The following is the first part of a seven-part short story/novella I'm working on. It's not finished just yet, but now that it's no longer tied up in submissions for grad school, it's safe enough to post.
I sat in a diner with my uncle once when I was a kid. I want to say I was 8, but I always say I’m 8 in these things. I’m really not sure. I just know my feet weren’t touching the floor, and my uncle said I wasn’t old enough to have any coffee. So there’s that. Anyway, I sat in this diner, and my uncle was talking to a sponsor from a twelve step program he had joined, or was about to join. And he said he didn’t know about the whole sharing thing, telling other people about his life. He hemmed and hawed, and the one thing I remember being said exactly was, when my uncle told his sponsor he didn’t know where to begin, what the sponsor said. What he said was,
“Begin at the beginning.”
And that was interesting to me then, and it’s interesting to me now. Then because I thought it sounded cool, and I didn’t get what it meant. And now because I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think there is a beginning to much of anything. Not that we can be sure about, anyway. I mean, example. In the story of how a bunch of people got blown up by a rocket in Uzbekistan, there’s a guy pushing a button. And when he pushes the button, the rocket launches, and it goes to Uzbekistan, and it hits and it blows the people up.
The problem with that beginning is, it doesn’t tell us how the guy got there, or how the button got there. Or which one we should be following back. Or how far. Anyway, I’m saying all of this because I want to talk about how I was tired, and how I got un-tired. But I’m not sure exactly how I got that way, or how, when, or even if I stopped being that way. So I’m starting where I was first sure of it.
And that’s all.
Some weeks ago, I woke up in a car lot in a car that isn’t mine to the sound of protesters. It was a surreal wakeup to be sure, but not an entirely unpleasant one. The sun was rising behind the crowd and their signs and it looked an anti-Frankenstein mob. Then someone knocked on the window and yelled at me. I opened the door; it was Bob, one of the sales managers at the dealership whose grounds I was currently trespassing on.
“Mars, what the hell are you doing in there? This is a protest.”
“Fur is murder?”
“Get out of the car.”
I obliged, but Bob didn’t stop glaring. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sleeping in the cars? This is not the reason you have keys.
“What are they protesting?”
“We’re protesting the employee discounts for regular customers. They keep—“
“Wait, you’re protesting too?”
“It was bad enough that they tried it once two years ago. But doing it every year, and continuing to extend it? It’s getting ridiculous. And corporate hasn’t done anything to extend our benefits. So where are the perks to working for GM?”
“Apart from, y’know, your salaries.” At about the ‘ya,’ I realized how stupid this was.
“Listen, you condescending little prick. You and that car wash company your slacker friends started are on thin ice as it is with the dealers’ association. Close the car door, give me the key, and go the fuck home, and I’ll think about not telling Max about this.”
Though his standing in the owner’s good graces seemed at jeopardy from the protest, I didn’t push the issue. I needed some more sleep and breakfast anyway. I took Bob’s advice and went home.
By “car wash company,” Bob meant the business my friends Cal and Jamie and I started. We detail the cars for the dealerships in the area. Cal and I came up with it about three and a half years ago, and ever since we’ve been building clientele; the dealers realized we were cheaper because we were freelancers, and not on the payroll. Also as it’s our sole focus, we do a better job than the guys they had working on it before (usually mechanic trainees).
We brought Jamie in, bought our equipment from the GM dealership I was just sleeping at, and went with it. As of today we have five of the seven car dealerships in Little Halifax. Whenever they buy a used car, or get ready to sell a test driver, we do the detail work. They prefer us to do it at night, or during lunch hours. Hence my access to keys.
***
A short bike ride later and I was home. It was Jamie’s shift, so she had the van today. We’ve only got the one vehicle and set of equipment (wet-dry vac, pressure washer, carpet shampooer, et cetera) between the three of us, so we just rotate shifts by days. Cal, Jamie, then me. We used to rotate it by jobs—admittedly more fair—but it was impossible to plan our lives around that.
I figured Cal would be asleep, so I snuck up the preposterously creaky front steps like I was breaking into my own house. I slid the key in and slowly turned it. Then I braced myself for the inevitable door squeak, and pushed it open. To my surprise, Cal was not only conscious, but there to greet me. He was still wearing his extra-long Jets t-shirt he likes to lounge around in. I didn’t see any boxers poking out below, which led me to suspect that he was bare-assed under there. I think he noticed my disgust, because he instantly tried to grab my attention.
