by Geoff Ryman
He had pigtails and a checked apron and balloon sleeves and white surgical gloves. For some reason he was also wearing a bandito hat and was holding maracas. His face was in sections like a quilt.
Mortimer gave the maracas a shake. “Hola!” he cried. “Que tal!”
Spanish? “Bee-ba Meh-heeko!” he cried, lips thick with red lipstick. Jonathan was mildly surprised to see red, but could not remember why.
“This is Mexico, isn’t it?” Mortimer was not sure.
Jonathan couldn’t remember.
“We’re in Kansas?” said Mortimer as if he had stepped in something. The maracas sank to his lap. The surgical gloves were bloodstained. “What the fuck are we going to do in Kansas?”
I don’t know, thought Jonathan, still driving.
“I thought you wanted to go to Mexico! That’s why you were going to learn Spanish.” Mortimer gave a showy sigh. “And I so wanted to go abroad.” Mortimer giggled. “Who knows, I might have come back a lady.”
Jonathan had never realized just how camp Mortimer was. Jonathan hated camp. Where, Jonathan asked Mort, do you come from?
“From you!” said Mortimer, pointing. He smiled and gave his nose a wrinkle.
I’m nothing like you.
Mortimer pressed his spongy, latex face against Jonathan’s sweaty cheek. In the mirror of the visor, Jonathan saw the same blue eyes staring back at him.
“See the resemblance?” Mortimer whispered in his ear.
How? That face? Jonathan thought.
“Daddy sliced it.”
My father was good and kind, thought Jonathan. He was an athlete. He wanted me to be an athlete, but he never pushed me. He only hit me twice, once when I had hit little Jaimie Cummings and when I’d stained his walls with berries.
“He only hit you twice!” exclaimed Mortimer and clapped his hands together as if in admiration. “What a sweetie. Did you ever hit him?”
He never deserved to be hit.
Mortimer lounged back in the seat, smiling as if his lips were full of novocaine.
“Did he die or simply ascend into Heaven?” Mortimer asked. “Making a noise like a dove, perhaps. Whroooo!” Mortimer blew on the palm of his glove and white pigeon feathers fell in the car like snow. “And dropping doo-doo on people underneath.”
He was killed in a car crash, thought Jonathan, bitter with grief, as if it were some kind of vindication. Mortimer grinned back at him. Jonathan searched his mind and really did find his father without blemish.
“He never did anything wrong!” Jonathan was shouting aloud.
Silence, and a numb smile.
Jonathan muttered, “How else are you supposed to discipline kids?”
“Oh! I am in complete agreement,” said Mortimer, hand on breast. There was an instrument of torture, rather like a corkscrew, on his lap. “In fact, the differences between me and your father might be less than you think. Do you like my dress?”
Mortimer batted his eyelashes.
Go away! thought Jonathan.
Mortimer’s eyes went evil. “I thought you wanted to see Kansas!”
He pressed his face against Jonathan’s again and grabbed Jonathan by the chin and made him look in the rearview mirror.
“This face is Kansas. A country is like a child. Smooth and new and virginal until Daddy slashes its face.”
Mortimer fell back into the rear seat. Jonathan felt Mort’s sweat still on his cheek. Mortimer was opening the back door. “Don’t kill any babies,” he warned, and launched himself out of the moving vehicle under the wheels of a truck.
Jonathan swerved violently as the truck roared past, horn blaring. Jonathan pulled over onto the soft shoulder and stopped the car, his hands weak, his heart pumping. In the side-view mirror, Mortimer lay on the road like a prairie chicken. A loose, broken wing stirred in the backwash of air from other cars.
Jonathan sat shivering in the front seat.
My God, he thought, my mind is going. I really am going crazy. I shouldn’t be let loose, I shouldn’t be driving this car. I don’t even know what country I’m in, and I haven’t been able to keep anything down, even water, since breakfast yesterday. What am I going to do in Manhattan, Kansas? He ran a hand across his damp forehead.
There was nothing he could do, but press on.
