The Ancestor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  “Woo hoo,” Grayson cheers, patting a beat against Travis’s back. But Travis never celebrates, since death is never a celebration. It brings him closer to his own mortality—

  that one tiny slip could cause destruction. This feeling lingers in the lump in his throat until he swallows and passes it on.

  The caribou ran some distance, so they bring the pickup nearer. After putting away the binoculars, Travis finally allows a celebration with a cracked-open Molson, frigid against his chapped lips. Grayson does a touchdown dance over the dead carcasses while Travis grabs the rope and ties them up. With every ounce of exertion left in them, they hoist two caribous into the back of the pickup, not enough room for the third. Flurries are beginning to fall, and they cover the kills with a heavy tarp.

  “I’m gonna take a leak ’fore we head out,” Grayson says, trotting away.

  “Why you going so far?”

  “Okay, it’s a massive dump. Mind yer biz.”

  Travis watches Grayson’s blond head become smaller and smaller until he passes behind a snowy bank. He takes off his baseball cap and stands over the lone caribou they must leave behind. He places the cap over his heart and gives thanks for the meals they’ve procured, not to any type of god because he believes in nothing like that, but to the law of nature, which requires sacrifices for one to survive. He hopes other hungry animals find the carcass and make a good meal so its death is justified.

  A twig snaps over yonder and he cranes his head but he’s left the binoculars in the pickup and doesn’t bother to get them. It might be a critter coming to observe this funeral, nothing to be concerned about. The sky absorbs his focus, blue like the eye of a wild and beautiful bird, blue like the wallpaper in Eli’s room, sweet Eli who should be waking from his nap by the time he gets home.

  “I must hug him more,” he says, surprised to vocalize this out loud but glad he does.

  That way it’s truly out there in the world, this massive love he feels for another human being even when the little terror sometimes makes him wish he was deaf. “I must love them all more,” Travis says directly to the clouds, the same ones passing over Callie and his son so the essence of his words might trickle down as vapors into their hearts.

  3

  Right eye jolts open, the lid flapping like a pulled shade, the left still frozen. The fire has extinguished; he’s not surprised. To keep it stoked, he should’ve only allowed himself an hour of sleep at a time, but rest was more important than warmth. Limbs have tightened up again, difficult to move so he rolls from side to side to get the blood flowing. Out of the corner of his good eye, a wolf sits poised, staring with a piercing blue gaze. His first thought being that this is the wolf he already killed and consumed. It has returned as a vision, a terrible oasis. But the reality of the wolf’s growl tells a different story, one filled with its pack circling around their prey. Four of them, teeth bared, impossible to fight all, the end near. He swears he’ll go out swinging.

  “Come at me, sumbitches,” he snaps, morphing into a wolf now too.

  One attacks by bearing its teeth and going for his arm, but then a gunshot rings out, the echo like a door slam. He scans for the source but is too afraid to truly move. The wolves all do the same, their necks pivoting in unison toward the distance. Another round goes off and this gets them scared. They vanish as a unit, scampering down a hill until they are gone.

  This time he can tell the direction of the gunfire, due east, curious how he knows that phrase. A rocking ship on uneasy waters lingers in his consciousness, but this is not the moment to search for memories. Whether the bullets come from friend or foe, he’ll die out here soon enough if he doesn’t investigate.

  Silently, he pursues the gun owner, hazy from dehydration, each step a lifetime. He’s adept at not making a peep. This is a skill he’s practiced and excelled at before. Atop a bluff stands a man holding some sort of hat over his heart, a dead caribou at his feet. The man wears unfamiliar clothes very different from his own Mackinaw coat and trousers with rubber boots. The gun slung around the man’s back is one he’s never seen before.

  But he doesn’t know much of what he’s seen before, so it isn’t much of a shock.

  When the man turns from the caribou, he can make out his profile but the man does not see him. This man believes he’s alone. His good eye zeroes in on this first human.

