The director could disguise neither her surprise nor her excitement. “Now, this,” she exclaimed as she paced between the ticket counters and the museum office where, in fifteen-minute intervals, she recorded the increase in ticket sales, “this is what we were waiting for!”
The people poured in. From nine o’clock sharp, when the director ceremoniously turned the key, there was a steady flow of visitors through the museum gates. They turned in circles in the great hall—abstractedly folding the corners of their museum maps—before gradually turning their attention to the thoughtfully spaced objects that lined the back wall. Finally, they drifted off into the adjacent hall, where glass cabinets displayed the souvenirs of forgotten civilizations. Items had been organized not according to age or origin but according to “utility” and “theme.” In one display cabinet, for example, visitors observed every writing implement that had been used over the past thirty-seven centuries; in another, every personal weapon. Examples of the visual and plastic arts from various epochs were presented in a series of long corridors connecting the main cabinet rooms to the great hall, and adjacent to these was a theatre where examples of film and television from several key periods in the history of cinema played on a continuous reel. On the second level, a reproduction shopping mall had been designed, each section reflecting a different consumer trend, beginning in the nineteenth and following through to the end of the twenty-sixth century. On the third level, there were more cabinet rooms, and an interactive display on various stages in the development of telecommunications.
It was not long before the visitors became weary. Where at first they had read the long and detailed descriptions that accompanied each cabinet, they were, as the hours passed, no longer able to distinguish between the various epochs, or the themes according to which each carefully curated item had been—by the director, her well-intentioned staff, and a stream of devoted interns—meticulously arranged.
This confusion had been foreseen, even invited, by the director and her staff. After all—as the director had often remarked—it was only natural, and not at all counter to the museum’s overall aim, that in looking back over the course of thirty-seven centuries the line between them should begin to blur slightly; that visitors should begin to feel the bewildering sensation of several civilizations rising and falling together—of all of history occurring at once.
If this was indeed the aim of the museum, its opening was a great success. Before long, the visitors began to wander the halls as though through a dream. They no longer read the carefully worded descriptions posted beside each object, but began instead to “sense” the difference between the objects that surrounded them, to feel time in layers. They found the newer items, for example, disconcertingly familiar. The older items appeared, and “felt,” by contrast, old. After a while, they lost touch with even these differences, and all the artifacts, regardless of their stated or apparent age, began to look as though they had all been used at the same time in history and for the same purpose. Visitors began to find themselves in rooms they had already travelled through and not recognize the artifacts there, or, equally, they would wander into a wing of the museum they hadn’t known existed and believe they were merely retracing their steps.
It was in precisely this sort of bewildered state that three young visitors, a man and a woman somewhere between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, and a boy who could have been no older than seventeen, stumbled upon an unmarked door in the museum’s upper west wing. The door opened off the back of a hollowed metal shell—or seemed to. When the young man approached and tried to turn the door’s handle it felt loose, as though there was nothing for it to catch upon.
The shell itself had been classified variously over the years. Several experts had suggested, for instance, that it had once served as the interior dome of a cathedral, whereas others insisted it had been a fibreglass swimming pool mould, and still others maintained it was a fragment from a twenty-first-century nuclear bomb. This was all recorded on a posted sign outside the entrance to the shell—and was ignored equally by all three young visitors as they entered, making their way to the opposite wall.
Once again, the young man jiggled the door’s handle, and once again there seemed nothing for it to catch upon inside. Bored, he gave it one last shake, turned—was just about to go—when something clicked. The young man glanced back at his companions, surprised. Then, as if acting on instinct, he leaned his weight against the heavy door. Beneath him, he felt it shift. Ever so slightly. It was clear that the door had not been opened for a very long time.
Now the young woman and the boy approached and leaned their weights against the door as well. All three pushed as hard as they could—until the door’s edge was framed with silver light and, at last, it swung open.
They stood together, then, blinking against a sudden brightness.
At first they were unsure what they were looking at—or if they were looking at anything at all.
But then…
Sky, the young woman thought to herself as she took a step toward the light. She did not know where the word had come from. She could not remember ever having learned it, or even having heard it spoken.
Perhaps she had, though. Perhaps she had heard it in some long-forgotten History of Science class, or read it on one of the museum signs, before she had given up reading them several hours before.
She just, suddenly, knew. And, propelled by this knowledge—or memory, or desire, or whatever it was—rather than by any conscious decision, she took another step forward. As she crossed the threshold, however, she stopped, choking suddenly on a sharp blast of unfiltered air. She looked back and saw that her companions had followed. That they, too, had stopped and were now bent double, choking and gasping on air.
Was this, she wondered, the last room in the museum…or was it…was it possible?
Something flickered overhead. She looked up. A pale, nearly colourless shape drifted across what otherwise seemed a limitless stretch of open sky; below, the same shape appeared in the negative, sweeping its way, in a dark swath, across the earth.
