Айзек Марион - The Living

“I know you did, Dad,” she says through a mouthful of apple and cheese. “And I know you still do.”

Ella Desconsado watches from upstairs as Sprout chats with her father. Ella is glad she undertook the trek from her bed to the window. She stumbled a few times, wracked by fits of coughing; she wasn’t sure she would make it, but knowing what she knew about this day, she felt a need to see what she saw. Now she turns around, takes a deep breath, and begins the return journey.

She wishes Julie were here to scold her for straining herself. When she woke up this morning filled with certainty, she almost asked the girl to stay. But Ella has never been one to make a scene over herself. She never liked big birthday parties. Her wedding was simple and intimate. Life is full of milestones and markers, transitions and rites of passage, so why should this one be any fussier than those?

She falls back into bed with a deep sigh and clicks on her radio. It takes some force to move the dial away from Fed FM, but once it’s free of the sediment, it glides easily. Most of the stations are still personal pleas, signal flares for lost loved ones— we’re alive, come find us, we’ll be waiting— but a few public programs have started to appear. Ella pauses on a man talking about agriculture. Then a woman describing a new town founded by Nearlies. Then a conversation in Spanish about blasting down the border wall. Finally she settles on her favorite show.

“Hello question-marked world, this is Huntress Tomsen with the Unknown Almanac, broadcasting today from South Cascadia, specifically Post, specifically the belly of Barbara, my studio on wheels. Before I serve delicious news and ripe updates I want to introduce you to the…to my friend, Julie. Julie Cabernet, one of Post’s new civic organizers, and also my friend.”

“Hi, Huntress. Hi, everyone.”

Ella smiles. Her lungs tighten and her breaths grows shallower. Spots appear in her vision. She allows her eyes to close and it feels like releasing a heavy weight. It’s comforting to realize she’ll never have to lift it again.

“ What is a civic organizer? ” Huntress asks. “ What do you do? Your father was an Army general and the city’s commanding officer, are you his successor? Do you lead Security and govern the city? Radio isn’t supposed to have ‘dead air’ so please say things now.”

Julie laughs. “ No, I’m not the general. It’s not like that anymore. What I do is…”

Ella feels the darkness behind her eyes deepening, from a dim field of colorful static to a softer, quieter black. She sees Julie the small child, tasting wine for the first time in that roach-infested Brooklyn apartment. She sees Julie the wounded girl without a mother, full of rage but unsure where to aim it, grasping blindly for answers. And she sees Julie the woman—this woman on the radio, this organizer, this leader, calmly explaining how a new world might work.

Ella is overwhelmed. She can’t comprehend the privilege she’s been given, to have seen the things she’s seen, known the people she’s known.

Do you see her, Lawrence? she says into that deepening darkness. Do you see our Julie?

She hears three tiny voices laughing downstairs.

Do you see all our kids?

The room fades. Her body fades. She can breathe freely now, and she takes thirsty gulps of that cool, soft nothing.

Did you ever imagine we’d have a family so big?

She sees light at the edges of the darkness. A warm orange glow like a reading lamp. She must be back in her home, because she’s surrounded by bookshelves. She must be sitting across from her husband with a mug of mint tea, both of them lost in their books yet still alert to each other’s presence. A firm awareness that they’re not alone.

“Lawrence?” Ella says without looking up.

“Yes, Ella,” part of us answers. “I’m here.”

Ella smiles.

ISTILL ENJOY WALKING. I did a lot of it when I was Dead—back and forth, up and down, around in circles—and the habit stuck with me. When I was Dead, I walked just to make sure I could, to prove to myself I was still here despite all evidence to the contrary. Now I walk because it feels good. Because the scenery fills my head with daydreams. Because I can smell the dirt and the trees. Because I’m free and the world is large and it wants to be discovered.

So I’m walking from the suburbs to the city, where I’ll meet Julie when she gets off work. I hear her on my pocket radio, wrapping up her interview with the Unknown Almanac. She has a good voice for radio, low and smoky—much better than Tomsen’s mousy squeak, I’m afraid—but I can still hear a giddy tremble beneath her calm, and it makes me smile.

“ Some people keep asking how we’re going to bring back civilization,” she says. “They want to know how we’ll have peace without an army, how we’ll have prosperity without an economy, who will build their cars and computers and who will mow their lawns. Well, I don’t have those answers. ”

I reach the crest of the hill leading down into the city, and I pause to take a picture. I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately. It’s an old film camera and I haven’t found the equipment to develop the roll, but I’ve heard rumors of someone running a lab in Portland. And even if I never develop them, I can see the shots in my head.

“ If the question is what system will solve all our problems and still give us exactly what we had before, then I don’t know what to tell you. How do we make a better world without giving up a single piece of the old one? We don’t. We can’t. That’s a fucking stupid question. ”

In the shadow of the stadium, at the bottom of a tall apartment building, steam wafts from a little shop window. I offer the woman a spoon I carved from a cedar branch and she shakes her head. I add a handful of batteries and she nods. I inhale the tangy steam while she works.

“ So I guess what I’m saying is…bear with us. Work with us. These are crazy times and no one really knows what to expect, but we have a chance to build something wonderful here, and we’re going to need everyone. So…okay. That’s it from me. Thanks, Huntress. Thanks everyone. Cabernet, out.”

A trail of crushed bones leads up to the old Mercedes, squiggling drunkenly where Julie swerved to run over a few more skulls. There have been no cleanup efforts. The battle has built its own memorial, and it will remain until time sweeps it away. I take a picture of Mercey surrounded by bones—another memorial—and hop into the driver’s seat. I stuff my camera in my bag and pull out my notebook. I have scribbled a few pages when Julie climbs in next to me, slouching into the cracked leather seat with a deep sigh.

“Idiot or lunatic?” she says.

“What?”

“Which did I sound like? Please don’t say both.”

I slip the notepad into my bag, hoping she’s too flustered to notice her name on the page. “You sounded like a leader.”

“A leader!” she laughs. “I don’t even know if we’re going to have those. But thanks.” She pecks me on the cheek and tosses me the keys. “Now will you please get me out of here? I’ve done all the leading I can do for today.”

I start the car and take off like a getaway driver. The tires squeal and so does Julie. I am not the warmed-over corpse I used to be. I can breathe, run, climb, cry, and—finally—I can drive. The only signs that I was ever less than Living are the spots on my calf and shoulder, pale and faded like old, regrettable tattoos, a record of a life I’ll remember forever so that I’ll never go near it again.