The Crossing

by Jason Mott

  But she couldn’t fill the spaces no matter how much she tried. And she did try.

  In the beginning, back when the hard decision she’d had to make still stung the inside of her heart, she invited friends over for long, free-spirited stays. It was an easy way to fill the space because everyone was scared back then and fear is always lessened by the sounds of laughter. So she and her friends stayed together for weeks, spending their days at work and coming home and cooking dinner and laughing and living the way they did back in college. Some of them she hadn’t seen since graduation even though they all lived in the same town, but now that the world was falling apart they had reconnected and, before long, they were all having a wonderful time and were able to ignore the television, the newspapers, the internet, the chatter about the war and The Disease and Embers and the time when only children would be left and the time after that when not even children would be left.

  She and her friends were able to push all of it away for a glorious, intransient time.

  But one by one, they all found reasons to leave. For most of them it was family. For others it was work—even though she tried to convince them that there would soon be no point in going back to the way things were. Before long, she was alone in the empty house.

  After a week of it the space was getting the better of her again. She had trouble sleeping. She took to making love with men from her past who came over and then left. None of them thought much of it. They weren’t the only ones in the world making love to beat back the fear. Whether they stayed for days or left before the night was through did not matter. All that mattered was that for a short time she was able to breathe again. She was able to fill her lungs with air and drift away and that was good enough for her.

  But the lovemaking didn’t last either and she found herself wandering the empty house, afraid and regretful and sometimes crying. Trying to convince herself that she had done the right thing.

  Some days she was able to believe the voice inside her head. And other days she covered their photographs or simply turned them down so that her parents couldn’t look on her. But the bigger problem was the house itself. Her parents had built it together and there was no way to forget that. The only option would be to move away and she didn’t have the means. Fact of the matter was that the fear of The Disease had become unbearable and when she looked at her parents she no longer saw the man and woman who had loved her and cared for her through the entirety of her life, but instead only saw potential carriers of a plague that could one day infect her and bring her thin life to a sudden end. It took all the money she had to get them taken away and set up in the home that would keep them there without many questions asked.

  But living here alone like this was getting unbearable.

  The empty hallways, the wall in the kitchen where they had, every year on her birthday, marked her growth like the rings of some tree. All of it was unavoidable and it told her, again and again, day after day, “You’ve betrayed your parents.”

  But what else could she do? It was a proven fact that her parents’ generation were the primary carriers of The Disease. She couldn’t take the chance of being around them until people understood better how The Disease worked and how to prevent it from progressing further and coming for her one day. Thankfully, she hadn’t been the only one to feel that way. There were places that would take people of a certain age in, just as a means of quarantining them, whether they volunteered for it or not. In the same way that you could check a person into a psychiatric ward, so too could you check candidates of The Disease into rest homes where they were monitored until they fell asleep and did not wake or until someone found a cure for all of this.

  The former was more likely than the latter.

  And when the people came to pick her parents up—without their knowledge or consent—Angela’s parents opened the door and saw the policemen wearing their gas masks and they knew what their daughter had done. Their reaction wasn’t one of anger or surprise or fear, but simply one of love. Her mother turned to her and said, as gently as the time she had broken her mother’s favorite vase—the one that had been in the family for generations and yet, next to her daughter, meant nothing—“It’s okay, Angela. It’s all okay.”

  Some nights, now that she was alone, she still heard those words, and they twisted her up into knots and she wept and called her mother’s name but there was only the empty house and the sound of her own voice echoing back to her.

  TWELVE

  “Why’d you do that?” Gannon asked. The sun had only just risen and the world was still gold and amber and cold and blustery. Everything seemed drowsy and forlorn to Tommy.

  “I don’t know,” my brother replied.

  “You’ve got to know that it’s not good for her to go out there on her own like this. I’m trying to help her.”

  “This isn’t about trying to help her,” Tommy said. He rubbed his knuckles. They were sore deep down inside. He wondered if something might be broken. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Gannon rubbed his jaw. “I’m fine,” he replied. “You really do have a career as a fighter if you ever wanted. You swing well above your weight.”

  In spite of himself, Tommy grinned. And then the grin faded away. “I don’t remember my dad,” Tommy said.

  “Well, it happened when you were pretty young.”

  “That’s not why,” Tommy said. He continued rubbing his knuckles. He folded his arms over his chest, suddenly cold. “I have trouble remembering things.”

  “I know,” Gannon replied. “Retrograde something-or-other is what they called it the day I first got word about you and your sister from the social worker. Something related to amnesia.” He offered a stiff laugh. “I feel like you should have been treated differently in school. Like you should have been in special classes or something.”

  Tommy flinched.

