Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 54 - Small Town

Photo by Daren on Unsplash

They arrived in Cornerstone just before dawn.  It was the glorious morning hour, with the air still cool with dew as the dark blue night sky crashed into the pink glow of the rising sun.  The light bathed the town in an orange hue that bounced off of everything: the windows of the Pentecostal church next to the water tower at the entrance to town, the fire station and tiny city hall, and the tractors with their farmers preparing to work the endless miles of cornfields surrounding them.    

“Always felt I could live in a place like this,” Jeremy said. “Small town life.  You know your neighbors.”

“And they know you,” David said from the passenger seat. “They know everything about you, which is why Olivia left this place. She said it was like living in an aquarium, where everyone stared at everything you did.”

Still groggy, drained, and intensely sluggish from all they’d been through, David now tied his shoes after sleeping throughout the night as Jeremy drove.   Their journey was met with greater ease than expected as they worked to avoid most major highways.  When forced to take an interstate route, the challenge of nighttime driving was made more accessible by the vast number of people pulled off to the shoulder or filling rest areas to maximum capacity in desperate need of sleep. Everyone in the world, it seemed, was exhausted.  Cashiers who took their posts once again at gas stations of their youth wearily punched numbers on antiquated registers wherever Jeremy and David stopped to refuel.  They’d stare at the two brothers with deadened countenances and large drooping black circles beneath their eyes.  

Even now, as they slowly drove down Main Street in the small town where Olivia had grown up and from which she eventually ran away, old farmers walked through the early morning with stooped shoulders, looking tired and broken and frail. 

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said as they passed the IGA and a small pizzeria on the corner with a sign outside that read Delucci’s. “I still like it — the little grocery store, the beat-up old Dairy Queen we saw when we turned off the highway.”

David fell silent as the car coasted through town.  He sat upright now, watching familiar buildings drift past with worn edges and desperate need of repainting.  Everything appeared as old as the elderly farmers who seemed to be rounding about every corner, congregating on porches and entryways to stores, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee.  David half expected to see his father-in-law among them.

“I hate that we can’t go straight to Olivia,” David lamented.  He repeated the same throughout their long trek from North Carolina.  The realization came to him frequently that even after all they’d endured, after how fragile and beaten up he’d been by the time he’d arrived back at his childhood home, and now, after traversing over a thousand miles, his wife would not be here, that there would be more waiting, more worry.

“Turn here?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes, and then the second left.”

“Can’t believe I remembered that,” Jeremy said.  “It’d been decades since I was here.  And even then, only that one time.”

“It’s not hard to get lost in Cornerstone,” David said.

A few minutes later, they were on a dusty pathway that veered southward. Early-sprouting corn no more than two feet tall lined the road on both sides before it emptied into a well-trodden swath of packed dirt, with a work shed and small white house to the left in front of them.  

As they turned up the gravel road, an immediately recognizable older man stepped from the shadows of the work shed, smiling as he wiped his hands on a tattered red bandana.

“There’s Mickey,” Jeremy said as he and David climbed out of the car. 

“And there’s Grace,” David said, pointing to his mother-in-law. Like her husband, she was younger than when David last saw her but still so much the same. She was wiping her eyes as she walked down the steps of their covered back porch.

“Dear God in heaven, I still can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing,” Mickey said. David extended his hand out to his father-in-law. Mickey slapped it away and swallowed David into his arms in a tight embrace. Mickey’s entire body felt bony but firm — a farmer’s body. “Son, you’ve no idea how good it is to see you.”

“You too, Mick,” David said, hugging him back.  

“You’re back,” Grace said as she approached, walking quickly.  “You’re really back.”

Mickey released David so he could greet his mother-in-law.  

“Thank you for getting him here,” Grace said to Jeremy, her head now poking out from over David’s shoulder as she quivered in her son-in-law’s arms.  “Thank you so much.”

She fell into silent sobbing, her eyes clenched shut and mouth open as tears rolled down her cheeks.  David felt something was off with Grace.  Her gait, the way she held herself, the way she trembled in his arms.

“It’s been too much,” Mickey said.  “And each day, it seems to get harder.  You’d think we’d be getting used to all this at some point.”

“I’ll never get used to it,” Grace said and pulled back, holding David at arm’s length.  “We’d lost you, David.  You know that, right?  We lost you.”

“I know.”

“We buried you in the ground,” Grace said.  “We buried you in the ground, and now here you are.  How is that possible?”

“But Olivia’s not,” David said.

“Have you heard from her yet?” Jeremy asked.

“Not yet,” Mickey said.  “But we’re having more luck with the phones, so hopefully, it will be soon.”

“You boys got here practically overnight,” Grace said.  “I hope that wasn’t a mistake.”  

“Every time a car passed us going the other way last night, I wondered if it could have been her,” Jeremy said.

“She was always good about checking in,” David said.  “She’ll call.”

“It’ll work out,” Jeremy added.

“Show him the workshed,” Grace told her husband.

“We’ll get to it,” Mickey said.

“You get a new tractor or something?” Jeremy asked.

“Nothing like that,” Mickey said.

“It’s the kids,” Grace said.

David’s eyes opened wide.  He looked at his brother; an unspoken message passed between them.  Jeremy raised his eyebrows back at him.  He’d sensed something strange with Grace, as well.

“My kids?” David said.

“Something is going on that we’re not seeing just yet,” Grace said.  “Inside those black hole things.”

“Yeah, I saw one of those,” David said.  “It’s how I got away from those guys who attacked us.  I…I barely escaped from it myself.”

“But you did,” Mickey said.  “And now you’re here.”

“A gas station worker said they’re popping up all over the place,” Jeremy said. “I haven’t seen one.”

“Well, we had one out in the shop here,” Grace said.  “And our TV, too.  But Mickey didn’t see that one.” 

“I don’t know what I saw,” Mickey said.

“Your kids are in there,” Grace said.  “That’s what I told Mickey.  He doesn’t believe me, though.”

“It’s not that,” Mickey said.  “It’s just that I don’t see how.”

“They’re up over Lake Michigan,” Grace said.  “New York.  Los Angeles.  London, too, and other places.”  

“What’s that have to do with my kids, though?” David asked.

“Well, you’re standing here right now, aren’t you?” Grace asked.  

“I am,” David said.

“The fact is you shouldn’t be,” Grace said.  “You died.  And I think these black hole things know it.”

“Know it?” Jeremy asked.

“I think the world is trying to fix itself,” Grace said.  “God didn’t mean for these black holes to be here, so He’s sorting things out for us.”

“Gracie, come on now,” Mickey said.

“That’s why those things keep randomly appearing everywhere,” Grace continued.  “I think God doesn’t like what’s been done and is fixing it.  I think these black holes know who belongs here and who doesn’t.  And you’re not supposed to be here, but your kids are.”

“Gracie,” Mickey said.  “That’s enough.”

“So why bring me all the way here, then?” David asked.  “You were happy to see me a minute ago, but now this?”

“Oh, I’m thrilled to see you, David,” Grace said. Please don’t think I’m not. But the truth is that I think you may be one of the keys to fixing all of this.”

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