by Adam Johnson
“The kernels look perfect,” I said. “Completely viable. They were stored underground, in even temperatures, wrapped in layers of airtight velum.”
“It is just not possible,” was all she could say. “This cannot be.”
“I need you,” I said. “I need you to come here. If you get in your car right now, you’ll be here before dawn.”
There was a pause. I could hear her breath.
“It is just not possible,” she said again.
I was silent.
“Tell me,” she said. “You must tell me. Is this about corn? Or is this about me?”
I had nothing to lose. “Yulia,” I said, “I’m no catch. No one reads my book. My phone doesn’t ring. Though I have heart and good intentions, I ultimately fear I do a disservice to my graduate students by teaching them. They could be someplace else, where real research is being done. Right now, I’m calling you from a minimum-security prison, where I’m being held until jury selection begins on my grave-desecration trial. Now I have found what looks like a kilo of the oldest maize on earth, and I have a grad student who, I fear, might try to eat it. I don’t know if this Clovis corn is real or not, but my gut tells me this is the biggest thing ever to happen to me, and all I know is that my first instinct was to include you. When a sheriff’s deputy strangled me unconscious, I thought of you. When a pack of condemned dogs ate my hamburger, I thought of you. And now that I’ve opened a door into the previous eon, I want you to step through with me.”
I could hear Yulia breathing. “I’m coming,” she said. Then the line went dead.
When I hung up the phone, I could see that a prisoner working the concession stand was preparing for Psycho by popping a fresh batch of popcorn. Inside a box of yellow Plexiglas, the smoking metal drum turned and turned, a snow of puffy white falling into drifts below.
* * *
I couldn’t bring myself to seek out the small bunk that awaited in my “cell.”
Yulia, I kept thinking. Yulia. This was the time when you were vulnerable. This was when Hope snuck up on you, slipped an arm around your neck, and slapped a sleeper hold on your ass. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about her.
Already, I could picture Yulia’s hair, frizzy and wind-driven as she descended the steps from the airplane. Her eye shadow was Ukrainian midnight, her lipstick Chernobyl red. Behind her ear was a fresh-cut Draculunus vulgaris, a blossom I imagined as flushed and fiery as an inflamed genital. I watched her hips sway under a Soviet-gray skirt as she strode across the pink tarmac, through the hot terminal, and toward a taxi whose driver would speak to her of rapture all the way to the spectral, stained-glass light of the visitor-processing center.
From there, heedless, she would come to me.
I needed to walk around. I had to clear my head!
I stepped outside, let the cold air penetrate my scalp. I inhaled deep enough to bend me over. I stared at a movie poster until I settled my breathing. It was for tomorrow’s movie, North by Northwest, and it depicted Cary Grant running through a cornfield from an evil crop duster bent on snuffing him out.
Ahead, under the marquee, a few insider traders stood smoking. And standing with them, discussing the NASDAQ index, was Eggers.
I approached the boy, put a hand on his shoulder.
“What are you still doing here?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Eggers said. “I just thought . . . I kind of figured I might hang out with you for a while.”
I had some big issues going on. This was my personal/leisure time. The last thing I needed was some grad student glomming on to me. I let my eyes dart to a distant point in the prison, as if some important business were calling me there. I exhaled with impatience, but Eggers didn’t seem to get the hint.
“I’ve got things to do,” I told him. “I’ve got places to be.”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Eggers said. “I understand, completely.”
Yet he made no move to leave.
“Is there some special circumstance?” I asked. “I mean, is something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “It’s just—I don’t have a lodge anymore. I don’t have anyplace to go.”
I slid my hands into the overalls. “Normally, sure, I’d love to. But I’m in prison here. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
He gave his normal Eggers smile, as if to say this was the answer he’d been expecting.
“Sure,” Eggers said. “Sure.”
“Any other time,” I said. “Believe me.”
