The Meaning of Isolated Objects
Page 18
Tossed it casually onto the little table by the front door.
And waited for Tag.
He got home around four p.m. and ignored the envelope. “What did you do today?” He seemed a little distracted, but sat beside her on the sofa.
“Went into town. Checked out the museum and the missile park. Ate lunch. Walked around. They said you can arrange a tour for me, something more behind the scenes than the regular one.”
“Huh. I’ll ask tomorrow and see how that works.”
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes.
“Are you tired?”
“Not too much. You want to go somewhere for dinner?”
What she really wanted was to know what he’d been doing all day. What the sketches meant and why they’d been sent to him. Maybe getting him out of the house would help. They might run into someone at dinner, who might ask a question or say something to offer a clue.
“Let’s go out. We don’t have much here anyway. Tomorrow I’ll go to the grocery store.”
As they were walking out the door, he stopped for a moment and kissed her, like maybe he’d forgiven her for sleeping with Keller. And possibly, forgiven himself for his part in that.
He took a different route than she had earlier that day, so she got to see more of the community. There was a little bar and grill that seemed like a good place to run into people he was working with, and inside, she looked around hopefully, wondering if someone would call out his name.
No one did. But she was hungry, and it was nice just sitting there in the dimly lit room, the smell of chili strong as they sipped beer and listened to music.
“Tell me about your work.” The direct approach might work best with him.
“It’s a special project. Pretty boring.”
“Oh, come on. You wouldn’t be here if it were boring.”
He laughed. “You’d be surprised.”
The chili arrived in thick blue bowls with a bottle of Tabasco on the side, and new, cold bottles of beer. A Dave Matthews’ song was playing, and the warm light across Tag’s face made everything seem okay again.
“Tag!”
A man walked up to the table and Tag motioned him to sit down. “Mack. This is Wendell.”
Mack motioned to the waitress that he’d like what they were having. He was older than Tag, and friendly. Could be he’d talk more than Tag did about work.
“I was just asking Tag about the project.”
Tag kept eating and didn’t make eye contact with her or Mack.
“Has to do with tracking missiles,” Mack said. “We’re working on a special application to some tracking device mechanics. Engineering, sort of.”
He paused and then rambled on. She didn’t even listen because what was more interesting was Tag’s face. As soon as Mack started talking, Tag looked up, and for a split second had been totally surprised at what Mack was saying. Which meant it wasn’t true. Not a word of it.
When they got back home, she asked him point blank. “You’re not an engineer. What are you really working on?”
“Stuff I can’t talk about. You know the drill.”
Of course she knew. There had been years of secrets with her father, questions not asked and answers never offered. She had asked Aunt Jessie, who told her what he did was special and important, but private. Aunt Jessie had used the word private, which had always seemed strange to Wendell, as if her father’s job centered around his own body, some intimate work he did only for himself.
It had become an issue of pride with Wendell that she never asked directly. A pretense that she understood, was mature enough to know the rules. What developed over the years between the three of them was a wall. Distance that added to the things they already didn’t know about the other.
All she’d had growing up were the flashes of places, some details, that she never quite trusted, but eventually had trusted because they seemed so real. Much like the vision she’d had with Tag on the mountain.
Tag was sitting beside her on the sofa, leaning back, arms folded up behind his head. His body was in the most casual of positions but his eyes were focused and intent. He watched her.
“I grew up not knowing what he did, where he went. I hated it.”
Tag nodded. “I know.”
“So why am I here living that all over again?”
His lips turned up in a half-smile. “You know the expression. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Maybe that’s what you should do.”
She shifted on the sofa. “I’m an archaeologist. Not some kind of secret agent.”
“Maybe there’s more than one kind of excavation.”
She had been looking at his arms but looked to his eyes. They were wide and clear, unblinking.
“Just think about it, Wendell. The possibilities.”
That night in the hotel room Scott got very drunk and looked at Wendell’s things, the laptop bag and books he’d taken from the little house outside Austin, thinking he could go into her emails if he ended up not finding her.
It had been awhile since he’d had charge of her gear. Years back, hauling diapers and sippy cups and little plastic containers of snacks pressed into his hands by Jess, as though he would forget to feed his own child. As though he would actually let her go hungry.
Outfits and toys, stuffed bears, blocks, later on a doll that had its own gear. Books, always books. Jess would go through it all when he took Wendell back, making sure nothing critical had been left behind.
Things were shifting in his mind and in the room. What Wendell had got herself into, the company, and what might be happening behind closed doors. His feelings for Jessie, something he’d never seen coming. He was relieved, he realized. He hadn’t been sure it was still possible. Being taken by surprise.
He wanted to call Jess, but he couldn’t tell her anything yet. She would worry. She might even hang up. All he wanted was to hear her voice.
But here he was. In a hotel room waiting on bigger things.
