“Reminds me of Christmas at Granny Laczinczca’s, feeling stuffed with food. All we need is some of those wafer-thin chocolate peppermints and some orange-and-cinnamon punch. Oh, those were”
Rick’s words faded away and Krysty leaned forward. “Go on. Tell us. I know. A game we used to play back at Harmony ville. You think what’s the best ever moment you can remember. Let’s do it. Who’ll go first? Doc? Rick?”
The freezie thought for a moment. “Yeah. January, late nineties. My sickness hadn’t begun to bite all the way, and I had some furlough owing to me. I’d watched the final two games in the World Series. Last time it was played at the old Yankee Stadium up in the Bronx. Guys calling ‘Yo, beer,’ all around. A three-run homer in the top of the sixth clinched it. But then it was the Superbowl. Don’t remember where. West Coast. San Diego?” He shook his head, “I can’t be sure. But it was the Giants. My Giants, following on the win of my Yankees. They were playing against the Anaheim Colts. Used tocan’t recall. But we won it, and I was there, a young man full of living and the sun and all those people. That was the best I can remember.”
The room had been quiet during his memory.
A length of joist, burning clear through, broke in two in a noisy rustle and a burst of bright orange sparks.
“How about you, Jak?” Krysty asked.
“Me? Best time ever? Seeing Tourment fucking die. Best.”
Rick had closed his eyes, exhausted with the effort of visiting the perilous land of Nostalgia. Now he opened them again. “What?” he said. “Did I miss something? Who is?”
“Before your time,” Ryan said. “Man called Tourment chilled Jak’s old man. Got himself chilled. End of story.”
“Short and sweet. Krysty? What’s your best moment ever?”
She considered the freezie’s question for many long heartbeats, her hand across Ryan’s arm.
Finally, “Mother Sonja was still alive. I was1 can’t remember how old I was. I know it was summer. It was always summer then. Harmony lay amid a bowl of gentle hills, heather-covered, sweet and protective to me as a young girl. I broke fast early on fresh wild strawberries and cream and new-baked bread. Walked alone up to a high waterfall, closed in a narrow valley with polished boulders clustered together at its foot. The purple-and-pink chem clouds were gone that day. I often used to go there when I was on my own. There was a pool, deep and clear and pure as crystal. I peeled off and plunged in. It was was so good. I swam around for a while and then pulled myself out on a flat rock, sun-warmed. I sleptrested and slept and cleaned my mind of all the what Uncle Tyas McCann used to call excess baggage. I always remember that day because I thought a lot about the earth force and Gaia. There were some odd little black flowers up there, soft and delicate.”
She stopped, her mind turning inward with the memory. Jak threw a couple of pieces of fresh wood onto the fire, bringing a new burst of flame that highlighted Krysty’s flaming hair.
The young woman continued.
“The day trickled past me, filled with the distillation of peace. I have never felt so calm and so sure of myself. Not ever before” she looked at Ryan, “and not ever since. There’ve been some good times course there have. But nothing like that. When I walked back, barefoot, to Harmony ville, Mother Sonja met me and hugged me to her. She said that I had gone out that day as her little girl, and I’d come back to her as a woman, grown.”
Doc nodded and clapped his hands quietly. “A good tale, my dear. Oh, yes. So sweet a time, so gently recalled. It does you the greatest of credit.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“I got a question, Krysty.”
“Yeah, J.B.?”
“We known each other now for a good while, haven’t we?”
“Sure.”
“You talk some about your mother.”
“I don’t” she began, trying to interrupt him. But he continued.
“What about your father, Krysty? How come we never get to hear anything about him? You never speak about him. Never.”