Was

by Geoff Ryman

  “What about Billy the Kid? He was real.”

  “Looks as if he may have been born in New York City.”

  Jonathan began to hear cattle lowing, somewhere up the canyon perhaps.

  “Tell me more about Dorothy,” he said.

  “She was from a farming community called Zeandale, near a place called Manhattan, Kansas. Its other claim to fame is that Damon Runyon was born there.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Well,” said Bill, looking into his wineglass. “It was as if she lived in Oz all the time. She lived in a world of her own. Maybe that was what Baum saw in her, maybe not. I wrote to the Baum Estate to find out more about it. All they could tell me was that Baum had been a substitute teacher there for a short while. They thought it more likely that the character in the book was named for Baum’s niece.”

  He told Jonathan the story, as much as he knew. He told him how Dorothy had died. The room seemed to fill with the low smoky light that comes on winter afternoons, sun through silver mist.

  “One day,” said Bill, “I might just go to Manhattan and see what else I can find out about her. Speaking of which, how are you and Oz getting on?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oz. Remember our contract?”

  Jonathan had forgotten.

  Ira finally arrived in his own car. He was gray with fatigue, and he stared coldly at Jonathan.

  “I rang and rang. Where were you?” he asked, as he sat down.

  Jonathan’s eyes were round, unblinking, feverish. He didn’t answer.

  Ira turned to Bill. “I’m really sorry, Bill. I wanted to call and say I was going to be late, but I didn’t have your home number.”

  Bill explained. “That’s okay. Jonathan told me he was locked out of your house. He couldn’t answer the phone.”

  “I’ve lost my house keys, Ira,” said Jonathan. The room glimmered, as sunlight sprinkles snow with stars. Someone was trying to walk toward Jonathan through the mist. All Jonathan could see was a dark shape, lumpy, in dark clothes. Light came in rays from all around it, cutting through the mist, casting shadows.

  “I’ll need sunglasses,” said Jonathan and grinned and grinned.

  Muffy came in, carrying the dessert. To Jonathan, the dessert looked like a chocolate pudding.

  “I made this specially for you,” Muffy said to Jonathan.

  Jonathan imagined how smooth the chocolate pudding would be. He picked up the serving spoon and plunged it into the dish, and then, confused, pushed it into his own mouth.

  “Jonathan!” exclaimed Ira and thumped both hands on the table. The pudding seemed to turn into dust in Jonathan’s mouth. It was chestnut pudding, bland and with a kind of powdery texture underneath.

  “It’s okay,” said Muffy. “I’ll get another serving spoon.”

  As she left for the kitchen, Jonathan thought: She made it for me, and I don’t like it and that will hurt her feelings.

  I know. I’ll eat without chewing it, so I won’t have to taste it. There was silence at the table as he gulped it. He took another serving spoonful and swallowed again. He made a noise like a frog.

  Muffy came back out. One more mouthful for her. He stuck the spoon in and swallowed it whole, raw.

  “Very. Good,” he said.

  Then he stood up and shambled into the kitchen and threw it up, into the sink, over the draining board.

  “Oh God! Jonathan!” shouted Ira.

  There was a kitchen chair. Jonathan slumped helpless onto it, otherwise he might have fallen.

  Ira was in the kitchen first. He picked up a towel. It was a good dishtowel, too good to use.

  “Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he said and flung the towel against the wall in rage. Muffy came in.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Ira to her.

  “That’s okay. I can clean it up,” said Muffy. She did not sound cheerful, but managed to be reasonably businesslike.

  “No. You will not. That is one thing you mustn’t do,” said Ira. There were wispy trails of blood in the pudding.

  Jonathan had begun to realize exactly what he had done. He wished he was dead. Then he remembered that he would be soon enough. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice perhaps too low for the others to hear. Jonathan tried to get up and found that he couldn’t. “I’ll clean it up,” he said. Again, no one seemed to hear.

  Muffy flashed rubber gloves. Ira took them from her. “Really,” he said. “I’d rather you let me do it.”

  “Okay,” said Muffy. “Jonathan, would you like to go outside for a walk?”

