“I can read.” She pulled my arm. “Come on.”
Trespassing, I was trespassing for the first time in my life. Kate handed me her shoulder bag, then clambered over the stile. Her summery yellow shirt came untucked, I saw a pink flash of skin. “Hand me the bag, would you, Jeremiah? And hurry.”
I followed her, though ceasing the running had commenced my trembles anew. It took hard concentration to close my hand around the bar at the top of the gate and hold it firmly for the time it took to vault over.
Already Kate had dashed on, and I hobbled after with my stomach clenching like a boxer’s fist. A wave of hunger swept over me, as intensely as if my lungs felt a lack of air. Could that short race have exhausted all the food I’d devoured that day?
“Over here,” Kate called from ahead. “Hurry.”
Yet I paused. What had become of me, that I had allowed circumstances to decay this far? Where was my judicial prudence, my disciplined mind? I bent at the waist, gulping great breaths, and willed myself to think clearly.
There had been no demonstrations when the Lazarus Project was reawakening little sea creatures. The protests began with me. Although most people had been kind and generous, I had to give weight to the other side’s arguments. I was the one they cursed in the cathedral. I was the one the woman had insulted at the baseball game.
Carolyn was mistaken. They knew exactly who they wanted, these jackals. I was the one they hunted, I was their prey. Therefore, to take responsibility for my existence, and to protect Kate, it was my duty to act.
I straightened, my body no less gripped by spasms, but my mind clarified and purposeful. I noticed my surroundings then, the air motionless, the water still, the sailboats all nosed into their slips. Excellent. The world sometimes made such orderly sense. And it was still morning, a whole day of possibility ahead.
Kate ran back to me. “What’s the matter? We have to hide.”
“I apologize. Lead on.”
As she went before, I could hear from behind the thud of a car door slamming. It came from well up the hill, but I knew: soon they would find us. Kate hid behind a sailboat made of some sleek white material, neither wood nor metal, looking as if it could glide through the roughest waters. I ran a finger along the hull and it felt like fine china.
“What were you doing back there?” she said, staring over my shoulder. “You have no idea what these people will do if they catch you. They have no restraint.”
“Kate.” I took one of her hands. “I need your attention now.”
She came back to me then, serene, her powerful calm returning. “I’m listening.”
Here was my moment, my opportunity to avoid hurting someone by leaving, to prevent another Joan from happening. “Kate, I have tried countless times to recall what I experienced in the time I was gone. Heaven? Hell? Some place of completion or rest? There was nothing, nothing I could . . . return. No, reverse. What is the word?”
“Remember?”
“Remember, yes, thank you. Wherever I was, it is totally forgotten.”
She stood there, holding my hand, waiting for what I would say next. In her patience I felt a surpassing tenderness.
“That, my dearest friend in the here and now, is what I ask you to do for me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Forget me, Kate. As though I were a century during which you were . . . you were frozen, yes, and you awakened with a clear heart.”
She chuckled, and gave my hand a squeeze. “For such a smart guy, you can be quite a dummy.”
I drew back. “Whatever do you mean? I am trying merely to—”
“You are trying to be some kind of noble something or other, and you should just stop it. I am a big girl, I do not need rescuing by anyone. If anything—”
“But if these people are as cruel as you say—”
“Jeremiah, hear me out a second, would you? My turn?”
My body wanted to run in a hundred directions. But I concentrated, I willed it to remain still. “Please.”
“In grad school I spent a summer on a research vessel in the North Atlantic. One morning a whale approached our ship, swam right alongside, black as coal. He floated there, looking at me just like a person would, only the whale’s eye was larger than a dinner plate. After a minute he gave a sour exhale, plunged off into the rest of his day. Then I noticed the captain, standing down the rail. A tough old Scotsman. He leaned my way and said, ‘Fix it fast.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, sir?’ He poked his thumb against his forehead. ‘Fix it fast in your mind, because you may not see the likes of that again.’ ”
“I am sorry, Kate. I can’t . . . I don’t understand—”
“You are my whale, beautiful man.” She thumbed her forehead. “You are fixed in me.”
