Mr. Fahrenheit (18 page)

“No, you were good, Papaw,” Benji offered. “We should listen to it.”

Papaw sighed, and said, simply, “No, Benjamin, we should not.” He looked back at the poster. “Maybe we would've made a fancy, big career for ourselves, but that ain't what life had planned. Robby died that night. Drunk driver. Senseless as hell. I sold my guitar after his funeral.” He paused. “But you know what, I don't regret selling it. I wouldn't have met your grandmother otherwise. And what's a good life, anyway? It's workin' and makin' a better life for your blood. That's all. Go to Timbuktu and it's true. That's all there is to life: struggle and people you care about. Ay-uh, that's exactly the size of it.”

But the confident rhythm Benji knew so well wasn't in Papaw's voice, then. Papaw didn't sound like even
he
believed what he was saying. Actually, it seemed as if he were trying to convince himself, as much as Benji.

“Let's put that away now, Benjamin. No, you know what, let's just clear these boxes out; the garbage is going today.”

Papaw took the poster from Benji's hand. Benji felt his heart twist. Papaw was obviously upset, and Benji felt it was somehow his fault, for showing him the poster in the first place.

Yet Benji also felt a little angry as he watched Papaw stuff the poster into the box. Anger at what, he wasn't quite sure. . . .

A question formed in his head.

“Why were you thinking about the fire, sir?”

“I was just thinking of Shaun Spinney, I guess. Remember I said Shaun Spinney's parents would show up in my office to sue me? I was not wrong. But I just started thinkin' about how
it's my own fault. What I did to that boy the other night at the barricade was mean and it was low. The worst thing you can do to a person is not tellin' them what they are. It's telling them what they never will be.”

Papaw shivered, though Benji noticed no wind.

“So you just thought of the fire because Spinney was there?” Benji said, weirdly uneasy.

“Well, partly. Like we were saying, Benjamin, maybe a lot of your trouble is that you've been trying to become somethin' you aren't. I'm old enough to know that you don't need that kind of trouble. Your father went off looking for a big adventure, too, signed up after 9/11, thinking he had some patriotic duty. And your government thanked him kindly by giving him a vehicle as fragile as a Campbell's Soup can.”

Benji felt his cheeks burn. “I've never said I've been trying to become something I'm not.”

“Well, you pretty much did.”

“No. I didn't.”
You just never listen to me.

Benji realized something: As wonderful as Papaw's kindness felt, Benji couldn't open his heart to that kindness without letting Papaw's stubbornness come in, too. Papaw said that traditions are gravity, things that kept you from floating off, and there was something beautiful in that idea. But even it cast a shadow.

Gravity doesn't let you go
, Benji thought.
Never. It just sucks you down on the earth.

“You know what I don't get, Papaw? I don't get why you and every other adult in this town tell kids, ‘Shoot for the stars, follow your dreams!' But then, the second we get to high school, you say, ‘Well, time to be realistic.' What does that even
mean
? You say that's just the way life is, but it's only that way because you're too afraid to change it.”

Papaw actually flinched. But Benji couldn't stop; he'd kept all this fear and anger pent up inside him too long.

“I don't get why adults say young people should know about politics and current events, but when we try to talk about them, we get told to shut up. You say, ‘Believe in yourselves!
But don't be proud
.' ‘Dress nicely, feel good about how you look!
But don't be vain.
' ‘Be a self-made American! Never let the past define you!
But don't forget where you came from.
' Don't you people know what you're doing to us? If you want us to believe in everything, we can't believe in anything.”

“Now listen, pal—”

“Don't call me that. You don't get to just be my friend when you're feeling bad and want someone to talk to.”

Anger flared in Papaw's eyes, but it was fleeting. He put down the box and raised his palms, like,
let's slow down here.

“Benjamin, I think I'm not saying things right. I haven't slept more than a few hours this week—nightmares, I don't know why—but I'm tryin' to tell you I'm proud of you. For God's sake, that agent fella came by again last night, wanting to talk about you.”

Benji's anger congealed to cold fear. “W-what? He's still in town?”

“He is. That's what I mean, honey.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, I don't know. Not much, I guess. He wanted to talk to you, give you a few pamphlets you asked for.”

“Did he leave them?”

“No, he said he'd give 'em to you hisself. Benjamin, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” Benji said, and turned and walked out of the garage as Papaw called his name. Benji stopped halfway across the yard and looked back. The first edge of dawn had seeped
into the sky, and it and the space heater conspired to color the snow dark red. He didn't know why McKedrick had come, but Benji was afraid, afraid of a lot of things just then. He wanted to say something to Papaw, but he could think of no way to warn him without telling him everything.

