by Rodney Jones
“Tess, you don’t have a pa?”
She gave me a puzzled look.
“Right,” I said, “that’s neither here nor there.” Her mouth dropped open, but before she had a chance to say anything, I added, “It’s more there, come to think of it.”
She shook her head, then scratched the side of her neck. “My dad. Hmm… People don’t say that anymore—pa. My parents divorced when I was eleven. He lives in Rutland with his girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I just looked at her—a stunned, stupid look, I imagined. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
About what? Whenever I see an exceptionally pretty gal, like in town or at a dancing or somewhere, I naturally assumed her life must be as effortlessly flawless as her beauty. Tess seemed to have no idea how pretty she was; leastwise, she didn’t act as though she was pretty. The story about her folks, though, just didn’t strike me as a pretty gal sort of thing. I’d never known anyone whose folks divorced. Seemed like such a shame, but you wouldn’t know it, hearing it from her. And telling me of her pa’s sinful secret, as if I were her brother, like something a three-year-old might blab about, not knowing any better.
So what was it I was sorry about? “Your folks, divorcing and all. That must’ve been awful.”
She looked at me, shifting her jaw. She turned and went to brush back a lock of hair that’d fallen across her face and, instead, began playing with it. “I guess it was.” Her eyes were on her hand twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “Hmm… I just went around believing I was the only one who felt anything. Selfish, I suppose. I mean, there was my mom. She must’ve… well… she couldn’t see anything beyond her own pain, I guess. Maybe we were both feeling alone.” She shrugged. “That was a long time ago; I don’t think about it anymore. Just the way things are.” Her eyes shifted to the clock on the panel in front of us. “So what are we going to do?”
“About me?”
She tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Yeah.”
I took a deep breath, then slowly let it go. Her chin rested on her knuckles, her pinky at her lips.
“Hey, my friend Liz has a brother with an apartment in Rutland. He lives alone, I think.” She reached into a bag at her side and removed the little folding calendar she’d shown me earlier. “Let’s try that.” She opened it, poked at it a few times, and then held it up to her cheek. There was a long pause, then, “Liz?”
“What?” I said.
She looked at me. “John, I’m… hold on a second, Liz.”
“Liz?” I asked.
“I’m talking to my friend, Liz.” She held the device toward me. “A phone.” She put it up to her cheek again. “Liz, can I call you right back?” Her eyes stayed on me as she spoke. “Give me five minutes, okay? Thanks. Bye.” She clamped the thing shut. “Okay, John, Liz has a phone like this one, and she’ll call me back in a few minutes. I’ll answer the phone—well, pick it up and talk into it—talk to her, not you.”
The look on Tess’s face had me pretty well convinced she was serious. “Call you?”
“Call. Make my phone ring so I know to answer. You’ll see.”
“She… you call back, and she can hear you?”
“Yes. No. I talk. It’s like she’s right here, talking, but—”
“But where is she?”
“It doesn’t matter where, as long as she has a phone.”
“And that’s what that was earlier, on your front step? That’s what you were just doing?”
Her eyes shifted as though she was trying to remember, then she turned to me and nodded. “My friend Jen. She lives about a mile south of Wallingford. Yes, that’s what that was. I called her. I dialed her number. That’s who you heard talking.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad about it.”
She smiled. “You’re too sweet.”
“I’m not trying to be sweet. I mean, I’m just saying…” My forehead grew warm.
“Well, you are.”
I wagged my head side to side. “So, you just live with your ma?”
“My mom, yes. So that’s enough about me. What about you, your parents?”
“Mine? My pa was killed down in Shepherdstown, Virginia, fighting in the war. I can’t remember ever seeing him. I reckon he came home one time when I was maybe three or four, to make Michael, but he never got to see my baby brother, far as I know. When he died, it was like someone had thrown a big rock into the pond and scattered us like scared ducks, every which way.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s quite all right.”
“You have brothers and sisters?”
“My little brother, Michael, caught ill when he was but five and died. I still think about him a lot, though. That little snip-snap sure was a handful of trouble. My older brother, J.W., lived there in Greendale with me for a time after our pa was killed, but then he met this gal in Weston, married her, and they moved down to Chester to take care of our ma. I have a sister up in Barre—Sarah. She has a—”
A bell-like sound came from Tess’s phone.
“Oh, sorry. That’s Liz. See, that’s her number.” Tess held the phone up toward me and tapped the glowing window. “That’s her calling me.”
I nodded.
She unfolded the phone and put it against her cheek. Her eyes were on mine for a brief moment before shifting away. “Hello.”
I very nearly responded, but then caught myself.
“I’m sorry. I got distracted.” She paused. “In my car, near Weston. Yeah, I was. I missed the bus. Long story. But hey, does Jim still live in that apartment on Washington Street?”
Was I to believe she was speaking to someone miles away, and the someone could actually hear her? I watched her, looking for a flaw in the show, a playful shift in her eye, a crack in her ruse.
“I know this is really weird, but I have a friend who needs a place to stay for a night or two. No, a guy. It’s part of that long story. He’s really nice. No, you don’t know him. Well, we just met. I don’t know. Does it matter? Just a second.” Tess lowered the phone to her chest and whispered, “How old are you, John?”
