Will Chancellor - A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

He found his knees in well-worn gravel. Grooves cut from traffic back and forth.

He pulled back the tarp at the mouth of the cave. Rock bits rained down and settled between his shoulders and the pack. A stream of light edged into the cave.

Dawn on his son, asleep.

Burr ducked in and unharnessed his pack without waking Owen. He wanted to collapse and grovel, but summoned the strength to breathe and hold himself up. He had never seen Owen with a beard. He had never seen Owen gaunt. Burr dropped at Owen’s feet.

He tugged Owen’s toe.

Owen rolled on his felt blanket, turning to face Burr and wiping away sleep with the base of his palm.

He looked at his father: backlit shoulders, a golem in grime and chalk, two streaks of mud across his brow. Owen reached out and took his father’s hand.

Burr crawled to Owen’s side. He swept back Owen’s crisp curls and looked at the bad eye, no longer covered by an eye patch. He placed a firm hand on Owen’s shoulder and then tilted his son’s chin to the light, making sure this wasn’t the inflamed mess the doctor had prepared him for. He squinted back tears.

— Thank God you’re okay.

Owen sat up and embraced his father, not quite sure what he was seeing. Head on his father’s shoulder, he caught sight of the pack in the corner and realized this was real.

Burr buried his cheek in his son’s chest, then patted Owen’s cheeks with his gravel-chalked hands.

They sat in silence, laughing and shaking their heads.

Owen hadn’t spoken in weeks. He was only able to find one word:

— Dad?

Burr unlaced his boots and dumped out a fishbowl’s worth of gravel. He filled his stainless steel canteen, handed it to Owen, and collapsed at his son’s side.

— You’re safe. We’re safe.

They sat in silence until helicopter blades snapped the sky. The rotors whistled toward them, then away.

After a minute:

— You heard the shot? I think that was meant for me.

— What? What the fuck, Dad?

— I’m in some trouble. But we’re fine, because you’re fine.

They sat together on a bench Owen had constructed from driftwood and blue jugs of sun-bleached plastic he’d collected from the black beach of Heðinsfjörður. If there was anything redeeming about the travesty of one of the most remote beaches in the world littered with ghost nets, bobs, and nurdles, it was how salt, sun, and grinding through the gyres had tumbled these plastics into colors faded richer than their machine-pressed brightness, now turquoise where once they were industrial blue, now coral where once fuel-can red. Owen’s father looked the same, weathered and blanched, but with a glow amid the scratches.

Burr looked around the cave at Owen’s tiny home.

— I don’t think I brought anyone to your cave.

— It’s more of a lean-to.

Burr’s enthusiasm dropped.

— No, no. It’s a cave.

Owen took his eye patch from the trekking pole. It was now so overstretched that it sagged across his brow.

— North Iceland was a hell of a landing spot. You know half the farmers in the country think you’re the ghost of Odin.

With the lone trekking pole, eye patch, and battered suit, complete with gaiters stuffed and bound to his shins, Burr saw how his son could be mistaken for the ghost of a pagan god.

— That’s not why they’re hunting me. That sounds like another helicopter making a pass.

They listened to a chopper buzz the cliff and then circle back to the sea.

— That’s not for you.

— Whatever you heard isn’t true.

— I am positive that you’re not a fugitive. You’re not guilty of anything, not anything that would make helicopters chase you, at least. I, on the other hand—

— That’s not in any way reassuring.

Burr wanted to impress Owen with his celebrity and daring, but he needed to comfort his son. He placed a hand on Owen’s back.

— No, you’re fine. Kurt didn’t… die. He was severely hurt, however. He cracked his T-4.

— He didn’t do it. I did it. How can I be even remotely fine?

— It’s gonna be all right.

— No, it’s not.

Burr spoke in a low, even voice:

— If they pressed charges, Kurt and Altberg would have to answer kidnapping charges of their own. There’s also international jurisdiction involved, since this whole work was a process initiated in Berlin and executed through Basel, also encompassing the entirety of your flight to Iceland, I suppose. You running away and disappearing made the piece even more valuable. The actual event will get buried and forgotten, in the name of art — or commerce. You made Kurt a very rich man.

— I don’t care about that. I doubt he does either.

— He sold one sculpture for twelve million dollars. You got nothing. In a sense, that’s the settlement. Kurt even titled it Settlement . No one is after you. They’re after me.

— What? Why?

— I burned down the Parthenon trying to find you.

— The Parthenon? In Athens?

— On the Acropolis. Athene’s high-built hill itself. I threw a Molotov cocktail at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.

— Why in the hell would you do that?

— It was the only choice. I was in Athens because that was all I had to go on. Since you’ve left I’ve, well, I’ve made quite a name for myself among activists.

— I leave for six months, and you become an anarchist?

— More or less. But we can talk about that later. You’re alive! Not only alive, doing well. You don’t know.

Burr was now whispering, exhausted, repeating “You don’t know.”

— We should rest. The only thing we need to do is keep quiet and still. You did a great job of disguising the cave.

— Rest.

Father and son woke to a dense fog misting into the cave.

— I don’t suppose you have a hot shower back there?

— Sure. Just push that rock on the left and the secret entrance opens.

— Aren’t there hot springs?

— Not in this part of Iceland. Those are all in the nameless places near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

— I hiked through it! Just last week.

— You flew into Reykjavik?

— I think it was my last international flight.

— Because of the anarchism?

— I think they’re calling it terrorism. Jean Baudrillard says they’ll throw me in Guantanamo if they find me.

— What?

— He may have been kidding. He’s a friend. We spoke together in Athens. During the Olympics. Before the riots. Well, I think the State Department is now calling them my riots. Hence Guantanamo.

— You’re not kidding.

— No.

— Jesus, Dad. Seriously?

— I’m afraid — No. That’s not true. I’m not afraid at all. I’m perfectly content to stay right here. The only trace I left was a flight record. And a few people have seen me in the north. I stopped at a croft, looking for you. But when’s the last time you saw someone in this valley? I’m guessing I could live out the rest of my life and no one would make it up here.

Owen peeked out from under the tarp to see if he could spot any more helicopters.

— I met your girlfriend in Berlin.

Owen rubbed his brow and blinked.

— Dad, I’m a little weak. You’ve got to keep things slow.

— No rush. I’ll unpack.

Burr unloaded all eighty-five liters on the floor opposite the bench. A white canister filled with at least ten gallons of water dwarfed Burr’s two aluminum water bottles. Burr washed the grit from his hands and face.

— How did you carry that jug up here?

— I nearly fell when I tried to carry it all at once. Now I add to it a few liters at a time. What do you mean, you met my girlfriend? Stevie?