The Wonder of All Things

by Jason Mott

  Macon was almost finished with her hair. He had combed it and smoothed it and fixed it into a very neat ponytail. He took pride in how well he had learned to manage his daughter’s hair. “I don’t know, Ava,” he said. “And that’s the truth. The fact is, nobody really knows what the hell happened. Nobody knows how Wash got better. Nobody knows how you made him better.” He sat on the foot of the bed, as if a great weight were being loaded upon his shoulders, word by word. “Wash seems okay, but they’re doing all kinds of tests to be sure—not quite as many as you’ve been through or as many as they’ve still got up their sleeve for you, but they’re definitely putting him through his paces. They kept him here for observation for a couple of days after everything happened, but then Brenda made a fuss and let her take him home. Brenda says he’s feeling fine. But I think there’s still something weird going on with him.” He laughed stiffly. “As if all of this doesn’t qualify as weird enough.” She rested her head against his shoulder.

  “As for you, Miracle Child, you’re just a whirlwind of questions,” Macon continued. “Hell, the only reason they’re letting you go home is because I’ve had enough of you being trapped in here. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m learning how to maneuver through all of this attention. You’d be surprised how much clout you get when you can threaten to hold a press conference if people don’t let you take your daughter home.”

  “Do they want me to stay?” Ava asked.

  “Some do,” Macon replied, “but not because they’re afraid for your life, just because they want to poke and prod you. And I’ve got nothing against tests, but they just want to do things they’ve already done. They all agree that you’re out of danger and, for me, that’s enough.” He took her face in his hand and kissed her forehead. “I won’t let them have you permanently,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Ava asked.

  “They’re saying there’s something going on with your blood cells. There’s some type of anemia, which is the reason you’re so cold all the time. Or maybe it’s the iron deficiency. At least, that’s what they think. Nobody is really willing to say with certainty what’s going on. If you don’t like what one doctor is telling you, just wait five minutes.” He cleared his throat. “But the one thing they can all seem to agree on is that you’re on the mend, and that’s enough for me to get you the hell out of this place. I’ve spent too much time in hospitals over the years. Both of my parents died in this very hospital. But I’ll get you out of here.”

  There was a knock at the door and, before Macon or Ava could answer, the door was flung open and a pair of men entered in a rush. They were both dressed in scrubs like doctors, but something was wrong. They were too young to be doctors and, even more than that, they were wild-eyed. Macon and Ava leaped up from the bed.

  “You’re her!” one of the men said. He had brown hair and a wide, bumpy nose. “We just need help,” the man said quickly. “Our dad, he’s sick. He had a stroke a few weeks ago and he’s not getting any better.”

  The second man was shorter, with long blond hair and a sweaty upper lip. He only looked at Ava as the first man spoke. There was both fear and need in his eyes.

  “He can’t move his right side,” the first man added. He huffed as he spoke, his words running together. It was obvious that they had used the doctors’ outfits to get past security. Macon pulled Ava behind him. He placed his hand on his hip—out of habit as sheriff. He had expected to find his pistol there, but he’d left it locked in the glove compartment of the squad car when he arrived in the hospital. He took another step back, keeping Ava behind him and opening the distance between her and the men.

  Ava peered over his shoulder, frightened. Even with everything Wash and her father had told her about how things had changed since the incident, she hadn’t truly believed them. Perhaps she had not wanted to understand. There is always comfort in pretending that change has not happened in life, even when we know full well that nothing will ever again be the way it was.

  From outside came the sound of footfalls running though the hallway toward the room. The second man looked back over his shoulder. “Shit,” the man said. He tugged his brother’s arm, as if to prompt the man to run. Then he stopped, realizing that they would not get far and, more importantly, that they had come to plead their case. So he stepped past his brother and toward Macon and Ava. “We just want our dad to get better,” the man said. His voice was full of sadness and insistence. He pointed at Ava. “She can do for our dad what she did for that boy,” he said. “That’s all we wa—”

  His words were cut off as a pair of policemen came racing into the room. They tackled the two men to the floor. The man with the bumpy nose hit hard against the linoleum. Blood trickled from his mouth. But never, not even when another police officer stuck a knee in his back as he was handcuffed, never did he take his eyes off Ava. Never did he stop asking her to help his father.

  * * *

  Coming out of the hospital was as terrifying as Ava had expected it to be. It was a blur of yelling and lights and cameras and people calling her name. The policemen formed a wall between her and the crowd, leaving enough room for her and Macon to make it to their car. Parked in front and behind the car were state policemen, their lights flashing.

  The sea of faces called her name again and again, and she could not help but look at them. Each time she turned to see who was calling her name, a wall of light flashed before her eyes. She could not count how many reporters there were, how many cameras, how many people holding up signs that read Ava’s Real and It’s a Miracle. Her eyes landed on a woman waving a banner that read Help My Child, Please. She had frizzled blond hair and heavy lines around her eyes and she looked worn down by the world around her. She did not chant or cheer like the others. She only looked at Ava pleadingly.

  Then they were inside the car and the wall of policemen surrounded them.

