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Census

Page 14

by Jesse Ball


  There is so much that was terrible, and of it, I can never say how much of it he felt.

  And now there is a future, his and not mine; I imagine it all, but somehow in my mind I do not picture his return, he will go somewhere else, somewhere farther. My son will travel all day on the train to the circuit station and at that station he will change to the next train and he will travel day and day and day—many days to the place where he goes. After many days, after an almost impossible distance, the train will stop at a little station near nothing. It will have to travel that far—until it is almost near nothing. The train will halt, grinding its metal brakes. The conductor will look around. The conductor will find my son in the seat he has chosen, a window seat from which he will be looking out. My son will be used by then to the traveling. He will have become fond of the train. The conductor will help him up, will get his bag. They will go together to the exit. During the trip, a trip that will last months, maybe even years, the conductor will have become fond of my son. They will have become parts of the train, parts of the continuing travel. But, the time will have come to go; they will embrace. My son will step onto the platform and stand there. He will stand there. The train will pull away.

  Someone will be waiting in a car and will run to him. It will be perhaps my father, or my mother or my wife. They will know each other. No one knows anyone like this—so well will they be acquainted, so deeply. They will leap into each other’s arms. They will climb together into the car in their joy and ride a short way over green banks, and as they ride they will approach a house, the house where I was born, or the house where she, my wife, was born. It will be her parents there, or mine, or perhaps even I will be there. The car will arrive at the house and such a gladness will reign, I can’t even speak of it. My son will dash to each person and be received, and he will tell them all of his journey. He, who will be the only one remaining, his the true census, he whose eyes have seen all, whose heart has felt all, he will speak of it to them, and in that place, that impossible place, all that he says will be understood as it never has been—and will pass into something far above the brutal retching of this earth that bites with its mouth and spits with its teeth, this earth that never gives without taking.

  About the Author

  JESSE BALL was born in New York. He is the author of fourteen books, most recently the novel How to Set a Fire and Why. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. He won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize, was long-listed for the National Book Award, and has been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

  Photo Section

  Also by Jesse Ball

  The Way Through Doors

  Samedi the Deafness

  The Curfew

  The Lesson

  Silence Once Begun

  A Cure for Suicide

  How to Set a Fire & Why

  Prose & Verse

  March Book

  The Village on Horseback

  Fool Book

  Collaboration

  Vera & Linus

  Og svo kom nottin

  Deaths of Henry King

  Theory

  Notes on My Duncecap

  Sleep, Death’s Brother

  Copyright

  All interior photographs are courtesy of the author’s private collection.

  CENSUS. Copyright © 2018 by Jesse Ball. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover art and design by Sara Wood

  Digital Edition MARCH 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-267615-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267613-9

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