Bob stuffed another fry into her mouth and stared at Rice, trying to decide what to say. “That’s what I like about you, Rice,” she said at last. “You keep your balls in your mouth so you can always find them.”
Rice reddened, slid his chair back to leave. “Well,” he said, rising, “you let me know if you need me to hold your hand.”
Bob reached out, seized Rice by the wrist. “Wait!” She let go and Rice sat back down.
“What?”
“I don’t know who or what it is.” Bob looked down at her plate, then up at Rice. She knew that the only way to work Rice was to play into his bullshit. She flashed a look of helpless need across her clear, oval face. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever dealt with. Very small, and it doesn’t seem to be very fast, but it’s got some field around it, some force I’ve never felt before. It’s following the Prez everywhere she goes, and I can’t get close without it trying to push me away.”
Rice smiled.
“It’s getting stronger, boss. I need your help.”
Leaning back in his chair, Rice let out a huge sigh. Perhaps this was one of those times when he had to go look for himself. Mork had gone dormant and Spud had disappeared and the General was chewing his ass on a regular basis. He was tired of flying blind. But the alternative – a full day of vomiting – seemed an awful price to pay. And could he afford to be so incapacitated right now? He looked at Bob. Her hair was a mess. And there was a stain of what looked like real fear in her eyes. He hadn’t thought her capable of that. Leaning forward, he picked up his coffee and took a sip. He cradled the cup against his chest. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said at last.
Bob’s eyes tightened. “What sort of deal?”
“You try again today. As often as you can. Take Mr. Random with you. Or Alice. Or even Mary if she’ll go. See what a couple of you can do. If it doesn’t work, I’ll join you tonight.”
Bob nodded. It was all she’d wanted. He was an asshole, but there was no denying it; if you needed something killed, anything, then Rice was the man for the job.
Across from her, Rice stood again, his face flush with self-satisfaction. He smiled down at Bob. “I’m off. We’re tracking down all of Ma’s known contacts in the Northeast. Maybe we can beat her there … wherever she’s going.”
Bob licked the salt from her finger. “Good luck.”
Rice turned to leave, then stopped. There was Phelps in the doorway.
“Mr. Phelps?”
“Dude!” said Phelps, stepping into the room, “They found the car!”
6.2
“Where’s Grace?” Cole’s voice was loud and a bit angry. His nose twitched.
Emily grabbed her book bag. “I don’t know. She was getting dressed last I saw her.”
Cole walked to the bottom of the stairs and shouted. “Grace!” There was no response. He took a step up. “Grace?” He looked back at Emily. “Go ahead and get in the car.” He headed up the stairs.
Emily lifted her backpack onto her shoulder, grabbed her brown paper bag half-full of DVDs, and stuffed a piece of cold toast into her mouth. She pushed through the door and stepped out onto the porch, the morning air cold and moist around her. She glanced at the car. The President stood by the back door of the Subaru, dressed in the jeans and red cotton sweater her mother used to wear, a bundle of blankets and a pillow in her arms, her green bag slung over her shoulder. Next to Linda stood Iain. He was showing her his new MarioKart game on his DSX3. Emily rolled her eyes and started down the steps.
Seeing his sister approach, Iain scrambled around the car to take the front passenger seat.
“Hey!” Emily ran forward, attempting to stop him but dropping her bag. DVDs spilled out onto the gravel.
“Jerk!” she spat, kneeling to pick up her movies.
“Idiot.” Iain plopped down into the front seat.
“Hey!” It was Cole, walking out toward the car with an old sweater in his hand. Grace was at his side, her head bowed low, seemingly asleep on her feet.
“What?” Iain protested. “I was just—!”
Emily lifted her bag and stepped up to the car, jerking open the right rear door. She crawled in behind her brother, managing to kick the back of his seat more than once. Cole and Grace circled around to the driver’s side and Cole opened the other back door. Grace just stood there so he picked her up and sat her in the center seat, next to her sister. Grace looked around as if in a dream as her father bent down to buckle her seatbelt. Satisfied, Cole tugged a latch by the headrest, pulled the rear seatback forward a bit, and stuffed the old sweater in behind to keep the mechanism from re-latching. Grace leaned back. Her eyes fell shut immediately.
