“Yes, and that’s exactly what I mean. I think readers would really benefit from your perspective on that sort of thing.”
“Really? Cuz that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“I bet it is. You know it’s too bad I’m gonna die soon because I would really love to work with you on turning your stories into a book.”
“Really?
“Yeah. And you know what? I guarantee it would be a bestseller.”
“You really think so?”
“Without a doubt. Why, with your experiences and my writing ability, we’d make millions. Not to mention how famous you would be.”
“B2, stop talking to the agent,” MOM said. “Can’t you see he’s just trying to butter you up?”
Bear One. Bear Two. Bear Three? Three daughters. Hedda was the easy one. Lotti was the lesbian. Eva said she must have been enchanted. Give me another chance tonight. All right? Don’t call the old number. Call the new one. Remember.
“Does anyone have a phone I can borrow?” I said.
Laughter all around.
“What’s so funny?”
“You just sit tight and relax,” said MOM. “Everything’s just fine. You’re not gonna die. We’re just going for a drive. Nothing bad is gonna happen to you. OK?”
She turned on the radio.
The drive went on and on. At some point the bear stink and the heat and the blindfolded rhythms of the car caused me to fall asleep. It may sound weird that I would have fallen asleep only moments after being told point-blank by a confessed killer that I was being taken to my death—surely a normal person would have stayed awake trying to plan a daring escape, or at least stayed awake to learn what I could about my captors, or just stayed awake to enjoy my remaining few moments of life—all true, but I was tired. So I fell asleep. And like so often happens when one falls asleep, I had a dream, a dream that has nothing much to do with anything except that it might make for an interesting scene.
In the dream I was back at the house I had woken up at that morning. In the dream I had just woken up too, only instead of a girl at the closet stepping into a skirt and saying, “I’m super late, so I’m gonna drive, OK?” the closet light was still on but there was no girl there. But there was in the bed beside me. She had her naked back to me, the blanket having slipped down over her hips. She had short blond hair—almost white—and a beautiful slender back. The movement of her body as she breathed suggested she was deep asleep. Then I heard a sound from the window behind me. A woman’s voice singing my name. I knew it was my name she was singing even though I couldn’t hear the name, itself. Meaning I couldn’t hear the actual word, the actual syllables and letters of the name—meaning, it was my name she was singing—I knew it was my name—but she was singing it without actually saying the name. It was a dream, what can I say?
Soon I was up and outside standing on the back patio. There was a strange silvery light back there, and a thick haze over everything that even in my dream I recognized as being particularly dreamlike. I looked out through the mist for the source of the voice. It was louder now, and very lovely. I started walking into the mist toward it to see what I could find. I seemed to walk for a long time but finally in the mist a shape came into view. It was a beautiful girl—you would probably expect that—but what was unexpected was that she was sitting and swinging back and forth in a giant birdcage that was suspended over the ground by some mysterious means. She was wearing nothing but a white thong and a little t-shirt that said:
QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE.
As I approached she stopped singing, and said,
“OMG! Who’s there! Lucy? Is that you? Chee-chee-cha?”
I didn’t know who Lucy was, and I certainly didn’t know what chee-chee-cha meant. I approached her cage and when she saw me she said, “There you are, you stupid cat! Where have you been? Whenever things get the slightest bit sketchy you turn around and run like a total coward! Now, look! Those lousy raver nerds have got me trapped! Now, listen, Luce! Don’t run away again! OK? All is forgiven, just don’t run away! I need you to go find Mama a key! OK, kitten? We gotta get me out of here so we can save that cute little metal man! He’s in big trouble, Luce! Plus, remember what the cowboy said! It might be up to me to stop the end of the world! Now go-find-a-key-for-Ma-ma! It has to be around here somewhere!”
A rustling sound.
A little rabbit shot out of the mist.
I gave chase.
“No, no, no, no, Luce, no!” The voice followed me into the bushes… “Luce, come back!” …through the bushes… “Come back, Luce!” …down a hole…
“LUCE!
LUCE, YOU NO GOOD WORTHLESS
MOTHERF#¢&ER!
I SWEAR TO G-O-D IF WE EVER
GET BACK HOME I’M GONNA…”
“…sleep.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s drooling all over me. Plus listen; he’s snoring.”
“Maybe he’s faking. Candy?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your opinion? Is he asleep?”
“Let me see… Yeah. He’s asleep. He always snores like that. It’s really annoying.”
“My god, he’s a straight-up foghorn. How could a skinny guy like that make such a racket? You’re sure he’s not faking?”
