A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

  King James Bible, 6th Edition, 1962.

  I held it up to my dad. “Well,” I said, “at least he died with what he loved.”

  Mara stood up, gently touching my leg. “I’m getting coffee. Take a minute with it, will you?”

  Sal patted me on the shoulder as he followed. “You should read it, you know,” he said of the Bible. “Might learn a thing or two.”

  I smirked back and watched them leave, holding up the Bible and running my hands over it. I felt close to him, as if he’d just reached through time and space to hand it to me. I thumbed the pages, feeling the creases and the surprisingly thick paper.

  My dad sat down next to me and put an arm on my shoulder and smiled down at the Bible. For as important as it was to me, it must have been more important to my father.

  Finding the middle, I closed my eyes and opened it, hoping it would fall perfectly on the fourth and fifth chapters of Corinthians, so I would know that my grandpa was watching.

  But I didn’t land on Corinthians. There was no typed text on the page; just lines and lines of scribbled cursive.

  “What is that?” my father asked. “Did he . . . did he write in the Bible?”

  I flipped backward, and it was more of the same. I tore through page after page of hesitant cursive, occasionally falling on ripped pages. The number of them overwhelmed me; page after page, some completely full and others with only a few lines. I opened it to the very first page . . . april 29, the 1970.

  “It’s not a Bible.” I ran my hand over it. “It’s a journal.”

  My dad looked back and forth from the Bible to me and back again, his eyes widening.

  “It goes all the way back to 1970,” I told him. “This trip, the one he was reliving, the one that ended in . . . He wrote the whole thing.”

  “He brought that Bible everywhere,” my dad breathed. “He was carrying around a journal. And reading it—”

  “He was rereading his own story,” I said. “He was reliving the parts he forgot.”

  I set it on the table in front of us, closed. My dad was holding his breath, staring nervously, unsure if he wanted to open it or not, and I could understand why. It was almost too much: all the answers we’d wanted tucked neatly between two faded covers and now presented to us. What if he wasn’t who we thought he was? What if we were in there? What if this changed things?

  But my dad had a different question. “Where do we start?”

  I swallowed and nodded and flipped it open to the last page. The final entry was dated may 4, the 2010 . . . the day that he died.

  I imagined him sitting alone at Kent State, under the bell where I’d just been, and writing for the last time.

  7.

  may 4, the 2010.

  i always imagined, when i died,

  i’d want to think about every secand

  of my life

  except the one i was in.

  i imagine some dying people hold tight to their memary,

  view single slides of a life lived,

  weigh regrets & accomplishments like stones on a scale,

  polish medals & paint over scars,

  in anticapation of the Great judgment.

  i imagine others fret the Great transation,

  realizing they’re finally cornared

  by the questions they spent their human lives avoiding,

  consumed by a fear of heaven

  & abyss & reincarnation & dirt.

  but i’m not doing that.

  cold bell dirt arthur,

  i’m just saying my own name.

  arthur.

  i’m saying my own name

  arthur.

  & i’m reminded that i exist.

  i spant sixty years watching a past that never happened.

  i spant sixty years chasing a future that never came.

  i spant sixty years

  thinking your voice was over the mountain,

  but it was with me all along.

  you were here all along,

  waiting,

  unseen.

  & now, in my final moment,

  i’m here too.

  finally awake,

  i can finally see,

  & finally,

  we are eternal.

  —arthur louis pullman

  The Epilogue.

  Time Remembered.

  may 6, the 2015.

  there are pieces of me that i’m learning to question & parts of my past that i’m learning to rewrite. i started a journal again, without the capital letters, which feels like an appropriate tribute. maybe it is worth it to think about how you feel sometimes. maybe i could do well with the therapy. maybe it’s not a weakness to give parts of yourself to other people.

  “you’re in an interesting position, you know?” mara told me after the police had left & the dust had settled & it was just the two of us, left with the journal my grandpa had left behind.

  “i know,” i said. “but i don’t know what you’re talking about specifically.”

  “there are people who believe your grandfather to be a god, & those who believe him to be a complete asshole. communities that worship him, professors that teach him, family members that despise him. you are in sole possession of the only remaining piece of his legacy, & so, it seems, you are in sole possession of this decision.”

  “decision?” i asked her. “what am i deciding?”

  she smiled, like she’d just seen a face once loved & lost & now found once more.

  “how he’s remembered,” she said, & the wind took over.

  kent, ohio, air is crisp when the seasons start to turn, just enough chill to remind you of where you’ve been, & just enough sun to show you all that you have to look forward to. punxsutawney phil saw his shadow in 2015, the tricky bastard, promising six extra weeks of winter. the six weeks had turned into sixteen & kent, ohio, was just starting to look like spring.

