by David Arnold
Yes, looking at Lennon was great. But as it turned out, listening to him was the real party.
“I’ve never really felt lonely,” she said. “Not like Loretta said this morning, anyway. Like . . . one of the world’s leftovers. But I think that’s because I had books. I just really love books. I love them for story and character, I love them for language. I love the groundbreak as much as the trope. Twists and turns are fine, but give me the meandering, rambling dialogue. It’s all documentation, right? Of how things were? Blow shit up if you must, but two people talking, one person thinking—I want that book.”
“You’re a bookworm.”
“You were warned. But it’s not just that. It’s—sometimes I think about the people who wrote books, and the artists and their paintings, or songwriters, these people all over the world who created. And now those people are gone. And that’s sad. But their art lived. I think the reason I’m not lonely is because when I read, I get to live those lives too.”
That art breathes life into the lungs of a dying world was not a new idea. But sometimes Nico wondered: If stories had the metaphorical power to save, might they also have the literal power?
“You’ve got secrets,” said Lennon, nodding toward her hand. “You’re keeping track of something. Days or miles or . . . something.”
“People have secrets.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Why Boston?”
He lifted his wrist so Nico saw the watch face clearly. Over the top of the city skyline, in small cursive font: Boston. “Jean and Zadie were good to us. Best moms you could ask for. That campground was our home, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Growing up, I heard all about Fenway Park, Freedom Trail blossoming in the spring, the HarborWalk . . .”
A look came over his face just then, as if his mouth had been commandeered by his brain; clearly, there was more to this Boston story.
“See?” She smiled. “Secrets.”
His face relaxed; the fire cracked. Beside her, Harry’s rhythmic breathing brought comfort as always.
“You think they knew?” he asked. “The artists and writers. You think they tried to make something that would outlive them?”
“My dad used to say that for as long as people have grown old and died, there have been people looking for a way out of old age and death. Eternal life, the fountain of youth. Heaven. Loops.”
“You’re saying art is attempted immortality.”
“Achieved immortality.” Nico raised both arms in a firmamental hug. “Proof we were here.”
Lennon got up to tend to the fire. “Are.”
“What?”
“You said were.” Quietly, almost to himself: “We’re still here.”
THE DELIVERER
There are three Red Books: edges frayed, bindings loose, corners bent; pages upon pages of ink immortal; some writings are ancient, some new, all in my own hand, the Red Books are a written account of my many Lives, past, present, and future. On the back cover of the third Book, a single word is etched in the leather: LIVES.
Below that, four columns of numbers, from 1 to 160.
The first 159 are crossed out.
With each passing Life, the Books grow fuller, my evolutionary advantage grows stronger, my knowledge of land and time deepens, but only if I continue to understand the benefits of peripheral adjustments, and only if I continue to listen to the Books.
Right now the Books are saying, We’re close. Can you feel it?
I can.
Entries range from lifesaving techniques to gardening tips, including various routes through towns and mountains, places to hide, people to help or avoid—but they rarely promote leisurely activities. Until these last few days . . .
DATE: October 30, 2043
ACTION ITEMS:
—Enjoy the stars
DATE: October 31, 2043
ACTION ITEMS:
—Enjoy the wine
DATE: November 1, 2043
ACTION ITEMS:
—Soak in your alone time
—Prepare for a guest
Years ago, those first weeks alone in the house, I would sit by the glass wall and devour the contents of all three Books in a day or two. It was an odd sensation, reading the years away, and time became pliable and nebulous, and I saw many futures, a map of the multiverse laid out before me, 159 versions of myself: decisions I’d made, for better or worse, paths I’d taken, people I’d tried to help. And while some entries are more memorable than others, some—prepare for a guest—are impossible to forget.
I smile, look around the house, try to imagine him here with me. “Echo,” I say.
My first word in days.
KIT
sixteen million brains
Maybe we don’t live on a timeline. Maybe it’s a time-ring. Kit’s body was tired but his mind was wired. He’d been restless last night, missing the genesis bedtime story, feeling embarrassed about missing a bedtime story, then feeling ashamed about feeling embarrassed about missing one. He hadn’t tried to overhear Lennon and Nico. Their conversation had simply presented itself to his ears.
Maybe we don’t live on a timeline. Maybe it’s a time-ring.
Something about it reminded him of Spacedog & Computer, which took his spiraling insomnia in new directions: Did any of my paintings survive the fire? Is Town still burning? I wonder if I’ll ever paint again . . .
It had been a long night. And night was when he missed his Dakota most.
Plus, when he finally had fallen asleep, he’d had the dream again. The bright-as-sun room where he sat with another person, speaking only in thoughts, followed by the all-consuming swarm. And because he’d only ever told Lakie about these dreams, the mornings after were when he missed her most.
He was tired of missing the people he loved. Missing people that much was like falling into a deep hole. It was like watching a breeze turn to dust, and if he thought any more about it, he was going to cry, and so he lagged near the back of the group and tried to stop thinking altogether.
