The grass really is greener here, she thought. The greener grass of Ireland.
She waited until she had caught her breath, then turned again and continued up the hill. The footpath wound ’round crags and rocks, but had now taken her almost all the way to the little house. It had been invisible from the road, appearing to be just another patch of grey rocks. Now it had taken on the familiar appearance of Grandpa’s house: stone walls, a roof of reddish brick tiles, and the door painted in a bright colour—she recalled it as green from her last visit; today, it was a clear blue.
The door opened when she was still a few yards from the house. An old man made his way out, standing on the three steps leading down to the yard, straightening his back. He looked exactly the same as last time—five years ago, or maybe seven? She couldn’t quite remember—thin, tall, with a wisp of nearly white hair that blew whichever way the wind fancied.
She smiled at him. “Hi, Grandpa.”
He nodded at her, smiled as she came closer. “Hello, Christine. I see you’re keeping well.” His voice was clear, but not altogether strong: It sounded as if his words were going to be blown away in the wind.
“You too, Grandpa.” She hugged him, carefully: He still felt strong, but since she was twelve, she had always been afraid that one day, he would become frail and be crushed by her embrace.
“It’s been some time now. Years.” Not reproachfully, simply a statement of fact.
“I did write.”
“But now you wanted to see the old man.”
“Yes.” She looked around, saw that the wooden bench was still there—most of it grey, weathered wood, but one armrest was a dull yellow, some plastic material. She sat down on it, gingerly: Not only didn’t it creak, it felt like sitting down on a rock.
“You’re grown now. A woman.”
She laughed, briefly. “Twenty-six. Not much more than a child, to many.”
He sat down beside her, folded his hands in his lap. He was quiet, but looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell him why she had chosen to come.
“Grandpa James died last week. On Friday.”
He sighed, slowly. “So it goes. What of?”
“Cancer, just like it said on his slip. Nothing unusual about it. Painless, he was asleep toward the end.”
Again, a sigh. “He was a dear one, that child.”
Christine nodded. “He did tell me, the day before he fell asleep, about you, and when he was a child.”
He nodded, lost in thought. “A dear one. I’m glad you came to tell me. It’s not a thing you’d want to read about in a letter.”
She looked at him. He knows now, doesn’t he? He knows. He knows that I know. “Grandpa, how old are you?”
He seemed to come back into focus. His voice was stronger, less an old man’s: “Older than I care to remember. I don’t count the years anymore. No one does, after a while. You’re just grateful you saw another one.”
“I always knew you were older than Grandpa James. I always thought you were my great-grandpa. I thought everyone had just got into the habit of calling you Grandpa, that you became everyone’s Grandpa. But he said that he’d been calling you Grandpa even when he grew up.”
“The years pass by, Christine. One by one. One day at a time. You get up in the morning, you stay awake, the sun sets. I don’t count them.”
She rose, abruptly. “I still do.” She turned, opened the door into the cottage. He sat still on the bench as she went in.
The smell was the same, after all those years. A hint of coal, a hint of food cooked slowly and lovingly, a hint of damp that wouldn’t go away even in a heatwave in summer. And a lot of old paper. Old books, old letters in a desk, old newspapers in a pile by the fireplace. She had lain awake at night, when they had come visiting, and felt the smell. It felt like they did it all summer, every summer, but when she looked it up and did the sums, it couldn’t have been more than five or six summers, and probably only two weeks, possibly three. But that is the way childhoods are constructed, long afterward: you remember scattered parts, some chosen at random, some that affected you deeply, and you string them together and say “this was me growing up.” Your parents say something else, your grandparents something different still, but you stay by the story you’ve told yourself.
She looked around, in a way she never had before. There had to be some clue in here. He had been born across the sea, only returning to Ireland and what he called “the land of my ancestors” as he was becoming an old widower. Surely, there was some sort of paper, some record of it.