“Seventeen,” I whispered back.
“Really? I thought you were older.”
“I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.”
She raised the thing to her cheek again. “Eighteen.”
It dawned on me just then that I had no cause to doubt her. I went from that realization to amazement.
“Uh, I can’t tell you right now, Liz. I’ll explain later. Can you think of anyone nearby?” Tess glanced my way, rolled her eyes, and made a yakking gesture with her free hand. “No, forget that. What? No, Liz, he’s not in any kind of trouble. Will you ask him? Thank you. Thanks, okay, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” The phone snapped shut with a clap.
“You were talking to someone—”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“On the other side of the mountain?”
“I could talk to someone on Bora Bora. Anywhere.”
“Anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“How? I mean, how is that possible?”
“John, I think we should get going. It’s almost eight, and I told my mom I’d be home by nine. I’m gambling on Liz’s brother saying yes. I can’t see why he wouldn’t. But then, I need to figure out something to tell my mom.”
“Am I asking too many questions?”
“No, no.” Tess inserted a small, metal blade into a slot behind the steering wheel and twisted it; a vibration came up through the floor. A child could’ve done what she’d just done.
“Satellites.” She grabbed a lever sticking up by my left knee and pulled it down part way, then looked up into the little mirror fixed to the window stretching across the width of the car before us. “These machines orbiting the earth, up in space.” The car began moving backward and then turned sharp to the right and stopped. She grabbed the lever again and pulled it down a bit more. I noticed t
he letters and numbers at its base. A glowing blue D. The car started forward.
“D?”
“Huh?”
“What’s D mean?”
She turned my way and made a face. “I thought we were talking about cell phones. D?” She glanced down to where I was looking.
“D for danger?” I held back a smile.
“What?”
“I take it that’s wrong,” I said. “Must be D for down ’cause we’re going down the road, right?”
She gave my leg a slap. “D for damn because you’re being so damned stupid.” She giggled.
I shook my head. “Good Lord, Tess.”
“Did I mispronounce?”
“I’m serious. You cuss more than a sheep farmer.”
She giggled again. “You want to hear some cussing?”
“I just wanted to know what the D is for.”
“You’re probably not going to believe this. Drive. D for drive.”
“And why wouldn’t I believe that?”
She stopped at the bottom of the mountain, waited for two cars to go by, then turned onto the paved road heading north. I sank back into my seat and glanced out the window to my right. A big yellow house with a stone foundation scrolled by. It looked familiar—just vaguely. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking. I turned and glanced at Tess, then at the instrument panel in front of her. The little red bar was above the fifty mark and climbing.
I heard the chiming of Tess’s cell phone. She lifted it from her bag, opened it, and raised it to her cheek, all without taking her eyes from the road.
“Hello? Oh, Mom, I was about to call you.”
I marveled at that thing.
“Yes, I was. No, I’m still here. Just Nicole and me.”
Machines orbiting the earth. I had not noticed any. I looked up ahead of us, and out to my right, then twisted around and looked back behind us, but didn’t see any. Did she mean up in space, like on the moon? Surely not.
“We’re thinking of getting a sub at Marco’s. Yes, I do. Yes, Mom, I know. Mom, would it be okay if I went to the show? Nicole. I know, I know. I’d come straight home, Mom. Dark Knight.”
Machines? Did she perhaps mean cars? But how could anyone out there hear her talking into that little device? I’d once watched the telegraph operator at the station in Ludlow send a message to Rutland. I thought that was something, and I believed I pretty much understood the mechanics behind it, but whatever knowledge I’d acquired about such things wasn’t doing me a scrap of good there in 2009.
“No, I haven’t. I think, eleven. I will. Yeah, Mom. Thank you, Mom. I love you, too. Bye.” She clapped the phone shut and dropped it into her bag. “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”
“Your ma?”
“Yeah. She thinks I’m in Rutland with my friend Nicole. I told her we were going to the show. That gives us plenty of time.”
“You lied to her?”
She flinched as if I had hit her, then cocked her head to the side and scrunched up her brow. “Well, I couldn’t tell her I was with you, could I?”
“You told her you’re going to a show?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, then her lips curled at the corners. She nodded. “You know what’s funny? There’s probably not another person on this planet that I have less in common with, and here I am, driving you around and completely enjoying it. I’m with a guy who’s never heard of the White Stripes, never been to the movies or seen TV or video games and—my God—a whole shitload of nevers.” She laughed. “This is so… way beyond weird.” Our eyes met for a brief moment. “I hope you don’t think I’m laughing at you. I’m not.” She turned back to the road. “I guess it’s not really funny for you. Sorry.”
“I don’t care what you laugh at. I like to hear you laugh.”
We went along quietly for a bit, me watching the strange world rushing by out the windows. It seemed that every moment presented something curious, but I was beginning to grow tired of my own questions.
The chimes ring again, Tess’s friend calling back.
“Hey, Liz.” Tess kept the device pressed to her ear. She nodded, then said, “Oh, good.” Two minutes of half-a-conversation later, she put the thing away, smiling. “Well, this is working out quite well.”
