court date came and went three times before both parties actually showed up in the courtroom together, and then the judge had a hard time following either side’s arguments. After much persuasion, however, in the form of atlases, photographs and testimony (mostly by an annoying former school teacher named Stokes), the judge finally was convinced that something had indeed happened to the geography of the Western United States and somehow needed to be set right.
“You’re saying that this mountain moved from Utah to Montana,” said the judge at last, to the enthusiastic nodding of the prosecuting attorney.
The judge looked at him. “So what?” she said.
“Uh...I forget...let me check my notes....Oh...so my clients wish for it to be returned or to be compensated for it,” continued the lawyer, a cousin of former Mayor Duffy.
The absurdity of the case was overwhelmingly obvious, but something dimly swimming in her mind made the judge pass the case onto a higher court, rather than dismissing it outright. There sharper minds grappled with it and also passed it on to a higher court. By the time it got to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, it had turned simply into a question of whether a mountain has the right to choose its own state of domicile, and when Chief Justice Ortega announced that it did, all the troublesome noise went away. Atlases would just have to be updated as necessary, at the publishers’ expense.
Everyone accepted the decision and the bothersome problem, which had become like a noise outside the window at night that threatens to wake one from one’s slumbers, went away.
When things calmed down again Stokes found he’d decayed into being a not-very-well liked member of the Fairfield community. He’d always been known as a pain-in-the-ass History instructor, but now he had made them the laughing stock of the country with this ridiculous lawsuit. Though they soon forgot what the lawsuit was about, they never forget who was behind it. B.F. Stokes, with his annoying insistence on historical accuracy, had been like a fly buzzing in their ear for more than half a century now, and they would be relieved when he passed away - which wouldn’t be too long now - he had just turned ninety six.
The rest of the Nation had accepted the changes in geography without much protest, but not Stokes. He felt a great wrong had been perpetrated. He knew that the landscape had up and changed. He had proof. He had taken the matter to the highest authorities, but they, in the end, had looked the other way. Where was the justice in that? He remained convinced to his dying day that something precious had been wrongfully taken from his community, but most days he couldn’t remember exactly what. It was more of a habitual outrage he felt than a specific grievance. The specificity of it had faded like the sharp line of a mountain peak when the sun goes down, faded to the point where the observer can no longer see it but simply takes it on faith that it is still there and will always be there.
GHOST STORIES
Just One or Two
"Any regrets?"
There it was, right in his face. Oh, he hated to take this gentleman's time, but there were.
"A few," he said, his voice cracking.
As expected, the man at the book sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Don't we arrange things perfectly enough for you?" he replied. "Must you always show up with one or two should-have-dones?"
"I'm...I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. That only complicates it. Excuse me, Sir, it's been a long day. I hoped to clear the books by ten P.M. I apologize. I've put my own demands ahead of the service I render - and you're just the kind to slip through incomplete if a gatekeeper's weakness leaves an opportunity. Okay, take this form, list your regrets - carefully and completely - and return it to me. Take all the time you need." His voice softened:
"It's for your benefit, you know."
"Thank you."
Gannon walked to a desk with the Standard Regret Form and began to fill it out. At first he thought he wasn't important enough to fill it out. Did it matter if he fell in love with his life or not? He was just a bit player in the whole thing. Then a brave throb gushed in his heart and he thought perhaps it might make a difference that he do it. In fact - he shook his head against the sluggishness that had settled about it - in fact, it might make all the difference. He approached his task with a renewed purpose and bent himself against the weight of his life to complete the form accurately.
The weight of his life. A thousand pounds of indifference against one ounce of "I care and it matters."
In a half an hour he had it boiled down. His regrets were three:
I regret I never had a relationship with Sally.
I regret I did have a relationship with Jane.
I regret the time it took to replace what was stolen.
He handed it back to the clerk and the clerk looked them over.
"Come with me," he said, and put a "Please Wait" plaque up on his podium to cover his departure.
They went around a corner and into a nearby fire door.
"Take your seat. The tall black one."
Gannon seated himself.
"Okay, pick it up when it comes on the screen. The exact moment. We'll start with Sally."
His life played back before him. Lots of places tugged at him - some joyfully, some painfully - and he wanted to go celebrate the joyful ones, but he felt the impatience of the clerk and bent his thoughts to stay with the regrets.
Presently Sally came up.
"There, stop."
It was there, plain as day: the reason why he couldn't have her. He had not allotted himself enough time. His plans hadn't included romance.
"That's my regret," he choked, "that my plans didn't include romance."
"Next."
Ouch. This clerk was wasting no time for tender reflections. His plans didn't include processing regret filled ghosts into the wee hours of the morning.
Okay, he'd quicken the pace.
"Second regret - going backwards, that is."
Jane. Before Sally.
Childish impatience.
Or so he judged - perhaps it was more adult than that. Adult impatience. Yes - very much an adult urgency.
"I regret I got in a hurry - no, that's not it. It's more subtle than that."
He looked at the screen carefully, asking for it to be adjusted back and forth by weeks and then days and then hours. She had appeared right when he said - or actually, a few months after he'd said time was running out.
He saw himself sitting midway back in a college classroom and listening to a lecture on Anthropology. Thoughts were running round his brain as he jotted absently in his burgundy notebook: something about waiting . . . or no longer waiting. Love was not going to come and find him. He'd have to seek it out.
He looked at the screen closer. Yes, in that very classroom on that very day he'd decided he was getting past his chance and he'd better take what was available at the next opportunity.
And that turned out to be Jane.
But the truth was he wasn't getting past his chance. He didn't have to "settle" for someone. There was no hurry.
The clerk was glaring at him.
Obviously he'd had no such regrets.
"The things you pick to be regretful about," he muttered.
"Thanks, just hold it there. I want to look at it a while longer."
The clerk was embarrassed, or so it seemed. Maybe he was less discriminatory than Gannon about what constituted sin and he'd been among the free and blessed for a great deal longer. For Gannon it had been but a few hours - if hours existed any more.
I came into death knowing more than you.
The words surprised him. He looked at the clerk and kept the thought to himself.
The screen beckoned his attention.
What was it about that Anthropology class that triggered off the urge to mate? What struck him that day that created the possibility of forming a relationship with Jane, a person he otherwise never would have tangled with – a person
he never should have tangled with?
The exactness of it slipped him. The screen could not focus that fine - yet he knew he'd sensed it.
"Okay, let it go."
"Thank you, Mr. Gannon."
Poor soul. Must be painful watching other people muck about in their regrets.
"Next regret: the time it took to replace what was stolen."
Time. Well, that made it silly already. Still, he wanted to look at it.
There was another face on the screen. Someone who had come along after Sally. An almost look alike of Sally, only one better. Sally had been earthy. This face was almost holy. What about meeting her had called up a strong regret?
She'd been someone he wouldn't have minded having children by. And now it was too late. Dead before mating. No survivors.
No one to go visit as a ghost.
"My third regret is not having offspring. I see a progression here. Regret for having wasted time on one I had no commitment to mate with, regret for not having had time for one I would have mated with, and third, for not having SEEN in time to correct the mistake and produce an offspring."
"Are you FINISHED, Sir?" asked the clerk.
"Not quite. This matters, you know."
A loud sigh did its best to discredit the statement.
"I cut off my balls," said Gannon.
"Beg your pardon?" asked the clerk.
"Oh, just a 20th century idiom. I had a psychic vasectomy. Decided the world had enough biomass to support without me adding to it, and then went about my days trying to resist my midbrain."
"And that's a regret, Sir? You don't know what you spared yourself. I had four kids. Four. Had to do a process on each one of them. I