  “Not so bad,” Macon said. He’d driven his squad car. It was one of two the small town of Stone Temple owned. When he switched on the lights atop the car, the police cars in front and behind did the same. And then the car in front started off and Macon followed as they slowly made their way out of the hospital parking lot, past the crowds, through the streets of Asheville toward the highway.

  “I don’t know what to do with all this,” Ava said as the crowds disappeared behind them.

  “Do the best you can,” Macon said. “Just don’t get lost in it.”

  Just as Wash had promised, home was not home anymore. The town of Stone Temple had always been a town that the world did not care to bother itself knowing. It was named after the Masonic temple that once stood in its center. But it was well over eighty years ago that the temple burned to the ground, along with a good portion of the town itself. The population, on average, was counted somewhere around fifteen hundred, and for the most part, it was the kind of place that people didn’t even pass through on their way to better locations—not since the building of the bypass almost twenty years ago. But there were still businesses that made life possible. And there were still people being born, living and dying here.

  Stone Temple was an odd beauty. The town lived in a cradle of old trees and older mountains. The main road in and out of town rested on the shoulders of the mountain. In places, it promised to cast a driver off, to send them tumbling down the slopes that were covered in oak and pine and birch or, in some sections, covered in nothing but the unforgiving and constant rock.

  But Stone Temple was peaceful, quiet. It was a place that slept.

  All that was changed now.

  It took hours to drive the length of the winding mountain road. Even before they’d entered the city, Ava could see how different it all was. In the fields along the outskirts, Ava could make out tents and vans, RVs and cars, all spaced in a field that had been harvested and sat bare and waiting for the next planting season.

  “What do they all want?” Ava asked her father.

  Macon grimaced, trying to keep his eyes
on the road ahead. The state police had done a decent job of clearing the path into Stone Temple, but they could not remove everyone from the small road. People stood on foot—sometimes on the narrow edge of the road, other times in the oncoming lane, even though doing so meant they would have little place to go if someone came along the road out of Stone Temple.

  “Turns out,” Macon finally said when he felt that he could split his attention enough to reply to his daughter, “all of that stuff people used to talk about, all that stuff about wanting to keep the world out, about wanting to keep Stone Temple a secret. Well, it went right out the door when folks started opening up their checkbooks.” He glanced at one of the fields brimming with people as they passed. “Gotta make a living, though, I suppose.”

  The closer they got to town, the busier things became. The road leading into Stone Temple was two lanes, climbing and falling through the mountains, full of blind curves and steep drop-offs. It was generally a quiet road, but now it was inundated with vehicles, the traffic thicker than Ava had ever seen it. The police escort slowed to a crawl as they came up behind the wall of cars. Those passing in the opposite direction stared at Ava like rubberneckers watching a horrific accident.

  When they finally arrived to Stone Temple proper, there were people gathered in the narrow streets. They had been waiting for Ava to arrive and were filled with a fervor that was typically reserved for presidents and celebrities—though neither a president nor a celebrity had ever come to Stone Temple.

  Ava didn’t recognize any of the people standing along the streets, cheering and yelling and holding up their signs. And she couldn’t exactly say why she felt the need to look for familiar faces among the mass of people. Perhaps she simply hoped that if she saw someone she knew, it would help to lower the scope of everything that was happening, everything she did not understand.

  “They won’t be at the house, will they?” Ava asked her father. He was concentrating on the road. Thus far the people around them were not encroaching on the car, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was only a matter of time before someone jumped out into the road—maybe even onto the car itself—the way they did on television.

  “No, no,” he said. He answered quickly and confidently, as though he had been expecting the question. “They’ve got everything cleared off once we get through the town,” he continued. “I tried to tell these guys that it would have been better to come up from the other side. You know, swing up along Blacksmith Road, through the forest. But it rained pretty hard the other day, so they didn’t want to risk it.” He motioned to a man standing along the street with a sign held above his head that read Help Me, Too.

  Ava and Macon stared at the man as they passed.

  “Just take it as it is, Ava,” Macon said. “It’ll get better. Things will be strange for a little while, but they’ll calm down. You, this whole thing, it’s just the flavor of the month, you know? People get excited, but eventually the excitement cools and people go back to living the lives they know. These things don’t last.”

  “Everything lasts forever,” Ava said quietly as though she were making the statement to herself rather than to her father. “Older people always think that things like this can’t last. But that’s not the way it is anymore. Things can last forever and ever now because of the internet. Everything is saved somewhere. Everything is permanent. Nothing dies anymore.”

  “That’s...insightful,” Macon said. He’d wanted to use another adjective, but he had become distracted. They were almost out of town now, almost to the point where the small buildings and few streets that comprised the town would fall away and give rise to the fields and trees surrounding the town. Not long after that, they would take the narrow, winding road up the mountain to their home.

  “Wash’ll be at the house when we get home,” Macon said with more than a little playful accusation in his tone.

  “Who said I was thinking about Wash?”