I had a bed for the night.
We went on a ways, me so deep in thought, I didn’t notice the silence, but Tess apparently did.
“You okay?” she asked.
Was I? I didn’t think I was. “Makes me nervous, all this. I mean, how am I going to get home? I’m not comfortable with not knowing.”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
A two-wheeled machine not much larger than the person riding it streaked by. “Two thousand nine, huh?” I twisted my head around and watched as the tiny car disappeared from sight.
“How did it happen?” Tess said.
“What?”
“How’d you get here?”
“I don’t know. Yesterday, the whole day was out of sorts. But I had no idea what it was. I do now, though.”
“Like, how?”
“Well, I was convinced I was imagining things, but I guess I wasn’t. I was taking a load of grist into Rutland and was—”
“Grist?”
“Meal. You know, flour and such.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I was on my way to Rutland and stopped because of a noise in the woods. I thought it was thunder, but I ain’t so sure now. I left the wagon at the side of the road and… then the trees just suddenly changed. The whole rest of the day went from crazy to crazier.”
“You think the thunder had something to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You had horses?”
“I never found anything of them.”
“They disappeared when you heard the thunder?”
“I was on the wagon when I heard the thunder.” I leaned forward in my seat and looked toward the sky. “It was as clear as it is right now.” The sky was still bright with light, but the sun was now close to the mountaintops at our left.
We crossed a small bridge and then came to a stop. Off to our left was a large, white building with a big, glowing sign out front. The words Mobil, Regular, Plus, Premium, and a column of numbers glowed along one side. In the window was a red-hot Lotto, and to one side of that, glowing a deep blue, was Bud Light. Tess turned left. I pointed.
“What is that?”
“A gas station, where you buy gas for your car.”
“What makes the words glow?”
“Well, they’re electric. I don’t know. I don’t know everything.”
“All these cables, they’re not telegraph lines, are they?”
“No, mostly electric for the lights and appliances and TVs and computers and glowing words.”
“The lamps are electric?”
“Yes, they’re all electric.”
“Electric, electric… electric lamps… electric words…”
“Everything.”
“All these incredible inventions, and you’re not amazed?”
“I sometimes read about things, new things, and think, ‘Now, that would be amazing,’ but then the new stuff just kind of blends in unnoticed. After a while, you wonder how you ever managed to live without it. You’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, John. There’s just so much. My grandmother talks sometimes about the way things were when she was a kid in the fifties, and it sounds so primitive and hard. Was it that way for you? I mean, the world your grandparents grew up in. Was it all that different from yours?”
“Some. I reckon the biggest difference was the trains.”
“We still have trains. I’ve never been on one. Always flew.”
“What?”
“Oh, shit, right. Yes, we fly everywhere now. If you’re going anywhere far, you take a plane.”
We were moving at nearly seventy miles an hour, coming into Rutland. I noticed a sudden increase of cars on the road, which soon turned into even more. They were everyw
here, going every which way—and hundreds of them parked, going nowhere. And building after building, everything lit up like daytime. Everywhere were lights: red, blue, green, yellow, white, glowing, blinking, flashing, dancing. Tess explained that the buildings were mostly stores, stores for everything. She pointed out a store that sold books, only books; one that sold ice cream; another, cell phones; and then toys; and a store that sold clothes, just for women. There was even one that sold pizza, a food she seemed to enjoy describing.
My stomach growled at the mention of food. I asked Tess if she was hungry and offered to purchase her some dinner at one of the establishments she’d pointed out. She was, but then insisted that my money was worth a lot more than I’d get for it. I felt funny about Tess spending money on me, but figured I’d find some way to make it up to her.
“What do you feel like having?” she asked.
“I ain’t fussy. I’ll eat whatever they have.”
Tess giggled. “Okay. Do you like hamburgers?”
“If it’s anything like what you made earlier, then I guess I do.”
“Why, John, you flatter me. How utterly charming that you noticed my refined culinary skills. I do hope you’re not disappointed by the mindless and, I might add, the loveless manner in which the meal you are about to receive is prepared.”
I barely understood her, but I had a sense that she had my best interest at heart. Like the other parts of Rutland I’d seen thus far, the eating establishment she chose was brightly lit. I’d never seen so much glass. Even the doors were made from big, solid sheets of glass. We walked into the strangest-looking dining room. All the tables and chairs were fixed to the tiled floor in perfect, neat rows, and signs were hanging everywhere with huge pictures of food. I glanced at a picture of what looked like a sausage patty with a pile of lettuce and other vegetables piled into a sliced bread roll. Of the dozen people scattered about, most looked fat, and I noticed none were using dishes or silverware. I stopped to study the big hanging picture.
Tess stepped up close to me, her shoulder to mine. “Doesn’t that look delicious? That juicy slab of critter meat, that beautifully ripe, succulent slice of tomato, like they just picked it from the garden out back. And look, it comes tucked into a fresh baked roll. Mmm, I bet you’d love to wrap your hungry lips around one of them. Let’s go see if they’ll make you one.”