The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020

by John Joseph Adams

  The path led, finally, to one thing there in the living room. The recliner.

  “This is where I found him,” Helen said quietly, looking down at the chair. “The first recliners were designed in the early nineteen hundreds. They were used in sanatoriums. Your father taught me that.”

  I looked around the living room, patted a hand on a column of Crate & Barrel catalogs nearly four feet tall. “Sounds about right.”

  Helen pursed her lips like maybe she wanted to argue with me about my father, but then she thought better of it. Instead she looked back at the chair. Now I could make out the impression that his body had made over the course of many years. It was like seeing a sarcophagus without the mummy in it.

  “When I found him,” Helen said. Her voice trailed off, then she cleared her throat. “He was in this chair, pointing.”

  She raised her right arm, stiff, and extended her finger.

  I turned in the same direction; he would’ve been gesturing toward the kitchen, or the steps that led up from the mudroom.

  Helen sniffed. “It was like the last thing he saw was someone coming up the stairs.”

  * * *

  Thanks, Helen!

  As soon as I’d been creeped the fuck out, Helen left. But after that, part of me wanted to ask her to stay. It was too embarrassing though. What kind of big Black man is afraid to be left alone in the house? (This one.)

  I didn’t sleep the whole night; instead I wandered, peeking into boxes at random. I left the lights on in every room, pulled the shower curtain back all the way so I could see inside, opened every closet door. Helen and Harvey came by in the evening, they brought me dinner. In the morning Harvey dropped off a plate of breakfast. They were kind people.

  * * *

  By the time I took the train home I’d decided to sell the place. The feeling of fear when I was in the place faded as I got farther from Syracuse. So I made plans: I’d hire a junk-removal team to go through and get rid of everything; I’d find a real estate agent to sell the place. Maybe the sale would put a little money in my savings account. Or, to be more honest, the sale would give me a reason to open a savings account.

  On the train ride home I worked on my edits some more. A small press in England was putting out a new edition of Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington’s memoir about his boyhood as a slave in Virginia and his struggles to achieve an education, true freedom, as a Black man in the United States. This edition would include footnotes by the book’s editor and illustrations. It was going to be one hell of a volume. I felt glad to work on it since most of the books I copyedited were jargon-filled, highly technical, and dull as shit. I also thought this British publisher wanted to have at least one Black person read through this damn thing before they published it and that’s partly why they sought me out. I’d decided to take the train back and forth between Syracuse and New York City mostly because the six-hour trips would be a great way to focus and work without distractions.

  I was in a mood on that trip back though. That shouldn’t be too surprising. In only two days I’d learned I had a father, lost a father, and inherited his hoarder’s hovel.

  Anyone would be feeling agitated.

  So I noticed something this time. On the train no one would sit with me. I mean of course, on one level, I loved this. Two seats to myself? Yes, please. But as we got closer to New York City the train turned crowded. I mean people were standing in the aisle at one point and still no one would sit next to me. This wasn’t the first time this kind of thing happened of course. It happens on trains and buses all the time. Would probably happen on airplanes too if people weren’t assigned seats. Folks who aren’t Black might not know what I’m talking about but the vast majority of Black folks just nodded their heads. It happens on the regular. I wouldn’t say it’s hurtful exactly, but it’s definitely noticeable.

  Normally I wouldn’t have cared but all that stuff at my dad’s had me feeling particularly untouchable, unlovable. I wonder if things might’ve turned out differently if even one person had slipped into the seat beside me on the train that Friday morning. Is that unfair? Absolutely.

  Still true though.

  4

  There are so many steps involved in closing out someone’s estate, even if the term “estate” is kind of a joke when talking about what my father left behind. A house worth about 75K according to a few real estate websites and, as far as I could tell, that was it.

  The man had no bank accounts; this made me think he didn’t trust such institutions. For a second I’d thrilled at the idea of finding a suitcase stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no.

  Anyway, the steps: I had to find an estate lawyer, had to file with the Onondaga County Clerk to become the administrator for the estate, had to file with the IRS for an EIN number for the estate, had to find a real estate agent in Syracuse who could help me sell the place, and I needed to hire a junk-removal company to clear out my father’s home. No way to do all this over the phone so I visited Syracuse three more times. I always took the train.

  On the first of these follow-up trips I found myself going half-nuts counting the number of people who passed me by. The plethora of folks who wouldn’t take a seat next to me. Even in the moment, I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop. It’s like worrying a wound, scratching at a mosquito bite. You shouldn’t do it, but then you do it all day. With some time and distance I can see now that I was boiling with grief, but I never would’ve called it that at the time. Why would I? Who grieves for a person they never knew? And yet, there’s no other way to explain it. The whole way up to Syracuse I waited for someone to sit down. No one did.

