The Ancestor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  “Elena,” Madison yells, calling a girl over who has bug eyes from being so thin. She’s all protruding bones.

  “I didn’t even recognize you,” Callie says, finally placing the face. She had roomed with Madison and Elena along with one other girl for a year after moving out of her parents’. Most of them waitressed while trying to score auditions, making enough for booze and tacos, hooking up with whatever guys meandered in their direction. Elena had been much larger then, and sometimes Callie and Madison would speak of how bad they felt for the girl to be in their hot posse. “You look great.”

  “I had my stomach stapled,” Elena says.

  “Ouch.”

  “What are you doing here?” Elena asks, like she’s accusing Callie of some terrible act.

  “Visiting my folks. They’re with my son.”

  “You have a son?” Elena asks, and she and Madison squeal but not from excitement.

  “A human being is never coming out of this,” Madison says, indicating her vagina.

  “Are you married?” Elena asks.

  At first, Callie’s offended. How could none of them know this? Hadn’t she been the hot topic amongst their circle? The girl who fled to Alaska. To them, it was far from exciting news.

  Callie shows her wedding ring, a small band with a diamond like a pinhead. The girls plaster on smiles, afraid of seeming cruel.

  “What’s he like?” Madison asks.

  “He’s a fisherman. Well, he’s opening up a fish shack. He hunts…” She tries to think of what else to say but finds herself stumped.

  “You never liked to color inside the lines,” Madison says, as if that explains Callie’s entire existence. “Come.” She hooks a finger with Callie’s and directs her over to a table where a pyramid of coke sits on a glass tray. “My boyfriend is a producer, he—”

  Callie shuts off while Madison boasts of her boyfriend who produces some reality TV

  show that Callie never heard of and is writing some spec script with some actor she didn’t know who has a PJ, which she later realizes means a private jet, and they fly to Vegas and Aspen all the time, and get the best coke in the land. She chooses to listen to the last part and replies with a good long sniff.

  “Amazing, right?” Madison asks, and winks. Her eye gets stuck due to her gummy, oversized eyelashes and she has to use her manicured nails to pry it apart. “Oooh, this is Julien.”

  Callie gets introduced to a skinny guy with a weird mustache and saggy pants that look like he took a dump in them who’s a songwriter. He starts singing in an embarrass-ing falsetto.

  “Julien is so talented,” Madison beams.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” Callie asks.

  “Dubai. I think. Yeah, Dubai. Securing financing. Girl, I’m opening up an athletic wear company.”

  “In Dubai?” Callie’s having a hard time following. People speak so fast here, and yeah she’d ingested a line of coke and probably everyone here snorted more, but it’s like no one can take a breath before they start talking more.

  “You should follow me on IG,” Julien says.

  “What?”

  “I said you should follow me—”

  “I need a bite of food,” Callie says, and pushes past them into the kitchen where two models discuss the calories they consumed that day and which one cheated more. Callie finds a cooked chicken in the fridge, rips off a drumstick, and gnaws. “Oh fuck, that’s good.” She tosses the bone in the sink and rips off the other drumstick.

  “You should take a napkin,” one of the models says.

  “You’re dying of jealousy,” Callie replies, munching in the girl’s face. When she gets back to the party, she spies Elena, who walks in the other direction, clearly fleeing. She thinks of how Travis would view these people: moochers and showoffs. He’d go off on them and this makes her laugh because he’s right.

  Madison slides her palm up the back of Callie’s shirt. “Em and Jeslene just told me you ate an entire chicken in front of them like a savage. What gives?”

  Callie belches in response. “Thanks, this was great.” She kisses Madison on both cheeks, leaving chicken grease. “Bye, doll.” She hugs Madison and the half-eaten chicken bone gets lost in Madison’s mane of hair. Since Madison doesn’t notice, Callie decides to leave it.

  “You’re going already?”

  Callie wipes a solitary tear. “I’m an alien here.”

  Madison shakes her head. “You’re just out of practice.”

  “For what?”

