A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

  “Then why leave?” I’d lost control of my volume. “If they mean so fucking much to you?”

  “Because they’re not—he’s not . . . they’re not what they used to be.”

  I shook my head, slowly, careful not to look at her face. “They’re not going to find anything.”

  Mara didn’t react. “They know that. They’re not looking for clues anymore. They’re looking for you.”

  I didn’t say anything, counting the seconds until she gave up on me again and left.

  “I can help you, Arthur, but pushing me out of here—”

  “I don’t want your help.”

  “This isn’t helping anyone, least of all you.”

  “Well, you’re not helping me either.”

  “Arthur—”

  “We’re done, Mara.”

  “It won’t take them long, you know, to find you—”

  “I really, really don’t want to hear it.”

  “They don’t think he has Alzheimer’s.”

  Echo.

  Neither of us said anything. The room came back into focus, then out again. She stared at me but I didn’t meet her gaze.

  “What?” I couldn’t feel myself forming the word, only heard its echo.

  “They don’t think that your grandfather has Alzheimer’s, or dementia, or anything at all.” She leaned forward over the table, her face intense and angry. “They think it’s a ruse. They think his writing is too complicated for someone with his condition. They had a doctor look at it and everything, and—and . . . they think he was faking the whole thing. Pretending to be sick, just to hide the secret library.”

  Our eyes met for the first time and the contact surprised both of us.

  “But they’re serious, Arthur,” she continued, looking back down at the table. “They’re really serious. They think it exists, and they, they think they’re destined to find it. Not just that they can; they think they’re chosen, on a mission from God, or something. And anything that gets in the way of Jack finding it, he’ll . . . God, I don’t know what he’ll do. And I just thought you should know.” She paused. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I didn’t say anything. The silence was punishing her, but the words in my head were sprinting closer together, then farther apart from each other, too fast for me to grab on to more than one to form a sentence.

  Finally, two collided. Two she had just said. Two that I could repeat.

  “Had Alzheimer’s,” I whispered.

  She brought her elbow to her face. “What?” she asked into her sleeve.

  “You said ‘has Alzheimer’s.’ You mean, he had Alzheimer’s.”

  Her head shook beneath her arm. “No,” she whispered. “They think it was all fake.” I felt the foundation of the library shake beneath our feet. “They think he’s alive.”

  Echo.

  4.

  March 3, 2007

  Dear Journal,

  Sometimes I think that my grandpa is faking every time he talks about forgetting stuff, and actually, he can remember better than anybody.

  He does forget some stuff.

  He makes sandwiches and forgets them in the kitchen almost every day.

  Sometimes he starts working on a toilet, then forgets and just leaves it like that.

  He calls me “Jeffery” sometimes, even though my name is Arthur, which he should be able to remember, because it’s his name, too.

  But sometimes I forget that stuff, too.

  He can always remember books. It all started when I was telling him about my Tom Sawyer project for school.

  Me: Have you read Tom Sawyer?

  Grandpa: Bull$#&*, Twain couldn’t write his way out of a left turn.

  Me: I have to write a journal on what I think is the best part of Tom Sawyer and what it means.

  Grandpa: That is easy.

  Me: No, it is not! How is it easy?

  Grandpa: Because I know the best part of Tom Sawyer.

  “the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.”

  (He said he would write it in my journal for me. That is his handwriting, not mine. I don’t write in cursive.)

  Me: What does it mean?

  Grandpa: I can’t tell you.

  Me: Why?

  Grandpa: Because that’s the mystery. You have to figure it out yourself.

  He just told me he could do it for any book! Which I don’t believe (because if he can’t remember sandwiches, why would he be able to remember books?). But we’re going to try.

  Me: A Tale of Two Cities.

  Grandpa:

  “a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

  Me: The Great Gatsby.

  Grandpa:

  “i was within and without. simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

  Me: The Bible.

  Grandpa:

  “for all of the

  He thought about it for a long time and I think he forgot what we were doing, because when I asked if he had an answer he got mad and now I have to go to soccer. I guess I fooled him.

  More later,

  Arthur Louis Pullman the Third

  “for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

  so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

  better luck next time.

  —grandpa

  5.

  I SLUMPED INTO a chair at the head of the table. The Great Diversion room had the distinct feeling of being closed off from not just the rest of the library but the rest of the world. The little sound and light that made it in from outside were muted and unnoticeable. The air in the room didn’t belong out there; the rest of the world didn’t belong in here. I didn’t belong in here. The table between us was a million miles long, Mara’s voice a million miles away.

  “It’s ridiculous, right? He couldn’t be alive, could he? I mean, he would have at least told his family, right? He couldn’t have been faking that whole time . . . could he? You knew him better than that, didn’t you?”

  “He’s dead,” I breathed, as if giving the words a place in the room would help me see them better, but it didn’t.

