Donovan Diambu Dinobi Dezy, her father, knelt down beside her, untying her wrists with the sure dexterity she had always associated with him. She threw herself into his chest, wrapping her arms around his familiar shape, the sobs escaping her uncontrollable.
Her father, however, was more clear-headed than she, his concern and confusion driving him to gently separate himself and study her face.
“Kenia, baby girl . . .what . . . when . . . you’re a grown woman. How long—” He stopped himself short, taking in the rising flames. He refocused his line of questions, his face taking on a determined expression of inquiry she knew well. It was clear to him that Kenia had made a jump as well, so no dwelling on that. Instead he settled on the urgency and safety of their immediate context. “When are we?”
“It’s just after 1 a.m., Sunday August 23, 1953. We’re in Selah Station, West Virginia. There is an integrated college here and a coal plant that the owner blows up with this truck in order to destroy it all. I’ve been making these jumps back for a few weeks now.”
“I see.”
“Mom told me about you.”
“She did—Kenia, you are all grown up.”
“Dad, you . . . disappeared,” she said, squeezing his arms as the feeling of loss resurfaced. “We thought you were dead. It’s been five years.”
“Five years?”
“Dad, the bomb has been set. It’s in this truck. We’ve got—” she scrambled over to Buzz where he was still knocked cold, took his wristwatch and put in on, “—thirteen minutes.”
Her father took her by the shoulders. “Baby, there is always a reason we’re called back. This,” he turned his eyes to the truck, “this has got to be why. We’ve got to get this out of here, away from the city.”
“The city is on an island with river gorges on either side. We could drive it into the river.”
“What about these guys, how many more?” he said, nodding to Buzz.
“There are six or eight others. They’re outside now but they’ll be coming back to collect their friend. That door over there.”
“I’ll hold them off. You’ve got to get this truck out of here.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
“Us?”
“I’ve got a friend here with me, from this time. He’s tied up on the other side.”
“Get him loose and get him out of here.”
“But what about you, Dad?”
A shadow passed over his face. “Kenia, pumpkin, I don’t think that’s in the cards.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself, I’ve been gone five years.”
“But you are here now! You can come back, you can always come back.”
“Don’t you see, Kenia? The last time I saw you, it was five years ago to you, but it was just moments for me. I jumped to here. I’m supposed to help you. But our people, who have this gift, this burden, we don’t always come back. Sometimes the wrong we’re supposed to right is . . . bigger than we are.”
“Dad—”
“Look at you, Kenia. You’re a woman. You’ve got to go back and live your life. Quick, tell me about Chinemere?”
“She’s a civil rights lawyer. She just won the distinguished alumni award from Columbia Law School for her work with the trans community.”
The pride in his face was unmistakable. “Chikmara?”
“Actress on Broadway. Was the lead in The Color Purple, not the high school production, but you know, for grownups.” She laughed a bit through her tears at her choice of words.
“Chiazam?”
“Harvard, pre-med, when he is not lecturing me on the merits of Dark Horse comics over Marvel and DC.”
He touched her face. “You?”
“Georgetown, studying public health, at least when I’m not living out a Dr. Who episode.”
“I always wanted a degree in public health,” he said, wistful. “What about your mother?”
Kenia felt a bubble of sadness rising and expanding in her chest again. “She misses you, Daddy. We all do. Please, don’t do this.”
Voices were closing in on the backdoor, close to the tailgate of the tanker.
“You are my child, Kenia. And no one is going to lay a hand on any one of my children. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever!”
She tried to reply, but the words were stuck in her throat.
“Like I said, there is always a reason we’re called back, honey,” he said, his eyes filming. She had never seen her father weep. “I wish I had known you had the gift. I wish I could have told you more. But there is no time. We’ve got to see this through.”
She couldn’t see for her own tears. He clasped her by the shoulders. “You know what you and your friend need to do?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He hugged her. She felt she would drown in all the things she would never be able to say. He stood up, taking up the shovel again and testing its weight in his hand, looking for the best place to hold the handle for what he had to do. He checked over his shoulder as he approached the rear door to make sure she was getting to her feet. She was, even though the tears kept streaming from her eyes. She circled the cab and found Mike. His face was swollen, his lips split, but he was conscious.
