“Yeah, man, definitely shouldn’t be drinking right now.”
“I’m trying to be better too. With my own temptations you see?”
“Uh, okay, okay. I hear ya. Pick you up around dawn?”
“Dawn it is.”
When Wyatt hangs up the phone, he untwists a baggie of heroin procured from the settlement before Aylen left. He won’t inject it ever again, but a snort suits him just fine. It
tingles and centers his brain to get it working right for what he must accomplish tomorrow. The future waiting in bold neon lights.
Travis ends the call, sips some beer, and rises. Callie’s at work, having gone back to Pizza Joint. He’d taken the day to bond with Eli, so leaving him with Callie tomorrow or even having Miss Evelyn watch, shouldn’t be a problem. He finds Eli playing with his stuffed animals, a wolf and a bear.
“He dead,” Eli says, pointing to the bear lying on its back with its paws in the air.
“Looks like. C’mere, kiddo.”
He pulls Eli into his lap. The boy has big green eyes much like his own. Looking into them, he visualizes Eli’s future. Growing up and taking over The Goldmine where his mom and dad still work too. A little sister or brother waiting tables. A family that gets to spend every day together. Stu and Cora coming in for dinner, sometimes lunch now that Stu’s retired. And even Wyatt, a silent partner responsible for The Goldmine’s success.
Maybe he still lives in Laner and comes over occasionally. Or maybe he’s moved on but returns every once and a while for a surprise. Uncle Wyatt. The role Grayson would’ve held.
He hugs Eli to fight back the tears because he’s cried too much in the last few weeks, his body exhausted from the effort.
Eli tries to squirm free. “Daddy, you’re hurting me.”
But he can’t let go. A chill rips down his spine as he thinks about never hugging his son again. When life’s going great, the bad can sneak up and wreak havoc. We’re never allowed complete bliss without a pinch of sorrow.
“I’m sorry, bud. Just missed you when I was away. I’ll never be away like that again.”
“Okay.”
“Seriously, bud. I haven’t always been a good daddy.”
Eli taps his chin with his sticky finger. “Uh, yes you have.”
“You’ll have a better daddy. I promise you.”
“I promise doo doo.”
“Eli, stop being silly.”
“I promise…caca.”
“Eli…”
“Pee pee!” Eli shrieks and runs around the room causing a hurricane. Toys flying everywhere.
This child, so content. Travis swears to find that contentedness again, see the world through a baby’s green eyes before death and sadness twist it gnarly.
“I love you, bud,” he says, and Eli flies into his arms for another hug. The boy always running colder than he remembers.
“Are you sick?”
He feels Eli’s forehead that’s like sticking his hand in a refrigerator.
“No.”
They hear the lock on the front door turn.
“Mama’s home!” Eli yelps, and buzzes out of the room.
Travis stays in the peacefulness of his son’s space. Breathes it in. The future changing.
It’s been shifting at a fast pace for a while now. Hard to keep up. Those he’s lost. Others
to whom he’s grown closer. The dust mites dance in the dusk light streaming from the window along with a cool breeze. Who controls these monstrous changes? Led him to gold? Brought he and Callie together again? Took Papa and Grayson from this Earth.
Bobby too? Even going back in time, who guided the Barlows to Alaska, to their edge of the world wonder where cold reigns supreme?
He’d be a different Travis had his ancestors settled somewhere else, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Other forked paths could’ve occurred, except fate decided to trap him in this ice land. A purpose to it all. A purpose to everything.
Callie smells of pizza toppings. She’s got a pie for dinner, showing Eli the meatballs on top and telling him it’s from a boo. They eat the pizza with wine, milk for Eli. Nothing special about this dinner. Two parents and a child talking about their day. Callie says Lorinda’s been doing well, but she wants to have her over later this weekend to cheer her up. Travis tells her about going ice fishing with Wyatt tomorrow and for Lorinda to come over then. A moose had been spotted on Main Street. Old Charlie the drunk saw it. This time Old Charlie was right and not hallucinating. The new deputy Bickley came to lead it out of the road. Miss Evelyn’s sick with the croup. Smitty’s wife too, something going around. They finish and Eli helps wash the dishes. They make him brush his teeth, twenty times up top, twenty times on the bottom before he gets in his footy pajamas and jumps into bed. Travis covers the blanket with all Eli’s stuffed animals.
