by Roxie Noir
Seth leaned over the table, getting closer to Jules, and she felt her heart go pitter-patter.
“There is a story about a family who tried to cross the desert in the summer to get to California, only for the father to go crazy and eat his wife and children. They say he was found still gnawing on an arm bone.”
Jules’s stomach lurched, and she looked down at the table, suddenly horrified.
“Really?” she muttered, not feeling terribly well.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” said Seth. “I just made that up on the spot, it didn’t happen.”
Jules looked up at him askance.
“Swear to god,” said Seth.
“Cannibalism makes me queasy,” Jules said.
“Nothing has ever happened in Obsidian besides puppies and rainbows,” he said. With his forefinger, he drew an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”
“I definitely don’t believe that,” she said. “But thanks for trying.”
Seth glanced around the room, his face darkening just a little.
“It’s not you,” he finally said, his voice quiet. “It’s me.”
“Did you kill all their dogs?” Jules asked.
“It’s weirder, and you’re not going to believe me,” he told her.
The waitress came back, face as cold as ever, and they ordered.
“Try me,” said Jules. “Unless it’s cannibalism. If it’s cannibalism, please lie.”
“There’s a legend that my great-great-great...” he paused, like he was trying to remember how many greats. “...Great grandfather made a deal with the devil.”
Jules took a sip of her coke, her eyes going wide.
“What kind of deal?” she asked.
Seth shrugged, jabbing his straw at the ice in his drink.
“For a good harvest,” he said. “His crops tended to do better than other peoples’, but it’s because he had the land along the Elk River.”
“That’s behind your house?” Jules asked, a little afraid to know the answer.
Seth nodded. “It’s a ways back, but that was all his.”
Then he frowned, like he was thinking of something else, and he paused for a beat.
Shit, she thought. The mine is going in his back yard. Does he know I’m working on the mine? That’s not why he asked me out, is it?
“Anyway, legend also has it that he and all his descendants can turn into golden eagles at will, and that at night we wreak havoc on the townspeople.”
“Well?” asked Jules. “Do you?”
“Only sometimes,” Seth said, laughing. “You know, when Billy Bob’s chickens are looking really tasty.”
“So people don’t like you because your ancestor had better luck than their ancestors,” Jules summarized. “They can’t possibly believe that you turn into an eagle.”
Seth shrugged.
“Who knows,” he said. “People have believed weirder things, and there really are golden eagles here, and they really do steal chickens. And disliking us is mostly habit by now. Gives the people of Obsidian something to do.”
“I bet you can’t wait until you get cable internet,” Jules said. “That should give people some new hobbies.”
“That would be nice,” Seth admitted. “Right now it takes all night just to download a movie. We’ve still got a movie rental store, though.”
The silent, surly waitress came back bearing burgers and fries and put them on the table without a word. Then she took out the check and put it on the table between them.
“Pay at the register whenever you’re ready,” she said, and left again.
Jules had to fight the urge to flip her off.
Family establishment, she told herself.
Seth nabbed the check off the table and put it on the bench next to himself, then gave Jules a look that practically dared her to protest.
“I’m going to insist, so don’t bother,” he said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Jules.
5. Seth
The bowling alley wasn’t much different. The guy at the shoe counter went suddenly robotic when Seth stepped up, despite laughing and talking with someone else not thirty seconds before. As he handed over two sets of bowling shoes, utterly stone-faced, Seth and Jules looked at each other, then Jules rolled her eyes and Seth shrugged.
She probably still thinks that I’ve murdered everyone’s pets, Seth thought. He’d gotten used to the unfriendliness from the other townspeople over the years, but it pissed him off that she was getting dragged into it.
As they walked to the only empty lane, Jules looked over at Seth, then at the counter behind them, screwing her face up a little.
“They don’t do bumper lanes for adults, do they?” she asked.
Seth laughed out loud.
“Come on,” Jules said, laughing along. “I’m pretty bad at this.”
“I don’t think they have bumper lanes for kids,” said Seth. “It’s the pioneer spirit to never make anything easy on children, you know.”
“Right, because then they’ll never make anything of themselves,” Jules said, a note of bitterness creeping into her tone. “Bootstraps and all that.”
Seth sat on the hard plastic chair, loosening the laces on a pair of shoes.
“So you grew up poor too?” he asked.
“West Virginia,” she answered. “Huntsberg, this little town in the mountains. First it was a mining town, and then it was a rust belt town, but then all the factories closed and now there’s still one mine open, but the biggest industry is probably meth,” she said. “Everyone’s poor, so at least I didn’t realize that’s what we were.”
“But you got out?”
Jules nodded, tugging the laces on her shoes.
“I got lucky,” she said. “I realized that the only way I’d have a life different from the one my parents or grandparents had was if I got someone else to pay for me to go to college, so I buckled down and got a scholarship.”
And now you work for the company that wants to put a huge mine in my back yard, Seth thought.
