Paul Clayton - Crossing Over

“I wonder where they are,” said Marie as he stepped down on the emergency brake.

“I don’t know. Let me check it out and then we’ll decide what to do.”

Mike got out and shut the door. He heard Elly questioning her mother in a plaintive voice. He walked up the weed-filled slope of the shoulder and peered into the truck. It was empty and the keys were in the ignition. The vehicle didn’t appear to be damaged in any way. Out of curiosity, he turned the key; nothing happened. He checked to make sure it was in park; it was. Maybe the battery was dead or it had some kind of electrical short-circuit.

He walked back to the truck. Marie pushed the button, rolling the driver’s-side window down. She and Elly leaned toward him.

“It’s empty and it seems to have a bad battery or something. I’m going in the camp to see what’s up.”

Elly turned away from her mother and began to open the door. “I want to go with you.”

Marie’s voice was sharp. “No. Let Daddy go look. I want you to stay here and keep me company.”

Elly’s face darkened with frustration. “Okay.”

Mike looked at Marie. “I’ll be about ten minutes. If someone comes up, just crack the windows, don’t unlock the doors.”

Marie nodded.

Mike walked up the highway to the turn-off. He walked down the gravel road, coming to the white gate-posts. A hundred or so feet away he noticed that the flag pole was gone. There was no wind and his crunching footsteps the only sound as he trod the curving road. He came out into the camp. The buildings were all gone, in their places, rectangular whitish shadows on the ground. Half the vehicles seemed to be missing, and the half that remained were blackened, twisted hulks. He recalled the bright red lines in the sky the night before. So that’s what it had been—lasers. He left the road and walked toward the nearest shadow. It was ash, symmetrical, with a few things protruding from underneath, pipes, hunks of concrete, pig-tailed wires, the burnt remains of what looked like a washing machine and dryer. He walked further to where the HQ had been, now a huge rectangle of ash. Twenty feet away, two trucks lay in heat-twisted shapes. He approached and saw just behind them what looked like an ancient sculpture—three men sitting on a log or stone bench. They appeared to be carved from bone or ivory, granular and whitish. Two of them were missing limbs, one had no head. Mike thought of the captain and the young soldier, Gabe, that Elly had been so taken with. Not far away he saw three more mounds of ash—people fleeing? He turned and started walking back toward the gravel road. He paused. The unmistakable remains of a motorcycle lay etched into the earth. It appeared to be a smaller Japanese bike, maybe a Honda. He stared it. There was no way of telling if it was theirs. He started back to Marie and Elly, picking up his pace.

He sighed with relief as he came out of the turn-off and saw them sitting calmly in the truck. He got in and closed the door.

“Well,” said Marie, “were they there?”

Mike bit his lip and shook his head. “No. They evidently moved out, the whole bunch of them.”

“But I wanted to see Gabe,” Elly pouted.

“Just wait, Honey,” said Marie. “Maybe we’ll run into them further up the road.”

“No we won’t,” said Elly, on the verge of tears.

“It’s possible,” said Marie. “They have to be somewhere. If we don’t run into them before we get to the border, maybe after we cross over we can come back down and visit sometime. Right, Hon?”

“Maybe,” said Mike.

“Really?” said Elly, her voice tinged with suspicion.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “But for now we better keep on going. We have to find a place to spend the night. I don’t think we can make the border before it gets dark.”

As Mike drove north his mind returned to the burnt-out remnants of the camp. He pictured Moore, Gabe, and the others. He still couldn’t believe people had opted for war so quickly. He remembered the on-line posts, the vicious and cruel comments, mostly, it seemed, young men filled with righteous indignation that anyone would disagree with their fantasies about fighting a war. They were ignorant, without wives and children, most of them. Strong, they could fight or run fast if things went badly. Not so many others. How could people have been so stupid, throwing away the good for the perfect, the utopia? And now what the hell did they have, and who knew where or when it would end? How does anybody turn off something like this once it has started?

And what about him? What had he done or tried to do to stop the rush to this insanity? Not much. He had even waded into a few late-night Facebook insult fests, throwing away all reason and civility while giving vent to his own righteous anger. But—a nagging voice whispered in his head, why not fight? Neither side was black or white—and he would have to come down on one side eventually. He would. But not until he got his family to safety.

They drove just over an hour before they reached the border. They were about a quarter mile out from the border crossing station when they passed the first vehicle parked on the side of the highway. Another hundred yards up vehicles lined both sides of the road. Some were parked in the trees not far from the road. People could be seen talking beside their rigs, or sitting on metal folding chairs around small fires. There were all kinds and types of vehicles—campers, sedans, homemade rigs, even long semis converted to huge campers. The closer Mike got to the crossing station, the more crowded it became, and he realized he would have to turn back to get a place at the end of the line. He made a U-turn in front of the building, pulled over and double parked twenty feet from the entrance.

“I want to run in and take a look before we go back and park.”

Marie nodded tiredly as Elly slept beside her.

Mike walked up to the glass doors. He saw a handful of people inside, a security guard about ten feet away. He tried to push the door open but it was locked. He noticed the hours stenciled on the glass. Closed at 4:00. It was already twenty minutes past. He put his face close to the glass to get a sense of the place. The security guard saw him and approached. He opened the door and stepped out.

“I just wanted to look around,” said Mike.

The guard pointed to a large Quonset hut-type building. “That’s where you want to be,” he said. “That’s where all the action is now… on the Canadian side.”

“Really?” said Mike.

The guard went on, “They open at nine, but people begin lining up around seven.”

“Thanks,” said Mike. He studied the distant building. Through the windows he could see rope lines, a long counter, and in the back about a dozen chest-high cubicles. He went back to the truck.

They were up at seven. Marie made some hot wheat porridge. They had a little pancake syrup to put on it. There was no more saccharin for their coffee.

“We’re getting low on pintos, rice, and other things,” said Marie. “We’ll have to see if we can find some somewhere.”

Mike nodded. “We can go after we talk to the people in the station.”

“Okay. Hope it goes quick.”

Elly’s face was hopeful. “Do you think we’ll run into Gabe?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Mike. “After we talk to the immigration people we can see if there’s a local market. If you’re out and walking around, you’ll see lots of people and it will help you relax.”

“Okay,” said Elly.

They cleaned up the camper and at 8:00: started up to the border crossing office. The line started in the parking lot on the American side. They took their place, hands in pockets, as the damp cold air clung to them. Mike asked the man in front of them how long he thought it would be before they got in.