Approaching Oblivion Part 4

"No, it's okay, I won't hurt you...do you see them?"

"See who, Charlie?"

Silence from them. Knox stared at them, fully, openly. And he realized they had been there often, watching him, on the raid, in the manufactory, in the furniture store, as he drove nails, in the bell tower, as he got ahead in the Party. They had always been there.

"I'm starting to remember, a lot of it is coming back."

"Charlie, what're you talking about...don't hurt me, honey."

"Brenda, listen: right there, standing right there, don't you see them?"

"I don't see anything, Charlie; are you all right? You wanna lay down a while, Charlie? The kids won't be home for a couple hours."

"I don't know where they came from, another world I guess, but that doesn't matter. They're training us, to go out there for them, out there somewhere. But we weren't cruel enough. They took up where we left ourselves off."

She lowered the slipper. He was rambling on now, saying things. The persons in black garments stood watching him, and there was almost a sadness on their faces, as though they had spent a great deal of time building something intricate and lovely and efficient, and now it had broken down. Their expressions did not speak of repair.

"They gave us the work on the line, and the words, and the missions, and the President's health.

When did they come? How long ago? What do they want from-"

And he stopped.

He. Knew.

Charlie Knox is. A man who: Had been a man.

Had been trained.

To go out there where he would not have been able to survive without their training.

Charlie Knox is a man who understood what he had been.

What he had become.

What he would have to be.

To be. Out there.

"Oh, G.o.d..."

Pain. And silence. Knox looked at his wife with eyes that might have belonged to the final moments of a golden retriever.

"I won't do it."

"Won't do what, Charlie? Please, Charlie, talk sense, lie down a little."

"You know I love you, honest to G.o.d I do."

He turned the knife and gripped it with both hands and drove it deep into his own stomach.

For Knox, the porch light had been turned off.

She sits on the edge of the bed and cannot take her eyes from the memory of the man she lived with for nine years. The memory remains, the form on the floor is someone vaguely familiar but undeniably a stranger.

Finally, she rises, and begins to dust the room. She cleans thoroughly, mechanically, despite the dim black shapes she sees from the corner of her eye, shapes she takes to be dust. And so she cleans.

Thoroughly. Mechanica1Iy.

Brenda Knox. Is. A woman who.

"The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man."

CARL GUSTAV JUNG.

Los Angeles, Sh.e.l.l Beach, Big Sur, Oakland.

California/1973

2 COLD FRIEND.

Because I had died of cancer of the lymph glands, I was the only one saved when the world disappeared. The name for it was "spontaneous remission," and as I understand it, it is not uncommon in the world of medicine. There is no explanation for it that any two physicians will agree upon, but it happens every so often. Your first question will be: why are you writing this if everyone else in the world is gone? And my answer is: should I disappear, and should things ever change, there should be some small record available to whomever or whatever comes along.

That is hypocrisy. I write this because I am a thinking creature with an enormous ego, and I cannot bear to consider having been here, being gone, and leaving nothing behind. Since I will never have children to carry on my line, to preserve some tiny bit of my existence...since I will never make a mark in the world, because there is no world left... since I will never write a novel, or paste up a billboard, or have my face carved on Mt. Rushmore...I am writing this. Additionally, it keeps me busy. I have explored all three square blocks of what's left of the world, and quite frankly, there isn't much else to do to amuse myself. So I write this.

I have always had the detestable habit of having to justify myself.

Let me hear some vague rumor or snippet of gossip about myself, and I spend weeks tracking it down, refuting it, bringing to justice the one who pa.s.sed the remark. Now that's just ridiculous. And here I am justifying myself again. This record is here, read it if you please, or don't. That's that.

I was in the hospital. I was terminal. Oxygen tent, tubes plugged into me everywhere, constantly sedated, the pain was the worst thing I've ever known, it never stopped. Then...I just started to get well.

First I died, I know I died, don't ask me how I can say such a thing with complete a.s.surance that I'm telling the truth, because if you've ever died, you'll know. Even under the knockout stuff they'd pumped into me, I still had some awareness. But when I died, it was as if I was strapped flat to the front of a subway car, spreadeagled to the wall, facing down the tunnel, into the blackness, and the subway car was hurtling along at a million miles an hour. I was utterly helpless. The air was being sucked out of my lungs and the train just slammed down that tunnel toward a little point of light. And in receding waves of sound I heard a whispering voice calling my name, over and over and over: Eu-gene, Eu-gene, Eu-gene, Eu-gene...

I went screaming down at that tiny square of light at the end of the tunnel, and I closed my eyes and could see it even with them closed. And then I crashed forward even faster, and went into the spot of light and everything was blinding, and I knew I was dead.

A long time later-I think it was two hundred years...on the other hand it may only have been a day or two--I opened my eyes and there I was in the hospital bed with a sheet up over my face.

I lay like that for almost a day. I could see the light of the ceiling fixture through the sheet. No one came to help me, and I felt weak and hungry.

