Page 6 of The Marigold Trail
B en keeps intense concentration on the wheel, though his mind is lost in thought. He had been warned earlier today via a phone call before our class reunion and waited until Kenny and I were separated. There’s not much he could’ve done while the four little monkeys were in his care anyway.
“Do Pops and Marcie know you’re coming?” Ben asks, referring to my grandparents. We’re heading back to Golden, taking the 287 and 93 backroads to their home, where my Pops’ old Windows 95 computer still sits with some sort of internet access. It’s likely the closest thing we’ll find to a device that won’t be traced back to us after our use.
“They don’t. We’ll sneak in through the back door. It’s always unlocked.”
We are limited on options. Both apartments are off-limits. Our department knows where we live, what we drive, and pretty much everything about our daily lives, but maybe Pops' old computer could be of use to us tonight. It was the only way I could think to search for that little marigold symbol without the department being able to track the search back to us—the same symbol seen on most of the attendee’s coat jackets in the devastating USB video.
We needed more information about that group if we were going to go up against them. Complying with them was a short-term solution, but we needed our own ground to stand on long-term.
We park Caleb’s old battered utility truck at the back of my grandparents’ house, just outside the fence across from the neighbor’s residence. “Follow my lead,” I say as I walk past my grandparents’ small forest of trees and the old treehouse. We reach the French door at the back and manage to slide in together without a whistle from the door. As we turn the corner to the living room, the fluffy white carpet reminds me to check for midnight snackers and sleepwalkers, in case my grandparents make a surprise appearance on the main floor.
All is clear. We stand eye level with the framed pictures of my high-school-aged mother and her two younger brothers, Steven and Davy, next to the closet door in the hallway. My heart beats with a little childhood magic knowing this door is home to Pops’ hidden room—only the two of us are aware of its existence. If Grandma Marcie had discovered it she hadn’t said anything in the last forty years since they’d owned the house.
I open the door and unveil a closet full of mixed-color plaid shirts hanging from a thick rod below a built-in bookshelf. To passersby it's just knickknacks and shirtwaists grazing the carpet floor in a small space; little do they know it's all a distraction to conceal the second door and its two knobs behind them. When I spread the curtain of shirts and reach through, my FBI badge tugs against one of Pops’ leather jackets. I secure it back into the waistband of my pants and continue feeling for the doorknobs behind the layer of shirts. I feel a slight tingle of betrayal for sharing our secret hideout with another person as I release each lock. There’s really no time to dwell on my choices here. Pops would forgive me if he knew the circumstance.
Ben enters Pops’ make-shift Narnia before I do. Disneyland levels of excitement enter my body just as he says, “Your grandfather just happens to have a secret passageway to a room in his own home?”
The look on Ben’s face is similar to his expression when he’s scouting a crime scene location. He inventories the seventies wood panels and pale blue-patterned wallpaper before I guide him to the chair next to the boxy Windows 95 computer where a bottle of Clean Wave cleaner and a few USB and lawyer trinkets lay. Thankfully, it’s still connected to the dial-up internet via an updated ethernet connection. Pops must’ve updated it. He mentioned he’d been doing some light gaming—3D Pinball and Minesweeper—recently.
“This is where Pops keeps all the things he wants no one to touch,” I explain. “I’ve also kept a number of things here as well. It’s been a few years since I’ve been here though.”
Ben opens the old metal filing cabinet next to the computer and starts pulling thick stacks of comics out, placing them on the desk in front of me.
“Pull out some newspapers from the shelves below. We can start there,” I say, touching the black start-up button on the hard drive and watching as the copyright text loads across the screen. It creates a buzzing noise louder than the old ceiling fan.
I hear hard plastic pieces clicking together like symbols and turn to see that Ben has pulled my old Lenox Sound transparent telephone with rainbow wires from a cardboard box. The box also holds a rusty vintage gumball machine with at least a few dozen gumballs as hard as ball-shaped gunpowder. He sits across from me and begins to dangle the red and yellow spiral cord that attaches the phone to its base in his hands.
“Didn’t I give this to you when we were in grade school?” he asks.
“You did! Diana had the same one and you didn’t want to have a girly phone like your sister so you gave it to me. I remember being so excited to match with Diana,” I reply.
“Those were my grandma’s old phone sets. I wonder if it would still work if I connected it into the wall jack?” He holds the phone up close to his face, seriously assessing it.
I dump a stack of newspapers in front of him, ignoring his desire to mess with the cable wire connection underneath the desk and ask him to take a look at the political section.
“The man in the video was a Colorado State Senator for a while before joining the US Senate. We might find something about him in the papers if we read through enough,” I say, as he punches buttons to check if there’s any life in the phone. I notice the “Important Numbers” sticker with the names and numbers of people I’ve never met yet still had memorized all these years. Back in the day, those unfamiliar names became targets of our prank calls.
