The Color Over Occam

by Jonathan Thomas

  These days, I wish more than anything for the wits of a younger man, to help me separate the signs of getting older from what the color is doing to me. I have found myself sitting in the parlor, or lying in bed, or staring out a window, always in a daze and slow to regain my faculties. I never recollect what I had been doing beforehand or even why I am in one room as opposed to another. The daylight or the dark around me may seem wrong, giving me to suspect I was out of the world for a fair spell. It is always possible I am going senile, except sometimes I return to myself with chills and with a hot, chafing sensation, as if I have had too much sun, and for a good while I am sickly. On those occasions I am reminded, though for my peace of mind I wish I weren’t, of what Nahum had said about the living smoke that was “cold but burns.” Heavens, that was over fifty years ago, but still feels like yesterday!

  There are worse moments, too, when my senses come back and I hear myself blurting out the last of some syllables that stay in my mind for only a few seconds. They are nonsense, to put it mildly, or like nothing in a language of men, and my throat is always sore, which leads me to wonder if anyone listening would say I was screaming pure and simple. There are also sights that are quick to fade, like after-images from harsh light, and mercifully they fade from memory at the same rate. The words to express any details, or anything definite, about these glimpses are beyond my reach, but an impression lingers of the room and its contents making up only a small part of what is around me, and merely the foreground of a vision on a scale I instinctively shrink from, and of forms and events my mind cannot abide without shutting down. I have spent earnest thought on how to put all this more plainly, but sorry to say, I cannot do better.

  For more years than I am competent to add up, the Chief Engineer, a nice man called Williamson, has been paying me visits. He sees to it I have provisions and warm clothing, on top of what the delivery truck brings from town every two weeks. With him I always rally to put on my best face and keep my mind sharp and mention none of the unbelievable happenings, so that he will think the better of me and keep returning. He seems to feel a particular sympathy toward me in my isolation, which I gather is based on understanding and not pity. Piecing together some items from my stock of old newspapers, Williamson, it turns out, had a cousin who went on a disastrous Antarctic expedition in 1930 and retreated into his own solitary world ever since, quite possibly in an asylum. Williamson may be taking an interest in me because he considers both his cousin and me as kindred lost souls, and forgotten on the outskirts. Williamson does not bring his cousin up, and far be it from me to pry and discourage our friendship. Unspoken bonds of sympathy can be the most genuine kind.

  Now Mr. Williamson has come with an offer of stupendously more money than the pittance of relief I’ve been getting in the mail once a month, since sometime after FDR took office. The state wants to buy all my land along with all the land that will be on the shores of the reservoir when it is full, and save it as forest. I should jump at the chance to get away from here, but am so rooted on this property where I have lived for eighty-some years, and which has been in my family since before the Revolution. I ought to start packing today, but am too muddled now to stand up and know the first thing to do. Mr. Williamson never ceases to be patient with me, though in light of how the state has been operating around here, I will be forcibly removed sooner or later. For God’s sake, let it be sooner, before the color takes too much of me!

  The Gardner place and part of the Blasted Heath have been under the restless water for several months already, but that has been of no help. I am being hounded with what feels like renewed purpose, as if I cannot be allowed to escape and reveal what I have learned. The thing had been planted like a mustard seed in my mind for ages, and at leisure has been coming into its own. If the pressure of fathoms does deter the awful smoke from exiting the well, it can, to as good effect, draw me to it, the way an angler plays out more or less line as he sees fit after hooking his dinner. Williamson informs me with some concern that when he has knocked on my door recently, I have not been home. He does not look reassured as I shrug off his worry and invent excuses about picking apples in my back lot or riding into town with the postman.

  The truth is, I have been finding myself out of doors, a fair distance from home, with no inkling of how I came to be there. It is like a gross worsening of those spells from which I would revive somewhere in the house, and the chills and that chafing, sunburnt sensation also occur every time, along with a sickening notion that a great bite has been snapped out of me, although I can discover no bodily wounds. Sometimes I end up in the woods, or else in the middle of the Blasted Heath, where I have to fight off my panic, not least because I have been breathing in that damned unholy dust. Without fail, I am led during these episodes toward the reservoir.

