by Geoff Ryman
“Clop clop clop,” said Jonathan, very faintly, transfixed.
Bill balanced maps and photocopies on his lap, glancing down. “The river curves in again close to the road just before we get to the school.”
“Fwoooo whoosh,” said Jonathan. “The river moves. It rolls over in its sleep.”
The papers fluttered.
The woodland left them, moving south. There were fields on either side now, flat, rich, and the road was straight for miles. Zeandale village was a blur ahead of them, blue with distance, wavering with rising heat. There were lanes to the right. Bill slowed. PLEASANT VALLEY CEMETERY, said a sign pointing right. They passed another lane, with a clump of trees.
“It’s supposed to be on the right,” said Bill. They both grew more anxious, leaning forward, peering.
“That’s it,” said Bill suddenly, flicking on the turn signal and pulling over to the right, the sound of dust under tires.
On the wrong side of the road was the schoolhouse. It had been painted gunmetal blue.
“That’s not it,” said Jonathan, very quickly, very firmly.
“I think it is,” said Bill, and got out. Dust from the soft shoulder still drifted across the road. The silence was very sudden, very complete. Their footsteps sounded very clearly as they crossed the road.
As they neared the old building, a droning noise started. It was as if a hollow tube were being whirled over their heads. Locusts.
“It’s the same building,” said Bill, holding the photograph.
The front porch had been turned into an extension, its door turned into a window. There was the bell tower.
“That’s not it,” said Jonathan in a wisp of a voice.
Bill chuckled a bit with exasperation. “It is. Look, everything’s there.”
Suddenly Jonathan was shouting. “It’s the wrong goddamned side of the road!” He ran out of breath. He began to make noises as if he were about to sneeze. “Huh ahuh ahuh ahuh.”
“Breathe slowly,” Bill said. Jonathan knocked away his hand.
“The memoirs say it’s on a lane! Ahuh ahuh. The plat book says it’s on a lane!”
“Roads move.”
“On a lane that leads to the hills. Where are the hills? A big bald hill where Dorothy made snowmen!”
Bill went still and cold. That’s what the old lady had said. Snowmen, with Wilbur, on a hill. Angels in the snow.
“It’s on the wrong side of the road, it’s pointing the wrong way. It’s the wrong goddamned schoolhouse!”
As if clubbed, Jonathan dropped. He sat down in the middle of the road.
“Jonathan, that’s kind of a dumb place to sit.” Bill tugged at his arm. Jonathan started to cry with frustration.
“That place was built about 1890!”
“Look, it says Sunflower School. Stand up, Jay, out of the road.”
“It was rebuilt in a different place!” Jonathan had flowered into full tears.
“How do you know it’s 1890?”
“My clock. My clock is never wrong. Look, the teacher’s wearing mutton sleeves.”
“Jay, get out of the road!”
“It’s my last day, and we haven’t found it!” He pounded the asphalt with the flat of his hand. “We’ve fucked it.”
On the horizon, a car was coming.
“Jonathan. Please stand up.”
“What for?”
“So we can keep looking.”
The car was shimmying like a dancer.
“I just want to stay here. I don’t want to go on.”
Bill leaned over. “Jonathan. You know what we’re going to do? There was a sign back there for a cemetery. Remember? We’re going to go to the cemetery.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“You’re asking me? What are cemeteries good for, Jonathan? Names. Names and families.”
Jonathan looked up. “Yeah,” he said.
“Come on, let’s get up.”
The other car began to flash its lights.
The road to the cemetery went up the hills to bald grassy slopes and down again through thickly shaded ravines, over shaded rivulets, toward a place called Deep Creek.
Jonathan snored. His whole face was going an unnatural brown, as if he had spent his life under a sunlamp. Beads of sweat were trickling down him, as if he were melting. Bill felt guilty. I should have taken you to the hospital, he thought. I know better. He promised his profession: Jonathan, I get you back into care by four this afternoon.
