The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel

by Wallace, Daniel

  She said this last part so emphatically that he looked at her like she had just run over his dog and was feeling pretty good about it. His eyes were little pools of pain. He’d become that boy again, the boy she met while he was picking up used nails from the gutters in front of the houses. She’d shown him what she wanted him to do to her and he’d done it, and he’d done it again and again over the years as she kept searching for that feeling, any feeling at all.

  She took his hand and placed it on her leg. “But we’re thinking the same thing now,” she said.

  “So you’re okay?” he said. “Because it’s fine with me if we just stay here and talk. I mean, Helen, I’ve never said this before, but I—I—”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  He smiled. “All right then. Good. That’s all I wanted to hear.”

  “Show me the shop,” she said. “Where you work. I want to see it. Maybe . . . maybe you can work on me there, too.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sure. But that’s not, I mean—we don’t have to.”

  She winked at him. She hated it when he was this happy, that he could let her make him so. She opened her door; he opened his. But only he got out. She waited until he was well on his way to the shop before moving over to the driver’s side of the car. He always left the key in the ignition. She turned it, the engine roared, and she gunned it backward, sweeping in circles through the dust and the flying gravel, in this parched lot full of rusting corpses, and she was gone. In the rearview mirror she saw him watching her go, not even moving, probably too rattled to know what to do. “Sorry,” she whispered. She took the car back toward Roam as fast as she could drive it, and would have made it in more than enough time had she taken that hill a little bit slower. But she hadn’t. The car lifted up as though it were about to take flight and then came crashing down, and when it did something broke, the engine died, and the car rolled to a stop beside a big tree. Now she had to walk. Now she knew she would be too late. Rachel would be on her way to the bridge by now, and there was nothing Helen could do to stop her.

  JONAS,

  PART III

  In a town full of sad men, Jonas Whittle was perhaps the saddest of them all. His mother and father had never married—in fact, they’d only seen each other a couple of times; one of the times is when Jonas was made. They were seventeen years old. His father’s name was Mason; her name was Britannica. She was pregnant with Jonas for six months before Mason even found out, and when he did he had a lot of trouble believing it was his, and maybe he never really did. His folks made him promise to marry her as soon as the baby was born, though, and he agreed because his father said he would kill him if he didn’t. But there were complications during the delivery: Britannica bled out and died. When he heard about what happened to her, Mason had a good idea how things were going to spin out, so he tried to leave town that same night—he’d never wanted a child, and he definitely didn’t want one he had to take care of by himself, especially one he didn’t really believe was his. But his escape was foiled by a rainstorm of such strength and duration that the lowlands around the town flooded, became a sea, and turned Roam into a temporary island. When the water subsided a few days later he tried to leave again, but by this time the hospital was on to him, and the old doctor met him on the road with the baby in a box. He set the box on the ground in front of Mason and said, “He is yours.” Mason thanked him, watched him go; then he took the box out into the woods, placed it in a clearing near a bear den, and walked away. He turned to cast a final glance, and something about how the box began to tremble moved him, cut him deeper than he was able to endure. He picked the box back up and took it home. It was, he would later say, the worst thing he had ever done in his life. Whatever plans he had, whatever dreams, hopes, ambitions—they were all gone now. The rest of his life was over. He named the baby Jonas, because he thought that was the name of the man in the Bible who was swallowed by the whale, and no one told him different.

