Was

by Geoff Ryman

  “You also ought,” she said, “to go swimming.” She dived into the pool and disappeared amid a flurry of bubbles, white like pearls.

  “Let’s get some chow,” said Karl. “You haven’t eaten anything since Bill’s last night, and you lost that.”

  For some reason, Jonathan already had the car keys in his hand.

  The new town center was a huge shopping mall that covered the end of Poyntz Avenue, where the bank of the Blue River had once been. Jonathan walked inside and his breath was taken away.

  It was glass-covered like a train station, with huge hoops of light in a row along the ceiling’s pinnacle. The floor was made out of brick and there were tall fountains and shrubbery in pots and walkways leading off down avenues of shops to the closed and darkened caverns of department stores.

  Jonathan walked forward with tiny, almost fearful steps, looking about him. It was late and the mall was just as deserted as the rest of the town center had been in daylight. Somewhere, echoing overhead, were the disembodied voices of children and the imprecations of adults.

  He tiptoed down the main corridor, where it was narrowed by flanks of white columns, and out into a wider space. There was the sound of splashing water and emptiness. A sign hung over it: PICNIC PLACE, said the sign in neon.

  In the center of Picnic Place was a black, convoluted, and somehow Italian fountain, surrounded by palm trees. Empty tables were rimmed around it. Along the walls were franchises for Mexican or Italian fast food, and something called runzas. The voices overhead still had to find bodies. An Asian Indian woman strolled past him in a purple-and-silver sari. Her sandals made a flapping sound.

  In the far corner there were double doorways that seemed to promise a more substantial restaurant. CARLOS O’KELLY’S MEXICAN CAFÉ, said a sign. Jonathan seemed to waft into it. Suddenly he was standing before an empty front desk. No one came to help him. He felt foolish. He walked past a kind of structural screen of plaster, meant to suggest a Mexican building.

  The place was a confusing welter of decor—stuffed foxes, Pepsi signs, cow horns, old tin advertisements of women who raised fringed skirts like theater curtains over their thighs, antique (perhaps) mirrors. A table full of male students as big as sides of beef roared with laughter. Jonathan jumped as if they were laughing at him. A waiter finally came up, apologizing. “Sorry, it’s kinda late, I’m the only one here,” he said. For some reason he had a flapper haircut, like a woman from the 1920s. He wore very baggy shorts almost to the knee. He sat Jonathan at a table and passed him a large menu encased in plastic sheeting.

  Chimichangas, thought Jonathan. They had not existed a decade before. In the 1970s, you sat down to beans, enchiladas and chile rellenos. Who invented chimichangas? Were they authentic? If not, how long did it take for something to become authentic?

  Time seemed to be leapfrogging over itself. Parts of it were missing. The sides of beef had been laughing so long and so hard they couldn’t stop and one of them was in danger of choking. He made squeaking noises like a mouse. Jonathan felt distant from them, and sour. How did they get so big, so strong? He didn’t want to eat. The waiter came, bringing him a microwaved chimichanga. When had he ordered that?

  Jonathan was used to being friendly and tried to talk to the waiter. Was he a KSU student? How did he find time to do this and his homework? Jonathan was losing his conversational touch—university studies are not called homework. Jonathan felt like one of those plastic fairgrounds smiles had been stuck on his face. It was held in place by biting down.

  What was he studying? The answer flattened the conversation like some pathetic animal run down on the freeway. The young man was studying the marketing of new textiles. Uh. Did that mean he researched what kinds of new fabrics people wanted?

  Not exactly. It was more to do with pricing strategies. “Only people are beginning to tell me the market is bottoming out and I don’t know if I’ll stay in it.” He had a pleasant, intelligent face, and hooked nose. He was enthusiastic when he found out Jonathan was from L.A.

  “Oh, I love Los Angeles!”

  “I love Manhattan,” said Jonathan.

  “How come?” the young man was mystified.

  “Its history.”

  “Manhattan has a history?” The young face was crooked.

  “Got more history than Los Angeles. Los Angeles, they just bury it under the freeway.”

