The Lightest Object in the Universe: A Novel

by Eisele, Kimi

  Carson was moved by the generosity, but he declined, then began a list of the plants they were likely to know already: dandelion, thistle, mint, raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, and stinging nettle.

  “You know dandelions, yes?” Carson asked.

  “You can make wishes with them,” said the girl.

  The oldest boy held up the greens Carson had given him. “These, right?”

  “Exactly. And thistle is what you just ate. You now know what it looks like and how it tastes.”

  “Bitter,” the boy at his thigh said. “Like dirt.”

  Carson handed the drawings to the oldest boy. “If you’re not sure, try a tiny bit and wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “For a reaction. Make sure it agrees with you. If you’re really not sure, leave it. It’s the best you can do. Whatever you do, don’t eat that one,” he said pointing to an oak tree a few feet away.

  The boy with the brown eyes looked up, curious. “Why not?”

  “It’ll turn you to stone,” Carson said, smiling.

  The boy made a small O with his mouth, then froze, his knee bent, his arms stiff, his eyes wide.

  “That’s right,” Carson said, gathering up his things. “You do that well. But stay away from the oak. You make a better boy than a statue.”

  “Bounty comin’ in. It’s July, and we are flush.” Flash wheeled his bike into the yard, his trailer full of mason jars. Rosie closed her notebook and smiled. How was it that he could be so cheerful all the fricking time?

  Flash placed a jar on the picnic table right where Rosie was sitting. Inside were fleshy red tomatoes, like smooth hearts. On the bottom of the jar was a label. “Who’s Helen McDonald?” Rosie said, reading it.

  “The woman who canned those. So she gets her jar back,” Flash said. “The new currency. Barter, barter, barter.” He held up another jar. “Green beans.” Then another. “Pears. Peaches.”

  “Yum,” Rosie said, reaching for a slippery peach.

  “We have high-ticket items here, thanks to Mama Maria Señora Tortilla and Miss Beatrix the Queen of Cacao.”

  “Don’t forget Abuela’s tinctures,” Rosie said.

  “Those too.”

  Beatrix came out to the yard and sifted through the jars. “Can I take two of these? There’s that lady down the street with her cat. They’re both starving.”

  That was Beatrix, Rosie thought. Always saving the neighbors.

  Jonathan Blue’s voice drifted into the yard. “Where you are, you look around and all you see is violence, scarcity, darkness. None of that is here. Here, there is kindness, abundance, and light. Trust in the power of the holy. That power can lift us out of the darkness. Look up. You can be lifted.”

  Rosie glanced at Beatrix, knowing what was coming.

  “Brainwash alert,” Beatrix said.

  “Abuela says it makes her happy,” Rosie said.

  “Rosie, listen to me,” Flash said. He sat on the bench and patted the seat next to him.

  “Okay, but I’m not five,” she said.

  “I know. You’re a beautiful woman with a good head on her shoulders.”

  Rosie felt her face warm. A beautiful woman? She sat down and tried to hide her smile.

  Flash draped his arm around her, and the caped superhero tattooed on his forearm looked like it was flying straight for her heart. “When I was your age, my grandma was really important to me. She was like your grandmother, an immigrant to America. My parents brought her here after I was born. Her faith was really important to her. She went to church every Sunday. She prayed every night. We said grace before every dinner. That’s what kept her alive. That faith, it was everything to her.”

  “Um, Flash,” Dragon said, “I hate to break it to you, but that faith is a little different than what Jonathan Blue is asking for.”

  “Kind of,” Flash said. “And kind of not.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rosie said. Flash and Dragon always seemed to speak in some boy code she couldn’t decipher.

  “So I used to get irritated with how religious my grandma was. Her prayers, her church gatherings, her community service, blah-blah-blah. But she just kept resting her hand on my forehead and blessing me,” Flash said. “When I started doing my own good in the world, it didn’t seem all that different than the good she did, only mine didn’t have some specific God attached to it, per se.”

  “What was your good?” Rosie asked.