  Mason and Jonas Whittle lived at the far edge of town where the forest was most ferocious, where if you stood in the same place for too long you were likely to disappear beneath a blanket of vines. A lot of time was spent just killing things that were green. Jonas went to school through the third grade. Sometimes his father forgot to pick him up and he’d spend the night with one of his teachers, who fed him whatever strange food they were eating, put him to bed, and took him back to school the next day. The first time a teacher questioned Mason about this, he took Jonas out of school and put him to work. Most of the day the boy was sent out looking for gutter nails—nails you might find in the gutter, used, discarded, but good enough if they were straightened, nails his father used for various building projects. As Jonas grew older, Mason accidentally taught him about cars; he had Jonas hold the hoods up on cars that didn’t have a setter, and as Jonas watched, he learned things. This went on for some time. After his father died—a car hood fell on his head one day—Jonas took over the business. He was good at it, but with business slowing down the way it was, he fell back on his first skill, collecting nails. He had some run-ins with the lumberjacks. They were so big, so full of life, Jonas looked like a scrawny sapling compared to them. They made fun of him, and he let them. But when they started saying things about his mother—how many times they’d had her themselves when she was a young girl, how (who knows?) anybody could be Jonas’s father—he scrapped with them. He put up a good fight, too. He’d get a few ribs broken, a bone now and again, but he held his own. They couldn’t kill him, hard as they may have tried. Being left in a box in the woods has its upside, Jonas thought. Makes you tough.

  Maybe it also helped to have nothing to live for. If Jonas did have anything to live for through those years he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t have any friends. He didn’t know how to read much beyond a stop sign. He had no family at all.

  Everything changed the day he met Helen. He was in the gutter outside her house and she was sitting in the porch swing, watching him. He knew that if he thought about it long enough, if he really looked at her, he’d realize she was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen, and maybe the ugliest there ever was. But he didn’t really think about it. Because even he, who knew next to nothing, knew how she was looking at him and what it meant. They didn’t have to say a single word.

  He didn’t know what her name was for a week. The first time they did it was against a tree along the backside of the house, her skirt pushed up around her hips, his pants pooling around his ankles. Like animals, really. And he didn’t have a problem with that. The problems only started later, when he actually started to care for her. He couldn’t say exactly how this happened: it wasn’t his plan. He had no hope or dream of it, nor even the idea it was possible. But just being with her so often over the course of weeks and months and then years . . . well, everything changed for him—though not in a way that he could show or talk about. He had an idea he might have said something today, out at the shop, but he never got the chance. Instead, he watched her drive away, abandoning him in the middle of nowhere, dust from the wheels settling into his eyes as he buckled his belt and kicked at the ground.

  A HUNDRED SILENT WINGS

  She couldn’t find her other shoe. On that list etched inside her head—The Simple Indignities of Blindness, it was titled—the inability to find the other shoe was at or near the very top. How one shoe strayed from the other was a mystery to her. She removed them at the same time, in the same place, the same as everybody, because who takes off one shoe and then walks half-shoed someplace else? And a shoe without a foot in it couldn’t go anywhere. So where was it? She tried to avoid getting down on her knees, because she didn’t like the way that must look, the blind girl crawling around the living room like some sort of animal. And she was still wet, dripping from the rain. (For someone who couldn’t see, Rachel was very sensitive to being seen.) She envied the instant information a pair of eyes must deliver. She had her own sources of information, of course, other senses, but some of what s
he thought she knew was, by her own admission, partly imaginary. It was never completely clear to her what was real and what wasn’t. This had its advantages, of course: though she had been told time and time again that there was no bay window in their home, she always imagined a bay window, like the bow of an abandoned ship on the hill overlooking the town.

  She held one shoe in her hand as she inched across the living room, letting her toes sweep the carpet ahead of her, hoping to bump into a canvas tennis shoe, her favorite, now held together by tape and string. Such grace, even when looking for a shoe. Even when she was in a hurry.

  She had to leave before Helen returned.

  Ah! Here it was, beneath the coffee table, behind the Roam telephone book inserted beneath a leg to keep it level. Her thumb ruffled the book’s cornered edge. All the numbers of all the people who lived in Roam were here, the ink barely raised from the surface of the fine rice paper, but enough so she could feel it. It seemed so odd, when you thought about it, that you could just open this book, pick a number, and call up anybody, even if you didn’t know them at all. Just call them up and say, Hello. My name is Rachel. To whom am I speaking?

