Travelers Rest (15 page)

And later things, too, from beyond her childhood. She kept seeing over and over something from when she first met Tonio. She had wound up in Santa Barbara at the same time Tonio happened to be there on his first fellowship. Actually, she had lucked out pretty incredibly and found a friend whose parents had a two-bedroom apartment near the beach, and this friend had even gotten her a job, with her father's influence, working as a bank teller. The only bad part was that the bank was way out in Isla Vista, and she didn't have a car at the time, which meant she had to ride the bus at 8 a.m.

She'd always liked crossword puzzles, and that morning she was doing the one from the
San Diego Union-Tribune.
It was maybe ten minutes before her stop when Tonio got on the bus and took the seat next to her. She didn't look up and would probably never have noticed him if not for his hands. He had the longest fingers she'd ever seen. His hands didn't appear especially big or clumsy, it was just that the fingers were preternaturally long, as if they were specially made instruments of some kind, designed to pry things open or probe things, maybe with adhesive pads on the tips for increased grip. But they were also nice hands, with a look of elegant strength to them, and they weren't ever quite at rest, the palms always adjusting slightly on his pants legs, the fingers lightly bobbing up and down, as if they were humming with a light charge of electricity. She was certain he had something to do with the college—her stop was the one right after UC Santa Barbara, so there were a lot of college types on the bus, and Tonio, with the John Lennon glasses and the plaid shirt and the slightly dirty jeans and the scuffed-up leather sandals, was obviously one of them. She had him figured for a graduate student, a designation that, even at twenty-three years old, she didn't quite understand—she just knew that graduate students were typically a little older than she was. It surprised her to learn later that he was almost thirty and on his way to becoming a professor. At that time, he had a serious but also boyish face that made him seem younger than he was, the thought line at the bridge of his nose where his eyebrows furrowed not quite able to offset the chubby cheeks and slightly pug nose.

A guy she dated once, whom she remembered only as having long hair and driving a restored Triumph Spitfire, had described her as “punch bowl pretty”—heads didn't turn automatically when she walked into a room, but five minutes later, when she was standing by the punch bowl and talking to a friend, every guy at the party would ask himself, “Who's
that?
” And while she didn't exactly feel indebted to Spitfire guy for this semiflattering assessment, she did come to recognize its accuracy over time. So while she didn't expect to be hit on constantly, she also wasn't used to being ignored, and she wasn't used to making advances or being forward herself. But there was something about Tonio when she first saw him on the bus that made her feel two things—1) she became aware that she was thinking about the time remaining until her stop in terms of a potential missed opportunity, and 2) it was going to be up to her to say something, because this guy wasn't going to say anything, didn't even know she was there, wouldn't notice her if she stood beside the punch bowl for
years.

So their relationship had begun with her asking him if he knew a seven-letter word meaning “brackish waterway.” He did. She had always found it amusing that the first word her future husband ever said to her was “estuary”—and that was all he'd said. Then she had to prompt him by asking about a coffee shop she'd seen near campus. He knew the place but couldn't say much about it. After question number four or five, he squinted behind the glasses and finally took a good look at her, his mouth open slightly, the long tensile fingers of one hand playing at his chin. And what she remembered about this moment now, sitting alone in room 306 and probably starving to death, was not that there had been any kind of
spark
between them, nothing as romantic or clichéd as that, but that there had been some mutual acknowledgment of each other, a loosening of the body's tension, as if something had been recognized and admitted and agreed upon already, so that Tonio's hands rested more quietly in his lap, and his leg slackened and inched closer to hers, and she put away her newspaper. It was as if they were married by the time he got off the bus, standing on the sidewalk and smiling at her there in the window, waving exaggeratedly to show where he had written her phone number on his hand.

