“Sure.” She eyed me. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah. But I have to, with this book.”
Under my reproachful gaze she shrugged, and her nipples bobbed on the bubbling surface. “You would book or not. If you’re like me. But it’s past, Henry. That’s all it is—the past.”
I told her about the day when the sea had been so glassy that it mirrored the clouds, and she sat back and laughed. “It sounds wonderful.”
“I don’t know when I’ve ever seen anything so pretty.”
She reached over the wood island, and ran a finger down the crease between the muscles of the backside of my arm. I arched my eyebrows, and with a grin slipped off the seat to float around and tussle with her. She caught me by the hair. “Henry,” she laughed, and held my head under, giving me more immediate matters to think about, like choking on water and drowning. I came up spluttering. She laughed again and gestured at the friends around us. “Well?” I said, and went under for a submerged approach, but she stood and sloshed away, leading me to the wall seats where the others were. After that we talked with Gabby and Kristen, and later old Mendez, who thanked us for our help with his barn.
But when Rafael declared the day’s allotment of wood was burned, and we got out of the baths and dried off, and dressed, I looked around the room, and there was Kathryn looking at me from the door. I followed her out. The evening air chilled my head and hands instantly. There was Kathryn, on the path between two trees. I caught up with her and took her in a hug. We kissed. There are kisses that have a whole future in them; I learned that then. When we were done her mother and sisters were chattering out the bathhouse door. I let her go. She looked surprised, thoughtful, pleased. If it had been summer—but it was winter, there was snow everywhere. And summer was coming. She smiled at me, and with a touch walked off to join them, looking back once to meet my gaze. When she was out of sight I walked home through the dusk (white snow, black trees) with a whole new idea in mind.
Some afternoons I just sat before the window and looked at the book—left it closed, in the middle of the table, and stared at it. One of these times the snowflakes were drifting down through the trees as slowly as tufts of dandelion, and every branch and needle was tipped with new white. Into this vision tramped a figure on snowshoes, wearing furs. He had a pole in each hand to help his balance, and as he brushed between trees he sent little avalanches onto his head and down his back. The old man, out trapping, I thought. But he hiked right up to the window and waved.
I slipped on my shoes and went outside. It was cold. “Henry!” Tom called.
“What’s up?” I said as I rounded our house.
“I was out checking my traps, and I ran into Neville Cranston, an old friend of mine. He summers in San Diego and winters in Hemet, and he was on his way over to Hemet, because he got a late start this year.”
“That’s too bad,” I said politely.
“No, listen! He just left San Diego, didn’t you hear me? And you know what he told me? He told me that the new mayor down there is Frederick Lee!”
“Say what?”
The new mayor of San Diego is Lee. Neville said that Lee was always in trouble with that Danforth, because he wouldn’t go along with any of Danforth’s war plans, you know.”
“So that’s why we stopped seeing him.”
“Exactly. Well, apparently there were a lot of people down there who were behind Lee, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it while Danforth and his men had all the guns. Neville said this whole fall has been a dog fight down there, but a couple months ago Lee’s supporters forced an election, and Lee won.”
“Well, what do you know.” We stared at each other, and I found myself grinning. “That’s good news, isn’t it.”
He nodded. “You bet it’s good news.”
“Too bad we blew up those train tracks.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it is good news, no doubt about it. Well”—he waved one of his poles overhead—“Lousy weather to be standing around chattering in. I’m off.” And with a little whistle he snowshoed off through the trees, leaving a trail of deep tracks. And I knew I could finish.
The book lay on the table. One night (February the 23rd) the full moon was up. I went to bed without looking at the book, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of it, and talking to the pages in my mind. I heard a voice inside me that said it all perfectly, said it far better than I ever could: this voice rattled off long imaginary passages, telling it all in the greatest detail and with the utmost eloquence, bringing it back just as lived. I heard the rhythms of it as sure as the rhythms of Pa’s snores (though the sense of it was not as clear), and it put an ache in me it was so beautiful. I thought, It’s some poet’s ghost come to visit me, maybe, come to show me how to tell it.
Eventually it drove me to get up and finish the thing off. Our house was cold, the fire in the stove was down to filmy grey coals. I put on pants and socks, and a thick shirt and a blanket over my shoulders. Moonlight poured in the window like a silver bar, turning all the bare wood furnishings into finely carved, almost living things. It was a light so strong I could write by it. I sat at the table under the window and wrote as fast as my hand would move, though what I wrote was nothing like the voice I had heard when I was lying down. Not a chance.
Most of the night passed. My left hand got sore and crampy from writing, and I was restless. The moon was dipping into the trees, obscuring my light. I decided to go for a walk. I put on my boots and my heavy coat, and shoved the book and some pencils in the coat’s big pocket.
Outside it was colder yet. The dew on the grass sparkled where moonlight fell on it. On the river path I stopped to look back up the valley, which receded through the thick air in patchy blacks and whites. There wasn’t a trace of wind, and it was so still and quiet that I could hear the snow melting everywhere around me, dripping and plopping and filling my ears with a liquid music, plinka plonk, pip pip pip pip, gurgle gorgle plop tik tik plop, plop plop plinka plop pip pip pip… A forest water choir, yes, accompanying me as I slushed down the path, hands in my big coat pockets. River black between salt-and-pepper trees.
On the cliff path I had to step careful, because the steps were half slush, half mud. Down on the beach the crack of each little wave break was clear and distinct. The salt spray in the air glowed, and because of it and the moon hardly a star was visible; just a fuzzy black sky, white around the moon. I walked out to the point beside the rivermouth, where a fine sand hill had built up, cut away on both sides by river and ocean. On the point where these two little sand cliffs met I sat down, being careful not to collapse the whole thing. I took out the book and opened it; and here I sit at this very moment, caught up at last, scribbling in it by the light of the fat old moon.
Now I know this is the part of the story where the author winds it all up in a fine flourish that tells what it all meant, but luckily there are only a couple of pages left in this here book, so there isn’t room. I’m glad of it. It’s a good thing I took the trouble to copy out those chapters of An American Around the World, so that it turned out this way. The old man told me that when I was done writing I would understand what happened, but he was wrong again, the old liar. Here I’ve taken the trouble to write it all down, and now I’m done and I don’t have a dog’s idea what it meant. Except that most everything I know is wrong, especially the stuff I learned from Tom. I’m going to have to go through everything I know and try to figure out where he lied and where he told the truth. I’ve been doing that already with the books I’ve found, and with books he doesn’t know I borrowed from him, and I’ve found out a lot of things already. I’ve found out that the American Empire never included Europe, like he said it did—that they never did bury their dead in suits of gold armor—that we weren’t the first and only nation to go into space—that we didn’t make cars that flew and floated over water—and that there never were dragons around here (I don’t think, although a bird guide might not be where they were mentioned, I don’t know). All lies—those and a hundred more facts Tom told me. All lies.