by Jerry Cole
“Kansas, huh? You’re pretty far from home, then,” Wyatt said.
“So are you. We all are,” Marney said.
“I’m from Oregon. So, I suppose you’re right about that,” Wyatt returned. Why had he told her where he was from? Was this some sort of journalistic impulse, as well? Make the person you interviewed trust you? Perhaps. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been a journalist long enough to know.
“What are you doing here, weary traveler?” Marney asked.
Kenny called for her, saying, “Marney, it’s clear he’s not interested. We can’t save everyone. Hell, we can hardly save ourselves.”
Marney paid no attention.
“Weren’t you the one trying to get away from it all, just now?” Wyatt asked, gesturing back toward the RV. “I wasn’t one for spying, but I did just see you run out of the RV screaming.”
Marney’s eyes glittered once more. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, having this pressure. This pressure of knowing what’s going to happen.”
“And that’s you?” Wyatt asked.
Marney sighed, allowing her slight little shoulders to round forward. “It’s always been me.” After a soft beat, she asked, “What is your name?”
“I’m Wyatt. Wyatt Masters.”
“Wyatt. Won’t you come with us? If you stay here, the end of the world will find you.”
“I’m actually heading back to Los Angeles,” Wyatt said.
Marney’s face was stricken. “We were only just there. We picked up Clara and Randy there.” She pointed back to the other couple, who gave soft little waves. “They were seated outside of a bar in Silver Lake, bemoaning their little realities. And then I told them about Venus, about the beings coming, coming closer. At first, Randy didn’t believe me. But Clara here, she’s clairvoyant. She knew what I was saying was truth the minute I spoke. And she told Randy, she told him that they had to save themselves. They had to come with us. Now, I’m asking you. Will you do the same for yourself? Will you save yourself?”
Wyatt had never given much thought to his own health, his own wellness. In Los Angeles, when he was a bit too broke, he ordinarily didn’t eat for a day or two – hoping to cut into his abs a bit more and keep his bank account at bay. When he grew hungry, he walked beneath the boiling sun, feeling uneasy, weaving a bit on the sidewalk.
Now, Wyatt thought back to the Foodster magazine in Los Angeles, the one waiting for his “interesting” stories regarding the food culture in New Mexico. How banal his writing about it truly was! How disinterested he truly felt about refried beans! He couldn’t possibly deliver what he’d created; he couldn’t possibly show his face to the likes of Stacey the receptionist, nor Peter the super-handsome sales guy, nor anyone else.
“Wait. You never told me where you were going,” Wyatt said.
“Texas, of course,” Marney said, cinching her eyebrows together tightly.
“Why of course?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s the place where ghosts live. It’s the place where countless people forged towns, which they then abandoned in the blink of an eye, in the middle of the night.”
“Are you saying that you’re going to take up residence in a ghost town?” Wyatt asked, a smile creeping across his face.
Truly, he couldn’t have imagined a better opportunity for a story.
“That’s what we’re saying,” Kenny called from behind, sounding aghast. “Are you going to come, or what? Marney, he looks like a fucking idiot. Let’s get going.”
“Are you an idiot?” Marney asked, stitching her face closer to his. Her eyes searched him, seemingly attempting to pierce into his soul. “I don’t think you are. But there is something about you, isn’t there? If not idiocy, it’s a sadness. A feeling that you’re never going to truly get what you want. Living in Los Angeles, what was that? Fame? Beauty? Someone to call you the love of their life?”
Wyatt’s heart dipped lower in his chest. “You’re just naming things most people in Los Angeles want,” he murmured.
“So, I’m correct,” she said.
“Why would I come with you if I want those things?” Wyatt asked.
“To be frank, I don’t know why you wouldn’t come. I promise that we’ll save you. And – if you take a chance on your life, don’t you think that’s the sort of thing that allows the true, beautiful things to unfold?”
Wyatt hadn’t been able to argue with her. Although, after he locked up his car in a little car lot on the west side of town, and stomped up the steps of the RV, he told himself he was doing this for his career, nothing more. He already imagined the various headlines he would toss back to the Foodster magazine. Regardless, perhaps his story here would bleed out to other stories, to other ways of declaring himself a proper journalist – the kind who chased stories.
