by Dave Eggers
“Can I see the invitation?” Ana asked.
When they got to the park, at the foot of a small wooded hill, they found most of the residents of the town, some gathered around picnic tables, others lining up for the bouncy house, in the shape of a cresting wave, complete with a trio of inflated surfers.
Already there was a table set up with a large sad sheet cake saying only SMOKEY, and around the cake were various brochures about fire safety, urging celebrants to support local rangers. Ana and Paul were drawn to a fire truck, where a goateed firefighter was demonstrating the use of his ax. Next to him, a woman in khaki, with a high bouffant, was showing the assembled kids the workings of a high-pressure fire hose. Josie thought of the strange math of the firefighting business at the moment. These two were here celebrating Smokey’s birthday, all patient and nonchalant, while elsewhere in the state a platoon of inmates were trudging off into the unknown.
There was a gasp, and all heads turned. Coming down the hill behind them were a pair of women in overalls, each of them holding the hand of a giant bear in blue jeans. It was Smokey. But this Smokey had aged, had lived a sedentary life. This Smokey was walking very slowly, and he wore his pants high around his stomach. He emerged from the woods resembling an elderly man who had been in the hospital for many months, and was for the first time walking in the light of day, more or less under his own power.
Smokey stepped carefully in front of the audience and waved a small, tentative wave. He was not the same bear they’d been seeing on the ubiquitous television spots about fire safety. That Smokey was an insurmountable brown monument. That Smokey had intermingled with Josie’s thoughts while Jim was pressing himself into her, in the Chateau, a lifetime ago. This Smokey, standing in front of a birthday cake (no candles) and still being held steady by the two assistants, had no idea where he was.
Ana and Paul grew distracted by the inflated wave. Ana asked, and Josie consented, and Paul followed his sister, relinquishing the dog’s rope leash. Josie and the dog meandered across the park, then, not wanting to be in the circle of parents watching their children climb up and slide down—Josie was not ready for conversation yet—she stopped under a small pine, and heard the faint sounds of live music, starting and stopping, sounding like the band from the parade.
She looked around her, and finally saw, in a wooded corner of the park, a circle of adults playing guitars and harmonicas and was that an oboe? It was the same band, but now expanded to nine or ten. Their arms were strumming furiously, their shoulders turning, and one man, the one facing her most directly, was sitting bow-legged, flapping his legs up and down like a frog to the rhythm. When he lifted his head, though, Josie ducked behind a tree, and for a while she stayed there, feeling ridiculous, given Follow was clearly visible, her leash giving her away if anyone cared to look.
“I see you,” a voice said.
Josie said nothing, did nothing.
“Behind the tree. We all see you and your pig-dog. Come over.”
Josie wanted to run. They didn’t know her face yet. If she ran back, maybe she could return, later, not as the woman behind the tree, but as a regular person. She could bring the kids.
“Come on,” the voice said, and Josie emerged, bashful, walking over to the circle, seeing that most of the faces were looking up at her, all of them smiling with perfect openness.
“Come sit,” the first face said. This was the voice who found her, had spoken to her. He was bearded and thin, in the realm of forty, lithe and bright-eyed, wearing a plaid shirt and a baseball cap. He indicated a place near him but across from him.
“My kids are on the bouncy wave,” Josie said, nodding to the giant wave-balloon across the park. She sat between a blond woman holding some kind of harpsichord and the man with the oboe. The bearded man began to play again, and the sound was bigger than before. She was in the middle of the sound, the crashing chaos of it, the diagonal violence of the strumming, the jagged strokes of the violinist, and yet the music was joyous, rollicking. What was the song? It was folksy, but had some bossa nova in there, and when she thought she knew it, a man near her, easily seventy and with a wild tangle of grey hair and grey beard, the swirl of it like an aerial view of a hurricane, began singing.
In che mondo…
Viviamo, im-pre-ve-dibile…
Was that Italian? She did not expect Italian language to come from this man’s mouth in this remote town, in this park near the Yukon. His eyes were closed. He could sing. What did it mean? Josie assumed it was something like “In this world/that we live in/incredible.” Then he sang the same verse, or some version of it, in English, and it was not quite what she expected.