  Dark, shaggy hair kept long, prominent nose and absorbing green eyes with flecks of gold. He removes the embroidered mirror from his pocket. He brings it up to his face to look at himself again. Then his gaze goes to this doppelgänger, this replica of himself except for a scraggly beard. Is he so far gone from thirst and hunger that he’s envisioned a duplicate? He shakes his head back and forth so the vision might disappear, but it remains more vibrant than ever—his past or future self, long-lost twin, or whoever it might be. He nearly soils his pants, manages to keep his colon tight.

  “Was all backed up,” he hears another voice call out. A fair-haired man pops up over the bluff.

  “I didn’t need to know that,” his duplicate replies.

  “Shat out a moose I tell ya. You got to see it.”

  “I ain’t looking at your shit, Gray.”

  “No man, this one is, like, legendary. Size of a baby’s arm.”

  “You need more fiber.”

  “C’mon, Trav. Indulge me.”

  “All right, you degenerate.”

  The two disappear over a hill. He’s motionless, mind whirling, unable to decide the next step. He peers past the dead caribou over to some large metal thing on wheels resembling a carriage but without any horse. He makes a break for it and dives into the back, tucking himself tight under the tarp, nose-to-nose with two dead carcasses starting to reek. Barely enough room to squeeze in. He hears the two other men return and hop in the front. A puttering noise is followed by a reverberation under his body, and then he’s in motion: soaring, gliding.

  “Take me away,” he whispers to the dead animals. He closes his one eye, exhausted from the trying morning where he almost died before he was brought to life again.

  His dreams, fragmented and untethered, full of images but nothing coalesces. Staring into a dirty hanging mirror, running a comb through his thick hair. This mirror existed in a place he called home, except nothing exists beyond his reflection trapped in a black hole.

  Does it lead to a bedroom where a wife and child lay? He senses a presence of something greater than himself in his heart, a pure love, yet who he loves remains an enigma. Somehow, he has found the first key to open the first door, now he must discover the rest.

  The carriage stops with a jolt. His head bangs against the metal bed. The dead caribous jostle. He hears a muffling conversation from the two men in the front. They must not find him in the back so he slides out like an eel, slithering into a puddle on the ground.

  The front doors are opened and he scurries under the wheeled monstrosity, just enough room to fit. He stares at their boots.

  “I don’t mind carving up the meat,” one man says to the other. “If you want to pick it up later.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Trav.”

  “Keeps me busy. You sure you don’t need a ride?”

  “I’m gonna pop into Elson’s. Have me a brew.”

  “You call a cab if you need it. Don’t be getting in your patrol vehicle.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Will do.”

  “Fuck you, kindly.”

  “Solid hunt today.”

  “Wouldn’t have expected anything else, Gray.”

  A whirring buzz resonates and he can see a large door opening upward and a room filled with tools and such. His doppelgänger, who has been called “Trav,” hoists the caribou inside one at a time. This Trav is strong, like himself. Once both caribous have been brought in, the door closes. He wiggles out and stands, bones cracking.

  He observes the space where Trav has entered, no window to peer inside. A home is built around this entrance and he hugs the siding until
he reaches glass he can see through. A small child lies on his stomach, feet kicked up in the air. The child focuses on a large box with moving pictures, mouth agape. The window has been open a crack and the smell of apples and cinnamon wafts into his nostrils. Stomach churns, saliva drips, longing occurs. A bite of something sweet seems an impossibility, a morsel of anything would be a gift from God.

  “Eli,” a voice says, sugary like that dream. The boy doesn’t avert his eyes from the box as a woman joins him.

  His heart stops beating, then beats faster, organs out of whack. The woman has red-dish-orange hair, wild like a fire, clipped back in a ponytail that hangs down to the small of her back. A kind face, the tips of her cheeks rubbed red, freckles dancing across her forehead. All her teeth show when she smiles. He can tell she smiles a lot.

