We’re All Connected, by Ryan Boudinot
Eleanor operated under a strange compulsion to visit cell towers, the more remote the better. Any time she saw towers lording over a ridge or hill anywhere in Washington State, she imagined the dusty, rutted service road that must lead up to it, the little padlocked control room housing the electronics that threw signals into the atmosphere. The men who worked at the towers seemed to be a lonely breed, but she had yet to actually meet one during the dozen hikes to these outposts of communications that she'd conducted since she’d upgraded from a flip phone.
When cell phone service went down for whatever reason—an equipment failure or freak storm, say—it bothered Eleanor as an existential crisis might bother someone else. It signaled that something had gone deeply wrong in the world. There was a fire at one tower and now everyone south of it couldn't get reception…a squirrel got electrocuted and shorted out part of another tower somewhere north. Eleanor followed the crudely designed niche websites that chronicled the dramas of the region’s cell service.
One morning in a foggy October, Eleanor pulled on her hiking boots at the trail head to Chelan Butte in Eastern Washington. She'd taken a few days off from managing the food bank and had booked herself an economy room at one of the resort hotels downtown. While most visitors to this town came for the paddle boarding or wineries, she'd set her sights on the two towers perched 2275 feet above sea level. Slinging her day pack over her shoulders she started up the trail. She encountered a lone hiker headed in the opposite direction, but this being a week day in the off season, the trail was otherwise all hers. After a couple hours through wildflowers and the occasional scorched remnants of pines that hadn't survived the previous summer's wildfires, she came to the towers.
The towers had two outbuildings, each about the size of a gas station rest room. The padlocked door on the smaller of the two was shut tight. Eleanor hiked around the base of the tower to check for unlocked windows or other potential entry points, eventually settling for a view through one window at ground level. A tangle of electrical wires jutted from inside so she couldn't see much more than machinery covered in plastic sheeting draped over top whatever mechanisms made this thing function.
On closer inspection Eleanor found that the padlock on the bigger of the two outbuildings was dangling from its latch, unlocked. She strolled around the perimeter and rubbed the dust off a window no larger than a hardback book. Someone grinned at her from inside; she leapt and yelped. A middle aged man with a beard and John Lennon glasses. Eleanor heard the door creak open on the other side of the building then the sound of boots on gravel. The man stopped when he appeared from around the building. He wore dirty jeans and a tan work shirt and one of those colorful, ethnic-looking vests you can find at farmers’ markets. "What took you so long?" he said.
"You knew I was coming?" Eleanor asked.
The man grunted and mussed up his hair, which looked about six months past a hair cut. At second glance, Eleanor couldn't tell if he actually worked here. And if he did, where was his truck? "It's been so boring here," he said. "I'm just glad you showed up."
"You work on the towers?" Eleanor said.
“Or the other way around, more like it. Sorry, name's Mike."
"Eleanor."
They shook hands, which seemed an overly formal gesture to make on top of a mountain. Mike said, "You want to see what I got inside?"
Eleanor took a step back.
Mike shook his head. "Jeez, I’m so sorry. A woman by herself on a hike, some weird guy in a cell tower station, I get it. Come on, Mike, connect the dots. If I were you I'd be a little freaked out, too. I don’t blame you."
"What do you mean the towers work on you?"
"You have to configure them to the right channels, the ones nobody down in the lowlands knows about," he said, pointing to taller of the towers.
Over her years working with the homeless and mentally impaired, Eleanor had developed pretty solid craziness radar; she could pretty much instantly tell when someone was actually dangerous and when they were just a little off. This Mike fellow didn't seem particularly dangerous, but clearly occupied a reality Eleanor was in no hurry to visit.
"Well, time for me to head back down," she said. "Nice meeting you, Mike."
"Likewise," Mike said, "You have an excellent rest of your Saturday."
Eleanor headed back down the trail. She was maybe a hundred yards from the towers when her left foot slid out from under her on some loose gravel. The earth and the sky flipped then bang crunch she was face down on the ground and a pain transcendent rocketed up her leg. Not good not good not good were some words in her head before she passed out.
***
When she came to, Mike was crouched over her.
"Jesus, you broke your leg," he said. "I'll have to carry you." Mike hoisted Eleanor onto his back and started walking with slow deliberate steps up to the towers. Eleanor's face was pressed into his dirty shirt and she could smell the sweat and pine needles of the mountain on him.
"I think we need to call 911," Eleanor said through clenched teeth.
