One of him fights for more air. He tells himself that it is Michael Oswald and not Michael Kalson that is carrying the day. It is the mature adjusted citizen that knows to keep his wits about him, his hands on the wheel, his speed below ninety, and his guts inside his ribcage.
More ghost stories.
He tries to lie to himself. It is a movie he’s remembering, a documentary perhaps. Characters in a story. A fiction. Harrison Ford or Pierce Brosnan heroically battling the bad guys who worship Death Herself. But this is a lie. A deceit.
He laughs out loud, and it makes his head throb.
Thuggee, Thug, Thugs, Deceivers. Bandits and dacoits. Killers. Killers all. Murderers like him.
Salt Lake is less than six hours away. The Radisson with clean towels. A shoe shine and newspaper. Croissant and good coffee after a night on clean sheets. He can have all that and be Michael Oswald again. It’s less than six hours away.
Carla needs him. Why else would she call him so much? A tenuous strand, but real nonetheless. Peter is going through a phase. In a year or so, he’ll want to know his father again. His real father. Michael will tell him these terrible stories maybe and Peter will forgive him for any neglect with compassionate understanding. The two will be friends like they haven’t been since Peter was a child.
And Tiffany, lost Tiffany, going down dark roads. He should be there for her. That’s what fate is telling him. She’s like him. She has some dark places. He could be there to show her how to be a survivor. That’s his purpose. That’s his destiny. He’s still a father.
He’s had a bad time lately. He’s been sick. But he’s better now. He doesn’t need to look to fairy tales and distant cults to understand why he is the way he is. He’s a survivor. He was traumatized. He sees it. He’ll get to counseling and put it away again. Get some sleep and be there for Tiffany in less than six hours.
He pushes radio buttons, but gets static, screeching, music that doesn’t speak to him. He switches it off and rolls down a window. Desert air fills the cab of the stolen car like perfume and he finds himself smiling despite his fatigue.
He is so tired. He needs to sleep. He should pull over now but he fears the first patrol car passing by will check on him and he’ll be arrested. He’ll have no options then.
But would that be so bad? Clean white-walled prison cell and cafeteria eating? A return to the Dormitory—don’t call it prison. It would be an easy solution, less evil than a head-on collision with a vacationing family from Montana.
But then he won’t be there for Tiffany.
Penance is what he needs, not punishment. He knows he’s done wrong. No need to lock him up. Let him fix things by being the best man he can be, improving the universe because of it. Purpose in penance, like St. Augustine. Let him be a saint and not a fool.
By the hook, you will know the family. By the throat, you will have the sign.
The words enter his mind unbidden like a killer in the night. He knows them like a mantra, like his own heartbeat. They tell him what he needs to know, but it’s gibberish. All is horror, but in thinking them he remembers the promise.
He must survive.
He alone could weather what was upon them then. He must continue, and when the time is right, he must return to Mother and rejoin the hunt.
Michael says the words out loud. “By the hook you will know the family. By the throat you will have the sign.”
It is an incantation, and it fells walls to his past.
He remembers their strangled faces hanging from the ceiling. He sees them in his mind as clearly as the day it happened. His mother’s beautiful lips which kissed him goodbye are blue and grotesque. His father’s strong arms that hugged him hard and long before leaving him forever, hang limply at his sides. Even in death his brother Christopher wears a smirk on his face, a final teasing for his little brother. And tall, beautiful Lynette, her eyes closed as if asleep, her last words echoing in his mind. “You are the strongest of us, Michael.”
“How can I be?”
“Do you remember Macbeth?”
“I didn’t understand it all,” he admitted. “But I thought it was cool.”
“Remember this,” she told him. “To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it. ”
A lifetime later, the road passes beneath Michael in a blur.
His eyes are useless. Tears blind him. The glasses err his vision. The sun is cruel and mocking. He will sleep and he will be better once this day is behind him.
He turns off the freeway. Rest stops are where normal people rest. He’ll sleep there anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The dam is leaking but does not collapse all at once. Trickles of memory slip out of the cracks slowly so as not to drown him in the deluge of a forgotten lifetime. Events and images, feelings and emotions, seep silently back into his mind while he sleeps, taking their places in the dark recesses of repressed time. They do not shout or torment him. They do not demand to be addressed or upset his rest. They want only their rightful place in the narrative of his life.
Michael wakes like he did in the hospital after Crystal Springs, confused and fevered. It takes him a few minutes to piece things together, identify the rest stop, the car, his destination.
He stumbles out onto the parking lot. The sun is going down. He assumes it’s the evening of the day he pulled in here, but he can’t be sure. Time is not what it used to be.
He goes to the rest room to clean up as best he can. He dunks his head under the faucet and when he stands up, he lets the water run down his shirt, sending the cold down his back. He towels off with a wad of toilet paper that could sand oak, and after running his fingers through his hair, he goes back outside to continue his journey.
“Hey Jack. Good to see you again.”
