Calvin

by Martine Leavitt

  I actually almost forgot about Hobbes for a while, and then he was there again.

  Hobbes: Thanks.

  Me: For what?

  Hobbes: For nothing.

  Me: What?

  Hobbes: How come I only get one bite of granola bar? Don’t let me get too hungry.

  It was getting darker, and I was about to suggest we set up the tent, when we came to the cars.

  I dropped the sled handle.

  Me: I’m hallucinating again. Still.

  Susie: It’s catching.

  Me: What are you seeing?

  Susie: Cars … nine of them. And a truck.

  Me: A car lot in the middle of Nowhere, Lake Erie.

  Susie: That’s what I see.

  Me: Do you see any people?

  She shook her head.

  Me: Me neither.

  We both stared, and the cars stared back.

  Susie walked right up to an old GMC, pulled on the door handle, and it opened easily.

  She grinned.

  I went around to the other side and slid in shotgun.

  Susie: This one is mine. Go find your own.

  I checked out a couple of rusted and banged-up cars before I saw a really beat-up old Mustang with the backseat ripped out. I whistled and slipped into the driver’s seat.

  After a bit Susie got into the Mustang beside me.

  Me: Hey, I thought you had your own.

  Susie: I’m just visiting.

  I gripped the steering wheel and stared out the windshield, grinning my face off. Susie grinned back.

  Me: Sooz, do you believe in God?

  Susie: It’s easier when he just gave us free cars.

  Me: Yeah, and even easier when he gives you keys!

  Susie: What?

  I turned the ignition. It whined for a long time and then it came to life.

  I tore away and she screamed and laughed and I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and we zoomed away over the ice and fishtailed and made donuts and came back and zoomed around a few minutes more until it ran out of what must have been the tablespoon of gas that was left in it.

  Susie: This lake is freaky.

  Me: Yeah. But in a good way, right?

  She grinned.

  Me: Vroom, vroom … vrooooommmm!

  Susie: (gasp)

  Me: What?

  Susie (whispering): I know why they left the cars. They’re dumping them!

  Me: Well, they’re not selling them, that’s for sure.

  Susie: Calvin—remember what Orvil said? About how they treat the lake? I bet people drive cars out here where nobody will see and leave them on the ice so they’ll sink to the bottom of the lake when spring comes. Maybe they know where the weak spots on the ice are, or where the ice breaks up early. Come on!

  We got out of the Mustang. We had to walk a ways north to get our sled, and then we started heading south across the lake again.

  Hobbes: What a waste.

  Me: They could have donated them.

  Susie: To the poor.

  Me: To poor teenagers.

  She looked around at the empty white lake.

  Susie: How can they do that to our lake?

  Me: It’s our lake now, is it?

  Susie: It’s ours because we know it this way.

  Me: Bill wouldn’t have been impressed if we’d driven across the lake.

  Susie: He won’t be impressed that you’re walking across it either.

  She stopped and looked back. It was dark enough now that the cars seemed ghostly from where we were.

  Susie: We made that up.

  Me: If we did, it was a good one.

  * * *

  I didn’t want to put the tent too close to the cars, so we walked a little farther.

  We’d just rounded another snow dune when we saw a light up ahead, floating in the dusk like a square moon.

  Me: Is that real?

  Susie: As real as my right arm.

  This did not reassure me.

  It was an island, a really small island.

  With a little cabin on it.

  Smoke drifted out of the pipe chimney. A fire was going in that cabin.

  I thought we would reach it in a couple of minutes, but it was farther than it seemed. We got out our flashlight and twenty minutes later we scrambled up the rocks on the shore of the island, dragging the sled behind us.

  A huge man opened the door. His beard covered almost all of his face except his lips, his upper cheeks and eyes, and his forehead. Those were covered by bushy eyebrows and a mane of curly gray head hair. He looked like a big gray bear with human eyes.

  Hobbes: Yeti?

  Man: I thought I was seeing things.

