by Alan Seeger
Except for Samuel, of course. He’d taken Samuel with him. And Mom. Damn you, she thought, damn you, you stupid, stupid —
Suddenly she flinched, a shudder running through her. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. She had the most amazing feeling that her father was standing beside her, the way he used to do decades ago when he was watching her draw. She could almost hear his voice saying Dakota, my girl, you are one amazing artist. It wasn’t just a memory; it was like a voice, whispering inside her head.
She shivered and got back in her car. Night was falling and it was time to head home, where leftover pizza, late night TV and a fat orange tabby cat were waiting for her.
CHAPTER 49
Nicolette Denver-LeClerc sat on an examination table in her OB/GYN’s office on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario, wearing a paper exam robe which did little to conceal her swelling belly and breasts. She was waiting for the doctor to come in. As usual, she’d been waiting a while. She didn’t mind, however; Dr. Leora Reuben was the best OB doctor in Ontario and very much in demand. Nikki counted the revolutions of the second hand on the wall clock.
There was a knock and Dr. Reuben came in. A tall, dark haired woman with an easy smile and calm demeanor, Nicolette always felt comforted by her presence.
“Hi, Nikki,” said Dr. Reuben, flipping through the paperwork in Nicolette’s chart. “Everything is looking really good. You’re sixteen weeks along, and your baby is about six inches long. You’ve gained just under five kilos, which is right at your target weight at this point. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been feeling pretty good,” Nikki replied. “I still have some morning sickness, but it’s getting a little better.”
“That’s very normal. Are you ready to see your ultrasound results?”
Nikki gave a huge smile. “Yes. Gerard wanted to be here, but he had to go to Vancouver for a business meeting.”
“Aww, that’s too bad, but you’ll be able to share the video with him,” said Dr. Reuben. She pulled a DVD out of Nikki’s file. “Here it is,” she smiled. “Are you ready to see your baby?”
Nicolette felt her breath catch as Dr. Reuben popped the DVD into the player and pressed Play. After a moment, a grainy, black-and-white image appeared on the screen, captioned DENVER-LECLERC, N / 13 MAY 2028. DD 14 OCT 2028
The fuzzy, swirly form moved around on the screen as the ultrasound probe technician moved the sensor around. As the video continued, statistics began to fill in at the side of the screen:
BPD: 2.9cm FL: 1.8cm
Dr. Reuben explained that BPD stood for Biparietal Diameter, the diameter between the two sides of the fetus’s head, while FL was the Femur Length, Both were used to determine whether the baby was growing normally. “Everything’s looking great,” she said, “and I believe that you said you wanted to know the sex of the baby, was that correct?” Nikki smiled and nodded. “Well, I believe that coming up here in just a few seconds, you’ll be able to see something that’s a little clue…” She smiled and pointed with her pen just as the grainy limbs that she’d previously identified as the legs spread apart for a moment and a tiny shape was visible for just a moment.
“Was that what I think it was?” Nikki gasped.
“Only if you think it was a penis,” laughed Dr. Reuben. “It appears that you’re going to have a little boy.”
Nikki stared at the screen. The curve of the skull, the tiny arms and legs, the arch of the spine, everything she saw suddenly felt overwhelming. She suddenly missed her father more than she had in the nineteen years he’d been gone.
“Steven,” she choked out, wiping a tear from her eye. “We’re going to name him Steven.”
CHAPTER 50
Michael stood near the center of one of the staging areas of the hangar and suddenly found himself unsure why he was there. He looked around, slightly confused, and glanced at his watch. It was a little after three in the afternoon. Time for a cup of syncafé. He headed to the break room, still a bit puzzled as to why he couldn’t recall the reason he had been standing in the empty staging area.
In Michael’s office, a folded yellow piece of legal paper suddenly disappeared from his desk; it had never actually been there in the first place, after all, since the person that placed it there had never been there either.
