A Catch in Time Read online

  After some scratchy, muffled noises, Eli spoke. “We’re going to sign off and start planning the party. It’s been too quiet around here without you guys. Be careful. Don’t let something happen when you’re so close to getting home. Over.”

  “You got it, Eli,” Josiah promised. He felt a need to let Eli know how he valued him but couldn’t think how to say it. Finally, he said, “You take care, too,” and paused before adding, “Over.”

  It took four hours to find a way around the blocked pass and finally rejoin the road, long after it had dropped from the heights. The journey across foothills had been rough, and by the time Kate finally bounced the car back onto blacktop, they were exhausted from bracing themselves. Kate and Laura cheered, but Josiah was in too much pain.

  He heard the women discussing whether to push ahead or to begin searching for a campsite or abandoned ranch house. Laura mentioned something about their route skirting the county of her hometown. Eyes closed, Josiah fought the urge to massage phantom pain from his missing leg. His energy depleted, he asked to stop, get water, take some medication.

  A sudden fuzziness overtook his mind. He became lost in a fog, struggled to open his eyes, bring things into focus, and heard a muffled sound. It came again, closer.

  “Josiah.”

  Laura’s voice? The fog dissipated, leaving his lips tingling.

  “Josiah?” Laura prodded. His eyes opened. Disoriented, he looked into Laura’s face, wondered about the dimness of the light. He was on his back, on the ground.

  “Hi, there,” Laura said.

  “Don’t tell me I passed out.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Weird.”

  “Are you in pain? We couldn’t give you anything while you were … not passed out.”

  He smiled faintly. “I hurt all over.”

  Kate squatted down, holding a cup in one hand and a pill in the other. “Can you sit up?”

  He did, with Laura’s help. “Where are we?” he asked. Kate placed the pill in his mouth and held the cup to his lips.

  “A barn in the middle of nowhere,” Laura replied.

  “The house is burned,” Kate added, “but this barn’s in good shape.”

  The configurations made sense to Josiah now, the rafters high above, the slits of faint light between wall boards. Through the open doors, he saw the fading glow of dusk.

  “We spending the night here?”

  “Good a place as any,” Kate said, walking away. “We found bone-dry wood, so we’ll have a small fire and hardly any smoke.”

  The Suburban was in the barn, its rear doors open. Kate unloaded supplies.

  Laura told Josiah to rest while she helped Kate. His thoughts drifted to Eli, the urge earlier, to tell Eli—what? That he valued their friendship. That, before Eli, he’d never had a real friend.

  The need to express this kind of emotion was new to him. His actions had always spoken louder than his words. But, for some words, there were no comparable actions. For all his belief that every person needed to make himself and not blame others, he had overlooked one basic element: communication. Not of ideas, but feelings. More specifically, feelings that connected people.

  He’d never even told Eli how great it was that Eli seemed to understand him. Such a small thing to say, but he pictured how Eli would look when he told him. The pleased smile, as though he’d just been praised. And then he saw something in himself he’d never recognized: presumption. Like a cloak of superiority, as though people should be pleased by his praise. “You pompous ass,” he muttered to himself. The revelation embarrassed him more than he could have expected.

  He flung his head to one side, as though to escape his thoughts, and found Kate facing him, eyebrows raised, a load of wood in her arms. “You talking to me?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Depends on what you heard.”

  “Hey, Laura,” she called back into the barn, “Josiah’s talking to himself. Should I make the fire right here? And put him in it?”

  “Sure.” Laura’s voice drifted forward.

  Josiah’s pain was fading, and he relaxed. Laura’s question haunted him: Why are you afraid to love me?

  He wondered if there was a way to explain it to her. He remembered the hilltop, and Laura’s kiss. Never again, he vowed. He wasn’t about to lose Laura’s friendship in order for her to know what he already knew.

  He wondered if Eli could help. He’d never spoken to Eli about Laura, but until just a few hours ago, he’d thought Laura was satisfied with their friendship. Something in Laura had changed this afternoon, and it was putting pressure on him he didn’t like.

