The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  “Vamp?”

  “That’s the curved upper of a shoe. The building was shaped like one. Wait, here it is. I didn’t recognize it.”

  I had stopped at a light. We were beside one of the city’s restored buildings, trim and well painted. It had a Chinese restaurant and dry cleaners downstairs, signs for a yoga studio above. Neighboring storefronts were empty, but the place had a feel of recovery rather than decay. “You know this place?”

  “My friend Ebenezer Cronin had an enterprise here.”

  “Cronin Fine Boots.”

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  “You were wearing a pair when we found you.”

  “Was I indeed? Those boots were magnificent. Calf-high, and oiled to withstand the salt and wet. He was an underwriter of our voyage, as well. What became of that pair, do you know?”

  “Somewhere back at the project, probably. I could look.”

  “Would you please?”

  “No harm in trying.”

  The beach was surprisingly pretty, but deserted. We walked past the concrete seawall, to a lawn where giant anchors painted glossy black lay at odd angles. The Boston skyline rose to our right, closer than I would have imagined. Meanwhile tankers squatted on the horizon, tiny at that distance yet somehow conveying their immense size nonetheless. I’d bought sandwiches, we sat on a bench in the blaze of the sun. Humidity pressed down on us, but I felt so removed from my routines that I didn’t mind. While we ate, Jeremiah reminisced.

  “That island to our east is Egg Rock. In my time a lighthouse stood there. The beacon swept the sky on stormy nights, it was a lovely and lonesome thing. Gone now.”

  I shaded my brow. “Looks that way, hard to tell.”

  “That arm of land is Nahant. Where Boston Brahmins brought their families in summer.”

  I rolled up my pant legs, swigged from a bottle of iced tea, felt the fatigue of my all-nighter like a blanket. Under the steady sun, Jeremiah carried on about Lynn history, his voice falling into a murmur. I did my best to listen, but it worked like a bedtime story, lulling: the floating bridge on Glenmere Pond. War with Cuba and how Lynn answered the call. A soap company with a product so strong it not only scoured your skin, it also worked well on floors. The fire of 1889 that claimed nearly four hundred buildings. Streets with Algonquin names.

  Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. Wabaquin, Paquanum, Tontoquon. I drifted off to sleep.

  Waking is one of my favorite things. I know that makes me unusual; most people struggle each morning. For me, returning to consciousness is a pleasure, if there’s time to do it well. My favorite is Saturdays. I wake whenever my body wants, but don’t get out of bed for half an hour. I might read or make a phone call, but often I simply lie there to let my mind wander.

  On that bench by the water, I kept my eyes closed so Jeremiah would not know I was awake. I’d slid down during my nap, head now on his lap. It was an intimacy I would never have dared while awake. The sun had dried my mouth but I held there, unmoving, enjoying. When he shifted, his thigh muscles flexed under my neck, strong like a horse, thoroughly male. The movement stirred my nethers, a little sexual secret telling itself to me.

  At last I opened my eyes, to see that Jeremiah was playing a game with his fingers. It was boyish, not something I would have expected of him. He held his hand in front of his face, quite close, while wiggling his fingers one at a time, incredibly fast. I’d never seen a person move fingers that quickly, like a pianist playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Then all of his fingers flurried at once.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  He jumped, jamming his hand under his leg. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “That game. How do you make them move so fast?”

  “Hm. It’s an old parlor trick.”

  “Fun. You’ll have to teach me sometime.” Feeling sticky from the humidity, I sipped my iced tea. It was warm, but I took a good gulp. “How long was I out?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have a timepiece. It’s late afternoon. Do you feel better?”

  “You just sat here all that time?”

  “Where would I rather be?”

  I ignored what that question implied, its possible revelation. “This is your town. There must be a million things you want to see.”

  “Kate, I imagine that very few people reach the end of their lives and regret having spent too many hours relaxing beside the ocean.”

  “True. Good thing you’re not at the end of your life.”

