by Tom Leveen
I also figured we’d finished this leg of the journey. But Charlie didn’t sway as easily as I did.
“Okay,”he said, projecting his voice through the rapidly closing gap between door and jamb. “We have the RV out here, so we’ll just camp out till you change your mind.”
The door stopped, then swung back open. Riley stuck his face past the threshold, closer to Charlie, and snapped, “What was that?”
“Yeah, this big camper here,”Charlie said. “There’s room for all of us. We’ll be happy to wait.”
Riley squared himself up and took a step outside. Charlie—and the rest of us—matched it backward.
“Listen up, smart-ass,”Riley said. “I have nothing to say. Get your big rig out of here, or I’ll call the cops to come out and give you a hand.”
Alex turned and took a step toward the yard, making a grab for Selby’s shirt on the way to drag her along. Charlie, on the other hand, fired right back.
“Go ahead,”Charlie challenged the older man. “We’ll keep coming back. I’ll park it past your property line if I have to, but we’re not going anywhere.”
Riley put his hands on his hips. The gesture made me suddenly think he would look different—and, somehow, more normal—in a casual suit. Something for an office. His red flannel shirt and dusty jeans struck me as idiosyncratic, or even a put-on of sorts. Like he was trying to fill a part he was never meant to play.
“Maybe you don’t understand,”the professor said slowly, “the concept of a man living by himself out in the middle of a goddamn desert.”
“Maybe you don’t understand how far some kids are willing to go to find their parents.”
A studying look crossed Riley’s face as he tried to suss out what cards Charlie might truly be ready to play. I wondered the same thing myself. Alex stopped with one foot on the steps, and relinquished his hold on Selby, who, by that point, appeared delighted to stomp out a cigarette butt in what passed for Riley’s front yard.
“They’re gone, Charlie,”Riley said, suddenly opting for a paternal tone. “You have to know that. They’re gone.”
“If that’s the case, maybe you can make me understand the concept of a friend of my dad’s living by himself out in the middle of a goddamn desert, so close to where it happened.”
Wow. I think the scientific term for that was “zing.”Riley looked like he’d been shocked with a Taser as he absorbed Charlie’s words.
Dr. Riley shifted back to his grizzled old miner persona, or whatever role he felt compelled to play. “You scrawny little son of a bitch,”he said, and pointed a thick finger in Charlie’s face. “And I mean every word of that.”
“No argument from me, sir,”Charlie said, straight-faced. “But I really do need to talk to you about my dad. Please. We won’t keep you long.”
Dr. Riley eyeballed each one of us, maybe to see if we were dangerous muggers or something. “All right. All right, fine. But I warned you. I warned you.”
He stepped into the house, calling over his shoulder, “I don’t have anything to drink except tap water and tequila, and I don’t recommend either one.”
Charlie hurried to follow with the rest of us trailing behind him. Selby came last, stomping her second cigarette out in the dirt yard, half-smoked.
Dr. Riley’s house had an open floor plan, with the kitchen, dining area, and living room all part of one big space. He’d decorated it in what I took to be Aging Bachelor Chic, with mismatched but functional furniture, a bookcase that took up the entire wall, and an impressive flat-screen hanging against the opposite wall on the redbrick wall of a chimney. A single hallway led, I presumed, to the bedrooms and bathroom.
Dr. Riley sat at the kitchen table, which looked like it had been nice once, and proceeded to pack a pipe full of tobacco from a pouch.
“Welcome to the embittered professor archetype’s house,”he grumbled. “Couldn’t be more trite if you tried.”
“Uh, so, I can smoke in here?”Selby asked.
“Cigarettes? Christ, no. You got a pipe, be my guest.”The professor got his pipe going, and the room slowly filled with the scent of cherry.
“So?”Riley said, squinting through his own smoke. “What do you want?”
