by Peter Wright
“I can at least plant a seed. We’ll get my mom to agree to the next green day.”
I smile. “Yeah. I think we can make that happen.”
Bundled beneath my layers, I turn once in the backyard. Fran in the window, the curtain pushed aside and a final wave. I walk, the deep-sea diver’s bundled strides. Above, a few milky stars, another night falling. The stale, waiting hours stretch before me. I think of my mother’s casserole and the games we might play after dinner. I think of her oldies station, the kind of songs that won’t be written again until we all understand a new normal. I don’t turn when I reach my corner. A government truck passes, its headlights on. Then silence. The neighborhood’s gardens and flowerbeds dormant until the thaw, and no one’s certain this spring’s blooms will be the same. I pull back my hood, a promise broken. I listen to my boots’ crunch over the snow. I lower my mask then lift my goggles and rest them atop my forehead. The cold a balm on my sweating cheeks. Water in my eyes, a sensation bracing and clear. The wind’s bite a luxury in my throat. My breath a cloud beneath the first flickering streetlight. A woman pulls aside a curtain and stares, and I think of the video Fran and I watched, a shadow lost in the wasteland. I pull the cold deep into my lungs. Another block, I tell myself. My mask and goggles kept off until I loop back to my street and see my porch light’s waiting shine.
My days become a series of grays. Gray skies, gray tastes, the gray of indoor lights and the deeper gray of what I’d first thought of as boredom but now recognize as a fatigue of spirit and soul. I eat my oatmeal (unsweetened, sugar now a luxury), the TV tuned to a Civil Defense channel of no faces, no voices, just a banner of running script and a hypnotic pan of gauges and screens. Temperature. Radar. Wind speed and direction. The RAD needle, the world’s scientists flummoxed by the count that keeps exceeding their models. Our pantry with its boxes of stale cereal, the nationwide fear of irradiated milk, rumors of poisoned herds and bonfires of meat beneath the prairie skies. The C.D. anchors urge reason and caution and civic responsibility. Red days like today relegated to level-one activities—the military and basic public services. Repeat non-level-one wanderers subjected to fines and the pulling of ration cards.
Morning, and I have an essay to type, an online response to a documentary on prohibition I watched with my father. Both of us in heavy sweaters, our woodpile running low, Chestnut burrowed deep beneath the afghan. Our post-viewing discussion centers on social movements, their often pure births, their complicated lives.
“They’re part of the beauty of a democracy. The will of the people and such.”
“Churchill is rumored to have said the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
“I believe Winston enjoyed playing the role of curmudgeon.” He rubs his chin, his stubble now a thick beard. Fran’s father has razor blades, a connection in his downtown office, the price of a single blade higher than four, pre-Shut-In packs.
I turn on the laptop. “Should I remind you of the last election?”
“And your alternative is?”
I take off my gloves and begin to type. “Let me get back to you on that.”
Afternoon. My report submitted, my work time doubled by Chestnut’s invitations to wrestle with a length of rope my father knotted for him. The dog now back on the couch, his nose sticking out of his afghan cocoon. The living room chairs pushed aside, and my mother and I roll our mats over the hardwood. A DVD plays, a blissful instructor, a sunset beach backed by wide mountains and towering palms. An island paradise that might no longer exist. I lift and contract and struggle to find peace in my breathing, in the release that sometimes comes with a stretch’s last squeezed centimeter. But today, peace eludes me, my self-consciousness too keen. The gray of isolation and the sting of my own fragility. Half the world in darkness, and here I am, alive and aware, and what, exactly, am I expected to do with this gift?
Later, we return to our week-long Monopoly game. My mother the car. My father the boot. The iron for me. Hotels and houses on every property. Fortunes won and lost with a roll of the dice. My thoughts wander. Odds and scenarios. The game’s underlying network of permutations. Another drift and thoughts of decomposition, the clockwork of radioactive half-lives. The more fickle organic world. Cavemen entombed in glacier ice and mummified pharaohs. The wet and heat that can strip a water buffalo to bones in weeks. The burned bones of cattle on the plains.
