The Late Bloomer

by Falkin, Mark;

  The voice sounded strong and articulate. A voice like ours, late-teens maybe, deep, male.

  “CQ CQ calling anybody. CQ CQ come back roger wilco shitfuck. Hello hello. CQ CQ this is Chris Washburn calling from near Medina, Texas. Awaiting any response. Hello! Goddammit, hello!” Dogs barking in the background. Lots of dogs.

  Bass grabbed the mike like Bono going into a chorus at Wembley. “Yeah, hey, hello hello! Bastian Calhoun in Austin, Texas! Hello!”

  “Holy Christ!” The guy, Chris, yelled off mike: “Hey, I got someone!” Back on mike: “Yeah hey, Bastian in Austin. Wow. For godsakes stay on this frequency. In case we lose it, we’re at the Utopia Ranch outside of Medina which is south of Kerrville, west of San Antonio about an hour. Holy shit man, I can’t believe it. Over—”

  “Chris, yeah, us too. There’s three of us here, a couple miles north of the UT campus. How many of you are there? Over.”

  “Five, now. There were six yesterday.” Pause. We didn’t ask. “We’re four girls, one guy, now. We’re all high school seniors. Over.”

  “Same here, but two guys, one girl. You’re all from Medina?”

  “No. Hell no. We came together from San Antonio. We had to get out. The kids. Over.”

  “What happened? Why’d you have to leave? Over.”

  “We just got here today, this afternoon. The kids in San Antonio…I don’t know how to say it. Well, let me ask. Any adults there at all? Anything coming together? Because in San Antonio there’s nada. Nobody alive. We drove around and around looking for others for a solid day. No one. We’d keep trying, I guess, if it wasn’t for the kids. Masses of them. They kept getting in the road, just standing there. It got to the point where they were blocking us at every turn. They didn’t do anything, though, just got in the way. It became a maze and we finally made it out of the city with nothing. Kinky had this ham radio in here, so. And now we’ve found you guys. Over.”

  “Kinky? Over.”

  “Yeah. We’re at Kinky Friedman’s Utopia Dog Rescue Ranch. One of the girls here used to help out here summers and since they don’t like dogs and it’s really remote out here, we came here. Random really, but. Over.”

  We all looked at each other mouthing, Kinky Friedman?

  “Wait, wait. They don’t like dogs? The kids? And who in the hell is Kinky Friedman? Over.”

  “Kinky. Uh, ran for governor a few years ago. Musician, writer. I don’t know much about him. He’s, like, the only musical act to ever have its Austin City Limits taping fail to air. For naughtiness or something. In the seventies. Anyway, Kinky’s not here. But, yeah, dogs’ hackles go up when there’s kids around. Bark like it’s the Devil himself. They do not hang around. God, we feel sorry for the kids, but they’re scary. It’s like they know they’re different now and can’t help it. What is this that’s happened? You guys have a frigging clue? Any media, Internet, phone working there? Ours all went out by I’d say nine that morning. Sorry, I have diarrhea of the mouth. Just so excited to be making contact. Over.”

  “Same here. No adults. No reception of any kind. Just looped radio ads and this ham radio. Over.”

  “Ha-ha yeah same in San An. The old world still shaking its moneymaker. Maybe the dead listen, head over to the great mall in the sky. Over.”

  Bass looked at us. We offered nothing but agape mouths among the scatter of cards. He stopped with the niceties and catch-up and issued an existential question meant to be practical. “So, what do we do now, Chris?”

  Chris took it as practical. “We’ve been talking. Makes sense to us that we should get together with anyone we find. Out here would a good place to gather. Austin’s probably not going much better than San Antonio kid-wise. Over.”

  “They’re not doing much here other than amassing down by the river and roaring a lot. They are freaky, though, yeah, give you that. I think they’re just all freaked out right now and if we just let things settle, maybe in time we can all work together. Over.” Bass shrugged at us, like, right?

  “You all clearly have not seen what we have. You wouldn’t be saying that. Over.”

  “I take your word for it. We’ve seen…enough. They haven’t done the roadblock thing to us. They’ve stayed away. They did surround us once when we went to go look at a plane crash, but that’s it. Other than their Hitler-youth rallies that look like an ocean of waving wheat. Oh, and they threw stuff at my truck. Over.”