Bigger things than he could name. Nebulous things, but he tried to trust it was all happening the way it needed to. That in the slant and tilt of the bed when he opened his eyes and closed them again, there were no hearts broken, no wounds that wouldn’t heal.
For now, he drank and he waited for his daughter. Rode the turning of the earth and marked time in increments marked by shots of whiskey.
When he woke up he felt instantly that he’d made a mistake leaving White Sands. The mountain. He kept seeing a mountain. She shouldn’t be there alone. But even worse, she wasn’t.
He closed his eyes. He was following Wendell and this man, up a dusty path. He felt Wendell’s excitement and her worry. He felt a pulse, separate from his own, and knew it was her heart beating. Faster than it should have been.
His arms tingled and the skin on the left side of his face. She was opening up to the man, letting him in her thoughts, letting him tell her what to do. Scott wanted to turn away but he couldn’t leave yet. He needed to know what the man wanted her to do.
There was something different about his daughter. He felt a shift, almost as if the bed itself had tilted beneath him. He grabbed the edge of the bed with one hand. She was merging with the man. They were putting their energies together.
Scott opened his eyes. This was some of what he’d done all those years back, gone too far, and he feared she was going there too. Being led there by this man, whoever he was, lured in by the connection she felt. Scott knew the power of this kind of connection. The appeal of merging with someone and how easy it was to get lost in that.
He sent messages to Wendell. Warnings to stay in her body, images of anchors and grounding via the rock of the mountain, the earth itself. He imagined her centered and still, impervious to outside influence.
When he opened his eyes, he felt dizzy and disoriented. It had been years since he’d felt this kind of pressure to view. The need to get an answer, with no hope of feedback. It was the thing that burned most of them out, back in the unit. N
ow it was personal and vital and yet the government was still involved. It was coming at him from both sides.
He stood up and walked slowly to the bathroom. A splash of cold water sometimes helped, and feeling his feet on the ground. Outside the motel, he walked along the edge of the street, noting the steel gray of the asphalt, the almost painful glare of the sun, and the soft green of foliage that blurred and softened in his sight.
Everything seemed more intense after a hard viewing session. There was a sheen to things that felt unreal. He was too open. He breathed himself shut. Forced himself to assume she would be okay.
Tag and Wendell got up before dawn as planned so they could go to Salinas early.
On the mountain, the air was dry and the earth was barren. She kept thinking of Virginia, lush and green.
Tag set the pace on the trail. “Make sure you drink water. You dehydrate fast out here.”
He watched as she took a long sip and wiped her mouth. Something notched up between them. She lost track of time as they walked. He was ahead of her, and her focus shifted to what she wanted to say to the mountain. The exact words she would offer.
Tag slowed until she caught up to him. “The Apaches were matriarchal. In some tribes the woman just went to the man’s tent she wanted to marry and after she stayed a few nights he accepted her by eating the food she cooked for him.”
Wendell turned away, not able to look at him.
“That wasn’t a proposal.”
They walked on. Along the way her legs grew heavy. She kept thinking about anchors, her feet weighted, securing themselves with each step, connecting more deeply to the earth. Her father’s protection wrapped around her like a cloak. She wondered where he was. What he was saying to her.
When they reached the summit, Tag stopped and motioned to the ground. “Before we start I need to ask you something. Did you have a dream back in Socorro?”
So he did know. “Yes.”
“Was it this?”
Tears came to her eyes. He nodded and closed his. She watched the rise and fall of his chest and leaned forward when his face tilted slowly to the sky.
She felt the heaviness again but shook it off. This was something she wanted to do. She had waited for the opportunity to set her life straight. She would not shut it down. She ignored the images and eventually they faded.
Tag opened and she followed, unfolded everything in her head and heart, a map that spanned more distance than she’d imagined. It took time to get quiet and empty her head, and she was hot, but eventually the heat of the sun became nothing more than her own skin, as though she had become the sun itself, and the earth beneath was her base. Her body rose from the ground like a deeply-rooted tree. Tag was another tree; they shared the same plot of soil, perhaps competed for water, but to the detriment of neither. They had enough of what they needed. Existed in harmony with everything that surrounded them.
There was comfort in being rooted this deeply.
Tag said the primitive Apache had been a nomad, a wandering soul, following the path with courage and endurance. And cunning, he said. They had cunning.
In the landscape of her empty mind she walked a new path. Everything fell behind, the questions and the confusion. She walked forward in the world. Watched from a different perspective, from the outside in instead of the other way around.
This was her intent: that her journey was right, that she was brave and true. No longer lacking, not defined by what she had lost. She had everything she needed.
She said it all out loud, in a soft voice that didn’t make itself known to Tag. She felt it happen. The mountain, the sacred mountain, caught the words and held them.
Tag touched her knee finally and they started the long walk back to the jeep.
This time it was difficult keeping her feet on the earth. She felt weightless and exposed, naked and quivering in the light. Like she might float away.