It didn’t take long. There was only one desk, only a few drawers, and she ignored those holding mementoes and the various odds and ends. But at the back of one drawer, with some plastic cards—probably long defunct—and various receipts, she found what she was looking for. A passport, an old-fashioned passport, possibly undisturbed since he had first settled in this house. With a birth date.
He was puffing on his pipe, peering through the smoke at her when she came out again. It floated near his face for a moment, protected from the constant wind by the walls of the house, until it gently drifted into the wind and was torn apart, dispersed faster than the eye could follow.
She sat down again, and picked up the small lump that had been weighing down her right jacket pocket on her way up the hill.
He nodded knowingly. “That’s one of the latest models, isn’t it? A Predictor.”
She put her head to one side, looked at him thoughtfully. “You’ve seen them? This is the new pocket-size.”
“No. Well, in the papers. The man from the village usually brings me an old newspaper or two with the groceries. But you didn’t have to bring it, you know. You’re family. I’d tell you if you asked.”
A moment of silence stretched out. Finally, she said the words that were so rarely said, even among family: “What does yours say?”
He puffed on his pipe again, took it out of his mouth, picked up a burnt-out match from the bench beside him, and poked carefully at the glow. “You know, I had it figured out as soon as I saw the slip. Both what it really meant, and that I had to go.”
“Why? Grandpa, what does your slip say?”
“Why, nothing. It was empty. I never showed it to anyone, of course. There would be no end of trouble, wouldn’t there? But I figured that if I went here, back to what my parents always called the Old Country, and settled somewhere I wouldn’t be noticed, everyone would just think it said ‘Car Accident’ or some similar. No cars here, see?” He gestured with the pipe, indicating the entire hillside. “This place had stayed the same for many years. It has stayed the same since I came. Nothing much changes.”
“What sort of trouble?” She knew it well enough—she had had all the time the trip took to work it out—but she really wanted to hear the full story.
“The manufacturers and operators would go mad about it, of course. They’d drag me to court, or something. Then there would be all sorts of religions wanting to have a look at me. Some of them would probably try to burn me at a stake, or say I was an abomination or a heresy. Others might make me their Saviour. Some would try to lay their hands on me, lock me up, and pretend I was never here. Of course, I reckon the Jehovah’s Witnesses would be the worst. They’d say I was the first of their one hundred and forty-four thousand, and I’d never see the back of them.” He chuckled slowly. “I think I actually moved too far away even for them. I certainly haven’t seen one since I came here.” A puff at his pipe. “But I had it all worked out. You know, the slips are accurate, they’re just not always truthful.”
She nodded. Sometimes it was in the news, but more often it wasn’t. Some of the stories she had heard were urban legends, naturally, but a sizeable proportion of them were true, as far as anyone could check them.
“So, what does a blank slip mean? Nothing, of course. I’ll die of nothing. And there’s one kind of nothing that’s all over the place. Literally.” He looked at her, with a twinkle in the eye as if to see whethe
r she was with him. “Vacuum.” Again the waving with the pipe, but this time toward the sky. “Most of the universe is nothing. So they tell me, not that I’m an educated man, but I’ve read it enough times to believe that they know what they’re talking about. So if I ever went out in a spaceship, I’d be darned if it didn’t spring a leak, and the vacuum would kill me. And that’s where the real trouble comes in, of course.”
“How?” She suspected she knew where this was going, but she wasn’t going to trust herself to guess his next leap.
“The scientists. They’d be next in line after the priests and prophets. And they’d run all their tests on me, and one day the brightest of them would come up with the idea that if they put me in a test tube and removed the air, that’d be the ‘nothing’ that’d kill me. And when it did, they’d just say, “QED,” clean out the test tube, and go to collect their Nobel Prize. So I just figured I’d stay here, at the back of everything. It’ll come after me one day, not that I’m in a particular hurry, but I’ve lived for a long time now and even if I don’t want to go, I did better than I’d hoped for.” He smiled, puffed again at his pipe.