  “Daddy’s home,” she tells the boy, who then becomes alert. The boy jumps up, feet tapping away. “Give him time, he’s in the garage.”

  She pets the boy’s hair, gently sitting him back down. She tucks him to her chest, his legs crossed over her own. They stare at the curious box with the moving pictures.

  From their fireplace, flames crackle and whistle, and he wants more than anything to be a part of their coziness. The love in this house full and simmering. Remote yet familiar. His head feels like a blown-up balloon, and he has to grab onto the windowsill for support. The world gets small like he’s looking through the wrong side of binoculars, then widens again, stretched out and surreal. A different woman and a different child appear in his mind. A similar fire cooks. The child and the woman are dressed in recogniza-ble clothes. She wears a floral dress buttoned up to her neck with lace around the trim, not much skin exposed unlike the woman he just witnessed. Her hair less orange, redder, even fierier. She sings to the child, tucked beneath her bosom, who’s barely able to keep his eyes open. “To-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Hush, now don’t you cry.” It’s an Irish melody, this he knows. Ireland is a country, and he’s not there now. He’s in America; he can tell from everyone’s accent. He’s uncertain if he’s been to Ireland, if that’s a part of his history.

  He dives further into this vision, afraid it might disappear. The woman has a name that rests on the tip of his tongue, but for now, that’s where it will stay. The same with the child. These aren’t strangers, he surmises. They are certainly a part of his past. Is this the wife and son he craves? He waits to feel his heart swell with love but it’s been frozen for too long like he has.

  Frozen.

  At that thought, his sealed eye twitches. How long had he been trapped in the wilderness unable to move? This unsettles him, the notion that he’s farther away from home than he ever could have imagined, no mode of transport to take him back.

  “To-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush, now don’t you cry.”

  The song settles into his soul, but he doesn’t heed its advice. Tears the size of raindrops plop from his socket, collect in his beard, and leave a salty tang on his lips.

  The woman and the child morph back into the ones in the house before him, cruel imitations since he believes the others to be his actual family. Why else would they sink into his mind? Are they fretting right now as to where he could be? Do they cry similar tears from being apart? A stabbing pain in his stomach warns him that he might never know.

  He squeezes his good eye shut to conjure them again, but they have faded, possibly never returning. The lullaby remains trapped between his ears while he stays trapped in this voyage to a new world, this hell on Earth.

  In the house, Trav enters the room and the boy squeals, leaps into his father’s arms.

  They spin around in delight, shower each other with kisses, each one causing the pain in his chest to stab even harder. He wants to burst in and replace Trav, experience the sensation of a kiss, a foreign entity since it’s been so long. Eons have seemingly passed without a hug and this has whittled him down to a nub.

  “Got a whole caribou,” Trav says, and the woman gives her thousand-toothed smile and now they kiss, long and hard, melting into each other.

  He must turn away, unable to watch their happiness anymore. He folds into his sleeve, the tears continuing to stream. But in horror, he forces himself to look back, since he knows the only way to return to his loves will be to keep this family in his sights.

  So he glues his rheumy eye to the glass, knowing at least one thing about himself.

  He is tenacious. And no one should stand in the way of what he wants.

  4

  Trav calls her California. A strange name for a woman, the man thinks. He rests his ear up against the crack in the window so he can fully hear their conversation. The boy is still absorbed in the odd box with the moving pictures where tiny people speak from out of it like they’re alive. California is a place that this man has known; it rings true in his mind.

  He’s seen it before, traversed its land, although he’s unsure how it looks. Not cold like where he stands now, this he knows. Items from his past traveling to his cranium in pieces, but he will be patient. He must.

  California comes to Trav with envelopes in hand. These envelopes bear bad news. The man can tell from the worried dimple that has formed between her eyes.

  “And I was having such a good day,” Trav says, folding into a chair.

  She hugs him from behind. “I hate being a buzzkill.”

  “Mortgage. Water. Electricity. Phone.” Trav chucks the envelopes on the table.

  “Which is the least important?”

