Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

Josie clapped and hollered. He was wonderful. The wine was wonderful. What a good world this was, that there was magic like this on ships like this. What an impressive species they were, humans, who could build a ship like this, who could do magic like this, who could clap listlessly even for the magician from Luxembourg. These fucking assholes, Josie thought, trying to singlehandedly make up for their sickening lack of enthusiasm. Why come out to a magic show if you don’t want to be entertained? Clap, you criminals!! She hated these people. Even Charlie wasn’t clapping enough. She leaned over to him. “Not good enough for you?” she asked, but he didn’t hear.

Now Luxembourg was gone and a man was making his way onto the stage. He was rumpled, his hair reaching upward seven different ways, and he was easily twenty years older than the others. Another man. Where were the women? Were women not capable of magic? Josie tried to conjure any female magician she’d ever seen or heard of and couldn’t. My god, she thought! How can that be? Scandal! Injustice! What about Lady Magic? Lady Magic, yes! Why do we allow all these men, all these silken heavy-breathing men, and now this one, this rumpled one — he made no effort at all to be pretty like the others. He had no lovely assistant, and, it soon became clear, he didn’t intend to do any magic. Goddamn you, Josie thought, guessing all the magic was over. And did she have money for another drink? She had about twenty-five dollars, she guessed. Maybe the drinks were cheaper onboard than on Alaskan soil. She had to count on it. She looked for the waitress. Where was the waitress?

There was only the rumpled man standing at the edge of the stage. Now he was telling the audience that he’d worked for some time at a post office, and had memorized most zip codes.

Holy crap, Josie thought. He’ll get murdered. What kind of world is this, she thought, when a man from the post office follows Luxembourgian magic and why were they, she and her kids, on this ship in the first place? With incredible clarity she knew, then, that the answer to her life was that at every opportunity, she made precisely the wrong choice. She was a dentist but did not want to be a dentist. What could she do now? She was sure, at that moment, that she was meant to be a tugboat captain. My god, she thought, my god. At forty she finally knew! She would lead the ships to safety. That’s why she’d come to Seward! There had to be a tugboat school in town. It all made sense. She could do that, and her days would be varied but always heroic. She looked at her children, and saw that Paul was now leaning against Charlie, asleep. Her son was asleep against this strange old man, and they were in Seward, Alaska. For the first time she realized how Seward sounded like sewer, and thought this an unfortunate thing, given Seward as a place was very dramatic, and very clean, and she thought it very beautiful, maybe the most beautiful place she’d ever been. It was here she would stay, and train to become a tugboat captain at the school that she would find tomorrow. All was aligned, all was right. And now, looking at her son sleeping against this man, this old man who was leaning forward, listening to the post office man talk about the post office, she felt her eyes welling up. She took a final sip from her second pinot and wondered if she’d ever been happier. No, never. Impossible. This old man had found them, and it could not be coincidence. This town was now their home, the site of this ordained and holy reunion, and all the people around them were congregants, all of them exalted and now part of her life, her new life, the life she was meant for. Tugboat captain. Oh yes, it had all been worth it. She sat back, knowing she’d arrived at her destiny.

Onstage, the post office man was telling the audience that for anyone who gave him a postal code, he could tell them what town they were from.

Josie thought this was some sort of a comedy bit, that he was kidding about the postal job, but immediately someone stood up and yelled “83303!”

“Twin Falls, Idaho,” he said. “Unincorporated part of town.”

The crowd erupted. The cheers were deafening. None of the magicians had elicited this kind of enthusiasm, nothing close. Now ten people were standing up, yelling their zip codes.

Josie, despairing for the waitress who had not returned, downed half a glass of water, and that act, the dilution of the holy wine within her, took her away from the golden light of grace she’d felt moments before, and now she was sober or something like it. Tugboat captain? Some voice was now speaking to her. What kind of imbecile are you? She didn’t like this new voice. This was the voice that had told her to become a dentist, who told her to have children with that man, the loose-boweled man, the voice who every month told her to pay her water bill. She was being pulled back from the light, like an almost-angel now being led back to the mundanity of earthly existence. The light was shrinking to a pinhole and the world around her was darkening to an everywhere burgundy. She was back inside the liver-colored room and a man was talking about postal codes.

“Okay, you now,” the postal man said, and pointed to a white-haired woman in a fleece vest.

“62914,” she squealed.

“Cairo, Illinois,” he said, explaining that though it was spelled like the city in Egypt, it was pronounced “kay-ro,” the Illinois way. “Nice town,” he said.

The audience screamed, hooted. It was a travesty. Now Paul was awake, groggy and wondering what all the noise was about. Josie couldn’t bear it. The noise was not about magic and tugboats: it was about zip codes.

“33950!” someone yelled.

“Punta Gorda, Florida,” the man said.

The crowd roared again. Ana looked around, unable to figure out what was happening. What was happening? Postal codes were making these people lose their minds. They all wanted to have their town named by the rumpled man with the microphone. They yelled their five digits and he guessed Shoshone, Idaho, New Paltz, New York, and Santa Ana, California. It was a melee. Josie feared people would storm the stage to rip his clothes off. Go back to sleep, Paul, Josie wanted to say. She wanted to flee, everything was wrong about all this. But she couldn’t leave because now Charlie was standing up.

“63005!” he yelled.

The spotlight found him and he repeated the numbers. “63005!”

“Chesterfield, Missouri,” the postal man said.

Charlie’s mouth dropped open. The spotlight remained on him for a few seconds, and Charlie’s mouth stayed open, a black cave in the white light. Finally the light moved on, he was in darkness again — as if a spirit had held him aloft and suddenly let go, he sat down.

“Hear that?” he said to Paul. He turned to Josie and Ana, his eyes wet and his hands trembling. “Hear that? That man knows where I come from.”

—

Afterward, on the gangplank, Charlie offered to walk them back to the Chateau. Josie declined, and kissed his cheek.

“Give Charlie a hug and say thanks,” she told her kids.

Ana rushed in and hugged Charlie’s legs. He put his hand on her back, his fingers spread like the ancient roots of a tiny tree. Paul moved closer but stopped, hoping, it seemed, that Charlie would fill the distance between them. Now Charlie was on one knee and his hands were outstretched. Paul shuffled toward him and Charlie brought him in, and Paul’s head dropped onto Charlie’s shoulder with something like relief.

“Let’s write letters,” Charlie said into Paul’s hair.

Paul nodded, and pulled back, as if to see if Charlie was serious. Josie knew Paul would obsess about these letters, and she was terrified by the possibility that she would have to offer their address to this man.