Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

After we had eaten and Curtis had had reconstituted beef stew and water, Glynn said, “I want to stay awake to keep the fire going. I’m going to stretch out for just a little while; do you think you can stay awake long enough to wake me in a couple of hours?”

“You bet,” I said. “You and Curtis roll up in that blanket and lie down beside the fire. It’s going to get cold before morning. I’ll poke you in a little while.”

“No longer than two hours,” she said, and called Curtis to her and rolled the Mylar blanket around them both, and stretched out before the fire.

“Night,” she mumbled sleepily, and I smiled in the darkness. I had no intention of waking her before dawn. I did not intend to let myself sleep. Now, now was the time to let go and sink down into it; to see how far I could go before I had to pull back before the howling pain and emptiness. Now, when no one else would have to bear the cost of it.

“Night, darling,” I said to her. She did not reply.

I pulled the blanket more closely around Laura and put the trailing end of it around my shoulders. We lay close together, she breathing slowly, I staring into the fire and trying to unclench the frozen fist inside me. I was not cold; the fire warmed my body, but the space around my heart was cold once more as it had been when I had first lain down on the earth above T.C.

I don’t know if I can let it go, I said to him. I don’t know if I’ll still have you if I do.

I said you would, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that ?

It doesn’t feel like it.

Then take it on faith .

T.C., you said I’d always have you and you’d have me as long as you lived. So now what? Damn it, have I…has—what did you call her? The Merritt of Merritt’s Creek—is she with only you now? Do I still have any of her?

I said you still have me, didn’t I? Well, if you have me, you have her. As long as you still have me, she’ll be with you .

What am I going to do with her back in Atlanta, T.C.? Nobody there even knows who she is. Do I have to hide her; will she ambush me; what if I can’t find her after all? Or suppose if I can. I don’t think Pom would know what to do with her. I don’t think she would know what to do with Pom. Not with anybody but you.

If you’re smart you’ll let her out and sic her on ol’ Pom and let her just flat turn him inside out. You’d be a fool to waste that woman, Merritt .

He may not be able to accept her.

Then he’s a fool too, a worse one than I think he is. Don’t go hunting tomorrow’s trouble. Carpe Diem. How many times do I have to say it .

I turned over restlessly, and Laura stirred.

“Who you talkin’ to?” she said thickly.

“T.C.,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Oh,” she said, and did.

The thing is, you don’t need to settle, Merritt. Use everything you were up here. Use it to get what you want back there .

What do I do with all that leftover love? That was yours.

Didn’t I hear you say that love made more love? Didn’t I hear you tell Glynn that yesterday morning ?

Yes…

Well, then .

I must have slept after all, because presently the little fire fell in on itself and sent a shower of sputtering sparks up into the night like fireflies, and I started up. It was cold, but drier. Beyond me, wrapped in silver, Glynn slept on. But Curtis had lifted his head and was staring off into the black space beyond the wavering fire. As I watched, the hackles rose at the base of his powerful neck, and I saw his lips go back, and caught the gleam of his long white teeth, and heard his low, menacing growl. It was soft and sibilant, and went on and on, and in that moment there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that something purely and simply evil waited just outside the circle of the dying light.

My heart pounding queerly, I rose to my knees and reached out very slowly and picked up the knife that Glynn had taken out of her pocket and laid on the earth beside her, so that she would not roll on it. I unfolded its blade, still staring at the place where Curtis looked. The growling went on and on, soft and low and utterly terrible. I felt my own hair prickle at the back of my neck, and felt the little puckering of the fine hairs on my arms. I waited there on my knees, not breathing.

Then it ebbed. Whatever it had been was simply not there anymore. After an endless moment, Curtis looked around at me, gave me a toothy, embarrassed grin and thumped his tail, and laid his head back on his paws. He closed his eyes. I felt sweat break out at my hairline and under my arms, and then I got up silently and built the fire back up and sank down again beside Laura. I don’t know how long I had slept before the falling of the little logs waked me, but when I looked up at the sky the fog had gone, and the stars burned huge and silver and gaudy in the sky.

Didn’t I say I’d always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up .

I take your point, I said, and pulled the silver blanket back around me and slept without moving until dawn. When I woke, it was to the huge, clattering sound of a helicopter that seemed to hover directly over us, filling the cold morning world with noise and wind and confusion, and we had been found.

I wouldn’t have believed you could set a copter down anywhere in that scrambled wilderness, but the young National Guard pilot did, and quite neatly. Soon we were spinning low over the line of the landslide, heading south. From the air you could see where the snake had thrashed and convulsed; in the mountains there was devastation, but it ended with the far edge of the landslide that had obliterated the road. On the far side, the trees stretched away unbroken and unvanquished, and the small towns and suburbs that I could see beyond them looked fairly whole. There were many fires in them, though; I could see their smoke. Gas fires, the pilot said, from where the heaving earth had broken the mains and the winds had whipped the fires alive. Further north whole sections of San Francisco were burning.

“Looked like the start of Desert Storm from the air last night,” the pilot said.

“How bad was it? The quake?”

“Don’t know yet. Big as Loma Prieta at least,” he said. “Hardly any towns and cities for about two hundred miles around that haven’t taken a hit. Don’t have any casualty counts yet. I been in the air since last night.”

“Have you found many people?”

“Just you all. It’s you I been hunting. Somebody said in Boulder Creek that they’d seen a fire up in the Santa Cruz’s around Big Basin. I didn’t see nothing, though, till the sun came up. Saw it reflecting off them blankets then. Don’t know if we ever would’ve found you if it had been foggy.”

He followed the now intact road down to Boulder Creek and set us down on a football field behind the high school. A welter of tents, large and small, had been set up, and from the air the big red crosses told us who would be succoring us. There were trees down on the earth here, too, and the school itself sat strangely askew, but it stood. I did not see much of the rubble that would have marked completely destroyed houses and buildings, but everything I did see leaned or canted slightly and horribly. The whole scene looked like a child with little coordination had drawn it, just awry enough to be unsettling.

“There’s bigger aid stations around, but they’re jammed,” the pilot said. “You’ll be better off here. They got a full medical staff just waiting. It’ll be a while before the folks from the mountains start coming in. There anybody else you know of up there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Up at the very top of the ridge, where an old fire tower used to stand. You don’t have to hurry, though.”