Shoulder the Sky (13 page)

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“All knowledge and all beliefs consist of judgements.”

A. Wolf,
Textbook of Logic

I couldn't decide if I was the one who should break the bad/good news about Jake to my sister. Darrell's idea is that if you want to forget about something and just put it out of your brain you just “delete the file.” Darrell did not show up for Scott Rutledge's funeral because he said he was close to breaking into the
Microsoft data bank or possibly the Pentagon. His back-up plan was to mess with Merrill Lynch.

“Don't worry, Martin, I follow the prime directive of non-interference. I just want to get inside, see if I can do it. I will slip in and then slide out, undetected. Give myself a merit badge, metaphorically speaking, and then move on.”

Darrell didn't invent new viruses or worms. “Worms are for assholes that hold grudges,” he said. “And viruses are old and pointless. No sense of humour. ‘A Man's reach should exceed his grasp.'” Like me, Darrell had a way of holding old quotes in his head.

“Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time,” I reminded him. Darrell was going to have to look that one up.

He and I had discussed a computer variation of a positive virus, something that infected your computer and improved your life. We'd argued at length as to what it might do — not exactly how; that's Darrell's department.

What could we do by way of your e-mail that could truly improve your life?

We were an old-fashioned couple of nerdlings in that we came to the conclusion (again) that you had to earn something in order for it to be of value. So all we could hand out were tools. And of course that was what my site was all about. I was offering
my humble advice, tidbits of logic and insight for curious brains.

The funeral had left me feeling like I'd just been to a funeral. Talking with Jake made me feel worse. Lilly was going to feel even more terrible when Jake dumped her next time instead of her dumping him. I wouldn't know what to do for her.

I decided I would take the oblique approach. I would unload the problem on my father (of all people) and see if he could react. A man asleep for so many days and months is bound to wake up sometime. I missed my father almost as much as I missed my mother. Even though he was there in the house. The Invisible Man had put his home life on permanent hold. He was part of the casualty count.

I was surrounded by body bags. Scott, for sure. Man down. For good. Mr. Miller, too. And my father. And Kathy, in a kind of Emily Dickinsonian doomed-love-struck cloud.

Dogs barked as I passed one house after another. Pekingese, poodle. Lab. Great Dane. Newfoundland dog. All aliens transported here from other planets to find host humans who would feed and shelter them. Intergalactic scam number thirty-seven. Fair enough trade.

Back to the body count. Darrell, the fragile egg that he was, could get himself into deep trouble. Someone would crack his safety shell. He was messing with the big boys. Bill Gates was going to find out, or the CIA or someone. Then he'd have to explain that his intentions were pure. “All rising to great places is by a winding stair,” as Sir Francis Bacon would say.

Dave was headed for a footstep into a major psychological cow pie. I was wishing he hadn't told me about his doubts. Maybe he was just making that part up. Rorschach test kind of thing. And now Lilly. About to be crushed. What would she pierce next?

It was five-thirty by the time I walked up the driveway. The van was parked in the usual place. I touched the side of it as I walked by, wondering why I always had a certain kind of “feeling” each time the van was there.

My father was in the kitchen, tie off, stir-frying vegetables. The house smelled of onions, garlic, and yes, even radishes. Men about to build pyramids or what?

Into the stir-fry, the old man threw a red slab of steak. He looked at me guiltily.

“Smell of red meat in the house used to really bother your mother, but she didn't complain.”

“Mom wasn't a whiner.”

“Truly.”

“Dad. How was your day?” Expecting mono or dual syllables at most.

“It sucks to be me,” he said, flipping the steak.

“Why don't you quit?”

“And do what?”

“Start your own business.”

“I'm too old for that. I've got a path; just need to stick to it. Retire someday.”

“You're thinking about retirement? No way.”

He stood back from the stove; looked up at the ceiling. “Your mother and I started out creative. She painted, I wrote. Art and literature. You saw her stuff from art school. She was out there. Really out there in her own territory. Extraordinary. I tried to keep up. I wrote poetry.”

“You wrote poetry?”

“Bad poetry, but poetry. I wanted to be a poet. Grew a little beard, had a way of standing and looking off into space. Thinking poetic thoughts. I read my poetry out loud to her at night by flashlight beneath the stars.”