  I was faring poorly when Mr. Williamson was here this morning, or was it yesterday morning? He got around to the usual topic of selling out to the government before push came to shove, and my feeble nod when I gave my assent left him tongue-tied a second, and he blanched at how I nodded and shook my head and whispered yes or no in reply to his next questions. Shaken as he appeared at my sudden frailty, he said nothing more about it after he asked if I was well and remarked on my gray complexion, and I groaned and had to hide my face in my hands. Once I took charge of myself again, he said he was sorry that preparing the paperwork for the transfer would take a few days, and wanted to know if there was anything he could do for me in the meantime. I did not have it in me to express any sensible wishes, either in my mind or with my voice.

  We shook hands, and I watched his black Packard raise dust down the Main Road. Next thing I knew, I was standing at the edge of the reservoir, and what restored my faculties might have been the cold water sloshing over my shoes and soaking my feet. The crust of gray powder and the dead mud underneath it were sliding into the water and bearing me with them, and I had a scant instant to right my balance and twist free. Sluggish as I was, I made tracks homeward as if death almighty was nipping at my heels, which it truly was, and I was ready to drop from exhaustion when at long last I hobbled onto my doorstep.

  I pray to God I will still be here when Williamson comes back with the sales papers, though I cannot credit that the thing with its hook in me comes from a place where God exerts any influence.

  That was the last line. Academic whether he had written no more, or sheets were missing. I blinked and stretched the kink out of my upper spine, which transported me from ancestral cozy farmhouse to modern wreckage, where rain cascaded down the flue and pattered across the roof. Through the distorting lens of meandering, repetitive prose by an unschooled rustic, out of his depth and going to pieces under stress, I could still vividly appreciate the stoicism, the self-reliance, the blend of stolidity and resilience in this extinct Yankee archetype. Making me all the sadder to conclude that his must have been the bones mired beside the well, among the geese and deer.

  This journal of decline was even more poignant for lacking a signature. Foregoing text may have introduced his name, or subsequent text may have entreated Mr. Williamson or posterity in general to remember it. And a heedless squatter may have consigned that name to the ashes in the hearth, or let it fuse with the sodden, moldy mess on the floor. I tightly rolled the manuscript and tried flipping over some of the crusty postcards and monthly statements with it, to ferret out any legible reference to the addressee, but in my hands was the one item that wasn’t glued to the festering tabletop.

  Frustrating, yes. Was I stymied? Not quite. Planted one tentative foot in front of the other and dared take one more pace, and the trunk was in reach. I heard no groan or split of floorboards. Held my breath and swung wide the creaking lid by its sprung lock plate, which protruded like a dislocated arm. A more distilled whiff of corruption made my eyes water, and when I squeezed the tears away I was peering down at tintype portraits of a bearded man and chinless woman under cracked glass in gilt oval frames, and a photo album in leatherbound cardboa
rd cover warped into drastic corrugations, and jumbled Sunday garments with streaks of black mold on white fabric, and white mildew on black fabric. Callous trespassers, perhaps over decades, had rifled through these keepsakes and must have scattered much else, for the trunk was half empty. Was I gawking at the face of the anonymous author, at his wife, at his one decent suit?

  With a fingertip I flipped back the cover of the photo album, in last-ditch search for captions and inscriptions. My retinas had absorbed nothing beyond the palsied, violet “To A. P.” across an invitation-size envelope on top of the first black page of bleached-out pictures, when a prolonged scream from somewhere almost sent me scrambling. The prospect of ambush at the door cowed me into an indecisive crouch, in semi-pirouette. Impossible to localize the outcry because of a bewildering muffled or stifled quality, for which mucus or confinement or infirmity were as likely responsible as distance. Couldn’t even gauge if it expressed anger, fear, or pain, none of it necessarily directed at me, but the implied message about my well-being was unmistakable. The squatter, or whatever had clumsily stalked me down by the cove in August, was coming home, and I didn’t want to be intercepted out on the Blasted Heath, let alone trapped in here. Did I have minutes or seconds? Enough, anyway, for more than a craven retreat? Camcorder and plastic satchel were hanging idle off my shoulder, bluntly testifying to my limited presence of mind. To live with myself, I had to decide, on the spur of the instant, did I dare whip out camcorder for a token sweep of the premises, or go straight to stuffing the satchel with A. P.’s relics?

