Knocking on Heaven's Door

by Sharman Apt Russell

  With Luke becoming more vague and distraught, Brad had started making the decisions. He sat down beside the old man to draw a map in the sand. They agreed on a direction. First they would stop for part of the morning and rest. Brad gave the remaining jerky to Clare. He checked the water supply and set up snares before allowing everyone to nap under the shade of a scrub bush. He had never been in charge of a trip like this before, never had to worry about someone else before. He knew he was forgetting something, and as the sun moved across the sky, Brad discovered what that was: They hadn’t provided themselves enough shelter from the heat. They should have gone deeper into the brush. They should have built a ramada of sticks and grass. Their punishment was waking to hot skin and dehydration. Now Brad decided they should drink the remaining water and push on to find more. Everyone felt awful but Dog and Elise and the golden animals following discreetly behind.

  This was what happened in real life, a mistake followed by a decision, and their efforts rewarded by the green flags of a cottonwood tree. Gratefully, they camped by the spring, and Brad snared a rabbit for their breakfast.

  In Brad’s dream, however, things were not going so well. The spring was dry, and even the baby in Clare’s womb cried out with thirst. Lucia sobbed and would not stop sobbing. Her old woman’s neck bobbled like a turkey’s wattle. Wattle, wattle, wattle. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Clare fell down a rocky slope and hit her head. The blood was old blood, not fresh, so that Brad thought distinctly, “This isn’t right.”

  Brad looked down at his father and thought, “This isn’t right.” His father didn’t look like the crazy bushkie Clare had struck with her spear. The blood around the bushkie’s wound had dried dark. The bushkie groaned and when he opened his eyes, Brad was surprised to see that, in fact, the man was his father. Those were his father’s eyes, sane and agreeable, the cunning eyes of a hunter. A man who could track a raven in a storm.

  “I saw a pillar of light,” his father told him. That was his father’s voice, too, deep, serious. “I saw it rise from the ground, a stick of glowing light.”

  Brad recognized the paradox. He had sent the consciousness of the sunflower stalk back in time. The bushkie had seen that glowing stick of light and was inspired to form his religious band who kidnapped Luke whom Brad helped rescue—meeting Dog and leading to the events that caused Brad to send the sunflower consciousness back in time. Which came first, the light, the bushkie, or Brad?

  In his dream, Brad began to think about time and paradoxes. What happened at the quantum level? How had he solved the problem of the sunflowers?

  Dog felt bored since he knew the answer, and he moved again—over to Clare, sleeping next to Brad. Clare was dreaming about Jon. In Clare’s dream, Jon lay sleepless in his summer tent, staring up at the night sky, the round hole where the poles came together. The round hole let in wind and moonlight but not enough, so that the air in the tent was stuffy and dark. Some people had already dismantled their skins, not needing them in this warm weather and preparing for the move the next day to the summer camp. Others wanted privacy for some reason, for sex or to be alone with their family or alone with themselves. Jon wanted to be alone with his anger. He stared up at the round hole of night sky and felt the tension in his body. His parents were dead. His first wife had left him. Clare had left him and then left him again and taken his child. He had seen the sign of her erased prints. She didn’t want him to know where she was going or whom she was with. But Jon knew. The lab rat had come back.

  Dog wondered if Clare’s dream were true, if she could really see Jon as he stared up into the summer tent or if she were only imagining the scene because she knew Jon so well. Dog could check but he didn’t. He was afraid of expanding and disappearing. He preferred to stay Dog. To do only what Dog could do.

  Clare was worried about the future. The elders would send emails. The tribes would be looking for them. Jon would not forget her. He would not forgive her. He would keep searching. And where would she give birth? That was less than three months away. Who would help if not her mother and grandmother? And what if they met another group of hunters? How would they hide Elise?

  Dog felt bored again. He couldn’t nudge Clare to dream about something more pleasant. He couldn’t influence Clare. Still, he didn’t leave her for Luke or Brad. Because Dog knew that eventually Elise would join him. Elise also liked watching Clare dream.

