“Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,” Rob muttered. The Beatles had turned into golden oldies long before he was born. So what? Hemingway was a golden oldie, too. So was Mark Twain. Dickens. Shakespeare. Euripides, for God’s sake. People were still reading them all. People were still riffing off what they’d done.
That was immortality, or as much of it as human beings were likely to get. So it seemed to the wise, perceptive philosopher and sage known as Rob Ferguson, anyhow. The philosopher and sage’s knees clicked when he stood up straight. He needed to take a leak. That wasn’t immortality. It was mortality, reminding him it was around. He strode over to the closest pine and took care of business.
His stomach grumbled. Last he’d heard, the Chinese place in Dover-Foxcroft was still a going concern. As he’d seen when transportation was easier, it had always been as much about what you could get in small-town Maine as it was about what you could do with that stuff if you were a Chinese cook. Had soy sauce come north in trucks? Did the gal who ran the restaurant raise her own soybeans under glass and ferment them?
It was probably an academic question, unless a bunch of locals decided to go to Dover-Foxcroft in a wagon or something. He supposed he could ride over on a bike if he wanted to badly enough, and if Lindsey did. They could plop little Colin into a seat behind one of them and make an outing of it. Dover-Foxcroft was only seven miles or so from Guilford.
“Only,” Rob said. “Yeah, right.” Seven miles wasn’t impossible on a bicycle—nowhere near. But seven miles each way wasn’t something you did with a casual case of the munchies, either. As far as time went, it was like a forty-mile commute each way through downtown L.A. back in the long-lost days of cheap gas and clogged freeways. You needed a serious jones for Maine-inflected Cantonese before you’d start pedaling. Otherwise, you’d walk over to Caleb’s Kitchen and eat pork sausage and turnips or chicken stew or something like that.
He turned around and headed back to Guilford. He wasn’t going to walk to Dover-Foxcroft today: that was for damn sure. There was such a thing as working up an appetite before you ate, but that took it too far. He didn’t think he’d end up at Caleb’s Kitchen now, but you never knew. If his stomach growled again while he was anywhere close, he might stick his head in and see if whatever Caleb was cooking smelled good.
Yes, grass and maybe even some things with flowers were coming up. Yes, the snow was melting faster than it was falling. Yes, that really was an optimistic rose-breasted grosbeak chirping as it flew by. Yes, the temp was edging up toward fifty, and might not drop far below forty tonight. Back in those long-lost times, this had been about as cold and miserable a day as Los Angeles ever got. For a post-eruption spring morning in Guilford, it was a corker.
Somebody coming Rob’s way waved. He waved back—it was Justin. His bandmate wore a denim jacket over a ratty flannel shirt, and probably a T-shirt under that. He was dressed much like Rob, in other words. Justin’s hair was still curly, but not permed any more. Like Rob’s, Justin’s beard showed the first traces of gray. Beards were warmer than bare chins. You didn’t have to worry about blades, either, or learn to shave with a straight razor.
“What’s going on?” Justin called.
“Not much,” Rob answered. “It’s just another perfect day—”
“I love L.A.!” Justin finished for him. They grinned at each other. After a beat, Justin went on, “I don’t love it enough to want to live there any more, though. How weird is that?”
“Oh, pretty much,” Rob said. “But I’m so the same way. When Lindsey wanted to head south after Colin was born, I was the one who talked her out of it. And she, like, grew up here. How weird is that?”
“Plus royal que le roi,” Justin said in what would pass for French if no Quebecer happened to hear him. “I like it here, though, more than I ever did anywhere else. We’re out from under, know what I mean?”
“I just might,” Rob replied. “Yeah, I just might. Before the eruption, our taxes were making the accountant’s eyes cross.”
“Duh! How many states did we have income from the last year before the supervolcano blew?” Justin said.
“Lemme see. There was despair, lethargy, doped-outedness, rage, lust… .”
“Not quite what I meant, but close enough,” Justin agreed. “He said our mileage was liable to get us audited all by itself.”
“How come none of the IRS weenies ever went out on the road with a working band?” Rob asked.
“Because they’re IRS weenies?” Justin suggested. “Because they wouldn’t know picking a guitar from picking their noses? But any which way, we don’t have to worry about any of that shit for a long time. We’ve fallen over the edge of the world. Here Be Dragons, the atlas says when it talks about places like this. We’re off the map, off the chart, off the goddamn Internet. I don’t miss it a bit. I don’t miss my belly a bit, either.” He slapped his stomach. He still carried more weight than Rob did, but he sure wasn’t pudgy any more.
“I don’t, either—now,” Rob said slowly. “One of these years, though, I’m gonna have trouble with a heart valve or my prostate’ll start trying to kill me or something else will go wrong. Then I’ll wish I was part of the big club, not the little one.”
“Hey, life is full of tradeoffs. If you have more fun while you’re living but maybe you don’t live as long—guys make that deal every time they light a cigarette or eat a pound and a half of prime rib. Do you really live longer or does it just seem longer ’cause it’s all a bore?”
“Right now, I’m with you. I told you that,” Rob answered. “Have to admit, though, I’m not sure I’ll say the same thing in my sixties.”
“Farrell does,” Justin said, which was true, even if Jim was bound to be past his sixties and into his seventies now. Justin went on, “Besides, if you do get sick I bet you can game the system. Show up in Bangor with a Social Security card and what will the hospital there do? Throw you out so you freeze in the snow? I don’t think so!”
Rob wasn’t sure his friend had it straight. The eruption had made everybody a lot more hardnosed. When there wasn’t enough to go around, people had to be. All the same… “And from what we hear, who knows whether things will be better anywhere else thirty years from now?” Rob said.
Justin nodded. “There’s that, too. So lay back and enjoy it. Maybe this summer some dope’ll make it this far north again, or some seeds so we can try our luck with homegrown. Even if it doesn’t, hey, there’s still rhubarb vodka.”
“Now I’ve got a reason to move south!” Rob exclaimed.
They both laughed. The local moonshine wasn’t as dreadful as it had been when amateur distillers first tried their luck after the eruption. It still wasn’t anything you’d drink if you had a lot of choices, though. Some of the homebrew beer, by contrast, tasted pretty damn good.
“We’re in another country. We’re in another time,” Rob said.
“The natives are friendly,” Justin observed. “Which is bound to be another reason we’re still here.”
“Still here…” Rob tasted the words. They rang a faint bell in the back of his mind. “Broadway song about that, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Justin screwed up his face, trying to dredge it up and plainly not having much luck. “By… by… Cole Porter or one of those old-time guys. Whoever wrote it, he’s right. We are still here.”
“Yup. Here in Guilford, by God, Maine. Who woulda figured that?” Rub stuck out his hand. “Here’s to us, here’s to being here, and here’s to being here in Guilford, by God, Maine.” Solemnly, Justin shook with him.