In this world.
That we live in. Unpredictable. Unpredictable.
In this world of sorrow, there is justice, there is beauty…
A beautiful song, far too beautiful for this park on this afternoon, far too beautiful for her. The sun was directly above, performing its intoxication, and Josie was immediately caught up, and nodding her head, bouncing her feet.
In che mondo…
Viviamo, im-pre-ve-dibile…
Josie glanced to her right, to see the man playing the oboe, and when he saw her watching him, his long fingers on that long black tube, he winked. Was there ever anything more phallic and less alluring than an oboe? Across the circle, a woman was playing the violin, though in this context it was probably a fiddle. Josie watched them all, their hands shooting up and down again. These were unnatural movements. Without sound the motions they made would look mad. These drastic gestures up and down, their chins and cheeks stuck to these wooden instruments, fingers touching strings in certain places at certain times.
And suddenly the song was over, and Josie felt spent. These people didn’t know what they’d just done. What they were capable of. These goddamned musicians. They never knew their power. To those with no musical talent, to Josie, what they could do sitting in a park near an inflatable wave was both miraculous and unfair. They were sitting there, adjusting strings, smiling at her, murmuring about keys and about the weather, when Josie felt like she’d just heard something absolute in its power to justify her life. Her children justified her daily breaths, her use of planetary resources, and then this—her ability to hear a song like that, in a group like this. Those were the three primary justifications for her living. Surely she was forgetting other things. But what?
“We’re just jamming,” the bearded man said.
Goddamn you, she wanted to say. It’s more than that. It’s so easy for you, so hard for the rest of us.
“You have any requests?” he asked. “I’m Cooper.”
Josie shook her head, now trying to shrink. She wanted just to listen, not to be part of this. She wanted to go back behind the tree to listen unseen.
“Anything,” she said. She grabbed at a patch of grass underneath her and pulled. Was this a crowd that would know Carousel? she wondered. Kiss Me, Kate?
“Name something. I bet we know it,” Cooper said. Now most of the faces were looking at her, actually wanting a request. Maybe they were bored with one another, these spoiled magicians.
“Okay,” Josie said, her voice sounding hoarse. There were songs Josie knew, and there were songs she knew they would know, and there were songs she knew they would want to play, so she went for the third category.
“ ‘This Land Is Your Land?’ ” she said, shrugging, though knowing they would love this. There was some nodding and grinning. She had made a good choice, and they began to get themselves into position. The harpsichord began, and the rest of the players followed. They went through the whole song, all six verses, eight choruses, and they insisted Josie sing, too. The song seemed to last twenty minutes, an hour. She glanced at the bouncy house periodically, catching sight of Ana and Paul climbing the inflated steps, sliding down, starting over.
“You play anything?” the oboe man asked her.
She told him no, she had no aptitude at all.
“Ever t
ry to learn?” he asked.
“So many times, Jesus Christ,” Josie said, and this was true. All the way through her teens and twenties she’d tried the piano, the guitar, the saxophone. She was equally inept at all of them.
And now she saw Paul standing at the bottom of the inflatable wave, looking around him, hand shielding his eyes, a scout watching for reinforcements.
“I have to go,” Josie said, and stood. There were a few murmurs of regret, and someone, maybe Cooper, told her to come back again, that they played every Saturday and Sunday at noon, that anyone was welcome, and while he was talking, Josie realized it must be Saturday that day, thus the parade, thus everyone off work, and that tomorrow they would be playing again, that she wanted to be there.