  He sank back onto the sleeping bag, deciding to talk to Eli about things he should have said long ago.

  Hundreds of miles to the south, Lucas shivered in his sleep, curled at the base of a fir tree, with only his jacket for warmth. Mack stared into the darkness, his back against the jeep, a wool blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

  He was finding it difficult to focus on his plan, though he didn’t wonder why. Frowning in concentration, he ticked off the points again.

  He had several five-gallon containers of gasoline. He had water, food, guns, and ammunition. He had his lovely, sharp, silent knife. The kid would provide directions. The kid said Laura wouldn’t be going over Donner Pass because she’d ditched Sister Donna.

  That meant Laura would take a long detour. And, just to make sure she did get home and into his trap, he had issued border bulletins, signed by Reverend Perry, that she was to be passed. Amazing, the things he could get Perry to do, just by promising a little restraint.

  Mack smiled, anticipating the sweet rage that would soon fill his heart. Finally finding that weasel Conrad and finishing him; getting Laura, who had betrayed him again.

  She had his daughter and hadn’t told him. What was the kid’s name, again? Lily.

  Six-year-old Lily. What a lovely age.

  CHAPTER 36

  LAURA WAS TORN. THE URGENCY SHE FELT TO REUNITE with Lily, to once again hold her in her arms, warred with her need to know about her brother, Conrad. Had he ever made it home? They were just a few hours from her hometown, but it lay in the wrong direction.

  Kate and Josiah convinced her that the detour to her childhood home was reasonable. Josiah calculated it would delay them only half a day.

  “Who knows if we’ll ever be up this way again?” Kate added sincerely.

  Laura was touched by their thoughtfulness, but the two urgencies continued their tug-of-war.

  Birthdays had no meaning for Mohammed. Time was not the measure of a man’s life. Amongst his people, a man might say “I was this tall during the year of the great winds.” Time, for nomads, flowed like sand, one grain into the other; the journey from one destination to the next was life and its measure.

  Mohammed was approximately fourteen by the time he and Conrad ended their journey. To travel so far was to be a man.

  When he and Conrad arrived at the house in which Conrad had grown up, and settled there, Mohammed experienced an unease he could not define. The stability he’d never before experienced bred restlessness. But he worked hard and prayed regularly. In those first weeks, he did far more work than Conrad, but this inequity didn’t trouble him. Conrad was in mourning.

  The first thing they’d seen, as they’d turned onto the long dirt driveway, was Conrad’s family’s Land Rover. It rested, smashed and crumpled, against one of many massive oak trees. Hungry scavengers had plundered the bodies within, but enough remained to tell the story.

  Three partial skeletons, strewn in and around the vehicle, bespoke the awful fate of his parents and brother. Mohammed, having heard much about Conrad’s family, needed only to count skulls and see Conrad’s stricken face.

  Remembering Conrad’s stories of a sister who had moved to a distant city, Mohammed wondered if he should offer the condolence that Conrad was not alone but, out of respect, said nothing.

  Mohammed’s mother had died, he’d seen his ow
n sister killed, and he now lived with the belief that their path might have shattered the instant before they could reunite with paradise. At least Conrad was spared that terrible knowledge.

  It was a long, grief-stricken walk down the dusty road, toward the white-shingled house at its end. Because of its remote location, it had not been ransacked. The cellar was well-stocked with canned and packaged goods.

  Starting the generator was all Conrad had done that first day. Once the pump had been primed and the fully fueled generator started, clear well water ran through the pipes.

  Mohammed familiarized himself with the house, barn, and outbuildings. He walked fence lines and crossed enormous pastures, slid down hidden gullies, and followed deep streams that emerged into lush meadows and meandered in shallow ribbons amidst open grassland.

  The high, rich plateau, with its open sky, appealed to Mohammed. Far in the distance, two snowcapped mountains loomed, one to the northeast and one to the southwest. Large, spreading trees spotted the meadows.