  “Yes! God, they move all weird. That alone. I mean, get the hell away from me, you know? Makes my skin crawl to see them do that. Not natural. Over.”

  “Yeah. Hey, keep this open. Don’t leave. We need to talk, map you guys, etcetera. Okay. Hold on. Over.”

  “Gotcha. Sitting here, drinking a Lone Star, watching the dogs play, sun going down behind the hills there. Man…All good, Bastian, considering. The girls are cute. Lucked out. Over.”

  Bass took his finger off the transponder. I said, “In case we get cut off, tell them where we are, the address. And ask them if they’re late bloomers.”

  They looked at me weird, but didn’t question. Bass nodded and told Chris in Utopia where we were located. But he didn’t ask.

  “Got it. Happy Halloween. Belch. Over.”

  “Ask him, Bass.”

  Bass pushed the mike trigger, scooted up closer. “Hey, Chris? This may seem weird, but I’ve got a friend here wants me to ask you something. Over.”

  “Belch. Sure, shoot. Over.”

  “It’s kind of personal, but I guess there’s no use being all polite. So, here it is: Were you a late bloomer? Over.”

  Chris paused. The pause went on so long that I thought maybe we’d lost the connection. “Chris, you there? Over.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I, uh, yeah, matter of fact I was. I was real self-conscious about it, too. I thought it was never going to happen. I remember thinking I was stuck in low gear, like I was really different. Being a teen’s bad enough, but that made it really hard for me for a while.”

  Our heads nodded with grim understanding.

  “But, then I bloomed with a vengeance, had a massive growth spurt and here I am, a non-virgin half-drunk monkey at world’s end. Over.”

  I motioned to Bass to continue. He asked, “What about the others? Do you know? Over.”

  “Uhhh, can’t say that I do. I think I know what you’re getting at, though. Let me ask real quick. Don’t hang up, okay? Over.”

  Chris came back breathless to the microphone. “CQ CQ you there Austin? Bastian? Over.”

  “Yeah, here. Over.”

  “Yeah, all admitted to reaching puberty later than most, as far as they knew. Late bloomers. Over.”

  Slowly panning his eyes across each of ours, Bass said into the mike with satisfaction, “Seems we have a pattern here, Chris. Over.”

  “Seems we do. And if that holds up, there are a lot of high school seniors out there running around like us trying to make contact.”

  Just as I thought I was understanding—that me and Kodie and Bass were the closest late bloomers to Fleming and, ergo, Jespers, that this is perhaps why we were still alive; to receive the message about Jespers’s Gene, to bring this understanding into the new world—now here’s this group of us in the hill country.

  “So, do we go out there?” I asked the group. “Seems we’re close to food and drugstores if we need them. Going out there, we’ll be cut off. Away from kids, maybe, but cut off. The logistics of it.”

  “The way Chris is talking, it makes me think that the kids will be doing the same here soon. And if they’re running them off that way by blocking their routes, it won’t be long before they start figuring out how to use materials to do their bidding,” Bass said.

  What bidding? I thought but didn’t broadcast. Kodie caught me looking inward. Our eyes met. She was thinking, asking herself, the same thing—Bidden by…?

  “Maybe,�
� said Kodie. “I’m not sure they plan on doing anything the old way. It’s like they’re starting from scratch. Like that’s what all this is about. Evolution, Rapture, whatever you want to call it.” She shrugged but had wide blinkless eyes.

  Kodie had it pegged, articulated what we already knew.

  “What I felt from them when I was locked in that room with them for that minute? That hostility? They seemed feral, cornered. I’ve never been so scared. My lizard brain got the adrenal-dopamine squirt. My skin prickled and my arm and leg hair stood up as if the room filled with static electricity.”

  “Yeah, I mean, think about it,” said Bass. “They may be scared, but not too scared to stand in harm’s way to block a moving car. The way they looked at us at Butler? Deathly. Like a snake rattling its tail at high pitch. I don’t think they’re scared when together like that.”

  “Point is, time’s of the essence. I don’t see peaceful coexistence happening with them, at least not for a while,” I said.

