Introduction: An Elephant Wind

A very old man and a very young man sat on a west-facing porch in front of an Ohio farmhouse. The old man reminded the young man of Ernest Hemingway—full white beard, tan face, squinty eyes all screwed up like he was always looking into the sun. The young man had never read Ernest Hemingway but he had seen his face on the backs of books his parents kept around the house. The two of them sat on rocking chairs, gently rocking back and forth, slightly out of synch with one another. The old man went forward. The young man went back.

A storm brewed on the western horizon. The land was flat and they could see almost all the way to Indiana. A breeze had picked up, washing over them, blowing the old man’s thin white hair back from his reddened scalp.

The old man sniffed the air and said, “An elephant wind.”

“A what?” the boy asked.

“An elephant wind.”

The boy liked elephants. He thought about them a lot more than was probably healthy. When he was even younger he told people he wanted to be an elephant. When he grew out of that he told them he wanted an elephant as a pet. Or a whole herd of elephants. They always told him elephants would be too expensive to keep. They never told him he was ridiculous for wanting a herd of elephants. He liked the image “an elephant wind” conjured but he still didn’t have any idea what the old man was talking about.

“What’s an elephant wind?” He knew the old man wouldn’t tell him if he didn’t ask.

“That’s what the Nefarions called it.” The boy didn’t know what a Nefarion was. The old man pointed out to the horizon. “Look out there.”

The boy did. He saw gray clouds gathered on the horizon. The storm, coming toward them.

“Imagine those clouds were elephants. A whole herd of them, marching right toward us.”

The boy looked at the horizon, shifted his gaze, tried to make his vision go blurry. He forced his sight beyond the field of dancing green corn stalks. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine the clouds as a herd of elephants. He didn’t even see the point in imagining them as a herd of elephants. The old man, he knew, was not without his quirks and odd beliefs. Sometimes he would make the boy follow him around the yard while he tried to lift things, his wiry old man body straining, all the cords and veins standing out on his neck and arms, almost always unsuccessfully. The old man had told him the stars were Native American arrow holes and before the whites had come the natives had known what it was to enjoy true darkness. He told him when grass made you itch it meant you had done something to make it angry. He said if you were asleep here it meant you were awake in China.

“I don’t see any elephants,” the boy said.

“You have to use your imagination.”

“But why would I want to imagine a herd of elephants instead of a storm?”

“Well, the Nefarions did it because theirs is a rebellious lot. Have I ever told you about the Nefarions?”

The boy shook his head. It sounded like something from one of his storybooks.

“Remind me to tell you more about them some day for theirs is an interesting history...” The old man trailed off, gazing out at the impending storm, lost in thought.

“The Nefarions, Grandpa?” the boy reminded him. The boy’s chair had stopped rocking and now he sat sideways in it, staring at the old man, listening to the wind slice itself against the cartilage of his ear.

“Oh, right. Anyway, theirs was a rebellious lot. All of their children were completely out of control. The out of control children grew to become out of control adults. But the children’s safety was very much these out of control adults’ concern. Anyway, the Nefarions live on a remote island in the Malefic Ocean...”

“I’ve never heard of that one.”

“You will, maybe, someday. Or maybe you won’t.”

The boy, as with many other things his grandfather told him, filed it away in the back of his head in the place of soon forgotten things.

“So this island in the middle of the Malefic Ocean was prone to storms a million times more violent than the ones we have here. It was rumored a bolt of lightning could shoot from the sky and cut a person clean in half if he happened to be caught out. Hair was blown from people’s heads. Skin was pushed back and frozen that way.” Here his grandfather pulled the loose skin on his face back to demonstrate, the result skeletal and terrifying. “Everything was more powerful there. But the adults couldn’t make the children understand that. A storm would come and the adults would tell the children they had better get inside and the children would laugh at them. ‘What is a storm?’ they would ask and then they would answer themselves, ‘It is nothing but wind and water and fire. These are the things of the earth. Are we supposed to fear them because they come from the sky?’ Very philosophical, those children.

“Their island was, however, home of a legendary herd of elephants, rarely seen, but large in number. One day these elephants broke free from the forest in the middle of the island and rampaged through the town, trampling everything in their path. It scared many of the children to see their parents and classmates driven into the ground by the weight of these enormous, vicious creatures. Soon, the adults thought up an idea. Whenever a storm gathered itself around the island the adults directed the children’s gaze to the gathering clouds and told them it was the elephant herd, come back to finish off the villagers. The elephants ran so fast, the adults said, they generated a wind. An elephant wind. They had the children so thoroughly convinced this was the truth that most of the children would say they could smell the elephants on the wind. Coming for them. Rampaging toward them. Hurriedly, they would retreat into their homes and hope the giant beasts were not able to desecrate their modest shacks and houses.”

The boy looked out over the corn toward the advancing clouds. Now he could see how one might mistake them for being elephants. So many shades of gray and black. Rounding curves that could be ears. Thin strands that could be tails or maybe even trunks. And all throughout the bank of clouds, the little glimmers of white tusks, eager to impale any straggling little boy. If he listened carefully, he thought he could even hear their unmistakable horn-like shouts. And, yes, if he thought about it hard enough he could even smell them—the faraway scent of straw and manure, hide heated up in the summer sun.

“I think I’m going inside,” he told his grandfather.

“Of course, here, here we don’t have any elephant winds.” The boy thought maybe his grandfather sounded a little sad about this. “Here we don’t really have anything close to magic at all. So you can stay out here as long as you want and nothing will hurt you. You might get a little wet, is all.”

But the boy couldn’t get the image of the trampling elephants out of his head.

“I’m going to go inside and have a snack.”

“Sure. Sure. I’ll be in in a few minutes.”

The boy knew this was a lie. His grandfather was a weather enthusiast and any time there was anything out of the ordinary in the sky which, in Ohio, was just about every day, he would be out in it, looking at the horizon or up toward the heavens. Once inside, the boy made a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich and sat down on a chair in the living room. Two large picture windows looked out over the cornfield, toward the approaching storm. He wondered where his parents were. They often left for hours at a time, taking his sister with them, and returning after he went to bed. After eating his sandwich and turning on the television, the boy must have dozed off.

He awoke to what could only be the trumpeting of elephants. Standing up, he ran to the window and watched wide-eyed as something strange and horrific unfolded in front of him.

His grandfather stood in the front yard, clothes flapping around his skinny body, hair swirling around his huge head, arms thrust up toward the heavens. Rain fell from the sky, huge fat drops, turning everything gray. Thunder rumbled under his feet. Lightning slashed the sky. And from everywhere he could hear the trumpeting of the elephants.

Then he saw them tearing through the cornfield. Dividing as they reached his grandfather. Hundreds of them. The boy grew very worried about his grandfather. He went to the door and opened it. The wind nearly ripped the storm door from its hinges.

“Grandpa!” the boy shouted.

The old man was oblivious. It looked like he was confronting the gods and, if so, it was a confrontation he lost. The sky darkened. Rain pelted off the backs of the pachyderm parade, swirling around his grandfather. Lightning strobed the dark day bright and, like that, his grandfather was gone. The boy sat down on the same chair he had fallen asleep in and cried.