  “Not those kind of special classes,” Gannon replied. “I’m not saying you’re stupid or anything. You seem just fine at figuring stuff out. I mean if a person can’t remember people or things after a certain point, I can’t imagine how that can pass for normal. Can’t understand how you’d let that person go on mingling with everyone else like it was just the way things were.” Gannon pulled up more tufts of grass and tossed them. “You’re something special,” he said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been called special before,” Tommy said. He looked over at the man. Gannon seemed smaller than he had only a moment ago. Tommy could see the place on Gannon’s jaw where his fist had landed and he felt a sudden twinge of remorse. He took a deep breath. “I don’t think that what I have is the way everyone says it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s not that I just forget everything. I’m not an animal.” Tommy’s jaw tightened. He took a deep breath to loosen it up again. “I mean that I can decide what I want to forget.”

  Gannon’s head turned quizzically.

  “It’s like throwing rocks into a lake.” He reached into the grass and found a small pebble. “Let’s say that this is everything that happened tonight. Even this conversation we’re having right now.” He rolled the pebble around in his hand. “I can feel the weight of it, feel the hardness. The little prickly points that if I squeeze my hand real tight will turn around and stick into my skin.” He held the rock between two fingers like a grape. “But if I want to,” he said, “I can toss it so far away I’ll never find it again. Sometimes it’ll leave imprints in my hand. Sometimes I’ll feel like I know it’s been there, but I’ll never really remember it. Not really. I won’t remember the shape or color of it. I won’t even remember the way it stuck into my hand when I squeezed on it too tightly.” He made a fist around the rock and squeezed his hand. “I can just let it go if I want to.” He took the rock and tossed it away. It sailed through the air and disappeared into the glare of the morning sun.

  “Always been like th
at?” Gannon asked.

  “Far back as I can remember,” Tommy said. He smiled because he had meant it as a joke. But it didn’t seem all that funny.

  Gannon’s body seemed to tighten. He exhaled. “I wish you could have seen Pop back before...well, before,” he said. “He was the sheriff. I told that sister of yours all about it once. Long time ago. But I know that she remembers everything so I’m sure she’s still carrying it around with her. I told her different things about him. Once I told her Pop was a hard son-of-a-bitch. Not mean, exactly, but hard. Like sleeping on the floor every day of your life and then, once you got older, you suddenly discover the softness of a bed.” He cleared his throat. “And maybe he was. But he was other things too. He was nice. He laughed. But it wasn’t until he couldn’t do any of it that I realized. I wasn’t glad about it, you understand. I was just...well, I just felt differently about him after he was gone. And I’m never really sure how I should feel about the fact that I felt differently.”

  “Ashamed or guilty?” Tommy asked.

  “I’m never really sure there’s a difference between the two,” Gannon replied.

  Finally he was done sawing at the grass. He stood and brushed off his pants and rubbed his jaw one final time. “Come on,” he said. “Just because you’re not going to tell me where she might go along the way doesn’t mean this train ride is over. I’m still responsible for the both of you. You’re still mine. So we’re going to go all the way. We’re going to finish all this out.”

  He started walking forward toward the car. Around him the fairground was awakening with the dawn. The sunlight glimmered over the abandoned Ferris wheel. Here and there rabbits made their way out from homes built into the antiquated and rusty machinery. The wind came up out of the south and warmed the air a little and rustled the banners promising, in bold font, A Show Like You’ve Never Seen Before!

  After a few steps, Gannon stopped and looked back at Tommy. “For the record,” he said, “next time you decide you want to hit me, it won’t go unanswered. And don’t you forget I said that.” He started walking again and his head dropped a little, as if he was ashamed of the words, as if they weren’t his own but someone else’s. His father’s, perhaps.

  “Okay,” Tommy said.

  For the first time since he’d known the man he felt sorry for Gannon. He wondered who Gannon would be if he was able to forget his life, forget whatever he heard inside his head when he spoke in that voice that didn’t seem to be his own, that voice that was full of someone else’s timbre and anger. If he could forget it all, what kind of man would he be?

  Tommy stood and brushed off his jeans. He took one final, long look around the fairgrounds and tried to remember some of the things his father had written about the place. He could almost see the words and letters inside his head, could almost hear my voice as I read them to him, over and over again, through the years of foster homes and foster parents and siblings and social workers and new schools and old bullies and everything else.

  Almost.

  But in the end, no one was there. The fact that our father had even written about this place at all was something that, just now, he wondered about. Why had he written about it? What exactly had he said? It was all a soft gray shadow in Tommy’s mind, like so many other things.

  What he needed was for me to come back to him, to tell him why this place was important and holy and sacred, why this specific spot on earth had meant something to our parents.

  If I had been there and told him why, he would have believed me. Because, after all, I remembered everything. I filled in the craggy patchwork of his mind, his world. And now that I wasn’t there, he could feel the tendrils of doubt creeping into his mind.

  Maybe this place isn’t so important, after all, he thought. Maybe nothing significant ever actually happened here.

  The truth was he knew that this place, that everything in his life, could only ever have meaning if he decided it did, if he hung on to the memory. Action without meaning is simply a thing that happened. It can never become sacred. It can never drive behavior. It can never make a person decide to do something to someone else or to themselves.

