Chapter 6 #3
Don nodded. An hour before, and he would have said his knees weren’t looking forward to the road ahead.
But now, with this lightness about them, he thought maybe, just maybe, they’d have a chance.
A fool’s notion, to be sure, but it was either that or give up here and now. And that wasn’t an option.
Jerri said, “Goddamn, I like you guys. You’re crazy. Most people don’t like to show strangers their crazy, but here you both are, letting it all hang out. Good for you.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Don said. “Thank you for stopping to help us.”
They’d almost made it to her truck when she called from behind them. “So, Naks has an idea.”
Don stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Naks? The dog?”
Jerri shrugged as Naks panted, head cocked. “I didn’t say it was a good idea, but yeah.”
“You hear that?” Don asked Rodney. “The dog has an idea.”
“I bet it does,” Rodney muttered. Raising his voice, he said, “What’s the idea?”
“I want to show you something,” Jerri said. “I need another person to see it to make sure I’m not losing my mind.” She laughed. “Any more than I already have. In exchange, I’ll give you my truck.”
Don blinked. “What? We can’t take your—”
“I’m not going to need it,” she said. “Come what may, I’m fine right where I am. But you folks aren’t.” She pointed back up the road. “My cabin isn’t far. Won’t take long, and you can be on your way.”
Rodney said, “What do you want to show us?”
She shrugged. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
True to Jerri’s word, they didn’t have to go far.
Five minutes up the road, she turned the truck down a small driveway hidden by overgrown trees and shrubs.
Almost full-on dark. Branches scraped the sides of the truck, causing Don to wince.
Naks sniffed Rodney’s crotch thoroughly just as Jerri said she would. Rodney suffered in silence.
Until Jerri pointed out the rocks captured in the truck’s headlights. Not all of them. Small pebbles, really, but they were floating a few inches above the ground. Then Jerri said, “Look at the trees.”
Pine trees. Conifers. And their branches didn’t sway side to side. Instead, it looked as if the limbs were rising, like one of those fake Christmas trees that had been boxed away, the wire branches sticking straight up. It was as if the trees were reaching toward the sky.
“How long has it been like this?” Rodney asked.
“Since last night,” Jerri said. “This morning, I saw a squirrel try to leap from one tree to another. It … just kept floating. Didn’t see where it landed.” Under her breath, she added, “If it did.”
The truck crested a small hill, and there, set back against a grove of trees, a small log cabin, the roof made of dark green metal.
Underneath the front windows, wooden boxes that held soil and flowers in yellow and pink and purple.
A small porch with a rocking chair next to a dog bed that looked as if it’d been chewed on a few times.
Don stepped out of the truck onto gravel and froze when he saw light moving through the trees about a quarter of a mile away.
Behind him, Rodney said, “What are you doing?”
“Did it follow us?” Don asked in a hushed voice.
Rodney climbed out of the truck, following Don’s gaze. “What on earth…?”
“Ball lightning,” Jerri said, appearing beside them, causing them both to jump. “Very rare. I’ve only seen it once before, when I was a kid. It’s been like this almost every night for the past week. It sticks around for an hour or two and then just … vanishes.”
“We saw it earlier,” Don said. “Before you showed up. It’s why we stopped. What … why is it?”
Jerri shrugged. “I don’t question things anymore. For all I know, it’s the Earth’s response to what’s coming. It never comes any closer than it is right now. I’m not worried about it. I’m worried about the moon.”
“What about it?” Don asked, looking up. He saw what she meant.
He didn’t know how else to think of it but this: The moon now looked like a comet.
Something was happening on the surface of the moon, something that caused a streak of white to trail off to one side of it, as if all the dirt and dust and rock on the surface was getting pulled into space. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah,” Jerri said in a low voice. “I don’t know how much longer she can hold on.”
She didn’t invite them inside; rather, she led them to the side of the house, Naks bringing up the rear, tail wagging furiously. In front of them, hills and rolling fields as far as the eye could see. Tall grasses swayed. Trees reached toward the oddly colored sky.
“What are we looking for?” Don asked.
“Give it a minute,” she said without looking at them. “What’s at Copper Mountain?”
“A promise we need to keep,” Don said.
“A serious promise?”
“Yes,” Rodney said.
Jerri nodded. “I get that. I’ve made those kinds of promises before. To others. To myself. But I didn’t keep some of them. Maybe a lot of them.”
