by Glen Kenner
No one.
Except a headless Fuhrer of Terror covered in a crawling blanket of flies. But the head’s gone. Dogs. Or possums.
This close to the river, in the industrial area, there’s not much traffic yet but the cars and SUVs and pickup trucks will start filling the streets soon with blue collar workers. Some white collar, too, I’m sure. Got to have a manager around telling people what to do. Blue collar, white collar, it doesn’t matter. Just normal people going about their normal lives, probably looking forward to vacation in Branson. Retirement in Florida. Cashing in that 401k.
My arm is mostly healed and I can see through the hole in my jeans that the skin where the copper pipe pushed through is still broken and ugly looking but a scab is forming around the edges. The raw steak will help with that. Top of my head seems fine. No pain. There’s a huge clot of dried blood in my hair and I pull it out and let it drop to the ground without even glancing at it. Finding clumps of dried blood on my body feels like just another day at work for me. Or, at least it did back in New York and before. Spending time with Kingsley apparently has me reminiscing. I walk down the street before remembering that last night’s festivities took place right across the street from a company of Kingsley’s. The company with the technology to save our very existence. Not Thirds’ very existence. Fuck them apparently. Firsts’ very existence. I look back and see the sign on the building. Alokin Denshi Digi-Tech. What the hell is an alokin denshi?. And the building is sun-bleached and dingy. Looks like it went underwater in the flood of ‘93 and they just went back into work once the water receded. But there’s a ten foot high razor wire fence around the back of the building and parking lot. Kingsley must be hoping for a miracle to come out of there.
I skim the very northern edge of downtown, finishing off the steak as I walk, and stick to the side streets all the way past South Grand and then hit Delmar. Almost there. I keep one block off of Delmar and pick up the pace. No po po is my motto. Keep moving. I cross a block from Sarah’s apartment and resist the urge to drop in. Shit, that reminds me of something important. I pull out my phone and check voicemail. One. But it’s not new. The text isn’t in bold but it’s from last night. Fuck if I didn’t check it after all that damage to my head and now I don’t remember? I stop and listen to the message. It’s Sarah.
Hey, I didn’t thank you for last night. Sorry. You saved my life. You also tried to kill me. Guess that makes it even. But we should talk about that. I’m feeling a lot better. Having never been sick before, I can honestly say it sucks. Please call me. I have so many questions. Anytime tonight is ok. I can’t sleep. I have so much energy. Call me, ok?
What to do? What can I do? I turn and head the block back and then two more south from Delmar and walk up to her apartment building door. Hit the buzzer despite knowing the code. Don’t want to remind her anymore than possible about yesterday.
Her voice comes over the speaker.
-Come on up, John. My door’s open.
I hear a knocking on glass and look up. Her bedroom looks over the entrance and she’s standing at the window smiling. That’s a good sign. The door buzzes open. Up I go and she’s now standing in the doorway of her apartment. She’s in a Rangers t-shirt and shorts and she’s still smiling.
-Hey, you didn’t call me back.
The smile fades a bit.
-You said anytime.
-I’m sorry. Seriously. I am. I got caught up with somebody. A friend, sort of. And his friends. Anyway, it was a long night and I just saw your message as I was walking to my truck so I booked it on over here. Sorry.
The smile is back. I recognize that kind of smile. I saw it on my Sarah in New York. It’s genuine and wants to be there. But it can disappear when someone doesn’t deserve it.
-Hey, two things…
She points to my dirty Cards t-shirt and then stretches the bottom of her Rangers t-shirt forward a bit and proclaims to my face matter-of-factly:
-One. Rangers Never, Ever Quit! Two. I fixed the door myself.
I inspect the work, saying not bad, not bad, and turn back to her.
-So now that we know where we stand, come on in. You got some s’plaining to do.
