Chapter Ten #3
“I always need to see a doctor,” said Bentley. “But, honestly, tonight I came here for the conversation. Some of my closest friends I’ve met in emergency rooms. Valerie—that was my wife—used to be a fool for Valentine’s. Since she died, I can’t spend it alone.”
—
It was astonishing, given that he had been speaking with the man for nearly four hours, that Miles had, until that point, not considered how Bentley, with his motorized conveyance, had arrived at the emergency room through a snowy February night.
Well, he was about to find out.
He didn’t even stop at the receptionist, but limped on out behind Bentley, through the double doors and onto the sidewalk.
The snow was falling faster now, but his companion was undeterred.
“I’m worried about your knee,” he said to Miles, and, pressing a button, he lowered a little step on the side of the scooter.
“Hop on,” he said. “Horse is tied up over there.”
Over there, it turned out, was not in one of the handicapped spots, four of them, and empty, which Snowflake said he left for those who needed them.
Over there was at the far end of the lot, now a foot deep in snow, where a vehicle shaped like an ambulance sat just beyond a flickering light.
But the scooter had been modified for the Vermont winter, with a cowcatcher fender that functioned essentially as a little snowplow.
The cart jiggled and jumped as they made their way along, cutting through the drift, Miles feeling a little ridiculous to be transported standing at the man’s side but, at the same time, unable to suppress the kind of glee that comes with any movement at speed over snow.
And there was lots of snow, now falling in heavy clumps, great chunks that surely would have intrigued both incarnations of the snowflake chronicler.
They pooled on Bentley’s cap, and on his lap, and in the books and papers in his basket, and in the grocery bags that hung from his handlebars.
As they approached the ambulance—for it was an ambulance, a decommissioned ambulance, bought at auction, liquidated for a tax-deductible loss by the very same organization that had bought and liquidated the old hospital—as they approached, the question had just arisen in Miles’s mind of how they would get inside it when Bentley reached forward and pushed a red button that he had duct-taped to his handlebars.
At once there was a groaning sound, and then the van began to undergo a transformation.
The rear door opened up like the loading bay on an airplane; a ramp, driven by a pair of pistons, lolled out like a metal tongue, while a pair of tracks slid out beneath to hold it.
He had timed it perfectly, the last piece dropping into place just as they pulled up.
“Duck,” said Bentley, and “Don’t let go,” and Miles ducked, and didn’t let go, as they rode up, and the pistons hissed again, and the great maw sealed them inside.
—
Miles Krzelewski, Acceptor of Rides Home from Strangers, sat shotgun in a remarkable vehicle, a miraculous Millennium Falcon of a car, a chimera of wood and steel, stripped of all superfluities, and re-equipped with only the essentials, which included a telescope, the full Oxford English Dictionary, and floor-to-ceiling card catalogues.
To enter had been a game of life-sized human Tetris, with the role of the Tetriminos played by two grown men, one 328 pounds in his undies, the other inelastic under the most favorable conditions, now hobbled with what he would learn one week later was a tear of his MCL.
Up the ramp, and through the narrow path that scraped the catalogues, Miles leaned in closer to Wilson Bentley, aware now of many odors, a sour smell of the van’s carpet, the musty odor of the library, some kind of patchouli incense, the man himself.
“Swerve,” said Bentley, as they reached the front of the car, and he slotted in behind the steering wheel, or, more specifically the wooden, snathlike extension attached to the steering wheel.
“Plop,” said Bentley, and Miles looked behind him and saw the passenger seat—the only seat in the whole car—waiting. He plopped.
Bentley beamed. “Not everybody lands the chair the first time,” he said. Then he reached up and grabbed a strap from the ceiling and pulled it down across his chest, locking it into the scooter.
“You sure you don’t mind taking me?” asked Miles.
“Buddy, if you keep asking, I’m going start minding. Just make yourself at home. Kick off your shoes if you want. The thing on the floor is a shiatsu foot massage, hot-wired to the engine. Valerie used to love it, but being a fellow of such speciall bignesse—I can’t use it. It’s heated.”
