by J. S. Bailey
“OREGON?” a very-much-alive Mitchell Sand asked. “What in the world’s in Oregon?”
Bobby set his Sprite down on the table. “I don’t know, but I guess I’ll find out.”
Mitchell’s parents had bailed him out of jail that morning, much to Bobby’s surprise. Now he and Mitchell were sitting on the outdoor patio of a family-owned burger joint down the street from Honeybee Music Depot, which Bobby had just quit much to his manager’s dismay.
“You don’t want any company, do you?” Mitchell gave a halfhearted grin. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve got anyone here. Stupid jerks.”
“Sorry, man, but you know I’m a lone wolf.” Bobby felt bad for Mitchell—he really did. It turned out that Tyler was in on the plot to steal the coin collection as well and drank the drugged beer on purpose when Bobby warned Mitchell not to drink it. Bobby thought the whole plan was a farce. It was a good thing he’d never joined the Indigo Apes since it didn’t look like the band would be playing at any point in the foreseeable future.
“Looks like I’m a lone wolf, too.” Mitchell tore a bite out of his cheeseburger and swallowed it. “I can’t believe they’d all gang up on me like that. If not for you…” He shook his head. “Thanks for giving me the heads-up.”
“It was nothing.”
“Sure it was. I would have been shot instead of Natasha. At least it was just her leg. Serves her right for doing what she did.”
The fact that anyone had been shot still turned Bobby’s stomach. Apparently Pablo had rushed into the bedroom and accidentally pulled the trigger the moment he stepped inside, shooting Natasha just below the knee as she was hoisting another box of coins out the window. “I guess it could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Worse.”
Bobby didn’t reply. He looked eastward across the parking lot at the low, brown mountains bordering the city. He’d thought about taking a day trip into them a few different times to go on a solitary walk but never got around to it. Feeling strangely sentimental, he brought his attention back to Mitchell and said, “You’ll have to watch your back, you know. If any of those creeps start acting like your friend again, make sure you keep your distance.”
Mitchell’s jaw tightened. “You’ll make a great mother someday.” Despite his choice of words, his voice conveyed no humor.
To lighten the mood, Bobby said, “I guess that means I should grow my hair out and start wearing dresses.”
“In that case, you should be heading to California, not Oregon.” Mitchell leaned back and stared in the direction of his house in Wasatch Hollow, which lay several miles in the distance. “You know, Bob, you’re not like the other ones. I think I’m going to miss you.”
Odd as it may have been, Bobby thought he might miss Mitchell, too.
IT took a few days for Bobby to hire a small moving van for the furniture he planned to take with him and get his affairs in order, and once he set out his nerves buzzed with excitement. No terrifying premonitions plagued him as he went over the apartment one final time to make sure he hadn’t missed any of his things. His mind was at peace when he got into his Nissan and hopped onto Interstate 80 heading west. It was a strange feeling. For the first time in ages he felt like he was pointing his life in the right direction even though he didn’t have a clue as to what would happen when he got there.
Maybe once he arrived in Autumn Ridge he could get some much-needed rest like the old lady in the music store had advised—but only if his premonitions allowed it.
The fastest route to Oregon would have taken Bobby through the northern border of Nevada but during his pre-departure research he had found a dearth of towns along Route 140, and the last thing he wanted was to run out of gas and get eaten by buzzards while trying to go get help.
He took U.S. Highway 395 into Northern California instead, stopping for the night in a parking lot in a place called Doyle, then continued onward bright and early the next morning. The rugged scenery changed over to pine forest, and eventually Bobby merged onto the northbound lanes of Interstate 5. His pulse quickened. He would be in Oregon so soon he could almost taste it.
CROSSING into Oregon was somewhat anticlimactic (a friendly green sign welcomed him to the state, which at first didn’t look any different from the one in which he’d just spent the night), but after several miles a bend in the interstate gave him such a spectacular view of a pine-filled valley that he almost pulled off to snap pictures, choosing only at the last second to keep going.