  With her shoes on she was ready to go. No need for a change of clothes; no need to pack a lunch. She brushed her hair to a soft shine and slipped on a cotton sweater, then left through the front door as if she were going to the store—confident, quick, almost not really blind anymore. The outside world hadn’t changed the way the world inside her had. The inside had changed in the blink of an eye, knowing what she knew now, knowing what she had to do—but the outside world changed more slowly. She knew it. Walking through Roam was like walking through a painting of Roam. She knew where she was going and how to get there, and had you seen her and not known who she was you wouldn’t have been able to say anything other than that she was a pretty girl on her way somewhere.

  In her mind there was a map, a map etched from years of patient practice with Helen. Rachel counted steps as they walked until the town became a series of numbers, a mathematical construction in which the path from the drugstore to the market was not a left on Chestnut and a right on Main, but left 126 steps and right 212. Helen didn’t know she was counting. Helen didn’t know the half of what was going on in her head.

  It was late already. She was about to do something reckless. She very well might die. But no single life was made to live forever; each had its own span of days. Were a fly to live for a week he would be famous among other flies for his longevity. Rachel’s own parents lived, all their years combined, for not quite a century, and yet one could say they left the world too soon. Rachel could certainly say that, and so could Helen, for it was upon her the weight of their absence set most heavily. It was Helen who continued living but who each day gave a bit more of her life away without even having lived it herself. Too much. Rachel understood. She knew why Helen had left her alone. She would have done the same. She was saying, You need to go.

  She was scared but felt free and real.

  It was a lovely day. She could feel the dying sun on her cheeks. The trees were crowded with so many cacophonous birds she had to press the palms of her hands against her ears as she walked beneath them. When she did this she could hear her own breathing. She could hear her heart beating. It felt like she could hear the wind blowing through her head.

  There was a bridge. She knew there was a bridge. And beyond that?

  Wonders.

  Rachel could feel the eyes of Roam on her as she walked, alone, toward the woods. The first person she met was the Widow Harrington. Rachel heard her old lady footsteps—the heel of her shoe dragging against the sidewalk.

  “Rachel McCallister?” the widow said. “What in the world?!”

  Rachel knew what that meant: Where is Helen? But Rachel didn’t have the time to stop and talk to her. She kept walking. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it, Mrs. Harrington?” she said, as she passed.

  843 steps to the Forest. 842, 841 . . .

  Juliana Scopes was the second person she met on the way to the Forest. Juliana was Rachel’s very first, and very last, friend. Mr. and Mrs. McCallister had struggled with what to do with Rachel after she went blind—how to present her to the world and how to present the world to her. After much discussion they decided to pretend she wasn’t blind, or at least to do the same things they would have done had she not been. So they had Juliana over for a playdate. Juliana lived one street over and had been born the same week as Rachel; when they were babies Mrs. McCallister imagined a future in which they grew up to become the best of friends. Then Rachel went blind.

  Regardless, Mrs. McCallister insisted that Rachel be treated no differently than any other child, and on the first day of summer she had Juliana over. They spread out a blanket in the backyard beneath the apple tree, and Mrs. McCallister took an apple and cleaned it and cored it and gave half to each girl. Juliana knew there was something wrong with Rachel from the moment she got there, the way her eyes couldn’t focus on anything, how her hands were always reaching for something that wasn’t quite there. Juliana was scared at first, and held tight to her mother’s legs. But as soon as Rachel tripped over the roots of the apple tree and fell, and then fell again as she was trying to get up, Juliana laughed and saw how much fun this could be. “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek,” she said.

  “I don’t know that’s such a good idea, Juliana,” Mrs. Scopes said.

  “Let them play,” said Mrs. McCallister. “Rachel wants to, I can tell.”

  Rachel did want to. She counted to ten while Juliana hid. Through force of habit, Rachel even covered her eyes with her hands, and this, to her mother, was the most heartbreaking thing. It was a long ten seconds, long enough for Mrs. McCallister to begin to regret her decision.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” Rachel called, and her pointless seeking began. She took one halting step after another, walking in small awkward circles. She did this for a couple of minutes, flattening the grass around her in a strange meandering pattern. Mrs. McCallister watched with a smile frozen on her face, as if perchance were she to maintain her composure, were she able to believe that something good would come from all of this, something actually would. After a few minutes Juliana quietly approached Rachel until she was just behind her. Rachel heard her—turned, lunged—but Juliana just got out of her way. This happened again, but the third time Rachel somehow tagged her.