“Kenia, you got free! Where is Buzz?”
“Taking a nap. We’re getting this truck out of here and in the river.”
“Do we have time?”
“We’ll make time,” she said, checking the watch. They had ten minutes. She succeeded in untying the ropes on his wrists and tossed them aside. “Can you get the garage door open?”
“On it,” he said, limping to the bay door. Kenia ran back around to the driver’s side of the cab, climbed up on the running board, and swung open the door. Before she slid inside she took a final look at her father.
He was there, standing between the door and the truck. He had already braced it with a crowbar through the handle, while the men on the other side battered against it. She could hear them calling out Buzz’s name between their blows against the door. The handle was starting to give way. Her father nodded at her, then readied the shovel.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
She swung herself behind the wheel. One of the rafters from above twisted free and came crashing down to the floor in a glut of flames. Kenia turned the keys in the ignition and revved the engine. The dash was full of gauges and switches. All she cared about was the gear indicator and the RPMs. She struggled with the clutch and the stiff gearshift, the truck lurching forward as she tried to find the friction point. She missed it and the engine stalled.
The pounding at the back door increased as the men heard the engine starting and stopping. Kenia could see the entire door shaking in its frame. Her father stood ready, in place, prepared to hold back hell if he had to.
She started the engine again. The truck settled into a steady drone. She searched the cab to make sure the handbrake was off, found the horn cord above the doorframe and pulled it, signaling to Mike to hurry. He turned from where he was pulling at the base of the bay door and shook his head. “It’s jammed. It’s the heat.”
A shower of sparks exploded downwards as another section of ceiling collapsed. Eight minutes on the watch. She checked the rearview mirror just outside the window; the door had come off its hinges, and her father was bracing himself against it.
No time.
She punched the accelerator down with her foot and the cab growled forward, picking up speed in low gear. Mike understood her intent, rushing alongside the cab, hopping onto the running board and grabbing hold of the rearview mirror.
“Mike, are you crazy?”
“Just go!”
She redlined the engine as the bay door neared. She shifted once, the cab bouncing, the exhaust pouring out of the stacks adding to the smoke and hellfire. “Hold on!”
The truck burst through the doors with a crack of wood and a scream of steel. The engine coughed, threatening to stall, but Kenia finessed it and kept the truck moving, the heat of the flames receding. Mike was still on the outside of her door, his hair and clothes singed, but safe. “Kenia, there’s someone back there, fighting with the good old boys!”
“I know.” But she said nothing else, for she was determined to make her father’s sacrifice mean something. A tableau of destruction was already unfolding before them. The coal stacks were three mountains of converged fire that towered into the night sky. The plant’s fire suppression teams were overwhelmed and in retreat, even as cars and fire engines clogged the entrance gate. She knew Prentice Bridgewater and so many other good men and women were likely already among the people rushing to help. But more critically, the new arrivals were blocking their means of escape.
“Mike, how do we get out?”
“Take that driveway there. There’s a second gate, an access road, but it will take us through the town,” he said, pointing to the north end of the grounds.
“We have less than eight minutes.”
“Then drive!”
It was a derby in hell’s racing ring. Kenia rolled up over curbs, tearing up grassy lawns as needed, smashing and sideswiping smaller trucks and cars in her way. The truck was powerful, hard to maneuver, but once she built up speed, its mass could knock away any obstacle. There was no point in slowing down for safety.
A police cruiser spun out as she struck its fender. A firetruck slammed on its brakes, the firemen bracing themselves against the dash as she cut them off. Another group of plant workers scrambled over a truck’s bed as she careened up against it’s tailgate, apologizing with a loud “Sorry!” useless as it was.
“There, that gate!” Mike said, pointing to a chain-link fence standing locked across an unlit roadway leading towards the forest.
