In the Time of Man

Chapter Fourteen

(Closing in on the end of this science fiction novel, and want to keep getting out these chapters. The final six chapters are completed and I am simply editing them prior to posting here. They will likely appear at times other than Wednesday when I am finished. I am, meanwhile, working on a longer narrative and political piece for Sunday. Thanks again for everyone’s enthusiasm and support and the incoming subscriptions. I am grateful for the interest. - JM)

After lunch, Walter and Ann Robbins had plans to go into Grand Junction and stroll the pedestrian mall downtown, hang out in a coffee shop, and look for a new bookstore they had been told had just opened. Walter was hoping to raise his energy level and get a bit reinvigorated instead of constantly sitting on the screened-in sleeping porch of his sister-in-law’s house. The more he relaxed the less motivation he seemed to have for doing anything else. The dry evening wind blowing across the mesa was almost narcotic and hard to resist.

Ann’s brother-in-law, Ted, a news junkie, was channel surfing the satellite in the living room when he called out to Walter, who was in the kitchen helping Ann finish the dishes. 

“Hey, Walt. You gotta come see this. It’s Johnny Eddington, the Giant’s guy. He’s having a news conference down in Phoenix. It sounds like he’s retiring or something?”

“He’s only 25 Ted,” Walt said as he entered the living room drying his hands on a dish towel. “I’m sure it’s something else.”

“Sure sounds like retirement. Listen.”

Walter watched as Johnny Eddington described a health problem that was inhibiting his ability to play baseball. Off mic, he heard the voice of one of his station’s own reporters, Becky Acuna, asking the athlete about his sex life. 

“Man, I guess nothing’s off limits for reporters these days,” Ted said as he turned up the volume to hear the answer.

“He hasn’t exactly been shy about his personal life, Ted.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned that. You said he was on one of your programs talking about all the women he’d been with?”

“He didn’t leave out many details, either,” Walter added. “I got a lot of phone calls from pissed off viewers.” 

He returned to the kitchen thinking yet another young person had been given almost every gift possible then had taken them for granted. Walter’s love of baseball had led him to admire Eddington’s on field grace but he wondered from the outset if the Giant’s star would be able to handle the abundant wealth and public adulation. He was rich, handsome, and intelligent with a blend of African-American and Scottish ancestry that revealed itself in a skin tone and facial features that gave him a broad, almost iconic appeal across all types of demographics. 

“He’s sick.” Ted was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Sick?” Walter asked. “He looks like he could run through walls. How can he be sick?”

“I dunno. Says doctors can’t figure it out. They think it might have something to do with all of that sex he’s been getting. Anyway, he’s going up to Mayo Clinic to get checked out.”

“How does he know he’s sick?” Walter asked. “And since when does sex make you sick, unless he got an STD, and that’s no reason to quit baseball. We do have drugs these days.”

“No energy. Dizzy. Can’t see to hit the ball or catch it. Can’t keep weight on. No appetite. All that stuff.”

Walter stared intensely at Ted and then turned his head away to look at the kids playing outside beneath a peach tree next to the driveway.

“Huh,” was his brief, guttural response.

Ann Robbins gave her husband a worried look and left the kitchen without a word.  Walter assumed she had gone into the extra bedroom where they were staying so she could change and get ready for their afternoon together. He went outside to play with the kids and try to divert his worrisome mind from wandering over troubling ideas. 

He had been thinking about the morning in Southern Utah that he had awakened in the back seat of his car; Walter had no memory of falling asleep. Exhaustion from his stressful job and intense exercise had left him this way often in the past and he assumed he had returned to the car from his walk around the national park and had simply passed out. He did recall odd lights in the night sky, satellites, he figured, or jet training flights from over in Nevada. 

