by Jason Mott
“The one behind Dr. Arnold’s. The big one with the tall fencing.”
“The one where you’re going to try to hide from everybody?” He meant it as a joke, but his tone missed the mark.
“Yeah,” Ava said heavily. Then: “Maybe I wouldn’t keep everyone out, though. Maybe, if you didn’t bring in that damned book—and you know which one I’m talking about—maybe I’d let you in. Just you and me. Nobody else.”
“You’d get tired of me,” Wash said.
“That wouldn’t happen,” Ava said.
“Plus I’d still bring the book. So you’d have to deal with that.”
“Jerk.”
“Whatever,” Wash said. “Besides, how do you know that you wouldn’t get tired of me?”
“Because it’s going to be you and me in the end, Wash.” Ava was still huffing, but the conversation was making her forget just how tired she actually was.
“Like Beowulf and Wiglaf?”
“Like Lucy and Ricky.”
“Okay,” Wash said, smiling. “I think I could get behind that.”
For a very long time after that the two of them were silent. They simply walked. And when Ava’s breathing became labored again they stopped and looked at the path ahead.
The two of them stood there in the darkness with only the sound of the wind and of their own breathing and of their beating hearts to be heard. They would, now and again, prepare to speak, to say something that would take away the silence that had settled between them. But there was never anything that either of them felt needed saying and so they only stood within the gravity of each other. There was foreboding and splendor in those moments, adventure and fear. As if each of these moments were the last. Every moment was a breath that would not return.
Wash remembered moments in movies like this. Times when the guy and girl were alone just before they were destined to part ways. Sometimes they seemed completely oblivious to the fact that, for them, this was their final quiet moment of happiness. The fact that, from this point on, all things would get worse. Become more difficult. Completely fall apart in their hands.
But Wash knew what this moment was. And he wondered if Ava suspected.
It was then that Ava took Wash’s face in her hands and kissed him. It was a clumsy kiss at first, the way first kisses often are. But the longer she held him the better it felt. Everything that was not Ava...faded away. It was a kiss that made him feel whole and alone all at once.
The possibilities of what life could be like for them swam through his mind as he became heady and slow from the feeling of Ava’s lips pressed against his. He saw them living a life together, just as he saw the two of them dying in some horrible tragedy. He wondered where she was leading him, since she knew that they would not escape her father, the reverend and the town that would come looking for them.
“We’ve got to go,” Wash said, pulling his lips away from Ava. When he finally opened his eyes and looked at her, there was something that, in the moonlight, looked like blood coming from her lip.
“Okay,” Ava said, wiping her nose. She sniffled.
“Is that blood?” Wash asked.
“Let’s go,” Ava said.
Wash took her hand and pulled her close. He wiped her nose with the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t have any tissues,” he said apologetically.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Ava said, half smiling.
“It’s going to be okay,” Wash said.
“I know,” Ava replied.
* * *
“Ava’s gone,” Brenda said through the phone.
Macon could barely hear her over what was going on in the town around him. There was still a fire burning and people were crying and, where there wasn’t crying, there was yelling and shouting—people barking orders, calling for help or yelling the name of someone they were not yet able to find. In the middle of it all was Brenda’s voice, buzzing through cell phone static, telling him that his daughter was gone. “What are you talking about, Brenda?”
“Run off somewhere,” she said. She spoke matter-of-factly, the way she always did. “She and Wash both. There were people here—must have been hurt from the explosion. They came here to Doc Arnold’s wanting Ava to help them—demanding it is a better version. I got into yelling at them and whatnot. Anyhow, when it was all over, I went to find the kids and they were gone. Slipped out the back of the house in all of the commotion, I suppose.”
“Jesus, Brenda!” Macon said. He turned around, looking in all directions, as if he might suddenly see them. “Where did they go? How did you let them leave? How long ago was it?” He rattled off the questions without giving her enough time to answer, even if she had the answers. “Where are you?” he added. “Are you out looking for them? Let me know where you are and I’ll come meet you.”
“I’m still at Doc Arnold’s,” she said.
“What the hell are you still doing there?” Macon barked.
“Doing what I can to help your wife,” Brenda said flatly.
The words were like a bell being rung inside Macon. He froze and let the sudden fear he felt wash over him. “Brenda,” he said slowly. “What’s wrong?”
“The baby’s coming early,” Brenda said. “Doc Arnold says we need to get her Asheville, to the hospital. We’re leaving soon. Don’t know what the road out of town is going to be like with all of those people, but a couple of the policemen are driving us. Maybe that’ll get us out of here faster.”
“Put Carmen on the phone,” Macon said.
There was the muffled sound of the phone being exchanged.
“Macon?” Carmen said. Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke. She cleared her throat and, when she spoke next, she had better masked the fear she felt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how Ava and Wash got away.”
“Let me worry about that,” Macon replied. “How are you feeling?” He walked over to a small bench that he happened to be standing by. He sat. In this moment, all of the commotion—the yelling, the people running by around him in a blur—all of it went away. There was only Carmen.