  “You two have been Bonnie and Clyde since the day you met,” Macon said. “I have no doubt that you’ve been wondering why he wasn’t there at the hospital when I came to pick you up. I know I’d be upset if I were a young girl and my boyfriend wasn’t there to greet me when I came out of the hospital.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Ava said with a flash of embarrassment.

  “Do you prefer paramour, then? Is that the language all of the cool kids are using these days? Keeping it a little retro, you know?” He stretched across the front seat and elbowed her playfully. “I mean, you know, I’m old and everything so I can’t really be expected to keep up with all this stuff. You little whippersnappers are so dabgum...” He paused, and then he laughed. “Hell,” he said finally. “I can’t really think of the word I’m looking for to finish that joke.”

  “Do you know why?” Ava asked, smiling a little.

  “Why?” Macon replied.

  “Because you’re old,” she jabbed, and they both smiled.

  When they were properly outside the city, the crowds that had been in the streets were gone and there was only the countryside and the mountains and the trees and the sky above transitioning from the bright blue of afternoon into the softer hues of evening, promising a languid sunset.

  * * *

  “Ava!” Wash called as she stepped out of the car. He, his grandmother, Brenda, and Carmen were standing in the doorway of the house, the light from inside washing over their shoulders. He waved at her as if he had not seen her in months. He seemed to be holding back the urge to run over and hug her.

  “Hey, Wash,” she said softly, resisting her own urge to rush to him. Being home, seeing Wash, it was like opening the windows of a house in the wake of a spring rain.

  But it was Carmen, Ava’s stepmother, who came out of the doorway and walked over and hugged her first. She was pregnant, very pregnant, and so her walk was a slow, awkward waddle. Carmen was of average height, with sharp, bright features. She smiled often, in spite of the tension between her and Ava that sometimes filled the house and made it seem as though the walls were not strong enough to hold the entirety of their family. She had been born to Cuban parents living in Florida and had grown up bouncing from state to state as her father sought work. Eventually her father settled in the Midwest and opened a garage and, when Carmen was out of high school, she went to college in North Carolina and, after college, decided to stay. She was working as a teacher in Asheville when she met Macon—a dark-skinned widower sheriff with an unrelenting optimism and a smile that made promises she could not ignore.

  The two of them became a part of each other’s life quickly, despite Ava’s resentment over the fact that Carmen was not her mother. Now she and Macon were married and all of them were trying to make the best of things.

  “It’s so good to have you home,” Carmen said, holding Ava tightly. The swell of her belly was pressed between them. No sooner than Carmen’s arms were around her, Ava broke the hug. “We’ve got such a great night planned,” Carmen said. She had grown accustomed to Ava’s resentment. “Brenda brought pie, and you know she never cooks anything unless you hold a gun to her head.”

  “I’m not cooking again unless somebody’s dead,” Brenda said, walking over. She was tall and willowy and with a crown of red hair. She was a strong woman who, in spite of her thin frame, exuded a regal and authoritative air. Macon sometimes called her the “Vengeful Peacock,” though he was smart enough never to call her that while she was within earshot. “How are you feeling, child?” Brenda said, stepping in to hug Ava just as Carmen pulled away. She smelled of cinnamon.

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “Because it’s what people do when they don’t know what else to say,” Brenda said matter-of-factly.

  “She’s doing fine,” Macon said, walking up beside them. “And she’s going to be even better with each and every day,” he added.

  She hugged Ava again and said, “Well, whatever the hell it is, we’ll sort it out. Don’t worry any more than you have t
o.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ava said, peeking around the woman.

  “I suppose you want to say hello to Wash,” she said as she released Ava and stepped aside.

  Ava and Wash met each other just beneath the eaves of the porch. He was still pale, Ava thought, but he seemed to be doing well enough.

  “Hey,” the boy said softly.

  “You’re not going to show me your stomach again, are you? Because you really don’t have anything worth showing,” Ava said. “You know that giant marshmallow guy at the end of the Ghostbusters movie? That’s totally what you reminded me of.”

  “Shut up,” Wash said, grinning.

  “I’ve had nightmares about it,” Ava continued.

  “Shut up!” he said, and finally he stepped forward and hugged her. He smelled like pines and grass and the river.

  “Okay, okay,” Macon said, walking over. “Break it up. We’ve got a dinner to eat. And I’m starving.”

  Dinner was a blur of sweet and fried foods and conversations about the hospital, about what was going on in the town, about what the internet was saying about the air show, how far the videos had spread.

  The subject no one discussed, the subject they all talked around, was what exactly had happened that day. What exactly did Ava do, and how? And why couldn’t she remember it? Would it truly fix itself? And what of Wash? Was he really healed? Like some rare breed of sword swallowers, they swallowed their curiosity that night.

  After dinner, Wash and Ava sat alone on the front porch, looking up at the stars and listening to Macon, Carmen and Brenda in the kitchen telling stories about how Stone Temple used to be—conversations sparked by the news reports of how the town had been taken over by people in the recent days.

  “Does it hurt?” Wash asked.

  “Does what hurt?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Anything, I guess. You don’t really look like yourself,” Wash said.

  “For a person who reads as much as you do, you’d think you’d be a little better at describing things, Wash.”