All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  “Is this like the mafia?” asked Iain, his face alive with nervous excitement.

  “Sort of. Yeah. And they don’t want me to tell anyone what I know. They’re trying to stop me. So I had to run away. I was headed—” She stopped for a moment, and stared off toward the window. Her eyes took on a daydream focus. After a moment she shook herself out of it. “Well, this is where I ended up. Quite by accident.” She flashed Cole a look of shared secrets, then returned to Emily.

  “Why did you have to run away?” Emily asked. “You’re the President, aren’t you?” She rolled her eyes at the self-evident nature of her statement.

  Linda turned to stare out the glass doors that led to the porch. The woods beyond were softly lit by the setting sun, giving the tree trunks a furtive quality, like spies watching the house from the shadows, signaling each other with the voices of whippoorwills. “There are people and things even more powerful than the President of the United States,” she said absently, her voice low and distant. She turned back to Emily. “I’m not running away. But I couldn’t stop them where I was. I had to get help. And I didn’t know whom I could trust.”

  Linda gazed around the table as Cole’s family watched, waiting for more of her story. She glanced down as Grace took her hand and turned her wedding band around and around. Should she tell them more, when knowing more might endanger them further? The People would not hesitate to kill them all if they deemed it necessary. Jesus! What was she doing hiding amongst these children?

  Linda slapped the table. Over her dead body. “Enough of that. Don’t you worry, Emily. It’ll all work out. Because I say so. In the meantime, I’ll feel a lot better if you keep asking me tough questions.” She smiled grimly and Emily nodded, as if to accept the assignment gladly.

  A tugging at her sleeve told Linda that Grace had yet another secret. She lowered her ear to hear. “My Daddy likes you but my Grandpa doesn’t,” Grace said, loud enough to make her father squirm in his chair.

  “Is that right?” A look of mock horror filled the President’s face, then she grinned at Cole with delight.

  Grace wiped her hands on her blouse. “Yep. Grandpa said you couldn’t find your own butt with both hands.”

  Iain choked on his milk and Cole buried his face in his palms.

  Linda winked at Iain, then put her hand to her mouth and whispered conspiratorially to Grace. “I think your Grandpa may be right.”

  3.5

  “The Prince held the frog close to his face. ‘You said the witch had a special?’

  ‘Two for one,’ the frog said with a nod.

  The Prince glanced up at the castle, then back at the frog.

  ‘Your appointment’s at 10 o’clock,’ the frog said. ‘It’s already paid for.’

  The Prince, with his tiny, green wife in his hands, walked out into the forest to find a certain witch.”

  Linda closed the handmade book with a flourish and looked down at Grace, who sat beside her at the head of the bed. Dennis, a white and brindle Whippet, having made his reluctant peace with the stranger in the house, slept between Grace’s legs, his head propped on her knee.

  “Did you like it?” asked Grace.

  “I did!” said Linda with a laugh. “Did your father really write that?”

  Emily, lying in the bed across from Grace’s, raised herself up on her elbow. “Yeah. But he told it to us first. He found this frog in the woods and brought it in and pretended that the frog was talking. Iain laughed so hard milk came out of his nose.”

  Grace laughed at the memory of it and Dennis, eyes still closed, thumped his tail in concurrence.

  Linda let out a long, slow breath, sank back into the pillow, and let her shoulders relax. “It’s funny. When I was a girl my Daddy would tell me stories about a boy named Jumping Jack. Jack was half human and half frog and he’d get in all sorts of trouble, jumping around and breaking things and hitting his head. He was really good at basketball, and rescuing kites from trees. But he was sad, because the girls were afraid of him.”

  Grace scrambled around to her knees and put her face right into Linda’s. “Would you want to be a frog’s wife?” she asked theatrically, her voice deep and round, her face a mask of seriousness that burst into hilarity.

  Linda hugged the laughing child to her chest. Grace buried her face in her mother’s old sweatshirt and sighed. “I would have married Jumping Jack,” she said wistfully.