Ah, her parable. I closed my eyes, trying to collect thoughts that scattered like panicked mice. Was there any way to spare her? I could think of only one possibility. I opened my eyes and let all the world’s colors rush in, beginning and ending with her face. “I believe Carolyn was correct. We should split up. We’ll be harder to chase.”
She gave me a look, then, an expression I could not interpret. Was it joy or anguish? “Jeremiah.”
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to say your name again.” She pressed her forehead against my chest, then straightened, pointing to where the pier forked. “You take the dock over there, hide yourself in the boats till dark. I’ll go the other direction. We’ll meet at the inn, the back door, after the church bell rings nine.”
“Perfect,” I said, though I had no intention of obeying. I was their quarry, I would lure them away from her. “Excellent.”
Then she drew near, as if she knew my mind, and curled into my embrace. Kate seemed so small then, warm and close. Yet I could feel my heart pounding against her, exhaustingly fast. Her ear was right there on my chest . . . she had to know.
“Kate, I hope I have not been a . . . some kind of a . . . what is the word?” Language flailed in my mind like fish netted and dropped on a ship’s deck. “A bad thing, then. I hope I am not a bad thing that happened to you.” I pressed her hand, as if the force of my squeeze would express what words could not. “I did not ask for this. I meant no one any trouble. You, Kate, of all people. I meant you no harm.”
She leaned back to look at me. Her eyes were glistening. “Be assured, Jeremiah.” She reached up to caress my face. “You have caused me no harm.”
What a moment we shared then, holding one another, silent and still. A few seconds only, yet they were as rich as the entire time since my awakening. But there was a twitch in my face, under her hand. Then a huge tremor climbed my frame, from my toes to the sky, like the deepest shudder.
I stepped away. She stood straight, regarding me with calm. What more could I say? How might I express everything I felt? My hands leaped and jerked like injured birds, and I slapped them against my chest to keep them still. But they continued, wandering over my person, trembling, until my fingers fastened on just the thing. Yes. Yes. They wrapped around it on my jacket like an organ grinder’s monkey grasps a coin.
At that moment I heard more doors slamming. A child’s voice cried out, “Over there, I saw them go down there.”
Kate looked away, then back. “You need to hide.”
“You mean we need to hide.”
“Yes, of course.” She took my face in both her hands, and she kissed me. It was her breath I experienced more than her lips, somehow, the awareness of her living self against me. Incomparable, and then it was over. “Now go.”
It took only an instant. I yanked hard on my coat, I tore the object free, I pressed it into her palm. Peering over the hull, I saw a reporter hastening down the pier.
“A button?” Kate said. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” I answered, moving away down the dock.
The reporter reached the gate and rattled it against the lock. I knew it would not delay him long. I turned, and I ran.
My feet are like wings, they b
arely strike the dock; I hold my arms wide for balance. There, after the last sailboat, floats a dinghy as if provided by God, eight feet of aluminum with two rough oars. Not until I have clambered aboard and unknotted the line does it occur to me that I am committing a crime. I vow to make restitution if I return, but an honest man knows a dishonest deed. The irony of it: Judge Rice perpetrating a theft.
In ten pulls of the oars I am among moored sailboats, hopefully a sight no paparazzi could fail to see. To those jackals I must be like knotted string to a cat, the tease they cannot help but follow. I know the open Atlantic, my escape, lies to the north. It would be in that direction, wouldn’t it? North again, as though it were predestined. I remove my coat and toss it in the bow, then check the sky for direction. With that, I set my trusty boots against the other seat, draw hard on those oars, and begin working my way unconcealed across the harbor. I sight the rocks over my right shoulder, then face astern whilst concentrating on north, north.
Rowing calms my hands. One pull at a time I am leaving the harbor, leaving what a harbor is, leaving what harbor means. My mind navigates through harbors of all kinds that I have left, beautiful protections, quiet anchorages in the past and the here and now.