Sleep that night had not left him rejuvenated, however. Climbing out of the back seat of his car that morning, Walter had looked out across the ancient ocean floor to where the rock spires were laying jagged shadows over the orange-red canyons and buttes of Monument Valley. The air had been pleasant and quite comfortable, still carrying a hint of the desert’s night coolness. Realizing he was overtired from the previous day’s long drive, Walter decided to skip his day of hiking in the nearby Canyonlands National Park. More physical exertion was the last thing he needed and it promised to be tortuously hot on the rocks that day. His eyes swept the wide sky and found it totally blue and cloudless. Moisture of any kind never lasted in that country. When he stretched, the bones in his back stiffened and popped. He got into the car and followed the park road back to the main highway. In a few hours, he could be in Moab for breakfast.

Out on the highway, Walter lowered a power window and allowed the morning air to wake him up. Ahead, he saw the steady rise of the roadbed as it narrowed into the horizon and climbed toward the Colorado high country. In spite of the mysteriousness of the landscape and its haunting appeal, Walter recognized that he had broken yet another promise to himself to explore the region as part of his private commitment to slowing down and stopping his constant worrying about work. If he did not relent, he was certain to push himself into a physical collapse and now he had added an extra-marital affair to his complications.   

Hunger was not enough of a distraction to make him stop in Moab that day. Grand Junction was too close for further delays. Walter had spent the remainder of his drive trying to envision how he was going to readjust to being with his family after sleeping with Michelle Mina every night since his children and wife had departed for Western Colorado. Deception required adjustments and creativity that also drained energy. 

Topping a rise on 191 north of Moab, he had marveled at how his mind still raced and cantered with his dreams. They had always been about his goals for his family and financial ambitions but now the visage of Michelle Mina kept intruding. His sedan rolled into the midst of a v-shaped expanse of country, bordered on one side by the Green River and on the other by the Colorado. The rivers gave little to the run of rock and desert whose beauty was made more insistent by its absolute denial of the waters at its perimeter. 

When Walter had finally turned eastward onto the wide familiarity of Interstate 70 that morning, he had begun to confront his denial of reality. In a span of days, he had almost undone his entire life. Yet Walter refused to accept responsibility for his feelings by rationalizing that these were emotions he had not chosen to have about Michelle Mina. People did not control how they felt. We do not select who we love. 

“Aren’t we accountable for how we react to those feelings, though?” he asked himself. He needed rest and time to think.

“You ready?” Ann was behind the screen door snapping a sports watch onto her wrist.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” Walter knelt and hugged his daughters as if he were going to be gone for weeks on a business trip. “You girls stay here and play with Cindy and Joshua. Your mommy and I are going downtown for a little bit so Aunt Liz and Uncle Ted are going to take care of you.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Alexandra and Faith ran off unconcerned.

Before the car had come down off the switchbacks leading to the river, Ann was asking questions. 

“How are you feeling, Walt?”

“I’m okay.  I think I just need to sleep better. I never adjust very well to being away from my own bed. You know that.”

“You’re losing weight, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘too?’”

“I heard the television, Walt.” Ann turned away from her husband and watched the Colorado River leading them into Grand Junction on its seaward plunge toward the Pacific. “I heard what Ted was telling you.”

“Ann, it’s nothing. You saw my blood tests. They didn’t show anything.”

“Well, apparently that baseball player’s don’t either.”

“Okay. Let me ask you this, if people get whatever he’s got through unprotected sex of some kind, how do I have it? You look great. You’re not carrying anything, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t know. I’m just worried about you, Walt.”

“I understand. But I’m fine.” Ann did not speak after this and her silence made Walter uncomfortable.

“I love you,” he said. 

 “I love you, too.” Ann did not look at him as she said this. 

Nothing had been resolved by Walter Robbins during his time staying outside of Grand Junction with his sister-in-law’s family. His intentions had been to emotionally deal with his affair and reconnect with his wife and children but he was unable to imagine his existence just then without the younger woman. He thought, however, that living with his betrayal and that one great lie was destroying his health. 