Ben gets up from his seat and places the phone next to me on the desk with a satisfied smirk. He pulls a newspaper from the stack as I load Internet Explorer and wait patiently to type “Marigold Symbol Business Logo” in a very ancient Internet Explorer 4.0 interface version of the search bar.
Surely we take for granted the ease of modern internet. I could have rebooted my Mac, ordered onion rings, and Facebook-stalked every single classmate at the reunion in the amount of time it takes to load the page.
When the page loads I get an error saying “cannot open the internet site,” learning that today’s Google page works fine in EF4 but all other sites are fatal attempts at any marigold logo information. I play around with some code to try and understand the technical roadblocks but after a few attempts I come to the realization that I’ll need a proxy server to get the information I’m wanting. The results page gives me a preview at least. Without clicking on any links, I gather what little bits of information I can from the first page search results.
“Here’s something. Look,” I say to Ben, who scoots in closer to my chair. He’s hovered over me a million times before at work but it’s hard to control my urge to smell him when we’re in Little Narnia all alone. “The Marigold symbol is the logo for Marigold Company which is a company started by the Sheriden Foundation,” I continue, summarizing the information available on screen. “Do you know anything about the Sheriden Foundation?”
“Other than what we saw on the USB video, not much,” he says, opening the newspaper and planting himself back in the old wooden chair next to mine.
I read through the rest of the search results trying to make connections to the Marigold logo. I find nothing and click the mouse in frustration. As another error page loads I peer over at a focused Ben. His face is barely visible behind the newspaper but I still have a decent view of his dark and determined eyes. He looks comfortable for a second and the paper lowers.
There it is again. He seizes me for a moment with that boyish expression hidden under the coarse crew cut that highlights his strong facial features. I can’t help but find the combination of his looks, character, and determination attractive. No matter what, he had me always wanting and wishing for more. And though I’d wished for it for so long, I knew he’d always only see me as his sister’s best friend since childhood.
“So far this sports section’s got excellent highlights for 2010, but I’m not finding anything helpful,” Ben says. I nod, continuing to scroll the search page for Marigold.
“Let’s say we do find more incriminating information on the Sheriden Foundation. How are we gonna tip off a trusted source?” I say to Ben.
“This thing?” He holds the transparent phone up and a smile slips through his lips. It’s at this moment that I realize I’m learning something new today about the man I’ve known for twenty-five years. He’s the kind of guy who opts for humor when the world is ending and a solution seems next to impossible.
I notice a bite marked wad of gum stuck to the side of the phone as he dangles it in front of me. Pops must have tried one of those ancient gumballs and disliked it. I wouldn’t put it past him to try one, honestly.
I snatch the phone from Ben and give the handset a spray with the Clean Wave bottle cleaner standing on the desk beside me. It works like a charm. The crusty goo slides off instantly and lands on the carpet with a thud. I rub the phone with my shirtsleeve soaking up the shallow puddle of solution.
The wall jack sparks, like a miniature firework display on the wall, causing me to jump a little. I look at Ben to see if he’s noticed my overreaction, but he looks just as spooked, still on edge from everything. When we make eye contact we chuckle. The electrical flare is gone just as quickly as it came and I start tapping the blue receiver buttons, dialing the first number on the list with extravagant finger movements. I’m doing this for show. I hope Ben enjoys it.
“1980s called. They want their wallpaper back, Pops!” I say into the clear receiver, making my voice a bit cartoonish. Ben’s face melts into a smirk and he shakes his head with closed eyes.
My joke’s cut short when the room light begins to flicker, giving us a few seconds of darkness. Did the power really just go out? I can feel all the blood rush down my face and balancing my two feet on the ground becomes an actual task.
A burst of light appears in the form of chaotic sparks—an actual firework show before my eyes.
What is happening?
I can’t help but think the room and everything inside it, including us, are going to burn. Before I feel heat from any flame, time speeds up like a collage of memories on a superspeed treadmill.
The collage of memories slows. I’m brought back to reality and an empty room void of sparks. My ears begin ringing as if there’s an echoing bell in a conch shell glued to my ear and I feel a sharp pain in my back. Dizziness begins to overwhelm me to the point that I collapse back into the desk chair.
With the worst headache pain imaginable, everything around me goes black again.
Nausea seizes me and my eyes become weighted, heavy as stones. My eyelids feel as if they’re trapped under tiny blocks of lead and it's as if I have to will my eyes open, fighting my body for choice.
I begin envisioning myself prying my eyelids open with a crowbar with hopes that they’ll open. Come on! Open up! Why did I suddenly black out? After four failed attempts at envisioning crowbars, I feel a lightness wash over me and I pop them open.