Incident on Bald Mountain

The memory of every rational voice I have ever respected screams at me to slow down. Visibility is near zero and no emergency crews will risk a trip up the mountain till the weekend is over. The wipers can’t keep up with the fresh snow coming down, forcing me to squint through a narrowing arc on the windshield.

“This isn’t safe, Sweetie,” I say.

“When you keep it below forty-five, we don’t crash,” Jordan says.

That gives me another five miles of acceleration. One way or the other, this will be over soon.

***

“She’s been looking forward to New York since you got here,” Margie says.

I nod. “She sold the most candy boxes in her class. She made me buy a dozen.”

“She hit me up for half a dozen,” Rich chimes in from the end of the counter. As he speaks he lifts his Orioles cap enough to scratch his scalp with his free hand.

Margie scowls behind the register. “You should’ve bought twice as many, you cheap bastard. Now, get out of here before I make you clean tables and put up chairs. Nobody’s coming in with this storm, and I don’t want you making excuses to sleep in one of the booths.”

I follow the scrolling chyron on the television mounted in the corner. The forecast has only gotten worse.

Snorting out a horse’s laugh, Rich stands and makes his way to the door. “Those VIPs up the mountain are getting more than they bargained for this weekend, ain’t they?”

“Sure are,” I agree. Margie hands me the rag she had brandished to get Rich moving with an admonishing glare. She wants him gone, but I can’t resist talking a little more. “I saw a helicopter come in earlier today.”

Rich whistles. “Helicopters mean real bigwigs.” He angles himself at the door to peer in the direction of Bald Mountain. “Senator, maybe.” He shrugs. “Or some rock star. Who knows?”

“I heard one of them boys that works up there say it was Marine Two,” Margie says. “Leave it to our elected officials to drop in for a massage and some skiing before the big peace argument this weekend. Now, good night, Richard,”

“You know I just don’t want to go out in this mess.”

“I know it. Good night all the same.”

I’m halfway down the bar with my rag before Rich sighs and shoves the door open. The cold from outside is immediate, setting my teeth on edge. The blank scent of the relentless nor’easter curls through the diner, rattling blinds and scattering napkins. Rich doesn’t intend to slam the door, but a gust takes it out of his hand. The hand-painted OPEN sign nearly flies off its hook before it strikes the glass with a concerning crack.

My little girl could be in New York right now with her sixth-grade class, surrounded by kids her own age and an appropriate number of chaperones, missing all of this. It’s the first time we’ve stayed in one place long enough for her to attend a field trip. But she refused to go at the last minute. When she told me she wasn’t going, she had that look in her eye that told me she knew something. Whether it was something here or there, I don’t know yet, but when Jordan gets that look, I know better than to argue.

“Jordan?” Margie’s voice sounds concerned. It brings my full attention to the kitchen door, where Jordan stands, dressed in a warm sweater and jeans, staring in the same direction Rich had a few minutes earlier. Her blue eyes—eyes unlike either mine or her mother’s—are wide. She’s seeing something, and the expression she wears guarantees two things. First, it’s bad. Also, it is about to happen.

***

“A tree is coming down!” she shouts, and for a moment there is a crack in the calm surety that usually comes over her when she’s experiencing a vision. The blue of her eyes is lambent. “Hit the gas…now!”

The defroster is almost as useless as the wipers. All I can make out is a sense of motion among flakes of snow large enough to fall in a Disney cartoon. I think I hear something to one side, but the crunch of tires is all I can be sure of. I’ve learned, though, and obey without hesitation.

The Wrangler skips forward as my foot comes down, and we feel as much as hear thick branches scraping across the top and back. A loud rush of wind speaks of a trunk coming down where we would have been if Jordan hadn’t warned me, and then we are fishtailing.

I turn into the skid and force my foot to come off the gas without stomping the brake. For a few seconds we seesaw across the mountain road, and I try not to think about the thousand-foot drop that might be right in front of us. Our speed decreases evenly, until finally we are moving in a straight line again.

“Faster, Daddy,” Jordan says.

“Faster,” I repeat. Sucking in a deep breath to calm my hummingbird heart, I return my foot to the gas.

***

“Sweetie?” I say when Jordan doesn’t respond to Margie.

She stares a moment longer before saying, “We have to go up to Bald Mountain.”

“Nobody’s going up that road tonight,” Margie says, but she knows the look in Jordan’s eyes, too. Margie’s seen enough weird moments to guess why Jordan and I are always moving on from the last small town.

“We’ll make it if we leave now,” she says. “I think.”

Those last two words catch me off guard sufficiently that I knock over the glass of water I’m in the middle of bussing. I’m about to curse and grab my rag when Jordan says, “The sign’s about to go out.”

The big neon BALD MOUNTAIN TRUCK STOP sign winks, flashes, and stays dark.

“Hell,” Margie growls. “The whole town better not—”

Jordan isn’t done, though. “The glass is broken.”