  Even that choice died in the making. The thump of some soft, wet mass against squeaky metal arrested everything in me apart from my loud, racing heart. Whatever was out there had already erased the buffer zone between us, and the yielding sound of its flesh connoted nothing so straightforward as a homeless person. Not anymore, at least. And where was it? Not at door or windows, though I should have reckoned with a back entrance hidden by the remnant stairwell. Devoted my attention to catching telltale shadows and rustlings from that direction, till the detail recurred to me of squelching body’s impact upon metal. What could that involve except the bulkhead? And while I’d been all eyes and ears, a foul scent had blossomed around me as if a coffin had popped open. I drew convulsive breath and gagged at lungs full of putrescence as another inhumanly prolonged, inhumanly expressive scream assaulted me from underfoot. Did the source of the stench prefer dwelling in the cellar, or was it hatching some stratagem against me? Was it screaming to rout me, or to summon help?

  The table and chair had blocked the rubbish from accumulating in several spots, where loose floorboards still showed. Through the gap between them erupted a pallid bluish glow, like that of Lucinda’s water when it broke or the meteor samples in 1882 or the anomaly in the submerged well. And something must have been feeling its way along the basement ceiling, because particles of plaster were coming loose beneath the floor and clattering like sleet.

  The screaming ceased, and something metal thrust up amidst the glow between the floorboards, inches from my shoes. Before it slowly sank from view, a sunburst-shaped stain halfway along its shaft jogged my memory. Here was the saw with which Wil had mangled himself on the path to the reservoir, and which had vanished before I’d fled from the reservoir shore. That was when my self-control collapsed. Minus souvenirs or footage, I careened out of the house, into the drizzle, toward the barbed-wire fence.

  With more haste than care, and without stopping first, I pushed down on the top wire, but misgauged the midway point between knots, one of which punctured skin at the base of my thumb. Shit! After hopping over, I paused to squeeze out blood and swaddled handkerchief around the gash, and whenever tetanus crossed my mind, or worse, the gray powder, I stumbled to another halt and expelled more dollops of potentially tainted blood.

  Despite so much going wrong, luck hadn’t entirely deserted me. My footprints in the Blasted Heath had held their shape and led me to the yellow trail. If the thing in the cellar had been signaling for an ally, I staggered and loped from gray wasteland to matted wilderness to the parking lot without any signs of it. I headed straight for the car. No profit in chatting with the rangers again. And even if I hadn’t seen it face to face, I’d been confronted all too vividly with the long-term effect of drinking from the reservoir.

  23

  Scrounged my inelegant excuse for supper from the freezer. Veggie burgers, sweet potato French fries. To get eating out of the way ASAP before I set about blurring today’s additions to my list of shame via single-malt and basic rocking out. Blasting The Who and Bevis Frond and The Stooges instead of brooding over failures to shoot video, and fill my satchel, and observe what had actually happened to the squatter, and jump a fence without jabbing ghastly infection into my bloodstream. On top of bungling every opportunity in the last three months to avert the looming crisis. Toyed with smoothing rough mental edges in earnest by scraping together another toke from my vestigial stash. Was moseying toward the baggie in my socks drawer when the blinking red of answering machine snagged me in passing. Stop the music! Jesus, I couldn’t pull one right move, could I? Innocent bid to soothe my psyche with drink and decibels had blotted out what might have been Herb reporting in, maybe with City Hall thugs at his heels. I fought to overrule my McClelland’s buzz and the ringing in my ears and hit playback, and then the world turned upside-down. It was Wil.

  “Jeff, were you here today? Or when?” Each gurgling, raspy word seemed to struggle laboriously past his lips. “Where are you? Can’t talk anymore after this. Bones all coming loose. It made me accept Morgan, you know. And then it got me. Dissolving from inside. Not myself anymore. Can see someplace all flux and ripples and folding. No eyes to see with here. Nothing with eyes here, ever. Lucinda, don’t do that! Stop it! Won’t work!” End of final message.

