Powerlines

by Kurt Newton

  Lindsey simply shook her head as Maria went back inside. A breeze blew across the yard, carrying cooler air with it. Lindsey slid her sunglasses down her nose and looked up at the sky. A thin layer of high clouds had moved in. The leaves on the trees were flipped over, casting a yellowish hue on the surrounding woods. Lindsey hoped there weren't any thunderstorms in the area. Ethan had his rain poncho but there was no shelter from a violent storm. She pictured him all sweaty and out of breath and welcoming a downpour.

  In the meantime, filtered sunlight was the best to tan under.

  She put her sunglasses aside and adjusted the backrest on the lounge until it lay flat. She took another sip from the cold, sweaty glass of iced tea before rolling over onto her stomach. She reached back and untied her top strings. She then pulled her bikini bottom up into a thong, a trick she had learned from a fashion magazine article on how to hide your tan lines. If you couldn't bathe naked, or felt awkward doing so, this was the next best thing.

  The warm air and the hot sun worked to relax her. The breeze in her ear was like a whisper or a goodnight kiss. She imagined it was Ethan nuzzling beside her, and before she knew it she had slipped off to sleep.

  15

  Ethan found himself once again hanging from the cliff, only this time when he reached up a hand grabbed his arm.

  He knelt gasping on the dusty stone ledge. When he at last caught his breath he looked up. The sun momentarily blinded him, but a shadow quickly stepped forward. It was his brother James. The sunlight crowned his head like a halo. He was wearing his flak jacket, full fatigues, a rifle slung over his back. He reached out his hand.

  "Don't worry, bro, I've got your back."

  Ethan opened his eyes.

  The sound of James' voice was so clear he swore he still heard the echo of it lingering in the room.

  That wasn't all he heard. The low-level hum was back. It was strange that he didn't hear it in his dream.

  He sat up. He didn’t know how long he had been out. Because there were no windows, no change in the light, he didn't know what time it was. He could have been out for fifteen minutes or four hours.

  He got up and began pacing the room again. Maybe he missed something. Maybe this was just some twisted mouse through a maze experiment where the way out was right in front of him and he just had to figure it out.

  When he exhausted all the possibilities he began to pick up the pine boughs. He stacked them in the corner like firewood. He used the largest one as a broom and swept the leaves also into the corner. He then took a stick and gathered the animal shit and put that too in the corner. He had to piss, so he stood over the pile of branches and leaves and shit, unzipped his fly and pissed. The debris trapped most of the urine but a few thin runnels wormed their out from underneath and raced toward his boots. He backed off before they could catch him.

  He then sat on the floor across from the entrance, the back of his head against the wall, and waited.

  He didn't know why he felt the need to clean the room he was in. He did it without thinking. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

  He listened to the hum that seemed to surround him. It was almost soothing.

  Pike watched the Pit #3 monitor and gave what he saw an appreciative nod.

  "He's adapting already, Wolf."

  Wolf sat by the doctor's side and looked up as if the collar he was wearing converted the man's words into wolf-language.

  "This is good. This is very good." Pike altered the frequency and increased the amplitude, making note of the changes.

  Pike turned to Wolf. "We'll feed him tomorrow."

  Wolf appeared to agree.

  "It's late, Wolf. Time for bed."

  When Wolf heard the word "bed" he automatically turned and began walking toward his pen. Pike put him away for the night and then retired himself.

  It had been a long and interesting day.

  Lindsey lay in bed as the rumble of thunder moved across the night. Flashes of lightning lit up her bedroom window but there was no rain. It was just the oppressive heat giving way to cooler, drier temperatures ever-so-slowly, reluctantly, like flint striking against each other, producing a spark but no flame.

  Lindsey closed her eyes. A nervous excitement rumbled in her stomach. Tomorrow couldn't come quickly enough.

  16

  "Wake up, bro..."