Kansas, he told himself, as extreme caution he moved the car back out onto an empty stretch of highway. I’m in Kansas. God knows why.
Then he looked up, across the road into the fields, and he thought he was having another vision.
Some way back from the road, there was a white schoolhouse. It was one-roomed, immaculate, blazing white, with a blazing white bell tower. It was nestled in trees. Beside it, sitting in a field of autumnal red sorghum heads, was a two-story frame house. The windows were not set square in it. There was a porch. Behind it there was a windmill.
Jonathan pulled the car over once more. He reached over the back of the seat and pulled out his new camera. He had bought it, credit card once again, at St. Louis airport. He had read the instructions on the airplane.
He began to feel his old hunter’s urgency. PRIVATE, said a sign. That’s okay, he told the sign, I’ll photograph it from here, safe in my car. Hands in a tumble of nerves, he pulled off the lens cap and looked through the viewfinder.
1000 1000 1000, blinked the camera, over and over. It was saying the vision was too bright.
Scowling, hands still trembling, Jonathan took out and reread the booklet. Yes, his new camera was on automatic, and yes, a flashing thousand meant too bright, okay, yes, so what do I do about it?
Anyway it was only sunlight. How could ordinary sunlight be too bright?
1000 1000 1000.
He took the picture anyway. There was something dead in the way the shutter clicked.
Suppose, he thought, suppose I hit it in one, right the first time? Suppose this was where Dorothy lived?
He held the fantasy glowing in his mind for a moment. It was enough to comfort him.
Time to move on.
Jonathan got lost. There were interchanges, small cloverleafs, and signs giving highway numbers and town names that meant nothing to him. Jonathan did not have a map. He found himself driving on a wide, sweeping dirt road, between balding hills. They were dotted with small evergreen shrubs. He stopped the car, and got out.
Crickets were singing. At first he thought they were birds, a flock of them, the sounds they made were so loud, so sweet. But the sound was too mechanical, too regular. He looked down on a valley full of trees and white modern houses. In the far distance was a rounded white water tower, stranded alone, it seemed, in a forest. Where was the town? Why hadn’t he asked for a map at the airport?
There was a rumbling sound, like thunder, as if thunder had giant hollow wheels and were driving over the hills.
“Rain,” said Jonathan. He wanted an umbrella, and he turned and looked at the empty prairies. No rain. Only sunlight.
He got in and drove down the hill. MANHATTAN, said a sign, and as if someone had switched on a light, the road was paved. At the first cross street, Jonathan turned right, and down.
He was very tired. He forgot where he was again. Confused, he thought he was lost in some suburb of Los Angeles. He passed one crossroad, scowled and stopped.
He got out. There was a low modern house, with a long sloping sunroof, and some kind of wooden jungle gym for kids to play on. Jonathan heard the rumbling again, perhaps a bit different in sound.
It was definitely Los Angeles, somewhere out in the Valley. The sound was coming from a wooden ramp built in a driveway. A kid in a bicycle crash helmet was practicing on his skateboard. He rumbled up and down the ramp. The houses had no fences, but stood isolated amid stretches of immaculate, featureless lawn. There was a low hill behind, with many trees, and some rooftops with satellite dishes.
“Where am I?” Jonathan asked.
A little girl answered him. At least, it was a little girl’s voice. “Look at the sign,” th
e voice told him.
Attached to the telephone pole were the words LITTLE KITTEN AV. At right angles to it, another sign said OZ CIRCLE.
“Oh,” said Jonathan. It made perfect sense. A sign, if you like. He felt quite contented. For a moment he thought that he had somehow managed to drive from Santa Monica to Manhattan, Kansas. Then he remembered the airplane trip.
I have to get to a bank, he thought. He had no money. I have to find a place to stay. He was happy again.
The rumbling went on. It was from the Drop Zones, the Artillery and Mortar Impact Area. The crickets sang, like metal warbling on metal.
Manhattan seemed to writhe its way under his fingers, in sunlight. He drove in and out of shade, turning left, turning right. He passed shopping malls and Texaco gas stations. He was sure that he had dreamed the medieval amphitheater of white limestone. In had crenellations and huge overhead lights. The sky rumbled. Was this Los Angeles having its earthquake? He was elated.
