Lighthouse Island

by Paulette Jiles

  What has demolition got to do with cloud cover?

  It affects the blast pattern, he said. We don’t have much cloud cover in this part of the city but other sections do. Is that comprehensible? The blast goes up, hits cloud cover, and flattens out, and the shock wave goes places it’s not supposed to.

  She lifted both hands. Got me, she said.

  He nodded slowly. Yes. Maybe I have. And so, yourself?

  I’m with the poetry people. The Sylvia Plath people.

  He tapped his fingers on the wheelchair arm and his expression was not so kindly now and the wind brushed up two spikes of his heavy brown hair.

  There isn’t any Sylvia Plath group. I must be very direct with you. What’s your name?

  I know, I know, we don’t advertise ourselves. She waved one hand. I suppose we should.

  And your name is . . . ?

  She hesitated and then said, Nadia.

  Nadia what?

  Ah, Nadia Stepan.

  I see. Mysterious Nadia who walks on the rooftops and wants to know what the dark spaces are. I am James Orotov and I am a solitary and curious man, who blows things up and lives in a wheelchair. Do you know which Nadia Stepan you are?

  She said, Fourteen-fifty-nine zero zero SB. So there.

  Very good. What’s in your handbag?

  She bent down and picked up her tote bag. She adjusted her hat. You know what? I think it’s my bedtime.

  It may be, he said. But I suspect you don’t have a bed. You are not here on a Sylvia Plath seminar. Your shoes are very worn. You got them in a ropa usada store. Let’s go from there.

  He did not seem hostile, just deeply interested. Nadia laughed and bent down and brushed imaginary dust from the rosettes. She said, I did not get them from a ropa usada store. (But she did.) I am indeed here on a poetry seminar. Anyway, it’s late.

  And so I suppose you’re also acquainted with Ramsey, he said. Surely you have not shot your wad on one solitary poet. He watched her with his flat blue or gray eyes and a slight smile as if he were some sort of particularly informed social counselor or an interviewer.

  No, no, she said. “We knew our way from dawn to dawn, and far beyond, and far beyond.”

  Ah, he said. You do know it. He relaxed in his padded nest. How few people know it.

  Poetry soothes the savage breast, she said.

  Not always but it’s a nice sentiment. It’s very hard to find a copy of “Anthem,” he said. I, however, have one. Nadia saw that a soft felt fedora was pegged on the back of the wheelchair as if he would, despite his paralyzed legs, appear manly and maybe even debonair.

  Good! she said.

  Copied it out by hand myself from a borrowed book. “It was the old ones with me riding . . .” Let’s see . . . ta dum ta dum . . .

  “Out through the fog fall of the dawn, and they would press me to deciding, if we were right or we were wrong . . .” And then it goes on for many more stanzas. In Italian sonnets.

  You have it memorized. He leaned back against the backrest. How good to hear it.

  And how good to meet somebody who appreciates Ramsey.

  There’s an affinity, I suppose. James ran his fingers over the handrims. Because of Ramsey’s life in a wheelchair but I am not yet an alcoholic, although I have considered it but it’s too debilitating.

  Well, she said. Most people who can read are put off by his simplicity.

  He’s not simple. They have the whole thing on Big Radio.

  I know. When does it come on? I forget. With Whitman.

  June. Narrative long poems, he said. “Ancient Mariner,” et cetera. Where does your group meet? He clasped his hands together and leaned forward. What floor? I would love to hear a discussion of “Anthem.”

  I’m afraid we’re all done, she said. Everyone’s gone.

  There is no group, he said. None.

  Why not? She opened her hands. Why shouldn’t there be a poetry group?

  Because it’s not listed. He leaned his head on one hand, the elbow on the armrest. And you slipped up saying the third floor. You’re here for the food and drink, I’m afraid.

  She sat very still for a moment and then lifted one hand in a throwaway gesture. There you go, she said.

  You made it up.

  She laughed. Right you are. It’s just me. A single, solitary attendee of a poetry seminar of my own invention.

  He sat and said nothing for a few moments. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a blister card of mints and broke one out of its pocket of foil and put the mint in his mouth. It was the last one. He said, Excuse me, and tipped up the bottle of Mamosi and drank. Then he shut his hand around the empty card. How did you get into this building?

  Discovered and unmasked, here at the very start of her journey to Lighthouse Island. She should have hidden the moment she heard the sound of his wheelchair wheels. She should have gone back to her assumed name, lifted it like a domino carnival mask between her two hands and secreted herself behind a potted palm.

  On the strength of my charming personality. By the freight elevator.

  That’s very dangerous, he said.

  She turned up one foot and regarded the decorative rosette on the toe of her shoe. Nevertheless.

  Are you trying to get into the interdicted area? You have a boyfriend there or something?

  No.

  Then what? He did a drumroll on the arm of his wheelchair. I have no intention of reporting you.

  For what? she said. I came up for air. For the view.

  And then what?

  She reached up and held her hat against the increasing breeze that smelled of the tar of rooftops and industrial smoke and concrete, hot with man-made energies and sinkholes of dense air. There was a long silence. The man in the wheelchair with his stiff brown hair did not interrupt this silence.