“Night,” Travis says, with a last kiss on Eli’s forehead.
They wind back to the couch in the living room, Travis a little tipsy, his lips cracked red from the wine. Callie nestles into his armpit and they interlace fingers.
“Love you, Bear,” she says, taken to calling him this again like they’re young lovers.
“Grrrr,” he says, pawing her, sucking on her neck.
“C’mon, Travis, you’ll give me a hickey.”
“A lasting image to carry around with you.”
He suctions his lips and leaves a circular grape juice stain under her left jaw.
“So gross,” she says, wiping off his saliva.
“Grrr, you love it. Now time for some honey.”
He tugs down her jeans and underpants, tasting her already wet. Lost in her folds. At sea and not ready to come up for air and end this moment of bliss.
59
As dawn ascends, Wyatt stands in front of the wall mirror waiting for Travis to arrive.
He’d gotten up early, having not really slept. The day too important, his mind spinning.
Numerous outcomes as to how it will end, but ready for what the future holds. No way he’d be frozen if it wasn’t for a greater purpose. Gold not being the reason, worthless when it comes to things that really matter. Family. The ability to create more generations.
He’d done his part but was robbed of watching it unfold. That’s what makes his ultimate decision justified.
Headlights pull up to his front yard cutting through the muted sunrays. After staying completely still for hours, he rotates his head toward the door. Steps outside of himself once there’s a knock. Rises and opens to his destiny.
Wyatt can tell Trav is taken aback upon seeing him, not expecting Wyatt to be clean shaven. Like he opened the door to find himself.
“Been a while, hasn’t it?” Wyatt says, embracing him.
“The beard?”
“Too itchy,” Wyatt says, going to stroke its phantom bristles and touching pink cheek instead.
“You really…” Travis begins, recalibrates. “Your face…”
Travis touches it, his fingers out of control. He assesses his doppelgänger because it’s unlike looking in the mirror. The mirror inexact, only a reflection, not completely him.
This vision shows the truth with all its imperfections. And through its emerald green eyes, he sees the inevitable.
“Ready to roll,” Wyatt says. “It’s something I’ve heard folks say in this present time.
I’m trying to talk more like you all. Say such crazy things, though.”
Travis’s heart palpitates. An increased vibration pressing against his chest. He gets in the driver’s side and Wyatt shotgun.
Theirs is the only car in the road at this time of morning. It’s the weekend and the fishermen are usually just starting to wake at this hour. Haven’t hauled out yet. Smitty checking on his wife since she has the croup, making her a tea with honey, eggs with rashers for himself. Elson feeding his one-eyed cat Jammy before he opens the bar. Jesse noticing his black eye starting to fade; the phone ringing as Tuck calls saying he’s got the croup too. Old Charl
ie already starting on a hot toddy. Lorinda doing a morning run before she’ll head over to Callie late morning. Callie in bed, her and Travis up late last night. He didn’t wake her when he left in the morning. In her half-sleep, she grabs for the pillow instead of him now that he’s gone.
On the drive over, Wyatt asks Travis to tell a story about Callie, so he does. The day they met. Her cruise ship docked and a sea of lower-forty-eighters spilled forth on Laner. He
was taking lunch from the oil refinery on the docks because most of the day he spent inside a windowless room, the sight of the ocean a necessary break. With oil-blackened hands he munched on a Wonder Bread sandwich with bologna and American cheese.