  Ethan opened his eyes. He lay faced down. At first he thought he was back on the ledge, but the ground beneath him felt soft. His fingers sank in as he got to his feet.

  Sand. Cool. Damp.

  "James?"

  He was on the island. Low clouds hung overhead. He heard the sound of the lake lapping against the shore, but a thick mist hugged the water and rode up onto the sand, swirling and eddying like a diaphanous current.

  "James?"

  He waited for a reply, his heartbeat thumping in the murky quiet.

  "Over here!"

  He ran toward the sound, up through bushes and brambles, the smell of moldering leaves and rotted wood entering his nostrils. He chased after what he thought was a figure in the mist.

  "James, wait up!"

  The figure crouched down as if hiding from something or someone ahead of him. Ethan slowed as he approached. "Hey —"

  The figure swung around, fingers held to its lips. "Shhhhhh..."

  It was James. He was once again dressed in his battle fatigues. He motioned with his hand to proceed with caution. Ethan joined him at the hiding spot. James pointed at their feet.

  The two of them were crouched atop a large metal plate. The plate had two handles. James directed Ethan to grab one of the handles. On the count of three they both lifted the plate up.

  Ethan stared down in disbelief.

  Twenty feet below was a man lying on the floor of a cement enclosure. He appeared to be sleeping. The man also looked close enough to be his twin.

  Then the ground suddenly shook.

  Kaboom. A weighted silence. Then kaboom again. Ethan thought it might be mortar rounds landing first on one side of the island, then the other.

  They quickly lowered the panel back into place. James looked up to the sky into the mist. His eyes grew large. Then he ran. He bolted down through the shrubs leaving Ethan behind.

  Kaboom.

  Much closer now. To the left.

  Kaboom.

  To the right.

  Ethan looked up, to try and see what James had seen. Fear gripped his chest like a vice. There was something high above. A long black shadow like the underside of an iron boom swung overhead as if carried by a crane. To the left, a tremendous leg cut through the mist and hit the ground with a leviathan-like certainty.

  Kaboom.

  Ethan fell to the ground as bits of stone and earth rained down.

  To the right, another leg landed, parting the mist with a whoosh.

  Kaboom.

  Ethan curled into a fetal ball as the moving power line stanchions straddled him.

  The left leg lifted again and continued its forward march, the right leg joining it seconds later. Instead of kabooms there came heavy splashes as the gargantuan entered the lake. Ethan watched it hypnotized until sounds of its movement disappeared into the mist. A subtle rustling and a feeling of a presence behind him made Ethan turn around.

  James was back, a look of relief on his face. "That was a close one," he said.

  Ethan opened his eyes. He was still sitting upright against the cement wall. He hadn't moved. But something was different.

  He glanced up at the hatch in the ceiling overhead. Then he let his eyes fall to the floor below. There were several pine twigs on the bare cement where there had been none before.

  He stared at them for a very long time before getting up and moving them to the pile. Then he sat back against the wall as if nothing unusual had happened.

  17

  The following morning Pike awoke from a restful sleep. This time his dreams were uneventful.

  Wash, get dressed, turn the coffee pot on.
Business as usual. With a hot cup of coffee in his hand Pike checked in on his new subject. The subject lay on his side, knees pulled up to his chest.

  Pike rewound the 24-hour recording, going back in time to the evening before when had had watched the subject sweeping the room. He stopped it there, then fast forwarded it. At first twice as fast, then four times. The subject sat against the cement wall motionless for several hours. At last, the subject's arms and legs began to twitch. Pike slowed the recording to real time. He watched the subject open his eyes and look about. Pike picked up the microphone and switched on the recorder.

  "At oh-three-hundred hours subject awoke. From subject's sleeping position, the subject turned his gaze toward the ceiling, toward the Pit #3 trap door. Subject then got to his feet and walked over to the spot on the floor beneath the trap door. The subject then crouched down and picked up items off the floor that were not there. He carried the imaginary items to the corner of the room, where he had previously piled the room's detritus. The subject then returned to the same sleeping position as before, breathing shallow, eyes once again closed.

