Who Am I This Time

“Would you like another martini, sir?” The tall, raven-haired stewardess asked him. Rueben eyed his glass and shook his head slowly.

“No, thank-you, I’m fine.”

The stewardess nodded obediently and moved on mechanically to the gentleman beside him.

Rueben cleared his throat, sighed, and settled down. The Captain had previously announced their nearing descent into Boston, Mass, so it would only be now a matter of minutes before the plane landed into the city and Rueben could be safely into a nice, cool cab.

As soon as Rueben gripped his thin briefcase and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, he bounded off the plane into the exit hallway and grimaced to the smiling staff members, as he made his way into the terminal.

“Excuse me, pardon me, thank you,” he announced, with a tone almost as methodical as the staff’s. He breathed a gentle sigh of relief as he raised his arm to catch a cabby’s attention. Part of his damp, wet, denim work shirt rose, un-tucking itself in the process.

Lucky for Rueben, Boston’s Logan airport was quite popular, not to mention busy that June. Almost immediately, the familiar yellow car stopped at the curb and the driver signaled to get in. Rueben shuffled his leather shoes, stepped quickly inside and slammed the door.

“Double Tree Boston,” Rueben announced.

“Buck and a quarter per mile,” the cab driver shot back. The cabby knew how to dress but the accent could not keep him from seeming lower-middle class to an American.

Rueben could not help as he glanced towards the nameplate. He grinned slightly as he saw that it was ‘Ishmael’ and he was reminded of the literary figure. “Yes, yes. I’m in a bit of a hurry to make a conference at three this afternoon, so as long as you get me there, we have a deal.”

“Yes, sir.” The cabby nodded and rushed them out of the parking zone.

There was a dead silence between driver and passenger. In usual circumstances, the cabby would either hear nothing but the sounds of his heartbeat for the entire ride, or the passenger would begin to start light conversation.

Ishmael’s deep brown eyes casually made their way to look at Reuben’s face. Rueben was appeared to be about thirty three, had slight lines in his face, he had dark brown hair, and his bluish eyes could see that Rueben looked pensive, as if he wanted to pour out his whole life story but felt like Ishmael was too much of a stranger to listen. This bothered Ishmael: Mr. American thinks he’s too slick to talk to me. We’ll see about that.

“What conference is that, sir?” He asked, giving way to a half-smile. Rueben looked like uneasy. Good.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. I’m training to be a human resources consultant and this is a conference to learn about how to deal with cultural diversity. You’re…um… ‘Hat’ there might be considered offensive to other co-workers if they didn’t know any better.”

Now it was the driver’s turn to feel uncomfortable. “I see,” Ishmael grumbled.

The car was silent for a few minutes, save for Reuben’s loud cough. Ordinarily, Ishmael would have thought nothing of this simple gesture, but when the cough was followed by what seemed like Rueben going into some kind of shock or seizure, the atmosphere became quite a different circus.

“Are you all right, sir? Are you all right?” The cabby asked. He darted his head back and forth from the road in front of him and his ailing passenger.

Something inhuman was taking place behind poor Ishmael. The seemingly normal face of the anxious, insensitive passenger had turned to something totally different. When Rueben didn’t look as if he were breathing, Ishmael, pulled the car over, and without thinking, put a light palm on Reuben’s shoulder. Rueben jerked away and slumped back into his seat. Rueben’s eyes rolled back into his head, and they closed.

Suddenly, he opened his gray eyes and situated himself back in his seat. His breathing returned to normal, and he eyed his driver with strange contempt.

“Get away from me, you goddamn Turk! I want to get off! Right now!”

“ What the! I’m sorry sir I can’t do that! We’re right in the middle of traffic. It’s very dangerous. Please control yourself for both our sakes.”

“Let me out! Please, for God’s sake, let me out! Do what you have to, whatever you must do! If you use that sword on me, I swear, I’ll have you executed forthwith!”

“What sword? I don’t understand what you mean. Please, sir, I can’t watch the road and tend to you at the same time. Would you like me to take you to the nearest physician? No fare?”

“God save the Queen!”

Rueben was acting stranger and stranger. What was Ishmael to do? His brother had instructed him that the customer was always right, but he knew better than to send his passenger to his death by letting him waltz out into the middle of traffic.