CHAPTER 51
Disorientation. Green swirling maelstrom. Confusion. Steven found himself on a ten ticket thrill ride, a metal bat bucking like a fucking bronco, as he held on for dear life. He had no recollection as to how he had come to be here, but he dearly hoped that it was a nightmare. He seemed to be traveling backward through a chaotic emerald whirlpool —
CHAPTER 52
“Oh, I am way the hell behind,” Steven Denver thought to himself, looking at the calendar. It was the second week of November, and the deadline that had been set by his publisher was just eighty-nine short days away. He’d made a number of false starts, but the insanely busy day he’d had yesterday had completely distracted him from the project at hand. He sat at his desk in the corner of the bedroom, staring out the window at the Bridger Mountains in the distance. He was not quite in full panic mode, however. Not yet. I can do this, he told himself, running his hand through his thick brown hair.
His own personal deadline for having the project at least at the rough draft stage had sneaked up and bitten him squarely on the ass, and now he was a full 24 hours behind schedule. Deadlines were undoubtedly the brainchild of some chemically challenged, emotionally stunted and extremely twisted soul, probably a frustrated English teacher from Poughkeepsie.
His personal goal as a writer was to come up with 50,000 words a month. That’s a full 1,666.666 words a day, Steven grinned to himself. I shouldn’t have issues with that last two-thirds of a word, but the first 1,666 might be a problem. He thought of the twin 666s in that figure and shrugged off the obvious joke as a little too easy.
He often fell somewhat short of his goal, humans becoming easily distracted as they… Hey, look, Spongebob’s on! Oh, wait. Must concentrate on writing.
As I was saying, he thought to himself, it may be true that I often don’t finish my projects, or come up with some pretty crappy writing, but I do have a publisher that seems to think I’m a decent writer, so I guess I better get to it. He generally had to give himself this mental pep talk three or four times a year. Hmmm… Plot. Characters. Motivation. Setting. What would Stephen King do? He tried to remember the tips the famed horror writer (some called him a talentless hack, but Steven strongly disagreed) had shared in On Writing. Start with the character? Start with the situation? He couldn’t recall. Might have to dig in the bookshelf and find it, but there was no time now; November’s a-burnin’.
Felicia Naumova was a spy for the former Soviet Union
No.
No one knew that the man in the bunny costume was actually
No.
As the dramatic theme music of his life began to play, Arthur Ball opened his eyes and groaned. His clock radio was blaring, and it was six a.m.
Maybe.
He sadly filed away the Stephen King analogy and thought to himself, “What would Hemingway do in this situation?” Well, first of all, Hemingway would likely have been rip-roaring drunk, even though it was only 8:32 am. I like a little nip now and then, but I’m not the type to get my wick lit this early in the morning. I’ll settle for a nice root beer over crushed ice. Coffee would be good, too, but I don’t feel like making it.
Okay, he thought, I’m in prime writing mode now. The kids were off to school, his wife Lynne was off to work, and there was nothing to distract him from… oh, damn it, who could be calling at this time of the morning?
“Hello? Yes, this is he… what? Oh, yes, certainly. I am sure that my wife mailed you a check for that several days ago. No, I’m sorry, I don’t have the check number. She’s not here right now, but I… what? No, I’m not going to do an electronic check over the phone, I told you, she’s already mailed it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank yo
u for calling.” Click.
He breathed a heavy sigh and shook his head. Now, where had he left off? Back to work, damn it. He cracked a mental whip at himself — I’m a Gemini, I can do that — and stared at the keyboard.
As the dramatic theme music of his life began to play, Arthur Ball opened his eyes and groaned. His clock radio was blaring, and it was six a.m. His pathetic little life had begun its next chapter, and
Staring at the words on the screen, he discovered that he was extremely unimpressed with what he had written. If I were writing on paper, he thought, I’d crumple it and take a shot at the trash can-slash-basketball goal. As it was, he held down the backspace key and relegated Arthur Ball to the bit bucket.
