View Finder

by Greg Jolley

  He was flung hard into the railing, crying out, his hands scratching for a hold.

  I hit him again, and he went over.

  After striking the coupling between the cars, he twisted and screamed. Seconds later, the steel wheels ate him. What remained was tossed, broken and splashing, across the trestles and out over the wide and rolling Colorado River.

  Rescue

  The act of rescuing; deliverance from restraint,

  violence, or danger; liberation.

  Scene 7

  During the rest of the train trip, I spent very little time in the compartment preferring to be around people in the dining, viewing, and reading cars. I knew I was commented on and pointed at because of the goggles, but I ignored that. I focused on the beauty and depth of my new 3D world—a world experienced and seen in breathtaking stereo.

  When the train reached the town a half inch away from Greenland on my map, I departed. I slipped away from George’s and the conductor’s recurring questions about the disappearance of Wysan Grub. Only I knew where Mr. Grub was—arm in arm with Father in hell or wherever evil men landed after death.

  I walked into town and entered a hotel. Spotting the phone booths to the left side of the lobby, I called Mumm’s answering service. There were no new messages for me. I also learned that she had over twenty-five transcribed messages, all unanswered. Entering the gift shop, I asked the clerk for directions to Greenland.

  “Greenland Homes? They’ll give you a map at the hotel desk, but you can’t get there this month…snow and roads.”

  At the hotel desk, I was offered a room and declined. The woman kept her eyes averted from my goggles and explained, “Fools built Greenland. Them trying to sell homes you can’t even get to.”

  She unfolded a map and drew a circle on a barren area beside what was labeled Starfish Lake.

  “Come back in the spring,” she told me and asked, “What are you wearing?”

  I had my new lie at the ready—the same one used during the last of the train trip.

  “Corrective lenses.”

  She shrugged and suggested I go across the street and buy winter clothes if I was planning to stick around. After declining a room for the second time, I went out onto the road and aligned my new map with the location of the town. A logging truck roared into view, and I stepped to the sidewalk as it passed, its tires sending up a mist of muddy wind that added to the brown mounds of snow in the gutters. A second logging truck passed. I crossed the road as a third appeared in the distance.

  The general store had all I needed if not much variety. I changed into new winter clothing and bought a flashlight and a pair of snowshoes, paying from my packet of cash.

  I ate lunch in the coffee shop next door. I ordered dinner as well and asked that it be wrapped up. A good number of people gave me odd looks along the lunch counter. I ignored them feeling my new emotion—a mix of confidence and strength.

  With the bagged dinner stowed inside my satchel, I walked from the town in the same direction the stream of lumber trucks was coming from. I found it difficult going but safer to trudge along the snow-covered tree line than near the road with those large trucks racing by.

  I moved onto the pavement at nightfall when the trucks stopped appearing. Cleaning my goggles constantly, I continued on into my new 3D world, a world of biting cold and falling snow. I didn’t check the map in the waning light. I knew I was headed in the right direction.

  To Greenland.

  To her.

  I slept on a bench beside four garbage cans in a roadside shelter. I was woken with a start as the first of the logging trucks roared past. Nearly frozen and dull with hunger, I started out again staying to the safe side of the shoulder, which was hip high and splashed with icy mud.

  At midday, I paused long enough to eat the wrapped dinner from the coffee shop.

  Two hours later, I stopped again at a Y in the road. The lumber trucks were rolling down the mountain from the right. In the other direction, there was a bridge a hundred yards out and a sign reading “Starfish Lake—5 Miles.”

  The road to the bridge was deep in snow. There were no vehicle tracks or footmarks. I waited as another truck rounded the long bend, big tires sending up a foul spray. When it was safely past, I started into the thigh-high snow toward the bridge.

  Twenty yards out, I stopped and kicked out a small clearing so I could sit down and put on the snowshoes. I stopped again in the middle of the bridge and leaned over the concrete siding. A wild river was tearing downstream between the boulders and rocks.