Bobby arrived in Autumn Ridge at lunchtime, feeling trepidation weigh upon him—not from any premonition, but from simple fear of the unknown. He had felt the same when he arrived in Salt Lake City the year before. The feeling would pass soon enough once he’d settled in and found a job.
Autumn Ridge looked to be an ordinary enough place. He’d read online that the population was roughly 20,000 and that hiking and fishing were popular area activities. There was even the occasional summer concert at a community park, which might provide a future opportunity for his musical endeavors.
He ate lunch at a place called Arnie’s Stop-N-Eat and then checked into a motel. Step one of getting here was complete. Next step: find a cheap place to live that didn’t come with roaches or mice.
THE guy who responded to Bobby’s roommate request online days after Bobby’s arrival in town met Bobby out in the motel parking lot. Caleb Young had brown hair, wore a crisp white shirt and khaki slacks, and had glasses so thick they magnified his eyes to frightening proportions.
“Bobby?” Caleb asked, raising his eyebrows. He reminded Bobby of a well-dressed bug.
“That’s me,” Bobby said as he shook Caleb’s hand. He was taking a huge risk in letting a stranger ride with him to go look at a rental house on a nearby road called Fir Street, but he’d talked to Caleb on the phone beforehand and he seemed like a normal enough person. Bobby had even gone a step further and did some online sleuthing, finding nothing on the web about Caleb Young, which meant he’d never been convicted of a crime.
Caleb said he attended Autumn Ridge Community College, which had recently started offering four-year degrees. “I’ll be so busy studying,” he said, “you won’t even know you have a roommate.”
Which sounded perfectly fine to Bobby. He hadn’t been able to find a decent apartment, so he’d decided to buddy up and rent a house instead. It would spell the end of his solitude, but sometimes you had to make sacrifices in order to get what you needed.
Caleb got into the Nissan, and Bobby drove to Fir Street, where all the houses were the same tiny model. He checked the house numbers and pulled into the driveway of number twelve, where a sixtyish dark-haired man dressed in a brown t-shirt and shorts stood waiting by the front door with a set of keys in his hand.
“You must be Bobby and Caleb,” the man said when they got out of the car.
“And you must be Dave Upton.” Bobby had spoken with Dave on the phone, and the man’s description of the house sounded like it would be the perfect place to live.
“That I am.” Dave shook Caleb’s and Bobby’s hands. “Nice to meet you, son. Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the place.” He held up one of the keys, frowned for a moment, then stuck it into the lock and pushed the door open. “I’m afraid it’s not that big, but if it’s just two of you in here, that should be okay, right?”
“The smaller the better.” Bobby followed Dave over the threshold into a square living room that was open to a kitchen on the right. The air smelled a little stale, but it wasn’t anything a few open windows wouldn’t fix.
“Only until a certain point,” Caleb said, rubbing his chin and looking through an open doorway into a room that housed a washer and dryer.
Dave followed Caleb’s gaze. “Don’t ask me why the utility room’s in the front of the house. The previous owners must have had the place remodeled and had it put up here instead of in the back.”
“Do the washer and dryer work?” Bobby asked.
“Of course
they do. Checked them myself after my last tenant left.”
Bobby crossed the living room and popped his head through another doorway into an empty bedroom. He immediately envisioned how he would arrange his bed and dresser, which by the look of it would fit perfectly into the small space. “We’ll take it,” he said, turning to Caleb. “Unless you have any objections.”
“If you like it,” Caleb said, “then this is where we’ll stay.” He pasted on an enigmatic smile. “You’re going to love Oregon. I’m surprised it took you so long to get here.”
I’d better love it. Now that he’d seen Caleb in person, the college student seemed a little odd, but Bobby could handle odd. What he couldn’t handle was people like Mitchell Sand and his friends, and from what he could tell so far Caleb was nothing like them.
