“Sorry, but I’m in a terrible hurry. I’ve got a new call phone number—I wrecked that old phone while I was back east.” I consulted the notes and gave her the new number of the disposible. “And I’ll call when I get settled. Don’t worry about the house. I have a neighbor looking in.” This was a lie. I didn’t want anyone at the house until I was certain that the danger had passed. “Emerson has a car waiting. I’ve got to go. Give my love to the kids. Bye!” I hung up quickly.
“Will it bother you to leave this place behind?” Emerson asked.
Would it? I had stayed less because I liked the house than because it had been Harrison’s and I had felt the need to preserve it when he no longer could. But how much debt did I owe my dead husband and his family? How much would he want me to owe him? And did it matter since I had no choice?
“I’ll manage.” That was probably true.
Packing didn’t take long. Partly because some part of me planned on coming back and doing a better job of sorting when it was safe— which surely it would be some day— but also because the house had never really felt like it was mine and I had lived in the margins, a trespasser careful not to fill it with my own possessions.
My only bad moment was coming a cross a bundle of letters from Harrison in my lingerie drawer. We had carried on a long-distance romance my last year of college. The sight of his faded handwriting paralyzed me. I couldn’t decide whether to take them or leave them behind. Emerson had said to pack only what was absolutely necessary because we would be traveling fast and couldn’t be burdened. I could abandon make-up, hair dryers and even photo albums, but this froze me in place.
Stunned and suddenly hurting with the realization that I was really leaving, I turned to Emerson, asking silently for the strength and wisdom to do this impossible thing.
He looked at the agony in my face and then took the bundle from me. He carefully tucked it into the duffle bag on the bed.
“Bring hiking boots,” he said and then turned away.
Chapter 10
“United States Hotel, March 6, 1842
My Dear Sir,
I shall be very glad to see you whenever you will do me the favor to call. I am more likely to be in the way between half-past eleven and twelve, than at any other time. I have glanced over the books you have been so kind to send me, and more particularly at the papers which you have called to my attention. I have the greater pleasure in expressing my desire to see you on this account. Apropos of the ‘construction’ of ‘Caleb Williams’ do you know that Godwin wrote it backwards—the last volume first—and when he had produced the hunting down of Caleb, and the catastrophe, he waited for months, casting about for a means of accounting for what he had done?
Faithfully Yours,
Charles Dickens”
—letter from Charles Dickens to Edgar Allen Poe
Clarice has called me anal—that is definitely the cast iron pot calling the tin kettle black, but I will admit that I am comfortable with predictability. I like organization. I love schedules—and suddenly I couldn’t even plan when to have dinner. Or where to have dinner since we headed into the wastelands of California and then Nevada and then heaven— or Emerson— only knew where. Looking at the sideview mirror as we rolled down the snowy drive, I half expected to see bridges burning behind us, but there was only Harrison’s house, already looking abandoned and forlorn. Life support was on, timers on lamps, the answering machine operational, but I had the feeling that this was stop-gap and wouldn’t really keep the house alive. It hadn’t welcomed me as a bride and it wouldn’t want me back when this adventure was done. It was time to give it to someone else.
Sighing wouldn’t help, so I didn’t do it. I just had to trust that Emerson knew what he was doing and had our best interests at heart when he recommended immediate flight…. Trust. It wasn’t my long suit these days and I was making an emotional leap that would scare Barnum and Bailey’s top trapezist. Emerson’s somber, the best plan in an uncertain situation is a flexible plan, had not reassured me that it was wise to work without a safety net.
I looked in the backseat at my bag. There weren’t a lot of clothes in it. That was the start of the necessary amputation, freeing myself from my old security blanket— or perhaps ball and chain— of my past life. Mainly the bag had the guts of the March edition of Golden words in it. Feeling like I was taking the last drastic step, I had backed up my files onto memory sticks and put them in a photo sack I used for my film while traveling. I did not keep them in my purse, not wanting to chance that prolonged proximity to Emerson or I would wipe them clean. Being around Emerson gave new and unpleasant meaning to the words ‘magnetic personality’.
