by Ike Hamill
“We find the others. We can’t communicate with them directly. It turns into a whole thing.”
“And none of us make it back?” Tim asked.
Ashley shook her head. “But we stay together.”
“Ashley,” Lisa said. “No. You can’t make that decision for us.”
“If we’re going to go, then we’d rather have it be on the course that at least allows you to make it back,” Tim said.
“I can’t,” Ashley said. “I can’t be responsible for that.”
“You’re not,” Lisa said. “It’s what we want. Trust me—Tim and I have been aware of this since we first got to the observatory. Maybe we didn’t want to admit it to ourselves, but we knew.”
She glanced back at Tim and he was nodding.
Tim added, “Besides, nothing is certain. You’ve already proven that.”
That notion put Ashley back on her heels. Her eyes darted back up to the road they didn’t take and then over to Tim and finally settled on Lisa.
“So, you think if we go north now that we can avoid all that?”
“Que será, será,” Lisa said.
“What does that mean?” Ashley asked.
“Turn around and I’ll explain it.”
The road improved rapidly as it climbed in elevation a little and wound through the upper terrain of the valley. Lisa leaned her head back and looked up at the blue sky above. Off to the south, there were some clouds threatening to come over the mountains and invade their perfect day, but Lisa knew that the sky would stay clear. Something about the geography of the area made storms turn east before they reached the valley.
“It’s a shame that we have lost so many other languages,” Lisa said.
“Isn’t it easier?” Ashley asked. “Everyone can talk to each other.”
“It wasn’t really that difficult. I went to grade school with a girl who immigrated from Ecuador. Within a few hours we could communicate a little. In a couple of weeks, we had enough words in common that we could explain almost anything to each other,” Lisa said.
“Then why does it make a difference?” Ashley asked.
Lisa glanced back to Tim to see if he would weigh in. He had been hypnotized by the sun and sky as well. Tim’s head was slumped to the side and his eyes were closed as he enjoyed the rumbling cart ride.
“There are concepts that we simply don’t have proper words for in English. Take that expression, ‘Que será, será.’ It’s not a proper Spanish expression, but it uses a tense that we have to mimic in English. We say, ‘Whatever will be, will be,’ but it doesn’t really capture the real essence of the future. There’s an uncertainty in our future tense that can’t be defused.”
It was clear that Ashley was trying to make sense of Lisa’s point and getting nowhere.
“What if I said to you, ‘I will make dinner.’ What would that mean?”
“That you are going to make dinner.”
“Definitely?”
“Yes. You always make dinner when you say you are going to.”
Lisa nodded. “But look at the words we’re using. Is ‘will’ a commitment? There is a suggestion in there that it’s my intention, but I believe there’s also the implication that my best intentions might not be achievable.”
“Are you feeling okay, Aunt Lisa?”
“Yes. I feel fine. I’m being a little philosophical. Humor me for a moment, it might be relevant to our current situation.”
“Okay?”
“So, I will make dinner is an act of will. I am going to make dinner suggests that I’m moving in that direction. Neither is a proper commitment or guarantee. The language we share doesn’t give us a compact way to express a concrete future event. It will rain. It’s going to rain. In Spanish, for example, they can say ‘Va a llover,’ to mean the same thing, but they could also say, ‘lloverá.’ The way my Ecuadorian friend explained it, there was no willingness involved. It shall rain. There wasn’t a guarantee of the timeframe involved, but it shall rain.”
Ashley gave her the benefit of the doubt. The kids, especially Ashley, loved to challenge things that their father would explain to them. They had to understand it for themselves before they would really internalize it. Lisa considered it a sign of great respect whenever they took something that she said without challenge. Although, this time Lisa wondered if Ashley was just humoring her because she thought that maybe Lisa had gone insane. Either that, or she was humoring her because there was a chance that they wouldn’t all…
Lisa abandoned the thought. She had one more point to make.
