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.
Showing posts with label free novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free novel. Show all posts
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.
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.”
“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.
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.”
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.
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 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.
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.
Chapter Thirty
When I finally came to, my head still felt heavy. My lungs and stomach felt heavy. I tried to stand but couldn’t. I rolled over and vomited out rancid seawater. I managed to pull myself to my knees. A very dense fog surrounded me. I looked out at the ocean. I saw Big Karl out there flopping around. He crested the surface before plummeting back under, leaving me with the searing image of his giant human buttocks. I would have laughed if I didn’t feel like I was dying. I checked my pants for the flame. It was gone. Of course. That was just my luck. To come all this way and then lose what we had come all this way for. Dad was collapsed on the sand a few feet from me. He was probably dead. I crawled over to him, shaking him. His skin was cold.
“Dad?” I shook him harder.
“Dad?” I rolled him over onto his side and pounded on his back. I placed my hand on his back to see if I could feel him breathing at all.
He coughed and spewed up some seawater and a crab that quickly burrowed into the grayish sand. I slumped down beside him. He opened his eyes and sat up, vomiting once again between his legs.
“Shit,” he said.
“Shit, yeah.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“Big Karl happened.”
“Huh?”
I motioned out toward the sea. Big Karl continued to frolic, unabashedly smiling and revealing everything.
“That’s an ugly motherfucker,” Dad said.
“Damn right,” I said.
“Still have the flame?”
“Nope.”
“Is that it out there?” He pointed into the water.
It could have been the flame. Could we be that lucky? Probably not. Bad luck seemed to run in our family. The luck was so bad that even when we performed an act to try and reverse the luck or at least balance it out the bad luck would make it impossible. I stood up, still dizzy and woozy, and entered the cold ocean. As I got closer to the object I realized it definitely was the flame.
The imposter sprang up from the water on the other side of it, rushing for it as fast as I was. It was like a race in slow motion, each of us trying to trudge through the water to reach the flame. At the last second, I made a tremendous leap for it and clasped it in my hands. The imposter then leapt on top of me and tried to hold me under like we were children at a public pool. He was even weaker than I was, however, and I was able to resurface and push him away from me.
“Leave us the fuck alone,” I said. “You guys got what you want, okay? You’re here now. Go off and find your long lost relatives or something. And take off that stupid beard. You can never be me.”
Again, the hurt look I was becoming familiar with flooded into the imposter’s eyes. He took off his soaked false beard and slung it into the water, trudging off to my right, further down the shore. I could see two figures waiting for him—Onionface and Eaglehead. Part of me was glad they had also survived Big Karl, even though Eaglehead had tried to swindle us in our final moments of extremis.
I soggily wandered back up to the sandy shore. This was not at all what I expected from the island. It was gray with fog and dismal and kind of chilly. Visibility was down to about fifteen feet. Wherever we decided to set off to would be a mystery. Something like a channel was cut into the beach, arching off as far as I could see. It made me think of a very narrow moat, about two feet wide and dry.
I held Brilliance up in front of me. The flame burned very low. It looked in danger of going out.
“We’d better return this quick,” I said.
“We have to figure out where we’re returning it too. We’re on the island. They should be able to find us now. They know what we want.”
“So what now?”
“What now? I guess we walk.”
“You’ve never been here, huh?”
“No. I didn’t make it anywhere near this far last time. I almost thought the place didn’t exist at all.”
“Is this how you thought it would be?”
“No. I thought it would be... sunnier. Dad always described it as being sunny and tropical. This is downright Gothic.”
“That’s an apt description.”
“Maybe we should try and cut around the perimeter at first. Maybe it’s not so foggy on
the other side.”
“Do you know how big the island is?”
“No. Not really. I don’t think it’s extremely large. It has to move itself through time and space periodically. It can’t be that big, can it?”
“I dunno.” Physics wasn’t one of my strong points.
We took off walking in the opposite direction of the Nefarions.
“I should warn you,” Dad said. “If we see any other Nefarions, even if it’s the normal-looking ones, we should probably proceed with caution. This flame is the only thing they’re going to care about. We’re just intruders. Remember that. There’s a reason no one comes here.”
“Right.”
