by Geoff Ryman
He stood up and emptied his pockets. The garage keys, the bungalow keys, he left on the table in his little niche with the stained-glass window. He didn’t want to die in L.A., alone, listening to NPR, waiting for someone, anyone to call. He didn’t want to bother Ira, torment him, make Ira take care of him and make himself sick. Jonathan wanted to disappear. He wanted to make one last visit to Back Then.
He left his keys, but no note. He took his little purse, with notebook and credit cards. He smiled. An adventure. What do you want to do? people always asked him when they found out, meaning, Do you want to write a novel? Travel? I want, thought Jonathan, to do this.
He closed the door behind him. It was locked. He could not go back. He went down the steps. There was a silver hint of dawn in the sky. He would catch the blue bus on Wilshire and then the blue bus along Lincoln. He would take the big blue bus to Oz.
After Ira and Jonathan left, Bill had climbed up the wooded hill in back of his house. He looked down on the City of the Angels, at its rivers of moving light. He felt wonder at the world. Unaided by faith or meditation, a visitor to his house was having visions, like a medieval monk. Bill Davison was going to pray to the blank yellow-gray sky, to the lights, to the God that drove them all. He suddenly found that he couldn’t.
Manhattan, Kansas
September 1989
“breaking the will”
This phrase is going out of use. It is high time it did . . . But the phrase is still sometimes heard; and there are conscientious fathers and mothers who believe they do God service in setting about the thing.
I have more than once said to a parent who used these words, “Will you tell me just what you mean by that? Of course you do not mean what you say.”
“Yes, I do. I mean that a child’s will is to [be] once for all broken!—that he is to learn that my will is to be his law. The sooner he learns this the better.”
—The first paragraphs of a front-page article on child raising from the Manhattan Nationalist of Friday, January 15, 1875. The article goes on to describe, as an example of good child-raising practice the case of a four-year-old boy who was subjected to a two-day campaign to get him to pronounce correctly the letter G.
Jonathan’s Canada had disappeared. It had been there when he left in the earliest seventies. By the late eighties, Corndale had been swallowed up by an administrative fiction called Missasauga. It was another Indian name, another vanished tribe.
Missasauga was a sea of subdivisions. Corndale’s nearest neighbor, Streetsville, was solid, stolid housing as was Corndale itself. The two realities met as fiction. The farms on which Jonathan had seen running deer as a child had disappeared. When he visited Corndale now, he got lost in the bewildering meander of streets designed to stifle speed and protect children. It was all about land values and Toronto airport and Highway 401. Urban foxes, urban raccoons were rumored to rummage through trash cans at night.
So where was home?
Jonathan pulled the gray Celebrity out of the parking lot of the airport of Manhattan, Kansas, and suffered a delusion. Outside there were wide green fields, and huge trees the like of which he had not seen since the elms in Corndale had been cut down after Dutch elm disease. He thought he had finally, somehow, found his way back to Corndale. In particular, he was driving along the number 10 highway, the road that led from Brampton.
This made him very happy. This made him feel that suddenly everything had gone right with the world, even though there was for some reason a puddle of blood and stomach juices on the back seat. It seemed to him that he recognized the road signs, the chalky limestone through which the road had been cut. He recognized the huge, 600-acre farms. He wondered what had happened to his childhood friends, and if he could visit them now.
Then suddenly, instead of blood on the back seat, there was a visitor. Oh dear, thought Jonathan. Why did I bring him along?
On the back seat sat Mortimer.
It was going to be terribly embarrassing taking Mort home, because he was in full drag. Perhaps he had come fresh from some Halloween parade. He was dressed as Dorothy.
He had pigtails and a checked apron and balloon sleeves and white surgical gloves. For some reason he was also wearing a bandito hat and was holding maracas. His face was in sections like a quilt.
Mortimer gave the maracas a shake. “Hola!” he cried. “Que tal!”