Then, something odd entered Ishmael’s mind. Could it be? He’d heard of this thing before, but the cases were so few and far between, that it couldn’t have been. Could it? He wondered. “What year is it … me sahib?”

“Don’t be daft! It’s 1930!”

“1930?” It didn’t make sense. His fare had seemed all right when he’d entered the cab. Ishmael figured that he’d better do the right thing and made the turn to go to the hospital.

“Yes, you fool, it’s 1930!” Rueben shouted and pounded on the Plexiglas.

Ishmael stepped on the gas, and was almost to the hospital when the light suddenly turned yellow, than red at a corner. For an instant, he considered running it, and getting Rueben there much faster, but he’d already been in trouble with the police for speeding, and figured that everything would be fine for the five or so minutes at the light.

Unfortunately, he had not thought that Rueben would leap out of the stopped vehicle and charge into the busy street.

CHAPTER 2

It was approximately nine when Ishmael put the car into park, and set the emergency lights. He raced out of the cab, and started towards Rueben. However, the light turned green and several cars started to honk. Ishmael begrudgingly got back into his cab and started for the police station. “Let them figure out how to deal with the crazy, passenger.” He thought to himself.

Meanwhile, Rueben had cleared the street and was now racing down the sidewalk. There was a blank look in his eyes and he was mumbling in a British, well to do accent. He bumped into several couples on the sidewalk, splitting them up, and occasionally knocking some back.

Loud yells followed Rueben as he walked, but nothing deterred him from his path. At the corner of Twenty-fifth and Main, he paused for a minute, thinking to himself. “Could it be? No, that’s impossible.” The resemblance was so uncanny, that surely it could be no other. Rueben started towards the man.

“Ahem, Captain Northcliff, how nice to see you again. Do you know of a good spot for high tea? I could use a spot of it.”

The man looked at him oddly. “I’m afraid I don’t know you, sir.”

Rueben chuckled, and reached out to pat the man on the back. “Don’t be silly, old boy, how can you have forgotten the Gandhi years so quickly?”

The other man backed away rather quickly. “Get away from me!”

Rueben was surprised by the man's attitude, but continued on. His journey had led him to a little known area.

He knew where he was going -- a small café where he usually went to think. Hopefully this would help him clear his mind, and possibly explain why people were acting so peculiar. The only tea that he knew of had ice in it and on special occasions a little bourbon.

The road diverged, and instead of taking the right towards the café he inexplicably felt drawn to the left.

Here the pathway became more treacherous. Several pine trees were all overgrown, intertwined and nearly choked out what used to be a road. Many of the small tombstones in the nearby cemetery had been overgrown with masses of weeds.

Rueben plodded his way through, stopping at a marker. Rueben pulled away most of the foliage and read the following lines: “Here lies Lieutenant James McIntyre, Member of the Royal British Army from 1915-1936. Retired, became citizen of United States, and died in 1959.”

Rueben clutched at his stomach, a sensation of nausea overwhelmed him and he fell into a fetal position. “Heal all, must heal all.”

“Hey, Mister, what are ya doing? You don’t need to be here! Sleep it off somewhere else.”

Rueben sat up, dusted himself off, and shook his head at the night watchman. “Yeah, fine, I’ll go now.”

“Yeah, you’d better! Otherwise I’ll call the cops.”

He nodded and started on his way home. He needed to make sense of what happened to him, and figured that the act of writing it out might put the jumbled pieces together. He walked out of the cemetery trying to figure out how he’d get this disturbing image out of his head, and onto paper. He felt himself the happiest when he was sitting at his computer, and typing the images that flowed from his mind.

He arrived home, still trying to guess what the hell he was doing in the cemetery to begin with. He took the house key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

Once inside, he raced into the den and turned on the computer. He started to write down what had happened to him; the morning’s packing to go home, the plane flight – maybe the recycled air filters weren’t working right, or something; the very odd cab ride, the encounter with a pedestrian, whom he thought was Captain Northcliff – and the night watchman.

He re-read it all on the screen, just to be sure that it made sense, and started to print it. There were about three pages in all, and he seemed excited to get it printed, and it took a few moments for the printer to actually spit out the pages. As the printer was working, he suddenly had this craving for good English for tea, went into the kitchen to prepare a cup. He set a pot on to boil, and placed a bag in the cup. Soon, he had his tea and he was ready to go.