She sighed. “Grandpa, I found your passport. You’re a hundred and seventy years old.”
He seemed to shrink, as if he felt the weight of all those years. He chewed the pipe, took it out of his mouth, and looked at it thoughtfully. “That many, is it. Well, that’s a lot.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve buried my children and my grandchildren. And your Grandpa James was the last of their children. All gone now. All gone.”
“But you kept in touch with us. Why, Grandpa? You knew someone would figure it out one day. The world would come back. There are still prophets and scientists.”
He looked up at her. His eyes were watery, as if they were about to burst with tears. “You get lonely, Christine. You get so very lonely. All your friends are gone. And then your wife and sisters and cousins and uncles. And then, one day, everyone in your generation. One day, you’re the only one alive to remember the days when you were a child. All the things you used to say and do, and all the places you used to go. And then the only one to remember the days when you had become an adult. What the politicians were like, what the news was about, the foods and smells and worries and music and all the small things that tell you that this is now, the time you moved with when you were young, the jargon and idols and the excitement of what has become ancient history. You’re a refugee in time, living on after your world has turned to dust. And the family, Christine, your own descendants, are the only link you have with everything you’ve lost. They are the only way you have of still being attached to the world.”
She found her eyes starting to water, as in response to his. Her hand moved toward the Predictor, as it lay on the bench.
“I don’t think we have to do that,” he said slowly. “If you say it’s a hundred and seventy, I say you’re right. I might have missed a dozen, but that would really make no difference. And I’d really not like the world to come stampeding here to look at me, if it’s all the same to you. Not at my time of life.”
Christine shook her head. A strand of hair was caught by the wind, and settled across her face. “I believe you, Grandpa. I figured it out, more or less.” She kept her eyes fixed on him, while her index finger found the hole in the Predictor. “I brought this here to show you.” A click, a quick sting in her finger, and a whirr as the Predictor ejected the small slip of paper. “I thought you wouldn’t believe me if you didn’t see this.” Still without letting her eyes leave his, she picked up the slip and gave it to him. The slip that—just like last time, just like always—had no text on it.
He looked at it. He looked at her. After a moment, the tears started to roll down his face. And slowly, and still silent, he turned and looked out over the landscape.
She sighed, and relaxed. And as he had done, she turned and looked out over the landscape, illuminated and painted in red and gold by the setting sun.
Story by Pelotard
Illustration by John Allison
COCAINE AND PAINKILLERS
AT NINE O’CLOCK ON A TUESDAY MORNING, THE PARKING LOT IN FRONT OF JACK BOGG ENTERPRISES WAS SOMEHOW ALREADY FULL. Kelly didn’t know quite what to do. It had never happened before, not once in the year she’d been working for JBE. Especially troubling was that her favorite spot—right by the planter, the only spot in the office park guaranteed to be in the shade at six P.M.—was taken by some cruddy old Volvo. But three circuits of the lot only served to make her late, so she sighed, pulled around to the other side of the long metal building, and reluctantly parked by the O-ring wholesaler. She doubted she’d be leaving work before sunset anyway, if the last six weeks were any indication.
A wave of heat rolled over her as she pushed open the driver’s door. Today was a summer scorcher, and knowing Big-Spender Jack, he’d have an oscillating fan going in his office while everyone else broiled like breakfast sausage. She checked her makeup in the mirror, grabbed her computer bag, gathered her courage, and went for it.
After three minutes crossing asphalt that threatened to melt her from the shoes up, Kelly pushed through the door with the white vinyl letters and gasped. It was cold in here—against all odds, Jack was actually running the air conditioning. A breeze from the vent ruffled her hair, and she blew a loose strand away from her face. She didn’t even know the office had air conditioning.
The next thing that struck her was the noise. Ringing phones, voices chattering—she glanced over at the phone bank as she walked to her cubicle, and was surprised to find two extra folding tables crammed into the corner of the room, manned by a dozen unfamiliar faces haltingly reading from scripts and tapping into computers that hadn’t been there when she’d left at two o’clock Saturday morning. Something was going on—something big.