Dave folded his hands together, looking pleased. “Excellent. If you’re ready, I’ll go fetch the contract for you to sign. And this boy here’s right. You’ll love Oregon. I’m sure it’ll hold lots in store for you.”
Bobby grinned. “I hope so.”
Bobby’s story continues in SERVANT…
RAIN WHISPERED AGAINST the cottage windows, and the candle flickered in a draft hissing through some small gap in need of patching.
The old woman, Constance Crellin, continued to hand-stitch the quilt she’d been making for days, and Patsy, the yellow tabby, had curled up on the floor by the hearth, emitting a content purr while dreaming of rodents. The fire had died down to orange embers, not that Constance needed a fire this time of year. It was supposedly June or July, or perhaps even August, though such distinctions mattered little here.
“Could be December now, for all I know,” she muttered. Patsy twitched in her sleep, and Constance blinked to refocus on her sewing. It was so hard to see anymore. The reading glasses that once belonged to Dan had been rendered nearly useless by scratches, so Constance rarely used them.
Sometimes she wondered if she was dead, too, like Dan now these long years. Dead and buried and long forgotten.
Constance jerked her head up. She’d dozed off again, hadn’t she? The crude needle had fallen from her fingers and landed on the quilt under construction in her lap. Shayla, who raised livestock on her ranch a mile away, wove cloth when she wasn’t feeding her flocks, and she sent most of it Constance’s way to “work her magic” upon it.
Constance squinted and grasped the needle between her right thumb and forefinger, determined to finish her project no matter what. A fat lot of magic I’ll be working if my eyesight gets any worse. The quilt was to be a present for Shayla’s birthday—as if things like birthdays made sense when they weren’t even sure what month it was.
She made a few more stitches in the homespun fabric before her eyelids grew heavy again. This time when she closed them, she dreamed.
CONSTANCE Hernandez—known as “Connie” to her friends—climbed out of the twin bed in the room she shared with no one (her sister Luce had her own room across the hall) and hurried barefoot across the hardwood floor, then down the hallway and stairs to the mudroom.
Connie shoved her small feet into a pair of blue rubber boots, undid the deadbolt, and crept out into the June darkness.
It was late enough that the fireflies she loved to watch at dusk had all gone to sleep, and the moon hadn’t risen, so the black heavens were awash with infinite stars. She raced down the worn footpath toward the barn where Bourbon Queen and Hotshot and Wednesday’s Child and all the others stood sleeping in their stalls, then veered to the right into the untamed meadow, where she flopped onto her back despite the mosquitoes and ticks and watched the stars’ slow waltz across the sky.
Abuelita had given her a constellation guidebook for her fifth birthday, and Connie had paged through it so many times since then it was practically in tatters. It had taken her little time to memorize the shapes in the stars as well as their names. As the dew soaked into her clothes, Connie picked out Cygnus the Swan stretching out great wings toward its neighbors Draco and Pegasus. The stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair glowed brighter than most of their companions. Like diamonds.
While Connie watched the night move past her, she remembered the time her family spent a weekend in Louisville for a family reunion. Connie had snuck out to the hotel balcony while her parents and sister slept, and instead of the stars she’d expected, the sky had been lit up with a yellow urban glow that broke a tiny part of her heart.
She sighed as she lay in the damp meadow. The horse farm was a far cry from Louisville or any other city: a dark refuge in a world drowning with light.
Cloudless nights like this one were timeless. Half a night could feel like an hour, and an hour could seem half a night, which was why she didn’t know how much time had passed when soft footsteps muffled by grass came up beside her and a voice said, “Stargazing again, Con?”
She turned her face toward her father the moment a meteor streaked overhead. “It’s so beautiful.”
He sat in the grass to her left. Though it was too dark for her to see, she felt he was smiling. “I know it is. Like little diamonds, right?”
Connie nodded, but she knew that which glimmered above was far more precious than the diamonds they resembled. “I’m going there someday.”
