Carol Phillips
Altered Realities
On June 29, 1979, I strolled into the Golden Gate Park from Fulton Street hoping to find a place out of the cold wind blowing in San Francisco’s ubiquitous fog. I had an hour to wait until I would meet friends and view the King Tut exhibit.
I followed an earthen path through Monterey cypresses and pines that grew out of a carpet of ferns. Wind roared through the upper branches of the hundred-foot trees but as I walked, the air grew still and almost warm. And almost silent too—not even rustles from the squirrels, rabbits and birds I knew were around—only the soft crunch of my footsteps as I walked on dried needles.
The path sloped down a short ridge and opened where it met two other trails to create a glen where a fallen log, spotlighted by the sun, invited me to sit. I relaxed into the stillness before pulling out my book, Lord Foul’s Bane, from my purse and got lost in the magical world of the Land. The Land where the leper Thomas Covenant somehow suddenly appeared and then just as suddenly left. The Land where he was no longer sick, but infused with power he didn’t understand.
Sirens cracked the silence—police, fire engines, both? I didn’t know. I tried to find the source of the maelstrom swirling around the edge of glen but saw only the trees. I felt someone coming, but there was no one. A man appeared on the path to the right of me, standing, watching me. He appeared as suddenly as Thomas Covenant appeared in the Land. An average-sized man. Ragged. Homeless I figured. Maybe from the camp just off Haight-Asbury. I watched as he moved towards me and stopped a few feet in front of me.
We looked at each other. His eyes held fear but determination also. “Do you have any money? I’m desperate. I need your money.”
“No,” I lied. “I have no money.”
“Not even some change?”
“No. No change.”
He stepped closer. “I don’t believe you. Do you want me to take your money? I’m desperate.”
I looked at him for a moment, then reached down to get my wallet. Sirens filled the air, wrapping us and the glen in incessant high-pitched wails.
The man startled. “Wait. Stop. You’re a cop, aren’t you. Don’t pull a gun on me. You’re a cop. I can tell. Don’t shoot me.
“No,” I said, concern now rising from my gut. “I’m not a cop. I don’t have a gun. I’m just getting my wallet.”
He leaned closer to me as if trying to see inside my purse. “Okay.”
Letting out a breath, I pulled out my wallet and gave him a twenty-dollar bill. Half of what I had. “I need the other twenty to take my friends out to dinner,” I told him.
“Give me your money. All of it.”
We looked at each other again and I felt like there were just the two of us; like the sirens created a barrier beyond the trees and cut us off— him and me—from the rest of the world. It would have been romantic if he wasn’t robbing me.
I gave him the other twenty, hiding $.89 in change. He plucked the bills from my hand. I watched him back up the slope I had descended.
“I need this money. I know you’ll call the police. You know what I look like.”
He continued to slowly back up the hill. “You know I have brown hair; I’m wearing blue jeans and a black jacket.” I’m in your power he seemed to tell me.
Then the man was gone. Vanished. Like Thomas Covenant disappeared from the Land. Silence descended—the wails of sirens gone as abruptly as they started.
I let the quiet, the stillness, seep into my soul, then picked up Lord Foul’s Bane wondering if Covenant could stay in the Land forever.
“Carol!” I don’t know if I said this out loud or shouted the words in my mind. “You bloody fool. Get out of here. You could have been beaten up, raped, killed.”
I put my book in my purse and walked toward the museum. The glen and the man and the robbery and Thomas Covenant pushed from my mind by the growing voices of the crowd waiting to be admitted to the King Tut exhibit.
A tent had been set up in the staging area in front of the de Young Museum and wine could be had for a dollar a glass. Just what I needed. A glass of wine before my friends arrived. I made my way through the crowd to the table and asked for a glass. I pull out my wallet and suddenly remembered I had no cash. I placed the $.89 in my outstretched palm and turned to the man beside me: “May I have eleven cents for a glass of wine. I’ve just been robbed, and this is all the money I have.”
“Robbed?” the man said, handing the server a dollar and me a glass of wine. “Where? What happened? You need to report this to the police. Now.”
I didn’t think telling the police would do any good. Besides, I remembered my feeling as the man disappeared: I have him in my power. I didn’t want to use that clout any more than Thomas Covenant wanted to use his newly found power.
But my benefactor dragged me off to find a cop who dutifully took notes and said: “We probably won’t find him.”
I went looking for the glen some days later. I didn’t find it. Only the memory lingered—a waking dream someone called it. An altered reality. Like the Land. One that costs forty bucks admission.
Carol Phillips’ essay, “Waiting In Time,” appears in the Main Street Rag Publishing Company’s anthology About Time. Her short story “Driving Lessons” won Second Place in the Carolina Women’s 2020 Writing Contest. Carol has written columns about mild traumatic head injuries and invisible disabilities for the Chapel Hill News, part of the News and Observer group. In addition, her short stories and haiku have appeared in small journals. She has been a member of the NC Writers’ Network since 2006, and served as a Regional Rep for four years.