In the evening after an enjoyable afternoon together downtown, Walter and Ann split a bottle of Pinot Griggio with dinner before retiring to the back porch with Ted and Liz.  Walter sat across from his brother-in-law and exchanged the clipped, conspiratorial phrases of two men who have married sisters and are convinced they can reveal secrets to each other about the behavior of their wives. As the four adults drank their coffee, the children were dark figures dancing before them in the twilight, running without fear across the grassy space between the house and the apple orchard. In the moments when their squealing and laughter stopped, Walter listened for the hiss of the mighty Colorado more than a half mile away below the mesa that marked the edge of the orchard.    

When his phone buzzed on the table, Ann heard it and frowned at her husband.  Walter saw the caller ID was Michelle Mina. 

“I’ve got to take this, Annie,” he said. “It’s work. I’ve been gone for a month now. I’ve got to stay on top of things a little bit.”

“It’s fine, honey.”

The screen door slapped behind Walter as he walked outside to talk.

“Hello?”

“Walt, it’s me, Michelle.” 

He was instantly torn between the excitement he felt at hearing her voice after a few weeks and his insistence that she not try to contact him while he was with his family in Colorado.

"Jesus, Michelle,” he whispered. “I can't believe you called me up here. This is dangerous as hell."

“I miss you, Walt. I’m sorry. I needed to hear your voice. Is it okay? Can you talk a sec? If you can't, just say so and I'll hang up and call you sometime tomorrow when it’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I’m outside. I, uh, miss you, too. I just don’t know what to do, Michelle. Have no idea, whatsoever.”

“I know; me neither. I’m sorry I’m putting you through this.”

“You aren’t putting me through anything. I made my own choices.”

"Walt. I’m afraid I have to tell you something. I’ve been with him.”

“What? With who, Michelle? What are you talking about?”

“I thought you would have seen the news. Johnny Eddington. The baseball player.  I’ve been with him.”

Walter did not respond but he immediately understood some of the pain Ann would feel if she ever learned of his infidelity. 

“Walt? I’m sorry,” Michelle was already pleading for forgiveness.

“When, Michelle? When were you with him? After I left town? You just couldn’t stand to sleep alone?”

“No.  It’s not like that. I wish it was. But I was seeing Johnny at the same time I was seeing you.”

“Seeing? You mean fucking, don’t you?” Walter hissed.

“Walt, it was wrong. I know that. I didn’t realize how much I actually cared for you.”

“God, what a damned fool I’ve been.” Walter was talking to himself. The children ran past him toward the porch.

“Don’t say that, Walt. Please. Ed Smith told me you were staying up there a while longer to recover from mono or something and I got worried.”

“Yeah, well, sounds like I may have something other than mono.”\“Don’t say that, Walt. They don’t know anything for sure. I saw Becky’s story on the news.”

“What’s your health, Michelle?”

“I’m fine. I ran the breast cancer awareness 10k this morning in Mesa and felt great.”

“Lucky you.”

“Please don’t say that, Walt.”

“What in the hell am I supposed to say, Michelle? Thanks for screwing around on the guy who was screwing around with you? I ought to have had more sense. I always have until you came along.”

“It’s because we care about each other, Walt. We have something special. I didn’t completely realize that until you were gone. I also needed to tell you something else.  It's something I've been avoiding. But I just can't any longer. I have fallen in love with you. I think it happened without me truly being aware of it. And when it finally hit me, I had to deal with the fact that you are married. It's my fault I let things go this far.  Please tell me we can still be together.”

“You have to be out of your mind, Michelle, and the most oblivious, selfish person I have ever known.”

“Walt. Please.”

“Good-bye. I’m sure I will see you at work around the station.”

“Walt.”

Walter Robbins touched the red cancel button on his phone to end the call and stood, silently shaking in the lowering darkness. Before he walked inside he remembered an e-mail that Ed Smith had sent him that morning, which contained the kind of information that would have normally prompted Walter’s direct and immediate involvement.

“What was that all about?” Ann quickly asked, interrupting herself mid-sentence in a conversation with her older sister. “You were out there 15 minutes.”

