While these stories and his forbidden history may paint a portrait of Mr. Pullman as a cold, bitter recluse, those who were close with him maintain the opposite to be true. After meeting him at a function for this newspaper forty years ago, I described him in a letter as “warm and inviting; the sort of kindness that extends beyond formality and into real understanding. . . . To speak with [Mr. Pullman] is to speak with yourself as you wish you were.”
This is the Arthur Louis Pullman that I knew, and the one that I will always remember him to be. The literary revolution and subsequent youth culture movement that he inspired are a testament to the seminal nature of his work, his character, and his reading of humanity, all of which will rightfully be remembered as among the best in the English language.
As Lou Thurman, political writer and contributor to this newspaper, said, “At the end of his life, a man’s story is written in the words he never said.” Almost as compelling as the stories Mr. Pullman wrote are the holes in his own story that he left behind.
Whether these holes are ever filled and understood, Mr. Pullman will forever be remembered for his incredible ability to captivate and inspire.
7.
I KNOW WHAT it’s like to not feel anything.
It’s overwhelming light. It starts at a single spot and spreads outward, so fast that the real world burns in its wake until there’s nothing but light. It’s the white-hot flashbulb in the space behind the bridge of your nose and between your eyes. It’s the inch of empty air between your skin and everything else that exists.
At a certain point, your body stops negotiating with pain and becomes it. It’s liberating; you lose the control and the consciousness and all the parts that make you human, and let your body—the vicious, instinctual animal it has always been—make all the decisions. You think nothing. You feel nothing. You are nothing. Nothing but light.
The room was dark and the house was quiet. My auntie and uncle had gone to sleep seven hours ago, at 9:00 p.m., like Truckee people do. But the moon was reflecting off the lake, through the window, too bright for me to think about sleeping. I reached the end of my Twitter timeline, so I checked again, then again, and again. Each time: No New Tweets. No one posts on Twitter at 4:30 a.m. No one does anything at 4:30 a.m., unless they’re on meth, or me.
This kind of night had become a routine. And at 4:30 a.m., after I’d passed the point of no return on an all-nighter, I remembered what it was like to think about Kaitlin.
Dr. Sandoval told me that when that happened, I should journal, like I used to have to when I was a kid. I told him that was because I gave a shit what my dad thought when I was a kid, and I don’t anymore.
I disagree with the basic premise of journaling for the same reason that I disagree with the basic premise of therapy: because feelings are supposed to be the one thing we just do. Because you can plan and prepare and schedule every other little detail of your tiny life, but feelings are supposed to be the disruption to that. They’re not supposed to be documented and studied in a journal, then calculated by some guy in an intentionally nonthreatening sweater vest. If you’re forced to identify your feelings, then what the fuck is even the point?
But the therapy was court-mandated, so I had to do it if I ever wanted to see Kaitlin again.
I was thinking about Kaitlin. I could still see her with perfect clarity, radiating outward from the prosecution bench of the superior court of Palo Alto, her skin pale and hair flawlessly brown, just long enough to tickle her shoulders, wearing a white tennis skirt and smiling forward, away from me. I’d tried to tell her I was better. She didn’t look at me.
I cycled through the other tricks Dr. Sandoval had given me. “I’m getting better,” I told myself. I stared at my cast, fixating on the physical pain in my hand. He thought physical pain like that would put the emotional pain in perspective. But having perspective made me think about Kaitlin. My hand made me think about Kaitlin.
Pain made me think about Kaitlin.
“I’d never felt so scared in my entire life,” she was telling the judge, but she wasn’t in the courtroom anymore. She was lying on the bed next to me. “He doesn’t realize he can’t control himself, but when he gets angry, it’s like there’s this little switch in him that flips, and he goes crazy.” Her voice was light and airy and inviting, like a pop star’s. “He expects too much from me.” She looked directly into my face. “You expect too much from me,” and she rolled over, away from me.
“No, I don’t!” I pleaded, just like I used to shout at her, but I shouldn’t have shouted because it always made things worse.
“You’re not getting better!” she told me without rolling over. “You look all quiet, and hopeless, and hide behind your little I hate the world and the world hates me routine, but that’s how you manipulate people.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you!”
“You get angry, and you can’t control yourself—”
“I’m not trying to be angry!” I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t let her think I was dangerous; surely she could see the irony of a “protective order.” I was the one who protected her. “I’m not trying to be anything, I just want to be with you!”
“He needs me too much,” she said on my bed and in the hospital and in the courtroom and forever buried in my ear, deeper than I could reach so I could never get it out. “You need me too much.”
I know what it’s like to not feel anything.
It’s overwhelming light.
At a certain point, your body stops negotiating with pain, and becomes it. When you don’t feel anything, you’re not a person anymore. Nothing you do can help you, nothing can hurt you, so you submit yourself to it.
