Dover Beach

by Richard Bowker

"Not that I noticed."

  "Still, it's real. He's over there. Doing something amazing."

  It wasn't clear to me that we had any proof he was doing something amazing, but then, it was becoming apparent that Winfield didn't need any proof. Like me, he had a dream—a dream of his clone, his creator—and the dream was all that mattered.

  "So what do we do now?" I asked.

  "Find him, of course."

  "The evidence is sufficient? You want to go to England?"

  Winfield reached over and poured himself a drink. "Who cares about the evidence?" he said. "I was gonna go anyway. Don't wanna go back to Florida. Work day and night—for what? Keep people alive so they can feel more pain, and then they die anyway. They all die. Shit." He gulped down the whiskey.

  He didn't care about the evidence. Swell. "Are you taking me?" I asked.

  "You want to come?"

  "Yes."

  "Then sure. Come on along. I could use the company."

  "Okay."

  Winfield poured himself another drink. Now what? Everything was going as I had dreamed it would, so why didn't it seem real?

  "When do we leave?" I asked.

  Winfield gestured dismissively. "Anytime."

  "Do you have the money for our tickets?"

  He looked at me as if I were an annoying fly, and he was trying to decide whether to answer me or swat me. Finally he stumbled to his feet and went over to the closet. He rooted around inside it for a few moments, and then came out holding a large peanut butter jar filled with white powder. He set it down next to the whiskey bottle on the night table and flopped back onto the bed. "Our tickets," he said.

  "What is it?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  "It's the best hospital-approved morphine a doctor can steal. Know anyone in the market?"

  I stared at it. Then I stared at Winfield. This wasn't in my dream. But private eyes don't get to choose their clients; and people who want to go to England had better not be very choosy about the source of their funds. So what should I do?

  I closed my eyes. There was no choice. Patients in Florida were screaming in pain, but I had had my share of pain too. "Yeah," I said. "I guess I know someone who's in the market. Can I use your phone?"

  Bobby was sure to be impressed.

  * * *

  Bobby was impressed enough to send Mickey in the van for us right away. Winfield was not inclined to go, but I suppose he realized he couldn't stay in that hotel room forever—and he wasn't going to let me take off by myself with his peanut butter jar. He cradled it in his lap as we made our way through the snow to South Boston.

  The two of us confused Brutus as we climbed the stairs to Bobby's office: he wanted to wag his tail at Winfield, he wanted to maul me. The best he could do was to growl indecisively as we went by. That was all right with me.

  Bobby greeted Winfield effusively. "So nice of you to come, sir. I'm sure we'll have no trouble with our little transaction. Tell me, what do you think of our fair city?"

  Winfield made a face. "The weather sucks."

  "Oh, well, it's not like it used to be, but it's still quite, er, invigorating, wouldn't you say, Mr. Sands?"

  "Um—"

  "That's right. Incidentally, Mr. Sands here is quite possibly the best private investigator in the city."

  "Prob'ly the only one," Winfield muttered.

  "Well, you know, I hadn't thought of that. Now let's take a look at this white stuff here, shall we?"

  There wasn't much haggling. Winfield seemed bored by the whole business, and Bobby, friend that he was, obviously didn't want to ruin the deal and keep me from going to England. The only problem was that he didn't have enough cash available to handle the deal by himself—and Winfield wasn't interested in computer parts. "Gotta bring in a partner on this one," Bobby said when the price was agreed upon. "Would you excuse me while I attempt to make a phone call?"

  Winfield and I went outside. Winfield still clutched the peanut butter jar. The ride over seemed to have sobered him up a little, but not enough to carry on a coherent conversation with me. He shut his eyes and leaned back against the wall. "England," he muttered.

  Bobby came out a couple of minutes later. "All set, gentlemen. My partner is as interested as I am. Will tomorrow at three be convenient?"

  "Sure, sure," Winfield replied.

  "Wonderful." We all went back inside and sat down. Bobby opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of Scotch and a couple of greasy glasses. "Shall we have a drink to conclude the negotiations?"

  Winfield perked up. "Sounds good to me."