My mother’s voice: “Kay?”
I blink. The board surfaces. The images in my head fade. My father hands me the dice. “Your turn, Sweet Pea.”
I shake. The dice rattle in my cupped palm. Bones, gambler’s lingo, a word my mother taught me. Bones. Sweet Pea. Bones. Fucking bones. Mountains of bones. Continents of smoldering bones. A phantom in the mist. My hand sinks into my lap. My head hung. The tears come with my father’s voice, his hand on my shoulder. “Kay? Honey?”
* * *
Evening. The Monopoly board set aside, and over dinner, I offer apologies and assurances. Hollow phrasings, excuses that mean little because I don’t understand what to apologize for, my break a reflex, a drowning in a tide that runs deeper than logic. I help with the dishes then retreat to the basement where I clear a path around the perimeter, a side-to-side just long enough to claim a breath of momentum on my roller blades. My strides awkward at first, but by my third lap, form finds me, then speed, and I slash across the concrete for thirty minutes. An hour. Until my body glows with the rush of escaping inertia. I pick up my old hockey stick, and on my path’s long stretches, I close my eyes for a stride or two. With the stick held tight, I plant myself back on the open field. The turf rolls beneath me. An open sky above.
I rest on my father’s weight bench. A flush, my sweat and thirst despite the cold. Beside me, a duffle bag, the clothes I brought down to throw in the wash. I nudge the bag with my stick. The canvas gives, a smiling dimple. I poke again, harder. I empty the bag, the pile soft around my feet, jeans and sweatshirts and socks. I place a twenty-five-pound weight at the bag’s bottom and return the clothes. Wavering atop my skates, I sling a chain over the ceiling’s I-beam and secure the duffle.
I skate, and with each lap, my stick taps the bag. The skates’ echoes a seashell hum. Another jab, and the bag twists, its bottom weighted and sluggish. The chain clanks.
I move faster. Around me, a blur of boxes and shelves, the furnace and washer and dryer. The bag’s shadow sways over the concrete. The stick an extension of my skeleton, my knuckles bloodless and pale. A blow for the fucked reality of New Year’s morning. A chop for the sickness of men. A slash for my frustrations and weakness. Another rumor, articles online and whispers at the distribution center—the skyrocketing suicide rate. Individuals, sometimes groups of a dozen or more. On the nights I can’t sleep, I think of them. The faces and the acts’ mechanics beyond me, but I can see them alone, their bare feet toeing the abyss. I would never—not in a thousand years—but I understand, coolly and deeply and with the certain truth of a balanced equation.
A strike. The bag dances. The slash of my skates and the chain’s rattle telegraphed upwards, notes trumpeted through the metal and plaster and wood. A signal of my own, angry and defiant, my offering to another diseased night. Faster, and my only focus belongs to the bag. All else melts. My next blow crumples the canvas, and in me, the imagining of a blow this hard meeting flesh and bone.
“Kay? Honey?” My mother at the top of the cellar stairs, her voice rises and falls in my swirl. “What’re you doing?”
The Shut-In’s third month. The snow stubborn, the shadowed nooks surrounding houses and trees. The RAD count orange, another inside day. I exhale onto my bedroom window, my lips close enough to feel the cold, then wipe away the fog. Below, the back yard, and the plants of my father’s garden stir beneath the soil. The first buds in the oak, and in its branches, my ghost-self, a girl not so lonely or unsure. This morning’s news brought stories from neighboring states, roaming mobs, public hangings o
f murderers and profiteers. I think of my father, a tennis ball and flashlight, half a world in darkness. I think of the moment’s veneer and the hidden forces churning, and I see another darkness beneath this world. A ping on my computer, and I turn from the window. An email from Fran, and I click the YouTube link.
The video features a girl not much older than me. She fumbles with the camera before settling onto her bed. A guitar balanced on her lap and a bashful wave, her hair pulled back and a halting introduction. Her hometown deep on the Saskatchewan plane. Books on the shelves, dolls she’d no doubt outgrown. An Edmonton Oilers poster. She reminds me of a girl who might sit at my lunch table, a girl who does her homework, reserved yet quick to smile. Her first words barely rise above her strummed chords. Then a swell, the courage of simply pressing on. The song is full of lulls that feel like invitations. I listen twice then three more times with my mother. “What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” she says. She tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Maybe this is the kind of song that was waiting to be written.”
