Sheriff Dietrick turned her head to Irene. Her face pleaded, her eyes motioning to the car. The deputy placed a hand on Irene’s head, pressuring her into the backseat.
He closed the door, and held a hand to the window, a universal sign of “wait here.” He returned to the sheriff’s side. She engaged the patrolman in a verbal confrontation. Irene couldn’t hear them from inside the car. Dietrick’s hands opened, her movements intentional and slow. The other officer puffed his chest, his hands fisting closed and open.
Then the patrolman pointed past the sheriff and the deputy. Toward the car. His eyes rose to Irene. He pointed right at her. He glared, spit frothing as his mouth slapped open and shut. The sheriff moved to block his view as the deputy rounded the front of the vehicle. In a moment, they were back in the car.
“Come on,” Dietrick said, “let’s haul ass to the Silverleaf before this gets any worse.”
The car started with a controlled growl, and Deputy Leo eased it around the blockade. The screaming engine aggravated the tension between them as the car opened up on the road.
“What the hell was that about?” Irene asked.
The question hung in the air, unanswered. Leo stole a pleading look to his boss. Dietrick puffed out a sigh and turned in her seat to face Irene.
“The body they pulled from the barn was a highway patrolman. Someone murdered him.”
“Jesus Christ,” Irene said. “Murdered?”
The sheriff nodded.
Irene shook her head. “That’s terrible! But … why was that officer angry at me?”
The sheriff chewed her lip, eyes fixed on Irene. She debated something; Irene sensed ambivalence radiating from her.
“What is it?” Irene demanded, steeling her gut for more dreadful details.
Dietrick released her lip. “Your brother was shot.”
Irene nodded.
“By your father,” the sheriff continued.
“That’s what he said,” Irene confirmed.
“And your father doesn’t own a gun?” Dietrick worried. Her brow wrinkled, eyes wide. The sheriff hoped for a specific answer.
Irene shook her head. “He doesn’t, no. Why?”
The sheriff’s face fell a bit. “And Wes?”
“I … I don’t know,” Irene admitted. “I can’t imagine he would be able to get one legally, with his record.”
The sheriff didn’t blink. Her eyes hardened, her lips thinned as she swallowed. “That patrolman they pulled out of the barn? His gun is missing, Irene.”
Chapter 59
Caleb
“But why does it need to be me?” Caleb asked. “Why don’t you just … I dunno, drop a rock on the kid? Cause a car accident?”
Oh, believe me, I tried.
The shock of the flippant response stopped Caleb in his tracks.
Yeah, I mean, that video of the deer getting crushed? I was aiming for the boy. I did what I could, but it didn’t work out.
Caleb’s mouth fell open. “But how could it not? Aren’t you …”
I can’t make anyone do things. It’s a “free will” thing, you know? People have to act on their own. Make choices. Each choice results in a moment. More choices.
“So you … what?” Caleb asked. “Talked the driver into murdering the boy?”
Oh, no. That whole thing, it was more of a Hail Mary. He loved animals, was on that road at the right time, with a paranoid squirrel in exactly the right place. Most of the time that’s the way it is. You’ve seen it—there are just too many possibilities to track.
“But why is this happening? Why me?” Pride and terror battled in his chest as the voice remained silent. What made him special? Was he created to do this one thing?
He stopped walking as a shudder of resignation ran through his body. He recognized the emotion, the gesture. It didn’t belong to him.
Caleb raised his open palms, annoyed. “Are you … shrugging?”
Yes, sorry. You can’t see that, can you?
Caleb sighed, turning around. The rising smears of color had expanded. The sky was full, walls of color ebbing and flowing like the surface of rising water.
Keep moving. The church is two streets right, three streets up.
“I know,” Caleb snubbed. He walked the last dozen steps before the town’s first intersection. He turned off the road to a side street that ran by the church. The town was still, save a thin wail rising in the air. Across a small yard was a boxy, prefabricated building. The annex. That’s where he needed to go.
