The Great Unknowable End

by Kathryn Ormsbee

  “Yeah. Catch you on the flip side. Or, like, the other side. You know.”

  I run for the house, processing Kim’s attempt at a joke a little too late. The front door is locked, and I am digging around for my key when the door swings open and I find myself inches from a red-faced Jill.

  “Stella!”

  “Hey,” I say, stooping to hug her. She wraps me in a tight embrace. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re fine; we’re fine.”

  “They caught him,” she whispers in my ear.

  At first I do not understand. I am expecting her to ask about the rain. My next thought—completely absurd—is that she’s talking about Galliard; she is telling me that Galliard was caught for breaking curfew at the commune. Then the absurdity clears. I hear the radio playing in the den, and the newscaster’s words take on meaning.

  “. . . police headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Mayor Beame addressed his constituents, saying, ‘The people of the City of New York can rest easy tonight because police have captured a man they believe to be the Son of Sam.’ ”

  “The murderer,” Jill says, removing any doubt. “They caught him.”

  Jill leads me into the den, where she has set up a burrow of sorts on the couch—blankets and pillows piled high, the radio nestled among them.

  “You’re not mad at me, are you?” she whispers, crawling into her hiding place. “I couldn’t fall asleep, so I brought the radio into my room. And then they made the news report, and I really couldn’t sleep”

  “I’m not mad.” My voice sounds very far from me. “I should’ve been home earlier. Anyway, I . . .” I watch Jill, who has stopped paying attention to me. She sits with the radio propped on her knees, listening intently as the newscaster continues to repeat the same half dozen facts in varied ways.

  “Jill,” I say. “Did you . . . see the rain?”

  She looks at me, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, see the rain? I heard it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Right. That’s what I meant.”

  She doesn’t know, then. I decide in an instant that I won’t tell her. There’s no reason. The rain has stopped for now, and it would do no good to tell my sister that it looked like blood pouring from an open wound. If I said that, she wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight.

  We do not move out of the den. I fail in every attempt to separate Jill from the radio, even long after the special broadcast is over. In the end I join her in her burrow of fleece and cotton stuffing, and we remain there, bundled tight—Jill, her radio, and me.

  April 3, 1976

  Craig,

  Art is science, though. I'm not trying to argue with you, only show you another perspective. Art is science, but that doesn't mean science saps the joy out of art. I think it only makes it better, when you know all the complexities behind a brush stroke or your favorite song. Take music, for instance. There is a reason we humans prefer thirds and octaves to seconds and sevenths. It is about harmony and unison versus dissonance and lack of resolution. It's about how we are conditioned and what our biology craves-science. That doesn't make a song less beautiful, either, whether it is by the Beach Boys or Rachmaninoff. It makes it richer, I think, and deeper. It's just another way of looking at it.

  Your sister,

  Stella

  17

  Galliard

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10

  “What is it, acid?”

  Archer hasn’t stopped talking since I walked into our room.

  I wasn’t the only one caught outdoors when the downpour began, and by the time I got to Heather House’s front doors, our residence leaders—Faith and Wes—had implemented a “procedure.” All of us who had been touched by the rain were asked to strip down to our underwear on the covered porch and wait to be washed off with a garden hose. Faith saw to the girls and Wes to the guys, in separate lines, but the whole thing was still humiliating. Once deemed clean, we were handed scratchy bath towels and sent inside, ordered to stay in our rooms until further notice. Back in my room, I deposited my briefs in the trash, sealed the bag, and placed it outside my door—as instructed. Only then could I finally change into clean clothes and receive the full force of Archer’s snickering. Tonight of all nights, he decided to stay in and play cards with some of the guys. The lucky bastard.

  Archer and I have shared a room since we were ten and first assigned to each other in Sage House. Now, that’s carried over to Heather House. For the most part, it’s fine. Archer isn’t messy, and we got along so well we became friends, which means the Council’s pairing system wasn’t an utter failure. Nights like this, though, I wish I slept alone.

