The Lightest Object in the Universe
(a novel-in-progress)
I started writing a novel (my first) in 2005 after trying for several years to craft essays that expressed my confusion about living in the “world’s superpower,” my frustrations about U.S. foreign policy, and the ever-present contradictions of my American privilege in the world. I turned to fiction, wondering what would happen if I gave some of these struggles to fictional characters and watched how they fared.
NOVEL SYNOPSIS:
In the wake of an unprecedented economic collapse and nationwide systems failure, historian and high school principal Carson Waller finds himself jobless and adrift in a large, east-coast city. He spends most days contemplating the dramatic history-in-the-making from the ever-shrinking security of his apartment. On the other side of the country, Beatrix Banks, an anti-globalization activist, is similarly grounded, her global cause now radically circumscribed and somewhat circumspect. Grave personal loss initially brought them together, but it is the universal loss/devastation now surrounding them that sets in motion their separate journeys toward each other.
Amidst escalating violence, Carson leaves his perch to begin chronicling history as it happens, walking west along the railroads, towards California. He encounters an altered America, brought to life by a variety of characters and their stories of former lives and current survival. Meanwhile, Beatrix tends to the immediate issues of shelter, water, and food, slowly building community in a neighborhood she previously barely knew. In between them lies The Center, a mysterious destination advertised in a stream of broadcasts by an evangelical Christian cult promising “ascension” to those who make pilgrimages to the country’s geographic middle. As Carson continues westward, unable to shake Beatrix from his mind, Beatrix and her neighbors work to ensure their own survival and present an alternative to the Ascensionists’ irresistible, unfulfillable promises.
Excerpt, Chapter 9
Beatrix stands on the corner of Halcyon and 23rd Street waiting for Penny, one of the Velocipede riders. She holds half a dozen letters in her hand. She does not fully believe they will get there, as this service seems too good to be true. But, whatever. Might as well try. Otherwise the letters just keep stacking up on the table.
Beatrix is bothered by her own lack of faith. Once upon a time she would have sent the letters readily, with full confidence that an anarchic network of bicycle messengers could do the job, or at least with more indie style than the lumbering behemoth of the postal service. But she does not feel like herself lately. There is too much fear in the house, too much sickness. And now, to complicate things, she’s added a new feeling to her emotional stew. It’s not guilt exactly. She does not know what to name it. “Peach pit,” is the closest thing. The little pit that forms in her chest when she thinks about Gory. There is a flutter-thrill in her stomach, the memory of being touched. Then the peach pit surfaces—a little knot of confusion and regret.
She has replayed the scene of their sex dozens of times in her head. Once she could sleep with a man and have it not be anything more than two people enjoying each other in a moment. But now it’s like she’s tripping on her own insides. She could confess to Frances. Frances would be light about it. Frances would laugh. Frances would probably approve. “Fun! Go Beatrix. You’re having fun!”
Is she? Nothing feels that fun lately. Besides, she’s angry at Frances. She flips through the letters. She could run it by Carson, see what he thought about her sleeping with an ex-military man, 10 years her senior, who had given her a gun. He’d have an opinion.
She remembers Carson’s hands, placing her own between them. She remembers how he held her hair, all of it, it seemed. She remembers how for the first time in many years she had not woken in the morning with a sense of wanting to go somewhere else.
A bell dings and there is Penny, squeaking her brakes and coasting right up to the curb. “Hey there,” she says, reaching over to hug Beatrix. “Good to see you.”
“You look happy. It’s going well?”
Penny nods vigorously. “It’s awesome. Riding my ass off.”
“And the pay?”
“Good enough,” she says. “Depends on the week. Generally the money gets pooled and divvied up. It’s organized regionally.”
“Privately?”
“Like a non-profit, but not completely. The postage money pays for the riders and bike repairs. More like a cooperative. No one’s sucking profit off the top. It’s cool.”
Beatrix hands Penny six letters and 60 dollars. “Here goes nothing.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing. No guarantees. Since it’s regional, we can’t really know if all the Cyclicals are functional.”
“Cyclicals?”
“That’s what each regional operation is called. Think of it like orbiting planets in the solar system, except every now and again the planets touch. And presto, your letters get passed from one rider to the next. It’s that simple.”
“Like the universe.”
“Yes. Just like that.” Penny slides the letters into her bag. “I’ll do my orbit.”
They hug again, and Beatrix thanks her. But as Penny rides away, the peach pit forms again. She should be feeling elated, having just mailed the letters. But all she feels is lonely.
***
When he is walking, he often forgets that there was ever anything else but walking. As if he has been walking his entire life and will continue to walk forever and that all there is to life is walking. The placing of one foot in front of the other, the passing over of ground with its dirt and rocks and cement and small miraculous greens, and the steady glide of the world on either side.
Never mind the blisters on his feet, never mind the pain in his left shoulder, never mind that he never knows where he will end up on any given day. He does not know who he will meet, how he will find food and water, or where he will wake. He walks this track of uncertainty.
