“Everclear?” the flight attendant said when they brought out the drink cart.
“No thanks,” Steve said, but Araho asked for a whole cup of the jet fuel, no ice. He slammed back a shot.
“So, Steve, how you liking your new school?”
“It isn’t a school. It’s just a manufacturing and software development firm for The Phone Company.”
“That’s what you said.”
“One kid made this app, I have no clue how it worked, but it could read your mind.”
“I’ve seen some like those,” Araho said.
“Really? Because I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Sure you have. Those simple toys that read your mind? You know, by asking you a series of questions?”
“But that’s what I’m saying. The one kid would think of a number, any number, no limit—they didn’t even have to be whole numbers—and the Tether would know exactly what it was, no questions. It just guessed.”
Araho gave Steve a warm but sideways smile. “That’s a Chinese curse, actually.”
“What.”
“May he live in interesting times.”
Steve frowned, not just confused, and not just angry. Araho had been a good man.
Maybe some part of him’s still listening, Steve thought. Maybe, whatever good was left in him still cared for what Steve had to say next.
“One of my son’s friends, I don’t really care for this kid, but he was developing a game called That Day. It let you play as Jaime Vedder.”
“Wow, cool,” Araho said, and Steve’s frown deepened.
“It’s not cool, it’s disgusting.” Steve had seen enough of the gameplay to know it was incredibly realistic. The missions followed the same path Vedder took through HMS, and the victims looked exactly like the real people, the real men, women, and children the town had lost.
Mr. Diehl.
Little Mickey Mackeroy.
Kelli Anderson’s daughter.
“Principal Warner, he didn’t even care,” Steve continued. “He just said the only weird thing is that the game updates to the past. To the past. What does that even mean?”
Grinning, nodding, as if he weren’t hearing Steve’s grievances at all, Araho said, “Let me ask you a question, if you don’t mind. Who are you voting for?”
“I don’t know,” Steve said, looking out the window at the big empty below him. He thought he’d known the world. The truth was, the closer you got to the ground, the less you saw the bigger picture, and the farther you flew above it, the more you lost the detail. Steve’s idea of the world, his perception of it, was skewed because he could only conceive of so much.
The question he struggled with the most, though, was this: if there was so much evil in the world, and it was so pervasive, was there an equal or greater opposite force?
“Well, Fred Hill’s our guy,” Araho said. “Pro-family. Pro-education.”
Pro-PCo, Steve thought.
“Fred knows what this country has to give up in order to create real change. Fred’s only one point below your daughter in the popularity polls, did you know that? He’s definitely got the union’s support. We’re all connected.”
“Please don’t talk about my daughter,” Steve said.
Araho leaned closer to Steve so that their shoulders touched, and that smell came wafting over again, mixed now with the stench of cigarette smoke and alcohol. “You sure you don’t want a cigarette?”
“I’m just tired,” Steve said, shutting his eyes.
“All right.” Araho sat back and cued up an in-flight movie on his phone. “I’ll let you sleep. You’ve got a big day ahead of you.”
CHAPTER 40
Steve had been to Mount Rushmore once before, with Janice, back when he was still smoking.
She had wanted to stay all day, to watch how the sun dialed across the rock and to write poems about the passage of time and light. She had wanted to travel to Chichen Itza, too, spend one equinox at the ruins and watch the plumed serpent descend the stairs of El Castillo.
He still remembered her poem.
Part of it, anyway.
All
life
is cast
in light
and shadow.
The sun lets us see
only what it wants us to.
Like a good president.
To Steve, the presidents looked like giant coins, stamped and minted into the rock.
Washington’s all-seeing eyes, at certain times of the day, stared hooded in shade. No matter where Steve walked in the giant granite amphitheater, no matter where he was in the visitor’s center, at the gift shop or anywhere else, Washington had watched his every step.
Jefferson and Roosevelt gazed off to the east, remembering the sunrise, while Lincoln pondered the evening theater of the sun.
Sixty feet tall, the four heads of state lorded over the slope of rubble below them, as if they had personally laid waste to the rock.
They were only perfect, they were only memorable, because they were unfinished and at the mercy of the rock. Men may have sculpted them, but it was the weakness of the rock that had arranged the heads.
* * *
“Why,” Steve said, huffing and puffing behind Casey Araho, “are we doing this?”
Araho stopped at the foot of a giant rock. The trail led up to the steep granite cliffs of the Black Hills, winding through a scatter of boulders and sweetly scented ponderosa pines. Neither Steve nor Araho were dressed for the hike. Araho was in a suit, for chrissakes.
“Did you know,” Araho said, not even out of breath, “that the Native Americans hate what’s been done to this place? What we’ve turned it into? We might as well have carved Andrew Jackson out there on the rock.”
“That might be . . . taking it a little far,” Steve said.
“It’s sacred to them, and we defaced it.” Araho kicked with his polished shoe at some nails rusting in the dirt, remnants left long ago by the men who had worked on the cliff face. Wires and lengths of air compression pipes littered the woods, all signs and curses of American conquest.