We walk in and I stop in the foyer and look around. Still nice and neat. The blood on the floor and wall is gone. The wall has been patched up. The curtains are open in the living room on the far side of the apartment and the room is filling up with eastern sunlight. She pours two glasses of water from the kitchen faucet and walks into the living room and sets them on the coffee table and then takes a seat at one end of the couch. I sit down at the other end and there’s an empty cushion between us. The cushion I sat on yesterday afternoon while holding a sledgehammer. Wonder if she found it?
-Can I ask what really happened to you last night? I mean, your clothes need to be thrown away. Maybe they looked like that yesterday when you got me home or later tried to kill me, I don’t know. But the caked on mud and hole in your jeans looks recent. And you’re barefoot.
I look down at myself and then at my feet. Huh. I forgot to look for my shoes. I walked ten miles on the side streets of St Louis and never realized I was barefoot. I’m going to have to drive back down there and find those Vans.
-Yeah. Well. I kind of got roped into dinner with a guy I know from New York. At Luca’s. You know Luca’s?
No recognition on her face.
-It’s good. Better even than Chef Boyardee. Seriously. But dinner didn’t go as planned. And on the way back to my truck - it’s still in the lot over by Racanelli’s - things went from bad to worse and there were some things said. Anyway, I got out and this guy’s acquaintance wanted to give me a hard time. And he did. And then another acquaintance got out of the limo and he wanted to join in, and he did. Yada yada yada, I woke up this morning in that same general vicinity and, uh, walked back here to get my truck.
-So this is macho guy stuff, right?
I nod and mouth yeah, yeah.
-Like Die Hard and X-Men stuff?
-More like Enter the Dragon.
-I don’t know that one. Is it anime?
-We’ll watch it sometime.
-Alright. So you got into a fight with two bad dudes, stood your ground but they whipped your ass, and you thought it’d be safe now in the daylight to get your truck and get home. That’s cool. Two against one. Nothing embarrassing about that.
-No. No. That’s not what I said.
-I know. You’re not saying anything really at all. Look, will this make more sense if you tell me about what happened with me yesterday?
-Yes. Yes it will.
-Good.
She reaches for her glass, takes a sip, and looks at me with eyebrows raised.
-Well, go on.
I spend the next half hour going over the details of how I found her on Delmar. How she looked. How I heard the buzz. She tells me she hears a buzz, but it’s coming from me. I explain that as well. We hear each other’s, but not our own. Our brains simply tune it out. Sort of like how we don’t see our nose every minute we’re awake. Nothing magical. Just Mother Nature. I invoke Mother Nature a lot. I don’t want to put crazy thoughts in her head about magic and destiny and super powers. All of that is a load of shit that just makes it harder to understand the truth. It’s Mother Nature or evolution or maybe karma. No one really knows the why, but the how is pretty straightforward. It’s simple biology. The buzz is generated by our cells working overtime. Other people - I haven’t used the terms Firsts and Thirds yet, that only leads to asking about Seconds and that’s harder to explain - other people's cells simply don’t process energy as efficiently as ours do. And all that crazy high-speed cellular activity running at maximum efficiency makes a noise. A high-pitched buzz. Why regular people don’t hear it is another whim of Mother Nature. There are different theories. But it’s not like any of us are eager to volunteer as a guinea pig in a government lab somewhere. So we simply don’t know. Not yet. There’s far more we don’t know than we do.
Sh
e starts taking notes. Then she grills me a bit, asking me to repeat an answer, state it a different way. I laugh out loud when I realize she’s cross-examining me. Shit, I watched Perry Mason back in the day. And The Defenders. And Ironside. And Jake and the Fat Man. And Night Court. Lots of Judge Judy. Huh. I should be a lawyer.
-What are you laughing about? I’m trying to piece this together. You tried to kill me. I want to know why. And I stopped you. I’d really like to know how I did that.
-Ok. Sorry. I laughed because you lawyered up on me. And I like legal dramas. But I’ve never been on trial before. That I remember. Let me start at the beginning. But I have to do this in pieces. It takes too long to lay it all out and it’s too much for someone to absorb. Ok? And put down the legal pad. Let me tell it to you as a story, the way that it really is. Yeah?