They were all a little sluggish this morning, Loretta especially. Her cough seemed to have progressed overnight. He knew from A Beginner’s Guide to Infectious Diseases that it could be a symptom of mononucleosis or whooping cough or pneumonia. It was freezing out here. Constant walking, gulping breaths of cold, thin air. Maybe it was just a cold, nothing more. A few times he’d looked into Loretta’s eyes to see if he could find it: the thing that took his Dakota.
He couldn’t tell.
“Hey.” Nico slowed down until Kit caught up. “You good?”
“Yes.” He reached down to pet Harry and, not for the first time, thought, This looks like Spacedog. He felt exhausted all over again. “Just need some time to think.”
“I get that.”
Cut from the same cloth was a phrase Kit knew, which meant the essence of one person was a lot like the essence of another. He’d suspected as much yesterday, but now felt certain: he and Nico were cut from the same cloth.
Harry too.
In his most secret heart, he’d daydreamed of running off with the dog. They could live together in the mountains, maybe, just a couple of lavish breezes, nothing to see here. Nico could join if she wanted. Same cloth and all.
“Sorry we basically pressured you into joining us,” he said.
“No one pressured me to do anything. I have a soft spot for Harry is all. Anyway, I’m glad it worked out like this.”
“You are?”
“Sure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have met you.”
There were six ways to make people like you. Kit knew this, having found Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People tucked in the bottom of a Taft librarian’s desk drawer. In addition to the promising title, the book’s cover boasted sixteen million copies sold. As Kit understood it, there was a direct correlation between the
inherent value of a thing and the number of people who bought it. And so he’d gone into the book with high hopes. In the end, he did learn a lesson, though it had less to do with winning and influencing, and more to do with herd behavior, which was a fancy term for when millions of people buy a book because millions of people bought the book.
Now, however, was the perfect opportunity to put Dale Carnegie and those sixteen million brains to the test. He could only remember a few of the methods. But it was better than nothing.
Kit looked up at her, put on the biggest smile his face could handle, and said, “Thank you, Nico. That means a lot to me. I’m glad to have met you too, Nico. I think you are very important. And I would like to hear more about your interests.” He made eye contact for as long as he could—so long that he ended up tripping over a rock, falling face-first into snow.
Nico helped him up, a big smile on her face. “Would you like to be friends, Kit?”
Kit grabbed his necklace, careful to keep his eyes on the ground as they walked, lest his feet betray him again. “Okay,” he said, glad to know Dale Carnegie hadn’t duped sixteen million brains. “I would like that.”
Sixteen million and one, he thought.
oh, love’s contagious warmth!
They spotted the cabin that afternoon. From their position, maybe a hundred feet away, crouched behind a thicket, it looked small. Hard to imagine more than a single room inside.
To the left of the cabin, a firepit. Behind that, an animal carcass—deer, from the looks of it—had been cleaned, gutted, skinned, and hung from a tree. Lennon pointed out the pulley system, which kept the meat out of critters’ reach. “We had one like it in Pin Oak. Doesn’t need to freeze to keep. Just cold enough to slow down the bacterial microbes. Someone clearly lives here. We shouldn’t linger.”
Loretta put a finger to her lips. “You guys hear that?”
Moving water.
“Over there.” She pointed beyond the cabin. “Guess we made it to the river.”
Only now, here, on the cusp of saying goodbye to Lennon and Loretta and Nico and Harry did Kit really consider what it would feel like to finish the journey to the Isles of Shoals alone with Monty. Just the two of them.
“We’ll go around it,” said Lennon, pointing south. “Pick up the river down—” He stopped midsentence, eyeing Monty, who had dropped his backpack on the ground and was tucking his ax under his coat, eyes on the cabin. “Monty?”
“I’m going to knock on the door.”
“The hell you are,” said Loretta, immediately slipping into a fit of coughing.
“Dude.” Lennon put a hand on his shoulder. “Not a good idea. There might be a whole group of people in there.”
Monty pulled Loretta close, kissed her on the forehead, and whatever annoyance Kit had felt toward them, he officially took back. They lit up when they were together, like two lamps from the olden days.
Another reason why the impending split concerned him. He’d seen plenty of unplugged lamps during scavenges, sad and dusty and broken.
“You’re not well.” Monty spoke to Loretta in gentle tones, as if the rest of them weren’t there. “And now we have a chance to get you inside, out of the cold. I’m not passing that up.”
It was late afternoon, but it felt like evening, the sky an early winter gray. And even though this cabin in the woods gave Kit the creeps, and even though he could hardly feel his toes or tongue, his heart, strangely, was warm.
Maybe love seeped out of their hearts, through the air, and into my own!
Probably that wasn’t how love worked.
“I’ll go with you.” Nico took off her backpack.
“What?” said Lennon. “Why?”