Then he pushed the thought away. It hadn’t been her idea, obviously. She wasn’t in charge. At best, she was testing soil samples or something, and might not know a thing about the project beyond the ground’s pH levels.
Plus, her nose crinkled when she laughed in a way that made him feel really funny inside, like all he wanted to do for the rest of his life was make her happy.
That would be a pretty good fate, he thought, watching her concentrate on the slip of paper for scoring.
It’s your first date, he told himself. Save naming your children for date number three or four, okay?
Not that you’ll get that many dates. Maybe one more before she leaves if you’re lucky.
He didn’t think for a moment she’d ever be back in Obsidian. She’d clearly decided that the small-town life wasn’t for her, and as much as Seth loved his wild, desert home, he could understand why someone might not.
“Okay, I think I get it,” Jules said, tapping the tiny pencil on the score card.
“It’s not rocket science,” Seth teased.
“I’ve never had to score on paper before,” Jules protested. “For all its failings, the Huntsberg Bowl-O-Rama was automated.”
“I bet you’ve got cable internet, too.”
“We’ve even got a McDonald’s,” said Jules
“You bowl first, fancy pants,” Seth told her.
She took a bright orange ball from the stand and hefted it, like she was doing some sort of calculation before finally standing up straight, assuming the position, and heaving the ball down the lane, her back to Seth the whole time.
He didn’t mind the view at all.
The ball went straight into the gutter, and Jules watched it roll all the way down, hands on hips.
“Shit,” she said.
In the next lane, a little boy looked at her, wide-eyed.
“Sorry,” she said, then wrinkled her nose at Seth, grabbing another ball.
>
This time she got two pins, and her hair bounced up and down when she jumped for joy. Seth couldn’t help but smile.
“Beat that,” she said, and winked.
Seth felt that wink tingle all the way down into his toes.
“I’ll give it a shot,” he said, and winked back.
Seth won both games, which didn’t surprise either of them. The whole time, he wondered whether he should show her how to bowl, holding her from behind, their bodies moving together in concert, but he didn’t.
After all, there were kids in the next lane, and he wasn’t about to make guarantees about what could happen next. Plus, she knew how to bowl. The concept wasn’t hard.
She was just really bad at it.
At 7:45, a voice crackled over the PA system in the bowling alley. It was totally incomprehensible, but Seth knew it meant they were closing soon. He ticked off the second-to-last box in Jules’s score sheet — she’d gotten an amazing-for-her seven pins — and tried to think of anything else they could do in town. Obsidian didn’t even have a bar. If it had been in any other state, it probably would have, but not Utah.
Vatican City probably has more liberal liquor laws than the state of Utah, Seth thought.
Jules walked back to where Seth was sitting.
“I’m feeling good about this game,” she said, grinning. “I bet I’m crushing you.”
Together, they glanced at the score card, and Jules burst out laughing.
“Go bowl,” she said. “Put me out of my misery.”
A few minutes later, they were walking to Jules’s truck in the gravel parking lot. Seth felt the back of his hand brush against Jules’s, and his heart practically flipped over in his chest. Something about her made him feel like he was thirteen again and had a crush on a girl for the very first time, as if no one in the history of humanity had ever felt quite like this.
“Where next?” she asked, jingling the keys.
“Remember how I said that everything closed early?” Seth said. They stopped next to the truck, by the driver’s side door. She was so close that he could smell her scent, spicy and earthy all at once, like a pine forest after a hard rain.
“It’s only eight,” Jules said.
Seth just shrugged, helplessly.
“There’s a gas station convenience store that might still be open, though I wouldn’t count on it,” he said. “Otherwise, we could go back to my house. I don’t think my brother’s home from school yet.”
Her facial expression was mixed, like she wanted to say yes but wasn’t quite sure.
“We can sit on the front porch and look at the stars over the Mesa,” he said. “I’d say we could have a drink but the closest place that sells alcohol is two hours away.”
He felt a slight twinge as he said mesa, and reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say this date was planned last-minute,” she said, her hazel eyes sparkling up at him, her body moving just a hint closer.
“It was,” he confessed, putting a single finger on the point of her shoulder, feeling her warmth through her shirt. “But not because I wasn’t excited.”
Her lips were perfect, just barely parted, and Seth looked into her eyes and had the sudden sensation that he was flying high over the earth, looking down into some lush paradise.
Just as he bent down to kiss her, headlights blinked on from twenty feet away, blinding them both.
“Bowling alley’s closed!” shouted a gruff voice.
Are you fucking kidding me, thought Seth.
“Sorry!” shouted Jules, her cheeks turning bright pink in the strong light. “Your place?” she asked Seth.
“You live with your brother?” Jules asked as she drove them out of town.
“My youngest brother. Zach,” Seth said.
“How many do you have?” she asked.
“Just two. Zach’s the one I live with, and Garrett leaves us voicemails sometimes. I even get to talk to him about once a year.”
