Digging in his pockets, the needle’s been left behind, but the baggie remains. He scoops some on his index finger, takes a snort. Decides that’s not enough and does it again. Jolt to his brain and then everything goes numb. Eye sparkling with crystals. Stars reflected in his gaze. He’s all-powerful, all-seeing, poring through layers of the past until he reaches the memory he desires. The coldest day of the year, 1897. Little Joe’s first winter. And a window remaining open all night.
Barefoot in the morning, the chill spills over his toes through the crack in the door.
The doorknob like a snowball. His heart punches as he bursts inside and finds Little Joe in his bassinet right against the windowsill, blizzard flakes covering the child’s purpling face. He grabs him, rushing to the fireplace in the living room. Brushes the packed snow from the baby’s eyes. Listens to his chest for a heartbeat, relieved to hear a steady purr.
Cooks him over the fire until limbs begin to magically uncrack. A wail that causes his own tears to fall, as the child’s face turns beet red.
Joe surely should be dead. But a heart still beats. He can visualize the child while back in the woods, tucked in a snowbank, pale blue and flirting with death. This is how he must’ve looked all those decades in suspension too. But his own heart still beats. It had to. “What unites you and I?” he asks his zombie child. “What makes us able to withstand such temperatures?”
On Saturday, he’ll be meeting his other kin: a great-grandson he was informally introduced to at Aylen’s, and even more, his grandson, a direct link to Joe. Joe’s child would have insight into what kind of man his son became.
“We’re closer now than we’ve been in a long time,” he tells the baby, an ice block in his hands but alive and writhing.
A giant hand sweeps down from the sky, not connected to any body. It scoops him up, forcing the child to fall from his grasp. As he’s carried away, the baby’s framed by snow.
A bleating dot amongst the stark white. What could be heaven, but he cannot stay there for long. Doesn’t deserve absolution. He’ll descend to an opposite destination. The giant hand plunging down now with Wyatt locked in its fist. Smell of smoke until his nostrils are on fire. A pit of flames awaits, ready to char his sins.
While the cries of Little Joe never cease, a constant ringing in his melting ears.
27
When Travis picks Wyatt up, Callie moves in the back seat with Eli. Wyatt seems a version of himself, more whittled, as if he’d been carved over the past few days. Despite the beard, his cheeks sink in like the Scream painting.
“Are you eating okay?” Callie asks, touching his arm.
“Was a bit ill,” Wyatt says, into his lap. “I want to apologize for the other night. You were so hospitable.”
“I hope you’re doing better.”
“Hi, mister!” Eli chirps. “I have a butt.”
All three adults let out various stages of a laugh, Wyatt’s the quietest.
“You better have brought your hungry,” Travis says. “Because my mom’s been preparing all winter for this.”
The snow turns to mush once they arrive, the sun doing extra work to clear any signs of frost. Boots splash through puddles, but it’s the first time everyone has seen each other outdoors this winter without giant coats swallowing their bodies. Cora’s done her hair in a perm, curly with a bounce. Stu’s at the grill, likely manning the fort for the entire party.
Papa Clifford sits in a wheelchair, a heavy blanket draped across his broomstick legs.
“You’re early,” Cora says, embracing Travis and Callie and then leaving a big lipstick smear on Eli’s cheek.
“Gramma,” he whines, wiping it off.
“I could eat you whole, little one,” Cora says.
Wyatt steps out of the car, all of them having a different reaction. For Cora, it’s between a gasp and the feeling of being completely at peace, like seeing a ghost you’ve been waiting for. He’s an image of her dead son, but only fleetingly. He’s his own person once she gets her bearings.
“This is my buddy, Wyatt,” Travis says. “Wyatt. Mom.”
“Ma’am, you have a lovely home.”
He gives a type of bow, clenching her palm, and leaving a kiss on the back of her hand.
Flustered, she bounces her hair. “Well…”
“This is my pop. Stu, Wyatt.”