“To some extent, the words that we use color they way we interact with the world,” Lisa said. “In the way that you and I communicate, in English, the future has no certainty. That’s what Dorris Day was singing about in that song. She had to convince herself through the lyrics to let go of her agency and let fate take over. It’s not a natural thing for us, and that’s why the future doesn’t have any power over us.”
Ashley slowed to steer around a fallen tree.
The wheels of the cart dropped off the packed side of the road and into a patch of sand.
Ashley sighed as the wheels spun. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. The cart could run a long, long time on a tank of fuel, but it didn’t go very fast and the small wheels didn’t get much traction. On the plus side, it was light enough that the three of them could easily push it back onto the road.
“Tim?” Lisa asked. She reached back and nudged him. Penny got up and pushed her nose under his arm.
He woke up with a yawn and a big stretch.
“It’s nice out,” he said. “I think I fell asleep.”
“I think Penny needs a rest stop, and you have to get out so we can get the cart back on the road,” Lisa said.
“Gotcha,” Tim said. He yawned again and pointed to the dog. Tim had worked on getting Penny to stay put in the cart until she was given permission to jump out. Before that, Penny had leapt from the moving cart a couple of times to investigate a passing smell.
“Actually,” Ashley said, “with Tim out of the back we might have enough power to get back out of the sand.”
She began rocking the accelerator, trying to build momentum.
Lisa shook her head and stepped out. The valley unfolded below them. Down the hill, over a patch of trees, she could see flashes of the sparkling river. Her memory of the raft trip was already fading. That mode of travel had seemed tolerable at the time, especially after all the hiking they had done through the woods. Looking back, it had been reckless. They had nearly been eaten by killer fish and dashed against the rocks and drowned.
“Penny!” Tim yelled. “Oh, Penny.”
The dog had lost her footing on the slope and skidded down the hill. Tim was trying to find a way to get down to her without slipping himself.
Doris Day’s song was still stuck in Lisa’s head. She hummed the tune of Que Será, Será to herself as Ashley spun the cart’s tires in the sand again. They were going to have to push the cart out—Ashley was burning fuel on a useless pursuit.
“Penny,” Tim called again. When he slipped on the rocks, he created a miniature avalanche. He caught himself after a few feet of skidding. “Give me a hand, Lisa?”
“Yeah. Just a sec,” Lisa said. She leaned back to say to Ashley, “You have to get out and push. You’re just…”
Lisa stopped when Ashley looked over to her. The girl’s eyes were wide with panic and tears were rolling down her face. Ashley’s mouth was pulled into a pained grimace.
“Ashley?”
“It’s too late,” Ashley said.
“What?”
“He’s already gone,” Ashley said. “I was so busy thinking about the cart and the future that I didn’t realize that it has to be happening right now.”
Penny began to bark. Lisa looked over and saw that Tim had disappeared down the hill after the dog.
“Ashley, that’s what I’m saying. Nothing has to be happening,” Lisa said. Even as the wo
rds were leaving her mouth, she remembered something that had occurred to her back at the observatory. They always seemed to know everything that was going to happen. Yet, when it came, it was like a wave that obscured the rest of the ocean. Events would unfold around them and, at the last moment, everything was happening in realtime, instead of just fulfilling the prediction.
“What if that’s happening now?” Lisa whispered to herself.
Penny was still barking.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Ashley sobbed. She bent her head and wiped her eyes.
Together, Lisa and Ashley walked to the edge of the road and looked down the hill. Penny had found a flat spot on the bottom of the slope. Tim had dirt up his side. He had slid down to a spot where he had gotten tangled in a bush. One of his hands was clawing in the loose dirt, like he was trying to swim toward Penny. His other outstretched hand was closing and opening. His fingers were trying to grab the dog even though she was still several feet away from him.
Penny was barking at him.
“Tim!” Lisa shouted.
Ashley put a hand on her shoulder.
“Tim!”