Sometimes when he walks he recalls June’s loveliness and notices that he misses her still, but that the missing now is not the same as it was even a year ago. He marvels at the slow, eventual evaporation of grief.
And then there are the moments of stillness. When he stops to rest in the middle of the path, or alongside it on a makeshift bench where someone has sat before him, or fashions a new from whatever there is at hand—a pile of railroad ties, a cement block, a clearing beneath a tree.
The rest stops can be dangerous. Not just because of what might pounce on him—the freebooters, someone starving, some cop who’s lost his beat. But also because of what can well up from inside—doubt and all its associated terrors. Is he really walking to Beatrix? Has he completely lost my mind?
When he is lucky, sleep comes and dissolves the doubts, at least temporarily. He wakes to walk. You find what you are looking for, isn’t that what they say? Even if you find it slowly, at a snail’s pace, step by step.
One day, he hears a strange, but familiar sound, like the whisper of someone from his past, someone whose voice he can no longer place. It trickles into his ear, softly at first then rising into a full, motorized growl. He turns to find a faded yellow Toyota pick-up truck, circa 1983, advancing toward him. He’d had the same model in red.
The driver sticks his head out the window, shouts, “The brakes don’t work so good! I suggest you move!”
The truck coasts to a stop a few hundred feet away. The driver wears a black patch over his left eye. He is not a young man, but thin and fit and strong. His hair is long and gray and dirty. “Where you headed?”
“West.”
“Well, you can ride along as far as I get, if you like.”
Carson has been waiting thousands of miles for this. He throws his pack in the back, where there are a dozen or more five-gallon containers filled with something he guesses is biofuel.
The driver introduces himself as “Flex.” “Born Felix, but everyone calls me Flex. Been on the road for decades. Sent off by a lady, you could say. Katrina, that is. August 28, 2005. A mighty gal, that one. She kissed me a little too hard, knocked me off my feet. Never thought I would leave that town. Glad I did though. Can’t even think of that place without remembering someone in tears.”
Carson nods. The oil spill. The birds—flightless, coated, grounded—still sink his heart.
“Been living on the road ever since,” Flex says.
Inside the vehicle, the relationship between time and distance shrinks. The mountains speed toward them. The sky expands.
“Listen to how she purrs,” Flex says, running his hand along the dashboard.
“Biofuel?” Carson asks.
Flex gestures behind him. “Nope. Used cooking oil. Dunkin Donuts was a windfall. I’m just going until I can’t go anymore. That’s my plan. And you? Staying off the highway—that’s your secret, right?”
Carson nods. “Railroads.”
“Even smarter! Say, you’re not a preacher, are you? You kinda look like a preacher.”
Carson laughs. “A preacher. No. Rhymes with preacher, though.”
“Leacher? Ha. Get it? Naah. Bleacher, creature? Teacher. You’re a teacher!”
“Yup.”
“Aaaah. What do you teach?”
“History.”
Flex nods vigorously. “Right, right, right. Ain’t nothing like the past. ‘You have to know the past to understand the present.’ That sort of thing?”
“That sort of thing.”
They drive through dry desert now. The mountain slopes have receded and a big sky has opened up. Pale green and gray sage and black brush reach out across the flats. Carson notices how in a moving car, plants in the distance appear to move slowly or even stand still, while those immediately adjacent to the road whiz by quickly.
“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past,” Flex says. “I didn’t say that. I mean, I said it just now, but it’s not me. It’s Faulkner.”
“Oh,” Carson says, impressed. Then, “I don’t know. The past seems pretty past to me.”
“Maybe. But not dead. Tell me I’m not the only one who hears it, ringing in my brain loud enough to deafen me at least once every day. What comes through the loudest for you?”
Carson thinks for a moment, amused by his new companion. “Lots of equal noise, I guess. Different days it’s different things—my students, old songs, my former morning routine, people I used to know. The train. The train comes through a lot. Some days I think it’s actually coming. I’ll even hear it.”
“Ha. Like a cell phone, right? A phantom ring!”
Carson looks out at the desert moonscape, the soft colors—blue, beige, faded green. “Sometimes I hear the future more loudly than the past, I think,”
“That would be the horizon,” Flex says. “Every traveler’s song—such a pretty tune.”
Carson smiles. “Damn pretty.”
Flex looks over at Carson. “Oh shit. Say it isn’t so. Don’t tell me you’re pulling for some woman out there. Are you? Is that what you’re doing?”
Carson shrugs and laughs. “She’s almost mythical now. It’s like she takes up the whole sky in front of me sometimes.”
“Write that down. She’ll want to hear that. What’d you say your name was?”
“Carson.”
“Well, Carson, I’ll get you as close to that myth as I can.” He turns to Carson, lifts the eyebrow of his good eye, then slaps the steering wheel. “Yeee-haw!”