  Mara saw straight through them. “Arthur. How well did you really know your grandfather?”

  I stared past her, counting books on the bottom shelf across from us, fully aware that she was watching me and waiting for something.

  Eventually, out of focus, her dark figure began to bob toward the door, then stopped after a few steps.

  “When I asked Jack why he wanted to find this so badly he said, ‘We deserve this.’ And when I asked you, you said, ‘He deserves this.’ That’s what Leila would say. That’s why I came back. For her.”

  “That sounds like bullshit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That sounds like bullshit.”

  She took a few steps closer to me.

  “I know what you’re running away from, by the way. I looked you up. You were in court three weeks before I met you.”

  I closed my eyes to hide, letting myself be somewhere, anywhere else. Driving. I was driving. I could see the inside windshield of my Camaro, and the road in front of me.

  “Hitting your girlfriend? Attacking your best friend in a courtroom? A restraining order?”

  I was driving the Portola Valley Dive, taking the curves hard at 120—

  “That’s your reason for being all cryptic, not wanting to talk about yourself, wanting to get the fuck away from California?”

  —shifting into sixth gear on the straightaway, the speedometer hitting 160. My shoulders were pinned back by inescapable acceleration.

  “Let me guess what happened. You did something that you would never do because you felt like you had to do it, and then you regrett
ed it immediately after. Does that sound right?”

  I could feel the g-force energy, screaming forward, pulling me toward the center of the Earth, pumping me full of the most addictive substance that exists: adrenaline.

  “If Kaitlin Lewis was here right now, is that what you would tell her?”

  Kaitlin’s name brought me back. The road, the car, the escape disappeared. I wasn’t driving. I was in the library with Mara.

  “I know what that’s like, Arthur. But I think maybe . . . it’s time you start acknowledging the worst parts of yourself, rather than pretending they’re not a part of you. Rather than putting that shit onto everybody else.”

  I hadn’t noticed that she’d made her way back to the table and dropped a page in front of me. “There. That’s all they want, and I want you to have it. What does that do for your trust?” I pulled my eyes from the bookshelf and saw my grandfather’s penmanship scrawled inside the fold, with new ink on top of it: a tiny black fist, threatening me. “Sorry about the stamp; Jack put it on all of them.”

  She stood still for another moment. “Say something.”

  “Giving something back after you failed isn’t noble,” I whispered. “It’s cowardice. It doesn’t earn you trust, it earns you pity.”

  She turned up her nose. “Better to live as a coward than to die as a hero.”

  “You have that expression backward.”

  “I know. And that’s exactly why I came back.” She paused. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Arthur.”

  She walked quickly out the door without looking back.

  I felt a headache tickling the sides of my brain, everything behind my eyes crashing and colliding. I took three deep breaths. I didn’t know how to do anything else.

  The page she’d left behind was the first journal, from the cabin in Truckee.

  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

  “He’s dead,” I told the empty room. “They sent us his . . .”

  The room didn’t respond. It swallowed the words and sent them shooting away from me.

  For thirteen years, his illness had pushed my family to every conceivable breaking point. For thirteen years, we’d given him every care and comfort, excused every mishap, fought to understand every absurd behavior. For thirteen years, we’d given up our lives for him, only for him to abandon us in the end.

  But I hadn’t been without my doubts. He had remembered things I was certain he’d forget. His clues were filled with complex thoughts, more complex than I would have ever thought he was capable of. He had made a clean break, disappearing without questions or a search and never coming back, without telling any of us.

  Unless he was telling me now.

  6.

  AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of nothing, I pulled myself up from the table and took the small red King James Bible from the shelf.

  I thumbed through it. It reminded me of the one my grandfather had carried with him everywhere. In the last few years of his life, it had become an extension of his body. He read it constantly, retreating into it whenever he was lost or confused as if it was some kind of map. And the tiny little text—full of its irrational and outdated stories, its lessons handed down from an all-knowing leader, its psalms and chants and quotables—took over and became his memory.

  There was no inscription in the front of the Bible. I shook it, but there was nothing tucked into the pages. I turned it over, moving on to the next set of shelves, but before I could feel for anything else, a drone of sirens came pouring in from outside the library walls.

  I pulled a chair to the room’s only window, smashing my face to the circular glass. On the street below, there were police cars gathering, throwing red and blue around the neighborhood. Loud footsteps and shouting voices came from outside the room as the officers took over the building.

  I sat in the stillness of the back room for ten seconds. No one knew I was here, other than Mara and Suzy, but neither had reason to call the police. Even if my father did know I was here, he couldn’t have called this kind of siege on me. Some other criminal must have led a police chase here, thinking the library was the last place they’d expect. Still, I tucked the Bible into my pocket and rushed to—

  “I’m learning now that the world is a circle. And what I thought was behind me . . . was actually ahead.”