She walked back to the bouncy wave, and for a while watched her children sliding down, jumping off, climbing back on. This was not civilized, though. There were too many kids, and they were all bigger than Paul and Ana, and bodies were everywhere, tumbling over one another on the way down, feet and elbows narrowly missing faces and necks. “Careful,” she said, but her children were not listening. They were not afraid, they were capable of fending for themselves. Here Josie was watching resilience at the genetic level. She watched them climb the inflated steps, kids above them, feet stepping on their hands, and then watched them tumble down, their heads landing on the knees and stomachs of other children, and though Paul’s and Ana’s eyes were first round with shock and awareness that they could be aggrieved by their slight injury, they chose to roll off the wave, and climb back, again and again.
“Wait here,” she said to Paul. “I’ll be right back.”
She turned around, walking back to the circle of musicians, but they were gone. She scanned the park, and finally found one of them, Cooper, walking toward the parking lot. She ran to him, making sure she could still see the wave that contained her children. He saw her approach, and a curious smile overtook his face.
“Woody Guthrie,” he said, standing still, holding his guitar case.
“This will sound strange,” she said to him, “given I don’t know anything about music, but for a while I’ve had some music in my head, and ever since I heard you guys playing, I’ve wondered if you could help me.”
“You have music in your head?”
She gave him an imploring look that said Please don’t mock.
“No, no,” he said. “I get it. You need a composer?”
Josie didn’t know if it was composing or something else she had in mind. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think if you play some chords, I would know which ones were the sounds in my head, and we could go about it that way.”
“Hm,” he said, staring at the grass, a private smile overtaking his face. Josie knew he was thinking this was some excuse to get him in bed. She needed to keep this linear, and this required a lie.
“We’re up here for a few weeks while my husband is in Japan on business,” she said, happy her children were not near, hearing this canard. “But when I saw you guys playing, I had this thought. I could compensate you guys. I couldn’t help noticing that dental care might be welcomed among some of your band. I’m a dentist.”
Cooper rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “So, lessons in exchange for dental care?” he said. He seemed to find this a perfectly rational transaction.
“Not exactly lessons,” Josie said, and explained that she wanted him to play, and she could listen, and when she heard something she liked, she might tell him to play it more, and faster or slower. She would know what she wanted to hear once she heard it. That she had no musical aptitude, but she knew music, or had heard it, and had composed countless tunes in her mind, or had thought of them at least, flashes here and there, but couldn’t articulate the music in her head, or write music on paper, or even know which instruments made which sounds.
Cooper nodded slowly, taking it all in.
“Makes sense,” he said.
—
“Where were you?” Paul wanted to know.
“Over there,” she said. “Just near the trees.”
For some reason she didn’t want to explain the hootenanny circle to him just yet, though she couldn’t figure out why. Paul, being all-knowing, knew she was withholding, made this clear with his searching and disappointed eyes, but he didn’t press it.
“We’re hungry,” he said.
They walked through town, looking for a grocery store, expecting to find a small market, but instead, at the end of the main road, there was an enormous store, big enough to fit everyone in town. And in front, next to the entrance, was an incomprehensible thing: a pay phone. “Come,” Josie said, gathering coins. They set up in front of the booth, Paul and Ana and Follow, watching the locals come and go into the store, restocking their barbecues and picnics. Josie’s stomach leapt. She had been living for weeks utterly removed from her Ohio life, from Carl, Florida, lawsuits, possible police pursuit.
“Ready?” she asked her children.
“For what?” Paul asked.
“Nothing,” Josie said, realizing she was asking herself, and knowing the answer was God, no. She dialed the number without thinking. A distant tinny ring came through the line.
“Hello?” Sunny’s chandelier voice.
“Sunny, it’s me,” Josie said, and looked down to Ana, whose eyes opened wide. Josie’s eyes filled.
“Oh Josie honey,” Sunny said, “where are you now? I talked to Sam. She said you left without saying goodbye.”
Josie pictured Sunny in her house, the same house, sitting in her dining room, where she liked to take phone calls as she watched hummingbirds alight on the feeder she’d installed.
Josie did a messy job of describing something of their trip since seeing Sam. It seemed years since they were in Homer.
“I always wanted to go up there,” Sunny said. “Too old now.”
“Shush,” Josie said.