“What’s wrong with Grace?” asked Emily, now seated with her bag on her lap.
“She’s just very tired, sweetie,” answered Cole, trying to sound like he meant it. Cole shut the door and turned to face the President, who waited patiently at the hatchback door, watching. For a brief moment he imagined kissing her. He backed up a step, struck by the absurdity of the image, frowning as if he could stuff the thought back into unconsciousness with his eyebrows.
“You okay?” she asked.
The open concern in her voice and the incongruence of his secret thoughts almost undid him. He was about to abandon his own children when they most needed him and Linda Travis was asking about his well-being? And he wanted to kiss her? He did not deserve such care and support. He was leaving his kids. Nodding stiffly to hold back tears, he opened the hatchback and slid back the retractable cargo cover. Linda tossed in the blankets and pillow, then put a hand on Cole’s shoulder. “She’s going to be okay,” she said.
Cole swirled to face her, anger flaring to shield the guilt and fear. The President held up a hand in defense, then motioned toward the kids with her head. “They’re not going to hurt your children, Cole.”
Cole laughed without humor. “Who’re we talking about here, Linda? The bug-eyed aliens or the secret government agents?” He looked up at the bright morning sky. Not so much as a cloud. He turned back to Linda. “Let’s remember that you’re on the run, Mrs. President. It’s not like you’re in control of this.”
Linda sighed and nodded, glancing down at the ground. “Yeah,” she admitted softly. “I guess you’re right.” She raised her face to his and looked him right in the eyes. “Thank you, Cole,” she said. “You’re a remarkable man.”
Cole flushed, caught off-guard by her acknowledgement. She’d taken his anger and given him back more kindness. He motioned to the cargo compartment, as if he could bury his discomfort in a bit of legerdemain. “I unlatched the back seat so you could push your way out in an emergency,” he said, twisting his face nervously. “You ready?”
“Let’s do it.” Ducking her head, Linda crawled onto the pile of blankets, checking to make sure her hands and feet were clear. “Okay,” she said. She smiled courageously, defiantly, as if, in control of the situation or not, she could still do that.
Cole pulled the cover closed and lowered the hatchback, latching it firmly with a solid whump. He stepped around to the driver’s door and opened it, forcing a smile to his own face before taking his seat.
“Everybody strapped in and ready for blast-off?” he called out, like he always did.
“Yes,” the kids replied in rote, Grace’s voice notably absent.
“Good enough,” he said, completing the ritual. Cole inserted the key in the ignition, hoping that his kids wouldn’t ask any more questions, wondering if his answers were the truth. The night before, when Grace had fallen out of bed, she hadn’t even awakened. Nor had she stirred when he lifted her up and put her back under her covers.
He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. When he went back down to finish his conversation with the President – with Linda – he’d found that she had already taken a couple of her high-powered pills and was fast on her way to sleep herself. With a promise to figure things out in the light of a new day, she was out. Cole went to bed shortly there
after, once he checked the locks on all the doors and windows. He’d called for Dennis, who’d gone missing shortly after those eyes had peered through the window. Cole had even screwed up his courage enough to step outside and look at the sky. But the huge black objects were gone. The night was quiet and cold and Dennis, who was afraid of his own shadow, let alone strange people and monsters and UFOs, was nowhere to be seen.
The remainder of the night had been quiet, but Cole had hardly slept. Alert to every snippet of sound, he had achieved little more than a hovering doze, an endless treading of water in the dark ocean of sleep. When dawn slammed through his eyelids it felt as if just moments had passed since he’d closed them. He woke with the vague memory of a dream tickling his mind. It quickly evaporated. Something about a Frenchman on a train.
