by Keith Rosson
They turned around in their seats then. Dismissive like that, like I wasn’t worth worrying about. The passenger tapped the bat against the glass of his windshield. “Get out of the car now,” he said, and the Russian accent here was gone, a facade cast aside. This was spoken with just a flat, almost droll kind of menace. Boredom, even.
I stepped out onto the shoulder of Road Seven. The driver let out another honk as they turned around and sped away. I walked, hunched over and aching, toward my bike.
•
I found Sandoval at the edge of the woods, threading a tripwire along a line of trees with a spool of sewing thread. I watched him, crouched, testing the buoyancy of the line with his fingertips. Somewhere I heard a little bell jingle. I knew that it would either be buried beneath the sound of the wind or alert whoever had tripped it, and I thought, This was the man who’d written half a dozen books? Whose body has purportedly been scarred by extraterrestrials? This was our supposed envoy, our spokesman?
“That’s not gonna work,” I said, setting my bike down. “Whoever trips it will hear it first, then they’ll run.”
It was like watching someone wake up. The way his features drew away from that dulled, sleeping look into someone here. And it took an unnerving length of time, the two of us just standing there. But then he grinned, pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, and it was Sandoval again. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll get ’em on video first. I’m thinking we should start putting the cameras in the woods. Maybe leave the EVP on overnight.”
“The hell is happening to you, Mark?”
“What do you mean? Nothing.”
“You’re . . . What was that, right there?”
“I am absolutely fine.”
“Listen.” I exhaled. “I, uh—I just got jumped by two men in masks. On the road.”
Sandoval nodded, looked at the woods again like he couldn’t wait to get back to it.
“One of them had a bat. They said no one wanted us here. They told us to leave.”
He spat on the ground, nodded again. “Walk with me, Brian.”
We made our way to the house and sat down on the porch. Sandoval lit a cigarette, saw that the wind was blowing the smoke my way, and switched sides with me. He stared out at the driveway and Road Seven beyond, scratched his chin with the hand holding the smoke. “You know I’ve been walking around with an EVP recorder out there.” He tilted his chin at the trees. “Just talking. Asking questions.”
“I know.”
“Haven’t gotten anything yet. I keep trying. But part of me . . . I don’t know, part of me just likes walking around out there. You know why?”
“No, man,” I said, weary. Tired of all of it. “Why?”
He leaned in close. “Because I’m a little afraid to,” he said. “I think of those poor British bastards all the time. Poor guys thinking they lucked into the safest spot in all of the war, and then getting blown up by their own ordnance. That’s dark. That’s a dark turn.”
“How in the hell is a ghost going to activate a tripwire, Mark? Or ring a bell? What’re you looking for out here? Ghosts or unicorns? What the hell are we doing here?”
“You think I’m falling down the rabbit hole.”
“I never said that.” Classic Brian Schutt. Pure chickenshit. Brooke would have laughed her ass off. Here I was, obviously alluding to something, and then buckling like rice paper when I got called on to say it plainly.
“Give me a break, Brian. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re phoning it in. Scale of one to ten, how many shits do you give about any of this? How invested are you?”
Now the anger came, the righteousness. Still adrenaline-shook, I embraced it. “I just got jumped by two men in masks. I’d say I’m invested.”
“You remember when we talked in Don’s office? The interview?”
“Sure.”
“And I asked you if you believed in any of this stuff. And you said you wanted to.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Don Whitmer ever mention me?” Sandoval asked.
I was confused by the curve ball in conversation. “No. I didn’t even know you knew each other until that email you sent. When you said we should meet at his office.”
“I rode out of that part of my life like I was on a bullet train, okay? I was in a bad way. And I had to make certain choices after that. Don, I hadn’t seen him in years, since he threw me out on my ass. Justifiably.” He ashed his cigarette. “I wanted to rub it in his face.”
“Why?”
Sandoval winced, rubbed an eye with his thumb. “You know, success. The fact I’d done something. That I’d made it in spite of him. Fifty-one years old and in a dick-swinging contest with a man who tried his best to help me out. Pathetic, right?”
“Listen, Mark. No offense, but what does this have to do with what just happened to me out there?”
He ground his smoke under his boot, stretched back and put the butt in the coffee can behind us. “You saw the evidence. I mean, you literally held some of it in your hands. My question is, what will it take for you to believe?”
I couldn’t help but feel a trill of pleasure run through me, that dark little ripple of joy people took when committing acts of pure meanness. It was my turn to lean toward him now. I hissed, “That was a pile of horse shit. With some junk jewels and glitter sprinkled on it. That was somebody screwing with you, Mark.”
“Nah,” he said. “You’re not seeing the whole picture.”
“I’m done,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
He waved a hand at the woods and said, “I see the lights out there sometimes. At night. These floating lights.”
I went cold. All-over cold. “What’re you talking about?”
“It’s their souls, Brian.”
We sat there.
I said, “You see lights in the woods. At night.”
“Yeah.” He stood up. His knees popped.
“Why don’t you film them?”
“They don’t show up. Not on motion sensors. Infrared, digital. Nothing.”
