Braden HeightsL.S. Kunz
4100 words Jonathan never expected to be living when the town’s time capsule got opened, it being a hundred-year time capsule, and he nineteen by the day they buried it. Whenever that box of bygones finally saw daylight again, he should’ve been planted six feet deep in the family plot alongside Pop, Mother, and Granddad. But nothing was as it should’ve been. The town was gone, burnt fiddle to fence post twice over before most everybody finally left back in 2043. The stone marker was still there though. Just as he’d known it would be. City slickers. Built their houses of little better than sticks and spit. But the monument to the town’s time capsule? Granite, of course. Solid granite. Why? Because wouldn’t a polished stone look timeless beneath the Braden apple trees. A real testament to the community. It looked timeless all right. Timeless as a tombstone. And what were the Braden apple trees now? Four torched and twisted husks. A real testament to the community. Jonathan, leaning on his wheelbarrow, squatted low and brushed soot from the stone marker with a work glove more patches than leather. The marker was singed black but legible as the day they dedicated it: Braden Heights Apple Capital of Utah Founded June 23, 1999 Time Capsule to be opened at the Centennial Celebration—June 23, 2099 Apple Capital of Utah. Even in 2053, with every last city slicker dead or driven east where they belonged, the insult still seared like a branding iron. Jonathan pushed himself back to his feet, stripped off his work gloves, and dropped them in the wheelbarrow beside the rest of his worldly possessions—shovel and pickaxe, of course. Rusty toolbox, picked-over first aid kit, shotgun, half-box of ammo, Margaret Ann’s old, battery-operated boombox, a handful of black-market, single-use batteries, and eight jars of home-canned peaches, each wrapped in a white tea towel hand-embroidered with apple blossoms. Knowing he’d left work undone at the ranch hurt like a pitchfork to the gut, but eight jars of peaches wouldn’t last but days, and he had to dig up that time capsule while he still had the energy. Hidden inside that fool box of suburban trinkets was an item more precious than water—an old cassette tape with a recording of Margaret Ann’s voice. Margaret Ann had been just seventeen at the town’s dedication. A girl with rosy cheeks, blond curls, and a yolk-yellow sash cinched round her waist. Jonathan couldn’t remember the song she sang. Some fool ditty about apples, most like. But the song didn’t matter. It was her voice—young, hopeful, sweeter than apple pie. Jonathan had been nothing more than an angry, young cowpoke back then, with mud on his boots and a plastic sack dripping with fresh cowpats meant for the mayor. But then Margaret Ann had started singing. It was like a bucket of water on a campfire. Could Braden Heights be all bad if an angel like Margaret Ann lived there? Instead of slinging cow pie that day, he’d returned to the ranch determined to win Margaret Ann’s hand. From that day on, he’d done everything he could to deserve a city girl like Margaret Ann. He’d taken over day-to-day operations of the ranch like Pop had always wanted. Within a year, he’d doubled the herd. As the ranches and farms around them transformed into strip malls and tract housing, he’d built Garraway Ranch into an operation to be proud of. When he’d finally brought Margaret Ann home, it had been to a rambler with all the modern luxuries. And when baby Meg came along, he’d bought her everything a little girl could desire. He’d been a good husband. A good father. Even when the snowpack dried up and revenues ran low, he’d made sure they wanted for nothing. Jonathan pulled the battered cowboy hat from his head, fanned his face with the brim, and squinted up at the sky. The sun was climbing on toward noon. Already, it radiated like a bonfire on his liver-spotted scalp. If he dug now, odds were his heart would stop before he ever heard Margaret Ann’s voice again. And that wouldn’t do. The capsule had waited fifty-four years to be opened. It could wait a few hours more. Scanning the burned-out buildings, Jonathan selected the blackened shell of a hardware store. Its slivers of roof looked sturdy enough to stand a few more hours. He would hunker down there till evening. A breeze would pick up then. That’s when he’d dig. No rush. After a lifetime of chores, this was his last task, and he could take as long as he liked. He steered the wheelbarrow toward the hardware store. Tire crunching on sooty asphalt, he weaved right and left to avoid glints of glass. A flat tire wouldn’t be the end of the world—that had already happened. But it would spoil his last hours on this shriveled-up