A Matter of Life and Death or Something

by Ben Stephenson

  (He never did find her another trilobite for company. In the end, he took a bullet for her when they were finally discovered. She escaped though, and they never caught her. As my dad sat against the cave wall, dying, he only had one regret. He had a wish.)

  “... at almost the exact same time.”

  (He wished he could have met his son.)

  I jumped when I realized Mr. Peterson was staring at me.

  “Right?”

  “W-what?”

  “I mean, isn’t that incredible?”

  “Yeah. Amazing.”

  I felt like I got knocked out in a boxing match and woke up and a week had passed but I was still at Mr. Peterson’s house. I thought maybe I’d look up whatever he was talking about on Wikipedia later, in case it really was amazing. But mostly, I felt confused and I really wanted to go home. I pressed the STOP button and started putting the tape recorder and Phil back into my backpack.

  “Is the interview over?”

  “Yeah. I got lots of stuff to work with—”

  “So sudden?”

  “I gotta get home for supper. I’m probably missing it already. Thanks for answering my questions.”

  “Oh, no trouble. Anytime.”

  I stood up and my back hurt from the stiff chair. I went straight to the door and put my boots on.

  “See you later,” I said, even though it was probably a lie.

  “Goodbye.”

  WHEN I GOT home I checked Rosie’s website for new updates but there weren’t any so I just looked at all the photos of her in the most amazing places on Earth again and I read one more time about how you only get one life and I tried to grab things by the horns but instead I felt excruciatingly sad, for some reason. Then I didn’t feel much better while we ate mini-pizzas for supper. And after that I went in the woods like always except everything looked different. I went between the first few trees on the edge of our lawn, down the reddish-brownish path into the thicker woods, over roots, past the treehouse, then I turned right and walked that way for a while. I jumped across the little ditch, heading towards the beach that’s just a bit farther in, down at the bottom of the hill with the tallest trees that in the summer have dandelion-yellow leaves but had no leaves yet. The sky was so grey, and somehow it was like the trees were closer together than usual. They looked a bit taller, like they had all grown as tall as an extra person standing on top of them in the nighttime.

  There was a lot going on in my brain. I kept thinking about the tree sap, for one thing, but for another I felt almost like there was someone else in the woods. I wasn’t sure who, so I tried to make my imagination slow down, and I tapped each one of those empty dandelion trees with my branch as I slowly walked by. My brain was thinking amazingly hard because of how confused I was, and I was trying to picture who or what was or wasn’t in the woods with me, but I couldn’t.

  I mean, obviously there was no one there. I looked around the whole place. I even sat down on the ground for a while, digging my branch into the earth, looking over my shoulder to see who was there, but it was no one.

  It was really weird because I was always alone in the woods but I never really felt alone until right then. Not alone in a bad way. But also I felt like maybe I wasn’t alone, so it was kind of scary. I usually never got scared in the woods. Then I realized that the feeling in my brain was exactly like one I got a long time ago when I first heard this one crazy question, and then of course the question came exploding back into my head until it was taking up most of my brain.

  “If a tree falls down in a forest but there’s no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” I still think about that question all the time even though it’s years since I heard it, and maybe I’ll think about it forever. Probably I will, because the thing about thinking about that question is that you can’t, really. I mean think about it:

  A tree falls down in the forest. (It doesn’t matter how, because that’s not part of the question, but anyway there’s no person who knocks it down—sometimes trees just fall down by themselves, I guess, and even if they don’t they do in this question because it’s like in algebra when they only give you an x and you can’t ask why.) So obviously when the trunk of this mystery tree cracks open and when its branches scrape the branches of the other trees around it, and when it lands with a big splash sound like a cymbal, obviously all of these things make a lot of noise, and in your brain you want to yell “TIIIMMBERRRR!”

  But the thing is that no one is around to hear the noise or yell timber. Because everyone in the universe is so far away that they don’t even know that the tree that just fell down even exists. So if the sounds of the tree falling never touch anyone’s ears that means, “Are they really sounds at all?” And the other thing is that let’s imagine that in our world any time a tree falls down and no one is around, the tree actually makes sure it doesn’t make a sound. It is just completely silent. If this was true, we wouldn’t even know about it, because we wouldn’t be around to not hear the sneaky tree. So we can never prove whether it would make a sound or not.

  So you can say yes and you can say no to this question but it doesn’t matter because the point of this question is that both are wrong and you are left with no answer—just like when you try to ask where the big bang came from—and I guess that’s why someone asks you the question in the first place, because they’re trying to confuse you for the rest of your life.

  The first time I thought about the tree question too much I kept going back and forth between answers and then I got more than confused, and I started to get scared, even though there was nothing real to be scared of. It was just an imaginary tree in an imaginary question, but that made it even worse. So it sounds stupid but I felt like I couldn’t stop living inside that question so I tossed my branch and headed for the beach just to forget about trees.