“Carl called,” Sunny said, and seemed to be waiting for some expression of shock, but Josie couldn’t breathe or muster words. Given Sunny’s age, Josie wondered: Could she have given Josie’s location away?
“What’d you tell him?” Josie asked.
“Oh, I didn’t answer. I didn’t call back. Should I?”
“No, no. Please don’t. I’ll call him.”
Ana was reaching for the phone, and Josie relinquished it. “Hi,” she said. “This is Ana.” For a minute Ana held the phone close to her face, nodding occasionally. She tended to forget the listener couldn’t see her, and thought facial signals would suffice. Losing interest, she handed the phone back to Josie.
“Josie,” Sunny said. Her voice had dropped an octave. “Did you know she died?”
“Who died?”
“Evelyn Sandalwood.”
Josie did not know.
“It was just five days ago,” Sunny said. “She was undergoing some procedure related to the cancer.”
Josie said nothing.
“You didn’t know—oh god, that’s what I figured. Josie?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but heard a hoarse tremble in her voice.
“Helen took the liberty of calling your attorney. Apparently nothing’s changed. But you probably could have assumed that.”
Josie had no idea what to say. She looked around her, to the tops of her children’s heads. Ana was stroking Follow’s tail, while Paul was watching one of the parade floats, now disassembled, drive home.
“All that struggle, it meant nothing,” Sunny said. “She gets nothing from it all. She’s dead. You get nothing. It’s senseless. But Josie.”
“Yes?” Josie said.
“They did not defeat you.”
Josie knew this. “I know,” she said, then felt a surge of strength. What she was feeling was not defeat, but triumph. She was thinking: Evelyn, I flew north of your rage. She thought of Evelyn’s son-in-law, the lawyers, all their devious eyes, and she thought, I flew north of your anger. I flew away and felt none of it. I was gone. I am gone.
“You’ve had plenty of reasons to doubt,” Sunny said.
But Josie did not feel doubtful. She felt invincible. She felt like continuing. She needed nothing she did not have there with her. She had Sunny’s voice, she had Ana, she had Paul. She told Sunny that she loved her, that she would call again soon, but she wasn’t sure when that would be. She had planned to call Carl, too, but now she felt that could wait. Enough news from home for today.
—
“Gotta leave him outside,” the checkout woman said. She’d seen the kids and Follow all this time, and when they tried to enter with the dog, the woman was ready.
“It’s a she,” Ana told her, but the woman did not care.
They tied Follow to a pole outside. “We’ll be quick,” Paul told Follow, who was dancing around in a way that implied they would return to find that she’d peed or defecated on the sidewalk. Josie made a mental note to buy plastic bags.
“Bright,” Ana said, and the three of them spent a full minute standing in the doorway, the store seeming an acre wide, two dozen rows of food stocked seven feet high. It had only been a few weeks since they’d been in a store like this, but it seemed like years. The customers were the same people she’d seen at the parade and the park, denim and baseball hats, but now Josie felt foreign among them. Under these lights, amid all this abundance, everything so clean, the antiseptic floors and blue-white lights, she was uncomfortable.
“Can we use the real bathroom?” Paul asked.
“If you can find it,” Josie said, and Ana went with him.
Josie grabbed a cart and went about quickly loading into it everything they needed—rice, beans, cans of soup and corn. Evelyn Sandalwood was dead. She thought of the funeral, all that anger. Sunny had sounded so old. What was she now? Seventy-five. Seventy-six. Josie would need to see her soon. Oh god, she thought, thinking of Sunny older still, unable to care for herself. What would happen then? Some combination of all the young women she’d helped would come to her aid. Josie would need to see her. Josie would be there for her. Oh god, she thought. She missed Sunny desperately at that moment. She wanted to call her again, see her immediately. But then her mind reversed itself, insisting that she needed to keep moving. That she was healthier here, that she and her children were growing far beyond what she could have imagined a month ago. Did that mean they could never return to their former lives? No decisions were necessary now, she knew. Right now they would get food, and would return to the cabin, and then what?