  Dog felt a thrill, an almost-thrill. He had kept track of the little girl all night. That was part of his job, too, listening for predators and babysitting Elise. For now she played with the golden animals following discreetly behind them—the camel, horse and colt, two deer, two black bears, small cat, saber-toothed cat, and five mice. Brad had told these animals to go away and hoped they would. Because they were evidence against Brad. Because they might lead a human hunter to him and Clare and Luke. Because they would certainly upset Clare if she knew they were still here, part of their new group. Brad hoped the golden animals would float away out of his life, like the golden sunflower, but Dog knew this was not going to happen. Dog understood the animals’ compulsion to stay together and to stay near him.

  “Don’t let the woman see you,” he had commanded them. “Don’t let any other human see you.” He was stern. “Stay behind us. Blend into the sunlight.”

  Almost immediately, the golden animals had also been attracted to Elise, and on this second night, Dog had introduced her to them. With everyone else sleeping, the child had started a game of freeze tag. The golden animals learned the rules quickly and seemed happy to be jumping and leaping and holding still, “frozen” by Elise’s “touch” on the yellow plain. Dog was pleased to see Elise following at least one of his instructions, not running too much faster than a little girl could run, not doing too much more than a little girl could do (except for the floating part, except for the disappearing in and out of things part). He had warned both her and the golden animals over and over: Stay within your shape.

  They agreed wordlessly. For the most part, they were wordless, mute like any non-Paleo. Only the saber-toothed cat occasionally spoke to Dog or sent word images, feeling images that seemed almost-angry, as though the big cat still resented dying and being eaten by direwolves, resented, perhaps, being brought back.

  “Dog?” Elise asked, suddenly beside him and watching Clare dream. “Who is Jon?”

  Dog wagged his tail. “A friend of your mother’s.”

  “Why are we scared of him?”

  “He wants to find us. We don’t want him to find us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dog explained. “No matter. I go where Luke goes, and you go where your mother goes.”

  Elise seemed satisfied with this, and for a while they eavesdropped while Clare whispered urgently to her grandmother as they gathered watercress. The watercress looked crisp and tasty, and Clare yearned for a dish of watercress lightly salted.

  “Dog?” Elise asked. “You weren’t here … before, were you?”

  “No, I’m new.”

  “I’m new, too, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” Dog said. “You and I. We are new.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BRAD

  Brad was getting good at rabbits. In the last few months, he had made a study of why rabbits went where they did and at what time of day, what snare worked best, how to kill the animals if the snare didn’t, how to skin them, and what herbs brought out their flavor. He was becoming a rabbit expert, perhaps not as exciting as being an expert in deer or horse or black bear, but still satisfying—to bring Clare a bowl of rabbit stew and get a smile in return.

  Clare was astonishingly large. With the birth only weeks away, she seemed as big as a ground sloth. Different parts of her were in discomfort, and those parts were sometimes out of her control or even her reach. In the evening, Brad had started massaging her ankles, the top and bottom of each foot, and each toe. He combed her hair with a comb she had made from bone, and he rubbed her stre
tched-out stomach with a paste of plants Lucia ground fresh every day. If Elise was behaving, Clare could relax, and he and she talked about the day’s events—not about the future or anything else. Clare would repeat that this was a nice spot, this hidden canyon that Luke had remembered, with its small spring and green bower of cottonwood and red willow. At the top of the canyon, a scatter of caves provided shelter from the heat and thunderstorms. This is so nice, Clare would say. How lucky we are.

  By mid-July, the rains so far had been scarce, however, the summer dry. That was not lucky. Also, Elise did not always behave. This morning, as Brad sat on the ground and tried to check his emails, she kept walking through the solarcomp he had taken from the lab, walking back and forth as she whispered and scolded an imaginary being in her private game. When Elise walked through something, her form disappeared—in this case, her feet. When she wanted to disappear herself, she simply stood very still as though standing behind molecules of air. She was not interested in becoming more solid or, rather, in appearing to be more solid—like Dog—although Clare would have liked that, would have loved, in fact, to hold her daughter’s hand and use the comb on that wild hair. But Elise only laughed and chattered, “Look, Mommy, what I can do!” And she disappeared. “Look, Mommy!” And she floated through a tree.

