A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

“Can we not talk about this?”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged.

  I knew exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it: talking about my grandfather meant thinking about my grandfather, and thinking about my grandfather meant thinking about whether he was alive or not, whether he’d tricked my family or not, whether he was trying to communicate with me or not. It meant letting myself entertain the kind of hope that makes possible the kind of disappointment that you don’t come back from.

  “Can you at least tell me why he spells the words wrong?” She shifted in her seat, pulling her legs up underneath her. “Come on, I’ve just told you my sister died. That doesn’t buy me at least a few questions?”

  “Yeah, alright.” I shook my head. “It’s an Alzheimer’s thing.”

  “The letter ‘a’?”

  “Phonetic spelling.”

  “Phonetic spelling is a symptom of Alzheimer’s?”

  “No. Phonetic misspelling. Spelling and grammar are nuanced, and tough to hold on to when your brain stops storing information. And when your brain loses its ability to remember spellings, it chooses to write out words however they sound in your head. Which for my grandfather meant using a lot of a’s.”

  “Oh?” She turned on her seat toward me. “What about these random sentences: ‘jagged line burning orange lite’?”

  “It’s a memory device.” I turned toward her. “His doctor taught him. When he didn’t understand where he was or what was going on, he was just supposed to start calling out the things that he saw, or the parts that he didn’t understand. If you think it’s weird on paper, try hearing it in person.”

  “Wait,” Mara said, her fingers dancing down the page. “So do you think he really saw a greyhound? Or all these waves?”

  “No, no.” I winced, remembering all of the times that my family had been fooled, overly excited or extremely confused by this particular habit. “Sometimes he would see the world in metaphor. You’ve gotta watch out for that.”

  She smiled sideways at me in the window reflection, eager to test this new trick she’d learned. “Alright,” she continued. “Why his name? Why does he say ‘Arthur’ so often?”

  “Self-awareness.” I heard his voice, booming out my name, my father’s name, his own name, just enough to throw the entire household into confusion. “The doctor said as long as he could remember his own name, he could tether to it. He would do it at home, too, and he said—” The words caught in my throat. “He said he was just reminding himself who the, the narrator of the story was.”

  Mara watched me, hearing my voice break, and I carefully turned back to the window. “What about this, the date?” she asked. “Why the 2010? Why not just 2010? Some kind of weird contrarian thing?”

  “No, he, uh, he did that on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  I spoke to the window glass. “Because he, he said it made him remember what that number, the number of the year, what it actually means. ‘The 2010th year’ since Jesus, or, as far as he was concerned, since human beings started to understand what it meant to be conscious. He said before he started writing, he always wanted to remind himself that he was the product of two thousand and ten years of conscious evolution. He’s a part of the two thousand and tenth try.”

  Mara was silent for a long moment. “I think,” she said, slowly at first, “that he had a pretty limited scope of evolution if he thought that—”

  “I know. That’s just what he thought. He was . . . He liked God. A lot.” I leaned my head back onto the seat and let it fall against the headrest.

  “Okay. So what do you think he—”

  “Mara,” I said, closing my eyes. “Can we . . . can we not talk about my grandpa?”

  “Just one more question?”

  “Mara—”

  “You do know him,” she said, pursing her lips in earnest and leaning them toward me, so I couldn’t forget it. “I asked you, how well you even . . . you did know him. You do know him.”

  I made a noise between a sigh and a grunt. “One more question.”

  “Do you think—your grandfather—do you think he knew how old he was? Or what year it was?”

  “No,” I said quietly, without looking at her. “I think he had his own world. And in that world, it was 1970, and he was twenty, and he was happy.”

  Mara sighed and reclined her seat, her head resting a few inches from mine. “It just seems absurd, doesn’t it? To remember something for that long, even when you forget everything else? To feel something so strong that it never goes away? Like that woman, Sue, stuck saying good-bye to her husband over and over again.” The train hummed under her as she spoke. “I guess we really do keep love somewhere much deeper than the rest of it, huh?”

  I didn’t answer, pretending to sleep, and before too long, the real thing found me.

  8.

  “PARTY PEOPLE OF the Mid-State Cruiser! You may just be joining us, but we are entering what we excitedly and affectionately call ‘the home stretch’!

  “Omaha to Chicago! One single, solitary blast across the plain Great Plains of Iowa, and this nonstop steam engine will come to its final resting position in the Union Station, Windy City, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America! We’re on time today, folks, and we intend on keeping it that way, so let’s keep the stops short and the good-byes sweet—if you’re off in Creston, then for God’s sake, get off in Creston! We’ve all got places to be and mysteries to solve and worlds to conquer and it all starts . . . eight hours from now.

  “We’re coming up on the Nebraska border, and we’ve got only heaven beyond that—no, wait, excuse me, this isn’t heaven, no, it’s Iowa. That’s all, from your brilliant and loyal conductor.”

  9.

  May 4, 2005

  Dear Journal,

  I am writing in you because my grandpa and I are riding on the train.

  Me: Why does he say that?

  Grandpa: Why does he say what?

