The Wooden Sea

by Jonathan Carroll

  “I know exactly what I want to see.”

  “Really, a stegosaurus would be no problem—”

  “Skip it, Barry. You want to prove who you are? I’ll tell you what I want to see.”

  After I did, his shoulders sagged like they were silently complaining “that’s all?” But he straightened them again and said okay, follow him. He started across the parking lot toward the market.

  “And Magda will be all right?”

  “Trust me.”

  “You keep saying that. Why should I?”

  “In five minutes you’ll know why. For five minutes trust that nothing will happen to your wife.” His big open face was one you immediately felt you could trust. It was perfect for the job he’d been sent to do. You saw this guy and right off you thought, I’m in good hands. Maybe I’m in trouble, but here’s a man who looks like he can help me. I’ll trust him.

  Too bad he happened to be an alien.

  He stopped walking, turned, and looked straight at me.

  Paranoia hit like a glass of ice water thrown in my face. “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Something...” Touching his chin with three fingers he slid them back and forth as if feeling for stubble. “Something just happened here in town that matters. I don’t know what, but something important. I just felt it. It’s very strong. It’ll affect things.”

  “What?”

  He raised a hand palm up. “I don’t know what, but something... something very definitely just happened in your town that will affect things.”

  “That doesn’t help, Barry. If you traveled from your planet to here and can change time, conjure dinosaurs, bring back the dead, how come you can’t... Where are you from anyway?”

  “It would be best to express it mathematically but since that’s not your bent, I’ll say it phonetically: Hratz-Potayo.”

  “Rat’s Potato?” My gut jumped in before my head had time to think. A laugh burst out of me that sounded like a bizarre jungle bird: Yee-Yee-Yee—Caw—caw—caw. “You come from Rat’s Potato!” I couldn’t stop laughing. The name sounded so stupid—like a name from a TV show for little kids. Plus I’d reached some kind of breaking point—after all that had gone on it finally felt as if my brain was melting like hot candle wax.

  While I laughed, Barry lifted his thumb and began carefully writing with it in the air. As his finger moved, two words in thick white script appeared between us and hung there unmoving: HRATZ-POTAYO.

  “Where is that?”

  “Seen from the earth, it is behind the Crab Nebula.” “Oh. So you rats are behind the crab. That’s fitting.” I pointed to the lunatic words hanging in the air, as vivid as if they were on fire. “If it were any other time, seeing this would impress the hell out of me, Barry. But you know what I feel now? Tired. That’s all—just fucking tired. Let’s go see if you’re telling the truth.” Now I was the one who started walking toward the market, although I didn’t know if that was where we were supposed to end up.

  He hesitated. Reaching toward the white words he plucked them out of the air and put them into his pocket. “It wouldn’t be good for others to see them there like that. Who knows what they would think.”

  “Whatever. Are we going to the market?”

  “Yes. That’s what I want to show you.”

  Long before we got there I knew it was all true. I knew Barry was the real thing. I knew that what I was about to see was impossible but I was about to see it anyway. I could already hear it. And what I heard half the Western world would have killed to hear.

  I stopped and looked at the spaceman, but he continued walking. Without looking at me he said, “Come on, you’ll hear better inside.”

  At the market door he pushed it in. The moment the door swung open the music swelled louder and I almost swooned. I could not believe it. You know instantly when music is live compared to when it’s on the radio or piped-in shit. The hyped-up rawness of it, the blare and bang of too much guitar, feedback wrecking your ears, or drums that push everything else out. This was live and it was them because now I could see them. And Jesus Christ, it was them.

  I had been in the market a thousand times before but it had never looked like this. Where aisles of food should have been, a stage had been erected in the middle of the store. But nothing professional—you must understand that. Nothing glitzy, expensive or in any way appropriate to who was standing on that stage playing live for only Barry and me.

  They saw us moving toward them but none reacted with anymore than a shrug or a hi-how-you-doin’ head tip. Their indifference said we weren’t interrupting them because they were used to an audience.

  John Lennon sat on the edge of the small stage with a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and a Rickenbacker guitar held in his hands. He looked twenty-five years old, maybe thirty—they all did. Paul stood on the other side of the stage next to George. The two of them were weaving back and forth, goofing around. Paul sang a lousy version of “I Feel Fine.” At the back of the stage Ringo played the drums with eyes closed. “I Feel Fine” performed badly by the Beatles. Bad or not, it was the boys and their sound was un-fucking-mistakable.

  That’s what I’d asked Barry to show me and that’s what this was a quarter of a century after the group broke up, twenty years after Lennon was murdered. For a million reasons I wanted to reach out and touch Lennon’s arm—only that—but I resisted the impulse. He must have sensed my excitement and awe though because he abruptly looked up and wiggled his eyebrows at me. It was the same expression he’d used in a famous TV interview he’d done after the group broke up. I had the interview on tape at home. I owned way too much Beatles memorabilia because no one, not no one, was ever better than they were.