  “Mingling, angling, networking. There’s opportunity on this deck.”

  Callie wipes the sweat from her forehead. “It’s so fucking hot.”

  “Yeah, it’s summer in L.A.”

  “I miss the cold.”

  “You’ve been here two seconds.”

  “I just want to be with my husband on the couch.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “Because I’m a fool.”

  “All right, bye girl. Enjoy your mooseland.”

  “I will, Madison. I fucking will. Enjoy your fantasy.”

  Madison drops her mouth wide open. “Bitch, I was on a PJ yesterday drinking Cris-tal.”

  “And on your deathbed, if that image makes you happy, then by all means give over your soul.”

  “You were always so…”

  “So what?”

  “So unsettled, Callie.”

  “Well, you have a chicken bone in your hair.”

  And in the middle of the night when she gets back, her parents asleep, Eli out cold, she has a glass of wine on the deck observing the still Pacific. How it gives her the silence she’s longed for since she got here. Its lapping waves, its quiet conversation. Telling her to get in her spaceship and fly back to the only home she’s ever known.

  48

  Stu has second thoughts about taking Wyatt and Aylen along to go after The Hand, but they’re almost halfway to the cabin and there’s no chance of turning back. Aylen directs him from the passenger seat while he keeps Wyatt in his sights through the rearview. This man who his son has befriended, an odd choice. He can’t quite pinpoint why he doesn’t trust him. Thirty-plus years on the force, his gut saying to get as far from him as possible.

  But for now, a much larger fish needs to fry.

  “I’ll stop when we near the cabin,” Stu says, crawling at a turtle’s pace because there are no worn paths. “Then you two take the car back. Leave the keys in the sun visor.”

  “Won’t you need a way out of here when you apprehend him?” Aylen asks.

  Stu whistles through his bottom teeth. “I ain’t planning on only apprehending him.”

  “He do something to you personally?”

  “That’s what I’m gonna find out.”

  Wyatt clears his throat. “Trav’s wife…What you think of her?”

  Both Stu and Aylen furrow their brows.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Stu asks.

  “Seems like they’ve been having problems as of late,” Wyatt says.

  Aylen gestures to the right. “Turn here.”

  “Marriage is hard,” Stu says. “Cora and I hit our share of rocky patches. But the good outweighs the bad. I’m sure my son feels the same.”

  “Callie said she wanted to go to California.”

  “When were you talking to her?” Aylen asks, crossing her arms.

  “We talk all the time. I have lunch every day at Pizza Joint.”

  “Travis is starting a business,” Stu says, keeping his eyes trained. “They have a young child. Wears on anyone.”

  “But do you think they’re right for each other?”

  “Wyatt!” Aylen hisses. “Stop poking.”

  “Do I think they’re right? Well, no. California and Alaska don’t mix well. In fact, nothing mixes with Alaska well.”

  Stu lets out a yawn, delirious. He counts the hours since he last slept, almost reaching a full day. His bones heavier than normal.

  “We’re close,” Aylen w
hispers, and gets a visible chill.

  “Why are you so concerned about my son?”

  “He’s like family. At least that’s how I think of him.”

  “And does he think of you this way?” Stu asks.

  “There.” Aylen directs a shaking finger up a bump of a hill where the cabin sits.

  Shades drawn, mostly camouflaged by a ring of trees.

  Stu eases his foot off the gas as the car rolls to a stop. “This is where we part ways.”

  He opens the door in slow motion so it doesn’t make a sound. Aylen inches over to the driver’s side.

  “Don’t you want backup or something?” she asks.

  Stu observes the cabin. Creepy even if it didn’t house a baddie like The Hand. The wood stripped of color, nothing more than gray slab. Weeds birthed from the landscape and crawling up the sides like tentacles.

  “Only way I’ll get the answer I want is if I go in alone.”

  “If I hear anything about Tohopka—” Aylen begins.

  “He ain’t the puzzle piece I’m after. Just call the station if you find his whereabouts.”

  “Sheriff,” Wyatt says, with a salute.

