White Horse

by Alex Adams

  He has my number. He can call me.

  It’s a stupid rule and one I’ve never subscribed to, and I don’t believe in it now. It’s just the story I tell myself to cover up my real fear: Nick is dead.

  I pick up the phone, dial four of the seven digits, hang up.

  He can call me.

  DATE: NOW

  One day bleeds into two and still I keep vigil. The Elpis will come. I know she will. She has to. I need something to give all this meaning. I can’t have come all this way for nothing.

  The Swiss swaggers out, stares out to sea, his face harder than the ground we’re standing on.

  “Your boat isn’t coming.”

  “It will.”

  “You are a fool. A dreamer. I suppose you believe in things like love and morals and valor. Women like you sit and they wait for men to come and rescue them from the unspeakable horrors of the world. You like nothing more than to sit at home, getting fat, while you cook and eat and create more mouths the world cannot hope to feed. And for what? Some misguided belief that you are special, that you are loved, that you matter to someone. You do not matter, America. You are ultimately nothing. Dust.”

  “It will be here.”

  Spit flies from his mouth: a wet, clear blob with a yellow center. Egg-like.

  The thought comes before I can stop it: I hope he’s sick.

  The Swiss correctly interprets the expression dancing across my face.

  “I am not sick. Disease is for the weak.”

  I walk away in search of Lisa. She’s up in one of those lifeguard towers, the bare metal frames with a seat on top.

  “Listening for Jaws?”

  “No. There’s a boat coming.” She points the way, my broken, blinded beacon.

  At first my longing to believe is so great that I can’t bring myself to trust in her words. I’ve wanted this too much. Then I bolt, boots pounding along the water’s edge, peering between the gaps, desperate for a glimpse. Then I see her. She rolls into port, an old, cold tomb. The Elpis. The Hope is my only hope.

  All my strength evaporates. My infrastructure collapses in on itself and I have no choice but to crouch down, one hand reaching out in front to steady me like I’m an unwieldy tripod.

  The Swiss’s jaw ticks like a time bomb.

  “I told you,” I say. “I told you so.”

  DATE: THEN

  The jar resists me,

  but not the borrowed hammer.

  Cracks, splinters, mess. Bones.

  DATE: NOW

  She’s nothing to look at, the Elpis, with her ruby-red rivets and her pointed bow carving the sea into foamy slices. She needs no introductions, no elaborate adornments to announce that the harbor is hers and she has come for it, for she is the only vessel that displays signs of life. There are passengers on that boat, and they wait on the deck and watch. I cup my hand over my eyes and scan them for friendly faces, but see nothing but my own sadness reflecting back at me.

  The captain comes ashore, the gangplank shaking with his heavy steps.

  “You coming to Greece?” His mustache leaps as the words battle their way through the hairs.

  “Please,” I say.

  “Okay. But you must pay.”

  What once passed for currency is now worthless, and I have no money anyway. What I have to offer is peace of mind, relaxation, and escape, all in a tiny white pill. He knows what they are; the greed in his eyes betrays his hunger when I pull the blister packs from my pocket and offer him payment for me and for Lisa.

  He nods. Our transaction is complete. I snatch up my things so I can run, run, run to find Nick.

  The Swiss and I face each other.

  “Here we say good-bye. Lisa?”

  “I am coming,” he says.

  “No.”

  “The world is free. I can go where I choose without even a passport. Who are you to tell me what I can do or not? You are a nobody.”

  We stare each other down. In his eyes, I see a wasteland where nothing can survive. I am the first to break and glance away.

  “You have to pay your own way,” I say.

  He makes a deal with the captain but I do not see how he pays the ferryman for his passage. When they’re done, I pull the captain aside. I tell him who I’m looking for, describe him in detail. The captain chews on my request. The fisherman’s cap shakes with his head.

  “I see no one like that. Each time is just a few people. But none like that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Eh. Who knows? Everyone looks the same now. Like you. Tired. Hungry. Dirty.”

