Chapter Seventy-Three

Monday November 1, 2032

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“Wow, just look at that.” said Wesley, peering straight up into the nighttime sky. 

The view was framed by trees on all sides, but in the enormous space between the treetops, the Milky Way was visible, as was a splash of stars and planets. It was a new moon that night, so the humans below were getting the full celestial show. Elizabeth was standing next to her husband, joining him in the stargazing. 

“This is the clearest I’ve seen it,” he said to her. “Maybe we should get a telescope for the kids.”

“Oh, I think that would be as much for you as for them,” she said with a grin. 

Wesley continued to scan the sky and said softly, “Two trillion galaxies, and a hundred billion stars in each one. Good God, we’re so tiny. Just a point inside a point inside another point. I’ve tried all my life, but I just can’t grasp it.” His wife looked at him sweetly and gave him a squeeze.

The nighttime air was getting chilly, so they both moved closer to the campfire that Wesley had lit earlier in the evening. The loud pops and cracks of the hissing logs and the sight of the constantly changing flame were especially captivating on such a starry night.

“When do we need to head out in the morning?” Elizabeth asked as she gazed at the flames of the campfire.

Her husband stretched his arms and replied, “It’s a couple of hours to Sacramento, so let’s plan to be on the road by eight. The election returns won’t start coming in until tomorrow night, but we’ve got to do our best to make one final push.”

Elizabeth gave him an even stronger squeeze with both arms and whispered into his chest, “Win or lose, I’m so proud of you.” He smiled at the remark, instantly thinking to himself it was one of the sweetest things she had ever said to him, as he kissed her gently on the forehead.

Looking toward the forest where their children were playing, he said, “Virginia, Stewart, come on out, I’m going to teach you the proper way to make a s’more, like I promised,” to which Elizabeth swiftly added, “Pay attention, kids. No one takes s’more-making more seriously than your father.”

The children came running out from the woods, Virginia with one long, straight stick, and Stewart with a couple of branches of his own. “How’s this, Dad?” asked Virginia, holding up the slender twig for her father’s inspection. 

Her father examined it carefully and said, “Excellent choice, my dear. It’s long enough to keep your hand comfortable, it’s sturdy enough to provide good point control, and it’s still green enough that it’s not going to catch fire. How about you, Stewart?”

The boy held up both branches he had found and said, “I got sticks that have three points each! I can roast six marshmallows at the same time, and Virginia can only do one!” Gently taking both sticks from the boy’s hands, the father said, “There’s a reason that Poseidon was never mentioned as being good at roasting marshmallows. These need some work.”

Tossing one of the branches aside completely, his father snapped the flanking prongs off the remaining wooden trident, leaving only a middle point. Handing the diminished stick back to the boy, he said, “Here, that’ll serve you better. Now come on over to the fire, mount your marshmallows, and let’s get started.”

Elizabeth sat in a comfortable lounge chair that was a substantial, and therefore cooler, distance from the campfire, while the father and their two children sat on three large, smooth boulders near the flames for their training in the s’more arts. 

Positioning his marshmallow above the blaze, Wesley said, “The trick is to provide heat, but not flames, and not very much heat, either, and not for very long in any one spot. If you just thrust the marshmallow into the center, it’s going to just catch on fire and plop into the coals, and even if it doesn’t, it’ll turn black and taste terrible. 

“So, what you want to do instead is hold it way up here, close enough to get some good heat, but not so close that it ignites. Once you’ve got it there, give it a nice, gentle spin, kind of like a marshmallow rotisserie. Just keep slowly spinning it, managing the distance above the flames, and watch it turn a beautiful golden brown.”

The children tried their best to follow their father’s lead. Virginia would occasionally pull the marshmallow away from the fire to inspect its progress, then she would gingerly position it again above the campfire, just as her father had instructed. 

Wesley proudly watched both children as they tried to mimic his marshmallow mastery. Suddenly, the end of Stewart’s stick was engulfed in a gooey white flame, and in a few moments the blackened remains of his marshmallow fell directly onto the red embers with a lengthy sizzle.

“I have no son,” said Wesley faux-melodramatically, dropping his head low and then looking off into the middle distance. 

