The Ancestor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  “There you go speaking of time again. I think you’ve got a fixation.”

  “I just want to get back to when I’m supposed to be from.”

  She cups his massive hands, directs one toward her breast. She does the fondling for him.

  “I have a wife.”

  “So do most of the men that come here. I don’t judge.”

  “I love her.”

  “I’m sure you do. This don’t mean you love her any less.”

  “You have an Injun look to you. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw ya.”

  She lets go of his hand, her mouth grasping for what to say. “No golden nugget is worth some racist bullshit.”

  “I don’t know those words. I…was makin’ an observation.”

  “We’re not called Injun, asshole. It’s Native American.”

  “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “You don’t make no sense.”

  She fishes for the golden nugget from her pocket, ready to give it back.

  “No, no, please. I apologize. I told you, I’m not from your time. I don’t know the right things to say. Please lie back down.”

  He pats the bed. She hesitates, but gold trumps all else. He’s been poisoned just as much by its lure.

  “All right. Native American, that’s what you’re called in 2020. I won’t make the same mistake.”

  “This is something you should’ve learned long ago. But I’ll play along with your time travel story. When are you from?”

  “1898. Came to this area for the Gold Rush and believe I never left.”

  “What have you been doing since then?”

  “Thawing.”

  She plays with her areolas, pinching until the nipples harden.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he says. “Really.”

  “Men back then didn’t like sex?”

  “I told you I love my wife.”

  “If your story’s true she’d be about one hundred and fifty. Hate to break it to you, but don’t think she’s still around.”

  A layer of frost coats the window blurring the outside. Between the lit candles and a song playing downstairs from what sounds like a phonograph, he’s transported. Modern

  world disintegrated. No Adalaide or Joe—but their bed materializes. What it was like to descend into its sheets after a long and arduous expedition. The caress of home after one has been beaten. Covered in hot towels to soothe aching limbs. Adalaide beside him with a bucket tending to his sores. Maybe abandoning them wasn’t the last time he saw either one. He could’ve returned only to leave again, hopefully with her blessing.

  “Where did you go?” Aylen asks, snapping her fingers in front of his nose.

  “I saw her,” he says, enchanted. Reaching for Adalaide, but she’s already dissolved.

  “Who’s that, honey?”

  “My wife.”

  Salty sting of tears, figuring he’s wept more in the past few days than in a lifetime prior. He wipes them away, ashamed.

  “I’m sorry for crying.”

  “You ain’t the first to do that in this bed. Usually it’s after sex though.”

  This entices a smile out of him.

  “Ah, you can express emotions other than grumpy.” She digs an elbow into the mattress, rests her head in her palm. “Tell me about her. What was her name?”

  “Adalaide.”

  “Very pretty name. What was she like?”

  He goes to say what should come naturally, but finds himself at a loss. How to describe someone who only exists in a few memories? She’s nothing more than a fog.

  “I don’t know.” His hands shake and this scares him, her too. “I’m trying to get back to her, my son as well. I believe the last time we spoke I wasn’t kind.”

  “Memories aren’t always what really happened. I’m sure you’re being hard on yourself.”

  “My son was sick. He’s always cold and we don’t know why. Instead of being there for him, I came here. For gold!”

  “Did you find that gold at least? Beyond a nugget?”

  He has a fantasy of digging through snow. Fingers blistered. Fear throbbing throughout his chest. A hole in the earth and gold shoved deep down. Its brilliant shine covered until it was fully unearthed. He surfaces from this passage, head spinning, nausea creeping. Clinging to Aylen just to maintain.

  “I have these visions,” he says, gumming his dry mouth. “But you say that memories aren’t always what happened, so I don’t know if they’re real.”

  She pulls him to her bosom as if he’s a tiny child. “Come. Rest.”

  His cheek sticks to her breast from the boiling temperature of the room. They are fused together. She massages his temples, sends him into a deep sleep, further down than since he awakened. There’s a tunnel he finds, a direct line. A giant ship docked that he runs to catch, its sails flapping from battering gusts and welcoming him aboard. But the tunnel only allows a picture of this like he’s staring at a painting. He’s unable to board, however it’s more real than any mirage he’s had thus far.

