WHEN TIME STANDS STILL

From the R.M. Dolin novel, "An Unsustainable Life - The Book of Darwin."

Chapter 17: When Time Stands Still

Deep into the shadowless domain of dusk, Darwin’s rust-riddled pickup lumbers to its spot along the left side of the large straw-bale insulated shop he built to replace his weathered festival tent. To no one’s surprise the Cubs didn’t win their afternoon match against the Brewers but the long, rugged ride up Marquez Mountain to the wild mustang meadow has value because they get to watch a large black bear scurry her cub across the road to the relative safety of a steep arroyo filled with crisscross deadfall making any kind of threatening pursuit improbable. A little later up the mountain, Murphy, who always rides with his head out any rolled down window, alerts on a long lanky mountain lion putting a sneak on an unsuspecting squirrel. The squirrel would be toast for sure if Murphy hadn’t insisted on barking. He probably didn’t see either the lion or squirrel at first, but given the hostile ferocity of his alert, he definitely smelled the cat.

The drive back down Marquez Mountain is equally entertaining, especially the first steep descent with its sharp left turn right where rugged mountain terrain trades places with thin desert-dried air. Blasting down the descent with nothing but blue cloudless sky ahead looks a lot like taking off from an aircraft carrier as solid metal runway trades places with vast ocean waves. Vincent’s panicked reaction to the rapidly approaching edge of a sheer four-hundred-foot drop-off with no guard rails and little room to misjudge the turn is priceless. He screams so loudly for Darwin to stop, the truck practically does so on its own just as the passenger tires cling to what little road is left. After catching his breath and allowing his heart to come somewhat back to normal, Vincent declares with absolute certainty he’s gonna walk the rest of the way down the “God-damn mountain,” but when he opens his door, the drama only escalates as he comes face-to-face, or should we say toe-to-toe, with the fact there’s literally no ground beneath his feet.

Thrusting himself back into his seat, he straps his seatbelt on in some beguiled belief that when they go over the edge, that’s gonna make a difference. Darwin quietly waits for his brother to regain his composure before calmly stating, “see what I mean about needing to fix washouts after a rainstorm.” He grins just a little before jamming the truck into second gear. “And you laughed at my tractor.” They drive in silence until they near the next steep descent. “Probably a good time to tell you we got two other suspect spots,” Darwin causally continues his safety briefing like an airline steward who long ago memorized the preflight script, “they aren’t as intense as that last one but they do always seem to be in greater need of repair so, keep your seat-belts fastened and remember, your nearest exit, as you recently learned, may not be your safest.”

The thing about trekking around remote mountain roads is that climbs are never as treacherous as descents because going up provides more driver control given you get to decide how fast you’ll go, how solid you’ll brake, and how best to navigate washouts, berms, and depressions. Going down is mostly a game in gravity’s favor where braking becomes an adventure all to itself. Guiding two tons of metal momentum pointing down doesn’t allow you to slam on the brakes whenever you need to, especially on loose gravel or soupy mud; there’s just no telling how a vehicle will react. All you can do is let the truck accelerate at the speed of gravity while waiting for a safe place to regain some semblance of control. For the uninitiated, what presents as a madman behind the wheel having a reckless desire to die is really a skilled technician practicing solid mountain maneuvers. Of course, you can never satisfactorily explain that to the poor frightened soul clutching his passenger seatbelt in the belief destiny comes with options.

Other than those brief moments of excitement, the rest of the day is as enjoyable as any day involving a Cub’s game can be, especially after they blow a two-run lead in the late innings. One comical aside is the way the wild appaloosa stallion spends most of the afternoon trying to decide whether he should tolerate Vincent’s presence. He keeps his mares in a tight bunch at the upper end of the meadow while mindfully watching this would-be intruder from within the quasi concealment of the aspen grove just above base camp. Meanwhile, Murphy does as Murphy’s do and quickly finds his favorite colt to play with while mom makes sure the boys don’t stray too far from the herd or get into too much mischief.

After parking the pickup beside the straw-bale shed, Darwin and Vincent head toward the hacienda with Vincent continuing his interrogation, “I agree your trees are too dense and the majority of them are, as you said, stunted and weak but there’s so many it’s hard to even know where you’d start.”