With Dewey, it was curious the moment she thought of most. Neither she nor Tonio really understood the sports thing, the whole competitive business with the screaming in the stands and complaining about the coaches, the money spent to get the newest basketball shoes, the most expensive tennis bag. Tonio seemed okay with it, enjoyed the games for the most part. She found it disgusting, honestly. But she had learned it all, out of necessity, what an RBI was, why you got two free throws sometimes and only one some others, how many points it took to win a set tiebreak. None of it meant anything to her, but these past few days she kept thinking of a single moment during one of Dewey's basketball games. His team was in the Youth League County Championship or whatever it was called, and there was a lot of excitement and commotion because the other team made a basket and took the lead with less than a minute to go, but when they passed the ball inbounds to Dewey, like they always did, and he started dribbling the ball down the court, she could see in his eyes exactly what he was going to do. He went straight to the three-point line, just like she knew he would, stopped, shot, and made it. She didn't even cheer. The rest of the parents, even Tonio, went nuts, jumping up and down and screaming, but it had seemed so obvious to her what was going to happen that she didn't even think to react. Of course that's what happened. That was
her son
out there, and she knew him. She'd given
birth
to him, for God's sake.

The other team threw the ball away, the game was over, Dewey was the hero, the moment was past. But Julia had seen it in those few seconds while Dewey brought the ball up the floor, while everyone else was going crazy—she had caught a glimpse of the grown man Dewey would become,
was
becoming. It was the adult Dewey looking out of her child's face—serious, determined, calm, confident, a person who could do important things. And it thrilled her, and she would never forget. She was prepared, from that time forward, to forgive all his lapses—his odd anxieties, his weird fugue states, the sometimes startling depths of his absentmindedness. They were the wavering of the line but not the line itself, the heat wave—the illusion of wavering—but not the heat. She had seen the man, David (Dewey) Addison, exposed within the image of the boy, the future standing out with the present in relief.

All this was very interesting, the way these moments stretched out through all different times of her life and came together in such a tactile, visceral way for this current Julia, the one here in this room, like lily pads upon still water, stepping-stones along a path. Interesting, interesting—it was almost as if she could see herself, for the first time, in the same way she had seen Dewey then.

But there was this starving problem. She hadn't eaten since before they pulled off the interstate. She recalled that last meal—a chicken sandwich at a Denny's off an exit ramp somewhere in eastern Washington—with great wistfulness. What she wouldn't do for a chicken sandwich now. She walked into the bathroom and turned on the cold water and cupped her hand under it and drank. She turned off the water and went back out and sat on the bed. Water did nothing to whet her appetite. Why hadn't she eaten? It was a good question. She had used the key, hadn't she, over and over, venturing up the stairs or down the hall or out into the street? But there were never any people. She had found the letter in the window, but she had never encountered another person. And there had never been anything to eat.

Had she ever been out of the room, really? When she used the key, did it actually unlock or open anything? There was always a moment during the passage—a held breath, an icy instant, a sense of separation. It was as if some other version of herself embarked upon the journey, went out into the other rooms of the hotel, out into the snow. Someone else was remembering these things, not her—they were borrowed memories. She had the distinct impression sometimes that she had become trapped inside not a room but a dream.

Out the window the snowflakes were like an army of small, light creatures descending on the earth in some form of quiet destruction. She pushed up the window and scooped snow off the ledge and squeezed her hand tight, letting the ice numb her fingers. Then she slung the rest of the snow away and leaned her head out. She had tried a few times calling out for someone but no one answered or came. She was as alone all the time now as she had been in those few vivid moments of her life she remembered so well. Something was bound to happen. She had thought of jumping from the window. She was on the third floor. If the snow got much deeper, she thought she might have a good chance of surviving the fall without serious injury. But she hadn't given up on the door and the key yet. The letter in the window had promised her.

And so she moved across the room to the door, her hand on the key inside the pocket of her dress, prepared to open it and find again one of those mirror images on the other side, peering hopefully and curiously back at her. The key turned. There was that rush of cold air, maybe from the hallway, maybe from something else. She opened the door. There stood Robbie, with his back to her, in the hall. When she touched his shoulder, he didn't disappear. Instead he turned and looked at her strangely, as if he was finding, simultaneously, exactly what he had been searching for but also what he most feared. She took his hand and led him across the threshold.