  Finally she said, Where does the city end?

  Ah. He turned his head to look out over the panorama of lights and the dark area and in the distance the fierce glow of some distant place that was more well lit, a brighter existence there, richer people, riskier lives. The breeze was changing into a hard wind, and it made his brown hair stand up like the crest of an exotic bird or a helmet. Is this just curiosity?

  No, she said. No. I am going to walk to the end of it.

  The end of the city?

  Yes.

  James Orotov leaned his head on his hand and laughed. He held the empty blister card in his hand. I am speechless. How odd. He raised his head and regarded her. What the hell will you do when you get to the end?

  I don’t know, she said. Maybe there will be water there. She noticed he was waiting for her to say something more. Or a kind of desert? Maybe mountains? I would love to see mountains with no buildings on them. No people. The mountains going on without us. There is a poem that says something like that.

  The garden, he said.

  Yes, the garden going on without us.

  And that’s it?

  Yes, she said.

  That’s all?

  Yes. That’s all. She lifted her shoulders in a kind of overdone comic shrug.

  Well, strike me dead. He regarded her with a still and expressionless face. Didn’t you get any credits for vacation time where you worked?

  I did, I did, but then I lost them all on demerits. She clutched her tote in both arms against her chest as if defending herself against marauding demerits. It was just me. I kept getting demoted. I started out well and then just went through life getting repeatedly fired. That’s what comes of reading.

  I see. And you didn’t sign up for any particular vacation? There are ways around that you know, of course you know, you subvert and corrupt the poor fellow making out the precedence list. You choose a plan and lay siege.

  Oh yes, certainly, they did have all th
e plans. There was Country Gardens and Celebrity Splendor cruises and Skateboard Championships and Village Stroll. Where you shop at ethnic food stalls. Let’s see . . . Northwest Challenge where you go with Captain Kenaty’s men and stay out all night. Locker Room Tour for the guys, and Undersea Adventures, that’s an aquarium somewhere, and Lighthouse Island. She ticked them off on her fingers. And I couldn’t bring myself to lay siege to anybody and they are all virtual anyway.

  He nodded. They are. Well, no. Lighthouse Island isn’t. Skateboard and Lighthouse Island are the two that aren’t virtual.

  Really? Is there really a Lighthouse Island?

  He hesitated and turned the flashlight over in his hands. Yes, he said. Yes, there is. In a way.

  And that big wooden house?

  Yes.

  I knew it. Nadia clapped her hands together. I knew it.

  And you are going to go there and light up the tower.

  Is it out?

  For now, yes.

  Where is it?

  You wouldn’t know if I told you. He tapped his fingers the way people with operable legs jiggle their feet. North, he said. It’s north. So why did you lose all your credits to demerits? Did you strangle your supervisor or what?

  I don’t work well with others, she said. I look for individual solutions to collective problems. Could I get there if I walked?

  Walked. My God. His smile brought out the creases around his mouth like brackets and enlightened his plain, long face. To Lighthouse Island. It would take you two or three years or so, given luck and given help.

  You lie, she said.

  I don’t.

  So if I walked north for two or three years I would come to Lighthouse Island. I’m just trying to get this straight.

  Ah, probably. It would be in the Northwest.

  Oh, said Nadia. I see. Up there among the savage hippies.

  That’s what television tells us. We are all such innocents, aren’t we? He looked at her carefully. For all I know you really did strangle your supervisor, “Anthem” or not. Do you have a leave permit?

  Her doubts all came back like rats. It was possible he would turn her in. Report her. Then she would never see a free river or bare mountains. She would never get beyond the dense city blocks and the demolitions and the trucks carrying evacuees somewhere to die. The television going on without us. We are but turnips in the clinches of the agencies, the human spirit as a useful if nonnutritious paste.

  So. No leave permit.

  She lifted one hand to her garnet earring and then finally she said, No.

  Where is your ID?

  They took it away.

  You can’t walk to the end of the city without an ID and in those clothes.

  I have to, she said. These are the only clothes I have. I need to look normal.

  That’s true, that’s true. He pressed his lips together, thinking. Go directly northwest, he said. The end of the city is a very long way. More than four hundred miles. Then there is a sort of interurban area before the next city begins. Massive scrap yards. Then mountains, with mining barracks. He bit his lower lip and then said, You’ll end up jailed or killed.

  But it ends somewhere, she said. The urban areas end somewhere.

  It ends for individuals, he said. When they die.

  Chapter 13

  The wind increased to a ghoulish howling. James shut his eyes against it and said, Come with me. He grasped the right-side handrim and turned the wheelchair on one wheel, spinning, and started away down the tiles, one shoulder to the parapet. She stood watching him; she saw there was a keypad on the wheelchair armrest, and beneath the seat, a motor, but he was not using it. Come with me, he said. There’s a place where the wall is higher.

  He wheeled down the tiles and around a corner where there was a parapet higher than their heads. It was easier to talk in the wind-shadow. He wheeled himself beside one of the potted palms; its long, barbarous sharp-leaved fronds moved only slightly.