Though I was not in any way riding around on Emerson’s raven, I was feeling a bit out of body, looking down on my life from this newly heightened perspective and hardly recognizing what it had become. Had the situation been less dire I might have bolted, or pleaded with Emerson to stop the car so that I could sit unmoving for a few minutes and let my mind catch up to the body. But my inner voice was saying that the situation was dire indeed, so I kept my crazy thought and impulses to myself.
Emerson and I took his vehicle since it was four-wheel drive and had snow tires, and he drove. I had had a moment of worry about him using any device as modern as a car, but he did fine, so at least I didn’t have to fret more than usual about becoming an automotive fatality.
Emerson looked at the sky every few minutes. It was clear, but he still frowned.
“What is it? Are you looking for your raven?”
“Among other things. There is as yet no portent of destruction, but I believe that it is high time for us to get lost in the wilderness.”
“But we will still stop at the printer’s, right? I need those covers. And I already paid for them.”
He looked away from the sky and smiled indulgently. The printer was out of the way, three hours south. They were slower than our local shop but they were cheapest with color printing and I used them for the magazine when I didn’t have a rush job to do. Three hours wasn’t bad, but since there were few passes through the mountains open in winter, the detour would actually cost us more like eight hours.
“Of course.”
“It’s that or send it on to Clarice. She might wonder about that though. She might start to wonder about you. She might think you are a bad influence, wooing me away from work.” Not likely. She considered me far too involved in Harrison’s magazine and wanted me out being social. “Clarice is quick to make up her mind—and everyone else’s too,” I grumbled.
“Tell me more about your family,” was all he said, picking up speed once we were on the highway.
So, I did. Emerson seemed especially taken with Pickles Linn, my granny. It had been O’Linn once, but the O was dropped somewhere on Ellis Island not too long after the Civil War and it never got properly glued on again. The story of Grandma fashioning herself as an Irish Annie Oakley amused him. That lead to a story about her sister, my great aunt, Juliet, who looked like Boris Yeltsin, smelled of carbolic and who has no gifts beyond saying the absolute most embarrassing thing at the absolute worst moment. Her heart, if she had one, was probably kept in formaldehyde in the chamber pot under her single-wide bed. Clarice and I have long suspected that my Uncle didn’t actually divorce her and move to Australia as she claimed, but is instead buried somewhere in her basement—probably in six tidy pieces. For some reason I couldn’t remember, we had taken to calling her Auntie Earwig until mother had threatened to wash our mouths out with soap.
I told him that Clarice was talking about getting her pilot’s license in the spring. We did not talk about her having The Sight and refusing to use it, or about my parents’ deaths, though I did describe how Dad flew with a kind of religious ecstasy that, while not safe, was alluring when I was young and reckless. How many of us love what we do and would choose our job over all things? In that I envied him, though I had no urge to follow his lead and thought Clarice was crazy to consid
er it.
Dark fell early. We decided to stop the night in Solvang. It is a fairytale town, founded by Danish settlers in 1911, population fifty-three-hundred and change. There’s even a windmill. We got a room at a small but charming inn and opted to eat in our room rather than go out in public. Feeling somewhat nervous, I insisted we bring in our bags, the box of covers from the printers, and also the new laptop Emerson had purchased for me in Bakersfield. Normally I wouldn’t have accepted such an expensive gift, but he owed me—or so I chose to believe since I couldn’t afford to get a computer on my own.
I was very nervous about sharing a room with Emerson, but also excited and relieved not to be alone with my imagination. I had been brave all day, but with night and rain closing in, I was beginning to feel jumpy. Emerson was calm, assuring me that the small storm was completely natural, but I was just as happy to lock our door and have Emerson beside me for the night. He was looking terribly concerned and handsome as I fretted. Not that anything romantic would happen. Even if I wanted it to. I had begun to understand that Emerson wasn’t that kind of a guy.