Both of us were too exhausted to say anything. We just continued to walk mechanically. I tried my best not to look at the flame. The last thing I wanted to see, after coming all this way, was the damn thing guttering out. If it went out completely, I knew, it would mean our death. Because it wasn’t just us who had come all this way. Too many things had happened for me to think we had done this by ourselves. From first spotting Eaglehead in New York to the hallucinogenic sandwich, to the busride, to the shifting and shortened landscape, all the way to the ship that brought us here, it was clear we had had some outside help. And if it seemed as far from the divine as help could possibly get, I was okay with that. If it meant we hadn’t done it all on our own, I was okay with that too. It gave me a sense of security—so long as the flame burned. If the flame went out we would have not only failed ourselves but the Nefarions as well. The flame was of vital importance to each of us. For me and Dad, it meant getting Mom and possibly Grandpa back. For the Nefarions, it meant maintaining their life force, their tradition, going back to their old ways—whatever those ways may have been. Maybe it would even mean the end to all this gloom.
Eventually we saw a figure cutting its way through the fog. Dad pressed his plank to my chest and we walked back into some shrubbery just beyond the sand. As the figure drew closer, we were able to get a better look at him. He was very thin. He had hair and a beard down to his waist. He walked in the moat-like thing cutting its way into the sand. He was in it nearly up to his knees.
“Dad?” Dad said. The old man either didn’t hear him or he couldn’t see where the sound was coming from. It would have been difficult for anyone with even slightly impaired vision.
Dad grabbed my arm and we approached the wandering old man.
Dad now stood in front of him. “Dad?”
The old man stopped.
“Dan?” he said. Then, “Dan! You found us. Amazing!”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“Is this...”
“David.”
“David! I haven’t seen you since you were...”
“Seven,” I said. “When the elephants came and took you away.”
“Ah,” he said. “And you didn’t believe me.”
“I believed you. You were the one that didn’t believe.”
His eyes went to the flame in my right hand.
“You didn’t bring that here to return it, did you?” Grandpa said.
“We have to, Dad. It’s time. We’ve had it long enough.”
“Fuck! But that’s what I worked my whole life for.”
I knew what Dad wanted to say. He wanted to tell him that was all well and good but his life was almost over now and it was time to give the Nefarions their lives back.
“What good’s it doing in the attic if you’re here?” Dad said.
“That’s so... practical,” Grandpa said, shriveling up his face. “You always were the practical one. Not a dream in that bulbous head of yours.”
“Did we come all this way so you could insult me?”
“I guess you came just so you could return that, huh?”
“Something like that. We came back for you. And Barbara. Have you seen Barbara?”
“They took her away.”
“Took her away?”
“Come on, let’s walk. Notice this path. Want to know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years?”
He didn’t give either of us time to answer.
“Walking this same path,” Grandpa said. “They knew I took the flame. They kidnapped me and brought me here and told me I could walk around the island, searching for the flame. It was, I knew, to be my death sentence. I wasn’t allowed in the middle of the island. It takes me exactly one day to walk around the entire island. They leave a meal for me at the half-way point and the end of the first day and the beginning of the next day.”
“Jesus,” Dad said. “Do you ever get to sleep?”
“On the seventh day,” he said.
“How very Godlike,” Dad said.
“Hardly. I’m like a slave who’s given a fool’s errand. But now I can show them. I finally spotted the flame. I can stop walking in circles although, at this point, it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“We need to get this flame back and find Barbara, Dad. Do you know who we need to give it to?”
“You’d probably want to give it to King Chin but I haven’t seen him since the day I arrived here. I haven’t seen any of them since they brought me here.”
“Then how do you know they took Barbara away? How do you know they got her at all?”
“Because I hear things. Sometimes the fog muffles sounds but sometimes it’s like the voices travel on all the little droplets and settle in my ears. I guess it all amounts to being in the right place at the right time.”
“Well, I don’t think the flame is going to last that much longer,” Dad said. “And if it goes out...”
“There’ll be some pretty pissed off Nefarions.”
“If it goes out...”
“There’s no starting it back up. What you hold there, Davey boy, is more key to our world than you will ever know. Let’s go this way.”
We veered to the right. I followed behind Dad and Grandpa.
“So,” I said, as we headed into the bush. “What do these people do?”
“What do they do?” Grandpa said.
“Yeah, well, everybody has to do something, don’t they?”
“Well, they used to. Now they sleep, for the most part.”
“Because they don’t have the flame?”
“I guess so. Even the wild elephants have gotten lazy.”
“What did they do before?”
“Before I borrowed the flame?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, mostly you had your three classes of people. It wasn’t like a caste system or anything. They were all treated as equals. One group was the worker group. These were the people who rebuilt the huts after the storms, kept up after the elephants, retrieved and grew food. Another group was the dreamers. There is a special building they go to for the largest part of the day. In a way, they are like the workers in that they are building things but what they build are dreams. Not just for themselves but for everyone...”