  “It’s not acid,” I say, not for the first time. “If it were acid, don’t you think I’d be in the infirmary?”

  “Well, I don’t know, maybe it’s delayed acid. Could take a few hours to sink in.”

  “That’s not how acid works, man.”

  “Okay, well, it’s raining blood, so I’d say the laws of nature are in question.”

  “It’s not blood, either. The rain is just red.”

  “Oh right.” Archer is trundling around the room, casting the occasional manic look toward our one window. “Sorry. The rain is just red! The sky is just green! The ground is just purple! Those are the fucking fundamentals of human existence, after all!”

  I slump on my narrow bed and shove my pillow over my face. “Calm down,” I say into the mattress.

  I sure feel calm. I went Outside, without Archer’s help, and tasted, quite literally, what it had to offer. I saw a different side of Slater, spent time with people who were worth spending time with. I felt brave. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t afraid to step out into the mystery rain and see for myself what it was: not dangerous, just different. I can take different. I can even like different. I wish Archer would get on that level with me, but it’s hard to put into words the way I’m feeling. It’s not something I can simply say. What’s happened to me tonight requires more than words. It requires music.

  While Archer squawks on, I get up from the bed and take out a sheet of lined notebook paper from my desk. I sharpen a pencil, peeling off its shavings, then put lead to paper. I write. I write and I don’t stop. I write lyrics. I write a verse and then two. I write a chorus and a bridge. On a new sheet of paper, I draw out treble and bass clefs, and I hum riffs and pencil them in as possibilities.

  I must be too quiet for too long, because Archer slams his hand on the desk, disrupting my work.

  “Hey,” he says. “You with me?”

  “Not if you’re still freaking out,” I say.

  “Yeah, you mark my words: The Council’s gonna call a meeting about this. Not that they’ll tell us anything important. They’ll give us the usual ‘We’ve got a fallout shelter, so everything’s fine, blah, blah.’ ”

  Archer thinks it’s the end of the world. He thinks there’s no logical explanation behind what’s happening. I can see the logic, though. I see what my gods are up to. This rain, like the lightning, is a challenge. Embrace it, Galliard, they’re telling me. Do something new. Take risks. Take a chance, like we did.

  Tonight I listened to music made after the year 1970. And it was good. It was more than good—it was inspiring. The red rain outside isn’t dampening the fire inside me; it’s fueling it, asking it to rage on. I’ve never felt like this. I’m inspired, and I’m writing a new kind of song. It’s not about love I’ve never known or about how great a place Red Sun is. I write about the rain. I write about a new kick in my heartbeat, set off by Stella’s stories and Kim’s music and Ferrell’s hamburgers. I bat away Archer’s hand and write and write, until there’s nothing left I can do until I get to the Common House Yamaha and work it all out on the keys.

  Now that the song is out of me, I feel purged. Exhausted.

  “. . . could be ending, and you think Rod would tell us? Not a chance. I bet they’re reporting on television right now. I bet it’s breaking news. Only we aren’t going to hear anything, because—hey. Hey! Where do you think you�
��re going?”

  During Archer’s ongoing tirade, I’ve risen from my desk and opened the door.

  “You can’t go out there,” he says, like a whiny kid. “You heard what Wes said—no one goes out except to piss.”

  “Yeah, well. I have to piss.”

  I leave Archer to his raving and walk down the hall to the communal bathrooms. It feels as though I’m walking through a dream. Everything’s murky and half-formed. What I did tonight. Where I went. The red rain, David Bowie, and Stella, Missouri. They’re mashed up together, and I’m not sure I’m walking in a straight line, but I make it into the bathroom, and when I do, I see someone leaving one of the stalls.

  It must be the murk, because it takes me longer than it should to realize who it is.

  It’s Phoenix.

  It’s just Phoenix and me, in the same room.

  I clear my throat—once, twice, then a third and fourth time.

  He doesn’t pay me or my tics any attention. He goes straight for the sinks and washes his hands. We’re playing that game where we don’t acknowledge each other until I say something.

