“Is there someone else I could talk to?” I asked.
And say what? And do what?
“I’m afraid the time for that is over.”
Literal language was useless for what I’d come to do. This man was refusing to read between the lines, acknowledge any subtext, and thus we were locked in a prison of exact meaning, impossible to shed.
It would turn out that LeBov’s language protocols, as practiced by his staff, prohibited nuance, inference. They were nearly moot now anyway.
He stood up, gathered some papers, among them what I took to be a copy of The Proofs.
I pointed at it. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
He pointed at a pile of them sitting on another table.
Right. He would victimize me with facts, fail to elaborate, force me to excavate an ultra-specific set of questions to which he would then show his dumb, blank face. Quiet uncertainty is perhaps the most medicinal mode. I was not going to like this new form of speech.
He pushed a pamphlet at me. “You might want to look at these protocols. Some things to keep in mind when you speak, if you really must speak. You’ve mentioned yourself a few times, and it’s probably worth avoiding. It’s not personal. Or I guess actually that it is. It’s really personal. It’s just that the studies are pretty conclusive about this stuff.”
“The studies?” I asked. “Is that what you’ve been doing here?”
A low growl issued from one of the crates, triggering a chorus of animal cries throughout the lobby.
“Or talk all you want,” he said, bored. “But do it somewhere else.”
His smile had a little bit of clear shit in it. I could smell it.
I took the pamphlet, stared at it without focus. The text was slightly darker than the white paper it was printed on. My hands were unsteady and the text wobbled, as if it hadn’t been fastened to the paper. I felt sick, a tightness in my chest.
“It only seems harder to read,” he smirked. “It’s much, much easier on the… you know,” and he tapped his head. “We’re probably going to see a lot more of that soon.”
I pictured seeing more of something you could hardly see to begin with. That great unused resource, the invisible air. We’d fill it with text, the nearly translucent kind. That would solve everything.
“Sorry to run but you’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “We’re closing up. This Forsythe is probably not going to meet again. Maybe that guy you’re looking for, Murray? Maybe he’s in Rochester?”
Murray of Rochester. In my mind I hacked at him with a long knife.
It was dark outside and the Oliver’s staff had finished loading their vans. They drifted out of the lobby into the parking lot. I guess they would go home and pack now, maybe get an early start and hit the road later tonight, before the sun came up. Beat the traffic.
It’s hard to describe people who are silent as a matter of life and death, who move through the world in fear of speech. You can hear the swishing of their limbs, the music of their breath. None of them spoke. They left the building with small waves of the hand to each other, faces down, and walked out into the night.
As the man in coveralls walked off I asked him if he’d had any news, if he knew anything. I tried to raise my voice but the white collar on my neck seemed to limit my volume.
“Go home, stay inside,” he said, over his shoulder. “Do not talk to anyone.”
“Right,” I said. “But do you know what’s actually happening?”
“We’re telling people, just to be safe, to say their good-byes.”
I watched him leave. He embraced an older, well-dressed woman on the way out. She was crying. He kissed her cheek, then disappeared into the throng of vans.
19
There was one place left to try. It would involve parking the car at Blister Field, ducking under the fence, and trekking through the woods until I reached the stream. The stream would be dry now, maybe iced over, and I’d have to traverse the bank in darkness, groping on hands and knees until I found the half-rotted footbridge that would bring me across.
Then the far bank would need to be climbed and tonight it would certainly be slippery. Slippery and sharp, with stones pushed up from the frost heaves, the bitter ends of tree roots bulging out to collect heat from the air.
I never went to the hut at night. But tonight would seem to be an exception to the rule. These last months were an exception, if one wanted to be strict about it. It was hard not to feel that the codes of access at our hut were written for unexceptional times. All the guidance I knew was written for unexceptional times.
I climbed the last of the riverbank and bushwhacked through low, dry branches until finally I reached the little footpath that would lead me along the southern approach to the hut.
Before I even arrived I saw the wild glare of a flashlight. An oily glow zoomed through the woods and I ducked down to watch. The hut had no window, just a framed hole long relieved of its glass.
On warm days Claire sometimes sat in the empty window frame while I readied the transmission.
Now inside our hut a man crouched and shook, peered out at the forest. Parts of him were all I could see. I stayed hidden in the trees, watching that smooth, preserved face, the orange hair boiling on the head.
LeBov was alive and he was Murphy.
He looked from the window hole with the light under his face, showing himself to the dark woods.
I circled quietly, keeping my distance. From behind a tree I watched as he went in and out of the hut, sweeping his flashlight in small arcs of discovery.
Occasionally the flashlight settled on something and he dilated the lens. He’d stoop over, pick something up, examine it in the light, then, invariably, he’d toss it to the ground and resume his search.
LeBov circled behind the hut, dragged over a crate, and climbed up on the roof. From there he crouched, seemed to pick at the shingles, and then slid down and disappeared, the glare from his flashlight strobing in the high branches.
I dug in against the embankment. LeBov’s flashlight retreated into the far woods behind the hut, and then I heard nothing, saw no more light.
I sat back to rest. I’d give it a little bit more time.
I should have gone home. At home there was still so much to do. We had to pack, ready the house. Claire would need help. Perhaps I could lift her into the bath, let her soak. More than that, she might need persuading. I had to think about how I would explain our next move, how to remove all choice from my presentation.
She’d want to stay. Beg to stay. But I couldn’t let her.
Staying wasn’t staying. They’d find you and wouldn’t have stayed at all.
Beyond that were my medical supplies, just a bare minimum, and where to put them. The key gear, and then at least a suitcase’s worth of medicine. I’d want to resume my work as soon as we relocated. To lose momentum now would be a mistake.
But I didn’t go home. The woods were fully quiet now, the light was gone. LeBov had no doubt finished with his defilement and moved on to other fine projects. I’d missed my chance to confront him and I will admit that I was relieved.
I groped into the darkness toward the hut. In front of me I could not even see my hand. With each step I braced myself for a collision, something sharp to strike my face.
I’d spent so many days here, thoroughly explored the grounds, dug shallow holes each time I buried the listener. Claire and I had walked home thoughtlessly, paying no attention to our surroundings, and we’d never been lost, never felt scared by unexplained sounds in the woods.