  "Conclusion: Subject was participating in a lucid dream scenario. These actions indicate an enhancement of cortical function and spatial differentiation."

  Pike fast-forwarded the recording again, watching it until it reached the present time.

  "No other episodes to report."

  Pike placed the microphone back into its cone-shaped cradle. He sipped his coffee and watched the live feed.

  Lindsey spent most of Sunday morning getting ready. When it was time for her to leave, her mother asked her where she was going.

  "To pick up Ethan," she said.

  "Oh. That's right. He couldn't arrange for someone else to meet him?"

  "Yeah, but I told him I would."

  "Oh. Okay dear. He's not coming back here, is he?"

  "No, I'm taking him home. I'm sure he'll want to take a shower. We might go out to lunch afterwards, I don't know."

  "I sure hope he's giving you gas money for all your trouble. The price of gas isn't cheap, dear."

  "Mom, I'm doing this because I want to. He's my boyfriend." Lindsey shook her head. "I gotta go. Bye."

  "Bye, dear. Drive safely. Call me if you'll be home for dinner."

  Just when Lindsey thought she and her mother had reached an understanding, her mother always said something to negate those feelings. At least there was one thing she could count on: her mother never failed to disappoint.

  But Lindsey wasn't going to let something like that bother her. Not today. She shed her mother's words and blasted the radio as she drove, singing along with the tunes she knew and faking it on the ones she didn't. She was happy to at last be on the road to pick up her baby doll.

  She checked the map Ethan had made for her. It was an hour's drive time to get to the rendezvous point where the power lines crossed over the Mass Pike. She had driven there with Ethan a week ago, but today's solo trip made her nervous. It was a meandering route on secondary roads through a half-dozen small towns in northeast and north-central Connecticut. Pomfret to Woodstock to Eastford to Ashford to Union to Sturbridge. Quaint towns that pretty much all looked the same. Town greens dotted with a statue of one Revolutionary hero or another. If not a statue then a cannon, or gazebo, or an old well pump preserved since the town's inception, or any combination thereof. At least it wasn't raining. In fact, the threat of rain the night before had given way to even more heat, a bit drier perhaps but still hot enough to complain about it.

  Lindsey's only worry was which Ethan was going to walk out of the woods? The same Ethan she had left on the side of the road two days earlier, still indecisive, still brooding about what he wanted in life? Or the Ethan he had hoped this retreat would produce: an Ethan who could at last say definitively where they stood? An Ethan who could look her in the eye and profess his love for her and she would know without a doubt he meant it?

  She didn't know which scared her more, the former or the latter. She prayed for the latter but expected the former. Because even if it was still the former, it didn't change a thing. All it meant was he needed more time; time she was more than willing to give him.

  When she at last entered Massachusetts and arrived at the I-90 tollbooth in Auburn, her heart began to race. It didn't let up until she spied the power lines in the distance. She checked the in-dash clock. It was ten minutes before noon. Aside from a couple Sunday drivers, who were kind enough to eventually pull over and let her by, she had made good time. She hoped, as she put her signal on and pulled over at the agreed upon location, Ethan would be waiting for her at the edge of the woods.

  But he wasn't there.

  The power lines cut a swath through the thick patch of trees that lined the highway. The twin rows of stanchions marched away for several lengths before cresting a hill and out of sight. Tall green grass and patches of shrubs grew beneath the lines. A narrow access road — basically two tire ruts — ran along the right side of the poles.

  No Ethan hiking in the distance, waving as he followed the trail.

  She tried her cell phone.

  Service Unavailable. As was expected. They had tried phone service last week with the same result. Must be one of those dead zones.

  Cars whizzed by with ambivalence. With each tractor-trailer, the Range Rover stuttered and shook, as if in fear of the leviathans hurtling by.