  “Oh but the shopping is wonderful!”

  Jonathan looked at his pleasant, intelligent face and said, “Your values suck.”

  Had he really said that? The young man was no longer there. A cold chimichanga was half-eaten on his plate, and Jonathan’s throat and gut felt like a wall from which paint was peeling. He coughed slightly, and something really did seem to come free. He swallowed it. The stuffed fox, the orange lights, the drifting beer signs swam inside his eyes.

  Jonathan got up to go. He forgot to pay.

  Outside, there were humps in the parking lot, like that designer supermarket where there were buried cars for a joke. Knees jiggling uncertainly, as if he were trying to be hip, Jonathan walked forward.

  Which car?

  He found he couldn’t remember the make or the model or the color. He was color-blind, and in this light, they would all look the same. He walked down a row, looking at license plates. He wouldn’t be able to tell.

  He panicked again. How am I going to get back? He wondered miserably. How will I ever find the car again, how will I get it back to Hertz? Jesus, I can’t even go to a restaurant and park a car anymore. It was dark and traffic whined past on the big blue road around Manhattan where the river had been. Trucks, the odd car, wind, emptiness.

  What am I going to do? he wondered.

  Then he saw the sign, glittering on down the road. BEST WESTERN. Maybe a mile away. He began to walk.

  There were ditches and treacherous green humps of manicured grass. Jonathan kept stumbling. He made a sound over and over, like he was about to sneeze. He was dimly aware of it. It was just how he breathed these days. When he was in trouble.

  There were train tracks underfoot, hard metal, and splintering ties, and he kept stumbling. Why were there humps and train tracks? Would he get flattened by a train, or would he hear it first? And where was the other river, why was there only one river now?

  A child’s voice whispered to him: “There was a flood and the river moved.”

  Very suddenly, everything spun up and under and away from him. Jonathan lost his balance and fell onto the train track and felt the earth spin and his dinner pour back out of him. It hurt, as if he were vomiting up raw sand.

  “I can’t keep down my food,” he said, feeling weak and a little bit tearful. His own body was something precious that had been lost.

  It was the beer, he shouldn’t have drunk that beer with the chimichanga. Remember, he told himself, no more alcohol anymore. Say goodbye to beer. He managed to reel up to his feet and stagger on along the train track. The train track ended suddenly, no longer wanted. Jonathan veered right and slipped down into a dry, lawn-mowed ditch. Huge trucks buffeted past him, coughing over him. To his left were a Wendy’s, a Pizza Hut, alone, isolated and empty, the lights still on.

  Ahead was the office of the Best Western, and he could see through its glass walls that it was lit, with a television on. He felt calmer.

  Inside, the office smelled like some particularly fruity flavor of bubble gum. Jonathan wiped his face on his sleeve. Angel came out of the back office.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jonathan. “I can’t remember my room number.”

  He thought he managed to say it very well, with just the slightest catch of tension in his voice.

  “Dontcha have the key?” Angel asked, pulling her pallid hair back from her face.

  “I forgot it,” he said. He made a joke of it. “But I can just about remember my name still, so if I tell you that, will you tell me the room?”

  “I’ll have to open up for you as well,” she said, looking over her li
st. She glanced up.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  What could he tell her? Yeah, I feel great? He felt like mist about to be blown away. “I’m not too well,” he admitted.

  She waved toward herself. “Lean forward,” she told him and felt his forehead. “You got a fever. You want me to drive you to the hospital?”

  “No!” he said, too abruptly. He modulated. “No, no thanks, I just want to sleep.”

  “All righty. Let’s get you all tucked in.” The keys clinked pleasantly.

  As soon as they stood outside the door, Jonathan remembered the room number: 225. The lights were still blazing. Angel opened the door, and everything was just as he had left it: sealed. The room smelled like a headache.

  “There’s some aspirin in the medicine chest,” she said. “If you need anything, just press nine.” She pointed to the telephone.

