Stop worrying about Wes. He’s called Irene. She’s working on it. Keep moving toward the boy.
Caleb stopped, raising an arm to help release the catch in his ribs. “What? When?”
Um … just a few minutes ago, I guess?
“How the hell did he call his sister?”
Your phone. He had it in his pocket.
Caleb shut his eyes. A wave of rage and shame washed over the breakthrough pain as he tightened his fists. Through his gritted teeth, he spit, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me he had my phone on him!” He turned in place, searching for a target for his ire. “We could have called for help back at the truck!”
Well, sure, I guess I could have done that. But then you would have waited there, right? And we don’t have time for that. Look, it doesn’t matter. Wes phoned his sister. She’s close. On her way here. She’ll get someone out to help Wes.
The stitch in his belly reasserted itself. Caleb breathed through the pain. “And you know this for sure?”
Yep.
“So … Wes’s gonna be okay?”
There was an emptiness in his deaf ear. It lasted only a moment, but long enough for a kernel of doubt to form before the voice answered.
The Utopia Volunteer Fire Department is aware of Wes’s location and situation. They’re on it.
“But you know, right? You can see the … branches or whatever. The possibilities. So you know for sure, he’ll be okay?”
Silence. This wasn’t right. A sickening hole opened under his pain. “Listen, I’m not taking one more step until you tell me … no, you fucking show me that Wes lives through this.”
A sigh filled Caleb’s deaf ear. A balloon of emotion, expanding and releasing against the inside of his skull.
It’s not that simple, Caleb.
“No. No more until you assure me Wes will be safe.” Caleb looked for a place on the road to sit and rest. A fence. A stump. A rock. There was nothing but dirt and brush.
I can try to explain it to you. Or rather, show you, but … okay, hang on a second.
Caleb scoffed. “Now I’m supposed to wait? For what, exactly?”
Okay, take one step forward.
Caleb swallowed. His feet and back ached; each step released a wave of agony in his gut. The tumor in his liver pulled on his diaphragm with each drop of his heel. He didn’t want to continue on anymore. He could die right here, in this spot. And that would be okay.
Please, Caleb! I know you’re tired, but this is a time-sensitive step I’m asking of you.
Caleb sighed, the impulse to move turning to a compulsion. An undeniable desire to act. He lifted his right foot, feeling the lumps on his liver shift. He brought the foot forward, setting it on the road. As he shifted his weight, something cracked beneath his shoe. There was a buzz, a crunch, and then silence again. Lifting his shoe, Caleb saw the remains of a thick beetle on the road, torn apart between the asphalt and his sole.
There! Your choice to take that step has saved a countless number of lives.
The voice spoke with an air of pride, but Caleb couldn’t appreciate it. He looked around at the still air. Nothing had changed. He looked at the broken bug. Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t understand.”
A rumble filled his head. Caleb stumbled, then left his body. He watched himself slam into the road, wincing at the sight of his face hitting the pavement. He noted the rough facets on each pebble, discerned the individual pores and hairs on his skin as the road abraded it. He felt nothing from the fall. No discomfort from his sickness. No air or sun on his skin.
The translucent threads appeared. An endless and dense tapestry wove through the moment. Thick swatches speared out toward the town, and thinner strips wandered off into the hill country around him.
Now, I will show you what would have happened if you didn’t step on that beetle. I’ve never done this before, so bear with me. Let me know if it hurts.
The perspective changed around him. Colors disappeared, turning the scenery to clay. He stood on the road now. The beetle was on the asphalt in front of him. Caleb noted one of its legs was in the air, that the insect’s mandibles were half-opened as it cleaned them off. This was the moment he’d stepped on the bug.
Look here.
Caleb knew where to look. A single translucent fiber stood out from the rest, a thread that spiraled through the beetle.
Follow it.
Caleb knew how to follow it. The next moment came, in full color, the scene living and real. The beetle moved into the field on the side of the road.
Faster.
