Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

“Blake, man, you missed it.”

Harry had sunk the eight. I congratulated him on the win, moving to excuse myself from the table, but he looked disappointed and shook his head.

“There’s no way I can keep that shot. I have to pull the ball and shoot again. A man can’t win a game when his opponent’s not looking, friend.”

“Really,” I said, “come on. I know you made it fair and square.”

“Shelley!” he called. “Two shots.”

“No, listen,” I said, but Harry was already on his way to the bar, and he quickly returned with a shot of whiskey held out before him, another near his lips. He nodded encouragingly, and not wanting to disappoint the man further, I took the glass from his hand and took the gold liquid into my mouth.

“Thanks,” I said, my throat constricting.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “That one’s on Dale.”

“Who?”

“Blake!”

Mitch was standing by his table, seeming tense. I still couldn’t see beyond the bar, but there was a loud cheering and clinking of glasses, and then the bright plaid shirt began moving back toward the door.

Mitch flicked his head. We need to leave , was the message.

I apologized to Harry, who, though sorry to see me go, thanked me for the game.

“People around here,” he said, “just don’t understand the kind of sacrifices real art requires.”

Mitch and I met at the door. He seemed sober and alert. But after the air-conditioned bar, the heat outside was almost unbearable and gave me a woozy feeling I tried to hide.

Mitch looked at his watch. It was midnight.

“What are you up to,” he said under his breath.

I followed his gaze across the lot, where the man in plaid was standing with his back to us at his car door. It was a plain American sedan, the kind Mitch avoided these days. The man was average height, thin, and his hair was black, slicked back. He opened the door, and as he turned to climb in his face shone under the single light standing over the lot. It was Dale Cooper.

WE TRAILED THE CAR through town, then east along a winding arterial that splintered off on either side into tree-lined neighborhood streets. I was shaken, drunk, and deflecting Mitch’s curious looks by leaning my head against the cool glass. I wasn’t ready to speak. It felt like I’d had a sudden encounter with someone from my past, but I couldn’t summon which past he’d been part of. Someone I’d known from college? A teacher from high school? A friend of my parents? Maybe I’d simply seen him on the news. I’d seen a report about him, about his crimes.

We turned right on Airport Road and Mitch grew excited. He asked me to pull a cell phone out of the glove compartment, and moments later he was speaking to his father.

“I don’t know where he’s headed,” Mitch said. “But yes, of course I’m prepared to go.”

We stopped at the entrance to the small airport — a landscaped clearing with two metal buildings that seemed more likely to hold packages than waiting passengers. Mitch turned on his CB and began scanning.

“All static,” he said into the phone. “I know, I know. I’m going to.”

Mitch held the phone to his chest and told me he was going in.

“Going in where?” I asked.

“To the airport. If he…shit.”

Mitch was looking over my shoulder, and I turned to see a small white plane gathering speed on the runway. It was headed in our direction, and soon rose slowly into the sweaty night sky. Mitch jumped out of the car and jogged toward the closer building, then around the corner.

The radio chirped.

I didn’t feel like running to catch up, but I didn’t want to sit in the car, either. I took the keys from the ignition and wandered in the direction Mitch had disappeared. Walking reminded me how much I’d had to drink, and I tried to keep a straight line as my heavy body swayed back and forth like water sloshing inside a jug. The more I thought about that moment of recognition, the more the feeling changed inside me. It felt much different than a memory. It was as though I’d looked toward the shape of a man but seen a hole in the world. Less like a memory than a premonition.

I peeked around the corner. The field was empty and the buildings seemed closed. Mitch was nowhere in sight. A statue stood between the two structures and the airfield, a tall Native American man holding his hand up in something between a friendly wave and a stern warning. There was no breeze, no birds, no airport personnel. It seemed impossible that an airplane had departed only moments before. Just as I was taking in the eerie emptiness, however, movement alongside a dark, silent van beside a loading dock caught my eye, and a bright white chicken toddled out onto the grass. Its contented, perky clucking was a comfort somehow, as though chickens wouldn’t exist in a strange, unreliable world.

I edged closer to it, inching toward the Indian. Perhaps it was a pet. Or maybe a watchdog of sorts, here to scare away rodents. It didn’t seem frightened of me, either way. I was able to get within two feet of it. I crouched. I reached out my hand.

“What are you doing?”

I swiveled on my feet, too quickly, and spilled over onto the cool grass. The chicken startled and ran back to the van.

Mitch jogged up to me.

“Come on,” he said, “we’re heading north.”

He helped me up and we walked quickly back to the car.

“That plane is going to Niagara Falls.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I bribed the controller.”

I looked around.

“You found someone?”

“The controller.”

We got in, buckled up, and I handed Mitch the keys. He was surprised, as though it had been unnecessary to take them.

“It seemed odd to leave them in,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, and as we pulled away from the airport I looked back to catch one last look at the glowing white bird.

When we hit the highway, Mitch gave me the option of being dropped off, of staying at a motel or waiting for a bus back to the city. I refused. Though I’d decided to keep silent about Dale Cooper, I needed to see him again. I wanted to have that feeling again, that feeling of familiarity, of affinity. It was fading from me fast, and as I tried to keep hold of it, tried to examine it, it seemed less like something lived through and more like something dreamt. The car pointed north, to Buffalo, and I, as though in pursuit of this apparition, with the gentle movement of the car conspiring with the beer, began to nod off.

“I’ve been thinking about your question,” Mitch said.

I responded groggily with something that sounded like car or gone .

“There’s no king named Anonimous with an ‘I’—I looked into it. But the problem here isn’t the misspelling.”

“No?”

“The problem is that anyone can just make something up, and poof, it’s right there next to Shakespeare.”

I woke up on a daybed in a small living room filled with light. Mitch, who I seemed to remember having fallen asleep in the recliner across from me, was gone. In his place was a neatly folded towel. The room itself was tidy but cluttered, filled mostly with books and antique laboratory paraphernalia. A large microscope sat on the floor, its tray home now to a moldy Petri dish. Jam jars with large bugs suspended in a viscous fluid lined the shelf directly behind my head. A chart, hung from a tripod in one corner, was titled The Periodicity of the Elements .

On the opposite wall hung a painting depicting a pastoral scene with a large farmhouse in the background, and in the foreground three Belted Galloways and an autumnal oak tree with an empty rope swing. Smoke curled out of the farmhouse chimney, and a large brown stippled squid flew through it in the sky above the house. I leaned in, trying to confirm that the squid was not an original feature of the painting, but I was interrupted by the sound of banging pots.