KGM: Sticks and stones.
KJL: You’re a mystic. That’s what you are, Kevin March.
KGM: Oh, shush you.
KJL: I mean, they made you come here on a boat! [laughs] And you’re like oh, okay…
KGM: You left me that note!
KJL: They made me, apparently. I don’t recall, Senator. But I’m glad I did. I didn’t tell you to come by boat.
KGM: They didn’t give me a choice. You’re saying there’s a reason.
KJL: There has to be one. A vision quest. Preparing you. On a donkey from the desert.
KGM. Oh, c’mon.[27] There’s no risen Lazarus here.
KJL: Not what Bass thought. He was a dead man.
KGM: But he wasn’t. And neither were you.
KJL: Whatever you say. What you say and what you believe are different things. [sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: Kodie, look… I was trying to get out of Austin in a police car. They stopped me. Your note. Your handwriting. There’s the kayak. No other way out. What was I to do?
KJL: Nuh-uh. You were driving around in a police car?
KGM: It’s all on here. [tapping at microphone] Later, okay?
KJL: You honestly think there’s no reason they stop you from going by car but then do nothing when you go by a kayak they obviously set out for you? That they’re just scared and acting bizarre?
KGM: You tell me what it is when their freaking skin connects.
KJL: What? What do you mean their skin connects?
KGM: When I tried to drive out of Austin in my police car, over on Forty-Fifth and Airport, they huddled and drew together and as I rolled toward them the… white stuff jumped between them like webbing, started pulling them tighter. To form a wall.
KJL: Jesus.
KGM: Yeah, that’s what I said. They really didn’t want me leaving that way. I mean, I saw that[28] and I freaked out, threw it into reverse.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: Cars, roads, all the old-world ways… they don’t… I never told you this, but the morning of, I was sitting up at Mount Bonnell and I saw this wave come up the lake. Just this one rolling wave and it kept on going north, under the bridge. I know it came from here. I heard that awful sound, and then that wave came upriver.
KJL: But there’s that dam there… [fingers snapping] what’s it called, uh…
KGM: I know. This is what I’m saying. I was meant to see that wave from that vantage. I knew right then that I would go back down the river just as that wave came up. That I would come to meet whatever it was that made it come up. And that I’d do it alone.
KJL: You just admitted it. Meant to see. You’re shrugging and looking down at your lap. You’re nodding.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: That’s why they didn’t bring us together. You had presaged this.
KGM: I’d dreamed it. Last summer.
KJL: Okay, you dreamed it.
KGM: Vaguely. Whenever I did, Johnny came into my room peeing down his leg, sleepwalking and mumbling.
KJL: Kevin. They key off you. If things don’t go as you saw that it would, they can’t let it happen.
KGM: Sounds pretty woo-woo.
KJL: Whales on fire? A million kids down there. Pretty woo-woo. [sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: So, there I am, on that boulder and I’m questioning things pretty mightily because I had just smoked a bowl, you know? Her comely silhouette nods in the dark against a thousand fires, the smell of charred whale flesh and burning blubber oil all around us. The constant ocean curling in, hissing, the gulls’ laments, the boom and scrape of the dead behemoths against the pier reaching out into the dark sea.
KJL: Nice.
KGM: [laughter] I didn’t know the world was ending, per se. I just knew something had changed, it was big, and that I’d be here at the river’s end before too long. Then, I didn’t even know the Colorado came here. I just knew I’d be going the other direction that wave came from. So here I am.
KJL: Prophetic mystical you. Graveyard cyclist, paddler of swollen unknown rivers.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: It’s like the earth was hit by something and the wave was the aftershock.
KGM: No asteroid, though.
KJL: No earthquakes, tsunamis. Killer virus. Lions tigers bears.
KGM: Just white stuff emitting from your lungs, cementing in your windpipe. Billions. Within an hour or so of dawn.
KJL: [long exhalation]
KGM: Lions tigers bears don’t make you commit sui—
KJL: Let’s not even… okay? That’s one thing I’ve thought about a lot here in my museum home behind glass. I can’t understand it. It makes me very very sad.
KGM: Okay. Me too.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: Hell if they weren’t adamant about me coming by river.
KJL: And you came. [sniffing]
KGM: I came for you. You’re nodding. [KJL sniffing]
KJL: I left a note. [her voice breaking up with crying]
KGM: You did.
KJL: [through crying] Love you.
KGM: Love you. [KGM sniffing]
[long pause][sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: You cold?
KJL: A little.
KGM: Let’s go up to the nature center. You can show me your digs.
KJL: Oh, they’re impressive.
KGM: C’mon, Maggie. Bet you’re hungry huh? Speaking of—
KJL: Oh, they always leave me something. I’ve eaten a whole lot of flame-broiled fish. And sometimes fruit. Good, too. They can cook, the mutes.
KGM: Fruit? Where they getting that?
KJL: Don’t know. South Texas. Lots of agriculture down here.
KGM: It’s November. There’s nothing on trees right now. Harvests are way over.
KJL: Dunno.
KGM: What, they’ve raided grocery stores and farm storage? Not very new world of them.
KJL: Dunno.
KGM: How are they surviving? Where are they crapping?
KJL: Oh, well, that’s over there. The stone-age mutes at least know a thing or two about pits and fire.
KGM: You don’t say.
KJL: How do you mean?
KGM: The bodies.
KJL: Really?
KGM: Big ones, outside the cities. I watched them doing it.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: Doubt they’ll leave a care package for Maggie.
KGM: Yeah, doubt that. Let’s walk.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying; sounds of footfalls on sand, on rock, sandy shoes scratching on cement]
KGM: You sure it’s mine?
KJL: Kevin.
[scratching on cement stops; sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
Yes.
KGM: Nobody else even possible?
KJL: No. Stop it. Turn that off.
KGM: Hold on. Let’s keep it rolling for the record. ’Case I gotta go to court to fight paternity and child support.
KJL: Kevin…
KGM: She said with anger.
KJL: [sighs]
KGM: How far along?
KJL: We did it once. Rainy day at my place. That long.
KGM: How… do you know?
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: I just know.
KGM: Well, I mean, how? Did the kids take you to a drugstore to get a pregnancy test kit?
KJL: No.
27
It is interesting to note that KGM said exactly this was the reason he thought he went down the river on a boat, yet he won’t admit such thoughts to KJL here.
28
KGM doesn’t mention the “winged thing” he saw to Kodie. See NDC-13 for more detail about Kevin’s First Days Manifestations.