  What?

  Then it was a minute or two later and Muffy wasn’t there. Ira was scrubbing, his back to Jonathan, pouring bleach on the draining board.

  “Ira? We were talking about Wichita,” said Jonathan. “And Wyatt Earp. He wore a policeman’s uniform. Mostly he just took in stray dogs. His sisters were registered prostitutes.”

  Ira did not answer.

  “I’m sorry, Ira.”

  Ira still did not answer. When he was done, he seemed to sag in place. He pulled off the gloves and let them soak in bleach, and he washed his hands, and he turned around, and his face was white like a fish’s belly and stubbled with blue-black beard. He looked fat and haggard at the same time. He had been working until nine o’clock. He had been working a lot lately.

  Ira walked out of the kitchen and left Jonathan sitting there.

  And there was the mist again, and there was someone walking through the mist, out of the midst of the dishwasher.

  “Squeaky clean,” said Jonathan and grinned.

  Whoever, whatever it was drew back as if afraid. Was it wearing a dress?

  “No, no, don’t be afraid,” said Jonathan. It seemed to come back.

  Sometime later, Bill was leaning over him, arm across his shoulders. “Who are you talking to, Jonathan?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Jonathan replied, on automatic pilot. There was nothing in the kitchen except for the stove, the sink, the dishwasher.

  “You’ve been talking to someone out here for quite some time.”

  Jonathan didn’t remember that at all.

  “Who to?” Bill asked.

  Jonathan wasn’t quite sure, but he could hazard a guess. “Dorothy,” he replied.

  Ira drove them back home in silence. They had had to leave Jonathan’s car behind. Muffy said she would drive it home for them the next day while Ira was at work. “I’ll stop in and see you,” she said to Jonathan.

  Jonathan realized later that he had not answered her.

  It had drizzled during dinner. The streets were greasy with rain, slick and shiny. The colors swam in Jonathan’s eyes.

  “Snakes,” he said. “Snakes on the road.” He meant that the lights seemed to move. He did not mean that he was actually seeing snakes. Ira’s eyes were as hard as the lenses of his glasses.

  Getting back to the freeway, they passed an old-fashioned shopping plaza. There was a long low blank white wall, with a row of poplars in front of it. It glowed in blue-white strip lighting, and Jonathan blinked.

  The wall looked to him exactly like the face of a faraway hill. He began to see the evergreen trees in its blue mistiness. There must be a deep gully, a valley between him and the slop. He smelled water. A river too, full of cool spray.

  “I didn’t know there was a valley with a river here,” said Jonathan.

  “What?” asked Ira. His knuckles on the steering wheel were white.

  “There, the valley over there, with the river.” Jonathan pointed at the shopping plaza.

  Ira was sweating. He kept looking over at Jonathan, and pushing his glasses back up his nose.

  “We need some gas,” Ira muttered to himself. He signaled and pulled in, under a bright canopy with Coke machines and the glimmer of piped music. A Mexican strode over to the car and saluted them. He held up a bottle of wine. He smiled, face creased, some of his teeth outlined with gold. He held the bottle out to Jonathan. Jonathan smiled blearily ba
ck and took a swig.

  Ira came back to the car after paying.

  “That will be some surprised Mexican if he finds out he’s HIV positive,” said Ira.

  Jonathan suffered a moment of clarity. “It doesn’t spread that way, Jo-Jo.” Jo-Jo? He had just called Ira by his own nickname.

  “You’ve got bleeding gums,” said Ira, succinctly. He turned the car key with a wrench and the engine made a grinding sound. They pulled out into the wide boulevard, toward the on-ramps.

  Very suddenly, in the middle of the road, Ira stopped the car. He threw off his glasses and covered his face and sobbed, and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “I don’t think this is a good place to stop, Ira.”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Ira.

  A truck howled in alarm behind them, swerved onto the wrong side of the road and, blaring hatred, roared past them.

  “You used to be a pretty bright guy, you know?” said Ira quietly. He put his glasses back on and started the car and crept carefully forward.