  “You peeked!” Juliana screeched, until she realized that cheating, for Rachel, was impossible.

  Mrs. McCallister thought it best to continue the playdate some other time. After that Helen was the only friend Rachel had.

  Now here Juliana was again. Even before Rachel heard her she could smell her: a cloud of sugary perfume filled the air, so thick as to be dizzying. She was with someone.

  “Oh, my,” Juliana whispered, but not nearly so softly that Rachel couldn’t hear. “It’s Rachel McCallister.”

  “The blind girl?” a man’s voice said.

  “Yes, the blind girl!” Juliana whispered quite loudly. “Now lower your voice!” she said even louder.

  Rachel tried to keep walking—732, 731, 730—but at the last moment Juliana spoke to her, and Rachel felt she had to stop.

  “Rachel,” she said. “This is—I am—Juliana Scopes. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “Of course I remember you,” Rachel said. She needed to keep going; the longer she was on the streets the greater the chance she’d be discovered by her sister or be taken home by some do-gooder. But she had to act as though everything were fine. “I do hope you’re well.”

  “I am,” Juliana said, but Rachel could hear in her voice that she was staring at her the way people felt so free to do, knowing Rachel couldn’t see them back. “Father, you know Rachel.”

  “Of course. Hello, Rachel.”

  “Mr. Scopes.”

  “Your sister isn’t here,” Mr. Scopes said. “She’s with you, usually, isn’t that so?”

  “Usually,” Rachel said.
>
  Juliana and her father exchanged a look: Rachel didn’t have to see to know that. A bird flew down and—briefly, just long enough to say it had—perched on Rachel’s shoulder. Then fluttered away.

  “Well, would you look at that,” Mr. Scopes said.

  “Animals have always liked Rachel,” said Juliana. “I guess it’s one of those things that comes with it.”

  “It?” Rachel said.

  “They see what we see,” Mr. Scopes said, the way a father says it, with that deep voice, as though he knew what he was talking about when he was talking about something he had no concept of at all. “Because blind or not, I have to admit: you’re the prettiest girl in Roam, Rachel. Present company excepted, of course,” he said to his daughter.

  “Thank you, Father,” Juliana said, “but I have eyes.” An awkward silence. “I didn’t mean—I only meant that without a doubt there’s no more beautiful girl between here and Arcadia than you, Rachel.”

  “Please,” Rachel said. “Please stop.”

  “To wake up every morning and see your face on the pillow beside him,” Mr. Scopes said. “I don’t know a man who could easily say no to that.”

  Rachel felt as though they were throwing rocks at her. “Helen told me that people could be cruel,” she said. “I just never imagined how cruel. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You should, but I know you won’t be. Anyone who could say such things doesn’t have the capacity for shame.”

  She heard them reeling, felt the shock, the sudden surprise. “Rachel,” Juliana said, aghast, breathless. No one expects a blind girl to have the temerity to say what’s true.

  “Juliana,” she said, mocking her. “If you are no prettier than I, you must have the face of a dog.”

  And she walked away, just like that. Again she heard them not making a sound, and Rachel thought: How the world seems to change after one decides to leave it.

  729.

  The third and last person Rachel met before she made it to the Forest was Mrs. Samuels. Mrs. Samuels was in fact the last person she wanted to meet, because other than her sister she seemed to be the only person in the entire world who truly cared for her, or who thought about her enough to care. Rachel wondered why—because Mrs. Samuels had never been particularly kind to Helen. Rachel sensed that cool distance between them when Mrs. Samuels came upon them selling their things on the corner. With Helen and Mrs. Samuels, it was as if much less were being said than thought, known, and felt. So maybe it was simply pity. Pity the poor ugly blind girl who has taken everything from everybody and given nothing in return.