She had never seen a shadow before. Her parents had never seen a shadow. Perhaps her grandparents had. Perhaps something like a shadow still flickered in the sound of their voices when they spoke of the past. But she herself had never once seen a shadow. And yet, here it was, and somehow…she knew. She recognized the flickering patterns of light and shade, the way that one moment everything appeared bright and clear and the next moment was plunged in sudden darkness.
As first her eyes adjusted to the light, and then, more slowly, as her lungs adjusted to the unfiltered air, she was able to observe things more closely. To notice and recognize what had so far escaped her.
Grass. Water. Flowers. Trees.
And still, she did not know how she knew the names of the things she saw, or if what was awakening within her was a deep memory, or a longing for something she had not yet known. Still, she did not know if she had stumbled into the last—best—room of the museum, or if somehow she had managed to leave the museum entirely, and with it the known world.
But if the museum director could have seen her and her companions then—if she had not, that is, been kept so busy running back and forth between the main foyer and the museum office in order to record, in fifteen-minute intervals, the steady increase in ticket sales—she would have been very pleased, indeed, to see her visitors as they turned in circles and looked and gaped and wondered at what they saw, and were unable, in their vast confusion, to detect the difference any longer between the last century of the old world and the first century of the next.
O unhappy citizens, what madness? Do you think the enemy’s sailed away?
Virgil, The Aeneid, Book II
I KNEW THAT I COULD COUNT ON DEAN. He was like a brother to me, but better than that. Ever since we’d met on our first day of Basic, both of us just eighteen years old. Turned out we’d both grown up near Houston. Dean was from just north of Sugar Land, in Miss
ion Bend, and I was from Alvin; in good traffic, just a little less than an hour away. Maybe it was that. Whatever it was, we understood each other—which is saying something. Dean is not a guy who is easily understood. He’s always been nuts. Even in Basic. He started picking up odd jobs even then, “just to keep things interesting.” Mostly it was nothing. Just roughing up a guy in town every now and then, for a friend. But after a while he got into some real dirty work, too. I kept telling him he was going to get himself into trouble but he’d just say, nah, and when he did get into trouble it didn’t have anything to do with any of that shit. He was always pretty good about it—didn’t leave a lot of loose ends.
What happened was he got called in for a domestic on account of this girl, Natalie, who he wasn’t even serious about. They issued him with protective orders, but that suited him just fine, and for a while it looked like they were going to let it go at that. But then, a year later, when his term of service was up, he was denied re-enlistment. If you ask me, it didn’t have anything to do with the girl, though that’s what they said. Everyone could just sort of tell that Dean was a little—unhinged.
* * *
—
Dean pretty near lost his mind when he heard about it. You can imagine. That was the beginning of September, 2001. I was home on leave—and I was the first person he called. I told him, Come on back home, we’ll get you sorted out. And so he came back and calmed down a little. He even managed to pick up a few jobs, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d come over to visit Tracy and me all the time. We’d drink beer and play video games until three or four in the morning and we’d both fall asleep in the living room, one of us in the La-Z-Boy and the other stretched out on the couch. The night before the Twin Towers fell was a night like that. We’d been playing Colony Wars but hadn’t even managed to finish the game. When we woke up Dean said we should finish it out because he’d been winning. I agreed—but only because I still had a chance. It’s a good game that way, more like real life. Even if you lose a few battles you can still win the overall—it’s just about how everything balances out. Also, it’s not like most games where it’s either you win or you die. There are five different endings to the game: two of them good and three of them bad. So that’s like real life, too. There’s always a chance that things will work out—but more of a chance that they won’t.
I was trying to concentrate on the game because I was still losing when Tracy came in with Cody screaming on her hip—he was still just tiny then. She just sort of stood there at first, looking at us. Letting Cody cry like that. Even if she had tried to say something, though, I probably wouldn’t have heard her because of how much noise Cody was making and because I was still trying to concentrate—finish the game, even if I was losing—and because Dean was yelling at me the whole time, too, saying, You’re gonna die, motherfucker! You are so going to die!
Finally Tracy walked over, the kid still screaming, and flicked the screen over to the TV, and just at the moment that she clicked over—the first tower fell. It was fucked up. I didn’t even know what was happening at first. Like it was sort of a joke. Or a clip from a movie or something. Dean said, Damn! in the same way he did when I beat the shit out of him playing Blast Radius or Hogs of War.
After that Dean had a job. He got hired on at Blackwater, and he liked it a lot better anyway than he liked the marines. He told me I should get discharged and join up, but I didn’t think so. I’d just got back from a six-month tour in Afghanistan and didn’t want to go back anymore if I could help it. I wanted to get transferred to the Northern Command. Get posted at Fort Sam, maybe—be closer to Tracy and Cody that way. Plus, I liked the idea of homeland defence. It was an arithmetic thing. Say you blew up three guys over there in Iraq or Afghanistan—you never could be certain if they were the right guys. At home, if anybody tried anything, you’d know for sure when you blew them up that you were getting the right guy. If any more 9/11 shit was going to happen, I liked the idea of being right here, waiting. Couldn’t stand the thought of being stuck sitting on my thumbs over at Camp Eggers or Fiddler’s Green.
