On the Wing (23 page)

He paused, and I knew he was waiting for Albertine to urge him on.

“Go on,” she said obligingly. “I'm fascinated.”

“Well,” he said, “when I thought about it, I realized that a newspaper is like a serial history.”

“History in daily installments.”

“Right. Exactly that. But my grandfather's good idea was about influencing the future.” He got up and opened the briefcase that he had carried home with him. From it he pulled a copy of
The Oracle.
“I've turned
The Oracle
into a serial prediction. Take this copy to bed with you. Let it lull you to sleep. You can tell me what you think of it in the morning.”

Candace showed us to a comfortable room, and we got into bed as quickly as we could. We read
The Oracle
with fascination, passing sections of it back and forth. The issue we read was dated ten years ahead of the current date. The town we read about was a place where people got along with one another. They were humble and modest, not pushy or demanding. They were generous with one another, eager to give, eager to help. They respected their differences, but they cultivated collaboration. They were friendly. They were neighborly. They were welcoming. They were quick to praise and slow to condemn. They had sympathetic souls. They were moderate in what they asked of one another, and of the earth. They were diligent in their work, and they were unswervingly optimistic.

“It's going to be a nice place,” I said.

“We might want to return in a decade and see how it turns out,” suggested Albertine.

“Maybe,” I said with a yawn.

*   *   *

AT BREAKFAST the next morning, Ed and Candace were silent, but I could see the eagerness in their eyes. They wanted to know what we thought of
The Oracle.

“It's a fascinating idea,” I said, “but let me ask you something: have you thought of going beyond local predictions?”

“Beyond?”

“Yes. How about—let me see—world peace, international brotherhood, the triumph of reason over superstition, an end to vengeance—”

He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn't—”

“Mr. Leroy,” he said, rising from the table with a look that I remembered from years ago, when he had told me to spend the night in the barn and leave before dawn, “I may be every bit the cockeyed optimist that my grandfather was, but I am not a fool.”

Chapter 19

Homesick and Blue

Cut grass. Work fast.

Dersu Uzala, in
Dersu Uzala

IT WAS A BLACK, tempestuous day, a day more night than day. I had been riding through rain since morning. Rain was ahead of me, rain was all around me, it was rain without end. The coming of evening was a gradual darkening, from dark to darker to black and wet, but now and then, in place of the enveloping darkness, the world was lit by lightning.

Spirit
coughed.

“What's the matter?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“I can hardly breathe,” she said. “I feel as if I'm drowning in this rain.”

She began to wheeze. Then she made an alarming noise that I had never heard from her before, “Pitipootipit.”

“What?” I asked.

“Pitipootipit,” she said again. She hesitated a moment, as if she had something else she wanted to say. “Sorry,” she said at last, “but I think I'm—”

She stopped.

I tried to restart her. I couldn't do it. “You'll have to push me,” she said.

I dismounted and began pushing her through the rain. I was wet and miserable, and I couldn't see a single light from a single house where we might take shelter. In the brief illuminations I saw that we were in what seemed to be cattle country, or cow country, with fenced fields of grass on either side of me and, here and there, a tree.

I knew the folly of taking shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm, but, as I said, I was wet and miserable, and I wanted a few minutes when I could sit quietly and eat a soggy sandwich. That, I thought, would cheer me up, embolden me, inspirit me, and give me the strength to resume my journey.

In a flash, I saw a sheltering tree, venerable and welcoming, its branches stretching out like the timbers of a low ceiling. This tree had stood there for so long, I reasoned, through so many storms, that it wasn't likely to be struck by lightning now, and I would be safe and dry beneath it, I hoped. I pulled off the road and stopped
Spirit
in the shelter of the old tree.

“What are you doing?” she squealed.

“Stopping here to get out of the rain, eat a sandwich, dry off—”

“—and get fried to a frazzle by a bolt of lightning.”

“Oh, that's not likely to—”

“I want you to get me out of here.”

“Don't you want to be out of the rain for a while?”

“Of course I do, but not if I'm going to end up as a twisted mass of smoking metal.”

“Oh, pitipootipit,” I said.

“In the morning you'd be found lying beside me, a crackling corpse, sizzling and smoking like a bird on a spit.”

“If there were anyplace else, I'd—”

“You could build a shelter from supple saplings woven into waterproof mats and lashed together into a simple structure like a pup tent.”

“How could I—oh—I know what you mean. I could build a shelter like the one those guys built in
Bold Feats.
I could probably do that.”

“It would be fun.”

“Maybe.”

“And your father would be so proud of you.”

She was right. My father undoubtedly would be proud of me if I did something that might make it into
Bold Feats,
a magazine that he subscribed to despite my mother's objection that it was “not the sort of thing that Peter should find lying around.” The magazine's slogan, printed below the title on the cover of every issue, was “No Kidding”; if it were around today, I suppose its slogan would be “No Bullshit.” It was full of stories about adventures that men had when they left their families behind for a weekend and went fishing. Some of the adventures were pretty exciting. I used to read an issue now and then when I found it lying around, but some of what I found in it puzzled me. I didn't understand, for example, why the voluptuous women that these men encountered when they stopped for coffee on their way to fishing holes of legendary abundance vanished from the stories entirely after a single tantalizing appearance. I was younger than the target audience, so perhaps I didn't understand what made middle-aged men tick, but I knew that if I found myself in a diner staffed by “babes” and “hot numbers” it would take much more than a “fishing hole known only to a lucky few” to lure me away.

As I headed into the woods to find some straight and supple young saplings, I tried to recall the adventure story that had included the weaving of the saplings into a simple structure like a pup tent, struggling, as I meandered through my memories of issues of
Bold Feats,
against the distracting babes and hot numbers and against my tendency to indulge in nostalgia, which kept grabbing my memory of a particular issue and putting it into the context of my home life back in distant Babbington.

