The truck pulled onto a drive off the main road, which continued back down the other side of the mountain. We were on a smooth expanse where the curvature of the formation mimicked the Earth’s. Soon we came to a small lodge with a tower attached to one side, so that the building looked like a toy soldier shouldering a rifle.
Nigel got out, slammed his door, and grabbed a full cardboard box from the back of the pickup. As he approached the building, he gestured with his hand, as if to say, Come on, old man, don’t be afraid.
Inside, an ax and cords of wood lined the back wall as though the occupants were prepping for a long, hard winter. A window opened onto the back of the mountain, where leaves shone in the starlight. Below in the valley, the commune firelights were Lilliputian, the faint rooftops benign as mushroom caps.
I peeked into a side room. A mattress was pushed against the wall under a dreamcatcher. On the mattress lay a partially wadded-up dress. The dress was like what Araminta wore.
I stepped back into the main room. “You live here.”
Nigel rummaged through a hutch. “I spend most of my days up here on lookout while Minty does her counselor thing. Unless it’s harvest time. Then it’s all hands on deck. Or on field if we’re being particular.” He paused and grunted to himself. “No one comes up here because it’s so far. I guess that’s what I like about it most.”
The place was simply furnished but contained a certain warmth. There was a potbellied stove, a rough-hewn table with benches, and a colorful mandala-esque hemp rug. Rumpled papers, mechanical pencils, and old textbooks—many by authors I remembered from my schooling like Nolan; Shrumley and Aloise; and Hatter, Wang, and Jonson—were everywhere.
“Still reading, I see.”
“It gets pretty dead, so I go up in the tower.” Nigel pointed up.
A trio of rifles were propped on a rack near the fireplace. He had placed the opened cardboard box next to the rifles. A familiar holstered weapon sat on top of some linens.
“What’s with the insurrection?”
“I handle the guns and ammo because I’m in charge of security. Sometimes we get unwanted visitors.” I furrowed my brow. “Anyway, most of those books are Minty’s, though. She’s been studying extrapolational humanism.”
“Is that my revolver?”
Nigel went over to the box and picked up the holstered gun. “Yeah. They took if off you because they thought you were from the government.” He unholstered it, went to the stove, and with his free hand flipped on a propane burner to warm water. “We don’t keep much up here. I’m having tea if you want some.” I nodded.
“Why’d you come?” Nigel placed the gun on the table.
I casually lifted the weapon and tried to spin the chamber. Again, it didn’t work, but I saw it was still loaded. I gathered the holster and secured it and the revolver around my waist.
“I was very worried about you after the festival,” I said. “I searched everywhere. I almost went bankrupt paying a PI to find you. I searched flophouses and under cold bridge overpasses. One freezing night, leaving a mixer at the City Rail Station, I saw a boy sleeping on a mat by an exhaust vent. I tried to wake the boy, who I quickly determined was dead. For a moment, I thought he was you. It sickened me, that boy’s death, and the idea that you might be as dead as him.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I went,” Nigel said. “That wasn’t fair. But I needed to protect myself.” He placed teabags in two mason jars on the table and poured steaming water into them, one at a time.
“Protecting you was my job.”
“Dad.” He shook his head. “Are you sure that’s what you were doing?” He handed me a jar of tea.
“How could you say that? When you ran off with those terrorists, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“That’s all well and good, skip, but I wasn’t kidnapped. I enlisted.”
“Don’t play with me.” I had no idea what kind of charade Nigel was playing at, but I wanted to shake some sense into him. I couldn’t let him see my frustration. I was his father. I was in control.
“Who’s playing?” Nigel took a sip of tea. “I joined ADZE along with some other kids. Not long after that mall attack, that was.”
“You wouldn’t join up with terrorists. Not willingly. They must have gaslighted you into thinking it was right.”
Nigel looked me in the eye. “You were my hero. I thought you were good. Whatever you said, I sopped it up with a biscuit. ‘Wear a stupid hat for your own good, Nigel.’ ‘I know the needle hurts, but I would never hurt you, Nigel.’ ‘I love you, Nigel, so grin and bear it, Nigel.’ ” He imitated my voice so well that I was afraid to open my mouth, afraid of what might come out. He pulled off his faded yellow cap and tousled his hair. “That’s why I still keep this thing.”
