James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

Light green covered the walls in the new shaft. He checked. “American Express,” he said to her. “Don’t leave home without it.”

Pure white reflected the light in the small room the shaft led to. Eric chuckled. Sears cards, of course. In the middle of the room stood a large grandfather clock. Earth Dancers formed a semi-circle around it and sat on the stone floor. The woman lit two torches on the wall, then placed her torch in an empty niche. She knelt in front of the clock and pressed her forehead to the floor. How out of place the clock looks, Eric thought. A beautiful piece of work, though. Its mirrored oak finish and polished brass fittings called to his mind paneled drawing rooms. No, smoking rooms, where massive, overstuffed leather chairs held proper gentleman who smoked pipes and read from gilt-edged books. “Your drink, sir,” the butler would say, and in the background, the grandfather clock ticked majestically, calling out the hour with measured chimes.

All of the naked Earth Dancers leaned toward the clock until their foreheads pressed against the floor. This is a cathedral! I’m in a place of worship. Why have they brought me here?

After a minute where no one moved, the woman, barely raising her head, crawled to the base of the clock and opened the glass front that covered the weights and pendulum. Blindly she groped in the cavity until she touched the pendulum, then she pushed it so if began moving back and forth. Each swing grew shorter, and the clock didn’t tick. She pushed it again, looking at Eric this time.

“It’s just a clock,” he said. His face flushed, and he felt embarrassed for their posture. He pictured their wild leaps at the moon, their wonderful patterns of dance. They belonged. They were scary and primitive and feral, but they seemed proud. He was the one that was out of place, in his clothes, in his remembrances. “It’s just an old, dead clock from a world that never existed.” He spat the words. Anger filled him too. They hadn’t chosen him from the camp because there was a special connection. They didn’t know him from anyone else. He was just the oldest, the most likely to know how to fix the clock. The closest human to their parents’ age.

She kept her head on the floor. The pendulum stopped. Eric’s] head sagged. He felt tired. It’s late, he thought, and I should be asleep. Voice thick with irony, he asked, “Does anyone know the time?” Her eyes pleaded with him to help, and again she reminded him of Leda whose eyes were so expressive, and he said, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know exactly why he was apologizing, but he knew he should. “You’re not responsible for your gods. I mean, they’re not your fault. You’ve been sold a bill of goods by moms and dads who didn’t even know what they were doing.”

He thought, at least this god, if that is what it is, when it works is visible. At least this god is dependable and regular. This god keeps good time, and a god could do a lot worse than that. He stepped into the circle, and, not knowing what to do, bowed a little before peering into the clock. The woman crawled out of his way.

“Have you tried pulling on the weights?” Bottoms of three acorn patterned, brass weights barely showed at the top of the case. “Of course you have.” But he pulled one to the bottom anyway. When he let go, it rattled back to the top.

“I had a pendulum clock once,” he said. “Here, give me a torch.” No one moved. He got one himself and held it so it cast light inside. This is tricky work, he thought. When the flame approached the clock close enough to see the works, it also scorched his cheek. He didn’t want to singe the wood, so he put the torch back, reached inside and worked by touch. As he hoped, just like his clock at home, the main weight pulley screw was loose so that the gear on the back of it wasn’t engaging anymore. Awkwardly reaching both hands inside, he pushed the pulley wheel against the gears, then tightened the screw by hand. This time when he pulled the weight down, it stayed.

“Here goes,” he said and pushed the pendulum. The ticking echoed loudly in the small chamber. Dawn light doused the last and brightest stars as Eric and the Earth Dancer climbed down the steep path into Coal Creek Canyon. “It’s been a pleasure,” he said, “being able to help you.” She reached the bottom and waited for him. During the hike back, she stayed much closer than she had on the way to their home. In the morning light, she seemed much smaller than she had in her moon-lit costume, and though she seemed no less animal-like, she was less threatening. Her smell at close quarters was almost overpowering, pure mountain creature.

Eric found himself staring at her as she walked in front of him across the highway, the muscles in her back and butt contracting pleasantly at each stride, and even though she was narrow-hipped, she still had a slight side to side sway.

“Stop it, Eric,” he said. “She’s young enough to be your great-granddaughter.” Then to her, he said, “You know, some of the young men I’m traveling with have dreams about you. Maybe you ought to not be such a stranger.” She didn’t even look back. He’d been talking to her the whole walk. No one in camp appeared to be awake yet. Fifty yards from the sleeping men, she stopped, facing Eric. He thought he might have a few dreams about her himself. “I’d invite you for breakfast, but I think you need a coat.”

Impassive, she looked at him, and he could tell now, peering through the white powder that covered her face, that her eyes were brown. He wanted to shake her hand, or hug her, but he was sure she would run away, and now he didn’t want this odd meeting to end. “You’ll have to fix the clock yourself the next time,” he said.

The woman reached out and held his wrist. Shocked, Eric flinched but didn’t pull away. She pressed his hand against his chest, then pulled it to her breast, holding it palm flat to her. She said, slowly and distinctly in a low, throaty voice, another reminder of Leda, “Don’t tell them where we live.” Then she let go and ran across the road. Eric stood for a long time watching the last place he’d seen the Earth Dancer. Finally he walked into the camp, trying to decide what he could tell them of the night. Before he bent over to shake Teach awake, he realized he could still feel the shape of her breast in his hand.

After a breakfast of strong herb tea and hard bread, where Eric told the party almost nothing of his evening, Teach pulled him aside.

“You got some secrets last night, that’s obvious, but maybe you can tell me something about this.” He took Eric to a spot outside the camp where a blanket lay on the ground. “We covered it up so the wind wouldn’t get at it.”

He pulled the blanket away. “It’s what the Earth Dancer woman was drawing in the dirt before you went with her. Does it mean anything to you?”

Eric rubbed his throat, and an almost religious ecstasy filled him. The world is a magical stage, he thought; she did choose me. She knew who I was. The drawing, sketched in the dirt she had smoothed so carefully, was a noose.

No breath! Eric opened his mouth wide—his jaw pressed against the rope buried in his neck, but no air came in. Pressure pulsed in his forehead and droned in his ears.

He thought, I don’t have to die. He pointed his toes and felt beneath him for the stool. Darkness hid it. He was blind. If I catch it with my foot, I can tip it up or maybe stand on it. His foot bumped something and he stretched, but he couldn’t find it again. I’m spinning or swinging, he thought. Reach! Take the weight off the rope. Breathe! His tongue filled his mouth. Time slowed. His hands clenched in fists behind his back, firmly tied. He opened them—felt his fingertips press together. Consciousness divided. A part concentrated on the sensations: rope, choking, dangling; a part separated and saw him twisting above the floor, and a part went back to his fingers touching behind his back so much like prayer. Dad used to take him to church every Sunday when he was little. He kicked his feet, weaker now.