  During some of his solitary treks across Conrad’s land, he glimpsed a herd of horses, always in the distance. He deduced that the horses could only mean there was a measure of safety to be found here—they were alive; nobody was hunting them for meat.

  Twice in their long journey from southern California to Conrad’s home in the northeast, they’d ridden on horses found grazing in fenced pastures. Conrad was a good horseman, and Mohammed found such travel akin to his life as a camel boy, though not only were horses more companionable and tractable, they smelled better as well.

  Their first two mounts had been shot out from beneath them by a roving band, who’d then insisted they share the meat. Mohammed had been mollified by that token of justice.

  Their second two mounts, however, were stolen from them at gunpoint by a couple with two children. Mohammed had been furious at the theft, and urged Conrad to avenge the wrong; the only laws Mohammed knew allowed them to slit the throats of robbers. But Conrad spoke of the children’s hardships and held that no debt was owed.

  “Agh!” Mohammed had spat to one side in disgust.

  The smaller child had been about Aida’s size. But she’d looked nothing like Aida. So why did he think of his dead sister? And why, in thinking of her, had be become so angry?

  “Bara imshi nayik!” he’d screamed at Conrad.

  “Don’t know what you just said,” Conrad had said, “but you’ve said it plenty before. What’s it mean, anyway?”

  “It mean,” Mohammed had explained furiously, “Go fuck yourself.”

  Conrad’s surprise turned to laughter. “You’ve been saying that to me all this time and I never knew it?” He waggled Mohammed’s turban. “Little shit! Teach me how to say it.”

  “No!” said Mohammed. And then he’d laughed, too.

  A week into their overland journey, Mohammed tried to talk to Conrad about the blackout but didn’t know enough English. He frustrated himself and confused Conrad, but he didn’t give up. Mohammed learned a few more words every day.

  The next talk was in the bunkhouse of a large ranch in Arizona, eighty miles from the nearest town. The old man who lived alone in the big house nearby had hired them for a few days in exchange for room and board.

  “Conrad, big talk, hah?” Mohammed had begun.

  “Sure, what do you want to talk about?” Conrad said.

  “Talk about how—no, why—here. Now.”

  “Why we’re here now? It’s as good a place as any.”

  “No, no!” Mohammed shook his head. “Not today, many, many days.”

  “I don’t know how many days we’re staying, but the deal I made with the old man—”

  “No, no! Not here.” Mohammed smacked the bunk on which he sat, cross-legged. He waved his arms around. “Here. All. Why all here now.”

  Conrad rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “You want to talk about the meaning of life? Shit, Ali, I don’t have any answers. Nobody does.”

  Mohammed watched him intently, then pounced on the one useful word he hadn’t understood. “Life?”

  “Yeah, life—everything. Well, not everything, but everything that’s alive.”

  “Alife?”

  “Alive. Um, let’s see—breathing.” Conrad breathed in and out, exaggeratedly. “I breathe, you breathe, we’re alive. Everything that breathes is alive. Life.”

  “Life. Yah, hokay.” Mohammed filed the word away. He couldn’t think of a gesture for the concept of change. He took another tack. “I in Tunisia.”

  “You were in Tunisia. Now you’re in America.”

  “I were in Tunisia. Now I in America. In Tunisia, I do camel work.”

  “Right.”

  “One day,” Mohammed held up a finger, then suddenly yelled, “Pow!” and crumbled to one side.

  “You were shot?” Conrad exclaimed.

  “No.” Mohammed hit the mattress with his fists. “Not shot. Everything, pow!”

  “There was an explosion?”

  Mohammed tensed. “Explosion?” he asked tentatively. “Yeah, pow.” Conrad threw his arms up. “Fire. Bang!” Mohammed shook his head. “No fire, no bang.” Conrad sighed. “I don’t know what you mean.” “I need word, Conrad.”

  “I know. You need a word for something that happened in Tunisia. Did it happen before or after the blackout?”

  “Blackout?”

  “When everything changed.”

  Mohammed looked blank.

