Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  I remember Millie being able to ask them in their own tongue why the men did no work, and I remember being able to understand the answer: “Big braves do not work.”

  The women would unpack the bundles and spread out on the ground large buffalo skins. They would then cut themselves lengths of small bushes or hickory about five or six feet long. They would use these as the frames of small boats, bending them across each other and stitching the skins in place, to make a rudderless, prowless square craft. The women would then pile into them the corn and the reed bowls and the naked children.

  Then a woman would get her pony and drive it into the river. She would hold on to its tail with one hand, and the boat with the other, and in this way pull life and property across the current. The men simply swam.

  I remember one night my father, my sister and I camped with them overnight. I remember the moon. I remember the smoke from the fires and from the pipes. I remember women sharpening knives and feeling no apprehension. I remember we ate a fish caught fresh from the river, a giant channel cat that must have weighed all of forty pounds—or so my father declared.

  There was no whisky among them. This may have been unusual. At least my father was not supplying them with it. I remember him picking his teeth with a fishbone and trying to explain mortgages to the Kansa men, who roared with laughter.

  My father was always a hero to me, but the next day, he became a hero to others. It was at the time of the June rise and the river was full to the bank. My father and I were up early, to begin the trek home. It was first light, and the women had already begun their crossing.

  My father noticed one horse, with woman and boat, pull away from the crowd and start downstream. I think most of the men were asleep, and most of the other women were wrestling with the strong current, for it was my father who ran down the bank and plunged into the water. I saw him swim toward the woman and catch her by the hair, just as she went under. He pulled her back toward the bank, into the arms of some of the women. The boat went spinning downstream, a child wailing on top of it. My father went after the boat as well, which tangled with some branches overhanging the stream. By the time he had rescued the child as well, the entire camp was aroused. I can still remember the gratitude on the faces of the braves. The pony was swept away and drowned.

  I grow confused in time, which seems to me to be like a river. Trying to remember is like trying to hold on to the current. It does seem to me that my father was marked for good things by the Indians because of that incident, so I think that my other memories of them must follow this incident.

  To this day I think of Indians and my father in “one breath.” Neither of them worked and both of them drank whisky and both of them were robbed of their birthright. In the end, both were wretched and miserable. In 1873, Congress finally took the Indians’ diminished reservation, and the Kansa tribe was forced to march away from the state that bears their name. My father died the same year.

  The air conditioner was clanking.

  Jonathan woke up on the thick patterned coverlet of the bed, leaves of Xerox scattered all around him. His throat was horribly sore. Sitting on the chair by the desk, a plump young man looked at him. Jonathan knew his face, but from where?

  “It sure is stuffy in here,” said the young man. “You ought to go outside for a while.”

  It was the kid from the Con. “Karl,” said Jonathan, sitting up.

  “Hi,” said Karl, grinning with his huge white teeth. “How are ya?”

  “I’m not well,” croaked Jonathan.

  “Yeah, I heard,” Karl’s eyes were downcast.

  Jonathan remembered and felt a flood of misgiving and guilt. “And you. Are you okay? I mean, are you well?”

  “I’m okay,” said Karl. “When I heard about you, I took a test. Nothing. We didn’t do that much, remember?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right!” Jonathan settled back onto the bed with relief. “We didn’t, did we?”

  “I thought you might like to know that,” said Karl. “Come on, there’s somebody wants to see you.”

  He helped Jonathan to his feet, and Jonathan fumbled woozily with the locks on the door. Outside the air was cool and sweet-smelling and seemed heavier, as if it contained more oxygen. White light glowed inside the blue swimming pool. Worms of light wriggled over the walls of the Best Western.

  And Moonflower walked toward them. For some reason she was wearing a 1930s evening dress, white satin with a long train. Her small breasts hung unsupported within it. Her hair was still wild, uncombed.

  “We were all real upset when we heard about you,” she said.

  “All of us fans,” said Karl.

  “Some of us used to talk to you when you weren’t there,” said Moonflower.

  Jonathan held up a hand. “It was just a part. All you could see was the makeup.”

  “You became,” said Karl, “an icon. We saw your picture so much, you moved from the right-hand side of the brain to the left. You stopped being a visual image, you became more like a word sign. You became a meaning.”

  “That’s the trouble with you intellectuals,” said Moonflower. She slipped the satin dress off over her head. “You always stare at the images and tell us what they mean to you. You should ask us what the signs mean. We’re the people who use them. You should be doing scientific surveys, not staring at your own belly buttons.”

  She walked away, naked. Her legs and arms were thin, her hips and stomach already settling down with age. Seagulls in the blue light played about her hair.

  “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 finall
y 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 list. 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 c
hair 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.’”