Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  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.”

  Father 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 would 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 ar
m. “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.

  “Why yes, there was.”

  “Where?” asked Jonathan, his voice rough.

  “Stand over here, young man,” said Mr. Baker. He leaned over Jonathan’s shoulder and pointed. “See that hump of trees there? That’s where it used to be. You see, the Worrells wanted to be able to say they were helping everybody so they built a new schoolhouse and paid the teacher. But the old schoolhouse was there until, oh, 1961. Thereabouts. Old Paul Jenkins lived in it with his mother. I think he set it alight when she died.”

  “Yee hah!” Jonathan screeched. His voice gave way, and he began to cough.

  The Bakers smiled a bit nervously, and Mr. Baker stepped back. “Well, I’m pleased to have been able to help,” he said.

  Jonathan kept coughing, unable to speak. He doubled over, hand over his mouth. He danced in place, still happy.

  “Thank you, thank you very much. It really means a lot to him,” said Bill.

  “Well, you’re both very welcome,” said Mrs. Baker. Jonathan was still coughing, smiling, shaking his head.

  “Now if you’ll excuse us, my husband needs his lunch,” said Mrs. Baker. “Then he’ll go lie down. I’m afraid he’s not very well either.

  The Bakers walked back to their house, arm in arm.

  “We did it,” croaked Jonathan.

  They drove on down the lane, through fields of plowed, rich, brown-black soil. Off to the right, far away on the horizon, there was a slight rise of trees, with a white, test-tube tower. It was the hill over Manhattan.

  “Stop,” whispered Jonathan, his voice gone. He patted Bill’s arm.

  Ahuh ahuh ahuh.

  Bill eased the car to a stop. One-thirty.

  “The hill,” whispered Jonathan, and pointed to the left. His skeleton hands fluttered against the window.

  There it was in bald ziggurat layers. Dorothy’s hill.

  “It’s around here. It really is!” chuckled Bill.

  “Hurry,” said Jonathan.

  As Bill drove, Jonathan seemed to fold up smaller and smaller on the front seat. He leaned back, mouth open. His lips were cracked. As the car bounced up onto the main road, he began to talk to someone.

  “Sure they will be. I know they will be,” he said, hoarse. “They’ll be there.”

  Then Jonathan paused, as if listening.

  “But you didn’t die,” Jonathan answered. “You grew up. Into me.”

  They came to the lane. ROCK SPRING, said the sign. The clump of trees was at the crossroads. Bill turned right and parked the car. The lane was unpaved, white gravel, and it led in a straight line to the ziggurat hill. A row of old-fashioned telephone poles ranged along it on the left, like a line of crucifixes. Two huge farm machines stood some way away amidst the sorghum. On the other side of the lane, the field was harvested, bare earth, thrashed stalks. Everything was seen. Everything was visible.

  Quarter to two. We’ve done it. Thank you, Jesus.

  Bill patted Jonathan’s knee. “Come on, kiddo,” Bill said. “Let’s go see it.”

  Jonathan still smiled. He didn’t move.

  “Come on, Jonathan.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” he answered in a whisper. He stirred slowly.

  Bill helped him out of the car. Bill got out the plat-book map and turned it upside down, south on the top.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Jay,” said Bill, with a nervous chortle. “The Bakers’ farm? That was it, Jonathan. That cabin. That was the house. That was where she lived.”

  Jonathan moved as if he were on a ship at sea. His smile was fixed. Did he even understand?

  “Let’s go have a look at where the school was,” said Bill. There was a collapsed fence of barbed wire that he had to hold down and a ditch beyond it that made climbing over the wire difficult. They had to duck under and around small conifers or larger ash trees. And then, unmistakably, there was a clearing where a building had been.

  Jonathan stepped into it and smiled toward one end. “Hello,” he said. He stood still in the low grass with its purple heads.

  “This is where the school was,” said Bill.

  Or maybe not. In the midst of the thicket there was another building, gray and parched.

