The World Is a Narrow Bridge

by Aaron Thier

  “Very good,” she says again. “But incorrect.” Her eyes are sparkling inside her hood. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s garbage!” She laughs and tosses a Snickers wrapper on the ground. It blows into the flooded forest. Once more she says, “It’s garbage! All the way up the coast!”

  It takes Murphy a moment to understand what she means, and then he sighs and says, “The landfills. I never thought of that.”

  The landfills, yes indeed. The real highest point in South Florida is Mount Trashmore, formerly the Monarch Hill Renewable Energy Park, formerly the North Broward County Resource Recovery and Central Disposal Sanitary Landfill. Mount Trashmore rises 225 feet above sea level. It towers above the surrounding landscape. Mount Trashmore will be a little island when the rest of South Florida has vanished beneath the waves.

  Murphy sees that Eva is now interacting with the ill-tempered farmer, whose produce gleams on a gray folding table next to his truck. Murphy watches her gesture and laugh. A terrible anxiety grips him.

  Here is the woman’s idea: Acquire all the landfills in the lowland South and build on them. And it’s a brilliant idea. Brilliant enough that Murphy is moved to ask her how she “ended up in that parka.” She should be running General Electric.

  “I’m in the process of repositioning myself for fresh success,” she says enigmatically.

  In any case, Murphy is welcome to the Mount Trashmore idea. It is an “open-source idea,” she explains. Does he know the term? It’s a computer term that he might or might not have heard. She is also an expert on computers. Only a fool would ignore them, she says, because it’s the computers that are beaming all the instructions to us.

  “Practically all the instructions come from computers nowadays.”

  She produces an orange prescription bottle from some recess in her parka. She removes two green tablets and then offers the bottle to Murphy, who politely declines.

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” she says, swallowing her drugs. “Sláinte. Prosit. Cheers.”

  It’s five o’clock in Karachi, but in Florida it’s too early for revolutionary ideas, and Murphy makes for the car in a state of moral unrest. Is it very bad to think about profiting from the inundation of an entire American state? Why should it be bad, as long as one does everything one can, in the meantime, to forestall that dreadful outcome? Not that it can be forestalled. He slips into the passenger seat and sits with his arms folded. The sky is chalk white and the heat is starting to hum. What about the guys who shorted the housing market? Are they scavengers or are they just smart people who took advantage of an opportunity? Eva appears a moment later. All she’s managed to buy is a bunch of radishes, which neither of them want, but maybe this is for the best. There’s a time to feast and a time to fast. Murphy turns the car on, and off they go.

  Live oaks, wetlands, inlets, rivers, fast-food franchises, big-box stores, rehab clinics: Life on the American road. The Chitter Chatter Pallet Yard buys and sells pallets. If you pawn and redeem three times at Lending Bear, you become a VIP. The Vapor Station sells “E-Cigs and Juices.” Bikers are welcome everywhere. The Huddle Hut has “The Best Food Yet.”

  An hour and a half later, they’re at the famous old fort in St. Augustine, which was occupied at various times by Spain, Great Britain, and the United States, but never by France. They see the ancient graffiti in the guardroom—a drawing of a big ship under sail, writing with heavy serifs. They examine some old-time medical equipment. They learn that Osceola, the great Seminole warrior, was captured under a flag of truce, the white man’s favorite deception, and held here for a time before being transferred to Fort Moultrie, in South Carolina, where he died. They stand in the sentry boxes on the limestone walls. The sentry boxes are tiny because people were shorter back then. Murphy looks out at the bay and tries to imagine the treasure fleet going by on its way back to Spain. Eva sees two pigeons fornicating on the roof. It reminds her of arm wrestling. Murphy doesn’t notice the pigeons, not even when Eva tries to call his attention to them, and yet later, when he reads the poem she’ll write about this moment, he won’t be able to distinguish his memories from her inventions and he’ll believe that he did see the pigeons after all. He’ll decide that the failure of the Murphy-figure to notice them is just a literary contrivance, and he’ll even feel a little hurt. He’ll ask himself: Why doesn’t she think I’d notice something as good as that?