Stu’s got his focus on the grill so any introduction would come second. While Bobby doesn’t come to mind because he’s tucked Bobby deep down for today—a rare break—
there’s a recognition he can’t quite place. He’s seen this man before. This man has etched into his brain.
“Stu,” he says, shaking hands, using someone’s grip as a window into their personality. This soul has been through a lot, he decides. He’s worn like an old shoe.
“And here’s the honoree of the hour,” Travis says, sweeping his arm over to Papa who wakes up with a snort.
Upon seeing Wyatt’s face, Papa Clifford immediately thinks of those lost too soon. He has one photo of his father, grainy and whitewashed, curling from age, on a hill when he arrived to Alaska, backdrop of white-tipped mountains, face full of a beard. Younger than
this man, barely more than a teenager, but that’s what his mind goes to, this photo that sits in a cigar box filled with his father’s keepsakes.
For Wyatt, he’s overwhelmed with the love of family, the energies firing around their orbits, how they interact sweetly with one another. Cora checking to make sure Papa’s not cold. Eli hugging Stu’s leg as Stu plays a game of what’s on my leg? Travis with his arm around Callie, picking a ball of lint from her hair. And Wyatt alone, in the middle of it all.
He’s relieved when another car pulls up, and Elson and his wife step out.
Soon enough, other guests arrive. The women in Cora’s book club: Minnie, Jane, Ro, and Barbara, two of them with husbands, one with a Great Dane to play with Chinook. Elson falls into bar duties, making sure everyone has their beers. Eli runs around with two other children, their pants soaked from the slush. Elson’s wife Sammi talks with Smitty and his wife about pickling. Smitty never knew she made the jarred radishes and artichokes sold at the store on Main. Smitty’s wife Nancy balancing a plate with a burger in one hand and her other in a cast after a fall on ice. We’ve all been there, each one says. Travis and Grayson are figuring out a good time to go hunting next, since they haven’t been since shooting the caribous. Grayson tells Travis that it hasn’t been easy to lock down plans with him as of late. He wonders if it has to do with Lorinda. Travis brushes it off. He won Grayson in the divorce and Callie gets Lorinda, that’s just how it’ll have to be. Papa Clifford’s attempting to get potato salad into his mouth but the fork keeps trembling, causing the potatoes to ooze back on the plate.
“Lemme help you,” Wyatt says, sitting down beside him on a bench.
“It’s like I’ve become a baby again,” Papa Clifford says. “I have no control anymore.”
Papa’s tongue the color of liver, broken with grooves. A puff of hair sticking up from his skull the largest sign of life. Skin blanched and bad shakes, not from cold, from wear and tear. A body at its end.
Wyatt spears a slab of potato coated in mayo, brings it to Papa Clifford’s mouth. Papa bats around the potato between his cheeks, working to chew it down, making sure it’s as gummy as possible so he doesn’t cough it back up.
“Again,” Papa says, almost a minute later once it’s traveled down his throat.
Wyatt complies and they take their time until a few bites have been eaten.
“My wife used to make a version of this,” Wyatt says. “Vinegary with grain mustard seeds. I don’t know this white sauce.”
“It’s fucking mayo,” Papa says. “Tastes like a garbage disposal. I remember potato salad like you said. Mayo was a thing that got big in the 1950s, the worst era of food.
Everything sealed in gelatin.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Right, too young
.”
“More like I missed it.”
“You didn’t miss much. Yeah, we were glad the war was over, but try bringing that back with you. And then my sister carted off to some nut house. But I got married in the 1950s, right in this town at a lodge that was torn down when they built the refineries.
Frannie wore white and we joked that she really shouldn’t, since we’d been together in the biblical sense. My father had long passed but my mother came. She danced the whole
night, never seen her so happy. Most of my childhood she was working multiple jobs, trying to make it through the Depression without a husband. One of the last memories I have of her. Eh, I’m babbling, shut me up.”
“I want to hear more,” Wyatt says. “What do you remember of your father?”
Papa’s scrunches up his face. “My father? Why do you ask?”
