Race Across the Sky (26 page)

June walked quickly back outside, down Main Street, to the bench.

“Oh God, Caley,” she whispered into his ear as she bent over him.

Caleb listened to her, still as stone.

“He
told
them that,” she almost shrieked when she had finished.

He looked at her. A ranger, a police officer, would see their dusty hair, dirty faces, the scratches along their forearms from the backcountry branches, the pallor of Lily's skin. Things might not progress well from there.

Caleb calmly stood up and unzipped June's yellow backpack. He found sunscreen and gently rubbed it into Lily's soft face and throat and neck and shoulders. Circles of dirt appeared over her cheeks; it must have been his fingers. He took out a soft white sun hat and tied it under her chin.

“Did you hear me?”

He fit Lily snugly into the purple pack and slipped it back over his shoulders, adjusted his weight, and snapped the belt around his waist. He blinked into the sun.

Then he started to run.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

S
hane stood in their narrow kitchen, sweat running down his forearms, and began removing the contents of their open refrigerator.

He looked at the eggs, leftover pho, bacon, and milk at his feet, trying to judge which of them possessed some intrinsic right to stay.

“What are you doing?”

Janelle surprised him; he nearly jumped. He'd thought she was out for the afternoon with Nicholas. He turned to face her. She wore a thin black raincoat for the May drizzle, house keys still grasped in her right hand, Nicholas napping in his plastic bucket seat behind her.

“Close the front door?” he asked her quickly.

“Shane . . .”

“If the doorbell rings, don't answer it.” He blinked rapidly. “Or the phone.”

Janelle stepped closer, looking at the food on the floor, its condensation pooled on the tile like the blood of a mass murder. She arched her eyebrows questioningly. Shane steeled himself and pointed to the styrofoam cooler propping the refrigerator door open.

“It's the medicine.”

Janelle hesitated, processing. Then she stepped backward. “Oh, Jesus.”

“It's not body parts, for God's sake.”

“You really did it.” She repeated to herself quietly. “You really did it.”

“I just need to hold this here for a few days.”

“Hold it here? You sound like a coke dealer.” She came closer, peering at the cooler. “Why can't I answer our phone?”

“Because,” he offered helplessly.

“You want to elaborate?”

“Because Helixia found out. They know everything. They sent some asshole, he tried to take it.”

Janelle's eyes narrowed furiously. He was fairly certain he had never seen this look in them before. “Who?”

“Jon Benatti? He knocked the cooler out of my hands. Some of the vials broke.”

“They what?”

“I just need time to find a medical storage facility for what's left. These have to stay at fifty-one degrees until then. I found the temperature control on the fridge.” He pointed, nodding. “It's inside the door.”

And then, as if some biblical demon had suddenly abandoned her, Janelle pulled off her black raincoat, let it fall, and knelt beside the cooler. She pulled off its styrofoam top with a squeak. The vials emitted a smell like contact lens fluid. She ran her hands along a row of vials.

“They're cracked,” she agreed.

Shane joined her on his knees and pushed the glass aside. “The layers underneath look okay. But there might be some microscopic cracks. I don't know.”

Janelle opened a cabinet above the sink and found a large glass mixing bowl. She began wiping each vial with a tissue, and inspecting it, holding the tissue to the light. If it was dry, she wrapped that vial carefully and placed it delicately into the bowl.

He joined her. They worked together quietly, checking the small vials with red stoppers and transferring the surviving ones from the cooler into the bowl. For the first time in months, Shane felt the sense of entwinement, and when his hand grazed hers she allowed him to linger.

“Twenty-one,” Janelle counted, when the cooler was empty.

“I got twenty-two.”

“Trust me, it's twenty-one.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “How many did you guys make?”

“Forty.”

In a gentler voice, she asked, “How many do you need?”

“If it works? She'll need two shots a year.”

“So, there's enough to last until she's forty-three.”

“That's not enough.”

“No,” she agreed, “it isn't.”

“The world,” Shane told her, “will have to get on it by then.”

From the living room Nicholas broke into a full cry, and they each tensed.

“I told you something like this was going to happen,” she whispered.

“You did.”

“You did it anyway.”

“Look, I just have to get this to Caleb. Then it's all over.”

“How are you doing that?”

Shane shook his head in frustration. “I can't reach him.”

“Why not?”

“He stopped working at that store, and he's not answering any letters. I think I should drive it to Boulder, explain to him how to store it.”

“Jon Benatti?” she shook her head. “I can't believe that little douchebag.”