  Clare had started making rules that Brad couldn’t enforce. Now, for example, he was supposed to tell Elise to stop walking through his solarcomp. He tried. “Honey, Elise, stop walking through my solarcomp.”

  “I’m a giant antelope,” the little girl said, “with giant white teeth.”

  “Mommy doesn’t want you walking through things. It looks funny to the rest of us. It’s very distracting now.”

  “Now Spider Woman comes down from the sky to look at the giant antelope with giant white teeth, and she and the antelope get into a fight.”

  “Someday we might meet other people who will get upset if you walk through things.”

  “The giant antelope pulls Spider Woman’s hair, and Spider Woman’s hair breaks into a hundred baby spiders! Not even the Warrior Twins can save Spider Woman!”

  Brad recognized the Navajo story and admired the little girl’s adaptation. He gave up on the scold. Clare wasn’t here, after all, but busy in the cave preparing her birthing room. In truth, Clare was the only person who could get Elise to do what she wanted her to do, and then only some of the time. Brad had never realized how strong willed a four-year-old could be. He had often thought of himself as strong willed. But compared to Elise, he was a rabbit. The thought made him smile.

  Elise smiled, too. She had been watching him. She loved to entertain people. “A hundred baby spiders,” she sang, “going everywhere, in every direction …” Parts of her curly and slightly glowing hair began to break off, twisting in an imitation of baby spiders—luminous tendrils escaping into the air. She looked like Medusa, one of the old Greek myths, and Brad stopped working. When Elise started deforming like this, no one knew what would happen. She might dissolve entirely. She might not form back into the daughter Clare recognized. Brad had a sickening image of hands pointed the wrong way or eyes out of place.

  “No, Elise!” he said sternly.

  And somehow she knew he meant it this time. Her hair reconstructed, and she stopped pacing, her feet in the solarcomp, her naked legs blocking the screen. Brad guessed she was about to cry.

  “Hey, look at this email!” he said. “This is really unexpected!”

  “Whaaat?” Elise hesitated.

  “Come around here, here behind me,” Brad went on, changing the focus and font of the email text, adding some graphics, throwing in music. “We’ll read it together.”

  Elise liked to pretend to read.

  “Oh, it’s from that wicked Council woman. What does she say?”

  Brad knew exactly what the Council woman said because she said the same thing in every email. “Where are you? Contact me immediately.” She sent these emails almost daily. Judith also wrote on occasion, asking the same question. A few of his other least favorite colleagues wondered instead about some of the things he had left behind. Could they borrow the chair from his office? Could they use his computer while he was gone? Brad worried quite a bit about that. He wasn’t sure if he had wiped his computer 100 percent clean. He had left the lab so quickly. If someone like Judith were to look hard enough, she might find traces of the experiment, the work with Dog’s head and thirteen sunflowers. Brad put that thought away. Of course, he never answered the emails. He didn’t want to be traced.

  “Come on,” he coaxed Elise. “I can’t read this alone.”

  “Elise!” Clare was calling, rolling like some slow-motion boulder down the path from the caves. Elise hopped right out of the solarcomp.

  Late in the afternoon, Brad and Lucia went hunting. Small game was plentiful, but bigger animals now avoided the spring, and Lucia wanted something big, a horse or deer. She wanted to prepare jerky for the day they could not hunt, the emergency they could not yet predict.

  “You’re tired of my rabbit stew?” Brad joked.

  “Really tired,” Lucia said.

  They walked through the tall grass that spread like water from the sheltered canyon, mountains in the distance, black birds circling in a blue sky. Brad suspected Lucia welcomed this escape as much as he did, away from the domesticity of camp, the burden of chores and children. The old woman led them to a small rise. From here, they could see the herds move across the plain.

  Lucia seemed content enough, her white hair braided down her back and plaited with flowers like women liked to do in the summer. Her lined face looked softer and fuller now that she had stabilized and was Lucia the midwife all the time. Deliberately, she belted her leather tunic to reveal and not hide her meager breasts.

