“We can work anytime.” He leans closer to brush a loose eyelash from my cheek.
“Isn’t it going to seem suspicious when we return to the community with so few morels?”
“We’ll just say we couldn’t find any.”
I laugh but the sound stalls in my throat. “A bishop who lies.”
“It’s not a lie,” he insists, putting an arm around me, “if we’re not looking.”
Rocking back on my heels, I rise with the basket, and Jabil’s arm falls away. I glance at the sun pouring, warm, through the grove of pines. All day, I have been unsettled, and I know Jabil—despite his compliments and affection—senses this. For weeks, I have been able to put my childish dreams aside, concerning what one in love should resemble and feel, and have been able to focus on Jabil, whom I can easily think of as my fiancé but am still unable to contemplate as my husband. But then, this morning, when I was out tending the garden, a plane flew overhead. It was a small red plane—so different from the one that crashed in our field—and yet the image of it caused me to miss Moses with a physical ache that made me realize some hope, buried deep within, is refusing to die. Why? I wonder. Why can’t I give up? Why can’t I grow up and wholeheartedly embrace this man?
I turn and look at him now, his dark eyes shining with worry. “Jabil Snyder,” I say, “thank you for loving me, even when sometimes I’m undeserving.”
My fiancé stands and puts his arms around me, drawing me back. “You are always deserving,” he says. “And I look forward to the day when you know it . . . here.”
His fingertip touches the front of my cape dress. My heart pounds as his breathing changes. He turns my face toward him, one hand supporting my throat, and seals his mouth over mine. His urgency makes the kiss different from before, and for the first time, I can imagine the transition from fiancé to husband, and the magic available through that change. The basket falls from my hands, the hard-won morels tumbling across the earth. But neither of us cares.
Moses
A good tailwind propels me back toward Kalispell, making the miles pass far more quickly than on my way here, when I had to fight the headwind buffeting against the plane. But though it’s easier to fly, I’m still fighting my return. I dread Josh’s disappointment when I have to tell him about the trip. So I decide to make a detour to at least delay the inevitable. Using basic math, I divide the distance by the gallons of fuel I have left. A cushion of thirty minutes allows me to make it to Bonners Ferry and back. I know it would be more useful to check out the area around Glacier National Park instead of saving that for another day, but somehow I am compelled to turn west instead. I admit, within a few miles, that I have subconsciously been planning this detour from the time I climbed into the plane.
In less than an hour, I am circling over Bonners Ferry, and I’m shocked at how different it looks, though I’m not sure if it’s different or simply recollected through the soft focus of hindsight. Spring growth covers the majority of the desolation. This time, I do spot a few people camping in the woods, the smoke from their bonfire rising in a column. I bring the plane down low, and they glance up as if it’s a giant bird of prey—part wonder, double parts fear. I wave out the window, and they pause before waving back. If they know I come in peace, maybe they won’t want to shoot my plane down, if they somehow have ammunition.
The creek wends through the bottomland, and the green of the grass is intensified by the contrast of sky. A bald eagle pair perches in a decaying tree to my left. It amazes me to see how humanity seems to be the only thing harmed by the EMP. If anything, nature is thriving and taking its territory back. I pass the Best Western restaurant and casino, where my grandpa and I used to stop in the summers after Grandma died and we got tired of looking at each other, not to mention tired of eating our own cooking. The building’s structure looks remarkably untouched, but the first floor windows and glass panels above the indoor pool have been shattered, revealing the pool’s painted-blue tiles dirtied with leaves.
Turning downwind, I slow the plane to eighty-five knots and power the engine down to around two thousand rpms. I see my grandpa’s farm up ahead—the once-comb-straight rows now a tangle of yellow star thistle and oxeye daisy, the latter straining their faces toward the sun.
