24
It’s late when Wyatt unravels himself and makes his way toward Aylen’s. He’d rocked with his knees tucked up to his chin and shed enough tears for a lifetime. He doesn’t want her in particular but a warm body will suffice. Without even thinking of checking at Raye’s, he makes the long trek to the settlement, assuming she’s still sick.
The trailer’s dark when he arrives, no amount of knocking could conjure her. The four teenagers are smoking and wrestling around the wonky bonfire. He remembers the girl the most so he speaks directly to her.
“Have you seen Aylen?”
The girl sips from a can of Coke, a film covering her eyes. Her other hand holds a pipe made from tinfoil.
“Who do ya think I am, the hostess of this place?” the girl says. “That bitch comes and goes at all hours of the night.”
“She’s not a female dog,” Wyatt says, and the four teenagers double over while holding their stomachs.
“Take a chill pill,” one says. “Or more like a drag.”
This one’s pipe gleams in the moonlight, creating a light show in his palm.
“What is that?” Wyatt asks.
“Meth,” another one burps, his teeth browned.
Wyatt takes a sniff, decides it smells evil. “Opium? Do you have any of that?”
Three of the teenagers laugh at this, but the girl removes a bag of powder from one pocket and a lighter and a spoon from another.
“How much have you got on you?” she asks, and when he shrugs she rubs her fingers together and mumbles, “Money?”
He procures balled-up twenties from the last two days of work.
“That should do it,” she says, swiping the cash before he can change his mind. He stares at the bag of powder and the corroded spoon. She squirts a needle. “One last thing.
Here, I’ll show you.”
“This is opium?”
“Heroin.”
She mimes for him to pour some of the powder on the spoon, then cooks it with the lighter until it hisses and bubbles. She stabs the needle into the potion and fills up a hit.
“You inject,” she says. “Do you want me to do it?”
He doesn’t respond so she takes it upon herself and rolls up his sleeve.
“Ya gotta find a good vein, that’s the trick.” Her fingers glide down his arm. “Ah, here’s a juicy one.”
The prick of the needle entering flesh. A dollop of blood surfacing. Skin flushes, body heavy, mouth dry. It rushes up in tingles. Then it hits. Explosion of pure pleasure. The sadness due to Adalaide and Little Joe eliminated. He loves everything. The teenagers watch with spooky fascination. He loves that he has a body, that he’s an actual being. The girl touches his arm and feels like fire ants rushing across, all of it delicious.
“Sit down,” they tell him. “Nod off. It’s okay. Lie back, gaze at the stars.”
Even though the ground is cold, it’s the warmest bed he’s ever experienced. Dozing in a stoned dream, but lucid, like the dream is real, like he can control every facet.
“Take me to them,” he says, drooling until the twinkling stars grant his wish.
Returning from his first golden jaunt, wallowing away sorrows in an opium den in San Francisco when the search came up empty. Stoned and sluggish, he meanders up the coast, taking boats and trains until he spends every last dime to get home. Once there, he finds a chilled Little Joe a shade of blue in his bassinet, flames from a fireplace licking, and Adalaide with a thousand kisses awaiting his return. He scoops her up, carries her to the bed, peels off her long floral dress, her tight undergarments, leaving her boots on as they dig into his back. His tongue burns but hers is sweet with sugary love.
“You were gone longer than you said you’d be.” She lets her wild hair out of a bun as it tumbles across the pillow.
“I didn’t find it,” he replies, shooting himself in the heart for failing. “I have nothing.”
She laces her fingers in his. “You have us.”
“Little Joe grew so much since I left.”
“That’s what babies do.”
“And his pallor?”
“Dr. Greeson says not to be concerned. Just keep him close to the fire during winters.”
“They are whispering about Alaska.”
“Who’s whispering?”
“Gold,” he says, in his own lilting whisper.
“When I think of gold, I think of poison.”
“Why?”
“Because it takes you away from us and even when you’re here, you’re not really here.”
