A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

“Or.” She shrugged. “You could go back to not telling me things, and just do that somewhere else, far away from my booth.”

  No part of this would get less complicated by involving another person. No clue would become easier to find if Mara knew what I was looking for. The journals would still be obscure, and his past would still be beyond my reach. But Mara was sitting right there, and if I wanted her to stay . . .

  “He left my family,” I said. “Five years ago, my grandfather left my family, and we never saw him again. No one knows what happened to him. He just went missing, and then we found his body a week later.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Three days ago, I found a clue that he left behind for me, in a house where he used to live, and it led me to Nevada. I met a woman that knew him, and she told me . . . well, she kind of told me that he went to Green River. And I just found out that he used to go to that bar, the one we were just in, even though no one in my family thought he had ever left California.” I paused. “He had Alzheimer’s, so most of my family assumed he was just wandering, but I think he was doing it on purpose.”

  “What do you mean on purpose?”

  “Alzheimer’s breaks down brain functions one by one—short-term memory, then language, then decision-making, then mood control—but long-term memory is the furthest back, so it stays buried. Then when an Alzheimer’s patient starts struggling to understand their senses and what’s really going on around them, the long-term memories start to become their reality. Like, Jewish nursing homes in the last fifteen years started noticing Alzheimer’s patients hiding food and ducking nurses, because in their heads, they were back in concentration camps, reliving the Holocaust. It’s called episodic reliving. At the end of their lives, people with Alzheimer’s basically live inside of their strongest memories.”

  “And you think . . .”

  “That’s what my grandfather was doing, yeah. I think he was reliving a trip he used to make all the time when he was younger, and I think he was leaving me clues to find him—I mean, find where he went, and what he was doing, and why.” I let the information sit, hearing it aloud myself for the first time. “Also, I learned that he liked whiskey, a lot. But I guess I kind of knew that.”

  I braced myself for the recoil and instant regret, but it never came. The muscles of Mara’s face were frozen, and she was staring at her finger as it traced figure eights around a napkin on the table, but she didn’t tell me it was stupid, and she didn’t sigh like she was disappointed. She just kept staring, processing, creasing her forehead. “When was he making the trip, you said?” she asked, finally.

  “When he was my age. I think, like . . . the late sixties? The seventies?”

  “San Francisco to Denver and back?”

  “Yeah. I mean, from what I can tell. I just know he stopped in Green River a lot.”

  The edges of her lips flickered as she looked up from the napkin on the table. “Your grandpa was a hippie.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “Summer of Love and whatnot? Anti-Vietnam protests? You know, that glorious protest history I was talking about?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I know about that.” I tried to speak confidently. “I just don’t really get what that has to do with my grandpa.”

  I hadn’t planned to say it, but it was my first time calling him “grandpa” since he’d passed away. I felt a rush of closeness to him, followed by a reminder that he was dead now, and he always would be.

  “Well,” she said, leaning forward, “in the sixties and early seventies, loads of young people were running back and forth between San Francisco and the rest of the United States for protests and rallies and it became sort of a rite of passage, you know. Make your way to the great west, make your way back, burn a flag, the whole anti-Vietnam bit. And most of them were on Greyhound buses or hitchhiking or whatnot, but loads of them took the train as well. And this route is iconic for that. The Zephyr train has been around since the forties. Allen Ginsberg probably had sex with a male prostitute right where you’re sitting.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying to picture my grandfather and a male prostitute burning a flag together. I didn’t know much about my grandfather’s early life, and I couldn’t picture him young.

  But Mara knew what she was talking about. “This was a very serious youth movement in your country, and there were a lot of people talking about it.” She was incredulous. “Like, all of the best writing from that era. Did you never have to read any of that? Kerouac? Ginsberg? Thompson? Pullman, for God’s sake?”

  My head shot up and she noticed.

