Road Seven

by Keith Rosson

  “Oh!” Whitmer frowned, adjusted his glasses. “Uh, certainly. Brian, if you’d care to stop back in after your interview, uh, we can touch base about how Biomechanics went today—”

  And then Sandoval did stand up. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder and, smiling apologetically, said, “Actually, Don, I was hoping you could give us a minute.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Sandoval peered at the old man and said, “Would you mind stepping outside for a minute?”

  Whitmer’s gaze pinballed between the two of them. Brian, mortified, felt knifed by a profound sense of loyalty coupled with the distinct feeling that all of this would have played out in some similar way whether he’d been in the room or not. There was that sense of history between them, some kind of weird, subdued dick-swinging thing going on, academic or otherwise. Whitmer finally sucked his teeth and said, in a bright, clipped tone positively snapping with rage, “You know, I’d be happy to step out in the hall, Mark. Have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, maybe?”

  “Sure,” Sandoval said. “Yeah, why don’t you do that?”

  Whitmer touched his glasses with his blunted, calloused fingers as he rose from his chair, which wheezed like an asthmatic.

  Brian sat rooted to his own chair.

  And then Whitmer winked at Brian, exempted him from his awkwardness just like that, and briefly placed a warm, liver-spotted hand on his shoulder as he shuffled out. The door clicked shut behind him and the room howled and jumped with his vacancy, with the strangeness of what had just happened. The man had just been kicked out of his own office! His professor! Brian felt the urge to go after the old man, to apologize. It felt nearly as intimate, what he’d just witnessed, and personal as sex, or a fistfight.

  And then Sandoval walked around the desk and sat down in Don Whitmer’s chair.

  •

  The summer he’d turned sixteen, Brian left a party and went to catch the bus at an unfamiliar stop. It’d been a quiet, windless night. The heat had been like a blanket you were forced to wear outside. Grass felt almost synthetic in its dryness.

  There was a guy at the bus stop that night. A few years older, not that much bigger. He wore a baseball cap backward and a voluminous T-shirt. Acne had studded his cheeks. He was yelling at his girlfriend, who sat there on the little bus bench while the guy stood over her and berated her. Brian, dismayed, had rounded the corner and slowed as the guy called her every kind of name, some that Brian hadn’t even heard up to that point. She sat there in a black hoodie with her hand jittering a little as she took long drags of her cigarette. Her nails were ragged and red-rimmed with old blood—one of those details that just get snagged in your head and promise to stay. He thought about walking past them, waiting at the bus stop four or five blocks down, but he was drunk and already a little lost and he thought for a moment that he might be brave. Her mascara was messed up, her eyes glittering with tears, and the guy leaned over her and called her these terrible things while Brian stood there a few feet away, staring at the weeds rising through the slab of sidewalk at his feet, and his heart clanged like a kick drum in the cage of his ribs.

  Finally Brian offered a weak “Hey” and the guy stepped over to Brian fast, reaching behind his head to adjust the brim of his hat. (In the decades that followed, when Brian relived it, he knew that that was the moment he should have punched the kid, when his hands were raised behind his head like that.)

  “The fuck are you looking at?” the guy said, and mock-punched him, his fist stopping inches in front of Brian’s face.

  And Brian had flinched, hard, and he’d turned and walked away, his face hot with shame and fear. He’d walked home—three or four miles—so that he wouldn’t risk seeing them on the bus.

  It was just one of those things that stuck with him, those moments of cowardice that would ride his skull to his deathbed.

  Sometimes, usually at night, he got stuck in memories like that. Snared in them. Peeling back years of his life like a kid lifting rotten logs, looking for the dark, scurrying life hidden underneath it.

  •

  Sandoval leaned back—the poor chair groaned again—and laced his arms behind his head. His shirt cuffs pulled up and Brian saw, finally, the latticework of scars that began at his wrists. A scuffed boot peeked out from the behind the desktop as he crossed his legs. The fruity tang of spent alcohol hung close in the room.

