by J. D. Laird
When Dale was eighteen years old he left home and spent a few years traveling the world. He used his boyhood contacts to get jobs teaching in countries all over Asia. It wasn’t until Cambodia that he had heard the call to join the Air Force.
He was at a bar in Phnom Penh having drinks with the locals when a group of U.S. Marines came in. They were all on leave and clearly already drunk. The marines were loud, rude and itching for a fight. They found the confrontation they looking for. As the violence broke out, one of the Marines punched a hole in the wall of the bar. He shattered the bones in his hand. It was then that the fighting stopped.
One of the men that Dale had been drinking with was a doctor. He wanted to help the soldier but the Marine refused, unable to understand what the doctor was saying. The language barrier was too great. It was then that Dale stepped in serving as translator between the two people. The Marine had his hand splinted and placed on ice. He and his friends apologized for their behavior. One of them even left money behind to pay for the repairs to the wall. Three months later when Dale returned to the United States he signed up for the Air Force.
Dale’s parents paid for college while he was serving in the Air Force’s ROTC. But the time he graduated he was an officer and was quickly deployed to serve as a translator for an intelligence gathering unit in Guam. He was only serving there six months before he was pulled for a secret assignment at their current base. When speaking of his placement, Dale said, “It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.”
There was some irony there of course. A mountain of debris had crashed down onto Dale’s leg. There was likely massive bleeding and no hope of escape. None of which would have happened had Dale stayed in Guam. Madison suspected that Dale’s mention of “luck” was an illusion to his feelings towards her. Like most things uncomfortable, Madison ignored the feelings that she felt in the moment. She resolved to overcome them and remain strong.
Still, there was no denying that Madison liked the way that Dale talked. The way he phrased things and how he spoke about his experiences. The airmen knew full well how fortunate he had been to see and do all the things he had. He had never taken any of it for granted. Dale’s whole life was so much different than Madison’s own, and yet both of them were there in that moment. Two coworkers in the same department who were trapped together under the collapsed ruins of a secret base located in an isolated mountain in New Mexico.
As they waited for rescue, or death, whichever came first, Dale talks less about himself and starts probing Madison for information about her own life. Dale has to pry the details out of her. Which was good, the effort on Dale’s part, because it keeps him from drifting off. Madison fears that her coworker is at risk of passing out any moment due to the inevitable blood loss that is coming from his leg. It is trauma hidden by hundreds of pounds of rock.
In some ways, Madison is much the same way. She is like that leg, only instead she is a whole wounded person. One who hides her injuries under years of callouses built up over time.
Dale is persistent in his questioning. Eventually he wears Madison’s callouses away.
While still maintaining the bulk of her secrets, Madison does reveal that she had grown up in the Midwest. Madison’s grandmother had raised her most of her life. She was a stern woman and expected a lot from Madison even as a child. Madison’s grandmother had emigrated from Germany and insisted that Madison learn to speak the language. Which after a while, Madison didn’t mind. Like Dale, she found she enjoyed learning how words were formed in other languages. She liked the sounds of them on her tongue and the way strange words felt in her mouth. Every opportunity she got Madison was in her local library learning something new.
Madison didn’t have the opportunity to travel the world like Dale had. Instead she learned languages from books and by listening to tape recordings. When she got older, at the age of fourteen, Madison worked at a restaurant where the servers only spoke French but the kitchen staff only spoke Spanish. Madison loved and absorbed it all.
At home Madison was far removed from the paradises she sometimes read about in her foreign language novels. Madison’s grandmother often chastised her for staying out too late or criticized Madison for the friends she had. Friends, Madison didn’t have many. By the time she was sixteen she had hardly any at all. It was shortly after Madison’s seventeenth birthday that her grandmother passed away. A sudden case of pneumonia took her one winter and Madison’s grandmother never woke up. She left Madison a small heritage. It was just enough to help Madison leave her small Midwestern town.
Madison, seventeen years old and with a small fortune in her pock, arrived in Spain and spent the next six months backpacking around Europe. It was only when her funds ran out that she started looking for other options. It was at an embassy in Germany when Madison was poor, alone and hungry that she signed up for Air Force. Madison didn’t have a guardian present so she forged what she imagined her mother’s signature might have looked like. Nobody ever asked any questions and before long Madison was shipped off to boot camp.
From there, Madison climbed the ranks. She took courses online between drills, earned her GED and soon a college degree. She then took the officer’s aptitude test and was almost immediately reassigned to the post in the mountains. Madison got three meals a day, a bed to sleep in and the opportunity to work with the languages she loved.
“Do you miss it?” Dale interrupts Madison’s stream of thought. His voice is faint. Madison knows his strength is fading.
“Miss what?” Madison replies. She readjusts her legs both to increase her circulation and to jostle Dale’s head to keep him awake.
Dale grimaces in pain as she does this but then his face melts into a smile. “Miss people?” He says.
Madison couldn’t quite fathom the question. Her finger runs across a jagged piece of skin by her nail. She bites the flake of skin off with her teeth. It is a nervous habit. “I don’t understand.” Madison says with her finger still in her mouth.