He looked up at them. His eyes were crazy with rage. He practically snarled at them.
“She can’t climb back up from there,” Ashley said with a sigh. “She’ll have to go right by him. When she does, he’s going to grab her and kill her. It’s not his fault.”
Lisa shook her head, rejecting Ashley’s version of the future.
“Tim, if you can still understand anything that I’m saying, climb down. Go down the hill and then walk north to those trees. You’ll be able to climb back up there.”
“He won’t,” Ashley whispered.
“You have a better idea?”
“I’m just saying that he won’t. He’s beyond reason. He’s like the scientists that killed each other. They couldn’t be reasoned with either. Some of those cages in the monkey house—the big ones down at the end—I think those were human skeletons in there. They studied the people and even they didn’t find a cure.”
“That’s not permanent. It can’t be permanent,” Lisa said, pointing at Tim. “He’s only been down there a few seconds.”
She started to lower herself to the ground.
“If I can get him out of there, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“No!” Ashley shouted, pulling at Lisa’s shirt and then her arm. “No. He’s going to kill you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Lisa said.
For whatever reason—maybe it was because Tim had turned to snarl at Lisa instead of Penny—the dog began to try to move toward Tim. She didn’t have good footing on the slope. Her paws scrabbled at the sand and rocks, making them cascade down the side of the hill. If Penny slid far enough, there was a drop down there. It didn’t look like a long fall, but it could be enough to break a bone.
Tim heard the sound and turned back toward Penny. His grasping hand was closer to Penny with each tentative step that she took.
“Stop, Aunt Lisa. Please,” Ashley said. She sounded like she was beginning to panic. “Let’s think of another way. There has to be another way.”
Lisa looked at her and tried to remember what Ashley had said before. It was like being on the ocean—she tried to remember what was beyond the coming wave.
“You said that the radiation is bad down there. Wasn’t that it? What, is there some kind of radioactive something in the dirt?”
“No,” Ashley shook her head. “Not that kind of radiation. Think of, like rays coming from the sun, like what’s causing the discoloration on the moon.”
Lisa looked at Tim with fresh eyes. Maybe all she had to do was knock him out of the patch of sun. Could it be that easy? Maybe she could slide down and push him through whatever had driven him crazy. It was worth a shot, but she knew that she couldn’t tell Ashley. This wasn’t Ashley’s mission—the girl had to stay safe, no matter what.
Lisa pushed herself forward, meaning to slide on her butt, get some speed, and run directly into Tim.
“No!” Ashley shouted.
The girl’s hand shot out and caught Lisa’s collar. The shirt bunched up, arresting Lisa’s momentum and choking her.
“Let go,” Lisa managed to squeeze out.
“No,” Ashley’s voice was tight with strain as well. She was pulling up with everything she had. Lisa had no choice. She had to push herself back up the slope just to keep her shirt collar from crushing her throat.
When Lisa was back up on the sandy edge of the drop-off, Ashley finally eased up a little.
“We’re going to find another way,” Ashley said.
“You guys are damaged,” Ashley said under her breath.
Lisa didn’t know if the young woman was talking to her, or just musing out loud. They were at the back of the cart and Ashley was tossing aside the other backpacks in order to get to her own. When she finally unearthed her pack, Ashley began to pull out the contents, throwing them everywhere in the cargo area. The corners of the cargo area were still sticky with blood from the elk that Lisa had shot. It seemed like that had happened a million years before, but the evidence of the kill was still there.
“Here!” Ashley said. She held up one of the lengths of rope that she had stolen from the boathouse.
Lisa stood while Ashley bent and put her shoulder to the back of the cart, grunting.
“Help me push,” Ashley said.
“Oh.”
Lisa joined in and together they got the cart back up onto the road. Ashley jumped in and drove the cart a few yards up the road until it was as close as she could get to Tim and Penny. Jumping out again, Ashley ran to the back of the cart and tied one end of the rope to the bumper.
“You could help,” Ashley called.
