Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“Kind of,” Mark said.

“You need a lift?”

“I need something.”

The Winnebago man opened his passenger door. Karin pushed forward. “We’re okay. We’re good.” The man looked through them both and stared a long time before closing the door and driving away, slower than a riding mower.

“That reminds me,” Mark said, no faster than the vehicle.

She waited, but patience produced nothing. “Of what?”

“It just reminds me.” He strayed from the roadside to the center line. She tagged behind. He held out his hands, re-creating the imagined path. “I know I rolled the truck. I know they operated on me.”

“They didn’t really operate on you, Mark.”

“I had a damn metal spigot coming out of my skull.”

“That wasn’t exactly brain surgery.”

He flashed a palm to silence her. “I’ll tell you what else. That car reminded me. There was someone else out here. I wasn’t alone.”

Insects burrowed in her skin. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? In the damn truck. I wasn’t the only one in there.”

“I think you were, Mark. You know, if you can’t remember being in the truck yourself…”

“Well, you were not fucking there, either! I’m telling you what I know. Somebody was sitting there talking to me. I remember talking. I distinctly remember another voice. Maybe I picked up a hitchhiker somewhere.”

“There was no one else anywhere near your truck.”

“Then whoever it was just picked up their death bed and walked away!”

“If the investigators found any prints, they would have—”

“Judas Christ! Do you want to know what I remember or not? I’m telling you what this thing’s about. People appearing and disappearing, like that!” He snapped his finger, a vicious crack. “First they’re right there, then they’re not. In the truck, out on the road, gone. Maybe I dropped them off somewhere. Anybody can disappear on you, at any point. One day, they’re your blood relations, the next day, they’re plants.” He scrambled into his pocket and pulled out the crushed scrap of paper, his sole anchor. The gift that kept on taking. His eyes welled up, blinding him. “First they’re angels, then they’re not even animals. Guardians that won’t even admit they exist.” He threw the scrap of paper on the pavement. The crosswind raked it over the road into the ditch, where it snagged on a stand of switchgrass.

Karin cried out and tore after it as if chasing a straying baby. She ran headlong into the ditch, scraping her bare legs on a patch of prickleweed. She leaned down and snatched the scrap, sniffling. She turned to face him, triumphant. Mark stood frozen in the road, looking east. She called him, but he didn’t hear. He didn’t break his gaze, even as she came back to him.

“Something was right there.” He swung around in a half-circle. “I was coming this way, just over the rise.” He turned back east again, nodding. “Something in the road. Just here.”

Her spine ignited. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s right. Another car? Swerving over the center line. Coming at you, in your lane.”

He shook his head. “No. Not that. Like a column of white.”

“Yes. Headlights—”

“No car, damn it! A ghost, or something. Just floating up, things flying. Then gone.” His neck caved forward and his eyes widened, pulling himself from the wreck.

She guided him back to the car and got him into the passenger side. He ran the same continuous calculation, all the way back to Farview. A mile before town, he demanded the note. She almost had to stand up behind the wheel to extract it from her too-tight shorts. He read it again, nodding.

“I’m a killer,” he said, as she pulled into the Homestar’s empty driveway. “Some kind of guiding spirit in the road, and I tried to kill it.”

So the note writer’s not a churchgoer.Fine. He’s proved that much, at least. Visited all the non-illegal churches, shown the note to every believer in town, and nobody’s claimed it. Time to head out among the heathens. People don’t generally know this about Nebraska, but it’s filled with heathens. He takes Bonnie-baby with him. Old missionary trick: send out the youngest, sexiest girl you’ve got. The core cults are all over this. People are nicer to foxes. Send a fox to somebody’s front door, and a woman will assume that you can’t possibly be a serial killer, while a man will stand there melting, emptying his pockets for the charity of your choice. Even read the Book of Mormon, if she smiles at him right.

The two of them set out together, the fox and the grapes. Like they’re married or husband and wife or something, which he personally would have no problem with, if it meant getting your claws painted and your ashes hauled on a regular basis. Sometimes they even take the dog — one big happy family. Bonnie’s not crazy about the idea at first, but she gets into it. They go on a door-to-door campaign, note in hand. House-to-house fighting, to flush out the messenger hiding behind the message.

A lot of people are familiar with Mark Schluter, or say they are. He recognizes some of them, but you never can tell, with people. Maybe he went to school with them, or worked with them out at IBP or at his prior not-so-gainful employment. Small-town life: worse than having your picture up at the post office. A lot of people say they know him, although they don’t really mean know . They just mean: Oh, the dumbass we read about in the Hub who flipped his truck and had to work his way back from a vegetative condition. It’s pretty easy to read their real thoughts, just by how nice they are to him when he and Bonnie ring the bell. At least, when they sit him and Bonnie down and serve them the fizzy drinks, he can check their handwriting. Maybe they’ve left some letters out to be mailed. Maybe a shopping list stuck on the refrigerator with the little Star Wars magnet. Or they’ll make some pathetic suggestion — some number to call or book to read — and he can go, Hey, great idea. Can you write that down?

But nobody writes like the note. That handwriting died out a hundred years ago, in the Old Country. Everyone he shows it to gets all quiet, like they know that those twisting letters could only have come from beyond the grave.

The note is disintegrating, turning back to dust. He gets Duane-o to laminate it, up at the plant. Make it perpetual, for however long he needs to haul it around. But in early August, something strange starts happening. They’ve been knocking on doors for weeks. No one in Farview will admit to anything. Farview’s pretty much eliminated, checked off his list. He wants to tackle Kearney. They could stand out at the Speedway station pumps, or alongside the Sino-Mart greeter. At worst, they get thrown out of the store. But Bonnie gets weird about the whole thing. Then he picks up on it.

Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? he asks her.

Ordinary how, Marker?

She’s in a white sleeveless blouse and cut-off jeans, like way cut off, and that straight black hair of hers and that navel that just won’t quit. She really is maximally adorable, and it’s kind of a mystery that Mark was never onto that fact in any systematic way before this whole accident.

Unordinary. Extraordinary. Notice any peculiar…well, let’s just say, patterns ?

She shakes her pretty head. He wants to trust her. She’s a little too close to the Pseudo-Sister for comfort’s sake, but that woman has everyone fooled, even Barbara.

You’re saying that nobody we’ve talked to…seems at all odd to you?

The little laugh, like a music box. Odd, how?

He has to make it sound like something that won’t scare her. Nobody’s going to believe something that endangers their whole world-view. Okay, he tells her. A lot of those people who’ve been answering the doors when we knock? I’m not saying all of them. I’m just saying…some, some of them are like the same person.