All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  “Weird.” Cole frowned. It all just got stranger and stranger. “Well, whatever. I thought we were caught for sure. Didn’t know whether to hit the gas or beg for mercy. Then that little guy shows up and the tanker blows and here we are.”

  “Maybe we have more help than we know about.” The words had spilled out of Linda without conscious thought, as if spoken by someone else. “You know?” she added, seeking acknowledgement. If she was going to start hoping for something, she was damn well going to have his agreement in the matter.

  “Maybe we do, yeah,” he replied, glancing again at the sky. He turned to look at Linda. “I’m sure not gonna complain.” He gestured toward the highway. “You ready?”

  “Let’s do it,” Linda said with a quick smile. She took a bite of her donut.

  Cole faced forward and opened the bag of popcorn, chewing his way through the Mylar like a starving raccoon and stuffing a handful of the salty snack into his mouth. He put the car in gear and pulled onto the road. They were on 114, which would take them almost all the way to Keeley’s house. Cole straightened in his seat, relaxed his shoulders. There was something new in his blood. He could feel it. A nonchalance. A bit of devil-may-care. Maybe even power. He felt … happy?

  It’s the last thing he would have expected, but there it was. For the first time in a long time, Cole felt fully alive, as if the state trooper had given him a blessing instead of a fright. He could still feel the Earth moving majestically beneath him. And he could imagine himself standing straight and true on this slowly-spinning ground, as if, finally, finally, he belonged here. There were huge forces at work all around him: spinning underneath, flitting overhead, stirring deep inside. There was some vast story being enacted in the universe. He understood very little of it, and he was scared as hell. But he was also needed. He was involved. He had a role. His actions now mattered in a way they never had before. Like a pupal moth beginning to form its wings, Cole could feel the first hints of some new purpose he might serve in the wider world, some grander meaning he might discover beyond the quiet caretaking of his family. Rather than finding the right script to follow before he could live his life, Cole now found himself thrust onstage with no script at all. It was … exhilarating.

  The President took another bite of her donut and spoke around the chocolate, interrupting Cole’s reverie. “So why do you call it ‘he’?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The black ball. You referred to it as ‘he’, and then called it ‘the little guy.’”

  Cole stopped chewing long enough to think for a moment. “It seemed … friendly somehow,” he finally replied. “Like a person. Not just a thing.”

  Linda smiled. She wasn’t going to question it either. They would use all the friends they could get right now. She took a swig of the orange juice, savoring that mix of tangy and sweet she’d learned to love as a child. Keeley had eaten dog kibble. Linda had drunk OJ mixed with chocolate milk. As so often happens with children living at the far ends of the normal curve, shared eccentricities had drawn them closer together.

  “So tell me about Keeley,” said Cole from up front. Linda flinched in defense. Great! Now Cole was reading her thoughts too? She’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime. After a couple of long breaths she calmed back down. Of course he’d ask about Keeley. She’d told him almost nothing, and they were getting closer to her house.

  Inhaling deeply, as if breathing new life into old memories, Linda’s mind inflated with images. “I met her in school. Fifth grade. We played on the same team in Little League: the Wildcats. We were best friends until she moved away, when we were seniors. I haven’t seen her or talked to her since.”

  Cole nodded, trying to take it all in and form a picture of the situation. “So how is it that we’re now driving to her house?”

  Linda caught Cole’s eye in the rearview mirror and grinned, her heart opening to this brave man who was helping her, who was trying so hard to comprehend, to give comfort, and to hold it all together without coming unraveled himself. Gratitude welled up in her eyes. She’d been alone in this crazy situation for so long. She wanted more than anything to reach out and hold his hand in hers, to take their growing connection and make it manifest. “Keeley was in that play,” she said at last, searching for the shortest route to understanding. There was so little time.

  “With the aliens?”