“Why?” Don asked, despite himself.
“Because sometimes, the people asking for the promise didn’t have my best interests in mind. People can be cruel, selfish, only thinking about themselves even as they inflict harm on others.”
“Is that why you moved out here?” Rodney asked.
“Partly,” Jerri said, still looking out at the moonlit fields.
“I don’t have to answer to anyone but myself.
I spent years trying to be something I’m not, and I had to make a decision: Either I got out, or I stayed and nothing changed.
” She laughed to herself. “Hardly anyone out here looks like me, but fuck it. I got out of a bad situation, and I sought absolution. I don’t think I could have asked for a better place to find it. ”
“Did you?” Don asked, thinking of a great many things.
“Maybe, maybe not. But it’s enough for me.” She glanced at them. “Absolution. You want to know what I learned about it?”
Rodney nodded.
“You have to want it. Above all else. Because it’s so easy to stay stuck down in the muck. Even as it tears at you, it feels safe because it’s familiar. But that safety is a lie. The muck is filled with apathy that can spread like poison.”
“It’s not that easy,” Rodney said.
“But it doesn’t have to be as hard as people make it out to be,” Jerri said. “Easier said than done, I know, but you can’t hold on to everything all the time.”
Don said, “We can try.”
She grinned at them. “Even now? Even near the end?” Glancing down at her watch, she said, “It’s almost time.”
“For what?” Rodney asked as Naks sniffed his trousers.
Jerri said, “I’m not a big people person.
Never really have been. Humans made art and music and dancing and books and films. People just …
continually disappoint. For all the cool things that exist, there are people trying to take it all away.
It’s why I like animals. A dog doesn’t give two shits if you think you’re a failure.
To them, you’re their entire world. Isn’t that crazy?
To us, dogs are part of our world. They come, and if we’re lucky, stick around for a good long time.
And then they leave us, bereft but so thankful we had the time we did.
But to dogs, we’re their entire world.” She reached down and gave Naks a good scratch around her ears. “Have you thought about the animals?”
Don blinked, looking at Rodney. “The animals?”
Jerri nodded. “The whales, the giraffes. The insects and the birds who eat them. Dogs, cats. Walruses. Lions. Wolves. Muskrats. Living in ignorance about what’s coming.
They’ll know, before the end, but not like we have.
They haven’t spent the last year holding their breaths, wondering what news is going to be given today.
They know this earth just the same as we do.
Maybe even better. It’s said ignorance is bliss.
We know that’s not true, even though we’re animals.
It’s more of a blissful unawareness. Isn’t that a gnarly way to live?
I wish I could have been an animal. I always wanted to be, ever since I could remember.
They’re not so different than us. Wilder, more feral, but they have minds all the same.
I respect them, on their terms. I never force myself.
That’s the problem with people. We insist. We call it persistence, but it’s all so selfish. All to protect our own interests.”
“Don’t animals do the same?” Rodney asked.
“No,” Jerri said. “There’s a difference.
They run on instinct, on survival. We think we’re smarter, we think we know more, that we’re better in every regard, only to show our whole asses by stealing land or taking our weapons to other countries and using American-made bombs to spread the message of freedom through exceptionalism.
We’re territorial, and greedy. That land is rich, why can’t I have it?
Those people have something I don’t, and I want it.
I’ll take it from them. Look at that land, I should own it.
See those mountains? Those trees? The rolling hills?
It belongs to someone or something else, but why can’t I take it? ”
“You sound as if you think humanity doesn’t deserve to survive,” Rodney said.
She waved him off. “That’s not for me to decide. But don’t act like there’s an abundance of evidence to the contrary. We are an angry, violent species. Of course it was going to end this way. From fire we’re made, and from fire we’ll be unmade.”
“Then what’s the point of doing anything?” Don asked helplessly.
“Good question,” Jerri said. “And one I don’t know that I’ll ever have an answer to. Do you know?”
Don shook his head, dumbfounded.
Jerri sighed. “I’m not trying to—” Then, “It’s starting. Like clockwork.” She turned back toward the fields.
Don and Rodney did too. Beyond them, open land. Mountains in the distance. Trees reaching toward the heavens. Flashes of light: ball lightning floating above the ground, though too far away to be dangerous. But all that fell away when he saw what Jerri was trying to show them.