“Unfortunately, I’m very sure. And look how he drools. It’s totally gross!”
The truth was I was not asleep. I had woken up, but their comments had convinced me to keep snoring—as well as to keep drooling—which was quite difficult because to my horror as soon as I had woken I realized that my face was practically buried in Bear One’s armpit.
“Well, I’m waking him up,” said Bear One. “I don’t like to be drooled on.”
“No.” This was MOM. “Let him sleep. We have some things we need to discuss in private. Candy, keep an eye on him and if he starts to wake up, let us know right away. Now, I know he seems like kind of a fool but these agents can be real tricky. So Bears, keep that in mind. You might find he’s kind of slippery. And just because he walked into our party like a total moron doesn’t mean he still can’t make an escape. I just have the feeling he’s trying to pull a fast one on us. I mean, he can’t really be this stupid, can he?”
Candy: Why are you looking at me?
MOM: It’s just that I’ve always thought you were a savvy girl, princess, but he snowed you, and having observed him I just don’t see how.
Candy: I’m a sucker for writers. I thought he was a genius.
MOM: Well, next time, have him prove it.
Candy: In my defense he did write one very good book. In Complete Accord. Any of you read it?
All In Unison: No.
Bear Two: What’s it about?
Candy: It’s about how everything is connected. But how everything has come apart. How the universe is like a big puzzle that’s been broken and needs to be put back together again. And how when you do you find—well, I don’t want to give away the end. But it was really beautiful. The New York Times called it an ambitious attempt.
Bear Two: Wow, the New York Times!
Candy: I guess it almost won, like, a ton of awards.
MOM: Odds are he didn’t even write the book. It was most likely written by someone at his headquarters when they were coming up with his identity. That’s how they scheme. He needed a front and an excuse to operate without anyone asking what he was up to. If they did he’d just tell them he spent all his time working on the follow-up to his first book.
Candy (snorting): Yeah, and when you’d ask him what it’s about he’d say he’d love to tell you but it’s bad luck to talk about a work in progress. What-evs.
MOM: That’s why we gotta be careful with him. We still don’t know exactly what kind of animal we’ve caught.
Bear One: Aw, jeez! L
ook at all this drool!
Bear Two: We shoulda just got rid of him back at the house.
MOM: That’s what I thought too, but Pop wanted him moved to someplace set up with a table.
Candy: We should have someone pick up that bitch wife of his. She’s definitely an agent too. Someone should put her on the table.
MOM: Mr. Brubaker says that Pop knows all about her, so don’t worry. She’ll get hers.
Bear One: Oh, sick! It’s pooling in my belly button! Come on, MOM, let me wake him up!
MOM: Relax. You’re supposed to be a tough guy, B1. I think you can stand a little drool for one more minute. So when we get there, boys, we’re gonna pretend we’re pretending, OK? We want him to think that we’re just putting a scare into him. So you bears can be rough but not too rough. Be scary. Violent but not too violent. He needs to be conscious. Mr. Brubaker here is going to take the lead on the interrogation. He knows more about this than anybody. Is there anything you want to say, Mr. Brubaker?
The Driver: I don’t want to see any guns or weapons of any kind. I’ve heard how the two large fellows in the back are apt to get trigger-happy now and then. That won’t be happening here. We’ve reached a very serious juncture. My orders come from the one you call Pop, himself, and he’s not willing to take any chances. This snoring drooler might have something that we’ve been looking for for quite some time. Something incredibly important. He needs to be alive so we can open him up and see.
Candy: Open him up? You mean like surgery?
The Driver: Yes. Like surgery.
Candy: Will it hurt him?
The Driver: Yes.
Candy: Like torture?
The Driver: Uh-huh.
Candy: And it’ll be horrible? And he’ll be begging for death?
The Driver: Of course.
Candy: Good. The fucker told me he was gonna marry me someday.
The Driver: Well, then I guess he’ll find out what it would have been like.
