The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (50 page)

Now there were almost no evergreens. And he was walking fast and faster. He was almost warm. Why the sudden sense of optimism? He could still be miles from anyone who could help. Any second now, he would trip over the body of the last guy abandoned by God in the middle of a crisis. It probably happened all the time. His eyes were still watering. His cheeks were wet. The woods thinned. He was at a crossroads.

The road he had climbed—he only now noticed that he had been walking uphill—plateaued and continued through the intersection and beyond, flatter now, no longer an undulation underfoot. It stretched ahead, as far as Seth could see, toward a vanishing point. But what if it actually vanished at that point? It looked so unused that he could easily imagine it terminating in a field, thinning and running aground, sliding under the floating wreck of a pioneer cabin. You still saw them sometimes, roof beams rotted and caved, mysterious holes in the log walls. He imagined taking that road, and living out his days in the ghost cabin, combing wheat seeds out of hulls with his teeth and chewing them raw,
drinking the nectar of wildflowers, beard long and soft across his naked chest as he trance-huddled against the one standing wall of his shelter. But what if he couldn’t grow a long beard? He had never tried.

The crossing road delineated a wilder from a tamer place, woods from field, overgrown from overcleared.
Two roads diverged in a wood
 … He had walked out of the wild and had to choose: walk into the tame or take the road that straddled these ways of being?
Way leads on to way …

To his left, west. He took a couple of experimental steps, shoes crunching gravel, and it felt so good he kept going, up hill and down dale until he came to the ocean. And kept going and discovered he could breathe underwater. He had simply never tried. Perhaps it only worked in salt water. Sundar and Sita were there. The water had pieced them back together and there they lived, swimming with the fishes. Sita couldn’t swim before. But necessity is the mother of mothers.

Then there was the appeal of the east. He looked back over his shoulder at it. The vast expanse of where he came from. He jumped and was pulled back there, legs and arms flung from the force of the vortex that funnelled along the road.
The widening gyre
. He spun, he tumbled, he flew, miming in reverse the actions that had brought him to the crossroads, till he was shocked back into the darkness of the womb.

East or west: it was his choice.

But he always chose badly. He was not trained for choice; he didn’t like it. The only things that made sense in his life were the things he had not chosen. His wife, his kids, his nations, his job. His God? Was that a choice? Or had Shivashakti chosen him? It felt as though Seth had chosen freely. He had overcome the resistance of his wife and kids to do it. Had he chosen badly? His department chose his courses; his students chose him. His parents chose his wife. When they went to a restaurant, Lakshmi’s food was always better, unless he let her order for him. He could always be happy with a choice someone else had made. He should not be given such responsibility as this. He turned to face each direction one more time.
Sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler …

He sank to his knees and wept at the crossroads. He wept and could not choose and could not move.

“
SIR
?”
A MAN
’
S VOICE, UNEASY
. “Could you stand please? Slowly. What you feel is a gun in your back. No sudden moves.”

Seth continued to kneel, looking down at the mixed dirt and gravel where the roads entwined, and saw boots, brown hiking boots, to one side. Beyond them, if he shot his eyes as far to the side as they would go without turning his head, he could see the tires of a truck resting quite ordinarily on the western road. He became aware, as he had been so politely informed he might, of an iron nubbin of pressure on the bend of his spine. He took his hands off his chest, slowly put them to his thighs, and then pressed his fingertips to the chapped skin of the winter ground as he tried to straighten his legs. One didn’t work. He tried the other. That one failed as well and he fell over.

“Shit.” This voice was different from the other and came from behind him. “Pat him down.”

Seth, on his side on the sloping ground, shook his feet to try to get the feeling back into them and his legs. As the tingles started, so did the fear. He looked up at the first man who had spoken to him, wearing a ski jacket and a nylon balaclava.

“I’m checking for weapons and your wallet, understand?” There was fear in his voice, but still his intentions could be violent and godless. “Hold your feet still. Cut that out.” He zipped open Seth’s jacket without
helping him up, kneeled awkwardly to check where his pockets should be, and, finding Seth’s wallet, stood back and opened it. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, pulling out Seth’s driver’s licence, credit card, Harbord ID card. “Faculty? You’re a professor?”

Seth nodded and tried to roll himself to his feet.