planet. Braden Heights had been a ghost town for the better part of ten years, and a suburban wasteland for forty-five years before that. But, somehow, Jonathan still saw it as it had been. Before. When the West was cattle and cornstalks as far as a man could see. The land had been Saul Braden’s back then—acres of apple blossoms white as rose-scented snow, and red-ripe fruit as crisp and sweet as a fall breeze. By the time the developers got finished with it, only the four apple trees in the center of town square remained. Four. Pruned and pristine as plastic fruit. Sorry sentinels for the stone marker. Sure, the children of Braden Heights had lived west of the Rockies, but they hadn’t lived in the West. They had only learned about it in school—pioneers and forty-niners, cowboys and coal miners. Even Meg—born and raised on Garraway Ranch—didn’t know the West. If she had, maybe she wouldn’t have gone vegan to save the planet, then married that computer programmer and moved to Detroit. He couldn’t understand young people today. He had worked hard every day of his life. Never took a vacation. Couldn’t recall a single sick day. All he wanted from life was to provide for his family, and America hated him for it. Shouted about animal rights and methane gas and climate change—all while grilling the beef he produced. And the packing corporations? Don’t even get him started. Even as beef prices rose, he had gone broke, every year worse than the last, till yesterday when his last heifer died. In the destroyed hardware store, Jonathan picked his way through burned debris and wedged himself into a shady corner beneath a busted window. The air was stifling as a chicken coop in August. It seared his cracked lips. But at least he was out of the sun. Around him, melted shelves hulked like mud pots. Looters had toppled a few like dominoes, but there was nothing left to loot. Anything worth taking was long gone—pilfered in hopes it was valuable enough to buy entrance into Detroit or another safe city. Over the last twenty years, everyone Jonathan had ever cared about had died or migrated east. One by one, he had watched them go—neighbors and friends. Meg. Even Margaret Ann. He couldn’t blame Margaret Ann. Not really. Not when Detroit had so much to offer and he so little. The water was gone. He couldn’t say if it was greed or global warming. It didn’t matter in the end. First the Great Salt Lake dried up. Then the snowpack failed. Then the groundwater. He had built basins to catch rain water, but you can’t catch what doesn’t fall. Then came the toxic winds. The dust storms. The wildfires. Great, sweeping flames that flashed through scrub oak and burnt town and farm alike. The fire of 2041 had claimed the barn and two outbuildings on Garraway Ranch. But he had saved the house and all but a single calf. There was no cause for Meg to leave. He had rebuilt by fall. After the fire of 2043 took the rambler, Margaret Ann had left too. Called him every kind of pigheaded fool and hitched a ride east with that scoundrel Rick Robinson and his family. Jonathan kicked the wheelbarrow tire with his scuffed boot and forced his mind back to Margaret Ann’s song. The song was all that mattered. He would dig up the capsule and play the recording. He would hear Margaret Ann’s voice one last time—sweet and young and full of love, the way she sounded every day of their married life. Till the day she abandoned him. He must have dozed because he woke with a start. A noise. A footstep? With his hearing half gone, he was more likely to hear the tinnitus in his own ear than danger. Still. Quiet as a vole in sawdust, Jonathan pulled the shotgun from the wheelbarrow, rolled onto his knees, and peeked through the broken window. Why would anyone be here? He hadn’t seen a soul in more than a year. There was nothing to loot. Still. He didn’t want to die. Not before he had heard Margaret Ann’s voice. He ran his eyes around the square, searching the burnt nooks and charred crannies. Finally, when he started to turn away, he heard it again. His eyes darted back to the window. Through cracked shards of glass, he saw a shadow move. Across the square in the shell of the grocery store. Jonathan held his breath. Seconds ticked by like drumbeats. Like waiting on a cow to calve. He raised the shotgun to the window and watched. The shadow loomed large and materialized into a mangy pit bull. Its black fur dusty. A patch of white on its chest spotted red with blood. Abandoned when its owner fled east, no doubt. A length of chain still dragged at its neck like a noose. Thick saliva dangled from the corners of its panting mouth, and a tangle of rusty barbed wire crippled its haunch. The pit bull sniffed the ground, hobbled