  “We could take out a second on the home?” California says, but her voice strains and she does not mean it.

  He waves her away. “’Least we got meat for the next two weeks.”

  “I’ll get Lorinda to give us some pizzas. She’s always willing.”

  “Maybe not. Her and Gray broke up.”

  “Shit,” California says, blowing her bangs away from her face. “Cheated on her?”

  “That’s not what he told me.”

  “Doesn’t mean it isn’t what happened.”

  A lull laps around their conversation. They watch their son watching the box, craving his naiveté to the woes of adulthood. The man sees this in their frowns.

  “Have you been…looking?” California asks, then it’s obvious she wishes she didn’t say anything. Trav cuts her with his sharp eyes, doesn’t respond.

  “I bet Elson could get you a shift behind his bar,” she says. “Place has been hopping since the layoffs.”

  “Glad Elson’s doing so well.”

  “Now, now,” California says, changing her tactics. She curls into Trav’s lap, rubs his meaty thighs, tickles his neck with her nose. “No one’s got it better than us Barlows.”

  Barlows.

  The man tries the word out on his tongue and it seems to fit. He’s said it before, many times. Us Barlows. A last name? Does he know these people somehow? Maybe he is Trav’s twin, although they don’t seem concerned that he might be missing. Maybe he’s been missing for so long that they’ve stopped caring.

  On impulse, he goes to knock on the window and let them know of his existence. But then he stops, recoiling, afraid of their reaction. If he’s a stranger, he’ll ruin his spying and any chance of getting back to the visions from before.

  “Do you want me to tell Stu and Cora not to come over for dinner tonight?” California asks.

  “No, it’s Sunday. I’ll make a stew for Stu.”

  “It’s so odd that you call your dad…Stu.”

  “I came out the womb calling him that.”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you, my folks are putting in a pool.”

  Trav raises an eyebrow, but he’s clearly uninterested.

  “Maybe we can go down with Eli when they finish,” she says.

  Trav spins out of his chair, disappears for a moment, and returns with a frosted beer.

  He cracks it open and indulges.

  “Who’s paying for the flight?”

&n
bsp; “I’m sure they will if we ask.”

  “But nothing comes free with them, Callie. You know that.”

  “They miss me is all.”

  Trav chugs another long swig. “How in the hell did you wind up in buttfuck, Alaska with a loser like me?”

  “Because…I was on a cruise and we docked for the day and I saw this tree trunk of a man slicked with oil on his overalls, hair like a lion’s mane, tearing into a sandwich like it did him dirty, and I said, ‘This will be my future.’ Saw it in lights.”

  She takes the beer from his hand, sips, and leaves it on the table out of reach. She kisses him sweetly, which makes the boy finally look up from the box and cover his eyes, saying, “Gross!”

  “I love you, California,” he says, the first real grin on his face that the man has seen.

  “I love you…most of the time, Travis.”

  Trav picks her up and rocks her in his arms. She glides through the air. Her arms bare and the top of her breasts peek out, which startles him. He knows he’s used to women being modest, this girl flashy. Some stirring rumbles beneath his waist, the first true sign of life since he opened that one eye. He’s beginning to form again and this brings him joy.

  “I need to start carving up that caribou if we’re gonna have a meal ready by the time my folks come,” Trav says.

  Trav places her down, cheeks flushed. She looks at Trav like he wishes she would do to him. And for one tiny moment, he believes that she does, gaze flickering over in his direction as he crouches down low, afraid he’s been caught. But when he pops back up, Trav and California have both gone. Only the child remains, focusing on the box with moving pictures, as if it’s an oracle that could read a map of all of their futures.

  He holds Trav and California tight in his mind, back flush against the house, traces of their conversation still batting around. Hallucinations run wild, likely from hunger. The wolf has long passed through his digestive system and he’s ravenous. Squeezes his eyes shut until what he truly craves spirals back, not Trav and California but the woman and child he once knew intimately.