  The Beatles, dead and alive, together again in the Crane’s View supermarket. Brought to you courtesy of the Rat’s Potato, that friendly little planet just behind the Crab Nebula.

  On finishing their own song, the Fab Four started playing the Zombies’ “She’s Not There,” another of my all-time favorites. It was a song in the McCabe Music Hall of Fame. But why were the Beatles doing a cover version of this one? None of them said anything—just moved from one tune right into the other. I sighed like a boy who’s fallen in love. I didn’t even have to die to know that this was heaven.

  As they reached my favorite part of that eerie song, Barry leaned over and asked, “Would you like to talk about it now or wait till the music is over?”

  “Now. If I stay any longer I’m never going to leave here.”

  “Okay, let’s go back outside. As long as we remain here they’ll continue to play.”

  The Beatles were playing only for us? I moaned, “Is that true?”

  “Yes. They’re what you wanted, Mr. McCabe, so as long as you stick around here they’ll just keep playing your favorite songs.

  “Help!” My head flooded with songs I loved – “For No One,” “Concrete and Clay,” “Walk Away Renee”... They would have played those too, I suppose. Just like I said—Heaven. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” On the way out I didn’t risk looking back over my shoulder. But for the first time in my life I understood why Lot’s wife wasn’t so stupid after all.

  Out in the sunglare and heat of the parking lot things were quiet again. All the music was gone and I knew that meant they were gone too. If we’d walked back into the store it would only be a market again—cans of Campbell’s soup and frozen legs of lamb back where they belonged, having replaced my dream come true for a little while.

  Two crummy green lawn chairs had appeared in the middle of the parking lot. On the seats were large Styrofoam cups. Somewhere nearby a person was cutting wood with a chainsaw. The sound and smell were on the air. A dog barked wildly– row-row-row—like it was going out of its mind. A car pulled into the lot. Someone whistled high and long. A woman’s voice said hello. The day was wide-awake and coming downstairs for breakfast.

  Coffee was in the Styrofoam cups, perfectly sugared and boiling hot—exactly t
he way I liked it. None of this surprised me. Barry was turning out to be a dandy host. Sitting on the edge of the cheap metal chair, I stared across the lot at the parked ambulance. For a few moments my heart started doing its weird jumpy dance again. Blowing on the steaming drink, I took it in quick careful sips. “All right, story time. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “You’re not very religious are you, Mr. McCabe?” “No, but I believe He’s there. I believe that wholeheartedly.” “Oh, He is, but not in the way you think. Would you like me to describe this situation in detail or would you prefer an abridged version?” He was grinning when he said it but I knew he was serious.

  “Abridged, Barry. I’ve got Attention Deficit Disorder. I have a hard time sitting still very long.”

  “All right. Then the best way for me to begin is to quote something to you from the Bible:

  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.

  “That is a passage from Genesis, a word that literally means ‘a coming into existence.’ That first chapter of your Bible is where the creation of the universe is accounted for.”

  “The universe? I thought Genesis only described the creation of life on earth.”

  “Noooo, it is the origin of everything—every planet, every being, every cell. But mankind is predictably vain and sees things only in relation to itself. The most important thing in all this is that symbolic seventh day when God had finished His work and rested. That day is now coming to an end, Mr. McCabe. We’re getting very close to the time when He will wake again, so to speak, and reassert his authority.”

  “Armageddon?” I asked the question in the same tone I once asked an emergency room doctor, “Am I dying?” after having been shot and feeling myself dropping steep into a coma.

  This pleased Barry. Having just heard the most frightening word in the human vocabulary, he chuckled and took a long swallow of coffee. “No, it’s much more interesting than that. For a moment think of God as a bear.”

  I looked up at two slivers of silvery airplanes moving in different directions across the cobalt blue sky drawing separate vapor trails behind them. “Did you say a bear?”

  “Yes I did. Imagine God as a bear that, having created the heavens and the earth, went into hibernation for billions and billions of years. Time out of mind.”

  The idea was so mind-boggling that for the moment all I could do was feebly repeat him. “Billions of years.”

  “Right, but before He went to sleep He arranged to be awakened at a certain point.”

  I blew up. “Get the hell out of here! You’re saying God-the-bear made all this and then went to sleep? But not before arranging a wake-up call? Who did He call, the front desk?”

  Barry put his cup between his thighs and brushed off his hands. His till-that-moment-friendly voice turned red-hot sarcastic. “You can be snide and waste time or you can listen, Mr. McCabe. I would advise listening because it may end up saving your wife’s life.”

  Go on.

  “The brilliance of God’s plan was in its simplicity.” He stretched out both arms and opened them as if showing the size of a big fish he’d caught. “He created it all—the universe, you, me... everything, and then rested. But before He did, He arranged to be awakened by all of us, in concert. He gave us the knowledge and the resources as well as sufficient time to develop individually so that together we could build a device that would awaken God when it was time.”

  “The whole universe works together to make a machine that will wake God up?”

