The Ancestor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  “How much are you willing to go in?” she asks, business-like.

  “That’s a conversation Trav and I would need to have.”

  “It’d be a godsend for us.”

  “That’s why I would do it.”

  She sips again, staring into the black coffee as if it can foretell the future. “Your name, your real one that is…Are you running away from your past?”

  “I’m running back toward it. Fast as I can. Head-first.”

  He longs to tell her that he can be everything Trav doesn’t have it in him to be. Provider, protector, true lover, confidant. Everything that united him and Adalaide. Callie’s not fulfilled with Trav, this crystal clear. She escaped to California, and yes, she returned, but not much will change between them. She just said they are nothing alike.

  “So what’s your last name?” she asks again.

  Better to keep the enigma alive, even if for a little longer. Keep her guessing, more important to have her thinking about him than knowing every secret. He can be that itch that never ceases, the stirring in the night, so he speaks of himself as that enigma, and she smiles because it’s now their inside joke, and there’s something about him that keeps her attention. She’s divulged her woes during lunch sessions. He knows some of her inner-most feelings. There’s danger in that knowledge, a palpable attraction, this version of Trav who’s rougher around the edges and sweeter at the same time.

  “Coffee was delicious,” he says, rising. And she’s flustered, face as red as her hair.

  She stands to say goodbye and he takes her hand and leaves a wet kiss atop, his bristling beard causing a nervous tickle.

  It’s been a month since Callie’s made love to Travis, not since Papa Clifford died, and her loins are screaming. Let this mountain man Wyatt lie her down and do unspeakable

  things. He smells of the earth, deeply rich, aromatic in an all-consuming way. And he’s ready for her too. The heat between them vibrating. But he leaves before a collision occurs, making his way to the door with the same gait as Travis, shoulders hunched, this mystery wrapped in a package so similar to the one she knows better than anyone else.

  She’d never repeat what she does next, even to her girl Lorinda, but after Wyatt leaves she slips into her bedroom and curls a finger into her underwear with her other hand clamped over her mouth so she won’t wake Eli with her bucking moans.

  52

  Stu’s long walk back to the Native American settlement is interminable. No closer to answers in Bobby’s death than before. And even worse, no more clues—The Hand being a last hope. It’s afternoon when he arrives, shell-shocked, as if returning from battle. A wounded warrior limping toward a bonfire. The usual teenagers gone. It’s summer and they don’t need its warmth. He lets the flames direct his thoughts, absorb his frustration.

  His face soiled with a layer of dirt and clean lines of tears dripping into his stubble.

  An old man observes from his trailer. He saw Stu when he sat down for lunch, oftentimes watching the goings-on in the settlement, never one for television. After a nap later, he finds Stu still standing there cooking in the sun. The white man’s face red from the fire. If he stays too much longer he’ll start to boil and peel.

  The old man feels his age every time he rises. His quivering knees first, a back that stings. Grasping his cane, he goes outside to retrieve the white man because he knows of his face. The sheriff who comes by to root out the evil in the settlement. The one who has never succeeded.

  “Come,” he tells the sheriff who blinks in response, seemingly unable to talk. He takes the sheriff by his elbow, leading him toward the trailer. Inside, the sheriff has to duck his head for the old man is short and the trailer’s ceiling low. He sweeps the dust off a seat and sits the sheriff down. In his fridge, he finds a sliced egg in a cream sauce, slathers it across a grainy bread, and serves it to the sheriff who wolfs it down.

  “Thank you,” the sheriff says, rubbing his stomach.

  “Qaletaqa,” the old man says, pointing at himself with a finger twisted by rheumatism.

  Stu wipes the crumbs onto his plate. “Stu.”

  Qaletaqa has lived alone for some time. A wife passed many years ago and he never had it in him to search for another, part of him dying with her. So he became an observer.