He focused on Charlie. Selby, pissy about the cigarettes, flung herself into an old wooden rocking chair in the living area. Alex set the camera bag on the floor, and he and I sat tentatively on the edge of a cracked brown leather couch. Charlie stayed on his feet.
“We’re making a pilot, sort of,”Charlie said. “A video. About the disappearance. Would you mind if I taped you answering a few questions about it?”
“Guess I don’t have to tell you who you remind me of right now.”Riley sighed. “Go ahead. I don’t care.”
Charlie nodded to Alex, who nodded back and spent about five minutes setting up a camera on a tripod, and something Charlie called a key light. Alex obviously knew what he was doing, working with the smooth efficiency of familiarity. Riley sat watching the setup and eyeing Charlie.
After Alex finished setting up the camera, Charlie pulled a kitchen chair beside the tripod and sat down. Alex said, “Rolling.”
“You worked with my dad,”Charlie began.
“We’ve established that,”Riley said.
From where I sat on the couch, I saw resolve harden Charlie’s expression.
“And you just so happened to retire a few miles from where he disappeared,”Charlie said. “Can you tell us about that?”
Riley snorted. Smoke streamed from his mouth, dragon-like. “I see. You think I did them all in. Is that it?”
“No, sir. But I think you know more than anyone else might be willing to believe. I think you’ve kept things about their disappearance to yourself. I want to know what those things are. We just might believe them.”
Charlie used the word like bait, hanging it out there for the professor to latch on to or not.
Dr. Riley’s eyes narrowed. He examined all of us from his chair, each in turn, like the bad cop in an action movie. I didn’t like what I saw in his expression—bitterness, suspicion. Fear.
“I had a friend once,”Riley said. “Nuclear engineer. Worked on building bombs. When he retired, he moved to New York City so he could be as close to a primary nuclear target as possible. So he wouldn’t suffer if the Russian missiles hit. People think they can survive if they buy enough canned beets and ammunition. But sometimes it’s better to die in the first wave.”
No one said anything. I, for one, had no idea what he was talking about, and it didn’t seem anyone else did either.
“I’m sorry,”Alex said, actually raising his hand like we were in a classroom. “There’s a bomb that’s going to go off here?”
Dr. Riley smirked a bit. I suddenly had an image of having him as a teacher in college, and how much that would suck.
“Oh, I doubt it,”he said. “But if John Prinn was right . . .”
He paused. Charlie leaned forward. Maybe we all did. Riley shook his head.
“All right,”he said. “You really want the whole story? Fine. Buckle up, kids.”
21
Now
* * *
A red digital clock on Riley’s bedside table reads 6:04 a.m. when I open my eyes. I slept for more than twelve hours. I see light coming from the living area, but hear nothing. The house is perfectly still. Calm.
I slide out of bed, moaning. My muscles are knotted tight, like they can never be undone. I move out of the room, down the hall, and into the living area. Charlie is asleep on the couch. The TV is on, but the screen remains black. Books, notebooks, and papers lay strewn across the floor and on the coffee table. Two cans of soda and an empty frozen dinner tray stand guard over it all. For no good reason, I realize Riley had told us he had only tap water and tequila to drink. I couldn’t help wondering: So what else did he lie about?
Since there’s no telling how long he’s actually been asleep, I choose not to disturb Charlie. I go out to the RV, picking carefully
through the dirt and rocks. Selby has moved around some during the night, but is still out cold. I check her bandage—no blood. I opt not to lift the gauze and see underneath. I put a bottle of water on the drop-down table beside the bed within easy reach for when she wakes up, then go back to the house. I figure I’ll make some breakfast, maybe shower, then come back and wake her up if she’s still sleeping.
I search the rest of the small house to see what we have to work with. Riley’s food supply veers more toward frozen and canned food than fresh, plus generous supplies of Dr Pepper and the same brand of tequila he’d been drinking. A door off the kitchen leads to a tiny garage. A blue four-door Jeep Wrangler sits there. Already inside are two full ten-gallon gas cans and several jugs of water.