  Me: “That is all, from your brilliant and—”

  Grandpa: Because people like knowing they can trust the person in charge. They like knowing he will do a good job. God calls himself “ruler of the universe” because it makes people feel safe. They know they are being taken care of. Do you feel safe?

  Me: Kind of.

  Grandpa: What if he said, “That is all, from your average & boring conductor, who does not really know how this goddamned thing works anyway!”

  I like riding on the train with Grandpa because he explains everything to me, and he makes up a lot of funny stories that make it less boring.

  Also, he says “goddamn” in front of me and does not apologize because he knows I’m not a kid.

  He makes me sit on the inside, because he says that I am “too desirable of a young man,” and I might get snatched up. So I let him sit on the outside.

  Me: Why do we have to go to Truckee?

  Grandpa: Because it’s important to pay the respect.

  Me: Pay the respect?

  Grandpa: When someone dies, it’s important for people to get together and talk about how sad they are.

  I wish he wouldn’t have said that, because it reminded me of how sad I was. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew that he was sad, too.

  Grandpa: Alright, one more question, then you have to go to sleep. I thought for a long time about what I wanted my question to be.

  Me: Where is Grandma gonna go now?

  My grandpa didn’t answer right away and I thought for a second maybe he forgot that we were talking. Finally, he talked really quiet.

  Grandpa: A peaceful sleep’s not the end of night; by morning, she’ll dance with the angels of light.

  Me: Who said that?

  Grandpa: It was one more question.

  Me: Please?

  My grandpa smiled, like he was remembering something that made him really happy.

  Grandpa: One of my favorite poets said that. Henry Pullman.

  Me: He has the same name as us!
>
  Grandpa: Yes he does. Now no more questions. Time for bed. That is all, from your brilliant and loyal grandpa.

  I fell asleep for a long time.

  I woke up only once in the middle of the night, when it was dark outside. But my grandpa wasn’t asleep. He was just sitting there.

  His eyes were closed, but I knew he was awake, because he was holding his hands out and facing them upward like someone was about to hand him a pile of logs.

  And he was smiling at the window. And he looked at me, and he did not say anything. Just smiled.

  I think he likes taking the train more than I do.

  More later,

  Arthur Louis Pullman the Third

  Part Eight.

  Chicago.

  1.

  THE AIR THROUGH the window wakes me up to fill my lungs.

  There are no clouds in the California sky and there’s a familiar highway in front of me, a familiar safety belt snaked around me, a familiar pedal sliding under my right foot, easing forward, my big toe propelling me closer and closer to the crest of a familiar climax, a tipping point I’d desperately missed. We break the top of the mountain and the sun swallows the frame of the front windshield, uninterrupted by clouds and shimmering off millions of invisible particles, blinding us for a moment, but we don’t need that moment; we drive by faith, not by sight; we know this road.

  Don’t do something you’ll regret—the kind of warning that only comes from those who don’t understand; this kind of high doesn’t come safely; this kind of life, the kind worth living, is only found dangerously close to the blade of regret.

  When the world comes into focus, the dive is twice as steep as it ever was before, the highway twice as narrow, one single road, the peak of its own winding mountain surrounded by impossibly deep canyons, the bottom invisible through fog and darkness, so far below that by the time I hit the bottom, I’d be too far away for sound to carry back up to the road. I would disappear silently.

  I hit the inside of the curve at maximum acceleration, only centripetal energy left to pull me forward, spinning the steering wheel sharply, wide rubber beneath me clinging to the asphalt for my life. The safety belt tightens; every organ in my body continues northeast but the vehicle veers northwest, my liver and stomach and heart slamming against the inside of my rib cage. I jerk the gear to sixth, a downhill free fall stretching ahead of me until—

  There’s something on the road.

  Somethings: small, circular, perfectly silver, formed of invisible particles and shimmering in the Portola Valley sun.

  My ring. Our rings.

  I clench my teeth and drive straight over them. One, two, three, four independent explosions, each shattering the still air. I grip the wheel so hard that I feel shattering in both of my hands, bone against bone and pain shooting up my arms.

  There’s someone in the passenger seat.

  Brown hair and pale skin, shimmering in the Portola Valley sun.

  Ahead of me or behind me, through the shattered windshield, I see the bottom of the hill. There’s never been a train track here before, improbably carved out of the mountains, no barriers or lights to warn oncoming traffic, an enormous train fast approaching.

  The car stops. No air, no breath, no escape, no stopping the train. I lose the struggle to myself and I lie still. There’s no one in the passenger seat. It’s just me.

  You need me too much.

  There’s a moment of singular and perfect clarity. I think about trying to move, but I don’t. All I do is feel; adrenaline, rushing through every vein and vessel, begging me to jerk my arms, to twist my torso, to reach for the window, to shatter the glass, but I don’t.

  The engine lights start to flash. The smoke around me starts to become visible. I can hear my dad crying out behind me.

  2.

  “ARTHUR!”

  The outline of Mara’s face was hovering above mine. “You’re doing it again.”

  The stray swatches of color began to clarify: blue patterned seat beneath me; soft yellow light through the window; cold gray skyline outside it.