When in Rome, thought Miles, leaning forward to unzip his boots.
Bentley turned on the car, and the beams lit up the snowfall. “Lucky to get out when we can. An hour longer and we would have been spending the night with the coeds. And that, my friend, is not as good as it sounds.”
He pressed on the gas, and the van lurched backward, stopped with a jolt, and took off out of the parking lot, ripping a path through the smooth expanse of snow.
—
It was eighteen miles from the emergency room to the Rumphius home, and though, on a good sunny day, Miles wouldn’t have been able to finish a full episode of Marketplace on NPR, the storm had transformed the highway.
Snow heaped along the verge suggested the passing of a plow, but this seemed to have happened long ago.
They had the world to themselves, and Miles, calmed by the rhythm of the Shoe-at-su?, sat back and entrusted his life to his new companion.
For some time, they rode in silence. There was something about the snowfall that seemed to demand it, as if a great hush had fallen across the world and it would be blasphemy to speak.
There wasn’t anyone else out, and Miles wondered if he should be worried, but Bentley drove with confidence, and slowly Miles settled in, and watched the snowflakes falling through the headlights, the dancing of the wipers, and—out of the corner of his eye—the driver’s rapt attention.
But Miles couldn’t go a long time without talking, and by then he had a few burning questions, principally about this most extraordinary vehicle, and the card catalogues, for he always admired a good card catalogue, and one of his more mundane disappointments in life was not to have bought his very own when the university library was selling them off.
“Love your card catalogues,” he said, and it felt so good to say it.
But Bentley, who had been so garrulous, did not answer right away.
Had he not heard him?
“Love the card catalogues,” said Miles again.
This time Bentley nodded. “You want to hear a story?” he asked.
And, in the manner of a man who has carefully weighed whether to tell a story and now has resolved to tell it, Bentley began.
—
The truth, he said, was that his connection to Snowflake Bentley was a little more complicated than a shared love of snow photography.
It wasn’t something that he shared with everyone, but Miles seemed the open-minded type, and the gossip would make it around to him sooner or later.
And since they had a long car ride ahead of them, Bentley felt some further explanation might be needed.
“Of course,” said Miles, flattered by the compliment that had, some words back, been buried in the layers of caveat.
The truth, said Bentley, was that he was Snowflake Bentley, or to put it in a slightly different way, he was the second Snowflake Bentley, having been possessed, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, by the first Snowflake Bentley’s ibbur.
Miles did not know what this was.
An ibbur, explained Bentley, was a concept from Kabbalah, a benign possession, a disembodied soul that takes up residence in another’s body so that it might fulfill the purpose of the life cut short.
It had taken him some time to figure that one out, having been born a Baptist, but a man must read widely.
And once he’d discovered it, he felt it described him exactly, the presence that both was and wasn’t him, the voice, the wise counsel.
“Got it,” said Miles.
“I feel,” said Bentley, “that we should get that out of the way, being neighbors and all.”
We might have gotten that out of the way before I accepted a ride, thought Miles. And it occurred to him that, were he to try to run, he was currently only in his socks, his feet confined in the purring grip of the massager.
Bentley, however, must have anticipated his friend’s discomfort, because he added quickly that he understood how strange this sounded, given how he was aware of the unenlightened attitudes of the general citizen toward the occult.
But there was nothing to fear; he was as harmless as, well, as his name might suggest.
Miles did find himself reassured. Had the man said he was possessed by Satan, that would be one thing, but in the world’s hierarchy of innocence, Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley seemed pretty close to the top. Even his ghost was near the top.
“And what does he say to you?” asked Miles.
“Tells me to murder people,” said Bentley.
“Oh!” said Miles.
Bentley started to laugh.
“Got you there! Man, did you look about as green as those gals in the ER. What do you think he does? Photography advice, mostly. Life advice, generally. Pep talks.”
Miles nodded, feeling his heart slow down. This was a relief. Still, it wasn’t exactly clear what this had to do with the card catalogues.
“You are probably wondering what this has to do with the card catalogues,” said Bentley.
—