  The letting go of things was Tommy’s greatest strength and he feared it so much that a chill ran down his spine and made his body tremble.

  He could let me go too if he wanted. He knew that now.

  * * *

  When they were back at the car, before getting in and starting out, Gannon went to the trunk and opened it. After a few moments of digging around he came up with a small metal lockbox. He fumbled with his ring of keys and, eventually, opened the box. He removed a fist-sized metal object and stuck it into his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Tommy asked.

  “She shouldn’t have kept my gun,” Gannon said. “The two of you had to know I’d have a backup. Didn’t you?”

  A chill ran down Tommy’s spine. His face went flush and his fists tightened.

  “I’d never hurt her,” Gannon said, anticipating the boy’s rage. “But when we catch up to her again, it can’t go down the same way. It just can’t, Tommy.”

  Then he closed the trunk and got in the car and started it. For a moment the engine idled and Tommy stood looking at the car, deciding what he could do. His mind ran from idea to idea to idea, but in the end he only got in and shut the door and wished that he was the type of person who could think their way out of such things.

  * * *

  They stopped off for food at the end of the day. They were somewhere in southern Georgia. Not far left to go. They could have kept driving straight through, but there was still a whole day and a half before the launch and there was no sense in racing ahead. The only time they actually had to be there was when Virginia would be there: at the time of the launch.

  That’s what Gannon had said, at least.

  Tommy caught sight of the boys as soon as they pulled off the road and into the restaurant’s parking lot. They were getting out of a truck, all wearing their uniforms. Five of them. They were a mixed bag. Not a single one of them any older or larger than he was. Two blond-haired boys whose perfect features made them seem to reek of wealth. A black boy with a wide nose. A Hispanic boy with the darkest hair Tommy had ever seen, even though it was cut short. And last, one final boy Tommy couldn’t figure out. Whether he was black or white or something else, Tommy couldn’t say. He had a scar in the back of his head that he probably usually hid under a full head of hair, but now that he’d gotten his military buzz cut the old scarred skin shone in the daylight like a landing strip.

  They piled out of an old Jeep that was on its last legs, like so much of the rest of the world. But they were five vibrant young soldiers leaping out of that dying world, hungry and shaking with life.

  Tommy watched them with the fascination of stumbling across a dragon.

  “Tommy!” Gannon shouted. Maybe he had been calling for a while. Tommy couldn’t quite say.

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded at the boys. “Go talk to them if you want. Maybe it’ll do you some good.”

  Tommy didn’t even bother to argue. Fact of the matter was that he did want to go and talk to them. He knew it the second he saw them. They were like living and breathing mirrors. Seeing them was like seeing himself, split into five parts.

  He stepped out of the car, heading toward the restaurant and the five parts of himself. Gannon came behind soon, carrying his father in his arms, like always.

  The young soldiers were seated in a booth in the back, loud and boisterous. A pair of withered old men stood at the side of their table, laughing and shaking their hands. “It’s a great war,” one of the old men said. “You’re a lucky boy. I wish to God I was younger, able to do more than stand around and complain about my arthritis.” He laughed.

  Then the other man added, “You should have seen the soldier I used to be.” He reached into his back pocket an
d pulled out a large crackling wallet. He flipped it open and gazed at a photo. Tommy couldn’t see it, but he could imagine what it looked like: the man standing in uniform, the American flag boldly flying behind him, a stern expression on his face but tinged with the undercurrent of a proud smile.

  “I tell you,” the man said, “I was something back then. And talk about the women! You boys ain’t had women until you got into that uniform. They come falling out of the sky, each one prettier than the last.”

  More laughter.

  “We’re going to do something amazing,” one of the perfect blond boys said. “We’re going to go out there and change the world.”

  “That’s exactly what the world needs right now,” the first old man said. “Change. Things have been sliding too far for too long, and it’s good to know that, finally, things are going to get back on track. I just wish I could do more than sit around at home. I wish I could be there.” His hand suddenly became a fist and slammed against the table. The boy jolted a little.

  “Well, we’ll leave you boys to it,” the second old man said, folding his wallet back up but keeping the picture out in his hand. He looked at it for a moment. Then they both nodded and walked away.

  The new recruits, now that they were alone, looked at each other and laughed. Whether they were proud or mocking the old men was hard to say. Tommy walked over to the table.

  “Army?” Tommy said.

  “The uniforms with the army logo didn’t give us away, did they?” the Hispanic boy said. The table laughed.

  Tommy smiled, but only because it felt like the thing to do. “Are you on leave?”

  “Two for two,” the Hispanic boy said. His uniform said “Rodriguez.” More laugher from the table, but softer this time.

  “Come on,” said the boy Tommy couldn’t figure out. “You know that the sergeant said we’re always representing the unit. And we’re the best goddamn unit on the planet!”

  “Hoo-ahh!” shouted all the boys in unison, loud as trumpets.