The Kingdom of Ohio

by Matthew Flaming

  Until one day, I found your photograph—the picture Paolo had taken of us sitting in the Suicide Hall with Tesla—and everything changed.

  It was all real. At that moment, looking down at the image, I understood that everything I had denied, everything that I’d made myself ignore and forget—all of it had been true. This was the realization that left me sobbing and helpless in the antiques store. All these things returning like a flood, and with them, an abrupt, desperate urgency.

  Everything had changed—but still, at the same time, my situation remained stubbornly the same. It was true that, despite my doubts and despair, I had never completely given up looking for you. After all, how could I? My memories of you, and our time together, were the things that defined me: I could not stop searching for you any more than I could forget to breathe. But despite this, the facts were still facts. I was still an old man, living alone in Los Angeles. You were still gone, and I still knew nothing more than before about what had happened to you.

  So finally, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I started to write.

  Now, sitting in Battery Park, I remember the first time I saw you near this river: that cold afternoon, a century ago. The gray clouds blanketing the sky and the dark mirror of the current, the foghorns of barges and the leafless trees. How you fell, and for no clear reason I decided to help. The lines of your face against the monochrome winter world. Pale skin, dark curling hair, a shabby antique dress. My surprise, and the distance in your eyes: two strangers thrown together, briefly facing each other in the endless rush of days.

  I shake my head, blinking the present back into focus. I could spend (and have spent) days wandering through these memories, but that’s not why I came here.

  So why did I come to New York?

  When I bought the airplane ticket I told myself that I was returning here to search for you one last time, equipped with the results of my studies and the urgency of my failing heart. But writing these pages, some part of me has always understood that my recollections might be mistaken and that, in the end, my searching hasn’t really answered anything. Heaven only knows, for that matter, whether the Kingdom of Ohio ever existed as you described it to me, or as I’ve tried to piece it together.

  Although I’ve tormented myself for years with the need for some clear truth about what happened to us, and what happened to you, I’m not any closer to certainty than I had been at the beginning. And maybe, I tell myself, that’s simply the way life is: maybe the past is always, ultimately, unrevealed and unknowable. An endless series of “what if” questions whose answers never arrive.

  Maybe that’s why, if I’m honest with myself, the truth is that I really came to New York to say good-bye. To stand in the place where you might pause and glance up on your way through the vastness of the world, this final point of shared passage between us.

  In front of me, small waves on the surface of the Atlantic reflect fragments of late-summer sunlight; behind me the city begins in a gleaming wall of skyscrapers. I think of how we stood here together. And I hope—if such wishes mean anything, or have any power through the barrier of time—that somewhere you have been, or will someday be, happy.

  Finally, ignoring the protests of my legs and back, I climb to my feet and start walking again. Past the neoclassical fortresses of Wall Street and the quiet avenues of Tribeca, I make my way north toward Canal Street.

  Although the buildings have changed, the bustle of Chinatown remains the same. The sidewalks are still lined with vendors hawking their wares, and I recall the smell of rotting fish and charcoal smoke in the air. But when I try to picture the excavation site, Paolo and Tobias and the others amid the piles of machinery and broken rock, I can’t bring the image into focus. Against the backdrop of my present surroundings, the ranks of garish advertisements (Best Electronic Deal! All Brand Name Rolex, 90% Discount . . .), and the swarm of pedestrians crowding the sidewalk, my memories of that time seem irrelevant and unreal.

  From almost the moment I started walking, my heart has been pounding and I feel uncomfortably short of breath. At the end of the block I see an entrance to a subway station and hurry toward it, clutching my cane, thinking that I can’t stay in this place. But when I reach the stairs that lead down to the subway, I hesitate.

  The first time that I returned to this city after my “accident” (the wrong word; but if there’s a right one, it escapes me) I had visited the subway. Stepping into these passageways—excavations that I remembered so vividly, but which had become utterly alien in their tile-lined, fluorescent-lit modern shape—I felt such a wave of disorientation and fear that I had to scramble back toward the surface, gasping and nauseous. After that, on my subsequent visits to New York, I’d avoided the underground railroad. But now, clutching the handrail, I take a deep breath and descend into the tunnel.

  And this time, standing in the subway station, all that comes to me is a vague sense of sadness. The flow of commuters through the turnstiles and the electronic ticket-vending machines are empty of threat or significance. Instead, these things are only more reminders of the impossible distance that separates the present from the vanished places I remember.

  I board the subway and lower myself into one of the scarred plastic seats. As the train lurches into motion I study the faces of other passengers: polished professionals in expensive suits, tired shop workers slouched behind tabloids, knots of gossiping teenagers. A random gathering of lives, each oblivious to the rest. Myself among them, an old man in a world that doesn’t make sense, wearing a stranger’s socks.

  I close my eyes, swaying with the motion of the train. It’s over, I tell myself. This is how the story ends.

  I realize that I’m holding my breath, waiting for . . . something. I don’t know what. But nothing comes: only the white noise of the subway rushing through the tunnels, accompanied by a pang of weariness.

  I open my eyes again.