“I don’t care,” Steve said. “Where the hell is . . . my son? That’s all I care about.”
After a few more deep breaths, Araho said, “Come on,” and kept climbing.
Steve glanced back over the boulders, between the trees. He loved to hike. He had been out-and-back all over Cracked Rock, the nature trails, the quarry. He had seen a lot of Yellowstone, as well. Tower-Roosevelt. Old Faithful. All beautiful.
But he hadn’t been on a hike since the start of summer vacation, and the Black Hills were treacherous. Steep. Loose rock. Soon to be sheer cliff faces. Steve couldn’t stop panting. His legs and lungs, which had burned at first, felt shaky.
He didn’t know why he was following Araho. If he needed to run, he couldn’t now. Not enough breath. Not enough energy. Maybe that was by design.
Every now and again, though, Steve would catch the sound of something on the wind. He would hear cheering, an echoing speech. “So the union’s backing . . . Fred Hill,” he said. “Pro-PCo you said?”
“Yes. He’s in the Top Twelve.”
“Didn’t you see what they did at USconn? Driving those poor people . . . off a roof?”
“That was USconn, not PCo,” Araho said. “The manufacturer, not The Provider.”
“What the hell is this Provider I keep hearing about? Like it’s some . . . golden idol.”
“Well, Steve, that’s why we have service,” Araho said, and at first Steve thought he meant something else, that the reason they had cell reception was because of their provider. “That’s why we go to church, to learn about our connection.”
“To what?”
Araho turned, confused yet amused. “Are we even having the same conversation?”
Steve didn’t know anymore.
They came to a high-security fence plastered with warning signs. Do not enter. Exorbitant fines. Steve stood with Araho at the gate while a
park ranger walked over to let them through.
“Hello, Steve,” Graham said, tipping his park ranger hat.
Steve took a step back. “What the hell’s he doing here?”
Araho and Graham shared a look.
“I’m the gatekeeper,” Graham said, smiling at Steve.
Always the same smile with this guy. It was like he wasn’t a real person. He was a cardboard prop, flat, following you everywhere with his eyes.
From the breast pocket of his uniform, Graham pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He handed one to Araho and one to Steve, then lit Araho’s, who puffed and puffed. Graham held the burning lighter out to Steve.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You used to.”
“Not anymore. Never again.”
“Oh, but you must,” Graham said. “Otherwise you don’t get through. Consider it like an agreement of good faith. We even bought your brand,” he said, waggling a pack of American Spirit, which Steve had smoked for years.
“I guess I stay here then,” Steve said. “No loss to me.”
Graham’s lighter flame guttered but persevered. “Steve, did Casey tell you why we brought you to this place? This sacred place?”
Steve shrugged. “Something about a speech. Something about a puppet for president.”
“No,” Graham said. “Something about your son.”
Steve thought about blowing out Graham’s flame, if only to put a flicker in his smile.
The Phone Company had gone to such great lengths. They obviously wanted to show Steve something. He didn’t know what, but he figured it would happen anyway, even if he wasn’t there. At least if he was there, he could do something about it.
“If that’s true,” he said, “if JJ and I are here to meet Fred Hill, why am I on top of this mountain? Why not down at that speech?”
Araho looked confused. Graham looked amused.
“Smoke the cigarette, Steve.”
“You know what,” Steve said, lifting the American Spirit to his lips, then to the flame. “Fine.” Steve puffed.
And then he coughed and coughed.
* * *
They left Graham behind and entered through the high-security fence, climbing up a set of near-vertical steps to the granite fortress of the Black Hills.
Steve felt dizzy from the cigarette.
He felt sick.
“We’re right behind the heads now,” Araho said, as they passed into the cold shadow of a canyon.
He led Steve past the Hall of Records, carved right into the rock; its dark bore was aimed at the back of Lincoln’s head. They climbed up one last set of metal stairs, and the sound of the crowd and the speech grew louder.
“These hills,” Araho said. Step by step, the sun undressed him of the shadows. “The Indians believed they were the center of the world. And then we blasted into them.”
Steve squinted as he joined Araho behind the white dome of George Washington’s head. Someone stood atop the head, peering out over the valley and the visitor center five hundred feet below. Steve thought it was Graham at first, a smaller version of him anyway. Same suit. Similar earpiece. Magically reappearing as he had in the parade.
“JJ!” Steve said. He nearly fell when he tried to run forward. His legs felt boneless, his heels blistered.
The valley expanded green and rocky below him, and the granite cliff dropped six stories to his left over the prominent brow and nose of Thomas Jefferson.
Steve moved slower toward the granite rise of Washington’s skull, knees trembling.
“Can you hear it?” JJ said, his suit flapping like a flag in the wind. He was staring down at the amphitheater, which looked like the cutaway of a giant seashell. People, like little ants, filled the shell, and Frederick Hill’s voice boomed at them from the stage.
“JJ,” Steve said, “JJ, please. Get down from there.”
“How many men?” he said.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
“How many?”
“JJ, I don’t know what you mean. Please.”