Then the car seemed to plunge into permanent shade. Huge trees sheltered the roofs. Who had had the wonderful idea of building a town in a forest?
And he was there, Back Then. The white frame houses had French-looking, sloping tile roofs and front porches with pillars shaped like Greek columns. There were white trellises and window frames that were not quite square and painted dark blue or khaki. How old? How old? Jonathan’s internal clock answered. 1896. 1910. 1880. 1876. He kept stopping the car and fumbling with the camera. Other cars growled behind him, drove around him, beeped their horns. Jonathan thought they were Santa Monica friends, saying hi. He beamed and waved.
30 30 30, said his camera. Too dark. Too dark.
A beautiful girl sat on a porch eating ice cream.
“Whatcha doin’?” she called.
“I’m in love with your house!” Jonathan cried back.
“Well you can’t have it!” she answered.
“I can’t even photograph it!” said Jonathan, holding up the camera helplessly.
“Oh yeah? Lemme look.”
Seventeen and fearless, never having had to be afraid. She wore white trousers and a fawn sweater. She took hold of the camera and looked through the viewfinder.
“The flashing numbers mean something’s wrong,” said Jonathan.
“Well, s’okay now,” she said, mystified. She took a picture. “Here you go. Hope you find a house. This one’s not for sale.” She strode off. Jonathan looked through the viewfinder. This time a lightning bolt flashed inside it. That meant the flashlight was attached. It wasn’t. Jonathan turned to ask her where there was a good place to stay. He saw the screen door swinging shut.
The car nearly lost its oil pan driving over an intersection. The cross streets had high humps and dips for drainage. BLUE MONT, said a drive. Jonathan turned right, and beyond a confusing series of traffic lights and franchise restaurants, there was another sign.
BEST WESTERN.
It was the name that drew him. Jonathan was chorused with car horns as he drove straight through two sets of lights into what he thought was its parking lot. He showed his credit cards at the desk and signed.
Was it the same girl behind the desk? She chewed gum and gave him a map.
“I can’t read it.”
“I know,” she sighed. “Nobody can. The whole town’s run out of maps. Everybody just keeps photocopying the old ones, till you can’t read them. Anyway they were so old none of them show the new town center or any of the new shopping malls.”
She tried to tell him about the shopping malls and the cinema complexes.
He asked her where the Registry Office was. He asked about historical museums.
“You go up Blue Mont, only you can’t read it, and turn right on Denison onto Clafin, only you can’t read it.”
“What time is it?” Jonathan asked.
“Three-fifteen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Angel,” she said, smiling. “Dumb name, huh?”
It’s the right name, he thought and replied. Only he didn’t speak. Outside there was the rumbling in the sky. Gosh, that skateboarding is loud, thought Jonathan. He went hunting.
The Registry Office was in the new county offices. Like everything else in Manhattan, Kansas, they were lost in trees. An old limestone tower rose above the new civic space. 1900, said Jonathan’s inner clock, of the tower. 1976, it said of the offices, because the building was still square and flat. There were no postmodern gewgaws, no turrets, triangles or circles. There was a three-story-high portico outside it with three-story graceful pillars. The pillars were rectangles too.
The offices were air-conditioned. There was a mural over the reception desk, but it looked to Jonathan’s fevered eyes like a video screen seen too close: the image dissolved into lines.
The Registry Office itself was up one flight of stairs. It was full of desks, slightly outdated equipment and enthusiasm.
Jonathan kept himself standing straight behind the counter. “I’m trying to find someone in the past,” he said. He was maintaining, in the way someone on drugs maintains, by conscious focus.
“Okay, we’ll do what we can for ya,” said one of the women at the desks. She was about Jonathan’s age, well groomed, bronzed hair cut short and swept up. Her name was Sally, and she invited Jonathan into the tiny back rooms where records were kept. The first small room was lined with shelves on which thick volumes lay flat.
