New People of the Flat Earth

by Brian Short

  •

  The list was organized so that each destination fell easily along my route, one to the next. I just needed to get to each and take the pictures, whatever they were. I no longer cared.

  Next came a park not far past the foothills that required a short detour off the highway, across a small bridge and into thick woods. In this case the turnoff was clearly marked, so that I knew at least I’d not taken the wrong road. But the park, I found, had been neglected and left overgrown, its wide and empty lot of broken, black asphalt shot through with weeds and blackberry shrubs, their thorny vines thick with late-season berries. No one else was around. I took several photos of the cracked blacktop with its white demarcations, and the vines that pushed through it, and the regular array of tall lightpoles, their metal hoods turned green with clinging fungus. What may have once been pathways were now so overgrown that nothing could pass, so I contented myself with picking all the berries I could hold and driving straight back to the highway. I did not want to waste any time. As I started up the car again though, I felt the same hesitation as before, as at the last spot; a certain, distinct thought, almost a voice, that told me I should get out of the car with my second camera and point it at the sky.

  It wasn’t my voice. It wasn’t my thought. I did what it told me.

  Through the lens, an arc of blue stretched across in a wide dome, fading toward white in the center, fading darker and toward feathered clouds at the sides. The streak of a contrail ran through, off center, in a mild diagonal, its one end semi-sharp, the other dissipating. I read the light meter, clicked, adjusted, and clicked twice more.

  The next mark on the map took me into a small town, where a particular phone booth seemed to be the point of interest. I shot the town from several angles – it was all of two blocks long – just to make sure I had coverage, then featured the old phone booth on its own, dramatically, from low, from high, in three quarters, from straight on; like it was a fashion model, like it was a movie star. The sunlight bounced off it, glass and steel, in bright spikes of glare that made starlight flares in the lens. It could’ve been the Chrysler Building. It could’ve been fucking Godzilla.

  I didn’t hesitate this time but, compliant with the voice, aimed my ancient Nikon straight up, bracketing three different exposures onto film. I found, strangely enough, that doing this helped to pull the sick fear out of my skin and guts, and with each place that I stopped, and with each photo I took of the sky directly overhead, the twisted gut-clench lessened incrementally.

  The point of intersection of two highways formed, on my map, where it had been emphatically circled, what appeared to be a small town, its name highlighted in fluorescent yellow marker. This turned out to be an abandoned house, set back some distance from the corner. The intersection didn’t even warrant street signs. I pulled the car to the shoulder and approached the building through the deep grass on foot. It still stood, though its walls and porch and shingled roof were rotten and gray, and the windows all broken. Some part of a wooden sign remained over the door, though most had rotted away and was missing; all that remained of it spelled “GEN.” I peered through and inside a cracked window pane beside the boarded-over door, and from what I could see, the house had last served as a grocery store, full of chest-high display shelves, all empty now. I snapped photos of everything. I stuck the camera in through a hole in the window and shot inside. I took pictures of the grass beside the road and the power lines overhead. Lastly, I grabbed the old Nikon and aimed up. I didn’t look through it. Snapping three photos, adjusting the f-stops for each, I felt immediately relaxed, a subtle, inner pressure relieved, like whatever thing was chasing me had decided, for the moment, to take its time in catching up.

  •

  Staring out over the wide, white arc of cement that crossed the river, blue water high to one side, to the other side recessed, while the crushing sound made as thousands of gallons moved through it and spewed out, fell and shook the ground where I stood, shook the bones and the body, I raised the small camera to frame it – not a difficult thing to do; the scene all but framed itself – and clicked several shots in succession, each a little different. The dam was legitimate, I could see that. It made sense why this spot was chosen. The scale of its construction was sublime, and the surrounding landscape – small mountains to one side, and the river, now widened into a new lake where the level had risen, beyond that the purple-gray scrub of sage through the lowlands – made me all but weep at the beauty of it. but with no eyes, no body, mind or form – no beginnings, no motion – because the object in motion and the object at rest are the same object, the same shape – the two sides, the other things – other sides, two things, other, other – which in motion or rest, there is no difference – no ending, no completion, no motion or gesture, but in which the gesture is begun – this is what I can tell no one – how the lighted sun has grown thick and dim and still – how the heart grows still, with no movement at the center – to begin, to make, to recover – to begin – in order to –