Virginia picked up the open plastic bag of Jet-Puffed and held it out toward her little brother. “Try again, Stewie,” she said. From the comfort of her lounge chair, Elizabeth said, “That’s sweet of you, Virginia, thank you. Give it another go, Stewart.”

The father smiled at his kids, and he carefully pulled his own perfectly roasted marshmallow off the end of his spear and popped it in his mouth. It had a subtle caramel taste, and its slightly hardened skin protected his mouth from the gooey interior for the few moments that were needed to make the white blob palatable. After he swallowed it, he decided to pace himself and wait a little while before having seconds.

Wesley Williams’s gaze settled into the center of the fire, and the constantly changing colors and rhythmic miniature explosions drew him into a trance. He sat and silently considered his life’s path, and how impossibly unlikely it was that he wound up where he was at that very moment. 

Wesley considered what was right in front of him. He had his health, his wife, his children, and enough saved up to keep them safe and comfortable. Maybe he would be a Senator, or maybe he wouldn’t. It was impossible to say, and Wesley Williams had lived long enough to know the truth in the old adage: if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

In spite of that, Wesley contemplated the thousands of decisions, inflection points, and lucky breaks that had all led to this very instant, which was simultaneously terrifying to consider and miraculous to comprehend. It could have all turned out otherwise, with just a single different direction for any one of those ripples in time.

Looking back, all the forks in the road of life seemed so meaningless when he was living them, but in retrospect each became the junction leading to one irreversible future or another. If he had ever been truly aware what a difference the most trivial choice could have made to the remainder of his life, he would probably have been too petrified to ever make any decision at all.

As the images of his own history twisted and ripped their way through the flames in front of him, Wesley Williams somehow knew that he had taken the right path after all. Maybe the trail had been laid out for him all along from the day he was born, and it was simply up to him whether to keep marching forward in the right direction.

Wesley was here now. In spite of all his shortcomings, all his bad choices, and all the times he had missed the mark and felt ashamed, he knew in his heart he was still where he was meant to be.

Gazing across the distance at his wife’s eyes – those tender, loving eyes that he had fallen in love with when he was just a boy – he knew he had never left the trail on which he belonged, even though it was impossible from day to day to know for sure where the markers would be.

Somehow, he had managed to stay on the path where he knew he needed to be, even if his own foolhardiness had put his fate at risk. For reasons he could not comprehend, he had been spared his own oblivion by the pathway’s power.

“I made something for you, Dad,” said Virginia, as she draped her arm around his neck and propped her chin on his left shoulder. Extending her hand, she presented him with a s’more, daintily placed on a white paper towel. 

Looking at the treasure resting on his daughter’s hand, Wesley saw the square of Hershey’s was already half-melted from the heat of the tanned marshmallow. These ingredients were sandwiched between two graham crackers, which Wesley squeezed gently to compress the tower to a more manageable height. 

The chocolate had melted perfectly, but not so much that any of it was dripping off the sides. “Virginia,” her father said, “this is the finest-looking s’more I’ve ever seen. Now, the moment of truth!”

As his daughter watched, he took a bite of the dessert, breaking off a corner into his mouth. He gave it a few chews, enjoying the paradoxical pleasure of three otherwise humdrum instruments being combined into a surprisingly delicious symphony. An unstoppable grin appeared on his face, which prompted his daughter to smile back. He reached out and pulled her closer, giving her a strong hug, and his gaze turned to the fire once more.

The rest of the planet would have to take care of itself that night, because those gathered around the campfire were all that mattered to Wesley. In a world that had proved itself so untrustworthy, everyone in his family recognized how lucky it was that they still had themselves and, more importantly, still had each other. 

The last year had seemed so terrifying, it had become hard to take one step forward without dreading the consequence. Yet Wesley knew he would keep walking anyway. He couldn’t help himself.

The one thing he finally knew was that he could trust in the future. There was no way to explain it, but he knew in a way he could not yet understand that things were going to be all right for them. On a vastly smaller scale, though, he simply felt happy.

That feeling wouldn’t last. Pure feelings never did. But for those fleeting seconds, in the presence of his wife, his son, his daughter, their dogs, the fire, and even his s’more, Wesley Williams was, in that one rare instant, completely content. Even more important, every person around the campfire that night beneath the endless and starlit sky knew that, after such a long wait, they were all finally home.