by Billy Wright
Liz laughed. “Sure.”
On the morning of the yard sale, Liz and Cassie were outside on their lawn chairs in the shade of the carport. Cassie made a cooler full of lemonade, sweetened with prickly pear syrup, and sold it to an appreciative clientele for fifty cents a cup. Stewart couldn’t help but smile at her entrepreneurial spirit, a trait she certainly hadn’t inherited from him. He hated getting in front of people and trying to sell anything. Give him a job to do and he would happily go do it, as long as it didn’t involve persuasion, selling, anything like that. He liked metal, he liked earth, he liked concrete things he could make with his hands. Such things were all he was good for.
He wasn’t ready to give it to Hunter yet, but he put the finishing touches on the hunting knife. About eight inches long, the Damascus blade turned out beautifully. It was razor-sharp, flexible, and the microscopic layers meant that it both took and held an edge, the kind you could shave with, which was why Damascus steel had been in such high demand in medieval times. He fashioned the handle from desert ironwood, which also had a pronounced, gnarled grain, but was very dense and hard to cut and shape, harder even than maple and walnut. That was also precisely why it made such a great knife grip.
The sheath he made from a few scraps of leather left over from other projects. He was not a skilled leatherworker, so it was very Plain-Jane, but he sewed it with real sinew, which gave it an archaic, Native American look.
Cassie’s dolls had been such a tremendous hit that he wondered if he could get two home runs in a row. It wouldn’t be Hunter’s birthday for a while, but he planned to give the knife to his son when they went on their camping trip.
The camping trip. He still couldn’t convince himself that it was a great idea. It just felt wrong to go on any sort of vacation when he didn’t have a job. It made him feel like a deadbeat, a failure, somebody who ran from his problems.
But then he thought about the map. He had no silly illusions that it was authentic. It was just a toy, a fabrication... But toys were toys because they unlocked adventure and imagination.
When had he stopped playing with toys? When had he put away childish things? Had he ever, completely? He still dreamed grand stories of taking his children on trips and showing them things like the terracotta warriors of China, Machu Picchu in Peru, the lost city of Angkor in Cambodia, the Great Pyramids, all the wonders the world had to offer, and he could imagine himself in a leather jacket and fedora like Indiana Jones, or maybe he could be an explorer and save tribes of gorillas in Africa from poachers. When he got really fanciful, he could imagine himself in a suit of armor battling ogres and dark elves on some strange battlefield. All these things he could imagine. He could show Hunter and Cassie these amazing things, because he was their dad, and they made him feel like he could do anything. He was not just a “bad kid” from a skid-mark town in the middle of nowhere. To them, he was no such thing.
All this rumination kept him in the back yard, staring out into the desert, long after he had finished the knife.
For some reason, the customers and neighbors wandering through their yard sale annoyed him. It was like they were vultures picking through a carcass. Gramm wasn’t even his grandmother, but he’d loved the old bird.
At dusk, Cassie came and took him by the hand. “Daddy, come and look at everything that’s gone!”
He smiled and let her lead him out front, where he found her to be correct. Much of Gramm’s furniture was gone now, except for that awful, floral-print sofa. In the daylight, it gave his eyes a cramp. He couldn’t remember everything that was missing, only that there was much less stuff there now than there had been this morning.
“Guess how much money we got!” Cassie said.
“How much, sweetie?”
“Two thousand dollars!”
His eyes must have bulged.
Liz chuckled and said, “Kiddo is a little overzealous and added a zero.”
He laughed. “So, two hundred then?”
“A little over, but yeah. I can’t complain.”
He found himself growing tense, teeth clenching. “It’s not enough.” All that work! All that gas! He spun and walked back to the house. His hands were shaking.
Liz called after him. “Stewart?”
He didn’t answer, just kept walking. He wanted to walk out into the desert and never come back.
Liz was following him now. “Stewart! Where are you going?”
He didn’t know.
“What’s gotten into you?”
He didn’t know that either. It was as if a ton of bricks had just fallen on his head, each of them carved with things like:
You’re a loser.
You’re no adventurer.
You can’t go on some silly camping trip.
You can’t afford it.
You don’t have the money.
You have to find a job.
Everything is a waste of time.
You don’t deserve a woman like her.
You don’t deserve such great kids.
You’ll never amount to anything.
You’ll never take them on any adventures.
They will grow up hating you.
An endless litany, raining upon him.
“Stewart!” Liz seized his arm and tried to stop him, but his strength was easily twice hers. He pulled his arm away. Her gasp of fear began its shift to anger.
Let her anger come. He deserved it.
“What the burp is going on?” she said.
He stopped a few paces away from her, near the rocks where he’d seen the huge ogre or whatever his diseased mind had confabulated for him. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you so angry? After all your hard work this week, I thought you’d be happy we got rid of most of it.”
He didn’t know why he was angry. It was as if every negative thought he’d ever had had been loaded into a machine gun and fired at him in an unending barrage.
“I know it’s not your thing, but I need you talk to me,” she said.
