Chapter Six: Saoirse decides to go back (pages 6-10)

Song for this part: "God's Highway," Tobias Froberg:

They stepped outside the door and Saoirse closed her eyes at the exact moment they did so, feeling William Howard Taft take her hand and pull her ever so slightly forward.

Her right foot stepped onto the front porch and then her left foot did, too.

She felt William Howard Taft holding her hand.

After a few seconds of just standing she opened her eyes. She was still on the front porch of the house, holding William Howard Taft’s hand, and with her left hand slightly outstretched, expectantly. She was leaning forward slightly. Just inside the door, Ansel was holding Chuck and looking at her. Stephanie peered over his shoulder.

She felt a little foolish.

“What happened?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” William Howard Taft asked.

“We didn’t go anywhere.”

“Quite.”

Saoirse tried to quell her impatience with that.

“Weren’t you going to take me somewhere?”

“I thought you were going to take me somewhere.”

“But I don’t know where we’re supposed to be going.”

“Yes, you do,” said William Howard Taft. “We’re supposed to be going home.”

“Maybe you are home,” Ansel said behind them.

Saoirse looked back at him, then at William Howard Taft.

“Is there any way to be sure whether they’re dead or alive?” she asked him. She guessed that William Howard Taft knew what she meant as he shook his head.

She looked back at Ansel and the children and wondered what if I make it out of here and go back home and they’re all dead? The fact that they’re here with me means that I want them here with me to be happy, right? So if I go back home that means I won’t be happy? Unless they’re also there, too?

But what she said was “How do I work the traveling part?”

“I don’t know,” admitted William Howard Taft.

“Well, how do you do it?”

“I don’t know that, either,” he said.

“You don’t know how you got us to my house from that forest?”

“No.” WIliam Howard Taft spoke thoughtfully. “These things always seem random to me. The way they did with you. When you first traveled, that is. The traveling happens and you end up someplace you needed or wanted to be. That is how I got into the forest: I was sitting and pondering how you had moved us from the beach to that ocean and the building with the stores, the mall, and I ended up in the forest. Then, when I wanted to talk to you again… what are you doing?”

He stopped because Saoirse had climbed up onto the rail that skirted the porch, a cast-iron railing that in her life was rusted and needed painting and was loose and rickety, but here in the After was perfectly maintained; she would have to spend even a second, it seemed, reminding Ansel that this year they were going to definitely fix up the porch.

In seconds she was gripping the edge of the gutter.

“Help me,” she said.

Ansel came outside and said “What on earth..” but he stopped as William Howard Taft, delicately for such a big man, cupped his hands lifted Saoirse onto the roof.

The house was a split-level house; she was on the lower roof now, looking down at them from a height of only about 3 feet above Ansel’s head. But her brain did not measure the height from her feet to Ansel’s head; it measured from her eyes to the porch, and she felt a little dizzy as she looked down. She shook it off, secure in the knowledge that nothing was going to happen here that could hurt her -- unless I want to be hurt? She wondered. The thought was shelved; she did not want to be hurt. She then wondered, as she grabbed the side of the brick chimney, whether she could want to be hurt. What do masochists do in the After? She thought as she began using the brick chimney to get on the upper roof.

“Saoirse,” Ansel called, “Stop!”

She didn’t stop.

She clutched at the edge of the bricks and felt their gritty sides below her fingers. The sharp edges did not cut her; she did not fear that they would. I should just wish myself up the chimney, she thought, but she knew by now that the After did not work that way. It’s not a genie, she thought to herself, propping her knee on a small indentation in the chimney that formed almost a step, and reaching up to grab the gutter at the upper edge of the house. It’s not a genie, but I can maybe make it work to do what I want consciously. She reached her other hand up and dangled from the gutter, feet flailing.

“Saoirse,” Ansel said again.

“Mom, come on down,” said Stephanie.

They’re worried about me, she thought. But are they worried that I’ll fall? Or that I’ll go away? She did a chin-up and flopped her left arm onto the roof, splaying out her hands. She rocked her legs back and forth and swung her left leg up, hooking her foot onto the gutter. Clenching her legs, she rolled over and pulled up and she was lying on her back on the rooftop, breathing hard and beginning to sweat and thinking: So things could still be hard to do in the After. I guess I wanted that to be hard to do.

She sat up and looked down over the edge; the distance was only double the height of the lower roof, but it seemed to increase her dizziness exponentially. She backed away from the edge and looked around the roof. All summer long, before the vacation, there had been an action figure up on the roof. Austin had thrown it there when he was mad at her for having to come in from the backyard for dinner. She had stood in the backyard, hands on her hips, and told him “Get over here and get inside.” Instead of getting inside, he had stood his ground and tried to grab his action figures and glared at her. She had come towards him, picking up some of his toys, little men with guns and robes and swords and horns on their heads, and carrying them as she got nearer him. “Give me that one, too,” she had said, demanding the final toy he’d been able to hold on to, but he had run around her and dodged her and ran towards the house and thrown the action figure onto the roof.

She’d left it there.

It wasn’t here now. The roof was clean. The small depression in the roof, the one Ansel had pointed out to her when they’d gotten up on the ladder, the dip in the shingles that meant an expensive repair would be needed, and probably before the winter, was gone, also.

She walked up to the peak of the roof and noted that they still had their satellite dish. Why would we need satellite television in the After? Shouldn’t we be able to watch any show we want? The satellite dish was there, she knew, because she wanted to get her television through a dish on the roof.

Saoirse was briefly chagrined to realize that her After, the existence in which she could have or be or do anything she wanted to have or be or do, included television. With all eternity ahead of her and a multitude of possibilities, her deepest desires included watching game shows in the afternoon.

She turned around. Ansel had continued calling after her. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll be fine.”

There was a silence, and then Ansel said “I know that.”

William Howard Taft’s voice drifted up. “What are you doing?”

“Forcing the issue,” she said.

“Forcing what issue?” he asked.

“If I can’t directly control the After, maybe I can indirectly control it,” she told him. “When you and I left before, I was bewildered and not thinking clearly. My subconscious took over, I think, and took us to those places while my conscious mind was overwhelmed. I need to do that again: overwhelm my conscious mind and let my subconscious mind take over.” She took a deep breath and finished: “That’s why I’m going to jump off the roof.”

Want to be part of a Boat Club without the expense? Look into Windpath's fractional boat ownership. You get the boat and the fun and the lifestyle; someone else gets the work and expense!