  “Yes.” Jeremiah grimaced. “Good thing.”

  We sat in silence for a minute or more. Little wavelets flopped themselves against the sand. “Kate,” he said, “if a physician told you that you had an illness, and would only live for a year, or six months perhaps, what would you do with that information?”

  “Let me think,” I said. The question did not strike me as odd, because the man had lost his life once already. What would I do? I snuggled tighter against his leg.

  “When I was getting my doctorate,” I began, “I paid my way by teaching one-hundred-level classes to undergraduates.”

  “One-hundred level?”

  “The basics. That’s how most Ph.D. candidates can afford all those years of school, they teach introductory courses—at slave wages, by the way. Anyway all my peers hated it, grading papers, preparing labs. Not me. I loved it. None of the drive to publish, no impatience with the pace of experiments, zero concern with career.”

  I sat up, lifting hair off my overheated neck. “It’s thrilling to work at the cutting edge of science, no question. This project with Carthage will launch my work in any number of high-altitude directions. But if I had only six months to live, I think I would spend them teaching youngsters how beautiful and interesting the universe is.”

  Jeremiah nodded slowly. “A fine answer, Kate. But why don’t you do this now?”

  “It’s complicated. I guess you could say I want to do something significant.”

  “Hm,” he said. “My intention, upon retiring from the bench, had been to become a law professor. I consider few things more significant than engaging young minds.”

  “Maybe you could still do that,” I offered. He was silent. I wiped my face with my hands, stretched my legs lazily. “I’m sorry I snoozed so long. What else would you like to see while we’re here?”

  He gazed out at Egg Rock. “One more thing.”

  “Your home, right?” I had driven by the place, of course, doing my homework for Carthage. It was a lovely brick house, set on a rise, in a part of town that had experienced a wave of renovation. Antique gaslights hung on either side of the ornate front door.

  Jeremiah heaved a deep sigh. “No thank you.”

  “Really? I’ve been wondering for a long time when you would want to go there.”

  “My disposition at this moment is not to dwell on the past, but to contemplate the future mortality that abides within me.”

  I turned on the bench to face him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I feel the pull of my home, yes, but also the tremendous weight of what I have lost. What time I have left must not be spent in grieving. Not if I am to be of use.”

  “But your house, where your family—”

  “I could not withstand it.” He stood abruptly. “There are things about me, Kate, important forces in my present condition, that you do not know.”

  I wanted to ask what he meant. But I did not dare. “Sorry. I’m sorry I pushed.”

  He smoothed his pants. “That is not where I want to go. Not today.”

  “Tell me, then, Jeremiah.” I spoke softly. “What do you want to see?”

  “The cemetery.” He closed his eyes hard, opened them slowly like an owl. “I want to visit my grave.”

  The first time I came to Pine Grove Cemetery, researching for Carthage, I drove through, a graveyard ma
p from city hall riding in the passenger seat. This time, Jeremiah asked me to park at the entrance so we could march ourselves in.

  “Let us approach this by degrees,” he said. “Please.”

  The entry featured a Gothic stone building with a paint-peeling sign that said OFFICE. We peered in the windows. Papers on the floor, tipped-over chairs, it looked as if the place had been abandoned in a hurry. All that remained of officialdom was a sign detailing the cemetery’s rules.

  “No climbing on graves?” Jeremiah said. “What sort of person does that?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  We strode up the hill that led to the entry, a shady lane between gorgeous pines. I imagined them as two-foot saplings in his first lifetime. Jeremiah paused, picking a cluster of needles off the blacktop. I watched him spread the needles from their base, testing the tips’ sharpness against his thumb.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if he were returning from a distance. “There are so many things that I have been too distracted to see, properly see. I believe I have my eyes back now. And do you know?” He held up the cluster of needles. “Everything is miraculous.”

  “You are an incredible human being, Jeremiah Rice.”

