John Adams - Wastelands 2

“Someone’s at the door,” said Tillie. She stirred beside him. “It might be the pool man.”

Carson pushed himself from the bed, his back cracking in protest. His legs felt wooden. How long had he been next to her?

She was sitting up, blankets over her legs, an open book face down under her hands. “You’ve been sleeping, Bob Robert,” she said brightly.

He put a hand against her forehead, then against his own. “I’m not Bob Robert.” She was cooler, and the wheezing in her chest didn’t sound quite as bad. The empty penicillin bottle sat on the night stand beneath her reading light. Could antibiotics work that fast? Even if they did, one dose wouldn’t cure whatever they had. She’d relapse. He’d get sicker. He needed to find more.

A pounding from the front of the house again.

He stood shakily, his chest aching on each breath.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“Oh, I’m all right. A bit of reading will do me good.” She opened the book. It was one from his office. Sometime during the night she must have gotten out of bed.

Carson braced himself against the hallway wall as he walked to the front door, hunched over the illness. His head throbbed and the sunlight through the front window was too bright.

“Carson, are you in there?” a voice yelled. “Birnam Wood has come to Elsinore,” it shouted.

Through the pain and fever, Carson squinted. He opened the door. “Isn’t it Dunsinane that Birnam comes to?”

The warehouse manager balanced a box on his hip. “I saw the damnedest thing on the way here.” He started. “Jeeze, man! You look terrible.”

Carson nodded, trying to put the scene together. The manager’s truck was parked next to his own in the driveway. The sun lingered high in the sky.

How long had he been sleeping? Carson forced the words out in little gasps. “What are you doing?”

Grabbing Carson’s arm, the manager helped him into the living room onto the couch. “I found the antibiotics I told you about,” he said. “It wasn’t in the pharmacy. The place burned to the ground.” The manager ripped open the box lid. Inside were rows of small white boxes. Inside the first box were hundreds of pills. He plucked two out. “But in the delivery area behind the store, there was a UPS truck chock-full of medicine.”

Carson blinked, and the manager offered him a glass of water for the pills. When did he get up to fetch the water?

“Your chest is heavy, right, and you’re feverish and tired?”

“Yes,” croaked Carson.

“I can hear your lungs from here. Pneumonia, for sure, I’ll bet. If we’re lucky, this’ll knock it right out.”

Carson swallowed the pills. Sitting, he felt better. It took the pressure off his breathing. Tillie had looked healthier. Maybe the penicillin helped her, and if it helped her, it could help him.

The manager walked around the room, stopping at the photoelectric panels’ gauges. “You have a sweet set up here. Did you do the wiring yourself?”

Carson nodded. He croaked, “Why aren’t you at the warehouse?” The light in the room flickered. Ponderously, Carson turned his head. Through the picture window, it seemed for a moment as if shadows raced over the houses, but when he checked again, the sun shone steadily.

Without looking at him, the manager said, “Time to move on. That warehouse paralyzed me. I’ve been waiting, I think. Olivier’s Hamlet said last night, ‘If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come it will be now.’ ”

“What was he talking about?” asked Carson.

“Fear of death. Grief,” said the manager. “The readiness is all, he said. Ah, who is this?”

Tillie stood at the entrance to the hallway. She’d changed into jeans and a work shirt. Her face was still feverish and she swayed a little. “Oh, good, the pool man,” she said. Without pausing for a reply, she waved a handful of packets at them. “I’m tired of waiting for flowers, Carson. I’m going to plant something.”

Confused, he said, “It’s nearly winter,” but she’d already disappeared. He rubbed his brow, and his hand came away wet with sweat. “Did she call me Carson?”

Shadows hurried across the street again, and this time the manager looked too.

“What is that?” asked Carson.

“I was going to ask you.” The manager stepped out the door and glanced up. “I saw them on the way over. They’re funny birds.”

Carson heaved himself out of the couch. His head swam so violently that he nearly fell, but he caught himself and made it to the door. He held the manager’s arm to stay steady.

Overhead, the flock streamed across the sky, barely above the rooftops. Making no sound. Hundreds of them. Narrow wings. Red breasts.

“What are they?” asked the manager.

Carson straightened. Even sickness couldn’t knock him down for this. The birds zoomed like feathered jets. Where had they been all these years? Had there just been a few hidden in the remotest forests, avoiding human eyes? Had they teetered on the edge of extinction for a century without actually disappearing despite all evidence to the contrary? Was it conceivable to return to their glory?

Carson said, “They’re passenger pigeons.”

The manager said, “What’s a passenger pigeon?”

It’s an addition to my life list, thought Carson. Audubon said they’d darkened the skies for days. Carson remembered the New York City Marathon. The people kept running and running and running. They filled the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

“I guess sometimes things can come back,” said Carson.

The impossible birds wheeled to the east.

September 19

The picture came! Veronica tapped on my glass and woke me up, and she held it up for me to see. It’s autographed and everything! For you, Veronica mouthed at me, and she smiled a really big smile. The autograph says, TO JAY—I’LL THROW A TOUCHDOWN FOR YOU. I couldn’t believe it. Everybody is laughing at me because of the way I yelled and ran in circles around my room until I fell on the floor and scraped my elbow. The janitor, Lou, turned on the intercom box outside my door and said, “Kid, you gone crazier than usual? What you care about that picture for?”

Don’t they know Dan Marino is the greatest quarterback of all time? I taped the picture to the wall over my bed. On the rest of my wall I have maps of the United States, and the world, and the solar system. I can find Corsica on the map, and the Palau Islands, which most people have never heard of, and I know what order all the planets are in. But there’s nothing else on my wall like Dan Marino. That’s the best. The other best thing I have is the cassette tape from that time the President called me on the telephone when I was six. He said, “Hi, is Jay there? This is the President of the United States.” He sounded just like on TV. My heart flipped, because it’s so weird to hear the President say your name. I couldn’t think of anything to say back. He asked me how I was feeling, and I said I was fine. That made him laugh, like he thought I was making a joke. Then his voice got real serious, and he said everyone was praying and thinking about me, and he hung up. When I listen to that tape now, I wish I had thought of something else to say. I used to think he might call me another time, but it only happened once, in the beginning. So I guess I’ll never have a chance to talk to the President again.

After Veronica gave me my picture of Marino, I asked her if she could get somebody to fix my TV so I can see the football games. All my TV can play is videos. Veronica said there aren’t any football games, and I started to get mad because I hate it when they lie. It’s September, I said, and there’s always football games in September. But Veronica told me the NFL people had a meeting and decided not to have football anymore, and maybe it would start again, but she wasn’t sure, because nobody except me was thinking about football. At first, after she said that, it kind of ruined the autograph, because it seemed like Dan Marino must be lying, too. But Veronica said he was most likely talking about throwing a touchdown for me in the future, and I felt better then.