“Because you talked of him. Because I had a father who was rarely around. I know what it means to grow up without guidance. To have to teach yourself.”
“We’re dealt the cards we’re dealt, son.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Why it was Joseph,” Papa says. “Joseph Barlow.”
“Little Joe,” Wyatt whispers, an ice cube running through his veins. A reaffirmation of how they are all connected, his true family.
A hand pats his shoulder. He’s unaware if he’s repeated “Little Joe” over and over like a benediction.
“Who’s Little Joe?” Trav asks, thrusting a cold beer into Wyatt’s hand.
“Oh, my…” Wyatt shuts his eyes for a moment, forces himself not to breakdown. “My son. Your grandfather was speaking of his father named Joseph and that was my son’s name.”
“It’s a popular name,” Papa shrugs, not seeing the big deal.
“Yes, I guess it is. If you would excuse me for a moment? The bathroom?” he asks, recalling what these people of the future call their in-houses.
“Right through the back door, first room on your left,” Trav says.
Wyatt weaves through the guests to reach the bathroom. Smitty and his wife try to start a conversation, but he apologizes that he has to tinkle and the two of them laugh.
Two kids run by, slowing his pace. Before he’s about to go inside, Stu steps in the way.
“You were in the trailer,” Stu says, picking at the label on his bottle, his head down but his eyes locked.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“The one that whore shares with her druggie cousin.” Stu wipes the spit from his mouth. “You were in the bedroom. I remember your face.”
“She’s a good woman,” Wyatt says.
“I bet there’s three new bumps on your pecker that would tell you otherwise.” He leans in close, breath full of suds. “How do you know my son?”
“From Elson’s.”
“And that druggie cousin of hers? Where is he?”
“I never met him before that night.”
Stu scratches his stubble, assessing this stranger, locating his cracks.
“What about your girl? Tell me about her.”
“She works at Raye’s, that’s how I know her.”
Stu kicks his boot, causing a splash. “You think I’m not aware of that? That settlement out there, the drugs killing ’em in spades, infecting us too.”
Wyatt jams his hand in his pocket, squeezing his stash.
“I wanna know who’s feeding them. Someone has to supply, and I’m guessing their range goes way beyond Laner.”
“I-I have no idea, Sheriff.”
“Do you see sheriff’s clothes on me today? I’m just flipping burgers. But you ask your girl. You ask her where that root of evil sprouts from. I have a good mind to think that’s where her fuck-up cousin is right now. He’s the middleman, but I ain’t interested in him.”
“Are we finished?” Wyatt asks, because he’s struggling to hang on. Memories of Little Joe swirl. The surreal pummeling of being surrounded by this backyard of kin. His stomach gnaws, vomit rising.
Stu spits at the ground, a show of authority, hooks his thumbs in his jeans pockets and saunters away, one eye left trained on Wyatt.
Wyatt jolts to the bathroom, flipping up the toilet lid but unable to regurgitate. A dry heave that scratches his throat. He runs the water, pumps some soap that smells of flowers. He splashes his face, tugs on his beard, and stares in the mirror, a hollowed-out core watching back.
A knock at the door.
“Are you all right?” a voice asks, and he recognizes it as California. Soft yet demanding. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t mind Stu,” she says. “He can be gruff with new folks. It’s the kind of town this is. They were the same with me.”
She tries the door and it’s not locked. “Is it okay if I come inside?”
“Sure,” he says, too exhausted to tell her no.
She enters brushing her hair back behind her tiny ears. He sits on the toilet and she hops up on the sink.
“Travis told me about your son,” she says. “That you don’t know where he is.”
“Yep, that’s true.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Hopefully, you never have to.”
“Is there anything we can do? Help you locate where he may be?”
“There’s no way for me to travel there. It’s too far.”
“Everything is just a plane ride away.”
“Not where he may be.”
She’s staring at his eye that has closed over, since it’s gnarly and off-putting. He’s aware he must appear monstrous, recalling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a creature he now resembles. He tells her that.
