Soon again, it was my journal, the headlamp, and me. I picked up the pen to write.
I could do this. I had to.
Chapter Two
Bumps in the Road
Early dawn had become my reliable companion, and I rose to the subtle sounds in the campground: a birdcall, the rustle of leaves from a breeze, the occasional cough from another tent. I emerged from our tent, quietly zipped it closed, and began to gather our things. Will was also an early riser, but I gave him a few more minutes to rest.
There wasn’t much to pick up in our campsite. Most was in the tent or car. A neatly stacked pile of rocks sat beside the extinguished fire. They looked just like a cairn, with the larger flat rocks on the bottom, angling up to a pointed small topper. It reminded me of our trip. Finn had loved Jenny Lake in the Tetons just as much as Will. They had stacked smooth rocks into cairns while Brandon and I sat on the shoreline taking it all in. It had been beautiful. It had been my first enjoyable time in a year.
I fell onto the bench at the picnic table and hung my head in my hands.
My mini-geologists had been delighted beyond words as we traveled around Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful, explored old lava tubes, and participated in ranger-led programs to experience the geothermic marvel that is—or was, I thought, as a sharp taste rose in my throat—Yellowstone National Park.
Dear God, we had just been there. There. Where it all happened. There, where my brother Brandon and my son Finn remained. My spunky Finn. Salt Lake City had been on the edge of the “central ring” of devastation. The city had been decimated. However, per news reports, the eruption had begun after their scheduled flight boarding. After. Had they been in the air when it happened? What if they had been delayed further?
I had kissed Finn goodbye on his cheek, given his plush animal, Otter, a squeeze, said my love-you, and boarded the plane with Will.
Three days ago. Just hours before the eruption.
Oh, my sweet, enigmatic, energetic, give-me-gray-hairs son, Finn. My brother Brandon had wholeheartedly come along with us on the trip we were supposed to have taken last year with Harrison before the accident. Brandon’s experience from his years in the Air Force Special Ops and an overseas deployment abated some of my worries. Some. What if he’d been hurt though? Where were they now? Were they alive? Had they caught their scheduled flight from Salt Lake City to Denver? Even if they had…Denver Airport had been rocked by a horrible earthquake. Tears blurred my vision. I shook and fought the urge to vomit. I was on a hamster wheel with my obsessive thoughts and, for the life of me, could not get off.
I pleaded with the air, an invisible force, or God, I didn’t know which. “Please, I swear I’ll never complain again about searching for a damn toy or count the minutes until bedtime or ask Finn to take a talking break.” I gulped, I sobbed. “Please,” I said in a pathetic whisper, reeling it in to control my tipping into hysteria.
They must have boarded the plane before the eruption. I refused to believe anything else. I’d received Brandon’s text message after we landed in Portland once I turned my phone back on after landing. They had been on schedule to get on the flight to Denver. Boarding in thirty minutes, his text had read. Yet I’d heard nothing else from him after that. They couldn’t have been in Salt Lake City when the devil’s fingers rose from beneath Yellowstone.
Nope.
I continued to reason with myself, threading hope with logic as my pulse grew erratic. Details invaded and kept me spinning on the hamster wheel.
Early reports indicated tremors in the West, from Spokane south to Albuquerque. The newscast had said Denver had been devastated by earthquakes during the actual event and was in the outer ash ring. The city was in shambles. Not leveled, but dire. I reviewed my options.
Volcano near Salt Lake City.
Earthquake in Denver.
Or they were in the air. Somewhere else. No word. No call or text. Nothing. My brain told me they were in Denver.
Finn buried under rubble, suffocating. Brandon knocked unconscious.
I nipped that train of thought with one fell swoop.
Although we were well-informed on the supervolcano’s history courtesy of Will’s fixations, while we’d meandered through the meadows and mountains of Wyoming’s most famous park, we thought that type of eruption was thousands of years off. No warnings or alerts had been posted. We had felt no tremors. Did the scientists know? Of course they did. They’d learned the hard lesson after the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I scratched my head, pulling documentaries from memory. Yellowstone was an active bubbly volcanic wonder with daily tremors or spurts. If there had been concern, officials would’ve closed the park. None of the visitor centers had postings on recent seismic activity despite news reports saying there were earthquakes during the twelve hours leading to the event.