Most of the time, it puts you to sleep, stopping your nerves from vibrating so your body shuts down. But sometimes, it wakes you up. Your body knows it must survive so it lashes out at the nothingness. You still hear everything—I’m sorry, Arthur—you need me too much—do you have any idea what it’s like to have to take care of someone that crazy?—from the tiny little spot where the light exploded, so your body goes after it, unafraid of pain or consequence, because when you aren’t a person anymore, what do you have to lose? Violence is the only way to ensure survival.
Anyone who shouts control yourself always forgets that part; it’s not me steering the ship anymore. It’s my body, the primal creature it’s always been, doing what it must do to survive.
The sound of the chair crashing reminded me where I was. When I looked to the far side of the bed, Kaitlin had disappeared, leaving twisted sheets in her place. I listened breathlessly for a few moments, but no sound came from downstairs.
A dozen photo frames were shattered at my feet, and their stray glass was catching moonlight and throwing it around the room. My grandfather’s last photo sat in the center, on top of a book, cracked only slightly at the center, directly across his face. I set it in the middle of the desk and left the rest on the floor.
You need me too much.
I picked Birds of Tahoe off the floor and began to flip through it, desperate for something else to think about.
The American robin, a small, forest-dwelling bird, had a brick-red breast and a yellow beak, and Kaitlin had a friend named Robin who she used to be friends with at elementary school in—
The hairy woodpecker is a long-billed bird that can be identified by the white stripe down its back and the kind of bird name that would make Kaitlin laugh in public, the kind of laugh that made us exchange a look like we always did when someone inadvertently made a penis joke and didn’t—
I scanned the table of contents for something that wouldn’t make me think about her.
Dark-eyed junco, dark eyes just like hers.
Canada goose, native to her favorite country, Canada.
The western tanager—
Page forty-seven. I remembered my grandfather telling me a story about them once, about how they were a sign of good luck, or how some guy pretended they were. I flipped page afte
r page, as fast as I could, past all the Kaitlin birds, trying to ignore them and failing, creasing over page forty-six—
A folded piece of paper fell out of the book and fluttered softly to the floor.
I almost didn’t see it, but it caught some light from the window halfway down.
It landed amid the glass.
It was thin, folded neatly, almost shimmering in the orange light from the window and the reflective shards around it.
I leaned to pick it up, and noticed the faded inverse of an address on the outer sheet:
S E KOPEK
17 C H ST
E, DA
As I unfolded the page further, it became two pages, fighting back, the creases firm as if they hadn’t been touched in years, frayed on the edges. They had been ripped out of something.
The page was covered in black pen that had dulled with age. The handwriting was a familiar cursive, but sloppy, as if written in a hurry.
I slumped into the folding chair in front of the desk, and read.
april 27, the 2010
dask wooden cold lite
lite
off the photo of family
arthur timothy arthur
lite
from the lake
jagged line burning orange lite
into blackness
mountains & mountains of trees, mountains of
jagged line horizon
i always felt there was some Greater love waiting for me
just around the bend of the orange horizon
i’m learning now that the world is a circle
& what i thought is ahead of me is actually behind
but my eyes are open
& i can see that i’m coming up on it again
& i feel Great purpose.
& i feel
arthur timothy arthur
hand to desk pen shaking lite
lite
off waves, reflections of lite
they’ve long since forgotten us
but they’re just waves
& what were they ever but reflections of lite?
what were any of us ever but reflections of lite?
i’m called to a voice i don’t remember
in a language i invented & have since forgotten
lite, too bright to see its source
chevys & greyhounds & zephyrs
you & me & them
lite from the orange sky
there are clouds ahead
& i hear trumpets & angals in your voice
calling to me
finding
peace in forgotten wars
homes in foreclosed jungles
saints in slums of missions
sinners in sanctuaries of church street
hope in forests of elko
safety in mecca.
chaos in cold, wet veins of ch
lou & sal’s tribute.
a true, Great purpose
great
jeffery arthur
shaking hand to desk ring
we are eternal, we’re together
& we always have been
photograph
of family
arthur & timothy & arthur
& lite
too bright to see its source
in the morning
i will listen
in the morning
i’ll be once again aboard my zephyr
full speed to elko
full speed to you
—arthur louis pullman
8.
I READ EVERY word on the page, then read them again, more slowly. By the third time through, I could hear my grandfather speaking behind me.
His voice rolled slowly out of his chest to fill every corner of the room, deciding every word as he went, placing each one carefully on top of the last. I imagined him sitting at the desk, eyes fixed out the window, but he wasn’t with me; he was out there, with the waves and mountains and burning orange light.
“We’re together,” he tells me. “And we always have been.”