“I knew you two did some weird stuff before Lilly and me came into the picture.” Something about the smell of meat frying in the kitchen and my father talking to me in full sentences made me feel like it was a big moment. We were connecting in a way that hadn't happened in a long while.

“I should never have been lured into advertising. I followed the money instead of my gut instinct.”

“What did your gut instinct say?”

“Alaska. It said, go to Alaska.”

“That's what you and Mom always talked about, but I didn't think you really wanted us to do it. It was just a game, yeah?”

“Yes and no.”

Dad stabbed the steak with a fork and held it up in the air.

“Want some?”

“Shall I call Lilly?”

“Sure.”

“Jake told me he's breaking up with Lilly.”

“Jake is scum. She's better off.”

“She's still going to be devastated.”

“What do we do?”

“I was hoping you had an idea.”

“Jesus.”

I knocked on Lilly's door and told her about supper.

“We never eat together.”

“Dad cooked stir-fry and steak.”

“What's the occasion?”

“He thinks his job sucks. So he decided to cook a steak.”

“Okay.”

The three of us sat at the kitchen table. Lilly opened a can of Clamato juice and poured a big glass, then added a hefty dose of Tabasco sauce. My father started to talk and Lilly looked at me with a “what is going on here?” stare.

“So now they have me writing ad copy for Odor Eaters. This is what it comes down to. One day you're sitting under a tall cedar tree writing poetry, and the next you're writing about foot odour.”

“Dad, get a grip,” Lilly said. “People have stinky feet. They need the information you provide so they know what to buy to stop the stink.”

“Think of it as a public service,” I added. I liked everything about my sister and I trying to cheer him up.

“I'm not even that good at what I do,” he went on. “I could write something brilliant if I wanted to, but what they want is something predictable.”

“You work for an ad agency. What did you expect?”

“I don't know. I expected more.”

“Jake says that he thinks advertising has replaced religion,” Lilly said. “He doesn't think that's so bad.”

My dad looked at me. Lilly didn't have a clue that Jake was about to dump her. My father didn't say anything, but I couldn't keep my mouth shut. “Jake has the IQ of a foot fungus,” I said, keeping with the foot and mouth theme of dinner.

“Oh, that's so sweet,” Lilly said, back to her old sarcastic self.

Dad was studying a piece of steak on the end of his fork. His mind was at work — making connections I couldn't quite begin to fathom.

“That does it,” he said. “We're going to Alaska.”

And we finished the meal in silence. But it wasn't the silence usually accompanying any family encounter with the Invisible Man. It was different. Maybe the toxins in the red meat had triggered some long-dormant endorphins that made my father react thus. But it was like he had returned from the dead.

Meaning of Life

The more I know, the less I understand. I think the best any of us can do is keep on living. The world is unfair and unjust as I have discovered and some of you have as well. Admit it now and let it be part of you but don't let it destroy you, make you cynical, or turn you into an asshole.

Wait for weird interesting shit to happen. It will and you should revel in it. But you have to keep your eyes open. Most people you and I know have their eyes closed even while they are awake. If you are bored with everything, it's you. It's not the world. If you're angry at everything, it probably is the fault of the world, not you. You are
human; you expect more than that. So you should be good and pissed off.

I predict that something will happen to you in the next twenty-four hours that will be extraordinary. I know this because I understand the people who come to Emerso.com. You are here because you expect something more. You are not looking up porno sites, playing silly, violent games, or watching movie stars being interviewed. You have a hunch that life is about to bite you on the ass. That's why you are here.

I am not just messing with your mind for fun. I know some stuff and what I know is that something WILL happen to you in the next twenty-four hours. It will change your life if you let it. You might miss it, however, so if you do, it's your fault, not mine. This THING may even appear to be negative at first until you realize the significance. It can come from within or it can be something that happens to you. I don't know the details. I just know it will happen. You can post your experience on the bulletin board of this site.

I'm not going to explain to you why this event will happen to you now but, you'll have to trust me. As most of you know, I haven't steered you wrong before. Like I said, I'm not just messing with your head. You've got television and teachers and presidents for that. This is real. I'm not telling you this because of any planetary alignment or any of that astrological sort of thing. I don't
know what Jupiter is doing right now and I don't particularly care.