“Even us?”
“Even us. Well, they make the good dreams, anyway. Not the nightmares. No one knows where they come from. So they go to their special building and they make dreams. Another group is your shiftless layabout group. They don’t do anything. Actually, they’re kind of a middle group. Sometimes they will help make the dreams. Sometimes they’ll help retrieve food or rebuild a hut or something like that. But mostly they just eat and nap. They’re accepted just as the other groups are accepted. They see it all as something you’re born to do. If you’re a lazy person, they assume the work you do will be bad and passionless and they don’t want any part in that.”
“If they build our dreams, built our dreams, but they haven’t done anything except lie around for the past twenty years or so, why do we still dream?”
“Everything resonates. Everything that has a powerful origin leaves ripples and waves for years. If you think about it, the whole human race might just be a resonance caused from the big bang. A huge creation. Many little creations. Just look how long ideas last... Even bad ones.”
“Someone told us the flame was here to restrain their dreams.”
“No. It doesn’t really restrain their dreams. It... edits their dreams. See, they’re completely subservient to the flame. The flame, they believe, is the height of perfection. It lives on eternally, unless we kill it. It burns with passion day and night. It absorbs everything bad in their world. Think of it as the perfect mood drug. It eats depression and hatred, things like that, and makes them a stronger society for it. Or, at least, it used to anyway.”
We were now on a narrow trail, ascending the side of a mountain. I couldn’t see the top of it. To look up was to see huge broad leaf palm trees rising and disappearing into the fog.
“If you knew all this,” I asked. “Why did you take it?”
Grandpa breathed a very heavy sigh. “I wish people would stop making me out to be the bad guy. It used to be, in anthropology, we took things from tribes and societies all the time. Hell, if we decided we liked where they were living, we’d report back to the king or whoever and, before long, set up some colonies there.”
“Colonialism’s a little outdated though, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. We just don’t call them colonies anymore. Now we do it with corporations. Who needs to grow food when you can grow coffee for the rest of the world?
“I can only explain it like this... Keep in mind, I’m pretty much of an atheist. I don’t think I have much of a need for a higher power. So, I assumed their belief in the flame was all a bunch of mumbo jumbo just like every other religion I’ve found. And, I figured, if it wasn’t, if it really could take away things like depression, madness, hatred, I would have liked to see what it could do to our world.”
“I don’t think it helped much.”
“No. You’re right. It didn’t help at all. So I hung onto it. I figured they’d get by. Religion is basically mass imagination. I just assumed they would find something else to worship and go about their business. And then they hijacked me from our world and I came back here and I saw how things had changed. But I told them about the flame. I told them how it didn’t do anything in our world and it was all in their heads. I wanted them to become self-sufficient, without the flame.”
“You wanted them to be just like you.”
“I don’t remember you being like this when you were seven. You have a way of making everything seem so... bad.”
“You were imposing your will on a whole group of other people. That’s bad. That’s like Hitler or something.”
Grandpa threw his hands up in the air. “Great. So now you’re comparing me to Hitler.”
“I’m sorry if it sounds harsh.”
“But I notice you’re not retracting it?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I’m too old and tired to argue. I’ve been walking for twenty years. My legs are like two pieces of beef jerky. I just want a bed and some sunlight.”
Dad was wheezing. After all we’d been through, I didn’t really blame him.
“So, where’s Barbara?” he asked.
“If I heard things right, then she’s at the top of the mountain. Remember when I told you the Nefarions slept most of the time? Well, they put her up there to stand watch, although I don’t really know how anyone could stand watch in this much fog. She has a really big horn she’s supposed to blow if they need to wake up for any reason. Although, these days there isn’t much to wake up for.”
“And where does the flame need to go?”
“Oh, even further up the mountain.”
We continued to trudge up the side of the mountain. The fog became even thicker. It was actually now more like a mist than a fog. The flame continued to sputter. At one point, it guttered out completely. My heart practically stopped but then it flickered back to life. But only barely. I had an acute feeling of dislocation. Here I was in some dimension not entirely my own, on an island more make believe than anything, situated in an ocean not found on any map, climbing up the side of a mountain shrouded in fog. And now I didn’t even know if we would make it to where we needed to go. I trusted Grandpa to an extent. He was so old. He had been here so long. Just walking around in day long circles, thinking his thoughts to himself. We were probably the first people he had spoken to since coming here. It wasn’t very hard to imagine him completely insane. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone on the island at all. It seemed like at least one person had to be awake. Of course, fog has a way of dampening sound as much as it does of dampening sight so it’s entirely possible, if someone was awake and wandering around on the island, that they still had no idea we were here.