Caleb knew how to move faster. Moments came and passed in rapid flashes. Details accumulated until he found the beetle rummaging under some rough growth. He couldn’t feel it, but Caleb knew the air carried a chill now. The season had changed. Murmurs filled the space. Not people, geese. They waddled through, bickering and picking at the rough ground vegetation. One goose clamped its bill around the beetle, crushing the bug before swallowing it. The beetle’s thread spun down the bird’s gullet, then intertwined with a new thread. The thread of the goose.
Follow it.
Another series of flashes, and the goose was in the sky, Caleb’s view following the goose as if he were flying himself. The effect should have been nauseating, but Caleb felt nothing. The flock spanned forward and left. The ground passed far beneath them at a plodding pace. With a snap, another moment arrived. The formation broke as a bird of prey landed on the goose leading the flock. Caleb saw the thick talons of the eagle. Each scratch and gouge in the sharp nails was apparent as they passed through thousands of delicate barbs in the goose’s feathers. They sank into the flesh as the remaining geese scattered in a show of flapping wings and terrified honks. Caleb’s goose plummeted, following a few of its flock as they broke to the right.
Another sound joined the fray—the purr of an engine. A small, single-engine plane. Caleb experienced it for only a moment before the goose disappeared in a spray of blood and feathers. The thread of the goose knotted around other threads, ones that passed through the Cessna. Five of them. Five living things in that plane as it fell out of the sky. A path of smoke highlighted their fibers as they ended, knotted into the burning ground.
None of this happened, thanks to you.
Caleb’s perspective shifted again. He pulled away from the crash to see other branches reaching out, past this moment. Above it. Below it. The frustum shifted. A plane landed. A bundle of threads stretched away from the event. Faces came to him. Tens, then hundreds, then millions of faces raced past Caleb as he dragged forward.
These people will exist because you took that step. Without that choice, none of them would.
Caleb registered none of it now; the faces became a blur of white noise. Years. Millennia. Epochs. They passed around him like wind. The tapestry from that one event branched into a forest of possibilities. People. Futures. A saga of humanity.
A snap in his head, and everything was dark. He felt something. Warmth, under his fingers. He blinked. He was in his body, facedown on the road. He eased to his knees, checking for fresh injuries. He rubbed the road grime from his face, specks of stone, dirt, and sweat falling off his cheeks. His head throbbed from the experience, but it hadn’t been painful. It had been exhilarating. Too much so for his broken body to absorb.
You’ve saved an infinite number of lives by making a single choice.
Caleb stood, his breath catching again. The tumor in his liver asserted itself with a sharp pang.
Every moment—every choice—is like this. There are endless outcomes, each leading to an endless number of other choices.
Caleb was upright. His breath heaved, his body shuddering with each throb of his heart.
The forward outcomes are impossible to predict. No one can tally them all. Not even me.
“Why show me this?” Caleb huffed between labored sighs.
Because there isn’t a ledger to the universe, Caleb. I’m
only trying to keep things moving forward. Keep things from ending.
He shook his head, clearing the haze left by his out-of-body experience. “What does that have to do with Wes?” He looked around him, as if he would see the voice standing next to him. “You said you’d explain how Wes would be safe?” Caleb’s heart leapt. “No, you could show me! Show the threads to follow where Wes lives, and I can figure out how to get to them!”
Caleb, look …
“No, dammit!”
Caleb …
“Not until you show me!”
No! Caleb, I can’t!
“You can’t? We just finished a literal fucking goose chase! Don’t tell me you can’t!” Caleb was screaming now. He twisted his body around, searching for something, anything, on which to focus. “Or you won’t? You want me to kill that boy, you need to show me how it keeps Wes alive!”
I can’t show you that, Caleb.
“Show me, or I’ll sit down right here and die!”
The sigh filled his head again, but there was no shift in his perspective. He stayed in his body, left with a lingering shadow of sadness as the voice filled his deaf ear.