  Jonathan couldn’t make sense of the words, so he nodded and smiled. Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine, he thought he had said. She nodded and closed the door and Jonathan went into the bathroom and retched blood. The droplets spread on the surface of the water of the toilet bowl like stars spinning away from galaxies. Jonathan drank some water from the cold tap of the basin and that promptly bounced back out like sheet rubber.

  I can’t keep down water, he thought. His stomach burned. The tips of his fingers buzzed. Shivering, he peeled off his clothes. There were patches of sweat on them. The stale, warm air made his tender skin rise up in goosebumps. The sheets felt freezing and he curled up on them, his bones quaking in spasmodic jolts.

  There was a knock at the door. “Can I come back in?” Angel asked.

  She unlocked the door and looked at him. “Do you want someone to sit up with you?”

  Jonathan couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know.

  “I just thought maybe it would help you sleep if someone read to you.”

  Jonathan thought that sounded pleasant. “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay. I got to be on call, kinda, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” said Jonathan.

  She sat primly down on the chair by the desk. “What do you want me to read?”

  “I have some photocopies,” he said, trying to think where they were. He had left the papers somewhere on the bed.

  “I don’t see any,” said Angel, leaning forward on her knees.

  “That’s funny.” Jonathan sat up, holding the sheet modestly in front of himself. He didn’t want her to see his ribs. Dismay came, “They were just here!”

  He went weepy, “They were just here!”

  “Ssh ssh ssh,” she said. “It’s okay, I got them.” She coaxed the papers out of a fold of the quilt, thrown on the floor. She tapped them neatly back into order on the desk. “Righty-ho,” she said, lightly.

  “I’m losing everything,” said Jonathan, lying back down.

  He told her where to start reading. The memoirs began again. “Pioneer Beauty.”

  It seemed to him that he was not being read to. It seemed to him that the author of the memoirs was speaking to him with her own flat, plain voice. He thought he heard the crackle of a fireplace.

  “‘In those days,’” she read, “‘Manhattan was abolitionist, but St. George was pro-slavery. There were rival gangs, many of them from far afield. Once my father was traveling to Topeka to bear witness to the treatment of the Indians on the Council Grove reservation. He agreed to travel for part of the way with a friend who had an ox team. The friend assumed that my father would travel faster than himself, and so left early, the plan being that my father would catch up with him on the road.

  “‘On the road, my father was stopped by a gang of men. Judging them to be from Missouri, he told them he was from near St. George.

  “‘“Well,” the ruffians replied. “It’s a mighty good thing you are from St. George or the same thing would have happened to you as happened to that damned man from Manhattan.” The gang let my father have his freedom. Further along the road to St. Mary, he found what he was dreading, the body of his friend. He had been murdered and his team stolen.’”

  The author remembered orchards of cherries, crab apples and winter apples. She remembered the more uncertain crops of peaches, plums and pears. There were native plums as well, and wild grapes in tame arbors. The fruit had to be canned or dried. Jellies and pickles were made. Paper coated with white of egg would be laid over the contents. Pickles were put up in earthen jars or crocks with a large plate inverted over them and a scrubbed stone placed over each plate for weight.

  Jonathan saw woodpiles. Cottonwood, cobs, chips for a quick fire. Blackjack for a steady burn. He smelled apple-scented carbon dioxide, exhaled from fruit in barrels.

  Suddenly he was awake. Angel was at the door.

  “Oh darn, you were asleep, I’m sorry.”

  “Stay,” he croaked. He was scared. He felt very odd indeed.

  “I can read you some more.”

  “I can’t follow it,” he said. “Just stay with me.”

  She sat down again. “So why don’t you tell me why you came to Manhattan?”

  He told her he was looking for Dorothy. Dorothy of Oz, she had really lived, she had lived near here, she knew Frank Baum.

  “Really? Wow,” Angel said lightly. “I mean, everybody knows Baum came here once. That’s why they named some streets after the movie.”

  “I’m trying to find her house. I’m trying to find where she lived.”

  “Why? So you can get to Oz?” A smile.