“I almost put him through a windshield.”

“Calm down. You're shaking.”

Shane sat in a kitchen chair and pushed his hand through his hair. “You can't ever see things coming.”

“It's all right.”

Shane sighed deeply. He had never, he realized, felt this exhausted.

“I'll get Nicholas,” Janelle said quietly, and left the room.

He heard her speaking gently to the baby, carrying him upstairs, singing sweetly into his ear. Shane took deep breaths, trying to find the comfort his son was feeling just hearing her voice. It was not, he saw, forthcoming.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

The souvenir shops faded away, leaving only sugar pines along the sides of the road.

The road took a stunning sweep into the Sierras, during which Caleb almost forgot to count his breaths, or to recite his affirmations, almost forgot about the weight of Lily on his shoulders. He was lost in the curves and turns, the undulating ascents and descents over sheer granite, the mountain wall on his left and the rolling green mountain fields below him on his right. The energy he took from them was real and wonderful. It was so different from the blankness of the void. Running out here was like being plugged directly into the inner workings of it all. He felt alive and untethered to the earth.

Every so often a car would pass them from the other direction, headed toward Yosemite. So far only a handful had passed on their side. Each made June grab his arm and squeeze, for they knew no drivers were expecting to encounter them on the narrow shoulder. They could be hit or run off the road ridiculously easily. But at least none were police cars. They should hit the next town soon, Caleb thought, and then June could rest and he could try Shane again.

Some miles later the land flattened out and the green hills turned into hay-colored marsh. The geography out here was so new to him; he supposed he had never seen anything like it. The highway was sun-bleached, faded and forgotten. They found themselves in an almost lunar landscape of bare red clay, spotted with occasional green shrubs as if a bored road worker had lazily tossed them there. The light, undulating road reminded him of sound waves.

In the middle of this, June gripped his wrist hard.

He looked to her.

“I need to stop.”

He could feel Lily in the backpack above him, playing with the ends of his hair. “No, breathe with the air.”

“I don't think I can go anymore.”

“You have to. Let go. Smile at the sky.”

A halting hour passed. They moved in perfect solitude.But June began limping noticeably, holding her side. Caleb could see the energy dripping out of her and onto the gray road. They slowed to a walk, and he took her hand.

“You can do it,” he told her. “We can't be far.”

And then a noise gathered from the distance. It reminded him of something, a thing he had heard before, a rumble of sound, increasing, accelerating. And suddenly their mountain road was cut off by an explosion of eighteen wheelers coughing black spray, speeding SUVs, small cars whipping past them, blurs of color, deafening sound, a horrid thickening of the air. Lily burst out crying. Caleb stopped, his chest heaving, body dripping sweat, staring unbelievingly as they faced the onslaught of Interstate 120. It shot across their quiet road on a brutal and unforgiving diagonal, cutting them off.

There was no way across.

June bent over, panting. Above him, the baby was unhappy.

Caleb exercised a deep squat, and June took her from the backpack and sat down on the last patch of gray earth with her. She stroked Lily's head as she rummaged through her yellow pack. Caleb watched the thunder of the interstate, hands on his hips. He turned as June found a jar of baby-food peas and popped it open. Bugs emerged abruptly from everywhere. The smell was so thick that he became nauseated.

“The shortest distance to the next town has to be along the shoulder.”

June shook her head, feeding Lily, who was quiet now. “We can't be on the shoulder of that thing. Everyone driving by will see us. They're going to think our car broke down and call the police for help. We're not even a town away.”

Caleb worked through what would certainly happen: the police would find that they matched exactly the description of the couple being searched for in Yosemite, unfit parents who had wandered off from a strange group from Colorado without proper food or clothing. Lily would be turned over to Protective Services, examined by an overworked local doctor who wouldn't stop to think about genetic malfunctions. They would place her in foster care. Who knows how long they would keep her? He saw what Mack had done by telling the rangers about their lives. The simple truth was enough to punish them in the harshest possible manner.

“Hold on.” In his voice he detected a scratch of panic. “I'll run up the highway, find a phone, and call Shane. You stay here with Lily and rest. I'll be fine. By myself I look like a guy taking a jog.”

“You don't look anything like that,” she informed him.

Caleb squinted into the noxious haze. To the right of the interstate there were dense woods. Caleb stepped closer, saw something there. A few yards into them, a narrow path had been beaten by road workers and littered with candy-bar wrappers, cigarette butts, soda cans. It was separated from the interstate by a thin curtain of brush and trees.