  They eat fish tacos for lunch. Nobody wants to live on passion fruit and radishes and milk. Then they walk through the old streets, but the old streets are not crowded medieval alleyways, as they hoped, and it’s impossible to imagine what this city was like in the sixteenth century. The sublime essence of the place is imperceptible, or else it fails to accord with their expectations and they persist in believing that it’s imperceptible. St. Augustine is a place for tourists. Murphy and Eva, who are tourists, are upset by this and lament that it’s not a “real” city. But of course it is, and that’s why there’s so much pressure to monetize its history.

  “I had a dream last night about a turtle that couldn’t get comfortable,” says Eva. “He was uncomfortable in his shell.”

  Murphy explains the Mount Trashmore plan in comical terms, perhaps attempting to minimize its beguiling appeal. He represents it as a kind of moonsanity. Then he amuses himself by identifying other kinds of moonsanity. There are people out there, for example, who believe that the moon landings were filmed on a soundstage in Hollywood. He speculates that you can see the junk and tracks up there with a good earth-based telescope, but the afflicted—the lunatics, so to speak—will tell you that the government put that stuff up there to fool us.

  “Some people are so smart they can put a guy on the moon,” he says, “and other people are so dumb or crazy that they can’t be convinced it ever happened, and that’s the problem of human society right there.”

  Eva waits a beat. Murphy frowns.

  “We’re assuming it did happen,” he says anxiously.

  “Yeah, we’re assuming they didn’t put all that stuff up there to fool us.”

  “Which somebody could easily have done.”

  But by now it’s early afternoon. They’ve admired a fort; they’ve looked out over the hot still water toward the sparkling sea; they’ve dined on fish tacos; they’ve reflected on the time gone by, the years and centuries; they’ve discussed the moon; and they’ve each thought privately about American slavery, as one must when one travels in the old Confederacy. It is no longer the morning, the time of possibility, nor is it the evening, the time of sweet resignation. It is no time at all. It’s the time of the shattering sun, and suddenly nothing is interesting any longer. The world seems emptied of possibility. This is a familiar kind of ennui that they call “Afternoon Sickness.”

  Eva grows morose and returns to her favorite theme. Having a baby, she says, means “forcing someone to do something they might not want to do,” by which she means that the baby himself, or herself, is forced by his parents, or her parents, to be a human being and thus to confront the disasters of existence. Strep throat, heartbreak, aggravating holiday parades, standardized tests, embarrassing school presentations and/or performances, middle school dances, adulthood. And that’s if she’s lucky, or he, because there are any number of problems that can prevent a child from having a normal life in any sense of the term. The disasters of existence are what you experience if you’re fortunate.

  Murphy asks whether this means she has changed her mind.

  “That’s the cruelest part of this whole setup. I have the feeling that the worst catastrophe is what if I can’t get pregnant at all?”

  Murphy has been checking his weather app every few minutes. Knowing whether it’s going to rain or not is not the same as knowing the future, but it’s easy to make that mistake. At two o’clock, the app says that the UV index is “14 out of 12.” Sweat is pouring into his new Walmart underwear, but he hasn’t realized until now how uncomfortable he is. Why should he have needed to learn this, in
essence, from his phone? More generally, what’s he missing when he stands there staring at it, deaf and blind to the world? If it didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have to check it, and if he didn’t know that it didn’t exist, he wouldn’t miss it. It’s the phone that creates the need for the phone.

  “Remember when you got that stomach infection?” says Eva. “Remember how unhappy you were?”

  “I thought it was a dairy allergy.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “But the people at the doctor’s office were so nice about it. I remember that too.”

  “You can’t count on that. All you can count on is the infection.”