  “So, which? Tell Chris we’re going to stay put for a while or go to them now?” Bass lifted the transponder.

  And then, through the speakers attached to the ham radio, we heard the dogs of Utopia start to bark like mad. Chris had kept the line open, as if he wanted us to hear.

  This went on for a minute. The next thing we heard was a whisper, sounding like Chris. “You all hear that in Austin? Get yourself a dog. I’m telling you. ’Cause they’re here. I can’t see anyone yet. It’s dark.”

  I turned my head to the window to see the navy sky, knowing out there, away from vestigial city lights, with the hills and cliffs rising around the ranch, it would be darker.

  “I don’t think it’s the meter reader or the FedEx guy the dogs are barking at.”

  After another half minute of louder barking came close, throaty whispers, the last we’d hear, lips touching the mike, the breath stressing its metal diaphragm: “Methinks it’s trick-or-treaters.”

  Chris didn’t pick up again and navy evening turned to black night. Bass folded his hand and said hold on, he was going to go out to switch off the generators to test the grid. The lights and sound disappeared.

  Me and Kodie giggled in the dark. I grabbed her hand and held it tight. Her wheeze sung its see-saw song. Her head was silhouetted against the picture window. I smiled to myself at her beauty, the shape of her head, her blinking lashes.

  We heard Bass curse outside, but it was the humorous curse borne of frustration or clumsiness. We chuckled again, trying to allay the fear of sitting in the dark at the world’s end on Halloween night having lost contact with Chris in Utopia.

  Then, for the first time in two days while home, we heard a dog barking. We squeezed hands. Our neighbors didn’t have dogs. This one sounded like it was around the block. It barked and barked.

  There’d been no barking in the neighborhood when we filled the tubs. There was nobody for dogs to be barking at because there was nobody walking dogs, no invading servicemen. The dogs had been silent until now. Silent and very hungry.

  Just as I had decided to get up to grab a flashlight, the lights flickered and the static pulsed once, twice. I froze, then all was back on. We heard Bass coming back in, laughing and snorting. He stopped as he rounded the bar to the living room.

  “What’s the cussing about?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Bass.

  “What about this master electrician work you’re doing, taking us off the grid, putting us back on? I wouldn’t have a clue how to do that.”

  “Did I fail to mention that?” There was a hint of smarm in his voice.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, a little perturbed.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Bass said with mock dismissiveness. “Really.” He tried to make a serious face, but it held for only three seconds, then he snorted laughter through his nose. Then I smelled it.

  “Ah. Terrapin Station. Didn’t know you still had some,” I said to Bass.

  “A wee bit I found in the pocket of me coat. A little smoke for the hallowed eve,” he said in a not-half-bad Irish accent. It lit up the room and we smiled at him. Life returned in these little moments and I could see how it would be possible to get it back someday. Humor and levity may be the most powerful forces on earth.

  “Screw it,” said Bass, clapping his hands once hard. “I’m going to carve a jack-o’-lantern. Okay with you?” he asked, looking at me. “Can I grab your pumpkin outside?” I said sure, buoyed by his bothering to ask me. After all, moms and dads brought home the pumpkins in October and sat them on the porches. My mom did. She always did, and it was Martin who carved. I’d usually help.

  My throat got tight and I nodded after saying sure and Kodie gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze.

  Bass sprang into action. Bass strode out the front door to get the pumpkin. He sat it on the floor by the ham and then called out a barrage of seek-yous. I felt useless so I got up to make myself available. Bass lifted his head and said, “You hang close to her. I’ll do the Martha Stewart thing, and mind the ham.” Bass had a talent for communicating in a way that was clear and forceful but never strident.

  I helped Kodie up off the floor and we took to the couch. “Right about now I’d be watching a horror movie,” Kodie sighed, staring at the flat-screen set within the hutch in the corner of the room behind Bass’s set-up. “Watching Michael Myers rise up behind a blubbering Jamie Lee Curtis who you simply cannot believe is still standing there with her back to him. I mean, you stuck him in the eye with a hanger. Now, run, bitch!”

  We chortled. She wheeze-laughed. Insane serial killers had become nostalgic. Bass was scooping pumpkin with his hands and slapping the wet seeds and stringy goop on a spread newspaper—slap. slap.