  Bobby poured a couple of ounces into each glass and passed one to Winfield. Bobby held his up in the air for a toast. "To friendship," he said.

  "To England," Winfield said.

  Bobby forced a smile and downed the Scotch. He shook his head. "They don't make this stuff like they used to," he complained.

  Winfield finished off his drink. "It does the job, right?"

  "That's certainly true. Care for another?"

  "Don't mind if I do."

  That was my cue to leave. I stood up. "I guess you people don't need me anymore."

  Winfield looked at me, bleary-eyed. "You're goin' to England, Sands. Don't you wanna celebrate?"

  "I guess not."

  "Mr. Sands is the best non-drinking private investigator in the city," Bobby said. "You want Mickey to drive you home, Mr. Sands?"

  "Nah. The weather's so invigorating, I think I'll walk."

  "Come get me tomorrow," Winfield ordered.

  "Yes, boss." I gave the two celebrants a wave, then walked off toward Louisburg Square, alone.

  Chapter 14

  I took my time—savoring my success, but mostly dreading the moment when I would have to tell my little family about it. That wasn't going to be easy.

  I wandered through the city, steeling myself for the task. But maybe wandering wasn't a good idea. Wandering brought memories, and memories always confuse things.

  Gwen and I had already moved in when we found the cardboard sign, which had fallen off the door and lay facedown amid rotting leaves on the front steps. "Property of Charles T. Moseby," it said in rain-streaked letters. "He Will Return." Well, property rights were somewhat illusory back then (still are, really); if Charles T. Moseby wasn't there, it wasn't really his. Gwen was frightened, imagining some stealthy creature pressing a gun to her temple in the middle of the night, but I was inclined to stay. People were always leaving places and planning to come back; they never did. And I liked the town house, liked the statue of Christopher Columbus outside, liked the cartons of books in the attic. We stayed.

  Mr. Moseby returned several months later. It was a beautiful early fall evening, and we were sitting on the steps, enjoying the last of the good weather. He walked to the foot of the steps and stared at us. "This is my home," he said forcefully, like a bureaucrat sure of his rules. "You'll have to leave."

  We stared back. It was hard not to. He was wearing a filthy brown pinstriped suit, a white shirt, and a paisley tie. He carried a battered, bulging briefcase. He fit my image of a traveling salesman—except that there were no traveling salesmen in our world.

  And he looked like he was about nine years old.

  There were enough dwarfs around, of course, that his size didn't shock us. It was hard to know what to make of the suit and tie, though. "Could we maybe talk about this?" I asked.

  "There's nothing to talk about. You're trespassing."

  "The laws nowadays are a bit vague on the subject of trespassing," I pointed out.

  "There is a moral law. The moral law hasn't changed."

  "You look hot and tired," Gwen said. "Would you like a glass of cider and something to eat?"

  That stopped him. When you're thirsty, cider is a more interesting subject than the moral law. "Well, I have been traveling all day," he said. "Yes, I guess I would like some cider. But then you'll have to leave."

  "Let's go inside."

  He came in, and he d
rank some cider and ate some cornbread, and we talked.

  Mr. Moseby had been on the road. (Hell, let's call him Stretch. The nickname came later, but it's hard to think of him any other way.) Like me, he had left the city during the Frenzy, but he had made it a lot further than Brookline. And most definitely unlike me, he had a purpose in his travels beyond that of simply getting away.

  Stretch wanted to find out for himself if America could survive. Was there anything left in this country to give him hope—anything to strive for, to become a part of? He needed to know. So he traveled, in his silly old suit, trying to discover where things worked and where they didn't, where there was hope and where there was despair and where there was frenzy. People fed and sheltered him, and people ignored him, and people tried to kill him. People pitied him as a victim of the bomb and shunned him as if his condition were contagious. And out of it all he found what he was looking for. And then, as promised, he returned.

  Most people, I think, find what they are looking for. Of course, it is far easier to find despair nowadays, but for someone like Stretch it was not impossible to find hope; for someone like Stretch, every mushroom cloud has a silver lining. The future did not lie with people like Mr. Fitch, barricading themselves on their farms, isolated, inbred, self-sufficient—or, if it did lie there, it was not a future Stretch was interested in. No, the future lay in people helping each other out, in rebuilding what needed to be rebuilt before chaos totally overtook us, in creating out of the ashes something stronger, purer, and saner than what had come before. It lay in cities, where people were forced to cooperate, to govern themselves, to be civilized. Stretch had found cities that worked. And that's what he wanted to be a part of.

