Mysterium

The town had been in a kind of trance, Howard thought, ever since the tanks rolled down Coldwater Road last June. There had been some gestures of resistance, all futile. A couple of NRA types had taken some ineffectual shots from their upper-story windows. Both men were apprehended and executed publicly and without trial. Two Rivers was a hunting-fishing town, and Howard supposed there were a great many people with their Remingtons still primed and hidden. But what could one rural county do against the weight of a nation? Declare independence?

In a way, they were lucky. As occupations go, this one had not been exceptionally brutal—at least not yet. He remembered reading about Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge, where civilians had been shot to death for wearing European eyeglasses, or for no reason at all. There had been no such slaughter here, maybe because the battle had been so one-sided and the prize so peculiar.

So the town had capitulated to its occupation with a dazed shrug. Howard was no exception. He had gone into hiding almost gratefully; hiding was something he was good at. He had grown up fragile and chronically thin. Beaten for his awkwardness, he had learned to take his beatings and go home; he had never complained or even plotted revenge. There had always been the solace of a book.

The name of this behavior, Howard thought, was cowardice. He had stopped denying it long ago, had even acknowledged it as a fundamental component of his character. He knew two essential facts about himself: that he was smart and that he was a coward. It wasn’t the worst draw in life’s lottery.

A memory came wafting up from his childhood. Often during his illness he had been surprised by these gusts of memory, and maybe he was still sick, because here came another: he was ten years old on the porch of the house in Queens, listening to the rumble of his parents’ voices, to one of their winding, pleasantly silly marathons of talk.

“Some people believe,” his father had said, “in reincarnation—that we live again and again, and in each life we have a task. A thing to do or a thing to learn.” He had reached out absently to ruffle his son’s hair. “What about you, Howie? What is it your business to learn this time around?”

Howard had been young enough to take the idea seriously. The question plagued him for days. What was he supposed to learn? Something difficult, he guessed, or else why dedicate a life to it? Something he had resisted in all his other lives; some Everest of knowledge or virtue.

Let it be anything, he thought—the names of all the stars, the origin of the universe, the secrets of time and space… Let it be anything but courage.

∞

Past midtown, the streets were mostly empty. It was harder to be inconspicuous here. He shuffled with his hands in his pockets; where possible he took suburban roads, winding his way through the newer and bleaker housing projects that marked the western extremity of Two Rivers. The military patrols would not likely come this way; there was nothing here to draw them. Still, he had to be careful. The soldiers had made a barracks out of a Days Inn on the highway, midway between Two Rivers and the ruins of the Physical Research Laboratory —not far from here.

Howard had pored over a map of the town in the days before the tanks came, and he had a good memory for maps; but these curving roads and culs-de-sac confused him. By the time he found an obscure and plausible way east—following a line of electrical towers where the trees and scrub had been cut back—it was nearly curfew.

He had planned for that. He crossed the highway where it met Boundary Road and followed it a quarter mile north, staying close to the drainage ditch on the left. The shadows were already very long. There were no houses out here, nothing but junk maples and the occasional crumbling gas station. He reached his first objective before dark: a tiny bait and camping gear shop close to the border of the old Ojibway reserve.

He had stopped here with Dex Graham last June. Dex had bought a map and a compass, both long since lost. The store was a tar paper shack with a shingle out front. Uninhabited, as Howard had supposed it would be.

He took a long look up and down the highway. He listened for a time. There was no sound but the rattle of a solitary cricket in the chilly dusk.

A fat, rust-red padlock protected the front door. Howard picked his way through a scatter of bald tires, past the rusting hulk of a ’79 Mercury Cougar to the rear door. This door was also padlocked, but one brisk tug separated the latch from the rotting wood of the frame.

A powerful stench wafted out of the dark interior. Howard hesitated, repulsed. Then he thought: The bait. Jesus! There had been two big freezers full of herring roe and dew worms in here. Over the summer the contents must have fermented.

He stepped inside, breathing through his mouth. The only light was the last blue of the sky through a dusty window. Howard moved cautiously down an aisle of bulk goods.