What the hell am I going to write about?
He picked up his guitar, which was badly in need of restringing, and played a few chords. F, A minor, C, E… it was an odd progression, something that almost sounded prog-rock, but he liked it, and it spelled “face,” which he liked as well. He’d have to come up with a lyric about Lynne’s “beautiful face” or something. That reminded him of his favorite old Beatles song, and he began to slowly strum the chords, transforming it into a ballad.
“I’ve just seen a face, I can’t forget the time or place where we just met,” he sang. He played through the changes a couple more times, wincing at the out-of-tuneness of the instrument. The UPS guy should come any day now with the new strings he’d ordered.
After playing the progression a few more times, he got a sense of timelessness, as if he were floating in some kind of interstellar void. No, not interstellar, that would just be outer space. Interdimensional. He grinned. Maybe there was a story there…
Oh, my god. What was that sound? It sounds like fricking Mecha-Godzilla is outside, he thought, but they lived nowhere near Tokyo, though their two oldest daughters desperately wanted to move there someday. It sounded as if someone was digging up a sewer line. I’ll go peek out the window and see what’s going on, he thought.
Okay, it wasn’t Mecha-Godzilla, but it was some kind of huge monster machine, and it was devouring the ground right down to the bedrock, and was headed right this way.
He ran outside, where a gigantic yellow Caterpillar excavator was ripping up the ground near his driveway as a half dozen men in safety helmets stood around. He approached the earth mover, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs to get the crew’s attention. “What the fuck are you doing? This is my house! Who told you to dig up my yard?”
It took a few minutes to communicate with the workers over the noise of the equipment, but they finally flagged the operator, who idled the machine and opened the door of the cab. “Somethin’ the matter, sir?”
“You’re goddam right there’s something the matter! Why are you tearing my yard all to hell?”
“Uh… we got an order here from the County Commissioner that says you’re spose’ta get a new drainage field. This is County Road 58, right? Williamson?”
“No, this is fifty-five, and this is the Denver residence. You guys are supposed to be about two miles east of here.”
The equipment operator looked sheepish and apologized profusely. Steven went back to the porch and stood watching as the Caterpillar was loaded back onto its trailer and driven away.
Steven wandered back into the house and put some coffee on to brew. He realized that he was very hungry, and scrounged up the ingredients for a pretty decent little sandwich. The ham Lynne had bought last payday was long gone, but he made an enormous turkey sandwich with cheese, Miracle Whip and crisp lettuce on wheat toast. He assembled it quickly and it was half gone before he arrived back at the computer. Wow, he realized, I was even hungrier than I realized. Maybe I’ll be able to write now.
He sat for a moment, thinking about the Stephen King question again. He went to his bookshelf and scanned the spines of the hundred or more books stored there. Ah, there it is. He flipped through his copy of On Writing until he found what he was looking for: The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question…
CHAPTER 53
Lynne Denver sat at her desk, trying without much luck to restrain the pent-up energy of her twenty-three wound-up third graders as the minute hand of the clock crept slowly toward the 12. Nearly three o’clock, and the children knew it. Finally the bell rang and the kids flooded out of the classroom, roaring toward the school bus loading area like water streaming through a raging rapids.
She leaned back and stretched, her back dully aching, and expressed thanks for the fact that it was Friday. She graded an assignment from earlier that day, did some paperwork on one of her students who had been out of class with the flu for a week, and began to gather her things to get ready to go.
A sort of chill went up her spine, the kind they say you feel when a goose walks over your grave. Lynne wasn’t the superstitious sort, but she thought to herself, What’s up with that? She hoped it wasn’t an indication that she was coming down with something.
Lynne walked down the hall to the classroom where her friend Nancy Leonard taught second grade. Nancy’s car had broken down the day before, so Lynne had given her a ride to work and now would take her home. “Hey, Nance,” she said as she walked into the classroom, “You about ready?”