The wailing blossomed into a piercing siren. It rose and fell in pitch as an ambulance raced through the intersection beyond the church.
It was heading south. Straight for the wall of dissolving colors. Straight toward Wes.
Focus, Caleb. You’re so close now.
A shudder racked his chest. Not physical pain. This was bitter regret, shaking the breath from Caleb’s lungs. “Is he gone yet?” he worried.
Who?
Caleb’s unbraced hand ran over his face, wiping past his frustration. “Wes, who the hell do you think?”
Oh, right. Let me see. …
Caleb stepped into the churchyard. The annex was featureless and unremarkable. It squatted on cinder blocks, the bulk of it taking up what was once a basketball court. The plank siding of the Silverleaf walled the far side of the yard. He wondered if the boy was there now. Beyond the diner and across the street, Caleb saw the wood gazebo in the park. His hand reached for the fanny pack under his coat, finding it bloated with cash. Then it moved to the revolver in his pocket.
Looks like he’s hanging on. Shouldn’t be long, though.
Caleb looked to the annex. Wood stairs led to the only door in the structure. Three steps, each a choice he needed to make. A tremble came to his lips. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to hurt anyone else. A story played out in Caleb’s head. He could take out the gun. Put it under his chin. End himself before he caused any more damage to the world. One choice. One last moment. A squeeze, then nothing. No ten seconds of awareness like he’d have with the Final Release. It would all end in a flash.
Don’t you puss out on me, Caleb! We’ve come too far for that! You need to see this through!
The voice stabbed through his mind. Fresh pain, a crushing fist, gripped him. His chest tightened. The tumors in his belly ground against his rib cage. His posture bent at the angry force shoving his body forward. “Stop,” he croaked. “Please, stop! I’ll do it!”
The pressure abated, and Caleb stumbled to catch himself. Hands on his knees, he caught his breath. “Please, don’t. I’ll do it,” he grunted.
Get on with it, Caleb. The universe has time. You don’t.
Caleb nodded. “I will. I’ll do it. But … I want to see Wes one last time. Before he’s gone.”
What did I say? We don’t have time for this, Caleb!
“No,” he replied. His breath calmed as his body relaxed. “No, we do have time, don’t we? You can take me into that … that space. With the threads? Time doesn’t pass when we’re in there. Does it?”
His deaf ear was silent.
Caleb stood up straight, a sharp pang pinching under his ribs. “Well? Am I right?”
The snap in his head was his answer. Caleb expanded beyond his body. The moment shifted around him, his mind racing back the way he had come. Blazing over tepid-colored scrub and hills. South. Toward his son.
The clay ambulance was turning off State Road 187. On the farm road was the truck. Wes. Caleb was with him now, his putty statue slumped in the pickup, the details sickening. Blood dripped from his leg and pooled on the floorboard. It was the same neutral color as Wes’s form, making it appear as though his son were melting in the afternoon sun.
See? There is your son. Right where you left him.
The voice was flat, colorless as the environment that surrounded them. Caleb ignored the cynicism and focused on his son. He looked past the excruciati
ng details for what he knew was underneath. And he found it. Wes’s thread.
Caleb, what are you doing?
He traced the thread backward, through their afternoon in the apiary. Further, back to Junction and I-10.
This won’t change anything.
Caleb ignored the voice, moved along the thread. Faster. To Truth or Consequences. Further. Wes arriving at the hospice office. Caleb lurched along the glassy fibers, heaving past Wes’s recent time in rehab. Past his previous stint several years ago. Caleb groped past years, stumbling through moments of his son’s young adulthood. Wes sitting in a small classroom, dozing. Wes running through the street with other children as a monsoon opened above them. Caleb searched. Scoured.
Caleb, are you trying to delay your responsibilities?
Caleb wanted to know. When was it? What was the deciding moment?
Oh, I see.
What choice had he made?
You want to understand how you fucked up your son?
He would have chosen other words. But yes, that was what Caleb wanted to know. What did he do, as Wes’s father? What was the tipping point that nudged Wes onto his path? The laziness. The drugs. Violence. Bleeding out in a truck, alone.