  The pain that travels through the settlement appears in various colors. He sees his neighbors in different hues, assesses how he can help. Those teenagers who sleep around the fire are bathed yellow. There is hope for them because they are so young. They can one day be freed from the spirit they ingest in the form of drugs. He’ll perform smoke ceremonies in the back of his trailer, a room kept precisely for that. Filled with herbs and clay pots. He hasn’t healed everyone who has entered, but at least he has tried.

  “You are at an impasse,” Qaletaqa tells Stu, who nods to this stranger. “Come,” he says, directing Stu into his ceremonial room that smells of freshly cut grass.

  Without explaining, Qaletaqa places herbs in clay pot to begin the smudging ritual.

  Smoke being a medium between the higher and lower realms, creating a good space for positive spirits and removing the negative ones. He mashes together sweet grass, tobacco, white sage, cedar, and his secret concoction. Each of the herbs a gift from the Creator.

  The leaves bound and placed in the clay pot. With a lit candle, he ignites the herbs, sweeping his hand across to extinguish any fire. Tendrils of smoke rise from the smolder.

  Cleansing himself first, he cups his hand and draws the smoke around him. Starting from the top, the smoke brought around his head, down his torso, all the way to his feet. His

  breathing slow and relaxed. With a feather, he wafts the smoke into the corners of the room, then focuses on Stu. He blows the smoke into the sheriff’s eyes, his treasured eagle’s feather directing it around the sheriff’s body until he becomes encased.

  Qaletaqa’s room morphs from a hole-in-the-wall trailer to a plane on another realm. It appears to look the same, but Stu can tell he’s traveled far. Qaletaqa’s chanting like a bad phone connection filled with static. The old man dances around but is invisible, only present by the music spilling from his lips. Stu’s son enters this plane too. Bobby with a beard that appears to have kept growing in the two years since he’s been gone. It flows down his chest, sparkling. Stu goes to speak but his mouth stays closed; Bobby’s as well.

  Yet they can communicate, minds in sync. Stu asks him how he died, his own life’s burning question. And Bobby explains that it’s a mystery because even he doesn’t know. But were you murdered? Stu wonders into the universe, and the universe answers that one night Bobby’s eyes were open and a second later they closed forever. Stu explains his two-year quest, his basement wallpapered with newspaper clippings, the man he just gunned down who won’t be found for days and days, but nothing has brought him closer to the truth.

  You cannot stop what is inevitable, Pop. Bobby hangs his head low. Whether I was murdered or did myself in, it was always bound to happen.

  Stu wants to reach out and shake his son’s image. But if they killed you?

  Then they beat me to the punch. You can’t save someone who is already dead.

  Stu’s bloodshot eyes narrow in response.

  What will you gain from answers, Pop? If you’re looking to alleviate your guilt, you shouldn’t have any. You and Mom did all you could. You treated me with kindness more than I deserved. You allowed me to make mistakes to teach me a lesson. None of it worked. Some souls are doomed. It’s the toss of the dice. I was a born with a mark. For some, the mark is poor health, an expiration hanging over their lives; my mark was a different type of sickness, an evil sprout. And I nurtured this bad seed, watered it often, watched it grow until it took over. I’ve done terrible things. Things it’s best you don’t know.

  Stu chokes on a sob. I failed to guide you correctly.

  If not for you and Mom, I would’ve gotten lost earlier. I would’ve destroyed more lives than I already did.
You two, Travis, you all are better without me. I would’ve only dragged you further into the pits of hell.

  Stu stares at his palm, the crisscrossing lines that change in lengths, showing him a variant future, then reform back to their original map.

  I saw what you did to The Hand.

  Stu looks up from his own hand into Bobby’s face, absorbing every millisecond of this final reunion.

  Whether or not he was responsible for my death, he caused many others. Whether or not he would cause any others, he deserves to be no more. The universe has decided this.

  I helped you destroy him because you never would’ve been led to that cabin otherwise.

  This I can swear to you.

  Qaletaqa’s chanting gets louder, less staticky.

  So it’s time for you to leave with peace in your heart. If you don’t, then this is the end for you, for Mom. What you are carrying around will be the albatross that sinks you both.