  The music played on. Lindsey tapped her fingers to the beat, occasionally glancing toward the power lines, each time expecting Ethan to appear as a dot on the distant landscape walking stick in hand like Moses exiting the desert.

  A small flock of birds flew across the gap. Aside from that the scenery remained unchanged.

  Twelve noon.

  "C'mon Ethan, where the hell are you?"

  Lindsey rolled down the windows and turned off the engine. The air-conditioning sputtered to a stop. Almost immediately the summer air pressed into the car, coating her skin like the thinnest of massage towels. It reminded her of her monthly spa treatments at the Norwich Inn with her mother: a morning of mud and oils and massage followed by an organic lunch, followed by a heavenly heat wrap. It was one of the few mother-daughter activities they shared. Besides fighting.

  12:15.

  She unhooked her safety belt and leaned over to the passenger-side window and looked out. Still nothing.

  "Ethan...you're pissing me off. You said twelve o'clock...and I was here early...and now you're late..."

  She half sang the words over the song playing on the radio. She searched for a better song. She tried to stay occupied.

  Her back was growing sticky.

  She started the engine and put the AC back on, forcing the warm air out of the car before sealing the windows up tight. The highway noises faded. The wooden love knot hanging from her rearview mirror — the one Ethan had made it for her — for them — turned and twisted slightly like a wind chime. It reminded her of their first meeting.

  When she and her mother had entered the Custom Furniture Mill in Eastford last fall, she was expecting creepy old carpenters with leering eyes and sawdust in their hair. However, the owner was a nice man, neatly dressed and professional — used to dealing with the surrounding clientele — and the "carpenters" (which she later learned was incorrect — "woodworkers" being the correct terminology) were all relatively young, the youngest of which was Ethan. He sat like Geppetto on a wood stool, hand-tooling the wing of winged-backed chair. He looked so cute with his safety glasses on. When he blew off the piece and caught sight of her in the doorway, she knew he was the one. He got up then.

  Hi, I'm Ethan. Can I help you with anything?

  His smile nearly melted her heart.

  She remembered for a moment the noise in the shop disappeared, taking the entire world with it, leaving just the two of them.

  To this day she couldn't remember what she had said in reply. But when she had left the shop she had his phone number written on her palm.

  12:30.
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br />   "This is ridiculous."

  The first frissons of worry began to creep into her thoughts.

  What if something happened? What if he got lost? But how could he get lost following the power lines? If he's not here by one o'clock, I'm really going to be pissed.

  As she was watching the grassy slope, deciding when to start panicking, a police cruiser appeared in her rearview mirror. She immediately put her cell phone to her ear and began talking. The cruiser pulled back out into traffic. She waved to the officer and the officer waved back. She kept her imaginary conversation going until the cruiser was out of sight.

  "C'mon, Ethan. What's keeping you? How long do expect me to wait?"

  The thought then occurred: How long was she expected to wait? How long was too long? An hour? Two hours? She couldn't very well sit out here on the highway without attracting some attention. She had already had one Good Samaritan stop by a police cruiser. If he still saw her sitting there next time through, he would definitely think something wasn't right.

  She decided to move. She started the engine and swung back into traffic. She would kill some time by driving down to the next exit, get back onto the highway heading east, get off again and get back on again heading west. By the time she had done all that — paying small tolls in the process — and returned to her original spot, it was a little after one o'clock.

  And still no Ethan.

  "This is crazy! What the hell am I supposed to do? Sit here all freakin' afternoon?"

  Then she realized what if he had come when she was gone? He would have expected her to be there. If she wasn't, what would he do? He might wait a little while, then what? Begin hitchhiking? It was illegal to hitchhike on the highway. Walk until his phone had service? That seemed the likeliest.

  She checked the power lines again. Same green swath, no change.

  She estimated it would take him a good fifteen minutes to walk down from farthest point to the edge of the highway. There's no way she could have missed him.