I glance at the glass lying on its side beneath my hand. A sizeable chip is missing. I would have gotten a nice cut if I’d grabbed it.

“Get the first aid kit,” Jordan says. “Rich is coming. He has a broken tooth.”

Margie’s eyes are bulging. The door swings open and Rich stumbles in, both hands covering his mouth. Blood trickles between his fingers. “I barely made it halfway to my truck,” he says, sounding as though his mouth is full of wet marbles.

Margie isn’t looking at Rich, and for once a bystander isn’t staring at my daughter. Margie is staring directly at me, and I don’t need special senses to hear the words before she says them. “Jordan said you need to leave now.”

***

I think, Jordan said. That’s what I can’t get out of my mind. The needle on the speedometer is back up to forty-five, and I’ve been driving by the feel of the road for the last ten minutes. Only Jordan keeps us alive.

“You have to turn right,” she says.

“There’s nothing there but trees,” I tell her, but I’m turning the wheel as I say it.

“It’s an access road.”

“Those are always worse than the main road.”

“The main road is gone, Dad. I think this is our only chance to reach her before she leaves.”

There it is again. Jordan never doubts when she’s in the throes of an episode like this. She’s guided me through everything from a car accident to a burning building. For a time I wondered whether she was causing all the tragedy we’ve experienced, but over the years I understand that she’s guiding us to them just as she walks us through them. Something guides her to lives that need saving, just as she’s guiding me.

“I’m driving blind, Sweetie,” I say. “Where is this taking us?”

“The golf courses. Pretty soon this opens up, and when it does, you floor it. We’ll go as far as we can, and then I run.”

I’m going to drive my Jeep Wrangler across the golf courses of Bald Mountain Ski Resort and Lodge, where senators and rock stars mingle and swing clubs that cost as much as the house I once mortgaged. A smile spreads across my face.

Then Jordan says, “Daddy?”

Her voice is that of the child who had to reach up to hold my hand. A shiver of fear races through me colder than the storm outside, and I can’t meet her gaze. It kills me, but I can’t force myself to look in her direction and see those eyes that aren’t my daughter’s. “Yes, Sweetie?”

“I can’t see anything after that.”

The darkness of the trees recedes around us, leaving us in a sea of moonlight refracted through snow. There’s nothing else to do. I put the pedal all the way down.

***

We spare a single moment to grab coats before hurrying for the door. Rich gawks. He tries to ask what the hell the two of us doing going into the storm, but the pain in his mouth is too much. When we pass by, he reaches out, intending to grab Jordan’s arm, and she shrinks away without seeing him move. She hesitates just an instant, fixing him with a stare like twin blue stars. He sits, ass thumping against the old tile, as if shoved.

“Go on,” Margie tells us, but we’re already pushing the door open against the force of the storm.

Rich stammers, and the last thing I hear Margie say as the door is yanked free of my hand is, “You didn’t see a damn thing, old man.”

***

We hit the frozen water hazard at close to seventy miles per hour and hurtle into space before we start to spin. I white-knuckle the steering wheel as three seconds stretch into decades. I have ample time to doubt every decision I made after Rich staggered into the truck stop with blood spilling from his broken tooth. I regret taking Jordan by the hand after Margie told me to hurry. I curse myself for being a damned fool.

The Jeep Wrangler is equipped with standard front and seat-mounted side airbags, and when we hit the far embankment still spinning, they all deploy in a series of explosions. Fistfuls of white powder preceded the punches of two professional boxers while my seatbelt yanks me back hard enough to flatten my lungs and turn the world back.

I fight my way back to consciousness, lungs screaming for air, with one thought: Jordan. The car is dark, but spotlights have come on closer to the resort. Still struggling to inhale, I see that the passenger door hangs open. She is gone.

And then I run.

My hands hammer at my seat belt. As it unlatches, my lungs open, filling with a searing combination of bitter cold, drifting talcum, and raw terror. I claw at my door and fall onto the embankment before scrambling to my feet and half-running, half-crawling after the tiny silhouette I know to be my daughter. If Margie heard correctly about the helicopter that arrived earlier today, there is Secret Service on Bald Mountain tonight, people with strict orders to shoot first and let others handle questions.

Attempts at screaming Jordan’s name only reinforce the fact that I just survived a high-speed collision with the side of a mountain. I manage a squawk, and the world lists awkwardly as if I’m still spinning. It occurs to me that I am probably about to throw up, but I can’t let that slow me down. This is the part where she saw herself running—emphasis on her—but by God I am not letting my little girl down.

I catch her at the side of a fir that forms part of a perimeter between the lodge and the course. She stands with one hand on the trunk, staring at another feminine shape about ten yards off. The other girl is backlit by the resort spotlights, and I get the impression of a girl about Jordan’s height and build, wearing a coat much more appropriate than what we grabbed on our way out of the truck stop. The other girl stands with her own hand resting against the trunk of another fir, a mirror of my daughter’s stance.