  The weight of the world shifts from my shoulders to my head, drags it low.

  “We go now,” the captain says.

  “He’s dead.” The Swiss is behind me. Privacy means nothing to him. “I knew you were coming for a man. Why else does a woman do anything?”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Is he the father of your bastard?”

  “Mind your own fucking business,” I say.

  The captain waits.

  My reflection in the terminal window is me without all the baggage. Maybe it’s me as I used to be, or maybe it’s me as I wish to be. I appear strong, determined, resolute. I believe Nick is alive and made it to Greece safely. He’s gone via some other road. I won’t believe anything else. If he’s there, then nothing will stop me moving on.

  “I’m coming,” I say. Forward is the only way.

  PART

  TWO

  TEN

  DATE: THEN

  There is no nuclear war, no fight for land, no arguing over human rights and petty despots. The beginning of the end comes because of the weather, just like Daniel, my blind date, said it would. Only, he’s wrong about the culprit: it isn’t China, it’s us. So we’re both right.

  The end begins in hurricane season, although in truth the seeds had been sown much earlier with mass filing of patents and theories about how the weather could be controlled with man’s hand and a whole lot of funding.

  Weather modification. Playing God. Modern man couldn’t conquer death, had a flimsy grip on disease control, so he turned to another lost cause.

  Scientists scream, but they’re soon silenced with money stuffed down the throats of their pet research projects. Which leaves the entrepreneurs, the government, and their nodding stable of scientists to tinker with the weather.

  Hurricane Pandora, they name her, although it isn’t her turn alphabetically. Because, like me, they are insatiably curious. Some say she’s a typical woman, one minute hugging the coast, the next hurling winds and rains at that same jagged finger of land, daring it to look into her single eye as she hypnotizes the Gulf Coast region into a false sense of calm.

  The experiment is a secret. Until it fails. Details hemorrhage into the media after that.

  Pandora claims houses and lives for her own. Returns land to the ocean. Drains money from a lot of already-empty pockets.

  A week later, a cyclone forms off the east coast of Australia. This time the experiment is a success and the cyclone dies before she makes landfall.

  The attack comes when the U.S. and her allies are celebrating their victory.

  It’s an electronic Pearl Harbor that leaves the country unable to buy books, check movie times, send pictures of funny cats with misspelled captions. It’s an outrage, people cry, until they realize how deep it goes. Suddenly they’re cognizant that their wealth exists only in a computer database. They’re virtual millionaires and billionaires. Or they are until China implements the One Way, Our Way policy, as the media aptly dubs it.

  The country panics. We’ve jumped too far forward to go back to newspapers and passing paper notes in class. The Internet is gone. Cell phones are night-lights and colorful paperweights. We are hostages with all the luxuries we had twenty years ago. We are adrift. …

  Give us the technology, China demands, as though this is the high seas and they’re toting peg legs, parrots, and cannons.

  The United States
doesn’t give in to demands; it’s not Lady Liberty’s way. Instead she buys allies. Our technology for their help.

  Then someone gets clever, decides that if we can unmake a hurricane, maybe we can help one grow. I don’t know if that’s possible. It’s for smarter people than me to know. But that’s when everything explodes. The atom bomb, its power and destruction, is tossed aside for a new potential weapon that everyone wants: the weather. Mother Nature as a war machine, bent to man’s will at last.

  Every able-bodied man goes to war. There is no fleeing across borders because they’re going to war, too. Pick the wrong border and the final taste in your mouth is metal.

  Colleges close, so even those are no longer havens for those who don’t want to fight.

  Who could have known that the War to End All Wars would have nothing to do with God?

  DATE: NOW

  The Elpis lurches across the sea, and my stomach along with her. Crossing the Mediterranean should only take a handful of hours, but the captain tells me their fuel supplies are low and they must stretch what they have—so she creeps. The journey will take as long as it takes. He says this in cobbled-together English, filling in the blanks with hand gestures.

