Wolves
Sarah abandons Carmen for her own good. Chapter 29 of my serialized novel, The Lost City of Desire.
[This is a serialized novel, chapter by chapter. You can read the previous 28 chapters here. A new chapter will be delivered every week.]
I hiked all afternoon after leaving Carmen at Shonda’s place, and at sunset found myself looking out over a wide river, the Delaware, according to the map. I wondered if this was where Washington crossed with his troops to make a surprise attack on the Hessians.
A glint in the water, a flash near the shore. Jeez, a large drone had washed up onto the riverbank, muddy and wet and totally dead. I inched my way to the shore and picked up the device, which was about four feet across, but curiously, there were no propellers. How could it fly? I carried it up onto land and had to smash it over and over with a rock to get to find whatever treasure was inside. It wouldn’t crack until finally I picked a heavy stone above my head and slammed it down on the corner and the seams popped. Inside was nothing but empty space, nothing worthwhile at all. As I examined the smashed bits I wondered if this really was a drone. Had I ever really seen a true drone? This dead drone piqued my curiosity about the other side. What the hell was going on over there? Any culture that would rely on drones to spy on strangers wasn’t a good culture.
Then doubt flashed across my mind like a spotlight. What if my mother and father were now part of it all over there? What if they bought into all those ideas about New Yorkers. Why did I want to see them, if they’d abandoned me on purpose to live in that place? They’d chosen things and money over me.
These thoughts gave me serious jitters, and I felt like running back into the woods for a while to gather my thoughts, to sleep like a bear. I’d heard of drones shooting people, bombing houses, spraying fire and chemicals on crowds. I’d never seen it, but I’d heard of it. Everyone had. I didn’t want any danger.
I sat in the face of a large boulder and built twigs up for a fire while my fishing lines drifted in the river. I was really hungry. And kind of lonely. It would be sweet to have some roasted fish tonight. I collected driftwood and sparked a flame with my flint and steel and soon the campsite where the shore met the rocky beach was homey. I stacked more wood near the flames so there’d be plenty to fuel the dinner fire and burn through the night, for a little bit of warmth against the dark mountain chill.
The river flowed rapidly nearby, whitewater where it separated around boulders and stones. I’d made a simple shelter by tying my tarp between two trees, with one long flap stretching like a bird’s wing towards a third tree. Then I spread pine boughs on the ground for padding and unfurled the sleeping bag. This was going to be nice.
In the end, my drifting lines caught four trout and I gutted them and threaded a stick through their gills and hung them over the fire to roast. The smoke flavored them and I was starving by the time I ate, which made the meat extra delicious. After dinner I crawled into my sleeping bag and looked at the stars and talked to myself about what might be up there.
“I think there’s nothing,” I said. “I think it just goes on and on like that forever, just stars in the sky.”
I thought of Joe looking at the same stars. I pictured us both on a path towards the wall where we would meet. The paths were like lines in the sky connecting stars.
That night I awoke to the sound of several wolves howling nearby, a mournful and terrible sound that made me wish I was inside a warm cabin somewhere, a fire burning in the fireplace. I knew that wolves rarely attacked people. There were more than enough deer and rabbits and other animals around to keep the wolves fat and happy forever. Still, the moaning cry gave me a chill. I was human, after all, and humans didn’t have the sweetest history with wolves.
You had to wonder why such a creature had been created on this earth. It was so powerful and fast, so intelligent, that humans were almost certain to kill off the lot of them at some point. Wolves had been hunted and vilified for centuries, but I once found a t-shirt in a giant empty house on Gramercy Park that suggested that the relationship was more complicated than that. On the front of the shirt was a colorful drawing of an alpha wolf howling at the moon, his pack silhouetted behind him. The backside of the shirt read: It’s only human nature.
I lay on my back, eyes closed, drifting back into sleep. In the twilight that formed behind my eyes I joined the wolfpack in their woodsy lair. It was as real as my imagination could make it and the wolves let me stay with them – insisted on it – as they gorged on a deer and lallygagged around playfully, as though they had all the time in the world. And I guess they did.
I woke again to the sun with a heavy fog across the lower parts of the valley. And my wolf was gone. I could feel it. Maybe they’ll come back, I told myself. But in truth, I didn’t believe it.
Dreams for me were not harbingers of the truth. I felt that while they might be signals by which you could interpret much of the world, it was a good idea not to lend them too much credence. That would only lead to either paralysis, or extreme disappointment. I opened my pack and peaked at Shonda’s metal cylinder. So shiny and fresh – I wondered how old it might be. I pulled it out and rubbed it between my palms. It was beautiful, and made with true precision, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The seams that joined the metal were so slight as to be invisible. I had no idea about how to open it or turn it on or use it for anything. But I could tell it was a special thing, a rare object. I was counting on the notion that I would meet someone on the other side who had the smarts and the generosity to charge it and then help me understand what it did. Was it anything useful at all?
I lay back in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes for a second sleep. Before I knew it I was waking up to the sun filtering through poplar leaves. A bee buzzed it’s wings near my ears and I felt supremely happy to be on the road, with this adventure laid out in front of me. I felt urgency. And then it all hit me again.
I thought of Carmen, a captive in a sort of prison paradise – well, if not paradise then at least a place where she was well-treated and cared for, if still unable to leave. She must be going crazy, I thought. Somehow, I was going to get her out of there.