10-10-09 – A Room With a View

Today I made some new friends.

Right away I can see why Ted likes the Stocktons. Corie and Ned are a tall, attractive couple and their two sons are extremely charming. Not in the disturbing, doped-up-on-Ritalin sort of way; they have energy and they’re talkative, but you can tell within a few seconds of knowing them that they’ve had a swell childhood. Mikey, the older son, is ten and has the intense, dusky look of his mother. He’s more reserved than his younger brother and informs me in a discrete, adult whisper that his little brother is still “just a baby.” Evan is four, a scrapper, with the All American looks of his dad and still learning to talk. He travels only by shoulders, straddling his dad’s neck, perched up there like a guru on a mountaintop. Evan wins me over right away when the first words out of his mouth are: “You kill zomblies too?”

“Yes, Evan,” I say, “Just like your mom and dad.”

It would be easy to underestimate Corie and Ned, and it’s tempting to write them off as a youngish yuppy couple who are prim and self-possessed on the outside while they hide a turbulent, hateful marriage. But they seem cool, legitimately cool, the kind of people you meet and think later on: I’d like to be like them someday. Corie’s the kind of woman you always dream of showing up at the class reunion. Then you get there, smug, educated, successful, only to discover that Corie is now a Pilates instructor and has only become more humble and likable and that she’s aged gracefully – in fact, she’s more beautiful now in her 30s then she ever was as a teenager. And you might want to hate her, but then you see her now, in a confusing, shattered world where it’s easy to become numb and depressed and she’s still laughing for her kids, still a rock solid mom.

Ned and I don’t hit it off immediately, but then, in a side conversation with Collin and I, he turns into someone I really, really want to hang out with. He and Corie lived in a suburb not far from Black Earth. When the undead arrived their neighborhood splintered; no one banded together, no one stayed to fight. One neighbor discovered that fire is a powerful weapon against slow, shambling enemies, but it also has a tendency to get out of control. Within an hour the entire cul-de-sac was in flames.

“I didn’t say: We’re staying, this is our house and we’re staying no matter what. Maybe I wanted to, but I knew we had to go. There wasn’t going to be anything left. I knew it, I could feel the house coming down around us and Evan was just screaming. They were coming up the yard, up the drive, everywhere… So I said: Honey, make sure the boys are with you, get them up. We’re getting out of here. I didn’t know where we would go, but out, out of there, was the best idea I’d had all morning.”

(Not that exciting, I know, but this next bit is when he earned my respect.)

“And so I lit the PT Cruiser on fire and pushed it down the driveway.”

Collin and I share a glance at this, both of us realizing then and there that Ned is going to fit in just fine around here. He and Collin then discover that they’re both ex-military. Ned was an engineer for the US Army in his twenties. This is enough to make them long lost brothers and they’re soon pounding each other on the back like real compadres. It’s my Freshman year of undergrad all over again, when even the most general, tenuous connection helped you befriend strangers. You’re lonely and unsure and scared and so any shared interest at all is enough to forge a life-long bond – “You like peas? No way! I like peas. Wanna get drunk?”

That’s Ned and Collin. Maybe they should be the new Hollianted – Nollin? Cod? Never mind.

I have a feeling this means I’ll see a lot less of Collin and more and more of Corie and the kids. So after listening to Evan’s spirited, broken recount of their journey to the arena, I join Collin and Ned for target practice. Ned hasn’t shot a gun in years, but the way he picks it back up again tells you he’s a natural. He’s a shot, a very good one, and he makes me look like a blind old porch sitter taking potshots at squirrels. Collin and I are both impressed, and this enrages Finn considerably who had, up to that point, been considered the best marksman.

I’ve barely seen Ted at all today. He’s become so busy with the nurses and patients at the med tent that I’m beginning to wonder if he’s actively avoiding me. I hope that’s not it, I miss having him around. Dapper is thrilled that Evan and Mikey have entered his life; the two boys are enamored of the mutt and I think it’s safe to say that the feeling is mutual. And with all of this, all this new stuff, I worry a little about Corie. It’s not that she’s fragile, the opposite really, but I know she’ll have a harder time fitting in. The Black Earth Wives have already begun to swarm, cunningly asking for her advice on motherly things when clearly no advice is needed. They’re trying to lure her into their little club and I’m afraid it might happen. Collin thinks they’re harmless, that it’s good they try to keep themselves busy instead of letting their losses rule their lives.

He says this to me and I can’t help but think he’s not referring to the Wives at all…

I’ve been thinking about the nature of potential, about how all of us maybe have the potential to be what Zack was. I think there is a kind of ugliness inside of me, a violence that I never knew existed, that I never had occasion to encourage. I try to push that part of me down but then I remember how often it’s saved me and saved Ted. It hurts to think that I might steal and kill, or that if I’m bitten, infected, I too will become of those horrible things. All of these things are locked away inside of me but now, one by one, they’re beginning to emerge. I wish I had the key. I wish I knew the combination to the lock.

Collin asks me again if I want to join he and Finn for a drink and this time I accept. I thought maybe he wouldn’t ask me again, but it cheers me up considerably to find that he hasn’t written me off completely. It’s pleasant. So pleasant, in fact, that there’s almost nothing to say about it. Finn is even more fiery and blasphemous when he’s drunk and Collin seems to be one of those people that’s simply immune to alcohol. He might have gotten a little rosier, but he stayed, as always, a bit of a mystery, reserved and tucked away from us. It’s something he’s very good at, I think, presenting the illusion of openness while really concealing most of his personality. I don’t think he has anything to hide, he just prefers to sit behind a veil of secrecy, silently and comfortably apart.