a few steps, and licked its paw. With each step, the twisted barbed wire cut deeper into the dog’s flesh. Jonathan must have moved because the pit bull’s tail tensed, its ears stood on end, and its dull eyes hardened into amber and darted toward the hardware store, boring through the warped glass into Jonathan’s cataract gaze. Jonathan held his breath. Finally, the pit bull turned and limped toward the stone marker. Jonathan melted back to the ground. A hurt dog was a dangerous dog. By nightfall, it would have died or moved on. It was nothing to him. But he could still hear the staccato scrape of the barbed wire. He could barely hear anything anymore, but he could hear that dog’s misery. He covered his ears. Scrape. Scrape. Such a brave dog. Tangled in barbed wire, bearing down on death, but it didn’t complain. Didn’t even whimper. Jonathan couldn’t take it. He pushed himself to his feet, pulled wire cutters from his toolbox and, after a moment’s thought, grabbed the first aid kit and canteen as well. The dog had reached the stone marker and was sniffing the inscription. When Jonathan stepped into the street, the dog tensed so hard it shook. A low growl rumbled in its throat. It faced Jonathan, ears angled, amber eyes narrowed to mean slits. Jonathan shifted sideways and focused his gaze on the stone marker. He kept his hands at his side and spoke in a voice low but firm as if to a skittish horse. “It’s all right, boy. I’m not gonna hurt you.” He took a slow step forward. The dog braced and growled, low and raspy at the back of its throat. Jonathan took another step. The dog paced and bared its teeth. Jonathan narrated his approach. His words low and steady. “I know. They abandoned you, didn’t they? Headed east and left you behind? Don’t you worry. You’ll show them. You’re a fighter. We just need to pull that wire away.” The dog splayed its forepaws and released a loud, vicious volley of barks. Jonathan waited. The barking subsided to a high-pitched whine. Jonathan took another step. The dog cowered back on its haunches, ears flattened against its scalp, trembling. Jonathan kept talking. Calm and confident. As if nothing was wrong. Finally, he reached the dog’s side. Narrating each step, he knelt, slipped the wire cutters around a length of barbed wire, and squeezed till the rusty wire snapped in two. The dog started as if to flee but stayed put. Its body rigid as firewood. Jonathan cut another length of wire and worked it away. Then another and another till the dog was free, its wounds fiery red and oozing. By now, the dog was limp. Jonathan tilted the dog’s head, slipped the chain from the dog’s neck, and dropped it. The dog nipped at Jonathan’s hand but didn’t break the skin. Jonathan treated the dog’s wounds and wrapped them with gauze, gave the dog a long drink from his canteen, and shuffled back to the hardware store. The sun was blazing. He needed a drag of water too and some rest. But as he sank down in the shade his eye fell on the eight jars of peaches. Each in their own clean, white tea cloth. The last of Margaret Ann’s bottled bounty. Once jars of fruit and vegetables fresh from their garden had filled the cellar. Now, these were the only jars left. Saved till last because they tasted most like sweet memories of Margaret Ann. He reached for a jar, hesitated, and reached again. With the tea towel removed, the glass was cool and smooth against his hot, cracked skin. Almost like holding Margaret Ann’s hand. He lifted the jar into a sliver of sunlight and admired its glistening, apricot-gold jewels. Finally, he hobbled back into the sun, crossed the cracked asphalt, twisted the jar open with a pop, and set the contents before the half-panting, half-dozing dog. Letting go of the jar hurt like tearing a piece of himself away. He turned his back on the golden syrup, returned to the shade of the burnt-out hardware store, and fell asleep beneath the busted window. When he woke, the dog was beside him, its boxy head resting in his lap, its gauze-wrapped legs twitching in sleep. The peach jar at its feet, licked clean. Jonathan smiled. His lips split and cracked like an old rubber band. He patted the dog’s head and ran his hand down the dog’s back. Stopped. Backtracked. The dog was bone thin, of course. But there was something else. He pushed the fur aside. Scars. Old. New. Everywhere. Not just abandoned then. Abused and abandoned. Jonathan liked the weight of the dog’s head on his leg. But he couldn’t lead the dog on. The dog would live for days yet, years maybe. But Braden Heights was Jonathan’s last stop. He scooted away and let the dog’s head droop to the cracked, sooty floor. Jonathan dozed again and when he woke a second time the dog’s head