My mouth grew dry. I rose, lumbered to the car, and located my water bottle.
The thought of what-if coiled my stomach. We’d escaped, unknowingly, and barely by a day. But my brother and Finn…
I had to stop debating. Denver it was. That’s where I was going.
My heart did a flip-flop. Even my body told me to stop this madness. The usual nausea that no amount of antacid could fix had already crept in. It had joined its pals, the aching prickle that wrapped around the back of my head and the tingles in my fingertips. They were my daily trio these days.
My calls to Brandon were greeted with no answer or a dial tone. Regardless, I had to try again. I pulled my phone from my back pocket. The glow of the screen on my phone sneered at me. I dialed.
Nothing. Not even a ring.
I dialed the airline number, which by now I had memorized.
Nothing new.
An automated message referred people to a website that had no useful information, of course. Internet service had already become fragmented and slow, too. I’d emailed Brandon several times, hoping email would work, even if texts and calls didn’t. I had to do something. The laptop sat in the front seat of the car, ready and waiting to be used once we checked into a hotel along the way.
I slammed the car door.
I approached Will’s cairn and touched the smallest rock, which glistened with striations of pink feldspar, seemingly out of place with the rest of the granite and gneiss rocks he’d used to build it. I pocketed it for Finn.
It was time to go.
****
To the passerby, life appeared unchanged as we drove on a quiet stretch of highway in northern New York. Chaos had not yet broken out on the East Coast. Governments were intact and people went to work; yet I’d felt the rumblings of early unrest as we had left town. People were pissed off about lack of cell coverage, and the stores were hectic in prewinter storm mode as people emptied shelves. A few radicals had been touting about end of the world crap on the corner near the bank, but thankfully they hadn’t gotten much airtime. I wondered if people were glued to their televisions the way our country had been post 9/11. I hadn’t been able to tear my eyes from the screen the entire first night. When I did, I slipped into terrible dreams about Finn. I imagined him being swallowed by great chasms in the ground that opened with razor-sharp teeth.
Disorder trickled across the country at the same rate as the ash cloud. Slowly and certainly. It was happening. I was crazy to drive straight into it, but I couldn’t lose another person. Not my baby. I had loaded the car, got cash, and grabbed my weapons of choice.
Bring it.
To suppress the tangled thoughts that clawed at me, I clicked on the radio. I yearned for Finn’s chatty questions. Will was lost in his back seat oasis.
News reports. I kept flipping. Not one damned music station.
I steadied my hands on the steering wheel. Once again, I’d forgotten to take my morning dose. I changed the station again and then thumbed through my handbag on the passenger seat.
“Now a message from Governor Benitez.”
The governor of Colorado rattled off her condolences and assured the
public that the government had created shelters and mobile hospitals in immediate areas including southern Wyoming, southern Idaho, and northern and central Colorado. Unless people were injured, they were to stay put and wait for recovery packs to be delivered.
“Agh, Mom. Not more talking. Can’t you put on music?” Will interrupted.
“Trying, hon.” I had forgotten my CDs and the adapter for plugging in my MP3 player was broken.
I listened for another minute, hoping to hear about recovery efforts for those displaced or injured, but Governor Benitez moved on to relief for roads and airports. She concluded that it may be at least a few weeks before roads were passable and a month before airlines in the northwestern region of the country were operational. Airlines across the country were shutting down, freezing travel. Search and rescue efforts were the highest priority for the National Guard and army right now.
“Mom…”
“Dammit!” I snapped, immediately regretting it. He was right. We’d heard enough.
“I love you, Mom,” Will said. “It will be all right.”
I chewed my lip. “I’m sorry, honey. I love you, too. And it will be all right.”
“What if they close more highways? The radio announcer said no traveling in Colorado,” Will observed.