He turned it over in his hands and sniffed it. “It’s a reminder, I guess. I don’t want to forget you. I can’t afford to. Everything you did to me, I really believed was for the best. Even the way you convinced me to lie to Mom about what you were doing. But then I met Minty at school. Boy, did she help me turn my head around. We had this long talk at that plantation you went to for your job. She helped me see things that were right in front of my nose. Better yet, she helped me see my nose. But I still remember what we were like before I woke up.”
“Araminta wasn’t even with us at the plantation.”
Nigel leaned against the table and grinned in a way that made me squirm. “Oh, sure she was. Her neighbor brought her along to babysit one of his kids. You and Mom were sleeping when she threw a rock at my window and told me to meet her in the woods.”
“No. That’s not true. Your mother and I found you splashing around that dirty pond all by yourself.”
“Dad.” Nigel sighed and rubbed his hands together. “Minty was right next to me. In the water. The whole strip-down-naked-and-free-yourself thing was her idea. But that’s beside the point. The point is that she was the first person who understood me. Her dad, her real dad who died before I met her, had his own demons. Did bad things to her. She was the one who told me that maybe you really meant well but couldn’t help yourself. She was the one who said I couldn’t depend on Mom to shut you down. Minty thought my plan to run away made all the sense in the world. But I had always been too chicken to do it. She made me feel less crazy.”
“Because of her, you joined a group of killers.”
“I was wrong to join them.” Nigel stood up, his shoulders slumped. He inhaled. “They were saying what I wanted to hear. The leader told me that the people who died at the mall were an accident. He never even used weapons! No guns. No bombs. People got so freaked out whenever we showed up, they would stampede and hurt each other. But really, I didn’t care. I thought if a few people got hurt, so what. Because I was selfish and angry. One of the men did bring a bomb to the festival. I don’t think anyone knew what he was up to. But it was too late. After, the adults abandoned us outside town with nothing. A bunch of us hopped a train, but only a couple of us got off near the commune.”
“Who took you from me?” I stepped toward him. “Franklin? Supercargo? Your wife’s neighbor? Octavia? Just tell me.”
“No one took me, Dad.” Nigel folded his arms and exhaled in exasperation. “As bad as things were with them, they were better than with you. You were so afraid of everything. I mean, you wouldn’t even let me call myself black.”
“You’re not black,” I said, a bit of spittle leaping from my mouth. “You’re mixed. Two-fifths Irish, one-fifth German—”
“And you?” he asked. “What are you?”
I didn’t answer, and I certainly didn’t tell him about my new ID, which listed me as “American White.”
“Remember the day you rubbed that max-strength bleach on me? It may as well have been battery acid the way the stuff burned.” Nigel leaned forward. “You left. But I didn’t tell Mom about it because I couldn’t. She always knew you were up to something, but she would have been too hurt if she knew about that. I mean, she might have gone after you with a frying pan. Or way worse. She might have fussed for a while, cooled off, and forgot about it like she did with everything else ’cause she felt helpless, too. I mean, in the back of my head, even I kept thinking you might change. And I knew better. Both of us did!”
“We had our disagreements, but—”
“She wanted out. She cried all the time when you weren’t there. Even when she thought I couldn’t hear. One night she locked the bedroom door and turned up the TV in there—that Unsafe Wherever You Go show was on—but I heard her. She used to say nothing was wrong with crying, but she couldn’t let me see that, I guess. I made dinner—enchiladas and churros. When I called for her, she wouldn’t come out. So I wrote a note and slipped it under her door. After a while, a letter popped out from her side.”
I grabbed Nigel’s arm. “I know you hate me, but this—this revisionist history is foolish.”
He stepped around me and fumbled through piles of paper on the floor. He grabbed a notebook and tossed it aside.
“Dammit.” He opened a narrow door by the fireplace that was camouflaged to look like part of the back wall. The faux logs swung toward me. There was a stairway behind the door. He entered without saying anything.
I followed. The stairs were narrow and rickety. In the dull light, a lizard crawled into a gap in the wood.
The bell tower’s ceiling was high, and at the top of the vaulted ceiling, a massive yoke crossed from one side to the other, but there wasn’t any bell. Nigel knelt by a chest, his arms plunged deep inside.