She pointed to Monty, who looked as determined as ever. “He’s clearly not getting talked out of this. If there are people inside, I’d rather make nice now than have them hunt me down later.”
She’s lying, thought Kit. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but whatever Nico’s real motivations were, she didn’t want them to know. “Fine.” Lennon stood, started taking off his own backpack. “You stay here with them. I’ll go.”
“Oh, okay, sure,” said Nico. “Helpless women and children that we are . . .”
The air, which moments ago had been alive with love, now felt electric with something else.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Lennon.
Nico pulled a knife from her backpack, relocated it to her coat pocket.
“I just meant . . .” Lennon ran a hand through his hair; it was the first time Kit had seen him unsure of himself. “I could go. Instead.”
She tossed her backpack to Lennon, kept her eyes right on him as she tied her hair back in a ponytail.
“If you’d rather not go, I mean.” If a face could shrug, Lennon’s just did.
Done getting ready, Nico stood still for a moment, calmly looking at him. Even in the cold, Lennon looked likely to melt.
And so it was that Kit learned of the powerful efficiency of silence.
When Nico finally did talk, it wasn’t to Lennon. She bent down, whispered something in Harry’s ear. And then, to Monty: “You ready?”
As Monty and Nico stepped out of the thicket and slowly approached the cabin, Kit put an arm around Harry. He felt big things: love and silence and impending goodbyes. He pulled the dog closer, tried to keep his psyche from leaking all over the place, and just then Kit wished more than anything for art supplies.
“You’re a good old boy, Harry,” he whispered. “I’d paint you right for sure now.”
NICO
Welcomes
The trees thinned as they neared the cabin, but also seemed to grow taller, and connected at the top like a canopy high over their heads.
“Is it just me, or does it feel like night came early?” said Monty.
It wasn’t just him; the sun felt very far away.
On the front porch, in campy font, a sign read WELCOME TO CABIN LEIBOWITZ, and as they climbed the rickety stairs, all of Nico—every shell of her, down to the tiniest, most tucked-away Nico, was flooded with a strange sensation . . .
“Can you imagine living here?” Monty asked, only she didn’t answer.
The thing was, she could imagine it. It was why she’d volunteered to go with Monty in the first place.
From the moment she’d laid eyes on this cabin with its canopy-trees and far-off sun, she felt she knew the land, felt she’d lived here for years. Somewhere behind the cabin, the Merrimack River roared, drowning out the noises of the forest and filling her mind’s edges and in-betweens with its full-tilt southern rush. The water was a reminder. She’d been given a job, something to do, something important, only she couldn’t remember what, because she was here at last—
“You okay?” asked Monty.
They were on the porch now, the front door a foot away.
She said, “Yes,” hoping the word sounded truer in her mouth than it felt in her head.
“Thanks for coming with, by the way.” Monty looked at her. “I know this is . . . kind of weird.”
“Sure.” Nico looked at the sign again—WELCOME TO CABIN LEIBOWITZ—and before the déjà vu had a chance to kick back in, she reached out, knocked lightly on the door.
They waited.
No answer.
“Maybe we circle around back?” said Nico. “See if there’s a window, or something.” Because in her mind, she saw a window, a stack of mattresses, a coffee table.
“Hufflefuck.”
Monty looked at her. “What?”
“Nothing.” She reached out again, only this time she knocked harder, and the door swung open by inches.
Windows
There were mattresses, though not in a stack. Along the left wall, three twin-size, with crumpled quilts. In the opposite corner, a woodstove, a counter with overhead cabinets, a coffee t
able in the middle of the room.
An old map of New Hampshire hung on the wall beside a mounted blueprint of some kind of satellite tower. There was also a gun rack with three rifles.
Beside the mattresses, a bedside table with a gas lantern, and a framed kid’s drawing of three stick figures holding hands: an adult woman with comically huge glasses; two kids, one taller than the other; the smaller kid held a stuffed elephant.
Each figure was labeled with arrows: Mommy; Me; Elefint; Echo.
There was a window in the back wall, exactly as Nico had pictured it. It was boarded up, but through a thin slit, she saw that the back of the cabin looked out over a steep hill, and at the bottom of the hill, running and alive as if it had skipped winter altogether: the Merrimack River.
After confirming the place was empty, the rest of the group joined them inside . . . Lennon, peering through the boarded-up window . . . Loretta’s slow boots across the dusty wooden floor, the way she muffled her cough with the back of her fist . . . Monty, quietly combing through supplies in a cabinet . . . They feel it too. It’s why they’re all so quiet.
On a visceral level, something wasn’t right. Not the cabin itself, but their presence in it.
Time to go, she thought. Whatever this cabin was, whatever the reason for its familiarity, she’d reached the river now. Manchester was due south, daylight was dwindling, and she was about to start saying goodbye when Lennon turned from the window and grabbed a rifle off the rack.
“Hey, Kit,” he said.
Kit was staring at the stick-figure drawing. “What.”