  “Little things. Like I helped to get a bike path built through the neighborhood. Not just me, but a group of us. We petitioned the neighborhood association, held some fundraisers, spoke at city council meetings. I’m not saying this to brag—I’m just saying we all need some good deeds.”

  “What I really need is permission to leave the house,” Rosie said. “My abuela is terrified of everything. And she hates my boyfriend.”

  “‘Hate’ is a strong word,” Beatrix said. “But yeah, Diego is not her favorite guy.”

  “I don’t think she hates him,” Dragon said. “I think she’s just protecting you.”

  Flash rubbed his chin. “Maybe we need to get Maria del Carmen on a bike. Let her see the world a little bit.”

  Rosie laughed, picturing it. But she knew Flash could do it. Maybe it would lighten Abuela up. Or better, help her loosen the leash a little.

  Carson squinted at the landscape—a long stretch of rolling plains patched with lifeless croplands cut off from their irrigation hoses. There had to be water nearby, though, because that morning a great blue heron had soared over him, its wings wide brooms sweeping the sky. Maybe a wetland somewhere?

  Late afternoon, he came to a structure shining in the low sun. First, he willed it into a wide, cool lake, then he wished simply for a diner. An old-school diner, with gleaming retro chrome, spinning stools at the counter, and a milkshake with the extra on the side, in one of those chilled stainless-steel cups. A mile back, he’d seen a symbol of a skirted stick figure holding a fork. Not all hope was lost.

  The shine came from the solar panels on the roof of a small house. Potted plants lined a path to a wrought-iron security door. He called out, “Hello?” and then peered in to see a tattered sofa, a table for two, a fireplace, and a wall of family photographs.

  A woman cracked open the door. “Unload your weapons first,” she said.

  Carson stepped back, startled by the greeting.

  “Just our policy, you understand,” she said, stepping into the light. She was in her sixties. A bold-patterned scarf—yellows, blues, and greens—covered her hair, and a strand of seedlike brown beads hung around her neck.

  Carson figured this woman could see his gun in her crystal ball, but that didn’t mean he wanted to surrender it.

  “If you hand over your weapons, you can stay. Work for trade. We need help with the beehives and the blackberry harvest. You look hungry. You decide.”

  He sized her up. Her eyes softened. Was he a fool? But food and bed. He unzipped the top pouch off his pack and handed her the gun.

  “You’ll get it back,” she said. “I’m Naomi.”

  “Carson,” he said.

  She gestured to a bench near the door. “Have a seat.”

  She disappeared inside and returned with a bowl of cold soup and a hunk of bread. Carson tried to eat slowly, but he gulped the soup like a starving dog. When he finished, she brought him a serving of peach cobbler. He exhaled, finally relaxing. “I’ve landed in heaven?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s all real. Peaches are a little early this year. Apples coming this fall. Right now, it’s blackberries. I hope you don’t mind thorns.”

  Carson was tempted to lick the bowl.

  “We had to chase off thieves a few days ago.” She pointed to the roof. “They came for our solar panels. Daniel sent a shot up and scared ’em off the roof. Daniel’s my son. Being in prison somehow made a man of him.” She looked at Carson, as if anticipating a comment. “My boy was locked up, but you won’t believe that
when you meet him.”

  She poured hot water from a thermos into a mug and placed it in front of him. “Spearmint,” she said.

  Carson sipped the tea. More heaven.

  “You can bunk here a few days in the extra room. Work starts early. Milking goats. Tending hens. Beehives. Picking.”

  The room was more of a closet than a bedroom. But there was a mattress, clean sheets, a window, and, outside, a solar shower and a compost toilet. “The shower should be good and hot,” Naomi said.

  It was indeed good and hot, and once clean, Carson lay on the bed and slept deeply.

  When he woke, it was evening, and Naomi served him more tea. Daniel, the son, had not yet appeared, and Carson started to think he might just be a decoy, a way for Naomi to protect herself against strangers.

  “My husband always drank tea in the evenings. Don was Irish, so tea mattered. He steeped it in a little pot and drank it with milk. Our place was right off the highway. One night, we were out of milk. Don went out to get some on his bike, at dusk. Witnesses said the truck hit him from behind. The driver never even stopped.”