  Me: I know the feeling.

  Man: I thought I must be seeing things because no way would two kids be out for a stroll this far into the lake, and at night.

  He sounded angry. He took a step toward us, onto the wooden box that served as a front stoop. Susie and I backed up.

  Man: I thought, they got a sled. They turned right when they should’ve turned left, those two. They want a hill, not a lake, those two. You know the difference between a hill and a lake, boy?

  Me: We—

  Man (his voice getting louder): Then I see one of you is a boy and one of you is a girl, and no way should a girl be in the middle of this lake.

  Susie scowled at him.

  Man: So I’m thinking that the boy should be the one held responsible for the girl being out in the middle of the big, very big lake.

  Susie and I glanced at each other and started to leave.

  Man: Git in here!

  Me: Thanks, but no, sir. We have to be getting on our way, sir.

  Man: You stay out then. Come on, girl, I’ve got a fire, and I’m not near as scary as I seem. Come on, this house isn’t made of candy and I’m not going to stuff you into the oven.

  She pointed at me.

  Susie: I’m with him.

  Man: All right then. Both of you, in. Grab a bit of fire. Name’s Noah.

  Me: I’m Calvin, this is Susie.

  I said it cheerfully in my best un-schizophrenic voice.

  Susie: Calvin didn’t tell me about any islands out here.

  Noah: It’s a reef. Not on the map.

  We walked slowly through the door of the cabin. Noah gestured to two chairs at a small wooden table.

  Noah: Throw your coats there.

  Hobbes: Will there be hot chocolate and marshmallows?

  The fire was a beautiful thing. I was almost willing to be thrown into it, if that’s what he meant to do to me.

  In the cabin was

  a narrow bed heaped with quilts

  a coatrack with various ratty coats on it

  a duffel bag, open, full of books

  some shelving with cans of food on it

  a small round table stacked with papers and pencils

  two old wooden chairs

  a stool hanging from the rafters

  various bins

  and a door to another room—probably the privy.

  We took off our parkas and mitts and boots and socks and held our sore feet to the fire.

  Hobbes stretched out close to the stove, still just out of my line of vision.

  Noah: Figure you two have a reason.

  Susie: We’re hiking across the lake.

  She pointed at the door to the privy.

  Susie: May I?

  Noah: It’s basic.

  The minute she shut the door he looked hard at me.

  Noah: Walking across the lake is something only seasoned hikers would do, boy, and only after they studied maps and depth charts and weather reports. And even then they wouldn’t do it.

  Me: I know how far it is south to the Ohio shore. And I know the lake is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, but still plenty deep enough to drown in. And I know it’s cold outside.

  Noah (not looking at me, speaking to the fire): Worse than an idiot to bring a girl out here.

  Me: I know
.

  Noah stood up, opened a door in the back, and returned with a big chunk of wood and a loaf of bread. He threw the wood into the belly of the woodstove and put the bread to warm on top.

  Noah: You got a story. Why you wanna do the lake? And you’d better talk to me or I’ll be notifying the coast guard, you can bet on that.

  Me: I’m on a pilgrimage.

  Noah: And you didn’t want to go alone.

  Me: She … she wanted to …

  He looked at me like I was a big, disgusting insect.

  Susie came out and sat next to me.

  Noah glowered at me.

  Me: So you live here, Noah? Year-round?

  He ignored me.

  Susie: Do you?

  Noah: I come here off-season. Do a little ice fishing. Do a little poetry.

  Me: Poetry?

  Noah (to the air): I’m talking to the little lady.

  He didn’t look like a poet. Not that I’d ever seen one before.

  Susie: No one at home to care that you’re out here all alone?

  Noah: My wife cares. Cared. She’s divorcing me.

  Susie: I’m sorry.

  Noah drew his arm across his nose, and I realized he’d started to cry. His facial hair was soaking his tears up like a sponge.

  Noah: She said she’d take me back if I figured it out.

  Susie: Figured what out?