“There is a legend,” he said, taking a step closer to me, now only a few feet away. “It’s about how humans became people.”
“Weren’t they always?” I asked, sidestepping him into the living room.
“No! They weren’t.” He followed, maintaining eye contact. “They used to just be humans. Not people. And they were alone.” He grabbed my shoulders. “Listen. This is very important.” It was clear I wasn’t getting out of this easily. I decided to hear him out.
“Okay, Cal. Finish your story.”
“It’s a legend.”
“My apologies. Finish the legend.”
“Okay Mars. So when humans were first around, they were alone. There were only a few of them, and they each lived on a mountaintop all by themselves. And someone gave each of them a secret to keep that none of the other humans knew. And they told the humans that as long as they kept their secret, they would never die.
“One day, none of them could bear it anymore. They knew there had to be other humans out there. So they all left their mountains, and they met in the middle of the world. They told each other their secrets, and became people. And they died.”
Over the course of his story, I’d managed to inch around him to the couch. I was looking around for something he might be on. “Okay Cal. Jamie gets pissed enough about you smoking pot here. You’d better not have tried acid this time—“ And then I saw it, a few dried up slices on the coffee table: peyote.
“Holy shit dude! Peyote? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Calm down, Mars! I just had a few buttons. It’ll wear off in like twelve hours or so.”
“Your parents are coming later, Cal. And who knows when Jamie’ll be back. If they come back here and catch you stoned out of your mind, you’re fucked. You’re not even on the lease.”
“Oh shit. I totally forgot about Mom and Dad coming. Dude, you have to help me get straight. Run a tub of cold water! I’m gonna make some tea and get some pants on.” He ran into the kitchen. I went into the bathroom, plugged up the tub and turned the knob all the way to cold. I remember hoping desperately that this would work; aside from its appearance I knew very little about peyote.
It had come up once in a conversation with a few people from my intro to philosophy class; someone threw the “boulder so big God can’t lift it” argument out there; someone else argued that science requires faith. Just when the group was about to die of existential boredom, someone said the following: “If you ever really want to meet God, head out southwest. Hit up an Indian rez down there and find yourself some peyote. Go out into the desert, pop a few buttons in your mouth, and have a seat. God will be with you shortly.”
Back to the bath, this was typical. The thing about us—Cal, Jamie and I—is that our lives are very predictable. We rotate shifts at work. We come home at night. We watch the History Channel. You know that little H in the bottom-right corner of the screen? It is burned into our giant tube TV. We love those damned documentaries, but I swear every one of them is the same: either exposing the bullshit behind the Da Vinci Code, or demystifying the third crusade.
And, just as predictably, about once a month, Cal smokes pot in the house, despite Jamie’s repeated freakouts about it. Lately I’ve been coming home before she catches him, just in time to help him get rid of the smell and clean up the ash and papers. Our world is stuck on repeat.
Cal came into the bathroom. “Okay, you gotta put my head under. I’m too chicken.”
“What? Dude, just stick your head under there.”
“No. Can’t. You have to force me under.”
“Fine.” He knelt down next to the tub, and I grabbed his head with both hands. “Is this even going to work?”
“It has to!”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Probably not.”
I forced him under. As I held my roommate’s head beneath the surface of the 65-degree water, I realized what really bothered me wasn’t Cal’s immaturity or Jamie’s high-strungedness. It was our cycle—the reruns. I let Cal up.
***
To my surprise, a few hours later he was coming around. “I’m really sorry you had to baby me like that. I was going to handle it myself. It was going to be cool. I just forgot about my parents.”
“I know, Cal. It’s fine.” And it was. I’d had some of the tea, and he makes good tea. “Still seeing creation myths in your brain?”
“No. They’re gone now.”
There was a knock at the door a few minutes later. “That’s them,” Cal said. “I’ll see you later, all right? Thanks again.”
“Sure. Just try and—“
“I know, man. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
He was about to turn the doorknob, but I had to know.
“Just one thing, before you go.”
“Yeah?”
“The first people. Or humans, or whatever. Who gave them the secrets, Cal?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
***
Cal and his parents went out to shop and grab dinner. They invited me along, but I didn’t go. I never know how to deal with complete sets of parents. I only had the one. My father left when I was three. My only memory of him is a VHS recording. In it, he’s giving a tour of a house. Mom said it was the first house I ever lived in, but I don’t remember it either.