Later, he would often think he had been depressed from that point onward.

Chapter One

When I turned twenty-four I dropped out of college for the fourth time and moved to a scummy apartment in Dayton to write a novel. After about a month, I got lonely and invited the copious amounts of homeless people skulking in nearby alleys, vacant lots, abandoned houses, and junked cars to stay in the apartment, establishing something like a flophouse. Their presence helped the writing. I never could think when surrounded by silence or canned creativity like music or television. At first, I wrote on a laptop but someone stole that while I was sleeping so I went to a thrift store and found the biggest, bulkiest typewriter I could find. It would be too heavy for them to lug to the pawnshop and it had a generally useless, ancient look to it. Using a typewriter meant I had to keep a paper manuscript and my bums stole that as well. I don’t really know what they used it for. It was good for editing purposes. I had to write the same scenes over and over. Eventually, when I reached something resembling a finished manuscript, I got tired of them stealing it so I put the ream of paper in a plastic zipper bag and stashed it in the tank of the toilet. As the manuscript grew, the water in the toilet’s reservoir didn’t have anywhere to go and it would run out from the tank. This worked out nicely because no one ever wanted to get caught making a mess in the bathroom so they never opened up the tank to see what was making all the water come out. They just finished their business and got out as quickly as possible.

The actual physical act of my writing (they never read anything I wrote) inspired some of the bums and they would spend entire days writing on the walls. I encouraged this, figuring I wouldn’t get my deposit back anyway. After they stole the radio and the television this was the only way I had to entertain myself when not writing. I never really knew who wrote what but it was all pretty good. Gritty. Realistic. The complete opposite of the novel I was writing. I had trouble keeping the bums’ names straight. They all had nice, solid, Midwestern names like John and Hank and Buck and Mike. Or nicknames like Stinky, Pooptooth, and Blackbeard.

I stayed there for three years.

A guy named Squirt was there, standing right behind me, when I finished my novel. He was enthralled with how quickly I could type and a little sidetracked by the flaking rash on his stomach.

“That it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

“What now?”

“Guess I should try and sell it.”

I bought a guide to writers’ markets and quickly figured out every publisher was actually the same publisher and it was located in New York.

“Well guys,” I announced. “I’m going to New York.”

No one paid any attention to me. One man was hastily scrawling on the wall. Another man was in the corner shooting heroin. One was in the kitchen, cutting his wine with tap water. One was passed out on the couch, snoring loudly. He only wore one shoe. Squirt came out of the bathroom and proudly proclaimed he had fixed the toilet. I told them they were welcome to stay until they got thrown out and, if the landlord asked about me, to tell him I had died that morning. Again, I don’t think anyone really heard me.

With my manuscript under my arm and a suitcase in my hand, I went to the bus station and bought a ticket to New York.

Chapter Two

It was a bright May morning when I reached the offices of Devilment Incorporated, on Fifth Avenue. I read the little placard by the elevators and took the elevator up to the fortieth floor. A horsefaced receptionist greeted me when I came off the elevator. Apparently, I looked fairly authorial in my corduroy blazer. A man lay on the floor behind her, moaning and holding his head.

“May I help you?” The receptionist’s nametag read: “Artemis X.”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe you can. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Mr. Dix.”

“Hm,” she said, putting a lacquered fingernail against her bottom lip and looking down at an appointment book filled with childlike, pornographic sketches. “Mr. Dix is, uh...” She giggled. I noticed she had her shoes off and the moaning man on the floor was tickling her heels. She coughed and kicked him in the head. He rolled back to his place on the floor. “What I meant to say was, uh, Mr. Dix is...”

“A GOAT!” the man on the floor shouted. “MR. DIX IS A FUCKING GOAT!” he shouted again before being overcome with a case of the giggles himself.

“No...” Ms. X tapped her fingernail on the counter. “No.” She shook her head. “Mr. Dix is most definitely not a goat.” She picked up the pornographic appointment book, closed it, turned around and swatted the floored man with it after each word. “Why. Don’t. You. Go. Back. To. Your. Own. Floor.” Swat. Swat. Swat.

The man snatched the book from her hands, stood up, and said, “Fine. If that’s the way you want to be. I will go back to my own floor. But don’t expect me to be there when you get home.” Then he stormed out of the office, stalking over to the elevators and angrily pushing both buttons frantically.

“Mr. Dix is...” Ms. X looked at the acoustic-tiled ceiling. “Well, he’s certainly not here today. That’s what he isn’t.”

“I see. Should I come back then? Perhaps I can just leave this with him?” I brandished my bulky manuscript. Although, frankly, I would have felt a little nervous leaving anything in that office.

“Hm,” she said. “Let’s have a look-see at that.”

I plopped it down on the counter.

She read the title aloud, mispronouncing a couple of the words and running her thick fingernail under them.

“David Glum?” she asked when she got to my name. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“Probably not. This is my first novel.”

She laughed and called out, “Lance!” I turned to see who she was shouting at. It was the man from the floor. The elevator doors still had not opened and he continued to push the buttons. They both glowed ferociously and his face glistened with sweat. “He says...” She spoke around her wild laughter. “He says this is his first novel.”

At this, Lance stopped pushing the elevator buttons, clasped his hands around his stomach and threw out the loudest most inauthentic laugh I’d ever heard. He fake-laughed so hard he fell to the floor. The elevator doors opened and he just rolled inside, not even bothering to stand up. The doors closed and I heard his laugh descend with the elevator. My face burned red. Once he was gone from earshot Ms. X ceased laughing and struggled to pull her horsey face into something resembling seriousness.

“If this,” she said, stroking a hand down my title page, “is your first novel, then you would want to see Mr. Half. Not Mr. Dix. Mr. Dix does not work with first time novelists.”

“Well... I assure you my appointment was with Mr. Dix but if Mr. Half is the only one here today then I guess he’ll have to do.” It would have to be okay since my appointment with Mr. Dix was imaginary.

“Just a moment.” She sat down at her chair and picked up the telephone. She enclosed her hand around the receiver so I could neither hear her nor see her lips moving. “If you would like to sit down over there Mr. Half will be with you in a few moments.”

Chapter Three

I crossed the office but before I could even make it to the uncomfortable and stained couch someone shouted, “Glum!” from behind me.

I turned around and a very small man approached me. “If you’ll just follow me,” he said.

I followed him down a long corridor and turned left into his office. The office was very small. Filing cabinets lined the walls. Paper spilled from all of them. Paper was everywhere. Piled on his desk and on top of the filing cabinets. He sat down behind his desk, adjusted his small glasses and said, “If you could give me just a half an hour with your, uh, manuscript there, I’ll be able to let you know.”

I plunked the manuscript down on his desk. He let out an exasperated sigh and reiterated, “One half hour, please.”