“Sure you do.” Dale replies in a whisper, his voice growing weaker. “All day, reading and listening to people’s stories. Don’t you miss that? Being connected?” He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath followed by a heavy exhalation. Madison runs her hand across his forehead, smoothing back his hair.
She is connected. Isn’t she? Madison worked for a large military structure of one of the world’s most powerful nations. She is assigned to a top-secret project that she was told was of the “utmost importance” for national security. All of that meant Madison mattered, didn’t it? It meant that her actions had a role in the outcome of the world’s narrative. It meant that she was connected to something.
But Madison knew what Dale truly meant. It was a feeling that had been with her since she’d started her assignment at the base.
Dale wasn’t talking about her role in the larger tapestry of life. He was talking about the private moments. The intimate connection that occurs between two people huddled up in the dark. The connection that exists between two people that allow themselves to know what the other is thinking. To trust in someone else implicitly despite having been hurt in the past. It is the ability to be vulnerable. The ability to open up a closet of skeletons and say “here they are”. To know that the other will accept that darkness and in exchange reveal their own secrets to you. It is the pact of best friends, partners, brothers and soldiers. There is nothing deeper. Perhaps there is nothing more important in all of human existence. Yes, Madison realized, she had missed it. Madison missed the connections. They were the connections she had never allowed herself to have. Her personal walls were built up so high that Madison thought she could provide for herself. Now, cradling this head of a man who had been open and honest with her in her lap, Madison finds she had been so wrong.
In the darkness Madison cries as the man in her lap dies.
11 Gabriel
Gabriel works forty-five blocks from his apartment. From there it is another ten to his children’s
school. He doesn’t know what time it is. As far as Gabriel can tell, all the clocks in the world have stopped. Even the watches in the store display cases, brand new ones with fresh batteries, had all frozen at the same time, 10:10 AM.
Looking towards the sky, Gabriel uses other indicators than the hands of a watch to keep track of time. The sun is up, just shy of reaching the midpoint in the sky. He holds his hand out in front of him, his fingers stretched out. He lines the edge of palm with the horizon and then counts palm widths till he reaches the sun in the sky. He counts to eleven, which means it is probably still early in the afternoon. Gabriel’s two girls will most likely still be in school. Where else they could be were possibilities that Gabriel tries not to think about.
The walk across the city will be long. In the past Gabriel had been forced to make the trek on foot a couple of times when the bus lines were down. Just like then, Gabriel seems to have no choice now. He has to make it across town, across the Schuylkill River, on nothing but the soles of his work boots. At first, Gabriel thinks about taking a car, but every one he tries has been carved up and made inoperable. In nearly all the vehicles only a large gap sits where the steering wheel should be. Some of the vehicles are still intact, those that are parked at meters mainly, but Gabriel has no way of getting inside without breaking windows. Even then, he has no way to start the vehicle. All that besides, the roads are too congested to travel by car anyway.
Stalled cars line the roads and clog the intersections. The vehicles are now nothing more than abandoned metallic shells wasting away on the pavement. They are each silently waiting for the ages to erode them where they sit.
Gabriel tries not to think of this as the end, the end of life as he knows it. He tries not to think of everything that he is seeing as permanent, but there is little evidence to the contrary. While he can’t put words to the existence he has awoken into, Gabriel knows that things are irreversibly different. No one is coming to rescue him. The fact becomes more and more evident the longer he walks and the more of the carved up city he sees.
The spherical cutouts are everywhere. There are even indentations in the sidewalks at places. It is like someone had scooped something up and taken the cement with it. Gabriel thinks he knows what that something was. The silence of the city gives it away. Somehow Gabriel has been spared. The pigeons seem to be his only company.
A few blocks in, Gabriel finds a motor scooter. Its headlight has been shattered from colliding head first into the trunk of a car that was in front of it. On the sidewalk there is a body. It is only the second that Gabriel has seen. Blood is caked on the cement of the sidewalk. Dried blood, leaving a trail where it has dripped out from the seams of a motorcycle helmet. Gabriel can imagine the rider hitting the back of the vehicle in front of him with his scooter as it suddenly stopped. The rider must have been thrown twenty feet before skidding across the street and up onto the walkway. The helmet had provided little protection from the force.
Gabriel sees that the keys are still in the ignition of the scooter. He turns them over a couple of times. There is not even a spark from the engine. The scooter lay dead. As dead as its previously owner. Both are left to rot away.
Some relief for Gabriel’s feet finally come by a drugstore at the intersection of the blocks ten and eleven. Outside of the store is a bicycle that had been discarded haphazardly near the doorway. Gabriel lifts the cycle up off the ground. Inspecting it, Gabriel finds the only damage to be a scratch in the bike’s red paint on one side. The gears are still in perfect working order. The bike is practically new. The only thing that seems not to work is the light that had been fixed to the handle bars. It’s an electronic on and off switch that does nothing when toggled.
Gabriel restocks on supplies in the drugstore. He finds bottles of water and some lightweight snacks. Gabriel also finds an allen-wrench. He uses it to adjust the seat on the bike to the proper height.
