I drop the hang glider onto the bed and run outside. From the front porch, I see the progress of their stampede. Tall trees in the distance shaking.
They’re coming. They’re coming. By accident or by design, the cabin is in their direct path.
I run inside. I consider closing the shutters, fortressing myself in the cabin. But I shunt that idea aside immediately—the cabin stands as much chance resisting the duskers as a matchbox in a fire. They’d rip this log cabin into shreds within seconds.
I pick up the hang glider, walk sideways down the hallway with it and out the front door. Cold wind gusts manically around me, the echoes of howls swirling in them.
It’s now or never, ready or not. I choose now, I hope for ready.
I latch a hook to a corresponding hook on the hang glider. I start walking toward the cliff edge even as I lock carabiners into place, slide cords through loops, all guesswork and no conviction at all in what I’m doing. I can only hope they’re going where they’re supposed to.
The ground begins to rumble under me.
Shrieks loft out of the forest behind and beside me. These are different in tone, rapturous, the cries of pleasant surprises, of unexpected discoveries.
I run. Dangling, still-unhooked carabiners bounce against my body like the nudges of a needy child—fix me fix me fix me—but it is too late for that. All I feel is the razor edge of their screams, slashing not only my eardrums, but the skin on the back of my neck, the skin on the back of my heels, reaching out toward me like claws on outstretched fingers. I pull the metal handlebar of the hang glider over my head, making sure I don’t trip as I run. A single stumble now will be a fatal mistake.
A pool of darkness begins to enfold around me.
Don’t look back. Don’t look to the side. Just keep your eyes on the edge. Run for the edge, run run run.
And then it is there, the cliff edge racing toward me, the mouth of nothingness gaping wide beyond it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the hang glider but it is too late for second-guessing now. Ground rumbling, the air pierced with a thousand cries of lust, I fling myself over the edge, into the yawning chasm of bottomless black.
And just as I do, I hear a shout, a single word verbalized from behind. Gene!
I am plummeting, my feet scrabbling empty air as the cliff face screeches past. There’s no wind. The hang glider flaps like a wounded bird, wings rattling with hysteria. A sick, panicky feeling settles into the pit of my stomach.
A terrific wind gusts out of nowhere. The glider latches on to it with an almost audible click. The night air—once so vacuous—suddenly gains the solidity of a palatial carpet under me, lifting me into the night sky.
Throat in mouth, clasping the bar with a white-knuckled grip, I glance down. Duskers are spilling off the cliff edge, dropping into the black abyss. The glider wobbles. I snap my eyes to the handle, focus on the heady task at hand. I lean my body this way and that, test out the flight mechanics in careful gradations. I’m a quick study at most things, and soon enough get a feel for flying the glider. Everything done slowly and smoothly, no rough jerks or sudden maneuvers. It’s not too difficult, once the initial fear is overcome.
In fact, it’s exhilarating. The sensation of soaring through the airy expanse, the surprisingly gentle, refreshing breeze on my face. Far below, emerging out of the mountain in a titanic waterfall, the Nede River flows out of the mountain. It shines beneath like a magnesium strip, a directional arrow pointing east. To the Promised Land. To my father. If this easterly wind keeps up, I will make good time.
I take one last look back at the mountain. The moon is now pouring its milky light on the mountainside, and I can see a blanket of silver and black dots streaming up like a cloak. Wave upon wave of duskers pouring out of the mountain’s innards. They will be upon the Mission before too long.
I have tried not to think of them, but my thoughts involuntarily swing to Sissy and the boys. They will have made it back to the Mission by now. For a second, an emptiness vaster than the night sky echoes in me.
I stare dead ahead. East. Somewhere out there, beyond the scope of my eyes, is my father.
I wonder how many girls Sissy has convinced to leave by train.
My father will be tanned, I think, no longer having to stay out of the sun. And perhaps fuller around the waist, with all the food and drink he will have consumed.
I wonder if Sissy and the boys are on the train now. If the village girls are piling in with them as the train engine revs up.
My father will have a beard, or a moustache, or perhaps a scruffy shadow. He will have hair on his arms, on his legs. The bags under his eyes will be reduced, or altogether gone, removed by months and years of deep, restful sleep. He will look different, my father, but, free from the masks he has worn his whole life, he will be his true, unveiled self.
I wonder if Sissy and the boys are fine. I wonder if they know they must leave immediately. I wonder if they know the sheer volume of duskers storming toward them.
