Noah was trembling in his arms. His brittle fingers dug deep into Joe’s shoulder.
“Do you see?” he murmured now. “Do you see?”
Joe saw. Another heaven; and under it a shore. And beyond the shore a sea, the boom of whose waves had become as familiar as his heartbeat, the spice of whose air had made him shed waters of his own, as if in tribute.
“Quiddity . . . ” Noah breathed.
Oh Lord, Joe thought, wouldn’t it be fine to have Phoebe beside me right now, to share this wonder? Awed by the sight, Joe was scarcely aware that the ground underfoot was in flux until he was ankle-deep in liquid dirt; dirt that was flowing back and forth over the threshold. There was strength in it, and in order not to be thrown off his feet he had to halt a moment and better distribute the weight of his burden. He was no more than two strides from the crack itself, and the energies loose here were considerable. He felt his joints creaking, his guts churning, his blood thumping in his head as if it would burst out and flow into Quiddity of its own accord if he didn’t pick up speed.
He took the hint, clasped Noah close to him and ducked down, like a man walking into a high wind. Then he strode forward again, the first stride hard, the second harder still, the third less a stride than a lunge. His eyes were closed tight against the onslaught of energies, but it wasn’t black behind his lids. It was blue, a velvet blue, and through the roar of his ambitious blood he heard birds, their voices like streaks of scarlet in the blue, somewhere overhead.
“I don’t know your name,” somebody whispered to him, “but I hope you hear me.”
“Yes . . . ” he imagined he said, “I hear you.”
“Then open your eyes,” the voice went on. It was Noah, he realized. “And let’s be on our way.”
“Where are we going?” Joe asked. Though he had instructed his eyes to open, the blue behind his lids was so serene he wasn’t all that eager to desert it.
“We’re going to Liverpool,” Noah said.
“Liverpool?” said Joe. The few images he had of that city were gray and prosaic. “We’ve come all this way to visit Liverpool?”
“It’s the ships we want. I can see them from here.”
“What kind of ships?” Joe wanted to know. His lids still refused to open.
“See for yourself.”
Why not? Joe thought. The blue will always be there, the moment I close my eyes. And so thinking, he opened them.
THREE
I
Friday morning, and it was too late for excuses. If the shelves weren’t stocked, if the windows weren’t polished, if the door wasn’t painted, if the street wasn’t swept, if the dog wasn’t clipped, if the swing wasn’t fixed, if the linen wasn’t pressed, if the pies weren’t ordered, well, it was too damn late. Folks were here, ready to spend some money and have some fun, so whatever had been left unfinished would have to stay that way.
“No doubt about it,” Dorothy Bullard had announced to her husband as she rose to see the sun at the windowsill, “this is going to be the best year yet.”
She didn’t need to look far for confirmation. When she drove down Main Street a little shy of eight, it was already busier than an ordinary Saturday noon, and among the faces on the sidewalk there were gratifyingly few she knew. These were visitors; folks who’d checked into their motels and boarding houses the night before, and had driven or walked into town to begin their weekend with ham, eggs, and a slice of Evervillian hospitality.
As soon as she got to the Chamber of Commerce she checked in with Gilholly, whose offices were just across the hall, to see if there was any news on the Phoebe Cobb business. Gilholly wasn’t in yet, but Dorothy’s favorite among the officers, Ned Bantam, was sitting behind his desk with a copy of the Festival Weekend edition of the Tribune and a carton of milk.
“Looks like it’s going to be a fine weekend, Dottie baby,” he grinned. This nickname was one she’d several times forbidden him to use, but he defied her with such charm she’d given up trying to enforce the ban.
“Did you arrest Joe Flicker?”
“Gotta find him first.”
“You didn’t find him?”
“If we’d found him we’d have arrested him, Dottie,” Ned replied. “Don’t look so grim. We’ll get him.”
“You think he’s dangerous?”
“Ask Morton Cobb,” Ned said. “I guess it’s a bit late for that.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know?” Ned said. “Poor bastard died last night.”
“Oh my Lord.” Dorothy felt sick. “So we’ve got a murder-hunt going on in the middle of Festival Weekend?”
“It should spice things up a bit, huh?”
“That’s not funny,” Dorothy said. “We work all year—”
“Don’t worry,” Ned said. “Flicker’s probably in Idaho by now.”
“And what about her?” Dorothy said. She knew Phoebe by sight only; the woman had airs and graces, was her impression.
“What about her?”
“Is she going to be arrested or what?”
“Jed had Barney watching her house all night, in case Flicker came back, but he’s not going to do that. I mean, why’d he do that?”
Dorothy didn’t reply, though there was an answer on the tip of her tongue. Love, of course. He’d come back for love.
“So there was no sign of him?”
Ned shook his head. Dorothy couldn’t help but feel a little spurt of satisfaction that the Cobb woman’s lover had not returned to find her. She’d had all the secret trysts she was going to get. Now she’d have to pay the price.
Her anxieties salved somewhat, she asked Ned if he’d keep her up to date on the manhunt, and then went to work, content that even if the felon wasn’t in Idaho, he was too far away to spoil the next seventy-two hours.