  I stepped off the path and my boots were on stones, these soft white pebbles that were in some places on the beach, and then the jagged grey gravel on other parts. I walked right up to the edge of the water and then kept walking, and I waded into the calm river just until it was halfway up my boots, so that there was a line on them where the red was suddenly dark red. I bent down and touched the top of the smooth water with my hand, and I held my hand there so the skin on the top of the water stuck to me like it does for the feet of those flies who are light enough to walk on water. The river was cold. It was really cold, of course, because winter was still trying to hang around, and it was before the water had even rose, but even still I took another couple steps out into it, because it seemed fun I guess, but then I was looking at my legs and didn’t notice a little wave come out of nowhere and overflow my right boot, and I made a little noise because of how amazingly cold and soaking my foot was all of a sudden and I ran back towards the beach before the next wave came.

  I limped back up the beach and sat on this big washed-up-log bench that was there. I yanked my boot off, and it made a ploonk kind of suctioning noise. I poured the cold water out onto the beach gravel. My foot was freezing. It felt blue. I put it back in my red boot. I was going to get pneumonia of the foot.

  It was funny because the beach had been just down through the woods for the entire time our house had been there—obviously, beaches don’t just sneak up on you or something—but I had never swam there, not even once. In the summer if I went swimming I always went to a bigger beach down the street, or to a sandy one on the ocean that was so far we had to take Maxine’s car and make a family trip out of it. Anyway, I never really went to this beach even though it was so close to my house. I didn’t even know whose beach it was.

  Then I realized. I was where it happened. This was the beach—it had to be. The book was just up the hill a bit. It’s stupid but I had been imagining some other beach far away. But then I somehow just got this feeling in my entire body like I knew. It was this beach, this exact beach that I nev
er swam at ever, that I was sitting right on.

  I started thinking more and tried to stop but couldn’t and I just kept thinking more and more. I thought about where I was. I thought about Phil. The water was so cold. The gravel was so noisy to walk on, and the beach was so close. How come I didn’t hear it? Where was I? Even if I wasn’t around, how could I just not hear something like that? I wanted to punch things.

  I pictured Phil alone with no one else there. No me, no anyone. I sat on the log picturing that for a long time until I couldn’t anymore. I wanted to punch everything. I couldn’t look at the water and hear the tiny waves make their horrible little crashing sounds on the shore. I couldn’t hear the sharp gravel crunching or sit on the smooth wood anymore. Everything was punching me. I kept picturing Phil and no one else. I kept picturing everyone else in the world so far away from the beach, talking and making jokes to each other and giving each other hugs and presents and going to each other’s houses and visiting, without Phil. I couldn’t stop picturing Phil alone on the beach exactly where I was.

  So I ran home to get far away.

  When I left the woods it was almost dark out and there were a million cars in our driveway and all over the stupid street, because Simon’s bridge club was there, like I should have expected. I walked into the living room really fast and there were a bunch of adults sitting around at square tables. Uncle Max was there, and Simon’s friend Matthew, and Max’s friend Andy. But like I couldn’t possibly have expected, there were girls there too. At one table Matthew and Andy were both sitting across from their wives, or girlfriends or whatever—one’s name is Allie and the other one I don’t know her name—and at the other table was Simon and Max and Maxine. The only person I didn’t recognize was the lady sitting across from Simon. Simon was holding his cards and resting his hands on the corner of the table and talking loud and slow, like he had been going on and on about something, which was weird, and the lady was staring at him in the eyes with this big smile.

  “Heyyy buddy!” Uncle Max called out when he noticed me standing there.

  “Hey Arthur,” said Aunt Maxine.

  Everyone in the entire room turned and smiled at me and said “Hello” and waved and laughed. Then Simon said “Arthur, this is Maureen,” and the lady said “Hi Arthur” in the way that grown-ups think you’re supposed to talk to babies.

  “Hi,” I said. Then I asked Simon if I could speak to him for a moment in private, but I said it really loud by accident, like I was yelling.

  Simon put down his cards. Everyone else went quiet.

  “Sure, chief. Is something wrong?”

  I didn’t say anything except with my eyes that said, “Obviously.”

  Simon followed me into my room.

  “Shut the door please,” I said calmly.

  He shut the door.

  “What is going on!?”

  “Please don’t yell, Arthur. What do you—”

  “You guys NEVER have girls over. It’s a men’s bridge club.”

  “It was Max’s idea. We just thought we’d mix it up. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It IS a big deal!”

  “Arthur. Please don’t yell. You’ll notice I’m not yelling. What’s really going on? Do you mind telling me where you’ve been this whole time?”

  “So do you like her!?”

  “Who?”

  “Do. You. Like her!?”

  “Maureen?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know, Arthur! What do you want me to say?”

  “Typical.”

  “Arthur—”

  “You’re ruining my life!”

  I sat on my bed and didn’t look at Simon. I scrunched my fingers into balls and bit my teeth together and I didn’t look at him at all except out of my peripheral vision but I couldn’t help that.

  “I’ll talk to you in the morning. We’ll discuss whatever it is when you’ve calmed down.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m going back out there. Okay?”