“Thank you,” I said, reaching across the desk to shake his hand. It was the size of a child’s and very smooth. I walked back down the long corridor and out to the reception area. Ms. X was crawling on the floor, sniffing the carpet. I pressed the button for the lobby and the elevator opened right up. Lance stood in the back right corner of the elevator. He stood very straight and very serious-looking. The elevator door closed and he moved to stand right next to me.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he hissed.

“About what?”

“Artemis.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about there.”

“She’s mine,” he hissed again, giving me a little push.

“Fine. Fine. I’m here to sell a book.”

“Oh, a big time author, huh?”

“Well, not really.”

“Just remember—stay away from Artemis.”

“Okay. Okay. Just...” The elevator doors opened and I immediately heaved myself for them. Lance tripped me and I went sprawling into the lobby. Staying in the elevator, he pointed at me and laughed. I picked myself up and headed for the front doors, figuring by the time I stepped outside, went back in and back up to the fortieth floor, a half hour would have elapsed. Standing on the steps in front of the building I saw a man with the head of an eagle walk across Fifth Avenue and into Central Park.

I also saw my imposter for the first time. He came through the front doors and stood there next to me. Curiously, I stared at him. He wore a wig resembling my hair. He wore the same glasses and blazer as I did. He carried a fat ream of paper under his arm. He surveyed the street in front of him and then, turning, saw me staring at him. He grabbed the ream of paper up to his chest and took off running into the park. I contemplated running after him, thinking maybe he had stolen my manuscript, but I wanted to be able to meet Mr. Half in one half hour.

Chapter Four

I took a deep breath and watched all the people walking up and down Fifth Avenue. Fashionable, well-dressed people. Slovenly dressed people. Moderately dressed people. Some of them entered Central Park. Some of them were on their way to other destinations. Who were these people? What were they doing? Where were they going? And did I care?

I most absolutely did not.

I turned and went back into the building, crossing the drab lobby to the elevators. Gratefully, I noticed Lance was no longer in the elevator. He must have found whatever floor he was looking for. Now there were at least fifty people in the elevator, an impossible amount, all of them dressed like doctors or nurses. I sucked in my breath, trying to make myself smaller, and squeezed in amidst them. All the buttons were lit up and the elevator stopped at each floor. No one waited to get on and no one got off. When it reached the fortieth floor, I exhaled, the surge of people behind me nearly shoving me out into the reception area. Cautiously, I strolled to the desk, waiting for a potential ambush from Lance.

The reception area was completely destroyed. The couch I had been previously directed toward was maimed and gouged, stuffing flowing out and onto the carpet, which had been torn up in places. The coffee table was overturned, the various trade magazines covering it torn and scattered across the floor. Ms. X’s computer sat in a melted lump on the counter.

There was no sign of Ms. X so I let myself back to Mr. Half’s office, again wandering along the interminably long corridor. None of the office doors had any numbers or nameplates on them so I wasn’t sure it was actually Mr. Half’s door I knocked on when I finally reached it. I waited for him to call me in but didn’t hear anything. I knocked again. Again, nothing.

“Mr. Half?” I breathed into the door.

Still nothing.

I tried the knob and entered the office, only to find Mr. Half sound asleep, his head resting, cheek down, on my manuscript, a trail of drool darkening the page. I nudged his shoulder. “Mr. Half?”

He plucked his head up and adjusted his glasses over his bleary eyes.

“Oh... what... I’m terribly sorry,” he said. He removed his small wire-framed glasses and wiped sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands before putting his glasses back on. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Glum.”

“Sorry to bother you.”

“Oh, it’s no bother.”

“Did you get to read any of it before you...”

“Fell asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, yes, I read a few pages.”

Then he entwined his fingers and rested his chin on them, staring at me.

“And?”

“Yes?”

“What did you think of it?”

“Not much, really. I mean, I fell asleep. How good could it have been?”

“I see.”

“About how long did you spend on this?”

“Three years.”

“Pity.” He separated his hands and shuffled my damp manuscript around on his desk.

“So, is that it?” I asked. “Should I go? Or are you going to show it to Mr. Dix?”

“No. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Half, if you don’t mind, I’ll take my manuscript and get going. I’m very sorry to waste your time.”

“It’s no bother. Really, I’ve got nothing but time. My wife has uh... left me, so I mostly just stay here. Actually, she hasn’t so much left me as... invited a lover into our home. The children love him. He’s a contortionist, you see. They call him Mr. Flexy... A much more interesting character than their father. A gimmick, really, if you ask me but, well... you didn’t, did you?”

“Didn’t what?”

“Ask me.”

“No. I guess I didn’t.”

“Anyway, I really hope you’re not discouraged. This has nothing to do with you or your writing...”

“You’re rejecting it but telling me, at the same time, it is not a reflection of the writing?”

“Exactly.”

“But if it was good you would have accepted it, right?”

Mr. Half chuckled and looked nervously at the teeming manuscripts surrounding him.

“I mean, it’s okay if it sucks. You can tell me. You’re an editor. You must have read countless manuscripts—good and bad. I would think, being a man of education and letters, you would be able to encapsulate your feelings toward my writing in a single sentence or two.”

“You’re obviously a very confused young man, Mr. Glum.”

“You’re probably right, Mr. Half.”

“Let me tell you how things work before you go back out and tell everyone what elitist snobs we all are.”

“I never said you were an elitist snob. If publishers were snobs they wouldn’t publish half the shit they do.”

“Okay... Okay, no need to get insulting.” Mr. Half sat back in his chair and spread his arms to draw my attention to his office and those insurmountably depressing mounds of novels, short story collections, memoirs, and queries. “I am only an assistant editor. Do you know what that means?”

“You’re like a filter for the head honcho, right? A...”

He held his hand up to silence me.

“Not even just a filter. Being an assistant editor implies that I am still some kind of editor. That’s where I don’t want to lead you astray. I am a half-editor. I was born to be a half-editor. Because I am half a man. I am half of Mr. Dix. I am half as tall as he is. I weigh half as much as he does. While I am not completely bald, my hair is very thin and, I can assure you, if a count were taken, you would find me to have half as many hairs as him. My office is half the size of his. I have half as many filing cabinets as he has. But this is where things differ. Whereas I am half the person he is I do a thousand times the work. All I do is read things. Every day. All day. Mostly. So he has time to live his full life and be the full man he strives to be. Occasionally I find something I like enough to pass along to him but if he doesn’t like it, if it doesn’t in some way enrich his life...”

“Yes?”

“The consequences are dire. Mr. Dix is a ruthless man. And he is not afraid to use his fists.”

“I’m very sorry about your situation, sir, but if you’ll just return my manuscript I’ll be on my way.”

“I’ll give it back to you but I should have you know that I might as well throw it away.”

“Why? I worked hard on that.”

“But what are you going to do with it now? Publish it yourself? I can assure you you will be a mockery if you choose to do that. Mr. Dix may not even look at any more of your manuscripts should you choose to do that. And, I’m sorry, but there just isn’t any other place for you to take it. We own everything.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“Fine,” he said, using the sleeve of his jacket to wipe some drool from the title page before hastily scooting the bulky manuscript across the desk. “Take it. Go read it to the homeless or something. See if I care. And may I make one suggestion?”

