III. New Longitudes
Somewhere over the Southwestern United States; specific location, not determined. Time and date, unknown.
“Russians,” Irene said as if the concept had just occurred to her, as if the word itself had just taken on meaning. “In Colorado.”
“And they weren’t just visiting,” Levi clarified. “The name of the store was written in that Russian script, the one that looks like half-formed shapes instead of actual letters.”
I looked at Irene and then down at the palm of my hand, unable to process all the information I’d been given.
“Even the street signs had Russian names!” Levi added.
During his pause between proclamations, Irene started crying.
“The people – all of them! – were speaking Russian,” Levi said. “It was like we lost some kind of war to those guys.”
After that, we flew for over an hour before anyone said another word. Just before dawn, Levi set the plane down in a flat, hard baked strip of Arizona sand.
“I don’t understand,” I said, questioning Levi, “How did you not pick up on this when you were talking to the radio tower?”
Levi shook his head, and I knew the answer. He never called the tower, only kept it low like a crop duster, buzzing away to wherever he wanted to go, a renegade to the very last.
“Can’t we just go home?” Irene asked, her face becoming more frantic.
I’ll never forget the look on her face when she phrased that simple question. It was desperate, ragged and beautiful, lost and hopeful. I wanted to be her hero, to pull her into my arms and press my hand against her head and tell her things would be alright. But it was a promise I didn’t have the confidence to make, and a move I never would have attempted with her husband sitting next to us, flying the plane.
Somehow, some way, I can’t even begin to explain it, but there was a connection between that plane, that cursed Grumman G-44 Widgeon and “Spruce Lake”. Maybe it was in the name (“Spruce Lake”, The Blue Spruce), maybe it was a paranormal phantom thing, I don’t know, but when we left the lake and Levi decided to fly west, rather than going directly back home, the connection evaporated. Shifted. Became something else.
I don’t ask anyone to understand it. I don’t even ask them to believe it. Not really. But I tell the story, only because it is true. For me, every minute, every week and month and year we spent lost was real and true. And time warped on us, the years cheated forward and the lines between places became thinner and thinner. And with the change, the relationship between the three of us grew more and more strained.
***
Somewhere in Arizona; time and date, unknown.
The truck that drove by was a standard military thing, drab green paint, big tires and a heavy duty engine that hummed its way down the road. The inscription on the side however, read, “R. S. A.”.
“Are you sure that’s what it said?” Levi asked Irene.
“It went by so fast,” I added, forcing her to look at me. “It could have read ‘U.S.A.’”
“It said ‘R.S.A.’” Irene insisted. ”I’m positive.”
“Okay,” Levi shrugged his shoulders, “At least it was one of ours.”
“We think it was one of ours,” Irene said. “’R.S.A.’ could be ‘Russian States of America’.”
“The letters wouldn’t be written in English like that,” I countered her suggestion. “It would probably be ‘C.C.P.’... or something else, but foreign sounding.”
Another truck rushed by and this one definitely read “R.S.A.”.
The three of us stood in a small circle on the side of the highway, all of our lips moving slightly as we tried to work out the acronym. The next vehicle was a white patrol car with an interesting crest painted on the door. It pulled off the side of the road and came to a stop beside us. Up close, the emblem looked like the silhouette of a Comanche Indian riding on a horse beside a Navajo hogan. The rider was painted in a golden color, a rich yellow, the color of a warm summer sun, the hogan was a deep desert shade of red and the sky behind them blue. Written in a crest above and below the drawing were five exacting words, “The Reservation States of America”.
“You people need to stay on your land,” the officer stepping out of the patrol car announced. The treaty after the East-West Civil War says you can’t come over here.”
He had long hair, running down to his waist and wore a silver badge, not a star, but a round shield, with an intricate inlay of turquoise shapes: a coyote, a horse, a sheep, and an owl.
“The East-West Civil War?” Levi asked, his chest bowing a little as he said it.
“Yeah,” the officer answered. “That’s the one that came after the North-South Civil War, about fifty years ago. You need help with your geography homework or your history lessons? Or both?”
“We don’t mean any –“ I ventured, holding my palms out in a sign of deference.
“That’s what they always say,” the officer continued. “Listen, the treaty says that Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona are ours. You folks need to stay off of our land.”
“What happened to Texas?” Irene asked.
“Who cares?” the officer answered. “Are you going to get back across the line or am I going to have to have you deported?”
“Deported?” Levi laughed. “Out of Arizona?”
A second patrol car pulled in behind the first and a taller Navajo stepped out and thumped his billy club in the palm of his opposite hand.
***
Headed east again…. Time and date, still unknown.