  Only tonight I’m feeling risky. I’m feeling brave. So I say something.

  “Hey. Phoenix?”

  He cuts off the tap and looks up. For the first time I see the resemblance between him and Stella. The big eyes that look weird on her are what make his face babyish. Looking at him, my throat seizes up.

  “Look,” I choke out. “Look.”

  Phoenix doesn’t say anything. He dries his hands on his jeans.

  What am I asking him to look at? What’s there to say?

  My throat tic rears its ugly head. I grind out a low, hard sound. Something flashes behind Phoenix’s eyes—impatience, or maybe even annoyance. He pushes past me.

  “Craig.”

  It’s out of me, and I can’t take it back, but it gets the reaction I wanted: Phoenix freezes, one hand on the bathroom door.

  He never told anyone here his old name. He’d already crafted his new identity by the time he showed up at Red Sun. He introduced himself to everyone as Phoenix. Just Phoenix. No one here knows who Craig Mercer is. No one should.

  I’ve done it. I’ve pulled the element of surprise on him. And it’s all I’ve got. I’m scrounging around for what to say next, but I’ve prepared nothing. I’ve got nothing.

  “I know.” Craig’s voice is deep and measured. He stays facing the door. “I know you took her letter. I knew for sure when you asked for the painting. I knew you wrote her back.”

  My throat bursts with unwanted sound. Then, intentionally, I say, “It was because you wouldn’t have.”

  “I told you, my family’s dead to me. That part of my life is over.”

  “Damn it, Phoenix,” I say. “She loves you. You mean a whole fucking lot to her. If you heard the way she talks about you—”

  Phoenix turns around. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Well, too fucking bad, man! Because she wants to see you. She just wants to talk to you. How hard is that? How hard is to meet with her once?”

  “It isn’t going to be once!” Phoenix shouts, slamming a hand on the door. “That’s what you don’t get. She doesn’t want to talk. She wants me to leave. She wants me back with the family.”

  “You don’t know what she wants.”

  “And you do? How long have you been writing her, huh? How long have you been pretending to be me? Because I could send her a letter tomorrow and end all of this.”

  I act like that doesn’t affect me, that I don’t understand what he’s threatened: to expose me and hurt Stella. He could, though. He could do permanent damage, and he knows it.

  “You’d do that,” I say, “but you wouldn’t send a letter two years ago? When she needed a letter? All she wanted was to know you were okay.”

  “No.” Phoenix is messing up his baby face with very unbabyish fury. “She wanted to change my mind. She wanted to bring me back down. And I won’t do that. I won’t go back there. You think Stella cares that I’m happy here? No. She wants me back there for her sake. The world out there is selfish. And I’ve left it and those toxic people behind. I told you that, Galliard. I told you.”

  “Yeah.” My throat tic butts in, but I talk over it. “Yeah, you did. But Stella isn’t toxic, and the Outside isn’t half as bad as you made it out to be. And people on the inside can be selfish too. People who don’t answer letters from the people who love them.” My eyes narrow at him. “By the way, I hear our Moonglow customers are loving your art.”

  He leaves. He doesn’t say another word. He punches open the door and walks away, while I watch him go.

  Then, alone, I stay standing in the empty bathroom, listening to the angry slam of rain upon the roof.

  November 21, 1976

  Stella,

  You make pacifism sound a lot bigger than I think of it. The way you write, pacifism is something made for countries and national governments. I guess I can't make sense of it when it's that big. For me it has to be small. Personal. That's how Opal teaches it, anyway. That pacifism is about respect for the person standing across from you. You respect that they are alive, like you, and they feel, like you, and they deserve dignity. That is one of the fundamental rules for behavior here at Red Sun: We live in peace and unity and, above all, respect.

  Not that there aren't fights. There are. When they get noticeable, the Council addresses them.

  But out there? It's a bad place. People are filled with hate and bitterness and anger, and that leads to violence. That's why Red Sun exists. It's a place where no seeds of bitterness will ever grow.