Gabriel is not a particularly good bike rider. He hadn’t learned how to ride until he was twelve or thirteen years old, whereas most of the children he grew up with had been riding for much longer. The fear of falling and hurting himself had always prevented Gabriel from trying. It was wasn’t until Gabriel had met Talia that he truly felt inspired to give learning a try.
Talia was beautiful, especially back then. Her innocence added an extra shine to her complexion. Gabriel had grown up in a small town in Arizona before moving to New Jersey. His father was looking for better opportunities for both himself and his family. He moved them into a trailer home community outside of Newark. It was the only thing they could afford at the time. Talia lived two doors down with her aunt and uncle. She came to introduce herself to Gabriel on the first day.
Gabriel learned that Talia had no brothers and sisters. The other kids in the neighborhood were never nice to her either. Despite being beautiful, to Gabriel at least, Talia had very few friends. Finding himself in a new city, Talia was the first to show Gabriel around, and the two of them hung out nearly every day after school. Gabriel remembered how his sisters would tease him. They would call him names and make kissing faces whenever the two of them were together. Gabriel would ignore it and tell Talia that his sisters “were stupid”. Yet secretly Gabriel hoped that Talia might feel that way towards him after all.
Talia had a bike and she loved to ride it. The only bike that Gabriel had was one of his older sister’s hand-me-downs. It was a purple street bike with no speeds or special gears. After school and on the weekends, Talia would often want to go riding and invite Gabriel along. He would always say he had “something better to do”. It wasn’t until she had invited him to go watch the sunset over the industrial park and he had said no yet again, that Talia finally guessed why Gabriel was so reluctant to join her.
“I don’t even think you know how to ride a bike.” She said. Talia’s nose was scrunched up. It was her attempt at an ugly face, but to Gabriel even her ugly faces were beautiful.
“Of course I do!” He shouted back, fiercely trying to hide his shame.
“Oh yea, then prove it!” She had retorted. It was an argument that Gabriel couldn’t win.
“I can’t.” He retreated into rage to protect himself. “Not today. I hate bike riding. I think it’s stupid and for kids!” He turned his back on Talia and only chanced a glance back once as he stomped away. Gabriel saw that Talia was crying.
That night Gabriel got up when the rest of the house was asleep. He found a canister of black spray paint and crept outside. Gabriel spent the night covering over the purple mess that had been his sister’s bike and instead made it all his own.
The next morning, and every morning before school, breakfast, and before anyone else in the neighborhood was up, Gabriel would practice riding that bike. He fell half a dozen times each morning. At school he hide his scraped knees and elbows from Talia whenever she was around.
Gabriel could recall when he first rode on his own. That first time when he had gotten up enough speed and gotten the balance just right. The wind blew through his hair. He did loops around the neighborhood. Each one was faster and faster. He dared himself to risk everything for a taste of just a little more speed.
That day after school Gabriel rode his bike to Talia’s house. He felt braver and bolder than he had ever been. The two of them hadn’t seen each other at all after school since he had yelled at her. Gabriel hoped Talia would forgive him, or even better, that she wouldn’t remember. To Gabriel it had been a moment of encouragement, a lightning bolt that had electrocuted him into conquering his fears. Gabriel never guessed that for Talia it had been a moment that led to something very different.
When Gabriel knocked on the door of Talia’s house she was not alone. She had a friend over, an older friend. Gabriel recognized him as a highschooler. They were home alone and had been watching TV on the couch. Without knowing explicitly why, Gabriel suddenly felt very scared. Something about seeing Talia with him seemed wrong. The two of them alone in the house gave him an empty feeling in hi
s stomach and made his legs feel weak. He asked her if she wanted to go for a ride with him. She told him that, “Bike riding is for kids.” Gabriel walked his bike home.
As he rides his newfound red bike through the empty streets of Philadelphia, Gabriel finds that he is crying. Tears pour down his face in tiny and thin streams. The droplets of water whisk away as the wind sweeps by his face.
Gabriel isn’t crying for Talia. He isn’t crying for how if he had not told her the truth. How he hadn’t told her that he couldn’t ride a bike that night she had asked him. No, and he isn’t crying because she had gotten pregnant. That she had dropped out of school and disappeared from his life all together. He isn’t crying because if he had just told her the truth, or learned to conquer his fear of riding earlier, the two of them might have been together. No, Talia was long gone.
Now, Gabriel cries for his daughters. Though he fights it with all the strength that he can muster, Gabriel cries because he had never taught his daughters how to ride a bike.
12 Madison
After Dale passed away Madison sits in the dark alone for what feels like an eternity. Tears had stopped flowing centuries ago, but her body feels petrified by rust.
When Madison finally decides to move it is only out of respect for Dale’s body. He deserved better than to decay on the lap of someone who hardly ever noticed him. Someone who had gone out of their way to ignore him even. Madison buries him with stones. A fate Madison figures would be destined for her as well eventually. In remembrance of the man that had forced her to open up, Madison makes a ceremony out of placing each rock deliberately and delicately. The placement of the rocks becomes significant in and of itself.