I flip the carburetor heat on and power back to fifteen hundred rpms. I hold the nose level until the airspeed drops, and then I extend ten degrees of flaps. Every spare thought is pared away as I coordinate my turn with the rudder pedals. One miscalculation could send me into a spin. Flying low, toward the yard, I spot the model 1940s Spitfire airplane attached to the top of the thick wooden post serving as the mailbox’s backbone. I can remember Grandpa Richard spinning the propeller of that glorified toy whenever he’d walk down the lane to fetch the Bonners Ferry Herald and bills. I understand that, more than likely, I will never watch him do such a civilian task again. What I have learned is this: some things you expect to be destroyed aren’t, and some things you expect to survive never do.
Once the threshold of the lawn is forty-five degrees behind me, I apply another ten degrees of flaps. This brings my airspeed down even more. Beside the barn, on my left, is the Quonset hut where the crop duster used to be stored, along with a mishmash of farming tools Grandma didn’t want to see from her kitchen. The brick rancher, flanked with white pillars and shutters, appears in person the same as it does in my mind’s eye. Pinning down the front porch are the massive ceramic planters, which Grandma had me and Aaron place because, she claimed, our backs were young. I almost expect her curtains—something flowered and blue—to be flapping in the breeze. Their pattern was similar to the apron she always wore and used for everything from shielding me from Grandpa—when he’d come after me with a switch for something like sneaking his Red Man tobacco—to wiping dirt from my face when Aaron and I came in from playing horse.
Past and present, childhood and adulthood, converge as I use pitch to maintain my approach speed and the rudder pedals to keep the plane aligned with the makeshift, overgrown runway. This time, unlike when I crash-landed in Leora’s field, everything goes smoothly. A few feet off the ground, I ease off the yoke until I reach taxi speed and turn the plane in the front yard, mashing the long grass beneath the tires, leaving behind an indentation, like a crop circle.
And then, just like that, I’m here at the refuge I felt I had to escape, rather than facing my fears like a man and sorting them out. I hop down from the plane and listen to the wind sweeping across the Idahoan prairie. The sound is a relief after the plane engine’s incessant whine. A jackrabbit, with ears longer than old-school antennas, bounds away as I cut through the grass of the yard, my arms lifted out like I’m wading through water. Though I should be thinking about what I’m going to eat tonight, for once survival’s not the first thing on my mind.
I approach the house and see the manual door is lifted on the double garage, an addition my grandpa built after he and Grandma reached the age where falling on ice became a hazard. My heart jumps around in my chest as I enter and see my grandpa’s old pickup truck—the undercarriage eaten with rust from those years it sat outside—next to my grandma’s sedan. Both of these vehicles, which I once rode in without thinking, are relics from another age.
I walk up the cement steps and open the door, calling my grandfather’s name. No response. I step onto the linoleum in the kitchen and feel weird wearing my shoes when Grandma spent years harping at me and Aaron (and sometimes even her husband) to take them off. I almost expect to see one of her crocheted washrags spread out to dry on the rim of the soapstone sink, and my grandmother’s blue bird figurines perched on the window ledge, catching the midmorning light and covering the eggshell wall in a maritime tinge. Of course, all of this is gone. Not from looters having desecrated the home, like you’d think, but because—the week after her funeral—my grandpa removed everything but her pictures, while the rest of the family was holed up at the Best Western, unsure if our reclusive patriarch needed us to go or stay.
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He soon made it obvious, in his passive-aggressive manner, that he preferred us to go. He gave us boxes of mementos to take back with us: yarn picture frames in Christmas colors, encasing younger versions of ourselves; a somewhat cheesy depiction of a farm scene that my grandmother had tried to paint from a calendar print; sensible women’s shoes, scarves, and dresses with padded shoulders and round brass buttons that could’ve doubled as kitchen knobs. What he thought his special ops grandsons could’ve done with such items, I don’t know.
My father, though far from sentimental, was furious that my grandpa didn’t keep these things. But Grandpa Richard didn’t get rid of everything because he felt it was time to move on. The fact was, though he and his wife picked on each other for all the ways they were different, he could barely live without her, and so he couldn’t stand to live with the physical, daily reminders that everything she’d touched was still with him but she, herself, was gone.