“By the way,” Grandpa said. “When did you get that plank for an arm?”
“I’ve had it for a couple days. I’m hoping it’ll go back to normal when we right everything.”
“I hope it’s as easy as you think it is.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? There isn’t anyone on this island who doesn’t want this flame to be back in its rightful spot.”
“You may be right about that. There are no bad guys here. Except for the mutants.”
“We already met them.”
“You should have killed them. They were banned from the island for a reason.”
“Yeah?”
“They want to destroy the flame.”
“We sailed here with them. I think they tried to kill us.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
Just then, we were ambushed by the three mutants. Onionface had peeled layers of itself away and was spraying something that was very much like tear gas out. Eaglehead tackled Dad and the imposter came at me. I thought about staying to help Dad and Grandpa but, if I did, and the flame went out, then nothing would be right anyway. All hope would be lost and we would probably be killed by not only the mutants but by the Nefarions as well.
The imposter pulled out the leftover burrito he had made from my brain on the bus and took a bite of it. Immediately, I felt consciousness shift somewhat. But I clutched the flame and tried running up the side of the mountain, finally deciding to leave Dad and Grandpa behind me. Occasionally, I looked back over my shoulder to see the imposter taking bites of the burrito. Each time he took a bite, it was like time jumped forward or sideways or something and he was closer behind me than he was before. My muscles felt swollen and rubber, leaden. I could hardly move my legs. The imposter tackled me, wrestling me to the ground. He smashed the rest of the burrito into my face.
“Give me the flame!” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Give it to me!” he shouted, closing his hands around my throat.
“What can you possibly gain from killing the flame?”
“Then I can extinguish the society that cast me out.”
I hit him in the head with the urn and the flame went out. The imposter rolled off me. He was still conscious. Getting to his knees, he looked at me and the flame and smirked.
The earth moved. A slight tremble. A look of surprise crossed his eyes. He lunged at me and I stepped out of the way.
The flame sparked a little bit. I didn’t know what I could do to keep it going.
“You’ll lose,” the imposter said. “You’ll always lose. The fake you is better than the real you. That’s something to remember. I’m surprised you don’t know that yet.”
No. I thought. He wasn’t right. It wasn’t even worth arguing with him. I was me. He was him but he didn’t know who he was.
And I didn’t know who I was either.
First a writer. Then a napper. Then a beard grower. Then an unemployed philosopher. Then an adventurer.
“Fine,” I said. “You want the flame...”
He held out his hand to me. “You know I do.”
I held the urn up to my beard, the flame licking the hair and setting it on fire. It was like a cool wind. I reached back with the urn in my hand and threw it as hard as I could at the imposter’s face. It clanked against the bridge of his nose and his face shattered into hundreds of pieces, revealing a different person beneath it. I didn’t get a chance to really look at who the imposter was beneath the me exterior before he ran away down the mountain.
The earth shifted again.
I heard the far off call of a horn. I heard the trumpeting and braying of elephants. And suddenly the fog was alive. The mountainside was alive. The island was alive with the stampede of elephants and, before I knew it, I was lifted up by their trunks, held aloft with my flaming beard as they charged up the mountain. The Nefarions were waking up now, coming to the balconies of their treehouses and crawling out of their huts to see what all the commotion was as the elephant wind carried me up the side of the mountain. I passed Mom and her giant horn she blew with great fury and passion. I tried to wave but she wasn’t paying any attention, focused as she was on her horn blowing. Hopefully, I thought, my beard is just long enough. Hopefully, the flame will burn until we get wherever it is we need to go.
The elephants traveled at a lightning pace, racing for the top of the mountain, the terrain growing even steeper and more rugged.
Eventually, we reached something like a crater at the very top of the mountain and I thought it was a volcano. The elephants raised their trunks and threw me into the crater. I felt myself falling down and down, into blackness, accompanied only by my blazing beard. I looked up and saw hundreds of faces: Mom, Dad, Grandpa, the Nefarions, all looking down at me as I raced to the bottom of this strange mountain.
I did not feel an impact. It was like falling into a springy net. When I reached the theoretical bottom, I heard a whoosh as my beard caught other things on fire. This was strange kindling indeed—ectoplasmic blue and green, floating like a vapor at the bottom of this cavelike dwelling. The power from the ignition shot me back up to the opening, to the top of the mountain, on a column of flame.
