Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“The where?”

“The boonies.” She said this more loudly yet, giving the word many long o ’s.

“I see,” Jens said. “And are you from there?”

“I have some people on the ground there.”

“What are they like?”

“Who?”

“The people in Broomeville.”

The agent turned to look at him. Her eyes were black, dancing. She smiled at him, showing teeth. In the eight months she’d been guarding him, Jens had not once seen the agent smile. “There shouldn’t be any Muslims in good old Broomeville,” she said, patting him on the knee. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not,” he said, and in one sense he wasn’t. But then again, in another sense, of course he was. He looked at the people sitting next to him, to see whether they’d heard what the agent had said, but they were still talking loudly, paying no attention to him at all.

“I thought that Hamburg had a very nice facility,” Carl was saying. “Much better than the facility in Düsseldorf.”

“Oh, Düsseldorf was a terrible facility.”

“ ‘Terrible’ might be overstating it,” Carl said. “But it’s true that I’ve seen better.”

“Will you write that in your report?” Helen asked.

“Only in so many words.”

They clearly hadn’t heard Jens and the agent talking. No one else seemed to be paying attention to them, either. Jens stood up slightly again, looked three rows in front of him and to the right. The woman and man had switched seats. The woman’s screen was showing a movie, but she was looking incredulously at the man’s screen, which was also now showing a movie. Jens sat back down. For the past two years, whenever he saw a Muslim in public, he was convinced they were looking for him, even though he was supposed to be dead. But he didn’t feel this way on the airplane: apparently, to be on an airplane was to be in a place where the rules and fears that guided you had been suspended. This was what he hoped it would be like to live in Broomeville, too.

“I think I’m going to like Broomeville,” Jens said to the agent.

“Yeah, you would think that,” she said. Once again, this should have sounded mocking, mean, but didn’t. Jens took a close look at her. She was still smiling at him, but it was as though she was amused not by him but by something way off in the distance; meanwhile her legs lazily wagged in and out in the manner of someone who is sort of sedated. You’re on drugs! Jens thought, and decided to ask her something that he’d wanted to ask all the agents who’d guarded him, but hadn’t had the nerve.

“What’s your name?”

Her smile got wider, although again it seemed like it was directed at something far away. “Locs,” she said.

“Locs?” Jens said. “How do you spell that?”

That seemed to do something to Locs. Her eyes focused and turned wary. “Why would you need to spell it?” she asked.

“Well,” Jens said, “is it your first or last name?”

“Yes,” Locs said. But before either of them could say anything else, the pilot came on the loudspeaker, promising a rough ride the rest of the way. The plane bucked, and the engines made that whining shifting-gear sound that ends up meaning nothing even though you think it must mean something. Locs closed her eyes and gripped her armrests even more tightly. “You’d better fasten your seat belt, Henrik,” she said to him. And those were her last words to him until they landed at JFK.

After they arrived at JFK, Jens and Locs took a taxi to the bus station, where he was to take a bus to Broomeville. Alone. Locs told him that the usual precautions weren’t necessary. She told him that in America, no one would ever look for anyone important on a bus, that in America no one who was anyone would even consider taking a bus, not even an assassin.

“And you’re going to be there when I arrive?” he asked her, yelled actually, over the tumult of the New York City bus station. Port Authority, Locs had called it, although Jens didn’t see a port visible, nor any authority: twenty feet away from them a man wearing what looked to be several layers of charred burlap sack was urinating into a corner; in the corner opposite, a man in a blue pin-striped suit and shiny brown wing tips was doing the same in, or to, his corner. But Locs wasn’t paying attention to either of them. Jens could tell that whatever sedative she’d taken for the plane trip had worn off; she was all business now, again. She was wearing sunglasses, even though they were inside. Her head was like a security camera, panning to one corner of the bus station, then panning back, not seeming to see anything, but possibly not missing anything, either.

“Am I going to be where?” she asked.

“Broomeville,” Jens said, and when he said that name, Locs’s head stuttered to a stop. She and he had said the name Broomeville several times on the airplane, and it hadn’t seemed to affect her then. But now there was an effect. “Broomeville,” Jens said again, and Locs took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were as black as black licorice, and wide with horror, but also with wonder. It was the way the corners might look if they had eyes to see the men urinating on them. Then she put her sunglasses back on and resumed her scanning.

“Don’t worry,” Locs said. “Someone’s always watching you in Broomeville.”

Suddenly a bus driver called, “All aboard!” Then he took Jens’s bags and shoved them under the bus. Jens turned to Locs. She took a step closer to him, put her left hand in his right jacket pocket, then withdrew it. “Have a good trip,” she said. Jens nodded. He got on the bus. It idled loudly. He watched Locs through the window, repeating to himself the name and address of the place where he was to be staying in Broomeville, repeating what Locs had told him after the airplane had landed at JFK.

“Remember,” she’d said. “You are Henrik Larsen. You have always been Henrik Larsen. Remember: you are no longer a cartoonist. You are a guidance counselor. Remember: do not tell anyone the truth about who you are. Remember: go to the Lumber Lodge and ask for Matthew.” And Jens (Henrik) had asked, “But won’t Matthew know who I am?” And Locs had said, “Matthew doesn’t even know who he is.”

Then the bus backed out of its parking spot. The driver hit the horn, twice. Henrik glanced quickly at the driver, then looked back to where Locs had been standing, but she was already gone.

Henrik put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. He didn’t know what they were, but he was so terrified, being alone and unguarded for the first time in two years, that it didn’t matter what they were. He took two of the pills; five minutes later, he was unconscious.

WHEN HE WOKE UP, it was four hours later. Henrik felt that pleasant, superior, invincible feeling one gets when one has just gotten up. It’s the way cats must always feel. He stretched his hands to the ceiling, then looked out the window. He was sitting in the back of the bus, in a seat next to the window on the right side of the vehicle. Outside, he saw a body of water — either a canal or a calm, wide river. There were no boats. It was as though boats had yet to reach this country. On the other side of the water were green fields, green hills. Looking outside made him feel new and hopeful inside. But inside the bus, the seat was sticky. As far as Henrik could see, there were no people outside the bus. Inside the bus, across the aisle, was a man: he was wearing a red sweatshirt with the hood pulled over the back part of his head, tucked just behind his ears, but still Henrik could see his long, curly black hair, a beard that was struggling to really be one. The man was wearing large white headphones through which Henrik could hear random squawks. The man was making squawks, too, with his mouth, while his hands played what Henrik imagined was an imaginary guitar, right hand high up against his chest, left hand out in the airspace of the seat next to him, fingers moving furiously. The seat next to him was empty. Possibly the seat next to him was always empty. Through the man’s window, out the other side of the bus, was a wall of black rock, a runtish tree here and there trying and mostly failing to take root, streams of water pouring down the face and onto the sides of the highway. Henrik preferred the view out his window, but before he could turn back to it, the man must have seen Henrik looking at him, because the man turned in his direction and said, yelled actually, “Stevie Ray’s birthday!”