  I didn’t look at him.

  “Goodnight, Arthur.”

  I heard him close my door. I lay down on top of my bedsheets, with all their stars and galaxies, and I remembered that he wanted me to change them and put new sheets on. So I didn’t.

  He was probably back out in the living room playing bridge and having a great time. Bridge is the stupidest game ever. You need four people to play, but only three people ever do anything important. Because the rules are that one person always becomes the star of the show, and tries to win, and the other person on their team becomes the “dummy” and sits there being bored and boring and wasting space. Then the other two people team up to ruin everything for the star of the show. The stupidest thing was how the bridge-playing guys would always go on and on about how bridge is exactly like life. But who knows, maybe they were right. It’s not like life was any better.

  I went to my closet, opened it, and took out the clues. I looked them over. I took deep breaths and moved some pieces around and went over what happened that day. I thought about Mr. Peterson building a chandelier and then smashing a chandelier to smithereens. I got a new strip of paper and wrote on it:

  -I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

  But it was supposed to be things I knew, not things I didn’t know. I crumpled it up and chucked it at my garbage can, because if I started collecting things I didn’t know then I would have to collect everything and collect for a million lifetimes and I only had one. I thought about Simon and wrote something else.

  -I will NEVER EVER GROW UP!

  BUS

  Some mornings like this morning I wake up already so down and so aimless and with my mind grinding and tearing to such degrees there’s no chance and I wander the kitchen so sure it’s a bear trap there’s nothing I can do about it biting its way in and shrinking and burning until a miracle of courage and I kick my front door open and run from the flames as firefighters bravely run past me and I can’t stop running inside me until I reach the bus and pay my $2.50 and get my transfer and my seat, then I close my eyes and pray my mind will just override itself turn off and kick into silent emergency mode I’m not in control but if I’m really really lucky the smell of the smoke fades and I inhale slowly and sit waiting for it to happen and it does—this drifting slow ecstasy finds me, and it’s like I’m sitting beside myself in the rain.

  And I am. It’s raining inside the bus now as much as it’s raining outside, and I can watch my chest filling and emptying and feel my heart’s kicks get farther apart, the rain is warm but tastes like a glacier. I see Ecstatic Phil tilt his head back and open his mouth. Piano music softly plays and Phil looks up front and it’s the driver, he’s playing the three Gymnopédies waiting for the light to turn, the windshield wipers as metronome. And every atom of Phil wants nothing but to surrender to this rainy hope, this rapture of the crowded bus and of finally loving every person on it so completely... look at them all:

  The pale guy with big neon headphones and soul patch can feel it. The old black woman with the tubes connecting her small waxy body to the oxygen tank, in her green and white striped shirt, in everything and despite everything she can feel it. And these are not strangers and these are nothing to hide from or to make the blood pump so fast and hot and these are the ones Phil has everything in common with and they must all be dampened by the same rain. They must all feel it no matter what, even as the bus grows more and more crowded it must be increasing, somehow, and Polite Phil stands to give his seat to a stressed red-haired woman. The rain still falls and now it’s changing colours. Oh, look at it. Every drop is a different solid colour and to look through them all as they fall is to be simultaneously aware of every colour, all bound to land on the same floor, and man they’re heavy these raindrops but they don’t bruise.

  And soon
Enlightened Phil will have to get off this bus and he will but whatever breakfast diner soon holds him he’ll make sure to bring the bus with him in his pocket. He will bring it in 1:1000 scale size and do laps of the placemat—WELCOME BIENVENUE—and sit and transfer the bus to his journal in whatever way he chooses and then walk to the library, and he will remember the great boundless joy of life and the communion of everyone so alone—the euphoria of a crowded bus taking you and everyone just where you need to go. And at night when he forgets it and sees himself sitting on top of his own head kicking spitting and howling HE WILL NOT FORGET and he will LIVE IN that joy and EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.

  STACKS

  I’m stuck here. We were here, we were right there, there we are, we were a couple of people studying in silence at that table, all wood and metal exactly like this table, a replica, but completely different. I can’t get out. I woke from a dream of it yesterday and lived in remnants of the dream all day, now I’m here, this is not why I came here or is it, of course it is, to watch an empty table from across the room, to read invisible books, to no doubt soon walk home alone with nothing but demons, to never stop imagining, trying to squeeze every bit of pain I possibly can from this, What is wrong with me, what else do people DO.

  We were whoever I was a year ago and whoever you were, Phil and E, they got up, she held the door for him, they went downstairs and she returned a few books and they went outside. He grabbed her hand and held it, but the air was piercingly cold, just about to be December, and she soon unhooked her hand from his and put it in her pocket. It was decidedly hands-in-pockets weather. Was he disappointed that she’d withdrawn her hand then, in the cold?

  They were keeping silent, just climbing up the icy steps, focused on not slipping and breaking necks. They walked along the sidewalk in the type of silence that only five hours of reading dusty books produces. Exhausted silence. But he was glad then, to be exhausted and silent.