Spanish? “Bee-ba Meh-heeko!” he cried, lips thick with red lipstick. Jonathan was mildly surprised to see red, but could not remember why.
“This is Mexico, isn’t it?” Mortimer was not sure.
Jonathan couldn’t remember.
“We’re in Kansas?” said Mortimer as if he had stepped in something. The maracas sank to his lap. The surgical gloves were bloodstained. “What the fuck are we going to do in Kansas?”
I don’t know, thought Jonathan, still driving.
“I thought you wanted to go to Mexico! That’s why you were going to learn Spanish.” Mortimer gave a showy sigh. “And I so wanted to go abroad.” Mortimer giggled. “Who knows, I might have come back a lady.”
Jonathan had never realized just how camp Mortimer was. Jonathan hated camp. Where, Jonathan asked Mort, do you come from?
“From you!” said Mortimer, pointing. He smiled and gave his nose a wrinkle.
I’m nothing like you.
Mortimer pressed his spongy, latex face against Jonathan’s sweaty cheek. In the mirror of the visor, Jonathan saw the same blue eyes staring back at him.
“See the resemblance?” Mortimer whispered in his ear.
How? That face? Jonathan thought.
“Daddy sliced it.”
My father was good and kind, thought Jonathan. He was an athlete. He wanted me to be an athlete, but he never pushed me. He only hit me twice, once when I had hit little Jaimie Cummings and when I’d stained his walls with berries.
“He only hit you twice!” exclaimed Mortimer and clapped his hands together as if in admiration. “What a sweetie. Did you ever hit him?”
He never deserved to be hit.
Mortimer lounged back in the seat, smiling as if his lips were full of novocaine.
“Did he die or simply ascend into Heaven?” Mortimer asked. “Making a noise like a dove, perhaps. Whroooo!” Mortimer blew on the palm of his glove and white pigeon feathers fell in the car like snow. “And dropping doo-doo on people underneath.”
He was killed in a car crash, thought Jonathan, bitter with grief, as if it were some kind of vindication. Mortimer grinned back at him. Jonathan searched his mind and really did find his father without blemish.
“He never did anything wrong!” Jonathan was shouting aloud.
Silence, and a numb smile.
Jonathan muttered, “How else are you supposed to discipline kids?”
“Oh! I am in complete agreement,” said Mortimer, hand on breast. There was an instrument of torture, rather like a corkscrew, on his lap. “In fact, the differences between me and your father might be less than you think. Do you like my dress?”
Mortimer batted his eyelashes.
Go away! thought Jonathan.
Mortimer’s eyes went evil. “I thought you wanted to see Kansas!”
He pressed his face against Jonathan’s again and grabbed Jonathan by the chin and made him look in the rearview mirror.
“This face is Kansas. A country is like a child. Smooth and new and virginal until Daddy slashes its face.”
Mortimer fell back into the rear seat. Jonathan felt Mort’s sweat still on his cheek. Mortimer was opening the back door. “Don’t kill any babies,” he warned, and launched himself out of the moving vehicle under the wheels of a truck.
Jonathan swerved violently as the truck roared past, horn blaring. Jonathan pulled over onto the soft shoulder and stopped the car, his hands weak,
his heart pumping. In the side-view mirror, Mortimer lay on the road like a prairie chicken. A loose, broken wing stirred in the backwash of air from other cars.
Jonathan sat shivering in the front seat.
My God, he thought, my mind is going. I really am going crazy. I shouldn’t be let loose, I shouldn’t be driving this car. I don’t even know what country I’m in, and I haven’t been able to keep anything down, even water, since breakfast yesterday. What am I going to do in Manhattan, Kansas? He ran a hand across his damp forehead.
There was nothing he could do, but press on.
Kansas, he told himself, as extreme caution he moved the car back out onto an empty stretch of highway. I’m in Kansas. God knows why.
Then he looked up, across the road into the fields, and he thought he was having another vision.
