The Lightest Object in the Universe: A Novel

by Eisele, Kimi

  “They’re everywhere if you know how to look,” the man said, pronouncing the word “look” as “Luke.” “There’s one now.” He pointed upward, to the west, toward a stand of hemlocks down the tracks.

  “The trees?” Carson asked.

  “The cloud,” the man said. Sure enough, sitting low in the sky was a large downy cloud. “Just have to know what you’re lookin’ for,” the man said again. “Well then, be good to you.” He tipped his hat and retreated to the group.

  Carson nodded, relieved but confused. Wouldn’t they want to tell him about God? Invite him to follow God, too? He turned toward the cloud and started walking, feeling strangely snubbed.

  Moments later, the little girl came running. With her ashen pallor, she reminded Carson of a Dust Bowl photograph. But then there was the plastic bag dangling from her hand. “Mister,” she said. “For you.”

  The girl’s hair seemed to glow, halolike, around her forehead. “Sandwich?” she asked, holding out the plastic bag. “Cabbage and onion.”

  Carson hesitated, then took the sandwich. “Thank you very much.”

  “My dad also said to warn you about the demons.”

  “Ah, yes, the demons,” he said. “I know them well.”

  “You do?” she said. “That’s why we’re going to the Center.”

  One of the men hollered out for her. She made a quick smile and ran back to the group.

  “The Center?” Carson called after her. The group nodded in unison. Carson held up the sandwich. “Thank you.”

  Rosie sat alone in the dim living room with a chocolate bar on her lap. Chocolate from Ecuador, here in her very own hands, thanks to Beatrix, who seemed to have traveled everywhere in the world.

  She unwrapped the chocolate bar and found it coated with a white film. She smelled it. Chocolate all the way. Who could complain? She bit into a tiny corner and held the piece on her tongue. The chalky film melted away to sweetness.

  Outside, the buds on the tree had expanded into leaves. Dragon had said that by the beginning of September they’d have little golden apples. Too many months away, it seemed. She stared past the tree to the empty street and willed Diego and his friend Charlie to come. Or better, just Diego.

  When Diego had finally kissed her, Rosie felt like she’d swallowed a beehive, her stomach churning. Diego said, “I like you.” And before Rosie could respond, his dry dark lips were right up against hers, his breath warm and smelling of walnuts. She felt it between her ribs and then in the lowest part of her belly, like water was being sprinkled there. “I’ll see you soon, Rosielicious,” he said.

  “Rosielicious,” she said aloud now. Maybe today was “soon.”

  She browsed the bookshelf of the man who’d lived there before and pulled out a book at random. On the cover was a black-and-white drawing of a young woman who looked a little bit like a man. The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

  She flipped through the pages. I held a jewel in my fingers. And went to sleep. She smiled at the image.

  After a little while, she set the book down and bit off another piece of the chocolate. This time, she tasted berries, sweet and tart at the same time. She wrapped up the rest of the bar and placed it on Abuela’s altar. Why not? Maybe if she gave the spirits a little something, they’d give her something back.

  At dusk, Carson stopped walking and dropped his pack. The night was clear and cold, and already the first stars had appeared. He stood in a clearing, the damp grass and weeds up to his ankles. Exhausted, his body chilled quickly in the stillness.

  From a nearby stand of pine, he gathered needles, twigs, and thick branches. He set a match to the kindling, and the sparks made tiny mesmerizing fireworks. He added more wood and warmed his hands. He felt like the last man on Earth.

  His shoulders ached, and a blister had formed on the bottom of his heel. He’d made it through his first day. No ambush. No weapons. No compound fracture. No fall from a cliff. No dangling by a hand. Lucky.

  He listened to the hiss of flame and the silence beyond it. The problem with fire was that it made the darkness darker. If anyone else was out there, they could see him, but he was blind beyond the fire line. A part of him wished someone friendly would emerge from the darkness, someone in the know, with smart words to offer. Someone like Ayo.

  He opened a can of beans and ate them cold. Soon, he’d be foraging. Mice and squirrels. Berries and weeds. Dumpsters.