After he read the printed version, he turned on an overhead light and sat down in the computer chair. With a few clicks of the keys he was telling his story, although it was nothing like he’d ever heard of before.

“Lieutenant James McIntyre here. Goodness, it feels good to scratch the ol’ quill. I hope not to run out of ink, as it is a precious tale that I need to tell. It was hard to deal with the savages today as they were everywhere, and one could not help but step on them as one walked by. They were so oddly dressed that it was hard to describe, bare chests and a towel covering their heads!”

Reuben continued to read. “I have already heard of plans to enter into treaty with these godless heathens! How foolhardy can one get, pure rubbish! If it were up to me' I'd draw and quarter the lot of them and be done with it. Clear the land for those that are willing to abide by the laws that are placed down by our Queen, what I say.”

“Rather odd.” Reuben thought, lingering slightly on the delete button of the computer for a moment, but hitting the save button a moment later. “Might be of some importance, be able to use it for a short story or something.”

Reuben clicked off the computer and went to bed.

CHAPTER 3

In the morning Reuben awoke, and went to the den. There he was treated to the peculiar sight of the computer being on and five more pages on the screen. However, the last part of the page was the most interesting since his own name was mentioned.

What in the hell? Rueben considered that it might have been a sleepwalking incident and thought nothing of it, committing the document to save.

“Dear Rueben, I thought that you might like to hear the exploits of a good merchant man on a mission from the Holy God Almighty. I sense that you are likeminded as myself, and that you should have an interesting scope to take on this tale. Remember, Rueben, I am entrusting you to take care of this story and that it is up to you to treat it with the value that it so deserves.”

Rueben started to read, his mind soaking in every little detail. It was a new story to him, but it did not lack for truth.

“This evening on the twelfth of July I witnessed the proper treatment of a Indian woman. She was the nanny to a nearby old English couple who had made the grave mistake of putting her in charge of their two-year-old child; I cannot even begin to tell you what they might have been thinking. Yet, I will tell you that if those lovely, old folks had chosen another nanny, then their child would still be alive!

“The story is already splashed about the newspaper this morning, about how the lad was sent out in his play suit in the yard. The nanny ‘supposedly’ had some other errand to run, or what not, and the child ended up wandering in the yard for quite some time by his lonesome.

“During the day, the heat had set into the nineties and by the time that the parents returned home, the lad was sprawled out upon the grass, his face a beet red, and eyes staring blankly out into the sun.

“When the nanny returned home, the parents were already there – they had since brought the whelp in to try and treat him for heat exhaustion, but it was, of course, too late.

“That poor boy.” Rueben mused.

There was still more to go.

“Of course, the judge acquitted the bitch of all wrong doing, but it didn’t take just any man to realize that the judge WAS on their side – the Indians, I mean. It took a real man like myself, to do what was necessary and finally bring the murderess to justice.

“Many people might have seen what I did as murder, that the assassination of a woman is wrong, but it is up to those with a brain to take matters into their own hands. When a brainless one takes the life of an innocent infant, that is when the tables must be equalized. The child had done nothing wrong and didn’t need to die like that, and his murderess was going to walk, Scot-free. That was just wrong.

“I knew what had to be done, and set about doing the deed at approximately twelve fifteen the next morning. I had thought about using my Luger on the wench, but that would have probably connected me to the whole thing, as it is known as a military issue weapon.

“I had to think of some other way to go ahead and do it.

“The thoughts racked my brains almost ceaselessly not giving up in the least, and after a few days I realized that I had found not only the perfect way to do it, but also the best way to implicate those heathenistic Indians.

“It was well known that many in the Royal Indian guard had sabers or cutlasses of the like, and that if one were able to sever a head then that would be the almost perfect way to go ahead and do it. Yet there was still the question of how I was going to go ahead and procure the blade.

“I must say that I have had a brilliant stroke of luck! I was walking by the local trading merchants when I had the most fortunate stroke of luck that one could possibly think of!

“Cutlasses, sabers; dozens of them all standing there in a nice little row! They were all fine pieces of craftsmanship and the blades themselves had all been recently honed to a razor sharp edge!