  “I get confused, Ira. Ira?” Ira didn’t answer.

  Jonathan needed Ira to take the terror away. Jonathan shrank down very small and quiet in a corner of the car, so that Ira would not be angry. So that Ira would not go away. The freeway, the Santa Monica hills, sped past in the darkness.

  Jonathan began to sing. He was not aware of it.

  I would wile away the hours

  Conferring with the flowers

  Consulting with the rain

  I would dance and be merry.

  Life would be a ding-a-derry

  If I only had a brain.

  “Don’t sing that,” said Ira, teeth together.

  Jonathan shrank even smaller.

  The car pulled into the garage, a reassuring throb of engine bounding back from the narrow walls and a smell of gas and the settling down of light and noise when the engine was turned off. The sensations of coming home.

  They walked around to the front, into the garden, and then Ira pitched himself forward. It was Ira’s turn to be sick.

  “Ira? Ira?” Jonathan’s hands danced like butterflies.

  Ira rolled sideways and sat in a garden chair, head in hands, glasses dangling.

  “Are you sick?” The prospect of Ira being ill too filled Jonathan with alarm. “Let me get you a drink or something.”

  “I don’t want anything.” The garden floodlights made Ira look blue-white. He sat still with his eyes closed. “I’m very tired, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan had to say something. He found that he was fighting. “Maybe we could, maybe we could arrange a holiday for you.”

  “Juh!” said Ira, turning away, eyes still closed. With a great effort he stood up and began to walk up the steps.

  Jonathan followed him, his head wobbling like an Indian dancer’s. Everything felt loose, as if his ligaments had come untied. “You. You could stay at Jenny’s for a few days, Ira, in the hills. I’ll be okay, I can stay here, maybe see a few people, go out for dinner. You’re very tired, Ira, I can see that, I feel real bad about that, I know I make you do everything…”

  I leaned on you too hard and you broke.

  Ira stopped in front of the door and turned. “Do you think I want to go through all this twice?”

  Ira wanted to go away.

  “No, no, of course not, that’s why I said, maybe a break would be a good thing.” Jonathan followed Ira across the darkened living room into the kitchen. “Maybe the time has come to get a cleaning lady or something or a nurse or something, you know, just to take some of the strain.”

  Ira was greedily drinking a glass of water straight from the tap instead of the filter. The freezer buzzed, where Ira kept the coffee beans frozen until they were ground. So it would be healthier. Ira turned and looked at him solemnly, heavily, like stone. Jonathan looked at him.

  “Please don’t go, Ira.”

  “Where the fuck can I go?” said Ira. He walked with his tumbler of water into the bedroom. “I carry it around with me.”

  “You’re working too hard.”

  “I’m working too hard to keep away from you,” said Ira. He began to undress. He kicked off his trousers, leaving them discarded, twisted. He really was getting very fat. His body was familiar, like an old pillow.

  “That bad, huh,” said Jonathan.

  “That bad. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep.”

  Jonathan stood helplessly in the middle of the room. They slept separately now; sleeping next to Jonathan was unpleasant; he knew that. He shivered, he sweated, he got up. He didn’t expect Ira to sleep with him, but he did want to be touched, he did want to be held. He wanted to be comforted.

  Without saying anything, Ira began insistently to push him back out of the room.

  Jonathan panicked. He began to gabble as he walked backward, as if a tape were being rewound. “Ira. Don’t go, huh. I’ll ease up, I’ll do anything, I’ll go away and come back, I’ll do anything, only please, Ira, please don’t leave me alone!”

  The door was closed. He stood looking at it.

  “Oh, God,” said Jonathan, to the ceiling. What do I do now?

  You try, said a more sensible voice, to get some sleep. You try to get yourself calm and try to sleep. You’ve got a disease to fight.

  Even if I want to die?

  The room was spinning anyway. Oh God, Jonathan felt himself surrendering the world from exhaustion. He stumbled toward the big easy chair.