“Why not?” I said, collecting the manuscript.

“You should think about giving it a shorter title. To be honest with you, I fell asleep before reading the whole title.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Glum.”

“You too, Mr. Half.”

I turned to leave the office and, reaching the threshold, heard Mr. Half reading, at top volume, from another manuscript.

Entering the reception area, I noticed a goat had taken Ms. X’s place. The goat sat in her chair and gnawed on the destroyed computer, sliming it with some kind of drooly goat funk. He brayed at me as I once again boarded the elevator. The doctors and nurses had all gone but now there was a patient, stretched out on a gurney, a sheet covering the body and head completely. He may have been dead. I started feeling kind of bummed out. When I got out of the elevator I decided to go sit in the park for a while. Then I guessed I would go back home. Not to the apartment but to my parents’ farmhouse in Grainville. I had wanted to be a novelist since I was in the third grade and had now failed. I was bummed because of the failure but the prospect of finding something else to do seemed exhausting and staggering. And the thought of spending years learning some other skill or craft only to fail once again was thoroughly depressing. It made me want to do nothing at all. Just sit in the park and watch people who undoubtedly had better lives than mine.

I bought a sandwich from a greasy man with a growth on his face and a thick accent.

I found an empty bench and sat down to eat my sandwich, surrounded by acres of fake wilderness. I ate my sandwich and thought about how my life no longer had any purpose. For the past three years, my purpose had been the novel and now... The positive point of view would have been to go back home and start another novel but, after being told, in so many words, that it didn’t matter how good the book was, I couldn’t embrace that point of view. Maybe I would try and build something. Something practical. A man writes a novel and, if no one reads it or it doesn’t make any money, he may as well not have done anything at all. It is just a small ream of paper that sits there and takes up a small amount of space. The only place the work really exists is in the author’s head. Because, undoubtedly, changes did occur in the brain while the novel was being written. Things imagined that had never been there before. People created who never existed before. Walls torn down. Entire cities built. But, in the real world, it was so much shit on paper. But if a man builds a house... well, then he has something to show for it. He can say he built something. “See, there’s that house I built.” And people can look at it and say, “Yeah, that’s a house.” And they might even ask, “Did you build that?” And the man can proudly say, “Yes, I did build that.” And even if no one sees it, even if it is in the darkest heart of the remotest jungle, it will still be a house. It will still be utilitarian. A man, hell, a whole family, can live in it. It would provide shelter from the rain and the wind and the cold and the sun. It would be SOMETHING whereas what I had now was a big pile of NOTHING.

I didn’t want the rest of my sandwich and threw it out onto the walk, hoping someone would step in it and soil their shoes. Then, totally unwittingly, I discovered my new purpose.

To my right, a gaggle of people strolled down the walk, going toward Fifth Avenue. At the center of the group was a tall man with an enormous white beard. He held a pipe in his right hand which he used to gesture with. There were at least three people on either side of him, nodding at him, agreeing with him, interested in what he was saying. Suddenly, I found myself waiting anxiously for them to approach the discarded sandwich. Surely one of them would have to step in it. Which one would it be? I hoped it would be the old man. I wanted to see this stately center of attention debased by having to look at the mess soiling his sober brown loafer.

Unfortunately, none of them stepped in it. As he passed, I tried to catch what the old bearded man said but it sounded like nonsense. Gibberish. Not even words. Just something that sounded like knocking on wood and static. And they all just glided right over the sandwich. It sat there on the walk, looking lonely and pathetic. Then the eagle-headed creature I had seen earlier came toward it, picked it up, and popped it into its beak.

It was at that point I decided to go back to Ohio and grow a beard. Whatever was meant to happen would have to come after that. The eagle-thing squawked at me and I thought of it as the creature’s unique way of saying, “Good idea.”

Chapter Five

I stood up and scratched my chin, imagining the luscious black beard that would soon adorn it, placed my manuscript on the park bench, and walked back toward Fifth Avenue. Reaching the sidewalk, I turned to give my book one final look. This was, after all, the only copy. Three years of work. But if I didn’t leave it there for someone to find, even if they didn’t read it, even if it just ended up in the garbage, I knew I couldn’t feel like I had created anything. This way, at least it would fill a landfill somewhere, which was a little more politically involving than a trunk or my desk drawer.

My imposter stood in front of the manuscript, holding his own bulky manuscript in his arm. He placed it on the bench beside mine. Even from this distance, I could tell they were almost exactly the same size. He picked mine up and tucked it under his arm. He bent his knees a little bit, as if testing its heft. Maybe he thought they were different bonds or something. I started back toward the bench, toward my imposter. He spotted me, clutched the manuscript tightly to his chest, and ran off into the park. I continued toward the bench.

Sitting down once again I lifted his manuscript onto my lap. It was filled with blank pages. Just a ream of paper. A true imposter would at least have tried to write something. But maybe not. Maybe a true imposter was only a shell of the real thing. Something filled with nothingness. Empty. Of course now that manuscript was as much his as it was mine. The only difference was in my head. I knew I wrote it but he could easily say he wrote it. Of course, since he was my imposter, he would also say he was me. Maybe in the end it was all just a wash out.

I couldn’t sit there contemplating all day. I had a beard to grow. And quick.

I passed the greasy man selling sandwiches again and he said, “Hey! Hey, buddy!”

I approached his smoking, heavily scented kiosk.

“You wanna try a hallucinogenic sandwich?”

“I just had a sandwich.”

“You don’t have to be hungry to like this one.”

“Sure. I guess. Is it legal?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Sure. All natural ingredients. On the house this time.” He motioned to his cart. “You fix it up the way you want it.”

“Thanks,” I said. I wasn’t hungry at all but the temptation was too great. While I had never been truly impoverished, I had been hungry enough to know one should never pass up free food.

The only thing on the cart I recognized was the bread. The rest of the little stainless steel bins were filled with exotic-looking vegetables. While I went about making my sandwich the vendor crouched down and started playing with my shoes.

“Hey!” I said, startled.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m also a cobbler. These shoes is all worn out.”

“Whatever. Is that free too?”

“Sure. I just can’t stand to see someone in ratty shoes.”

I assembled a moderately sized sandwich, figuring I would probably be hungry on the bus.

The vendor/cobbler stood up. “Got you all fixed up there.”

I looked down at my once tattered canvas shoes and saw they were now brand new-looking, with no signs of patches, glue or off-colored thread.

“Wow. You do good work.”

“Been doin it for years,” he said with a nod.

“Please. Let me pay you.”

“No need. I have everything I need right here.” He motioned to the cart.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay then. Have a great day.”

“You too.”

I turned and left for the bus station. I didn’t have a lot of money left and I had heard about a cheap and highly disreputable bus company near Battery Park.

Chapter Six

A couple hours later I sat in the back of a reeking bus, idly waiting to take off. The driver, a portly middle-aged woman whose face reminded me of a bag of onions, was out on the sidewalk trying to get people to board the bus. She didn’t have the exciting oratory skills of a carnival barker and everything came out sounding kind of jaded and lazy.