I’ve watched it so many times. My father’s movements are stilted and awkward, as if he were being held at gunpoint. You never get a good look at his face, just a brief profile here or there. He has his back turned most of the time, because he’s gesturing around the rooms at things: the refrigerator; the bed; the night stand. Mom said he was camera shy.
***
Jamie got home around 7. The door was unlocked, so she just came right in. I was on the couch watching something about the French and Indian War. She tossed something on the kitchen table, and took off her jacket. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey. How was work?” My brain was on auto-pilot.
“Eh. All right. Not as much to do today. GM’s sales staff’s on strike.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Something about a problem with their employee discounts.”
I didn’t respond; auto-pilot can only handle so many topics.
“Mars?”
“Yeah?”
“What did I just say?”
“’Céloron's expedition was a turning point in the war.’”
“No, that’s what Richard Attenborough just said.”
“Oh. Shit. I’m sorry, Jamie. You know these shows suck my brains out.”
“I know.” She plopped down next to me. “Cal out with his parents?”
“Yeah, you just missed them. They said to say ‘Hi.’”
“So about the GM strike. I talked to Bob and Sandi. Bob said you’d been there this morning. That you’d been sleeping in an Astra?”
“Yeah. I went there last night to be alone and think or whatever. I fell asleep in the car. Bob woke me up.”
“You really need to cut that out. We can’t afford to piss off any more of the dealers. Cal’s been bad enough to contend with. I can’t clean up after you, too.”
“You know, a better friend than you would’ve asked why I wanted to be alone and think.”
“You wouldn’t tell me anyway. And you’re deflecting. This is serious shit, Mars.”
“Look, I’m not going to turn into Cal. I’m fine. It won’t happen again. All right?”
“All right. I just…You know, this stuff is important.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s on? Revolutionary War?”
“French and Indian.”
“Mm. Any good?”
“Eh. Same old, same old. New style of warfare. No more gentlemanly crap. Yada, yada, yada.”
“So I recorded a few new shows this week. Want to watch some animals-and-earth crap?”
“Sure.”
Remember the pigeon that got hit by a baseball? I love that pigeon. I remember the week it was on the news. I watched that pitch over and over. I saw it, and I thought: “That’s something that has probably never happened before, or will ever happen again, ever.” And I couldn’t help myself.
Because for every exploding pigeon out there, you get ten thousand goth kids, a million anti-Republican bumper stickers and fantasy freaks, and god knows how many horror movie sequels. The universe has jumped the shark.
The show began somewhere in the California redwood forests. There was brown and green and a man talking about trees older than Christ. I find comfort in ancient things. Sometimes I go to the library and look for the oldest book. I once found an English literary journal older than the U.S. I read a couple of the stories. I couldn’t tell you the name or author of either of them, but those yellowed linen pages haunt me.
Eventually the scenery changed to the African savannahs. I fell asleep about halfway through the segment. Something about a flock of a zillion locusts is just too calming to stay awake and watch. Then I had my first intrusion.
It was in color, which was strange. Skin was not skin-colored and sky was not sky-colored, but colored they were, and I never dream in color. There was this figure standing on a hill. The hill was moving. Like a wave or something. But it was dirt and grass and made of green, and not at all like water. And I knew: ‘you are sleeping, Mars Jackson. You are sleeping, but this is not a dream.’
I approached the hill, but it was hard to walk on the wave-ground. It was like a cross between a waterbed and a moonwalk. I closed in on the hill and the figure, inch by frustrating inch. Eventually I made it to the foot of the hill. A hard wave hit, and I fell. I looked up.
It was a dog, a black lab I’d gotten in fifth grade. He died just before I graduated high school. Liver cancer. It’s been five years, and I’m still broken up about it. For a moment, I just sat there holding back tears. Dogs aren’t like humans; you don’t have these mixed, complex memories of them. You just miss them.
Then he spoke. At first I couldn’t make out anything he was saying, but I recognized the voice from somewhere. I was struck by a crushing fear of nothing in particular, and soon it became clear: it was my father’s voice. I felt an overwhelming need to be obedient, but not to him. I could not speak; I listened instead. Here is what he said, as far as I can remember it:
“Mars. You’re probably wondering why I am speaking to you now, and in this way. I can’t promise it will ever be entirely clear, but it’s important that you listen to what I’m telling you. I know you think everything has already happened, that the sun always rose in the east and nothing is strange anymore. I know you are tired, but it’s time to get to work. This is the plainsong of the twenty-first century, boy, and you are here to crack the cocoon, and bring a new story into the world at last.”
kester taylor