Stories: All-New Tales

Ollie just liked riding in the car and going for walks. He had his certificate, but the death scent made him sneeze. The smells that interested him came from other dogs, and he immediately covered them with his own, lifting his leg and making her wait. As spring turned to summer the only thing he’d discovered was a bee’s nest, provoking a swarm and earning him a bump on the nose. He would have stayed and tried to fight them if she hadn’t dragged him away.

She made the mistake of telling her younger son, who told her older son, who called and said he thought they agreed she was going to stop.

“I don’t see why you’re so upset,” she said.

“I’m worried about you. Do you understand why?”

“No.”

“That’s why,” he said.

After that, every time he called, he made a point of asking how the search was going.

She refused to lie.

“The same,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

It meant she was ranging farther and farther west, devoting whole weeks to a single exit off the interstate, tromping the buggy jungles behind truck stops and fireworks outlets, breaking ground by every stockade fence she came across, graffitied or not. Her knees creaked, her arms ached, and then at work she had to lean over the conveyor and lift a gallon of milk into someone’s cart, and she thought maybe he was right. She was too old to be doing this.

There was always the possibility James Wade had been lying. As her map filled with pins, she tried not to let it bother her.

In August, jumping a drainage ditch, she twisted her ankle and missed three weeks, ruining her schedule and giving her son a new excuse to badger her. To catch up she went out five days a week, but felt like she was rushing, cutting corners. The weather was mild, Indian summer lingering deep into October. If it held up (and the Weather Channel said there was a chance), she’d have a shot at finishing.

One bright afternoon she was outside Fairport Harbor, behind a Ryder truck center, when Ollie stopped and lay down in a shallow trough filled with pine duff. He rested his head on his paws and flattened his ears back as if he were being punished. It wasn’t anything she’d taught him.

“Come on, get up.” She whistled and clapped, and still he didn’t budge. She had to coax him away with a treat and tie him to a tree, and even then he hunkered down, cowering.

The Ryder place wasn’t a self-storage, and the fence, though heavily tagged, was chain link with green plastic slats, but she went to get the video camera anyway.

The trough was tub shaped, around five feet long, and sunk a few inches below the ground around it. She brushed away the leaves and pine needles and laid the pitchfork beside it for scale, narrating as she panned along the fence. “November third, 2008, 1:27 P.M.”

When she’d gotten enough coverage, she set down the camera and took up the pitchfork. She dug into the very center of the trough, jabbing the prongs through the crust, pushing it deeper with her foot, pulling back on the handle so the ground cracked and broke around the tines. She stuck it in again, levering open a hole.

Behind her Ollie whined.

“Shush,” she said.

The third time she dug down and yanked back, the pitchfork snagged on a swath of fabric.

It was discolored with mud and stank of mildew, but was unmistakably a piece of green nylon, a wisp of white batting poking from a hole.

She set aside the pitchfork, tossed away her gloves and tugged at the piece, pulling another couple inches through the dirt. It was the shell of a sleeping bag, she could see the thick seam of the zipper. With a finger she wiped at the crumbling mud, revealing rusty teeth.

Thank God, she thought. What would Brian say now?

As long as she’d waited for this moment, she didn’t want to see what was inside. The thing to do was stop and call someone, but after last year, she couldn’t. She knelt beside the hole, digging it free with her bare hands. This time she would make sure. Then everyone would know she wasn’t crazy.

LEIF IN THE WIND

Gene Wolfe

“HE’S BEEN OUT THERE,” ENA SAID, “for an hour and fifty-two minutes. It took him twenty-eight to nail that plate back down. I’ve been trying to get him to come back in ever since.”

Brennan rubbed his chin. It was a big one, and required quite a bit of rubbing. “He answers you? He replies?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“But he’s conscious?”

“I think so.”

“Fugue state?”

Ena shrugged.

“Talk to him.”

“I’ll try.” Ena’s gesture switched on the mike. “This is Ena again, Leif. Brennan is here with me now. What are you doing?”

“Watching the sunrise, Ena. The planetary shadow is fading. Fading…This sun appears behind the horizon curve, just peeping out past it now. I can feel the first breezes of its solar wind.”

Brennan tried to make his voice soft. “You can’t possibly feel a solar wind, Leif. You’re suited up.”

“I feel it.”

Ena said, “Please come back, Leif. We’ve completed the survey, done everything we were supposed to do, and—”