Everville

  Again, silence.

  “If we’re done, I’d like to get going; get an early start in the morning.”

  And still, silence. Finally, Harry reached round and tentatively touched the back of his head. The hand had gone, leaving only the sensation of contact behind. He glanced round. Both of Maria’s children had disappeared.

  He blew out the candle in front of the dead woman, and said a quiet goodbye. Then he went back to his hotel, and plotted his route to Everville.

  PART FIVE

  PARADE

  ONE

  I

  Not for the first time in the dark years since the Loop, Tesla dreamed of fleas. A veritable tsunami of fleas, that rose over Harmon’s Heights with the wreckage of America on its busy crest, and teetered there, ready to drop at a moment’s notice. In its itching shadow, Everville had become a lagoon city. Main Street was a solid river of fleas, upon which makeshift rafts were paddled from house to house, rescuing people from the leaping surf.

  A few folks seemed to know her, though she didn’t recognize any of them.

  “You! You!” they said, stabbing their fingers in her direction as she towed her own creaky little boat down the street, “You did this! You with the monkey!” (She had a monkey on her shoulder, complete with vest and red felt hat.) “Admit it! You did this!”

  She protested her innocence. Yes, she’d known the wave was coming. And yes, maybe she’d wasted time with her wandering when she should have been warning the world. But it wasn’t her fault. She was just a victim of circumstance, like all of them. It wasn’t—

  “Tesla? Wake up! Tesla? Listen to me. Wake up, will you?”

  She unglued her eyes to find Phoebe staring down at her, grinning from ear to ear.

  “I know where he is. And I know how he got there.” Tesla sat up, shaking the last of the fleas from her head.

  “Joe?”

  “Of course Joe.” Phoebe sat down on the edge of the sofa. She was trembling. “I was with him last night, Tesla.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought it was a dream at first, but it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t. It’s just as clear in my head now as it was when I was there.”

  “Where?”

  “With Joe.”

  “Yes, but where, Phoebe?”

  “Oh. In Quiddity.”

  Tesla was ready to dismiss the whole thing as wishful thinking at first, but the more Phoebe told, the more she began to think there was truth here.

  Raul concurred. Didn’t I tell you? he murmured in Tesla’s ear when Phoebe came to the part about the door on Harmon’s Heights. Didn’t I say there was something about the mountain?

  “If there is a door up there. . . . ” she thought.

  It explains why this damn town’s gone crazy.

  “I have to go up there,” Phoebe was saying. “Get through the door, so I can go find Joe.” She grabbed hold of Tesla’s hands. “You will help me, won’t you? Say you will.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I knew. I said the moment I woke this is why Tesla came into my life, because she’s going to help me find Joe.”

  “Where was he when you left him?”

  Phoebe’s face fell. “He was in the sea.”

  “What about his boat?”

  “It went on without him. I think . . . I think they must have thought he was dead. But he isn’t dead. I know he isn’t. If he was dead I wouldn’t be feeling what I’m feeling now. My heart’d be empty, you know?”

  Tesla looked at the woman’s elation, and heard her faith, and felt a pang of envy, that never in her life had love taken hold of her this way. Perhaps it was a lost cause, going in search of a man lost overboard in the dream-sea when it seemed the world was about to end, but she’d always had a taste for lost causes. And if she spent the last few hours of life trying to reunite these lovers, was that so petty an ambition?

  “Did Joe tell you where the door was on the mountain?”

  “Just somewhere near the top. But we’ll find it. I know we’ll find it.”

  * * *

  II

  It was less than half an hour later when Tesla and Phoebe stepped out into the sun, but Everville was already in high gear. Main Street was fairly swarming with people: bleacher builders, banner hangers, balloon inflaters, barricade raisers. And where there was labor, of course, there were people around to watch and remark upon it: coffee drinkers and doughnut dippers, advice givers and troubleshooters.

  “We shouldn’t have come this way,” Phoebe said as they waited in a line of a dozen vehicles for a truckload of chairs to be unloaded.

  “Calm down,” Tesla said. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us. Let’s just take things as they come.”

  “If only they knew what we know,” Phoebe said, watching the people on the sidewalk.

  “Oh they know,” Tesla said.

  “About Quiddity?” Phoebe replied incredulously. “I don’t think they’ve got the slightest idea.”

  “Maybe it’s buried deep,” Tesla said, studying the blithe faces as they passed. “But everybody gets to go to Quiddity three times, remember.”

  “I got to steal a visit,” Phoebe said proudly.

  “You had help on the other side. Everybody else gets their glimpses, then forgets them. They just get on about their lives, thinking they’re real.”

  “Did you do a lot of drugs?” Phoebe said.

  “I’ve had my moments,” Tesla said. “Why?”

  “Because some of the stuff you come out with—it doesn’t make any sense to me.” She looked across at Tesla. “Like what you just said, about people thinking they’re real. They are. I’m real. You’re real. Joe’s real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s a stupid question,” Phoebe said.

  “So give me a stupid answer.”

  “We do stuff. We make things happen. I’m not like . . . like—” she faltered, searching for some frame of reference, then pointed at one of the coffee sippers, who was sitting on the curb scanning the cartoon strips in the morning’s Oregonian. “I’m not in the funny pages. Nobody invented me. I invented myself.”