  Kodie said, “I’m really wondering if we’re not Jamie Lee, just sitting here. Maybe we should heed Chris in Utopia.” She looked the window. “I think we should definitely go out there.”

  “I’m leaning that way. We need numbers. But, it’s too late tonight. Let’s go in the morning. Bass?”

  Bass stopped carving, looked at all he’d set up, sighed, and nodded. “Yeah. We need to make a run for it and link up with those guys.” He punched an eye hole through the pumpkin with the knife handle. “First light, let’s start packing.”

  It was settled.

  I took comfort in that and, for tonight, the existence of the arsenal in this room. I felt fortified, ready. I wanted to lighten things so I brought back the old world with Halloween. “I’d probably be taking Johnny around trick-or-treating. Last year, Bass and I were just getting to know each other and we hit the cemetery for the first time. Remember that, Bass? I took Johnny out for a while and then you and I jumped the fence and did our cemetery dance.”

  He bobbed his head, but was uninterested in reminiscing. Facing away from us, he hunkered and listened intently, called out into the present, “CQ CQ Chris you there? Anybody?”

  slap. slap.

  wheeze. wheeze.

  (bark bark)

  “Hello? Chris. Hello.”

  The lights low in the house. We’d closed the blinds and curtains as if this were a normal Halloween night and we wanted to give the customary signal that we wouldn’t suffer trick-or-treaters, we don’t have any damned candy for you, go away.

  Bass had set the jack-o’-lantern on the kitchen bar. I’m sure he meant it to be festive and comforting, but to me it was a reminder of what jack-o’-lanterns were all about which was to ward off the spirits of the damned come rap-rap-rapping on your door. Though the face wasn’t scary per se—it was childlike with its rounded eyes and nose and convex eyebrows—it was mawkish and seemed to be laughing at us, in on a joke we weren’t privy to, a joke that had real-life peril as a punch line, a byzantine joke that lost you in its labyrinth until it mattered, at the end, when you learned you were the brunt of it all along, its victim. Its ochre glow radiated, renderin
g incomplete shadows on the walls and ceilings.

  “Cool, eh?” Bass had said when he first set it up. Kodie gave tepid applause through a stifled yawn. Kodie and I had started to doze, my eyes flying open when she coughed or when Bass spoke out into the abyss. My watch said eleven. Now Bass sat reading in a chair, I couldn’t tell what, but it was obvious to me he hadn’t been really reading but listening; to the night wind, to the gathered darkness, that dog barking. He went back to the ham. Bass had been at it for hours.

  “I feel like if I don’t keep trying, that’s when I’ll miss someone.” I’d been asleep but his sonorous voice jerked me awake. I was still blinking my eyes and trying to figure out where I was, my life’s context—couch, Kodie on me, her smell in my nose and lungs, family gone, world gone, night. “What if this is it? Chris in Utopia? I’ve heard nothing from anyone on this thing for hours.”

  Bass had placed the book he read facedown on an armrest. Lord of the Flies, my copy from my room where I kept it on a high shelf above my desk slotted in among many others, a decades-old forest-green cloth hardback. I could smell the decay in the yellowing pages from here.

  When did he go in there? I’m confused in my sleepiness. I propped myself up on an elbow and looked at him. Bass said in a way-too-serene and measured voice, “Like Utopia Chris said. There are probably a bunch of people our age getting it together and doing just what I’m doing. It’s just a matter of time.”

  I muttered with a tired croak in my voice, “Probably right.” I tapped Kodie on her hot head. “You,” I whispered to her, “pill time. Get that fever down.” She got herself up, looked at each of us through eye slits, and waggled her arm goodnight, flopping her hand like it wasn’t properly connected.

  As she shuffled away, she turned her head to the jack-o’-lantern and started to say something to it, but demurred.

  Bass seemed animated despite the hour and the day we’d had. He hopped back to the chair and lifted the book up again. His brow furrowed, eyes skirting along the lines. “I’m going to stay up. We need someone to stand watch. I’ll start. I’ll wake one of you guys up in a few hours. I’m into this book now. We were supposed to read this in, like, ninth grade? but I don’t really remember it.”