Some way back from the road, there was a white schoolhouse. It was one-roomed, immaculate, blazing white, with a blazing white bell tower. It was nestled in trees. Beside it, sitting in a field of autumnal red sorghum heads, was a two-story frame house. The windows were not set square in it. There was a porch. Behind it there was a windmill.
Jonathan pulled the car over once more. He reached over the back of the seat and pulled out his new camera. He had bought it, credit card once again, at St. Louis airport. He had read the instructions on the airplane.
He began to feel his old hunter’s urgency. PRIVATE, said a sign. That’s okay, he told the sign, I’ll photograph it from here, safe in my car. Hands in a tumble of nerves, he pulled off the lens cap and looked through the viewfinder.
1000 1000 1000, blinked the camera, over and over. It was saying the vision was too bright.
Scowling, hands still trembling, Jonathan took out and reread the booklet. Yes, his new camera was on automatic, and yes, a flashing thousand meant too bright, okay, yes, so what do I do about it?
Anyway it was only sunlight. How could ordinary sunlight be too bright?
1000 1000 1000.
He took the picture anyway. There was something dead in the way the shutter clicked.
Suppose, he thought, suppose I hit it in one, right the first time? Suppose this was where Dorothy lived?
He held the fantasy glowing in his mind for a moment. It was enough to comfort him.
Time to move on.
Jonathan got lost. There were interchanges, small cloverleafs, and signs giving highway numbers and town names that meant nothing to him. Jonathan did not have a map. He found himself driving on a wide, sweeping dirt road, between balding hills. They were dotted with small evergreen shrubs. He stopped the car, and got out.
Crickets were singing. At first he thought they were birds, a flock of them, the sounds they made were so loud, so sweet. But the sound was too mechanical, too regular. He looked down on a valley full of trees and white modern houses. In the far distance was a rounded white water tower, stranded alone, it seemed, in a forest. Where was the town? Why hadn’t he asked for a map at the airport?
There was a rumbling sound, like thunder, as if thunder had giant hollow wheels and were driving over the hills.
“Rain,” said Jonathan. He wanted an umbrella, and he turned and looked at the empty prairies. No rain. Only sunlight.
He got in and drove down the hill. MANHATTAN, said a sign, and as if someone had switched on a light, the road was paved. At the first cross street, Jonathan turned right, and down.
He was very tired. He forgot where he was again. Confused, he thought he was lost in some suburb of Los Angeles. He passed one crossroad, scowled and stopped.
He got out. There was a low modern house, with a long sloping sunroof, and some kind of wooden jungle gym for kids to play on. Jonathan heard the rumbling again, perhaps a bit different in sound.
It was definitely Los Angeles, somewhere out in the Valley. The sound was coming from a wooden ramp built in a driveway. A kid in a bicycle crash helmet was practicing on his skateboard. He rumbled up and down the ramp. The houses had no fences, but stood isolated amid stretches of immaculate, featureless lawn. There was a low hill behind, with many trees, and some rooftops with satellite dishes.
“Where am I?” Jonathan asked.
A little girl answered him. At least, it was a little girl’s voice. “Look at the sign,” the voice told him.
Attached to the telephone pole were the words LITTLE KITTEN AV. At right angles to it, another sign said OZ CIRCLE.
“Oh,” said Jonathan. It made perfect sense. A sign, if you like. He felt quite contented. For a moment he thought that he had somehow managed to drive from Santa Monica to Manhattan, Kansas. Then he remembered the airplane trip.
I have to get to a bank, he thought. He had no money. I have to find a place to stay. He was happy again.
The rumbling went on. It was from the Drop Zones, the Artillery and Mortar Impact Area. The crickets sang, like metal warbling on metal.
Manhattan seemed to writhe its way under his fingers, in sunlight. He drove in and out of shade, turning left, turning right. He passed shopping malls and Texaco gas stations. He was sure that he had dreamed the medieval amphitheater of white limestone. In had crenellations and huge overhead lights. The sky rumbled. Was this Los Angeles having its earthquake? He was elated.