-Yeah.
She puts the pad down and sits back. I wait a few seconds to make sure she’s ready.
-There’s a man who maybe doesn’t have a name. Not a proper name. A family name. No one knows who he is. He’s extremely old. Old is a word whose definition is going to change for you. Old for you and me and others like us, and especially for this man without a name, is not 80 or a 100 or even 120. There’s another man here in St Louis named Maurice. He’s my good friend. A really good guy. I’ll introduce you to him. He was born in the 1920s. Early 1920s. So he’s going on a hundred. When you meet him you’ll see that he looks to be 20 or 22. He’s a huge guy. Huge muscles where I don’t think I even have muscles. Ok? So that’s Maurice. Now that acquaintance last night? The guy from New York? He’s been around a bit longer. I’d say he was born in 17… uh, early 1700s. Born right there in New York.
I pause and look at her face closely. Have I lost her? No shaking of the head, no weird smile with one corner up and the other down or her lips pursed tight. She shows nothing at all. And doesn’t make a sound.
-Now, one of his acquaintances was born in the forties or fifties. 1940s or 50s. I don’t know. The other bragged about being almost a thousand years old. And there’s no reason for him to lie. Exaggerate, maybe. But at any rate, let’s say he was born in 1000 AD. Give him the benefit of the doubt and make it nice and even. He wasn’t born in America. There are native Americans that are like us, but this guy was European. So you see how the word old means something different now?
No response. Good or bad, not sure.
-And names are like that, too. As the years go by, languages change and so we change our names to stay current. Plus, we don’t typically stay in one exact location for every long. By that I mean, the same house or apartment. With the same neighbors. The reason being is that Maurice or the guy from New York or the thousand year old guy from Europe, they all look about the same age. Early 20s. Imagine what your neighbors would think if you’re 20 when they’re 20 but then you still look 20 when they’re 50 and still no older when they are 75? So we move around. Every 10 or 15 or 20 years, move to a far part of your city if it’s large enough, or to a different city or state or country or even continent, change your name, change your story. Become someone new. Live your life and do it all over again. And again and again and again. So that man at the beginning? He is truly old, though he apparently looks to be 20ish.
-Well, don’t leave me hanging. How old is he? And how old are you?
Here we go. Sip of water and I start back up.
-He’s the oldest of us all. He’s the first of us. It probably sounds goofy, but he’s actually called The Father. And it’s not just a catchy name. He is our father. I don’t mean in a spiritual way. I mean, he is our biological father. See, there are things about your past that are the same as my past and Maurice’s past and all the others’ pasts. You were conceived from a union between your mother and The Father. The, with a capital t. The Father. And so was I from my mother and The Father. And Maurice’s and so on. You and I and Maurice and even the guy from New York, unfortunately because he’s such an asshole, are all half-siblings. Make sense?
No reaction.
-Were you aware that you are the child of your mother and a man other than the one that raised you?
I point to the pictures on the bookcase.
-Yes, actually. I do know that. My mom was dating my dad while at A&M. Their senior year, they drove to Piedras Negras, Mexico, with two other couples. Long story short, there was a lot of partying and the guys got into a huge fight outside of a bar with some Mexican guys and my mom got separated from the crowd and she was grabbed and raped. She had been with my dad since senior year of high school, had been on birth control and never had a… an accident. But she got pregnant from the rape. The day after they graduated from A&M, my dad married my mom.
-And she died in childbirth.
I say it matter-of-factly. Too matter-of-factly. But she doesn’t cry. I was waiting for it. But she doesn’t. She just takes her time and lets out a breath and nods her head yes.