“They say prior to human intervention the trees in my forest were so spread out you could run a horse at full lope and now wildlife can’t even venture off game trails. I thought about starting my own sawmill, employing locals to help with selective harvesting but that’s a huge undertaking I’m not willing to devote bandwidth to. If someone were to come along with that business plan though, I think we’d come to an arrangement. I’d have to practically give them the trees for free so they can make a profit but what the hell, I’m already giving away a hundred grand in elk tags every year, so, what’s another lost profit potential.”

“What about firewood?” Vincent counters, “There’s always guys selling firewood out of their pickups around here.”

“Yeah, it’s a solid way for locals to make extra cash, a truckload of split wood goes for like three hundred; if it’s mostly piñon, they’ll get upwards of four hundred depending on where in Taos they sell. Unfortunately, those guys are like the logging companies, they want large diameter trees; they will take deadfall though, since it’s already dry but only if the termites haven’t chewed on it too much. The problem is firewood merchants already get permits for free to do the same thing on state land and they still don’t even put a dent in getting ahead of what nature produces. It’s gonna take a commercial enterprise to make the kind of impact needed to fix my forest.”

Darwin holds the hacienda door as they step into the kitchen. “I’ll get going on dinner,” he tells Vincent. “You go make nice to your wife who you abandoned all day.”

“Only because she wouldn’t come.” Vincent defensively reacts.

“Yeah,” Darwin teases, “like that matters. Tell her about the mountain lion,” he adds while looking in his fridge for possibilities, “that was really something, it’s only like the third one I’ve seen in five years.” He pokes around the fridge. “They say for every one lion you see in the wilderness, a hundred have stalked you. Just think, three hundred near death experiences I was clueless about. I bet that’s why mountain men always have dogs with them, you saw how Murphy reacted when he sniffed out that cat.”

Uninterested in mountain lion small talk, Vincent heads for the guest bedroom to check on Ilene. Meanwhile, Darwin goes to his utility room to assess his sun monitor and battery bank gauges to see if he’s going to need the generator later, it’s been a spotty sunshine day on account of a fall storm rolling in over the Rockies and having guests means he can’t just turn off the fridge and walk around in darkness like he usually does on low bank days. He gets back to the kitchen just as Vincent rushes in all excited, “she gone!” Vincent shouts.

“Gone where?” Darwin asks while digging through the fridge for whatever he needs to make whatever supper he still hasn’t figured out. He’s yet to make the critical connection between the information conveyed and the note in Vincent’s hand.

“Home,” Vincent states with worry. “Back to Chicago.”

“That’s a mighty long walk,” Darwin quips as he cradles dinner supplies in his arm.

“Her note says she misses Issac and he needs her, which is just bullshit. I already know this is my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

“Whatever the hell caused her to suddenly up and leave, it’s always my fault.”

Darwin drops his armload of food on the kitchen counter studying the pile to decide how it’s somehow going to be transformed into supper. “How’s she getting there?” he asks without really caring. “It’s not like she can fly the Mooney, right?”

“Apparently,” Vincent states in agitated frustration, “Your little Miss Sweetie-pie drove her to Santa Fe.”

“Huh,” Darwin says to himself. “Wonder why she’d do that?”

“I gotta go.” Vincent shouts.

“She’s a big girl,” Darwin dismissively counters. “Anna made sure she got on the plane okay, then it’s a direct shot to O’Hare.”

“No, I gotta go. I told you about our troubles, this is part and parcel tied to it, if I don’t go, things only get worse.”

“Well, that’s damn disappointing, you just got here. But I get it, if ya gotta go then you gotta go. I can run you up to the airport first thing in the morning.”

“It’s gotta be now or this whole thing is really gonna blow up on me.”

“I hate to break it to you, compadre, but that donkey’s already left the barn, besides, it’s getting dark and you haven’t even filed a flight plan. Are you even instrument rated to fly at night?”

“I passed my instrument test last month and can file a flight plan at the airport.”

“It’s like a thousand miles dude, even if you average two hundred an hour, by the time you refuel in Kansas it’ll be after three in the morning when you land. Best to wait till daylight, you’ll be more alert and thinking straighter.” Darwin continues working through the logistical math, “if she catches the five o’clock to O’Hare, she’ll be on the ground by eight, let’s say it takes ninety minutes to get her luggage and grab a cab, that puts her home around nine-thirty. We can have nice supper, drink a couple beers, and you can call afterwards to talk things over.”