“Doesn’t sound like yours yet.”
“Maybe it shouldn’t.” We sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, and I catch her humming along. “What’s done won’t consume us / won’t define us. / This dream will end / and we’ll walk in the sun again.”
I share “Here to There” with my father after dinner. I rest my elbow on his shoulder as he sits in his office chair. Perhaps I’m too old to hold his hand, yet I’ve forged a new bond with my parents these past months, a connection rooted in confusion and struggle and survival. Now it’s my turn to hum, and I’m surprised by the thousands of hits the song has accumulated. As he watches, I consider his cluttered desk, the red clay pencil holder I made for him in kindergarten, his notes on the fallout’s effect on the spring buds, measurements and sketches and charts. The song ends, and the girl who’s no longer a stranger approaches the camera, her hand swallowing the frame. “Goodbye all.” The screen goes dark.
“That’s lovely,” my father says. A pause, and in his gaze, a judgment. “Do you want to see what I’ve been working on?”
He pulls up his faculty page and clicks. I’ve heard about The Movement. Online whispers at first, posts and tweets from musicians and artists. At its birth, The Movement had only one message—the invitation to all mankind to take pause. To reflect before stepping back into the light. To wrestle with the responsibility of living in a world teetering upon the brink. Here, amid tragedy, waited the gift of a second chance, the opportunity to redefine ourselves. We could end hunger, nationalism, militarism. We could look upon every child as the gift of a single, beautiful tribe. The Movement’s message countered by the government’s talking points, and the state-controlled airwaves reverberate with buzzwords and shadings and repeated slights. Intellectuals. Elitists. The ones who sold the toil and blood of the common man to socialists and international cabals.
My father leaves to fix us tea, and I page through his blog’s entries. His expertise of roots and soils abandoned but not his tone or his lens of structure and reason. I read an entry pleading for clear thought from a species with the unique power to both save and destroy itself. I read another on the ballet of genetics and the mechanical wonder of organs, the deep seas of commonalities waiting beneath the wrapping of skin. All of us brother and sisters. All of us evolution’s most beautiful blooms.
He returns with a pair of steaming mugs. He dunks the bag until my water turns orange then transfers the bag to his cup. Tea another rationed item and I wonder if it’s really tea at all. Another click, the blog’s stat counter. “You’ve got a lot of views.”
“Less than a percent of your song.”
“It’s more than just your normal geeky professor types.” I lift the cup and let the warmth rise over my face.
“There’s a lot of people writing all over the world.” He dunks the tea bag, his water’s pale hue. “Guess we all have a lot of time on our hands.”
“Fran’s dad said The Movement is a bunch of naïve people manipulated by communists.”
“What do you think of that?”
I blow the steam from my cup. “He’s always been a bit of an alarmist. But before he limited it to refs and people who drove too slow.”
“Stakes are higher now. Unfortunately.”
I picture the redness in Fran’s father’s face, the dinner table silent until Fran’s mother joked about the latest ration decree.
I set down my mug. “He said they want to close all the churches.”
“Do you see any evidence of that?”
“Fran’s dad thinks there is. Although I’m not sure you and your peer-review crowd would approve of his sources.”
“Suggesting a reexamination of religion’s role in the current political landscape is a far cry from calling for the closing of churches.” He sips. “Do you think we’re naïve?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t see a better option.”
He puts his arm around me. “These blogs, your song—they’re all asking for the same thing, I think. We can follow the same path—or we can find a new one.”
“Have a plan,” I say.
He nods. “A new plan because the old one’s nearly killed us all.”
I lean against him. “Fran’s right. Normal will be weird after all this.” I click out of his blog. “Want to hear the song again?”
“Sure.”