  “No” was the answer to the question. I’d never read any of those, save the SparkNotes of my grandfather’s, but from what I could remember, none of it had anything to do with a train, or protesting, or hippies, or anything she was talking about.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I ignored the question. “Have, uh, have you read those authors?” I placed my hand over my backpack.

  “Yes, in excess. And I’m not even from your country.” She sounded increasingly agitated. “Really, for all the shit your lot talks about your star-spangled pride, you really seem keen on forgetting the only parts of your history that don’t involve killing people.”

  Again, I ignored her. “So you’ve read Arthur Pullman?”

  “Yes, A World Away, twice. Which I suspect is two more times than you’ve—”

  “That’s who I’m looking for.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Who?”

  “Arthur Louis Pullman.” I pulled the journal entries from my backpack and laid them on the table between us.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  I nodded to the clues. “That’s my grandfather. That’s who I’m looking for.”

  She didn’t say anything right away, biting her bottom lip. “So when you say your name is Arthur,” she began slowly, “you mean to say—your name—it’s actually Arthur . . . Pullman?”

  “The Third.”

  She looked from the clues to me, then back to the clues, still biting her lip. “And when—you say he’s writing to you—you mean—”

  I smiled and pushed the clues in her direction. “Read, in this order.”

  As she began reading, the only thing I could think about was my uncle’s joke: Maybe you could use the book to get laid. The notion that a girl might be impressed by my relation to an old author seemed much less ridiculous now as I watched Mara’s eyes shoot back and forth across the page. Her finger bounced as she read, just like before, and she smiled expectantly at the pages, unflinching. Occasionally she’d mutter under her breath, “Brilliant,” or “God, what a fucking genius.” Between every entry, she’d look up at me expectantly, like I was going to tell her it was a dream or a well-executed and elaborate practical joke. But I shrugged.

  Out the window, the mountains of Colorado sped by us, snowcapped and white, occasionally giving way to the all-consuming blackness of a tunnel. When the train was built through this area—they told us over the intercom—it had been impossible to get over the peaks, until they discovered that they could use dynamite as an unnatural solution to God’s natural blockades. Out in the open, we could see skiers making their way down the mountains, rivers gushing around the base, fighting bends and turns as if drawn in by a sloppy child with a pencil. But in the tunnels, we couldn’t see anything, not even each other.

  “Oh, you’re going to share them with this girl?”

  I flinched with terror. Kaitlin had taken the seat next to Mara in the booth across from me. “This girl you barely know? With the gross accent?”

  “Yes,” I said. Kaitlin looked upset; Mara looked up. “Nothing, sorry.”

  “Well, great idea, Arthur. When she robs you and leaves you for dead, don’t come crying to—”

  “Arthur.” Mara’s eyes were still closed, gears again turning behind her forehead. “I’d like to help you in your search.” It sounded like she’d been rehearsing th
e words.

  “Oh God!” Kaitlin shouted. “Who does this girl think she is? No, Jesus, Arthur, tell her no.”

  She was right. “I’m sorry, Mara—”

  Mara raised her hand to stop me. “Let me rephrase. I can help you in your search. And it would be very wise of you to take my assistance.”

  “‘I can help you in your search—’” Kaitlin mocked her accent, poorly.

  “Look, Mara, I don’t know you. And there’s a girl—”

  “Let me ask you something,” Mara interrupted me. “You’re on your way to Denver, right? Because this says Mecca, and I’m assuming you’ve figured that out?”

  “How did you—”

  “Once you get there, what is your plan?”

  Both of them looked at me expectantly. I didn’t have an answer but my mouth started moving anyway. “Um, I guess, I’ll go, to . . . I guess I don’t know yet. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

  “Well, looks like you’ve got about eight hours to ‘figure it out.’”

  I didn’t respond but I knew she was right. Systems were crashing in my head.

  “Or.” Mara’s voice warmed. “You could let me help you in your search.”