  In my subpar condition, had to sit down before the emotional crosscurrents floored me. Lucinda was home? Applying Occam’s razor for want of better tools, much more sensible to lump her among Wil’s patently hallucinatory experiences of “flux and ripples,” et cetera. But wherever his wife was, Wil had been relatively lucid and had been reaching through his torment toward me while I’d been selfishly immersed in Iggy Pop belting out “Raw Power.” Another wretched fumble I’d never live down! And my levy of guilt burst under pressure from the related question, How many days since my best and only friend had even rated a thought? Worse, I’d written him off as deceased, and here he was valiantly clinging to sentient life, without an ounce of help from me.

  No, get a grip, letting the tears flow while under Scotch influence would sideline me for the evening. Had to rally, and I cross-examined myself, So why was the onus for Wil’s slow, lonely expiration wholly on me? Began seeing red on considering the thousandfold victims like Wil who might have been shepherded out of harm’s way if city priorities had ever transcended property values and “budgetary responsibility.” My every stab at “working within the system?” Deflected and belittled, or outright sabotaged. With the opaque threat of violence hanging over me for the duration.

  Damned if I wasn’t going to lurch off the sofa and phone Wil and start making amends right this second. While dialing, I gave short shrift to my inner reprobate crossing his fingers that Wil wouldn’t pick up. For better or worse, the reprobate won. After four rings, voicemail activated. I refrained from saying anything. What could I tell Wil that I’d want the entity infesting him to hear?

  Call me feckless, but I wasn’t up for driving to Dyer Hall in my present state. Hitting the road now and then with a blood-alcohol handicap courtesy of the Aviator? A calculated risk, yes, but I had to get home, didn’t I? On the other hand, to quit that comfy home and embark logy on a grueling, probably futile errand in the dead of night? Especially when town was a hundred subjective miles away? Blatantly foolish. Enervated me to contemplate it, and besides, the room had commenced spinning at 16 rpm and could only accelerate from there.

  Tomorrow morning, refreshed and sober, I
vowed, that’s when I’d exploit Wil’s house keys again. But bed was where I belonged, with the TV to divert me from bedspin, at this ripe hour of 10 P.M. when one channel broadcast local news. Ages since I’d sampled what passed for current events in Occam. Foresaw shallower banalities than ever, thanks largely to city government’s informal chokehold on meaningful reportage. Good for a sardonic laugh, I wagered.

  No familiar faces on camera. Even the weathergirl was a sub, new hire, or intern. Merciless ailment had purged the ranks of everyone handsome, buff, slim, perky, cute, or sexy. After ads for a Connecticut casino and online dating, a portly matron who could have been Ms. Lathrop’s older sister recapped a developing story that must have aired initially when I was in the bathroom. A good thing I was lying down. In a trice I was stunned and faint, with bulging eyes and a profound tingle in my throat. This in spite of blatant amateur’s fractured reading off the teleprompter.

  “Lethal force rings out in a house of healing! In the third such incident this week, police responded to a 911 call from the Osborn Clinic in Armitage, where several women, apparently without warning, simultaneously displayed erratic and destructive behavior.” The station had tastefully pixelized the faces of patients and orderlies alike in blurry, jumpy CCTV clips. Spastic women in hospital gowns were screaming, running wild, and throwing furniture and potted palms around a solarium. Staff were out of their depth, and doing their utmost to avoid collisions and flying objects, accomplishing nothing, but standing their ground, maybe out of professional pride.

  Cops blipped from out of nowhere into the next excerpt, and their dark uniforms added salt-and-pepper contrast, and sardine-tin overcrowding, to the white-coat disarray. Then healthcare personnel disappeared, and cops were roaring at inpatients to disperse, and just as vainly clutching at elbows and hems that jerked away. One strapping lawman tried restraining someone half his size, who yanked him off his feet. He weathered a few hysterical kicks and slams in his scramble to rejoin his squad at the dumbstruck periphery.