Overland

by Graham Rawle

The man nodded, backing away.

  “Well, not actually God, but you know what I mean. God as in Godfrey. George Godfrey.”

  “Well, I gotta get going.”

  “You’re good, I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t help me none.”

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “I’ll ask someone else.”

  “You do that.”

  “I don’t even want the factory. I want what’s above it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Overland.”

  “Overland?”

  George checked himself. He realized he had breached the security protocol. He lowered his voice again. “Overland. You know. A little burlap, a little green paint.”

  “Green paint? Oh, wait a minute. Overland. Now I got you. I didn’t know what you were on about. Overland is right around the corner.”

  “Well why didn’t you say so?”

  “You confused me talking about an airplane factory.”

  “No, it’s Overland I want.”

  “Just around the corner. Go past the library and it’s a couple of blocks up on your left. There’s a coffee shop on the corner, right across the street from the movie theater.” The man was illustrating his directions with hand gestures.

  George followed the shapes and patterns, nodding.

  “Take a left there and you’ll see it. Overland. It’s a big place. You can’t miss it.”

  George was relieved. “I don’t know why I couldn’t find it. Completely lost my bearings. I was expecting it to be on a different level. You know, much higher up than this.”

  To George’s eye, some of the buildings and storefronts were beginning to look distinctly phony, which suggested he was on the verge of crossing, or had already crossed, the threshold into Overland. The border between the real world and the one he had created blended so seamlessly that even he, its creator, was unable to spot the point of transition. He should have been proud, but instead he felt disoriented and uneasy, once more caught up in a shifting no man’s land between realities.

  A little farther along, these doubts were laid to rest when he saw the familiar architecture of the Overland Public Library with its impressive brass clock hanging outside—the workings of which, he noted, must have recently been mended since it now showed the correct time: two minutes to five.

  A workman with a big canister contraption on his back like an aqualung was spraying the grass in front of the library building. George vaguely recognized him as one of the Overland crew. He called out to him.

  “Your paint’s too thin.”

  The man turned. “What?”

  “Your paint’s too thin. There’s no color coming out.”

  The man smirked. “Wise guy.”

  George smiled weakly, unsure what he meant. His attention shifted to the impressively authentic-looking street lamp at his shoulder. It seemed taller than the ones he had designed for Overland. And now that he looked more closely, the library building was taller too. Much taller.

  Nearby, a man was getting into his car. George caught him.

  “Am I in the right place? Overland?”

  “Overland? Right around the corner.”

  “Oh. So I’m not there yet?”

  “No, not yet. Right around the corner. Take a left at the cafe.”

  George saw the cafe up ahead on the corner of the block and, across the street, the movie theater mentioned to him as a landmark, which, coincidentally, was actually called the Landmark.

  Painted on the window of the Black Cat Cafe was a silhouette of a cat: spine arched and hackles raised. There were signs offering hot wieners or hamburgers for a nickel, and quick lunches at twenty-five, thirty and thirty-five cents. George was hungry, and debating whether to step inside for a snack. He sauntered by, glancing in through the window to check it out.

  Inside, a handful of diners, caught between mealtimes in a no man’s land of their own, were taking a late lunch—or an early dinner. A fat guy in a cowboy hat, unconcerned about such formalities, was tucking into an ice-cream sundae with a long spoon. In the open doorway, a woman in a white uniform with a little folded paper cap stared out. George assumed she was a waitress, but it occurred to him that in another context, a hospital or a doctor’s surgery, the same outfit would squarely identify her as a nurse.

  On the table of one of the empty window booths, he noticed someone’s purse had been left unattended. Box-shaped and covered in red tartan—he’d seen the bag somewhere before, or one just like it, but couldn’t think where.

  The cafe looked dead; George decided to wait until he was back in Overland.

  THIRTY-SIX

  TWO BLOCKS FROM the Black Cat was Kaestner’s, a ladies’ dress store. Smart red awnings jutted out over each of the windows like scarlet salutes. A sales assistant emerged carrying a broken display mannequin, which she stood out on the sidewalk next to some cardboard boxes—perhaps leaving it there for the garbage truck to collect.

  Across the street, George had paused at the corner to get his bearings. By now he was convinced he was back in Overland because a few minutes ago he had spotted the Resident tennis couple, racquets at the ready, no doubt on their way to play a match. Just to be sure it was them, he’d waved and the woman had waved back, albeit a little hesitantly. Then he spotted Kaiser’s drugstore with the mannequin standing outside. He was pleased to see that the red awnings he had suggested had been installed, but confused why the name had been repainted. Kaestner’s? Wasn’t it supposed to be called Kaiser’s? Oh well, same difference.

  Reassured, he began to relax. Everything now seemed harmonious and serene. Overland as he remembered it, the pedestrians all busily doing nothing as per the Resident program. Many activities seemed well choreographed: street sweeping, taxi driving, window shopping, but others seemed aimless and uncoordinated. Three elderly men sat motionless on a bench. George couldn’t help but say something.

  “Come on, guys. If you’re going to sit there like a set of dummies, we might as well use dummies. They’re a whole lot cheaper to feed, you know.”

  The men turned to face him, unsure what he meant.