Kenia knew there was no time to unlock it and shifted the truck into a higher gear. Mike braced himself against the door again, the distance shrinking, the gate growing as it rushed into the windshield. The cab shuddered with the impact, but the fencing popped free in a blast of sparks and tangle of wire. The gate remained lodged on the front of the cab, the windshield spider-webbed with cracks. They were approaching a tunnel of dark road enclosed by the branches of the forest.
“Lights, lights, lights,” Mike said.
Kenia flailed around the cab but could not locate the switch for the high beams. Mike finally reached through the window and pulled a knob that turned them on.
“Much better,” he said.
Kenia kept accelerating down the straightaway, the sections of fence and gate they dragged along sending out an apron of sparks to either side. She checked the wristwatch. “Five minutes, Mike!”
“We can make it. Get ready to slow down when you take this next turn to the left.”
The road stopped at a T-junction, Mike gesturing left with a karate-chop motion. She braked, surprised at how reluctant the truck, with all its momentum, was to slow down.
“Should have braked sooner, hold on!”
“Downshift, downshift!”
“Trying,” Kenia said, wrestling the clutch and gearshift. The brake pads squealed and smoked until she was able to engage the engine brake, the engine snorting, the entire cab shaking. The entire vehicle tipped to the side just before it came crashing back down on all eighteen tires. The smell of burnt rubber, overheated brake pads, and fuel-rich exhaust filled the cab.
“Oh my God, that was scary,” Mike said.
“Scarier now that we are driving into town.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll make it, just don’t tip us on the turns,” Mike said. Even as he did, the stoplights of the streets came into view. Kenia kept their speed steady, watching for traffic, hoping for an opening as headlights and taillights crossed through the intersection up ahead.
“You’ll need to turn right on Principle Avenue, then it’s a straight line for the bridge.”
“Tell me when I get there,” she said as they passed by the first buildings of downtown. People were out and about, having heard the sirens and been drawn by the glow of the fire. She noted black and white faces, young and old, as in previous jumps—Selah Station, before the dream was lost. The tanker truck was approaching the town square. She recognized it from previous jumps. A crowd was gathered, roused by all the commotion and waiting for news.
“That’s your turn!” Mike said, pointing to the looming intersection with cars waiting at the lights, parked at the curbs, and people lining the sidewalk. “Blow the horn!”
Kenia pulled the horn line so hard that the line felt as if it would cut into her fingers. The blare stunned the people into stillness rather than flight. “Don’t stand there, move!” she cried.
Mike screamed the same thing, waving them to the side as they roared closer. She kept pulling the horn, and the bystanders finally began to flee. She tried to take aim for a path around cars waiting at the light, but it was impossible. She resigned herself to crashing through them.
“Slow down, slow down!” Mike said, swaying on the review mirror. He was right, she needed to slow to negotiate the turn. She smashed down the brake pedal and even yanked up the handbrake, before downshifting, the gears grinding. Their force still turned cars up and over on their sides. Mike was flung away from the cab, the images in the side mirror dancing as he held on to it, his feet kicking in the air beyond him. Kenia fought with the oversized wheel as Mike’s feet floated back to the running board. Steady once more, he reached through the window and grabbed the wheel with her.
The truck rounded the corner. It did not tip this time, but the trailer with the tank swung wide, the rear-most set of wheels screeching, sending up a cloud of blue smoke. People scattered and the tailgate smashed a series of storefront and diner windows, dragging merchandise into the street and tearing lunch counters out onto the sidewalk. A salt shaker hit the windshield, followed by a flurry of napkins. The gearbox was screaming, gears knocked out of alignment. Lights flashed on the dash, warning Kenia of overheating systems, a flooding engine, an oil leak, and other mechanical catastrophes. A cooking-pot-on-asphalt sound told her that they were likely dragging the oil pan beneath the cab. The engine let out an angry whine, just as the trailer fell back in line with them. They had slowed considerably. A red light told her the rear brake line was broken. A morbid thought told her she would not need it anyway, and she shifted for more speed. She checked her watch.
“Mike, just over two minutes.”