  It was hard not to laugh at Stretch; it was impossible not to admire him. His past was no different from Gwen's or my own—full of death and loneliness and terror. But Stretch had come out of his past determined, not just to survive, but to improve the world. And even if that goal was ludicrous, no one could fault him for trying to achieve it.

  Just as the moral law cannot substitute for peach cider, however, high ideals are not an adequate replacement for human companionship. Stretch, it turned out, was as lonely as he was thirsty. After a few hours of conversation around the kitchen table, he agreed to drop all trespassing charges, and Gwen and I agreed that Louisburg Square was big enough for the three of us.

  And so we became a family, although we could never really agree about who adopted whom. Gwen got a job as a messenger for the reborn Globe and dreamed of becoming a reporter, Stretch started his climb to the top of the water and sewer biz, and I—well, I did this and that, while I waited for inspiration to strike. There was always money coming in (and money suddenly had value once again), there was always food and fuel and companionship. And eventually our family grew.

  The new arrival came in a not atypical way: he tried to kill one of us. To be fair, Linc denied that he would have killed Gwen, but such after-the-fact denials are suspect. The fact is, he scared Gwen just as much as Gwen scared me when she put the gun to my head that night in Brookline, and we owe it to her that things ended up as well as they did.

  She was riding her bicycle along the Esplanade late one afternoon, delivering something for the Globe. The Esplanade was not her safest route—residual barbarians (there will always be some) liked to lurk in the bushes that lined the bicycle path. But the path was straight and smooth, the view of the Charles was beautiful, and she knew how to take care of herself, so she thought it was okay to risk it.

  In fact she was right, because the attack, when it came, was not all that dangerous. A wild man jumped out of the bushes, brandishing a knife. He lunged, she swerved, he missed, she accelerated. End of attack; another day in the life.

  When Gwen had put a little distance between herself and the attacker, she stopped and turned around. He was still coming toward her, still waving the knife. She could have shot him, I suppose, but, like me, she wasn't the shooting kind. Instead she just watched, and he saw her watching, and then he stopped, too, and then he fell in a heap to the ground.

  This is where the story gets strange. Instead of pedaling off, satisfied that he wouldn't bother her, Gwen headed back to the fallen mugger. He was unconscious. She took the knife out of his unresisting hand and tossed it into the Charles. She checked his breathing: still alive. She raced home and brought us to where he was and made us bring him back.

  Why? Gwen never gave a satisfactory answer. She acknowledged that it was stupid, the mugger could have been feigning his collapse, there could have been other muggers waiting to grab her. But still she did it. There was something in his eyes, she said, when we pressed her about it. But, damn it, I don't think she could have even seen his eyes in the fading afternoon light on the Esplanade. Best not to waste too much time thinking about such matters, I suppose. She did it, and that's that.

  Linc was in bad shape: feverish, malnourished, delirious. Was he worth the effort of trying to save? Everyone I know has been forced to make that sort of decision; this one seemed easier than most. Stretch and I tried to persuade Gwen to get rid of him. But Gwen refused: something in his eyes. She cared for him; he got better; he stayed.

  Linc was older than the rest of us: he remembered Saturday morning cartoons, riding in a shopping cart through the supermarket, the smell of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. He was always vague about what happened to him afterward. Sometimes he claimed amnesia, but no one took his claim very seriously. If he didn't want to remember, or didn't want to talk about what he remembered, that was understandable; that was all right with us. What mattered was the present. And in the present, he was no longer a barbarian. He worked hard, when he had the strength, he was devoted to Gwen, and his sharp tongue made life more interesting without making it nasty. We were glad to have him.

  And that's our family. Others have drifted in for a week, a month, a season, before drifting on to other families, other lives; but we have stayed together.

  I drifted away, of course, when duty called and it was time to serve my country. But I came back. I came back, to tears and hugs, and the silent satisfaction of Gwen lying contentedly in my arms once more.