  We are a dozen, not including the skeleton crew. All of us downtrodden, our hearts crushed beneath life’s careless boot heels. Not long ago this route was filled with honeymooners and vacation-goers, people who would have to struggle to conjure up anything dimmer than a delighted grin. Not us. We can barely lift our chins to acknowledge each other with anything more than grim suspicion.

  There are two other women, both middle-aged, maybe sisters, maybe friends. They cling to each other as though the other is a life vest. The men slouch in their carefully selected territories. None of us turn our backs. We are still animals with animal instincts. Who carries the disease? Who passes as human and yet is not? We watch. We wonder. We don’t risk.

  My gaze sticks on the man hunched in the far corner. He’s maybe sixty, although stress can age a person and we’ve had more than our fair share of trauma. His shoulders stoop as though he carries the burdens of a thousand men upon each one. It’s not just his hair that’s gray but his very soul. Despair seeps through his pores. He’s a man out of context, so I slot him into various visions of my old life, trying to gauge where he fits.

  Lisa rests her head on my shoulder. I put my arms around her, link my fingers. The Swiss leans on the railing on the starboard side, watches the sea.

  Still, the man captivates me. I change his clothes, make him one of those paper dress-up dolls I loved as a girl. Tidy his hair. Shave him close to the bone. When the penny slides down the chute in my head, I gasp. For a time, I sit and watch him and try not to stare. Why is he here? Stupid question, because why are any of us here? Still, why is he here? When I can no longer rein in my curiosity, I get up, pace back and forth until I can’t help myself, then take a seat near him. Close, but respectfully distant.

  “Mr. President?”

  He looks me in the eye like I’m his superior.

  “I’m the president of nothing.”

  “I voted for you.”

  He nods slowly, as though he aches from it. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was pleased to do it.”

  “You should have bet on the other guy.”

  DATE: THEN

  The war taints all. Men go to war and never return. Word of their demise sometimes reaches home. Wal-Mart’s shelves empty and remain that way without cheaply made goods to replenish them.

  One night on the news I see Jorge’s red truck being pulled from the river, squirrel heads sodden and rotting, still danging from the mirror.

  Nobody says anything at work. Nobody says much of anything now. We all go about our jobs like automatons set to toil.

  Soon I start missing faces. One day the regular receptionist is gone from the downstairs lobby, and in her place is a perky twenty-something who’ll stay friendly until benefits kick in. After that, she’ll adopt a bored stare and a Whatever! attitude. Later that afternoon, winter personified follows me onto the elevator. Her arms are stretched around a box filled with photo frames and knickknacks, things meaningless to everyone but her. She stares through me like I’m an open window, no twitch or blink to suggest she’s trying to place me the way I’m placing her. I remember her in white and she doesn’t remember me surrounded by dead mice and George. P. Pope’s questions.

  Another day I go into the bathroom, where three women are gathered around a calendar, trying to calculate the first day of their last periods. One of them stops mid-conversation, races to the nearest stall. The door slams, then swings open just as her vomit splashes the floor.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I figure I only have about eight more weeks of this.”

  I make all the right noises, but really I’m thinking about Ben, Raoul, James, Mrs. Sark.

  And Nick.

  I contact the CDC. They redirect me to 911. The tin woman answers, and when I tell her about the jar, she dismisses me as a lunatic.

  George P. Pope appears in the paper one morning, posing next to a brittle blonde the caption identifies as his wife. He’s made all the right quotes, meant to soothe a panicking public. Phrases like get your flu shots now and our scientists are making new discoveries every day. Hollow words from a self-serving mouth.

  Mrs. Pope doesn’t buy it, either. There’s a speck on the ground more worthy of her attention. So she places it there and hides her lack of faith behind a wall of fair hair.

  The picture gives a better sound bite than Pope’s mouth.

  DATE: NOW

  Night comes to the open sea, creeping from the east. When the ferry’s lights flicker on, their beams absorbed by the encroaching darkness—when just we two are on the deck—the president of nothing begins to speak.