Under the blue sky, amid the brown grass and the passing shadows. Bill felt alone. He looked back at the mask that was Jonathan’s face and spoke to it.
“I don’t believe in God anymore, Jonathan,” said Bill. “My faith has gone. I think…I think I need some kind of sign. You have visions, Jonathan. Do you have visions of God?”
Jonathan didn’t, couldn’t, answer.
Pleasant Valley had a chain-link fence around it and a big metal gate with upright bars and letters cut clean through large metal plaques on either side of stone gateposts. PLEASANT, said one side. VALLEY, said the other. A dirt driveway led between two conifers and circles through the tough little oaks of the cemetery.
It was on a hill far from anywhere. Jonathan and Bill left the car parked in the lane near the gates. The sound of crickets was high, strong, sweet. The air was surprisingly cool, and there was a strong wind, as if the Spirit were moving. Jonathan’s eyes were yellow and feverish, and he looked distracted. He blinked and stumbled up onto a concrete platform, with a gravestone at its head like a pillow. At its foot, planted in the concrete, was a rusty old hand pump.
Jonathan played with the pump’s long wooden handle. “Can you imagine what a water pump must have meant to them? No more buckets hauled up from the well. I bet this was some old guy who finally bought a water pump. And he was so proud of it, they used it for his gravestone.”
They wandered between the stones. The names carved into them were already familiar. There were Pillsburys scattered everywhere.
FAREWELL, said a scroll over a carving of a man’s and a woman’s clasping hands:
ANNIE J. PILLSBURY
WIFE OF
B. MARSHALL
DIED
FEB 26 1857
AGED
27 Ys, 7 Ms, 27 Ds
Down the row from that there was an obelisk:
MARY ANN
REED
PILLSBURY
BORN
JULY 21 1826
DIED
JAN 1 1892
There were more humble stones, small, laid level with the ground. Bill leaned over to read them.
MOTHER
HELEN EVA
MAR 14 1869 FEB 12 1937
LIVED ON PILLSBURY HOMESTEAD 58 YRS
Side by side.
FATHER
ELLERY CHANNING
APR 5 1850 JAN 6 1933
KANSAS PIONEER OF 1862
Jonathan began to sing, amid the sound of crickets. His throat was raw, his voice cracked, harsh, tuneless:
My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
Bill looked up to see Jonathan staggering up the hill. His singing grew louder. He looked like something that had climbed out of the graves, long legs, skeletal arms flapping wildly.
He is pressing out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored!
Oblivious of the gravestones, Jonathan marched up the hill, out of the cemetery.
“Jonathan!” called Bill. “Where are you going?”
The voice went wild, loud, screeching like a hawk.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Jonathan was marching out toward the prairie, into the high, crackling grasses. There was a barbed-wire fence on top of the hill. Jonathan stumbled into it, entangled, holding out his arms like a scarecrow.
Bill ran after him, puffing up the slope. Fifty years. The grass streaked with blue and purple slashed his ankles.
On the hill someone had lashed together a crucif
ix of branches, barkless and polished by the weather. Jonathan howled, arms waving as if blown in the wind:
His truth is marching on!
Like a rag wrung dry, the voice gave way. Panting, Bill stopped running and pushed his way up the hill, hands against his knees.
Jonathan was standing, staring, mouth hanging open. His teeth showed, and his gums, and his staring eyes watered. Bill turned and saw the valley, with its one straight road, its large fields, some of them harvested and plowed under, some left browning. There were woods in bands every mile or so, across the valley, to the hills, piebald in blue and gray.
“Come on, Jonathan,” said Bill and took his arm and led him down the hill. Jonathan didn’t say anything. Bill could feel the weakness in Jonathan’s knees. He trembled, hot, like a trapped bird.
The time was twelve-thirty. Please, Lord, give him three more hours. Three more hours is all we ask.
Back among the dead, Jonathan seemed calmer, more focused. He blinked, and his eyes and head began to move, looking around him. Very suddenly, despite Bill, he knelt.
“Look,” Jonathan said, very gently.