“To the stars?”
“Yes.”
BANGING on the front door jolted Constance awake. It took a moment to orient herself. The candle had burned down to a waxy nub, and Patsy stood on all sixes, staring at the door with glowing violet eyes.
“Constance?” More banging. “Constance, wake up!”
Constance tossed the quilt aside and crossed the bare floor. She threw the door open to see a white-faced Shayla holding a lantern at her side. The dancing flames cast eerie shadows over the woman’s features.
Rain fell in sheets now, and ominous thunder crackled overhead. The rain had plastered Shayla’s still-black hair to her forehead and cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” Constance snapped when it became evident Shayla wouldn’t be forthcoming with an explanation. “Is it Kess?”
“Kess? No, I haven’t talked to her. Oh, Constance, look.” Shayla stepped farther out into the downpour and pointed toward the western sky that lit up with intermittent flashes of lightning.
Doing her best to withhold a growing sense of dread, Constance left the shelter of her living room and followed the line of Shayla’s finger with her gaze.
A silvery white light cutting through the storm descended from the heavens in silence. Based on its trajectory, it would land near the orchards that lay beyond the narrow stream where Constance drew her water. Eerie shadows swept across the lavender grasses, and nocturnal insects took flight from the unexpected disturbance.
“This is the third one.” Shayla’s voice quaked. “I’d gone out to use the loo when I saw the first. I ran here as fast as I could.”
Constance’s mouth drew into a thin line as yet another silvery light appeared and silently lowered to the ground.
CONSTANCE and Shayla barricaded themselves inside the cottage and doused the lantern. The final light had landed and winked out, and now they waited in fearful anticipation of what might happen next.
Patsy paced back and forth mewing, her eyes now the blue-green of distress.
“I’ve never seen anything like them,” Shayla whispered. The rain had died down to a sprinkle, and one orange moon peeked through dissipating clouds. “They could be hostile.”
Yes, they could be, Constance supposed, but there wasn’t a thing they could do if that were the case. Aside from Constance and Shayla there was only Kess, and three old women well past their primes would hardly be a match against invaders.
It hadn’t always been just the three of them. There had once been five, but Ez and Dan had succumbed many years before and were now buried near Tower Rock, the stone formation that marked the edge of their settlement.
“What are we going to do?” Shayla asked.
Constance plucked Patsy off the floor and held her close to h
er chest. “We’re going to watch and wait.”
THE night progressed, still and slow, and Constance Crellin’s mind wandered.
She remembered a different Constance, a younger Constance, one who had yet to see a wrinkle or a gray hair. A Constance who had flown for the first time at age sixteen, and who’d felt a rush of exhilaration from pulling back the throttles and leaving the ground behind, letting out a whoop of glee that made her instructor cover her ears.
She flew almost as high as the air lanes before her instructor demanded that she take the ship back down.
After that, the younger Constance craved her weekly flying lessons like a drug. On her off days she’d sit in the same meadow beyond the horse barn memorizing flight manuals (she kept the constellation guidebook with her too even though it was close to disintegrating), and at night she’d dream that she wouldn’t stop at the air lanes…that she’d keep flying higher and higher into space and finally get to see countless unseen worlds orbiting the diamonds of her childhood.
The older Constance, waiting with Shayla by the window in her cottage, thought of how the younger Constance earned her pilot’s license at seventeen and joined the Air Force at eighteen.
She thought of how she’d kissed her family and Bourbon Queen and Hotshot and Wednesday’s Child and all the others goodbye.
She thought of Horatio Crellin, a fellow pilot who’d caught her eye. He’d impregnated her, they’d wed, she’d miscarried, and they’d divorced; all before the Earth had made a full orbit around the sun.
“Why don’t you take your name back?” her sister Luce had asked over lunch during a rare visit.
The younger Constance had been unable to answer. Sometimes the older Constance wondered what would have happened had Abuelita not given her the constellation guidebook for her birthday.