“Peter, have you seen the latest issue of
Bold Feats?
” my father asked in one of those memories.

“I sure have,” I said. “In this issue, two guys on their way to the ‘legendary lair' of a ‘monster wall-eyed pike' stop at a ‘sleepy beanery' for a couple of mugs of ‘hot joe' and they are served by a ‘smoldering blonde' wearing a dress that fits her ‘like a coat of wet paint.'”

“Where is it?”

“The ‘legendary lair' or the ‘sleepy beanery'?”

“Bold Feats.”

“Oh. It's—ah—well—it's in my room. I'll get it.”

I dashed upstairs. The magazine was under my pillow, and I wanted to retrieve it without having my father see where I was keeping it. Starting downstairs, I flipped through it quickly, hoping for one last look at the illustration of the smoldering blonde in the dress of wet paint, and I came upon—I can see it now—the illustration of the simple structure made from saplings.

“What's keeping you?” called my father from the living room.

“I was just—ah—looking at the illustration that accompanies one of the adventures.”

“Peter,” said my father, frowning and running his hand through his hair, “I think you should know—I mean I think it's my duty to tell you—as your father—that—those illustrations are—well—let's say they're exaggerated.”

I looked hard at the illustration.

“I think I see what you mean,” I said. “It's not likely that these guys would come upon so many young, supple, pliant—”

“Peter,” he said, “give me that.”

I handed the magazine to him and—

“What are you doing?” asked a deep voice from close beside me in the dark woods.

“Holy shit!” I shouted in greeting. I leapt back and peered in the direction of the voice. I saw the shape of a man. He was hugging himself and shivering. “Where the hell did you come from?” I asked him.

“I'm not sure,” said the man. “I don't really feel as if I've come from anywhere. I have a vague feeling that I was on a fishing trip—I remember stopping for coffee—there was a waitress—”

“A smoldering blonde?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Just a guess.”

“But then suddenly there was all this rain—and I was in the woods here—and someone was thrashing around in the brush like a madman—and that was you.”

“I'm not thrashing around like a madman. I'm cutting saplings.”

“What for?”

“To weave together—to make a shelter—from the rain,” I said, returning to the work.

“Why don't you just take shelter under that big tree?”

“Lightning,” I explained.

“Lightning?”

“You're not supposed to take shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm because—”

An illustrative bolt struck the big tree, cleaving it in twain.

“Yeeeow!” cried the fisherman, apparently impressed.

“What are you doing?” asked a sweet voice, a girl's voice.

“Cutting saplings,” I said.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Some guy who was on a fishing trip and got lost in the rain,” I said.

“I don't see anybody.”

“You don't?” I said.

“No,” she said. Lightning struck again, farther away. In its light I saw that she was a dark-haired girl. Actually, I saw that she was
the
dark-haired girl. I didn't see any sign of the fisherman.

“He must have run from the lightning,” I said.

“It cleft that ancient oak in twain,” she said.

“I like the way you put that,” I said.

“I have a way with words,” she said.

“You do,” I said. “You would be an excellent companion on a journey—on life's journey.”

“You're making me blush,” she said.

“I know you,” I said, standing straight up to give my aching back a break. “I saw you one day, back at home, in Babbington, one summer day when I was stretched out along the bulkhead on the estuarial stretch of the Bolotomy River with my friend Raskol.”

“That's possible,” she said.

“We were both younger,” I said, “just kids, really, but I remember you. I was on the Babbington side of the river, and you were across the way. You were sunning yourself on the foredeck of a lean blue sloop. Even though you were just a girl, I could see that you were—”

“What are you doing?” asked another voice. It was my father's.

“I—um—well—I—” I said evasively.

“I asked you what you're doing.”

“Cutting saplings,” I said, relieved to remember that I was doing something that would make him proud of me. “I'm going to weave them together to make a shelter because taking shelter under a tree would not be wise, as you probably know from that issue of
Bold Feats
that had the story about the two guys who were on their way to the legendary lair of a monster wall-eyed pike but became stranded in a violent storm and—”

“I don't think those are saplings.”

“You're right,” I said. “They're not. Whoever planted this bit of woods apparently never thought about the needs of a young adventurer on a rainy night. There are no straight young saplings.” I hacked at the brush. “There are bushes. There are brambles. There is poison ivy. It wasn't like this in the pages of
Bold Feats.
”

“You talking about the men's magazine?” asked the fisherman, materializing out of the rain again.

“Yeah,” I said. “My father gets it. This is my father—”

I turned toward my father, intending to introduce him to the fisherman. He wasn't there.

“He's around here somewhere,” I said. “He must have wandered off in search of saplings.”

“It's funny you should mention
Bold Feats,
” said the fisherman.

“Why is that?”

“Because I sometimes get the feeling that my life is an adventure straight out of the pages of that magazine. I don't mean to brag, but—”

“Hey, buster, what do you think you're doing?”

“Huh?” said the fisherman and I in unison.

An obliging lightning flash illuminated a smoldering blonde in a rain-soaked dress that clung to her like a rain-soaked dress.

“Wow,” said the fisherman and I in unison.

“Don't give me that,” said the blonde. “I've heard it all.”

She waved a soggy piece of paper under the nose of the fisherman.

“What's the idea of running off without paying?” she demanded.

She turned to me and explained. “This four-flusher here comes into the high-class diner where I'm a waitress, see, orders the He-Man Breakfast—three eggs, sausage, bacon, pork chop, home fries, grits, toast, a short stack, and our famous bottomless cup of joe—chats me up pretty good, and then when I go to hand him the check, he's gone. Just like that! Nowhere to be seen. Disappeared.”