“NO, No, no,” Vincent shouts while shaking his head. “You don’t know how it’s been, I can quote you exactly how that conversation will go. I need to be back in Chicago tonight. Whatever we have to say to each other, has to be said in person.”

“I get that, so, I’m not gonna argue even if I think you should take a deep breath and chill, it’s not like you ever listen to me in the first place.” Darwin looks again at the random pile of food on the counter unsure if he should start supper or put it away. “If I know anything about you, it’s that once your mind’s made up that’s it, so, no point beating that dead horse.”

“Give me five minutes and we can leave.”

“I assume you’re at least planning to grab something to eat on the way to the airport.”

“Make me a couple sandwiches,” Vincent shouts as he heads to bedroom. “And a thermos of coffee.”

On the drive into Taos, Darwin continues doing what he can to convince Vincent not to fly home in a hurry. He argues for a while that it’s best to give Ilene a day or two to think things over, but that has little effect. He then leans into spending the night in Taos, drinking at a plaza bar while telling war stories, but that holds no appeal. As a last-ditch effort, he suggests Vincent stay until at least after tomorrow night’s Cubs game, which maybe would have been sufficient if the Cubs were ever going to be relevant this late in a season.

Instead, Darwin stays at the airport helping where he can as Vincent hurriedly files a flight plan, fuels his aircraft, goes through preflight checks, and loads the plane, including the cooler of elk meat Darwin insists he take. As the Mooney taxis down the runway, Darwin lingers long enough to wave good-bye before heading to his pickup to let Murphy out to stretch and nourish some trees. Unsure if he should call Anna to get to the bottom of her duplicity or just go home, he decides he really doesn’t want to deal with her right now and besides, if he puts the decision to his trusted companion the answer’s always the same, “there’s no place like home.”

It’s deep into the dark despondent dead of night when Darwin’s rudely awakened by a loud persistent banging on his front door that’s further amplified by Murphy’s aggressive reaction. It takes Darwin a moment to get dressed and ready the 9-millimeter pistol Victor insisted he get from his cousin because it couldn’t be traced. Darwin’s still flushing cobwebs from his head as he stuffs the loaded weapon behind his waistband feeling the cold metal press against his back. He cracks the door open slightly making sure his foot’s firmly planted behind the door to prevent further opportunity while his right hand grips the pistol. “Oh,” he flatly states upon seeing his visitor, “it’s you.” He pauses while choosing between closing the door and going back to bed or letting her come inside. As he opens the door further, he immediately sees the sheriff’s patrol car and understands completely what this is all about.

Rather than enter, Anna stands in the doorway staring at Darwin with a solemn sadness further confirming what he doesn’t want to hear. “I wanted it to be me to tell you.” she tearfully begins. “Mateo’s cousin Manny, who works at the airport, got the call. He calls it in to his cousin Dominic at the sheriff’s office who then calls Mateo who calls Victor, who calls me. Dominic’s here because this has to be official, but he’s agreed to stay in his car.” Anna pauses while searching for her next set of just-right words. “Even though he frequently makes these kinds of calls, I think it’s something he’d rather not do.”

Darwin looks at the patrol car without offering any expression before turning around and walking to the kitchen where he pulls his whiskey from the pantry and pours what’s likely to be the first of multiple rounds. “Give it to me straight,” he tells Anna who’s followed him into the kitchen.

“What we know so far is Vincent’s plane didn’t reach Kansas City for his scheduled refueling. Transponder data shows he went down over Raton, you know how those winds can rip up the mountains when weather takes a drastic turn. Crews are trying to get to the last known location, but the transponder data shows a rapid decent in a near vertical direction.” She stares at Darwin with deeply mournful eyes but he’s not looking at her, “it doesn’t look good, Darwin. They’ve already declared it a recovery rather than a rescue. There’s fast moving weather and these early fall storms pack a lot of energy, even if he survives the crash, it’s unlikely he can make it through the night in a subzero snowstorm.”