A semi exploded past, and its sound sent Lily into tears.

“Take her with you,” June told him as the baby cried loudly.

“What?”

“I'm not keeping her out here in the open, where police could see us, in this heat. With these trucks. She needs milk and shade.”

June began pulling the rest of the money, the blue fleece pullover Lily had worn at night in the van, a bottle, diapers, a stained white sun hat out of her yellow pack, and began shoving them into the big Kelty.

Caleb was still confused. “What about you?”

“I need time to rest. I'll be fine.”

June's breaths shook her whole body. She changed the baby, kissed her ten times, and buckled her back into the backpack.

Caleb stretched his back, lifted the backpack, and nodded. “We'll be back for you in an hour.”

“Don't come back.”

Caleb stared at her.

“I'll hitch there. Don't bring my baby back to this place.”

“I'm not leaving you here in the
woods
.” His frustration was mounting. His body was slowing down, and once it crashed there would be no restarting it.

“Just go to the first exit you see,” June cried. “Go to the first place to get food. Call Shane. I'll meet you there.”

“No, we could get confused.”

“You can't miss the first place at the first exit. Sit in a window booth. Let her sleep. I'll see you in there.”

Caleb looked around helplessly, staring at the speeding trucks in front of him, the trees to his right, the hot sky above, as if beseeching them for answers. From above him Lily started crying again.

“Take my daughter out of here.”

Caleb shook his head no.

“
Go!
” June shouted at him.

And without another word, he started into the woods.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

I
n the lobby no security guards pounced on him.

Riding the elevator Monday morning, Shane suffered visions of the entire Commercial Department turning to watch him walk through the hall like a high school kid caught with contraband. But then he blinked and saw Stacey tossing him her baseball as if nothing had happened. During that short ride, Shane seemed to exist in a world where a dozen different realities existed simultaneously; all he had to do was pick the one he liked most.

He got off on the executive floor and started down to Dennis's office. Dennis's assistant Danielle saw him approaching, she picked up her headset and called someone, her voice intentionally muffled, her brown eyes darting to him as he arrived. For his part, Shane stood with his hands clasped behind his back, studying a bright painting of a horse on the brick wall.

Some minutes later, Tonya Jackson, a large woman from Human Resources in a bright purple suit, and a slight young man who was clearly of the legal profession, walked into Dennis's office. The door closed behind them. Some minutes passed. Shane spent them considering all the places he might take Nicholas this spring: a Giants game, music in the park. It would be great fun, he thought, to be a real dad, present. Then Danielle nodded for him to go inside.

As Shane entered the office he recalled his interview, just less than a year earlier. As before, Dennis sat, his torso towering above his desk, the gray hair over the young face, the Scottish black brows, his blue eyes as warm as ever.

He greeted him in his deep baritone. “Shane.”

“Hi, Dennis,” Shane replied breezily, returning the kind vibe.

Dennis sighed. “I'm really miserably disappointed.”

“I'm right there with you.”

“Can you please explain this to me? What were you guys doing?”

“I was doing some pro bono work after hours. It didn't affect my work here in any way.”

“You asked me. You asked Dineesh. You even asked Anthony. And we all told you no.”

“You told me not to apply for an orphan grant. And I didn't. What I do on my own time should not be a company concern. It doesn't impact the company in any way.”

Dennis sat straight, his eyebrows arching. “You took a patented protein from our lab and cloned it. That's not acting as a private citizen, that's theft.” He took an audible breath. “Unless, is that postdoc exaggerating?”

“Depends,” Shane said, “on what he's saying.”

Dennis rumbled, “He's a prick.”

“We can agree on that.”

“Jon brought him in to talk. And as soon as he was finished telling us about you and Prajuk Acharn, do you know what he did?”

“What?”

“He asked for a job.”

Shane smiled. “Really? He did that?”

Dennis shook his head in disbelief, and for a moment they almost shared a laugh. The moment passed. “Jon told him we don't have any postdoc positions available. And the kid said then he wouldn't give an affidavit about what you guys were doing.” Dennis rubbed a large hand through his thick gray hair. “Do you know why?”

“I don't.”

“Because he doesn't want to hurt his
reputation
. He says no one will hire a postdoc they can't trust.”

“Smart kid.”

Dennis's eyes darted to the others, who sat together on a tan couch behind Shane like spectators at a ball game.

Tonya spoke.

“Did you and Doctor Prajuk Acharn isolate, clone, and humanize a therapeutic IgE antibody patented by Helixia?”