  Stu doesn’t salute back. He closes the car door, slips his gun from the holster. Waits until they back up and disappear.

  Driving away, Aylen has no interest in speaking to Wyatt. If she has to hear about Travis’s wife one more time, she’ll scream. It’s bad enough he drones on about his own.

  His obsession with the Barlow family began as amusing. Fixating on them as if they’re his own kin. Now it’s borderline twisted.

  She’d done this before with guys. Excused their deficiencies, made excuses. Stayed too long. Same thing with Tohopka. The rent’s cheap, even if it costs an occasional chunk of hair. Sometimes she disgusts herself that she has so little self-value.

  If I had a mother, a father? she often thinks. Someone to guide. A child has no business in raising themselves.

  “You’ve gotten quiet,” Wyatt says. They’ve almost reached the settlement. “The sheriff’ll be okay.”

  “I’m not thinking about him. How do you really feel about me?”

  He hunches forward, his massive forearms resting between the front seats.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You speak of your wife and this Callie so often.”

  “She reminds me of her.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then what are you doing with me?”

  “She is with him.”

  “Fuck you.” She doesn’t want to cry but her tears betray, hating that she doesn’t appear strong.

  “What are you doing with me?” he asks.

  “You’re different, I dunno. I spend so much time in these false relationships, I don’t know how to act in one of my own. That’s the most honest I’ve ever been.”

  “You’ve been very kind to me, Aylen. I was broken when I met you. I’m almost pieced back together.”

  “Glad I could be of service.”

  “But I’m no one to hitch yourself to, at least not now. To me it seems as if it’s only been months since I was with my wife. And my son. I can’t describe to you—”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “When I’m around Trav and his family, it’s like I’m with my own. I don’t love Callie any more than you, she just allows me to transport.”

  “I get it—I understand. Well, I don’t. But I’m trying.”

  “It’s not me being mean.”

  “But you are.”

  “Stop the car.”

  She does and shuts off the engine, places her face against the steering wheel. Tiny toot from the horn.

  “I need to leave here,” she says.

  “You should. Nothing is keeping you.”

  “I thought you might want me to stay.”

  “Go. You deserve better.”

  She lets out a bark of a laugh. “I do.”

  “You are lovely and would be a dream for most guys to call their girlfriend. I am damaged. I’ve killed, Aylen. These hands have been responsible for gruesome acts you couldn’t imagine. And I’ll do it again.”

  “But that was in the past.” She smiles awkwardly. “A hundred years ago, right?”

  “But it’s like yesterday. And I’m not finished. Because I’m not complete.”

  “What would make you complete?”

  “You don’t want me to say.”

  “I do.”

  “No, I don’t want to speak it out loud. Because that will make it true. And I’m trying everything in my power to change the course of what I think will happen.”

  Aylen starts the car again. They roll for a while until the settlement comes into view.

  Part of her wants to fight, not just for them, but for him to see his own self-value. But she knows if she can’t find hers, his will be even harder to locate. Left behind in a different era, unable to thaw.

  49

  As small children, Bobby Barlow formed differently than Travis. Even when Travis was four and Bobby two, Stu and Cora could tell the boys had divergent personalities. Travis amiable, always eating his food, quick with his please and thank yous. Bobby never would laugh, or cry, or express much emotion. As he grew older, he took to slaughtering small animals in their backyard. He refused to leave his room. He fought at school. Unlike Travis with a dust-up during recess, Bobby maimed. Broke a student’s arm. Touched a girl inappropriately. Yanked on a teacher’s dress until she fell over. He was himself when he followed his darkest impulses. He was a soul who needed saving.

  Cora, master of denial, summed him up with one word: boy. She didn’t have girls, and while Travis had been well behaved, most boys were not. Bobby would grow out of his rebellion. And he could be sweet when he really tried.