Grace had slept through the alarm clock and had to be awakened by her sister. And she had fallen asleep at the breakfast table, dropping her toast peanut-butter-side down on the dining room floor. She barely spoke. When Cole announced that the kids would not be going to school, that they would go spend the day at their grandfather’s house, Iain and Emily had been full of questions. Grace only smiled and closed her eyes. “Good,” was all she’d said.
Cole started the engine and put the car in gear, glancing over at Iain with a faint smile. “You okay, Dad?” Iain asked.
Cole nodded, touching the gas. The car moved out onto the gravel drive, propelling them all into a future that he could not divine. After breakfast he’d attempted an explanation. Iain and Emily were too old, and too damned smart, for him to try to hide things. He knew they could see right through him: see his fear, his exhaustion, his confusion. So he’d told them what he could: that the President of the United States was in trouble; that there were some very mysterious forces involved; that she needed his help in getting to a friend’s home in the Northeast Kingdom; that he’d be taking them to their Grandfather’s for the day, while he gave her what help he could; and that he’d be very, very careful. The older kids had been unusually helpful, packing up their things and bringing a bag full of items they knew Grace would want. Grace had fallen back to sleep.
“Dad!” called Emily from the back seat. “What about Dennis?”
Damn! He’d forgotten the dog. “Did you guys see him?” he asked. Neither of them had.
“I’ll bet you twenty bucks he’s up at Jake and Cat’s house again,” he said, hoping to satisfy them. “He’s such a chicken.” He forced a chuckle. “He just couldn’t get used to having the President of the United States in his house.”
“But he liked her, Dad!” answered Emily.
“Tell you what,” said Cole, knowing that his daughter would never give this one up. “I’ll get your Grandpa to come over and pick him up later. After we get you guys settled in.”
“But Dad!”
Iain turned to his sister. “There’s no time,” he said, his voice both stronger and more gentle than Cole would have expected. Iain nodded toward the back of the car where the President was hidden. “They have to get going.”
Emily scowled, then tapped her father on the shoulder. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
Cole made his way out to the main road, thinking back on the morning as he drove. Linda had stood in his bedroom doorway. It was her knock that had awakened him. She’d asked if there was a car she could borrow, but the thought of her just driving away without him had grabbed his gut. There was no way he could allow that. Sure, Ruth’s old Toyota still ran, though with the hard economy Cole had done little to maintain it. And with her leg healed, Linda could now continue on as she had planned, as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. The President had revealed to him a world he’d never imagined: a world fraught with dangers that threatened his children; and a world filled with wonders that drew him toward them, even as he pushed away in fear. How could he just sit back and let others face this danger? These were his children.
And how could he resist the adventure that stretched out before him like a trail of blank pages? He was off script now, for sure. Ruth was the one that had known where she was going, and she was dead. It was time to find his own right work in the world. He could feel that now. He was no farmer. He sure as hell wasn’t a painter. He didn’t know what he was. But he knew he was just running on fumes at Harmony, once again playing out the story somebody else had written for him. Even though it meant leaving his kids, he knew he would always regret it if he did not see this through.
And there was more, a piece Cole could only begin to think out loud. Just as the Little Prince had done with the fox, in the short, intense time they’d spent together, Linda Travis had tamed him. Her problems were now his problems. If she had to go somewhere, Cole Thomas would be the one to accompany her. He was not at all clear exactly who or what they were facing, and he was scared as hell, but he was certain of this: he would do everything in his power to protect this woman.
But while he might endanger himself to oppose this threat, he would first take his kids out of the line of fire. He would leave them with their grandfather before he did anything else. Cole chuckled to himself as they headed toward his father’s house, the car now gaining speed on the paved road. The President thought she had problems, with her aliens and her crazy government agents. At least she didn’t have to deal with Ben Thomas.