was back in his lap. The dog was awake this time too, staring up at him with wide, ripe-wheat eyes. Jonathan pushed the dog’s head away. “Off with you now.” Using the wheelbarrow for support, Jonathan pressed himself to his feet. The dog struggled up beside him, tail wagging. Jonathan peered through the cracked window. The sun had dipped toward the distant mountain peaks. It was time. He wrapped the empty glass jar in its tea towel, returned it to the wheelbarrow beside the seven remaining jars, and pushed the wheelbarrow out into the street. The dog limped behind, close at Jonathan’s heels. Jonathan shrugged. “Come if you like. But you best stay out of my way. I’ve work to do.” Back at the stone marker, Jonathan parked the wheelbarrow and lifted the pickaxe. It felt heavy as an anvil. When he took a swing, the blade barely made a dent. The soil was as compact as concrete. He took another swing. A few clods of dirt broke away. He wiped his brow, retrieved his work gloves, and started in earnest. Jonathan threw all his strength into the task. Swing after swing till the soil loosened. When he switched from pickax to shovel, the dog scooted forward and helped. When the hole was big enough to sit in, dog and man sat down and shared a jar of peaches. The dog’s tongue lolled. Its tail wagged. Jonathan let it lick the jar clean before he wrapped the jar back in its tea towel and returned it to the wheelbarrow. After another hour, the shovel hit something solid. Shoulders sore and hip acting up, Jonathan worked his way down to his knees and cleared the dirt away. Pointy metal. The corner of a box. He whooped. The sound of joy disintegrated into the rust-orange sunset. The dog flinched but wagged its tail. Jonathan laughed. “We found it, boy. Come on.” Redoubling their efforts, dog and man dug around the capsule till it wiggled. Grasping the box with both hands, Jonathan rocked it back and forth till it broke free. Tumbling onto his rump, Jonathan displayed the steel box like lost treasure. The dog cocked its head and sniffed the box. Jonathan laughed. “I know. It doesn’t look like much. But it’s everything. Trust me.” Sitting on the stone marker, Jonathan worked at the rusty hinges till the lid popped off. The capsule was stuffed full. Jonathan looked around for a clean spot and settled on the stone marker. After wiping the granite slab with his sleeve, he upended the capsule and poured its contents out. Trash from the nineteen-nineties toppled onto the engraved stone. Stripping off his work gloves, Jonathan picked through the contents but didn’t see the cassette tape. Where was it? He wanted to rummage, shove the garbage out of the way till he found the gold he was seeking, but he forced himself to work slowly. The tape would be fragile after fifty-three years underground. Finally, there was nothing left on the stone but a freezer baggie full of what? Rotten rice? Jonathan leaned in. Seeds. A plastic baggie of seeds. The baggie itself was a novelty. A wrinkled relic of a disposable past. When he grasped it, it crinkled between his fingers and threatened to split. But Jonathan didn’t care about the baggie. He pushed it aside. Underneath, brittle but intact, was what he had come for. Margaret Ann’s cassette tape. Tears sprung to his eyes when he recognized Margaret Ann’s loopy script. Her handwriting hadn’t changed. Why had she? Jonathan wiped the tears away and, using both hands, lifted the cassette from the stone as gently as he had lifted Meg for the first time. Cradling the cassette in his palm, Jonathan retrieved the boombox from the wheelbarrow and set it on the ground. Margaret Ann had kept the boombox all these years. Listened to it even as he had bought her new, better electronics. Danced to it as she cleaned the house. Turned the volume up if Meg complained the music was outdated. Bought batteries on the black market to keep it running. Repaired it more than once. Chose it among all her treasures to save when the rambler burned. But then left it behind when she walked away from Garraway Ranch. Jonathan pressed the eject button, and the cassette door popped open. Sliding the cassette in, he pushed the door closed again till it clicked. Finger trembling, he pressed play. The machine whirred and static popped in the speakers, but no music came. Jonathan checked the volume. It was fine. As gently as he could, he pressed rewind. The machine jumped to life and let out a squeal, rewinding the tape so fast it nearly made his heart stop. Finally, the player clicked off. Once more, Jonathan pressed play. This time, after a brief silence, he heard clapping and cheering and chattering voices. When a guitar twanged, the crowd kept talking. But when a voice joined the