  You know things, he used to tell his students. Use what you know. The resources are inside of you.

  Where were his students now? Had they fled the city, too? Were they holed up in the suburbs? Did they know enough? He felt a twinge of guilt. He’d given them books to read. He’d made them think about cause and effect, how one event leads to another, how the course of history could be swayed by a single person or a collective theory. He’d honed their critical thinking skills. He’d made them explain themselves, articulate their ideas. They had learned about the rise and fall of so many other civilizations: Sumer, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Chaco Canyon, Tikal, Greece, Rome, Spain, Germany. But not their own. How could he have prepared them for this?

  He scraped the last of the beans from the can and wished for more salt.

  The morning brought dampness and more aches. Carson didn’t want to move. He opened his eyes as a large crow flew overhead. The birds were so fortunate. They could see the sprawl and order of cities. They could take in a long strand of coastline, the blur of white waves crashing. They could drift over the green-gold quilt of farmland. If only he could have that view of the landscape, a more coherent geography, to see clearly where he was going, where he had been.

  A crow landed a few feet away, its blue-black feathers shiny like metal. Behind the house where he and June had lived, he used to watch the crows as they flocked to the fields to scavenge for seeds and insects. They’d gather there, a jittery oil slick.

  A shadow passed now, and another crow arrived. The two birds stood in the grass pecking, moving with purposeful and sturdy hops. Watching them, Carson had a momentary sense that nothing of any significance had taken place. The world was exactly as it had always been. Earth circled the sun, bringing darkness and light to its surface. Crows searched for breakfast in open fields, devouring grain and insects in the natural order of the food chain. A man could wake up at dawn after sleeping in a field and be covered with dew. As always.

  He thought again of John Muir, how he returned home from his wanderings to a wife and child. Carson wanted to go home to that. He wanted to roll over and put his arm around Beatrix.

  April 4

  B., I am like a crow looking for the shortest route. I survived day one. I am green and damp. Even my bones have emotions. I hope I have not made a mistake.

  Love, Carson

  The second time Beatrix met Carson, her stomach went into a spin. He was standing next to the shoeshine kiosk, right where he’d said he’d be. She had traveled east for a meeting of chocolatiers.

  A man was shining shoes, and Beatrix made a nervous comment about her scuffed boots. Carson spoke her name and held open his arms.

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “You?”

  The day went by so quickly—coffee, lunch at the Diner/Bar, a walk along an old rail line that had been converted to a park. When evening came, they were not finished with each other.

  At his building, he introduced her to the doorman, Ayo. “I have heard about you,” Ayo said, smiling. He bowed slightly to her. He looked at Carson. “This is a fine man. You take it from me.”

  The elevator had brass railings, shiny wood, and mirrors. Beatrix and Carson stood side by side, in the flesh. In all the reflective surfaces, she could practically see the desire there between them, like a third person, large and billowy.

  She reached out and hovered her hand over the mirror. “Someone cleans this every day,” she said, nervously diverting attention to something else. There was always a menial narrative to accompany polished brass and sparkling mirrors.

 
“Flora,” he said. “She’s from El Salvador.”

  When the elevator stopped, Beatrix looked at Carson’s hand as he gestured for her to exit. She’d been noticing his body all day, the long bones that held him upright, the lean muscles of his arms, the gray of his eyes, and now, the strong tendons in his hands.

  Once inside the apartment, as he folded his jacket over a chair, she reached for his arm.

  Carson turned and brushed her hair off her face and tapped her forehead gently. “Just making sure you’re really here.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I am here.”

  He was taller than she had remembered. She wondered, briefly, if June was there, somewhere, in his mind. He pulled her closer. He smelled like soap and wool. He reached beneath her hair to the back of her neck and pressed his other hand to her heart. He kissed her ears, temples, forehead, cheeks, nose. When he got to her mouth, he pulled away.

  “I am here,” she said again, and reached her mouth to his.

