NOWHERE MAN chapter one

NOWHERE MAN

                                                                THE REUNION

John, Paul, George, and Ringo finally managed to separate. 

All four were weeping.

"I never thought this was gonna happen again," John finally managed to say. "We're all here; we're all together."

"I wouldn't have believed it if it'd been anyone but Paul who told me you were still alive," George said, smiling through his tears. "I thought I'd lost you. We all thought we'd lost you."

"It's good to see you, mate," said Ringo. He wiped a sleeve across his face and stepped forward to embrace John again.

John held his old friend for a moment, squeezed him, and let go.

"You too, Ring," he said softly.

He looked around at his friends and his heart seemed to swell. He had missed them.

For the past eleven years, really, he had missed them.

The four men spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on one another's lives. It felt like a dream, something impossible that they would surely awaken from.

Finally, George asked the question that was on all their minds.

"So, John," he said softly, "What happens now? Are you goin' back to yer island, or, will you rejoin the world?"

John sighed, and smiled sadly.

"Well," he replied, lighting a cigarette, "Someone tried to kill me, didn't they--and they think they were successful. That puts me out of danger, and I have to say that I like that...it's a good place to be. Then there's Mavis. She's become precious to me, and I don't know if I would ever be happy again without her. Besides," he added, "Yoko's gone on with her life, apparently, and the world seems to be gettin' along just fine without me."

He pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room, to look out of the window at the windblown fields beyond the house.

"I'm happy where I am," he admitted. "I love me new life just as it is...but I miss me work and I miss me kids and all of you. If I could keep what I have now. and add those things, it would be grand--it has to be one way or the other, though, doesn't it. They say ye can't have everything, and it would appear they're right about that."

"Can you really be happy hiding out there on the island forever, John?" asked Paul. He poured himself a drink and looked to the men seated around him for support, but their eyes were on John.

"Maybe," he replied, "I dunno. I think I have to try, though. I'm dead scared, Paulie. I think I would feel better--not to mention safer--if I just stay dead."

Later that night, he lay beside Mavis, safe in their bed on the island. John stayed awake long after she had gone to sleep, staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows cast by the flickering firelight. He got up carefully, being sure not to jostle her, and added a couple pieces of wood to the fire.

As great as it had been to hear all about how his kids were doing and seeing the pictures of them that Paul had given him, it just wasn't the same as being there.

He pulled the pictures from the pocket of his jacket and gazed into the open, friendly face of his youngest son. The child was obviously Eurasian, almond shaped eyes smiling out at him, from beneath a mop of dark, glossy hair.

John's heart banged hard in his chest, his throat constricting, as he looked at the boy in the picture, so changed from the child he'd held the day of the shooting, yet so unmistakably the same.