guitar, all other sounds fell away. Soon Jonathan was alone with the sweet, clear voice of his Margaret Ann. When I find him, he’ll be the apple of my eye. He’ll be my sunshine. He’ll be my ever-loving sky. When I find him, I’ll stay with him till I die. I’ll be his girl. He’ll be my guy. The chorus gave way to another verse, but Jonathan didn’t hear it. The bright-eyed girl with the yellow sash stood on stage with her guitar. His Margaret Ann. When he had seen her that day, he had known she was everything. He had worked his fingers raw to give her everything she deserved, but she had left anyway. She hadn’t stayed with him. Not in the end. When I find him, it’s sure I’ll know him by the spark. We’ll have picnics in the park. We’ll take long walks in the dark. The song turned back to the chorus, and Jonathan’s mind turned back time. In the early years, he and Margaret Ann had gone on lots of picnics. Lots of walks—in the dark, in the rain, in the orange glow of sunset. But that had been long ago. Before chores and bills and baby Meg. Eventually, they had stopped frittering their precious time away. Or had they? Margaret Ann had asked on occasion. She had packed picnics too. He remembered now. Nights he came home late when dinner hadn’t been waiting in the oven but in a basket. How long had it been since he had seen that basket? He couldn’t remember. The strum of guitar died away. Margaret Ann’s voice disappeared. After a breath, there was loud, long applause. Someone called out Margaret Ann’s name. Someone else whistled. Eventually, even the applause died away, and Jonathan was alone. Again. But he wasn’t. The dog nudged Jonathan’s arm. Jonathan patted the dog’s head. The dog whined. “What? Want to hear it again?” The dog tilted its head. Jonathan nodded. “Me too.” Gently, he pressed rewind and cringed at the heart-stopping squeal. When the player clicked off, he pressed play and let the song wash over him. The dog lowered its head to Jonathan’s lap, and the two listened together. When the song gave way to applause, Jonathan pressed stop. He patted the dog’s head. It was time. He wanted to shoo the dog away, retrieve the shotgun, end life the way he had lived it—on his own terms. But something stopped his hand. Something gnawing the pit of his stomach. Something wrong that had to be put right. What? Jonathan took up the chain that had served as the dog’s collar and ran his fingers along it. When he got to the end of the chain, his fingers stopped. The last link was stretched and twisted. Broken. The dog hadn’t been abandoned. It had run away. It must have taken weeks, months, to strain against the chain till it finally broke. Jonathan stroked the dog’s head. “It must’ve been real bad for a loyal pup like you to run away.” Jonathan’s hand stopped rubbing the dog’s fur. The dog whined. But Jonathan didn’t hear. He was looking east. “It must’ve been real bad.” Jonathan sat up so suddenly the dog scrambled back and cocked its head. Jonathan laughed. “That’s right. Time to get a move on. Detroit’s a long way off, and we’ve only got six jars of peaches left thanks to you, you greedy mutt.” Jonathan reached for the wheelbarrow to push himself to his feet, but stopped. What was he thinking? He couldn’t go to Detroit. They wouldn’t let him in. He didn’t have anything to offer but a beat-up dog and an old boombox. Jonathan’s hand twitched. There was something, wasn’t there? He looked at the debris from the time capsule scattered on the ground. There it was. A baggie of seeds. Gently, he pulled the baggie open and peered inside. Apple seeds from Saul Braden’s orchard. Thousands of seeds. Hard and round and firm. Young people didn’t want beef anymore. But they wanted fruit. People would always want fruit. They’d let in an old man if he brought an orchard with him, wouldn’t they? He could find Margaret Ann, and Meg, and the computer programmer. He could meet little Annie. She must be ten now, maybe eleven. It wasn’t too late. People still went on walks in Detroit. Didn’t they? They must. What was the point if they couldn’t go on walks? The pit bull by his side, Jonathan pushed himself to his feet, dusted the ash from his pants, and turned east. |
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L.S. Kunz
L.S. Kunz lives with her husband in the rolling foothills of northern Utah. She has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Utah’s Best Poetry & Prose 2023, and has received awards for her short and middle grade fiction. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys hiking, camping, gardening, running, watching wild critters in her backyard, and reading almost anything she can get her hands on.
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