  “Do you feed the Colorado River?” I asked the fast and icy waters rushing the gray stones.

  I closed my eyes and pictured dead Wysan Grub floating and bobbing, being carried along to his final place out to sea.

  “Flushed. Like garbage down the city drains.”

  Killing him didn’t bother me. I felt no regret or guilt. He had tried to get in my way. It came to me that he was nothing but another obstacle to be rounded or run through.

  “I’m on a quest,” I said, stealing a recurring line from my comics and detective novels.

  “I’m going to save Luscious. And then save Mumm.”

  FIVE MILES isn’t that far, even in snowshoes, but I got lost in the hills. It was near nightfall when I came out of the trees and stood before a snowfield that looked a mile long and a mile wide. Off to my left was Starfish Lake.

  In the snow silver with moonlight feeling cold and hungry and tired, I took out my flashlight and thumbed the switch.

  Within the grasp of my damp mitten, the beam of light raced across the snowfield. The beam dissolved in its reach for the far, northern hill. My stinging ears heard before they felt the next wind off the lake.

  The tall trees behind me swayed as a frozen wind slapped my back. The clouds retook the moon while the white beam retreated and, with a small click, disappeared.

  I raised my heavy and awkward snowshoe straight up and outward. This snow was different from before—it had a hard crust of ice. My balance was uncertain, and with my knee straight out, the snowshoe rested on the top of the hard, gray pack. I leaned into my knee, and the snowshoe crunched down with resistance at first, then smoothly on further to rest.

  Ten tiring strides out, I stopped and again aimed my flashlight to the darkened row of houses on the hill at the far opposite end of the snowfield.

  The clouds parted, and the white moon offered an icy light. I felt my empty stomach clench. I watched the great rolling clouds pull together again. When they had, I took another heavy step across the gray snowfield.

  I was eighty yards out when I crossed another set of snowshoe footprints. The trail looked like it was cut by kicking, rather than by raise, reach, and push steps. I stopped and worked my mitten into my jacket pocket and removed the flashlight. The tracks were old—not nearly as deep as mine. They appeared to be coming from the far hill and turning there before me to Starfish Lake. I saw that the previous traveler had been weaving and stumbling. I aimed the flashlight to the disrupted snow and recognized bloodstains that, when warm, had burned channels into the white.

  I shined the light along the tracks to the east to the lake. I put the flashlight away and continued. A wind full of ice rushed over me burning the back of my neck. I wanted the return of moonlight, but the clouds would not cooperate. I walked in the tracks of the prior traveler which made the going a bit easier, even though the clumsy, blood-stained path wandered left and right.

  An hour and a half later, the sky began to lighten with daylight, and I started climbing the hill. I had to concentrate on accurate step placement as I moved upward. I stopped twice and looked up to see the houses, but the brow of the hill blocked my view.

  WITH THE first light of dawn, I was almost done in—exhausted and nearly frozen. Having finally reached the crest of the steep, relentless hill, my attention was torn. A yellow biplane was slowly banking across the snowfield and distant Starfish Lake at my back. Before me, one of the large houses was goi
ng up in flames.

  I stood shin deep on a snow-covered lawn between two tall houses. The yellow biplane was angled low above the pines, the sound of its engine wavering in the cold air.

  Across the road, orange flames and black smoke boiled through the windows and the open front door. I looked one last time to the airplane, but a dark house blocked my view. I gave my full attention to the burning structure in front of me.

  My stomach was no longer growling. Instead, it was cramping. I stared at the fire without a thought of doing anything other than watching. The 3D enlivened black smoke and orange flames were alive and beautifully reflecting on the blue snow. It was the same kind of layered vision Mumm and I had shared with our View-Masters. I could hear the cracking and crashing sounds from inside the house. I knew it wasn’t the safest thing to do, but I took a dozen steps closer to warm myself.