  Floating particles of moisture in the air formed rainbows, faint but visible, while the sky, all stretched out, was an unmarked blue above, was glassine, was deep and blank and empty. I pointed the Nikon straight up. I didn’t know how this would translate on film, but then I didn’t know what I was shooting, either. By now, the voice and its compulsion had lessened, but that was only because I did what it told me to do.

  and how I was the space that was not formed – empty and not empty – and for that reason wasn’t there – shape and shapeless both – how it was all I ever wanted, to not be there, to have no shape, no sex, no self – and how it was granted – by God, by whomever – that I became invisible – and was not there –

  The itch of my inner thigh burned. I tried not to scratch because that only made it burn worse, and if I started I could hardly stop.

  Of my list, only one item remained, and with the afternoon light now starting to fail, there seemed some small likelihood that I might drive the remaining distance and finish before the sun had entirely gone. This last site, thirty miles further out, had the unlikely name “The Metal Tears of St Stephen” – I could scarcely guess what that meant – but it was a point on the map, highlighted and circled, apparently some kind of monument at the very end of a long, straight road that ran almost as far north as the border with Canada, stopping just short of it.

  •

  “You won’t drink with me? What? Think you’re too good, the likes of me?” He was big all around, broad-nosed, dark-skinned, and approached me at the bar, spilt beer already in hand, where I waited with my coffee for the burger that I’d ordered.

  “What? No. You? No, it’s not… I just don’t drink. At all. Nothing personal.”

  “Nothing personal? So what is personal? In that case? When nothing…” he sat beside me, “…nothing’s personal. What are you saying? That I’m not a person?”

  “No. No. Not that.”

  “Then what?”

  I looked around at the brown-paneled interior, the bodies at tables, the bodies along the bar, the dimness, the infrequent neon glowing through a sheet-haze of tobacco smoke that hung just above center throughout, and lit, backwards lettering framed in windows by the door, windows revealing only darkness outside, reflective as thick, black oil. The man leaned on an elbow and waited, his face inches from mine, scowling, eyebrows furrowed, his breath thick with beer and cigarettes.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you. But you have to listen. Okay?”

  “Who’s not listening? Are you saying I’m not listening?”

  “And don’t interrupt.”

  His wide face wobbled near to mine, breathing in and out as if winding a spring of gathered fury. “I’m fucking listening to you.”

  I took a sip of my burnt coffee, lit a cigarette of my own and coughed, then said, “I’m no one, nothing. I know this. Sometimes, people even see straight through me.”

  “No one. Nothing. Straight through. I’m liss… liss
ning.”

  “But I’ve been places. This, at least, is what I’m told. Some of these places… I don’t know what they are. When people tell me that I’ve been there, I don’t know what they mean. And the things some people say I’ve done? In these… places… I don’t know about that either. All I can do is deny it. The accusation… listen…”

  “I’m lisssssning. Goddamnit.”

  “The accusation counts for something, that’s true. It counts for a lot. But if it does, then so must the denial. Others will have to decide for me what did or didn’t happen, and where I have or haven’t been.”

  “I’ll bet… I’ll bet you did it. Don’t know what it was, asshole, but I’m damn sure you did it.”

  “What? Why? You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “I know you’re white people. And white people always did it.”

  “Hey, Jeremy!” came a voice from the floor. “You tell him, innit. You tell him the way it is.”

  Looking into the darkness, I couldn’t see who’d spoken. Bodies sat at tables, others stood, throwing darts. Those at the pool table seemed unconcerned with us. Only the beaming, broad eyes of my companion stared back toward me, hovering a little too close for comfort, perhaps even, I don’t know, invading, like, my personal space. “Do you want to hear the story or don’t you?”