The sun is down but the sky is bright. It is magic hour as the filmmakers call it. The man talking to him is familiar. It is the place. He belongs here. He’d seen him here before or somewhere like, but there’s something more than even that. Something more recent even than that. An echo and a bear. Michael blinks a couple of times and scratches his unshaved neck in imitation of the man’s gesture. Half of it comes back to him as he remembers seeing this man at this same rest stop weeks before.
“You again,” says Michael. “What are the chances?”
“It’s a god thing,” he says. “Meant to be.”
Michael rolls his head on his shoulders stretching out the cramps. The pops from his decompressing vertebrae sound like cracking knuckles.
“You’re a sound sleeper,” the young man says. “I see you got a new car too. Upgraded.”
The light is soft and warm, the air more so. Michael traces the sharp features of the man’s face and places his age around twenty. He could be younger, but he wears it like wisdom and seems much older.
“I borrowed it,” Michael says.
“I need a ride,” says the man. “Can you give me a ride, Jack?”
“Where are you headed?”
“Tahoe.”
Michael cannot conceal his shock. His mouth falls open.
“Whoa. You alright?” says the stranger. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Why Tahoe?
“I’ve got business there.”
“Why do you think I’m going that way?”
“Aren’t you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I thought maybe you were,” he says.
“Are you lying?”
“What kind of question is that?” The man laughs. “If I was lying I wouldn’t tell you.”
It is an asinine question. Michael laughs at himself. “Actually,” he says. “I was thinking about going that way. What’s your name, Jack?”
“You can call me Jack if you want.”
“Don’t you want to know my name?”
“It’s Michael Oswald,” he says. “Right?”
> “How do you know that?”
“Jessica told me.”
“Jessica?”
“Yes. She’s why we’re going to Tahoe.”
Gooseflesh shivers up his legs and down his arms. The light is playing tricks on him. His retinas register swirling afterimages around the man, trails of smoke like black fatty-fire soot tinged with electric blue.
“What’s your real name?” says Michael.
“Trent,” he says.
He has mother’s chin but his father’s eyes. He recognizes the boy from the picture with his parents hanging on the wall of a New Haven mansion in Heidi Tagget’s mad room.
He feels like he’s been punched in the gut. He stumbles backward, gasping for air, reaching out to catch himself, gravity pulling him down. Trent catches him and leads him to the curb.
“You need some medicine or something?” says Trent. “Should I get you to a hospital?”
“Tell me about Jessica,” he gasps, his head growing light.
“You need a bag to breathe in.”
“Tell me about Jessica.”
“She’s a girl I know. She told me about you. Told me she saw you in the hospital. Told me to keep an eye out for you. That’s all. She’s like us—rovers. Gypsies. Homeless and traveling. She’s a friend.”
“She was at the hospital.”
“She said she was. She said you were really sick.”
“Why’d she visit me in the hospital?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”
“In Tahoe?”
“Yeah, in Tahoe,” he says. “Where we’re going.”
Six hours from Salt Lake – six hours from rebuilding his life his equilibrium fails. His body crumples over on its side and his senses shut down in surrender.
He wakes to the smell of French fries and ketchup. There’s light in the sky. It’s been only a moment. Trent holds a white paper sack over Michael’s face. They’re still on the curb.
“You fainted,” Trent says. “What the hell’s up with that? You diabetic or something?”
“Something,” says Michael, pushing the bag away. “It’s like I forget how to breathe sometimes.”
“Breath is everything,” Trent says. “Breath is life.”
“Thanks, Obi Wan. Where’d you get the bag?”
Trent points to an overturned trash can.
“You pushed garbage into my face?”
“I was trying to help you,” he says. “You might have choked on your tongue.”
“How does smashing fry sauce up my nose keep me from choking on my tongue?”
“Hyperventilation, you know? You need to recycle some of your own breath or you faint. I saw it in a movie,” he says. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks.”
The rest stop is deserted. It’s poorly placed; too close to real towns for much use.
“How long you been at this rest stop?” Michael says.
“I saw you pull in this morning.”
“I didn’t see you.”
He shrugs.
“Anyone else come by?”
“In the ten hours you slept? Yeah. Plenty.”
“Anyone special?” Michael asks.
“Like an ice-cream guy?”
“Yeah, like an ice-cream guy.”
“Two cops,” Trent says helping Michael to his feet. “They were going to wake you, but I chased them away.”
“Why?”
“You looked like you needed rest.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. They were content hassling me. Gave them something to do, a way to work off the doughnuts.”
Michael clenches his hands and walks in a circle to restart his circulation. He needs to get the blood back to his head. He needs to focus. Dissect. Discern.
“What’d the cops do?”
“The usual posturing. They demanded I.D. and my life’s story. They made a few suggestions as to my sexual preference and finally left me alone.”
“Did they ask you why and how you got here.”
“Of course.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Lies,” he says. “I told them I was hitchhiking to Mexico.”
“Did they believe you?”
“I’m a good liar.”
“I believe you.”