“No biggie,” Eggers said. “Forget I asked, okay? I never even asked.” He took a couple of steps backward into the snow. There was a hitch of pain in the way he turned. This was the second time in how many nights that we’d parted this way, and it was awful watching him walk away again. It was truly pathetic. The kid seriously needed a few sessions with the counselors over in the psych department.
I was no professional, but I called out to him: “Wait. I suppose there’s no harm in just walking together.”
Eggers stopped.
I gave a throwaway gesture. “I mean, there’d have to be a couple of ground rules.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“I’ve got some thinking to do,” I said. “I can’t very well do that with someone yakking in my ear.”
“Are you saying—no talking?”
I shrugged.
Eggers shoved his hands into his parka and looked around, as if he were debating it. He must have thought he’d look spineless to agree to such a condition, at least too quickly. Really, though, it was a pretty generous offer.
“I guess I can live with that,” Eggers said.
“Great, then,” I said. “Let’s start hanging out.”
“So—does it start now?” Eggers asked.
“What?”
“The no-talking thing.”
“You don’t have to say it like that,” I said. “It’s just, you know, there are special circumstances here.”
Eggers didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Eggers was quiet.
Nothing, I could tell, would get him to talk now.
“Come on,” I said, and began walking uphill, toward the top of campus. Eggers fell in beside me, the hood of his poncho pulled close around his face, and together we strolled past the old engineering building, a structure whose ivy had died and peeled away, though the trellises had left a ghostly, darker imprint on the walls. When the breeze swept by, you expected the ivy to shimmer, but it was no longer there. Eggers walked with me, crunching through a runner of fresh powder just off the sidewalk. Ahead, the snow-burdened branches of Douglas firs hung low and oscillating in the wind. As we passed, they tried to grab our ankles with their blind, groping limbs.
We neared the old campus broadcasting tower, galvanized with ice, and then there was the gymnasium, the repertory theater, and, at the top of the hill, the dome of the 1923 hand-crank Rawlins telescope. Eggers insisted on walking in my blind spot, silently pacing off my periphery, as if riding some invisible bow wave. In the corner of my eye, I’d catch a glimpse of his plodding booties, or the steamy grunt of his breath whenever he stumbled over a buried tree root. I’d be walking along, and just when I forgot about Eggers, there’d be a flash of shaggy fur beside me, or the ruffle of his game bag as it bounced with his hip. Yulia was coming, and what I needed was a plan. How could I concentrate with a Clovis hounding me?
Yet it was as if he weren’t completely there, either. Whenever I looked over, Eggers’ face was lost in his dark hood. Whenever I said “Eggers,” Eggers made no response, as if he didn’t even speak my language. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that Keno was cresting a hill with me, retracing ancient steps above a long-ago hunting valley. I knew this was Eggers pacing me, and not Keno. I knew Eggers was just acting withdrawn, giving me the silent treatment out of spite. And I wasn’t even hoping for an answer when I stopped and asked him:
“Is she really going to come?”
>
Eggers stopped. Crossing his arms to ward off the cold, he faced me, though I couldn’t make out his eyes behind all that fur. The whole campus was bordered by a sleepy, upper-middle-class neighborhood, and across the street were rows of brick houses, bought by people who thought they’d spend their golden years adjacent to the culture and vitality of a university. Some of these homeowners might have included the donors whose names were sandblasted off the buildings. Somewhere, buried between the sidewalk and that street, separating me from those normal families, was a cable that would sound an alarm if I crossed it.
“What other unseen things dictate our lives?” I asked him.
Eggers offered no opinion.
A simple step, I thought. I was one step away from how other people lived.
I considered again these sleepy houses. Frozen garden hoses were coiled stiff around spigots. The raised red ears of mailboxes stood suspicious and alert. The smoke from dark chimneys lifted, billowy and content, then, just above the evergreens, just out of view, raced away east. Somehow it was easier to believe in the hidden alarm than in the possibility that those homes were filled with families who were whole and happy.
I asked, “Is there really a buried cable?”