Settling into the exertion of it. Surely they’ve spotted me by now. And what is life but a little row in a small boat, every moment leaving what we know, every stroke unable to see where we are headed?
Wash of water under the hull, piercing light on the waves, briny stink of the air. I know the future, my future. Grim and inevitable, I have withstood it once I shall withstand it again. But no embrace of crushing cold this time. The rather, I feel I could dissolve into a million particles, turn into dust turn into light. And I have spared her the sight of it. Spared her of more than that, surely they must be pursuing me now. Dull drum of the oar hitting the boat’s side at the finish of a stroke. Surf seething against the rocks. Precision of observation now, the exact shape of a wave, the creak of my boots as I straighten and bend, my mind accelerating along with everything else.
Escorted by a gull, his tiny pink eye. A gull, if one contemplates, is an astonishing thing. Aloft, balanced on the wind, appetite as ceaseless as curiosity. A bell buoy gongs somewhere behind, a mob of wild roses crowds the bluff, the warm stain of sun on my shoulders, lungs like a bellows brightening the forge inside me. Amazing, all of it, incredible. The gull concludes that I am not something to eat, and veers back toward land.
My eye follows. Kate is small now, trim figure in a yellow shirt on that vivid dock. What has she done why did she not hide? A pack has formed near her, holding a few paces off. They cannot harm her now why would they when it is Jeremiah Rice that they seek? One of the gang points in my direction, they have seen me now they will chase me. She said she needed no rescue yet that is what I have done. This is how I this is how I save her.
Yard by yard the rowboat attains the point, then surpasses it. Rocks obscure the view, my last glimpse. Everything is so fast now, everything, it seems impossible to concentrate, even on the loss oh even on the loss of her. Calm water, little circles, tiny what are they, what is the word, why can I not recall the word it breaks my heart, ah yes whirlpools, little whirlpools chase the oars after each stroke. Exquisite, incomparable. A pool of whirl, was there ever anything lovelier. The land falls the harbor falls ever smaller away. Already I feel lighter, light. I bend my back to the task, a stroke a stroke a begin-to-sweat a stroke. A little farther north each time.
CHAPTER 43
The Hounds
(Kate Philo)
Where did he go? It was as if he vanished. I gave him a few seconds while I collected myself, and he was gone. My ploy had worked.
The first reporter vaulted the pier fence, sprinting up to me. I held out both hands. “Wait!”
Miraculously, he did. Then I saw it was no miracle, he was out of breath. He bent at the waist while the others one by one climbed over the gate. They took the time to hold each other’s cameras and notebooks. Politeness among parasites. A gaggle of protesters came charging up behind, a big noise, but somehow the gate stopped them. They waited, not climbing over.
“Gave us a good chase,” the reporter said, panting. “That was fun.”
“Fun?” I scanned the harbor, Jeremiah still not visible. Then I saw him, the little boat in which his enormous life was now confined. He was not even slightly concealed, just rowing right across the center of the harbor. Go, I said inside. Get away and I will hold them here.
The others came along, loud as horses on the boards of the pier. They began yelling my name, raising their hands like so many schoolchildren. I lifted my arms high again, and after a moment they fell into a murmur. One or two of them took pictures.
“Where is Jeremiah Rice?” the first one said.
He had held me, you see, as never before. I felt his life beating against mine. Then he tore something from his coat, he thrust it in my hand.
In the edge of my vision, the very periphery, I could see the little boat making its steady way. I wanted to yell. Come back. We’ll make what we can of every second.
The first reporter pointed out over the water. “Who is that out there?”
I turned as if I had no idea, shielding my brow. “Where?”
My heart was pounding. All was nearly lost. But always in the spectacular moment, my talent is self-possession. I learned the trick long ago and it became a habit of mind: to be calm amid the chaos. My powers of reserve would save him from this mob. Otherwise what would he be returning to, if he could somehow hear my pleas? What besides an angry crush of questions, plus my desperate affections for the few remaining hours? These carrion eaters did not deserve to see Jeremiah die. If I cannot be with you, I can at least protect you.