“Where am I?”
And in her lovely Irish brogue, she replies, “In its lure.”
“It’s nowhere near as pretty as you.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
He rolls over, rises, and cracks his back. Her boot dances down his spine.
“Look at me, Wyatt.”
“Anytime, love.” He stares into the worried dent between her eyes.
“We can sustain. The farm. My wares. I’ll knit till I bleed if that keeps you home.”
“I’m going to check on Little Joe.”
The dancing boot morphs into a hard kick. Like a shock to his system. When he turns around, she’s capsized into a ball armored by a swirl of red hair. He pets its delicate silk, but she only curls up smaller.
“I could’ve stayed in Ireland if I wanted to feel empty,” she says.
He kisses her fire-red locks. “You’ll see one day when you’re showered in gilt. You’ll see what kind of man your husband truly is.”
“The only kind of man for me is one I know will be around.”
“Guilt won’t keep me here.”
“I know. But let me have that. Because it’s all I have.”
Tears collect on the pillow and he uses them as a cue to leave. In the far room, Little Joe stirs in his bassinet, blue cheeks puffed out. Wyatt rocks the baby in his arms as its black marble eyes open to the world. The baby lets out a cool yawn.
The Wyatt from the future tells him to hold onto his child longer, endlessly, because once the spell breaks, he’ll never be able to embrace him again. Heroin’s magic touch and own telling whisper. So he listens. He spends eternity with his child tucked into his chest, then brings the baby over to he and Adalaide’s bed, placing Little Joe between their heated bodies as he speaks of lies he knows he won’t follow. He’ll leave behind his golden dreams, live for the farm and them, find happiness in stasis. And while in reality she never heard this, heroin’s dust allows for whatever manipulation he wants. So he gives her ghost a thrill of a lie causing her to uncurl with a smile of relief, as Joe’s cheeks turn from blue to red, and they all stay paused in their floating bed of hope. Until it becomes unmoored and crashes into a tall buoy, going under and descending into the black of the ocean.
The raindrops patter against Wyatt’s face in the early morning. The teenagers gone to sleep off their drug binges. He emerges from his cocooned shell with a shriek at the heavens for interrupting his fantasy.
But reaching into his pocket and pulling out the powdered baggie, he knows he holds the ability to return to whenever he fancies with a mere prick of the skin.
25
Upon hearing that the weekend will be unseasonably warm, Cora buzzes about getting plans for an outdoor gathering. It had been a rough winter due to Papa Clifford’s deterio-rating health, which in the last week had gotten worse. Stu more detached than usual spending most of his time home in the basement. She’d gone down to tidy up the area, making sure not to touch any of his newspaper clippings or files. Each time made her sadder to know that nothing had moved forward with Bobby’s case, and Stu was veering closer toward a breakdown. Early on, she’d tried to get him to talk about it, but Stu was never a man for words, usually responding in grunts, and he’d always had a closer relationship with Bobby than she. Bobby scared her, even as a child, even though she pretended there was nothing to worry about. He was secretive and vindictive, untamed and moody, some of t
he same traits she saw in Stu.
As for Papa Clifford, Stu had been distancing himself from his father as of late. She understood, having lost a mother to grueling rounds of chemo that would give glimmers of hope only for things to get worse. During the last round, she and her mother spoke in rudimentary questions and answers, nothing deep or that required thought and concern.
Cora would go over but focus on keeping the house in order, the bills stacking up, rather than trying to stretch out the last few moments to be as memorable as possible. She’d lost the mother she knew a long time ago and had already been through mourning.
With Papa Clifford, it was different. She loved the man because he was one-of-a-kind, a relic of a far-gone more brutally honest era. But he wasn’t her father, or even a replacement father. He was an old man who needed a nurse at times and that was a role she could play. Recently, however, he’d taken to sleeping more. She’d attempt to get him up in the morning only for him to crawl back to bed a few hours later after nibbling on toast for breakfast. The afternoons followed a similar pattern. He’d wake for lunch only to require a nap that would bleed into dinner. And when he was awake, he wasn’t much company, the house rocking with an unsettling silence.