  “Can we read another one?” asked Emily, springing out of bed and heading toward the bookshelf, the answer self-evident to her.

  Linda glanced around the room and out the window. It was fully dark now, with only a spittle of moon. The farm girl from Michigan wanted nothing more than to sit here forever, reading to these smart, open, lovely girls, soaking up the wonderful normalcy of it all. But the President of the United States knew that she had to get moving, that there were things she needed to do, or there would be no more normalcy for anyone. For now, for just a while longer, she would let the farm girl decide. Linda watched as Emily headed toward her, book in hand, thankful that the girl had decided to set aside her mistrust, at least for the time being. “I guess,” she said. “If it’s okay with your father. You girls do have bedtimes, right?”

  Grace glanced over at the clock on her bedside table. “It’s only eight-four-one. We don’t have to be in bed until nine-zero-zero. And Iain gets to stay up until nine-three-zero, but he only plays on his stupid computer.”

  “Okay.” Linda agreed. Emily handed her a book: The Little Prince. “Do you want me to sit on your bed for this book, Emily?”

  Emily thought for a moment, looking at Linda’s pillow-cushioned leg, as if remembering how long it took to get her upstairs. “That’s okay. You can stay there.”

  “All right. I can do that.” The President leaned back against the headboard of Grace’s bed and opened the book. Grace nestled more deeply into her embrace and closed her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever read this one,” said Linda, reading the cover.

  “It’s about a boy who comes from another planet,” said Grace. Her voice was low and soft, the gentling breeze of summer dusk. She was not far from sleep.

  “Really?” The President looked up, glancing around the room, listening for unseen dangers. From the kitchen below came the ringing of the phone.

  “Uh huh,” explained Grace, rousing slightly. “And he has to get some water for his flower so he comes to Earth and—”

  “Grace!” chided Emily from her bed, “just let her read it!”

  Cole walked into the room, his face pale. Linda looked up from the book. Her heart began pounding. “What is it, Cole?” she asked, her voice suddenly sharp with fear.

  Cole motioned absently back down the stairs. “The phone. Weird.”

  Linda closed the book and placed it on the bedside table. “Who was it, Cole?”

  “More beeps and clicks at first,” he answered, taking a seat on the end of Emily’s bed across from the President. “And then a voice. Like Emily said, all very strange sounding. Slowed down. Warbled. Sort of like Darth Vader.”

  “What did the voice say?” asked the President. She was sitting up straight now.

  “It asked ‘Is Linda there?’ That was all. Then … more beeping. And then there was music. You know, that President song.” Cole hummed a few notes.

  “Old MacDonald,” said Grace, almost asleep.

  “Hail to the Chief,” murmured Linda.

  3.6

  “Please just let it ring,” snapped Linda.

  Cole sat back down in the loveseat opposite the President. “This is about the tenth time. It’s driving me crazy.” Behind him the window revealed the darkness of the night woods.

  “Will it wake the kids?” Linda reclined on the sofa, her broken leg supported on the coffee table with small pillows and an afghan.

  Cole rose. “I’ll unplug it.”

  “Good idea.”

  Cole pulled the line from the wall-jack. The phone continued to ring. Exasperated
, he lifted the receiver. “Who the hell is this?” He listened for a moment then hung up. Immediately the phone began to ring again. Cole picked it up, walked to the front door, and pitched the phone out into the bushes and the darkness of the night. Silence for a moment, then ringing again, but fainter. Cole closed the door roughly and walked back to the living room. “Who is that, Linda? And how in the hell can they do that?”

  There was defeat in Linda’s voice. “It’s a long story, Cole.”

  “Well suppose you tell it to me,” Cole replied harshly. He sighed, regretting his anger immediately. He softened his voice and continued. “I mean, you’ve been telling me all day that you’re in terrible trouble and that you need my help. And I’ve agreed to help you in any way that I can. I think I deserve to know what’s going on.” The edge returned to his voice. “I need to know if my kids are in danger.”