  “well, i’ve made my decision,” i told her.

  “you have?”

  “his legacy is & forever shall be”—i held it up to read—“‘the people he met & the things they carried.’”

  she didn’t understand. “i appreciate the poetry, but i’m afraid the substance is . . .”

  “he wasn’t writing for a big audience, & he wasn’t writing in the abstract. he wasn’t telling stories that he wasn’t a part of. & you were right all along, he wasn’t writing for me. he was writing to them.

  “henry needed a companion; my grandpa wrote him one. the letters, every year, his whole life, something to look forward to, someone to believe in.

  “the bar in green river needed a train full of gold, & so he wrote about it in fiction, but in reality, i’d imagine the sale of an arthur louis pullman short story could probably buy you the entire town of green river.

  “& sue kopek, she . . . she needed something to help her remember who she is, & he reminded her. he wrote for those people.”

  “so you’re giving them back, then?”

  i nodded.

  “every last one?”

  i nodded again.

  “except for the journal with dozens of additional works that doesn’t really have a home other than with you.”

  it was my turn to smile.

  i’d made that decision as well. my family needed closure; my dad needed something to help him remember the best parts of his dad. more than that, the world needed a reminder of what an incredible writer my grandfather had been, & the fortieth anniversary of a world away seemed like the perfect opportunity.

  “you’re sure?” my father had asked.

  “yes, i’m sure.”

  “because we don’t have to. i don’t want to bruise the legacy he left behind.”

  “no, you’re right,” i told him. “& you were right before we found the journal, too. he deserves to be remembered.”

  mara & i sat for hours watching the students of kent state as we read & reread the journal entries.

  “this one,” i told her, holding up the po
em from denver, his confession & process & understanding of love. his ode to his breath & warmth & color. “this one doesn’t really have a home, because jeffery’s not here to take it anymore, so . . . well, you better.”

  “you—you’re serious about this?” i couldn’t tell for sure, but as i nodded i thought i saw a glimmer of liquid in the corner of her left eye, an overwhelmed, involuntary thank-you.

  on may sixth, i began rewriting the pieces of my past that i didn’t want to carry with me anymore. i’m sure a day will come when i’m reminded of how reality tells the story, but for now, & for the foreseeable future, i like how i remember it better.

  mara told me she was going back to denver, back to great purpose, to help them rebuild without jack. i thought she might stick around, or come back to california, & i got mad when she first told me we’d “still see each other sometimes.” but i realized that mara’s life is about mara, not about me, & mara needed something to chase. mara needed a place to belong, & i could be happy with sometimes.

  i wrote a letter to mason from the hospital, because i was mad at myself, & he got caught in the cross fire, & no one deserves to carry the guilt of another’s person’s self-hatred. i’d write to kaitlin, too, but i’m not ready for that just yet. also, it’s illegal.

  “you know what is interesting to me?” mara had mused as she flipped page to page through my grandfather’s diary of time he’d forgotten. “he made almost no grammatical errors, other than of course the blatant disregard for the rules of proper capitalization, & other than excessive use of the letter ‘a,’ almost no spelling errors—”

  “yeah, i think he was neurotic.”

  “—except, in this little bit here, that he wrote on his last day.” she opened to may 4, the 2010. “look, here, he misspelled the word ‘things.’”

  i followed her finger to the word. she was right, he’d accidentally slipped an extra e into the word, now spelled theings.

  “well, he was literally dying,” i said. “i think we can let him off the hook. maybe his hand slipped & he didn’t want to spend his final breath spell-checking his work.”

  “i know, i know, i know. i’m just saying, it’s weird, right?”

  i couldn’t deny her enthusiasm for even the mundane, & so again, as it had so often, her wave washed over me. “yes, it is weird.”

  i didn’t have anywhere i wanted to go or anywhere else that i wanted to be, so i began to read again. with my thumbs, i smoothed the creases at the edges of his pages, where his world stopped & everyone else’s began. next to me, mara’s head tumbled to my shoulder, asleep.

  i read each word, equally important, intricately linked & inextricable, a machine moving & bending & chugging & swaying together down the page:

  whare i lost my breath

  underessed before myself—

  it stopped me. the first time, i had read it as underdressed, but i realized that i had been reading too quickly, my brain seeing the letters & drawing a conclusion before it had a chance to actually notice their arrangement.

  the word he’d written, underessed, was closer to undressed, a word that made more sense in structure of the sentence. but he’d accidentally added an e. two spelling mistakes in the same journal entry was certainly strange.

  without pointing it out to mara, i continued reading:

  in a midwest march

  a civilization baried 100 of years ago

  & i hear voices in the graund,

  music scream siren explode gasp

  like applause

  whare

  perfect black & nothing nite

  & i feel these theings—

  through the spelling error she’d noticed.

