The Fugitives Read online

  IF IT MAKES a kind of heavily literary sense to abandon the shallow omniscience of the Internet and follow a meandering but inevitable line to that deep archive of the passé, the public library, what first guided me inside the library’s double-hung panic-barred security doors and through its sophisticated metal-detection equipment (What did I expect? The smells of stamp-pad ink and poster paint? Tall arched windows admitting dusty shafts of sunlight?) was no more than routine infirmity, the slightly enlarged prostate that is time’s gift to men my age, and after finding the john I browsed around, as a sort of courtesy to the spirit of home-cooked civic mindedness that provided public restrooms as well as books. The place has made all the usual concessions to the chain-store merchandising sensibility—ranks of bestsellers given pride of place, stacks of “media,” popular periodicals whose covers tracked the separations and reunions of the same two or three celebrity couples, an extensive section given over to Local Interest—but it’s still unmistakably a library (it’s amazing how many contemporary pursuits are completely shut out by the prohibition of noise). It was acceptable: it was real. It was, as I’ve said, a good mid-point place to stop during these morning walks, usually to piss, but sometimes to leaf through the pages of the latest Big Book to touch down here, stripped of the fabulous shimmer lent by its having been the cynosure of all nine hundred people in New York paid to be attentive to these things; the author’s gaze in the photo on the flap looking out not at those commoners arrayed around the scarred tables here in the heartland but at steeples of light in distant cities, the xenon flash of distinction.

  I take a certain satisfaction in noting that my own books are not part of the local collection.

  EVERYTHING IS “SMART” now. The library cataloging system is smart, classification and indexing information entered into a uniform online database. People wept and lamented the loss of the old cards, then forgot them. They pretty much forget everything they weep over and lament. Clop-clop of hooves on the street. The humble art of carrying a block of ice up the stairs, pincered by a pair of tongs. Rotary phones and 33 rpm records. Stamp-pad ink and poster paint.

  The books themselves are smart; terminologically accurate expositions of systems, grouped data, specialized knowledge, inhabited by ghosts chanting the facts. And that’s just the fiction. Who even knows why there are still books? Odd, strange, falseheartedly mandarin; amazing that someone who would never dream of adding something up on an abacus or even of sending a letter by U.S. Mail demands his yearly hardcover, his vacation page-turner. But they’re here, the books, and so are the people who do read them. And it makes sense, too, that it was in the library that an attempt would be made to reach back further, to the oral tradition (I literally thought these words, “the oral tradition”). A museum for this, too: why not? The old foxed reference texts, the framed display of typewritten and hand-annotated cards from the original library (a Victorian brick building now boarded up and awaiting renovation), and John Salteau.

  SOMETIMES I WONDER if it’s primarily envy that draws me to Salteau. It seems, not easy, but natural, what he has; a tap drawing from deep in the lizard brain. He speaks and the encrustations upon the world fall away as he brings a more essential one into being. It’s like watching the glass from which you are about to drink being blown, annealed, cooled; emerging brimming and beaded with sweat in some suggestive yet wholly new shape. I used to ascribe the same natural facility to painters and musicians, until I got to know some of them and realized that like me they’d been blessed with the dubious and vindictive gift of making it look easy. Going through an old manuscript one day I came across a (typical) page that looked like a knife fight had happened on it. Scissored passages, blood-red interlinear and marginal notes and corrections, a whole paragraph eliminated with slashing violence, six different page numbers in the upper right corner. In the finished book it nestled perfectly in context; read like a series of offhand remarks I’d thrown away with my feet up on the coffee table, a drink in my hand. Who would see the struggle? Who could? Some scholar-fanatic, a fawning hagiographer, an archivist accustomed to assessing things solely in terms of linear feet? Who could recognize that the provisional success had only meant moving on to the next failure? But Salteau never fails. Never hesitates. Never stammers when called upon to improvise, or to respond to the budding hecklers in his audiences. Salteau’s powers of invention, working within the constraints of polished legend, are constant.