  It didn’t help that I’d been living in the world of Booker T. Washington. Born on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia, the year might’ve been 1858 or 1859. He couldn’t be sure because such records weren’t kept, not for slaves anyway. His mother was the plantation’s cook, and there were two older siblings, a brother and sister. His father was rumored to be a white man who lived on a nearby plantation, but Booker never met him.

  There are seventeen chapters in his memoir, but the story of his life under slavery takes up only the first. The Civil War popped off during his childhood. He was free before he reached adulthood. And yet it’s this first chapter that I read and reread the most. Washington talks about how, in his childhood, he’d never once been allowed to play. His waking hours were spent cleaning the yards of the plantation, bringing water to the slaves in the fields, once a week he took corn to a nearby mill to be ground. He discusses the hardship of this last task in greatest detail.

  Washington, being a boy of probably no more than six or seven, was given a horse and a large sack of corn balanced on its back. He would ride the horse alone down a winding road, one that led through dense woods. Often the sack would get unbalanced and fall off the horse’s back. But the corn weighed more than the boy. He couldn’t get it back onto the horse by himself so he would have to wait—often for hours—until an adult passed by and helped him get the sack up again. Because of these delays he wouldn’t return from the mill until late at night. There were rumors that the woods were full of soldiers who had deserted the army and that if a deserter came across a Black boy alone he would cut off the boy’s ears. These trips were a torture to young Booker. The last indignity was that he would arrive home so late each week that he was beaten or flogged when he’d finally returned. Imagine that. This fucking kid was six or seven.

  On the trip back to New York I practically seethed in my seat. Somebody had better fucking sit next to me this time, I thought. But also, woe to whoever had the bad luck to sit next to me.

  And then, when we were about a half hour from Penn Station, someone did it. A tall, skinny white guy in a wrinkly suit so oversized that it looked like he was wearing monk’s robes. Think of David Byrne back in the Stop Making Sense era. This guy’s version didn’t seem like he’d done it on purpose though. More like he’d been heavier once and never stopped dressing in thos
e old clothes. He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look at me the whole time. He had a paperback that he slipped out of his coat pocket, head down and fully engrossed. I’m sure he didn’t notice me, and why would he even care, but his presence soothed me much more than I could explain. At least one person—some random dude—didn’t treat me like a monster. What did that say about how often others did.

  5

  The second trip up is when I planned to meet the real estate agent. I’d picked a guy after a few minutes of internet sleuthing. We made plans to meet at my father’s place. On the train ride up I got into an argument with the editor at the press putting out the Booker T. Washington book. They’d sent me some of the illustrated pages—they’d secured work from a talented artist—but I noticed they only had a single illustration slated for all of chapter one: a drawing of a Black infant—young Booker, just born. Nice enough, but that was it. Visually, it would be like we’d leapfrogged from his birth to his emancipation in chapter two.

  I suggested a drawing of the boy in the dense woods, alone but for the horse. The sack of corn fallen on the ground. The child could be crying. Or, maybe they could even supply a picture of two severed children’s ears. The editor didn’t find this helpful. Called me morbid. I pointed out that we were talking about the life of a child slave, how the fuck do you make that upbeat?

  Anyway, that’s what I was up to on the phone when someone stopped in the aisle and asked if he could take the seat. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even answer, so busy on the call that I hadn’t felt isolated at all. At that moment the book’s editor pointed out that copy editors weren’t usually hired to recommend content. Maybe I didn’t really want the job after all? Just as soon as he said that I turned my head, looking around because I felt myself ready to let loose in a truly vulgar way, when I realized the person sitting next to me was the same white dude from the previous trip. Tall, thin, wrinkled suit, paperback already out. The sight of him surprised me so much that it flipped my whole mood. I smiled, laughed a little, and the editor on the phone thought I was taking things lighter with him. This made him less defensive, too. And soon he’d agreed there should be one or two more illustrations in chapter one. Portraits of the childhood Washington describes, but they’d probably still avoid the severed ears. Fair enough.

  I got off the phone and felt better than fine. I hadn’t wanted to lose the job.

  Couldn’t afford to. The estate attorney demanded a three-thousand-dollar retainer and that cleared most of my checking account. I had a thousand left to pay the junk-removal people and I didn’t know if that would cover it. I needed the work.

  I slipped my phone into my pocket and couldn’t help staring at the man in the baggy suit. What were the odds that he’d be on this train at the same time as me. Zero, that’s what. As soon as I thought this the guy looked up from his book, the covers were held together with so much tape I couldn’t even make out the title.

  “Simon,” he said. “Let’s have a talk.”

  I must’ve looked startled. That’s because I was. He closed the book, slipped it into a pocket.

  “I knew your father,” he said.