She’d been traveling with her parents, two cartoons who waved to her from the boat, uninterested in another boring Alaskan town, so she came over to Travis, popped the headphones out of her ears, and asked him what to do around here. He had work, but just before she docked, he had willed for a girl like her to appear, unlike any he knew in Laner, because it was starting to feel tiny, and he wondered if there might be more for him out there. Then she arrived and so he ditched work and took her for a hike up Ulee Canyon.
This wasn’t where he went with just any girl, most being fine with brews at Elson’s, but this one named California, with a name like that, she was meant to see Alaska at its finest, atop an overlook where the snow twinkles like a million diamonds.
“It’s so quiet,” she said, and he could see she was in awe. They made love up against a tree, carving their names in it afterwards, T&C, and she never made it back on that cruise ship. She waved to her parents as it sailed away and never returned to California either.
Because when the boat was pulling up ashore, she had looked into the great waters and wished for someone like him too.
“I haven’t told that story to anyone before,” Travis says.
“It’ll come in handy,” Wyatt says, so softly.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
They reach Anvil Creek with the sun now high. Water trickling through the creek beds sounding like glockenspiels. The frozen lake beams before them, majestic in its crystalli-zation. Summertime completely formed. They park the car at the rim and haul the gear toward the center, more fish there than along the edges. They cut a hole, unfold chairs, and dip their rods in the water. Cool out but hot under the rays reflecting off the ice.
“I remember coming up here one time with Stu, Bobby, and Gray,” Travis says. “Gray and I were about ten, so Bobby was eight. Mom was at church, but Stu insisted on taking us out since it was the first warm day of the year. That winter being exceptionally harsh.
When we got there, Bobby wanted to slide across the ice like he was stealing a base. Stu had already given up on scolding him, even back then. Wasn’t worth it. You could yell at that kid till you were blue and he still wouldn’t listen.
“So he went sliding around while I sat in a circle with Stu and Gray and none of us spoke. We listened to the silence, save for the cutting sound of Bobby slipping against the ice. It was the first time I caught a fish, and Stu, he was so fuckin’ happy. You could hear his excitement echoing across that lake, picked up by the wind. I wonder if you could still hear it in some hidden pocket? And then Gray caught one too. We were like, ‘Holy fuck, two big ones.’ Stu could’ve caught his own, too, but called it a day to give us the glory.
Bobby whined that he could’ve gotten an even bigger fish had he tried, but we ignored him, and then Mom cooked up those fish. She was so damn excited.
“And while I was chewing on the bounty I’d brought home, I remembered what I’d thought about during those silent hours on the lake. I willed the fish to bite my line. I made it happen, Grayson’s too. I had that power but rarely used it again. Because it scared me, you know? I told you about meeting Callie and willing for her to appear. Like,
right before I met you, I was thinking that something needed to change in my life, and then so much happened, you, the gold, the fish shack, Papa, fuckin’ Grayson. Man, I don’t know, just some crazy stuff I wrestle with at night. But that’s how you found that gold, right, Wyatt? You willed it.”
“That’s how I survived this past century.”
Travis laughs in spurts. Wyatt still sticking to his story of being preserved. He’ll play along.
“So are you pleased with how your future brood turned out?”
Wyatt feels a tug on his line.
“I am in a unique position. Most get to witness a grandchild at most. Back in my time, few lived past sixty, so we had to pump out babies early. I was on the later side of my thirties, same age as you. I’d roamed a lot before I met sweet Adalaide. Spent plenty of my twenties panning in California, losing time in opium dens when I couldn’t find a nub.
She was a farmer’s daughter. Can’t recall what I was doing in Washington or how we met. Haven’t rifled through all my memories yet. But I’m positive we weren’t childhood sweethearts or anything. I spent a good portion of my life without knowing her. That’s what made it harder when she was taken away from me. It’s ’cause we didn’t have enough time together.”
“Why do you think this happened to you?”
Wyatt goes to rub his phantom beard again. But he’s not that person anymore.