What, you getting spooked or something? Dean said when I told him about the homeland defence thing.
I shook my head. Nah.
Soft? he said. He poked me in the gut.
I shook my head again. You can see for yourself, I said. No.
The way I said it that time, he left me alone. But the next time I saw him, he brought it up again.
Still spooked? he asked. I said I’d told him before that I wasn’t.
It’s all right, he said. Everybody gets it sometime. But you got to remember—it’s not just about killing and getting killed. You’re an artist, he told me. A warrior. Don’t forget that. Then he took this book from his pocket and read me something out of it that he said had been written by a Roman general something like two thousand years ago.
For someone who came across like such a special needs case most of the time, Dean was actually pretty deep. He used to carry The Art of War around with him in Basic. Now it was Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.
We were having beers at the Triple Crown in Mission Bend, and when he got up to pay he shoved the book across the table toward me. Take it, he said. You might learn something. Then he made a face as if to say bigger miracles have happened, slammed a tip down on the table, and headed toward the door.
* * *
—
I liked the book. It made you think about things. I liked the way it was written, too, in these short little sentences, sort of like the psalms in the Bible. When I didn’t understand them, I would just skip ahead, and it didn’t matter. But most of the time I understood, and it was pretty cool to know that someone else was wondering about all the shit I was wondering about even two thousand years ago. Even though it made me a bit sad to realize that meant nobody had figured anything out in all of that time. Like this one part, where he says that everything exists for some reason. Even a horse, he says, or a vine—so why do you even have to wonder about it? But when he says it like that, it’s obvious he’s wondered himself or else he wouldn’t have had to ask about why. And then he says, Even the sun will say, I am for some purpose, and the rest of the gods will say the same. For what purpose then art thou?
I liked that. I’d even sort of repeat it to myself sometimes. For what purpose then art thou? Because even though it sounded like a question, it was sort of an answer, too.
* * *
—
Then, a week or so later, just before I was due to ship out, Dean showed up at my house with a copy of RifleShooter magazine.
This will make you feel better, he said.
I feel fine, I said.
No, seriously, he said. Check it out. If you get blown up over there I’ll do this for you—promise. And if I get blown up, you can do it for me.
He flipped open the magazine from the back and read from an advertisement in the classified section.
How about honoring your deceased loved one, he read, pulling a face, by sharing with him or her one more round of clay targets, one last bird hunt, one last stalk hunt—
I interrupted. Is this for real? I said.
Ha ha! Dean said. Hell yeah. Then continued to read the ad out loud. Only this time he stayed deadly serious.
All you had to do, according to this ad, was send these guys some ashes and they’d turn it into live ammunition for you. One pound of ash was enough for roughly 250 shells, they said. They even did mantelpiece carriers and engraved nameplates.
What better way, Dean read, to be remembered. Now you can have the peace of mind that you can continue to protect your home and family even after you are gone.
That’s the part that got me. I realized sort of all of a sudden what had been bothering me ever since I got back from my first tour. It wasn’t that I was scared of dying. The thing that rattled me was thinking about what would happen after I died. Not to me, but to Tracy and Cody. I’d start thinking about it, all the crazy shit that could happen, and it w
ould drive me nuts, because there’s no end to the possibilities that can happen after you’re dead—even more than can happen when you’re alive, and that is pretty much anything. I would get so crazy sometimes thinking about this that it got so I couldn’t even hardly breathe. I’d get this feeling in my gut like someone had just stuck me with an icepick, and after that I couldn’t breathe or think straight anymore. I’d just have to stand there with that pain in my gut until it passed. Sometimes it would last for a good couple of minutes, which is a long time to go without breathing. It wouldn’t happen all the time, but I could never tell when it was going to.
After I got back from my second tour it was even worse. I didn’t even have to be thinking about anything and it would happen. I’d be sitting there playing a video game with Cody or eating a sandwich at the kitchen table or Tracy and I would be fucking, and I’d feel it. A sharp pain in my gut first, and then my lungs starting to shut down. I’d try to shake it, but there wasn’t anything I could do. It got so bad I had to tell Tracy. It wasn’t like she didn’t notice. You can’t freeze up like that on someone when you’re in the middle of fucking them and not have them notice.
She told me not to worry. Nothing was going to happen, she said. But even if it did, I shouldn’t worry, because she could take care of herself, and Cody, too—and I knew it. She was used to it, she said, what with me being gone all the time. And she was right—I knew. That’s the thing. It was weird. If I thought about it I knew that I was lucky that way. Tracy was tough, and she was smart, too. We kept a gun in the house, and she knew how to use it. She was even a pretty good shot, and wasn’t someone who was likely to lose it and not know how to aim right, or be afraid to shoot if she needed to. I could pretty much count on that. She would get this look on her face when she was serious about something and you knew that no one was ever going to mess with her.
Tiger, Tiger Page 10