* * *
II
He hadn’t come for her. That was the thought Phoebe had woken with. She’d waited and waited at the back door, until the day had driven every star from sight, and he hadn’t come for her.
She sat at the kitchen table now, with the remains of a plateful of pancakes between her elbows, trying to work out what she should do next. Part of her said just go; go now, while you can. If you stay you’ll be stuck playing the grieving widow for every damn person you meet. And then there’ll be all the funeral arrangements to make, and the insurance policies to dig through. And don’t forget Gilholly. He’ll be back with more questions.
But then there was another voice, with conflicting advice. Leave town now and he’ll never find you, the voice said. Maybe he got lost in the dark, maybe Morton did him more harm than she’d thought, maybe he was lying bleeding somewhere.
What it comes down to is this, the voice said: Do you trust him enough to believe he’ll come for you? If you don’t, go now. If you do, then put a brave face on things, and stay.
When it was made simple like that, she knew there was no question. Of course she trusted him. Of course, of course.
She brewed herself a pot of very strong coffee to help her get over her fatigue, then took a brisk shower, fixed her hair, and dressed. At eight forty-five, just as she was about to get out for the doctor’s office, the telephone rang. She raced to it and snatched up the receiver, her heart crazed, only to be greeted by Gilholly’s drear tones.
“Just checking on your whereabouts,” he said.
“I’m just going to work,” Phoebe said. “If that’s all right with you, that is.”
“I guess I’ll know where to find you.”
“I guess you will.”
“Your boyfriend didn’t come home last night.”
She was about to say no, when she realized that he wasn’t asking her a question, he was telling her. He already knew that Joe hadn’t come back to the house. Which meant that he’d had one of his men patroling around all night; which in turn meant that there was every chance Joe had seen the man, and had kept his distance for fear of being caught. All this flashed through her mind in a
matter of moments, but not so quickly that her stunned silence wasn’t noted.
“Are you still there?” Gilholly said.
She was glad this was a telephone conversation, so that she didn’t have to hide the smile that was spreading across her face.
“Yes,” she said, doing her best to keep the relief from her voice. “Yes, I’m still here.”
“If he makes any attempt to contact you—”
“I know, I know. I’ll call you, Jed. I promise.”
“Don’t call me Jed, Mrs. Cobb,” he replied sniffily. “We’ve got a professional relationship here. Let’s keep it that way.”
With that he was gone. She put the phone down, and sat on the stairs for a moment, trembling. Then, without warning tears of relief and happiness came, and it was fully ten minutes before she could get them sufficiently under control to go up and wash her face.
* * *
III
Despite the exertions of the night before, Buddenbaum had woken, as always, a few minutes before dawn, stirred by a body-clock so perfectly calibrated he’d not missed a sunrise in the better part of eighty years. His business was the epic, after all, and he knew of no drama as primal as that which was played out every dawn and dusk. The victory of light over darkness, however, had carried a particular poignancy this morning, illuminating as it did the arena for a narrative that would, he hoped, be deemed as memorable as any in the human canon.
It was a century and a half since he’d sown the seed that had become Everville; a century and a half in which he had sown many such seeds in hope of apotheosis. Lonely and frustrating years, most of them, wandering from state to state, always a visitor, always an outsider. Of course there were advantages to his condition: not least a useful detachment from the crimes and torments and tragedies that had so quickly soured the pioneers’ dream of Eden. There was little left, even in a town like Everville, of the fierce, pure vision of those souls with whom he’d mingled in Independence, Missouri. It had been a vision fueled by desperation, and nourished by ignorance, but whatever its frailties and its absurdities, it had moved him, after its fashion. It moved him still, in memory.
There had been something to die for in those hard hearts, and that was a greater gift than those blessed with it knew; a gift not granted those who’d come after. They were a prosaic lot, in Owen’s estimations, the builders of suburbs and the founders of committees: men and women who had lost all sense of the tender, terrible holiness of things.
There were always exceptions, of course, like the kid lying asleep in the bed behind him. He and little Maeve O’Connell would have understood each other very well, Owen suspected. And after years of honing his instincts he was usually able to find one such as Seth within a few hours of coming to a new town. Every community had one or two youths who saw visions or heard hammerings or spoke in tongues. Regrettably, many of them had taken refuge in addiction, he found, particularly in the larger cities. He discovered them on seedy street corners dealing drugs with one eye on Heaven, and gently escorted them away to a room like this (how many like this had he been in? tens of thousands) where they would trade visions for sodomy, back and forth.
“Owen?”
The boy’s hair was spread on the pillow as though he were floating.
“Good morning,” Owen had replied.
“Are you going to come back to bed?”
“What time is it?”
“Just before seven,” Seth had said. “We don’t have to get up yet.” He stretched, sliding down the bed as he did so.
Owen looked at the spiral of hair beneath the boy’s arms and wondered at the workings of desire. “I have to go exploring today,” he’d replied. “Do you want to come with me?”