  “‘So we can both be lost together!’” Kaitlin got up and started walking around. “‘And then when we don’t find anything, we can just fuck each other and take turns taking shits on pictures of your ruddy old girlfriend!’”

  I looked up at both of them, rubbing my temples. I had read once that doing that helped stimulate brain activity but it wasn’t helping. “How would you being there solve that problem?”

  Kaitlin rolled her eyes away from me and Mara met my gaze. “Because I know where to go.”

  “How?” Kaitlin spat at her.

  “How?” I whispered.

  She motioned to the short story from Green River. “He says it in there. Not that difficult, really. Just have to know what you’re looking for.”

  “She’s lying,” Kaitlin said. “I know what it looks like when a girl lies. This girl is lying.”

  The train flew through a tunnel and both of them disappeared.

  I took several deep breaths, one of Dr. Sandoval’s strategies for helping me think. “I don’t know.” Mara reached out and placed her small, real hand over mine on the table. It wasn’t warm or soft, really, but it shot electricity up my arm and into my spine. Kaitlin noticed, and I pulled my hand back.

  “Arthur, don’t,” Kaitlin warned.

  “I have to,” I told her.

  Mara looked confused. “You—have to?”

  “Think about it, Arthur.” I could feel Kaitlin’s breath against my ear as she glared at Mara. “What’s in this for her?”

  “What’s in this for you?” I asked. “Why would you want to help?”

  Mara looked taken aback. “Because it’s really fucking interesting! I’ve already told you, I love this part of history. My sister and I—it’s like our whole lives. Your grandpa is a very important person to me. What’re the odds I meet his grandson? And have an opportunity to help him?”

  I felt myself almost smile. Kaitlin noticed.

  “What are you gonna do to her, Arthur?” She rounded on me. “What happens when you lose control of yourself?”

  I took a deep breath and turned back to Mara. “Okay. Where do we go?”

  “MAH-RAH!” Kaitlin groaned as Mara sat back down in the booth. “SOME RANDOM BITCH NAMED MAH-RAH! ARTHUR BETRAYED ME FOR MAH-RAH!”

  Mah-rah snatched the story from Green River and flipped to the third page. “You don’t know it, buddy,” she said. “But you’ve just made the best decision of your life.”

  I could feel the weight of the exact opposite to be true, but when she looked up from the page, our eyes locked, and Kaitlin disappeared.

  “See, right there.” She pointed to a line on the third page. “‘Their hideaway at Melbourne’—that’s where you’re headed.”

  “Melbourne is in Australia—”

  “Yes, my cunning solution is that your grandfather took a train to Australia, because I’m really quite a moron. No”—she hammered her finger down on the section again—“not in Melbourne. See how he says ‘at Melbourne’? It’s not the city, it’s a place.”

  I followed her finger along the page. “You think Melbourne is the name of a place?”

  “No, I know Melbourne is the name of a place. The Melbourne Youth Hostel. It’s been around for ages, very popular with this youth movement we’ve been discussing.”

  I reread the section a few times. She was right; he had very clearly used the word in when he was describing his presence in the town and at when he described their hideout at Melbourne.

  The train flew through a short tunnel, a ten-second blackout.

  “I’m not wrong,” she assured me.

  “How did you figure that out so fast?”

  “My sister used to—well, because, I know things.”

  I sat in silence, still staring at the section of my grandfather’s story where he revealed his next stop, wondering if there was anything else that was that subtle that I’d missed in the first entries.

  “There’s one more thing, Arthur,” Mara said, slowly and more hesitantly. “I don’t know that you fully appreciate what you have here.”

  I almost rolled my eyes. “No, I, I think I’ve read them enough times. All I’ve done for the last three days is, uh, is read these things. I don’t think there’s any way I’m missing something.”

  “No, I mean in general. Arthur Lou—your grandfather—he hasn’t been published in a long time. Since his novel, forty years ago. Do you know that?”

  This time I actually rolled my eyes.