I will, for the first time in my life, see my father really smile. I will see that purest of emotions he had learned to stifle. I will see his lips curl back, his teeth shine bright with a now-practiced naturalness, a brightness touch his eyes. His arms will remain at his side, no longer feeling the need to faux scratch his wrists. And that is what he will do when he sees me. He will smile. He will smile in the sunshine and not feel compelled to move into the shadows.
I wonder if Ben is not too tired from hiking all day. If David knows he’ll need gloves and a scarf because the wind whipping through the open cages of the train will be harsh and biting. I wonder if Sissy’s arm is better, if the brand has staved off infection. I wonder if they are thinking of me as I am them. I wonder if Sissy is needing to be with me. As I her.
Stars blink into existence above and around me, seemingly within arm’s length. As if I might reach up and dislodge them, and watch them drift down like snowflakes to the earth.
I stare east. See my father in the warm glow of sunshine, glowing and blurred like a fantasy. See him diminishing, fading, as all dreams, in the harsh light of morning, inevitably do.
I grip the bar tighter. Then angle my legs to one side, canting my body. The stars spin around me as I turn the hang glider, the moon swinging like a ball on a string. The silvered river rotates under me. And then the mountain is in front of me, its silhouetted peak leaning to the side, like a head cocked in surprise and confusion.
I’m flying west.
Back to the Mission.
40
THE MISSION IS nestled between two ridges in the mountain, and I miss it the first go-around. It’s the bridge—its two halves raised like bookends—that proves to be an invaluable reference point. I circle around, see a few specks of light flickering in the dark breast of the mountain. I fly closer until the Mission fully emerges out of the darkness, and I see the soft, illumined cottages. From up here, the village’s smallness and quaintness catches me by surprise.
My landing, I’ve already concluded—sadly, with resignation, and not a little trepidation—is going to be ugly, probably painful, potentially fatal, and dependent on gobs of beginner’s luck. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it—the fifteen minutes or so it’s taken to fly back—and have already decided that my best option is to land in the glacial lake on the far end of the Mission. But what seemed like such a good idea is in actuality incredibly difficult to achieve. From up here, the lake is the size of a small coin—a ridiculously small landing pad surrounded by cratered granite and thick coniferous forests with trees jutting up like knives.
Landing in the lake feels like crashing into a wall of ice. No give in the bracken waters. My legs, then body, are run against a metal shredder as I skid along the surface. The glider suddenly spears into the depths, coldness and bubbles and darkness flipping my world upside down and inside out. Completely disoriented, I unbuckle and wrest myself free of the vest, and kick away the sinking glider. Watch the bubbles, follow them up, watch the bubbles. I break surface and the wide open dome of the night sky spreads above me, filled with oxygen.
I swim to the lake’s edge, drag out my dripping mangled body. Cold. Need to hurry, limbs shaking like branches in a gale, mind already splintering into disjointed, haphazard thoughts. Stumbling along on unsteady legs, my jaw jackhammering away, I shuffle toward the nearest cottage, my arms wrapped around my chest, hands tucked under armpits. Frozen hand barely able to mold fingers around the doorknob. Dark inside. Throw open the chest, tear off the wet clothes, put on dry ones.
It’s then I realize I haven’t seen a single person.
I run out to the street, my teeth chattering.
My eyes scan the village square; nothing moves, no one is around. Just as I’m thinking that Sissy was able to convince everyone to leave, I see a group of girls. Their eyes, lidded and half-asleep, widen with surprise when they see me.
“Where are my friends?” I say. My first spoken words in hours come out shrill and jittery.
The girls only stare at me warily.
“Did you hear me? My friends: Sissy, Epap, the boys. Did they make it back here? Have you seen them?”
But they stare back vacantly, unaffected by the urgency in my voice. Except for one. She looks petrified.
“They made it back?” I ask her.
She nods.
“Where are they?” I say.
“At the train station,” she says quietly. “Most of them.”
“What do you mean most of them?”
She clenches her skirt, balling the material in her hand.
“What’s going on?” I demand. Alarm rises in my heart.
“I can’t say any more. I can’t,” she says, her body going rigid.
“What’s going on around here?” I demand. And when no one answers, when no one even meets my eyes, I start running for the train station.
“Get to the train now!” I yell back at them over my shoulder. “If you want to live, you need to get on the train!”
The train station bursts with activity. Seemingly half the village is here, unloading the train cars. Still unloading the cars.