“But you can see them.”
He said, “Who trashed my room, Brian? Ruined my manuscript? Busted up the equipment? Who threatened you?”
“Nationalist assholes? Xenophobes? Somebody who thinks we’re grifters?”
“Keep trying.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mark.”
“It does. It’s actually one of the very few things that matter. Who calls to me out here?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Are you hearing yourself?”
“The tests will come back, Brian. When they do, it’s gonna blow the lid off of everything we’ve ever thought of these animals. Of the world. Historically. Culturally. Genetically. Spiritually.”
I laughed, a sound that came out strangled and afraid. I was afraid. “The kids and I are making band shirts when they get home from school. I’m gonna do that, and then I’m gonna have dinner with this family and pack up my stuff. I’ll be heading to Kjálkabein in the morning and catching a flight to Reykjavík.” I stood up. “It’s been real, Mark.”
“I need this,” Sandoval said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t turn out to be the right guy for the job. Things got out of hand.”
“You have plane fare? Enough to get home?”
“I’ll figure it out,” I said.
“Listen. Brian, listen to me. We’ll move things ahead. We’ll go the álagablettur tomorrow, and then we’ll go to the base.”
“That’s just stupid, man. I just told you someone jumped me!”
“What if Shane can get us in? To the base. Someone to act as a, a guide.”
“Mark, no one wants us here.”
He pointed a finger at me, bared his teeth at me in this wolfish grin. “Why? Think about why. If there’s an answer to all of this? I
t’s either in the woods or at the base. That’s all that’s left.”
“Mark.”
He said, “I know that stipend I’m giving you won’t be enough to get you plane fare back to the States. There’s no way.”
“Fuck you.”
“Do tomorrow—the álagablettur and the base—and I’ll buy you out. Give you your commission early. We’ll call it even.” He started walking backward, hands in his pockets. Heading back to the trees, to his bells and threads and floating lights. Who calls to me out here? That grin, laconic as it was skeletal.
I said, “You’ve lost it.”
“I need this, Brian. I need you. I’m sorry, but I do.”
3
Sandoval was already in the dining room when I trudged into the house the next morning. It was sleeting outside and the rest of the house was still silent and sleep-heavy. He was writing in his notebook, a cup of coffee at his side. I decided right then that I’d call my parents today, both of them, and Brooke and Ellis, too. I still didn’t know if I’d take Sandoval’s deal—I mean, I knew I’d take it, but that early in the morning, I told myself I reserved the right to change my mind. But calling them today, when I knew I was heading home, it gave me some breathing room. It ceased to be an open-ended abandonment of everything. My sojourn to Hvíldarland could become less a crazed bridge-burning of my life and more just an odd trip coming to an end, now that there was an endpoint. Everyone—especially Brooke and my mom—would be furious with my silence, but it was a lot easier to frame stuff like that when you could say, Anyway, sorry I didn’t call, but I’ll be home tomorrow.
Like some cheap-shit, worrisome harbinger, my head hurt like hell that morning.
I poured a cup of coffee and gazed out the front door at the grim weather, then put on my coat, hoisting my bag over my shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” Sandoval asked from the table.
I stepped out on the porch, felt the bite of the morning. Got on my stupid little bicycle. My knees clacked against the handlebars all the way to Kjálkabein, rain spitting against my coat.
•
It was a mustard-colored, rectangular three-story building on the town’s southeastern end. Unlovely and utilitarian, Lögreglan in foot-high letters above the glass double doors.
The desk clerk took my name, eyed my ID for a minute and then got on the phone. He hung up and gave me a room number down the hall.
I found Constable Jónsdóttir hunched over a Tupperware container of soup in the Kjálkabein Police break room. The room overlooked the rear parking lot and the police motor pool. Dumpsters, chain-link fencing, a line of four or five squad cars parked at an angle, sleek as sharks. The room held a few couches, a pair of tables, a microwave, refrigerator and sink. A vending machine sat in one corner. It looked like any number of teacher’s lounges I’d been in.
Jónsdóttir laid her spoon down on one napkin and dabbed at her mouth with another. We were alone. She seemed wholly unsurprised that I’d dropped by. “Mr . . . Scott, was it?”
“Schutt.”
“Right, Mr. Schutt. Your face is looking better. How are the Hauksdóttirs?”
“They’re good.”
“I told my husband you were here.” She looked down at her soup for a moment, bashful. “He was hoping we might drive out to the farm and visit Mr. Sandoval. He has some books he was hoping to have autographed.”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m leaving the country, but I wanted to let you know. Two guys in masks jumped me on Road Seven yesterday. They told me that Mr. Sandoval and I had to get out of the country. You know, or else.”
Jónsdóttir stood up, carefully put the lid on her soup container. Something her husband had made her, I hoped, before she hit the cold, brutal streets of Kjálkabein, where sheep wandered brazenly into the city limits, and guys got into bar scuffles over whose dad had once pulled up a torpedo in a fish net. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but my head hurt like a monster that morning, and I was afraid and frustrated and angry.