“I’m not good,” Carmen said, almost crying. She made an awkward, clucking sound as she choked back the tears welling up inside of her. “You find Ava,” she said. “I’ll...we’ll be okay. I can do this.”
“I’m coming over there,” Macon said.
“Don’t be stupid,” Carmen replied. “You’ve got to find Ava and Wash. You know that. You can’t let them be out there on their own like that. There’s no telling what will happen if someone else finds them first.” She cleared her throat again. “Everything’s so crazy,” she added. “And, besides, we’ll be on the way to the hospital before you get here. The baby’s coming. It’s too soon and everything hurts, but the baby’s coming.” Then she added, “I’m scared, Macon.”
“I know,” Macon said. He looked off in the direction of Dr. Arnold’s. He could not see the house, but he knew where it was—just a few streets over, tall and old, waiting for him to come running. But what about Ava and Wash? “I’m scared, too,” he said.
Carmen gasped in pain and there came the sound of several people talking at once in the background. “Carmen?” Macon called. “Carmen?”
“Hello?” a voice called through the phone. “Macon? That you?” It was Brenda.
“Brenda, what’s happening?”
“We’re going,” Brenda said. Macon could hear her moving as she spoke. “We’re going to the hospital. I’ll stay with her. I’ll take care of her.”
“Thank you,” Macon said. There was a powerlessness in him at that moment. It was the way he felt when he could not reach Ava and Wash to help them at the air show. It was the way he felt when she fell unconscious after healing the boy. It was the way he felt when the world came calling, taking over their small corner of life, pressuring him to make one questionable decision after another—all for the sake of trying to prevent what he felt was impossible to prevent: the moment when Ava would be taken away from him. Either by doct
ors or churches or simply by all of the people who wanted her to do something for them, to be something for them.
And, even more than all of that, he felt powerless the way he had on the day when he came home and found his wife hanging from the rafters of the barn, and his daughter on her knees, sobbing, becoming broken in a way that could never be healed.
“Just take care of her,” Macon told Brenda. “I’ll find the kids.”
It was all he had left inside of him to say.
* * *
The search party swept out from Stone Temple like a great, calamitous fog. Their number was difficult to count. They were town locals, people from Reverend Brown’s church, newshounds, the curious, the confused, the hopeful and they were even those simply concerned about a pair of young teenagers who had disappeared in the midst of horror and tragedy. It did not matter to them that they were strangers to the town, unaware of the intricacies of the mountains into which it was believed the children had fled. All that mattered to them was the return of the boy and girl.
Seeing that he would be the only one able to stem the tide of people heading off into the mountains on their own to search for the children, it was Macon who came up with the idea of pairing one local with a group of visitors. At least then the groups would have some means of navigation and, when the night ended, there would be fewer people lost among the trees and rocks and bracken and deep places of the mountains. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t have to send out search parties to find the search parties.
Heading south, the country was harsh and the last thing he needed were strangers unfamiliar with the mountain stumbling through the darkness. There were pitfalls and precipices enough on the mountain to guarantee a tragic outcome. So he sent the majority of the searchers off to the south. The mountains were smoother there and it was the direction that led, soonest, to civilization. If the children were heading toward another town, hoping to catch a bus or to hitchhike away, that was the direction they would most likely go. He still wasn’t sure exactly why they had disappeared. There was still the possibility that they had been taken by someone, but he doubted that.
With so many searchers combing the south, Macon took the more treacherous stretch of forest and headed north. He had a feeling that, if his daughter had escaped to the woods, she would probably have gone in this direction.
Ava was headstrong, and if she truly had it in her mind to run away, it would not be impossible for her. But she was sick, too. Sicker than he wanted to admit to himself. She had been dying, little by little, with each healing she performed. And he had pushed her into it.
This was the thought that haunted Macon, even as he watched the town burn around him. There were still fires to be put out, still people that needed tending to, and no help or emergency support had arrived yet. The fire department was doing what it could, but they were few and most of them too old and out of shape to be doing the work of putting out the massive blaze. This was the problem with being in a town where the worst emergency was a brawl at a barbecue. When you really needed help, it was hard to come by.
“Macon!” someone shouted. “Sheriff!”
Macon turned to see Reverend Brown racing over to him. The man’s clothes were dirty and his face was riddled with worry. “Have you seen Sam?” Reverend Brown asked. His jaw was clenching and releasing and he was sweating. His breaths came fast and haggard. “Have you seen him? They found the man that takes care of Sam unconscious. Sam must have hit him and then ran off somewhere. Have you seen him?”
“No,” Macon said, “but we will. If he’s out here somewhere, we’ll find him.”
“You don’t understand,” Reverend Brown said. “He wanted to help. He wanted to help me.” His voice trembled.
Finally, Macon was beginning to understand. “Jesus,” he said.
“I don’t want to believe it,” Reverend Brown said. He placed his hand on the window of Macon’s car. His hand was red with the force of it, as if he were holding to a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
“Just stay calm, Reverend,” Macon said. “We’ll find your brother. But, right now, I’ve got to find Ava. She and Wash have disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Ran away, from what I can gather,” Macon replied.