  Automatic sprinklers came on across the lawns one after another in front of the large houses on both sides of the black-paved road. The thin cones of sprinkler water were turning into ice before they landed.

  Something heavy crashed and something crumbled inside the burning house. I watched the drapes in a second-story window ignite. Above, the black smoke was staining the morning sky.

  The snowplowed road in front of the burning house was one continuous, sweeping curve. There were no sirens and no adults to be seen. The sun had climbed into the sky high enough to lay strokes of sparkling light on the snow.

  I looked to the curb a few feet away thinking I might sit and thaw in the fire’s glow. There was a street bench to my left, and I chose it instead. Two strides to it, I stopped. The bench was occupied.

  A teenage boy was sitting on the green planks with his shoes and lower pant legs buried in the snow. The arms of his dirty gray jacket were crisscrossed over his chest. He looked roughed up, and there was a paper bag beside him. He was working on half a sandwich held close to his lips. As he chewed, he smiled, his cheekbones raised to the fire for warmth. I was relieved to see another person among the houses with no one else about. I hoped he could help me locate Luscious.

  I studied the teen and the remaining half of the sandwich in his filthy hands. I followed his wide-open eyes to the house giving off warmth and crashing sounds. Behind me, the sound of the yellow airplane grew louder. The inside of the teen’s dirty jacket began to move, and he restrained it with his arms. I walked across the snow to him.

  The airplane was close and loud. I listened to it banking across the face of the hill beneath the Greenland development. After it flew by, the teen took another bite from his sandwich. The fading sound of the airplane was replaced by an automobile coming fast, its motor wound out as far as possible in a low gear.

  A power-sliding Cadillac crested the top of the curve, its rear tires spinning. The silver automobile was sideways, its nose aimed at the inside of the turn where its headlights swept the white lawns and the cascading water from the sprinklers.

  I looked to see if I was in the Cadillac’s skid path. I wasn’t, but the teen and his sandwich were. I took a quick step and just as quickly fell, the snowshoe tip digging into the ice. I unclasped the snowshoes and yelled to the teen who seemed oblivious.

  The automobile caught some traction, and its aim pitched. The inside tire climbed the curb and snow plowed up over the fender. A mailbox and its post rode the hood and slid off the side taking the passenger-side mirror with it.

  The automobile rode down off the curb and continued to power slide. It didn’t brake as I expected but corrected and passed by the teen and me. It roared past the burning house and around with the curve and up the hill. When it disappeared from view, still going too fast, I expected to hear it crash. The airplane flew away in the sky behind me, then all was quiet.

  I focused on the teen who had, sadly, consumed all but the two middle bites of the sandwich. A timber crashed inside the burning house. A second later, I heard the automobile crash.

  There wasn’t a skid, only the impact of rending, smashing metal. The boy was pressing the two middle bites in between his lips. He was losing the battle to contain the activity within his jacket. I looked up the curve to the sound of the car wreck.

  Something inside the burning house exploded, blowing glass and wood and embers through the open doors and windows. I dropped in the snow and covered my head.

  When I looked up, the outside of the large house was burning as fast as the interior, and the white lawn was littered with sinking, smoldering fragments.

  The teen was using his elbows to wrestle with whatever was alive inside his jacket. His hands plied a church key on a soda can. His lunch bag was nowhere to be seen. He was turning his head side to side, extending his pink cheekbones to the warmth from across the road.

  I stepped into his line of vision.

  His eyes filled with alarm when he saw me.

  “Hello,” I offered, including a smile.

  The words seemed only to upset him more. His knees clenched and locked.

  The teen’s brown pants were caked with snow and mud. Dried blood matted his dirty hair on the left side and stained the shoulder of his jacket.

  I took a step closer.

  “Are you hurt? Can I help you?”

  He flinched and leaned away. I stepped back, but the alarm in his eyes remained on his dirty face. Both of us were dusted with powdery snow. I looked away.