  Phoenix

  18

  Stella

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 11

  Kim was right about the news crews; they arrive early in the morning. I pass them on my way to the salon, walking along Vine Street. (In the excitement of last night, I forgot to get my bike off Kim’s car, which meant leaving twenty minutes earlier to make the mile-long walk out.) From what I can tell, there are two stations—both local, from Wichita and Kansas City—gathered in front of town hall and the ever-present countdown, which now reads 07:16:54. Just over a week until the Unknown. I slow down as I pass them and pick up two fragments of conversation: “kid put food coloring in the fountain” and “slow news days.”

  So there are news crews, yes, but they certainly don’t seem to be concerned about an impending doomsday. Everything looks much less terrifying in the new light of day. The sun is shining, and cars are working, and people are walking the streets as usual. The only indication that anything was amiss last night is a faint pink stain on the sidewalks. That and the countdown, its violet numbers as visible in the day as they are at night. It is a constant reminder, though of what, no one has a clue. Not that this prevents anyone from talking. Everyone in Vine Street Salon has something to say about last night—especially Connie.

  “It’s astrological,” she tells Brenda Mae, her nine o’clock appointment. “It’s all to do with the stars. We’ve entered a new age, and the heavens are shifting, changing. Aquarius brings with it modernization, but also rebellion and chaos. It’s only natural that we’re beginning to see these effects manifested in our daily lives.”

  “Connie,” says Brenda Mae, gently chiding, “I’m not sure that’s entirely in keeping with the church’s teaching.”

  To which Connie replies, “If Jesus himself were alive today, he’d be told he wasn’t entirely in keeping with the church’s teaching.”

  Brenda Mae squirms but says nothing more as Connie skips scissors across her bangs in quick snips.

  “Did you hear?” asks my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Byrd. “Mayor Branum is organizing another town meeting.”

  “Well, thank heavens for that,” Connie says. “What we need is some rational discourse.”

  I agree with Connie, though I’ve a feeling the discourse will be less than rational. The town is scared. It’s become clear through news reports and town gossip that Slater and only Slater has expe
rienced the pink lightning and the blood rain and the mysterious ticking clock. It’s enough to keep clients from surrounding towns at home, in fear of visiting us.

  Three appointments cancel today, each citing the weather as their reason, even though it is eighty degrees and cloudless now. We’re not experiencing our usual problems of overbooking and impatient clients, but I’m faced with a new dilemma: I have lots of downtime, and today of all days I forgot to bring along a book. This leaves me to swivel listlessly on my stool and spy out on Vine Street. Even though I am being That Stella, that doesn’t mean I’m going to completely abandon This Stella’s job.

  One of the news crews has packed up, and their van lumbers by. Frank’s Deli across the road, which is usually open all day, is locked and unlit. Not everything has gone back to normal, then, and every so often I get a sense of unease. I feel especially uneasy when I think of what happened this morning.

  Dad came home at dawn and found me and Jill asleep in the den. I was the only one to wake, and he asked me to join him in the kitchen. He fixed coffee, and I poured a bowl of Moonstones cereal. Neither of us mentioned the rain. Dad drank his coffee, and I ate my cereal, and as I was sipping away at the stained dregs of milk in my bowl, he said, “Gayle brought you up the other day.”

  I said nothing.

  “She said you’ve got a mind for numbers. Something about these rocket plans you have in your room. I didn’t know about those.”

  I washed my bowl in the sink. “It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “She was just trying to be nice, find something for us to talk about.”

  “She says you’re very gifted in math.”

  “Yeah, well, I did take advanced calculus at school. Only girl in the room, that’s me.”

  Dad was silent, because it was the only alternative to saying, “I didn’t know that.”

  My father has never been one to ask about school. He never took a good look at my report cards, and he certainly did not take part in the PTA. Since I was a good student, he didn’t have much cause to be involved in my school life. Anyway, he was too busy with work. I understood that.