I can help you with that.
Caleb settled into a specific moment. The stale palette made forms difficult to distinguish. As he eased into the scene, his mind wormed into the exquisite details. The boat, on Elephant Butte Lake. Waters calm, except for the dozen ripples from the pontoons as they rocked against the weight they carried. The sun fixed high in a clear sky. The air still. Irene seated under the boat’s metal canopy, unwrapping a clay Popsicle. Caleb standing on the deck. Holding his boy. Playing the game they both loved. Counting. Teasing. Building the anticipation before tossing Wes over the railing and into the water. In the static moment, Caleb held Wes’s thick-boned body prone, about to release him out over the water.
What was this? Why this moment? How could this have set his son on such a destructive path? Wes loved their time on the boat. They all did. It was one of the few times the kids enjoyed each other. This was a moment filled with love, one he wanted his children to cherish. How was this where things went so wrong?
It’s tricky, though, Caleb. This moment is … was … the last time you took them out on the pontoon boat. Do you remember what you were thinking?
He remembered. Wes was getting too big for the game. Too heavy to throw. They wouldn’t be able to play it much longer, unless Caleb wanted a back injury.
Yes, but do you remember the choice you made here?
Caleb could not remember. What choice?
As an answer to the question, two fibers became obvious to Caleb. They knotted together in the chest of his putty statue, passing into Wes. They split there, one curving over the left side of the boat, the other over the right. Caleb didn’t comprehend.
You always flung Wes over the left side of the boat. That’s the side that has the ladder in the water. This time, though, this one time, you went the other direction.
The scene played out, Caleb’s form splitting as one released Wes to the left, the other to the right. Both Weses silently broke the water, sending ripples through the clay-colored surface. What was Caleb supposed to see?
Look deeper, Caleb. Look at what’s happening in your son’s brain.
Caleb moved into the microscopic details. Brain cells. Neurons. Chemicals spewing across endless chasms of space. Both Weses had the same rush. Neurotransmitters shoving the impulse from cell to cell. Feelings emerged as the event arced through his son’s brain. Anticipation. Excitement. Joy.
The patterns diverged. Caleb slipped back to the boat. Left-Wes reached the ladder, his brain falling back to something stable, something calm. Right-Wes slapped through the water to reach the pontoon. He pawed hand over hand toward the front of the boat, his brain flooding with new chemicals. Unfamiliar feelings. Different thoughts. Fear. He couldn’t get out of the water. Terror. He was drowning. Betrayal. Dad knew he was a shitty swimmer.
Experiencing Wes’s thoughts should have unsettled Caleb. The lack of privacy should have embarrassed him. As before, in this strange place, Caleb felt nothing. It was one minor detail on an infinite pile of emotionless data points.
That right there? That set it all in motion.
But how?
Subtle changes in neural pathways, solidified by the body’s reaction. It changed your son. How he responded to things. What he expected from people.
Caleb couldn’t look away. His mind captured every painful, writhing detail as his son thrashed in the lake. Eyes saucered, Wes splashed around the front of the boat.
Not all at once. Like, he wasn’t swimming here thinking, “Damn, now I’m an unmotivated drug addict.” But this was the first chink in his armor.
The moment moved forward. Wes—both Weses—were on the boat. Left-Wes reaching up to Caleb for another toss into the drink. Right-Wes shuddering under a towel next to his sister.
A slight change already, see? Changes have a way of accumulating.
Caleb rushed off the boat. Two fresh moments splayed around him. Wes was years older. Maybe eleven. He was walking into his two-story school building with other students. Left-Wes stood midstride, in a group of his peers. Smiling. Eyes homed on a boy standing next to him. Engaged. Happy.
Right-Wes stood a few yards back. Alone. Eyes on his shoes. Ignoring the world and the people in it. Shoulders stooped as if he was trying to disappear altogether.
More moments, more choices, more disparity.