“Let me go get some forms and I can take your statement. But you’re leaving the country today?”
“Tomorrow, probably.”
“Nothing official can be done if you aren’t here to press charges. You understand? If we find anything, I mean.”
“I understand. I’m not willing to wait around. I’d still like to make a statement.”
“Of course,” Jónsdóttir said. She put her soup in the refrigerator, balled up her napkins and threw them in the trash. “I’ll be right back with the forms.”
•
The fields lay furrowed with water, the sound of the rain soothing as it fell from the eaves of the house. I’d ridden home through it, and now was warming up in the living room. Thumbing through channels, looking for that loathsome lasagna, knowing it was there somewhere. It’d become some kind of talisman to me. Gruesome but telling, like Roman haruspex divining bird entrails. But, you know, with more dick jokes. The lasagna never left, moored forever on that goddamned table.
Karla was upstairs showering. The zippering and clomping and clicking of various pieces of equipment told me that Sandoval was in the dining room, prepping our gear for the trip. We were just waiting for Shane to show up. The children, their yellow slickers glowing in the fey afternoon gloom, their fingers fat and useless with heavy gloves, were playing outside. Polar bears, those children. Impervious to cold.
A gelatinous blur on the screen: there it was.
“What I mean is, you and me could make some beautiful music together,” the lasagna said in English, Icelandic subtitles across the bottom of the screen.
An exchange student? A pen pal of the daughter? A girlfriend? She had on a beret and a fringed sweater befitting the era. She was doing the dishes, her back to the leering lasagna. She said in a French accent, “Sorry, I do not date dinner foods!”
The laugh track went big on that.
The lasagna said, “Where you from, darlin’?”
“Nice,” she said.
“Nice?” he said.
“No, Nice,” she said.
“That’s what I mean. Nice.”
Laugh track subdued.
I was losing my mind. My skull was a detonation.
“You asshole,” I whispered, jamming my head into the back of the couch. “You viscid, mucilaginous asshole.” A half-dozen ibuprofen roiled my guts, had barely taken the serrated knife-edge off of the ache.
I walked to the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Karla?” Even raising my voice squeezed the membrane of my skull.
“Yes?” Her voice drifted from around the corner of the stairwell.
“Can I make some calls? I can leave you cash now, or PayPal you the money later.”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
I heard Gunnar and Liza clomp up the front steps. They ran through the house, found me in the kitchen staring at the phone. “Brian,” Liza shrieked, “come play with us! Be the monster again! Come outside!”
And I almost did. Nearly took it as a sign, brushed aside the phone calls, put on my heavy coat, went to play with these kids that I’d come to care about. But I’d be heading home after our trip to the base later tonight. If I didn’t do this now, I never would. So I said, “I’m sorry, Liza. I’ve got to make some calls first. But if I’ve got time afterward I will, okay?”
Gunnar nodded, the responsible one. “That’s fair, Li-li.”
•
I was the only one of us who had actually talked to my father since he’d abandoned us for Traci and the nudist colony. It wasn’t out of any profound sense of loyalty on my part; he’d called me once to complain about my mother’s lawyers, maybe a month after he’d left, and I, eternally afraid of conflict, had stood and listened. This had always been the inherent nature of our relationship. Me, nodding and grunting my “uh-huhs” rather than refuting his shit. I’d done it my entire life. He
’d started with, “It’s safe to say I’m being grievously misaligned by the women in our family, Brian.” It seemed like he’d had some drinks. We hadn’t talked since. If it was an attempt at reconciliation, some fatherly attempt at showing love or building allegiance, it was a shitty effort.
But today, my head jammed full of coals the way it was, on my way back home with this odd failure of a trip in my pocket . . . today felt different. I was halfway around the world. I was impervious, at least from him, his anger and contempt. Couldn’t it afford me a moment or two of bravery?
It was ten-thirty or so in Arizona. As the phone rang, Brooke’s terrible images zipped through my mind like tracers. Downward Dog, tan lines, the faint scars of breast implant incisions. Jesus.
“Hello?”
I cleared my throat. “Hi, Traci. I, uh, was hoping to speak to Brad.”
A momentary pause. “Sure, can I tell him who’s calling?”
“This is Brian.”
Another pause. “Brian.”
“His son, yeah.”
“Okay.” I could faintly hear the television in the living room of the Hauksdóttir house. “Well, I can try to find him for you. He should be out doing his laps at the pool.”
I leaned my head against the wall. My father, sleek as a porpoise, nude in the community pool, sunlight knifing off the water. He’d been such an unhappy, private man, so many sharp, tucked-away corners to him. So distant from us all. Now he did the breaststroke naked in the community pool, traveled the emotional landmines of polyamory, lovingly traced Traci’s implant scars while Scottsdale burned. Everyone was someone else. “Okay, thanks,” I said.
But then Traci surprised me. “But do you think it’s wise, Brian?”
“Sorry? Do I think what’s wise?”
“Talking to him.”
“Talking to my dad?”
“Aren’t you all, you know, embroiled in a legal battle right now? Shouldn’t you let everyone’s lawyers handle things at this point?”