Ten Miles One Way

by Patrick Downes

  How can I let myself die if this is even a tiny bit possible?

  On the other hand, why would I give birth to a fourth generation of Angers?

  You remember I thought of Lincoln? Trivia: Lincoln and Darwin were both born on February 12, 1809. What a year, right? Napoleon was conquering Europe, and Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day. Two hundred plus years later, the whole world’s at war and still arguing race, slavery, and evolution.

  When Darwin was a teenager, sixteen or something, his father got on him: “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Ten years later, Darwin returned home to England from a five-year voyage around the world on the H.M.S. Beagle. He was twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, a naturalist with ten million notes and observations from his long trip, carrying around a huge baby of an idea. It took him decades to work it all out in his head, to raise the baby. Darwin was fifty when he published The Origin of Species, and he changed the world.

  Let me take out Darwin. Look, just listen to this one thing from the very end of Origin.

  “It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms . . . have all been produced by laws acting around us. . . . Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life . . . having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

  “You see?” Darwin says. “Life is huge and beautiful. But what God or whatever started with, the few and simple, became many and complicated. Creatures have come and gone and. Everything, absolutely everything is evolving. Even humans. We’re evolving, getting closer and closer all the time to perfection.”

  Maybe perfection, even in me, even with my Chimaera. Maybe.

  Darwin didn’t count on us humans killing absolutely everything that lives and breathes. We love to murder. It’s awful, but Darwin would have shrugged his shoulders. Far as he’s concerned, something better than us might come along. Except, when the time comes, the sun will die. Darwin didn’t count on this either. All of it will be over. Da Vinci and Hitler, the Koran and the Bible, scientists and antiscientists, Minotaur and Chimaera, all the life before and after us, everything, all memory, the two of us, gone.

  Nest’s mind bubbles and steams and swirls. Primordial soup, and all sorts of creatures walk up out of her brain on their fins, which become feet. Listening to Nest is only as tiring as pretending to witness the start of the world.

  Let’s walk, Q. The rain’s done. I have to walk so I won’t go to sleep.

  Wait. The cold; watching the rain: I have to go before we go.

  Bathrooms are down the hall. They’re next to each other, Men’s and Women’s.

  Do you know Morse code?

  —?—

  If you knew Morse, I could knock-talk, dots and dashes, during the long separation.

  MILE FIVE

  I have everything I want to share with you up here, Q, in my head. Or in my heart. Quotes, you know. And poems, some whole poems. For today—.

  We’re almost to the bridge. And your eyes are lighting the world.

  You’re more beautiful than I am. You’re rare. But I have a Chimaera. She’s hiding from you, but she’s in me, watching, and she makes me even more rare.

  Almost always, on these forever walks, I cross the bridge. I like the graffiti, especially the tags painted in the places that look impossible to reach any normal way. I mean—.

  Three friends climb and climb up past where everybody else wouldn’t dare. No doubt or fear. You can see the guy with the paint, upside down, his friends holding his ankles. Or he rappels. Suction cups, maybe. It’s much easier to believe he hovers like a hummingbird, his wings flapping a hundred beats a second. And when he’s done, he collapses, totally exhausted. He falls straight down into the river, a finished angel, like Icarus with a can of paint, useless wings. He has to fight for life. But he left his mark, and that’s what matters.

  When I walk over the bridge, I stand in the middle, every time, and imagine what the world looked like before the city came. Hundreds of years ago, the land was forest and hills and cliffs and the river that cuts everything into this side and that side.

  You’ll see. You’ll stop breathing for a second when you see how beautiful it all was. The forest that stopped only for the river and the sky, and finally the ocean. The noisy quiet, and the whole living world that never once asked itself, “What did I do that for? What was I thinking?”

  This is the craziest thing about the bridge. No matter how you get here, you never see it coming. A couple lefts, a right, straight a few blocks, another left, and wham. There it is. Right now. Over our heads. So tall and.

  Metal.

  I always discover it, every time, as if it never existed before I thought it up.

  And the first step every time feels the same way. The road vibrates and hums. The vibration goes through your body. For a second you have to wonder if you’re doing the right thing, taking a bridge by foot over the water. There’s no other way, though, that isn’t scary. You can’t swim the river. The ferry vibrates and hums, too. The train swings and screeches and slows down as if the tracks have to be crossed really gently or they’ll snap. There’s no way to get from here to there, one side to the other, without knowing it. You’re awake and afraid.

  “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”

  It doesn’t matter how many times I take the bridge, I’m afraid it’s going to crack and break. Bridges sometimes do that. And when I’m walking, a truck comes and the road and bridge shake a little wild. Or the train comes over and it makes such incredible noise. But I hold on to the steel, and I close my eyes, and I wait. I think, “This isn’t the last day of my life.”