“I knew I had them.” He stood up. “What did you say you call it when you’re trying to prove you’re right? You give the judge something for the truth…”
“Truth of the matter asserted.”
“Yeah. That. I submit these for that.”
There were two slips of paper. One was a long rectangular strip with pastel flowers and chickens around the border. We had a to-do list affixed to our fridge by a magnet. This was one of those pages, faded by years. The other paper was narrow and flimsy, a receipt. I glimpsed Penny’s handwriting. I had wondered where all the things that had disappeared around the house went. Nigel must have planned his own disappearance for some time to make off with so many artifacts.
“No,” he said, “read this one first.” So I read the to-do list slip, which was dated years earlier and scribbled in Nigel’s handwriting.
Dear Mom, Let’s go somewhere safe where he can’t find us. We can drive to the ocean and float across.
Another note. This was the receipt. I touched the sunken paper where Penny’s pen had creased the page. Her fingers had held that paper. Her palm had brushed the edges. Some of the ink was blurred by the pressure of her skin. She had always hated the tyranny of grammar and capitalization rules.
dear my favorite chef i know that your father and i must seem pretty odd to you. there are problems in the adult world that you will face when the time comes. but for now i need you to understand that we both love you very much. food smells great. i’ll have some tomorrow. p.s. i promise things won’t always be this way and maybe we’ll go away, me and you
I sat on a low stool, covering my mouth with a hand. Nigel was trying to convince me that he and his mother were plotting an escape. What a ridiculous notion. Penny had been upset, for sure, but there’s no way she would have ever left me. She loved me. She wouldn’t have left. Not for good.
“She’s right to say I didn’t need to understand then. But I do now. I’ll ask again, Dad. Why did you really come here?”
“You asked me that, and I told you—”
“You said it was because you were worried about me and my safety.” Nigel lowered and shook his head. “But come on. If that was the case, this would be a happy occasion. You would have hugged me and said how much you missed me, and then you would leave. But look at you. Look at your beady eyes and tense shoulders. Me and my friends used to follow you around sometimes to see what you were really like. I know you. You haven’t done what you came to do. You’re still on duty. That’s why you brought this old gun.” He patted the gun at my waist.
“Don’t be ludicrous. This was for my protection. It was a long trip through unfamiliar territory.” I didn’t make eye contact. I tried, but I couldn’t.
“What’s that old story about the rabbit who saves the snake and is surprised when the snake bites him, but shouldn’t be because snakes gonna snake.”
“You have no right to look down on me. I’m your father! I always took care of you. Did everything I could to make sure you believed in yourself even when the other kids laughed at you. I stood up for you. I protected your self-esteem, and I’d do it all again.”
“You can’t understand, can you? A little while ago you said that you thought I hate you. But that’s not right. I forgave you a long time ago because, you’re right, you’ll always be my father. But that doesn’t mean you’re worthy of holding that kind of power over me. I never realized how much I needed to tell you that to your face, to show you that I control my life. And after tonight—”
“Enough!” I pulled my gun on him. “You’re so far gone, you don’t even know it.”
Nigel glanced at the gun, which was a few inches from his heart.
“Dad,” he said quietly. “You’re my father.”
Nigel stared at me with a serenity that I’d never seen. For the first time, I realized that his mind was a planet unto itself. During our years together, I’d only caught brief glimpses of that distant world with my telescope. But I suddenly understood that I couldn’t make him do anything now. To the extent I’d ever had any influence over my son’s orbit, that influence was gone. He was gone from me. He reached out and gently moved the gun downward and to the side. I dropped it. My legs weakened. I found myself on my knees, my arms wrapped around his legs.
“I’m not letting you stay here,” I said.
“Dad?”
“Stop talking and do as I say,” I whimpered. I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I wasn’t even sure he could understand me. “You’re my boy. It’s my job to take care of you. Is that so wrong? Just come with me. Please.”
Nigel held me back enough to sit down on the floor next to me. He put an arm around my shoulder and lightly squeezed. For a moment, I felt the movement of his chest against my side and his breath against my ear. He made a sound something like a chuckle. Somehow this calmed me.
“Dad. You need to go home.”