“Let me help you,” the man with his wallet said, and gestured with his head to the other man, leaner and taller than the first, also in a ski mask.

They got Seth to his feet. His legs would support him now but he couldn’t feel much below his knees. “Which department do you teach in?”

“Physics,” Seth said, and his voice was hoarse as if long unused. He coughed. They dusted him off a little. He did the same.

They waited. His knees buckled as if they’d been waiting to do so. Both men leapt to catch him.

“Goddammit,” said the shorter man, looking at the other, and then at Seth. “Maybe you had better sit down for a few minutes. We need to talk.”

They started to lower Seth back onto the ground and then reconsidered. “You may as well get in the truck.” When they had hoisted him into the cab, they withdrew, conferred, then returned to stand at the open door.

The shorter man asked, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing out here?”

Seth sensed concern. “Praying?”

The taller man looked away, then back at Seth. “Can we drive you home? Your address is on your licence.”

“I’m wondering, should we take him to a hospital,” said the shorter one.

“No, actually, I’m fine,” Seth said, rubbing his cheeks. “I was driving. I ran out of gas. My car is down that road, in the woods.” That’s what it was. He ran out of gas.

“Down there? You sure?”

“Is there any way you could take me to a gas station? Then I could call a tow truck to bring me back here.”

They looked at each other. The taller one gestured to the shorter with his head and they walked away again, leaving the truck doors open. They stood out of earshot, the dark thickening around them. The taller one scooped up a snowball and threw it away. As they walked back, they peeled off their masks. They were in their late twenties, tidy-looking, a couple of well-groomed white men in the prime of youth coming upon him in the middle of nowhere.

The skinny one had dark hair and was clean-shaven. He got into the driver’s seat. “Okay … what’s your name again?” he asked.

“Seth. Rhymes with ‘faith.’ ”

“Seth. Um, pleased to meet you.” He grinned a bit, not a smile, and held out his hand. “I’m Brian.”

The other, shorter, blonder, with a bit of a beard, was called Jeff. He hoisted himself into the passenger seat. “So, listen. We were on our way home. What we think is, you come with us. It’s not too far. Have a bowl of soup, wash your face.”

Seth put his hand to his face and then checked it in the rear-view mirror.

“Then we need to go to town anyway for some errands, and so we’ll take you, get your gas, and then drive you back here to your car. Sound all right?”

“You’re very kind,” Seth said. “But that’s a lot of trouble for you.”

“Nah, it’s fine. But …” Brian looked at Jeff and Jeff looked out the window. “I hate to have to say this, but, I think you can trust us—well, no, what I mean to say is that you can totally trust us, but I think it would be better for us if—well, we don’t want you to know where we live.”

Huh
, Seth thought.

“I don’t really think you know where you are at this point, do you?”

Seth smiled. “No clue, no sir.”

“Do you have a hat?”

“I don’t. I … wasn’t thinking.”

“Uh, yeah, so here’s my toque.” Brian handed Seth his cap, started the engine and spoke over Seth’s thanks. “Just put it on backward and pull it down over your eyes. That oughta do it.”

Seth obeyed. His brain was working again. The cloak of darkness made it impossible to ask the usual polite questions:
What do you do? Tell me about the area
. In the absence of appropriate niceties, he breathed shallowly in the knit cap, smelling another man’s scalp, and waited. Were they undercover cops? But then they wouldn’t live together. Were they gay? But many gay people lived quite openly these days. Illegal immigrants? No: Canadian accents. Where was the gun, by the way? By the way! Was it a gun? Finger? Too hard to be a finger.

In time, the truck stopped. “All right, here we are.”

Seth hesitated, but Brian said, “You can give my toque back now. You’re good.”

They had arrived at a farmhouse, dilapidated but with renovation work in progress on the wraparound porch. Toddler toys were strewn in the yard and there was a chicken house and a plastic-sheet greenhouse visible around the side.

Jeff walked backward a few steps, saying, “Let me let them know what’s up.” He gave Seth an apologetic look. “Cell phones don’t work out here.” He wiggled his fingers in the air. “Black hole.” The screen door banged behind him as Seth was still dismounting from the heights of the truck.