This isn’t the time to get into your relationship with Garrett, Seth told himself.
“The house is beautiful,” Jules offered. “Is it old?”
Seth nodded in the dark.
“Remember Hiram, who made the deal with the devil?” he asked.
“I could never forget Hiram,” Jules said.
“He built it, and it’s been in my family ever since. I grew up there, my mom grew up there. All the way back.”
“That’s amazing,” Jules said. “Do your parents still live there, too?”
Seth turned and looked out the truck window for a moment. He didn’t particularly like bringing up his parents on a first date — it was too morbid, and of all the emotions he hoped to inspire in Jules, pity wasn’t one of them.
But she’d asked, and it wasn’t like he was going to lie to her.
“Nah, they died when I was seventeen,” he said. “They were trying to take a shortcut through a canyon up to highway 260, and their car slid off the road.”
“Oh, my god,” said Jules. “I’m so sorry.”
Her green-to-brown eyes flicked to him.
Seth shrugged, never sure what response people expected him to have. It was over, it had happened, and it had sucked, but all that was past.
“I was about six months away from being eighteen, so the court let me become Garrett and Zach’s legal guardian instead of tossing us into the foster system. And we had the house, so we had a place to live. It could have been a lot worse,” he said.
“You must be close now, at least,” Jules said, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like maybe it’s a good thing that your parents died, that was rude.”
Seth chuckled.
“No offense taken at all. You wouldn’t believe the shit some people will say to a teenager who’s just lost his parents. And yeah, Zach and I are close,” he said.
Garrett, not so much, but that’s a topic for another time, he thought.
Jules hit the brakes and turned into Seth’s driveway, the mesa looming in the middle distance. For a few minutes, they jostled along in silence, and then Jules parked the truck and turned it off, suddenly blanketing them both in starlit darkness. Seth looked over at Jules. In the dim light, all the colors were muted except her eyes, which were as vivid as ever.
She unbuckled and looked at him, like she was about to say something.
“Wait,” said Seth.
He leaned toward her, unbuckling his own seatbelt, letting it clank against the door.
“Let me kiss you before anything else ruins it,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
He could have sworn her eyes flashed, but before he could think her lips were on his, soft and warm and pliant, and he cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand, her warmth sending a shock through him, her hand tentative on his shoulder, like a bird that wasn’t quite sure whether to stay or take off.
When their lips separated they hovered close for a moment. Seth didn’t want to pull away — he didn’t think he ever wanted to pull away — he just wanted to stay there, close to her, forever, and then she closed the space between them one more time, pressing against him a little harder now, just a little more insistent.
This time, when they separated, they both sat up straight in their seats, and Seth felt like his heart had grown wings and might simply fly out of his chest as he looked into her eyes, feeling like the entire world had shifted in some subtle way he couldn’t exactly name.
“Stars?” Jules asked, after a long pause.
Seth just nodded and got out of the truck.
As promised, they sat on the front porch in the warm night air, feet up on the railing. Seth had offered Jules orange juice — it was the fanciest thing they had in the house at the moment — but she declined, laughing.
“Next time, I’ll get sparkling grape juice,” he said.
He thought he saw something pass over her face, and he remembered: she was leaving soon.
Then
she tried to smile, but it didn’t quite make it to her eyes.
Finally, she spoke up again.
“Is that big dark thing Copper Mesa?” she asked.
“It is,” said Seth, and then he went silent, glancing her way. Jules wouldn’t meet his eyes, just staring at the mesa, like she was thinking hard about something.
Does she even know what’s happening? He wondered.
Then a much more insidious thought struck him.
What if they sent her on a date with me to see if I had the document? He thought.
It was a completely insane thought, but he was feeling pretty crazy at the moment.
“That’s actually why I didn’t call you last night,” he said, careful to keep his voice neutral and even.
“The mesa is?” she said. She still wouldn’t look at him.
Seth took a deep breath.
Fuck it, he thought. I know that she knows that I know and all that.
“You work for Quarcom, right?”
She nodded.
“They’re going to build a giant mine right next to the mesa if I can’t prove that we own it,” he said. “I was up until two in the morning on shitty dial-up internet trying to figure out how land ownership even worked in 1870s Utah, while Zach went through all the legal stuff from my parents’ will again, trying to see if there was something in there.”
Jules just shook her head, her posture stiffer than before.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
It’s not her fault, Seth reminded himself yet again, but now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop the floodgates.
“A mine there would wreck the whole town,” he said. “I work with a guy who used to live in Tinville, and the same thing happened there. Huge open-pit mine, made the whole place basically unlivable.”
“Did your family ever own all this land, or was it a legend?” Jules asked. “It seems like there’s a lot of legends around.”
“I don’t know,” said Seth, beginning to feel a little helpless. He was no closer to saving the mesa, and now Jules had gone brittle.