“Where might they go?” Reverend Brown asked. The confidence came back into his voice. “I’ll take some people and I’ll go,” he said.
“You find your brother,” Macon replied. “I’ll find the children.”
* * *
The ridgeline led the children to Rutger’s cabin. It was nestled in the grip of dense pines and overgrowth, on a flattened section of the mountain. The cabin was hidden, but it was there, the imprint of the life left behind, enduring through all the years of neglect. The yard surrounding the cabin was wild and overgrown, but not impenetrable. There was a sense about it that it was being maintained by someone.
In the center of a stump near a small stack of old firewood, a rusty ax sprouted and pointed toward the sky. There was an old, rotted plow propped against the base of a tree as if someone had placed it there in a rush a long, long time ago. On another tree dangled what looked like animal traps. Wash studied them as he and Ava passed. She walked sure-footed and confidently through the yard, hardly noticing so many of the things that fascinated Wash.
He wanted to walk up beside her and take her hand, like a couple. It felt like the correct thing to do. But the thought of holding her hand that way was electric to him. It made his lungs tighten and created a buzzing in his ears like the hum of a thousand songs all playing at once: an infinite loop of tinny words and crescendos. It was enough to make him slightly dizzy, enough to make his stomach clench as if he had not eaten in years.
But maybe that’s what love was.
There was a sprawling, almost feral growth of mint near the front of the cabin. Mingled in, somehow—straining and nearly choked to death—he could see sprigs of sage and what was, perhaps, thyme peeking up from among the mint. The mixture of the smells was hypnotic and he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and imagined how the world would be if this one moment, this one aroma, covered it all.
“Watch your step,” Ava said.
But already Wash was in the process of tripping over a tree root and tumbling to the ground.
“Smooth,” Ava said with a grin.
Wash stood and brushed off his clothes and followed Ava as she went to the front door and opened it without hesitation. “Shouldn’t we knock?” Wash asked.
Ava chuckled. “There’s no one here but us,” Ava said.
The old cabin smelled of dust and mildew. Inside, it was even smaller than it seemed from the outside. It was only four walls placed far enough to contain a bed and a wood-burning stove and a small table that sat beneath a broken window, covered in leaves and debris that the wind had deposited there over the years. On one of the walls, near an empty bed frame, there was a large hole in the wall through which the wind came. It was large enough for an animal—or a small adult—to slip through and Wash wondered how it came to be.
The place seemed built for a single person. It was never meant to hold more than one. It was, in many ways, the house that Ava had always wanted, somewhere where she might live alone and have her dogs and her silence. He wondered if this was where the idea had found its roots. And he wondered why she had never told him about this place before.
They went directly to the stove and opened it. Inside were a few small logs—old and burned through. “We could find wood,” Wash said.
“But we don’t have any matches,” Ava said. “And I’m cold.”
“I can make the fire,” Wash said. “My dad taught me.”
His father’s lesson had not fallen on deaf ears. Just as Tom had done, Wash walked around outside of the cabin and collected the smallest twigs and kindling he could find. It was difficult and slow work, and there was always, in his mind, the thought of how long this was all taking. There was a persistent feeling that time was not on his si
de. Every now and again he would hear the sound of Ava coughing from the cabin. The sound was a spur in his side.
He folded the bottom of his shirt up into a pouch and collected the kindling there. He picked up what rocks he could find, hoping that he might have good enough fortune to find some that he could strike together to make sparks. It was a foolish thought. It would take luck and fortune to have it happen, but he had hope.
When he came back inside Ava was curled up on the floor in front of the stove, shivering. She opened her eyes to look at him as he entered and she did not seem to recognize him. She closed her eyes again and seemed to tighten in on herself, like a frightened child. Wash emptied his collected items onto the floor and sifted through them. There was wood enough for his purposes, but the rocks were still uncertain. So he took his time and tried out different rock combinations he thought would work. After several failed attempts, there came a spark.
“It’s gonna work!” he shouted. He turned to see if Ava had heard him, but she did not stir. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow—slower than he had ever seen before. “It’s gonna work,” he said again to himself.
Starting the fire took longer than he had expected. The kindling was easy enough to organize into the small stack that his father had demonstrated, but lighting it with the spark made by the rocks seemed a matter of luck more than planning. Again and again the sparks glimmered and darted through the air and landed atop the kindling and, again and again, nothing else happened. With each clap of the stones the frustration grew inside Wash. He noticed the cold more and more. Ava coughed, as if to remind him of what was at stake.
But he was relentless. Relentless until it finally produced results.
When the small thread of smoke began to rise from the kindling Wash held his breath. It was like watching a life being born, and the thought of all the ways it could be ended overcame him. His hands shook, but he forced them to form a wind barrier around the kindling—the way his father had that day—and he whispered, softly, into the ember, “She’ll die if I don’t make this work.” Then he pursed his lips and blew as gently as he could manage and he prayed.