What he thought about our shared quarters I could not tell. He had his emotions, gagged, blindfolded and fettered. Though I was getting better at sensing his moods, that night he was a blank to me. This was frustrating because I was fairly certain that he could sense everything I was feeling.
He found me staring at a copy of the Bible open on the nightstand to Psalms and frowned.
“Someone else has been recoursing to prayer,” I said with a small smile. “Would we be wise to do the same?”
“It is not in my nature,” Emerson said seriously. “The Bible doesn’t praise intelligence, nor men who think for themselves. In fact it discourages all creative thinking. And that is unfortunate because it has led to a whole class of citizens who would rather die than reflect—and they do so in distressing numbers.” He paused. “This is not God’s fault, of course. Unless we blame him for free will.”
I said nothing. It was apparent from this and other things, that Emerson believed in God. He just didn’t much trust or like The Creator. Frankly, after what had happened, I could see his point.
After our small meal of open-faced sandwiches and apple pie we spread out on the bed picnic style, I suggested that Emerson get some sleep while I played with my new laptop.
There was a miniature table which I dragged away from the empty black glass that overlooked the parking lot— I couldn’t help remembering the ape-thing that had coming leaping through the glass of the living room window and preferred to be a back a ways from the frail barrier. Feeling a bit silly about the next precaution, I placed the portable on an antistatic mat and put on a pair of latex gloves, which Emerson had also purchased for me at the computer mart. He said that laptops were more sensitive than regular computers because the keyboard was right on top of the brains and that I might already be strong enough to damage the thing as my magnetic field fluctuated.
After some struggle, I did manage to get the computer set up, loaded my files and opened a new hotmail account which offered some anonymity when I wrote to Clarice. Emerson had insisted on this as a security measure. But at least half of my attention was on Emerson while I worked. My poet slept on his back with his left arm crooked over his eyes, hand in a fist in a pose that was unconsciously dramatic. He wore silk pajamas. I wondered if this was for my benefit or if this was simply because he came from an era when people dressed for bed. Thankfully, he didn’t snore.
I had thought him lost in the deep and dreamless, but after a moment he said: “I can feel it when you watch me.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. “It’s just… a little strange being here with you. But in a good way,” I added when he cracked an eye.
“For us both,” he said politely. “I am sorry that you are disconcerted though. Would you prefer that I slept on the floor?”
“Of course not! I’m just getting… accustomed.”
His lips twitched.
“I am also a bit disconcerted. Do let me know when it all feels normal. Goodnight, Anna.”
“Goodnight.” After that I made myself quit staring.
It was around one in the morning when I finally forced myself to bed. I didn’t do much beyond cat nap, both because I was still too flushed with nervous adrenaline, but also because it had occurred to me that Emerson might once again be drawn into my dreams and I didn’t trust them not to betray either my fear of what we were doing or my growing attraction to the man in those elegant silk pajamas. Instead I dreamed that I smelled fire and thought again about burning bridges.
Emerson, a revoltingly early riser on this occasion, decided that we would have breakfast in one of the small bistros before hitting the road. And I decided to dress up a bit for the meal and indulge a little more of my Siren Song lipstick so maybe he wouldn’t notice the circles under my eyes.
“That is a very sedate frock,” Emerson said when I emerged from the bathroom the next morning. “I haven’t seen you in anything so quiet before.”
“It is classic black and doesn’t wrinkle,” I excused it. Clarice had given it to me as part of her ongoing campaign to render me dignified.
“What more can one ask?”
“Better colors and style?”
Emerson laughed. He said impulsively: “Please don’t think me forward, but it is so lovely that you can surprise me. There is very little that does any more. And the people—especially women— who do something unexpected generally leave me more bewildered than charmed.”