  Brad didn’t want to bother with camels unless they saw a straggler. An antelope would be tasty. A young horse would be best. Brad brushed at the flies around his face and coveted, particularly, the tail of a horse. He’d certainly be a hero, bringing back a horse’s tail. They could use it in the evenings for mosquitoes, too.

  “We should clear more area around the cave,” Lucia was saying, “in case of fire.”

  “Take out the brush,” Brad agreed. With little rain, the grasslands were dry and thunderstorms building every afternoon. A fire would sweep across them, fast and hot, the small spring no protection. With a good enough firebreak, they would be safe in the birthing cave.

  “We should work on that tomorrow.”

  Brad nodded and wondered if those were elk to the east. Or horses? He watched a sloping hill that reminded him briefly of a woman’s thigh. Was that a shape against the hill, an older animal falling behind? It would be a long walk to see and longer coming back with meat in their packs.

  “Have you noticed anything unusual …” Lucia paused, for once not the first to spot game, “between Dog and Elise?”

  Brad glanced her way. So Lucia wanted to talk. Perhaps that’s why she had suggested this hunt. He answered cautiously, “Only that sometimes she does what Dog asks. He’s a good influence.”

  “A good influence,” the old woman repeated. Her silence was now pointed. Then “What were you thinking?” Lucia said gently, not really asking.

  Brad studied the sloping hill. What had he been thinking, bringing back Elise, knowing her presence would be impossible to hide among the tribes or in the lab? What had he hoped for? Another unique consciousness like Dog, someone who could help him unlock the secrets to the universe? Or maybe it had simply been all about Clare, her gratitude and admiration, her thigh against his in the middle of the night. Brad couldn’t decipher his own motives anymore. He suspected he hadn’t been thinking at all.

  “Elise will get better,” he said authoritatively.

  “Grow up, you mean?” Lucia scoffed. “You think she can do that now?”

  “No. Yes. Yes, she can learn.” Brad hoped that was true. Certainly Dog’s consciousness, no longer paired with his biohologram, was still lea
rning and evolving. A bit too much for comfort, Brad thought. But Elise had been a child when her biohologram died, her unique consciousness shaped by the experiences and lack of experiences of a child. Certain hormones had never coursed through her system. Certain physical changes had never taken place. How much could she learn or change as a perpetual four-year-old?

  Lucia shrugged. “Maybe.” And started a new subject. “Do you remember the younger bushkie, the one that ran away?”

  Brad kept his eyes to the east. Definitely those were horses. “Why?”

  “He had to go somewhere. We have to go somewhere. After the baby is born.”

  Brad wondered why they couldn’t stay in the small canyon by the spring, but Lucia was already explaining that. “Where we are is too good. Water and shelter. Likely other hunters use it, too, or will find it eventually. We can’t go very far east or west, not closer to the radiation zones. We could head north to Colorado. But there are lots of people there. Too many, I think. That leaves … the peyote fields.”

  Brad jerked his eyes from the herd. They had sent the crazy bushkie to the peyote fields. Exiled him. Probably killed him by doing so.

  Lucia shrugged again as if to say—we are exiles now, too. We are bushkies now, too. “If we don’t want to be found,” she spelled it out for him, “we have to live on the margin. We have to hide.”

  No, Brad thought and turned his attention back to the grassland. No, he rejected that for himself and for Clare, for the child in Clare’s womb. In the past few months, he had grown to understand Clare’s defense of the bushkies, the ways they were different, the ways being different was not bad. He understood his own fears better, although he no longer felt afraid. He knew he was nothing like a bushkie. He had Clare. He was a husband. He was a father. When Brad thought about the baby, his baby, he didn’t imagine an actual body, hands or feet or face. The baby itself was a blur—the category of baby. Still he felt something else that was specific, sharp as a spear. He felt the clarity of the future. He saw days and weeks and months and years, decades stretching ahead. His son, his daughter, walked confidently into that light. She moved with grace. She walked and held her own child’s hand. She walked beside other men and women, her tribe, her family. She was not alone. She was not marginal. Brad felt fierce although his voice stayed even, without emotion. “Do you see the horses?”