H
ugh and the Dooze Man trudged through the house-high snow, destination unknown, at least so far, at least to the Doozer. Hugh, presumably, knew where he was going. It seemed to Dewey that they had been walking a long time without covering much ground, but that was likely due to the agonizingly slow pace of the proceedings, which were hampered a lot by the fact that Dewey kept sinking in the snow up to his waist and Hugh kept having to turn around and help pull him out. It wasn't the kind of thing he'd had in mind on all the winter days in Mount Pleasant when he sat looking out the window and wishing for snow instead of rain. Right now, he'd go for rain any day. Little harmless drops of rain.

“You hanging in there all right?” Hugh called over his shoulder. He was walking in front of Dewey and when he took his wool cap off a burst of steam rose into the cold air from his sweaty bald head. Nice as Hugh was, he was not the sort of person Dewey would be hanging around with if his father was here.

“I'm okay,” Dewey said, but then thought better of it. “Actually, I'm soaking wet all the way past my waist,” he said. He wanted Hugh to know that he was potentially going to freeze to death if they didn't head back to the diner soon. He had no gloves, but at least he'd remembered to wear his hat, so his ears were pretty warm, but the bottom half of him felt like it could be chipped away with an ice pick.

Hugh stopped and turned to him, his breath wafting up in a huge cloud, almost purple in the fading light. “Do you want to ride on my shoulders?”

It would be nice to ride on someone's shoulders right now, thought the Dooze Man, but not Hugh's. If you rode on Hugh's shoulders, where would you have to put your hands if you didn't want to fall off? Answer: On his sweaty bald head. “No, thank you,” Dewey said. “Where are we going again?”

“It's just up here,” Hugh said, forging ahead. From behind, he resembled a large troll. “You'll see.”

Dewey's left foot sank deep into the snow with his next step and he grabbed the back of Hugh's coat to haul himself forward. “Why did your mom and dad come here?”

Hugh barely even lifted his legs to go through the snow. He just plowed through it like a horse. You could hang on to the back of his coat like reins. “It was only my mom and my sister and me,” Hugh said. “I never knew my dad. He never came around.”

“Oh,” Dewey said, because he didn't know what else to say.

“Yeah,” Hugh said, which somehow made sense.

“What was your sister's name?” Dewey asked.

“What
is
my sister's name, do you mean?” Hugh said. “She's still here, same as me. Her name's Stephanie. The two of us are souvenirs. That's what they call the kids who get left behind.”

“Why would they call them that?” Dewey said. “Why would you call a person a souvenir?”

Hugh plowed ahead faster, forgetting he had to wait for Dewey to catch up. “That's just how these people are,” he said. “It's just their way of letting you know you're not like them, that you don't belong. Like you're some trinket that got left behind when the people at Travelers Rest disappeared.” Hugh's knees jerked up and down and his legs drove ahead. He was getting almost out of earshot. “It's just because they don't want to admit they're afraid.”

“Hold up,” Dewey shouted.

Hugh turned around. “
Jeez,
buddy, come on,” he said. “I don't have all day.” Dewey plodded up and got behind him again. “Grab on to my coat and let me pull you,” Hugh said.

They went along for a while without saying anything, and while Dewey stared at Hugh's wide back and big shoulders he tried to imagine him as a kid, at the time he would have first come here.

Hugh's story, most of which he'd told Dewey before they left the diner, would have made no sense at all if pretty much the same thing wasn't happening to Dewey. The story went like this. Hugh and his younger sister and his mother had stayed at the hotel and the next morning his mother disappeared. This was in the summer, and the temperature in the town had stayed at well over a hundred degrees every day. Even in the morning there was almost no relief from the heat, which was so dry, Hugh said, that it made your eyes feel like sandpaper. He was afraid of the hotel, so he slept in a park by the creek. He saw his mother walking through the park, more than once, and then on the third day the weather turned cooler and the air rushed upward like a lid had been taken off the sky, and there was a popping sound, like your ears popping, almost, and then he never saw his mother again. And now here he was, a grown man who owned a diner. It seemed like a magical transformation.