“It will be my life’s search to find out why. Haunting me like the gold used to. I had to be chosen for a reason.”
“Any guesses?”
“Why have any of us been chosen? Million other little sperms could’ve reached that egg and yet we blossomed. Everyone’s endless search on Earth being why they’re here.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Tricky one. It was more commonplace in my era to believe. Nowadays folks are too distracted for that. I see that on the odd box you call television. This strange portal into others’ lives. But even in Laner at the edge of it all, God ain’t ruling much. Maybe church on Sundays for just a few. So no, I don’t believe. But I do understand there are things in the universe we cannot explain.”
“Like how you and I look so much alike.”
Wyatt touches his nose. “Well, I told you my theory.”
“That you’re my great-great grandfather?”
“You got a better one?”
“Yeah, we’re probably related somehow, distant cousins or whatever. Plenty of folks around here are, since most don’t leave. So the gene pool stays small. And you were in the wilderness and got knocked unconscious and woke with amnesia. Did you ever even try to see a doctor?”
“Medicine can’t explain what happened to me.”
“Okay, somehow you’ve got the right chemicals to withstand a hundred some-odd years on ice. And now you’ve met your family who logically you never should’ve been able to. Is that why you wanna invest in The Goldmine?”
“Is that so wrong? To help out my progeny?”
“No man, we really need it. You’d be saving my life.”
“You don’t have to put it that way. Please don’t.”
“But Wyatt, you would be. I wanna make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
Not because you think we’re related. I’d feel bad taking your money if that’s the case.
Like I hoodwinked you.”
“What else will I spend it on?”
“Whatever it is you wanna do.”
“I already know. And investing in The Goldmine is a part of that dream.”
“How much are we talking?”
“I have about fifty thousand left. All the money from the converted gold. Thank you for taking care of things at the bank by the way, since I have no identification.”
“Yeah, that should be enough to get it up and running. And I’ll pay you back right when I can. Give you a percentage of the profits too.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“You have to let me do something for you. I don’t like charity.”
“You’ve done enough.”
“But c’mon—”
<
br /> “I said you’ve done enough!”
There’s a throbbing vein on Wyatt’s left temple so Travis lets it go. He doesn’t fully recognize this Wyatt, more so than simply the man’s appearance. In the stillness surrounding this lake, Wyatt should be calm yet he can’t stop moving. Twisting from side to side. Hesitant. Jittery. Travis wants to ask if he’s on heroin but is afraid of offending.
“I apologize,” Wyatt says, then his voice takes on a different tone, more like Travis’s.
The pitch causing Travis’s blood to run like ice, like when you hear a recording of yourself, mystified by the way you sound.
“Who are you?” Wyatt asks, but for a second Travis wonders if he was the one who said it out loud.
“Who am I?”
“At your core? First thing in the morning before the world settles in. If I told you who I was, you would cry.”
Wyatt’s nervous energy accelerates. He stands and drops the fishing line, pacing from side to side. Travis thinking he’s probably on drugs.
“This is the only way.”
“What’s the only way?”
“I’m telling you there is nothing else that can be done.”
“Dude, sit down. You’re all over the place.”
“I didn’t anticipate this conversation. Saving your life? Why did you have to go and say that?”
“Because you would be. I’ve thrown in too much money, The Goldmine’ll go under without an investor.”
“I’m not talking about money.”
Wyatt squeezes his fist, his face wrinkling in pain.
“I did some terrible things in my time. These hands…”
He holds out his palms, the skin pale and cracked, lines like trenches.
“All for riches.”
“Well, shit was different back then, right?” Travis laughs, trying to lighten the mood.
“But I am no longer Wyatt Barlow from 1898. That man got trapped in gold and was buried by an avalanche. He didn’t ascend. But I did. My heart quietly thumped waiting
out the decades. And then that one eye opened, and I saw the wolf, I saw my future, and then I saw you, and you were me.”
The Ancestor Page 35
