Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

You didn’t hardly listen to one single word that Reverend Billy had to say.

I did. The whole bit about the repopulation of Palestine and the fulfillment of prophecy and whatnot.

And you wouldn’t break bread with us.

Well, you can’t be sure where that stuff has been.

Why did you bother coming? You spent the whole time just eyeing the congregation and waving that little note around like some kind of summons.

How can he tell her? If there’s really some Guardian Angel hiding out, refusing to identify himself, claiming God led me to you , he’s probably hanging somewhere like the Upper Room.

Bonnie comes back later that afternoon with his wannabe sister, while he’s going through churches in the Kearney yellow pages. It hurts his head to look at the list, and maybe he’s bitching a bit.

Jesus H. Crimmeny! Look at them all. They’re breeding like bugs. What’s a town this size need with so many churches? We’ve got more of these denomination things than we have people.

Bonnie slips behind him and rubs his back. This could become comforting. But counterfeit Karin sits down next to him and gets up in his face.

What is it, Mark? What do you want? We can help you.

He makes himself a stone. He tells them: I can do a couple every Sunday.

I can go with you, says Bonnie, pressing his shoulders.

But…how? These aren’t your churches.

She jerks back and laughs, like he’s being funny. They aren’t yours, either, Mark!

He runs his hand down the yellow-page list. You know what I’m saying. These things are all — whatever. Baptist. Methodist, and such. You’re an Upstairs Roommate.

So? They’re not going to stop me at the door.

They might. Homo sapiens can be very territorial.

If they stop me, why wouldn’t they stop you?

Because I’m nothing. Nobody stops a nothing from slipping in anywhere. They can still get to a nobody; convert him.

Pseudo-Sister reaches out to touch him, but stops. Mark. Honey. You want to know who wrote that note?

Like she’s graduating to mind reading.

Maybe we can take an ad out in the newspaper or something.

No ads! He probably yells a bit. Freaks even himself out, a little. But it’s just that whoever wrote the note might also know what happened to his sister. And if the people who got to his sister get to the note-writer first…

This upsets the sister stand-in. For some reason, it’s more than an act. Pulling her hair, like Karin always does. Bugs the hell out of him.

What can I do, Mark? Okay, so whoever left you the note believes in God. In guardian angels. Everyone in Nebraska believes in guardian angels! I’d believe in them myself, if…

She stops, like she almost gives the game away. If what? he says. If what ?

She won’t answer, so he gets a scrap of paper and starts copying down addresses: Alpha and Omega Church of Jesus Christ. Antioch Bible …

Mark, I’m telling you. This is crazy. It’s a total crapshoot.

Not as big a crapshoot as this guardian finding me out there in the dark, clear off the road. In the middle of winter. The middle of nowhere. What are the odds of that?

Bonnie, at least, is as good as her word. She thinks she’s going to save Mark’s soul. Maybe she is. They dress up every Sunday and go churchgoing, like a courting couple out of some pioneer schoolbook. Sex afterward and he’d be in heaven. But the best he can hope for after the service is a good buffet. They go to Phil’s or the Hearth Stone, places with high old-folk turnover. It must be an old person, given the spidery scrawl. At both the churches and the restaurants, he keeps the note out in plain view. Even walks around with it, waving it under strangers’ noses. But nobody even nibbles. And they’re not faking ignorance. He’d know faking, blindfolded.

He overhears the Special Sister Agent talking to Bonnie, when they come back. She wants all the details. What’s in it for B-Baby, to be filing reports on him? Distinctly possible that she’s his leash, that she’s helping set up the whole charade. But he can’t confront her. Not just yet.

The Woman Who Would Be Karin keeps coming by, pretty much every day. She brings him groceries, and doesn’t want cash for them. All very suspicious, but the food is mostly sealed, and by and large it tastes pretty great. Sometimes she cooks for him. Go figure. But it seems like a sweet deal, at least until he learns what it’s going to cost him.

She corners him one afternoon when he’s home alone, digging a new post hole for his mailbox. He’s gotten nothing but junk since leaving Dead Man’s Glands. They put the mailbox in the wrong place. Throws the mailman off. His sister might have been writing him this whole time, and no one would know.

It’s not where it was, before, he tells her.

She pretends to be horrified. Where was it before?

Hard to say, exactly. You can’t measure against anything. What can you use as a baseline? Everything’s a few feet off.

He looks out toward the few scattered trees fringing River Run Estates. Beyond the stand of houses, a single, green cornfield ripples out to the horizon. For a minute, the ground liquefies, like he and his real sister used to make it do when they were kids, spinning like tops, then slamming to a standstill. He looks at Karin’s substitute; she, too, looks wobbly.

Mark, we need to talk. About the note.

His whole body surges up out of the post hole. You know something?

I…wish I did. Now, Mark. Mark! Stop it. Listen to me. If whoever wrote this note hasn’t gotten in touch by now, it’s because they want to be…selfless. Nameless. They don’t want to be a hero or take credit. They don’t want you to know who they are. They just want you to live your life.

He spreads the post hole digger and drives it into the parched dirt. Then what fucking good is leaving a note? Why bother leaving one at all?

They wanted you to feel protected. Connected.

Connected? Connected to what? He slams the shovel to the ground and kicks it, his arms twisting like bull snakes. Mr. Invisible Nameless Angel? That’s supposed to make me feel safe? Connected?

Why do you need to—?

He almost jabs her. Whoever wrote this note saved my life. If I could find him, then I might find out what…

It gets to him: stupid, stupid. But he doesn’t even care if she sees him kind of cry. She joins in. Whatever. Monkey see.

I know. I know what you’re feeling, she says. And it’s almost like she does. She says: Do you really need to put a face to this note? Would it matter if you found out that they…? Mark, stop. No! Just tell me what you’re thinking. Do you just want to thank them? Do you want…I don’t know. Are you thinking you might get to know them? Make friends?

It’s like she’s just materialized out of nowhere. Suddenly trying to be the person she was just imitating.

I don’t give a good flying leap who the guy really is. He could be a ninety-year-old Lithuanian girl-groper.

So why are you trying so hard to find him?

Mark Schluter grabs his head in both hands and rattles it. Guardian devils, everywhere. His muddy work boots kick at the earth, trying to destroy the fresh hole.

Read the note. Just read the goddamn note. He squeezes two fingers into the pocket of his overalls and pulls out the folded-up scrap. It’s always with him now, next to his body. She doesn’t take the paper. She won’t touch it.

So you could live, he recites, holding the sheet up in her face. And bring back someone else.

She sits down in the dirt next to him, an inch away. Weird calm comes over the both of them.

Bring back someone? she asks. Like she might want to, herself.

He yanks forward, out of the hole. She falls back, her arms up to block him. But all he wants is to take her face between his hands.