  This is the traditional siesta hour. It occurs to us that the siesta must be a cultural adaptation to combat Afternoon Sickness, but Murphy and Eva would never take a nap in the middle of the day. They are young vigorous Americans. When they’re afflicted with Afternoon Sickness in Miami, they take long walks, each of them alone, or they exercise. That isn’t possible today, so here they are, marooned in time, and if they’re not exactly at odds, they feel a kind of mutual exasperation. Eva pulls out her phone and cyberbullies a U.S. senator. Murphy tugs at his shorts and stares into shop windows. Shot glasses, margarita mix, key lime pie on a stick.

  And yet now Eva has an insight that will prove important in the days and weeks to come. Although Afternoon Sickness can develop as the organic product of unusual circumstances, the fact that they’re on the road means that they can simply drive away from each new set of circumstances. And so they do. They feel better immediately.

  In Savannah, an old southern port town, one of the places from which the cotton set sail, they try not to think too obsessively about slavery. Sometimes you have to try to enjoy some pulled pork and cornbread, as they do now, despite the possibility that American barbecue traditions are partly rooted in the experience of slavery. Then they walk around in the last light, groaning and sickened by their meal, and admire the stately homes and the old squares and the wrought iron and the spreading oaks and the Spanish moss and the Venusian sunset. And obviously they think continuously about slavery, a hideous crime such as only a god like Yahweh would permit.

  This place is a little haunted for them. Three years ago they were living in Gainesville, Florida, which is not far away, and they recognize the light, the Spanish moss, the smell of the air. This disposes them to reflections of a broad and general character. What have they learned in the last three years? What progress have they made? When will they be able to give up their itinerant bohemian lifestyle? They wonder if they could settle down right here in Savannah. Surely this is a place where they could live peaceful modest inexpensive lives, drinking tea on a wide porch, padding softly across creaking old southern floorboards, smoking their own pork, eating shrimp, and thinking continuously and in anguish of American slavery. Would their child be an Atlanta Hawks fan, or—unhappy thought—a Charlotte Hornets fan? What if their child doesn’t love basketball?

  The air is dusty and dry, and soon it begins to get cool. They make a quick stop at an outdoor clothing store and buy cheap wool sweaters and matching gray work pants. They look like they’re in uniform.

  Murphy reminds himself that their notional child can make his or her own choice about basketball, and he and Eva will respect that decision. Basketball is not for everyone.

  There was a landmark, Eva thinks. There was a landmark. My hair fell out in Santa Barbara.

  The evening passes like a sigh on the south wind, and before long they return to the car and motor out to the highway. There’s nothing else to be done. They enjoy the powerful scent of Confederate jasmine in the dusty air. They believe they can detect the tang and sparkle of cellular data on the breeze. Eva wonders about those conjectural landfill islands. An apocalyptic Riviera. The new Florida Keys. Will civilization collapse entirely as a result of climate change, or will things just be pretty bad for a while? She thinks about Mount Trashmore, the jewel, rising high above the clear lifeless seas of the future. A future that their child will have to contend with as long as nothing else goes wrong.

  Here’s another Super 8, and once again they’re in room 210. Here’s the same king-size bed, the same big TV, the same plastic cups in the same individual wrappers, the same ice bucket, the same brown carpet. Here are the same thin towels, the same green curtains, the same jammed window. Murphy turns on the light in the bathroom and the air conditioner comes on.

  “Cripey!” says Eva. “This gives me a funny feeling.”

  They listen to the rush of the traffic, which sounds like the sea. How do they know that this motel room is real, and not just a memory of the last one, or a vision of the next?

  Murphy says that buying the landfill “poses no difficulty.” The touchy part is “inspiring credence” and “changing the conversation about landfills.” You need to 1) initiate, and, if necessary, fabricate scientific studies proving that living full-time on a landfill poses no health risks, 2) persuade the county or municipality to rezone the landfill so you can build condos and a hotel, 3) convince investors that people are going to want to live on a landfill, and 4) convince people that they’re going to want to live on a landfill. Once these things are accomplished, he says, “there can be no obstacle to success.” The attraction of high ground in a tropical setting will be irresistible, and there are other attractions as well. For example, landfills belch combustible gases—free energy.

  “But I’m already convinced,” says Eva. “How much money do we have?”