  “Where are you from?”

  I tell him.

  “They liked the other guy.”

  “How did you get here, Mr. President?”

  He shrugs. “I never wanted a life in politics. It chose me … much later on. When I was a boy, I wanted to be an astronaut.”

  Even in his world-torn state, he oozes charisma, and I remember why I—and millions of others—voted him into the highest office. Together we lean against the port rails and watch the void come for us.

  “You and every other American boy.”

  He nods. “Ours was a country with great dreams, all of them bold and large in scope. But we were not too good at the details. Do you have time for a story?”

  Anything for you, Mr. President, I want to say, but the words won’t come, so I’m forced to respond with a nod. This seems to satisfy him.

  He pauses for a moment. Two men have come on deck, gripping the ends of another; two trees and a hammock. They swing back, forth, toss him overboard. Sending the dead to a better place.

  “There was a man whom the people chose to lead them. ‘If I accept,’ he said, ‘I want you to share with me your ideas to make this country stronger.’ ‘No, no,’ they said. ‘This is why we have you. Your ideas are better.’ Pleased that they had so much faith in him, he accepted. Soon they came to his doorstep crying. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘I want you to share your ideas for making this country a happier place for all.’ ‘No, no,’ they cried. ‘This is why we have you. Your ideas will make us happier.’ Time passed, and again they came to his door, this time shouting. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Share your ideas for making this country wealthier.’ ‘No, no,’ they shouted. ‘It’s your ideas we trust to put more money in our pockets.’ Then a great war came. The people came stampeding to his doorstep with their pitchforks. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Please, help me preserve this country for your children. Give me your ideas.’ Again they refused. ‘We gave you power so you could decide for us,’ they yelled. When the sickness came, he pleaded with them again, and was again refused on the grounds that he knew best. This time, when he failed, they came for him, cast him to
the winds. ‘That man was worthless,’ they said. ‘He never did what we wanted.’”

  “That’s how it happened for you,” I say.

  “That’s how it happens for every elected leader.”

  “So you left?”

  “In the night like a common white-collared thief.”

  We speak of other things after that. Of apple pie and ice cream, of baseball, of times when people still celebrated July Fourth. Of times when those we loved were still with us. When a stable government meant we were less free, but pleasures lay thicker on the ground.

  The next morning, the captain finds him hanging from a thick pipe below the decks.

  “I saw you talking,” he says. “Who was he?”

  “A good man, for all his flaws. Better than most.”

  Lisa listens as the crew cuts the president down, throws him overboard with nary a prayer to send him on his way. Her head tilts as though she’s trying to put this into some context that makes sense in her world. She can’t see, yet she observes.

  Her fascination makes me shiver.

  “Do you think he could fix me?”

  I know what Lisa means. “If what the Swiss says about his past is true, yes. But the risk would be huge. You’d need somewhere clean, sterile. Proper equipment. We have none of that.”

  “I bet Greece has hospitals.”

  “You’re right. But what they don’t have is electricity.”

  “I don’t care.” A tiny smile curves her lips. Her face is soft and dreamy. She looks content. “I bet he could fix me.”

  DATE: THEN

  Nick likes to hang out in my head sometimes, as though he’s enjoying the clutter.

  I said open the jar, I hear him say, not smash it.

  “Sometimes my temper gets the best of me.”

  Do you realize you’re talking to yourself?

  “Yes.”

  It’s good that you know the difference.

  “Go away.”

  Okay.

  “No, stay with me.”

  About a week after he mentioned his sickness, I began scanning the newspapers for his obituary. I know, I could have just picked up the phone, called, but I didn’t. Denial and acceptance; I had a foot planted squarely in each. See, with a newspaper I could lick my thumb, rub it against the paper, make it not true. But I couldn’t handle hearing the phone ring off into infinity. There’s no way to erase the sound of a dead man not answering.