  Think of the story as a basic unit. Stand at the counter in the kitchen in the morning, shoveling in yogurt and bran, the old story of trying to live forever, why do you eat bran, well, I want to live. That’s one story. Or you say, dropping the spoon into the bowl to finger your jawline, I cut myself shaving, and the Mrs. says, with, I’ll grant you, an extraordinary level of awareness, wasn’t that a new blade? And the story wends its way through all the satisfying twists and false conclusions: the way it used to be, how I learned to shave, the corporate misfeasance of Gillette, ending Zen-like on the decision to grow a beard. This is how everyone lives; the traffic and lines, the rude clerks and precocious children, the price hikes and small happy surprises; times without number, continuous, and one day we look down to see our hands doing whatever it is they happen to be doing—chopping vegetables, typing, jerking off—and we finally recognize the truncation in that perpetual view, the necessity of a mind’s eye in order to see all of ourselves at all; we realize that we have been stuck staring at those hands for as long as our lives, our selves accruing and forming from the imperceptible blending of each moment into the indistinguishable modules of a whole, the unending stream narrated entirely by a hero without a face; those hands the only unvarying things, from delivery room to deathbed, to mark the fact that what we witness is ours and not someone else’s. How can we live if we don’t make discrete chunks of that continuum? This basic unit, the proffered parcel of our days and nights alone: anecdote and memory; association and reminiscence; conjecture, desire, and regret; the bones of the lunchtime saga over a glass of wine.

  4

  MONDAY afternoon at four o’clock it began to snow. It was still snowing at midnight when I turned off the TV and climbed the stairs to my bedroom. It was snowing when I opened my eyes at seven thirty and went into the bathroom, the tile icy underfoot, to shower. Outside, the ragged sound of a snowplow scraping a path down the center of the street came through loud and clear. I listened to Interlochen Public Radio while I made coffee and the snow came down. Thick, abundant, lake effect snow, deep drifts wind-sculpted, joining with the mounded shapes of buried cars, mailboxes, fire hydrants, picket fences, to form spectacularly suggestive feats of architecture, Gehry igloos. I began to consider the task of dressing. It wasn’t especially cold, I had boots and a down parka, but the storm seemed to call for ceremony. The muffled streets were deserted, the only sign of humankind the fresh channel that the plow had scored in the roadway snow. I was excited about walking. Last-man-on-earth stuff, a fantasy since I was a kid. How would I survive while managing to retain every modern convenience? was the question, then as now. I imagined generators, water tanks with raincatchers, automatic weapons.

  A vehicle was out of the question. I have a new truck, a Japanese make that’s regarded with faint suspicion by my more elderly neighbors—native Michiganders, after all—although the younger residents have plenty of German sedans and Swedish station wagons among them, an armada of rebuke against the retirees up from Kalamazoo and Ypsilanti, Flint and Hamtramck. Whatever its sins against nativism, my buried truck was out, both as a matter of practicality and in spirit. I’d have a walk-in freezer. A pantry the size of a restaurant’s. A Kalashnikov (what would the Boyds say?). I dressed decorously: long underwear, woolen socks, BDU pants, a T-shirt, a turtleneck, a fleece pullover. My boots, glistening with synthetic mink oil, gloves, a cashmere watch cap, and over everything my down parka with its faux-fur-trimmed hood, “designed to withstand elements mirroring those found at the South Pole,” in the words of the absurdly t
hick User’s Manual that had come with it. As I fondled the coat admiringly, even affectionately, I found myself standing in the doorway of the rear bedroom I use as a study, gazing with annoyance at my desk my chair my printer my computer. All calling to me with nothing to say: story of my life. Saying something was always up to me. I had answered the call unfailingly since I was twenty-five years old; followed every line to its conclusion. There may have been people waiting—so Dylan told me, so Monte told me—but it wasn’t their call that I’d responded to, ever. Last man on earth: would he still write novels? was the question. I wondered if it was a kind of knowledge I was acquiring, this ability to ignore the call. Or maybe it was just Susannah I’d acquired.

  TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS. Eleven a.m. I set out through the snow in my polar-survivor outfit. SUVs and pickups trundled by occasionally. Down Locust Street I heard the whine of a snowblower, saw a man astride it, meticulously reinscribing the shape of the sidewalk before a house, not one superfluous inch cleared on either side: his neighbors were on their own. The man had a fixed look of concentration, as if he had spent his life either operating machinery or dreaming of operating machinery. My kids wear that look when they’re deep in the landscape of invented games. The goal is total immersion. A world is at stake. And what look does a novelist wear when writing?

  I trudged along, my boots disappearing into snow that was up to my knees. I kept my arms raised a little, held out at my sides, for balance; lifted my feet from the holes they’d just made and put them down again, making new holes, each step a complicated procedure. I worried, pleasurably, about nothing but the next step. The act of walking in the deep snow became the purest thing in life. If I chose I could turn around and see all the steps I’d taken, the accumulation of holes, a line of them stretching back to my porch, and they’d add up to nothing if I didn’t take the next step successfully. I knew that there was an objective at the end, but it was each tricky individual step that needed to be attended to, and that was what pleased me. Don’t fall. Don’t lose a shoe. But near the next corner I misjudged the invisible border separating the sidewalk from the road, tripped, and crumpled, harmlessly, onto my side. The event seemed to take place in slow motion, and when it was over I lay there, on the deserted street, warm and comfortable except for a vague creeping sense of ridiculousness, lying there in the gutter like a drunk. I got up then and brushed the snow off my clothes, looking at the small white crater I’d made. I felt myself beginning to think again.

  I arrived at the library half-expecting to find it locked and dark, an apologetic handwritten sign on the door, but the parking lot was plowed, salted, and half-filled with vehicles. Two boys climbed the snow piled high at the margins of the lot, finding tremendous amusement in picking up enormous chunks of the stuff and throwing it at each other, grinding it into each other’s jacket and hat, kicking it in arcing eruptions that brightly veiled the air between them and then spattered like sleet upon hitting the ground. A woman stood in the center of the lot talking on a cell phone, the device mashed up against her face, an index finger plugging her other ear. She twisted and bobbed, a curious little dance, I thought, until I realized that she was trying to hang on to clear reception. It was a problem here, I’d discovered, not unhappily. The woman moved toward the edge of the lot where the boys were, hunching both shoulders now, her hands still pressed to the sides of her head. When the ice and snow from the boys’ play skittered close to her feet she turned and jogged quickly away: a mistake. The chunky wooden heels of her boots had zero traction even on the salted asphalt and her legs shot out from under her. She landed hard on her side, and remained there, a look of perplexity on her face, as if she were trying to interpret the foreign language of pain. Her phone lay some feet away.

  The boys—I’d thought one or both of them might be hers—ignored her. I stood frozen and indecisive, then lurched forward, a gloved hand out.

  “I’m OK.” Leaning back on her elbows, she planted both feet on the ground and hoisted herself up. I bent to pick up the phone and held it out to her. She was about five-seven in those treacherous heels, shoulder-length very dark brown hair, an attractive, somewhat flat face, high cheekbones, a considerable underbite, almond-shaped dark brown eyes, and a dark complexion. Definitely Asian or part Asian, I figured. Clothes that were, in the present locale, jarringly stylish.

  “You sure?”

  “Oh, yeah. My butt absorbed most of the impact.” She took the phone. “Thanks. Shoot. All morning I’ve been looking for a signal in this freaking place.”

  “Not from around these parts? Hear tell there’s a pay phone at the dry goods store.”

  “No offense.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t touting the local cell reception. I’m not the chamber of commerce. This country needs more backwaters as far as I’m concerned. Welcome to Kaczynski, Michigan. Digital nothing. Streets named after trees, and schools named after presidents and trailblazers. And points on the compass. It’s good to get back to the essence of things and I can’t think of anything more straightforwardly essential than one of the four cardinal directions. The slogan of this town should be ‘Welcome, and Get Lost.’ That’s what I did.”