  “Almost none. Very little.”

  She’s trying to encourage him. Usually Murphy is an inveterate retailer of half-earnest schemes, but he’s been so dejected the last few months that he hasn’t had any ideas at all. His interest in Mount Trashmore is a good sign.

  “How do we go about getting a loan?” she says.

  “It’s no problem at all. I’m sure there’s some kind of system.”

  He waits a beat.

  “But I’ll tell you one thing,” he says. “We’re going to send that woman a good chunk of the proceeds. Let’s say fifty percent. Open-source idea or not.”

  Eva takes a shower and Murphy tries to watch a little basketball. The Eastern Conference game is ending; the Western Conference game is about to begin. An important player exhorts his teammates to stay aggressive. Every game is a game seven—that’s the spirit in which each player will approach tonight’s contest. Tip-off is just a few moments away, but first here’s an Audi commercial. If you buy this car, what you’re essentially saying to the world is: I’m different, I go my own way. Next are some images of mountains and snow. A voice says, “It’s what inspired us to cold-age our beer.” Murphy thinks of all that ice and snow melting and running down to the sea.

  It looks like another godless morning in the American South, and Eva and Murphy are feeling pretty sharp. The milk has not spoiled, and there are some radishes and passion fruits remaining. They intend to visit Charleston, but first Eva takes a little walk and Murphy strolls across the vast damp parking lot to the Walmart, because there’s always a Walmart, because Walmart, according to all the most recent data, is the world’s largest company, with assets worth nearly $200 billion, a net income of about $14 billion, and annual revenue hovering around $485 billion, which is not much less than the GDP of Norway, a nation that has banned Walmart because of ethical concerns. Murphy has the same concerns, but there’s nowhere else to buy a cheap pair of running shorts this morning. It’s fortunate that he wore his running shoes to the Whole Foods the other night. Now he returns to the motel, changes his clothes, and heads out for a jog. It’s just fast food and gasoline and parking lots out here, and it feels somehow unlawful to be on foot. This is another place that isn’t a place.

  Back in the room, he’s able to spill some Guest Choice Café Collection coffee into the curtains. Then they check out and take the road north. But the pain in his legs and feet is more intense than usual, and the one thing you especially don’t want to do, if you’re having troub
le with muscle and joint pain, is sit rigid and motionless in the car after your morning run. You might as well stretch out in a warm tub of lactic acid. Murphy feels like his connective tissues are dissolving inside the leathery envelope of his skin. He’s in enough pain that he has to mention it to Eva, who has long since made her position clear—he must take a break from running or else cease complaining—and at the next gas station he purchases Advil and IcyHot Pain Relieving Balm, although the latter is not a product he has ever tried before. Meanwhile, Eva rebukes him. It’s been months of pain, she says. He needs to take a break from running.

  “Maybe I need to see a doctor.”

  “You need to stop running!”

  “I’ve probably got a stress fracture.”

  “You don’t have a stress fracture yet.”

  “It’s probably some torn cartilage.”

  “It’s inflammation or something. It’s a craziness problem that makes you run and run.”

  But no, he says, that’s where she’s wrong. It’s the running that alleviates the craziness. Sanity flows up from the feet, or actually it flows from gravity, because gravity provides the resistance. That’s why astronauts have to be so psychologically tough, because otherwise the lack of gravity would immediately drive them insane.

  IcyHot Pain Relieving Balm, like IcyHot Advanced Relief Pain Cream or IcyHot Power Gel, is a topical rubefacient heat rub intended to relieve minor pain associated with arthritis, backache, muscle strains, cramps, and sprains. IcyHot also makes a SmartRelief transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation device, which is endorsed by a giant named Shaquille O’Neal. All of IcyHot’s products are marketed by Chattem, originally the Chattanooga Medicine Company, which is a subsidiary of Sanofi, which is the product of a troubled merger between Aventis and Sanofi-Synthélabo, which are themselves the products of other mergers, just as nation-states are formed by the merging of city-states or tribal areas.