She was baked through from the sun, worn from the walk, but energized. He waited while she drank more water, and then handed her a blank pad and a pencil from the back seat. “I’m taking you to a special place. I want you to draw where we’re going.”
The sketches. It all had to do with the sketches. But there was more than that. “Why do you want me to draw where we’re going?”
“To see if you can.”
And then it hit her. Keller’s question outside the bathroom: do you think she can do what he did?
The envelope full of sketches, all dated the year she was born. They must have been her father’s.
“He drew them. He knew how to find things and he drew them. And you want to know if I can do it too.”
“It’s called remote viewing. There were studies. A unit that trained and ran ops. It was big stuff. Your dad was the best. But after you were born he lost his edge. They moved him back to the field. Ever since I got involved in this work I’ve had dreams about you. Then I found out you’re his daughter. We need to know if you can do what he did. We know more now. There’s so much we can do with this technology.”
Tag’s face was insistent but calm. He’d gotten her out here in the middle of nowhere so she couldn’t run away. She had to listen.
“You realize that my mother died when I was born. So him losing his edge – what he really lost was his heart.”
“I know. But it’s not him we want. It’s you.”
“And what if I don’t want this?”
He reached over. Laid his hand on her arm. “Come on. You’re a natural.” He pulled the napkins out of his pocket and dropped them on the seat. “You do it all the time anyway. Just try it for real, now.”
There was no reason she could think of to refuse. He would take her where he wanted to, and what happened after that could go a dozen different ways.
All she could hear inside her head was what her father said when she was little.
I go where they send me, Wendell-girl.
The drawing took about five minutes, and when she was done, Tag eased the jeep into gear. Twenty minutes later he pulled off the road and cut the engine. There was a rickety old shack, a pile of rocks, and three barrels lined up off to the side. Every one of those features was perfectly outlined in the sketch she’d just made.
“You have it.” He lifted her face from the sketch. “Remember what the old guy said to you in the diner? About Lozen’s abilities to see the enemy? That’s you, Wendell. You’re the warrior with sight. Think what we could do with that.”
“I need to think about all this. Take me back now.”
As he drove, she realized that it was him. He was the one from her dream. Part of her journey. What she had spoken to the mountain. Was this her answer, already? She looked at Tag’s face and his hands on the steering wheel. They shared something, an inner rhythm. She was in love with him, but she didn’t yet know what he felt for her.
Later in the evening he handed over a manila envelope that was sealed and asked her to sketch whatever came to mind. She made sketches that even she could tell were intricate designs for missiles. What she didn’t know was who was doing the designing. Or where. She ended up with nearly perfect blueprints. Tag took them and whistled.
Now she knew why she was at White Sands. And what it was they wanted.
Scott wasn’t sure whether to get in the car and drive back to Whizmer or stay put and let Wendell call when she needed him. He didn’t want to get hauled off by whoever was in charge out there. Which they might do if they found him hanging around.
He thought back to the year after Lynnie died. The work he’d done. His RV work had been threaded with images from his own past with Lynnie, from his future with Wendell. Half the time he hadn’t known what year he was in when he was given the target data and started the process.
He had been close to something big though, and they had known it.
When they shut him down, he went back to the field. A few people knew about the training, most didn’t. They’d kept an eye on his work though. Every few months someone access
ed his files. He suspected they were tracking him to see if he was more successful than the average spook. He was.
What they might not have known was that he couldn’t stop the remote viewing. It had insinuated itself into his way of being. Since that year, there had only been two things he couldn’t access that way. The daughter in A-stan and Jessie. For whatever reason, it didn’t work with them.
He had always suspected it worked with Wendell because she’d developed her own skills unknowingly, a way to stay connected to him when he was away. He hadn’t discouraged it. Had in fact taught her a few things on the sly, subtly, so she wouldn’t know he was even teaching.
It had come to this. They wanted her now. Not the father, old and used up, but the daughter. Young and impressionable. Pissed off and ready to rebel against her daddy. They’d waited for this. It was no accident. When she took off from Virginia, they made their move.
And if he went in there and got caught, he’d be no good to her if she needed him. This was the kind of thing that would have no trail. Nothing Jess could follow or sort through. He’d seen it happen. He’d made it happen, with his own daughter in Afghanistan.
When he called Jessie, he kept everything out of his voice. “I’m out here with her. She’s fine.” He waited while Jess asked questions and fussed at him for not calling sooner. “I’ll check in every other day.” He hung up.
What he had nearly done was alter the future. He remembered lying on the couch in the viewing room, soundproofed and darkened. When they gave him the target along with instructions to look at what was happening not in that moment, but two weeks hence.
It had to do with a device that was being placed somewhere by a man, and Scott was to see where he put it.
He did the usual protocol, reporting exactly what he saw. But then he did something completely new. He shifted the image by telling the man to leave, that he was in danger. And then, three days later, the man, oblivious to any part of the protocol or even the existence of the study, listened and went someplace else. Scott had shifted the future. He’d influenced the target to throw the device away, into a river.