  “Yeah. And an image of her stuck in my mind.” Linda finished the donut and swallowed some more juice. Done with her snack, she could rest her head again on the seat back. “Those few weeks and months after Rice brought me in….” her voice drifted. “It was a really strange time. On the one hand, here I was, the President of the United States, attending meetings and dinners and parties and press conferences and more meetings. Dealing with senators and congressmen and cabinet members and all that. Nothing had changed. The machines of government just kept on chooglin’ all around me, whether I was paying attention or not. It was as if that briefing had never happened. As if the memory of Spud was just a horror movie I’d seen long ago.”

  “And on the other hand?”

  “On the other hand everything had changed. Mary was there, my new shadow. Every now and then I’d see Rice, pretending to be Edmonton, part of my Secret Service detail. It was always from a distance and we never spoke. He wouldn’t even look at me. But the feel of his gun digging into my side, his voice in my ear - it haunted me.”

  “You couldn’t afford to just react out of hand. He might hurt the people you love.”

  Linda closed her eyes to see further. “Yeah. He’d certainly given me clear enough warning. I never did tell Mom anything. I just couldn’t bring her into it. But there was something more essential going on, Cole. There was something shifting inside of me. Something coming alive. Like, there was a voice in my ear, constantly whispering things I couldn’t quite understand. There was something I was supposed to do or say or think or be or … I don’t know. Something.”

  “So, Keeley?”

  Linda nodded. “Right. For the longest time I was just plain stupid. I look back on those first few weeks and it was like I was drugged or something. But eventually I came back to myself. Or woke up.” Linda paused for a moment, searching for the right word. “I guess you could say I started to hide myself. Hide my thoughts. Hide my actions.”

  “Like when you were figuring out how they could get in your mind and you started testing that.”

  “Yeah. And I started to see that I needed a plan. I knew that I had to get out of there. I knew that I had to tell the world what was going on. But, how does the President escape? I mean, every time I thought of telling somebody, well, they’d think I was crazy, wouldn’t they? And who could I trust? I mean, the People had to be everywhere, to be able to do what they did, to drag me from the White House whenever they wanted, to put Mary on me with no questions asked. And they’d threatened my mother. So, it was like, to whom could I turn? I mean, I was at a fucking Joint Chiefs meeting one morning and when it adjourned I grabbed Xander’s elbow and took him aside. I tell him there’s something I need to talk to him about. He looks around to make sure we’re alone and then starts laughing. He tells me that I have to take it up with Spud! This is the Chief of Staff of the goddamned U.S. Air Force!”

  Linda stopped. The memory of it still grabbed her by the guts and she hugged herself tighter, to feel what little protection she could. The Forester hit a hole in the road and the unexpected jolt almost made her scream. She took a deep breath, let it out, and continued. “I kept seeing Keeley in my mind, up on that stage, singing and dancing with the aliens. The expression on her face was amazing. She looked so … mighty. So I got online one day and Googled her. Found her website. She’s got a little farm up in the Northeast Kingdom. Up near Wallace Pond. Almost on the border. Married to a guy called ‘Pooch.’ They sell raw milk and eggs and vegetables in the summer. Pooch apparently fixes motorcycles and Keeley does dog grooming and flower arrangements.”

  “
And they don’t know we’re coming, I take it.”

  Linda chuckled quietly. “No. I think they’re in for a bit of a shock.”

  “I’d say so.” Cole smiled. He asked his next question, fearing the response. “And so, when we get there … what next? Do you have a plan?”

  Linda looked away, as if ashamed. “I have a long shot,” she finally said, her voice defensive and hesitant. “But I’d rather wait until we’re at Keeley’s before I talk about it.”

  Cole nodded. A long shot. Of course. The world he’d known was crumbling around him, just as it had crumbled around the President. The old rules were no longer valid. Long shots would be as good as it gets from here on out. There could be no real plan. The question that remained was this: what do you do when you have no plan? With no answer to that immediately forthcoming, Cole stuffed another handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Ah well,” he said, searching for comfort in a philosophical tone. “I guess we’ll just do what we do.”