  “I want you to tell me what happens.”

  “Okay,” I said, after taking another drag on my cigarette. “One place that I have been, that I know, very definitely, just today in fact, was this place at the end of a long road not far from here. Let me tell you about that. I drove out there as fast as I could. I was hoping to catch the last of the light, but I didn’t make it. It was already dark by the time I got there, at the road’s end, and then I had to leave the car behind and walk, and follow a trail into the woods. The sun had already set behind that range of small mountains to the west, so that when I got to where the trail stopped, hardly any light remained, just the very last of the twilight, the last, barest glow still in the sky. I could hardly see anything at all. But do you know what?”

  “Do I know? WHAT?”

  “It was beautiful. Really. Like at the bottom of a lake. The way it’s dim and far off and quiet. The way the light has to filter through. It was like being at the bottom of the ocean. Where entire schools of hundreds of fish turn suddenly and flash past. Where strange creatures flap along the mud, chasing smaller things that are even harder to imagine. Where everything that doesn’t eat you seems distant, like in a dream. It was the perfect end to the day, really, but no good for the pictures that I’d come to take, the whole reason that I’d gone out that far in the first place.”

  “Pictures. Asshole.”

  “Do you want me to tell you what I found there?” “…What. Where?”

  “At this place you call ‘The Metal Tears of St Stephen’. Although I still don’t understand why you call it that.”

  “I don’t call anything anything. Fuck you. What are you calling me?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I’ll have to go back in the morning. For the pictures. But also to be sure that what I saw there was real. Because I’m not sure about that. Not now. And even if it is real – even if it is, it may not be anything. It may not mean what I need it to mean. But I think it still might help me.”

  “Help you… I’ll help you.”

  “You will?”

  “I’m going to fucking help you. Asshole.”

  “But I don’t know if you… How…?”

  “I want you to tell me what happens.” He reached a hand out unsteadily, missed my shoulder, then corrected his aim and gave me a shove. I didn’t quite fall off the stool, but wobbled.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I found?”

  “Fuck… you… I want you to tell me the future…”

  “Oh,” I said. “That.” The bartender set my burger in front of me, open-faced and smeared in melted yellow cheese, surrounded by fries and a pile of lettuce. At the sight of this, my stomach tightened, turned inward and started to eat itself. “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “It’s…” assembling the food, picking it up, “not something that I do.”

  The man beside me stood and knocked his stool back and over, where it fell with a clatter. He leaned in and pressed his nose and forehead against mine. “Tell me the future. Asshole.”

  “Uh, it’s… not my business. Really.”

  “I’ll tell you about your business. You tell me the future.”

  “I… just want to… eat this…” but I’d dropped the burger as he moved forward, wrapped his thick arms around my waist and lifted me off the stool. I hung perilous for a moment, kicking my dangling legs back and forth, when he threw both me and himself onto the floor. He probably just meant to throw me, but our momentum carried him down also. Other people cheered at this, people I didn’t know, and I couldn’t tell if anything hurt yet or not. I also couldn’t move. He had both my arms and legs pinned, and my face pressed against the sticky linoleum.

  “Ow.”

  “Tell me… what happens.”

  He tightened his grip and I couldn’t breathe. “Eh…”

  Somebody from the crowd behind shouted, “Yeah, hey, you better tell him what’s gonna happen, innit. Hey, yeah, Jeremy, you make him talk.”

  “Tell me… the… future. Asshole.”

  “…Okay, fine, okay, I’ll talk…” my lips smashed against the floor.

  •

  “Hey. Buddy. You still have to pay for that.”

  •

  I looked at the swelling in the mirror. It hadn’t started yet in earnest, but there was a bruise across my face, and I told myself the noisy fluorescent light in here made it look worse than it was. The television in the room was on, but turned down low, just a whisper, free HBO, and I brought in my cellphone from the car, where I’d left it on the console, and found there was signal enough that it should work.