When Finn has passed out with his head on the table, Collin takes me to the radio booth. I see now where his broadcasts came from. He’s been using the glass box over the arena, the booth where the newscasters would call the games. It’s a bird’s eye view of the Village, and for a moment or two we sit together quietly and watch the darkened camp sleeping. Every once in a while a flashlight will bounce around the ceiling of a tent, lighting up the colored nylon like a glow worm in a green glass jar.

There’s a stack of books on the floor by the swivel chair. I pour over the titles, entranced just by the simple act of holding the titles in my hands. They were able to pool the books survivors had saved and ones they had rescued from the library.

“Should I read one?” he asks, sitting in the chair.

“Now? It’s so late.”

“Didn’t you listen late at night? Isn’t that how you found us?” he asks. He’s right, of course, and I nod, chuckling. “What’s so amusing?”

“It’s silly… No… It’s gross.”

“What is it?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” he says, helping me sort through the books. He pauses over Wise Children.

“I listened to you one night and Zack was there next to me. I thought I was going to… I don’t know, fall for him or something. God. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine being that idiotic?”

“I can, actually. I was married to an opera singer once, and I dated an Olympic speed-skater.”

“I’m not seeing the problem there.”

“Oh? Then imagine being woken up every morning at four and being knocked about the ears, berated for not being awake. I drove her to practice every morning. Trust me, it didn’t last long.”

“Still, that’s not so bad. At least she wasn’t a kleptomaniac.”

“That I know of.” He nods toward the neat stack of books in my hands and I take the seat across from him. I can’t decide. There are too many good ones. “Which one will it be?”

I’m a little drunk, so I pick Durrell’s Justine. Collin briefly questions the choice with a raised eyebrow and then takes the book from me anyway. It’s a slim volume, not a tremendously long novel, but so full of hurt and strange meanderings that I can’t help but want to hear it read aloud. I realize then how few books I’ve actually heard spoken, how I’ve only absorbed the words with my eyes and not with my whole breathing organ.

“I’m not even going to ask who rescued this one,” I murmur, settling back into the chair like a Persian cat angling for a nice, long nap.

“It was me if you must know.”

“Hedonist.”

“Mountebank.”

“Oh! Good one!”

“May I begin or would you like to trade insults for a while longer?”

“Sorry,” I say, blushing furiously for no discernible reason, “Please start.”

I see then that there’s a ripped page taped to the space above the switchboard. Collin turns a few knobs and clears his throat, scooting the chair closer to the microphone. He begins to speak, slowly and deliberately in that great, rusted old voice of his. He reads from the page.

“I don’t know how many of you are listening, or how many of you are still trying desperately to survive, but I want you to know this: All hope is not lost. You have somewhere to go, somewhere to seek. It’s late and you feel afraid, hopeless, but don’t despair,” he pauses here in the familiar shpiel and looks over at me, smiling faintly, “Why, just a few days ago a woman came to us. She was very nearly killed trying to get here but she made it. She heard us, she persevered, and I’m very grateful that she arrived in one piece. Her name is Allison. And so to honor Allison and her courage, I’ve chosen to read from a book of her choosing this evening. So dear listeners, close your eyes, let the worry drain away and listen, and remember, if you don’t like this book, it wasn’t my choice.”

I scowl and raise my fist and threaten him silently as he chuckles at my indignation. Then he clears his throat again, takes a brief moment to scan the open book in front of him. He seems nervous, as if he might not go on, as if it’s too difficult. The room around is so dark, so soft and silent that I can almost hear the deep thunder of his heart. And then, at last, he begins to read.

“The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes… I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child — Melissa’s child. I do not know why I use the word ‘escape.’ The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way…”

After only a moment I begin to feel sleepy. I’m drunk off of Collin’s “retirement” whiskey, a fancy bottle he had been saving for many years, a bottle he was hoping to open after his retirement from teaching. That day would have been many years off still, but he was sick and tired of waiting, and so he decided to share it with Finn and me. It’s probably the most expensive liquor I’ve ever had and while it burned on the way down it was a good, satisfying ache, like the first glorious sunburn of summer. I feel warm and ancient and I start to realize that Collin is watching me over the flimsy lip of the book.

Somehow the radio didn’t quite convey the loveliness of his reading voice. It distorted it, as if all the death and ugliness hanging between us in space had corroded the quality of his voice until it was a thin imitation. Even then, even with Zack next to me, it had been beautiful; but now, seeing him, being in the same room as the text and the man and the voice, it was incandescent.

Potential.

There are times when our potential grows weary of trembling in shadow and comes suddenly, violently, to the fore. Like a song forced through our pores, or water crashing over a broken dam, that potential arrives, determined, demanding our attention. Maybe there are other things in that locked vault – maybe there’s more than just violence and deception and desperation. Maybe there is radiance, love, a kind of longing that singes you inside.

P.S. – Morning of the 11th
You don’t know what it means to me that you all take the time to write, to say that you are finding a way through. That’s how I see it: A long, twisted tunnel cluttered with debris. I think right now that debris looks unmovable, but every time I read about one of you collecting rain water or turning into a family or going out to survive at sea, I feel that wall, that clutter, shaking to its foundations. Evan and Mikey are enamored of the idea of going to sea. They want to become pirates, “Scrooge of the Zomblies,” as Evan will say, and then Mikey corrects: “Scourge of the Zombies, dodo head.” They’re so young, but already they’re turning into fighters.