I landed on an elephant and watched the flame crawl into the sky, shooting up from the center of the mountain.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The flame burnt away all the fog and the island was exposed to the sun, immediately alive and thriving.
I sprawled backward on the immense hide of the elephant and shut my eyes against the sun, falling asleep for the next thousand years.
“Dad?” I shook him harder.
“Dad?” I rolled him over onto his side and pounded on his back. I placed my hand on his back to see if I could feel him breathing at all.
He coughed and spewed up some seawater and a crab that quickly burrowed into the grayish sand. I slumped down beside him. He opened his eyes and sat up, vomiting once again between his legs.
“Shit,” he said.
“Shit, yeah.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“Big Karl happened.”
“Huh?”
I motioned out toward the sea. Big Karl continued to frolic, unabashedly smiling and revealing everything.
“That’s an ugly motherfucker,” Dad said.
“Damn right,” I said.
“Still have the flame?”
“Nope.”
“Is that it out there?” He pointed into the water.
It could have been the flame. Could we be that lucky? Probably not. Bad luck seemed to run in our family. The luck was so bad that even when we performed an act to try and reverse the luck or at least balance it out the bad luck would make it impossible. I stood up, still dizzy and woozy, and entered the cold ocean. As I got closer to the object I realized it definitely was the flame.
The imposter sprang up from the water on the other side of it, rushing for it as fast as I was. It was like a race in slow motion, each of us trying to trudge through the water to reach the flame. At the last second, I made a tremendous leap for it and clasped it in my hands. The imposter then leapt on top of me and tried to hold me under like we were children at a public pool. He was even weaker than I was, however, and I was able to resurface and push him away from me.
“Leave us the fuck alone,” I said. “You guys got what you want, okay? You’re here now. Go off and find your long lost relatives or something. And take off that stupid beard. You can never be me.”
Again, the hurt look I was becoming familiar with flooded into the imposter’s eyes. He took off his soaked false beard and slung it into the water, trudging off to my right, further down the shore. I could see two figures waiting for him—Onionface and Eaglehead. Part of me was glad they had also survived Big Karl, even though Eaglehead had tried to swindle us in our final moments of extremis.
I soggily wandered back up to the sandy shore. This was not at all what I expected from the island. It was gray with fog and dismal and kind of chilly. Visibility was down to about fifteen feet. Wherever we decided to set off to would be a mystery. Something like a channel was cut into the beach, arching off as far as I could see. It made me think of a very narrow moat, about two feet wide and dry.
I held Brilliance up in front of me. The flame burned very low. It looked in danger of going out.
“We’d better return this quick,” I said.
“We have to figure out where we’re returning it too. We’re on the island. They should be able to find us now. They know what we want.”
“So what now?”
“What now? I guess we walk.”
“You’ve never been here, huh?”
“No. I didn’t make it anywhere near this far last time. I almost thought the place didn’t exist at all.”
“Is this how you thought it would be?”
“No. I thought it would be... sunnier. Dad always described it as being sunny and tropical. This is downright Gothic.”
“That’s an apt description.”
“Maybe we should try and cut around the perimeter at first. Maybe it’s not so foggy on
the other side.”
“Do you know how big the island is?”
“No. Not really. I don’t think it’s extremely large. It has to move itself through time and space periodically. It can’t be that big, can it?”
“I dunno.” Physics wasn’t one of my strong points.
We took off walking in the opposite direction of the Nefarions.
“I should warn you,” Dad said. “If we see any other Nefarions, even if it’s the normal-looking ones, we should probably proceed with caution. This flame is the only thing they’re going to care about. We’re just intruders. Remember that. There’s a reason no one comes here.”
“Right.”
Both of us were too exhausted to say anything. We just continued to walk mechanically. I tried my best not to look at the flame. The last thing I wanted to see, after coming all this way, was the damn thing guttering out. If it went out completely, I knew, it would mean our death. Because it wasn’t just us who had come all this way. Too many things had happened for me to think we had done this by ourselves. From first spotting Eaglehead in New York to the hallucinogenic sandwich, to the busride, to the shifting and shortened landscape, all the way to the ship that brought us here, it was clear we had had some outside help. And if it seemed as far from the divine as help could possibly get, I was okay with that. If it meant we hadn’t done it all on our own, I was okay with that too. It gave me a sense of security—so long as the flame burned. If the flame went out we would have not only failed ourselves but the Nefarions as well. The flame was of vital importance to each of us. For me and Dad, it meant getting Mom and possibly Grandpa back. For the Nefarions, it meant maintaining their life force, their tradition, going back to their old ways—whatever those ways may have been. Maybe it would even mean the end to all this gloom.