She convinced herself it was all due to the winter that wouldn’t end. Usually by May, there are visible buds on the branches, springtime thirsting to bloom. Not the pervasive death she sees out of her window everyday: browns and whites but no green, no vibrancy.
Certainly, that’s affecting Papa Clifford too.
But news of fifty degrees! That would be cause for celebration. She’d plan an outdoor event with all of his favorite people. Travis, Callie and Eli of course. Miss Evelyn, who Papa always likes to flirt with. Grayson and his girlfriend Lorinda…wait, maybe not Lorinda since she seems to remember Callie saying they called it quits. Elson, who served Papa Clifford for years. Smitty, who’d been a family friend. A few of the girls from her book club who always ask kindly about Papa. And Dr. Emmanuel, who’d been Papa’s doctor for decades. She checked in with Stu whether he thought it a good idea, to which Stu replied with his signature shrug. He had police business and was putting on his coat when she brought it up. She could’ve asked him for a ride to the moon and he would’ve barely blinked. She calls Travis first, speaking to Callie, and they settle on Saturday rather than Sunday, since by Sunday the weather would drop to below-freezing again. Callie suggests a barbeque, and Cora becomes tickled with trying a new spice rub she picked
up at the market that made Stu frown. At least she’d put it to good use now. After calling everyone else and getting mostly yesses with a few maybes, she goes into Papa’s room.
The heater on full blast, the windows locked shut, she could hardly breathe. She watches the rise and fall of his chest, his mouth wide open in a never-ending snore. She hates to wake him, but he must have slept fifteen hours already that day.
“Papa,” she says, shaking his shoulder. Bones protruding more than ever before, he’s becoming a skeleton. His skin so cold for a second she worries he might’ve died, but then she realizes her theory was debunked due to the snoring. “Papa!”
She shakes him hard enough to rouse the soundest sleeper and he chokes on a snore, his milky eyelids unsticking.
“What’s that?” he asks, a frog in his throat.
“Papa,” she said, in the tone she reserves for speaking to a child. “Papa, I’m planning a party for you.”
“Lemme break out my kazoo.”
“Oh Papa, it’s gonna be nice weather on Saturday, and I thought a barbeque.”
“Can’t eat that stuff anymore.”
“Nonsense, I could make ribs.”
“Too messy.”
“Well, a steak then.”
“Only things in little bites work.”
“I’ll cut it up for you.”
He turned back into his pillow. “Too much trouble.”
“Now Papa,” she says, her voice shrill. “We’ve been cooped up in this house all winter and it’s enough.”
“I just wanna sleep.”
“And I wanna be with George Clooney on a lake in Italy. We don’t always get what we want!”
Either he senses what this means to her, or he simply wants her to go away. “Fine.”
She claps her hands. “Oh goody. You’ll see. I’m gonna make an Angel food cake too.”
She leaps up and dances out of the room. This would be the end of winter and doom and gloom. This would be what the whole Barlow family needed.
Wyatt had just left when Cora calls and Callie picks up the phone. She’s not in the mood to have a long conversation like Cora tends to do. She agrees with whatever her mother-in-law says to get her off, puts Eli to bed, and finds Travis washing the dishes.
“Your mother is throwing an outdoor party for Papa on Saturday.”
With the faucet on full blast, she’s unsure if Travis heard.
“I said—”
“No, I heard ya.” He turns off the water, lets the dishes soak, and dries his hands on a towel flipped over his shoulder.
“You drove Wyatt home?” she asks.
“He doesn’t have a home. He sleeps in the abandoned goods store that has a hole in the window.”
“He seemed nice,” she says, because she doesn’t quite know how else to describe him.
“He lost his son. I don’t know the story, but that’s why he got so upset when he saw Eli.”