  “So yeah, thanks for coming out, Brian.” Sandoval waved a hand at the door. “I was just hoping for some privacy, that’s what that was all about. This is a sizably important matter, and the walls have ears, you know?”

  “Sure,” Brian said. Not believing a word of that. “Totally.”

  “Don and I have a long history.”

  “It seems like it,” he said.

  “So, okay. Long story short: before you came in, Don told me that you’re one of the most promising anthro students he’s had in years. That you’re making a huge mistake, torpedoing your doctorate like this.”

  “He’s a great guy.”

  “He also thinks your dissertation is ‘fearsomely good,’ and that’s a direct quote.”

  Inwardly, Brian winced. “He’s supported me a lot.”

  “See, that carries a lot of weight with me, though. Don’s input. He and I have our differences, but he doesn’t casually fling things around like that. Compliments. Accolades.”

  Brian decided right then: Sandoval was weird as hell. Sandoval made him nervous. Sandoval owned that booze-stink and thrummed with the kind of odd, unnerving energy that probably made light bulbs pop when he walked underneath them.

  The man’s books were a far cry from what even a layman would consider genuine cultural anthropology. Brian kept thinking back to the intimate, painful abduction and probe scenes in The Long Way Home; they seemed impossible to reconcile with the odd and charismatic man seated before him. Before leaving for class, Brian had quickly skimmed through a dog-eared copy of Seen Through the Trees, found amid a stack of discarded anthro texts in his closet. It had only reinforced Brian’s understanding that Sandoval’s work was leaps away, academically, from Don Whitmer’s three-armed embrace. Light on investigation, big on personality. They were memoirs of a sort, really, Sandoval’s books. Sugar-heavy entertainment housed in the flimsy, balsa-wood construction of pseudoscience. When you got down to it, they were mostly about Sandoval himself.

  But Brian’s future yawned wide and unknown, didn’t it? School had mostly been paid for—he was beyond lucky in that way—but he’d still accrued some debt. And he had no real plan. He’d be paying off the interest of these wasted years—or dodging loan people—until brittle turds were tumbling out of his pajama leg in an old folks’ home somewhere.

  “Thanks,” he said, and even managed to smile. “I’ve worked hard on it.”

  Sandoval tilted his head back and held up a single finger, as if about to make some proclamation. In a booming, oratory voice, he said, “They Built a Pyre and Alit Every Beautiful Thing: Death Practices of Nordic Chieftains of the Preagricultural Straits of Northern Europe.” Brian could see the wrinkles at his throat, white against his tan. A few more pale scars poked out of the collar of his shirt. Outside the door, someone’s shoes squeaked as they walked down the hall.

  “I’m not entirely sold on the title yet,” Brian said.

  “It’s a mouthful.”

  “Ha, yes.”

  “Don let me read the first few chapters. I won’t lie, man, it’s impressive work.”

  A slurry of emotions belted through him at the thought of Mark Sandoval reading his dissertation. Excitement, fear, a strange stutter of anger toward Whitmer at such an overreach. But also, yes, a kind of fierce, blooming pride. “Again, thank you. I appreciate it. How’d you remember all that?”

  “Oh, just one of those things. Dates, names.” Sandoval tapped a silver temple. “Just got a mind for it. So it’s do
ne? Your dissertation? Please tell me you’re not dropping out with the thing done.”

  “No.” Don’t even get into it, Brian thought. Please. For all that is good and holy. “It’s still a mess.”

  “Edits, then.”

  “Always edits.”

  “So, ABD,” Sandoval said. “You’re sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a big move, man. And so close to finishing.”

  “I’m just sick of it,” Brian said. He looked around the room. “This just isn’t for me, you know?”

  Sandoval leaned forward and smacked his boots on the floor. He turned the bird skull around so the tiny caves of its sockets faced Brian. “Do you speak Danish?”

  Brian’s hand wavered in the air like a boat in rough water. “A little.”