  But that’s not what the universe envisions. There is a window at my side and through it I see you returning to Mom, and she’s worried because you’ve been gone all night and day, and even though you do this sometimes, she worries and doesn’t sleep. So you can’t do this no more, ya hear? But I see you go to her and show her your basement; she hasn’t opened that door since I died because it used to be my room when I got older and came and went. It was easier to have me home but out of the way. For all of us. And I see you show her the last two years of your life and together you take down those newspapers along with every last shred of paper you scribbled on. You’ll burn that pain away and emerge healed. You’ll take her on a vacation, you’ll enjoy your twilight years. You’ll remember the good times we shared, though they were few, but that’s what you’ll allow to remain. And now I say goodbye.

  It’s nighttime when Stu gets back in his car, finding the keys under the sun visor. Windows down, cool breeze thickening his hair, he drives home to the woman he loves. He finds her knitting by the television watching an old episode of Perfect Strangers, but she’s not laughing because she’s worried and she’s been worried about her husband ever since she lost her son. He can tell she’s been upset because he hasn’t called and that’s a rule between them, to always call. She made dinner and had eaten hers and left his plate in a cold oven to warm when he got back home, like she always does. There are flecks of blood on his shirt, his hair smells of smoke, and he hasn’t bathed since he left.

  “I can run you a shower,” she says, because it’s better to face him once he’s cleaned up. But he takes her down into the basement instead. He knows she’s nervous, not having been there for months. She’s let Stu have his carved-out space. A tiny lamp on his desk beams a cone of light across the wallpaper headlines. It’s like a hit to her stomach, she has to kneel. Her cheeks puff and he can tell that because she’s nauseous, but he says it’s time and begins removing the wallpaper, throwing it in a trash bin along with the journals and the scribblings of a madman who lost his son. They fill three trash bins. Each one he brings up to the backyard and won’t let her help. She waits in the yard holding back tears.

  When he comes up with the last trash bin, he carries a can of gasoline too. He dumps the gasoline over the trash and lights two matches, one for each of them. He tells her he’s not ready to retire but he’s ready to retire from this. She says, “Good.” And then they toss their matches and watch the flames eat up the last remnants of the horror they’d faced. He holds her close and they cry together, for one last time. He understands they’ll be sad again because they’ve been unlucky, but it doesn’t need to define them anymore. They don’t have to be the parents of Bobby who died too soon. They can be Stu and Cora again, who enjoy bird-watching, hikes, old country music, waking before sunrise, and when Alaska shimmers at its coldest and most silent, so quiet at breakfast that you can hear the turning of a newspaper page, to a headline with good news because the world isn’t always unfair.

  People can drift far away from themselves but eventually tether again.

  53

  Wyatt doesn’t trust Grayson as he spies the deputy’s car pulling up to his front yard. The two alike, since Wyatt bets that Grayson doesn’t trust him either. Walking to the house, Grayson knocks the dirt from his boots, rotates his hat in his hands, and spit-licks a pes-tering curl sticking up. Wyatt grabs Tohopka’s dog tags that sit in a bowl in the foyer.

  Just as Grayson’s about to knock, Wyatt swings open the door keeping the deputy on his toes.

  “Was headed out,” Wyatt says, pointing in the distance.

  Grayson attempts to step inside. “Like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind?”

  “Ain’t there something called a warrant?”

  “Really? That’s how you want to play?”

  Wyatt crosses his meaty arms. “What’s this regarding?”

  “If you’d let me in—”

  Wyatt snorts. “I cleaned. Place is sparkling. Don’t want you mucking it up. How about a drive instead? You can drop me off in town.”

  Before Grayson can argue, Wyatt’s bounding toward the deputy’s car.

  “On second thought, show me some of the outskirts,” Wyatt says from the front seat, as Grayson goes to get on a larger road into town.

  “I’m not your personal driver.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Wyatt says, slipping on a pair of gloves.

  “You cold?” Grayson asks.

  “Always,” Wyatt replies, without missing a beat.