“I don’t know.”
I dug into my handbag again. I found the bottle, twisted the cap, and looked inside. Only six pills remained. Six? My daily dose was two, and that meant I’d need eight to get me to Colorado, and another dozen for the return trip. Perhaps I could refill it nearby at a pharmacy.
I turned the bottle in my hand. Zero refills. “Shit!” I’d forgotten to take care of it when we’d returned home. For being so organized, I forgot a lot of things these days.
“Mom!”
“Sorry, hon.”
“Mom, I have to pee.”
I drove a few more miles on the quiet stretch of highway before locating a rest stop.
“One sec, okay?”
I pulled out my phone.
“Mom, you’re always longer than a second.”
I grimaced. “Count to a hundred, okay? Please?”
Where would Dr. Martin send the order? Prescription renewals always took forty-eight to seventy-two hours. There was no way I was going to sit around in New York for three days. Heck, we were nearly to Pennsylvania. More highways could be closed. Where would I be in three days? I pulled out the atlas we always carried in our car. Faded by use and time, it was one of the few possessions of Harrison’s I’d kept in the car. Father and son alike had always loved maps. I couldn’t toss it. I projected the distance.
I hadn’t driven this much since Harrison’s accident. In fact, in the past year I’d avoided most driving. Brandon had driven on our trip. As for local driving, I placed the kids in carpools and limited my driving as much as possible. Gone were the road-trip days before kids.
My hands began to shake, and a familiar thump permeated my chest. What if I couldn’t make it? What if I clammed up and had no pills to help me through it? God dammit, they’d been my crutch for the past year. I couldn’t do it without them.
In three days, I’d hopefully be in Kansas. I drew my finger across the Kansas map and located Wichita. Okay, there. Hell, I didn’t know which pharmacies would be there. But it was a sizeable city. They’d have plenty of chain pharmacies. I didn’t have a damn smart phone and even if I did, reception was spotty. I groaned and refrained from letting tears get the best of me. AJ, you dinosaur. You idiot! Harrison with his maps, and me with my dislike of technology and now driving phobia. What a pair we had been.
I dialed the doctor’s office anyway. An automated answering service picked up, and I disconnected. I closed my eyes and rubbed my palms against them. It was Sunday. The office wasn’t open. I redialed. This time I left a detailed voice message. “Hi, Dr. Martin. It’s AJ Sinclair. I’m out of my anti-anxiety prescription. I’m traveling to Wichita, Kansas. I have no refills. Could you please send in a refill to a pharmacy in town? I don’t know which pharmacies are there. Perhaps there’s a…” My mind went blank. I rattled off a few chain stores, took a breath, and continued, “I know this sounds crazy. Yeah, I’m driving. My son is missing…he’s somewhere in Colorado, near the eruption zone. Please, please help. You can reach me at my cell number. I’ll try again later. Thanks.”
I hung up, the wind knocked from me, my heart hammering. Just to be safe, I’d wean myself to one pill a day, half my usual dose. I had to make them last. If I couldn’t fill the prescription in Kansas, perhaps Denver would have a pharmacy that was prescribing. I knew I’d have withdrawal effects, but at least a pill a day was a gradual wean instead of cold turkey.
“Mom…I have to pee…I’m already over a hundred.”
“Let’s make it quick, okay?” We entered the gas station store, grabbed the bathroom keys, and turned the corner.
“Come in with me?”
“Of course.”
After we returned the key, my mind was a muddle of more thoughts than I could manage. I reeled with possible navigation ideas to get to Kansas and locate my prescription.
“Mom, why’s the tailgate open?”
I ran to the car. Nobody was in sight. A black sedan sped out of the parking lot. I squinted to note the license plate numbers, but it was too late.
“Shit!” I hadn’t locked the car. I peeked in. The trunk space had been ransacked. Bins open, blankets strewn about. “Oh my God, oh my God!”
“What happened?” Will scratched his head. “Were we robbed?”