  * * *

  He invited me to the dining car. I followed him because he wouldn’t say any more there, better to talk over a meal. I would’ve laughed if I’d had use of my vocal cords. As it was I could hardly follow him, my legs felt so weak. We had to walk backward two cars. I watched the back of his head as he moved past one person and the next, on their phones, reading the newspaper, staring out the window, fast asleep. A part of me wanted to grab one of them and ask them to hold on to me. I felt as if I were being pulled forward, like when you get caught in the undertow and are dragged so far out into the ocean you may never be able to swim back to shore. But I didn’t do that, didn’t know how they would react. A Black man grabs you on the Amtrak train, is your first thought to assist him? Being inside a body people fear means people don’t believe you might ever be the one who needs help.

  When I say dining car I’m not talking about those little café joints, where you stand in line for a coffee and a microwaved sandwich. I mean eight booths, a waiter, and a hostess who seats you. It still isn’t fancy, but there’s an air of the diner vibe. We got there and it seemed my seatmate had made a reservation. For two. We were placed at a table and handed a pair of flimsy menus and two bottled waters. As he read through his options, I kept watch on him.

  “I always go with the steak,” he said. He sounded downright chipper, a man happy to break bread. “Once I saw a menu here that had sushi as an option. Amtrak sushi? No thank you.”

  I held the menu in my hands but hadn’t looked away from his face yet. He never blinked, not the whole time I watched him, and this made me feel drawn toward him. It’s an old hypnotist’s trick. They use it because it works. He nodded and sighed.

  “You want to ask me the dull questions first, but I’m going to caution you against that. We don’t have much time to talk before someone else gets seated at this table.”

  I frowned. “But it’s our table.” Then I wanted to slap myself. Was that really what I most wanted to say?

  “They seat four to a table,” he told me. “No arguments.”

  “Fine, fine.” I slapped the menu down but it made only a pathetic swiffing sound. “How did you know my name?”

  He leaned back in his chair and pointed at me. “Boring,” he said.

  “How did you know my father?”

  He wrinkled his nose, bad odor–style. “Doo-doo.”

  And then, sure enough, a pair of diners slid into our booth, a mother and her preteen daughter. It felt as if they’d arrived only because I’d asked uninteresting questions of him. The mother gave quick, tight smiles, the kid ignored us entirely. They picked up their menus. The man looked across at me and waggled his eyebrows. Told you.

  “I’m going to have the steak,” the mother said softly.

  The daughter said, “Do you know how factory farms treat cows? I’m vegan now, Mom.”

  The mother sighed, “So choose something else, Crystal.”

  “At least tell me your name then!” To be honest I probably shouted this question. Mom and daughter both flinched beside me but I didn’t pay any attention to that.

  He grinned and patted the tabletop. He pushed a bottle of water my way and indicated for me to drink. He opened his bottle and did the same. “Now that is an interesting question.”

  6

  The real estate agent arrived early, his car already in the driveway when I showed up in the cab. He didn’t mind, or at least he said he didn’t. I looked to see if Helen and Harvey would pop out of their house to say hello, but they must’ve been out so instead I got the key safe open (1-9-3-6) and let the agent in. He was probably fifty and he smiled often. He had a manila folder tucked under one arm. He wore a sport jacket with a checked pattern that looked surprisingly stylish.

  “How was your trip up?” he asked, but it was perfunctory. He wasn’t listening so he didn’t notice when I hesitated a moment and then said, “I don’t know.”

  While we were walking through the front door I explained the circumstances quickly. As soon as we stepped inside he saw the ziggurats of boxes and magazines and this wasn’t even the worst of it; we hadn’t gone up to the second floor.

  “Jiminy,” he said softly.

  Then I led him upstairs and he panned from left to right, scanning the living room and the kitchen. He regained the smile he’d lost downstairs. “Okay,” he said. “How are we planning to handle this?”

  I told him I was interviewing a junk remover later that same day. This seemed to please him. “So this’ll be an ‘as is’ listing. That’s what I’d suggest.”

  He slipped the manila envelope out from his arm and set it on a stack of Scientific American magazines that must’ve gone back a decade.

  “I’ve got some comps here,” he said. “So we can get an idea of what similar houses in this neighborhood are going for.” He stooped over slightly, l
ooking to me in the conspiratorial way of people who are about to go into business. And in that posture I found myself back on the Amtrak train, back in the dining car, with the man in the baggy suit. Food had been served. Three of us at the table had chosen the steak, while the daughter, Crystal, ate only a salad. Neither the mother nor daughter was talking. Actually they weren’t moving. When I lifted my head I saw that everyone in the car had gone silent and stiff. Almost everyone. Not him. Not me.

  “We’ll have an easier time communicating this way,” he said. When I looked back to him, his face had changed. No, that’s not quite the right way to put it. His face, his whole body had become slightly blurry, like when you draw a picture on a sheet of paper and then erase it, the impression remains.

  “Look at your hands,” he said.

  When I did they looked a hell of a lot like him. They were out of focus, faded somehow. I moved my hand and knocked over my empty water bottle.

  “Did you drug me?” I asked.

  “No, Simon. I have only made you more . . . aware.”

  I turned my head to look out the window; a little daylight might help clear my vision. That’s what I thought. But it didn’t work.