  So Grayson banks a left and the car skids past the turnoff. Only miles of woods instead. They weave through paths barely big enough for the car to fit. Grayson agrees because he plans on utilizing some shady police tactics. This man was never who he said he was. And he won’t let Wyatt out of this car until the mystery gets solved. He parks so the men can face each other, takes out his gun.

  “What is this?” Wyatt asks.

  “A truth session. Meaning I let you go if I’m satisfied with your answers.”

  “How do you believe I’ve been deceptive?” Wyatt asks, winking. Grayson hates that wink.

  “For one, there is no record of a Wyatt Killian in our database.”

  “Doesn’t mean nothin’.”

  “It means you haven’t been honest!”

  The aggression Grayson’s felt since Lorinda left leading him to dark places. He has a boxing bag in his basement that he pounds with fury each night. He’s imagined Wyatt in place of this bag.

  “Let me see your driver’s license,” Grayson says, snapping his fingers.

  “Don’t have one,” he says.

  “Fine. An ID. Gimme your wallet.”

  “Don’t carry one.”

  “Tried another name,” Grayson says, mopping his brow with the hand not holding the gun. “Wyatt Langford, which you told the Barlows. No record of him either.”

  “I don’t appreciate that gun pointed at me.”

  “And then a final name, Wyatt Barlow. And you know what came up? Born in Washington 1860, no record of death. This is the guy whose identity you’ve stolen. The Barlows’ ancestor.”

  “It’s my identity,” Wyatt thunders.

  “You’re nuttier than I even thought. That would make you one hundred and sixty years old.”

  “Time doesn’t work like you think it does for me. I was suspended—”

  “What the fuck you mean, suspended?”

  “In ice. I’ve told this to Trav. I’ve come clean. He is my great-great grandson—”

  Grayson responds by hitting Wyatt in the forehead with the butt of gun. A trickle of blood slicks down Wyatt’s nose.

  “Travis doesn’t need a bullshit scam artist like you in his life right now. He’s got a business to open, family that needs him. You’re a dead weight.”

  “I’m a better friend than you have ever been.”

  Grayson goes to hit Wyatt again, expecting Wyatt to throw up his hands in defense.

  But Wyatt stays stoic.

  “Travis is like a fucking brother,�
� Grayson says. “We go back to the schoolyard.”

  “But I’ve given him gold. I’ve changed his life.”

  “He’s blind to a con man like you. And I see the way you’ve looked at Callie. You’ve wanted a piece of that.”

  “With the way you’ve treated women, you don’t have the right to cast stones at me.”

  “I was good to Lorinda,” Grayson wails.

  “Tell that to the girls at Raye’s.”

  Grayson punches Wyatt in the jaw, feeling the crunch of teeth. Wyatt responds with laughter. Grayson knows the only power he has is if he kills Wyatt. He could make up some excuse and bring Wyatt in for questioning, but nothing would stick.

  “You may have loosened a molar.”

  “Good.” Grayson reaches in his pocket and passes over a handkerchief. He’s a good man overall. Always had a wandering eye, but never abused his police privileges. And yeah, he drinks too much. You try living in a frozen world where people hibernate like bears for most of the year. Find someone who’s not a drinker in this town and he’ll give them a prize.

  He watches Wyatt mop up the blood from his gums and wedge the handkerchief in his pocket. In its place, Wyatt removes the dog tags.

  “What are those?”

  They sit in Wyatt’s palm, the letters too small to read from where Grayson sits.

  “Were you in the military?”

  Wyatt gives a solemn nod. He shakes his palm, indicating for Grayson to take the tags.

  Grayson picks them up with his free hand, still directing the gun at Wyatt but with less precision, for his eyes stay glued to the tags that will finally reveal this man’s true identity. “To-hop-ka Oxendine?” Grayson asks.

  “That’s not me either.”

  Wyatt lunges, grabbing Grayson by the throat. He squeezes tight enough for Grayson to gag. Grayson flaps his arms wildly attempting to direct the gun closer to Wyatt. A shot rings out shattering the window, but Wyatt doesn’t relent.