  This ship being what brought him to the present, that he’s certain. He must find a way to get on for it holds clues to where he departed from and possibly what happened once he arrived.

  “Hush, Mr. Ice Man,” he hears a lovely siren sing from the sky. “Rest your weary eye.”

  13

  Travis drives his family five miles through an unseasonably late blizzard for a Sunday night dinner at Stu and Cora’s, since Papa Clifford wasn’t feeling well enough to make it to their house last week. The weather proving fickle. Eli difficult to bundle up again after being free from his snowsuit for days. Callie cursing the blinding whiteness. Travis wondering if the Cutthroat will be able to head out tomorrow.

  “You’re liking the job, aren’t you?” Callie asks. She clutches a jade crystal hanging from her neck.

  “Tell your crystals to make the snow go away.”

  “They don’t work like that.”

  He knows he’s joking, but can see it hurts her some. Callie believes wholeheartedly while Travis lives fully by logic. He’s never been able to stretch his mind.

  “It’s only been a week or so,” he says, squinting to see the road ahead. All he needs is a moose to pop out of nowhere. Laner filled with stories of car crashes related to wildlife on dimly lit roads. “But yeah, I’m doing well. Smitty’s got me fishing some, as well as scooping out guts. And we shoot the shit all day. I’ve really missed being out on the water.”

  “I know you have. I could tell.”

  “Hey, Little Man,” Travis calls out behind him. Eli’s iPad bathing his face in artificial light. “You miss me?”

  No response.

  “That damn iPad. Eli, I’m gonna throw it out the window.”

  Travis reaches behind, fumbling to try to grab it.

  “Nooooooooo!” Eli screeches.

  “Travis, let him play,” Callie says.

  “Stu would’ve smacked me when I was Eli’s age if I didn’t respond.”

  “Well, we don’t smack kids no more. That’s not a thing.”

  “Everyone’s so sensitive now. No one can say boo to their kids anymore.”

  “Boo!” Eli screams, making them both jump.

  “Eli, keep your voice down.”

  “Boo!” Eli yelps, as Travis slams on the brakes inches from a moose in the middle of the road. Staring back as if it could care less if they’d run it over.

  “Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” Travis says, gulping his breath. His fingers fusing to the wheel. He pries them off.

  Callie had lunged for his arm, gripping it tight. She too unclenches. The blipping noise from Eli’s iPad the only sound except for the spiraling flakes against the hood.

  The moose smacks his gums and sashays into the woods, thoroughly unaffected by the ordeal.

  “Are you all right?” Travis asks. “Is everyone okay?”

  Callie swivels around to find Eli just as impervious as the moose.

  “He
’s fine,” she says. “He doesn’t care.”

  “I was thinking about a moose,” Travis says. “Right before it happened.”

  “Let’s just get going before the car stalls.”

  She massages her forehead, as if she’s working on a burgeoning headache.

  “Right before. I thought about a crash, Callie.”

  “Okay. So? You foretold this. Is that what you’re saying? You’re the one who never allows yourself to believe in the uncanny.”

  Callie fingers her crystal and looks over at Travis, but he’s gone inward. He plays out the crash in his mind. The moose weighing more than the car and standing firm while the car is thrown into the woods. A giant tree slicing through the windshield. A thick branch spearing through Callie and Eli like a skewer.

  And Travis, left behind to sweep up their pieces.

  At Travis’s folks’ place, Callie can’t stop talking about the moose. How it appeared out of nowhere. How Travis braked inches from its snout. They’re all waiting while the stew Cora made heats up: Stu with a Rob Roy aperitif, Travis lost in a cold beer, Eli scribbling doodles, Papa Clifford in the bathroom since they arrived.

  “Is he okay?” Callie asks, indicating the bathroom.