I can’t show you a path where Wes survives.
Caleb’s eyes blurred.
Because I can’t find any. The choices that would have changed that have been made.
Stinging tears fell down Caleb’s road-rashed cheeks. His shoulders fell, and he struggled to stay standing. He knew the truth in the words. The things he’d done to get here—the lying, the stealing, the lives ruined—it guaranteed this outcome. Whatever choices they’d made—the choices Caleb had made—solidified this current moment. Guaranteed it would occur.
A bubble of spit shook on Caleb’s trembling lip. Despite himself, he whispered, “You lie.”
I’ve never lied to you. Your situation, this moment—this isn’t bad or evil. It’s not good either. It’s just … the way things have gone. Wes won’t survive the day. Neither will you. But you can both still make choices. You can choose how to live it out.
“You lie!” Caleb spit, his voice rising. “You let me think I would live! That this boy would heal me!”
No, Caleb. I never said that. I said you had a purpose. I said the boy was the key to your purpose. That you needed to get to the boy. And all of that is true.
“That’s still a lie! A lie of omission!” he yelled. “You knew what you were implying, what you dangled in front of me to get me here!”
I did what I needed to do. But I never promised you anything beyond a purpose, Caleb. Any “lie of omission” is what you read into it.
Caleb wiped his eyes on the sleeve of the duster. He turned away from Utopia. Toward his son. He could get back to him. Wes didn’t have to die alone.
The landscape had changed. Drab with shadow. Smoking. Was there a fire? Caleb looked closer. Fragments dissolved from the distant hills and lifted into the air. Waves and tendrils of color eased into the sky, where they joined other currents moving there. They flowed together, wisps wrapped around larger fingers, leaving a stale and lifeless putty color in their wake.
He recognized this. The fluid motions. The serpentine flow. This was the swarm he’d seen at the apiary. It spanned the entire Texas horizon now. Swaths of color dissociated from their matter, flowing away as far as Caleb could see. Hills, brush, and even the road smeared into the sky, leaving behind bland clay forms of themselves.
“What the fuck is this?” Caleb hissed.
Your choices are collapsing.
“That … that wave? The color disappearing?” he asked. “It’s like that space you take me to. When there’s no color.”
Yes. Moments are becoming fixed for you now.
“That’s … death,” Caleb said. His voice was distant, his breath stolen by the apocalyptic scene in front of him.
That’s a way of understanding it. Your death.
Caleb swallowed. There was nowhere to go. It was consuming everything he saw. “Can I still get to Wes?”
No. He’s behind the wake. You’ll die before reaching him.
“Can I save him?”
No. I told you. His path is set. He won’t survive the day.
The front of the wave crested another hill between Caleb and the Texas horizon. A spiral of sienna and sage broke away from the earth and lifted into the sky.
Turn around, Caleb. That’s where your choices are now.
Chapter 58
Irene
Once Wes stopped responding, Sheriff Dietrick had turned to Leo. “Utopia. The Silverleaf. It’s an hour away. Unless you drive—then it’s more like forty minutes.”
She wasn’t joking. Irene sank into the backseat of the deputy’s custom Dodge Challenger as he sped out of a curve. He handled the overpowered car on the delicate edge between control and chaos. The tires squealed in protest as the engine insisted they race forward.
Leo was a statue of concentration, his focus on the snaking road ahead. Sheriff Dietrick worked her phone and portable radio. She was trying to organize medical help for Wes and a police presence at the restaurant. Her tight shoulders and clipped tone told Irene it wasn’t going well.
“What’s the problem?” Irene asked. “Did the ambulance reach Wes yet?”
The sheriff turned in the front seat, giving Irene her profile. “I’m having trouble getting a coherent picture from Utopia dispatch. I got ahold of a friend over at the fire department.” She shook her head, dismayed. “Says help will be on its way to your brother soon, but everyone is working a scene north of town.” She looked back before adding, “What are the damned odds of that?”