I continue across the kitchen. A coating of dust, as thick as scattered flour, covers every surface. I refuse to let myself understand what this lack of disturbance means and call my grandfather’s name again, almost in defiance. A gingham place mat and a ghostly white ring mark the spot where my grandfather used to sit at the kitchen table. A pile of Bonners Ferry Herald papers is to the right, and I remember how he was holding one of those as he came out onto the front porch, hitching up the strap of his bib overalls, and saw me circling above the farm in his stolen crop duster. He waved the paper at me; I remember that. Like he was both chiding me for taking the plane without permission and saying good-bye.
After a few more steps toward the hallway, I am suddenly hit with my worst fear. My eyes fill as I bring my sleeve up to my nose to lessen the stench. My stomach tightens. I force myself to leave the situation by going back to those carefree days, fifteen years ago, when my grandparents would take us out of our parents’ hair.
Back then, Richard and Mary Edna Hughes were in their late sixties—feeling good and getting around fine. The house, in the summers, smelled of baking zucchini bread and my grandfather’s boot polish, overlaid with that rich earth that always clung to the heels.
I slowly make my way along the hall, punctuated with pictures, whose careful documentation stopped after my grandma died, and my grandpa didn’t have the heart to update or touch. I pass the bathroom. I can tell from the increasing odor that the body is in the bedroom, one door over. I am torn between just turning away—holding on to memories of him alive, working in the fields—and going farther. I decide I have to know what happened. I take off my button-up shirt and tie it around my nose and mouth like a bandanna before entering the room.
Grandpa’s body is in bed, as I guessed it would be, tucked under blankets. One of them I recognize as the ancient ragbag quilt Grandma didn’t care if we destroyed, so she let me and Aaron haul it out to our tent that we’d set up in the front yard because we—much to our grandfather’s chagrin—wanted to play Army. I walk closer and touch the quilt’s frayed edge, wondering if Grandpa recognized it as well when he climbed beneath. I hope he did. I hope it called to mind happier times, when life wasn’t reduced to how many pieces of wood you can cut for warmth or how many pounds of potatoes you can dig before your strength gives out. Did he know it was the end when he died? Or did he simply . . . fall asleep in one world and wake up in the next? Most likely he knew, but I will hold on to the hope that he did not.
His white hair and the tip of his hand are the only portions visible. My chest shudders with sobs at the sight. I instinctively reach out, wanting to pull the blanket back, as if doing so could bring back the grandpa I knew, who was like another father to me. Or more like a father than the one I had. But I stop myself, just in time. I surmise from his state and from the state of the house that he must have died early in winter. The brutal Idaho cold kept him mostly frozen until spring’s warmth came, allowing his body to start the process of returning to the earth.
The cause of death torments my mind as I stand here, bitter tears stinging my eyes. Did he die shortly after the EMP, or did he languish through some of the winter? I so wish I could believe he died of natural causes, that he didn’t freeze or starve, though common sense tells me otherwise. I should have come for him sooner, even if I would have died in the process of trying to reach him. I should have figured out a way. Beside him, lying on top of the covers, are two framed pictures. The left is of my grandparents on their wedding day, before he was shipped out. The right is a more recent photo, probably taken at Good Shepherd for the church directory. I love that it’s recent, because I can see my grandma’s rinsed white hair, permanently waved, and her large square glasses with the tint that she said helped protect her blue eyes from the sun. I see my grandpa. His hand cups my grandma’s padded shoulder, like they were newlyweds, rather than having lived through so much trial and joy. Leaning across the body, I pick up the left frame and turn it over.
I push up the tiny plastic arms to pull out the back. I remove the cardboard, and the other pictures fall into my hand: a chronology of the life he spent with my grandmother. There they are with me and Aaron, the summer after high school graduation, when we decided to come up and help with the harvest. There they are on their golden anniversary, dressed to the nines while holding flutes of champagne, even though my grandpa hated the taste. My eyes burn when I see the picture of my family—my mom and dad and brother—and I remember so clearly the night it was taken. How I wouldn’t even smile because I’d rather be playing paintball with my friends.