I caught my breath, and the gravity of what I held in my hands found me.
My grandfather had written again.
The diary or poem or whatever it was had been dated five years ago, April 27, 2010. It was the day of that final photo, the day he had disappeared, the first night of the last week of his life. It was the closest thing we’d ever found to an answer or an explanation.
I closed my eyes and clutched the pages, remembering the most important detail of all: he hadn’t left this out to be found. He had tucked it into a specific book, on a specific page, regarding a specific story he once told his grandson, about a boy who receives a sign from the divine and sets out after it.
My grandfather had wanted me to read this. He had left a clue.
He was next to me, hunched over, looking out across the desk and the photos and over the lake. I could hear him breathing, the wood bending every time he shifted his frame. I could see his old, trembling hand pushing to apply enough pressure to form the cursive on the page. Getting lost, getting confused, repeating himself, starting sentences and abandoning them. With Alzheimer’s, clarity came in waves. Waves that lasted long enough for him to write, but not long enough to make any sense.
What did he want me to find?
I flipped the page over, remembering the faded letters on the other side.
S E KOPEK
17 C H ST
E, DA
“It’s a name,” I said. S something E. She? Or see? Or Sue? That had to be it. Sue Kopek.
The line below it looked like an address. 17 C something H Street . . .
The sanctuaries of Church Street, I heard him write, and I smiled to myself. It was almost too obvious to notice. 17 Church Street. Sue Kopek at 17 Church Street.
The smile only lasted ten seconds. It was still nothing: a name, a street address, and an obscure poem that did nothing for me if I didn’t understand it. The address was meaningless without a city. The clue was meaningless without any context.
I read it again, heard my grandfather’s voice louder.
Dask wooden cold. He was sitting where I sat.
Jagged line burning orange lite. He was staring out the window, looking at the same horizon that I was, cut along the tops of the mountains, the color of the sun exploding behind them.
You and me and them. Who was he talking about?
On chevys and greyhounds and zephyrs; forests of elko, safety in mecca. Those were all proper nouns; places and things that sounded almost fictional, and in a small way, familiar.
chaos in cold, wet veins of ch. It was an incomplete word; he’d lost the thought halfway through.
We’re together & we have always been. Who’s together?
Lite too bright to see its source. My excitement slowly eroded into frustration.
It was nonsense. It read like the poetic insanity of a man lost inside of his own brain for too many years. The harder I tried to put the pieces together, the fewer pieces I found.
I saw him again, sitting next to me, the pen frozen in his hand, and this time, I remembered the look that had likely been on his face as he wrote: blank, warped with permanent confusion, squinting as if staring into a “light too bright to see its source.” No one in my family had seen him write in forty years, and this was why. With his illness, it was impossible; not to form the words, but to make them mean anything. I could read along with his train of thought as he lost it, distracted by the world around him—the light outside on the lake, the crucifix-shaped bars across the window, the photograph of our family . . .
Photograph of family, he had written. He had been looking at the framed photo on the desk, the photo that my uncle said he’d spent hours with.
I picked it up, the only photo on the desk. My breathing slowed as I ran my thumb over it, studying it once more. Why this picture? What was he looking for?
I realized where I’d seen the words before.
One was plastered along the si
de of the train behind us. The 6 train, the California Zephyr. It was the name of the train.
And next to it, reflected in the train’s window, was the digital screen at the station, displaying its next three destinations:
Reno.
Winnemucca.
And Elko, Nevada.
9.
May 16, 2010
Dear Journal,
My grandfather’s funeral was today.
I think there should be a rule that says you can’t talk about how someone died at his funeral. You are there to remember his whole life, and you don’t have very much time. Nobody wants to remember him dying. That’s the worst part.
My grandfather was alive for more than sixty years but all anybody wants to talk about is the last week.
Most people there didn’t look very sad. Most of them just stood by the food table and shook their heads and pointed at the giant cardboard poster of his book that someone put next to his casket. My grandfather would have hated that they put it there.
That’s another thing. We all started calling him “Grandfather” rather than “Grandpa,” because I think we forgot all the reasons why we ever called him Grandpa in the first place.
My father just stared forward the whole time at nothing. And my uncle Tim tried to make a bunch of jokes about how my grandfather always took the top of the toilet off, like nobody told him that we were all there because he died.
My grandfather’s agent, Mr. Volpe, spoke, and said these nice things about him, like how he was “brilliant” and “aware” and “ferociously creative.” Which doesn’t make any sense because usually Mr. Volpe just called him a “senile old mindfuck.”
Me: Dad, how come Mr. Volpe is being so nice?
Dad: That’s what people do at funerals.
Me: But that’s not what he said when he was alive.
A Lite Too Bright Page 3