Then the car seemed to plunge into permanent shade. Huge trees sheltered the roofs. Who had had the wonderful idea of building a town in a forest?
And he was there, Back Then. The white frame houses had French-looking, sloping tile roofs and front porches with pillars shaped like Greek columns. There were white trellises and window frames that were not quite square and painted dark blue or khaki. How old? How old? Jonathan’s internal clock answered. 1896. 1910. 1880. 1876. He kept stopping the car and fumbling with the camera. Other cars growled behind him, drove around him, beeped their horns. Jonathan thought they were Santa Monica friends, saying hi. He beamed and waved.
30 30 30, said his camera. Too dark. Too dark.
A beautiful girl sat on a porch eating ice cream.
“Whatcha doin’?” she called.
“I’m in love with your house!” Jonathan cried back.
“Well you can’t have it!” she answered.
“I can’t even photograph it!” said Jonathan, holding up the camera helplessly.
“Oh yeah? Lemme look.”
Seventeen and fearless, never having had to be afraid. She wore white trousers and a fawn sweater. She took hold of the camera and looked through the viewfinder.
“The flashing numbers mean something’s wrong,” said Jonathan.
“Well, s’okay now,” she said, mystified. She took a picture. “Here you go. Hope you find a house. This one’s not for sale.” She strode off. Jonathan looked through the viewfinder. This time a lightning bolt flashed inside it. That meant the flashlight was attached. It wasn’t. Jonathan turned to ask her where there was a good place to stay. He saw the screen door swinging shut.
The car nearly lost its oil pan driving over an intersection. The cross streets had high humps and dips for drainage. BLUE MONT, said a drive. Jonathan turned right, and beyond a confusing series of traffic lights and franchise restaurants, there was another sign.
BEST WESTERN.
It was the name that drew him. Jonathan was chorused with car horns as he drove straight through two sets of lights into what he thought was its parking lot. He showed his credit cards at the desk and signed.
Was it the same girl behind the desk? She chewed gum and gave him a map.
“I can’t read it.”
“I know,” she sighed. “Nobody can. The whole town’s run out of maps. Everybody just keeps photocopying the old ones, till you can’t read them. Anyway they were so old none of them show the new town center or any of the new shopping malls.”
She tried to tell him about the
shopping malls and the cinema complexes.
He asked her where the Registry Office was. He asked about historical museums.
“You go up Blue Mont, only you can’t read it, and turn right on Denison onto Clafin, only you can’t read it.”
“What time is it?” Jonathan asked.
“Three-fifteen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Angel,” she said, smiling. “Dumb name, huh?”
It’s the right name, he thought and replied. Only he didn’t speak. Outside there was the rumbling in the sky. Gosh, that skateboarding is loud, thought Jonathan. He went hunting.
The Registry Office was in the new county offices. Like everything else in Manhattan, Kansas, they were lost in trees. An old limestone tower rose above the new civic space. 1900, said Jonathan’s inner clock, of the tower. 1976, it said of the offices, because the building was still square and flat. There were no postmodern gewgaws, no turrets, triangles or circles. There was a three-story-high portico outside it with three-story graceful pillars. The pillars were rectangles too.
The offices were air-conditioned. There was a mural over the reception desk, but it looked to Jonathan’s fevered eyes like a video screen seen too close: the image dissolved into lines.
The Registry Office itself was up one flight of stairs. It was full of desks, slightly outdated equipment and enthusiasm.
Jonathan kept himself standing straight behind the counter. “I’m trying to find someone in the past,” he said. He was maintaining, in the way someone on drugs maintains, by conscious focus.
“Okay, we’ll do what we can for ya,” said one of the women at the desks. She was about Jonathan’s age, well groomed, bronzed hair cut short and swept up. Her name was Sally, and she invited Jonathan into the tiny back rooms where records were kept. The first small room was lined with shelves on which thick volumes lay flat.