“Is that him?” someone asked.
I knew that my moment had come. “It’s all true,” I said, which hushed them completely. But I stopped, not adding a word. They waited, with cameras, mikes, notebooks, jostling one another on the pier.
Just then one of the protesters overcame his reluctance and clambered over the gate. The rest of the group poured after him, galloping down the dock. One of them yelled, “Don’t let her get away.”
But the TV crews did me an unintended favor, possibly because they didn’t want to miss anything I might say or do: not one of them turned to film the gang of shouters running toward me.
Somehow, being ignored chastened them. Halfway down the pier they drew up, as though the leader had pulled on invisible reins. They had no weapons, they had no audience, they called no thunderbolts down from the sky. In fact they had nothing. Suddenly it was clear to me why they had always yelled so loudly: to conceal that they had nothing. Ignored, they were feckless. By the time they reached the scrum of reporters, the protesters were shuffling, almost shy. They arranged themselves in a semicircle on the dock, audience for a play’s final scene.
I waited, wanting to run, staying put. Jeremiah needed time to escape their line of sight. I squeezed his button in my fist, but otherwise held still, buying precious seconds.
Eventually one man nudged the fellow beside him. “What did she say, anyway?”
“We thought we had everyone fooled,” I said, a masterpiece of calm. “But apparently not Daniel Dixon.”
I went silent again, stalling. A tendril of my being stretched across that harbor, burning like an inflamed nerve, toward Jeremiah, toward the idea of him at least, as the reality itself moved steadily beyond my grasp. Come back. This is killing me.
They fidgeted in place. I could feel their attention dividing. Why was he rowing so conspicuously? He should be hiding. Would they chase that little boat, or stay here? When I realized that they were waiting for me to tell them, to give the signal, I felt a surpassing power. I could save him, though it might destroy me. I could actually save him.
All it would take was a lie, one lie.
Just then a motorcycle buzzed down the footpath. The rider hopped off, dashing toward me, lifting his helmet as he ran. Th
e look on his face was nearly as pleading as Jeremiah’s had been only moments before.
Billings. It was all I had lacked, the final push, the last audience member to arrive. I folded my hands at my waist, as matronly as a schoolmarm welcoming third graders to the first day of school.
“It was a hoax,” I said. “All of it.”
Their pause was like the passionate in-breath of a fallen toddler, silent seconds before crying full-voiced for mom. But when they exhaled, the experience was entirely different: they howled and barked like I was some sly fox, full of dodges and feints, yet finally treed at last, as I deserved, while now down at the trunk circled the hounds, ignorant, inevitable, eager to feed.
The coverage was merciless. One tabloid ran a photo of my face beneath a giant headline: PANTS ON FIRE. I could hardly sue for defamation, when I knew it was true. My refusal to reveal Jeremiah’s whereabouts only fanned the flames. Still, I devoured the papers every day, every inch of them, but there was no story about a rowboat being found, much less one with a person in it. I could only speculate about how Jeremiah’s end arrived. Was it quiet, a lonely surrender to stillness? Or violent like krill in the lab, one last spasm bursting his heart? Did he lower himself over the side, trusting the ocean to finish the job? Or lie on his back in the roasting sun? My mind considered the possibilities, all of them horrible, until I developed a fantasy: he is not dead, he is still out there somewhere, still rowing.
I heard the late-night TV shows making hay. “The vice president declared his support for zombies and werewolves today,” one host joked, with a picture of the candidate beside Jeremiah. “I guess he’s counting on the undead vote, which is strange since he’s already way ahead in New Jersey.”
The project’s ships were called back into port, ending the global search for hard-ice with a whimper. When the ninth fraud suit was filed, the Lazarus Project closed its offices with no forwarding address. Some pompous graybeard columnist at the Globe called for the attorney general to investigate.
The Curiosity: A Novel Page 39