  “When everything—” Conrad suddenly understood. “Everything pow. Blackout.”

  “Blackout,” Mohammed repeated. “Hokay. What in your head when blackout?”

  “I don’t remember. Nobody remembers.”

  “I know,” Mohammed stated, thumping his chest.

  “You know?” Conrad quirked a brow. “Okay, Ali, how did the blackout happen?”

  “Not how, not why … what. I know what blackout is. It big, Conrad. BIG.”

  “Yeah. The whole world.”

  “More big.”

  “What do you mean, more big? Like the whole universe? You can’t know that.”

  Mohammed didn’t understand everything Conrad said, but he heard the scoffing tone.

  He remained silent and Conrad fell asleep.

  Gradually, over the next months, Mohammed brought Conrad to understand his belief that every living cell was soul-energy come to the physical plane. But Conrad called it a far-fetched theory.

  By the time they were settled in California, in Conrad’s old home, they no longer talked about the blackout. Mohammed gave up; Conrad stubbornly refused to discuss it. Worse yet had been Conrad’s insistence that nobody remembered. Mohammed’s experience was his alone and could therefore never be fully shared.

  The small town several miles north of Conrad’s home was not empty. It was many days before they knew they weren’t alone. Of the town’s original 267 inhabitants, only a handful remained, but others had come to the tiny town, most of them under thirty. They’d quickly established their own set of rules, and, more significantly, beliefs.

  Six years after the blackout, the town was a community of Free Thinkers committed to living as one with the mother earth, her bounty, and each individual’s worth. They were intolerant toward intolerance but couldn’t recognize the inherent contradiction.

  Mohammed had little difficulty adapting his own religious practices to the pagan rituals of his neighbors. When they circled and chanted to nature and each other, Mohammed knelt, facing east, and prayed to Allah. The amusement they invoked in him had elements of contempt and theirs of him, an unspoken condescension. Mohammed preferred the solitude of the ranch and continued living there, even after Conrad moved to town.

  Three years after they’d arrived, Conrad had married one of the Free Thinkers, a pretty girl in her late teens. The whole town joined the celebration, a ceremony conducted with songs accompanied by bells and wind chimes, and involving exchanges of garlands and self-written poetry. Feasting and dancing continued into the night, and the ne
w couple moved to the bride’s house in town, where they took up residence.

  Mohammed had bicycled home alone that night beneath a bright full moon. It wasn’t until he’d stepped into the quiet house that the importance of Conrad’s marriage struck him; Conrad had pledged himself to another. Mohammed was free, his fate no longer tied to Conrad’s.

  It had been strange at first, living alone. Conrad had filled the place with too many people and too much noise. When it suddenly ceased, Mohammed found the silence that remained to his liking.

  At first, Conrad and his wife, Fawn—a name she’d chosen—came often to help with chores, usually accompanied by three or four others. But Conrad eventually spent most of his time immersed in the socialism underlying the commune’s thinking, and he gradually came to treat the ranch with detached fondness. A year later, he referred to it as Mohammed’s place and his visits dwindled further.

  Now eighteen, Mohammed was accustomed to seeing no one for weeks. Standing at the sink, he washed his few dishes, feeling the warm soapy water on his work-hardened hands. He glanced out the window and down the long dirt driveway at the pink and white blossoms of apple trees lining its length.

  A vehicle appeared at the end of the driveway. He strained to recognize it through the dust. Townspeople rarely used cars. The camouflage-painted Suburban rumbled into the yard and stopped. Three doors opened.

  He recognized Laura instantly from the many photographs he’d seen of her. Stepping out onto the porch, he raised an arm in greeting. “Hello. Welcome home.”

  “Hi,” Kate chirped, appraising the dark, handsome young man approaching them.

  Laura squinted at him. “Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

  Mohammed smiled, a flash of white teeth in a brown face. “I am called Ali. You are known to me through Conrad.”

  Laura’s hands flew to her mouth as she turned toward the house. “Conrad? Oh, my God, he’s here? He’s all right?”