  “Let’s go have a look at that there,” said Bill. He fought his way through leaves and whiplike branches. He swept them away from his face. He saw a window, some kind of shed or outbuilding perhaps.

  “Wait for me,” he heard Jonathan whisper behind him.

  “It’s okay, you can get through,” said Bill, distracted. Elbow across his eyes, he stood up. There was still glass in the windows, and a glass jar on one of the windowsills. There was a paintbrush on it.

  “Wait for me!” Jonathan screeched.

  Bill turned around and shrugged his way back through the trees. The clearing was empty. There was the sound of the car starting.

  “Jonathan?” shouted Bill.

  He heard the car pulling away, dirt spurting out from under the wheels. Bill sprinted across the clearing. Through the trees he could see the gray car accelerate, swerving. Bill got caught on the barbed wire. He slipped down the grass in the ditch. His trousers tore. He pulled himself back up and over the fence, into the lane.

  The car had stopped. Dust still rose from it. The driver’s door hung open. Bill broke into a run, down the row of telephone poles toward the hill. He got into the car. Its engine was still running. The key was still in the ignition. It swung back and forth like a clock.

  Bill looked around him, shouting, “Jonathan!”

  On the right, bare and harvested, there was no one.

  “Where are you?” Bill started to run across the fields, toward Dorothy’s farm and then stopped. This is crazy, he thought. There’s nowhere to hide. If Jonathan were ahead of him, he would see him, running. If he had fallen over, he would still see him, there was no cover, Bill could see every clump of dirt.

  Bill turned and pelted back toward the car, up and over the lane and down into the other fields.

  “Jonathan!” wailed Bill. “Answer me!” He thought Jonathan was lying hidden among the sorghum. He plunged down into its midst and ran across the orderly rows, looking up and down them. Nothing. No one.

  They had husbanded the lower slopes; they had dug ditches across the fields to drain the wallows, the buffalo wallows where children disappeared.

  It was crazy, but Jonathan had gone.

  Dreamtime and Zeandale, Kansas

  1883

  It seems that spring has come once more and farmers go forth to seed their fields. Some oats are already sown. The rain has moistened the earth, making a good outlook for rich harvests. Though nature seems to smile upon the fields, yet some heavy hearts rest among us, grieving over the departed soul of Sister Reynolds
.

  . . .Though her body was broken

  Through her misery unspoken

  Though deformity changed her aspect

  Though earth’s duties were hard,

  She complained not a word,

  For all these she could leave in the casket.

  She was gentle and kind

  Always bearing in mind

  That she had a work to perform

  And with meekness and love

  All things were performed in their turn . . .

  To those children so dear

  To their mother while here,

  We would say in their anguish and sorrow

  Be strong in the Lord

  Abide in his word

  Eternity is only tomorrow . . .

  —Lines written by “True Friendship” on the death of Etta Parkerson Reynolds, as published in the Manhattan Nationalist, March 18, 1889, as recorded by Ellen Payne Paullin in her edition of Etta’s Journal

  Inside the cyclone, Dorothy dreamed.

  She dreamed she was still on the road westward, walking toward Wichita. Wilbur F. Jewell was with her. Wilbur was still thirteen. He was now as old as Dorothy. Wilbur was dressed like an Indian, with a colored headband with feathers and painted lines on his face. He had gone to the Territory and found the Indians and lived with them. Dorothy’s heart swelled with happiness for him. Wilbur had come back from the Territory to find her and take her with him. The Territory would be full of Indians and buffalo and magic. Wilbur was tall and bony and gangling, and he looked so young to her now. Dorothy knew in her dream that she loved him, would have loved him if he had lived.

  America walked with them, westward out of the East. Dorothy dreamed that they had stopped in a wayside camp. There were wagons and tents. There were women in gingham dresses and children in smocks and narrow-eyed men in black hats. The men mumbled with metal bars in their mouths.