  “Just remember that when we get to Quiddity.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think a lot of things got invented there.”

  “Go on.”

  “And where things are made, they can be unmade. So if something comes after you—”

  “I’ll tell it to go fuck itself,” Phoebe said.

  “You’re learning,” Tesla said.

  Once they were off Main Street the traffic lightened up considerably, and disappeared completely once they reached the road that wove up the flank of Harmon’s Heights. It didn’t take them all that far. About a third of the way up the mountainside it came to an unceremonious halt, without so much as a sign or a barrier to mark the place.

  “Damn,” Phoebe said. “I thought it went further than this.”

  “Like all the way to the top?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looks like we’ve got quite a hike ahead of us,” Tesla said, getting out of the car and staring up the forested slope.

  “Are you up for it?”

  “No.”

  “But we’re here. We might as well give it a try.”

  And with that, they began their ascent.

  * * *

  III

  In his long life, Buddenbaum had met many individuals who had tired of the human parade. People who had gone to their death with a shrug, content that they no longer had to witness the same old dramas played out over and over again. He had never understood the response. Though the general shapes of human exchange were unchanging, the particulars of this personality or that made each new example fascinating in and of itself. In his experience no two mothers ever educated their children with quite the same mingling of kisses and slaps. No two pairs of lovers ever trod quite the same path to the altar or to the grave.

  In truth, he pitied the nay-sayers; t
he souls too stunted or too narcissistic to revel in the magnificent minutiae that the human drama had to offer. They were turning their backs on a show that divinities were not too proud to patronize and applaud. He’d heard them with these ears, many times.

  Despite the fact that his body knitted together with extraordinary speed (in a week his defenestration would be an embarrassing memory), he was still in very considerable discomfort. Later, perhaps, when the avatars had arrived and he was certain everything was in hand, he’d take a little laudanum. In the meanwhile, his chest hurt like the Devil and he had a distinct limp, which gained him some unwarranted attention as he made his way out in search of a decent breakfast. It would be inappropriate, he decided, to go to the diner, so he found a little coffee shop two blocks from his hotel and sat by the window to eat and watch.

  He ordered not one but two breakfasts, and consumed the better part of both in preparation for the exertions and last-minute panics ahead. His eyes scarcely strayed to his plates as he emptied them. He was too busy watching the faces and hands of the passersby, looking for some sign of his employers. It was by no means certain they would come in human garb, of course. Sometimes (he never knew when) they would descend out of the clouds wreathed in light: the wheels of Ezekiel rolling into view. Twice they’d come in the form of animals, amused, he supposed, by the conceit of watching the drama from the perspective of wild beasts or lap dogs. The one way they had never come was as themselves, and after years of doing them service he’d given up hope of ever seeing their true faces. Perhaps they had none. Perhaps the plethora of faces they put on, and their appetite for vicarious experience, were evidence that they had neither lives nor flesh of their own.

  “Was everything okay?”

  He looked round to see his waitress standing at his side. He had not taken too much notice of her until now, but she was a wonderful sight: hair raised in a vivid orange hive, breasts rampant, face daubed and drawn and dusted.

  “You’re looking forward to something today, I can see that,” Buddenbaum remarked.

  “Tonight,” she said, with a flutter of her mascaraed lashes.

  “Why do I think it’s not a prayer meeting?” Buddenbaum replied.

  “We always throw a little party Festival Weekend, me and some of my girlfriends.”

  “Well that’s what festivals are for, isn’t it?” Buddenbaum said. “Everybody has to let their hair down—or put it up—once in a while.”

  “Do you like it?” the woman said, patting the hive affectionately.

  “I think it’s extraordinary,” Buddenbaum said, without a word of a lie.

  “Well thank you,” the woman beamed. She dug in the pocket of her apron, and pulled out a little sheet of paper. “If you feel like dropping in,” she said, proffering the paper. On it was an address and a simple map. “We have these little invites made, just for the chosen few.”

  “I’m flattered,” Buddenbaum said. “My name’s Owen, by the way.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you. I’m June Davenport. Miss.”

  The addendum could not be ignored politely. “I can’t believe you haven’t had offers,” Buddenbaum said.

  “None worth accepting,” June replied.

  “Who knows? Maybe tonight’ll be your lucky night,” Owen said.

  A lifetime of yearning crossed the woman’s face. “It better be soon,” she said, more lightly than it was felt, and moved off to ply the needy with coffee.

  Was there anything more beautiful, Owen wondered as he left the coffee shop, than a sight of yearning on the human face? Not the night sky nor a boy’s buttocks could compare with the glory of June Davenport (Miss) dolled up like a whore and hoping to meet the man of her dreams before time ran out. He’d seen tale enough for a thousand nights of telling there on her painted face. Roads taken, roads despised. Deeds undone, deeds regretted.

  And tonight—and every moment between now and tonight—more roads to choose, more deeds to do. She might be turning her head even now, or now, or now, and seeing the face she had longed to love. Or, just as easily, looking the other way.