Nancy smiled at Lynne and said, “Sure, let me finish grading these last two papers and we’re outta here.” She was a tall woman with short brown hair and a cheerful disposition. She skimmed through the answers on the last test paper, stacked them neatly and gathered her things. Putting on her coat, she said, “What are you making for dinner?”
Lynne’s brows knit together, thinking. “I’m not sure. It’s a week before payday and the cupboard is pretty much bare. If I had my druthers, I’d make Steve take us all to the Iron Horse, but that’s not gonna happen for a week or two.”
CHAPTER 54
As Steven’s mp3 player began to pump out Men At Work singing Who Can It Be Now?, the doorbell rang. For a moment he sat in amazement at this synchronicity, and then the bell rang again, breaking him out of his mental prison.
He opened the front door, but no one was there. He looked down to see that someone had left a basket on the doorstep, with a bundle of blankets wrapped up in it. Puzzled, he picked up the basket — it was surprisingly heavy — and carried it into the house. Oh, my god, he thought, someone has left us a baby in a basket. But when he unwrapped the blankets, there was no baby, only a twelve pound smoked ham.
He was puzzled, but grateful. He couldn’t make a sandwich out of an infant, after all. At least not legally, he grinned.
He was too busy to take the time to eat now, though. He still had 3300 words to write to catch up to his quota for the two days.
CHAPTER 55
Lynne and Nancy walked out to the parking lot, greeting other faculty members who were also on their way home. They got into Lynne’s Jeep Cherokee, pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on US 287. Nancy needed to stop and pick up a loaf of bread and a few other things, so Lynne pulled in to the Town Pump truck stop, which had a well-stocked convenience store where the prices weren’t much higher than the full service grocer in town.
CHAPTER 56
Melvin Settlemoir had been driving west on Interstate 90 since before daylight. He’d spent the night curled up in the sleeper cab of his semi-truck in the parking lot of a truck stop in Murdo, South Dakota. He’d fallen asleep, disappointed in his lack of success in locating female companionship, but he was hauling a load of roofing materials to a building supply in Spokane, Washington where he was scheduled to arrive tonight, and he was sure he’d have better luck there. Wang, dang, sweet poontang, he thought.
After a long day of driving, he’d hit something in the road near the exit for Buffalo Jump Road, just past Logan, Montana. It blew one of the trailer’s tires with a bang, and he could hear it shredding as he drove. Better find someplace to get it fixed before dark, he thought, and began watching for a likely oasis. He saw a billboard for the Town Pump Tr
uck Stop in Three Forks and decided to pull off on US 287 and see if they had repair services.
CHAPTER 57
Lynne sat in her Cherokee and waited patiently as Nancy ran in to the grocery and picked up what she needed. She thought of going in herself, but their checking account was perilously low and she and Steve had agreed to be more careful of avoiding overdraft charges.
CHAPTER 58
As Settlemoir pulled his truck off the Interstate, he saw the sign for the Town Pump a few hundred yards away. It didn’t look big enough to have the setup to change a semi tire, but you never knew. Wouldn’t hurt to stop and check. He turned south onto US 287.
CHAPTER 59
Nancy emerged from the Town Pump carrying a grocery bag in one hand and her purse in another. She got into the Jeep and released a frustrated sigh. “This little bag of stuff cost me $37,” she moaned. “It’s just ridiculous.”
“I know,” said Lynne, “Steve is always telling me it’s a racket that the food distributors have going. Jack the prices up because we live on the backside of nowhere, and count on us not being willing to drive thirty miles to Bozeman when we need just a few things.”
“Well, it may be a racket,” said Nancy, “but it apparently works.”
Lynne started the Jeep and backed out of her parking space. She and Nancy were catching up on the news of the day, the upcoming flu vaccination clinic that the school was planning, and who would be the first player to go home on Survivor. She steered the Cherokee toward the exit that led back to US 287.