  He waved the compliment away. “A man with tangled thoughts. Please, lead on.”

  I confess I was in no hurry. I knew what lay ahead. I shuffled, I ambled, but I was unable to think of a single thing I could do to protect him. So we went the long way.

  Following a curve of road, we came to a clearing with a cannon at the crest. The hillside had rows and rows of low gray stones, each with a metal holder on its side for flowers or flags. Jeremiah squatted before one of them.

  “ ‘Private, Twenty-third Infantry, Second Division.’ What is this place?”

  “Didn’t you have military graveyards in your past life?”

  “Not remotely approaching this.” He cast his eye down the long arc of memorials. “At the battlefields of the War Between the States, perhaps. But not in the boneyard of one little city. What incredible conflagration is this from?”

  “World War Two,” I said. “Gerber told you about that one.”

  “All these died in that one war? All these boys, just from Lynn?”

  “There was a huge evil in the world, Jeremiah, one of the worst and strongest in human history. It was extremely difficult to defeat. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  He took off his cap, inching ahead, stopping every few stones. Delaying made me anxious about what was next. Jeremiah read the soldiers’ ranks aloud, one grave after another. “I’m looking for familiar names.”

  I set my jaw, ready as I would ever be. “You’ll find plenty of those further on.”

  That caused him to straighten. “I’m being morbid. Let’s continue.”

  We hiked past an idling backhoe, two men behind it having a smoke, nodding wordlessly in greeting, into the older sections. Jeremiah began to exclaim. “Kitchin, Newhall, Mudge, these are families I recognize. John and Hannah Alley, I knew them. Older folks.” He put his hands on his hips. “Kate, where is our destination?”

  Not fifty yards away, a small plot held a pillar bearing the name RICE. I pointed. “There.”

  “God in heaven,” Jeremiah whispered, creeping forward.

  I hung by his elbow, as if to catch him. The memory came to me of that night on the roof, when he had leaned on me so heavily. I had wished for him then, that this world not overwhelm or harm him, little realizing that the greatest places of pain are found within.

  Jeremiah stood before the graves of his parents with a hunch to his chest as if someone had punched him. An oak tree had grown to maturity within the family square; he leaned on it for support.

  “Remember man that you are dust.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Scripture.” He moved forward, touched his mother’s stone. “Truth.”

  “Are you all right?”

  He faced me. “I barely remember them, Kate. But I remember what it is like to miss them.”

  “Did you see your parents, you know, in the time between? All those years you were frozen? Or experience them in any way?”

  “If I did, I had to leave the memory behind when I revived.” He dug with a fingernail at the lichen on his father’s marker. “My recall goes directly from falling into the frigid water to opening my eyes with you sitting beside me. I remember your smile.”

  We both stood there, staring at the gravestones. “Well, anyway,” I said, “this over here is what I think you wanted to see.”

  The tree had crowded the next stone, but I guided him. “There. Who gets the last laugh now?”

  JEREMIAH RICE was carved across the top, above his birth date and a day in early 1907 that I assumed was when the expedition returned without him. There was a gavel etched on the stone, and a ship. Below, the carving read DEVOTED FAMILY MAN, RESPECTED JUDGE, FRIEND TO ALL.

  “I love that,” I said. “Friend to all. You were the same outgoing man then as you are now. The frozen time didn’t change you.”

  Jeremiah made no reply for half a minute. “Mark this down,” he said finally. “Here is my strangest experience yet in the here and now.”

  My mouth went dry, but I managed to speak. “Are you ready for the hardest?”

  His answer was to take my hand in his. Even in the anguish of that moment, I felt the privilege of being with this man, of guarding his heart when I could, of providing comfort when I could not. Here was a moment beyond my capacity, I knew that well. I squeezed his hand, and led him forward.

  The stone on the tree’s other flank matched his in height and lettering. JOAN RICE, AUG. 15, 1934. A bouquet of flowers was carved under her name. DEVOTED WIFE AND MOTHER.