Going back out to the RV, I pull all our stuff out from the storage compartments, then go back inside the house to use the bathroom and shower, trying to scrub everything that has happened to us off me. I try not to think about Alex’s bags, about the fact that he will never open them up and sort through T-shirts and underwear and shorts and jeans and socks that will never be used again—
I turn the hot water on stronger, until it’s so hot I have to turn it back down before it scalds me. I barely care. The piercing, blessed heat brings me the closest I’ve ever come to believing in God.
I climb out of the stall reluctantly. I could stay in there another year or two, but now I’m starved. I go out into the kitchen for a glass of cold water, only to find Charlie sitting at Riley’s table, staring blankly at the top of it.
He looks up when I come around the corner. I imagine my face turns a little red since I’m wearing only a towel, but Charlie doesn’t ogle me or anything like that. I should’ve just dried off and gotten dressed. Guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe never would again.
“You’re up,”Charlie says listlessly.
“Yeah.”
“How was the shower?”
“Good.”
“Leave me any hot water?”
“I think so. Quite possibly not, I’ll be honest.”
He nods, then waves weakly at the kitchen. “Making coffee. Hope you like it caffeinated.”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I should check on Selby.”
“I just did. Before I showered. She’s asleep. Figured I’d wake her up after breakfast.”
“Okay.”
Charlie stands, and somehow, he seems to have shrunk overnight. He’d been so tall standing on my driveway two days ago. Now he looks old. Decrepit.
“I’m gonna go clean up,”Charlie says. “You should eat.”
I nod and sidestep out of his way, brushing my still-wet hair behind my ears as he passes. Charlie pauses in the hallway and looks back at me.
“You look good.”
I have no response and Charlie doesn’t wait for one; he stated it as a matter of fact, a point of interest, not with a leer. I’m not sure whether to be disappointed or not.
I get dressed, grateful for the clean clothes, then make myself breakfast. My belief in a higher power surges again as I eat microwave sausage, a sweet roll from the oven, and hot coffee. For a few minutes, I’m just on a retreat, a little trip, a cabin somewhere to relax.
Charlie also takes his time in the shower. I rest his bags outside the bathroom door, knocking and telling him I’ve done so. By the time he reappears, I’m flipping through the channels on TV. More of them have gone off the air now. The few channels that remain on the air consist of home shopping or, perhaps ironically, religious programming.
“That shower . . . That was a beautiful thing,”he says, pouring himself coffee.
“I know.”I gesture to the notes spread over the floor. I haven’t looked at any. “Find anything?”
“Ideas. Leads, maybe. At best. But mostly no. Not really.”
“I had a thought about the professor.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s just that . . . we didn’t see him die.”
Charlie pauses with a mug halfway to his mouth. “Why would he . . . I mean, we heard him. I don’t think there’s much room for error.”
“But we didn’t see him.”
He gives me a worried look. “You don’t want to go out there.”
“I don’t want to, but I think we should. The sun’s up. I just want to make sure before we leave.”
“You still want to try to get to Vegas.”
“Yes. I am going. It’s just a question of whether you’re coming with me or not. I’ll take the RV or the Jeep. Either one, doesn’t matter. And I’m taking Selby with me.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Yeah, well, that was two days ago, wasn’t it. Things are slightly different now.”
Charlie resumes his sip, frowning as he does it. I wait.
“If we avoid the dam,”he says finally, “that’s got to be, like, four hundred miles. That’s a lot of time out in the open without any real protection.”
“I don’t know that there is any protection short of a tank.”
Charlie shrugs, conceding.
“You can stay if you want,”I tell him. “Either way, there’re two vehicles and . . .”
As I speak, Charlie puts down his mug and walks over to me. I stand up as he does it. Then his arms are around me, pulling me close, tight, surrounding me. I hug him back and shut up, my cheek pressed against his collar. He’s trembling, and I realize he isn’t hugging me for me; he needs me to be holding him.