  In something like sleep, he dreamed. He dreamed that he had played the Scarecrow after all. He was swept up in the magic circle of light, and gave the performance of his life. The Scarecrow was goofy and brainless, at war with the physical world, possessed of imagination, another kind of intelligence. He was more magical than the Wizard, kinder than the Tin Man, braver than the Lion. The Scarecrow was the favorite. He and Dorothy danced around and around in circles like a cyclone, filling the vacuum at its heart.

  He woke up and knew what he had to do. He did not have much time.

  He stood up and emptied his pockets. The garage keys, the bungalow keys, he left on the table in his little niche with the stained-glass window. He didn’t want to die in L.A., alone, listening to NPR, waiting for someone, anyone to call. He didn’t want to bother Ira, torment him, make Ira take care of him and make himself sick. Jonathan wanted to disappear. He wanted to make one last visit to Back Then.

  He left his keys, but no note. He took his little purse, with notebook and credit cards. He smiled. An adventure. What do you want to do? people always asked him when they found out, meaning, Do you want to write a novel? Travel? I want, thought Jonathan, to do this.

  He closed the door behind him. It was locked. He could not go back. He went down the steps. There was a silver hint of dawn in the sky. He would catch the blue bus on Wilshire and then the blue bus along Lincoln. He would take the big blue bus to Oz.

  After Ira and Jonathan left, Bill had climbed up the wooded hill in back of his house. He looked down on the City of the Angels, at its rivers of moving light. He felt wonder at the world. Unaided by faith or meditation, a visitor to his house was having visions, like a medieval monk. Bill Davison was going to pray to the blank yellow-gray sky, to the lights, to the God that drove them all. He suddenly found that he couldn’t.

  Manhattan, Kansas

  September 1989

  “BREAKING THE WILL”

  This phrase is going out of use. It is high time it did…But the phrase is still sometimes heard; and there are conscientious fathers and mothers who believe they do God service in setting about the thing.

  I have more than once said to a parent who used these words, “Will you tell me just what you mean by that? Of course you do not mean what you say.”

  “Yes, I do. I mean that a child’s will is to [be] once for all broken!—that he is to learn that my will is to be his law. The sooner he learns this the better.”

  — The first paragraphs of a front-page article on child raisi
ng from the Manhattan Nationalist of Friday, January 15, 1875. The article goes on to describe, as an example of good child-raising practice the case of a four-year-old boy who was subjected to a two-day campaign to get him to pronounce correctly the letter G.

  Jonathan’s Canada had disappeared. It had been there when he left in the earliest seventies. By the late eighties, Corndale had been swallowed up by an administrative fiction called Missasauga. It was another Indian name, another vanished tribe.

  Missasauga was a sea of subdivisions. Corndale’s nearest neighbor, Streetsville, was solid, stolid housing as was Corndale itself. The two realities met as fiction. The farms on which Jonathan had seen running deer as a child had disappeared. When he visited Corndale now, he got lost in the bewildering meander of streets designed to stifle speed and protect children. It was all about land values and Toronto airport and Highway 401. Urban foxes, urban raccoons were rumored to rummage through trash cans at night.

  So where was home?

  Jonathan pulled the gray Celebrity out of the parking lot of the airport of Manhattan, Kansas, and suffered a delusion. Outside there were wide green fields, and huge trees the like of which he had not seen since the elms in Corndale had been cut down after Dutch elm disease. He thought he had finally, somehow, found his way back to Corndale. In particular, he was driving along the number 10 highway, the road that led from Brampton.

  This made him very happy. This made him feel that suddenly everything had gone right with the world, even though there was for some reason a puddle of blood and stomach juices on the back seat. It seemed to him that he recognized the road signs, the chalky limestone through which the road had been cut. He recognized the huge, 600-acre farms. He wondered what had happened to his childhood friends, and if he could visit them now.

  Then suddenly, instead of blood on the back seat, there was a visitor. Oh dear, thought Jonathan. Why did I bring him along?

  On the back seat sat Mortimer.

  It was going to be terribly embarrassing taking Mort home, because he was in full drag. Perhaps he had come fresh from some Halloween parade. He was dressed as Dorothy.