“There, you see?” he says with a grin. “So, shall we head out? I don’t want to wait around here another night.”
“What were you really doing here?”
“Waiting for a ride to Tahoe, Jack,” he says.
“I believe you. Climb in.”
From behind the restroom, Trent collects a duffel bag Michael remembers him carrying before. He throws it in the back seat and jumps in the passenger side.
“Nice ride. How’s the mileage?”
“Crap.”
“Do you need gas?”
“No, we’re good. How do we get there?”
“Head up 168 past Moapa. The exit’s just that way a little bit.” He points. “That’s the road. Lonely and quiet. It connects to 93 at Coyote Springs. You know 93?”
“I do,” says Michael.
“Then take 93 north and 375 past Crystal Springs.”
“I know it.”
“Yeah,” Trent says leaning his seat back, “I know you do. If I’m still sleeping, look for Highway 6 after that. I can’t imagine I’ll sleep that long, but you never know. You got all that?”
“168 to 93, past Crystal Springs then on to 6.”
“Lonely roads the whole way,” says Trent. “Wake me if you get tired.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll drive you out in the desert and kill you?”
“No brother,” he says. “I’m not. Are you?”
“No,” says Michael. “I kind of wish I was.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t that be the sensible thing to think? Wouldn’t it be normal for me to worry about the motivations of a stranger I just met at a deserted rest stop?”
“Sanity is over-rated. It’s just a word for conformity. If you see the world the way most people see it, you’re sane and normal. See something unusual, feel something strange, and you’re suspect. Society will forgive small transgressions, like being drunk and falling in love, but not for long. Don’t let society dictate your mind, Jack. Don’t let them tell you your soul is wrong. You know what you’re doing. You know you. If not you, who?” He chuckles at his rhyme.
“You seem to know a lot about me,” Michael says.
“You’re trying to be sane again,” says Trent. “You just don’t understand. A friend of Jessica’s is a friend of mine.”
“Are you sane?”
“I am clear.”
“You’re a Scientologist?”
Trent laughs suddenly and loudly.
“No, Michael. I’m not a Scientologist. No Dianetics. No Thetans. I’m not Tom Cruise’s secret love child.”
“What are you?”
“We’re the same,” he says. “That’s why I came to get you.”
“I thought I was giving you the ride?”
“Think that if you want,” he says. “But I’m tired. Wake me up if you get lost. You got eight or nine hours in you?”
“Yes. Are you going to sleep that long?”
“If I’m lucky.”
And just like that Trent rolls over on his side and sleeps.
The last of the twilight fades and Michael drives the narrow two-lane highway northwest across some of loneliest places in America, but Michael does not feel lonely. Not in this open space, not with a rising moon and stars twinkling. Not with a stranger in the seat beside him. He felt more alone in Oakland. Much more alone. Deserted places are good. Deserts are better. Did not all the great religions come from the desert? Prophets find God is in the desert.
Michael keeps expecting to see ghosts and spirits running alongside the car, or pools of blood flooding the road ahead like heat mirages, but he sees none of this. The rest did him good. He no longer feels un
tethered. He feels like himself. He has new information, new experiences to process. He recognizes he is not Michael Oswald, but neither is he a stranger.
He remembers Oakland and the long day that started after a three-day blackout and ended at a rest stop. He tries to rationalize. He’s killed a man, but he’d nearly been killed himself. He had to protect himself. He had to survive. But strange he doesn’t mourn the man he murdered. He tells himself it was bound to happen to that thug eventually.
Thug.
The word catches him for a moment, but only a moment. His mind is sharp. He’s rested. He doesn’t fear the story and he can even acknowledge a relationship between himself and the Indian folktale. He does not remember it all, but he’s sure that the kidnappers who killed his parents, and later killed themselves, had taught him about them. They were a crazy family, a mad murderous group, and he’s lucky to have survived them. They could have strung him up beside themselves that day. Thank god for small miracles.
The desert is awash in merciless sunlight, beaten and tawny. Few things move and those that do move mostly looking for those that shouldn’t have. Vultures circling between the road and the mountains, sage and starving trees, cactus and rock.
He has a past, and it’s not pretty. History seldom is. Look at India and centuries of killers, Britain with Pogrom against whole classes of people, zealotry and fear. In time it’ll all be smoothed over, forgotten if not forgiven and he, like nations, will continue to function.
Now he’s headed to Tahoe with a stranger he suspects may be a survivor like himself and feels fine about it. It seems natural and appropriate to be going there with him. Salt Lake can wait. The new life he planned to begin can wait until he sees what is in Tahoe.
His mother, his last foster mother, Gale Oswald, the woman he remembers most as his mother, once told that him “God does not close a door without opening a window.” He thinks of her now and that phrase. He is in limbo at the moment, and whether it’s God or something else directing him to new opportunities, he doesn’t know, but he recognizes an open window.
His mother’s phrase is hopeful and pragmatic but he prefers his father’s line, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Christopher had his own version of it: “Whatever doesn’t kill me, better run faster than me.”
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