Darwin stares at his bourbon and immediately refills the glass. “He insisted on leaving,” he says mostly to himself. “I’m not sure he even looked at the weather he was in such a damn hurry. Said he had to get home to fix whatever was broke between him and Ilene.” He glares at Anna with the intensity of a cornered convict needing to make what’s happened be on someone else. “I wager you know all you need to know about that from your drive to Santa Fe.”

Rather than engage Darwin in a senseless blame game Anna continues her field report. “Ilene’s plane was delayed in Santa Fe, some nonsense about a coffee pot not working, she’s not due into O’Hare until after midnight, I doubt she knows any of this yet.” Anna pauses uncertain how to proceed, “I’m not sure if you want to be the one to tell her, but it should be you and it’s not the kind of thing you do over the phone. You need to go there Darwin and be with her. Let me drive you to Santa Fe, there’s a six AM direct to O’Hare that Dominic’s working to get you on.”

Darwin downs his bourbon and pours a refill, looking past Anna. “Yes,” he says in a quasi-comatose stupor. “I need to be in Chicago. I need to be there before Ilene finds out. I need to be there for Issac.” He’s not really talking to Anna; it’s more like he’s informing fate of his intentions. “Can you facilitate that?”

Anna compassionately stays focused. “Dominic’s agreed to escort us to Santa Fe so we can be there in time. He’s already working on getting you an emergency boarding pass. I’ll come back here once you’re gone and square things away and of course take care of Murphy.”

“Yes,” Darwin mumbles to himself. “Murphy needs someone to take care of.”

“I’ll stay here until you get back. Take as much time as you need, I’m not going anywhere.”

After a drawn-out measure of silhouetted silence, Darwin slowly pulls the pistol from his waistband and sets it on the counter beside the nearly empty whiskey bottle in a bizarre metaphor for the moment. He reloads his glass while staring at the weapon. Anna gently reaches for the gun and carefully glides it to her side of the counter, checking the safety before tucking it in her coat pocket. “Yes,” Darwin softly mutters, “I need to be in Chicago.” He pushes his unfinished bourbon to the center of the island and starts for the bedroom.

Dominic escorts Anna’s car through Taos Canyon at speeds so fast that it seems his flashing blue lights barely have time to bounce off the shear canyon wall on one side of the road before being absorbed by Rio Grande rapids on the other side. He barely slows down as they barrel through Española and past the Pojoaque Pueblo onto the newly constructed Santa Fe bypass built so nuclear waste from Los Alamos won’t have to pass through down Santa Fe on its way to the Carlsbad waste repository. They reach the airport in time to make the six o’clock to O’Hare and both Anna and Dominic refuse to leave Darwin’s side until he’s securely on board. For added measures they remain at the airport until the plane’s safely departed.

The six AM to O’Hare arrives at the terminal by nine and because Darwin doesn’t check luggage, he’s hailing a taxi by nine-twenty-three telling the driver there’s an extra forty in it for him if can navigate the Dan Ryan like Mario Andretti. By ten-fourteen Darwin’s standing in front of the door he’s passed through so many times it’s almost home; only now it’s a home that’s gone silent. He gently traces his fingers along Vincent’s name plate and taps on the door uncertain the people on the other side are aware of the realities ready to storm their world. He’s about to knock again when Gwen slowly opens the door; her red-flush face swollen in tears informs Darwin he’s arriving too late.

“Oh Darwin,” Gwen cries as she throws her arms around him. “It’s so devastating.” She buries her face in Darwin’s shoulder continuing to cry. “It’s all so hard. Ilene’s in shock, Issac can’t process what’s happening, and I know it must be horrible for you as well.” Gwen withdrawals wiping away tears as she tries pulling herself together. “You should come inside,” she leads Darwin by his hand into the apartment.

Ilene sits on the sofa with her arm around Issac, whose face is buried in her lap. There’s a mostly empty box of tissues on the couch with the spent ones scattered all around the floor like flowers floating on a still pond. Darwin stands there facing Ilene and Issac knowing he should say something but not knowing what that something is. Surrendering to his silence, he sits down next to Issac putting his hand on his nephew’s shoulder before reaching for Ilene’s hand. Ilene looks at Darwin through tear-filled eyes and breaks down all over again. “Why Darwin?” she meekly asks. “Why did he have to fly through a snowstorm at night? I keep asking myself why this happened. Why did it have to happen? God won’t tell me, so, maybe you can.”