  As he made his way down towards the intersection, where—despite the previous day’s encounter—he still intended to keep watch, he chanced to look up towards Harmon’s Heights. There was a mist cloud gathering on the summit, he saw, hiding it from view. The sight gave him pause. The sky, but for this mist, was flawless, which made him think it was not of natural origin.

  Was this the way his employers would come: down out of a clouded mountaintop, like Olympians? He’d not seen them do so before, but there was a first time for everything. He only hoped they wouldn’t be too baroque with their theatrics. If they came into Everville like blazing deities, they’d clear the streets.

  Then who’d go to June Davenport’s party?

  * * *

  IV

  The mist had not gone unnoticed in other quarters. Dorothy Bullard had called up Turf Thompson, whose meteorological opinion she’d long trusted, for some reassurance that the cloud wasn’t going to dump rain on the day’s festivities. He told her not to worry. The phenomenon was odd, to be sure, but he was certain there was no storm in the offing.

  “In fact,” he remarked, “if I didn’t know better I’d say that was a sea mist up there.”

  Comforted by his observations, Dorothy went on with the business of the morning.

  The first of the day’s special events—a little pageant about how the first settlers came to Oregon, enacted by Mrs. Henderson’s fourth-graders in the park, got underway ten minutes later than advertised, but drew a crowd of perhaps two hundred, which was very gratifying. And the kids were completely enchanting, with their little bonnets and their cardboard rifles, declaiming their lines as though their lives depended on it. There was a particularly affecting scene created around one Reverend Whitney (Dorothy had never heard of him, but she was certain Fiona Henderson had done her homework and the tale was true), who had apparently led a group of pioneers out of the winter snows to the safety of the Willamette Valley. Seeing Jed Gilholly’s son Matthew, who was playing the good reverend, forging through a blizzard of paper scraps to plant a cross in the grass and give thanks for the deliverance of his flock quite misted Dorothy’s eyes.

  When the show was over, and the crowd dispersing, she found a proud Jed with his arm around his son, both beaming from ear to ear.

  “Things are off to a damn good start,” he said to Dorothy, and anyone else in listening range.

  “You’re not bothered about that other business, then?” Dorothy said.

  “Flicker, you mean?” Jed shook his head. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back.”

  “Music to my ears,” Dorothy said.

  “And what about little Matty then?” Jed said.

  “He was wonderful.”

  “He’s been learning his lines for the past few weeks.”

  “I almost forgot them this morning,” Matthew said. “Didn’t I?”

  “You just thought you had,” Jed said, “but I knew you’d remember them.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure I did.” He ruffled his son’s hair, lovingly.

  “Can we get some ice cream, Dad?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jed said. “I’ll see you later, Dorothy.”

  She’d seldom had occasion to see Jed this way, and it was a real pleasure.

  “This is what the Festival’s all about, isn’t it?” she said to Fiona as they watched the kids deposit their props and hats in cardboard boxes, then peel off with their parents. “People enjoying themselves.”

  “It was fun, wasn’t it?” Fiona said.

  “Where did you find that bit about the reverend, by the way?”

  “Well, I cheated a little,” Fiona confessed, lowering her voice a tad. “He didn’t actually have much to do with Everville.”

  “Oh.”

  “In fact, he had nothing at all to do with Everville. He founded his church in Silverton. But it was such a good story. And fran
kly, I couldn’t find anything about our founding fathers that was appropriate for the children.”

  “What about the Nordhoff story?”

  “That comes much later,” Fiona said, in her best school-marmish tones.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “No, when it comes to the early years I’m afraid we have some very murky waters. I was quite shocked at how licentious Everville was at the start. There was certainly nothing very Christian about some of the goings-on here.”

  “Are you quite sure?” Dorothy said, frankly surprised by what she was hearing.

  “Quite,” said Fiona.

  Dorothy left the subject there, certain that the woman was misinformed. Everville had probably seen some robust behavior in its time (what city didn’t have its share of drunkards and hedonists?), but its origins were nothing to be ashamed of. If there was to be a pageant next year, she said to herself, then it wouldn’t be some phoney story, it would be the truth. And she would tell Fiona Henderson in no uncertain terms that it was her responsibility as a teacher and as a citizen not to be telling lies, however well intentioned, to her charges. As she left the park, she took a moment to study the mist on Harmon’s Heights. Just as Turf had promised, it was showing little sign of spreading. It was denser than it had been three-quarters of an hour before, however. The actual peak, which had earlier been visible through the fog, was now lost to sight.

  No matter, she thought. There was nothing much to see up there anyhow. Just some bare rocks and a lot of trees. She consulted her watch. It was ten after eleven. The Pancake Contest and All-You-Can-Eat Brunch would soon be underway at the Old Bakery Restaurant, and the Pet Parade lining up in the square. She was due to be one of the judges of the flower arranging at noon, but she had time to drop by and see how things were going at the Town Hall first, where people would already be assembling for the Grand Parade, even though it wouldn’t start for another two hours. So much to see. So much to do. Smiling people spilling off the crowded sidewalks, banners and balloons snapping and glittering against the blue August sky. She wished it could go on forever: a festival that never stopped. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?