Irene nodded. Her stomach reached into her throat. She wondered if it was because of her own worry, or if it was from Leo floating into another wide turn. Her fingers dug into the leather seat as the car sped up again. The sheriff didn’t seem at all perturbed by the offensive driving tactics, and she turned to face the deputy.
Dietrick’s voice lowered, still yelling over the guttural engine noise as she spoke to Leo. “Something’s up in town. Everyone’s cagey, I can’t get any direct answers.”
“That’s probably it right there,” Leo offered, one of his fingers shooting toward the windshield. Irene’s eyes followed it. The road straightened out, and ahead of them highway patrol cruisers blocked their way. Their strobing red and blue lights made the scene painful to view straight on. An ambulance was parked on the shoulder. Paramedics and officers scuttled over the area near the road.
Physics released Irene from the seat as Deputy Leo decelerated. He reached to the car’s console, flipping a switch. Emergency lights flashed from under the dashboard.
Dietrick nodded to the scene ahead. “Yep, here’s why we can’t reach anyone. Wonder what all the fuss is.” As the car eased to a stop in front of the blockade, she opened the door. As she closed it behind her, the sheriff turned to Irene, saying, “Stay here, Ms. Allard. We’ll only be a minute.”
Irene was alone before she put her protest into words. The windshield provided an unobstructed view of Dietrick approaching an officer, Leo stepping into his boss’s flank. Irene watched the conversation, trying to pick up any detail she could. Heads shook; faces were drawn. She wasn’t able to make out words from watching their lips.
“Come on,” she groaned. She looked at the road ahead. She saw no town. Just fields. Trees. Dad was down there, somewhere, coming her way. Wes was farther away, bleeding to death. And Irene was stuck here, waiting in the backseat of a tiny-penis-mobile.
She punched the headrest, releasing a modicum of her frustration. She turned back toward Dietrick. The sheriff had her hand over her mouth. Leo and the patrolman stared past her. Irene followed their eyes to a long, thin cluster of trees. Two paramedics heaved a large black sack, working it over the gnarled roots that wove the trees together.
Her heart slammed against her chest. Her fingers dug into the headrest. Not a sack. A body bag.
She pushed on the seat
in front of her, fumbling until she found the release on the side. She was out of the car, feet on the ground, moving into the scene. A hand gripped her shoulder. It was Deputy Leo.
“Ms. Allard, you need to stay in the car.” His voice was firm, but his eyes were round with care.
She looked to the black bag framed by the paramedics as they hauled it toward the ambulance. Her hand rose to her mouth. “Oh God,” Irene cried, “is that … my father?”
Leo shook his head. “I assure you, ma’am, it ain’t your father.”
“Let me see,” she screamed. “Show me!”
The sheriff closed the distance to Irene, stepping between her eyes and the ambulance. Irene tried to look over her tight features, searching for an explanation. Dietrick leaned in close, her breath hot on Irene’s cheek as she whispered, “Irene, it isn’t your father. It’s a highway patrol officer.”
Irene shook, her hands wandering to her cheeks, then her belly.
Deputy Leo’s arm went around her shoulders. He prodded Irene back toward his Challenger. “You need to be calm and wait in the car.” His head turned toward the officer on scene. His tone became guarded as he whispered, “Things just got a hell of a lot more complicated for everyone.”
Irene stood, one foot in the car, the other on the ground. She watched the paramedics hoist the bag into the back of the ambulance, the boxy chassis rocking from the weight. The doors closed, the body hidden. The ambulance pulled into the road, its siren wailing. Irene watched it shrink away, the pitch and volume of the siren falling.
Voices stole Irene from her reverie. Yelling. Her eyes found the sheriff. Another officer screamed at her, the sheriff’s hands raised in placation. What the hell?
The patrolman’s head swiveled, and his eyes locked on Irene. His stare was bitter. It was more than professional stoicism. He scowled at her. The man’s skin went ruddy; his lips sneered with vitriol.
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