  I took her number from my wallet: the scrap of notebook paper, folded into quarters and bent to the contour of the wallet’s spine, with Vivianne’s looping script. I dialed, then realized, sitting at the edge of the wide, stiff bed, I had no idea what I wanted to say to her. I just wanted to see her. It didn’t matter. I wedged the toe of my shoe into the shag carpet and waited as all the necessary connections were made, then heard the rising three-tone interruption, followed with, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again if you believe you have reached this message in error. The number you have dialed –” So I did just as it said, checking the number carefully, trying again, but got the same message, folded the phone shut.

  “Fuck.”

  I lit a cigarette. The cluster of large, red bites I’d discovered on my inner thigh itched like it should catch on fire.

  “Fuck.”

  I stared out through the open, purple door of the motel. The half-lit sign blazed pale against the sky’s star-specked fabric. Crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in resonant chorus, either near or far, I couldn’t tell.

  “Fuck.”

  •

  By dewy morning, my car the only one in the gravel lot behind me, I crunched across to the dirt path that led into the woods. I took one photo of the sign at the trailhead to mark the location, telling me as much as I already knew – THE METAL TEARS OF ST STEPHEN – though with no explanation forthcoming, and perhaps, those who’d named it figured, none owed. I walked through spiderwebs and hanging branches. My shoes became dark with damp. It was different now that I could see this, and the trail didn’t seem to lead as far as I remembered until the woods abruptly opened out into a wide and grassy field, where predatory birds circled overhead and the path led forward through bent stalks toward the center of the clearing.

  I could see it from here, partly. Taller than a man, it stood above the grass, reflecting the cold sunlight in its dull sheen. Photos from here looked like some bald head poking its skull-shape out from a fuzzy horizon.
When I reached the monument, there was a radius cleared out from it of a couple feet, seeming less to have been cut back than burned away with acid. The ground around it was dry and dead.

  The metal sphere stood silent and familiar. Its burnished surface shone gray and flat.

  I held up the camera. I lowered the camera. I held the camera up.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck.”

  I circled around and kicked it. It didn’t ring. My foot just kind of flopped against it.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “It’s not enough. This isn’t enough. Not nearly,” I said. “Fuck. Fuck.”

  The metal sphere sat in the dirt and did nothing. I put my ear against it (cold) and thought, after a moment, that I could hear something scratching around inside. “It’s nice. I’m not saying it’s not nice. It is. It just isn’t…”

  “Enough?” There was no wind. It did not stir the grasses.

  “No. Right. No. Not nearly, it isn’t.” I sat down hard in the dirt. My hipbone hurt where it was all bruised up. My spine felt shook. “No,” I said, “nothing like it. Not at all.”

  A falcon swooped in low overhead, hovered a bit, then flapped away.

  “I’ll see within…” I said, “what is the body. Within the body, what. The bird, metal tears, whatever. I don’t have any.” Scooping a fist of dirt in my hand, then dropping it. “Oh. Right.” I pointed the Nikon, strapped around my neck, up. “Almost forgot.” Clicked the shutter and wound, clicked again, wound again, clicked, adjusted, clicked, wound. “Where is the body?” I looked straight up. “WHERE IS THE BODY?”

  “I think it’s inside.”

  “What? Inside here?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, okay. Good. Good that we should find it, know at least where it is. I think… that… the body…”

  The sky deepened, stiffened. There was no wind.

  “Is that really… so good?”

  •

  The long, straight stretch of interstate freeway cut through fields and farmlands and high prairie flats, wound about rocks, crossed rivers and dead spaces, empty, dry horse spaces, and edged gradually back toward the mountain pass, prior to crossing into the western, rainy lowlands and back to the city of Seattle. The small city of Ellensburg, outside the foothills, provided a perfect stop for gas and a necessary meal.