“Come one. Come all. The best damn bus ride in New York. The best bus ride in all the world. You won’t believe the amazing places we’ll see. New Jersey. Pennsylvania. West Virginia. Ohio. And beyond. All for the low low price of free. Hop on just for the experience. You won’t believe your eyes. Experience Eastern and Midwestern America in the summer. Come one. Come all.”

All the while, she made some slow pinwheeling gesture with her arms. I was eager to get home even though I knew my beard growing had already begun. So far, there were only two other people on the bus. An old man with a head like his flesh covered his skull too tightly sat in the front seat with a child’s tricycle on his lap. A boy who looked no older than eight sat in the seat next to mine, smoking furiously and talking on his cell phone. Every other word was “Fuck.” He only stopped to dig his silver engraved flask from his hip pocket and belt back something that smelled like paint thinner. Whenever I glanced over at him he motioned for me to turn back around. I wanted to punch him in the face.

From the window I saw my imposter ready to board the bus. I knew he would not board if he saw me. I was very intrigued by my imposter. I slunk down in my seat. I heard him shuffle down the aisle and sit down with a sigh. I wondered if he still had the manuscript.

The boy next to me stood up and walked to the front of the bus just as the bus driver sat down in the captain’s chair.

“Takin off, little buddy,” the bus driver said.

“Yeah. That guy back there keeps tryin to touch me.” Hooking his thumb over his shoulder, he gestured toward me. I was still crouched down in my seat and the bus driver didn’t see me.

“Whatever,” she said. “I think you need to lay off that stuff.”

“I’ll fuckin do what I want, when I want, you ugly old cunt,” the boy said before descending the steps.

The bus driver angrily pulled the lever, trying to catch him up in the doors, maybe even to hurt him, but the wily little shit escaped unharmed. She pulled a radio microphone to her thick, peeling lips and said in that same bored voice, “Get ready for the ride of your life. All uninsured drivers, all the time.” She hung the microphone up with a shriek of feedback. The bus coughed, sputtered, and started rolling. Something toward the back clanked while something else scraped along the road. The old man stood up, mounted the tricycle and began riding it up and down the aisles. It had very squeaky wheels and a bell he rang continuously and I thought this was going to be a very long ride.

The bus driver picked up the microphone again and said, “My name’s Donna. This bus ride is here for your self-discovery. I’ve cranked the heat up for your enjoyment. It’s a mostly underground ride.”

I didn’t really understand a lot of what she said. My stomach rumbled. The heat made me hungry. I eyed the sandwich on my lap, picked it up, and had it devoured by the time we entered the alley off Wall Street. After that, things were both unreal and ultra real. I looked out the windows and couldn’t see anything but blackness. A great deep blackness like the kind I imagined one finds in caves. I sat there in my seat and wished I had a drink. It was so hot. Why did she turn the heat on? The old man rode his tricycle up and down the aisle. The look on his face encompassed both the ecstatic look of a child having the time of his life and the grim determination of a marathon runner. When he reached the front of the bus my imposter stood up and hopped on his lap. The old man wheeled the imposter to the back of the bus. The imposter hopped off the old man and sat down next to me. He looked pale and sweaty. Up this close he didn’t look anything like me.

“Thanks for sharing your sandwich,” he said.

“I didn’t know you were hungry.”

He scoffed at this. “Why are you following me?”

“I was on the bus first. I think you’re following me. Why are you impersonating me?”

“You know I can’t grow a beard,” he said. Then he reached out and lifted off the top of my head.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I tried to ask but my words came out all swirled.

The tricycling man started breathing heavily, saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” under his breath. Sweat shot from his gaping pores.

“I’m just trying to take a little bit more of you.”

I tried to talk again but this time all of my words came from the mouth of the imposter. “What did you do with my book?”

“I sold it.” These words also came from the mouth of the imposter.

“You sold it?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Did you sell it or did I sell it?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who did you sell it to?”

“Devilment Inc. Who else?”

“But I was just there.”

“But you couldn’t sell anything. I had to change some things.”

“What did you have to change?”

“Well, the title for one thing. And it’s a zombie sex comedy now. Those are all the rage these days.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not talking about anything.”

He assembled a burrito from pieces of my brain and a tortilla he pulled from thin air and proceeded to eat it. “Ain’t this a great bus ride?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, startled to feel the words were now coming from my mouth again. “I guess it is.”

“What are you planning on doing when you get back home?”

“You already know what I plan on doing.”

“Don’t get smart with me. I’ll eat you like a burrito.” He shoved the last bit of burrito into his mouth and belched.

The old man, finished with his tricycle, stripped most of his clothes off and went about furiously trying to cram the tricycle through one of the windows. The heat continued to smother us. “Someone should really help him with that,” I said.

The old man mopped the sweat from his brow and went back to trying to discard the tricycle.

“He’ll melt soon enough,” the imposter said.

I wanted to take the wig from his head. Was it a wig or had his hair been dyed?

“Do you dye your hair?” I asked.

“Do you dye yours?” he returned.

The bus continued to go faster and faster. I decided I didn’t really like talking to my imposter. He depressed me. I didn’t understand why he was here. I couldn’t think of anything more depressing than impersonating me.

“Why are you following me?”

“Didn’t I already ask you that?”

“But I never answered.”

“Then that means I don’t have to answer.”

“What if I die? Then what becomes of you?”

“Good question. I guess I lose my sense of purpose. Although there is a huge market in impersonating dead celebrities... Come to think of it, most impersonators are impersonating the dead. But you’re not a celebrity.”

“I’m your sense of purpose?”

“Oh sure. Look at him go.”

The old man became exasperated with the tricycle and sat down in the seat below it, leaving it hanging half in and half out. The lights in the bus cut off and it was plunged in complete and total darkness.

“And...” I began. “Let me tell you, I don’t think I’ll ever be remotely close to a celeb—”

“If you listen closely enough,” the imposter interrupted. “You can actually hear the old man melting.”

I closed my eyes. My head felt very strange. I discovered the imposter was right. I could hear the man melting and figured, when I opened my eyes again, the old man would most probably be either gone or nothing more than a puddle on the floor of the bus. Colors flashed behind my closed eyelids. Colors like a wild laser light show. It felt like I was falling off my seat. The bus seemed to be moving in ways that no bus could possibly move. I smelled the overpowering scent of onions and knew it was the bus driver. The imposter was trying to steal my clothes even though he already wore the same clothes. I wanted to stop him but felt completely paralyzed. I just sat there moving with the rhythm of the bus and feeling all those up and down sensations like some demonic roller coaster.

“A perfect fit,” the imposter said. And then I felt him trying to steal my skin. “This is how we become something else,” he said, whispering into my ear which was quickly becoming his ear.