“I'm fired, right?” Shane asked Dennis.

“You were fired Friday.”

Shane nodded. “I did some of those things. But I worked alone. I asked Doctor Acharn a bunch of questions, tricked him kind of. He didn't know what I was doing. As for the antibody, I can assure you that no protein created at this company was used for the purpose for which it has been patented.”

He watched Dennis's dark eyebrows arch curiously at that.

From behind him the lawyer interjected angrily, “You removed a vector with patented material from our premises and copied it.”

“I broke no law.”

“You broke corporate policy.”

“That,” Shane agreed, “may be a different matter.”

Dennis leaned forward, watching him intently. “Your postdoc said you're giving what you made to a baby?”

“He's all 'roided out. It's messing with his brain.”

“You mentioned a baby to me, and to Anthony. A baby you knew.”

A security guard appeared in the doorway.

“Hey, Jose,” Shane nodded to him.

“Shane,” he replied uncomfortably.

“What about Prajuk?” Shane asked them.

Tonya Jackson took that one. “Doctor Acharn is one of our most important scientists, and a trusted colleague of Steven Poulos.”

A cool stream of relief flooded his chest. He turned back to Dennis. “I really loved working here. I think you guys are geniuses.”

“It sounds like you've seen counsel. Whoever you saw, make sure you get even better.”

Tanya stood and handed him a manila folder full of documents and began to speak about the immediate termination of all benefits. When she finished, Jose followed him out of the room.

“Sorry, but I got to escort you straight out the building.”

“Sure.” Shane headed down to the lobby. Standing by the elevator, he smiled. “I've got a picture of my family on my desk.”

“I'll get it to you, man.”

Shane shook Jose's hand and walked into the cool day. He got into his car and without a second's pause drove out of the lot, past the McDonald's where Prajuk had first told him about closed and open doors, the Thai Orchid, where he had snuck quick dinners with Janelle before they were married. He took the short road to Greenway Plaza, stopped in the lot he had grown to love, and called her. He realized with a sharp pain deep in his side that he had just obliterated any chance she had of ever going back to her job.

She picked up frantically. “Why haven't you answered your phone?”

“I had it off during my . . .” It hit him then. “What happened to Nicholas?”

“Caleb's here.”

He sat up straight, as some force lurched from the ground and slammed into his body.

“Put him on.”

“Not here in the house. He's up in Yosemite.”

“Yosemite Park?” Shane squeezed his eyes closed, trying to orient himself.

“He wants you to get him. He's at a hotel. The Groveland Hotel.”

“You spoke to him?”

Janelle took an audible breath; in it Shane could feel her attempt to stay calm. “No, he left a message. He's with that woman, and her baby.”

Shane's head spun, his arm felt numb, things in front of him seemed to slow drastically.

“I called the number but whoever answered didn't know who he was.”

“When he calls back, give him my cell. I'm on my way there. I love you.”

He screeched out of the lot, and took the 101 as fast as the old car would handle. How long was it to Yosemite? He had friends who'd gone up for camping weekends, and it seemed to him that they had said it was three or four hours. He would be fighting daytime traffic, trucks, and tolls to the East Bay. Then it should open up.

But at the Bay Bridge he slowed to a crawl, alternately gunning the engine and braking. It was afternoon, he clenched his jaw; no one should be going anywhere. Who were all of these people, not to be in their offices and homes?

Shane punched his steering wheel as the car stood still on the Bay Bridge, hovering vulnerably over the waving water.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

In the woods the humidity jumped; he feared ticks and small snakes, tripping over tree roots, and branches that might scratch Lily's face.

He kept only a thin curtain of trees and brush between him and the highway, so that he was always just a few steps away. It would be a horrible thing to be lost in these mountains.

He walked quickly on this slight path for over an hour. At a certain point, he acclimated to the humidity and realized that the air felt fresh and full of pine. And he began to enjoy himself. The plants and leaves slipped off their coats, revealing a single, vibrating, golden energy. Caleb felt the forest rooting for them.

He reached up and back, and held Lily's dangling hand, as he made his way along the workmen's trail. Later the ground sloped abruptly, and he met the concrete barrier of a curving off-ramp. A truck took it slowly, and Caleb peered over it. Below, he saw a cluster of gas stations, fast-food signs, and cars. He guessed they had gone four or five miles.

“Okay, Lulu,” he said cheerfully, “let's get you some milk.”