A quick glance in the meager, unattended parking lot: not a soul around to even inquire if they saw anything. I summoned my strength. “Yes. I need to see what was taken.” My teeth chattered as I fought the inner demon.
Upon cursory inspection, some of the food and a gas container had been stolen, the bins rummaged through, sleeping bags unrolled, and my laptop was nowhere to be found. Also gone: jumper cables, my secret money stash, and…“Shit!”
“Mom?”
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” My pulse plummeted, and I grabbed the side of the car, combating the dizziness as blobs of white, purple, and yellow surrounded by jet black danced before me. I blinked through it.
“Three breaths, right, Mom?” Will said, his voice shaky. He wiggled from foot to foot.
“Yup.” I did as told, following the advice I repeated to him daily. He slipped his hand in mine for comfort. I squeezed back.
Harrison’s handgun, which he had purchased for home protection and would use at the shooting range with his buddies…was gone, too. Not that I even knew how to use it. I gritted my teeth. My aversion to carrying it in my handbag now resulted in its absence. He’d always asked me to come with him to the gun range. I never had.
I renounced my rainbow of swearwords as I slammed the tailgate closed. “Let’s go.” My laptop, too. So much for my plan to email Brandon. I thought of everything personal and cherished that had been on my laptop. I hoped most of it was backed up at home. And my extra money…gone. Jesus Christ, and the gun. I tallied my assets: I still had a tire iron, kitchen knife, pocket knife, food, water, the tent. So much for the unrest having not reached the East Coast. I was already in it. Bad luck had a way of following me.
Endless road lay ahead as I cataloged in my mind what remained.
I eyed Finn’s empty spare booster seat, then said a few affirmations that I didn’t believe and focused on the quiet landscape, the memory of some of my hikes with Harrison infusing my mind like a sweet-scented candle. I tried to not cry.
Golden rolling hills flanked us, and a long cargo train traveled east. I drove faster, futilely seeking out the black sedan. They were long gone. “Look, Will. How many cars do you think it has?”
“Mom, Finn likes trains, not me.”
“You did.”
“Trains are for babies. I’m a big kid now, Mom.”
Well, I tried. I noted the number of engines—two in front and one in rear—and the storybook r
ed caboose. Finn would like to hear about it.
Will didn’t ask about the robbery. I didn’t bring it up either.
I came upon a lone hitchhiker, my first on the journey, a man with short dark hair. He wore a red and gray plaid long-sleeved shirt despite the August heat, with an overstocked backpack. I drew my glance away from the road and studied him. I’m not sure why this particular person should have caught my interest. It was an odd place to be hitching. We weren’t close to the Appalachian Trail, where through-hikers would be trekking north. Perhaps he was local. I locked the doors. My shred of trust had been stolen with the assholes who had taken my stuff.
As I crossed the center line a few feet, I maintained a steady speed and kept my distance. He lowered his hitching thumb, slowly. Then gave the subtlest of nods. He understood. My gaze remained transfixed on him in the rearview mirror as he shrank to the size of an ant. Harrison would never have stopped. He had been cynical about everyone, always assuming the worst. Perhaps during the year since his death I had begun to develop that same disparagement. The naivety and hopeful optimism I felt for all human beings, even the darkest, had waned with my spirit this year. Was there hope for humanity anymore?
I looked back, but the man was long gone.
My thoughts returned to Finn, and that was that.
****
The colors passed by in a blur as Mom drove through the countryside of New York. Grays, different shades of green, brown. The leaves on the trees looked like they were moving, like a fast train. Will missed Finn, despite his brother’s constant talking, touching, and noise. Mom was usually chatty, too, but she also liked the quietness. Today, she was more quiet than usual. Maybe she was still mad about the people who had stolen their stuff.
Although it was August, some of the trees in this area were already beginning to lose leaves. Autumn wasn’t for another…
“Mom, what day is it?”
She sighed.
“The date, Mom,” he added.
“End of August something…”
He did the math himself. “Mom, there are leaves off the trees, but it’s not autumn yet. Look over there, all the leaves blowing around.”
Will Rise from Ashes Page 3