We had to sneak back across the border to get to the “puddle jumper”. It was a long day, followed by an even longer night. We stopped to re-fuel in a “parallel” – that’s what we naturally started calling them – that had never made it out of the great depression. It was a place where gasoline sold for almost $8.00 a gallon, and the people we encountered knew nothing about dental hygiene. We soon learned that most of them couldn’t read, and when they saw our clothes, rugged, but well-made western wear, they assumed we were “federals”. We weren’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but Irene took pity on them and gave away nearly all of the food we had in the plane.
From there, we ventured next into a parallel that seemed to be totally empty of human existence. We found traces, old things, rusted and crumbling: a horseshoe, a railroad spike, a misshapen belt buckle, but nothing recent. The trees were charred in places and the land seemed barren, but we couldn’t tell what might have happened to eliminate the population. We landed and camped for the night, catching fish and eating. I remember this spot well, as the fish were extremely plentiful and their taste was particularly good, perhaps because they were so free of human contaminants.
We took off again in the morning and came to a place close to where Jericho would have been, but it was nothing but a stretch of desert, blown dunes, brutal sun and a whipping wind. We found people there, but they were nomads, who spoke a broken Spanish dialect with a Comanche cadence to it. They were beautiful people, proud and resilient, tough without seeming hardened by their condition. They wanted us to stay and eat with them, but Irene insisted that we had put upon them too much already and begged us not to disturb their unique blend of cultures any further. We wandered through other parallels, sometimes existing on the very fringes of the societies we found, sometimes engaging and socializing, even taking jobs on one occasion.
Some of these dimensions or lateral universes were similar to the one we had been born into, but others were so markedly different that we felt like explorers stepping first on an uncharted planet in some remote solar system. Some of them resonated more with Irene, while others appealed to Levi. Some were war torn and haggard, desolate, impoverished. Others were simply different, sometimes pastoral and peaceful, sometimes just different, even if it was only slightly. But the more we wandered, the more it became obvious that we weren’t going to find our way back. The mathematical possibilities proved far too disconcerting. Summer faded into fall. The leaves turned and fell no matter what dimension we encountered, and winter made its way across the collective trail of parallel universes. One morning I woke to find a thick layer of frost on the ground in some unknown place, lost in space and time. I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and shivered not from the cold, but because I just wanted to go home.
***
I look back now and estimate that we spent that whole first year, crossing from parallel to parallel. During that time, we must have stepped into and ultimately back out of at least 200 separate worlds, never staying more than a few days. In the spring, we decided to find a parallel that closely resembled the universe we started in and give up the search. We were no longer looking for “home”, merely the closest substitute. In retrospect, it was this decision that broke us apart. The burden of constant travel itself was maddening, but once we agreed to find a “new” home, the opportunities for argument increased exponentially.
At one place, the society had developed such that women held prominence over men, a true “maternal” order. And while I could have easily endured a lifetime beholden to Irene’s direction, Levi would have nothing to do with it. In another, strange religions held sway and people travelled in rigorous cliques based on their denomination or sect. They refused to intermarry or even associate with other factions and the economic impact on society had turned the world into a poor, bitter, uneducated place.
Still, when we found one that seemed to be only marginally different from our universe of origin, Irene thought that it rained too much, or Levi found that the price of gasoline or cattle was prohibitive. In one instance, they argued over the fact that nothing repugnant immediately presented itself, meaning of course, that in the end, the differences between that parallel and ours would inevitably catch us off guard later.
After a few more days of debate, most often heated debate, we boarded the “puddle jumper” and moved on again. And again, until we found ourselves marking the second anniversary of our travels on a hill in a place that looked sort of like Colorado, but smelled like the Pittsburgh of old. A thick swelter of coal smog lingered in the eastern horizon. Above, the skies were the dull grey of a thunderstorm and yet no rain came.
“I think it’s time we just picked one and made it our home,” I said.
Levi sat on a log, smoking. He nodded and spat into the fire.
Irene harrumphed and turned away from him.
“We can’t go on like this forever,” I added. “Maybe this place here is a sign.”
Levi looked around at the thin trees and the wasted ground of a world ruined by over-industrialization. He snorted his disapproval. The mind has a way of coming untethered, losing its footing and slipping in its gears. I can’t speak for the others, but I tried to cover my lapses, first with humor, then with alcohol – when it was available – and finally, the coming of age.
“We can try,” Irene said, trying to come up with a smile.
“It’s been two years,” I made of point of reiterating that notion as often as I could.
“Alright then,” Levi announced, standing and smoothing his shirt. “Let’s do this. Let’s find ourselves a new home.”
CONTINUED…
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