“I don’t know.” Darwin softly responds, taking a moment to compose himself. He doesn’t really remember much about the high-speed ride down Taos Canyon, of boarding the plane in Santa Fe, or even the daredevil drive on the Dan Ryan. During the entire time he’s so caught up thinking about the many ways he must now step up and take care of things he doesn’t have time to allocate personal grief. Now though, sitting beside Issac looking at Ilene, the utter reality of the sudden void in his world hits him full force. “I’ve asked that question so many times for so many different reasons, at so many different moments in my life, and the answer’s always the same.” He squeezes Ilene’s hand. “The silence is the answer, Ilene. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but Vincent’s passing puts a silence in the world that can never be re-echoed.”

“He’s gone Darwin.” Ilene manages through tears that have forgotten how to stop. “My husband, Issac’s dad, your brother. One minute he’s here and we’re living a life together and the next he’s gone.”

“I want you know,” Darwin softly states. “I will be here for you and Issac. We’re going to get through this. I will always be here whenever you need me, I’m just a few hours away and coming is no big deal.”

“I know,” Ilene says, forcing a smile she can only hold for a micro-moment. “Vincent always told me not to worry if something happens to him because you’d step up. He always knew that.”

The next few days are beyond hard, there’s so much to do and Ilene’s in no condition to manage any of it, her focus is on Issac and helping him come to terms with how his world has suddenly turned inside out. With never demonstrated command, Gwen steps up to handle funeral arrangements, she knows where to go and what to do as she’s recently been through it with her parents. Darwin focuses on practical matters, like getting necessary legal documents arranged and contacting the insurance agency about Vincent’s policy. Then of course, there’s the matter of getting Vincent home and he gets mired in a bureaucratic federal aviation administration investigation with all their unanswered bullshit questions in search of blame.

Vincent’s laid to rest beside his parents, the wake’s well attended by close friends, colleagues from the hospital, and former patients who were positively impacted. The service at Saint Stanislas is led by the Priest who married Vincent and Ilene and attendees’ comment on how powerfully beautiful his eulogy is, but neither Ilene nor Darwin can remember it. While Gwen’s wonderful in the way she helps Ilene with her emotional trauma, Darwin focuses on Issac. They go for walks and spend hours talking about the different ways Issac must help his mom and how he’ll need to buckle down even harder than he has to stay on track for his future college career. Better men with dad credentials would have no doubt found better ways to connect with Issac’s grief but Darwin is foremost an engineer and all he knows when it comes to interacting with the world is identifying the problem before him and coming up with solutions, and there are no solutions for emotions.

As days turn into weeks Darwin finds himself lamenting his inability to connect with Issac the way he knows he should. It’s a long way though, from knowing you need to change your approach and being able to rewrite years of filtering the world on pragmatic problem-solving terms. In quiet moments he occasionally allows himself to consider how, if he were back in the game, he would develop a capability to allow people to work through grief in painless ways on a truncated timeline. He even goes so far as to lay out a general framework visualizing how Tien and the rest of his old crew would tackle the mathematical and programing challenges convinced this is how he would apply AI technology. Each time he starts brainstorming though, he eventually gets to the same certain outcome as multiple scenarios emerge for how his efforts to do good would eventually be corrupted. People are inherently evil, he concludes, it’s the most resilient part of human nature we can’t overwrite. While most successfully keep the evil lurking inside them in check, many cannot and humanity always descends to the lowest common denominator. Besides, Darwin rationalizes, grieving is a process that should proceed at its own individual pace on its own unique path, and who is he to pretend to be God and fix what’s broken in a person’s life; isn’t that the lesson of Berkeley.

That’s pretty much how Darwin leaves Chicago, which is why he knows he’s failed. It doesn’t matter that he promises Ilene and Issac he’ll be back often, what good is being physically present when you don’t know how to fix someone’s pain, loss, or sense of emotional emptiness. At the same time he realizes he’s failed himself; that his efforts to help Issac and Ilene were just acts of avoidance and now, as if time stood still since the moment he opened his door in the dark dead of night to find Anna standing there with her grim news, here he is back on a plane heading to New Mexico with no way to escape the utter loneliness he feels, the self-imposed isolation he’s flying into, and the devastating loss he’s so successfully delayed.