I think I know why. I am not sure I know how. It all happened very quick. It was certainly something I would not have considered doing had I given myself time to think. Not even in such dire circumstances as the ones I found myself in. But something inside me stirred. Like something in a seed stirs for light. Like something in a seed breaks the shell. And rises through the dirt. I felt water nearby. I felt it beneath me. I felt it running, flowing. I felt it below me. I felt it around me. I felt it inside. The wheels of the car. Went bu-bump. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. Driving fast. But everything else was slow. MOM, Candice, the Bears, Brubaker. A conversation. I thought: I don’t like talking while I drive. You get distracted. Knock on wood. I let out one last snore and then lunged forward, reaching out with my bound hands to where I knew the steering wheel would be. Wrenched it with all my might, feeling, as I did, hands groping for me, then losing their grip on me as the car, with a crash, bumped, crashed, and then began to fall. Through the air. Screams. Up against the wall. Blindfold. Thump. Up against the roof. Fall. Oh my god. Fall until the Crash. A window. A desk in front of the window. A laptop computer. Smash. Old metal bookshelves. Books stacked on every surface. History, philosophy, fiction. The shatter of glass. Postcards and old photos stuck to the bookshelves with magnets. A drawing by a child of some sort of rainbow-colored craft—bright vibrant colors covering every molecule of the page—and little round balls—smiling faces. We go into the water. An old green couch. A black throw pillow. Cold. A metal trash can, empty except for balls of gum stuck to the inside. The ropes are undone. A yellow chair. I sat down. Hit the spacebar. The blindfold comes off. The computer started up. The black screen flashed and then a white sheet stared back.
} else {
Subject:
hello my love
Date:
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:37:08 -0800
From:
erin@
Reply-To:
erin@
To:
m
Hi babe. I wonder if you will receive this message. I’m writing from my account.
How’s it going today? I am ★starving★. My stomach knows it’s not really 10:30. I guess I will eat my apple.
love you
your girl
The beauty is there, but not of the expected kind.
X
[1] About halfway through our stay in Montana, my wife received an email.
From:
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 14:40:28 -0600
To: erin@ .com>
Subject: Stir Crazy yet?
This is your Uncle Paul. I hear you moved to Montana. Does living in a cold climate agree with you? Hope so, but I don’t like to shovel snow. Congratulations on your TV winnings.
Care to do some snooping for me?
Your great grandfather, Gramps’ mysterious father, Morris, died in Bigfork, MT 10 November 1924. He is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Polson. I’m not sure exactly where you are living, but if the distances aren’t too great, perhaps you can do some research. The person who gave information for his death certificate was a “Mrs. Dorthy P. (or Dorothy A.) Brown.” Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find something about her.
Were there any newspapers in the area at that time that might have reported deaths? Are there funeral home records about him? Any marriage records for these two? He and grandma Nancy split in 1922 when Gramps was two and no one heard from him after that.
The death certificate says 14 miles S of Bigfork. The mortuary record says 20 miles NE of Polson. Maybe it was just “somewhere back in the woods.” Anywhere near you?
Anyway, if you have time, this snooping would be appreciated.
Uncle Paul
See below:
>From:
>To:
>Subject: Re: Re: Morris Brown
>
>The death certificate has his correct middle name Spencer erased
>and Samuel typed over it. It says that the residence was 14 miles
>South of Bigfork. I don’t know whether this would also be 20 miles
>NE of Polson, or not. His wife’s name was Dorothy Brown. He’d
>lived in his residence for 3 months. Cause of death was intestinal
>hemorrhage, duration 6 years. It doesn’t say anything about suicide,
>nor is there a box to check for such things.
>
>I located a letter sent from Lake County in 1963, enclosing the death
>certificate. It says
>
> “The local undertaker now has lived here a long time, and he told
> me that he remembered helping the then mortician go after the
> body of Mr. Brown,which was in a cabin way back in the woods,
> where the road was drifted with snow, and they had a very difficult
> (sic.) bringing the body out.”
The cabin we were renting was on a spot called Yellow Bay,
exactly
(14 miles S of Bigfork)
exactly
(20 miles NE of Polson).
We’d found it on the internet, in a sea of classifieds. We hadn’t known of Morris Brown.
★
The order is there, but not of the sort to damp down our questions.
★
[2] It was around 11 at night, a few months earlier, late October 2002, and we got up from the couch, bundled up in heavy coats, and walked down the path and out to the end of the dock below the house. We looked out at the dark lake. Then we lay down. My wife did first. I stood there above her, smoking a cigarette. Come down with me, she said. I pointed the flashlight at her face and turned it on. She shielded her eyes with her hand and her breath rose around her fingers. No, I said, and turned the light off. Come lay down with m
e, she said again. Look at all the stars. So I did. I tossed my cigarette, and lay down beside her on the dock. We looked up. The stars held us in place. And then suddenly, right above us, suddenly, suddenly—Suddenly—
A ball of flame appeared in the sky!
It came bursting over the trees, a ball of flame, orange and white and yellow. Could see the ball, the round flaming core, and the flames around it, burning, and the long, bright trail it made across the sky, and could see the flames of the tail, itself
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