“Bridge is straight ahead.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, gun it! We can make it.” Mike said, banging the side of the door. Indeed, she could see the Selah Branch Bridge and its lights, spanning the expanse of the river gorge ahead, curds of smoke from the plant fire rolling overhead. For the first time, other possibilities, new potential futures, seemed probable. She knew her purpose with a clarity that had eluded her up to this point. And she knew what she had to do next, as if she had seen it before.
Then she remembered, she had.
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, but you need to survive.”
She was thinking about the Pennels, her yet-to-be-born friends, who she knew would need their uncle. She had put him at risk up to this point, but she could not ask him to continue any further. She took hold of the wheel with her right hand, leaned in her seat, and shoved Mike in the chest with her left. He reached for the doorframe as he fell backwards, but she knocked his arms aside, throwing him, at last, off-balance so that he went tumbling into the street.
And she was fairly certain, as she did so, that she detected the flash of a camera out of the corner of her eye—an intrepid photojournalist by the name of Oliver Andersen snapping a picture, a picture she would see, decades later, wavering on the edge of existence, where an arm, reaching out from the shade of the cab had been her own all along, in an alternative timeline that was always potential and was now becoming real.
All that was left was the straight road, lining up with the bridge and the gorge, like a rendezvous with destiny. She shifted again, thought of her father and the willingness with which he had walked towards his own fate.
Voices are calling us . . . voices that mean work, sacrifice, and death.
Her vision blurred but she wiped her eyes. The watch gave her less than a minute.
If I perish, I perish.
Flashing lights raced across the bridge—firetrucks from the next town over. She pressed down the accelerator. They could likely see the flames from the neighboring valleys, glowing like a forest fire. The island was burning, like an epicenter of conflict in the dreamscape that was America. The fire would go on, she knew, but if the truck could hold out, the island, and Selah Station—and what they represented—might be spared.
The bridge was nearing. Kenia checked the speedometer, pushing the truck up to seventy, the temperature light still burning red. She picked out a break just off to the side of the roadway, before the guardrails of the bridge started, and took aim for it.
Thirty seconds.
Time had gone faster than she had thought. Her breath seized as she looked at her wrist. She was not sure if she would make it. More gas. The warning alarms were buzzing at a frantic pitch. The practicalities of steering the truck filled her mind. She knew by now that an abrupt turn would run the risk of sending the cab off the edge but swinging the trailer outward and hanging the tank up on the bridge. To compensate, she eased the truck onto the shoulder, the frame bouncing. Tree branches struck the cab with the sound of gunshots. She pressed the accelerator down harder to keep up the speed.
Fifteen seconds.
The bridge was nearing, but more importantly, so was the cliff. She steered off the road completely for the last few yards. Trees, bushes, and branches rattled against the cab, the wheels grinding in the earth and then . . . nothing. The cab cleared the cliff and the noise of collisions ceased, replaced by the rush of air, the roaring of the engine suddenly unencumbered by the weight of its load or the friction of the road. All this was accompanied by the lightness of tipping forward, as if at the crest of a rollercoaster hill, then a pressing of her body against the seat as the cab accelerated downward with the pull of gravity. The trailer had cleared. Over her shoulder, she could see its end following, the trailer lights glowing, surreally, alongside stars. Cars were stopped on the bridge. The surface of the Potomac was dark, its obsidian surface riffled by a gentle wind and the force of the current. She had never found the seatbelt and so, as the surface of the river raced upwards to meet her, she braced herself against the wheel, anticipating the collision.
The water struck with all the force of a concrete wall, slamming the wheel into her gut and her head against the windshield. Water gushed in through the windows, the cab engulfed in an instant and driven straight down by the weight of the following trailer. The water pressure on her body was crushing as she plummeted into the depths. Her pocket of air in the cab was quickly gone. The pressure built in her ears. A cloud of her blood floated from the lacerations on her head.
It surprised her, what was suddenly important to her in these last moments of her life. She did not want to die under a tomb of wreckage. She knew that. She wanted to, at least, float free of this contraption, meant to harm, to kill, so she pulled herself through the window and kicked.
