Dover Beach (28 page)

"Everything. Start at the beginning." She curled up in the corner of the sofa and waited for the story to start.

The beginning. "Chapter One: I Am Born," I said. "Eight months after the war. I like to think I was conceived on the day itself—you know, so that at least something good came out of it. But I don't really know."

"Where were you born?"

"On a farm in Maine—in the northeast corner of the country. The bombs didn't hit us, and most of the fallout missed us, too, so we were better off than a lot of people. But that's not saying much. The harvest was lousy, and the winter was bitter cold, and everyone was sick and hungry, and that's when I came into the world. My mother didn't survive the labor. People were surprised that I did; I guess I didn't know any better.

"A woman on another farm had lost her baby about the same time, so she nursed me, but then she died too. There was a lot of dying going on back then. My father and I were left to make it on our own—and, believe me, I wasn't much of a help.

"I don't expect he had much fun running the farm and taking care of me. The machinery would wear out and couldn't be replaced, of course, and the growing seasons were all screwed up for a while, and there were no pesticides, and I certainly didn't know enough not to complain when there wasn't enough to eat.

"The worst of it was, he seemed to think it was all his fault. Or maybe his only fault was that he had brought me into this world, when he should have known better. At any rate, you're a pretty good apologizer, Kathy, but you've got nothing on him. The most vivid memories of my childhood are of him saying he was sorry about something—no Christmas presents, no milk, no new shoes, too many chores to be done.

"And then, of course, he got sick."

"Oh, Walter," Kathy whispered. I felt uncomfortable, playing on her sympathy, but what else could I do? She had asked for the story, and here it was.

"He made some neighbors promise to take care of me," I went on. "I was almost old enough to be useful, so it wasn't a bad deal for them. And when he got too sick to work anymore, he went out and dug a grave—I don't know where he got the strength—and then he sat down beside it and shot himself in the head. I think if he could have gotten into the grave and shoveled the dirt in on top of himself he would have. He wanted to make it easy on us. He was sorry about having to die on me; he was sorry about everything."

Kathy had started to cry.

"You want to hear Chapter Two," I asked, "or have you had enough?"

"Is it... too painful, Walter?"

Well, it wasn't as much fun as eating a Big Mac, but it wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. "It's okay," I said. "Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins took me in. They weren't bad people, I think, but times were too tough to let them be very nice. There was too much work to be done and too little food, and there was no hope of it ever getting any better. They would talk about moving to California or Florida, places where they'd heard life was still almost normal. But it was impossible to get to those faraway places—and besides, life was normal there because the people who lived there kept everyone else out. So finally they decided to try Boston. Someone told them Boston was all right, Boston had food and jobs; things were looking up. So they hitched their old wagon to their old horse and abandoned the farm they had lived on for thirty years.

"It was a mistake."

"My father lived near Boston," Kathy said. Her gaze never left my face.

"That's right. The city wasn't hit, but, like most places, order broke down pretty completely afterward. The British sent troops and supplies over to help out along the East Coast, but for some reason Boston treated the British as if they were the enemy. Maybe it was some racial memory of the American Revolution, or maybe it was the Irish and their memories of oppression—or maybe people were just plain crazy. At any rate, the residents gave the British soldiers a hard time, and eventually you folks pulled out and left the city to fend for itself.

"And then the Frenzy started. That's what people call it now. During the Frenzy, you didn't go out at night. Night belonged to the crazies—and maybe if you went out at night there was something in the air that made you crazy too. We were spared the Bomb, but the Frenzy did a pretty good job of destruction on its own—mostly libraries and laboratories and concert halls and colleges, the places where science and civilization had once been. The places that had created the world we now had to inhabit."

"How long did the Frenzy last?" Kathy asked.

"Depends on how you want to define it. The worst of it was over within a few months, from what I'm told. But then it became a sort of institutionalized anarchy that went on for years and years."

"How could anyone live through something like that?"

I shrugged. "You got used to it. There were rules of a sort, and you learned the rules. By day things were tolerable. There were all these petty kingdoms—those six blocks of Roxbury belong to Horrigan's people, that bridge is controlled by the Monument Square gang—and if you knew the turf, you'd be all right. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins didn't know the turf."

"What happened?"

"Well, they knew enough to come into the city during the day—or maybe that was just dumb luck. All I can remember is how excited I was when I saw the Boston skyline in the distance. I had never seen anything remotely like it, outside of old magazines. Life would be different here, I knew, and since life couldn't get any worse, that made me happy.

"Anyway, we clomped along the highway, and eventually the highway became the lower deck of this two-tiered elevated structure, and we all became pretty nervous—with good reason, since nobody had done any maintenance on structures like that in years. We became even more nervous when we saw three men standing at the far end, waiting for us. Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins muttered to each other about turning back and finding another way into the city, but in the end they just kept going, right up to where the men were standing. They were carrying shotguns. 'Toll road, pal,' one of them said.

"Mr. Simpkins asked what the toll was.

"The guy looked at us. He knew the sort of people we were. 'We'll take the horse,' he said.

"Mr. Simpkins looked at his wife. They wouldn't need the horse in the city. They were scared. They just wanted to get to the food and the jobs. Mr. Simpkins got down to unhitch the horse.

"Now, see, that was his mistake. If he had tried to bargain with those guys, everything would've been okay. They would've taken his old Timex watch or something and let us go. But agreeing to hand over the horse showed just how much of a rube he was. The men lost respect for him. So the guy raised his shotgun and said, 'We'll take the kid, too.'

"One of the men came over and pulled me down from the wagon. Mrs. Simpkins started screaming then about how you people can't take the kid, he's ours, we need him, but she didn't do anything to get me back, and neither did her husband. Finally the third guy clubbed her on the head with his shotgun. 'Get outta here before we pitch you over the side,' he said.