All the colors throbbed faster and more vibrant and I felt sure the bus was going to crash. Every few seconds I could feel the impact of the bus smashing into the earth only I didn’t know if it was an actual sensation or if it was just my body trying to slide off into sleep before being rapidly jerked awake. Where were my clothes? Where was my skin? I didn’t feel naked at all. I felt smothered. All that heat. All those colors. Everything so claustrophobic. Everything had become so claustrophobic. I was a man living in a box and this bus was the box and I had to get out. Had to get out. Because if I didn’t get out soon then there wouldn’t be any getting out and damn that must have been one fantastic sandwich because I felt the bus crash land but it landed in water and then all the windows flew open and the water poured into the bus rinsing away all the heat and forcing my eyes open and when I opened my eyes all the colors were gone and replaced with a fantastic blue and all of my clothes were gone and all of my skin was gone and the old man was gone and the imposter was gone and the greasy sack of onions was gone and I was free falling through the water silently wishing and hoping and praying for my own crash landing...

Chapter Seven

I scraped my eyelids open and saw a bright unblemished blue. I felt like I’d been beaten. My whole body was stiff. My eyes were dry and felt like they had been scoured. I lay on my back on something uncomfortable.

“Jesus,” I muttered aloud.

The blue, I realized, was the sky. A gorgeous day to feel like absolute hell. I turned my head to the right and saw a vast expanse of green grass. I had no idea where I might be. I sat up. I was on a bench. At first I thought of the bench in Central Park. Maybe the whole bus ride was a hallucination. Maybe I had never even received a hallucinogenic sandwich. I remembered seeing the bizarre eagle-headed man in the park. Maybe he had cast some sort of spell on me. No. That was craziness. People did not cast spells in this day and age. Especially not in ultracivilized New York.

Studying the landscape around me, I figured I had to be in Ohio. While I didn’t remember much about the bus ride I felt like, somehow, it had brought me where I needed to be. I remembered smashing into the ocean. Everything was blank after that. Now I sat on a bench and recognized it for what it was. It was the battered old bench one found in ancient bus and train stations. Something that could just as easily have been a church pew. I felt greasy and smelled rancid. How long had I been out? Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone around who could answer those kinds of questions.

There I sat on a bench in the middle of a field in Ohio. I didn’t see any roads or buildings around.

A truck approached from the horizon. It went very fast, speeding right toward me. I thought about diving out of the way but I was too tired and stiff. It pulled to a screeching halt in front of me. A man wearing a black t-shirt and jeans hopped out.

“You seen the bus station?” he asked.

“I think this is it,” I said.

“No. It’s a lot... bigger. I could have swore it was here.”

“Did you come to pick somebody up?”

“No, it’s just something I do, coming to the bus station.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

“Yesterday. I go to the bus station just about every day. Mostly looking for transients and vagrants.”

“Why?”

“Mostly I like to take advantage of them. Teenage runaways are my favorite. Give them some food. Offer them a place to stay and they’ll do just about anything. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a bad person. I don’t kill them or anything like that. I just take advantage of them. I like it. I can’t help it. I talk a lot and usually need someone to talk to. I mean, again, don’t get me wrong. I don’t just want to have conversations with them. I like to take ruthless advantage of them. Physically. Usually sex. The last one... when was that? Last week? Yeah, must have been last week... She was... Christ. You probably don’t want to hear about it. All tits and ass and lips...” He stared, wistfully, at where the bus station maybe used to be. Then he blinked and shook his head, as if trying to erase some fond memory before losing himself to it. “Do you need a ride or something?”

“Are you going to take advantage of me?”

He laughed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his t-shirt, shaking one until it rose from the opening and then holding the pack to his lips. He let the cigarette dangle there on his lip and said, “Probably not. I usually only take advantage of the girls. Guys don’t really do it for me. I’ll take donations though. If you have any money.”

He lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply and squinted his eyes.

I patted my pockets. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t even remember what I did with my suitcase. The only things I’d had in it were the blazer and the manuscript. Two things I felt went hand in hand. Now I only had the blazer and it was filthy and, feeling it, maybe even crusted in blood.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have anything.”

“Where you from?”

“I took the bus from New York.”

“You from New York?”

“No, I’m from Ohio. Do you know where we are?”

“Right outside Grainville. Ever hear of it?”

“Yeah. Actually, that’s where I need to go. A house on Paradox Road.”

“Which one?”

“Old farmhouse. Sits back a long lane. Surrounded by corn. Invisible in the summer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man said, taking another drag from his cigarette. “I know exactly where that’s at. You need me to take you there?”

“If you would.”

“Sure. First I’d like you to fill your pockets with grass.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t do that. You heard me. I’d like you to fill your pockets with grass.”

“Why?”

“Look... It’s really hard to take advantage of someone who has nothing. I will have a giant hole in my soul if I do not get to take advantage of someone. Since you’re not a reasonably attractive wayward teen runaway and you don’t have any money you could at least provide me with the entertainment at your humiliated expense as I watch you wander around and shove grass in your pockets. Come on, you only have to do it until I’m finished with my cigarette and then we can go. Deal?”

“I guess.”

“You could walk. But it’s pretty warm out and you look pretty lazy so I doubt you want to do that.”

He was right. I was incredibly lazy. And tired. I really just wanted to get back home and take a nap. While the man smoked I wandered around and shoved grass in my pockets. The man either smoked his cigarette very slowly or lit a second one when I wasn’t looking because it seemed like I crammed a huge amount of grass in my pockets. First the blazer pockets until they were bulging and then my pants pockets.

“Okay,” he announced. “We can go now. I don’t guess anyone else is coming. Strangest damn thing. Yesterday there was a whole bus station here. Maybe it’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” I said.

The man crossed to the driver’s side, opened the door, and hopped in. I climbed in the passenger side. The cab of the truck smelled like cigarette smoke, semen, and the cloyingly cheap perfume favored by indigent teenage girls. Although it was difficult to smell anything over the odor of grass that now encapsulated me.

“You smell like grass,” the man said.

“I know.”

“That was pretty damn amusing though. Watching you stuff all that grass in your pockets. You got a lot in there.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“What do you mean, ‘You guess?’”

“I mean I don’t really know if I should be thanking you for having me fill my pockets up with grass.”

“No, I was complimenting you. Complimenting you on entertaining me. It’s pretty high praise. Especially since the only thing that usually entertains me is tight teen vagina... Or, really, any orifice... as long as it belongs to a teen.”

He fell into a contemplative silence for a second and then said, “I take that back. Because tits amuse me too. As long as they’re firm. Okay, actually, everything about vagrant teen girls entertains me.”

I didn’t even know what to say to that.

“So, I’m Action,” he said, extending his hand to me.

I took his hand and gave it a little shake, “David Glum.”

“Nice to meet you, David. Can I call you Dave?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I don’t really have many friends. As you can probably imagine. Most people I think are really just here for my amusement. Are you familiar with solipsism?”

“I think. Isn’t that the theory that you are the only existing person and everyone else is just a figment of your imagination.”

“Oh, you’re a smart guy. I should have been able to tell. With the dorky glasses and the dirty blazer you look very literary. Are you a writer?”

I chuckled. “Hell no.”

“You have to be something.”

“What are you?”

“I just told you. I’m a solipsist.”

“Oh. I’m an out of work philosopher.”