  Jonathan paused. “It’s that dumb. Yes.” Something seemed to swell in the air between them. “I haven’t got that long,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  “Mmmm hmmm,” she said, pressing her lips tightly inward.

  “And,” he said with a singsong sigh, “I don’t know that I’m going to find her. But I do reckon that I might stay here.”

  “In Manhattan. How come?”

  “I don’t want to go back to L.A.,” he said, and started to tell her about NPR, and a British pop group called It’s Immaterial, and how he loved their single, “Driving Away from Home.” He told her about Ira, his friend, how they had lived together for years, and then had a fight. Dimly he realized that she might guess what he was dying of, but he didn’t care suddenly. He felt like the scarf tied to a fence post, blowing in a hot wind. His words were hot.

  The scarf came untied.

  “It’s like Gilgamesh,” he said. “She goes to find the Wizard, like Gilgamesh tries to find…find…this Noah character and…and…and the Wizard is like a king because he and the land are the same thing, Oz and Oz, they have the same name and when he leaves in a balloon it’s like his big bald head, and the land dies, and…and…and Dorothy is…goes to the Netherworld to find life. She goes to the Land of the Dead.”

  He was raving. It felt good to rave. He finally found words. “She goes to the Land of the Dead to find Life. Isn’t that dumb? Why can’t we find it here?” It seemed to him a very reasonable question, asked in the spirit of inquiry.

  “You’re scaring me,” said Angel.

  Jonathan seemed to settle back. He touched his own forehead and it felt burning even to him. “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “Maybe if I read to you some more?”

  Angel rattled through the pages. The plain Kansas voice spoke.

  “‘My sister would never be held down. She was small and pretty, like something in a music box. People were always asking her to sing. I remember that if she liked something, she would try to give it away. She would wrap it up, sometimes even with her best hair ribbons and give it to me, or Father, or the neighborhood gals. And she’d wait and watch as we opened up her gift.

  “‘The life of a farmer’s wife would never have suited her. I know my father wanted her to be a schoolteacher. When she ran away to St. Louis, he was very unhappy. He need not have been. She became, I am informed, even more beautiful. How I wish now that
I could have visited the refined places in which she performed, to see her success, to hear the fine gentlemen, the appreciative ladies, applaud.

  “‘After the Angel of Death descended, an exhalation of my sister’s perfume was sent to us, a sweet child, her daughter, Dorothy.’”

  Jonathan went still on the bed, unable to move.

  “‘This little girl became a new source of happiness to us. I learned then what I know now, that childhood is the source of all happiness. We remember joy when reminded of our lost years.’”

  “Where?” whispered Jonathan. “Where is she?”

  “Oh,” said Angel and stopped. “You think it’s her?”

  “What’s her name? The name of the author?”

  Angel turned the wad of papers over in her hand. No name on the front. There was handwriting at the end of the manuscript.

  “All it says is that this was retyped, but that most of the papers were lost in the 1903 flood. But, here, at the back it says the author was E. A. Branscomb.”

  “That’s her, that’s her.” Jonathan nodded. He looked at Angel. “I’m not making this up, am I?”

  “Don’t think so,” she said and passed him the papers.

  He flipped through them, scanning. “Do you remember her saying anything about where the farm was?”

  “She mentions the Kaw.” Angel shrugged.

  “She’s got to tell us where she lived!” he exclaimed.

  Something stopped him dead on a page before he knew consciously what he had seen. He stopped dead, and seemed to see the word “School” and then read:

  I felt as blessed as my little charge to have had Miss Ida Francis for a schoolteacher, and Sunflower School so close at hand.

  “I got her!” whispered Jonathan.

  And then there was a knock, and Bill Davison came in.

  “Hello, I saw the note in the office,” Bill began, to Angel.

  “Bill!” Jonathan shouted, not at all surprised to see him. “Bill, I got her!” He shook the papers at him.

  Bill stood stunned for a moment.

  “I found Dorothy!” Jonathan said.

  Bill answered him. “That’s why I’m here,” he said.