He pulled the map out of his back pocket. He didn’t remember putting it there. Unfolding it, he stared at the lines traced into geographical shapes both familiar and unfamiliar. Here there be monsters.
“This is why I’m angry,” he said.
He tried to tear it in half, but it was somehow tougher than boot leather.
“Stewart!”
“Sometimes I just want it to die!”
“Want what to die?”
“The magic.”
She sat on a boulder beside him and took his hand. “Why?”
“Because life would be easier. Clinging to hope is too damn hard.”
“Oh, baby,” she whispered.
“Here I am, still without a job. How long before the kids are ashamed of me? How long before they start thinking I’m a good-for-nothing dad? I never had a dad. I never had any kind of male role model, so how am I supposed to know how to do it?”
She stood and tried to look up into his eyes, but he couldn’t meet her gaze. “Stewart, you are a way better dad than mine ever was. And I love my dad. But a strong man he was not. He still lets Mom and everybody else walk all over him. He’s a good, sweet soul, but do you think he’s happy? I remember one time, Mom humiliated me in a department store, I don’t even remember what it was about, except that she made me feel about two inches tall, and he just smiled and said, ‘Yes, dear.’ He didn’t stand up for me. I was too shocked to be furious with him. Then Mom sneered at him and humiliated him, too, right in front of several people. But he just wandered off and we lost track of him. I looked for him for an hour, found him sitting alone in a changing room. He’d been crying. He always knew what was right, but what he didn’t have was the strength to stand up for it. When I was a kid, there was still some life in him. But somewhere along the line, it’s like he gave up, and part of him just withered and died.”
Giving up was easy. It was what Stewart wanted to do. He wanted to give up and let that hopeful, magical piece
of him wither and die, starved on the vine. His eyes misted over at that. “Do you ever think...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish it.
After a long moment, she said, “Spit it out.”
“Do you ever think you made the wrong choice?” He met her gaze then. “You could’ve had anybody you wanted.”
She held his gaze. “But I picked you.”
And here she was, this beautiful woman, who strangely liked hanging out with him. The question was, why?
“Let me explain it to you this way,” she said. “Baby, you are a mountain. I had the quarterback, power forward, and half the marching band mooning over me. I was a vain little princess back then, so the attention was fun sometimes, I’m not gonna lie. The quarterback, Bill Myers—”
“Runs the car dealership. And the all-state power forward—”
“Has five kids by four different women and doesn’t pay child support on any of them.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I work in a day care. I’m losing my point...” Her eyes cast about, pointed internally, until they found it again. “Right. You’re a mountain, Stewart. All those other guys, the best of them are little hills, and most of them are speed bumps. I’m not sure my metaphor is working here. It takes a lot of time and effort to climb a mountain, but it’s worth it. I climbed a couple of fourteeners in Colorado on summer vacations. It’s tremendous work, kinda dangerous if you’re not careful. You got sheer cliff faces, hard-scrabble trenches, boulder fields, thousand-foot drop-offs, but boy, when you hit the summit,” she stroked his cheek, “the view is amazing. Absolutely nothing like it on this planet.”
“So that’s a really long way of saying you like a challenge.”
She laughed, the full, heartfelt laugh that helped him overcome his uncertainties every single time.
He said, “You’re the only one ever wanted to climb this particular mountain.”
She shrugged. “And it’s not just that climbing you is a pain in the baby donkey—”
“Baby donkey?”
“What’s another word for donkey?”
“Oh.”
“Let me finish my train of thought.”
“The tracks are still under construction.” He snickered.
She punched him. “Here I was being all sentimental and earnest and you’re cracking jokes.”
“I like your sentimentality and earnestness.” He hugged her close.
When they released each other, she sighed. “What I was going to say was that watching you deal with people like my mother, like your boss, is that you are like a mountain, able to withstand whatever storm came your direction, like the weather patterns for half of North America would just break and go around. Nothing seemed to be able to alter your course. Nothing fazes you. Except yourself. Maybe I should have said you’re like rocks on a beach, standing up to the waves and everything. My metaphor keeps breaking down.”
“I like the mountain one better.” He took a deep breath and looked around, surveying the desert colors of falling night. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where all that anger came from. It’s almost like it didn’t come from me, like someone was whispering in my ear.”
“The devil on your shoulder.”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe there are angels, too.”
“If there are, their voices aren’t as loud. Besides, there’s only one angel I need.” He looked into her eyes again.
A goofy grin spread across her face. “See? Just when I think I need to give you a good whacking, you say something like that and make me all gooey.”
“You are my warm, caramel angel.”
She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks flushed red. He hugged her close and kissed her.
He said, “We should go back and head for bed.”
“The kids are still awake.”
He laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
She waggled her eyebrows at him. “You sure you don’t want to hang out, out here in the dark a little while, and make out?”
“What I was going to say was we need our rest, because tomorrow we’re getting up early to pack for an adventure.” He took the map out and looked at it again.
“Really?” Her eyes sparkled.
He put the map away. “Then again, I like the way you think.”