  Linda recoiled. “It wasn’t supposed to work out this way,” she answered defensively. “I told you to wake me.”

  “Like you’ve got a back-up plan here, Linda? Your leg’s broken and the fucking mafia is chasing you. Were you thinking you’d call a cab?” Cole could hear old voices in his head - his dead wife Ruth calling him on his acerbic tone, his mother warning him to watch his smart mouth - but he didn’t stop. He knew he’d regret it later, but his heart was pumping adrenalin. These were his kids!

  Linda closed her eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths, as if letting Cole’s words sink in. She tucked the afghan more tightly around her legs, then looked up at Cole and nodded, her eyes moist and red. “I almost believed it,” she said at last, her defensiveness shed, her voice little more than a whisper. She lowered her gaze to her lap. “Almost. Almost believed that everything was normal, that the world was really like I’d always thought. All day, spending it here with your lovely family, just sitting and talking, eating, enjoying each other’s company. I wanted so much to forget.” She looked up at Cole. “I wanted this to last forever.” The President swatted at a tear. “Whatever happens, I want you to know how precious these last few hours have been for me.”

  Cole nodded but said nothing, dumbfounded by how gracefully Linda had dropped her defenses, and how easily that had disarmed his own.

  Linda sighed. “I got caught hoping, Cole. I’m sorry. You have every right to want as much information as you can get. You need to protect your children, and my showing up at your doorstep in terrible need has put you in an awful position.” She reached out to reposition the cushion beneath her knee, then cleared a strand of hair from her face with a shake of her head. “I’ve been alone with this for so long … I haven’t known whom to trust.” She glanced up at the ceiling, then came back to hold Cole’s gaze. “I don’t think there’s any immediate danger here, but I do need to keep moving. I’m sorry that you and your children got dragged into this. But I think – Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this – I think we’re at war, Cole. Whether anybody knows about it or not. A war that could change the whole world. And I’m afraid we’re all going to be dragged into this before it’s over.”

  Linda held her chin high, a gesture of steely defiance and utter surrender. Her eyes looked like rainy days. Cole rose, stepped carefully around the President’s leg, and took a seat next to her on the sofa. Tentatively he reached out to comfort her, his hand a cautious, curious chipmunk at the base of a tree, advancing step by step across the cushion. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, wanting desperately for his saying to make it so. Linda’s hand took his and held it tightly.

  From outside came the faint ring of the telephone from the bushes. The dome of the sky flashed white like a photographer’s lighting umbrella, illuminating the entire room. Then the darkness crashed back over them like a tsunami. “I can’t get away from them!” hissed Linda, scrunching her eyes tight.

  “Who are they?” Cole asked quietly.

  Linda let go of Cole’s hand and hugged herself against the cooling evening. “Okay,” she muttered absently, as if Cole had made a demand she did not know if she could meet. “Okay.” She rubbed at her temples with the heels of her hands. “In a second, okay?” Linda looked at Cole. “I need to see what’s happening out there first. Can you turn on the TV? CNN or something?”

  Cole grabbed the remote and flicked on the television, flipped through the channels and found some news.

  “... are briefing the Vice President. Senior officials report that they are following every lead and expect to have a statement soon. The White House also confirms that the President’s mother, Ellen Warren, has been taken to St. Theodore’s Hospital after collapsing this afternoon in her home in Falls Church. There have been no reports yet regarding her condition. Vice-Pres—”

  “Turn it off,” sputtered Linda. Cole hit the power button. The whole room went silent, save for the faint sound of snoring from the girls’ room upstairs.

  Linda sat back and kneaded her eyes with her fingertips. “They’ve got Mom.”

  “Who does?” asked Cole. “It just said she was in the hospital.”

  Linda exhaled her exhaustion. “There is no St. Theodore’s Hospital in the D.C. area, Cole. It’s a message. For me.”