Eventually we saw a figure cutting its way through the fog. Dad pressed his plank to my chest and we walked back into some shrubbery just beyond the sand. As the figure drew closer, we were able to get a better look at him. He was very thin. He had hair and a beard down to his waist. He walked in the moat-like thing cutting its way into the sand. He was in it nearly up to his knees.
“Dad?” Dad said. The old man either didn’t hear him or he couldn’t see where the sound was coming from. It would have been difficult for anyone with even slightly impaired vision.
Dad grabbed my arm and we approached the wandering old man.
Dad now stood in front of him. “Dad?”
The old man stopped.
“Dan?” he said. Then, “Dan! You found us. Amazing!”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“Is this...”
“David.”
“David! I haven’t seen you since you were...”
“Seven,” I said. “When the elephants came and took you away.”
“Ah,” he said. “And you didn’t believe me.”
“I believed you. You were the one that didn’t believe.”
His eyes went to the flame in my right hand.
“You didn’t bring that here to return it, did you?” Grandpa said.
“We have to, Dad. It’s time. We’ve had it long enough.”
“Fuck! But that’s what I worked my whole life for.”
I knew what Dad wanted to say. He wanted to tell him that was all well and good but his life was almost over now and it was time to give the Nefarions their lives back.
“What good’s it doing in the attic if you’re here?” Dad said.
“That’s so... practical,” Grandpa said, shriveling up his face. “You always were the practical one. Not a dream in that bulbous head of yours.”
“Did we come all this way so you could insult me?”
“I guess you came just so you could return that, huh?”
“Something like that. We came back for you. And Barbara. Have you seen Barbara?”
“They took her away.”
“Took her away?”
“Come on, let’s walk. Notice this path. Want to know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years?”
He didn’t give either of us time to answer.
“Walking this same path,” Grandpa said. “They knew I took the flame. They kidnapped me and brought me here and told me I could walk around the island, searching for the flame. It was, I knew, to be my death sentence. I wasn’t allowed in the middle of the island. It takes me exactly one day to walk around the entire island. They leave a meal for me at the half-way point and the end of the first day and the beginning of the next day.”
“Jesus,” Dad said. “Do you ever get to sleep?”
“On the seventh day,” he said.
“How very Godlike,” Dad said.
“Hardly. I’m like a slave who’s given a fool’s errand. But now I can show them. I finally spotted the flame. I can stop walking in circles although, at this point, it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“We need to get this flame back and find Barbara, Dad. Do you know who we need to give it to?”
“You’d probably want to give it to King Chin but I haven’t seen him since the day I arrived here. I haven’t seen any of them since they brought me here.”
“Then how do you know they took Barbara away? How do you know they got her at all?”
“Because I hear things. Sometimes the fog muffles sounds but sometimes it’s like the voices travel on all the little droplets and settle in my ears. I guess it all amounts to being in the right place at the right time.”
“Well, I don’t think the flame is going to last that much longer,” Dad said. “And if it goes out...”
“There’ll be some pretty pissed off Nefarions.”
“If it goes out...”
“There’s no starting it back up. What you hold there, Davey boy, is more key to our world than you will ever know. Let’s go this way.”
We veered to the right. I followed behind Dad and Grandpa.
“So,” I said, as we headed into the bush. “What do these people do?”
“What do they do?” Grandpa said.
“Yeah, well, everybody has to do something, don’t they?”
“Well, they used to. Now they sleep, for the most part.”
“Because they don’t have the flame?”
“I guess so. Even the wild elephants have gotten lazy.”
“What did they do before?”
“Before I borrowed the flame?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, mostly you had your three classes of people. It wasn’t like a caste system or anything. They were all treated as equals. One group was the worker group. These were the people who rebuilt the huts after the storms, kept up after the elephants, retrieved and grew food. Another group was the dreamers. There is a special building they go to for the largest part of the day. In a way, they are like the workers in that they are building things but what they build are dreams. Not just for themselves but for everyone...”
“Even us?”