There are a few other pictures, some stuck together by heat and time, and then I come upon the one I was looking for. In it, my grandfather is standing, his 1963 USMC sateen shirt billowing in the wind, his hair—later inherited by Aaron—so thick and oiled that the darkness of its hue hasn’t faded in the picture, though the picture itself has. My grandmother, his wartime bride, appears soft and inviting, and I recall how she was always eager to bandage my wounds even if she’d also swat me out of her kitchen.
Like so many others during that time, they’d come together because that unity made them feel they wouldn’t break apart. Surely my grandfather must’ve worried he wouldn’t make it back to her—who, unbeknownst to him, was already carrying his child, my father. And though, when he did come back, he wasn’t the same man who left, judging by these pictures gathered in my hands—and judging by the way I would sometimes catch them looking at each other or holding hands on the center console while they drove to church—I know that their love ran deep.
Fifty-some years later, my grandfather, when he died, was holding neither his medals of valor—though he had many—nor the roster of the men he’d saved. No, he was reaching for the picture of his bride, and of the family they’d created when the entire world felt a hopeless case.
I kneel then, in that bedroom they shared, decaying in every way imaginable, and see what my grandpa must’ve seen, all those years back. Everything in this life fades to dust except for the love we give while we live it. I came back here to rescue my grandfather—or at the very least, to say good-bye—but instead, even though he is gone, I feel that he is somehow rescuing me. His death is teaching me I cannot keep withholding my heart from someone simply because I want to keep her from experiencing pain. Yes, if I pursue Leora, she will no doubt experience more pain than if she were alone, or with Jabil. But the joy of companionship—of daily love—far exceeds the pain. I slowly go back through the stack of pictures once again.
My grandfather lived a worthy life—a life that started out as conflicted between duty and desire as my own remains. But in the end, obviously in the end, he realized that his family was his anchor to this earth. Yes, some of that understanding took place because he experienced such heartache—witnessing the devastation and the bloodshed of war. There is also no doubt he would have fallen into ruin if it weren’t for my grandmother and my father, waiting for him back home, eager to help him reclaim his place in life. But they were there, for him.
Des
pite the ways he failed my father—the way he withdrew himself sometimes, when the memories overpowered the present—and therefore my own father failed me, I do not have to fail my own son or my daughter or my wife. I know that, at the end of this temporal journey, all we have are these snapshots of moments. One day, we will yearn to relive each as we lie in our beds—or in the grass or in a patch of woods somewhere, just trying to survive—and if I know that, if I understand that, I will yearn to make each moment count.
Once I bury my grandfather in the backyard—beneath the curly willow, where he used to place peelings of apple and orange to draw in the orange-chested Baltimore orioles and simply sit there in the grass, his hands on his knees, to savor the beauty of watching them eat—I am going to make my moments count by flying this Cessna back to Kalispell. There, I will tell Josh I have to leave the militia and our mission to locate the ARC. And then I’m going to hike up to that community and take Leora Ebersole in my arms, telling her that I have loved her from the beginning of the end. And this time, I am not going to crash-land into her life just to leave it.
A group of people emerges from the traffic control center when I fly toward the airport. I panic, at first, fearing the airport’s been overrun in the past two days. And then I look closer—my eyes squinted in confusion and disbelief—and see that the people are not adults, but children. Children are sprinting across the grass in between the center and the runway. They stop when they reach the tarmac and wave, both arms extended as if embracing the hot afternoon sky. I touch down and taxi, bringing the Cessna to a halt. I shut off the engine and gaze out the window.
The children have stopped waving. Instead, they stand in a disorganized line, staring at the body of the plane as if they anticipate another life form, an alien, to step out. Jumping down, I stride across the tarmac toward them. They don’t scatter like I expect, but wait. They are dirty, these children, but not with the kind of dirt Aaron and I were always covered with when we were kids. This is the kind of layered grime that’s hard to wash off, that’s been accumulating daily for months. Their hair is also uncombed and uncut, their clothing nothing but a hodgepodge of rags barely covering their skin, making me relieved the temp’s warmed up. What did they do before?
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