“Tough gig.”

“You betcha.”

Action pulled the truck onto an ill-maintained back country road.

“By the way,” he said. “I should tell you now that we’re neighbors. I live in the woods behind your house... It’s not really your house, is it? It’s your parents’, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I say that because I’ve never seen you around before. I’m also a voyeur. I stare in windows whenever I get the chance. I own a pretty powerful telescope. I’ve never seen you at that house.”

“I lived there a few years ago.”

“Well, I was traveling then. I just moved into the tent recently.”

“You live in a tent?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Not like an Indian tent, though. What do they call them, oh, yeah, right, a wigwam. Not like one of those. It’s a big circus tent. We get along just fine. I picked it up used.”

“A used circus tent?”

“Yeah. You can come over whenever you want. I’ve got a lot of free time and a lot of theories.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“You wanna hear one of my theories?”

“Why not.”

“Okay.” He pulled out another cigarette from his breast pocket and lit up. “You know how when you go into a store and it has these narrow aisles you’re almost always stuck behind some old lady who moves way too slow?”

“I guess.”

“What? You’ve never had that happen?”

“No. I’ve had it happen. It just doesn’t like happen all the time.”

“Okay. Well, it does to me. All the fuckin time. Like every time I ever go into a store, it’s just wall to wall elderly. That’s what happens when you have a lot of free time. You get to go out during the day because you don’t really have any job to go to or anything and that’s when all the elderly are on the prowl. Anyway...” He took another drag from his cigarette. “I think what these stores need to start doing is putting roller skates by the door so when these slow moving old folks come in they have to put on the roller skates and then when swift moving people like me come in we can push the old people along at something resembling a normal pace.”

“But if you go into stores and they’re wall to wall elderly people, wouldn’t it just be a lot of old people in roller skates tripping over themselves? I mean, if you were the only younger person in there?”

“It’s not without its flaws, I’ll give you that. But it’s just... It’s just brainstorming, man. Ideas don’t come out all fully formed. Most of your ideas, like the shit that actually gets patented and that kind of thing, hell, those are thought up by like a whole fleet of engineers but they all just started as one man’s little retarded idea, you know?”

“I guess.”

He reached over and smacked me on the arm. “What do you mean, you guess? You know I’m right. Look alive! You’re like a... fuckin dead fish or somethin.”

“Sure.”

We entered the modest town of Grainville, a lot of two and three-story buildings that looked like they hadn’t changed décor since the Fifties.

“Now,” Action said. “I’m gonna pull up to this stop sign here and when I do I want you to hop out and just fuckin shower that old lady in the grass you have in your pockets.”

I put my hand across my forehead, massaging my temples.

“I also want you to shout ‘Grass!’ the entire time you’re doing it. Got that? Can you do that?”

“Do I really have to? I’m pretty tired. I just want to go home and take a little nap.”

“Of course you have to. I could close my eyes and wink you out of existence.”

While I thought that was ridiculous, I also remembered the bus ride and how my imposter had seemingly opened the top of my skull to sample pieces of my brain.

“Fine,” I said.

“All right!” Action sounded very enthused. “Get ready. I’m gonna slam on the brakes so she doesn’t see it coming.”

He slammed his brakes at the stop sign. I hopped out of the truck, trying not to really look at the old woman because if I did and felt sorry for her then I probably wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I reached deep into my coat pockets, grabbing two handfuls of grass. I ran over to the old lady, standing helplessly waiting to cross the street, and shouted, “Grass! Grass! Grass!” Showering her with the blades.

Action squealed the truck through the stop sign and sped away down the street. I looked at the old lady, standing all hunched over. She smacked me and then turned into my mother.

“David!” she shouted. “I taught you better than that.”

“Jeez. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know it was you. Why did you look so old?”

“Because he wanted me to,” she said, waving her hand after Action’s truck as it squealed and took a turn on two wheels. “He’s the biggest jackass in town.”

“Your neighbor, huh?”

“Unfortunately. Where did you come from?”

“The bus station.”

“Grainville has a bus station?”

“It’s not a very good one.”

“Where were you going?”

“I was coming home.”

“Oh, well, I guess you can ride with me.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I followed her across the street to her car, a gold fleck El Camino. This wasn’t the car I remembered her having.

“New car, huh?”

“This one’s more fuel efficient,” she said.

The bed of the car was filled with sticks. She pulled a box of matches from her purse and tossed a couple of them on the pile of sticks.

“Good thing it’s such a dry day,” she said. “This car’s a real pain in the rump when it’s raining.”

After a few moments, the fire was roaring in the bed of the car.

“Door’s open,” she said.

I climbed in the passenger side of the car and we rode out to the house in silence.

Chapter Fifteen

Sitting in the passenger seat I tried to adjust to Gary Wrench. It was odd, having to adjust to a person. Usually, you meet a person and decide whether or not you like them. If you like them, you talk to them, things grow out of that, you get to know one another. If you don’t like them you tend not to talk to them unless it is out of necessity or you’re just spouting something you have to share and they’re the only one close by. But nothing really develops from this. No deeper understanding. More like an icy distance. Rarely, did you have to adjust to a person. Maybe this is what a child or a pet experiences when a parent gets a radical new hairstyle or changes their wardrobe or something. But not, in my adult life, had I ever experienced knowing someone and then watching that person change physical appearances only to realize I had never known who they were. It made me think of other things. How much of our life is an act, anyway? You become a parent, you play a role. You act happy when you’re depressed. You act like you are enthused by some things that hold no interest for you whatsoever. But sometimes, through this acting, this repeatedly telling yourself you really do like something, some form of appreciation sprouts.

Was this the case with Gary Wrench; this man who, as a father, I was so familiar with but, as his real self, was a stranger?

“What did you think of being a father?” I asked him.

“Huh?” he said. He was very focused on the road. He drove very fast. Still out in the country roads, we didn’t pass many cars.

“Well, you were playing the part of father to Cassie and me... What did you think of that?”

“It was okay, I guess.”

“How can I put this?” I said. “We both thought you were our father but you knew you were not our father?”

“Mm-hm,” he said. He looked like he was trying to understand or like it was something much simpler to him than me.

“Do you have any real children?”

“Nope. Lifetime bachelor.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m trying to wrap my mind around this. It’s very difficult. It’s kind of like you were a step parent but you weren’t. You were an employee. So...”

I looked down at the flame, sputtering there on the floorboard, trying to find the right words. Perhaps this was why I had failed miserably as a writer.

“Okay. Take a man and his job...”

“Okay.”

“Some people develop a love of something and that love is a lifelong love. Like, say, a scientist. He is on a quest for knowledge. He loves theories. He loves testing his theories. He loves this quest for knowledge. And maybe he is only a teacher or a professor but he still loves this knowledge, he loves what he does and he wants to share it with people. Sure, there are some days when he doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and go to the job but when he stands back and, and... puts it all into perspective... he realizes it’s not that bad at all. He likes what he does. On the other hand, you take a man who works in a factory. It’s unrealistic to think this man likes putting the same bolt in the same part or whatever for eight to twelve hours a day. He does it for a paycheck so he can support his family or his booze habit or whatever. But every day, when he goes to work, he has to put himself into something like a coma because he hates what he does so much. Do you follow me?”

