Title: The Longest Weekend Author: Livia Date: 05/17/00 Email me at: livia001@hotmail.com My page: http://internettrash.com/users/livia/duesouth.htm Rating: R for language and not much else Disclaimer: The due South crew belong to Alliance. Moreover, the theme was swiped wholesale from Ray Bradbury's classic short story 'The Vacation' (which can be found in the collection 'The Machineries of Joy,' originally published by Bantam Books in 1964.) Thank you kindly: To Elisabeth and Resonant for their thoughts. You guys are the best.

The Longest Weekend by Livia

It is a perfect Indian summer day, in sweet contrast to the last few weeks' chill threat of winter. The days have been getting shorter lately, but this one stretches out beneath the sky like a Midwest highway in a road movie, druggingly calm in its eternity and full of great long rolling silences breaking gently like waves on a white shore. This meadow was an orchard once. Now there's just trees growing old, mostly apple trees with pale peeling bark and some cherry trees whose gnarled branches squiggle out into the sky like spilled ink. Cherry blossoms are fallen everywhere, pale white petals like dusted fingerprints strewn across the meadow's floor and amid the tall yellow-brown grass wet with dew. In the center of the meadow lies a blue wool blanket, spread flat and level as a dance floor. Parallel to the edges of the blanket, a dark-haired man lies on his back. His hands are folded neatly just above his solar plexus. His head points north, and his eyes are closed. A blond man sprawls on a diagonal in the opposite direction, face turned away from his partner's denim-clad calf, squinting against the sun. One leg bends lazily, and one stretches out; a boot-clad foot twitches in the grass. In the triangle of blanket between the two men lies is a white wolf, head between its paws. The blond man moves his hand in gentle circles, alternately smoothing and ruffling the beast's fur. The blond man closes his eyes, wondering if his companion is asleep. "Wouldn't it be great if ya could wake up tomorrow and-- everyone in the world was gone and everything was startin' over?" "Y'know," he continues quietly, "if ya could just push a button, right now, an' make it happen... I might. Nothin' violent, I mean," he hastens to add. No tragedy, no nuclear winter, no plague. Nobody hurt. Or tortured. Or beat up by their pimp, raped and left half-naked to freeze in a snowy gutter. No one with their balls cut off and stuffed in their mouth because a mob boss got pissed off. No one shot by a dirty cop and let bleed to death while the other cops tried to get their stories straight. No kids or mothers suffocated, burned up because some slumlord cut corners on the smoke alarms or wiring... "Just have everything vanish, like. Just leave the land an' trees an' stuff." The wolf lifts his head and whines questioningly. Ray grins and scratches behind his ears. "Yeah, animals too. Just people, gone. All the people. The stupid an' the crazy an' mad an' selfish, mean ones..." All gone, and all of time ahead. The longest long weekend in history. The way summer break promised to last when you were a kid, and never did. They'd leave the city, take the car, fly down some empty Midwest highway. Make good time, with no station wagons or triple trailers blocking the open road. And if the GTO blew a gasket eighty miles from nowhere... well, they'd find some other way to travel. Horses, maybe. Ray grins a little at the image: two cowboys and their trusty wolf. "Naturally, we would be left behind." Fraser murmurs. "Natch." Ray agrees, twisting to look at his partner's face. Fraser's eyes are still closed. "It might be... rather lonely." Which seems like kind of an odd thing for the Mountie to say. Mr. Wide Open Spaces. Mr. Don't Fence Me In. But, right now just like always, he's probably not thinking of himself. Ray closes his eyes. Just then another silence breaks with a low, slow rustle of leaves, the wind like a wave of some invisible thing crashing all around them. It could be a sign. It could have happened, just then. Just then, his wish granted and everyone gone in one breath of wind. Just like Ray wanted. He tries to imagine facing it. Going back, driving up empty roads to an empty city. No more snitch, no more landlady. No Frannie or Dewey or Welsh. He finds, with a small stab of remorse and surprise, that he'd miss Mort. No Ice Queen, he thinks. No Stella, no Mom, no Dad. But that's just how it is now. Ray makes himself realize it, makes himself stare into the dawn of a new world. The whole earth, an empty meadow just like this. Nothing on the radio but static like rustling leaves, and nothing in the streets but the gently scouring wind, and nothing in the sky but quiet birds. All gone, like some bad dream. Just him and Fraser and the wolf. They could drive down to New England for the fall, winter in Florida, spring in Louisiana or Texas maybe. Summer in Mexico. Or, they could go the other way-- north. Quebec. Prince Charles Island... no, that's not it. Prince Somebody Island. Fraser could tell him. Fraser could show him. Of all the people Ray has ever known, Fraser would be the best to have along on an endless summer vacation. Ray could even get used to those cheeseball ghost stories of his. "Be fun though, you know?" he finally says. "Sleeping out under the stars, cooking food outside every night. It could just go on like that, and..." Ray's gut twists as the fantasy takes its course, naturally, easily and implacably as the tide. Summer, endless summer, alone together, and Fraser and Ray could have it. Everything they can't have now, with duties and rules and jobs and eyes and whispers and old loves and past loves constantly harrowing the twice-tilled fields of their hearts, sharp caresses like plowblades turning up the rich, black, barren earth... The sun is suddenly too hot on Ray's face. He rolls away from Fraser, onto his side, one hand wedged awkwardly under the side of his face in a vain attempt to look casual. Smooth. And then Dief snorts harshly, a strange sensation against Ray's back, wolf-hot breath and cold-nosed snuffle, making Ray hiss in surprise and jerk upright before he's settled himself. Fraser sits as well, twisting around to look as the wolf bounds through the tall grass to the edge of the meadow. Only his white, scruffy, bristling neck and head show above the reeds and stalks. In the autumn-dim shadow of the trees, his black-rimmed eyes glow eerily for a moment. He barks once, then twice, roughly, then bounds away into the trees. Ray looks at the back of the Mountie's neck. Fraser sits very still, staring off into the meadow, the lengthening shadows cast by the trees. He does not speak, comment, mutter or otherwise disparage the wolf's odd behavior. Ray brings his knees up to his chest slowly, and rests his chin on them. Maybe the wolf wants the same as Ray-- no more sharp-voiced Dragon Lady, no more hard-eyed animal control officers. No more sticky-fingered kids who just wanna love the doggie. But still. When Dief sees himself running across that empty field of the world, what does his pack look like? Would it be Fraser, Ray, and Dief? Or would Dief hunt alone, and only occasionally howl to the music of other, far-off wolves? "What does Dief wish?" he asks roughly. The wolf doesn't talk. Ray knows that. But Fraser may speak now in a voice less reserved, less polite, less distant than his own. But he doesn't. Not really. "Well, wolves are social animals by nature, Ray. Some, less so than others." "Damn it, Fraze." Ray leans forward, rests his forehead on his arms. It wouldn't have to be goddamn fucking lonely, is what Ray wants to say. It wouldn't have to be. What would he wish? Ray remains silent. What wish is being wished right now? Everything is silent. And then the hot autumn wind rolls down across the meadow again, stirring everything. It rustles the dying, drying weeds together at the edge of the clearing. Leaves on the ground shift in the dust and brush together like dry palms. Tree branches rub against branches and cry out in a croak. The breeze cools. The cherry trees shake in the chill. Their last few handfuls of pure white petals begin to fall, fluttering and floating down on the cold, cold wind. The cherry blossoms fall to the floor of the meadow in drifts. They cover the footprints in the dust, the dead leaves and the broken branches. They cover everything, until the meadow is as white and clean as snow. [end]