Brian went around to the truck bed, let down the back and jumped up to drag sacks of soil to the edge, moving a couple of snowboards to do it. Hopping down again—his agility was impressive to Seth, but that’s what it is to be young—he hoisted one onto his shoulder as Jeff came back out. Behind him were two young women, one of whom carried a baby. The other was significantly pregnant, with a toddler around one leg.

“Come on up,” said Jeff. “This is Karen, and my little boy, Lucan.” He took the hairless child from the blond woman, while the pregnant woman, who had toasted-almond hair, eyes and freckles, said, “I’m Eiko, Brian’s wife.” Her little girl swung the ball of her wooden cup toy at Eiko’s knee and she winced.

Eiko and Karen were tidy, pretty, dressed in mismatched woollens
over a dress or jeans, like hippies, or so was Seth’s vague impression. The children were equally pretty if dishevelled.

Jeff said, “I’m going to help Brian unload. Karen and Eiko’ll get you a cup of tea or something, eh?”

Seth followed the women and children through an old-fashioned foyer to the kitchen in the back of the house, where Eiko put a kettle on the stove and said, “Please, have a seat.”

Seth accepted but then again sat in the awkward silence that his every instinct militated against. It was only the girls, though, so what could be the harm in attempting to be polite? What if they were being held here against their will? Stockholm syndrome! A cult!

He cleared his throat as tea was set before him with some kind of syrup—
agave
, he read on the label—and honey and a bottle of organic milk.

Karen sat the baby on her lap. “Jeff said you ran out of gas?”

“Yes, yes, carelessness.” He chose honey. “In such a remote place! Stupid. You have lived here for a long time?” Of course, they might not be remote—for all he knew they had driven back toward town. Did they know he had been brought here blindfolded? They may have been brought here the same way.

“Maybe a year or so?” Karen looked at Eiko, who shrugged. “A few months before Lucan was born, I guess.”

They sat a few more minutes, Seth trying to get Eiko’s daughter to show him her toy, until Brian and Jeff came back.

“We gotta skedaddle.” Jeff opened the fridge. “New Year’s Eve. Seth, when was the last time you ate?”

“No, no, I …” Seth began, but Jeff stared him down over the top of the fridge door, and Seth turned his hands up in a gesture that may as well have said,
Feed me
.

“We have some leftover dal and rice,” Eiko said. “It won’t take a sec to warm up.”

The dal was bland and unfamiliar, but with yogourt and brown rice, it was close enough to what he needed. They walked out again and got in the truck. The dark had sealed the chill and Jeff gave Seth a wool cap, politely asking him to pull it down over his eyes while they left.

“First stop the longhouse?” Jeff asked. He was driving this time, his voice to Seth’s left.

Seth heard the rustle of paper, to his right.

“Yep. Seth, we have to make a couple stop-offs on our way to town. Hope you’re all right with that.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He was a small, old man with a toque pulled over his eyes. Who was he to make demands?

“Customer appreciation night,” Jeff said, and cackled a little. It must have been a witty remark.

After ten minutes of winding and bumping, the truck came to a halt. Jeff cut the motor while Brian hopped out, leaving the door open.

“Are you cool, Seth?” Jeff asked after a minute or two.

There was some cold air coming in from the open door, but again, Seth wasn’t one to complain. And his face was nicely protected. “No, I’m fine.”

“No, I mean, are you cool with …”

Seth felt the seat dip to his right and Brian closed the truck door.

“Bri, you think we can let Seth take the hat off?” Jeff asked over the ignition.

“Are you uncomfortable, Seth?” Brian asked.

“No, no, no. Fine, fine.” There was comfort in passivity, even despite an abnormally high blink-rate and cheap wool chafing his eyelids.

“He’s gonna have to hang with us at the bar,” Jeff said. “Nothing between here and there’s any worse.”

“Y’okay. Pull the hat up, Seth, or take it off if you want.”

He obeyed and they granted him friendly grins as he smoothed his hair. A waning moon lit the Kootenay countryside. He recalled that they had driven for spells on proper roads, but mostly travelled on gravel, as they were doing now. They turned out onto a single-lane road bordering a sheer cliff, making Seth wish they had let him keep the toque over his eyes. They crested and then rolled down off the mountain and along a road covered with undisturbed snow. Perhaps snow had fallen more recently here—
Where on earth are we?
—but it had been five days since it last snowed in Lohikarma—
And what the hell are we here for?