  “Come on. Do something. Move around, take a stroll. You’ve got to keep moving.”

  Confused, the men got reluctantly to their feet.

  Farther along, a man wearing a sandwich board advertising fast service-while-u-wait photos was standing on the corner.

  “Well I guess I made it,” said George.

  The man looked George up and down. “I guess you did at that.”

  George let out a contented sigh. “Home.”

  The man repeated the word, savoring the concept with equal relish: “Home.” He nodded slowly, letting the idea settle. “You been away for a while?”

  “Seems like years,” said George.

  “Good to be back, I expect?”

  “It looks different. I recognized the drugstore right away, but I don’t remember any of this—the dry-cleaners and the print shop. Who built those?”

  “I don’t know, bud. I’m not from round here. Still, things change, I guess. That’s progress.”

  “Well, I must say it’s all looking very authentic.” George spotted a sign over one of the stores. “Schumacher—that’s good. It means shoemaker. I bet that was Jimmy’s idea.”

  The man smiled affably.

  “Jimmy Shepherd,” George explained.

  The man nodded. The name meant nothing to him.

  A woman pushing a baby buggy was heading towards them. Was it the woman from Overland? George wasn’t sure. What was her name? Gladys? She met his eye and smiled. As she drew nearer, she spoke.

  “Another beautiful day.”

  George smiled. “What have we done to deserve it?”

  “Beats me.”

  “How’s the baby today?”

  She paused, straightening the baby’s cover. “He’s fine. Sleeping, thank heavens.”

  George took a peek in the buggy.

  “Oh, he’s not so bad. I expected to s
ee … you know, a big ugly mug like Edward G. Robinson.”

  “Why would you expect that, mister?”

  George was wrong-footed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean … I thought you said he looked like …”

  She was clearly offended. George tried to make amends.

  “My mistake. Well … er … congratulations. Beautiful baby.”

  The woman huffily steered her buggy around him and left.

  Further along the street, he paused outside a furniture store, his hand pressed flat against the building’s facade. He slapped the stonework a couple of times, feeling its solid coldness against his palm.

  “I can’t figure where Burbank ends and Overland begins.” He was not addressing anyone in particular, but a passer-by responded.

  “You looking for Overland?” she said.

  “Isn’t this Overland?”

  “Almost. It’s right behind you.”

  George turned to see a large hardware store occupying a flat-fronted four-story building. There were two wide display windows at street level, above them, a sign painted in chunky white three-dimensional letters: OVERLAND & SONS Hardware.

  “No. No. No. That’s not what I mean. Not a store. I mean Overland the place.”

  He turned, but the woman had gone.

  He went inside anyway; he wasn’t sure why. He’d come to a dead end.

  Store clerks wearing matching striped neckties and brown coveralls with a smart red pocket badge were busy attending to customers from behind glass-fronted display cases. George looked around.

  Overland & Sons offered a wide range of home-improvement tools and supplies—everything the professional builder or home handyman might need. Gallon cans of Monad Non-skid Rubberized Spar Varnish had been stacked in a pyramid in the middle of the gleaming wood floor, itself presumably coated with the product. There were rakes, hoes, shovels and other long-handled tools that George recognized but to which he could not put a name. Hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches of all shapes and sizes were set out in neat rows. On a pegboard wall unit, a family of paintbrushes stood to attention, ranging from the smallest baby brush to the big fat daddy of them all.

  Every inch of the Overland store’s wall space had been used to display or promote its merchandise. Watering cans and pails hung from a beam above the counter and in the corner there were rolls of linoleum standing on end. Above a display stand featuring a fanned spectrum of color swatches there was a sign: Paradise Paints.

  A sales clerk approached, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically.

  “Welcome to Overland, sir. What can I help you with today?”

  George knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere, but he needed to have his say. “This isn’t what I meant. This isn’t what I meant at all. This is just a store. It’s not Overland, it’s just a store called Overland.”

  The sales assistant was unsure how to respond.

  George exited, frustrated.

  To the side of the store was a vacant lot used for parking. George wandered round to study the building from another angle and saw that high up on its side wall, perhaps fifty feet above the ground, was a giant billboard sign bearing a pictorial depiction of Paradise. It was another advertisement, its headline inviting the viewer to Join the Paradise Club—A Little Piece of Heaven on Earth. What, or where, the Paradise Club was had not been made clear, but the idyll portrayed in the poster made membership an extremely attractive proposition.

  A boardwalk path led the viewer into the picture and out onto a jetty extending into a clear cerulean lake bordered by exotic flowers, luxuriant trees and shrubs. Rare birds sporting implausibly vibrant color combinations perched proudly among the branches.

  At the water’s edge, a pair of vacant reclining chairs faced the tranquil waters of the lake, offering their prospective occupants the opportunity to relax and reflect on the enormity of their good fortune. A fishing rod had been set up on a makeshift stand at the lake’s edge, but the fish here were so eager to be caught that they were leaping high above the surface to offer themselves up to anyone who might show even the slightest interest. The keen look in their eyes seemed to say, Just show me the basket, my friend, and I’ll jump straight in.