  Lights were beginning to warm the windows of the large houses along the black curve, as though synchronized, perhaps on timers. I wiped the fresh snow from my shoulders and hair. The airplane’s motor was gone. The early morning was silent save the kissing of the lawn sprinklers.

  I wanted to help him if he needed it. Clearly, he was in need. I decided to leave the teen only when I saw his fear lessen with one step away. I walked up along the road between the lit and silent houses to the automobile wreck beyond the top of the bend.

  THE AUTOMOBILE was on its side having crashed into a ditch. Its parts littered the pavement and the lawns. An old man was climbing out of the wreckage through the driver’s side window. I noted the nasty tear in the nearby oak tree. He was looking at me, and when our eyes met, he raised one eyebrow, shrugged to the wreck, smiled, and waved. When he saw my flashlight, his brow furrowed.

  The old man pushed snow down and away along the leaning silver roof. He climbed onto it and slid slowly down to the edge of the roadway. Standing on the pavement, he rubbed his hands together for warmth. He fingered the bruise on his cheek, which was swelling. He looked away from me and traced the path of the accident until his eyes were again on the ditch and crashed automobile. He turned at me.

  “You had breakfast yet?”

  I wiped snowflakes from my goggles and answered, “No.”

  A large sign hung from the oak he had clobbered. In green letters on a white background, it read, “Welcome to Greenland.”

  The old man rubbed his thin beard and his stomach and walked away.

  “C’mon, then,” he said. “I’m buying.”

  I caught up, and he pointed to my flashlight. “Good idea you put that away.”

  I thumbed the flashlight off, pushed it inside my jacket pocket, and followed.

  We walked down the road away from the hilltop sign. Off to our right, there was a clubhouse—a two-story building of tinted windows beside an empty swimming pool and a snow-covered tennis court. I followed him across an empty parking lot past the clubhouse. He didn’t say a word as he led the way across the lot to a lower street. Two minutes later, he turned to a two-story house that looked just like all the others.

  I followed him to the front door, and we entered. The air inside was warm, and the front room had a cathedral ceiling and sky-blue carpet. Along the north wall was a solid row of televisions. Across the opposite wall was a line of identical cream recliners.

  He led the way along a wide hall, passing a soft-lit dining room behind French doors. We entered swinging doors into a spacious white and chrome kitchen.

  “Excuse me for a
minute,” he said.

  “Sure. And thank you,” I said to his back as he picked up the telephone receiver that lay on a table, its cord reaching across to the cradle on the wall.

  I stepped back through the swinging doors and continued down the hall. At the end, there was an immense room at least three times the size of the television and recliner room. There wasn’t any furniture. Looking up, I realized that the two-story home had no second story. The southern wall was lined with twenty-foot windows offering a view of the valley. Just outside, a white-haired woman sat at a table beneath a large umbrella. Her head and shoulders were haloed with electric blue light from a television in a weather box. Snow was falling around her and quickly melting. The heated decking under her feet was slick with water and steam rose from the boards. I returned to the kitchen.

  The old man was speaking soft and low into the telephone. The warmth of the house was working on my mind and body, and even though I was hungry, I thought of lying down and dissolving into sleep.

  “I’ll find her first if I can,” I promised.

  “What was that?” the old man asked.

  Before I could reply, he went on.

  “Baked beans and black rye okay?”

  I stretched my eyes open wide and blinked into my 3D world. I turned to him and nodded and smiled.

  “Good. Maybe some coffee, too? C’mon, there’s a fresh pot.”

  There were a dozen electric coffee percolators in a row on the tiles beside the sink. The machine nearest the tap was spitting and filling with dark brown coffee and that rich, familiar smell. The old man opened a cardboard carton on the counter next to the stove. He removed a can of baked beans and from another box lifted a similar size can of black rye bread. I had never seen bread from a can before, and I looked on as he poured dark syrupy beans into a pot on the range and put heat to it.

  He pointed to the cupboard above the coffee makers. “Get us down two cups, two bowls, and two plates.”