"So she got off the wagon, blood running down her face. Her husband just stood there. And finally the two of them started hauling the wagon into the city themselves. Once or twice they glanced back at me. I think they were crying, but I'm not sure. And that was the last I ever saw of them. I think maybe I'd like a glass of tomato juice."

"I'll get it for you," Kathy said, and she raced into the kitchen.

I rocked. It had been a long time since I had allowed myself to dredge up some of these memories. I hoped it would be a long time before I'd be forced to do it again. "Thanks," I said when Kathy handed the glass to me.

Her fingers lingered against mine. "Walter, please don't go on if it's too much for you," she said.

"Oh, maybe I'll just summarize the highlights. Believe me, none of it is really very interesting."

She sat back down. "But what did the men do with you?"

"They took me home. They were part of a gang, and they figured I'd be a good addition. Everyone lived in an old warehouse in Charlestown. It wasn't bad: there was food, and there were guards all around the place, so you felt safe. But I didn't like being kidnapped, so I felt obliged to escape and look for Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins. They were nowhere to be found, however, so I ended up on my own."

"Was it hard, being on your own?"

"Sure. But I learned fast. I had to."

"Weren't there—I don't know—orphanages or something?"

"Well, there were youth camps. Some were good, most weren't so good. When things got tough—in the middle of the winter, maybe, or when I was sick—I'd head for one of the good ones. But I never stayed. I'm not sure why—some sort of independent streak, I guess."

"But you're so well educated—Shakespeare, Chekhov—when did you have time to learn?"

I laughed and sipped my juice. "Time has never been my problem, Kathy. I often wish it was. See, I don't sleep very much. Maybe an hour or two a night. The rest of the time I've got nothing to do but read and learn and think. I'm a mutant, I suppose, but it's not the sort of thing one complains about to fellow mutants.

"One other mutation that I sometimes wish I didn't have: I don't forget. I read something, and it stays with me. My mind is stuffed full of all this useless information, like an attic where nothing ever gets thrown away. You wanna do a scene from
The Seagull?
How about the awful monologue Konstantin wrote for Nina: 'Men, lions, eagles, and partridges, horned deer, geese, spiders, silent fish that dwell in the water, starfishes and creatures that cannot be seen by the eye—all living things, all living things, all living things, having completed their cycle of sorrow, are extinct.' That about sums up modern life, huh?"

Kathy continued. "'In me the consciousness of men is blended with the instincts of the animals, and I remember all, all, all! And I live through every life over again in myself.'"

"That's me, all right. It's a sad little irony of my life, Kathy, that I would like nothing better than to forget my past, but I can't. I simply can't. It's all there, waiting for me every night when the rest of the world is asleep."

"I'm terribly sorry, Walter. I didn't know—"

"Quit apologizing. There's not much left, anyway. Eventually the government got working again, and I was drafted. I spent a couple of boring years as a soldier, and then I went back to Boston. I figured it was about time I did something with myself, and so I decided to give the private-eye business a try."

Kathy looked puzzled. "The private-eye business?"

I stared at her, and I realized that I had never exactly explained it to her. It wasn't all that obvious, apparently. "I'm a private investigator, Kathy—or at least I pretend to be. Lineal descendant of Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Philip Marlowe. Friend of the distressed, foe of the distressor. I ran an ad in the local paper, and I commandeered an office in an abandoned building, and I waited for clients. Winfield was the first one that came along."

I half expected her to laugh, but she didn't. "Do you think you'll be a good private eye?" she asked.

I considered. "I'm not doing very well so far, I'm afraid. A private eye should be in control of things, I think, and I sure haven't felt that way yet about this case. Instead, I feel as if something is taking its course, and I'm just standing around watching—or worse, as if I've been made a sort of unwitting agent in the thing, helping it along when required, shoved aside otherwise."

Kathy was crying again—abruptly, unexpectedly. She rubbed at the tears vainly with her fist. "I'm sure you're mistaken," she whispered.

I made a forlorn gesture. Her sorrow was catching. I stared at the tomato juice, stared out the window, bared my soul. "I decided to become a private eye because I figured a private eye could change things, could make a difference," I said. "Oh, he can't change history, he can't rebuild America, but who can? At least he can help a few people who need help. But I'm beginning to think even that's asking too much, that I've been deluding myself with fantasies out of popular fiction. Maybe the pull of events is as strong for people as it is for nations. Maybe what's going on between your father and Winfield is as uncontrollable as—as war, as fallout. You told me on the train that you had become an actress so you could find the right role. I think I'm acting, too, Kathy—looking for a role. But I'm also beginning to think maybe it isn't worth it, maybe there are no roles worth playing. Maybe all we should do is duck the fallout and try to stay alive."

Surprisingly, my speech did little to cheer Kathy up. "Oh, don't say that, Walter," she sobbed, "don't say that." And she came over from the sofa and buried her face in my lap. I put my tomato juice down. I stroked her black hair. I felt her body convulsing with an anguish I didn't understand. Reality was too complicated. I didn't know what to do, and so I waited.

And eventually Kathy got to her feet and took my hand, and we went into her bedroom together. She undid a button or two and pulled the nightgown over her head. She was naked except for the gold chain her father had given her, and her nakedness almost stopped my heart. She lay back on the bed and waited. I took off my clothes and lay next to her. We kissed, and our bodies came together.

My hands moved over and over her flesh, as if unwilling to believe that this awful world could produce such beauty—and that the world would let me touch that flesh, that the person inside that flesh would think me worthy. That the person would think my own flesh worth touching, her need as strong as my own.