A steep decline like this was worrisome with his tired quads. If he slipped he would fall with her face unprotected. Caleb moved deliberately. At the bottom of the ramp, he found himself suddenly amidst the world. The first place with food, he repeated to himself. He passed two gas stations next to each other on the left side of the street. Did those count? No, she had meant a place you could sit. Across the street, he saw a small truck stop diner.

He stopped outside of it, on a concrete parking area. He slid off the pack, balanced it carefully on its three poles, and lifted Lily out. He kissed her strawberry hair, stuck to her sweating forehead.

“Let's go,” he told her.

Inside the diner the intensity of the air conditioning, the smell of the grease, the sudden noise, launched his body into a kind of shock. Caleb moved uncertainly to the back counter and sat Lily on it, and himself on a stool in front of her, as sweat poured from his body onto the floor.

“Can I have a glass of milk, and some water, please?”

A middle-aged waitress nodded without looking up.

“And do you have a phone?”

She shook her head no. “There's one at the Mobil.”

The waitress set a tall, chipped red plastic glass of cold milk onto the counter with a crack that made Caleb snap his head up. Caleb poured it into Lily's bottle and placed it into her wide, grasping hands. His senses heightened to the point of abstraction: colors lifted from the truckers' plaid shirts, swirled in the air. Outside the window, a nuclear bomb irradiated the county; it took him a moment to appreciate this as the noon sun. He slammed a full glass of metallic tap water, reached over the counter to a small metal pitcher, refilled it, and drank it down again.

“What can we get you?” the waitress asked, looking at him and Lily more closely.

“Bananas. Pancakes. Applesauce,” he said, hoping June had given him enough money to pay for it. “Do you have a bathroom?”

“Over there.”

He carried Lily to a plastic changing station and checked her diaper. It was wet. This was good, it meant she was still somewhat hydrated. Changing her, she batted at him like a kitten, her eyes playful, her lips happy. June was right, it would be madness to take her back into the woods. All that mattered was getting her to San Francisco, and whatever treatment Shane had waiting for her. June could hitch or walk here when she was ready. In the meantime he would get Shane going.

When the food came he held Lily on his lap, fed her, and ate while she played a game of pushing pink packets of sugar around the sticky countertop. Then he filled her bottle with cold milk and rummaged through the backpack for the cash which June had shoved into it. He found a bunch of crumpled tens, twenties, and singles, paid, and took a glass of icewater with him to the door to find that pay phone.

Outside, country and hip-hop played in tandem from the idling trucks. The sun blasted his eyes. His head hurt, he had eaten too much sugar too quickly, had too much rest. He stood staring at the trucks, black exhaust, loud diesel engines, pickups, neon signs, fast-food smells, gas stations, insanity—he felt it all pressing in on him. It was not safe here, he realized, among this plowed and destroyed earth. His eyes madly sought the trees. But they were far away, across the busy street, up in the hills. He felt that his body was about to collapse. Then, without an ice bath, he would go into shock. What would happen to the baby? There was no way that he could wait here for hours for June or Shane. His plan, he saw, was fatally flawed.

What was he supposed to do? The carbohydrates and potassium shook his systems, his liver needed to know whether to produce more glycogen, his body needed to know if he was running or stopping? He was sixty or so miles into this run, just warming up. And he had learned one thing, one thing with absolute certainty during his life: when in doubt, the answer was always to run.

Behind the gas station, Caleb noticed a narrow road leading away from the noise of trucks and people. It seemed to run parallel to the choked highway. He hesitated, confused at the progression of his thoughts. June would understand, he knew, as soon as she saw they were not at the diner, that he had needed to keep moving. A shaking began at the bottom of his tailbone and wormed up his spine. Here was the moment, move or fall. Here was the pivotal decision. Sit and wait for them, and possibly the police, to find him here? Or continue forward?

He doused Lily's sun hat with water from the red glass and tied it under her throat. He found the sunscreen and applied it liberally onto her skin. With a kiss he buckled her in.

“You all right, Lulu?” he called up as he pulled on the Kelty. He was rewarded with a playful tap upon his sunburned head.

Caleb started across the four-lane street, holding his hand up to slow approaching vehicles. He walked along the side of the gas station and began to jog the small brown road. Ahead he saw tanned hills dotted with Holsteins. He made cow sounds; Lily giggled and tried, he thought, to copy him. The movement was magic; his energy was back. Things, it seemed, were in their proper motion. Twisting rust-colored manzanitas splayed at his ankles as he pushed into a jog. He reached behind and tugged on her small ankle. What was Lily experiencing up there? It must feel like flying; he supposed it must be wonderful.