-All of the mothers die in childbirth. Mine, yours, Maurice’s and so on. We don’t know why. Mother Nature’s whim. Not every story is as sad as yours. I mean, our mothers always die, but we all weren’t conceived from rape. Plenty of Firsts tell stories about our mothers meeting The Father at a party or on a vacation and so on. It’s love at first sight or they were feeling lonely or wanted to get back at a cheating husband or boyfriend. At any rate, it’s always just a one-time thing and then the man, The Father, is gone. Nine months later they deliver an incredibly healthy baby but they themselves die during delivery.
It feels like the right place to pause and take a drink.
-Ok, but you still haven’t told me how old this guy is. The Father. And how old you are. I’m guessing you’re not going to say 19, even though you look younger than 20ish to me.
I laugh and she joins in. Some levity. I need that. This is going better than other conversations I’ve had over the years. Though there’s a part of the story I have to tell her that won’t be so funny. That comes later.
-Alright. The Father. How old? Well, he’s the first of us and none of us, that we know of, have ever met him. So we don’t know his true age. But by putting some stories together, so to speak, it’s generally accepted that he is at least 12,000 years old.
She nods her head. And then there’s a smile.
-Are you going to tell me you’re 12,000 years old too?
-No.
I say it slowly, drawing it out.
-Nowhere near it. But I don’t know how old I am. And the reason why is complicated. We’ll get to that later, I promise. By the way, we’re called Firsts, with a capital f. Firsts. The story there is that’s what other people, regular people, started calling us a very, very long time ago. Their thinking was that because we lived so long - there have been times throughout history when normal people knew about us - because we lived so long, we must have been the first people made. God made or, actually at that time, the gods made.
-So it’s Firsts and normal people. Or do we just say people and assume that doesn’t include Firsts? How do we use it all in a sentence?
She shakes her head in frustration but that tells me she at least is open to believing this. But fuck. Firsts, Seconds, Thirds, I don’t want to have to explain this to her now. Or ever.
-Firsts have adopted the term for ourselves. So yes, when you’re with other Firsts and you want to talk about us exclusively, just say, hey John, being a First is pretty damn cool. Thanks for making it all so simple.
No laughter. Not even a smile. Can’t fault me for trying.
-Now so-called normal people, people not fathered by The Father, are called Thirds. Again, that’s a name they themselves came up with at the same time they started using Firsts.
-Thirds? They came up with that themselves? It sounds demeaning.
-Well, yeah, maybe. It was a different time. They believed that the gods pre-ordained everything and some people got a good life with strength and speed and health and lived for, what seemed like, ever. And some toiled in the fields and caught the plague and di
ed before twenty. It was fate.
-Why Thirds? Why not Seconds, with a capital s?
Explain it now or push it off? Hm. A little of both.
-Thirds because there was already a group called Seconds. But you’ll probably never meet a Second. Most Firsts and Thirds never do. Seconds are like us, in that they are conceived by The Father, and they go through First Death. Oh, by the way, that’s what we call the sickness that hit you and you survived. First Death. But Seconds are also very different from us. They’re not social at all. They keep to themselves, not in groups that we know of. Just by themselves. They are the ultimate anti-social loners. They’re strong and fast, and so on, and live a long time like us, but don’t go to Rangers games or become lawyers. Like I said, chances are you’ll never meet one. You’ll never even see one. Not across the street or at an airport or certainly never on Facebook. I doubt you’ll ever see a picture of one.
She’s slowly nodding her head and I think I did it. I’ll have to tell her more eventually, but not today. I look at my phone and it’s almost 11 am.
-Hey, Sarah, I’m still beat after last night. Sorry to ask, but would you mind if I crashed a bit? Or I could head home and come back whenever. Whatever’s cool.
-No, no, go right ahead. On the couch ok?
I nod yes and she puts the pillows at one end of the couch and closes the curtains to shut out the sun. I lie back, realize my clothes are filthy, and so are my bare feet, but she doesn’t say anything and stands back and watches me get comfortable. She waits until my eyes meet hers and then she half-whispers, half-mouths, I’m going out. Back in a bit.