  “I guess we will,” answered Linda. “I don’t really know what we’re walking into, you know? Whether Keeley will be pissed off, or grateful, or what. I don’t know that she can help.”

  Cole glanced into the rearview mirror, one eyebrow raised. “Why would she be pissed off?”

  Linda thought for a moment, frowning with confusion. “She just … moved away,” she said, shrugging. “After I saved her from her uncle. We never really had a chance to talk about it.”

  Cole understood immediately, having grown up in a world where schoolgirls sometimes needed to be rescued from uncles. The road made a hard right turn and he slowed to take it, noticing in his side mirror that he could no longer see the smoke in the sky. He allowed himself to hope that their problems were as far behind them as that burning tanker.

  He suspected, of course, that they were not.

  7.6

  Cole turned left at the intersection, unsure that he should. There was no street sign at the corner. The new road was gravel and it stretched northward, down into a valley and then back up. That had to be Canada just ahead. The thought made him feel better. He picked up speed, creating a cloud of dust behind them.

  Linda, now sitting up front, pointed at the windshield. “What’s that?” she asked. She was scrunched down in the front seat, her head held just high enough to help Cole find Keeley’s farm.

  “Oh!” Cole glanced at Linda, then reddened with embarrassment. “I forgot to show you. Rice did that.”

  The President reached up with a hesitant finger to follow the symbol Rice had drawn in the grime: a circle with a vertical line through it, another line coming off the top of the first in a right angle. She’d expected to feel something. Some sort of energy, maybe. A tingle. A jolt of memory. But there was nothing. No magic. No force. No wild ride. Just glass and dirt and a little drawing that didn’t mean a thing to her. “When did he do that?” she asked.

  “At the end,” Cole shrugged. “After he’d spoken to Emily. He just stopped and leaned over and drew that on the window and left.”

  “And you’ve been looking at it for hours now and you didn’t say anything?”

  Cole leaned toward his door, defensiveness rising up inside. “Hey!” he barked. “It’s been a crazy day, you know? There’s tons of stuff we haven’t talked about!”

  Linda stopped him with a hand on his elbow. “I know,” she said, her voice firm but gentle. “I know. We’re under a great deal of stress. We’re doing our best.” She removed her hand and ducked back down as a car approached. It rumbled past, cloaking them further with dust.

  Something else had come to memory and Cole shuddered at the thought of it. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you this,” he said. He slammed his forehead with the flat of his hand. “Stupid!”

  “We don’t know what it means anyway, Cole,” said Linda.

  “No, no,” answered Cole with a bleak smile of humiliation. “Not the sign. After that. Rice walked away and then turned back. Looked me right in the eye and smiled and said, ‘see you later.’” A muddled expression of guilt and confusion and pleading clouded Cole’s eyes. How could he have forgotten that? Stupid!

  Linda turned away abruptly, stared out the side window for a moment as open fields ended and woods began. See you later? Jesus! What the hell did that mean? The apparent normalcy of the outside world clashed with the bizarre nature of their journey. The dissonance threatened to unmake her. It almost felt as if that’s exactly what somebody was trying to do: unmake her, tear her to pieces, take everything away. Linda shuddered at the thought of Rice’s hands on the glass, as if that bastard had touched her. She wanted to stop the car and wash his mark away with bleach and cold acid and bitter curses. But she suspected that it wasn’t just Rice. In the end, as dangerous as Rice could be, he was probably just the errand boy. In the end, hiding somewhere in the invisible fissures of their society, there must be powers far more lethal than Theodore Rice.

  Linda turned back to face Cole, offering him a smile of apology. This was not his fault. “They can do that, Cole,” she said. “Make us forget things. Make us stupid.” She reached out and took his hand. “So we have to help each other be smarter. Okay? We can’t afford to go to sleep.”