“His son died?”
“I think the wife, or ex-wife took him away. And he has no idea where.”
“Invite him to Cora’s party.”
“You think? You saw how he acted with just the three of us.”
“That man’s in a lot of pain. Clear as day I saw that. He needs to be around people.
We don’t get homeless up here, I guess cause of the cold. But back in California, I volun-teered at a soup kitchen. In L.A., it’s heartbreaking to see them on the streets, but at least they aren’t freezing.”
They hug, her nose pressed into the dish towel.
“Makes you appreciate the family you have.”
“We’re lucky, Travis. Even when we’re struggling, we’re blessed.”
“I’ll swing by his place tomorrow.”
In the morning, Travis can’t find Wyatt in the abandoned goods store, or at Elson’s. He doesn’t have time to wait around since he has to get to the Cutthroat, but afterwards he convinces Smitty to call it an early day and swings back to Elson’s, who tells him that Wyatt never showed. He tries the goods store and finds a rheumy-eyed Wyatt mumbling incoherently in his sleep. Trying to wake him proves fruitless, and when a needle falls out of the man’s pocket, Travis chooses to ignore it.
We all have demons, Travis thinks.
He carries Wyatt out to his pickup, heading home and knowing Eli will still be at day-care. Wyatt rouses a bit from the bumps in the road, but not enough to fully emerge from his webbed slumber. Back at his place, Callie’s gone too, likely picking up Eli, so Travis gets Wyatt in the shower, turning the water on full blast.
“Wha…what’s going on?” Wyatt cries, swinging his arms.
“You were passed out. Just trying to clean you up.”
“No one asked you!”
“Get your shit together, man,” Travis yells, not wanting to go there but unable to quell his frustration. He throws Wyatt a towel and leaves the room.
About twenty minutes later, Wyatt steps out with the towel around his waist. If the men are identical in their face and their builds, even scars that they’ve obtained, Wyatt’s closed-over eye betrays their differences.
“I ain’t one to judge another man’s vices,” Travis says.
Wyatt digs a finger into his ear. “Yet I feel like you have more to say about it.”
“Anything you need a needle for is gonna bring problems.”
“I’ll deal with them as they come along.”
“Lemme give you a change of clothes.”
Travis heads into his bedroom
. When he returns with a flannel shirt, boxers, and jeans, Wyatt is observing the picture over the mantle of Callie and Eli. He turns away while Wyatt changes.
“Thank you.”
“We’re here for you, man. Callie and I. We want you to know that.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Tomorrow’s gonna be a really nice day. My mother is throwing a party for my grandfather. He’s old and I don’t know how many parties he has left in him. Callie made it clear she wants you there.”
“Your wife is too kind.”
“But you can’t come high. Can’t have you around Eli like that. Gotta make me a promise.”
Wyatt chews on a fingernail, as if debating. “It’s a deal.”
He spits into his hand and offers to shake. Travis looks baffled but spits into his hand and shakes back.
“We’ll pick you up around noon and take you over. Lemme drive you home before Callie and Eli get here.”
“I can walk.”
“Wyatt…”
“Let me clear my head, Travis. Let me return from the places my mind has gone.”
Watching Wyatt leave, Travis knows he’s entering an unwinnable test. He’s done it before with Bobby and maybe enjoys the masochism, or believes that with Wyatt he can right the wrongs that befell Bobby. He can rewind time and make a difference. The lighthouse as opposed to the anchor.
Or Wyatt’s demise will pull him under too, limbs caught under a rock, unable to squirm free as his lungs fill with water, suffocation inevitable.
26
Through the woods, Wyatt stumbles. The warm front hasn’t hit yet, everything on ice. He knows he should be cold but doesn’t feel the shock. It’s what allowed him to freeze for a century, blood in veins different than other humans’, a heart that could withstand. He’s seen kin of his with this same ability before, a clue to their immortality.
The Ancestor Page 15