  Never touched by decay

  The bridge of Nagara’s

  Bridge pillars

  Endure and so

  Will you, I’d say.

  I have some poetry in me, Q, even ancient Japanese lines, poetry memorized over the years during the long nights when my candle burned at both ends and in the middle. I’m not sure poems are all that good for me, since my imagination takes off, but.

  Poetry finds me. I can’t give up the beauty.

  I know why I don’t bother with Snapchat and Tumblr and fandoms and Instagram and GatherIt and FireFly and everything else I’m supposed to enjoy. What if this is our last day on earth?

  Hashtag: Exit.

  The word hashtag is now in the Oxford English Dictionary, by the way. Use it the next time you play Scrabble.

  But what if this is our last day on earth? An undiscovered meteor comes screaming through the sky, and. Good as gone. Hashtag: Duck. Hashtag: Infinitewinter.

  It’s not pessimistic. I’m saying our last day is the first day of forever.

  It matters what we do. Pretty much everything matters—.

  “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

  Everything matters. Like saying one thing that isn’t completely stupid. Or reciting a poem from memory.

  I feel like I’m yelling over the traffic and the voices of the bridge. I need my own voice to go the distance, for all the miles I have to talk to you—.

  There’s everything still on the
other side of the bridge. So, I’m going to shut up.

  We’ll stop at the middle. We’ll stand over the forests that aren’t there.

  We walked in the noise of the bridge toward its center. Tiny Nest on the inside of the walkway, me on the outside. I wanted to protect her from the traffic and any splashing from tires crashing through the long puddles.

  I was remembering a time a year before, when I visited Nest’s home uninvited. Nest hadn’t been to school in two weeks, and I worried she’d be lost when she got back. Nest always had to play catch up, it seemed, and she always fought through. She did better than anyone ever could expect. Sometimes, she would submit brilliant essays or ace exams after her long absences; sometimes she would scrape by. Wildly inconsistent, I guess you could say.

  Nest was gone two weeks, and I wanted to bring her my notes and assignments, all my work, anything to help. We were in a few classes together, but we almost never spoke. One of our quiet phases. We’d smile, though, never shyly, knowingly maybe. We were silent with each other. I can’t claim to understand. Like I’ve said, I was waiting.

  I went to the house after school, and Nest’s mother answered the door. Nest is a girl exactly split between her mother and father. She has her mother’s eyes and mouth, but what must be her father’s nose and skin. Sometimes we see such people, who look as if their parents picked what they thought would work best and stitched it together into a child.

  “Oh, hello.” Nest’s mother spoke in a way that made you think you could barely hear her, but you knew exactly what she’d said. Her voice not so much a whisper, but—. I don’t have Nest’s gift of words. I have my own gifts, and those gifts are in numbers. “Isaac,” she said. “Or should I call you Q?”

  “I’ll answer to both,” I said.

  “Q is how Nest thinks of you, so I’ll keep to your given name. Isaac, I’m Martha Fitzgerald. We’ve never actually met, but I’ve seen you grow up. Thirteen to now. It must have been tiring, all the height.” She laughed. “Nest and I never went through that kind of exhaustion for the sake of height.”

  “I guess it was tiring, I don’t remember.”

  “Your mother would, I’m sure.” She smiled a second before her face became serious. “I’m not wanting to be rude, Isaac, not inviting you in right off. Nest is camped in the living room, and I should ask if she would like a visitor. Would you wait a moment, please?”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Fitzgerald.” I took off my backpack and unzipped it. “I wasn’t invited. I just have some schoolwork I’d like to leave for Nest. Don’t bother her.”

  I handed Nest’s mother a fat folder, and she took it with a smile. “And you’re kind, too. Give me a second with Nest, all right?”

  I nodded, and Nest’s mother disappeared inside. I tried not to look through the blinds from the porch, but I couldn’t help myself. The light was dim. I could make Nest out, lying under a blanket with her arm over her eyes. Her hand clenched into a fist. I saw her mother approach with the folder and begin to speak. At first, Nest didn’t move. Then, she dropped her arm and propped herself up on her elbow. She turned her head and looked right out to me. Maybe she smiled, a flicker, but she shook her head. Slowly, so slowly, as if it might have hurt her to move any more. For all the world, I could imagine a goat, with its split eye and tapering beard, staring out after me from behind Nest’s back.

  When Nest’s mother returned to the door, she came with a glass of water and a smile. “You must be a little thirsty,” she said, mild as milk. “I’m sorry. Nest said no to the visit. Thank you for your generosity, Isaac. I’m sure you’ll see Nest soon enough.”

  When Nest returned to school, she didn’t come to me, and I didn’t say anything. We smiled in class before we sat, and I thought she looked healthy. No sign of trouble having gone on in her body and mind.