And in a sense, this was the best acting opportunity of his life. He was stitched there tightly between cult members, while Kenny rammed his foot against the gas pedal and hollered out. The blue sky above them was wide and open, aching with some kind of promise. For the growing cult, that promise was – what? Safety? Or escape?
Wyatt wasn’t entirely sure. But he was anxious to find out.
Chapter Three
Isaac
The Texas ranch was stitched along the edge of a dusty ghost town, dug deep in the heart of the western part of the state. The drive from the airport took Isaac several hours. His eyes burned forward, his fingers gripped the steering wheel, turning white. He tapped the back of his head against the headrest, allowing his eyelids to flutter down. The heat felt like a heaviness, shoving his shoulders downward, making his foot perpetually press against the gas. Not a single car approached from behind or in front. He didn’t see anyone for miles and miles.
A few hours into the trip, he yanked the rental car toward a gas station and pumped the gas, watching as a cowboy staggered from his pickup into the shadowy gas station beyond. Inside, the cowboy’s eyes flashed back toward Isaac, seemingly sizing him up. Isaac sensed that everyone out there knew his gayness like they knew the sun and the moon and the stars. They recognized it, knew it was foreign to them—or to the way they projected themselves to society. Isaac knew the history of it all, of course, that cowboys had lovers, that they’d taken up the space beside one another in bed, for warmth. To ward off loneliness.
But it seemed to be a forgotten fact in the current lexicon of most cowboys, who were largely apt to declare themselves conservative, strong.
Isaac entered the gas station and was struck with a blast of air conditioning. He tapped to the back of the store, across gritty tile, and grabbed himself a large bottle of water. His throat was parched. For the first time in years, he hankered for a cigarette, and pondered for a long time about purchasing a pack, his eyes glossing over the many multi-colored varieties. Marcus had made him quit long ago, citing the fact that he wanted him “around for years to come.”
Of course, Isaac should have known the moment those words had been spoken that he, himself, would be the one to leave.
Isaac decided against the pack, choosing instead to grab a thing of almonds. He dropped it on the counter, turning his eyes toward the cashier, a surly teenager with a rather square forehead. He chewed his gum slowly, dropping his finger across the various buttons.
“Forty-three forty-seven,” the guy blurted, including the gas from the pump.
“Ha. Not used to gas prices these days,” Isaac offered, reaching for his credit card. “I’ve been in New York too long.”
The cashier didn’t respond to this. He waited, his eyes glossy. Isaac handed him the credit card, feeling strangely on the spot, as though he was meant to perform as a Texan who hadn’t lost his Texan abilities.
“I haven’t been all the way out in West Texas in years,” he offered. “It’s been since I was a teenager, maybe. I’m heading all the way to that ghost town. What’s it called? Rhode’s Pike? Yeah, that’s the one. You ain’t been there, have you?”
The cashier shrugged just one
of his shoulders. He scanned the credit card. The cowboy inside the gas station cleared his throat, seemingly passing judgement. It was clear, Isaac didn’t belong. His nostrils flared.
“My father’s out there. But he’s not doing too good.”
Isaac realized that perhaps he was only speaking because he hadn’t spoken to a single soul in perhaps four hours, that Marcus hadn’t returned any of his text messages, that he felt like a foreign person on a foreign island of his own creation. He brought his water bottle and his almonds against his chest and spun back toward the door, shivering.
“Hey, mister!” the cashier called.
Isaac froze, suddenly imagining the worst; the cashier and the cowboy were going to jump him, tell him that he didn’t belong here. That he was meant to return to New York. Slowly, he turned back, his eyes big, bulging out.
“You forgot your credit card,” the cashier said, waving the plastic through the air.
Relieved, Isaac cut toward him and grabbed the card, thanking him. He raced toward the door, back into the blistering heat. He darted back into the driver’s seat, his thighs gripping at the leather seats. He inhaled sharply, trying to calm his racing mind. “Be calm,” he whispered to himself, trying to take refuge in his own voice. “Just remember that it’ll all be okay.”