“How long ago ya talking about?” Sally asked him.
“Eighteen seventies.”
That did not surprise her. “Uh-huh. Do you know what section or range the people lived in? Township would help.”
Jonathan didn’t. He gave her the names, spelled them for her. G…A…E…L…Branscomb. Sally wrote on the sloping surface of a kind of house for records that stood in the middle of the room. Jonathan looked at the walls, at the books. Mortgage Record, Riley County, 217. Record of Military Discharge 3.
More huge books lay suspended under the roof of the little house. On the walls were maps, in colored sections.
“Now,” said Sally. “Let me show you what the problem is.” She led him to one of the maps and pointed with perfect, frosted fingernails. There was the Kansas River. There was the land, divided into squares which were divided into further squares.
“If you knew the township, we could then start to look for what sector they lived on. You see, when the land was settled, each township and range was divided up into these sectors. And each sector was divided up into quarters, Northwest quarter, Northeast quarter. Sometimes they were divided up even further.”
Sally turned and reached under the roof, and with a grunt pulled out one of the huge books. Laid open, it consisted of a page to each half sector. Names and dates were written in lines.
“This tells us who had what sector when and how it changed hands,” she said.
Jonathan read:
41-1-72 / Webster J.M. to Louise R.B. Rowe / Book B /
page 308
“That tells us where to find the deed on microfilm. And that can tell us all kinds of stuff.”
Jonathan scanned the page. “But I’ve got to know where I’m looking first.”
“Yup,” she said with a sigh.
The dates were out of order. The land seemed to change hands every two years.
“You can see how tough things were for them,” said Sally. “They mortgaged the land, then sold some of it off, then bought it back, then mortgaged it again. It sure gets confusing. The deeds are great; you find out that someone couldn’t pay his taxes, or someone else has been jailed.”
Jonathan looked up. “That must be great.”
“Oh, listen, the stuff you find out,” she agreed.
Jonathan paused for thought. “How about school records?” he asked.
“Hundreds. Thousands. But same problem again, we got ’em for the whole county. I can show you.”
She led him into a second room, even smaller. Jonathan suddenly saw it had a metal door. It was a safe.
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Another grunt and a groan and another huge, beautiful book in leather with marbled endpapers was laid open. A sticker said: Grant and Burgess, Blank Book Manufacturers, Topeka, Kansas.
There were hundreds of schools, recorded by number, and lists of schoolteachers for each year and how much they were paid, fifty dollars a month. Jonathan looked at the tidy, scratchy handwriting done in nibbed pen. The ink had turned orange with age.
“And up there,” said Sally, pointing. Along the top of the shelves ran a line of blue-bound papers. “We have everybody’s school reports. I even found some of mine up there. And my mother’s. But we do not have much before 1903. You see, before the levee was built, we used to have real bad floods, and almost everything was lost in the 1903 flood.” She shrugged and held up her hands. “We might have some older records down in the basement.”
“I’ve got to know where she was,” said Jonathan.
“Unless you want to look through everything for the whole county. Got a month or two?”
Jonathan stood, eyes closed, thinking. “Do you keep the census records too?”
“Good,” said Sally and pointed at him. She had a hunter’s look as well. “But we don’t have those. Hold on a sec.” She leaned into the outer office. “Betty? Sorry, excuse me. Where would census records be for the 1870s?”
“Oh,” said her boss, coming in, a hand lightly across her forehead. Her boss wore a suit, blue jacket, blue skirt, blue ruffled shirt. “Let me think.” She looked concerned, helpful. “I think that would be the historical museum.”
She even gave Jonathan a slightly better map.
Just inside the door of the Riley County Historical Museum, there was an old ship’s bell on a plinth. There were some publications for sale, about the Old West. A pale young man in a nylon shirt with pens in the pocket was stapling papers together by a reception window.
“We’ll be closing soon. Can I help you?” he asked.
“I,” began Jonathan and found his mind had gone blank for a moment. “I’m doing some research. I’m trying to find a family who lived in this area.”
The pale young man sighed. “You’ve only got half an hour.”