  “I am so sorry, Jeremiah.”

  “She outlived me by twenty-seven years.”

  “I can’t imagine how this must—”

  “I wish she had remarried. I wish my Joan had not been alone all of that time.”

  I searched for the right thing to say. But he moved on to the next one, his body looking like it had gone hollow. AGNES RICE HALSEY, OCT. 17, 1926. LOVING DAUGHTER. DIED IN CHILDBIRTH. Her carving was of an angel with rays of light streaming from its head.

  “Joan suffered the loss of Agnes, too,” he said. “She had eight years alone.”

  “But in childbirth, Jeremiah, she went in childbirth. You may have descendants after all. I tell you what. When we get back, I’ll find that list, I’ll dig through every person who came forward, better than Dixon did. Her Mr. Halsey wasn’t buried here and that’s a great clue. We’ll find your family, I promise.”

  Jeremiah stood rigid, his face as blank as sheet metal. “Hm,” he said.

  “I am terribly, totally sorry,” I said. “This is the worst.”

  “Hm.”

  “Look, Jeremiah,” I said. “It may not be permitted in the time you come from, but in the world of today, it is okay for men to show their feelings. Especially grief. Totally allowed. Especially grief this stupefyingly huge.”

  “Hm.”

  I worked up my nerve, reaching, laying a hand along his upper arm. Jeremiah gasped, buried his face in my shoulder, exploded against me in sobs. One of his hands fluttered in the air like the wing of an injured bird. I brought it in against my chest. My other arm I wrapped around him as far as I could go, holding tight, while his back heaved like some kind of animal that was flailing against its cage.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Hunger

  (Daniel Dixon)

  When my cell phone told me the caller was the Lazarus Project offices, I figured it was Carthage wanting his daily bout of scheming on how to play the press. The last person I expected to find on the line was Gerber.

  “You might want to get back here pretty soon,” he said.

&nbs
p; “What’s cooking?”

  “Our fans in the park have outdone themselves.”

  He wouldn’t give me anything more, which all but guaranteed that yours truly would hustle back to Boston, pronto plus two. It was a shame, though, because I was having one of those days where instead of getting paid, I should have been paying someone. Like when I worked for that paper in Florida, and every spring break they would send a photographer out to the beaches to find the latest bathing-suit style. He would come back saying it had been crowded, hot, drunken kids, and a real annoyance. Then we would see his roll after roll of bikinis, thongs, even one-piece racing suits if you put the right twenty-year-old body inside, and any red-blooded man will be panting like a hound in a heat wave. The newsroom would razz the photographer for the rest of the week.

  That’s about how much fun tailing people was for me: staying in the shadows, driving half a block behind, opening a newspaper wide when my sidewalk bench needed to become an instant hiding place. One time years back, the mayor of the city where I worked had a reputation as a boozer. I tailed him three nights before catching him at an uptown bar. It was an easy mark while the guy sucked down five martinis, but then he marched out the door as steady as a surgeon. I hustled outside just in time to see him get behind the wheel and drive off. Now there’s a fine dilemma, because a reporter is not supposed to become part of the story, but if I sat mum and he plowed into somebody, it would be on my conscience. Before I could decide what to do, a squad car zipped by, lights on. Later it came out that the mayor’s wife had hired a private eye to shadow him, hoping to get him caught and scared sober. The whole thing cracked me up: this pathetic drunk just wants to get a load on, and meanwhile he’s being tailed by two people.

  Well, my marks that day had given me plenty already. I had ideas about where I could catch them later, too, if necessary. I hightailed it back into town, working side streets to dodge the traffic and reach the project quick like a bullet.

  I could have kissed Gerber for calling me in. When I pulled up, the place looked like a murder scene. Four or five black-and-whites blocked the street, there were lights and camera crews and people shouting back and forth. I squeezed behind a TV dish truck and approached the first cop I saw. “What kind of circus do we have here?”