Part II
Chapter Ten
The jubilation when Stewart and Liz told the kids the plan erased any remaining misgivings.
Hooting, jumping, cabbage-patching and floss-dancing, all made the adults laugh until their faces reddened.
Liz sent them back to their room to pack for a couple of nights’ worth of camping.
“I’m taking my dolls!”
“I’m taking my comics!”
“You can’t take your comics! They’ll get ruined.”
“Then you can’t take your dolls, doofus!”
“Enough!” Liz called. “Dolls and comics are okay. Dinosaurs, mastodons, and hippopotamuses are not.”
“Whaaat?” came the chorus from the back room.
Liz winked at Stewart and he chuckled.
Cassie came out into the living room, looking at her mother with one eye narrowed. “Mom. What are you talking about?”
“Dinosaurs, mastodons, and hippopotamuses will not fit in the truck. Therefore, they are not allowed.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and marched back to the bedroom. “I don’t have any of those things!”
Inside the house, what followed was a frenzy of “Can I take this?” and “Stop touching my stuff!”
From the back-yard shed, Stewart started dragging out the dusty accoutrements of their last camping trip. Tent, backpacks, water bottles, sleeping bags, all the little tools like flashlight, batteries, hatchet, matches, and mess kits, but also things like toilet paper, sunscreen, and mosquito repellent. He spread everything out on the ground to make sure no tarantulas or other creepy-crawlies had taken up residence in the family’s camping gear. It would not go well to discover any intruders when it was time to bed down at a campsite.
Even as he did all this, his heart felt buoyed, as if the dark, angry thoughts that had consumed him earlier in the evening were but a distant memory. Before bedtime, he had everything packed back up and loaded in the truck so they could leave bright and early in the morning.
He and Liz sat at the kitchen table, drinking some chamomile tea, looking at the map, comparing it to a state road map, plotting out their route and the possible campsites along the way. Meanwhile, they could hear the kids tossing, turning, and whispering back in the bedroom.
“You think they’re excited?” Liz said.
Stewart chuckled and pointed at a spot on the shopkeeper’s map. “Check out the Colorado River. It looks like, as it gets close to the Utah border, the river has a different course. Up until this point, the shopkeeper’s map looks fairly accurate—”
“Did you hear that?” Liz cocked her head toward the open kitchen window.
Stewart listened, too. After all the strange stuff he’d seen lately, the hairs on the nape of his neck rose instantly.
Liz said, “It sounded like whispering, but outside.”
Then outside, a tremendous metallic crash raised a yelp from Liz as she leaped to her feet.
“Something is in the garbage.” Stewart jumped up and ran outside into the dark.
After dinner tonight, he had placed the metal garbage can at the end of the driveway for tomorrow’s garbage pickup. They sometimes had the occasional raccoon or javelina try to get in the garbage, so he always made sure the lid was on tight.
What he found, however, was not the efforts of an enterprising raccoon or javelina. The garbage can looked like someone had fired a bowling ball into it at fifty miles per hour. It was completely smashed, lying on its side, the garbage bag burst open, scattering garbage in a twenty-foot fan.
“What the hell?” he said.
Had someone hit it with a car? He hadn’t heard any engine.
He c
ocked his ears into the silence of the night.
Was that whispering he heard in the bushes?
“Hey!” he called. “Come out of there where I can see you!”
The whispering stopped. It hadn’t sounded like adults or teenagers, too high-pitched.
He approached the noise, wishing he’d grabbed a flashlight on the way out of the house.
It sounded crazy, but Cassie’s stories of little people rose to mind—and the memory of the weird little man with a top hat he thought he’d seen in Gramm’s storage unit. Was he hallucinating? A hallucination couldn’t do that to a garbage can.
“I said come out of there!” he said.
Something burst out of the bushes like a roadrunner, not a real one but more like the cartoon. A burst of leaves, a dust cloud streaking away from him, and gone into the night.
He blinked and stared, a chill trickling down his spine. No animal could move that fast.
Then he jumped as something else burst from the bushes, streaking in a different direction to disappear just as quickly in the dark.
When he could get his feet to move again, he hurried toward the bushes to see if whatever they had been had left any evidence behind. The air near the bushes smelled of cinnamon and cloves, and the ground was newly scuffed by the passage of feet.
He turned back toward the house to retrieve a flashlight, when he spotted movement under his truck. Kneeling for a better look, he thought at first it was a porcupine because of the spines, but then he realized they were not quills or spines, but darts. It was...
His mind struggled to wrap itself around what he saw.
It looked like a naked mole-rat, but the size of a dachshund, and pin-cushioned by at least a dozen shiny, black darts about three inches long. Its wrinkled skin was the color of sour milk, and it lay on its back, four limbs in the air, staring at the undercarriage of his pickup, gasping, writhing like a creature in its death throes. The white whiskers of its face gave it the look of a kung-fu master from some old martial arts movie. It was maybe the most hideous thing he had ever seen. Its forelimbs ended in what looked like little hands, tipped with nasty-looking claws. No, not claws—blades of dark, lustrous metal fixed to its hands by little gloves.