“You aren’t gonna believe this,” Walter told the three of them. “One of my reporters, Becky, and old Mike Burke spent the night in jail on suspicion of murder.”

“What? What’s going on, Walt?”

“Don’t worry. They’re out. They didn’t do anything, of course. But they found that scientist, Barton Crawford, who Becky had interviewed for a story the other night; they found him dead in his lab.”

“Becky and Mike did, Walt? How awful.”

“Yes, that’s how they became suspects, I guess. But no charges were filed and they’re out.”

“Well, that’s good,” Ann got up from her chair. “I’m going to get the girls ready for bed. You can fill me in on the details later, honey.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in a bit.”

Deep, restful sleep continued to elude Walter that night as it had since becoming entangled with Michelle Mina. Ann, as always, was engaged in dreams minutes after lying down. He spent two hours jerking around blankets, rolling over and punching his pillow, looking for some inescapable shape of comfort to make him drowsy. Finally, he gave up and slipped quietly from bed to go out and sit on the porch. Eventually, Walter nodded off while listening to the high country wind in the apple trees.

In the morning before Ann was awake, he went back into the bedroom and put on his running shoes, shorts, and a tee shirt. A little more exercise and discipline was all he needed. When he looked at himself in the mirror, Walter saw that his chest was a bit sunken and his arms were more spindly than he recalled. His little middle-aged guy belly roll had also disappeared and Walter thought that the last time he had been this slight of build had been when he was running track and cross country as a teenager back in Texas. 

That’s what he intended to do: go for a run. Even a slow jog had a therapeutic effect on Walter and had always made him feel young. Ann stirred as he was changing and smiled when she saw him in his running clothes.

“Going for a run, eh?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I just don’t think I’ve been exercising enough. I’m too stressed out; that’s all.”

“That’s good, Walt. I’m going back to sleep. Don’t push yourself.”

“I won’t. See ya at breakfast.”

The morning sun was barely above the Great Divide far to the east and the still air was chilly as he stretched his legs with toe pulls. Walter had not run in several months and assumed he would have to jog and then walk to briefly recover in order to survive even a moderate distance. He took the footpath that led around the perimeter of the peach orchard behind the house and planned to loop back toward the apple groves out front before heading to the bluffs overlooking the river.

Within fifty yards, Walter was breathing heavily. As out of condition as he considered himself to be, this ought never to have happened. He slowed to a walk and realized his balance was slipping. Each step he took pulled him to the left as though he had an inner ear infection. He modified his expectations and turned around in an attempt to cover the half-mile or so through the apple groves to the river overlook. 

At the front of the house, he stepped onto the irrigation trail in the middle of the apple grove and the spongy soil felt good beneath his shoes. Walter started another easy jog and this time pushed himself to sixty yards, maybe seventy. He stopped when the wheezing of his lungs became too loud and the burn in his chest unendurable. For someone who had always bragged that he could finish a marathon on a good night’s sleep and a handful of vitamins, Walter was struggling to stay upright. Bent over, hands on his knees, his body was wracked as though he had just run a steeplechase.

Recovering slightly, Walter elected to get to the overlook with a brisk walk, which would allow his pulse and breathing to return to manageable rates. Nonetheless, he stopped three or four times and steadied himself by placing a hand on one of the trees. The lightheaded feeling did not end.

When he eventually came out of the orchard the sun was above the national forests just up the river to the east and he felt an early morning warmth. Walter stepped over to the edge of the cliff and looked down the steep rock incline a few hundred feet to the eternal roll of the Colorado River. Whitecaps and standing waves marked a short stretch of rapids and on the far side he saw an elk picking its way down a talus slide to reach the water for a drink. The sun brightened the outcroppings of rock and illuminated the strata of the higher mesas to the west. 

He looked up and down the river several times and marveled at the light’s variations and the timeless roar of the river. Everything he was observing became amazement to Walter and he had never felt closer to the grandeur of existence. The beauty of the moment, though, turned into an aching pain and he closed his eyes in an attempt to make it all go away. And then softly, Walter Robbins began to cry.