Lisa didn’t have any idea what to do.
“Help?”
“Yes. We need something bright.”
Lisa watched as Ashley opened Tim’s pack. Again, she started pulling the clothes from it, throwing them every direction. There was a yellow shirt that Tim wore when it was cool. Lisa hadn’t seen it in a while, but Ashley gave up the search when her hand closed on it.
“This will do. We’re going to need somewhere to hide until he comes back to his senses,” Ashley said. She was tying Tim’s shirt to the other end of her rope.
“Hide?”
“Yes. Somewhere he can’t get to us. If there was a building nearby, we could probably lure him there. The journals said that they like to go inside, or underground. I don’t think there’s anywhere close enough though.”
“Can’t we just drive off in the cart?” Lisa asked.
The look on Ashley’s face suggested that she thought Lisa might have gone crazy.
“He’s going to be attached to the cart. The rope?” Ashley waved the shirt. “See?”
“Oh. He doesn’t seem good at climbing. Can we climb up this hill?”
Ashley glanced at where Lisa was pointing. Her first attempt at tossing the rope was a dismal failure. The shirt didn’t have enough weight to carry the rope very far and it nearly tangled in a bush on the way down. Ashley made a frustrated sound and reeled it back in. She tied the end one of the sleeves and stooped to put rocks in it. Lisa helped out until they had some decent weight in the shirt. Ashley wound up and tossed it.
The throw was right on target. Tim was down there, grunting and clawing at the air and the shirt came down right on top of him. The rocks in the sleeve thumped him right on the head.
“Oops,” Ashley said. She started to reel in the shirt. The first time, she pulled it a little too fast and Tim didn’t grip it before it went too far up the hill.
“You’re not going to be able to pull him up by that, are you?” Lisa asked.
“Maybe,” Ashley said, throwing the shirt again. This time, she let him get his hands on the shirt before she pulled it. Once he had his hands on the yellow shirt, Tim went into a frenzy. His fingers, flexed into hooks, scraped and tore at the fabric, dragging it back toward his mouth. Li
sa thought about the way that he had nearly gotten ahold of the dog and she shuddered. It was impossible to imagine him tearing apart Penny, but she knew that it had almost happened.
“Come on, get the rope,” Ashley whispered, flicking the end to get it closer to Tim. He was intent on destroying the yellow shirt.
“Why is he doing that?”
“I don’t know,” Ashley said. “But the journal suggested that they go after bright colors, so that’s why I picked this shirt.”
Finally, one of Tim’s hands closed around the knot that was tied to the other sleeve of the shirt. When he pulled on the line, Ashley tugged it back. That motion elevated Tim’s frenzy to a new level. He got both hands around the rope and tried to pull it into his mouth.
“Don’t let him bite it,” Lisa said.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to drag him up, right? We don’t want to pull out his teeth.”
“Oh,” Ashley said. “Help me, then.”
Together, they resisted Tim’s strength and leaned into the rope, dragging it upwards. It was a delicate balance. They wanted him to keep his feet underneath him. If they tugged too hard, he might overbalance and slide down the slope again. Then, there was no telling if he would keep his grip.
Lisa took the anchor position, pulling backwards until she could loop the extra slack around the other side of the bumper and use that friction to help her. Ashley stayed near the edge of the slope so she could keep an eye on Tim. With each foot that they helped him climb, he was closer to making a grab for her.
Pulling the rope around the bumper made it easier for Lisa to hold it, but it also meant that her back was to Ashley. Her neck was beginning to ache from looking over her shoulder. It was worse once she could hear Tim’s efforts over the edge of the slope. The way he grunted and growled, it sounded like he wanted nothing less than to tear them both to pieces.
“Get ready,” Ashley called.
“Ready for what?”
“Run!”
“Where?”
Lisa was still standing there, holding the rope, when the tension went out of it. Ashley streaked by, running for the other side of the road, where it rose up the hill.