  Carson gasped, taken aback by her frankness. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Once they took his body away, I went out to where it happened. I found a little button on the road—pewter, vintage. Not Don’s, at least not that I recognized. Just a little button the color of the sky in a storm, rough and with a little imprint of a horse’s head on its surface, nearly worn away. Don loved horses, always watched those silly races. So it seemed like a special sign. A little piece of him. Or something to keep us fastened together, at least.”

  Everyone has a button, Carson thought. The detail that lodges itself in the brain at the moment of loss. An object or two that can anchor the feelings or contain them somehow. His were the oil slick of crows in the field behind the farmhouse and a whale-shaped cloud in the sky.

  “After that, I moved here and started fending for myself,” Naomi said. “Homesteading, I guess you could say. Just wanted to feel prepared and safe. Some days, I still miss him freshly.” Naomi stared at Carson for a moment, then swept her hands across the counter and started putting things away. She moved swiftly, efficiently, like a waitress.

  “My wife died three years ago,” Carson said.

  “Oh, you poor soul,” Naomi said. “Grief slices you down the middle. It takes a good long while before any sweetness returns. And even then, the hurt still comes, like heavy clouds.”

  Carson’s grief was more like a prickling sensation that burned up from his feet through his veins, as if he’d been injected with something not meant to enter the bloodstream. In the first few months when it came on like that, he’d have to lie down immediately.

  “Did you ever see that bird video?” Naomi asked. “That parrot bopping up and down in tune to the music.”

  Carson nodded. He remembered the video. It was a cockatoo, not a parrot.

  “At one point, I thought if a bird could dance, why couldn’t I?” Naomi said. She started moving, swaying her body to an imaginary beat. Carson watched, hoping she wouldn’t ask him to join her.

  “Sometimes when you dance, joy slips in. Even when you think it’s not possible,” she said. “Doesn’t erase anything, but makes space somehow.” She stopped and looked at him. “Try a little jig sometime. Just to see.”

  Carson wasn’t so sure, but just before sleep, well-fed and clean and alone in the small room, he held his elbows at his sides and wiggled his hips. He stepped to the side a few times, back and forth, then loosened his torso and shook it. Just a tiny moment, long enough for a little laugh to come out.

  Along one interior wall of Gary’s garage was a table covered with broadcasting equipment. A cord stretched out the door up to the roof, where it connected to the solar panels. Beatrix didn’t quite know what she was looking at, but she knew what it could do, and that pleased her.

  “As always, the PBB delivers,” Flash said.

  “No small price, though,” Dragon said. “Three bikes for those solar panels.”

  “And a few hours of labor,” Gary said.

  “Thank you. Thank you again,” Beatrix said. “Today feels like Christmas.”

  “Christmas in July!” Flash said.

  They could broadcast locally for now, Gary explained, and with the wire antenna he’d mounted above the garage, they had pretty good range. AM could travel via ground waves, he said, with a better and farther range at night. An old cassette recorder and some blank tapes could help them get to stations in other towns, provided those stations had solar power and cassette players. “You can have a whole network,” Gary said.

  “Like Blue?” Beatrix said.

  “Sort of,” Gary said. “But he’s probably got access to more power. Big solar arrays or powerful generators, I’m guessing. This will be more old-school, but effective. You can have folks gather to listen, too. Like FDR’s fireside chats.”

  “I like it,” Beatrix said.

  To advertise, they’d spread the word through the PBB, made announcements at neighborhood meetings, and chalked handwritten messages on streets and sidewalks.

  On the evening of the first broadcast, Gary leaned over the table and turned a knob. “AM ten-eighty,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Flash flipped a switch, and a small red button lit up. “On the air,” Del said.

  Beatrix and Gary went outside to listen on the speakers Gary had set up in his yard.

  “Greetings from the end of the sidewalk,” Dragon said. “You’re listening to Halcyon Radio, the station of the People’s Bicycle Brigade, PBB, western chapter. You know us, or you know of us: we bring you good deeds on the ground and good ideas on the airwaves. And we know you: you make your neighborhood strong and beautiful.”