“I think so.”

“I guess what I’m asking is... did you love us? Do you love us?”

He stroked his mustache with his left hand, keeping his right hand on the wheel. We pulled into the town of Grainville. I saw my imposter standing on the corner, harassing a small child. My imposter did not have a beard. Of course he didn’t. Even though he knew of my beard growing intentions, he had not seen me with a beard. He’d told me he couldn’t grow a beard. He glanced up and saw me, brandished his fist and I imagined, the next time I saw him, he would most likely have a false beard and wear an ill-fitting suit.

“That’s a really tough question. I’d have to say no.”

“No?” This kind of shocked me. In a way, it answered a lot of things. Most of the things I had done since adolescence, an outsider would probably say I did them because I felt a lack of love in my life. But to have this suspicion validated by a very simple word was staggering. Also, I kind of thought he might say yes just because that was the obvious answer he was supposed to give.

“Would you like me to qualify that?” Also, at that point, I realized, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was most assuredly not the person I had spent the last twenty years around. The factory-working father I knew would never have used the word ‘qualify’. His was a simple, nearly monosyllabic vocabulary. I wondered if I might grow to like this Gary Wrench fellow more than I had my real father who was Gary Wrench playing the role of my father. The more I thought about it the more confused I became.

“Sure,” I said.

“In order to love, one has to let himself love something. Understand? There were times I spent around you and Cassie that truly warmed my heart, that caused a swelling inside. Something most people would probably call love. The good times we had on family vacations. When I would read stories to you before bed. When you would fight with your mother and seek comfort in me. But, you have to understand, those were just natural human reactions. You see a cute puppy wandering along the side of the road, you feel the same thing. But you don’t take home every stray dog you find. I had to live every day around you as though it might be my last. There was a point, about two years into it, when I asked your mother if we might work something out in the case your father came back. Like, if he came back, then I could disappear and then reappear as like an uncle you had never met before or something. So I’d still get to see you.” He had a faraway look in his eye, recalling the past. “She said she didn’t think that would be a good idea. At that point, I think Cassie was already suspicious...”

“Hm,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“So, did I love you? I could never tell myself that. Could I have loved you? Definitely, given time, given the freedom. Also, remember, I’m an actor. I had to assume the emotions of the role I was playing. So, when I was around you, I told myself I loved you every second of the day but, when I went home at night, I tried to forget about you because if I didn’t then I would wish I was there and I couldn’t be there... That would have made me too much like a real father.”

“Yeah. How did you guys work that out? I thought you worked in a factory all night and then slept most of the day. Did you actually work in a factory?”

“No.”

“Did you sleep at the house?”

“Only during the summer. When you would have been home from school and noticed my comings and goings.”

“So, when you weren’t there, which was quite a bit, what were you doing?”

“Oh, I don’t know. This and that. I keep a small studio apartment in Dayton. I do a lot of reading. A lot of napping.”

“What about like a girlfriend or something? Did you ever sleep with Mom?”

“We slept in the same room a number of times. She wouldn’t let me sleep in the bed with her. She said that would feel too much like cheating even though I think she was pretty well aware of my sexual orientation.”

“Gay?”

“Bestiality.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Just kidding,” he said.

“Oh,” I laughed.

“No I’m not,” he said. “I wish I was. I have a female orangutan. Actually, a friend of mine keeps her most of the time. I can’t leave her home alone so much. But she’s always very amorous when I go pick her up. I wouldn’t call it rape.”

I still didn’t really know if he was serious or not so I kept my mouth shut.

“I need some coffee,” he said. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ll stop.”

We were now on the outskirts of town, headed west, and a gas station would be coming up any minute.

Wrench swung the van into the parking lot. All the lights were off in the building and one of the pumps was on fire. A fire engine was there but the firemen were only standing next to the fire, pushing each other and pointing at the flames.

“How do you take yours?” Wrench asked.

“Black.”

“Stay here with Brilliance. I’ll be right back.”

Wrench hopped out of the van.

“You!” one of the firemen shouted.

Wrench turned. “Yeah, you!” the fireman shouted again.

Wrench stopped. “I was just going to go in and get some coffee,” he said.

“You know who started this fire?” The fireman stalked up to him.

“Why would I know that?”

“All kinds of people know all kinds of things.”

“Okay. No. I don’t know who started the fire.”

The fireman began shoving Wrench. He outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. The other fireman called from the fire, “It’s so hot!”

“You gonna help us put out that fire?” the fireman asked.

“No. Aren’t you the fireman?”

“Well, I just thought you should know that the fuel reservoir’s gonna blow up any minute.”

“I’m sure we’ll be gone by then.”

“Ah, fleeing the scene of the crime, eh?”

“Hardly. I told you... Look, I need to get my coffee before the explosion okay?”

“Whatever. Punkass kids.”

Wrench turned from the fireman and pulled on the door to the store. It seemed to be locked. He struggled and struggled with it. It certainly looked closed.

“Need help with that?” the fireman called.

“Is it closed?” Wrench asked.

“Fuck if I know,” the fireman said. He trundled over to the door, grabbed the axe he had slung barbarian style across his back, and smashed the glass door. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” Wrench said, reaching in to unlock the door before opening it the proper way.

“No problem. I need to go in and get some water anyway. The truck’s all out.”

“Isn’t there a hydrant nearby?” Wrench asked.

“Way over there?” the fireman pointed to other side of the parking lot, as though he couldn’t possibly be expected to walk that far.

Wrench and the fireman disappeared into the darkness. The other fireman went to the air machine, for car tires, and aimed the hose at the fire. He stood at least fifteen feet from it and I had no idea what he meant to accomplish by doing this. The fire really raged. It was so hot it caused the cab of the van to warm. The other fireman came out of the store, carrying two jugs of bottled water.

“Knock that off!” he shouted to his partner.

The fireman dropped the hose and rushed over to his partner. “Now,” the one with the water said. “We’re probably going to die in a few minutes. Anybody you need to call or anything?”

His partner answered with a high pitched hooting sound that ascended and broke off into braying donkey laughter.

“Don’t tell me you weren’t warned.”

He uncapped the jugs and poured them onto the fire. It did absolutely nothing to diminish the flames.

“Shit,” he said, before hopping into the fire. His shrieks were loud and piercing but short lived. His strange partner, I now realized how thin and awkward-looking he was, hopped into the fire truck and sped off.

Wrench came out of the store carrying two large cups of coffee.

He handed them up to me before crawling into the van.

“That fireman was on something, I think,” he said.

“He just threw himself into the fire.”

“Hm. I guess we better go before something explodes.”

“Probably.”

Wrench honked the horn and the van’s engine revved. I didn’t remember him turning it off. Maybe it just knew when someone wasn’t sitting in the driver’s seat. He floored the accelerator and we shot out of Grainville, toward Indiana, sipping our coffee and feeling the warm wind rush into the van.