“Even us. Well, they make the good dreams, anyway. Not the nightmares. No one knows where they come from. So they go to their special building and they make dreams. Another group is your shiftless layabout group. They don’t do anything. Actually, they’re kind of a middle group. Sometimes they will help make the dreams. Sometimes they’ll help retrieve food or rebuild a hut or something like that. But mostly they just eat and nap. They’re accepted just as the other groups are accepted. They see it all as something you’re born to do. If you’re a lazy person, they assume the work you do will be bad and passionless and they don’t want any part in that.”
“If they build our dreams, built our dreams, but they haven’t done anything except lie around for the past twenty years or so, why do we still dream?”
“Everything resonates. Everything that has a powerful origin leaves ripples and waves for years. If you think about it, the whole human race might just be a resonance caused from the big bang. A huge creation. Many little creations. Just look how long ideas last... Even bad ones.”
“Someone told us the flame was here to restrain their dreams.”
“No. It doesn’t really restrain their dreams. It... edits their dreams. See, they’re completely subservient to the flame. The flame, they believe, is the height of perfection. It lives on eternally, unless we kill it. It burns with passion day and night. It absorbs everything bad in their world. Think of it as the perfect mood drug. It eats depression and hatred, things like that, and makes them a stronger society for it. Or, at least, it used to anyway.”
We were now on a narrow trail, ascending the side of a mountain. I couldn’t see the top of it. To look up was to see huge broad leaf palm trees rising and disappearing into the fog.
“If you knew all this,” I asked. “Why did you take it?”
Grandpa breathed a very heavy sigh. “I wish people would stop making me out to be the bad guy. It used to be, in anthropology, we took things from tribes and societies all the time. Hell, if we decided we liked where they were living, we’d report back to the king or whoever and, before long, set up some colonies there.”
“Colonialism’s a little outdated though, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. We just don’t call them colonies anymore. Now we do it with corporations. Who needs to grow food when you can grow coffee for the rest of the world?
“I can only explain it like this... Keep in mind, I’m pretty much of an atheist. I don’t think I have much of a need for a higher power. So, I assumed their belief in the flame was all a bunch of mumbo jumbo just like every other religion I’ve found. And, I figured, if it wasn’t, if it really could take away things like depression, madness, hatred, I would have liked to see what it could do to our world.”
“I don’t think it helped much.”
“No. You’re right. It didn’t help at all. So I hung onto it. I figured they’d get by. Religion is basically mass imagination. I just assumed they would find something else to worship and go about their business. And then they hijacked me from our world and I came back here and I saw how things had changed. But I told them about the flame. I told them how it didn’t do anything in our world and it was all in their heads. I wanted them to become self-sufficient, without the flame.”
“You wanted them to be just like you.”
“I don’t remember you being like this when you were seven. You have a way of making everything seem so... bad.”
“You were imposing your will on a whole group of other people. That’s bad. That’s like Hitler or something.”
Grandpa threw his hands up in the air. “Great. So now you’re comparing me to Hitler.”
“I’m sorry if it sounds harsh.”
“But I notice you’re not retracting it?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I’m too old and tired to argue. I’ve been walking for twenty years. My legs are like two pieces of beef jerky. I just want a bed and some sunlight.”
Dad was wheezing. After all we’d been through, I didn’t really blame him.
“So, where’s Barbara?” he asked.
“If I heard things right, then she’s at the top of the mountain. Remember when I told you the Nefarions slept most of the time? Well, they put her up there to stand watch, although I don’t really know how anyone could stand watch in this much fog. She has a really big horn she’s supposed to blow if they need to wake up for any reason. Although, these days there isn’t much to wake up for.”
“And where does the flame need to go?”
“Oh, even further up the mountain.”
We continued to trudge up the side of the mountain. The fog became even thicker. It was actually now more like a mist than a fog. The flame continued to sputter. At one point, it guttered out completely. My heart practically stopped but then it flickered back to life. But only barely. I had an acute feeling of dislocation. Here I was in some dimension not entirely my own, on an island more make believe than anything, situated in an ocean not found on any map, climbing up the side of a mountain shrouded in fog. And now I didn’t even know if we would make it to where we needed to go. I trusted Grandpa to an extent. He was so old. He had been here so long. Just walking around in day long circles, thinking his thoughts to himself. We were probably the first people he had spoken to since coming here. It wasn’t very hard to imagine him completely insane. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone on the island at all. It seemed like at least one person had to be awake. Of course, fog has a way of dampening sound as much as it does of dampening sight so it’s entirely possible, if someone was awake and wandering around on the island, that they still had no idea we were here.
“By the way,” Grandpa said. “When did you get that plank for an arm?”
“I’ve had it for a couple days. I’m hoping it’ll go back to normal when we right everything.”