  Nest.

  It’s easy enough to wonder what all I’ve made up in these days I’ve written this out, as Nest lies somewhere in her own Between. Life, death, and the horizon line. How could I remember everything Nest said or everything I thought? Sometimes I sound like Nest and Nest sounds like me. Nothing of this can be perfect.

  I can tell you only that I’ve repeated to myself this day we walked. I’ve relived this day, rebuilt it again and again.

  It’s a bridge of sorts, this walk, connecting one person who suffers from inside, in her mind, to one who doesn’t. Nest has all her humor and observation and thought and knowledge, but I can’t ever forget—especially now, with her face bruised and shut against everything alive, her broken body so close to nothing-more—she lives all the time near agony.

  We came to the middle of the bridge that crosses a river into the deep city. Nest leaned over the railing and stared down.

  Then:

  Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!

  Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.

  That’s from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman. It has a lot of words and is beautifully complicated. I don’t want you to get lost in what I say, Q. I want you to follow me everywhere, and I know you can.

  I want poems for you that would be like songs, songs to remind you where we stood.

  The arch is highest here, and we’re exactly between the towers.

  Look. Look at everything. Right now, watch the trees and try to imagine yourself down there, in the never-ending woods.

  Nest had built a forest around me in the middle of the bridge. It was a forest of all her thoughts and feelings. The trees, thorns, and wild vines. Almost impenetrable except for stars, animals, and sun spears. It was quiet and loud at the same time, like all forests. She surrounded me.

  She stood next to me, shivering, holding her damp flannel at her throat. The breeze turned her lips purple-blue. I couldn’t be sure I would ever get back to the forest Nest had made once I left it, but I wasn’t at all sure I would ever leave it, no matter where I went, or how far from her.

  I guess you can get lost in the city, in the forest of buildings, but not for long. You can never really get lost in a city or on an island. You have to pick a direction and walk. Or you can stand on a corner and cry until someone comes to help you. Draws you a map on the palm of your hand and.

  In a city, you’ll never be eaten alive or hear a tree explode in the cold.

  Is this what happens in extreme winter? The sap running through a tree freezes and bursts the wood? A tree dying in this way would make a sound like a gunshot, or a cannon. The tree falls. But who would be there to hear it?

  I leaned over the cable and guardrails, and I had the strange feeling of wanting to jump. Maybe this is what it feels like to be Nest.

  Be careful, Q. Legs have their own mind, and they say, Jump.

  If you jump, there would be nothing at all for me to hear, not even your body hitting the water—silence; only the image, the tiny clap of white visible from the bridge. What would you leave behind? Nothing. Not even graffiti.

  Don’t jump, Q. You’d miss me every day you were dead.

  We finished the bridge in silence. Once Nest and I got past the graffiti on the towers, we could see the first traffic lights up the crosstown avenue. It seemed like a thousand stoplights and traffic to the horizon. The heart of the city.

  MILE SIX

  Just over the bridge comes the part of the city where everything necessary gets done. Garages, printers, and fabricators; food distributors and car parts. Wholesale/retail. People here cut glass and aluminum and plastic and tile and stone. But there is also the memory of work, and abandoned warehouses. The blocks are long and lonely.

  Those giant, dead slaughterhouses, Q, right there, the city council and a developer want to make condos out of them. There must still be blood on the walls or in the cracks of the walls, and on the floors and ceilings. Who would buy a million-dollar condo in a slaughterhouse? I couldn’t sleep wi
th all the sweaty, bleeding ghost-cows crying and bellowing. How could anyone sleep?

  I’ve had dreams about you, Q.

  A square, white room, pretty big, twenty by twenty, and its ceiling is the sky, that close and endless. In the center of the room, there’s a wood table and two chairs facing each other. I sit in one of the chairs. I’m in a gown, a wedding gown, made from ice, its train swept around and around my feet, hiding them. I have a crown, too, of leaves—maybe eucalyptus—but the leaves are frozen, iced over. My skin’s pale, and my lips are blue.

  I wait with my eyes closed and my hands on the table until I feel a presence in the second chair. I’m afraid to open my eyes. What if someone other than you has sat down?

  I have to open my eyes. But I’m scared. I have to tell myself, “Open, open, open—”

  And there you are. You.

  I’m already crying. It feels like this is the first time we’ve seen each other in a very long time, two or three times as long as we’ve been on the planet.

  You nod. Or you drop your chin, simpler than a nod—not as, I don’t know, confident.

  I reach across the table, and you take my hands. Not a word. Half a minute this way, maybe, maybe half a minute or a thousand years, until I let go.

  You push back your chair and stand.

  “I’ll wait outside,” you say. “This room has to collapse sometime, Nest, and that dress will have to melt.”