  “Overly simplified, yes. And He’s been remarkably benevolent about it, considering the differences between species. Every civilization has developed at its own speed. Some are eons further along than others are, but that makes no difference. When it comes to this, no matter where a culture may be on the evolutionary scale without every one of them working together, this world machine cannot be created. And that is the essential thing. It is the only thing.”

  “It sounds like the Tower of Babel.”

  Picking up the cup he began breaking off small pieces of the plastic around the rim and dropping them inside what was left. “That’s true, but on an empyrean scale.”

  “Empyrean. What does that mean? Forget it, doesn’t matter. Barry, let’s get to the point: I know it’s egotistical but what does it all have to do with me? How come my life has turned into a Salvador Dali painting?”

  “Every civilization in the cosmos has a specific task to perform in this undertaking. Think of us all as workers in a factory creating one single product. Many have already accomplished what they were supposed to do. Some of it took place billions of years ago, some five minutes ago. It is happening all the time—piece by piece the world machine is being assembled.”

  “Why don’t you call it the God Machine?”

  “Because worlds are assembling it, Mr. McCabe, not God. That is the whole point of the endeavor.”

  “Why me? What does a cop in Crane’s View, New York, have to do with the World Machine?”

  He abruptly looked away. “We don’t know.”

  The next thing I knew, coffee was all over my hand and my fingers were stuck through my white plastic cup. “You don’t know?”

  He sighed like an old man who’s just taken off too-tight shoes. It was a while before he spoke again. “We don’t know what needs to be done on Earth. We have only been able to figure out approximately who must do it.”

  “Me?”

  “No. For a while we thought so and that’s why we permitted Astopel to manipulate your life. That’s why the old dog appeared, Antonya’s notebooks, why we allowed you to experience your future ... all that. We thought experiencing all those things would help stimulate you to do whatever was necessary. But we were wrong. You’re not the one, Mr. McCabe. We know that now. But time is growing very short and we must find the correct person quickly.”

  “Because of the Millennium?”

  He dismissed the question with a flick of the wrist. “The Millennium was Earth’s party, no one else’s. Work on the World Machine has been going on far longer than two thousand years. But every piece must be finished and incorporated within a specific time. Mankind has been given millions of years to complete theirs. Unfortunately they haven’t yet and now there are increasing concerns about a delay. That cannot happen. All of this work functions within a rigid schedule, although in Earth-time it wouldn’t sound rigid at all.”

  “What is your job on Rat’s Potato?”

  “Hratz-Potayo. We’re administrators and troubleshooters. Our task is to make sure that every component comes in completed and on time. We walk around the factory with clipboards checking things off as they arrive and are attached to the overall structure. When something goes wrong or there are mistakes it is our responsibility to rectify them.”

  “Has this sort of thing happened before?” “More times than there are molecules in a peppermint.”

  “All this makes me feel pretty small, Barry. What could I possibly do to help build the World Machine?”

  “Die.”

  Lions for Breakfast

  We were silent driving out of the parking lot and back onto the street. Barry had told the truth—nothing changed between the time we left the ambulance and when we were back moving again-toward the hospital. Although she appeared unconscious Magda looked more peaceful than before, as if a weight had been lifted from her. I suppose it had. I only wanted to sit there and watch her. Thinking about how much she meant to me, I knew she would be all right now. In a way that same weight had been lifted from me too and to my great surprise I felt relatively calm. I knew I had done the right thing although it meant the end of everything I loved and hoped for.

  Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane’s not there. No matter where you look you can’t find it on the sky, although the sound is st
ill there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you’re thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I’d been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky. I told this analogy to Magda after we married and she said it sounded like a country-western song. I said fuck you and she said please do.

  “Where’s George and Pauline?”

  “Behind us, just like before.”

  “What will happen now when the doctors examine Magda?”

  “Find that she has dangerously low blood pressure and recommend she take a variety of medications.”

  “When will this... thing start to affect me?”

  “In a few days you’ll begin having headaches. The situation will deteriorate quickly. It won’t take long.”

  “If you’re able to give me her brain tumor, why can’t you find the person who’s got to make the piece for the machine?”

  “We tried, believe me. But in essence we can only manipulate what already is or was, Mr. McCabe. For example Antonya Corando was a very good artist who had already begun taking heroin. She would have died within six months. We showed you your future as it would happen if you continued living the way you do. But to be frank, we haven’t been able to comprehend a great many things on Earth. There are huge gaps in our understanding. By interfering in your life, Astopel showed us our limitations.”

  “So that means you might be wrong with this too—maybe giving me her tumor won’t work and she’ll still die of it.”

  “Possible but unlikely. I can guarantee that if you were both given CAT scans now, Magda would not have a tumor and you would.”

  “But you’re still not one hundred percent sure of the final outcome?”

  “No, and I would be lying to you if I said so. We’re still trying to understand how systems work on this planet, but the overriding problem is we simply don’t have enough time now to figure them out.”

  “How did old Floon get back here?”