Rosburg

August 5, 1957.

Deb knew that something had changed in New Rosburg. The night was quieter, the animals calmer, when the sun rose it shone weakly through a warm drizzle of rain. The familiar thunder was muted, a distant rumble rather than a startling roar; its echoes blended with the noises of trucks on the highway that cut through the small town. When Deb went over to Susan's house to listen to her new Elvis record, the record player seemed cleaner, flatter; it had lost that intangible dimension of whispering static and almost fire-like crackling. Deb missed the noise.

"Do you feel like something's... off, today?" Deb asked.

("I got a pocket full o' dimes, it's gonna be just like old times," crooned Elvis from the shelf)

"Hm?" Susan asked, "Good off or bad off? Clue me."

Deb considered. "Both, I guess. Well, bad, more so. Flatter, you know? Like the world's gone a bit square."

"Hold that thought, my mom's at it again."

Susan got up and closed her door before the smell of cigarettes could drift upstairs. Deb kept talking. "Like someone just turned off the radio in the house next door. Like the end of a road trip."

("You went away and every day was misery, but now you're coming back to me, hot dog!")

"Like... like something... went away." Deb's brow furrowed in thought.

("My heart is gonna go insane, hot dog!")

"Say, Suse, did you catch Old Man Clementine this morning?"

Susan laughed. "Can't say I did, I'm not tight with him like you are."

"Oh, don't you say things like that! I talk with him sometimes is all. He's far out, he's got ideas, illuminations. And he's got this energy, dig? Like, the kind of energy that's missing today. And he always plays that little thumb-piano by the bus station, but I passed right by and didn't see him today."

A brief silence, as the song ended and Susan nodded slowly.

"Say, I think I know where you're at, Debbie. You know Miss Weber? The substitute teacher, with the, uh, the eye?"

"Never had her, but you've told me lots."

"Well she quit just yesterday! I didn't think anything of it, you know, but I did think, you know, I'm going to miss those fantastic rambles she'd come up with. They're saying she got put away. You think Old Man Clementine got put away too?"

"What, in jail? Why-"

"No, like, a loony bin."

"God, I- gosh, I mean, I hope not."

Despite the closed door, Deb could smell cigarette-smoke. She scooted to the other side of the room, leaning against Susan's bed.

"Let's have a party, let's have a party!" Elvis urged from the record player, and Susan perked up at the words.

"Hey, Debbie! You want to come to an ear-piercing party? Joan's place, next Friday?"

Deb felt her ear reflexively. "Oh, that's - that's soon, isn't it?"

"Haha, I guess so. Are you there though?"

"Uh. Sure, sure, I'll be there."

Susan beamed and reached for a magazine. "Wanna help me choose earrings?"

Deb smiled back, trying to banish distressing thoughts of Miss Weber and Old Man Clementine. And she did, until she was walking back home in the warm afternoon drizzle. It had been raining heavier yesterday, a proper summer thunderstorm, and as she'd walked from the bus stop the world had narrowed down to an intimate dry patch and the patter of raindrops hitting the plastic hood of her raincoat and the flashes of brilliant lightning through the downpour. Today it was just damp; light drops made their way into her hood and bled the color out of the surroundings.

Deb remembered, halfway home, that her father had asked her to stop by Wexler's Deli and pick up some pastrami, maybe pickles if Mister Wexler had good ones today. She took heart at that. She liked Mr. Wexler, with his hearty laugh and his eccentric fashion and the little toys he would sometimes give the younger kids.

But Deb's heart felt like it dropped into her rain boots when she turned the corner and saw that Wexler's Deli was closed. The mounting sense of loss hit her full force and she sprinted down the street, through the alley, around to the back of the shop where the door to the house was.

And there he was, Jakob Wexler, loading crates into the back of his truck. Deb couldn't see his face, but he moved as though he was laboring under a greater weight than the boxes. For a second, he seemed decades older.

"Mister Wexler!" she meant to yell, but mostly just said. The man turned around, and he wasn't exactly crying but he had that crying look on his face, and Deb could feel her eyes welling up.

"Oh, uh. Debbie. Who- what brings you here?" He sat down on the rear bumper of his truck, and Deb approached.

"Where..." she had to swallow before asking, "Where are you going?"

Jakob looked away. "Just traveling for a little bit. Family stuff. I'll be back, um, sometime."

Deb had always thought Jakob either a very honest man or a very good liar, but in this moment he seemed like neither. She leaned against the back of the shop, under the stairs that led up to his house, and folded her arms. She realized she was shaking a little.

"I know it's not family stuff," she said quietly, "You can tell me the truth. I'm seventeen."

She waited five seconds, ten, twenty, while Jakob looked at the crates, at the sky, at the shop, at the ground. After thirty seconds, she spoke up again. "Old Man Clementine's gone. Miss Weber, too. And others, probably. Please tell me what's going on. Rosburg is losing something and I'm scared."

Jakob looked back at her now. "So am I, Deb. So am I." Another pause, so long that Deb was about to ask again when he spoke.

"Your mother let you see sci-fi flicks?" he asked, "Forbidden planet, War of the Worlds, Frankenstein, Day the Earth Stood Still?"

The words sounded so weird coming out of Jakob's mouth; he had always struck Deb as the kind of person who watched nothing but TV rom-coms and Bogart films.

"Um, yeah. I saw Forbidden Planet last year. And some others. The one with the shrink ray. My mom doesn't know though."

Jakob nodded slowly. "Gimme a sec." He hopped up into the bed of the truck and undid the ropes that held the top on one of the crates.