  Cole nodded in obvious relief. “You got it, Mrs. President.” He hit the brakes and brought the car to a full stop. The road had come to a dead end. An iron gate painted in orange and yellow held two signs. The first, a red circle with a white horizontal bar, said, “DO NOT ENTER”. The second, black lettering on a white background, read, “REPORT TO PORT OF ENTRY. AVOID HEAVY PENALTY.” Cole put the car in reverse and turned around.

  They finally found Keeley’s little sign, hanging lopsidedly on a single length of chain from a battered mailbox that had long since given up its numbers. “Fiche le camp!” it read, purple letters on a dull yellow background, a faded iris to one side.

  “Get lost,” Linda murmured.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Get lost. That’s what the sign means in French. Get Lost Farm. I read about it on the website.”

  “Nice.”

  Cole pulled onto the drive, picked up a bit of speed as the car plunged into the woods and across a culvert. The mountains here receded, rolling down into farmlands and woodlots. The driveway took them out of the trees and past open fields on both sides. They saw the farm: the small white Cape, the red barn and outbuildings, the gardens, the pasture with half a dozen disinterested cows and a gang of curious goats.

  Linda held her breath. So much rested on this moment, so many months of pain and fear. As if all the troubles of the world had flocked to this one corner of the planet like so many vultures, to perch in the surrounding trees and await her arrival. Were they here to help her fly, or to tear her to shreds? Linda guessed that she’d find out soon enough. She rubbed her eyes with a shaky hand. All she wanted was to rest. She feared that she might never rest again.

  Cole pulled up to a two-track parking space in front of the barn and turned off the engine. Linda took Cole’s hand and squeezed, then opened her door. Cole followed suit. Starting toward the house, they both jerked with surprise to see the front door swing open. Out stepped a tall bear of a man in blue overalls and a green flannel shirt, his huge black beard flecked with gray. He looked at them, nodded and smiled, then called into the house, his words thickly accented in French.

  “They’re here, mon cœur,” he said. There was such laughter in his face that Linda’s heart pounded. The bear stepped down from the porch and strode forward to greet them, pulling them into his embrace. “Call me Pooch, eh?” he said.

  Linda burst into tears.

  7.7

  She could feel the warmth of his glow from where she was and knew that he was good. Another heart came out of the house and joined them: a woman. It was just as the Elder had said back on the highway, before He joined with that tanker and let loose the energy within: “If the President and your father make it to their destination, they will find some help.” Grace beamed a packet of love tow
ard the four of them and retreated a bit, giving them the space and time they would need to create their web of connections. Dennis hung at her heels, wagging his tail.

  Grace practiced her maneuvers and fine-tuned her discernment, watching from what felt like “above” as the four souls “below” her appeared as shimmering orbs, then solid bodies, and then orbs again. Slowly, she was figuring out how to perceive and make sense of the kaleidoscope of shifting, swirling levels and layers and vibrations that ran through every facet of reality. She enjoyed her new mastery. If she put her mind to it, she could see the physical plane almost as she remembered living in it. And she could see so much more, from the far corners of the Cosmos to the buried ages of time and the innermost secrets of space, to other realities as real and solid as the world from which she’d come.

  She’d been here before. She knew that much. But the specific memory of that time was closed to her. She could access the young mind she was still entangled with, as it slumbered on in that little girl’s head. In some very real sense she was that little girl. And yet, she could sense that she was much, much more. That little girl was only the momentary expression of a self that had lived for a very long time. Hidden in the folds of her being was a more essential nature, an eternal spirit that had access to experience and information far beyond the confines of that brief, embodied life. She smiled at the boundless possibilities that lived within her.

  But she would have to be careful. Because this realm was filled with other beings, and not all of them were nice. And because she was still that little girl. Her perceptions were limited. Already she’d made a mistake. Earlier, when the scary people had come, she’d thought to repel them, as she had before. She was just about to flicker in to help when Linda signaled for her to stay back. That had surprised her. She hadn’t realized that Linda even knew she was there. So she’d caught herself and pulled back just in time, enfolding herself into a ball, holding her vibrations calm and quiet, and watching as Linda drew the scary ones in.