“Dude, calm down.”
“Because I love her. I fuckin’ love her. She’s what I need.”
“I know you miss your wife.”
Wyatt clutches the silver mirror around his neck with the floral embroidery. His last link to Adalaide. He will not require it anymore. He rips it off, dangles it over the ice hole, lets go. A current quickly tucks it under, vanished forever.
“What you do that for?”
The blood rushes to Wyatt’s cheeks, face red, expression like he was struck by lightning. Travis feels a tug on his line. He hasn’t been paying attention. He looks down into the swirling waters, a dark pit with no end.
“I’m gonna be a dad again,” Travis says, as if he knows this man’s intentions, his survival instincts kicking in. Like taking out your wallet to show a picture of your kids when someone has a gun to your head.
Wyatt breathes this news into his nostrils. “So am I,” he whispers.
Travis’s ear perks up, catching what Wyatt said.
The fish tugs at the line, monstrous from the strength of its bite.
“I’m gonna be a dad again,” Travis says a second time, tears blurring his vision. The future accelerates at a rate faster than he’s ever experienced before and he’s powerless to its inevitability. Wyatt shaking his head like he feels bad for what’s about to occur and the truth is he probably does, even if this man was not his kin, but the two of them aren’t meant to exist at the same time, or at least both will never be entirely happy if they do.
Hundred and twenty-two years preserved him for this moment. Travis fights the tug on the line, but it’s too fierce and tips his balance. Wyatt leaps forward, dragging Travis down on the ice, half of him flung over the edge of the hole. The fishing rod gets yanked under, disappearing in the black, and a demon hovers trying to drown Travis. Travis gets his fingers around its neck, clawing for his life, unwilling to give up. Half of him wet and already doomed, the water cold like a thousand stabbing needles. The universe spoke of this as the defining time of their existences. All else before and after of less importance.
The victor continuing, the loser descending. The rush of water hits Travis like a giant slapped him in the face. He plunges into pure nothingness. Above him a ray of light beams from the ice hole, his ancestor peering over the edge, holding him down. He breaks free from the grip, but the current shoots him away, his nose tapping against the surface of the ice shield. He pummels at the barrier with his fists, but his movements underwater are too slow. The cold settling in, skin on fire. Screams nothing more than trapped bubbles. Callie and Eli flicker in his mind and then he’s unable to think anymore, brain frozen, body soon following.
Up above, a new Travis walks over his fallen former self. He gets in the pickup, speaking out loud the story of how he and Callie met as he speeds home. He’ll keep it in his pocket if ever she gets suspicious. He’d already sent an envelope filled with fifty thousand dollars along with a note to her and old Travis that said he had to leave Laner and for them not to worry because he’s found himself again, and they were a huge part of helping to reach that milestone. He wrote that they’re the finest people he’s ever known.
Then he signed Wyatt Emmett Barlow for one final time.
Under the lake by Anvil Creek, a man has been frozen much like another man in the same wilderness had been frozen, in this area of Alaska where silence is the loudest sound.
And much like the other man, time leaps forward while he stays petrified. Because it’s so quiet, if you place your ear against the ice sheet where the man lies below, you can hear the tiniest beat of his heart, until the lake finally melts and he’s free.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel was written during a very tough time when my dad passed away. It became my therapy, and even though he isn’t any character in the book, he exists and is kept alive on each page. He was always my best and toughest editor and I would not have been able to write this without him.
There are many other people who helped bring this book to life.
I’m indebted to Chris Rhatigan, its brilliant editor, for believing in keeping the novel intact, and having a keen and astute eye.
Sam Hiyate, for singing its praises and giving judicious edits, and for a decade of friendship.
Kat Bedrosian, for being its only other reader and cheerleader, and whose lightning quick turnaround I can always rely on.
Mom, for being a great support and reader of all my works.
Also, to a wonderful group of writers, folks in publishing, and good friends who became a soundboard during this process: Margot Berwin, Jen Close, Vicky Forsberg, Erin Conroy, Marco Rafala, Camellia Phillips, Nat Kimber, and Jeffrey Barken for publishing the first chapter in Monologging.
And, as always, to my tree in Central Park. A lot of this was written in the wintertime indoors, but there were a few times the sun came out enough to create in nature.
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels The Desire Card, The Mentor, and Slow Down. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018
Prix du Polar. The second book in the Desire Card series, Prey No More, is forthcoming, along with his other novels, Eating the Sun and Orange City. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay con-tests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adi-rondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com.
BOOKS BY LEE MATTHEW GOLDBERG
Novels
Slow Down
The Mentor
The Desire Card
The Ancestor
Novellas
Satellite of Love
Middle of Nowhere
The Ancestor Page 36