They had turned off the main street and onto a short road that led to some snow-covered steps and a handrail that resembled a long, white caterpillar. So much snow had swept across the steps that you couldn't really tell where to put your feet, and Hugh had to pull himself up by the handrail while Dewey held on to his waist from behind. Hugh was breathing so hard that Dewey thought he might explode. He should probably get some more exercise, Hugh, and maybe eat something besides the food at the diner, which was tasty but probably not what Dewey's mother would refer to as “heart smart.”

“I don't really know why my mother came here,” Hugh said, catching his breath after they'd reached the top of the stairs. “The only thing I remember her saying before she pulled off the highway was that she wanted to take pictures. It was like she already decided she wanted to take pictures before she even saw any of the things she could take pictures of.” He leaned over and grabbed his knees and groaned once and then started walking again. “Anything else you'd have to ask my sister,” he said.

They were up on a hill and there were a lot of snowy bushes and evergreens and you could hear the snow hiss into them and you could look back to Main Street and see the snow sweep across the streetlights. There were the top floors of the hotel, not as far away as you might think, considering all the walking. The town was actually kind of pretty when you stood here and viewed it this way, from this angle, if you didn't think about it being evil and creepy and how if you ever found your mom and dad you were going to get the hell out of here and never come back to the state of Idaho again—if you didn't think about any of that, then the view was sort of peaceful. But Hugh pulled on Dewey's coat sleeve and pointed him toward a huge rock wall that was closed off, for some reason, by a heavy iron door or gate cut into the cliff face. Cold as he was, Dewey found this wall and this door fascinating, and he felt himself creeping dangerously toward that place in his head where he went to be all alone, where he wouldn't hear Hugh anymore or know that time was passing. To keep himself from going there he reached out and grabbed Hugh's arm, squeezed the rough material of his coat sleeve.

“It's the entrance to the mine,” Hugh said. Very gently he took Dewey's hand off his arm and he stepped forward and brushed away the snow from an inscription above the entrance.

“Is that where you're taking me?” Dewey asked. He could see himself following Hugh into the pitch-dark hole, no flashlight or anything, feeling his way along the rocks, the noises echoing everywhere, water dripping down from the cave ceiling. Still dangerously close to zoning out here. When you'd done nothing for four days but sit in a lonely, cold hotel room missing your parents, Dewey thought, your brain probably got overstimulated easily.

“Shit,” Hugh said, and then apologized. “There's not enough money in the world. You couldn't pay me enough to go in there.” He reached out and pulled on the door. “Anyway, see? It's locked.” He wiped the last of the snow from the inscription above the doorframe. “There's a reason they closed this up, bud. Here, look at this.”

Dewey waded forward through the snow. His face felt hot and cold at the same time from all the walking, and his nose was running. The engraving was like something he would have done in kindergarten—the uneven lettering, the simple phrase—except that it was carved in stone: “All Our Dreams Are True,” it said.

Dewey wiped his nose on his sleeve, which he knew was pretty gross, but who was there that cared. “That's stupid,” he said.

“I guess,” Hugh said. “Sort of.”

“It doesn't even say it right,” Dewey said. “It's
come
true.”

Hugh wrapped his arms across his chest. “I don't think the guy who owned the mine knew English very good,” he said. He unwrapped his arms and took off his gloves and put his hands up to his face and then put the gloves on again. “But that's not exactly the point I was trying to make.”

Yes, Dewey thought, it would be nice, after all the walking and the sweating and the freezing, after being soaked from head to toe with the snow that fell from overhead, constantly, and the snow that kept piling up on the ground, constantly, if there was a
point.
That would be nice. Regardless, the idea of that mine was like an itch inside his skin. It was hard to think about anything else, especially now that it dawned on him—“like a light breaking through the clouds,” as it would say in a book—that he had seen this place before, on the weird TV. It was this place, this dark, open mouth, that the lights moved in and out of. Scary close, really scary close now to getting sucked in, so he bent down and cupped his hands in the snow and packed a snowball as quick as he could because it
stung,
a
good
sting that did what he wanted it to do, which was get his mind back inside his body—but wow, he could sure use some gloves about now. He could sure use
Hugh's
gloves about now, but apparently Hugh wasn't used to thinking about what kids needed, and Dewey didn't think it was his place to tell him. He took good aim and, with the same fluid motion he used to throw out runners on ground balls to short, pegged the snowball at Hugh and hit him square in the ass.