  Carson pulled her shirt up over her head. She pushed her head against his chest. He said her name slowly at first: “Bee-ah,” then a quick “tricks.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The neighborhood meeting was held in the elementary school, a beige brick building surrounded by a chain-link fence. Beatrix and Dragon locked their bikes to the fence.

  “Schools always look like prisons,” Dragon said.

  “Or factories,” Beatrix said. Carson once had questioned whether schools educated students or just regimented them into routines.

  They followed cardboard signs to the side of the building and entered a dim hallway where class schedules still covered the bulletin boards. Beatrix stopped to admire a collection of fourth-grade drawings called “Inventive Species.” A bear’s head on the body of a giraffe with duck feet. The head and neck of a swan on a pig’s body with deer hooves. Beatrix lingered on a cartoonish crow-like bird with large human feet. She liked the deep red of its body, the too-small wings protruding from its shoulders, the tawny flesh of its big human toes. “Is this a crow or a raven?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Dragon said.

  “Me neither, but I like it,” she said.

  “You should have it,” he said, reaching for the thumbtack. He looked up and down the hallway, then fixed his gaze on Beatrix, who gave a small nod. He pulled out the tack, and Beatrix folded up the drawing and tucked it into her back pocket.

  “We simply liberated it,” she said.

  The classroom still smelled like grade-school kids, a mixture of sweat and artificial strawberry. The dozen adults already in the room looked like oversized children at the student desks. Rog and Finn from the garden waved hello.

  A woman in a yellow skirt stood at the front of the room and wrote a list on the chalkboard in a perfect swirl of cursive: Community Garden, Water, Food, Neighborhood Watch, Tool Library, Evictions, Leadership. Each topic ended with a question mark.

  The woman introduced herself as a former teacher in the school, then called up Rog to speak about the garden. He encouraged people to give seeds to and take seeds from the seed library and shared information about an upcoming workshop on harvesting rainwater.

  “To keep us from depending so much on Dorn’s water,” someone said, referring to the horse-drawn tanks. “He’s got a monopoly, that guy.”

  “What choice do we have?” asked a woman in a hijab.

  Others nodded. A man in the corner spoke up. It was the green-eyed man who had stopped Beatrix at the checkpoint. “We monitor the water situation pretty closely on the radio. It is a monopoly, yes, but it seems to be a stable supply for now.”

  “We also have rain,” Rog said.

  A man in a denim shirt started talking about the neighborhood border, where Beatrix had met the men in bandanas. “We could use a few more guards,” he said. “And we’ve been looking to acquire more arms.”

  “Arms?” someone asked. “For the guards?”

  “For the guards, and anyone else who wants them,” the man said. “If you protect yourselves, we are all stronger.”

  “That’s awfully dangerous,” someone said. “We can’t have every mother, father, and child walking around with guns. This is not Washington, DC.”

  Several in the room laughed, and Beatrix felt her face get hot. She cleared her throat. “Some protection is in order, yes, but an armed barricade?” she said. “Who do we need to protect ourselves from?”

  “Yeah, isn’t that what the US military is for?” said the woman with the hijab.

  “Pshaw. What military?” someone said. “You seen any military around here lately?” He started talking about the Second Amendment and how lucky they were to have it.

  “Oh hell, what good is the Constitution now?” shouted a man in the corner.

  “We can uphold it,” Rog said. “Just because they screwed it up doesn’t mean we should throw it all out the window. ‘We the People,’ remember?”

  “We are hearing more and more reports of violence,” said the guard Beatrix had met. “Communities with armed perimeters and armed citizens are safer, it seems to me.”

  “So we’ll have a bunch of scared people running around with guns they can’t operate,” Beatrix said. “And why is it that we’re only protecting this neighborhood? What about everyone else? What happens past ‘the Perimeter’? Are we keeping people out? Or keeping ourselves in?” It felt like such an old argument, one she’d had so many times with her mother and the ridiculous man her mother had married. She sighed. She hoped they were faring okay.

  “I don’t know where you’ve been for the past six months,” said the guard. “We can take things into our own hands, or we can stand on the corner and rattle cans that our incompetent government entity will never hear. Which would you choose?”

