Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

KJL: Dad was a lawyer. Sorry. What Bass said she said to him is hearsay.

KGM: Right. I guess. You’re losing me. I’m only a pseudo-intellectual. A little slow.

KJL: He claimed to have witnessed something. He told us about his experience. But you don’t believe him.

KGM: I believe he saw it. But whether or not it was really there I don’t know for sure, no.

KJL: You ever see George Washington?

KGM: No.

KJL: Um… you ever see gravity?

KGM: Uh, no.

KJL: But you believe George Washington lived and you believe gravity to be a real phenomenon.

KGM: Yes.

KJL: Why?

KGM: Because I read about them in books. Saw it on the TV.

[laughter; sounds like she slaps him on the arm]

KJL: Because someone told you. Right?

KGM: I get you.

[pause][sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: Why do you ask about that, though? Bastian’s ghost.

KJL: Dunno. I’ve had a lot of time here to myself. It’s just been rolling around in my mind. He was so certain. I believed him. I guess it’s just kind of weird that you don’t.

KGM: Didn’t say that.

KJL: It’s just… you. You don’t believe this …

KGM: You’re waving you’re arms around above your head—

KJL: —Stop it. You don’t believe that all that’s happened is any more than some evolutionary-slash-extinction event. A natural occurrence.

KGM: Didn’t say I don’t believe. I’m not sure, okay? Jespers was a scientist. He discovered something, or thought he did, and he brought others in, but what happened that morning? I don’t think he or any of them saw that coming.

[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KJL: The agnostic who peddles through graveyards. The agnostic paddling down a flooded river at the behest of nubile throngs.

KGM: Sticks and stones.

KJL: You’re a mystic. That’s what you are, Kevin March.

KGM: Oh, shush you.

KJL: I mean, they made you come here on a boat! [laughs] And you’re like oh, okay…

KGM: You left me that note!

KJL: They made me, apparently. I don’t recall, Senator. But I’m glad I did. I didn’t tell you to come by boat.

KGM: They didn’t give me a choice. You’re saying there’s a reason.

KJL: There has to be one. A vision quest. Preparing you. On a donkey from the desert.

KGM. Oh, c’mon. [27] It is interesting to note that KGM said exactly this was the reason he thought he went down the river on a boat, yet he won’t admit such thoughts to KJL here. There’s no risen Lazarus here.

KJL: Not what Bass thought. He was a dead man.

KGM: But he wasn’t. And neither were you.

KJL: Whatever you say. What you say and what you believe are different things. [sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: Kodie, look… I was trying to get out of Austin in a police car. They stopped me. Your note. Your handwriting. There’s the kayak. No other way out. What was I to do?

KJL: Nuh-uh. You were driving around in a police car?

KGM: It’s all on here. [tapping at microphone] Later, okay?

KJL: You honestly think there’s no reason they stop you from going by car but then do nothing when you go by a kayak they obviously set out for you? That they’re just scared and acting bizarre?

KGM: You tell me what it is when their freaking skin connects.

KJL: What? What do you mean their skin connects ?

KGM: When I tried to drive out of Austin in my police car, over on Forty-Fifth and Airport, they huddled and drew together and as I rolled toward them the… white stuff jumped between them like webbing, started pulling them tighter. To form a wall.

KJL: Jesus.

KGM: Yeah, that’s what I said. They really didn’t want me leaving that way. I mean, I saw that [28] KGM doesn’t mention the “winged thing” he saw to Kodie. See NDC-13 for more detail about Kevin’s First Days Manifestations. and I freaked out, threw it into reverse.

[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: Cars, roads, all the old-world ways… they don’t… I never told you this, but the morning of, I was sitting up at Mount Bonnell and I saw this wave come up the lake. Just this one rolling wave and it kept on going north, under the bridge. I know it came from here. I heard that awful sound, and then that wave came upriver.

KJL: But there’s that dam there… [fingers snapping] what’s it called, uh…

KGM: I know. This is what I’m saying. I was meant to see that wave from that vantage. I knew right then that I would go back down the river just as that wave came up. That I would come to meet whatever it was that made it come up. And that I’d do it alone.

KJL: You just admitted it. Meant to see . You’re shrugging and looking down at your lap. You’re nodding.

[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KJL: That’s why they didn’t bring us together. You had presaged this.

KGM: I’d dreamed it. Last summer.

KJL: Okay, you dreamed it.

KGM: Vaguely. Whenever I did, Johnny came into my room peeing down his leg, sleepwalking and mumbling.

KJL: Kevin. They key off you. If things don’t go as you saw that it would, they can’t let it happen.

KGM: Sounds pretty woo-woo.

KJL: Whales on fire? A million kids down there. Pretty woo-woo. [sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: So, there I am, on that boulder and I’m questioning things pretty mightily because I had just smoked a bowl, you know? Her comely silhouette nods in the dark against a thousand fires, the smell of charred whale flesh and burning blubber oil all around us. The constant ocean curling in, hissing, the gulls’ laments, the boom and scrape of the dead behemoths against the pier reaching out into the dark sea.

KJL: Nice.

KGM: [laughter] I didn’t know the world was ending, per se. I just knew something had changed, it was big, and that I’d be here at the river’s end before too long. Then, I didn’t even know the Colorado came here. I just knew I’d be going the other direction that wave came from. So here I am.

KJL: Prophetic mystical you. Graveyard cyclist, paddler of swollen unknown rivers.

[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KJL: It’s like the earth was hit by something and the wave was the aftershock.

KGM: No asteroid, though.

KJL: No earthquakes, tsunamis. Killer virus. Lions tigers bears.

KGM: Just white stuff emitting from your lungs, cementing in your windpipe. Billions. Within an hour or so of dawn.

KJL: [long exhalation]

KGM: Lions tigers bears don’t make you commit sui—

KJL: Let’s not even… okay? That’s one thing I’ve thought about a lot here in my museum home behind glass. I can’t understand it. It makes me very very sad.

KGM: Okay. Me too.

[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: Hell if they weren’t adamant about me coming by river.

KJL: And you came. [sniffing]

KGM: I came for you. You’re nodding. [KJL sniffing]

KJL: I left a note. [her voice breaking up with crying]

KGM: You did.

KJL: [through crying] Love you.

KGM: Love you. [KGM sniffing]

[long pause][sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]

KGM: You cold?

KJL: A little.

KGM: Let’s go up to the nature center. You can show me your digs.

KJL: Oh, they’re impressive.

KGM: C’mon, Maggie. Bet you’re hungry huh? Speaking of—