Finally, I got angry, and I was so hungry I couldn't stand it any longer, so I whipped the sheet down off my face, and pulled the remaining tube out of my arm-I presumed it to be an intravenous feeding tube and whatever had been left in the bottle was what had sustained me-and got out of bed and slid my feet into my slippers-the heels of my feet were red and dry like the heels of old women in nursing homes--and in that ridiculous hospital gown I went looking for something to eat. I couldn't find the kitchen of the hospital at first, but I found a candy machine. I didn't have any dimes for it, but there was a nurse's station right there, and I was so angry at being ignored, I rummaged through some drawers and a purse under the counter till I found a handful of change.

I ate four Power House bars, two almond Hershey's and a box of those pink Canada mints.

Then, sucking on tropical fruit Life Savers, I went looking for the hospital staff.

Did I mention the hospital was empty?

The hospital was empty.

Everyone was gone, of course. I told you that at the outset. But it took me a few hours to establish the fact. So I got dressed and went outside. Everything looked the same. The name of this town is Hanover, New Hamps.h.i.+re, if you need to know. I won't bother with what the names of streets and things were when it was in the world, because I've given them all new names. It's my town now, all mine, so I decided I'd call it what I felt like calling it. But when this town was in the world, Dartmouth College was here, and there was good skiing, and it was desperately cold in the winter. Now the mountains are gone, and it hasn't been winter in a year or so. Dartmouth is also gone. It lay outside the three block area of what was saved when the world vanished. There's a pizza place here, though. I don't know how to make pizza, though I've tried. I think I miss that most of all. Isn't that mundane! My G.o.d.

The world is gone, and all I seem to be able to dwell on is pizza. What hapless little creatures we humans were. Are. Am. I am.

So. I was alive again, and I suppose the only reason I didn't poof away with all the rest of them was that everyone thought I was dead. I suppose that's the reason. I don't really know. I'm guessing, of course; but since none of this made any sense at the time, that was my only conclusion. If you think I'm terribly calm and rational about something as berserk as this, you can believe that I was frantic when I wandered out into the street in front of the hospital and saw the street was empty. I started walking, sticking my head into one store after another, looking for anybody. And every once in a while I'd stop and cup my hands around my mouth and yell, "Hey! Anybody! Eugene Harrison! Hey!

Anybody there?" But there wasn't a soul.

When the world was here, I was a postal clerk. I'm not from Hanover. I lived in White Sulphur Springs. I was brought to Hanover, to the hospital, to die.

When I got to the end of the world, at the foot of the street where the hospital stood, I just stared. I sat down and dangled my feet over, and just stared.

Then I scrunched around and lay on my stomach and looked over the edge. The ground sloped back, under there, and beneath the sidewalk there was dirt, and I could see roots hanging out, and it was a wedge-shape to the chunk of world floating with me on it, and underneath the chunk there wasn't anything.

I guess it's not anything. I tried lowering myself on a mountain-climber's rope once, about a month later, but even when I threw the rope over, it just lay there in the emptiness and wouldn't fall straight down.

I think perhaps gravity is gone out there, too.

So. I got up and decided to circ.u.mnavigate the chunk. It was three blocks square, just the buildings and the bit of park and the hospital and some small houses. The U.S. Post Office is also there. I spent one day, a while later, a whole day, sorting the mail that had been left behind when the world vanished, stocking one of the clerks' windows, oiling the wheels of the carts, sewing up the storage bags with the heavy thread and monster needle every sub-station keeps in its larder. It was one of the dullest days of my life.

I don't want to say too much about myself-hypocrisy again -just enough to pa.s.s me on down to you so I won't be forgotten or faceless. I've already said my name is Eugene Harrison, from White Sulphur Springs, and I was a postal clerk. I was never married, but I've had relations.h.i.+ps with at least four women.

None of them lasted very long; I think they got tired of me, but I don't know for sure. I'm moderately educated, I went two years at Dartmouth before I dropped out and went to work in the Post Office. I was majoring in Arts and Letters, which means I thought perhaps I would go into advertising or television or journalism or something. That was certainly a waste of time. I can write things down in order, and even with a little grace, but I'm no writer, that's for certain. I can't keep myself at the writing for very long; I get very antsy. And I think I use the word "very" too much.

I wish I could tell you there was something particularly heroic or remarkable about me, beside the dying, that is, but I am just like all other people I've ever known. Or, like they were. They aren't any more.

That's the truth, and I think it takes a big person to admit that he's very ordinary. My socks always matched.

I forgot to fill the gas tank sometimes and ran out and had to carry a can up the road to the station. I s.h.i.+rked some of my responsibilities. I made gallant gestures occasionally. I hate vegetables.

My interests were in travel and history. I never did much about either. I went to Yucatan one summer, and I read a lot of history books. Neither of those is very interesting.

