Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

Lake cleared his throat a little and said, “How far to the other side of the river?”

The porter pursed his lips and after an uncertain moment answered, “Oh, still a ways.”

Lake nodded. “It’s quite a river.”

The porter got a look on his face of almost vicious delight. He began to laugh. “Quite a river indeed,” he said. He kept laughing, “That’s it, all right, it’s quite a river.” He continued laughing as he turned from Lake and walked on down the platform.

Lake walked up a series of winding steps to a level constructed above the tracks. In the hollowed core of the oak was a small cantina and inn: a few tables and a bar in a dimly lit wooden cave, with misshapen gaps in the trunk staring out into the night. Hanging on the inside walls were several odd pictures, all of them the same; behind the bar hung a calendar. The inn consisted of half a dozen very small rooms perched on individual tiers in the most formidable of the upper branches; these tiers were reached by four long rope bridges that draped the branches from the trunk. The innkeeper was a friendly fat man with ruddy skin, clear-eyed but looking at Lake the same way as the porter had, as though he was not quite in focus. He asked if Lake wanted a room. Lake said no, that he would be pulling out with the train, but he would like something to eat. He asked the keeper if many people came through and the innkeeper said, Not as many as there used to be. The innkeeper asked Lake where he was headed and Lake said west, and the innkeeper nodded agreeably to this, but he seemed to nod agreeably to everything. Finally Lake said if it was all right he’d just sit over on the edge of the cantina next to one of the open knotholes where he could look out over the river. The innkeeper said this was fine and to let him know if Lake changed his mind about the room. Lake sat over by the window of the tree and for a while studied one of the odd pictures on the wall: it was nothing but a black spot, framed and lit by a nearby lantern. The other pictures on the wall were exactly like this one except for variations in shape and size. Lake decided he would just as soon get on with his journey. He closed his eyes and listened to the seashell roar, which pulsed and expanded around him. Somewhere in his slumber something struck him, and he suddenly jumped to his feet to see that the roar was not that of any seashell but that of the train, which had just pulled out of Angeloak and was slithering off into the fog.

I watched in disbelief as the train went off without me; cursing, I went back to the bar and began berating the keeper. I ran down the steps to the platform below and stood there as though it would somehow bring the train back. I simply could not get it through my head that I had missed the train. The porter was still there and I berated him too: it wasn’t, after all, as though there had been a throng of passengers. I was the only one, and both the innkeeper and the porter knew I meant to take that train out. The innkeeper assured me I would have a room until the next train came through. I told him I didn’t want a room, I wanted to be on that train, and I asked when another would arrive. He said he didn’t know, that the trains didn’t follow a precise schedule and I must have realized that when I got on. All the more exasperating was the way neither the innkeeper nor the porter would look right at me when I spoke to them, and finally I got rude and snapped my fingers in front of the innkeeper’s eyes. And then I realized he didn’t see me. Then I realized the porter didn’t see me either. Neither of them saw anything.

I was given the room on the highest tier of the oak. There was no key; the porter directed me to the third bridge and smiled broadly as I went on my way. I expected to tumble off the tree into darkness as the railing in my hand ran out. A lantern hung from the branches; I took it with me. In fact the bridge did indeed lead to a room, where the night was warmer and the wind softer than it had been in the tunnel. Hanging in my room were two more pictures that didn’t show anything. There was a single bed and a basin of water on a stool. There was a contraption for bringing water up from the river that hadn’t worked in a long time. I slept restlessly.

I woke early. I looked out my window and just began saying to myself Oh no, oh no, over and over. I turned a complete circle, going from one window to another, gazing to the north and the south, the east and the west. There was nothing out there. I could see for miles and there was nothing at all to see: there wasn’t a sign of land, not hill or beach, and in the west nothing but fog, and nothing on the water but the long gleaming zipper of the railway tracks. The clouds weren’t more than fifteen feet from the reach of my hand.

I made my way down the swaying rope bridge to the cantina. The innkeeper brightly bade me good morning but I still wasn’t in the mood to be civil. I demanded to know when the next train was coming; he explained I had to be patient. He begged me to have some breakfast. I left the breakfast sitting on the counter and went down to the platform, where I found the porter. I insisted that he tell me when the next train would arrive. “Can’t say,” he answered. I stepped out onto the tracks; the planks between were wide and solid. I can walk the rest of the way, I was thinking angrily to myself staring down the tracks into the fog, when the porter on the platform said, “I wouldn’t think about walking if I were you. Tracks are strong enough but what if the train comes? Nowhere to jump but in the drink.” For someone who couldn’t see anything he certainly saw a lot.

The train did not come that week. It did not come the next week or the next. The April page of the calendar behind the bar was torn away; nothing changed. I sat in the window of the oak looking at the fog at the end of the tracks; May came, but the train did not come with it. Exasperated by my exile, I finally asked the innkeeper one day why it was anyone would be living high in a tree. “We could never find,” he said, laughing, “the trunk of the sky.” I nearly said, Would you have found it even if there was one to find? before I was answered by the soundless silver gaze of his eyes.

One night early in June I woke in my room at the top of the oak to a ringing in my ears. It was high and sharp at the beginning and then trailed off for a long time, like the sound of someone firing a gunshot. The sound didn’t stop, as though the shot was always traveling closer and closer. All the next day I heard the ringing. It didn’t fade but rather grew, gradually, almost indiscernibly.

On the next day, with the ringing still in his ears, John Lake woke to a head full of sixes. It was the first time in a long time he had thought of numbers at all. He got up and washed his face, then went down to the cantina. At some point he asked the innkeeper the date. The innkeeper told him it was the sixth of June and that the year, at least according to the calendar, was 1968—that is, Lake realized, it was the sixth day of the sixth month in the sixth year of his sixth decade since his birth in 1913. It was the first time in a long time, and one of the few times ever, Lake had noted so exactly the date.