  Cora blushes. “Stopped up from all the new meds he’s taking. Sometimes he’ll go through the whole Alaskan Dispatch in there.”

  “Cora, you don’t have to paint a picture,” Stu says, spinning out of his seat. “I’ll check on him.”

  Once Stu’s out of ear range, Cora’s voice drops sotto voce. “He’s been so sensitive about Papa. I think the fall really scared him.”

  “It was scary for all of us,” Callie says.

  They look over at Travis who’s circling the rim of the bottle with his pinky.

  “We lost you there, Travis,” Cora says.

  When Travis finally glances up, he appears as if he has no idea who he is or where he’s landed.

  “Baby,” Callie says, tracing his thumb.

  The toilet flushes, causing the hairs on the back of Callie’s neck to sharpen. Stu leads Papa Clifford outside. In the scant days since they’ve seen him, Papa Clifford has withered. His arms riddled with sores, face sunken in. Thin where he used to be robust, a belt cinched tightly in an attempt to hold up his pants. Stu sees them start to slide down and catches in time.

  “Hey Papa, it’s good to see you,” Callie says, raising her voice but still Papa doesn’t hear.

  Stu gets his father situated in a special chair at the table that supports his back.

  “Everyone can stop gawking now,” Papa Clifford says.

  “No one’s gawking,” Cora says. “We’re all just happy to see you.”

  He twists his lips at her and waves to Eli. “There’s my boy.”

  Eli’s still doodling but Callie lifts up his chin. “Eli, say hi to Papa Clifford.”

  “Hi, Papa.”

  “What’cha drawing?”

  Eli shrugs. “Boos and stuff.”

  “The kids were almost in an accident on the ride over,” Cora says. “Moose on the road.”

  “Huh?”

  “Moose on the road.”

  “A caboose? Haven’t rode one of those since the fifties.”

  “No, a…”

  “I heard you the first time. Just fuckin’ with ya.”

  The table all chuckles.

  “Dad, you’ll never change,” Stu says, his hand on Papa’s shoulder like he’s afraid of letting go.

  “And you, sonny?” Papa says to Travis. “What’s your deal?”

  “Sorry, Papa,” Travis says, spiraling back to normal or at least faking it well.

  Cora fetches the stew she made, bison with red wine and sweet bay. Callie wants to say she’s been eating caribou all week and could barely stomach the idea of more wild game, but she nibbles mostly at the potatoes and carrots so as not to hurt Cora’s feelings.

  Cora’s too busy trying to feed Papa Clifford to notice.

  “They told me you got a new job, Travis,” Papa says, swatting Cora’s hand away when she tries to come at him with a fork. “Lady, I can do it myself.”

  “We’ve gotta put meat on your bones,” Cora says, but Stu gives her a signal to let it go. Callie spies the three empty bottles by Travis’s plate and the fourth in his hand, figuring she’ll be the one driving home.

  “It’s work,” Travis says.

  “Good you’re back on water,” Papa says. “Barlows are meant to be on water. That’s how we got to Laner.”

  “You want to tell us the story?” Cora asks.

  “I don’t know what the story is, but I can wrestle through my mind for one. Father traveled up from Washington State, this was in the twenties. Said the land pulled at him to come, at least that was what my mother told us. Never really knew the man. But we settled and almost a hundred years later, we’re still here. Then Mother caught pneumonia while I was stationed in Germany fighting the devil. Returned to my sister Rose gone mad. She wound up in an institution over in Juneau, shock treatments and the like but they never took. I met Frannie the day Rose was taken away. That good woman saved me. And now she’s in high heaven. None of you can know what it’s like to be the oldest person you know. I’ve lived too long.”

  “Don’t say that, Papa,” Cora chides, shaking her head.

  “I don’t mean I’m ready to string up a noose and call it a day. But I’ll…” He stops, eyes creaming over. “I’ll wake up sometimes and for a second I’m young again. When I’m still connected to my dreams. But then my body reminds me of its decay. Worst feeling ever.”

  Cora massages Papa’s veiny hand, the blood rushing to her face.