The scene flashed ahead. Wes was older. Midteens now. In a hardware store. He wore a utility smock, a name badge pinned to a polo shirt. He worked here. And he didn’t. The other Wes skulked in a corner, pocketing something from a display.
Moments came faster. One Wes buying groceries, the other buying weed. One finishing high school, the other skipping class. One in technical school, the other in rehab.
How was Caleb supposed to know? How could he have known that one insignificant decision would lead to this? More moments raced around him. Wes starting an HVAC servicing business. Wes relapsing into treatment. Wes grieving over his father’s death. Wes dying under the Texas sun.
Caleb wanted to stop, longed to leave this space. There was one Wes now. Getting married. Knowing love. Having children. His own boat. Caleb’s adult son, standing on the bow of a new pontoon boat, holding his daughter—Caleb’s would-be granddaughter—by the armpits. Faces bright. Eyes twinkling with anticipation. Like Caleb used to do with his son.
He longed to feel something. Anger. Sadness. Guilt. Something to acknowledge the lifetime of misery he’d caused his son. To grieve the moments that could have been. That should have been.
You can’t dwell on that, Caleb. You made a choice, yes. Wes made his own choices too. It’s impossible for anyone to see it all. The infinite outcomes and interactions. Hell, I can’t even do it. All you can do is move ahead. Make the next choice.
The moments folded on themselves. Caleb found himself back in front of the church annex. Color throbbed into the scene as his emotions reasserted themselves. Rage at the loss of his son, preventable by a single choice so long ago. Frustration at not seeing it in time. Despair that he would never have known any better. Broken over the moments that would never be.
Caleb pulled in a creaking breath, the pain of his disease blossoming once again. Its grip had tightened, an anchor dragging from his belly. Tears seeped from his eyes, blurring the annex door to a smudge. He wiped them away.
Would you like to see Irene too?
Of course he wanted to see his daughter. Yet, Caleb shook his head. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist unraveling the threads. He would learn why Irene was the way she was, while her brother’s life came to an ugly end. It would break him in two.
If it’s any consolation—
“It isn’t,” Caleb interrupted. As he placed his foot on the first step to the annex door, a ne
w siren blared from the road. He looked up, followed the sound of squealing brakes as a muscle car tore down the road. Several police cruisers followed, and the vehicles stopped at the intersection past the diner, blocking the road through Utopia.
Behind the cars, in the park across Main Street, a thin streak of rust and brown pulled away from the gazebo. It tangled with the stale greens and grays effervescing from the grass, mesquite trees, and stone wall as the colors of the park broke apart and rose into the sky.
Then you need to hurry. This can still go sideways. You have a few choices, Caleb. Make them count.
Caleb rapped on the door.
Chapter 60
Wes
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Wes opened his eyes. He looked down at his leg. His forearm still wedged the tourniquet tight. The makeshift clamp held. His lids drifted back closed.
One. Two. What were those numbers Pop had said? When he lay in the road? What did Irene call them? Oily numbers, or something. What were they? Two, something, right? Wes struggled to remember. Who remembered such a stupid thing, anyway?
Shit. Shit! He opened his eyes again. Was the tourniquet still holding? He grappled against the weight of his eyelids. His head leaned forward onto the steering wheel. He was so tired. His leg numbed as his body shivered from the chill. Maybe he would take a short nap.
The crowbar of a siren forced open his eyes. Just as fast, the sound stopped. Had he died? Was that moment his last one? The spattered windshield throbbed with the red emergency lights, making the spots and rivulets pulse. No, he wasn’t dead.
His door opened. His body moved. Not by his choice. Wes wanted to help. But the pain held him in his seat. The slurp of breaking suction. The scream from his thigh. He pushed against his own mind, willing it to stay conscious.
He must have failed. He was prone. Fresh agony, on his leg. Tearing. They were cutting off his jeans, ripping the coagulated blood from his wound. Ragged pain. He bled again. It wasn’t warm. He should be able to feel it on his skin, right?
Wes heard his name. He looked up, at a stranger. Round face. Weak beard. Wes nodded. More words from the round face. A single word stood out.
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