  Noah: She said I’d have so much time out here alone, she was sure I’d figure it out. It’s like she gave me a puzzle to solve, but I just sit here and think about it for hours and never figure it out.

  Susie shook her head sadly.

  Noah: The only clue she gave me was that I spent all my time digging around inside myself for poems, but I didn’t think about the inside of her. She said, stop stuffing metaphors between you and me. What does that mean?

  He opened a huge can of beans and dumped them into the dirty frying pan on the stove beside the bread and put a kettle on, too.

  Noah: She’s my muse, you see. If I lose her, I lose what makes the poems in me.

  Susie: Maybe she wants you to be with her, instead of here.

  He shrugged.

  Noah: Can’t live among the civilized all year. Can’t bring a woman out here.

  He glared at me, his eyebrows almost covering his eyes.

  Noah: Unlike some people. And you, little lady? What’s your story?

  So Susie explained everything to him, about how we’d known each other all our lives and how I talked to an invisible tiger and got diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I had decided that if Bill Watterson would draw another cartoon with Calvin okay in it, and no Hobbes, I would be okay, too, and how I knew I had to walk to Bill like a pilgrimage, but not an ordinary walk, it had to be big, and I came up with this stupid idea, and how she wouldn’t let me go without her because I didn’t have a clue.

  She talked about me like I wasn’t sitting right there, and he listened like I wasn’t sitting right there.

  When she stopped, he was silent for a minute. Then he scooped most of the beans into a big bowl and gave us two spoons. He tore a hunk of bread off for himself and gave us the rest. I was so hungry I dived in. He ate his beans out of the pan.

  I’d never tasted anything as good as those beans and bread, ever.

  Me: Thank you.

  He ignored me.

  Susie: Yes, thank you.

  Noah: You’re welcome.

  We ate in silence for a while—silence except for the fire falling and popping, and the wind outside. Noah was looking at the beans as if they held the meaning of life in their little beany hearts. He put the pan back on the stove.

  Hobbes: If I can’t eat him, can I have those beans?

  Me: No. Have some of my bread.

  I threw a piece behind me and looked up to see Noah and Susie staring at me.

  Noah (to Susie): Schizophrenia, huh? You ever heard of Max Planck?

  Susie (shaking her head, her mouth full):

  Me: Uh—he’s the quantum theory guy, right?

  Noah: Ol’ Max, he said there is no matter the way we think of it, that all matter is just a whole universe of atomic particles vibrating together in a way that makes it look like stuff and feel like stuff.

  Susie and I kept eating the beans and bread like it was the food of the gods.

  Noah: So other people, they take this fact and figure out that the world vibrates at seven hertz. The world and everything in it, cats and balls and books and spoons and hammers and mountains and all of it, including the human brain: seven hertz. It’s a seven-hertz world. So here’s all the world vibrating along at seven hertz in harmony with the universe, and then along comes a ten-hertz person.

  Me: Ten hertz?

  Noah:

  Susie: Ten hertz?

  Noah: Yup. Ten hertz. That’s what the schizophrenic brain vibrates at. Ten hertz. That’s what some say anyway. Some say you’re accessing other times or places or dimensions or worlds, you’re seeing things in the dimension of ten hertz and it’s just as real as the seven-hertz world.

  He picked up his beans again, and Susie and I stared at him like he’d just started speaking in ten-hertz language.

  This guy was smart. This guy got me!

  Suddenly I wished he could stand me.

  He looked at Susie.

  Noah: Of course that doesn’t mean you can let his reality boss yours.

  Susie: Whenever his and mine disagree, he gives in to mine. That’s the rule with us.

  Hobbes: Do you think a tiger in our reality could eat a poet in his reality?

  Me: In my reality we are dropping the subject, Hobbes.

  Noah (to Susie): Is he for real talking to Hobbes again?

  She nodded.

