Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

“You know,” I said, “there are plenty of other details we’ll need. Like where Cooper was born, what his childhood was like, who his parents were…that kind of thing. I mean, if this is going into the history books, we’ll need to have a complete picture.”

Russell waved at me dismissively. “Oh,” he said, “I already have quite a lot of that figured out.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“Well, you know, that could be helpful. Do you mind sharing it with me?”

“I suppose I could. I didn’t know it would be relevant.”

“Relevant? If I’m going to suggest believable scenarios, I have to know how he started out. How he got where he was, or is. Youth provides the basic structure for adult values and behavior, right? I mean, you know, that’s the idea.”

Russell paused to consider this, then quickly stood. “This is exactly why I brought you on board, Blake. This is exactly it. I have Cooper’s past written. Or at least significant episodes from it. It’s all in the Guild letters. I’m very sorry it didn’t occur to me to share those with you, but that’s where you should begin. Of course! I’ll have them sent home with you.”

Dahlia dropped the guitar, waking herself up, and looked at Russell as if she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here. The hollow instrument reverberated in the silence, carrying the rough chord of its abuse. I looked back to mark the sailboat’s progress, but it had grown too dark — the water stretched out westward, toward the far shore, and disappeared with everything in it. I tried to imagine what it would look like when the tsunami hit. Or rather, just before. The frightening but harmless first rush of water followed by the strong, silent undertow, the water pulling back from the Puget Sound, pulling out into the Pacific as if in retreat. It would be quick, but quiet, the water seeming to drain, to sink, to evaporate, but in fact gathering force, redoubling, coiling like a snake.

MY MOTHER was HOLDING a radio. She was sitting at the dining table, paperwork organized neatly into three small stacks before her, and she was holding the radio with her eyes closed. The cord trailed off the table to the floor, unplugged. It was past ten, and though I was no longer setting an alarm, I felt a little sheepish. Sheepish and irritated. Blake was still asleep, there was nothing “to do,” and in the midsummer heat wave, morning was the only truly comfortable time to be in bed. So why should I waste it being awake?

I made a big deal of stretching, then stood before the table.

“I have some things for you to read over,” my mother said. Her eyes were still closed. “When your brother gets back, he’ll need to read it over too.”

I sat down. Through the window behind her, I could see Brock packing his big white pickup. He’d taken his family out of town two weeks ago, then returned to haul out the rest of his stuff.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He left early this morning. Scavenging would be my guess.”

“Where’s Crystal and Olivia?”

Kent’s wife spent very little time here. Under the guise of helping her friends move, she’d take her daughter out first thing in the morning and often return after dinner. But I had my suspicions. Surely she didn’t have this many friends. A couple days ago I’d asked Olivia — a very serious ten-year-old — where they went all day, and she’d just stared at me. “Out.”

“I think she just drives around,” I said. “I’m serious. Where could she possibly have left to go?”

My mother opened her eyes and blinked.

“Don’t you think it’s weird?”

“It’s my living will,” she said.

I looked down at the orderly papers.

“Shall I walk you through it?” she asked.

Next door, Brock cried out, and I looked to see him dancing around, waving his right hand in the air. He brought it to his mouth.

“Is that the emergency radio?”

My mother nodded. She bent down to pick up the end of the cord and plugged it in. A small red light came on. There was a brief burst of static, then silence. We stared at it, expecting something more.

“Change the station,” I said. “I hate this song.”

My mother smiled sadly, weakly. “For some reason, it hasn’t felt real for me until now.”

“Let me see that thing.”

She passed the radio to me, but the short cord kept it in the middle of the table. I leaned forward in my seat and held it in the air, turning it over as much as I could. The size of a large brick, it was plastic, practically weightless, and colored a light, industrial brown. The speaker was hidden behind horizontal slats. On the back was a sticker that read:

Property of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency. It is unlawful to tamper with or unplug this emergency warning system .

“Relief,” said my mother. “When everyone began to leave, what I actually felt was relief. I felt lighter and lighter, almost dizzy, as though everyone had been…I don’t know, some sort of burden. It’s terrible, but that’s what I felt.”

“Well, you were responsible for their well-being for a long time.” She’d worked for Seattle Public Health until her retirement ten years earlier. “They were a burden. It’s not terrible — it’s probably fucking healthy.”

When my mother had announced she’d be staying, Kent and I hadn’t taken it seriously. We thought it would pass. We thought it was some kind of temporary insanity caused by old age, stubbornness, cancer. I’d been living in New York City and Kent had been planning to bring his family my way, and certain arrangements were already being made. But that was before everyone knew about the radios, about the decision to maintain basic services — she had inside information and knew it wasn’t as self-destructive as it sounded. That information was soon made public, but I’d still had half the plane to myself on the flight into SeaTac. By the time Blake joined me, she’d had the whole thing.

“Healthy to feel bad?”

My mother clearly hadn’t expected us to move in with her.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

Kent poked his head in the front door. “Blake, I need your help.”

I looked at my mother.

My brother’s pickup was up on the curb, back full of tar roofing shingles. He’d mentioned something about the house needing a new roof, but until now I’d taken it as a rhetorical statement. Yes, the house needed a new roof. The neighborhood needed more diversity. The average temperature of the world needed to drop ten degrees. These things, too, were no doubt on my brother’s list.

We climbed onto the back of the truck and started tossing the shingles into a pile on the neglected, overgrown front yard.

“Mom wants us to read her will,” I said.

My brother paused, then kept throwing.

“The radio came this morning,” I said.

Kent looked up. “What are you, a newsletter?”

“If you’d like to unsubscribe, please send an email to eat my shit.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. Please take me off the list?”

“The will.”

“I haven’t read it. I don’t think I’m going to.”

“Me neither.”

“It’s probably split down the middle, right?”

“What’s split?”

“You know, her estate.”

Kent shrugged.

“Do you even know how to roof a house?” I asked.

“Nope.”

We finished the job in silence. As Kent’s skillset had broadened, so too had his judgments of my character. He’d begun to look at me as a kind of broken tool. There was potential there, so long as he had the patience to fix it. But he wasn’t at all convinced that the time required would be worth it. He hadn’t said anything like this to me, but he didn’t need to. His focused determination was proof enough.