6.3
Though Ben’s house was less than a mile away as the crow flies, the task of getting the kids there required a three-mile drive on the main roads. Sobered and cautioned by the President’s story, and certainly alerted by the events of the previous night, Cole was nevertheless surprised to see the flashing lights up ahead as he neared the intersection of Gray Mountain and Boston Spoke. His guts turned immediately to gazpacho. Christ! How’d they find that car so fast? Frantic, he searched for a turn-off, but his car delivered him in moments to a line of stopped traffic three cars deep, a surprising number given how few cars traveled this route these days, with gas so spendy. There was no turning away. Not without being noticed.
Cole expelled a huge sigh of fear. “Don’t say a thing, guys,” he said, not daring to look at his kids. Up ahead, Ken Fairly, the younger and slimmer of Hindrance’s two policemen, waved the cars through with an orange-tipped traffic wand, stopping to speak to each driver. Anticipating his turn next, anxious to appear normal, Cole lowered his window. He knew Ken from the community substance-abuse prevention meetings they both attended every month. The car before him pulled ahead. Cole inched up to the officer.
“Mornin’, Cole,” said Ken. “Looks like you’re getting a late start this morning.” He bent down to look inside. “Hey, kids.”
“Watcha got here, Ken?” asked Cole, hoping to cut off any response his children might make, hoping any nervousness he exhibited would be chalked up to their running late, hoping Ken wouldn’t notice the new dent in his fender. Just up the road a tow truck was winching the President’s battered Cutlass from its hiding place in the bushes. Beyond the tow truck sat two state cruisers, their lightbars broadcasting both warning and excitement. Across the road sat another state cruiser, Ken’s local black & white, and a shiny black Lincoln. Two state troopers stood by the tow truck, watching.
“Don’t really know, Cole,” said Ken. “I just got here. Cyndi and Marissa found this car. Just before dawn. Saw the dome light. Tommy was on then but he’s gone home now.”
Cole took a deep breath and smiled, motioning toward the action. “You sure got a lotta uniforms here for a car in the ditch.” He forced a knowing chuckle. “Things getting too slow in the police biz?”
Ken shook his head, glancing nervously over his shoulder. He poked his head into the car, speaking in confidential tones. “I, uh, can’t really say, Cole, ya know? It’s big. That’s all I know. It’s something big. You heard about the President, right?”
Ken suddenly straightened and took a step back. A tall, thin red-haired man in a slick gray suit was approaching, stepping stiffly around the tow truck. He head
ed right for Cole’s car, a big smile on his face, as if Ken were an old friend. “What do we have here, officer?” he asked. His tone was expectant, his delivery formal.
Ken cleared his throat, obviously nervous. “Just my friend Cole and his kids, Mr. Edmonton.” He motioned toward Iain. “His boy and mine play on the soccer team.”
The man stepped up to the car, displacing the policeman, and offered his hand. Cole took it. “Nice to meet you, Cole,” said Edmonton. His smile was warm and genuine, his handshake solid. “Really nice.” He leaned to look into the car, catching Iain’s eye. “And you too, son. You’re a soccer player, are you?”
Iain waved slightly and looked down at his feet. “Yeah,” he muttered.
Edmonton noticed the girls in the back and smiled even more broadly. “Oh, and nice to meet you girls as well.” Emily just stared, giving nothing away. Grace was asleep. Winking at Emily, Edmonton withdrew his head. With a quick step to his left, he leaned out over the front windshield and starting drawing in the dirty haze on the glass with his finger: a circle the size of a tennis ball bisected by an inverted capital L. Finishing, the man rapped three times on the glass with his knuckles, grinned broadly, then started to leave. A dozen steps from the car he turned and waved. “See you later,” he said with a smile. He turned and walked away.
“Ken?” asked Cole, perplexed and wary, watching as Edmonton disappeared behind the tow truck. An old blue pickup pulled up behind them.
“Like I said, Cole. Something pretty big.” The policeman noticed the pickup and started waving his flashlight. Cole eased the car forward, an automatic response to the signaling wand. Skirting the tow truck, he saw no sign of the red-haired man in the slick gray suit.
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