All that mattered, I supposed, was that we believed there was.
Then Eggers lifted a hand. He turned, slowly and strangely, as if guided by an unseen hand, toward the dark prison buildings. He took one step in their direction, but stopped. He peeled back his hood and cocked an ear.
Out there was a scampering sound in the snow.
From the darkness, a rocking figure began to emerge, long and trailing. Then it came clear: racing toward us was a team of six Pomeranians, harnessed in tiny leather traces, bounding through the snow. Chests plowing the powder, their little heads loped above pumping torsos, while the patter of white breath rose in fits. I looked around for Gerry and his kids, but they were nowhere to be seen. The Pomeranian named McQueen was in the lead—I’d recognize the snitty cock of his ears anywhere—and as they passed us, heading in and out of the prison lights, I could see they were pulling an empty wooden sled the size of a breakfast tray. Gerry had said he was going to increase his sales sixfold, and now it was clear that he was selling dogs by the team, probably working a buy-six, get-a-sled-free angle.
I turned to Eggers. “Love,” I said. “Do you know it? Is it all they say it is?”
He regarded me. “I’m the protégé,” Eggers said. “I’m the one learning from you.”
The sound of the skids diminished, and the little sled slipped away, the dogs answering the call of an unseen driver who mushed them on with his ghostly voice.
Chapter Eight
The night arced high and cold, pulling icy black sheets over the prison. The sky was starless, the night infirm. Wind whisked inky and aluminum past my window. The chill penetrated the glass, radiating down to pool across the floor. Where was dawn? What good was the sun if it only came by every once in a while?
I rolled up tighter in my thin, penitentiary-issue blanket, but to no avail. The cold would not be stopped. It entered the room through copper wires and old weep holes. It worked its way into knotholes and sump fittings, was siphoned in through ducts and plumbing. It filled the voids in the cinder-block wall, made ice of my bunk’s metal frame. The thick rubber backing of my ankle monitor was fat-tongued with cold, making the thing constrict enough to turn my foot nightingale-blue, to make my toes buzz like baby radio towers.
With some effort, I located my socks, both of them soiled, and slid them, one over the other, on my right foot, then stared at the ceiling, waiting for my foot to warm. First light was on the way; there was still time to sleep, but I’d had a dream, one bad enough to make me remember all the mistakes I’d made before bed. After Eggers left, I’d called my father, hitting him up to deliver my brown suit so I could look suave for Yulia’s arrival. I kind of got going on a brag session, playing up how fine my new lady was, flying seven hundred miles to see me. But Dad’s answering machine ran out of tape, and I was cut off before I even got to the part about Yulia’s hothouse and my Siberian competition, a failed scholar named Ivan.
Next I called Trudy, waking her, and it’s painful to admit, but I begged her to find Yulia’s flight and pick her up from the airport. Finally, most shameful of all, I executed a masterpiece of folly—I called Farley, after midnight, to ask him for his surefire mushroom-soufflé recipe. When he answered, I heard Santana playing in the background, and it turned out he was not alone.
In my room, the cold seemed to radiate from everywhere: from the small metal desk, from the bulbless bedside lamp, from that lone wire hanger in the closet. Yet it was the dream that chilled my heart:
It opens with me walking through my old house, now empty. Though all of Janis’ possessions have been removed, I duck where her stained-glass lamp once hung. Where has she gotten to? I wonder. Suddenly I remember there is an extra room in this dream house, one hidden under the staircase. When I open the door, I find not Janis but our old dog, Roamy. It turns out that he wasn’t hit by a truck after all. I suddenly remember that I’d left him here, years ago. All this time, he’s been patiently waiting for me to come back—years and years of waiting. The part that really hurts is that Roamy isn’t mad. He puts his paws on me and keeps licking my face. He can’t stop—it’s like he’s trying to make up for all that lost time. I push the dog away and start running. I just close the door on him again and take off. I run in the dream—forever, it seems—until my ankle hurts, and then I wake, foot throbbing.
