Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“God,” I said. “Are you seeing all this?”

“I am,” said Paulie. “I am.”

We watched a pair of red ants pitilessly drag a thrashing inchworm across the sand. It was like the ending of a great novel.

“I used to think I was so important,” she said.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

Then she glanced up at the cabin. “Hans,” she said, turning, “do you think he’s all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because he stopped drinking, for one. Then he took us on a vacation. He took Mom on a vacation. He looks — I don’t know — he looks better .”

—

“I AM BETTER,” Dad said as he made his way ahead of me through the woods. It was evening, and he shone a small flashlight in front of him. Pulling back a branch, he said, “I’m much better.” Then he added, “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”

He stopped to point the light. “Can you see it yet?”

“Is it the old outhouse?”

“No, it’s another bungalow. It’s small, but it’s part of the estate. That’s why I chose this place.”

It was a tiny hut. There was a padlock on the door, but he had the key in his pocket. The inside turned out to be hardly bigger than a closet and contained nothing that the padlock might have protected. Just a small, splintered table and a wooden swivel chair tilted up against it, as though someone had been holding a spot at a library. A dusty, diamond-shaped window looked out into the trees. There was only enough room for the two of us to stand close against the walls, one on each side of the table. Paulie and Mom were back at the cabin.

He flipped on the light. “I’m going to do my work out here,” he said, as though I’d asked him a question. “I’m ready to do something again.”

—

THAT EVENING, I was watching the sun from the dock. It was an orange tennis ball lowering itself back into the can.

“You were standing in this exact same place last night,” said Dad from behind me.

“Oh, hi there.”

“What do you busy yourself with out here?”

“I listen to the universe.”

An owl hooted.

“Tell me,” he said. “Is it laughing?”

“The owl? Or the universe?”

“The universe.”

“No. It’s weeping.”

“That’s correct, Hans.” From off to the side, I heard the strike of a match. “Mind a little company?”

“It’s a free country.”

The dock creaked. Over the far shore now, the sun was half a grapefruit turned down on a saucer. As soon as it dipped below the horizon, the mosquitoes arrived. Their whines circled us, the rise and fall of the pitch marking out a narrowing orbit.

“Listen to that,” Dad said, grinding the cigarette into the boards. “Christian Doppler was the first to describe it. Such a basic idea.” He lit another. “But so clever to get his name attached.”

For a while then, we were both silent, except for his long inhalations and our periodic slaps. The wind had calmed, and the cigarette smoke settled down around us. Presently, he said, “This is going to be our life here, you know. It might be good for all of us. And not just this one week. I think we’re going to stay a while.”

“A while? How long is a while?”

“I don’t know. A couple more weeks, maybe. A month. But I do know this: I’m going to do something again. Right there in that shed.” The boards creaked, and in the twilight his glowing cherry was pointing. “I’ve always worked best in the woods, Hans. I should have realized it a long time ago.”

He walked to the other end of the dock, where his body showed itself against the brightness of the house. He raised his hands to his face, as though hiding his eyes; then lowered them and looked up at the sky. After a few moments, he said, “I can feel it, Hans. I have one thing left.”

—

IN THE COOL mornings, Paulette and I explored the remnants of the trails that wandered through the woods. They usually went to water or high ground, but sometimes they ended in unexpected places — splits of sunlight or views. One path cut its way through a thicket of blackberries to a promontory of rock that faced, I realized the moment I stepped out onto it, directly east. Someone had come here to watch the sunrise.

One morning I woke early and walked out to watch it myself. I arrived before light, and as the sky took on its first paleness I swallowed my dose and sat down on a rock.

I’m not sure I can describe a Michigan sunrise on oxyamphetamines.

Mathematics still hasn’t exactly succeeded in explaining time. Newton, who observed the world, deduced that time proceeded as a constant. Einstein, who refused to observe the world, deduced that it proceeded as a variable. Others have contributed. Minkowski added his four-dimensional manifold; Poincaré his transformation, named for Lorentz. (No matter that some of these men called themselves physicists: what they were doing was mathematics.) The previous theory of time and space had revolved around a concept called the luminiferous ether, which is now spoken of, by men like my father, with a quaint smile. Yet I myself resist. Luminiferous ether is the closest I can come to describing what I saw while sitting on that slab of limestone, over a brightening Michigan lake, my neurons excited by a twice-methylated amphetamine, as the sun rose in a ball of rainbow flame from the far side of the earth.

Neither is there a satisfactory mathematical explanation, I should add, for why time shouldn’t be able to run backward.

Several hours later, alone in the woods and weary, I rose, acutely aware of my own meaninglessness among the buzzing ricochet of particle motion that was the cosmos. In the growing warmth, I stumbled back through the thicket. Trees dropped the last of their dew on my head, and nettles stabbed at my pants. Nearing the house, I came upon Dad’s shed. I was turning down toward the water when the door opened. “Hans,” he said. “Come in here.”

He’d already set himself up. On the desk lay the stacked pads, the cup of pencils, and the candies. Above him in the rafters stood the three boxes. He motioned me in. “You’re up early,” he said.

“Carpe diem.”

He laughed, glancing quickly in my direction. He sipped his coffee and set it down. Next to where he set it on the blotter was a drawing of a tree, viewed from below. “Here we are,” he said. “In nature.”

“I think you’re right.”

He looked at me again, more carefully. “Are you okay?”

“More than that.”

“You’re doing that thing with your jaw again.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Look out the window, then. What do you see?”

“The luminiferous ether.”

“The what?” He pointed through the glass. “I want you to look at the trees, Hans. That one right there, in the sun over by the clearing — the cherry. It’s a black cherry, from what I’ve read. Tell me about its leaves.”

“They’re lovely.”

“Mathematically.”

I leaned closer. “Two ellipses, intersecting.”

“Or?”

“Two crossing hyperbolae.”

“Of?”

“Contrary orientation.”

“The formulae?”

“That’s trivial.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“TF 1+ TF 2= K.” I licked my lips. “I’m not a kid anymore, Dad.”

“Indeed. And the hyperbolae?”

I considered my options. “The centers of a set of circles externally tangent to a pair of their brethren.”

“Very clever, Hans. I see that you’re still capable of thought.” He moved closer to the window. “Well, think about this then. Think about the men who discovered those relations. Think of the men who extracted those truths. From the universe, I mean. Two thousand years ago. Ptolemy. Euclid. Nicotoles. It was the undoing of kings. Now ninth graders write it on their flashcards.” He looked back at me, smiling at the word. “But at the time, these men were tearing down the foundations of their cultures. They gave their lives in pursuit.”