  Cole squeezed her hand. “Tell me, Linda. Okay? Tell me why I shouldn’t just go out to those bushes and call the police and be done with all of this.”

  Linda glanced sidelong at Cole, about to speak, but something outside caught her attention. She gaped through the sliding glass doors at the south porch, and the trees beyond. Cole swung his head around to follow her gaze. The lights in the house flickered and went dark.

  Down by the curve in the creek a light danced, a small blue globe that sparkled like diamonds at its center as it bobbled over the dry stones. Soon another light joined it, this one a brilliant white beam that shone down from above the treetops, scanning the black woods like a spotlight. The blue globe weaved between the trees and the spotlight followed, both working their way slowly up the slope toward the house. The globe seemed to blink out and back on as it passed behind the trunks of trees. Another spotlight, also bright white, joined the first, following in lockstep, sliding across the ground-cedar that carpeted the forest floor. The spotlights closed in on the house, following the blue globe as it looped and wove.

  Cole rose from his seat on the sofa, stepped away from the window behind him. Absently he took a few steps across the room, reached out to flick the switch that would turn the lights back on. Try as he did, he couldn’t seem to reach it, though his arms felt longer than ever. The switch was always too far away.

  He sat back down on the sofa. The blue globe came closer, passing by the edge of the south porch, blowing shadows through the pickets like leaves in the wind. There were many white spotlights now, six, seven, eight, ten, weaving through the trees, scanning the grounds like a prison break; and darting in and out amongst the tree trunks, approaching the house like schoolchildren on a field trip, a cluster of tiny stick-people, a swarm of locusts, an army of robots, and yet nothing more than fog and shadows in the swirling light.

  The blue globe swept past the window behind the loveseat, zipped around the corner of the house and hovered, for a moment, right behind them, just inches away from the plate glass above the sofa. Linda and Cole turned like automata, staring in silence, their faces theatrical in the rich, blue glow. The globe pulsed and the room filled with an electric blue radiance so intense that neither of them could see. A deep rumble filled their minds and hearts, as if angels and earthquakes were two aspects of the same phenomenon, as if the sun’s splendid demise had come billions of years early.

  With a clap, all of the strange lights went out. The globe was gone. The spotlights and the stick-people had faded away. The rumbling drained off and the woods hushed. At the window before them was a pair of orange-red eyes the size of angry fists, glowing like dying coals. The eyes blinked. Cole gasped. The eyes rose up and were soon lost from view.

  Cole shook his head as if shooing a fly, then stood and looked around the dark, starlit room, bli
nking. Was that lightning he’d seen? There were no storms in the forecast. Why had the power gone out? He walked to the kitchen and poured a glass of water and drank, swirling the liquid around in his mouth before spitting it back into the sink. He poured another glass and swirled and spat some more, then glanced up through the window. Angrily he stepped to the front door, reaching out to grasp the knob, then pulling away with a shudder. The anger flaked away like dried mud and fell to dust. The house lights flickered back to life.

  Cole turned at the sound of snoring. The President was asleep on the sofa, her face peaceful and relaxed.

  3.7

  Linda threw off the little blue quilt with a grimace, as if it were full of bedbugs. She blinked herself fully awake. “What happened?”

  Cole took a seat across from the President. “There must be a storm coming or something. Lightning flashed and the lights went out, so I got up to check the box. But then the lights came back on and I saw you’d fallen asleep and I thought … you know…” Cole shrugged. “The pills and all. Maybe I should wake you up. It couldn’t have been more than a minute.”

  With a grunt, Linda pulled herself into a sitting position. She brushed at her clothes with trembling hands, then looked at Cole with tangled, bewildered eyes. “Were there bugs in here? Moths or June bugs or something? Did you see them?”

  Cole shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so,” he said, looking around the room.

  “And an owl?” she continued as if Cole hadn’t answered, twisting to look over her shoulder. “Did we see an owl outside?” She pointed at the window just behind the sofa. “Right there. An owl. We saw an owl.”