“Rest, Daddy,” Jordan tells me. Her blue eyes are full of confidence. As I watch, her lips form a smile that is equal parts confidence and relief and love. Nothing fills you with as much pride as a smile like that on the face of your own child.

We did it? I try to ask, but then I’m on my knees. The world tilts, or maybe it’s just me, and I have a vague awareness of Jordan guiding me to lean against the tree.

When I can see again, she stands with the girl from the lodge. They stand together, hands clasped between them, foreheads bent till almost touching. They’re both fully exposed to anyone in the lodge, I realize, and I desperately scan the area for any sign of Secret Service or other security. There is only falling snow and the creak of branches overhead. I try to stand, but my adrenaline is tapped out. I make it to kneeling before falling back again.

Jordan, I think.

I can only watch as they huddle together, impervious to the cold, maybe whispering, maybe communicating in some more direct way. The air between their bent heads blurs like a heat haze above a summer highway. I squint, imagining that the air there has a faint azure tint, a nimbus untouched by the raging wind, and then it washes over me.

Swept up in a tempest that dwarfs the storm around us, I feel the transfer between them. It is beyond electricity. Every cell of my body yearns to open, and I sense that Jordan has exposed herself to the core. What is revealed between them is the manifestation of memory out of time, the genetic history and future of our race on a level deeper than DNA. Here, time breaks down. Events yet to happen flow as easily as those a thousand years gone. I can’t close my eyes or even blink. I watch it pass out of Jordan, into the other girl, and I know it’s too much.

No! I think. I’d scream if I could and damn the repercussions. You’re killing her!

I try to stand, intent on separating them, but my body refuses to obey. In another splash of the torrent flowing before me, I am confronted by the fact that Jordan holds me still. Since I would not stay behind, I must bear witness.

This isn’t for me. My daughter tried to shelter me from this. After all the years I’ve watched over her, she tried to tell me, in her way, to just stay in the Wrangler.

The flow of information concentrates into a burst of sensory impressions. This is the real reason for our urgent journey. It’s too bright, but I can’t look away. A desert, so hot I smell it, the grit of sand in my teeth. A glittering city of glass towers. Rhythmic pounding overhead, a helicopter, Marine Two. I see the child who stands bent before Jordan walking with her mother, Madame Vice President. They stop before closed doors with polished handles, and I realize that it is not peace on the other side but the end of everything. There is one chance, one sequence of interactions, that will navigate the straits to allow humanity more days.

It’s a bitter pill Jordan makes me swallow. She could never have reached those doors, could never have won the ear of the Vice President. My child could not save the world, but this one can if she accepts the information Jordan has brought her tonight.

The girls stand together for a minute, maybe two, and then let go in unison. Jordan watches the other girl walk into the light, growing more indistinct with every step closer to the lodge, and then she hurries to my side.

Jordan crouches in front of me, concern writ large, but all I see is her eyes. They are green. Her mother’s eyes—the eyes she was born with—and my throat constricts.

“Daddy?” she says. “Can you get up? She told me there’s a snowcat over there, and if we get moving right away we can get back to Margie’s before anyone comes looking.”

She told me, I think, staring into those stunning eyes. Tears freeze in the corners of my own eyes. I lunge forward, engulfing Jordan in my embrace. I can feel her surprise in the way she goes rigid, but then she hugs me back, squeezing me hard enough to move something within my ribs that will hurt a lot worse tomorrow.

“Dad,” she says after not enough time.

“Right.” I let her go and try my legs again. This time they don’t fail me. Jordan takes more of my weight than I’m proud to admit, and we make our way in the direction she indicated. Behind us what sounds like a fire alarm blares. I hear the voices of a team of men calling to one another. If I’d stayed with the Wrangler—if we hadn’t run—we wouldn’t be able to make our escape in time. She hadn’t been able to see this far, and in her desire to protect me had almost trapped us.

“You gave her your gift,” I say when we’re safely in the snowcat and aimed toward town.

“We need her to have it,” Jordan says. It’s the last time she speaks with that supernatural level of confidence. Tears tumble down her cheeks, and I can’t tell whether she frightened or relieved.

***

Jordan tells me the right spot to leave the snowcat. It’s not something she intuits. The other girl gave her instructions before they parted ways.

We will have to leave the diner when the sun comes up, but for now we’re just grateful for the promise of warm beds and a chance to pack. Both have been luxuries over the course of our lives on the road. Rich holds an icepack against his mouth, but that can’t keep him from telling us that Bald Mountain is all over national news because of the guests weathering the storm above us.

“Marine Two,” he says. “Came here for some skiing before the big trip to Saudi this weekend. Probably thought the storm would blow over, but there’s a reporter up there who says the Veep is rushing everyone to leave early, in spite of the storm.”

Margie brings Jordan a mug of hot cocoa. She’s does a double take when their eyes meet. “Everything work out?”

Jordan smiles, looking tired and relieved. She holds Margie’s gaze for a moment. Then she shrugs and says, “I think so.”