I had to get out of that room. I draped the blanket over my shoulders and stepped into the hall, which was surprisingly warm. Only my room, it seemed, was an icebox. I walked down the center of the dark hallway, and all those doors scared me to death. I kept thinking they would suddenly open—who would I find behind them?
At the end of the hall was a group bathroom and shower house. On the door was a list for latrine duty, with the names of others crossed out and mine written in. Past the bathroom was a communal kitchen area, and my name also led the coffeemaker detail, as well as dishwashing and floors. Gerry had put my name down for defroster duty on the big double-doored refrigerator, and I didn’t even bother to check the list taped to the oven.
The kitchen opened into a group eating area, and on the bulletin boards were activity sign-up sheets, to which my name had been uniformly added. I was now a member of the Christian Jubilee Choir, Books for the Blind, and Tax Tattlers, a program that offered free income-tax preparation services to the community. Beyond the food-prep area were several dining tables, aligned in a horseshoe so everyone could view a large projection TV that was housed on a platform built from fake lava rocks and maroon carpet. The set was tuned to a channel that showed nothing but the weather, and by this blue light I made out one of Gerry’s kids. Before him, upside down on the table, was a wooden sled.
I didn’t have much experience speaking to little persons, especially ones under the impression that I’d killed their dog. But I couldn’t shake that dream. I tried not to think of the small, cold room waiting for me.
I neared the kid. “Whatcha got going on there?” I asked.
Looking up from the sled, he gave me the quick, recognizing glance that people reserved for the village idiot. Then he returned to the sled’s runner, on which he was performing some delicate procedure. It’s true that I had a blanket wrapped around my prison-issue pajamas, and I wore two socks on one foot.
“Saw your sled in action last night,” I told him.
He shrugged.
“Very impressive,” I said.
With the wax-paper modesty of an eleven-year-old, he said, “That thing? That was an assembly-line sled. That thing’s for mama’s boys in Nebraska. This is a racing prototype.”
The thing did look fast and sleek. It was cut from a lattice of blond wood, and all the struts and braces were pulled tight by a cradle of rawhide as clear and taut as drumskin. There were no metal parts that I c
ould see, and everything looked handmade.
I said, “So—who do you race?”
Almost defensively, he said, “Well, right now we just go against the clock.”
“Right,” I said.
“Mom never let us race the dogs the way they do in Impossible Journey. She said it was cruel to make them run around. But Pomeranians were born to pull. They’re an ancient and noble breed, you know.”
“Of course.”
“They come from Iceland.”
“An ancient and noble place,” I said.
He looked at me sideways, to see if I was making fun of him.
To assure him otherwise, I said, “I know you lost your dog.”
He made a few passes down the sled’s runner with a bar of wax that looked tacky and dry, like a withered scrap of soap you’d find in a gym shower.
Without looking up, he said, “No loss.”
“I had a dog once,” I said. “A long time ago. It can hurt pretty bad. I know you think I was the one who—”
“Forget it,” the kid said, licking a finger and running it lickety-split down the runner. “We were going to sell that one anyway. Some dogs are keepers. With the rest, you just do your job and keep moving.”
Where had this kid picked up such a philosophy? I hoped not from Gerry.
I asked him, “What exactly is your job?”
“I teach ’em to sit up and beg. They have to learn that, so you can slip their sledding harnesses on. McQueen does most of the work, though. The other dogs follow him. Gerry saved him, you know. Ever since Gerry brought him home from work, that dog’s done most of the training.”
The sheriff’s station came to me, with its cell-full of dogs, and suddenly it made sense that Gerry was the one who had to put those strays to sleep. It suddenly fit why Gerry was more upset over losing a dog than he was over losing his job.
I shouldn’t have, but I asked, “Does your mom know you guys were spending your days at the sheriff’s station? Does she know you’re here?”
“We’re just hanging out till she gets back,” he said. “Mom’s on vacation.”