“They seemed to call out to me, begging to be picked up and held by a proper English gentleman.

“I tightened my grip on the blade, and felt the weight and pressure in the palm of my hand. I swung the blade around slightly, just to see what it would be like to actually wield a piece of metal like that. (I had to force myself not to vomit at the thought of an Indian holding such a mighty fine piece of weaponry like this). It was in that instant that I knew that I had to have the blade and that nothing would keep me from my appointed post.

“I knew that I had to become that child’s protectorate – God rest his soul – and that the vile perpetrator of his death need take full heed of the vileness that she wrought.

“I slyly looked to either side of myself, just to be sure that I would not be caught stealing it; after all there were eyes everywhere, and it was of utmost importance that I not be seen from any point.

“It was later in the week, a Tuesday, I believe that the whole lot came together. The slave girl was just returning from her shopping rounds, I had watched her from afar, but I wanted to make sure that she was alone in her home.

“It was a modest, little wooden shack, like most of the lower end Indians had, and hers was no different. There was no lock to speak of on the door – heh, there was no door to speak of for that matter either; just a simple slab of cloth upon a bar that swung back and forth to allow both the breeze as well as people to come through. It could be nailed shut during the night, but it would be no problem for me to cut through the cloth and gain access.

“At approximately eleven PM, I made my move, the cutlass was clasped in my left hand, and ready to be put to good use, if I do say so myself.

“I pulled back the cutlass, and made a pinprick slit in the cloth, just to make sure that she really was there. If indeed I had the wrong house, then the damage could well be attributed to moths or something of the sort.

“Yet, as my eyes peered sneakily around, I knew that it was the right one.

“I then made ready to ensure the second part of my plan, and I left the cutlass in the local tavern, not attending it, exactly, but making sure that it was within sight so that no ugly Indian could take it back to its rightful owner.

“It seemed like hours passed before someone even REMARKED on goddamned the thing, the beauty of it all, and so on and so forth. Why, oh why, Dear Lord, was it taking so long for one of them to pick it up and examine it?

“I thought that I should go over to one of them, and have them look at it, make sure that it was authentic or some other plausible lie. But they were shirtless, dark skinned, and I doubt that they even had the civility to be able to carry on a proper conversation with one such as me. I’d leave it to the law to connect the two. After all, it shouldn’t be that hard.

Rueben stopped, and pressed the keyboard aside. This task of writing was getting way too difficult for him to deal with. “Why, oh why, am I being forced to deal with such a subject matter, and in such a cavalier attitude?” He rubbed his temples, got up from his seat, and went to get a cup of coffee. The cursor was blinking for the next paragraph, awaiting his next thought.

“Reuben, what is taking you so long? I need to finish this now. Time is growing short, the time for my story to be told is here and now.”

Reuben stared at the screen. The whiteness becoming encompassing.

He typed into the keyboard. “Who are you?”

CHAPTER 3

“I am simply a spirit. A man who has been tormented and framed by the demons of his past.”

“What do you mean? Explain it to me.”

“I don’t know if I can, Reuben.”

“Try.”

“All right. Where would you like me to begin?”

“As the saying goes, begin at the beginning.”

“As you wish.”

“I guess the story began in the 1890’s.”

Reuben grimaced. If someone had told him that he would be talking to a spirit, he would have told them that they were nuts, yet here he was. It was so implausible that he could think of nothing else, save for that it might be true.

“Go ahead.”

“Well, as you know, the English were controlling India, correct?”

“Yes, I believe that we had gone over that, and that you were sentenced to death for the death of a child right?”

“That’s right,” typed out the computer. “Well, since my own death by the governing bodies of England, my psychic life has been even more disturbed if such a thing is possible.”

“Explain.”

“Well, with the woman’s death that I had orchestrated, even though she was the lowest of the low – the governing body’s took it upon themselves to take my own life.”

“What was that like?”

“Well, at that time, the rules that governed the land were being twisted, demented, shall we say. If I had done what I did ten – no, even five years earlier, my action would have been seen as justifiable. And yet, in that time and place, I was condemned to death for the murder of an Indian. Can you even begin to imagine how awful, how horrid, that was?”