He thought that was forward?
“We’re women. That’s our job,” I muttered, annoyed that he didn’t find me at least a little mysterious.
He just shook his head, but I think he was amused.
At Emerson’s insistence, I changed back into jeans and a sweater after breakfast. He did not seem especially worried about being followed, but his air of abstraction meant that he was using his raven—or some other flying thing—to have a look at the terrain. That meant that he was not completely certain that we had shaken off pursuit.
The day was long and the roads through the Sierra were tricky. Snow plows had been through, but the temperatures were cold and ice was everywhere on the road at the higher elevations. I found myself bracing my feet against the floor and clutching at the door handle in anticipation of trouble.
Emerson, seeing my tensed body and probably catching some of my unhappy thoughts about cliffs and falling, shared with me that we would be leaving the jeep soon and flying to our next destination. Since we were nearing Las Vegas, I assumed that we were heading for the airport there. The news didn’t thrill me. My parents’ deaths aside, I’ve never much cared for being cooped up in a confined space with strangers. Though there was no connection between crowds and my visions or seizures, I always feared having one when people were near and I couldn’t slip away somewhere private. The seizures were no longer a problem, but I wasn’t so sure about visions. The last one had been a doozie.
“Try and sleep,” Emerson said before I could protest. And this time I felt the definite push of his will as he urged me toward slumber. Being tired and on a dangerous stretch of road, I decided not to fight him. If I stayed awake I would just worry and divert his attention from driving.
I awoke four hours later, snapping to awareness like a rubber band that has finally been released from service. I decided that Emerson and I were going to have a long talk about him forcing his will upon me when we reached our destination, but got terribly distracted by the scenery. Or lack of it.
It was night again, the short day fled while I slept. The airfield, if such a term applied to this strip of dirt and deccicated shed at its side, was silent and dark, the brightest lights being a western glow that I assumed was Las Vegas. There was no snow but a hard frost covered the stunted manzanita and dead grass. The wind had shifted directions with the setting of the moon but clouds were advancing from the western horizon. They looked like mildewed cauliflower as they passed over the city
and held the threat of lightning. And worse. I wasn’t having a vision, but intuition was biting her nails.
Emerson pulled into the crooked moon-shadow behind the shed and turned off the engine. Without a word we got out and walked around to the front of the building, which was actually better preserved than I had first thought.
I managed a few lungfuls of pungent, marijuana-laced air before notice the triad of odd tracks leading out of—or into— the shed. There was a plane inside. Of course. But unless there was a pilot, that meant Emerson was planning on playing pilot. My heart was so loud it could serve as a beacon. I willed it to slow. Though my lungs protested, I made them stop the panting breaths. There may have been a little white around the eye though. My imagination has a high tensile strength but it was near breaking at the idea of me climbing aboard a small plane.
“You fly?” I asked as he tipped over a large stone by the leaning wall, and avoiding a sleeping scorpion, retrieved a large iron key which presumably would fit the old lock on the barn doors. “But how? I mean with the way you mess up electronics….”
“I fly something almost as old as I am,” Emerson said with a smile. “The Thomas brothers are kind enough to let me use their shed when I visit. They grow and transport marijuana.”
“Oh good, dope smugglers and an antique plane without electrical systems. I knew it wasn’t as bad as I was thinking” My fake enthusiasm wasn’t at normal levels and I felt Emerson again enter my mind and absently-mindedly order me to calm. I struggled this time but it did no good. He was too strong.
In enforced calm, I listen as Emerson fiddled with the frozen lock on the shed doors, but other than some frost cracking as he pulled open the gate, I heard nothing to suggest that anyone or anything else was stirring.
Emerson paused.
“There’s usually a ghost here—an old prospector. I don’t see him tonight. I wonder where he’s gotten to.”
“I’d as soon not see a ghost.” Just speaking of it brought out the gooseflesh.
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