  Above the graffiti-scarred windows opposite me are a row of brightly colored posters: advertisements for tourist destinations, dentistry services, and bunion cream. One of the signs depicts a Native American, wearing an elaborate headdress, talking to a pilgrim with an awkward hat and wide-buckled shoes. Glancing up, I notice the caption above this image. Croatoan: Artifacts and Art of Early American Colonies, it reads.

  As I look away, at the subway floor, I feel a faint sense of familiarity that I can’t quite place. I look up at the advertisement again, trying to pinpoint the source of the sensation. Then, abruptly, the memory clicks into place, and the world stops.

  Croatoan.

  That was the word I saw carved into the door we found in the subway tunnels, the same word printed on the sign I’m staring at now.

  For an instant, I feel a shock of numb disbelief. But really, I tell myself, this is just a coincidence: another of fate’s practical jokes. This is exactly the kind of false clue that I’ve been chasing for decades now, on an endless futile search that I’ve come here to leave behind.

  Still, I can’t help climbing to my feet, stumbling as the subway jolts around a bend, and pushing my way through the crowd of commuters toward the sign. Ignoring the scowls of the other passengers, I study the fine print at the bottom of the advertisement. The poster is promoting an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, I realize, a special event that will be ending the day after tomorrow.

  The subway slows, pulling into a station. And then, before I quite realize what I’m doing, I’m shoving my way out of the train and up the steps, waving at a passing taxicab on the street.

  The Museum of Natural History is a rambling castle built of red stone, with crumbling turrets and a sagging slate roof, across the street from the green expanse of Central Park. As I approach the entrance a column of schoolchildren, walking in pairs, emerges from the building. I stand aside as they jostle down the wide steps, filing into a row of waiting yellow buses. As they do, a young girl— maybe seven years old, with blond hair and a grubby T-shirt—stops and peers up at me
.

  Looking at her, I imagine that there’s an unspoken question in her gaze. And what can I possibly tell her—I think, as our eyes meet—what message can be conveyed from where I stand? Maybe just the strangeness of the way our lives are shaped by the past: even the things we imagine to be lost. Because all of it stays with us, always, shading the light of our days until there is no longer any difference between it and us and the glimmering scene reflected in the mirror-surface of the present.

  The little girl frowns, and, at a loss for words, I stick out my tongue. This seems to satisfy her—she laughs and turns away, skipping down the steps. I close my eyes. I understand that I am sick with the chasm between this world and the things that I remember. But if I can’t forget, and can’t find any kind of certainty, what is left?

  The schoolchildren finally pass and I continue climbing the steps. At the ticket booth, the blond twentysomething attendant looks at me skeptically.

  “We’re closing in half an hour, sir,” she says, after I ask her for one senior-citizen admission. “Maybe you want to come back tomorrow?”

  I shake my head and she shrugs, counting out my change. My hands are shaking as I stuff the crumpled bills into my pocket, and I feel lightheaded, dizzy.

  “Enjoy your visit,” she calls after me. I nod back at her, nearly stumbling over my cane as I hurry into the museum.

  As quickly as decency will allow, I make my way through the dimly lit galleries, the dinosaur bones and silent dioramas depicting fragments of other landscapes: a series of stuffed birds against the painted backdrop of a sunset lagoon, extinct buffalo gazing out from a prairie of dried grass, carved totem poles in a forest. Finally I find the exhibit that I’m looking for, at the end of a silent corridor.

  My heart is hammering as I step through the door and look around.

  Coming here, I didn’t really know what to expect—but it certainly wasn’t this. The room is lined with displays that contain an assortment of neatly labeled artifacts: old-fashioned muskets, crude iron pots and pans, wooden dolls. Near the center of the space, a glass case exhibits a model of a few log cabins inside a rough wooden stockade, surrounded by trees.

  Crossing to the nearest display I scan one of the informational placards. British colonization of the Americas began in the late 16th century, and reached its peak toward the middle of the 17th century, the text begins, continuing to explain the challenges these early settlers faced. Nothing that has any connection with my memories, or with you.

  I shake my head, the wave of disappointment like a physical blow. And with it, an irrational surge of anger—as if I’ve been the victim of a cruel joke. For a moment I close my eyes, trying to push away the sense of frustration that makes me want to cry.

  I take a deep breath, and with an effort look around again.

  Beyond this first area of the exhibit, doorways open onto a series of smaller spaces that display artifacts related to the same historical period. And at the very least, I console myself, one of them might offer an explanation of the word from the sign on the subway, even if it’s only a coincidence. Inside the next room I find a collection of objects almost identical to the ones outside: carved forks and spoons, a painting of a sailing ship, etchings that depict life in the American colonies.

  A third room also reveals nothing about what I’m looking for. A bored gallery attendant, wearing an ill-fitting museum uniform, wanders in and glances at me indifferently. He is about to turn away when, out of desperation, I limp toward him.

  “Excuse me.” My voice is too loud, echoing in the empty spaces, and he scowls at me. I try to speak more softly. “I have a question.”

  The attendant glances at his watch. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes, sir. What’s up?”

  “The name of this exhibit, Croatoan. What does it mean?”