It would be great to be able to say I was special, but I wasn't. I'm thirty-one years old, and I'm just plain d.a.m.ned average, d.a.m.n it, I'm average, so stop it, stop your d.a.m.ned badgering! I'm a nothing, a n.o.body, you never even saw my face through the wicket when I gave you your stamps, you arrogant swine!

You never paid me the least attention and you never asked me if I'd had a good day and you never noticed that I trimmed the borders of the stamps I sold you, if they weren't full sheets, because many people collect full sheets, but you never even noticed that little service!

That's how I was special. I cared about the little things. And you never paid any attention...

I don't care to tell you any more about myself. Listen, this is about what happened, not about me, and you don't care about me anyhow, so there's no need to carry on like that about myself.

Please excuse what I wrote just now. It was an outburst. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I cursed. I didn't mean to do that. I am a Lutheran. I attended Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in White Sulphur Springs. I was raised not to curse.

I'm going on now to what happened.

I walked all around the edge of the chunk of the world. It wasn't chopped off neatly. Whatever had done it, made the world vanish, had done it sloppily. The streets came to ragged ends, telephone lines trailed off where they'd dropped and some of them hung off into the emptiness, just floating like fishlines in water.

I should tell you what it looked like out there beyond the edge. It looked like a Winter snowfall, murky and with falling motes of light like snowflakes, but it was dark, too. I could see through the dark. That was what made it frightening: one shouldn't be able to see through the darkness. There was a wind out there, but it didn't blow. I can't describe that any better. You'll have to imagine it. And it wasn't cold or hot.

It was just pleasant.

So I spent my days in what had been Hanover; I spent them all alone. And there was nothing heroic about me. Except that during the first week I saved my town from invasion about fifty times.

That will sound remarkable, but I a.s.sure you it wasn't. The first time it happened I was coming out of the Dartmouth Co-Op on the main street, carrying several paperbacks I had taken to read, when this Viking came screaming down the street. He was enormous, well over six feet tall, with a double-bitted axe in his hand, and a helmet with two horns, and a fierce orange beard, wearing furs and thongs and a bear skin cape, and he came right at me, shrieking in some barbarian language, with blood in his eyes and certain as G.o.d determined to hack me to bits.

I was terrified. I threw the paperbacks at him and would have run if I had been able to run, but I knew he'd catch me.

Except, what he did was: he threw up his free hand to ward off the paperbacks, and swerved around me and started running away from me down a side street. I couldn't understand what was happening, but I picked up the paperbacks and took off after him. I ran as fast as I could, which was pretty fast, and I started to catch up to him. When he looked over his shoulder and saw me coming, he screamed and ran like a madman.

I chased him right off the edge of the world.

He kept on running, right out into that darkness with the snowstorm in it, and he disappeared after a while, but I saw him still running at top speed till he was out of sight. I was afraid to go after him.

Later that day I turned back an attack by a German Stuka that strafed the main street, an attack by a Samurai warrior, an attack by a Moro with a huge batangas knife, an attack by a knight on a black horse- he carried a couched lance-and attacks by a Hun, a Visigoth, a Vandal, a Viet Cong with a machine gun, an Amazon with a mace, a Puerto Rican street mugger, a Teddy Boy with a cosh, a deranged and drugged disciple of Kali with a knotted silk rope, a Venetian swordsman with a left-hand dagger, and I forget which all that first day.

It went on that way all that week. It was all I could do to get any reading done.

Then they stopped, and I went about my business. But none of that was heroic. It was just part of the new order of things. At first I thought I was being tested, then I decided that was wrong. Actually, it got annoying, and I stood on the steps of the hospital and yelled at whoever it was responsible, "Look, I don't want to know about any more of this. It's just nonsense, so knock it off!"

And it stopped just like that. I was relieved.

I had no television or movies (the movie house was gone) or radio, but the electricity worked fine and I had music and some talking records. I listened to Dylan Thomas reading Under Milk Wood and Erroll Flynn telling the story of Robin Hood and Basil Rathbone telling the story of The Three Musketeers. That was very entertaining.

The water worked, and the gas, and the telephones didn't work. I was comfortable. There was no sun in the sky, or moon at night, but I could always see as if it were daylight in the daytime, and clear enough to get around by night.

I saw her sitting on the front steps of the Post Office, I guess it was about a year after I'd died, and I hadn't seen anyone else after the invaders stopped doing their crazy screaming thing in the streets. She was just sitting there with her elbow propped on her knee and her chin resting in her palm.

I walked down the street to her, and stopped right in front of the Post Office. I was waiting for her to leap up and scream, "Amok! Amok!" or something, but she didn't. She just stared at me for a while.

She was awfully pretty. I'm not good at describing what people look like, but you can take it from me, she was very pretty. She was wearing a thin white gown that I could see through, and she was pretty all over. Her hair was long and gray, but not old gray; it was gray as if she liked it that way, the fas.h.i.+onable young person kind of gray. If you know what I'm getting at.

"How do you feel?" she asked, finally.

"I'm all right, thank you."

"Have you healed up nicely?"