Mike carried her toward the building with its rusting service entrance door wide open. Inside was a sleeping bag, a pile of books, cases of soup and bottled water and an elementary school desk with a laptop. Mounted to the wall was a 1980s-style, cream colored landline phone with a tangled cord. He set her gently on top of the sleeping bag. The pain in her leg was a hellish, swirling thing. Mike shook out a handful of pills from a bottle and opened a bottle of water. "Acetaminophen. Take as many of these as you want. Hell, I’d take a handful if I were you," he said. Eleanor swallowed four or five and collapsed onto her back.
"Where's my phone?" she said, checking her pockets, "We need to call someone."
"That's not how it works up here," Mike said, "We wait for them to call us, we don't call them." He uncradled the phone from the wall and held it up to her. “See? No dial tone.”
"Did you take my phone?"
"Tossed it. Doing you a favor, really. Like I said, you don't need it up here."
"I want to go home," Eleanor said.
"You don't seem to want to listen," he said, "I'm sorry, but you really don't."
"I need to get off this mountain and see a doctor. We can call someone to come up the service road. I don't even have to tell them you're here. I get it. You’re hanging out up here. I respect that. Just give me back my phone."
"It's not that simple," Mike said, "We receive calls up here, we don't make them."
"Why did you bring me up here then?" Eleanor said.
Mike crouched on the floor beside her, his face close enough that she could smell his breath and feel its warmth against her cheek. He put a hand under her head like he was comforting an injured child, which made it hard for Eleanor not to start crying as the pain shot through muscle and bone. "You're kind," Mike said, "I've seen your picture online."
Those pills probably weren't Tylenol, it occurred to Eleanor as she passed out again.
***
When she woke up it was dark and Mike had set out a can of Chunky minestrone and a plastic spoon. She awkwardly took two bites. "Can you sit up?" he said. Eleanor sat upright then collapsed back onto the sleeping bag again when her leg throbbed like someone shot off an M-80 inside it. While she'd slept Mike had wrapped it in a splint crafted from construction site stakes and strips of pink vinyl tape.
"They should be calling any minute," he said.
"Who should be calling?" Eleanor said.
Mike stood up and threw his hands in the air like he was summoning a thunderstorm from the heavens. "The towers," Mike said, "They're going to call. Trust the towers. The towers know everything, and I mean everything."
Okay so now the craziness radar was going off. Eleanor looked around the cell tower station. In the corner was an old army surplus duffel which was unzipped just enough for her to see that it contained maybe $10,000 in twenties bundled together with rubber bands.
"What do you mean 'the towers are going to call?'" Eleanor said through gritted teeth.
Mike said, "You know what the Italian guy who invented radio thought he could do? The inventor Marconi? He thought his radio could pick up signals from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. No joke."
Through the pain fog a clear thought rose, perfect as a mathematical proof: she was going to have to kill this guy. "I need to pee," she said.
"There's a pit toilet in the other building. I'll help you to it."
Mike lifted her up and helped her hop out of the building across the gravel to the other. He used a key to open the other padlock and pushed the door open, reaching around to flip on the fluorescent lights. In a room no larger than a closet was a wall of panels with switches and gauges, and in the corner a latrine, a mad scientist's john.
"I'll be right here outside," Mike said.
Eleanor limped into the room and shut the door behind her, then performed a quick scan for something, anything she could use as a weapon and halleluiah, some worker had left behind a tool belt in which lo and behold there was a hammer. Eleanor awkwardly peed, then slipped the hammer down the back of her pants. She rapped at the door and said "Ready."
Mike opened the door and let her sling her arm over his shoulder. The moon was up now, the lake far below a velvet mirage. The gravel under their feet sounded too loud as Eleanor concentrated on her breath and what she knew she was about to do.
As soon as they reached the other building the landline phone loudly rang.
"See, I told you they'd call!" Mike said, lowering her to the sleeping bag before picking up the phone and saying, "Talk to me."
As soon as Mike’s back was turned, Eleanor swung the hammer as hard as she could, hitting his left knee. There was the sort of dumb blunt embarrassing brutality of what it meant to do this to a fellow human being. Panic, pain, panic. He didn't seem to understand how to defend himself. It was almost too easy. As soon as she brought it down on his head it was like dreaming or like something out of one of those blood-spattered paperbacks that littered the floor. He spat up and lay still.
The phone hung swinging on its cord, and from within it a distant voice said, “Eleanor? Eleanor?”