But of course, it wouldn’t be.
Isaac burned rubber, shoving himself from the gas station and back onto the highway. He felt strangely full after filling up the gas tank, as though the car was an extension of himself. He didn’t bother to touch the almonds, allowing them to sit, unwrapped, atop the passenger seat. Monica sent him a text message and then another, neither of which he opened. He would conquer this mountain when he arrived at Rhode’s Pike.
When he first spotted the ghost town, his breath caught in his throat. It seemed improbable that anyone had decided upon this place—in the center of the flat, sterile desert—as a home. Buildings remained intact, yet hard worn against the winds. Where once several of the buildings might have supported paint color, it now all seemed the shadowy color of sand, of dirt. Isaac parked his car on what might have been the main street, knocking his shoe from the car and testing the ground. Dirt. Just like everything else.
At the far end of the block, Isaac spotted a little rinky-dink saloon, hunkered beneath the brilliant sun as though it was trying to craft its own shadow. A neon sign in the window flared up—OPEN. Isaac pondered this for a moment, wondering if this was the sort of place his father had drank at for years on-end, prior to his diagnosis. Guided by an unseen force, he began to trudge toward the saloon, reasoning that his father and his sisters probably didn’t care to see much of him right then, anyway. Sure, they hungered for him now, stating him a horrific son if he didn’t make the trek all the way to West Texas. But the moment they spotted him? It was sure to be hellish, all the old wounds burning brightly once more.
Perhaps he would have more than one drink.
The old saloon had the sort of saloon doors you saw in movies. Isaac pressed his hand atop the ruffled material, then pushed, thrusting himself into the shadowy interior. In the far corner of the room, a television spat out an old sitcom, one Isaac vaguely remembered running time through the various hazy afternoons and evenings of his youth. Just then, New York seemed as though it didn’t, and had never existed.
The woman at the bar was leathery and wrinkled, as though she, herself, had been constructed in a cigarette factory. A self-rolled cigarette burned orange at the tip, whirling to and fro from her lips. She gave him a surly gaze, before breaking her mouth open, showing little brown nubs for teeth.
“Hello,” she said to him, in a tone that suggested that she very much knew he didn’t belong where he stood.
“Hi,” Isaac uttered back, trying to lean into his Texan accent. He blinked toward the far end of the bar, where two men wearing cowboy hats sat, gripping glasses filled with brown liquid. It was nearly three in the afternoon—but it wasn’t as though time existed in a ghost town. Wasn’t that the point of them? That they’d given up on time long ago.
Isaac slipped atop a stool three away from the man closest to him, careful not to lend eye contact.
“What can I do you for?” the woman asked, puffing once more at her cigarette. “Frankly, ain’t asked that in a while. Everyone comes in here is a bit of a local, ya know what I mean?”
Isaac wasn’t sure how to respond. Was this her telling him to get the hell out of her saloon? He hadn’t a clue of the rules of this western world.
“Just a whiskey,” he said. And then, “A double.”
“Double whiskey. Man likes to drink,” the woman returned. After a blink, she uttered, “We respect that sort around here.”
Isaac watched her motions, sure and almost languid, as though she’d done this same motion every single day, a million times, since her youth. Assuredly, she had. She tapped the glass back on the counter and waved her hand, saying, “Pay at the end. Everyone does. ‘Cept for Win.”
Win seemed to be the one closest to Isaac, the man seated on the left of the other. He grunted, turning his head so that his thick neck crinkled. He seemed to be approximately sixty years old, with an entire wealth of lives behind him.
“Hey, I tellin’ you I got it worked out,” Win uttered. “It’s gonna be comin’ through.”
The bartender gaze Isaac a steady gaze. “He’s been saying that for three years, since he came bumbling in through that door, very much like yourself.” After a beat, she continued. “What the hell you doing round these parts, anyway? I know everyone here. Been here since girlhood. My daddy said that we would be makin’ our way to California, but ain’t made it yet, huh? He died and left me this saloon. And I ain’t found a good enough reason to give it up.”