  Stu attempted to treat the boys the same. Taking them hunting, fishing, letting them alternate shotgun in his squad car. Bobby was master of talking himself out of trouble, and while Stu wasn’t in denial about his son like Cora, he found it hard staying mad for too long. When middle school rolled around, Bobby traded mauling animals for alcohol and pot, by junior high he was doing bumps of cocaine, hanging at the settlement on the outskirts. Dropping out of high school, doing heroin, getting arrested for petty robberies. Stu kicked him out on many occasions, but Cora always coaxed him back. She’d wet a towel over his forehead during withdrawals. Make him mac and cheese with spicy cream sauce to get in his good graces. After he hit eighteen, he pretty much left for good, meandering back when he needed money. He and Travis fought those times. Travis considering him poison. The boys had never been close, but when they were younger they coexisted.

  Adulthood made them enemies.

  Yet Stu loved his youngest son fiercely. Stu began life as a bit of a miscreant, bucking authority, not getting into drugs but certainly dust-ups. Alaska-bred wild men, he and Bobby were alike in that respect, while Travis was always the more sensitive one. Times spent hunting alone with Bobby were some of the happiest of Stu’s life. The power of stillness to unearth Bobby, hunting giving him focus. Without distraction from friends or family or drugs, Bobby was at his purest—his beautiful young son.

  He ruminates on those days as he waits outside of The Hand’s cabin. The shutters are down so it’s hard to see inside. He listens for any sounds from within. Not a peep. The sun passes overhead a few hours later, and he decides The Hand is not home. He finds a package of walnuts in his front pocket and nibbles, since his stomach starts to concave.

  Hiding behind a thicket of leaves, he spies his opponent. A massive man lumbering through the woods carrying three dead hares by their ears. No shirt, rug of fur coating his back, likely pushing forty but could be older. Identifiable face: nose, eyes, and mouth smushed together. His other hand just as described, whittled down like a sad chicken’s foot. The Hand swings open the cabin door and barrels inside.

  Stu pursues, gun ready. He charges for the door, catching it before it fully closes. Entering, he’s
hit with the powerful slap of rot rendering him dizzy. The Hand swivels around, dropping the three hares with scooped-out eyes.

  “Police,” Stu barks, spit flying from his lips.

  The Hand holds up his claw, shaking a thin E.T. finger back and forth. Then he dives for the floor, scurrying under the bed. Stu keeps the gun trained on the box spring as it bends under the mass of The Hand’s body. He’s about to fire, but afraid to kill this man and never receive the closure he seeks.

  “Come out from under there!”

  Stu cases the joint. A wall of guns ranging from Uzis to AR-15s. Another wall displaying samurai swords. A half fridge with a burned hot plate and a pot already boiling for the bunnies. The hiss and spit of water as the pot bubbles over.

  “I said to come out.”

  A round of bullets shoot through the mattress and puncture the ceiling. Stu dives down, hugging the soiled floor. He only makes out a dark shape moving under the bed until the mattress and box spring get thrown in the air and The Hand leaps like a wrestler, coming down hard on Stu. They roll around fighting for the semi-automatic until it slips through The Hand’s grasp and pirouettes across the cabin. The Hand tries to dig his giant thumbs in Stu’s eyes. He’s got over a hundred pounds on Stu, crushing his bones. Stu drags his gun so it lands in line with The Hand’s shoulder and fires, the bullet trapped in flesh, the wound coughing up blood.

  “AAARRRRGGGGGGHHHH!”

  An ogre’s cry, The Hand’s breath oozing like rotten yogurt. Stu slips out from under the man, scooches back. Keeps the gun set right between this devil’s eyes.

  “My son was Bobby Barlow,” Stu says, composed.

  The Hand clamps his good hand over the wound, blood running through his fingers.

  “So?” The Hand says, with the voice of a pipsqueak. Not what Stu imagined.

  “Did he work for you?” Stu shouts. “Running drugs or guns?”

  “I’ve retired now.”

  “Two years ago Bobby drowned, or was drowned. Is that name familiar?”

  “My shoulder,” The Hand says, as if he’s just realized.

  “I will kill you if you don’t give me answers. There will be no jail for you unless you comply.”