  “Icelandic?”

  “A bit more. It’s a tough language.”

  “That’s what I hear. But you’ve been to Iceland before.”

  Brian hooked his thumb at the door. “I went on a dig with Don last year. Lake Holvamatn.”

  “Okay. Good. And you know your Norse mythology. Your monsters.”

  “Yes. That I can say for sure. I know the history of monsters like the back of my hand.” In a moment that surprised them both, he leaned back in his chair and belted out in a terrible Southern accent, “Son, I say, I can tell you about every gottdamn ghost haunting, every gottdamn Viking burial mound from Krakow to Spitsbergen,” and then shut his mouth so abruptly his jaw clacked shut.

  But Sandoval loved it. He barked a single gunshot of laughter—“Ha!”—and some of the tension and strangeness seemed to ease from the room. “That’s good,” he said. “I like that. But seriously, it’s good to know that you’ve got, you know, boots on the ground experience. When it comes to research and investigative, uh, expectations and all that, Don and I probably have a different set of protocols.” He did this thing then where he kind of waved his hand in front of his face. Dismissively, or as if he was maybe wafting away the lurid stench of Whitmer’s belief in maintaining site integrity or cross-cataloging inventory. “We care about different things.”

  “It won’t be like a traditional dig, is what you’re saying.”

  Sandoval dipped his chin down, touched his nose, then pointed at Brian. “Exactly. But again, it’s good to know that you’ve got experience in the field. So, have you read my work?”

  For the first time, he got a sense of the man doing something other than performing the part of Rich Eccentric Guy Pulling Weird-Ass Power Plays. For just a second, there and gone, Brian saw a great number of things at play on the man’s face: bravado, worry, a naked want to be liked. All of it buried eyeblink-fast in the quicksand of supposed disinterest, a languid coolness that slipped immediately back over him like a mask. Mark Sandoval was a good liar, but not a perfect one.

  Brian said, “You know, I have read a few of them. The Long Way Home, definitely.”

  Sandoval said, “Sure,” like it was a given.

  “The Ghost in the Dirt. I just revisited Seen Through the Trees today, actually.”

  Sandoval smiled. “Brushing up for the interview, huh?”

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  Sandoval leaned back and laced his hands behind his head again. Once more, there were the scars. On one wrist Brian saw a circle connected to a triangle by a right angle. The other arm: a square, a series of dashes, a hexagon. These welted and alabaster scars. Some cosmic roadmap, Sandoval’s memoir suggested, some unknowable catalog number. Possibly even some warning or prophecy. His abductors would eventually be back, Sandoval’s book implied, and answers would be forthcoming.

  “Here’s the deal,” Sandoval said. “I’ve got a book that’s past due and an outraged editor that’s currently spelunking up my asshole, demanding pages. And my publisher’s legal department is over his shoulder, muttering about suing me for my advance. And something just fell into my lap. A sighting.” There was the definite sugar-stink of booze in the room now.

  “Okay.”

  “So I weaseled an extension, Brian, but they’re all frothing. Frothing. And litigious. And wanting pages. So this’ll be blitzkrieg-fast: a few days of prep and then three to four weeks on-site. I need an assistant handling the day-to-day stuff for me before we leave, booking flights and all that, and then I need an absolute beast when we make it into the field. Relentless in pursuing the vital but no-fun shitwork that comes with the job.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Transcribing notes. Equipment maintenance that borders on the religious. Site integrity. I can see that last one surprises you. I’m not a total shithead, Brian—”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I’m not a total shithead, and I know what it takes to run a site. And another big part of this—and something that your background will be helpful with—will be talking to the locals, picking their brains about sightings or local mythology. Getting a flavor of the place. Anecdotes. Details. Rumors. I need to catch the tone of the place, okay? Half the time it’s the guy that you randomly talk to on the street that busts things wide open, that leads you in the right direction.”

  “Definitely. I can do all that,” said Brian. “No problem.”