There was a low flat grave. He pulled grass away from its face.
HENRY
GULCH
1831–1888
HUSBAND OF EMMA ANGELINE
BRANSCOMB
“A name,” whispered Jonathan. “Or a geographical feature.”
They headed back toward Zeandale. After they had turned out of the gate, Bill asked Jonathan, “Why were you doing all that singing back there?”
Jonathan looked around in mild surprise. “Was that me?” he asked.
They eased down into the valley, passing a road on the left. AIKEN’S LANE, said the sign in green.
“Turn there,” said Jonathan.
Bill stopped the car with a very slight skid on the dirt, and backed up. Aiken’s Lane hugged the side of the hill. It passed farmhouses. One of them had walls covered in roof tiles. Another was white frame, with awnings. Old houses no longer seemed to interest Jonathan much. He turned away from them toward the fields.
They drove over a ditch. The bridge was made of wooden beams. Reeds and flowering plants grew along the banks. The ditch’s bed was smooth, damp, cracked. It ran off into the silent fields and was lost among them.
They came to a house where one wooded slope dipped down and another rose up, a gentle cleft in the hillside. The house had a blank stone front with some kind of ivy growing up the side and along the eaves. The roof had new, smooth tiles and small skylights and a TV antenna.
In the front garden, a woman in a blue tracksuit was pushing a hand plow through a vegetable patch.
“Stop,” said Jonathan.
He got out of the car and drifted toward her. The light was so fierce, he was so thin, he seemed translucent. The woman looked up as he wavered toward her.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” said Jonathan in his faraway voice, the one that made him sound like a child.
“You bet,” said the woman. She meant it was no trouble.
“I’m trying to find Sunflower School,” he said.
“Well,” she said, wiping her hands. She was rather old, rather plump for hand plows. Her blue-white hair was tied up in a scarf. She wore running shoes.
“Why sure. You can see it from here.” She pointed toward the gunmetal-blue house, across the valley.
“Was there another Sunflower School before that?” Jonathan asked.
“I wouldn’t know. But my husband might, and he’ll be in for lunch soon.”
“I’m very, very thirsty,” said Jonathan.
“You’re dead on your feet as well. My name’s Marge Baker. Who are you?”
“I’m Jonathan. This is my counselor, Bill.”
Bill stepped forward. “I would be very grateful if you could give Jonathan a drink,” he said. “He’s not well.”
“I can see that, too,” said Mrs. Baker. “Come on in and I’ll give you some lemonade.” She began to walk toward the house. The front porch had white metal railings around it and wind chimes that tinkled. A Dalmatian stood up in his cardboard box and barked and barked.
“Oh no, Rex! He’s not used to visitors.”
“Tell me,” said Bill. “Did this farm used to belong to people called the Gulches, or the Branscombs?”
“I’m not from around her myself. I just came here to teach school and ended up marrying a farmer. Come on in.”
They went through a side door into an extension, a kitchen, with wooden wainscoting and wooden floors, a rainbow rug, made of thick, braided, concentric circles of color, reds and greens and yellows. By the door, there was an old cabinet. It was thick and lumpy with generations of white paint. Inside it was a host of tiny oil lamps.
“Oh I collect those,” said Mrs. Baker. She opened up the cabinet for them. She took out one with a blue glass base. NUTMEG, it said in embossed letters.
“Back then people used to buy spice in them. Now mind, these wouldn’t be parlor lights. They would be little nightlights for children.” Very carefully, she put it back. “I said I would get you some lemonade, didn’t I?”
“I’m sure it’s delicious,” said Jonathan. “But I think it might burn my stomach. Could I just have a glass of water?”
“Nothing simpler,” she said. She poured a tumblerful from a new mixer tap.
“I’d like to look at your shed,” said Jonathan.
He wants to get outside, thought Bill, in case he’s sick.
“It’s quite a feature,” said Mrs. Baker.
Bill had not noticed the shed. It had been half-hidden beside a newer outbuilding made of corrugated iron.