  i feel everything & see nothing

  cold evening near the

  i’m crying but do not know my tears

  i’m running but do not know my legs

  i want so badly

  to know

  to bellieve—

  i stopped. again, my brain had let me slide past another error. he’d accidentally slipped another l into bellieved.

  coincidence will be the source of your greatest irrationality, mara had said, quoting someone. she was right, & dwelling on disconnected, totally irrelevant—

  focus on the moments of difference; those are the ones that matter. that voice was louder. it was my grandfather’s.

  underessed.

  theings.

  bellieved.

  undressed.

  things.

  believe.

  believe undressed things? things undressed believe?

  it was tricky, reading the words as they were & not as my brain wanted them to be. in my head, i wanted to fix the mistakes.

  slowly, carefully, i wrote them again, just the errors:

  under

  the

  bell

  my heart stopped & the world of kent, ohio, & mara & my parents & kaitlin & trains & doctors stopped spinning.

  under the bell.

  holy shit.

  the kent state victory bell had begun the protest, the bell that the students had rallied around following the shooting, the bell that had become memorialized as a testament to their will, a bell rung in remembrance of the lives lost & hope for future generations. i craned my head around & inside of it were markings . . . letters in the bell.

  here’s mara, transcribing:

  l

  i

  a

  n

  t

  &

  l

  o

  y

  a

  l

  c

  o

  n

  d

  u

  c

  t

  o

  r

  t

  h

  a

  t

  s

  a

  l

  l

  f

  r

  o

  m

  y

  o

  u

  r

  b

  r

  i

  l

  maybe there was more, all along, & i just had to stop looking to find it. or maybe it was exactly what it was, & the mystery was more important than the truth.

  i rearranged the letters to the proper starting point, & sitting beneath the bell, his bell, i smiled at his final message to me, his final message to everyone.

  that’s all, from your brilliant & loyal conductor.

  Author’s Note

  the story, characters, & incidents portrayed in this novel are purely fictitious.

  any identification with actual persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

  four people were killed in the kent state massacre (not five, as represented by the novel).

  their names are jeffrey miller, allison krause, william schroeder, & sandra scheuer.

  Acknowledgments

  addison.

  my family, the best & brightest on the entire planet,

  steve & jill & luke & leah & caleb & seth & joe,

  for racing me to the top of every mountain,

  & imbuing me with a thousand beautiful, repeatable truths,

  my roommates—anthony & sheppard & dylan—for making life so exciting,

  my brothers—cole & lucas & jordan & marcus & michael & anthony & grant & tj & joey—for showing me the world & keeping me in the mood for a party,

  my friends in los angeles—

  kaitlin kay, for inspiring the character only insomuch as you’re worthy of obsession,

  brookie, for keeping me company on the train,

  & a hundred others, for building me a home.

  my friends around the country,

  my paradise fears family,

  anyone who ever let me sleep on their couch or bought me a pink dunkin’ donut.

  ben rosenthal & harpercollins, for being so good to me,

  jason kupperman, for being right all the time, always
,

  joanna volpe & new leaf literary, for being literally just so much fun to talk to.

  the people i met & the things they carried—

  emily rose & christian, swifty, valerie, rebecca, heidi & kailie & emily, ben, brittany & ashley, the guy in elko who bought me the scotch, meredith & her beautiful son.

  vermillion, chicago, portland, seattle, boston, minneapolis, san francisco, new york, truckee, elko, green river, denver, omaha, mccook & everywhere like it, & i guess if i’ve gotta, los angeles.

  flor, bon iver, chance, lido, drake, this will destroy you, kanye, travis scott, porter robinson, drake, the weeknd, one republic, kishi bashi, jonsi, & drake.

  About the Author

  Photo by Jade Ehlers

  SAMUEL MILLER was born and raised in Vermillion, South Dakota, and now resides in Los Angeles, where, in addition to writing, he directs music videos and coaches Little League baseball. He began writing his first novel while on tour in a fifteen-passenger van with the rock band Paradise Fears. Currently, he attends graduate school at the University of Southern California. He credits his existence entirely to two spectacular parents, three brothers, one sister, and the best and sweetest puppy dog on the whole planet, Addison. This is his debut novel.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Samuel Miller

  A Lite Too Bright

  Back Ad

  DISCOVER

  your next favorite read

  MEET

  new authors to love

  WIN

  free books

  SHARE

  infographics, playlists, quizzes, and more

  WATCH

  the latest videos

  www.epicreads.com

  Copyright

  Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  A LITE TOO BRIGHT . Copyright © 2018 by Samuel Miller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.