“Ow, man!” Hugh said. “What the hey?” He turned to Dewey with a momentary expression of outrage. “That
hurt,
little dude.” He rubbed his butt. “You got an arm on you.”

“I play shortstop,” Dewey said. He put his hands back in his coat pockets, which didn't help much because the pockets were wet. Next time he left the hotel, he'd have to substitute the sweater for the coat, so it could dry.

“Do you want to know about your parents or not?” Hugh said, looking at him earnestly.

Yes and no. Yes and no. There stood this big guy with the stubbly hair and the oversized jacket with grease stains. It was pretty ridiculous that he had to listen to this guy, who he'd only known for like
four days,
tell him
anything
about his parents, with whom he'd spent his entire life. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. He looked up at the sky, where it was getting dark again, another day gone, and he felt the snowflakes on his face but he couldn't see them.

“Hey, Dewey, I'm sorry,” Hugh said. “Come here.”

He shuffled over to Hugh and his shoulders drooped and Hugh picked him up around the waist, and together they examined the inscription.

“All our dreams are true,” Hugh said, almost under his breath. In some little corner of Dewey's brain the concept was already taking hold—dreams are true, dreams are true. In this strange place, what did that mean?

“The reason I brought you here,” Hugh said, “was to show you this is where the first event occurred.”

Then there was a story about an explosion in the mine and a guy named Diamond and while Hugh continued to talk Dewey's thoughts went, finally, where they wanted to go, which was down into that hole where Hugh was telling him the first disaster had occurred. He could imagine it, the hole pulling him in while he felt dreamier and dreamier, farther and farther away, in a cold and unreachable place. He could feel the hole throbbing in time with his breath, and in the darkening sky he saw the same pulse in the snow clouds overhead.

Then he looked back at the gate, barely visible now. A terrible thought had occurred to him. “Are my mom and dad in there?” he said, and took a step toward the entrance, but Hugh put a firm grip on his arm.

“No,” Hugh said. “No.” He let go of Dewey's arm and patted him on the shoulder. “This place has been closed off since before you and I were born. It's the hotel where things happen now. But this was the first place.”

“I don't get it,” Dewey said. “What does the mine have to do with the hotel? Why'd you bring me out here?”

Hugh laughed. “Have you been down the stairs underneath the hotel?”

“No,” Dewey said. “Why would I go underneath the hotel?”

“Exactly,” Hugh said. “I wouldn't either. Smart man. But if you did, you'd see pretty quick how things are around here. Everything in this entire town is connected. There are shafts in this mine that run right down under the streets.” He nodded his head toward the mine entrance. “Something went wrong in there and it ruined the whole place.”

None of it made any sense, of course, but Dewey had noticed how sometimes things that didn't make any sense turned out to be true. And while his father would certainly make that little snorting laugh under his breath at what Hugh was suggesting, and call it superstition, and remind Dewey of the myriad ways in which cultures from the most primitive to the most modern assuaged their fears of death and cosmic aloneness, his father wasn't here now and in fact had seemed to disappear in the very way that Hugh was suggesting, and so if Dewey wanted to get his mom and his dad back he might have to deviate somewhat from his dad's way of thinking, because while it was always logical, maybe it wasn't always right.

“So what
is
it? The thing that happens to people,” Dewey said. “You bring me out here in the snow to some mine shaft I can't even go into and you tell me some story and then you expect me to stop believing in the laws of physics, like all the things I learned in third grade science class.” Right away he regretted saying this because, as his mother was always pointing out to people, he was a very nice kid with an enviable disposition, and he really didn't like hurting people's feelings. “Can we maybe just go back to the diner and get some hot chocolate? It's really cold,” he said. “Can't you tell me the rest on the way?”