It was a log cabin.
As they approached, a cloud of crickets jumped up from the grass. The cloud swirled, thickened, thinned again, with cries like windup birds. Bill was pelted by them. They flew into him, their wings throbbing against his chest.
“Hello, Mary Ann,” Jonathan whispered to them. “Hello, Ellery.”
Mrs. Baker affected not to notice. “This is our storm cellar,” she said. There was a doorway into the ground. It was made of wood, framed with limestone, and along the frame was a line of old stoneware jugs. Jonathan was running his fingers through the leaves of a tree. “What kind of tree is this?” he asked.
“That’s a hackberry bush,” said Mrs. Baker. “You can’t do anything with the fruit, but the birds love them.”
“What kind of birds?”
“Chickadees,” said Mrs. Baker, and she and Jonathan shared a smile.
They walked on, toward the shed. It was tiny, square. A thick limestone chimney rose up one side of it, supporting a vine. The frame of the front doorway was jammed up hard against the frame of a window. There were thick beams holding the whole structure off the ground.
“We have a lot of people asking to see this,” said Mrs. Baker. “This is an original pioneer dwelling.”
She and Jonathan walked around to the side.
“They were embarrassed,” said Jonathan. Bill came around to join them. From under the apex of the room, flat planks of wood covered part of the log walls.
“See? They didn’t want anyone to know they still lived in a log cabin, so they covered it with clapboards,” said Jonathan.
There was another door on this side of the cabin. “Why two doors?” Bill asked.
Jonathan touched an outline in the ground with his foot. “There was an extension on this side,” he said. “I bet it was a summer kitchen.”
“I bet it was too,” chuckled Mrs. Baker. “It would get awfully hot without one.”
Farther up the hill, there was a 1940s car. Jonathan walked on toward it, more crickets jumping out at him. The car had a long sleek hood, a short rounded trunk. Its paint had faded and rusted.
“That’s my grandson, Paige,” explained Mrs. Baker. “He collects old machines. Tractors mostly. Some of them you have to crank up to start. He even has one that runs on butane. They’re in the other building, if you woul
d like to see them.”
Jonathan looked at the car in silence.
“Paige wants to be a farmer. We know there’s no future in it. But we just have to hope he sees that for himself. Do you know, they are bulldozing some of the old farmhouses?”
Jonathan’s smile was fixed, his eyes unfocused.
There was a rumbling of a tractor up the road. “Well,” said Mrs. Baker. “Here comes my husband. I’ll just go down and check the oven, if you want to come along presently.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Baker,” said Bill. Jonathan did not move. Mrs. Baker walked back down the hill toward the wind chimes.
Jonathan was holding his breath.
“Breathe, Jonathan, slowly and deeply.”
“It’s green and red, isn’t it, Bill?” he said, without breath.
“What is?”
“The car!” Jonathan was smiling in wonder. “It’s green and red, very pastel in patches, like someone had airbrushed it. Very light, very metallic?”
“I’d say that’s a pretty good description.”
Jonathan turned toward him, still smiling. “I’m seeing green and red,” he said, and clenched Bill’s arm. “I’m not supposed to be able to. I’m supposed to be color-blind.
“And the trees,” he added. “And the crickets, in a flash.”
Bill looked at his watch: quarter past one.
Jonathan leaned over and lost all the water he had just drunk. Bill stroked his back.
In the driveway, Mr. Baker was patting the Dalmatian’s head. Mr. Baker wore dungarees. He was a big man, but faded, with watery blue eyes and blue veins in pale skin. He held a clean new straw hat in one hand. His wife came out of the house.
“Vance,” she said. “These two gentlemen came to ask me about Sunflower School.” She introduced Bill and Jonathan. Vance shook their hands and smiled with perfect false teeth.
Jonathan showed him the photograph.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Mr. Baker. “That’s my sister!” He pointed to a little girl in checked gingham.
“And that will be Miss Soupens, the teacher.”
“Was there another Sunflower School? One before that?” Bill asked.