So I do.
After a few minutes—what feels like hours—Charlie lifts his hands to either side of my head. He pulls away just enough so that we are touching foreheads, our mouths only an inch or two apart. Still he shudders. I raise my own hands to hold his wrists.
“I—”Charlie whispers.
I slide my hands under his forearms and touch his chin, then pull him close.
We kiss hard, though not passionately . . . desperate, perhaps. At first our mouths are closed, but soon we open them, and tear fiercely into each other’s lips. Our hands find each other, and link together, pressing tightly, squeezing hard. We gasp and twist our heads around each other like snakes, eyes shut tight, using nothing but lips and teeth and tongues to find each other. I lose all sense of time.
We end up in the same position as before, with our foreheads touching, Charlie tilting his head down and me tilting up. Our eyes stay closed. Or at least, mine do.
“I . . .”Charlie breathes, and catches his breath. “I . . . want . . .”
I grabbed double fistfuls of his shirt to keep my hands in place, so they don’t travel anywhere else the way they want to. I know what he wants. We. I know what we want.
He tries to say it again: “I want . . . to . . .”
I move my head away from his, and he nearly topples forward. I hug him.
“Get me home,”I say. “Get me home first.”
We don’t move for a bit. Then slowly, we untangle and each take one step back. Charlie sniffs and runs both hands down his face, giving his head a shake like a wet dog.
“Okay.”He clears his throat, trying to make it appear nothing just happened. “So we try to get you to your dad. Okay. Okay.”
“Thank you.”
He’s about to say something else when his attention shifts to the plateglass window behind me. Looking over my shoulder, Charlie manages to say one word:
“What—”
The room explodes. The window blows inward. Shards and needles of glass slam into my neck and back. The noise muffles my hearing and ties my lungs into a knot. I fall to the floor, hands over my head, even as a little survivor’s voice inside me whispers that I know this sound, have heard it recently, that the next few seconds are very likely going to be my last because it was, without a doubt, the blast of a shotgun.
22
Then
* * *
“Any of you kids read the Bible?”Riley said, like he knew t
he answer already.
“Cover to cover,”Selby said, bouncing a foot over one knee.
If she meant to impress him, it didn’t work. “Good for you,”he said with a derisive tone that put Selby’s icy glare to shame. “Tell me about the flood.”
“Should I use the original Hebrew?”
“Pop quiz, smart-ass. Question one. There once was a man with a wife and three sons who survived a global flood. Name all five.”
“Noah, and I don’t know the rest, because I could not care any less,”Selby said.
“Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,”Alex said. “I don’t think his wife is ever named.”
“Not bad. But wrong.”
Alex’s eyes bugged. Riley plowed ahead.
“Question two. Once upon a time, God told the men to go into a ship. They took all sorts of animals with them. The floodwaters rose, covering the mountains. Later, to check whether the waters had dried up, they sent out a dove, and it came back to the ship. Where can I find that story?”
“Genesis six, seven, and eight,”Alex said, a little forcefully.
“Wrong again.”
I thought Alex might tackle him.
“Question one refers to a man named Tumbainot, his wife Naipande, and three sons, Oshomo, Bartimaro, and Barmao. That’s the Masai flood account. The second question refers to the flood story from Tanzania. Neither of which have anything to do with the Biblical flood. Last count, there are at least five hundred similar flood accounts from all over the world.”
“Okay, didn’t know that,”Alex admitted quietly.
I felt myself nod in agreement.
“Know what that means?”Riley asked. “It means something happened. The details vary, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But something big happened several thousand years ago, and almost every culture we know of recorded it.”
“What’s that have to do with my dad?”Charlie asked, polite but firm.
Riley squinted at Charlie. “Myths aren’t about fact, they’re about truth. You hear the difference? It’s not important that God saved a righteous man and his family along with two of every animal by sealing them into a boat. It’s important that our world underwent a profound change at the behest of God.”