  Sit beside me, he said. He placed his hand on the pottery container. Here, wait. He leaned forward and shifted the big ample coat from behind himself and laid it on the edge for her. She sat down gingerly and was again briefly amazed at the liveness of the palm fronds and the way they lashed around and were not torn off the trunk.

  So you are going to go marching on.

  Nadia said, I have decided that it is compulsive. A brain affliction involving some inherited defect, a fold in the cerebrum, and so it’s not really a fault, you see; it’s a faulty neuron involvement. She paused.

  I’m listening.

  Well, then, I used to dream of washing up on Adrian’s Island, or being Captain Kenaty’s secret guide, or being hired to clean the lighthouse windows. Very adolescent but leading on to flight. She laughed, and as he stopped smiling and regarded her with a more serious expression the laugh trailed away. To live outside the city. I am looking around for a way to say this.

  Keep looking.

  I just always dreamed of living anywhere there is some kind of natural landscape since I was very small. I was meant to live in the wilderness. I don’t tell people this.

  He nodded. Well, it argues a certain amount of philosophical stamina. He looked down at his useless knees for a long moment and then carefully placed each hand on a kneecap as if to hold the kneecaps in place. I work with enormous machines, he said. And high explosives. Hydraulic shears, hoe rams. And here I sit. He lifted his head and said, All so strange. Very well, the first interurban area to the northwest is four hundred miles away. Do you know how many blocks to a mile?

  No, she said.

  About eight, he said. Count them. And so if there are eight blocks to a mile, how many blocks before you get to the thinning-out area?

  Let’s see. She bowed her head so she could think.

  Try three thousand, two hundred.

  Oh my God.

  And during your long nights sleeping in doorways you might brush up on basic math.

  I will. She nodded. His coat smelled of his own lax body and some kind of good soap. She wanted to reach out and take his hand but she was still carefully neutral, pleasant and unruffled. A thinning-out area?

  Scrap. Huge scrap piles where they sort and recycle. Not so carefully policed. If you make it to the e-waste scrap piles you might find a way to stow away on some kind of transportation, going on northwest. His hands remained on his kneecaps and he caught his upper lip in his teeth as if it helped him think. Three thousand two hundred blocks. That’s if the blocks are regular. I expect you to be dead or ill or arrested within a week. How interesting to meet you. He cocked his head to one side. What do you do in life?

  She tapped her fingertips together. I bring in the supplies for a personnel office, personnel for a public information group. I distribute pencils and pens to whoever wants them. Hand them The Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary. Refill the paper dispenser. I mean I did.

  Which PI group?

  Recycling veterinarian supplies. I used to write copy for a cactea opuntia processing public relations group, a sub-sub-subgroup of Nutrition and Cleansing. About nopal recipes and so on. I did some TV ads and wrote a couple of jingles, chant things. Then there was some trouble.

  Nadia gestured uneasily. So, demotion! Like a regular thing. Down to vet supplies PR, then down to the PR group for recycling trash from vet supplies. Can you imagine the state of mind it needs to write ads for recycling used veterinarian supplies?

  No, he said. I don’t want to try.

  Then I was demoted again.

  Veterinarian supplies. He cocked his head. An appendix bureau. No use for it anymore but there it still is. Since there are no animals anymore. Or almost none.

  Nadia hesitated. Does veterinarian mean animals?

  Yes. Medical care for animals.

  I thought so. Nadia looked off into the distant city and s
aid, There is a woman in this hotel with a cat.

  Yes. Takes a lot of paperwork and sensitivity training classes and then you wait for years. He crossed his arms in front of himself and she could tell he was chilled but decided not to try to get him to take back his coat for fear of seeming too solicitous. He said, So you have decided to live under the radar.

  Yes, said Nadia. Under the radar tree.

  There’s more here, he said. You have told me of a pull but there is always a push. That is, some sort of impetus flinging you out of what might have been a more or less normal dull life.

  Not really. Don’t other people get flung?

  Yes, but you don’t want to meet them.

  No, maybe not. So, okay. I never told anybody I just wanted to walk out of the city.

  That was bright of you, he said.

  Okay, well, then there was this birthday party bus that came to work and I knew it was a removal bus and so I . . . it’s a long story. Nadia clasped and unclasped her hands in a small nervous fit. So.

  Something else was going on.

  She looked down and banged her toes together. The rosettes on the toes of her shoes wobbled. I had an affair with a married guy in the office. His wife was on the removal advisory committee. In fact she was the head of it.

  Foolish girl, foolish girl.

  I know it.

  And she put your name at the top of the list.

  Looks like it. She stretched out her legs and clasped both hands. I won’t go into my hellhole life with an informer in my Youth Housing unit. So it was run or off to the cactus farms for me.

  Some people survive. What’s her name?

  Who?

  The wife of the married guy you had an affair with.

  Ah . . . Oversupervisor Blanche Warren.

  He laughed and briefly put one hand to his forehead. An oversupervisor. Damn.

  Why am I talking to you?

  People talk to me because I’m a cripple.

  Well, she said, and could not think of anything else to say.

  He said, It makes me seem harmless.