  “Oh, that? Something to do with the settlement at Roanoke.” He shrugs, indicating a direction with his head. “Explains about it all the way in the back, over there.”

  “Thank you.” I shuffle in the direction that the attendant indicated, through a passageway that leads me to a dimly lit space with no further rooms beyond. I stop, looking around.

  Unlike the rest of the exhibit, there aren’t any artifacts on display here. Instead, opposite from the entrance where I’m standing, is a single black-and-white drawing: a pattern of abstract lines maybe six feet tall. In the center of the image, written in crude letters like a child’s penmanship, is the word that brought me here.

  Several other pictures are also on the walls, but I hardly register their presence. Staring at the image in front of me, I experience a moment of déjà vu that makes me feel like I’m falling toward those rough letters. It’s a dreamlike sensation, suspended between wonder and disbelief. Without quite realizing what I’m doing, I cross the room and run my fingers over the drawing.

  Gradually, the rush of recognition fades and I turn my attention to the text that accompanies the images on display. The Lost Colony of Roanoke: An American Mystery, the heading reads. I try to focus on the words, to focus on what they mean.

  The placard describes one of the first British attempts to colonize America, an expedition organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587.

  In the summer of that year, I read, a fleet of three ships carrying 121 colonists departed England for the wilderness of Virginia. The expedition was commanded by a man named Captain John White, and only two members of his crew had ever seen the New World before.

  Shortly after setting sail, the smallest of the three ships disappeared in a storm off the coast of Portugal. The remaining vessels arrived in Chesapeake Bay at the beginning of autumn, and the colonists disembarked on Roanoke Island to begin their new settlement. Among them were Captain White’s daughter, his son-in-law, and his infant granddaughter. Before departing, White told the colonists that if they needed to move, they should carve the name of their destination on a conspicuous tree. If they left under duress, he said, they should also carve a Maltese cross. After giving these instructions, Captain White sailed away, promising to come back in six months.

  When White arrived back in London, however, tensions with Spain had escalated into war, and Queen Elizabeth called for all available ships to be used for the protection of England. By the time the Spanish Armada had been defeated in 1588, Lord Raleigh had turned his attention to other projects, and as a result Captain White was forced to raise money for a fleet of his own. It was not until February of 1590 that he was able to set sail for Virginia again, three years after he had told the colonists he would return.

  When he reached Roanoke Island, the settlement was deserted. The huts and stockades built by the colonists stood empty and abandoned, but still intact. Captain White and his crew discovered no evidence of violence, no bodies or graves. The only clue about what had happened to the colonists was the word CROATOAN, carved on a tree. Along with this word White found a Christian cross, but not the Maltese cross that the settlers were told to carve if they left the island in distress.

  While his fleet was anchored offshore, a storm blew up and two of the ships’ anchors were lost, forcing White to depart for England. Unable to find backing for a third voyage, Captain White did not return to Virginia and never saw his daughter, or granddaughter, again. Their fate—the placard concluded—like that of all the Roanoke Island colonists, remains a mystery to this day: a false beginning to the history of an America that never came into being.

  I finish reading and sit down on a bench in the middle of the room, trying to think about what this means.

  The word that you and I found on the door in the subway tunnel, a portal we destroyed in order to keep it from the hands of Tesla, Edison, and Morgan, was marked with the same inscription that had been carved on a tree in the Virginia wilderness: a hidden message at the birth of another America that vanished without a trace. Clutching my head in my hands, I struggle to guess the significance such a coincidence might have.

  Around me the museum gallery is dim and silent.
I imagine that I might be the last visitor in the building, alone with these artifacts in the windowless white-walled space. From a hallway in the distance, the muffled sound of footsteps grows nearer and then recedes.

  For no clear reason, I find myself thinking of what Tesla said to you in the Suicide Hall: “The only possible explanation is that you traveled from one world, where you did know me, into this one.”

  I remember this, and also what you’d said after we first met: “Our goal was the construction of a device to transport men instantaneously from one place to another.”

  Abruptly I’m struck by an idea that jerks me upright on the bench. It’s an intuition that comes out of nowhere, but that has an urgency I can’t ignore. And really, I think, it’s not impossible. Neither you nor I ever actually stepped through the doorway; both of us were simply nearby when the explosion happened. And what—I wonder—what if we had been wrong about the portal? That instead of creating a passage through time, the doorway was somehow actually a link between different worlds.

  After all—it occurs to me—if free will exists, it’s a decision that we make between futures. In which case, as many different versions of the future might exist as there are human choices. An infinitely branching set of parallel worlds in which our memories, both of what happened and what we wish could have happened, map out a single life’s path.

  I shake my head and stand. For some reason, accompanying these thoughts, I feel a strange sense of certainty—but, really, I remind myself, my imagination may only be running away with me: and in any case, I will never really know. Crossing to the black-and-white image, I scrutinize it again.

  According to the caption, it is a drawing of the inscription found at Roanoke, made by Captain White. Looking closely, I realize that the lines around the word CROATOAN are not an abstract pattern but instead are the patterns of tree bark.