Isaac marveled at the way in which her story streamed from her lips, as though she’d told it to so many people passing through. Her body and mind operated like a tape recorder. His entrance had allowed it to press play upon itself.
“I’m here to see my own daddy,” Isaac murmured. He drew his lips over the top of the glass and inhaled, allowing just a few droplets of whiskey to burn through him.
The woman’s little, drawn-on eyebrow lurched upward, showing her interest. “Oh? Your daddy lives ‘round here?”
Isaac nodded. For reasons he couldn’t truly understand, he said, “But I don’t think he’ll live through the week.”
The bartender shot a look toward Win. Win cut back on the stool, dropping his legs to the side to fully face Isaac. The other man remained disinterested; his eyes turned toward the television set. He couldn’t miss this millionth showing of this sitcom, couldn’t possibly let it pass by without him. He chewed on something, surely tobacco, letting his jaw go back and forth.
“Your poppa?” Win said, almost blurting it. “You ain’t saying that your poppa is Thomas Baxter?”
Isaac pressed his lips together, then nodded slowly, watching the way this information played itself out over Win’s face. He sipped the whiskey again. Somehow, the taste was becoming to him, as though the bitterness matched his internal life.
“That’s him,” Isaac returned.
“Jesus Christ,” Win said.
“Jesus Christ, indeed,” the bartender returned.
Isaac wasn’t entirely sure what to say. He scratched his throat, feeling the hairs that had popped up mid-way through the journey. His normal thought that Marcus would inevitably tell him he needed to shave came and went. He hated to kiss with too much itchy, scratchy hair scattered about.
“So, you know him,” Isaac finally said, as a commercial began to pipe in from the television. It was bright, chaotic. It made his stomach clench. He felt he might vomit.
“We sure as hell do,” the bartender said. She snuck her little hand over the counter. Her fingers were smudged with nicotine. Isaac accepted it and shook it, watching as the crinkles grew deeper above her nose. “You know, he really is a bastard. He ain’t never mentioned he had a son.”
Isa
ac chuckled.
“Although not many people talk about their families round here,” she continued. “I’m Marcia, by the way. Marcia Locklear. But yeah, I know-ed your poppa for years and years. Been coming to this bar until the day he couldn’t get outta bed no more. Him and Zane, before Zane kicked it.”
“Kicked it?” Isaac asked, remembering his father’s old cowboy buddy, the dark-eyed Zane.
“Sure. Died in a riding accident bout five years ago. I tell him, I said, Zane. Listen here, that horse ain’t no good. The horse was wild, you know. Couldn’t barely carry a man on its back. But Zane was stubborn bout lots of things.”
“I met him once, growing up,” Isaac said, feeling, once more, as though they were discussing a ghost. “I know my daddy always envied his life. Hated that my momma had trapped him with a pregnancy. With me,” Isaac said, letting out a dry laugh.
Win let out a holler, a “wahoo,” his eyes bright. “It’s funny the things people don’t tell ya,” he said, speaking mostly to Marcia. “It’s like you ain’t never gonna know nobody.”
“It is just exactly like that,” Marcia affirmed.
The man on the other side of Win grunted, as though he wanted to join the conversation. Marcia cast her eyes toward him, noting his beer glass was shining empty. She lifted it without a word and poured another brew into it, building white bubbles at the top. Isaac found her to be absolutely sensational.
“So, what’s it going on with your pop, then?” Win asked, still beaming toward Isaac, a sudden curiosity. “Things took a turn, then?”
“My sisters told me it’s nearing the end,” Isaac said, his hand clenching his glass of whisky so hard that his knuckles turned bright white. “I ain’t spoken to him in years and years, though. Dare say if we crossed one another in the street, he might not look my way.”
Marcia and Win exchanged knowing glances. Isaac stirred his whiskey, swirling it. The man on the other side of Win again grunted, before blurting out, “The wife’s said there’s more of ‘em coming.”