  Beatrix thought about how dozens of strategies and solutions would soon be revealed via low-power radio. Why believe one man’s false promises when instead you could live in the truth of everything and everyone around you? It was about listening to the people. That was all. Just like her friend Angel in Ecuador had said. Listen first. For the first time in a long while, Beatrix felt something close to optimism.

  “Hey, kid, do you have a bike?” Flash said, using his deep sports-announcer voice.

  Dragon, in a childlike voice: “Yes.”

  “Tell me about your bike. Do you like your bike?”

  “I do. Very much.”

  “What do you like about it?”

  “It takes me places. I can get around. I can go faster.”

  “And what do you do if something happens to your bike?”

  “I fix it.”

  “You know how to fix your bike? Where’d you learn?”

  “From the People’s Bicycle Brigade.”

  They shared information about basic bike mechanics, where to find spare parts, and the bicycle fix-in schedule. After fifteen minutes, Flash closed the show with a short riff on the guitar.

  Beatrix was up next. Her hands were sweating. She sat in front of the microphone and took several deep breaths. “Good evening, everyone. I’m BBX for the PBB and Halcyon Radio, the people’s station.”

  Now giddy, she read off a list called “Necessary Neighborhood News,” announced the upcoming garden workshops, the composting toilet cooperative (“Like an Amish barn raising: you help them, they help you”), and the call for more Perimeter volunteers. “Also, this Saturday morning at Squat Park, you can learn to make soap. And at four o’clock at Fifth Street and Sparrow, a small orchestra will play a mix of classic rock and Beethoven—don’t miss it.

  “This is your station. People-powered radio. Have something to share? Start a program or join us for an interview. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a wish. Share yours. We’re listening.”

  Feeling more confident in her voice than she had in a long time, Beatrix warned listeners of the T-Rize, urging them to tell the Perimeter guards about any sightings, damage, or violence. “Please do not confuse all cyclists for T-Rize. The People’s Bicycle B
rigade, or PBB—which also has some young members on bicycles—provides you with information and resources. Note that PBB helmets and armbands are marked with the red-and-yellow PBB logo. Stay alert.

  “And please, friends, do not use the T-Rize as your justification for joining Jonathan Blue’s exodus. This so-called Center is fabled to be a land of milk and honey. But we know little about it. The exodus itself is dangerous: anything could happen along the way. Go if you must. But weigh your decision carefully. There is milk and there is honey right here in the neighborhood. I’m not kidding. Tune in. AM ten-eighty. Halcyon Radio. Your source for survival. A safe nest on the shore. A respite from the storm.”

  CHAPTER 8

  In the morning, Carson woke to the sound of a hissing kettle. Sunlight poured through the small window. Outside, the leaves on the fruit trees were full and green. Naomi stirred something in a pot. Beyond her, a man, partially bald, stacked empty cardboard boxes against the side of the barn. Naomi’s son wasn’t a myth after all.

  Carson dressed and went outside to introduce himself. Daniel’s eyes were the same color as Naomi’s, blue like bottle glass. The skin of his arms was inked with designs. On his left biceps was a serpent and an apple; on the other, a fish with a sinewy tail.

  “You came from the East,” Daniel said. “What did you leave there?”

  “No job and a city that was about to erupt,” Carson said.

  “Nothing’s erupting around here,” Daniel said. “Not yet, at least.”

  Carson followed Daniel into a dark and dusty barn. Upon entering, Carson inadvertently kicked something, nudging it across the floor, and nearly lost his balance. “Ouch.”

  “What on earth?” Naomi said. Behind them, she slid open the door, letting light flood the space. She quickly picked up what Carson had kicked—an assault rifle.

  “Danny, please put this thing away!” She shook her head and looked at Carson. “Are you okay?” She hung the rifle on a rack on the wall, where it joined a small arsenal of others. “Really, this is for protection only. It’s supposed to go here.”

  Carson thought of his handgun, stowed in Naomi’s kitchen cupboard. Were these other travelers’ guns, never returned?