“I hope it’s as easy as you think it is.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? There isn’t anyone on this island who doesn’t want this flame to be back in its rightful spot.”
“You may be right about that. There are no bad guys here. Except for the mutants.”
“We already met them.”
“You should have killed them. They were banned from the island for a reason.”
“Yeah?”
“They want to destroy the flame.”
“We sailed here with them. I think they tried to kill us.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.”
Just then, we were ambushed by the three mutants. Onionface had peeled layers of itself away and was spraying something that was very much like tear gas out. Eaglehead tackled Dad and the imposter came at me. I thought about staying to help Dad and Grandpa but, if I did, and the flame went out, then nothing would be right anyway. All hope would be lost and we would probably be killed by not only the mutants but by the Nefarions as well.
The imposter pulled out the leftover burrito he had made from my brain on the bus and took a bite of it. Immediately, I felt consciousness shift somewhat. But I clutched the flame and tried running up the side of the mountain, finally deciding to leave Dad and Grandpa behind me. Occasionally, I looked back over my shoulder to see the imposter taking bites of the burrito. Each time he took a bite, it was like time jumped forward or sideways or something and he was closer behind me than he was before. My muscles felt swollen and rubber, leaden. I could hardly move my legs. The imposter tackled me, wrestling me to the ground. He smashed the rest of the burrito into my face.
“Give me the flame!” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Give it to me!” he shouted, closing his hands around my throat.
“What can you possibly gain from killing the flame?”
“Then I can extinguish the society that cast me out.”
I hit him in the head with the urn and the flame went out. The imposter rolled off me. He was still conscious. Getting to his knees, he looked at me and the flame and smirked.
The earth moved. A slight tremble. A look of surprise crossed his eyes. He lunged at me and I stepped out of the way.
The flame sparked a little bit. I didn’t know what I could do to keep it going.
“You’ll lose,” the imposter said. “You’ll always lose. The fake you is better than the real you. That’s something to remember. I’m surprised you don’t know that yet.”
No. I thought. He wasn’t right. It wasn’t even worth arguing with him. I was me. He was him but he didn’t know who he was.
And I didn’t know who I was either.
First a writer. Then a napper. Then a beard grower. Then an unemployed philosopher. Then an adventurer.
“Fine,” I said. “You want the flame...”
He held out his hand to me. “You know I do.”
I held the urn up to my beard, the flame licking the hair and setting it on fire. It was like a cool wind. I reached back with the urn in my hand and threw it as hard as I could at the imposter’s face. It clanked against the bridge of his nose and his face shattered into hundreds of pieces, revealing a different person beneath it. I didn’t get a chance to really look at who the imposter was beneath the me exterior before he ran away down the mountain.
The earth shifted again.
I heard the far off call of a horn. I heard the trumpeting and braying of elephants. And suddenly the fog was alive. The mountainside was alive. The island was alive with the stampede of elephants and, before I knew it, I was lifted up by their trunks, held aloft with my flaming beard as they charged up the mountain. The Nefarions were waking up now, coming to the balconies of their treehouses and crawling out of their huts to see what all the commotion was as the elephant wind carried me up the side of the mountain. I passed Mom and her giant horn she blew with great fury and passion. I tried to wave but she wasn’t paying any attention, focused as she was on her horn blowing. Hopefully, I thought, my beard is just long enough. Hopefully, the flame will burn until we get wherever it is we need to go.
The elephants traveled at a lightning pace, racing for the top of the mountain, the terrain growing even steeper and more rugged.
Eventually, we reached something like a crater at the very top of the mountain and I thought it was a volcano. The elephants raised their trunks and threw me into the crater. I felt myself falling down and down, into blackness, accompanied only by my blazing beard. I looked up and saw hundreds of faces: Mom, Dad, Grandpa, the Nefarions, all looking down at me as I raced to the bottom of this strange mountain.
I did not feel an impact. It was like falling into a springy net. When I reached the theoretical bottom, I heard a whoosh as my beard caught other things on fire. This was strange kindling indeed—ectoplasmic blue and green, floating like a vapor at the bottom of this cavelike dwelling. The power from the ignition shot me back up to the opening, to the top of the mountain, on a column of flame.
I landed on an elephant and watched the flame crawl into the sky, shooting up from the center of the mountain.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The flame burnt away all the fog and the island was exposed to the sun, immediately alive and thriving.
I sprawled backward on the immense hide of the elephant and shut my eyes against the sun, falling asleep for the next thousand years.
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