  I came back, and that's why I was finding it difficult to go home from Bobby's.

  Eventually I got tired of wandering, though. It was dark and cold and I was hungry. Time to quit stalling; there were things to be done. I turned my steps toward Louisburg Square.

  Stretch, damn him, had picked that night to put up Christmas decorations. He was strewing pine boughs when I entered. Linc was on the couch in the parlor, stringing popcorn and cranberries; in the corner, a large tree leaned in its stand. Gwen was playing "Silent Night" on the piano. She stopped when she saw me.

  "Ho ho ho," I said. "Have all you kiddies been good this year?"

  "Yes, Santa," Linc said. "Will you please put some coal in my stocking for Christmas?"

  "No, I'm sorry, little boy, according to my list you've been very naughty—you haven't been finishing the wonderful food people cook for you. You're getting an electric train instead of coal." I kissed Gwen on the forehead. "Sorry I'm late."

  She smiled. "How did everything go today?"

  "Terrific."

  "What happened with the information Bobby was supposed to get for you?" Stretch asked.

  "He got it," I said. I went into the kitchen. Stew. I slopped some into a bowl and returned to the parlor.

  "Well, what happened?" Linc demanded.

  I ate a mouthful of stew. "There is a list of scientists who went to England," I said. "The name my client was looking for is on the list."

  "That's great. So your client is gonna go over there and track him down?"

  I nodded. I ate another mouthful. The time had come. "It looks like I'm gonna go with him," I said.

  Silence. "How?" Stretch asked finally.

  "My client has sources of wealth I'm not at liberty to reveal."

  "Why is he taking you?" Linc asked.

 
; I shrugged. "I guess he likes my work."

  "Gee, that's terrific," Stretch said. "England. Imagine that. The stories you'll be able to tell us." He paused and stared at me, suddenly unsure of himself. "Walter, you're coming back, right?"

  I looked into Stretch's guileless eyes, and I realized I could no more tell him the truth than I could keep myself from going to England. "I'm a private eye, Stretch," I said, "and this is my case. When this case is over, I come back and get another case. That's the way the job works." I looked down at my stew and spooned some down my throat. I had never been more interested in stew.

  Gwen stood up. "Congratulations, Walter. This is very exciting. I wonder if you'd excuse me, though? I'm not feeling well, and I think I'd like to go up to bed."

  "Oh, sure, sure. I'll be up—"

  "Take your time, Walter. Good night all."

  She left the room. No one said anything. I stared at my stew. "Finish it," Linc said finally. "It's good for you."

  I set the bowl down. "So who wants to help me straighten this Christmas tree?" I asked.

  * * *

  We decorated for a while, but the mood wasn't right without Gwen, and eventually Stretch drifted off to bed too. That left Linc and me in the chilly parlor. He set the string of cranberries and popcorn down and leaned back on the couch, pulling his blanket around his shoulders. "Waste of food," he muttered. "I don't know how Stretch talks me into it every year."

  "Beneath that crusty exterior, Linc—"

  "Get fucked." He thought for a moment, and then smiled. "England, huh?"

  I nodded. "England."

  "Congratulations." He thought for another moment. "So which is it, Walter: are you a liar, or a fool?"

  I should have known it would come. "Um, perhaps you could be a tad more specific."

  "Oh, that's not necessary, is it? You don't have to answer, Walter. But listen: I hope you're a liar and not a fool. I hope you're not thinking: I'll come back, be with my friends, help Stretch rebuild the country."

  "Why?" I managed to ask.

  He lifted himself up on an elbow and stared at me. His eyes were on fire. "Walter, maybe you don't even know yourself which you are. You try to act so sure of yourself, but you're not, you're improvising, like all of us. Walter, listen to me. You've only got one life. Don't waste it if you don't have to. Mine's been wasted, but I like to think it was due to circumstances beyond my control. I know I'm dying, but you're dying, too, everyone is dying. All that matters is what you do before you take that last breath. You've got some control now. Don't screw it up. Get out of here and do something exciting, do something important. Enjoy yourself. Live well. Understand, Walter?"