Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

JOSIE WOKE TO THUMPING from the rooms above, and knew these were the sounds of Sam and the twins eating and dressing and, Josie prayed, leaving soon. She had no clock nearby and didn’t want to know the time. She wanted only for these people to vacate the house before they woke up Paul and Ana. Sam had to work in the morning, she had said, lead a group from New Jersey, and the twins would be at school, so Josie and her kids would be left alone till the afternoon.

The front door closed with civility, then the screen door with a cannon bang, and Josie put a pillow over her head. Then the door opened again, the screen banging three, four more times. It was some kind of joke, Josie thought. But finally it was quiet, and Josie was very warm, and briefly thought she would fall asleep again, only to find, when she closed her eyes, the face of Jeremy, and his mother, and her accusatory eyes. Presented with the choice between waking up far too soon, or closing her eyes again to fight off these faces and their accusations, she threw aside the blankets and pillows and got up.

The first floor was silent and clean. Sam and her children left no mess, no sign they had eaten or in any way inhabited these rooms just moments before. In Josie’s home, dishes were not cleaned after dinner; it seemed better to leave them until the morning, as if to clear and clean them too quickly would be to prematurely erase the memory of a fine meal. Josie walked around, and, her mind awakening slowly, thought with some small pleasure that for twenty minutes or so she might be able to explore the house without being observed or interrupted. Sam had no coffee, so Josie brewed tea and walked through the kitchen, opening cabinets and drawers.

The organization was astounding. There was a cabinet for glasses, another for plates and bowls, and no interloping had occurred in any of them — no rogue tumblers or platters. There was a drawer for plastic bags. A cabinet for pots. The silverware drawer had silverware in it and nothing else — no carrot grater, no corn holders. Those outliers had their own drawer. In vain Josie looked for the drawer or bin or closet where all the uncategorizable things were held, or hidden during desperate cleanings, but found nothing. The refrigerator, though an older model, was clean and bright, and inside were plastic tubs of leftover pasta and garden burgers. The milk had been somehow conjured from hemp, and the orange juice had been squeezed and bottled in Homer. A half-eaten banana had been carefully entombed in plastic.

Josie stood in the doorway to the living room, sipped her tea, and contemplated the strangeness of being in a house at all. Josie and her children had been away from home for only a few days and already this, this large house with its sturdy walls, walls so strong pictures and mirrors could be hung from them, was some foreign and unfathomable temple to solidity. Josie found herself touching the walls, leaning against them, lavishing in their strength. There was a fireplace that appeared to get use, a tidy wall of quartered logs on one side, a smaller pyramid of kindling on the other. On the mantel were some old family photos that Josie recognized, one of Sunny and Helen and Josie and Sam, an unsurprising array of the twins’ school photos and lacrosse trophies, and a large plaque that Josie passed over quickly the first time, only to realize, when she returned to it, that it had been created to commemorate Sunny’s retirement. How did Sam have that ?

From above, she heard two small feet drop to the floor, and guessed from their nimbleness that it was Ana. In the mornings Paul was slower to re-enter the world. It would be better, Josie thought, if her children had a father like Zoe and Becca’s: heroic and faraway, rather than nearby and cowardly. It was far better and Josie tried to stifle the envy that was washing through her. How did Sam afford a place like this by giving birding tours for three months a year? It was ludicrous and not fair. Why should her fatherless children be so beautiful and strong? Why should she have arrived at effortless solutions to everything while Josie’s head was in a vise?

“Mom?” Ana called from above, having no concern for her sleeping brother.

“Down here,” she said, and Ana tromped down the stairs.

Ana was hungry, so Josie found yogurt and they ate a cup together. They found grapes and crackers and ate them. They found eggs and Josie made omelets. While eating her second helping, Ana noticed the play structure in the backyard and ran to it. Paul was still asleep, so Josie went back to the fridge, found chocolate kisses and ate six of eight. She opened the front door, hoping to find some answer to the question of her unhappiness that day, but found only the morning newspaper.

She brought it back to the kitchen and paged through it while keeping an eye on Ana, who was busy finding weak spots in the play structure. Josie knew she would break some part of it, and knew also that Sam’s kids were far too old to play on it. With Ana, Josie did calculations daily: How likely will it be that she breaks this? What will it cost in time or money to repair it? She scanned the structure, looking for the worst Ana could do, and arrived at the conclusion that it would involve the thin chains that held the swings to the thick posts above. The chains were the structure’s weakest point and Ana knew this, and was already pulling wildly on them.

Josie refilled her cup with tea and turned her attention to the local weekly newspaper. The cover stories concerned a city employee who had made away with twenty-five thousand dollars in quarters he’d pilfered, over three years, from parking meters. The paper was astonished, wounded, but Josie thought: that is some extraordinary planning and follow-through. That man had some talent. A few pages later, the Announcements page graphic featured two words in large letters: Births, accompanied by a rattle and bottle, and Police, with a picture of handcuffs. These two words and pictures were next to each other, tilted jauntily, and were above what was mostly a police blotter of extraordinary clarity.

8/16

An anonymous caller reported a semi-truck traveling down the road with a tire on fire on East End Road and Kachemak Bay Drive.

A caller reported an aggressive dog on Beluga Court.

A caller reported an injured otter on the beach. The Alaska SeaLife Center, consulted, said to let the otter have time to see if it would go back into the water.

A caller reported neighbors being loud outside her window on Ben Walters Lane.

8/17

A caller reported he found a black lab on Baycrest Hill.

A man on Svedlund Street reported being yelled at by his woman all the time. He stated he did not want officers there.

A woman turned in a found purse.

8/18

Someone reported an overturned trailer on Ocean Drive Loop.

A caller reported that her husband was assaulted while walking along the roadway.

A caller reported theft of an outboard motor on Kachemak Bay Drive.

A caller reported a man walking down the road wearing shackles.

8/19

A man came to the police counter and advised he thinks someone stole his golden retriever.

A caller reported an injured sea otter.

A woman reported a bright light filling her home.

It was all very lucid and yet Josie had many questions. Was the man in shackles somehow involved in the assault of the husband on the roadway? Was it the same otter on 8/16 and 8/19?

Paul came downstairs and something in his eyes echoed Josie’s own thoughts about this house: it was warm and solid and made Josie’s family’s existence in the Chateau seem utterly irresponsible and cheapened their humanity. Josie made him an omelet and poured the last of the hemp milk, while his eyes asked just what they were doing — in the RV, in Homer. Why couldn’t they live here, or like the people here? A loud whine cut through the day’s quiet and Josie looked out the window to find a man wearing some kind of jetpack attached to a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. A leaf blower. The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human using a leaf blower. With this machine, the man was saying, I will murder all quiet. I will destroy the aural plane. And I will do so with a machine that performs a task far less efficiently than I could with a rake.