“It depends what you’re going to explore,” Seth said, shamelessly fingering himself beneath the sheet.
Owen smiled, and crossed to the bottom of the bed. The youth had turned from waif to coquette in the space of one night. He was lifting the sheet up between his knees now, just high enough to give Owen a glimpse of his butthole.
“I suppose we could stay here an hour or so,” Owen conceded, slipping the belt of his robe so that the boy could see what trouble he was inviting. Seth had flushed—his face, neck, and chest reddening in two heartbeats.
“I had a dream about that,” he said.
“Liar.”
“I did,” Seth protested.
The sheet was still tented over his raised knees. Owen made no attempt to pull it off, but simply knelt between Seth’s feet, and stared down at him, his prick peeping out from his robe.
“Tell me—” he said.
“Tell you what?”
“What you dreamed.” Seth looked a little uncomfortable now. “Go on,” Owen said, “or I’m going to cover it up again.”
“Well,” said Seth, “I dreamed—oh Jeez, this sounds so dumb—”
“Spit it out.”
“I dreamed that,” he pointed to Owen’s dick, “was a hammer.”
“A hammer?”
“Yeah. I dreamed it was separate from you, you know, and I had it in my hand, and it was a hammer.”
Odd as the image was, it didn’t strike Owen as utterly outlandish, given the conversation they’d had on the street the night before. But there was more.
“I was using it to build a house.”
“Are you making this up?”
“No. I swear. I was up on the roof of this house, it was just a wooden frame but it was a big house, somewhere up on the mountain, and there were nails that were like little spikes of fire, and your dick—” He half sat up and reached to touch the head of Owen’s hard-on “your dick was driving the nails in. Helping me build my house.” He looked up at Owen’s face, and shrugged. “I said it was dumb.”
“Where was the rest of me?” Owen wanted to know.
“I don’t remember,” Seth said.
“Huh.”
“Don’t be pissed off.”
“I’m not pissed off.”
“It was just a dumb dream. I was thinking about hammering and—can we stop talking about it now?” He slid his hand around Owen’s sex, which had lost size and solidity while its dream-self was discussed, and attempted to stroke it back to its previous state. But it wouldn’t be coaxed, much to Seth’s disappointment.
“We’ll have some time this afternoon,” Owen said to him.
“Okay,” said Seth, dropping back onto the bed and snatching the sheet off his lower torso. “But this is going to make walking around a little uncomfortable.”
Owen gazed at the nearly hairless groin before him with a vague sense of unease. Not at the sight itself—the boy’s equipment was pretty in its lopsided way—but at the thought of his manhood being used to hammer in spikes of fire, while the rest of him went unremembered.
Most of the time, of course, dreams were worthless. Bubbles in the stew of a sleeping mind, bursting once they surfaced. But sometimes they were revelations about the past; sometimes prophecies, sometimes ways to shape the present. And sometimes—oh, this was rare, but he’d known it happen—they were signs that the promise of the Art was not a hollow promise; that the human mind could know the past, present, and future as one eternal moment. He didn’t believe that Seth’s dream of house and hammer fell into this category, but something about it made his palms clammy and his nape itch. There was meaning here, if he could only decode it.
“What are you thinking?”
Seth was looking up at him with a troubled expression on his long, pale face.
“Crossroads,” Owen replied.
“What about them?”
“That’s what we’re going to look for this morning.” He got off the bed, and went through to the bathroom to piss. “I want to find the first crossroads in the city.”
“Why?” Seth wanted to know.
He contemplated lying to the boy, but why? The answer was a paradox anyway.
“Because my journey ends where the roads cross,” he said.
“
What does that mean?”
“It means—I’m not going to be here for very much longer,” Owen said, addressing Seth from the bathroom door, “so we may as well enjoy ourselves.”
The boy looked downcast. “What will I do when you’ve gone?” he said.
Owen ruminated for a moment. Then he said, “Build a house, maybe?”
FOUR
I
Tesla got lost just north of Salem, and had traveled thirty-five miles along the Willamina road before she realized her error and turned round. By the time she reached the Everville city limits it was past one, and she was hungry. She drove around for ten minutes, orienting herself while she looked for a suitable eatery, and eventually settled on a place called Kitty’s Diner. It was busy, and she was politely told there’d be a ten-minute wait.
“No problem,” she said, and went to sit out in the sun. There was plenty to divert her while she waited. The diner was situated at the intersection of the city’s Main Street and a second, equally bustling thoroughfare. People and vehicles flowed by ceaselessly in both directions.
“This place is busy,” she thought.
There’s some kind of festival going on, Raul replied.
“How do you know?”
It’s right in front of you, he said.
“Where, damn it?” she said, scanning the intersection in all four directions.
Up a couple of feet, Raul said.
Tesla looked up. There was a banner strung across the street, announcing WELCOME TO THE EVERVILLE FESTIVAL WEEKEND in blue letters three feet high.
“How come I didn’t see that?” she thought, confounded (as ever) by the fact that she and Raul could look through the same eyes and see the world so differently.