  “I’ll be doing a lot of the work on-site, a lot of the writing. So when I’m doing that, you’re doing other shit. Checking gear, checking cameras. Reviewing footage. Doing interviews, keeping supplies stocked. Cross-checking physical evidence, as far-fetched as that might seem to you now. Biggest takeaway is we always have to be advancing the narrative, especially with my editor howling for blood like he is.”

  “I hear you.”

  “It’s about the work, is what I’m saying.”

  Ah, finally! A fierce (but internal) eye roll from Brian. The work, he thought. Mark Sandoval was lecturing him on the work! The man who had penned a massively successful, magnificently vapid supermarket book about his supposed alien abduction! About fighting something in a darkened jungle that was almost assuredly a chupacabra! He claimed—the man who was insisting it was about the work!—to have nearly lured a fucking Wendigo from an ice cave in the Yukon! With a rash of rotten bacon!

  The work. Sure.

  Brian realized in that moment that if anyone from the anthropology department actually recognized Mark Sandoval, author of The Long Way Home, in Dr. Whitmer’s office today, it would probably cost Don a smirk or two among his colleagues at the next faculty party. Some ribbing, surely, even as the poor guy worked his way toward retirement. The fucking work indeed.

  And yet: Brad Pitt. Oscar nomination. Oprah.

  Bullshit or not, played out quasicelebrity or not, Mark Sandoval still made millions.

  “I totally understand,” Brian said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I have a pretty good handle on what a traditional dig entails, those duties. And I’ll be honest: it’d be pretty thrilling to branch out, use that skill set to do something new. Something a little outside of the norm. I’m ready for a challenge. You do something long enough, you invest enough time and money and effort into something and find that it’s not for you—that it’s actually pretty far from what you want, that its rigidity is pretty much the exact opposite of what you have vied for since, like, ever—and you suddenly find yourself very willing to take on things that might be a little outside of your wheelhouse.” He was babbling, but Sandoval was nodding intently. They were having a moment.

  “Your passport’s current?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. Let me ask you something, Brian. Do you believe in this stuff? I know you answered on your questionnaire, but seriously. Flat out. No lie.” Sandoval broke the silence before he could answer. “I mean, you’ve studied monsters in a historical sense. Right? You know about them, how they were used as kind of . . . surrogates for people’s fears or concerns. How they reinforced a society’s value system,
its ideologies. I get all that. But do you actually, you know, believe in any of this stuff? That the thing under the bed is real? The ghost on the lonely stretch of road?”

  Without hesitation, Brian said, “Nope. I don’t. Sorry.”

  Sandoval shrugged. “There’s no wrong answer.”

  “I mean, I want to believe in that stuff. Aliens, ghosts. Loch Ness. I do. It would make the world a larger place. But if history has shown us anything, it’s that the monster outside the window is usually just a branch tapping against the glass. That they were just a way to keep the children of the village from sneaking out at night. I mean, it’s usually the dude next to you that you have to worry about, right?”

  Sandoval nodded. “That’s fair. I appreciate that. That’s honest.”

  He stood up and held out that soft writer’s hand, and Brian stood up and shook it. Sandoval thanked him for coming in, and he was a little surprised at how crestfallen it felt to be dismissed. That familiar stutter of smallness walked through him, that feeling he’d felt a hundred times before, whenever he went in for an interview or assembled a fellowship package, whenever he’d written the essay, filled out the paperwork, piecemealed the CV together and sent it off, only to receive the stark, impersonal email, the curt phone call in return. It was a feeling that had grown large and malevolent in recent months as his dissertation took on such dumb, crushing weight.

  What was the best way to get in touch, Sandoval asked him. Email? Sure thing, Brian told him, knowing he wouldn’t hear back. Sandoval said that he had some more interviews to wade through and that he’d be in touch in the next few days. “I know it’s less than ideal, but please be ready to go. Pack up, have that passport ready. If I call, we’ve got to move. I should be able to let you know in the next day or two. Either way, yes or no.”