“No, no,” she says. “Not at all. Maybe there’s something I can do.”
She opens the mirror to his astonishment. Behind it lies shelves full of small bottles.
She takes out one along with a puff of cotton.
“Witch hazel,” she says, and he shrugs. She dabs the potion on the cotton and then presses it against his bad eye. “It’s one of those cure-alls. I had a grandmother who was obsessed with it as a disinfectant. Even used it as bug spray.”
He winces as she dabs harder, unsticking years of his lids sealing.
“It hurts…a little.”
“I can feel it working. Just be patient.”
She pours some more, and like a miracle, his bad eye parts, a tired pupil peeking out.
The world becomes three-dimensional instead of flat and he could kiss her. He almost does.
“You are magnificent.” He leaps up, observing the brand-new sight of himself in the mirror.
“Just handy.”
He won’t cry because he’s cried enough, but inside of him the saltwater churns.
“Thank you.”
There’s shouting from outside of the bathroom. Someone screaming for Papa Clifford.
Someone yelling for Callie as well. The chaos getting closer. It’s Trav, the sound of his footsteps harsh. The bathroom door opens and he stands there panting.
“It’s Papa,” he tells them. “He…he had a stroke.”
Cora took a moment from the party. She’d steered clear of Wyatt, not entirely sure why.
But Bobby was in her thoughts as much as she wanted to keep him away. An excuse to refill a tray of fish cakes led her past the piano, which displayed pictures of the family over the years. She’d curbed the amount of Bobby, retiring most to photo albums. A picture of him in his twenties with a thick beard remained, his lumberjack phase. The time they were the closest. Travis had moved out and Bobby finished high school at nineteen.
He worked some odd jobs Stu wrangled for him, but mostly stayed at home. It had been an exceptionally brutal winter and they fell in a pattern. Bobby didn’t talk much, but his presence was felt. Cooking for him, watching seasons of 24 on DVD. Before he started using, or at least he’d been better at hiding it then. She liked to think he did that for her.
After he moved out a year or so later, things were never the same. He’d vanish
for days at a time, sometimes weeks. He’d pop in and out of their lives, never explaining where he’d been, assuming they didn’t need to know. Maybe it was safer that way. Stu gave up. He refused to understand Bobby’s problem was a disease. So the sickness wasn’t properly treated. There are years she chooses to block out, for her own sanity, her mind’s defense.
She cannot relive them again. Even though she’s aware that Stu pores over every detail, all the wretched moments, poking for clues, what he missed back then. He and Bobby kept their emotions bottled, more alike than either thought. They were hard to read so how could anyone have known how bad things were, how deep Bobby descended.
The fish cakes turned cold. She’s about to shoot them back in the microwave when Travis barrels through the back door, face flushed, panic in his voice—Papa had a stroke and the ambulance is on its way.
28
Every Barlow in the back lawn outside forming a circle around Papa Clifford. The ambulance had been called, but the nearest hospital five miles and a town over and would take at least ten minutes due to slick roads. The left side of Papa’s face droops as if it were made of putty. He’s trying to speak but Cora’s telling him not to, tucking the blanket up to his chin that he proceeds to throw off. Stu watching the scene but not actively partici-pating, removed or in shock; Grayson with his hand on Stu’s back. Travis ushering Cora away, Cora flinging up her hands, Callie rubbing her crystal necklace. Friends and neighbors on the sidelines observing, with Wyatt wanting to rush over to his grandson and help perform a miracle. They just met and now he’s about to lose him.
An ambulance bleeps as it grinds through the slush. EMTs jumping out, getting Papa on a stretcher, and whisking him inside the vehicle.
“Got room for one more,” one of them says.
“Pop,” Trav calls out. “Go.”
Stu seems hesitant but then scurries into the ambulance. The siren turns on as it shoots away.
“Mom, you’ll ride with us,” Travis says, fingers shaking as he tries to get the car keys from his pocket. Callie holds his hand steady, guides it to where it needs to be.
The Ancestor Page 16