“Great news!” Jack grabbed her from behind, sweeping her up in a powerful hug. His sweaty bulk pressed into her, his round face over her shoulder glowing red with the exertion of walking around the corner. Kelly gently extricated herself and slipped into her best professional good-morning face, turning to face him—but he was five feet away now, pacing in a tight circle, his eyes darting like bumblebees, flitting around and then landing on Kelly for long, uncomfortable seconds. “Fat-It-Out is huge. Huge, so huge I can’t even tell you! You did great, babe, great. Look at this place!”
His sweeping gesture included the new bank of computers, the chattering kids, the cold wind blasting musty odors through long-dormant ductwork, even the too-bright fluorescent lights that were making Kelly’s head hurt already. She’d slept through most of the weekend plus Monday trying to recover from this place. It was clear her body didn’t want to be back.
Jack grabbed her wrist and headed off down the hallway, Kelly stumbling to keep her balance. “Whole new phone-response staff,” he explained. “Orders are through the roof. We made back our airtime costs in 80% of markets within six hours of broadcast. It’s a whole new era for JBE, and it’s all thanks to Fat-It-Out.” Her computer bag slipped from her shoulder as Jack pulled her into his office. She snagged the strap with an inch to spare.
Fat-It-Out was Jack Bogg Enterprises’ latest premium offering to the direct-response television market. The product (essentially a skillet with a spit-valve) was fighting fiercely for attention in a crowded field of similar junky crap that seemed to exist solely so that third-tier cable channels wouldn’t go completely off air when everyone stopped watching at one in the morning. And apparently, it was winning that fight—for the moment at least.
Jack sifted through papers on his desk, pulling one from a pile and shoving it at Kelly. “Look at these numbers!” She couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but got the gist when he grabbed her shoulders and shook her like she was in an earthquake. “This is record-setting, Kel. Record-setting! Ron Popeil never saw numbers like this. George Foreman would shit a brick if he saw numbers like this!”
“Sounds pretty good,” she managed through the quaking, turning away
from Jack to grab his file cabinet for balance. She held fast to the squarish metal, wary of aftershocks.
“Pretty good?” He grabbed his chest and sank into his creaky leather chair, sweating through his shirt. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack right there on the spot. “Kel, you’re killing me with ‘pretty good.’ This is the sort of response that you normally have to hone over time. You have to run focus groups and market research. You have to massage price points and premiums and giveaways in market after market, trying to find that perfect balance—you remember Ab-Mazing? We couldn’t give that piece of crap away.” He shook his head with a rueful sigh. “I can’t explain it, Kel. To do this right, it’s like landing a jumbo jet. It doesn’t just happen. But somehow you did it. People want this thing—it’s selling everywhere now. Sunday morning I had to call China in a panic. Lucked out—those guys work seven days. Not like this country. Those guys don’t go to church. I’m their church. The American businessman.”
She stood there, not quite sure how to react, afraid that maybe he’d jump out of his chair and grab her again—it was the sort of thing he did all the time. Jack Bogg was a tactile individual, always placing a hand on her shoulder, or tapping her on the head when he walked by her cubicle, or doling out high-fives at random times, then claiming she’d been “way too off-center” and insisting on doing it over and over until they’d achieved the perfect synergistic clap.
But he was her boss, and he paid her well, and he’d apparently done a great job mentoring her for her first campaign to be such a super slam-dunk. The least she could do was be professional.
She used to wonder if Jack misrepresented her polite friendliness as flirtation. She had long ago stopped wondering. He was hard-core in love with her, she was pretty sure.
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“What happens? We rake in the dough, is what happens,” he said, kicking a stack of papers off his desk to make room for his feet. Kelly stared at the worn soles of his shoes and wondered if perhaps she should have taken today off, as well.
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