  The fire in the woodstove snapped and roared. Noah’s talk made me remember an interview you’d given once, Bill. You said Hobbes wasn’t a doll that magically came to life when Calvin was around. You didn’t think of him as Calvin’s imaginary friend either. You said Calvin had his version of reality and everyone else had theirs, and they both made sense.

  Calvin thinks, therefore he is. In his conscious experience lies the theory of everything—new dimensions surround him like falling tinsel, like bubbles falling, down and down, breaking on him …

  Noah (putting down his pan): So. Bill Watterson. Met him once.

  Susie and I both looked up sharp, but he was poking at his fire.

  Me: Nah. You didn’t.

  Noah:

  Susie: Really?

  Noah: Nice guy. Quiet-spoken, firm-minded man. Not so much in the looks department.

  He got some instant coffee from a shelf.

  Noah: He came to my island to do some ice fishing one winter, with a mutual friend.

  Me (to Susie): Ask him if he has proof.

  Susie: Do you have proof?

  Noah: He didn’t leave his card, if that’s what you mean.

  Susie: How can we believe you, then?

  Noah: Who’s asking you to believe me?

  Susie handed the bowl to me.

  I sat there with my mouth kind of open but nothing intelligent was coming out of it, and I couldn’t even spoon any more beans into it. I put the bowl on the floor. I could hear Hobbes licking at the dregs.

  Susie: It—it’s just that this is so important to us.

  Noah: Girl, there’s some things you can’t prove. What would prove it? If I had his signature? I coulda bought it somewhere. If I had a picture? You could say I doctored it. Like I said, some things you can’t prove. I can tell you about it. Or not. Up to you.

  Susie (nodding): Please.

  Noah: Welp. He was a nice feller and we got some good fishing done.

  We waited. He made coffee for himself, gesturing to Susie with his cup to ask if she wanted some. She shook her head.

  Me: And?

  Noah babied his fire.

  Susie: Did he say anything about—about Calvin?

  Hobbes: Did he say anything about Hobbes?

  No
ah: Sure, it come around to that evench. Wasn’t much of a comic reader, myself, but I heard of him, and he chatted about it, brief.

  I waited. He took a long, loud slurp of his coffee, then tipped his head slightly to one side and stared into the mug as if he saw something in it.

  Susie: So do you think he’s sad about Calvin being … over?

  Noah (shrugging): People say stuff when they’re fishing.

  He seemed deep in thought while he said it.

  Susie: What else? Can you tell us anything else?

  Noah: You want me to say something particular, something that will make him seem realer than he was before. But he’s just a man, a mediocre fisherman who likes a poem once in a while.

  Noah looked up at me.

  Noah: He wouldn’t think much of you.

  Right then I believed that with every cell of my body. I wasn’t even angry that he said it—it was like he was stating a fact.

  Susie: You are a rude man.

  Noah: I have traditional values. A man should protect his woman and not put her in harm’s way.

  Susie: I am my own woman, thank you. And he just wants to walk across a lake, not live on it all winter long, like some people.

  Noah:

  Susie: If I were your wife, I would wonder how you could protect me if you were away for months of the year.

  Noah: I’m a poet. We need solitude.

  Susie: So as long as you make a poem out of it, it’s okay to hurt people?

  Noah: Art is the pinnacle of human achievement.

  Susie: Being a decent human being is the pinnacle of human achievement.

  She stood up.

  Susie: You’re being rude to my boyfriend. And furthermore, you’re a chauvinist. Make a poem out of that. Thank you for the beans. Come on, Calvin.

  She started putting on her parka. I was so stunned by the boyfriend word that I couldn’t move. I looked at Noah, but I couldn’t figure out whether to say I’m sorry, or so there. I didn’t know whether I should feel lucky that a girl like Susie would stick up for me, or ashamed that a girl like Susie had to stick up for me.

  Hobbes: Ashamed.

  Me: Huh?

  Hobbes: That’s the answer to the question. Where’s your inner tiger? Didn’t you learn a thing all those years we hung out?

  Susie had her parka on and Noah was staring at the floor.