  “Okay, well, then as I’m sure you know, people still talk about him, a lot,” she continued. “What he was doing, why he never published again. It’s all very mysterious. And I’ve heard—obviously you’ll know better than I will—but I’ve heard that he never wrote at home. There’s nothing more that the family—you—keep secret? Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “Right.” She smoothed over the Green River story. “So you realize, then, what you have?”

  “Something he wrote me?”

  She took a deep breath. “You are now in the sole possession of the only known pieces of his writing since then.” She held up the clues. “You have with you three unpublished works by Arthur Louis Pullman, written a week prior to his very, very famous death. There are people who have been dreaming about this for forty years. People take this very, very seriously. People will pay . . .” She didn’t even finish the sentence.

  “You’re saying . . . they’re worth a lot of money?”

  “They’re worth a lot of a lot of things, yes. I mean, a lot of money means different things to different people. Do you have a yacht?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you have a private jet?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Then yes, to you, these are probably worth a lot of money.”

  The train went black as we disappeared into a tunnel.

  3.

  “GOOD PEOPLE OF the California Zephyr! Wander no more, for we are arriving at our Mile-High Mecca!

  “For lots of you, this is your final destination and we’ll be saying ourselves a teary good-bye. We know you’ll all be eager to bulldoze out of the exit, but we’d ask that you keep in mind that, intentional or not, killing an Amtrak attendant is a federal offense, so stay back until the light turns green, speed racers. I promise you Denver will still be there, just as glorious and golden, if you take the extra thirty seconds to let everyone off safely.

  “Those of you staying aboard with us, on through the starry night and into Nebraska, you’ll have about ninety minutes to drink in the Colorado air before we say good night, Denver, and good morning, Nebraska.

  “This stop does require me to reverse the train into the station, so anyone curious, feel free to check the window for a master class in train operation. That’s all, from your br
illiant and loyal conductor.”

  4.

  I WAS ON the platform at Union Station in Denver when my father called me for the second time. The air was chilly and my fingers trembled against the iPhone screen.

  “Arthur, this has to stop now,” he started before the phone hit my ear. “You said you’d keep in touch and no one’s heard from you since last night. You said you’d go back to your auntie and uncle’s, but no one’s seen you. You said you were by the lake but—well, I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Hey to you, too, Dad.” Mara heard me and my face burned red.

  “Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

  “Yeah, actually,” I said, thumbing through the clues in my backpack. “I had a question I wanted to ask you.”

  “What?”

  I squeezed my ring. “Did Grandpa ever, when he was younger . . . is there any reason he would’ve gone back and forth across the country? Like, before you were born?”

  Mara leaned close, trying to hear his side of the call, the cold mist of our breath tangling in front of us.

  “Did he . . . what? I’m sorry, Arthur, I don’t understand what this has to do—”

  “Did he ever say anything about Green River, Utah? Or Elko, Nevada?” I asked.

  “No. Your grandfather lived his whole life in California.”

  “Maybe he didn’t tell you—”

  “Arthur, what are you asking?”

  “I’m just, I’m trying to figure out some stuff about Grandpa’s life.” There it was again, Grandpa instead of Grandfather. The word hollowed out my stomach.

  “Stop doing this,” he commanded.

  “Doing what?”

  “Stop trying to guilt me into forgetting about the fact that you’ve disappeared for three days without calling or telling any of us where you are. I’m not just going to drop it because I feel bad about raising my voice at you the other night!”

  Mara sensed it was a conversation she no longer wanted to be a part of and wandered away across the station.

  “I told you yesterday, I want to give you all the freedom in the world, and let you find your way, but you can’t keep using it as an excuse to manipulate us, Arthur. Our pity isn’t a free pass for you to be inconsiderate. In fact, in light of everything that’s happened, it’s more important that you listen to us now. So give me one good reason why I shouldn’t drive up to Truckee right now to come find you and bring you home.”