  “I’m sorry, I, I’m . . .” I sat up, still blinking. “I’m sorry.”

  Mara slumped back into her seat and packed her bag.

  My left hand was throbbing. Gingerly, I squeezed the cast around each finger, making sure I could still feel them. “I think I was having a nightmare,” I said, my ring heavy on my finger.

  “About what?” I tried to look past her, to the rest of the train compartment, but she blocked my view. “Arthur,” she said. “About what?”

  “Car crashes,” I said slowly. “I dream I’m driving my Camaro, and then something always happens, and right before I’m about to die, I wake up.”

  Mara’s eyebrows raised half a centimeter.

  “It’s weird that I’m screaming, though,” I continued. “In the dream, I’m just sitting there, like I’m not even surprised by it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a dream. Everything makes sense until you wake up and realize none of it made any sense.”

  “Has something happened while you were driving? Like, did you crash your car?”

  “No. Just in dreams.”

  “Is it possible you actually did, but now—”

  “Mara.”

  “Okay.” Mara nodded to herself. “Okay.”

  I didn’t feel any better about it, but at least Mara had turned her attention to staring at the fast-approaching station.

  We exited the train cautiously, both of us checking around every corner and making no mention of it, like admitting our paranoia might legitimize it. I knew we were both looking for Jack.

  “He does talk about Chicago in his book,” Mara told me. “Just a bit, though. Nothing specific, but it’s always, kind of . . . negative. Gloomy, angry, loveless. Almost evil.”

  We must have looked noticeable in the boarding room of Chicago Union Station; I hadn’t showered since I left home and my hair was starting to clump and stretch wildly; my hoodie and hands and face were stained with black and green, soot from the old stove and grass from the lawn behind the library, like I was starring in a low-budget community theater version of Oliver Twist. Mara looked basically the same as when I first saw her in the observation car, still in a black sweater and orange coat, so we walked quickly. Once we hit the main room, however, we disappeared into the crowd.

  It looked nothing like the abandoned stations across the rest of Middle America. The ceiling was vaulted in a grand window arch, letting natural light through. There were people, lots of them. It was chaos, trains and buses and cars and police officers and families and hot dog vendors and people in suits everywhere.

  “It’s always like that, isn’t it?” Mara asked from nowhere, her steps bouncing almost merrily along the crowded station.

  “Like what?

  “You go all the way across the country, find all of these different people and places and twists and turns and . . . and then it turns out, the thing you were looking for, the end of the maze, was right there with you all along; you just weren’t looking at it right.” She nodded to my backpack, inside of it the clue, inside of it the Lou and Sal’s tribute line that had taken six days and two thousand miles to properly materialize. “Seems like that’s how it always goes.”

  Overnight, we had charted a walking course to the Tribune Tower, the iconic home of the Chicago Tribune. Mara had attempted to call them and ask about the two writers we were looking for, Lou Thurman and Sal Hamilton, but had only gotten through to their evening message machine, a robotic voice that instructed us that if we wanted to offer them some kind of information, we should call during the daytime hours, and if we wanted to report a crime, we should call the police.

  “I don’t think this is gonna be the end of the maze,” I told her.

  “No, but still,” she said, her voice straining with forced optimism. “You can appreciate the sentiment.”

  “The sentiment that most of life is nothing more
than a runaround, trying to learn the things we already know?”

  “Oh, let it be,” she sighed. “Not everything needs to be as hateful as you—”

  The words froze in her mouth.

  “As I what?” I asked. “As I’m capable of recognizing that it is? Because maybe it doesn’t need to be, but to say it’s not . . .”

  Mara wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were focused above my head, unflinching. I followed her gaze to a large television screen in the corner of the station’s lobby, where a reporter with golden curls and a tan pantsuit was staring dead into the camera, reading my name off the prompter.

  “—grandson of famed author Arthur Louis Pullman has been missing for four days, after fleeing a relative’s home in Truckee, California. Authorities involved in the search say they have witness testimony from three different states over the past week and believe he may be in possession of stolen items . . .”

  As she spoke, they showed my house, shaky camera footage behind a police barricade that had been set up around our front yard. They showed my father, covering his head as he made his way to his car in our driveway. They showed Tim and Karen’s house, my uncle and auntie nowhere to be found. They showed the hostel in Denver, the innkeeper confused behind his desk, refusing to show anyone his logbook. They showed the Omaha library, Suzy the librarian being interviewed. “He didn’t seem dangerous—” They showed my grandfather’s display and the mess we’d left behind.

  It was a tour of the last week of my life, but on the TV, every stop looked cold, lifeless, and dangerous, as if they’d just been the scene of a murder.

  Finally, they showed Jack, his Great Purpose scarf suspiciously absent, speaking in front of the library. “He seemed so nice when we met him, but this is just, it’s inhuman. I mean, it’s his own grandfather’s legacy! We knew he was out of control, but it’s hard to believe he was capable of robbing us like that.”

  The pit in my stomach tripled.

  They ended back on the reporter at the desk, her face solemn and serious as if it was her that I’d robbed. “If anyone has seen Arthur Pullman, please contact authorities immediately. He is believed to be traveling and may be dangerous.”