  “Now, now, Papa. Maybe we can think of a better story.”

  “No, I shouldn’t complain. Isn’t a full life what we all aim for? I look at someone like Bobby and think, now that’s just not okay. That’s enough to make you truly ask God why.”

  Stu sucks at his cheek, then quietly gets up. He pushes his chair into the table and exits the room.

  “Papa,” Cora says, in a nagging tone.

  “What?” the old man asks.

  Her mouth trembles. “Why did you have to…?”

  “Ah, sorry, sometimes my mouth goes to where my mind tells me not to. Foolish, foolish of me.”

  Callie wants to say anything to help the situation, but understands that no words could suffice.

  So she gives Papa a wink that makes him smile again.

  “I’m gonna get a beer,” Travis says, wanting to be far away from that table, his family, even lucidity.

  In the kitchen, the cool of the refrigerator with the door open allows him to transport.

  He’s out in the tundra where the world stills. He hasn’t thought of Bobby all week ever since that first day out on the Cutthroat. Not to fault Papa Clifford, but his brother’s the last thing he wants to think about tonight. Their entire clan swallowed up by the loss—

  Stu the worst. He bets Stu’s down in the basement now, a madman’s shrine devoted to any possible conspiracy.

  Sure enough, when Travis descends, Stu’s hunched over a crowded table lit by a tiny cone lamp. Browning newspapers surrounding like wallpaper. Bobby’s name multiplied in Helvetica bold. Stu doesn’t hear him come down, that’s what madness does. Traps you. Better to recede up those stairs than join the funeral. So he leaves his father who’s got his notepad out, marking up the margins with a black pen that never leaves his side.

  Travis longs to snap that pen, end the mystery by allowing the tragedy to remain an enigma—as callous as that might be.

  Bobby never deserved this kind of obsession. Yet Travis’s entire life had been centered around his parents attempting to prevent what had been destined to occur. And what destroyed him more than anything was thinking that his brother’s death shouldn’t be mourned, but justified.

  Sometimes he wants to yell that in Stu’s ear, except he doesn’t have the heart to watch a man crumble.

  14

  Aylen injec
ted life into Wyatt, but also robbed him even more of Adalaide. Upon exiting her house of women, he has even less a sense of his love. She withered in the night, a sacrifice for his sin. And he’d not been truly aberrant, holding onto Aylen’s body but rebuff-ing advances for anything more. He surmises that the men who partake of her services must not be too kind because she let him lie there for hours. Downstairs, they could hear clientele getting drunk and frisky. But she remained burrowed in his bear arms, telling him stories of long ago that had been passed down to her from generations.

  “Are you part of a tribe?” he had asked, still transfixed with her hair. How it ran through his fingers like silk.

  “Tlingit…but not since I was a child.” She’d rolled a cigarette, and in the dim dusk light, her face became obscured from the smoke. “There are very few of us left in this area. It’s a matrilineal society and my mother has passed. I don’t plan on having children so it ends with me.”

  “Why don’t you want children?”

  “In case you haven’t realized, I’m a whore.”

  “You don’t have to use such a crude term,” he said. “And you do not have to do it forever.”

  “There’s not much opportunity around these parts.” She exhaled the smoke as if she were disgusted. “But Raye, the madam, is good to me. All of us. We’re a family. I never had a family.”

  “I miss my family,” he said, choking up. The words like nails in his throat.

  “You really have a child?”

  “Had.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Like you said, he would be well over a century old. There’s no way he’s still alive.”

  She scrunched up her nose. “You can drop the act.”

  “I do not know what that means.”

  “This time travel story. It was amusing, but you can be honest.”

  “I am.”

  She ashed her cigarette. “It’s getting old. I’m growing tired of it.”

  “I didn’t travel through time. Right before I left, I recall a book that came out titled the Time Machine. That’s not what happened to me.”

  “All right, I’ll humor you. What happened?”

  “I was frozen. This I believe. I went hunting for gold in these parts and became suspended.”