  Jack slammed the wooden door shut behind him, and the voices outside disappeared. His white scarf seemed to glow, perfectly visible in the low light. He paced slowly around the table. “I was hoping I was going to find you here. Or rather, you were going to find us.”

  I shook with nervous anger, but he didn’t notice.

  “It’s cool, right? I mean, they had it built for Great Purpose, specifically. Meetings, recruiting for protests, all of it. Thompson and Pullman—Duke and Arty—heading the room, leading the revolutionaries into battle.

  “Here’s what’s funny, though: when the organization disappeared, they kept the room secret. Still here, obviously, and still gets maintenance, but nobody uses it. Forty-five years. Why do you think they would do that?”

  He wanted me to answer, but I didn’t.

  “The library says it’s for historical purposes, but don’t people usually like to show off their history?” He examined the banner. “Not lock it up and keep it a secret? And sure, they let us use it now—I can be very convincing—but what about the forty years before that? Why were they keeping it here . . . if there wasn’t something—someone—they were waiting for?”

  I took three deep breaths, glaring into his grin. “You stole from me.”

  His smile didn’t break. “Well, that’s based on a narrow understanding of possession, Arthur.”

  My face twisted further.

  “Look . . . I don’t want you to have any bad feelings about this, so let me explain as best I can: we’re the closest thing there’s ever been to a new Great Purpose. We’ve got the same buildings, the same ideas . . .” He motioned to himself. “The same leader. And that’s exactly what our fathers—grandfathers—wanted.”

  He stopped, ten feet and an oak table between us. “Isn’t it? I mean, during his final week, he went to all the Great Purpose spots . . . wrote for the first time in forty years.” He spun the journal on the table around. “‘My eyes are open, and I can see that I’m coming up on it again. And I feel Great . . . Purpose.’” He looked up. “He was writing to restart the movement. And it’s not stealing if you’re taking what’s already yours. I’m sorry you were put off by our way of doing things, but sometimes revolution requires . . . greater measures. For the greater good, right? The greater truth, isn’t that what she said?” He glanced quickly left to right, like he thought Mara might be in the room. “I’m sure you can understand that. Either way”—I watched from the corner of my eye as he studied me—“who did you think he was writing to?”

  My fists clenched at my sides, desperate to lash out at him, but the more he talked, the fewer reasons I could find. Even my anger was fading. “You’re full of shit,” I said.

  “I’m full of shit? Why would I lie to you?” He shrugged. “You’re talking like I’ve got some kind of self-interest here. What do you think I’m doing this for, anyway? Money? I don’t get paid for this. I’m here because the world is crying out for new leaders. And I was chosen to answer that call.”

  He smiled up at the banner, lightly touching the bottom. “They built so much. All these libraries, and secret meeting places, and . . . diversions. And for what? Just to give up? Walk away and let the whole country fall back into ruin? I mean . . . there’s gotta be more to it than that, right? That can’t be it.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I said, convincing myself.

  He turned slowly back to me. “Good.” He shrugged again, reaching his right arm behind his back. “Don’t be.” He pulled the gun from his pants and slid it onto the table. “We need your help, Arthur.”<
br />
  I stared at it, resting between the two of us. “What?”

  “We’ve got all of the resources, we know the history of this thing inside and out, but we don’t know your grandfather like you do. And when we can find him . . . then that’s it. That’s the ball game. He comes back, and this is a true revolution. We could lead armies.” Jack spoke so confidently, it was difficult to find reasons to doubt him. But as I fumed, focusing on the in-and-out of my breathing, I realized I had just as few reasons to believe him. With every time he said we, I became more and more aware that it was just him in the library with me.

  “You don’t wanna be on the wrong side of this, Arthur,” he said.

  “No.”

  Jack blinked deliberately. “No, you don’t want to help us? Or no, you don’t know your grandfather?”

  “No.” I stood as tall as possible. “Fuck you, you stole from me.”

  “Arthur. Can you really not see past that? There’s a hell of a lot more at stake here than your delicate little sensibilities.”

  I glared back. “I’ve got an idea—why don’t you just try to remember all of the things you learned from your father?”

  A streak of anger ran across his face, but before he could act on it, it disappeared back into his calm. “This isn’t a negotiation, Arthur. I’m not asking you. This?” He motioned outside. “These cops? You wanna take a guess who they’re looking for?”

  I swallowed. “You’re lying.”

  He gave me just enough silence to consider that he might be right. “I’m sure it’s a coincidence. I’m sure they’re not looking for you. There’s no way someone tipped them off that there might be a fugitive in possession of stolen property here. I mean, how would I even know you were here? Other than Suzy, of course.”

  A wave of consequence washed over me and I swayed, suddenly woozy from the movement of the Earth. I felt the axis begin to shift, heard the footsteps and shouts louder through the wall.