“This monument, our whole country, this entire world is built on sacrifice,” JJ said.
“No.” Shaking, inching forward, Steve fixed his eyes on JJ’s back, on the folds of his suit. His son, his boy, looked dwarfed compared to the empty space all around him. Small, but not insignificant, not to Steve. “It’s built on hard work, too, JJ. People can build lives. They can rebuild them.”
“The soldiers. The slaves. Those kids at school.”
“JJ, please.” Another shaky step forward.
“The men who worked on these faces. Some of them died, Dad. Something with their lungs. Because of all that dust. This place killed them.”
Steve stopped a few feet from JJ, on the crest of Washington’s head, balancing in the wind. The drop yawned all around him now, and he felt the nearly imperceptible sucking of the abyss. If he fell, if he took a single wrong step, he would go spilling down the rough escarpment to the unforgiving scree.
Normally, cresting Washington’s head would have been easy, but the hike had left Steve feeble. He hated himself, hated that he was this weak.
“JJ, I don’t know what’s happened, or what they’ve told you to do, but they’re crazy, JJ. Don’t let them push you, please.”
JJ turned, crying. “That’s the only way to deliver them, Dad. It’s the only way. She needs followers, she needs blood. The only way to save them is if someone dies.” Suit and tie flapping, JJ took another step toward the void.
“No!”
Steve could see down Washington’s nose now. He held out his arm, as if to steady JJ, but also to steady himself.
“JJ, please! Let’s get down!”
“They’re crying,” JJ said, and Steve heard it too, nearly a mile below. The crowd wasn’t cheering, it was sobbing, wailing, crying at the sky.
“You don’t have to do this,” Steve said, grabbing JJ’s shoulder. “You won’t.”
“It’s too late.”
Then JJ turned and bulled past Steve, and for the briefest second as he scrambled and fell, Steve thought, He pushed me, he pushed! but JJ hadn’t. He’d merely shouldered past.
Steve sprawled out on the rock and clung to it, falling down one side of the skull far enough that it was like lying on a steep hill. If he moved, if he disrupted his balance at all, he would slide off. Steve scrambled back up the hill to Washington’s crown, panting, wheezing as he sat there like a crab, arms behind him, legs bent in front.
JJ joined Araho by the stairs, leaving Steve on Washington’s head all by himself, terrified but relieved JJ hadn’t jumped, but perhaps more relieved that he himself had avoided the fall.
CHAPTER 41
Steve’s thigh vibrated. Steering with one hand, he dug his phone out of his pocket. It was Bill.
He answered, ready to chew Bill out. To blame him for everything, even though none of it was Bill’s fault, not really. But Bill was one of them now, so it might as well have been.
“I can’t find JJ,” Bill said, no hello. He didn’t even give Steve a chance to bitch him out. “He’s not at school, he’s not at church, and I don’t know where the hell he’s at. Someone said they saw him getting into a PCo van, but I’ve checked all around town, Steve, I think they took him.”
If he hadn’t been driving such winding, hilly roads, Steve might have closed his eyes. “I know,” he said. “They had him out at Rushmore.”
“As in Mount Rushmore?” Bill said. “What the hell, Steve? Is everything all right?”
“No.”
Steve’s eyes started to sting, and he pursed his lips. Just thinking about it pissed him off as much as it scared him. “He’s one of them now. JJ’s connected.”
It was all Steve could say without Bill hearing the thickening in his voice.
The whole story was that JJ had gone with Araho; he had abandoned his father there in the Black Hills to the sobbing and applause below.
Steve had tried to catch up with them, but they w
ere like mountain goats, moving impossibly down the rocky hills. Steve’s legs, his entire body, felt like smeared jelly. No more adrenaline, just shaky exhaustion and fear.
A state trooper had escorted Steve back to the airport. He had no clue where JJ was now.
“Well,” Bill said, “at least Sarah’s all right. One of her friends drove her home after school.”
“Which friend?”
“I don’t know, but I’m parked outside your house right now, keeping tabs on her. I built her a fire.”
“So she’s okay?” Steve said. He no longer cared whether Bill heard his sudden head cold.
“Yeah, she’s in there studying. I found Barksdale, too.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“You almost home?”
“Yeah,” Steve said, looking at the trees rushing past, trying to locate himself. “Half an hour out.”
“All right, well, I’ll be waiting for you. And, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
This time, Steve did close his eyes, just for a second, pushing the hot tears out onto his cheeks.
“I should’ve kept a better eye on your boy. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Bill. I mean it.”
“Okay, buddy.”
“Take care.”
They hung up, and Steve wept for a solid minute out of fear. Out of sadness and fatigue. But mostly out of relief. He’d missed Bill. Even if their relationship had been reduced to a phone call, he’d missed him.
As the drive wore on and Steve settled down, he found his eyelids growing heavy: sleep deprivation, overexertion, and long car rides tended to get to him anyway. He started up a hill. By the time he snapped awake, he was headed down the other side.
“Ugh,” he said, sitting forward, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
Steve’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the ringtone:
Steve checked the caller ID.
The Phone Company Page 39