  Beatrix stared at him, stung by his depiction of protesters.

  “Listen,” the guard said, “the government isn’t equipped to do anything right now. We have lives to protect here.”

  “You’re right, Gary,” said the man in the denim shirt.

  At the front of the classroom, the teacher waved her hands in the air. “Please, everyone. Calm down! I think we need to discuss this carefully. There are children to consider.”

  “Precisely why we’re advocating this. The reports we’re hearing are about violent children,” the man in denim said.

  “Violent children?” the teacher said. “Goodness. We need to get them back to school.”

  “We haven’t seen them here yet, but Gary has heard reports on the two-way, right?”

  Gary nodded. “We’re asking everyone to keep an eye out and report any suspicious activity.”

  “Report it to where?” Beatrix asked.

  “There’s a bulletin board in front of the school. That’s one place for sharing information,” the teacher said.

  “Speaking of information,” Rog said, holding up a packet of paper. “We’re updating the neighborhood assets survey. Many of you know how this has brought us together in the past. The best way to secure your community is to know your community. In the days to come, we’ll be coming around and asking you about your skills and what you can offer. Think of it as an inventory of what we can share.”

  As the meeting adjourned, Rog tapped Beatrix’s arm. “I could use your help with this. It’s easy. What do you say?”

  Beatrix focused on the red curls atop Rog’s head, stalling. She wasn’t even sure she was sticking around.

  Dragon elbowed her. “C’mon, do it for the team.”

  “What team?” she said.

  Dragon swept his hand out over the empty room.

  How was this guy she barely knew so persuasive? She took the packet from Rog.

  They rode back to Halcyon and found two teenaged boys on bikes circling in front of the house. “You need something?” Dragon asked brusquely.

  “We’re looking for Rosie,” one of them said. He had shoulder-length black hair, and his face was speckled with a few pimples.

  “Hi, guys
!” Rosie said from the door. “They’re my friends, Diego and Charlie. It’s cool.”

  Maria del Carmen stood in the front hallway. “Those boys keep coming here,” she said, huffing, once Dragon and Beatrix were inside.

  “Of course they do, Maria del Carmen,” Beatrix said. “They’re teenagers. They need to be social. They can’t text anymore.” She understood the longing perfectly.

  She thought sadly of Carson’s texts.

  Good day today? he’d write.

  Good enough. Aside from poverty and corruption.

  Detention and fire alarms here. I saw a falcon this morning.

  Lovely. Lucky. You. The falcon.

  “It’ll be okay,” Beatrix said. “She needs to have friends.”

  Beatrix went upstairs then and wrote to Carson, adding to a long letter she had no way to send.

  April 5

  Dear C.,

  The principal of the elementary school here wants to re-open the school, despite the lack of lights and water. It’s a good idea. They need volunteer teachers. I also have to say, I feel lucky to be in this neighborhood. There’s already a lot of cohesion. I’ve been recruited to survey neighbors. I’ll be asking a lot of questions.

  I keep thinking about a story Subcomandante Marcos used to tell. A story of two gods connected like Siamese twins. One operated by day, the other by night. One was dark, the other light. They couldn’t get anything done because of their differences. Finally, one of them said, “Let’s walk.” The other said, “How?” And then in this way, by asking questions, they started to move. One step at a time. Soon they were dancing. They came to a long road. “Where does it go?” they asked. To find out, they kept going.

  Love, B. (Pressing send)

  Carson walked full days. By midafternoon, he wanted desperately to lie down. But there were three more hours of daylight, easily eight more miles. The ground beneath him blurred—gravel, railway ties, the dried-blood color of his boots. Fitting. Each step felt like a nail through his flesh.

  The tracks sliced through a clearing of grass—wide, green, the sort of place that used to hum with bees. Ahead was a figure, immobile, looking like a lone tree planted in the wrong place. Carson reached for the side of his pack and unzipped the pocket where he’d stored the gun. Just in case. As he approached, the figure came into focus as a gawky man tossing a green apple from one hand to the other.