The tanker continued past her before slamming into the bottom, the bending and twisting of metal sounding close as the noise carried in the water. The blast was coming, she knew it. She felt ready, her race completed, her task at an end here in the darkness of the river. Already the sight of the tanker truck was lost, the headlights and taillights flickering out as the circuits shorted. Her head was pounding, from the impact, from the water pressure, and her body trembling. Was this the shockwave? A rushing sound filled her ears. She saw a flash of light, but to her surprise it was a drawn out and steady glow, not an explosive blast, or a wall of expanding steam and superheated water. She knew the force of it would come, crushing her internal organs. Perhaps the oxygen saturation in her blood was already playing tricks on her brain, drawing these last moments of her life out longer, her perceptions slowing.
The light neared, sweeping through the dark of the water. She regarded it with a calm curiosity, was this a heavenly light? Was that form she saw approaching an angel? Perhaps all she needed to do was to surrender, to take a breath of the water and the figure would come closer, across the veil to take her hand.
The biochemistry of drowning consumed her thoughts as her synapses slowed further. Saltwater could not cross into lung tissue but acted as a barrier for the air to reach the lungs, cutting off the exchange of oxygen, allowing carbon dioxide to build in excess. The fresh water of the river would be even worse. The daughter of physicians, she knew how it would cross through lung membranes to upset the balance of ions . . . leading to hypertonic lung tissue . . . ruptured cells . . . water rushing into her own bloodstream, diluting it . . . hemoptysis . . . elevated potassium . . . depressed sodium . . . ventricular fibrillation . . . cardiac arrest . . . hemoglobin bursting from cells in her kidneys . . . renal failure.
The light closed in on her, slow and ponderous, just like her thoughts. The shape of the figure coalesced: a rounded head, a bulbous tubular back, waving fins. Bubbles rose in a column alongside a reflective scuba mask.
But angels don’t scuba.
Then she realized: she had jumped. One last time. A desperate urge to live surged back into her will. Her need for air was painful. The diver shone the light on her face as if seeing her for the first time. But if he was surprised, he didn’t respond like it. He kicked closer, removed the respirator and placed it to her mouth.
Kenia breathed.
She took a few more precious gulps of air before the diver moved them in a slow ascension towards the surface, exchanging the air regulator between them until they neared the surface, a light as bright as the moon waiting for them as they crested.
“Found her!” the diver said, as they broke into the world above. The light was not the moon but rather a light shining down from the stern of a boat. Kenia coughed and sputtered. “There, there, hold on, Kenia. I got you,” the diver said.
“Kenia, take my hand,” a mature black woman in a life vest said, leaning over the stern of the boat. The diver guided her hands until she could link up with the woman, who pulled her through the water to a ladder on the side of the boat. The diver floated behind her, his arms holding her steady as she climbed up and over the gunnel. The woman immediately wrapped Kenia in a towel before she moved to help the diver aboard.
Kenia looked around, the gauges, the fixtures on the boat, looked modern. Above she could see the stars bisected by the Selah Branch Bridge.
“When—”
“August 23, just after midnight. You are in 2017,” the woman said. She was in a wetsuit herself. The man who had retrieved her sat down on one of the boat’s benches, slipped off his flippers, his mask, and set the air tank on the deck with a clang like a bell. He peeled off the hood of his suit, looking over at her with radiant blue eyes.
“Praise Jesus, I found you down there.”
Kenia stared. He was an old man, with wild white hair, messed from the hood of his wetsuit. But he was still fit and strong, evident in the way he moved and how he had steered her up to the surface and onto the boat.
“She’s confused,” the woman said, putting her arm around Kenia and rubbing her back, while Kenia moved the tangled braids out of her face. The man took Kenia’s hands, like an old friend.
“I would be confused, too. Kenia, the last time I saw you, you pushed me off the cab of that damn tanker truck. It was over sixty years ago for me, but just moments ago for you. I know this must be a bit . . . disorienting.”
“Mike?”
“I know I’m a bit worse for wear, but it’s been a couple decades,” he laughed. If she focused on the sound of his voice alone, she could still hear the Mike Pennel she had met in 1953. He barely got out the words, “This is my wife Rochelle,” before Kenia leaped across the deck and embraced him.
That was when she started to cry.