  She nodded, vaguely. “Thanks again,” she said. I’d been living too long at the outskirts of things to flirt coherently. Having delivered this somewhat loony monologue, I turned and entered the library.

  It was 10:58 when I slipped into the Youth Services Department, opting to sit on one of the little chairs with most of the other adults who had remained behind to listen, or to watch their children listen. One woman had a baby balanced on her lap, the fine hairs on the back of its head whorled delicately, like a fingerprint. Most of the kids sat on the carpet near the bronze bear. As always, one or two of them sat on the bear itself, which was posed on all fours, one forepaw extended as if it were batting at something or taking a step, its face cast in the sort of expression that, in the higher mammals, reminds us of how truly inscrutable animals really are. (I have encountered exactly one bear out here, coming across it unexpectedly as I was walking from my truck down an unpaved road toward a rocky stretch of shoreline known locally as 669 Beach, after the county highway that comes to an end there. As I backed away I thought about how impossible it was to know what was in its mind.)

  Another reason I like Salteau: the complete sense of routine—not of self-celebration but of working. At a reading in New York the introductions always make you feel as if Thomas Mann, or even Gandhi, is about to take the podium. At such events we’re always assured that literature is in good hands. Salteau’s introduction consisted of a murky announcement over the PA system, as if canned peaches had just gone on sale in Aisle 5. Beginning in five minutes in the Youth Services Department. And caregivers please do not lose sight of your children. Salteau entered the room, then transformed himself from commuter to shaman, removing his baseball cap, his fleece-lined jacket, his scarf. He took off his glasses and polished them carefully.

  SALTEAU

  ONE day, Nanabozho, the trickster, was taking a walk across a grassy field when he saw Buzzard flying high above. He was captivated as he watched Buzzard sweep gracefully across the face of the sky, in gliding arcs that seemed to bring him closer and closer to the sun, and he decided that he wanted to see the world from Buzzard’s point of view. He began to wave and to call out, and Buzzard saw him immediately with his excellent eyesight and swooped down so that he was circling directly above Nanabozho. “What can I do for you, Nanabozho?” he asked. Nanabozho answered, “Look at you, soaring up there, seeing for miles in every direction, while I’m down here. I’m envious. Why don’t you let me get on your back so that I can see what the world looks like from up there?” “How do I know you don’t have some trick planned for me?” said Buzzard. “I don’t,” said Nanabozho honestly, and something in his tone convinced Buzzard to land directly before him. “Very well,” he said. “Climb onto my back and I’ll take you for a ride.” Now, Buzzard, himself not the kindest or most trustworthy of
creatures, had a very mean trick of his own in mind. But Nanabozho was blinded by his eagerness to see the world as Buzzard saw it, and he climbed onto the bird’s back, saying only, “I worry about falling, Buzzard. Promise me you’ll take care up there.” Buzzard promised him that he would be careful, although he really did intend to drop Nanabozho if he got the chance. In an instant they were soaring through the air, and Nanabozho soon got over his nervousness as he took in the magnificent view, barely noticing that Buzzard was taking tighter and tighter turns as he circled higher and higher in the sky. Suddenly, the bird deliberately changed direction and Nanabozho lost his grip and fell like a stone. Nanabozho was knocked unconscious when he hit the ground, and he opened his eyes to discover that the impact had doubled him back upon himself, so that he was staring at his own rear end. He slowly untangled himself and carefully got to his feet, wondering what had gone wrong, when suddenly he heard Buzzard laughing at him from above. “You deceitful creature,” he yelled, shaking his fist. “I’ll pay you back for this.” “Oh, no you won’t,” said Buzzard. “Oh, yes I will,” said Nanabozho. “I’ll pay you back for this if I have to wait a hundred years.” “I’ll be fine,” said Buzzard to himself, “I’ll just keep my eye on him from up here.”