The Shut-In ends on a cool June morning. A presidential declaration and the ringing of church bells. There are stipulations—the RAD count will be monitored for the foreseeable future, and fishing is banned until further notice. Infants, the infirm, and the elderly are advised to keep their daily outdoor exposure to under three hours. None of these restrictions cloud my mind as I wait on Fran’s steps. She appears at the window, a welcoming wave from me on the outside, a squeal from within. I can’t recall being either more excited or more nervous, the fretfulness of a dreamed-of reunion. A toe-dipping into a new normal.
We walk through the neighborhood. Our masks off, my breath unsoured, and the breeze on our faces. My strides, free from my deep-sea-diver’s larval shell, stretch across the sidewalk. My gaze lifts in hopes of catching the birds whose calls my father taught me during the Shut-In. Fran and I knot our sweatshirts around our waists and let the sun warm our skin. We reach Main Street, its open shops and shade-giving sycamores suddenly exotic, and I take Fran’s hand, wanting only to anchor myself, the fear I may drift into the sudden expanse.
We walk until our feet ache, rest, then walk some more. The warmth, the smells, and I think of my father’s words. This world of small miracles and a new beginning. We reach the park and share a bench. Others join us. Missy and the Wolf Pack girls pass a cigarette by the tennis court fence. Children shout, their sneakers a blur across the grass. The adults watch, but their smiles are different, the understanding of how fragile this all is. On the second day, Fran and I bike to the river, an adventure and the sense of wilderness. We claim perches atop the shore’s smooth boulders. A packed lunch and the confessions of young women—boys, our dreams and fears. The sun-kissed flow splashes against the rocks, and we’re entertained by the flights of dragonflies and a low-flying crane. The third day a Saturday. Another bike ride, the campus rally my father’s organized. We’re wary of every passing car, the lookout for Fran’s father’s sedan. “If I got grounded after being cooped up for so long, I swear I’d fucking burst.”
We sit along the quad’s fountain. My father hangs the podium’s breeze-swelling banner as Dr. Klein wrestles one of the fluttering ends. Her son is walking now, clumsy steps across the clover surrounding the fountain, and his little hands clutch the soap bubbles his sitter blows. Students fill the quad, more people than I’ve seen in months, and in me, an unexpected welling. All these faces, all these stories. Sunbathers in the grass, the shirtless boys who toss Frisbees and footballs. There’s almost too much to look at, and I fight the urge to close my eyes, the fear of being overwhelmed. My father stands before
the microphone, his hands raised. The guitar strummers and football throwers join the crowd.
“Welcome. Welcome all,” my father says, the words barely out of his mouth before he’s interrupted by a handful of counter-protestors pushing toward the stage.
“Leftists!” A stocky man presses a megaphone to his lips, his words distorted but his tone unmistakable. The counter-protestors in white T-shirts and sunglasses, many with faces masked by red bandannas. Their voices raised, a rough tide as they force their way forward. Scuffles break out, the white shirts retaliating, their bulk and menace. A bearish man waves a flag that snaps on the breeze. The red circle and white cross.
The students on the quad lurch forward, but their taunts are cut short by my father. The voice that read me a library of picture books echoes off the library’s brownstone. “Please, please! Haven’t we learned anything? Step aside and let them through.” The students draw back, a clear path carved to the stage where my father extends a hand. “My friends, I invite one of you step forward. You may speak first. We will all hear you out.”
The men in white look at one another, their flag raised but no longer waving. They huddle, conversations muffled by bandannas, then a retreat. The crowd pulls back again. One of the guitar players strums a few chords and by the time he reaches the refrain, the quad is awash in song. Fran and I stand atop the fountain’s rim, laughing as the white shirts’ pace quickens, and we offer our voices to the chorus. “We will walk in the sun / You and I, you and I / We’ll walk in the sun again.”
My father and I debate as we take Chestnut on his evening walk—do the discoveries of scientists like Wegener and Franklin and Kepler that went unappreciated in their lifetimes turn their stories tragic? I think yes, but my father proposes they, like all who are fortunate enough to have discovered a passion, were probably more interested in the process, in the meaning one finds in a lifetime of work. I offer a compromise—maybe they died disappointed but not bitter.