  Beyond the lake, winding roads traversed gently rolling hills of Arcadian splendor. These were flanked on one side by distant mountains depicted as a series of craggy shards painted in cool lilac and white. The sky was striped with horizontal ribbons of orange, yellow, pink and turquoise, suggesting a setting sun—the perfect end to a perfect day. George recognized the scene at once as a depiction of the lakeside at Overland—an interpretation, admittedly, somewhat glamorized by the scenic artist, but one with which he could immediately identify.

  Accommodation in Paradise, as in Overland, was offered in the form of a white picture-book cottage with a cherry-red roof, which sat on the water’s edge with a little rowing boat moored alongside it. A couple of pink flamingos waded in the shallows nearby. Flamingos? Too much? The artist did not think so. He used everything at his disposal to enhance his vision of a perfect world, drenching it in sumptuous hues: scarlet and coral pink, buttery yellows and zesty greens. Here, even the shadows, depicted in velvety indigos and mauves, were rich with color. It seemed that all of the blackness had been removed from this world, and correspondingly from the color palette used to portray it. As a testament to this, in the picture’s foreground were three cans of colored paint with brushes sticking out of them. Their labels proudly proclaimed that they were Paradise Paints.

  Responsible for the image of Paradise was a man in white painter’s coveralls clinging to a tall, thin ladder that extended all the way up to the surface of the lake, at a height somewhere equivalent to the building’s third floor. Here, with paintbrush in hand, he was adding flecks of vermilion to a bird’s plumage. He glanced down at George momentarily before returning to the picture. It was a sunny day so the man’s shadow, and the shadow from his ladder, fell as heavy black shapes across the billboard, separating him from the picture he was painting—a three-dimensional being, forced by the laws of geometry to exist outside of the two-dimensional world he had created.

  But must it be necessarily so? Couldn’t there be a way to enter that 2-D world, thereby lending it that third dimension and so bringing it to life? Major Lund, the country’s leading expert on this sort of thing, had always insisted that a flat, painted image could be made convincingly three-dimensional so long as the viewer was prepared to bring that extra dimension to it. What was to stop George stepping though the painted surface into the alternative world of Overland? Access might be gained more through faith, a willingness to challenge the constraints of Euclidean geometry and its three-parameters model of the physical universe. Perhaps the painted picture was the portal through which one must pass in order to experience the world of Overland as a three-dimensional space.

  George was prepared to make that leap of faith. Besides, it seemed far more than coincidence that the picture was painted on this particular building. The faded letters of the word Overland even appeared on the brickwork above the billboard picture. It was, he thought, not just a sign; it was A Sign. George waited and watched from the shade of an adjacent store on the other side of the parking lot.

  Eventually, the painter began to climb slowly down the ladder. Once on terra firma he began to sort through the paints and brushes scattered on a ground sheet at the base of the ladder. He crouched, pouring the contents from one can into another and stirring the resulting mixture with a short stick. He added a little from a smaller tin, clearly in the process of creating a specifically required color. George kept his distance, slyly observing the alchemist at work.

  The painter shook a couple of tins that appeared to be empty and then stood looking round him before finally strolling over to the Overland hardware store, presumably in search of fresh supplies. George anticipated he would be thus occupied for some time and seized his opportunity, heading surreptitiously over to the ladder.

  He looked up with trepidation,
daunted by the enormous height he must climb. Stepping onto the first rung, he began his ascent.

  The sound of an airplane overhead drew Queenie’s attention. She was on the street outside the Black Cat looking up at the narrow band of blue sky between the buildings. She shielded her eyes from the bright sun, but was unable to locate the plane’s outline. She started to walk, keeping her eyes on the sky rather than on her feet, but when she eventually did look down, she saw that her feet were not moving, as though she were being carried. Before long she found herself in a pretty country town shimmering with quiet bucolic charm.

  From a speaker somewhere, the romantic lilt of the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra with Helen O’Connell singing “Embraceable You” was carried on the breeze, the seductive melody surfing over the smooth foxtrot tempo.

  Residents ambled slowly by: a couple in tennis whites, a man carrying a stepladder on his shoulder, a woman riding a bicycle: people leisurely going about their daily business. No one was in too much of a hurry. They looked relaxed, smiling cheerfully in Queenie’s direction, fully accepting her as a Resident. She was one of them now.

  Finally, she spotted the plane, the sun glinting off its silvery fuselage. She waved up at it. From a hole in its side came first one then a whole stream of parachutists, their chutes quickly filling with air. Hanging like a string of bubbles from a child’s soapy wand, the troopers sank slowly towards the ground. Her gaze fixed on one of them who seemed to be steering himself away from the group and directly towards her. As he drew nearer, she could make him out in more detail, his hands gripping the risers above his head, legs slightly bent, knees and feet together. She held her arms aloft in welcome, but at the last minute the wind whipped him off course, carrying him over the roadside fence, where he landed in a field of sheep.

  She quickly climbed over the fence to the field where she found her hero lying on his back. The wind flapping at his chute threatened to drag him away from her, but she caught hold of him and lifted him up. He was a dummy, a two-foot rubber replica of a parachutist, yet she didn’t seem in the least bit disenchanted.