I glanced up. His cheek was wet. He wiped it with his wrist. Then he wiped my cheek, too.
I shook my head.
“I know you’re afraid,” he said. “But that’s something you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with. I’m not leaving with you. This is where I belong, and I love who I am.”
I pulled away from Nigel and placed my back against one of the wooden table legs. “I know.” I rubbed my face. I was embarrassed to cry in front of my son, but there was something else I felt, a feeling that rose up and startled me. I was envious. I couldn’t say that I’d ever stood so firmly for anything I believed in. But he had. “Why are you so stubborn?”
“I get it from Mom.”
“Who else?”
Outside, something backfired. An engine rumbled. Nigel went to the window. He peered down the road.
“Minty?” He looked as if he had just seen a flying saucer crash-land. He hurried downstairs. I went to the window. Araminta and Doc were untangling themselves from a motorcycle and sidecar. Nigel entered the field of the headlight. By the time I got downstairs, he and Araminta were arguing again.
“Why would you come up here in your condition?” Nigel asked Araminta. Then to Doc: “And why would you bring her?”
“As if I could stop her,” Doc said. “Her water broke as soon as you left.”
“Neither of you gonna tell me where to go,” Araminta said. “If you thought I was going to have this baby alone while you picked your teeth with your crazy old man, you a dumbass.”
“You could have just called me!”
“You mean on this?” Araminta pulled a walkie-talkie from Nigel’s pants pocket and waved it in his face. “You had it off, goofus.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I had a mind to— Ooh.” Araminta grabbed the side of her stomach.
“Let’s get her back to the infirmary,” Doc said.
They brought Araminta to the back of the pickup and lowered the gate. But once they had her situated in the truck bed, Doc turned to Nigel, who had taken a seat next to Araminta, and said there was no way they would get down the mountain before the baby came. Doc asked for blankets, hot water, and a few other items.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
But Nigel raised a hand to stop me. “We don’t need your help.” He attempted to get up, but Araminta squeezed his hand and told him to stay.
“Let him help,” Araminta said. “We’re short—unh—staffed.”
I went inside and collected all the things, and extras like pillows and a canteen of drinking water. I found myself going back into the lodge for more and more—towels, a flashlight, bug repellent—and circling the pickup truck like a satellite on each trip, speed-walking, jogging, sprinting, mentally cartwheeling in orbit around my son, his wife, and my arriving descendant. Eventually, more people from the commune rolled up in a busted green van. Others arrived on scooters. Suddenly, we were surrounded by a dozen or so others who sat in a semicircle around the impromptu delivery room, lighting candles and incense, playing music and singing prayers in languages I didn’t know, and laughing in the breeze.
I worried for Araminta. Her screams made my fillings vibrate. What if something went wrong? She lay on a cushion of blankets in the pickup bed, and Nigel alternated between stroking her hair and wetting her forehead with rags.
I was hovering over them when Dopey tapped my arm.
“Hey,” she said. “Sit with us.” Which I did. Dopey handed me two small bundles of cloth tied in heavy twine.
“What are these?” I asked.
“He asked me to gift-wrap your weapon and ammo.”
I sighed. The moonlight intensified as clouds gave way to the infinite vast above and stars spilled across the void like jewels across velvet.
“You ever feel as though there are questions you can’t answer?” Dopey asked.
“Never,” I said.
The sound of crying from the back of the pickup. I scampered to my feet. The musicians strummed and sang louder, and everyone cheered. The baby was wrapped in beige swaddling. It’s a girl, someone said. She was a lovely little gumdrop with a doll’s nose and eyes that seemed to ask what did I think I was looking at. She was very dark, nearly Araminta’s color. But she might lighten with time.
Dopey got behind the wheel of the truck.
Araminta’s and Nigel’s faces were both dripping wet. Nigel beckoned me, and I leaned over the side of the pickup bed so he could speak into my ear.
“Tell me something, Dad.” Nigel took his daughter’s chubby hand.
“Anything.”
“Do you honestly think you would ever be able to accept her looking the way she does?”
“I—” I stopped myself from speaking and looked down.
“At least you’re really thinking about it. I appreciate that. But we don’t need that in our lives. Go home. Enjoy what you’ve done to yourself. But don’t haunt us anymore.”