Finally, he said, “Be careful today.” Papaw only looked confused. Papaw was from innocent times. His dreams were small-town dreams. And in that case, Benji realized, it's hard to imagine larger and more malevolent nightmares.

As Benji threw on his tuxedo in his room, he thought of how the United States government had only acknowledged flying saucer sightings because of a death.

It happened in 1948, when an air force test pilot named Thomas Mantell radioed his control tower that he'd spotted something flying a few miles ahead, in the air over Fort Knox Air Force Base.
Negative
,
Captain
, the tower replied,
we've got nothing on radar.

Mantell said,
I see it right here.

Negative, Captain.

Dammit, guys, I've got eyes on it. Disc-shaped, appears silver. . . . Requesting permission to pursue, Control.

Negati—

The velocity, it's unbelievable! I'm increasing my speed to four hundred fifty miles per hour.

Captain, permission
denied
!

Five hundred— Five fifty—it's climbing now. I'm following, guys. I'm sorry. I'm telling you, I can catch this.

But he didn't catch it. Mantell pushed his jet to an altitude it wasn't meant for. His engine stalled out, and when the jet began to lose velocity and tumble, the friction of the atmosphere shredded the aircraft into a thousand pieces. The air force
stated that Mantell most likely had seen ice crystals vaporizing in the ionosphere, or maybe a reflection of Venus. Smoke and mirrors, in other words.

When Benji read about that two nights ago, he'd tried not to think about it, because it seemed to him to be a depressing real-life Icarus warning about a man who died flying too high in pursuit of something amazing. But now, his heart thundering as he sped to school on his bike, Benji realized that was not true.

Mantell's mistake was not that he'd flown too high. His mistake was that he had not gone fast enough.

I can't let everything good slip away. I just can't bear that.

Because of all the FIGs and parents coming to school for the homecoming assembly, even the sidewalks were a traffic jam near the school, and Benji didn't make it there until just a couple of minutes before the assembly was set to begin. He worked his way through the backstage part of the theater, passing the football team, who were in their uniforms and would come onstage after he had done his Magic Mascot introduction. He didn't look for CR.

Benji reached the big silver door that opened onto the stage. A freshman, dressed in all black and carrying a clipboard and looking approximately eight years old, told Benji that his cue to go onstage was coming in less than a minute.

Benji zoned out, trying urgently to figure out questions about the pod. Why had the pod only played old music? The pod—the Voyager, Mr. Fahrenheit—had broadcast songs at the drive-in theater from the era where saucer sightings and films were at their peak. Movies, music, sightings: All had filled the earth and sky during the same weirdly innocent time. Was that just a coincidence? If not, why? If so,
why
?

The reason the Voyager was here was so literally out of this world that it was unimaginable. There
had
to be a connection, some purpose behind it all, but it was like sensing shapes in a dark room and not being able to find the light switch.

No, that's not what it's like
. It was more like trying to retrieve a memory, or being on the very edge of understanding a déjà vu.

That doesn't make sense, though. Why would it be a memory?

“They're just about ready,” the freshman said to Benji.

And so Benji opened the door, and saw memory.

He froze. He'd expected to walk onstage and be looking straight out on the auditorium, packed for the assembly. But he'd forgotten about the homecoming video Ellie had edited. A retractable movie screen hung from the rafters above the stage, and on it, right in front of him, brighter and larger than life, stood the eleven-year-old boy Benji had once been.

Benji-in-the-video was walking between parallel rows of kids who sat in a high school auditorium—the very auditorium that Benji-in-the-present was in as well. The boy wore a tuxedo jacket, cargo shorts, and flip-flops (?!). Heartstring-tugging violin music swelled on the soundtrack. Benji-in-the-video's hands were shaking, which you could see because the high-definition camera itself was so steady.

“You'll go on after the video ends,” whispered the freshman.

Benji nodded absently, still gazing at the screen. “God, I remember that day. Wow,” he whispered, a faint smile coming across his face. “Fifth-grade countywide talent show.”

The freshman looked more confused than interested, but that didn't matter: Benji was mostly talking to himself. “This was the first time I ever did magic for an audience.”
And this was when it all began for me and Ellie.
“It was awesome, I mean, like, perfect. Watch, this part's great!”

Benji-from-the-past faced the elementary school audience to debut his act.

Benji-in-the-present watched it in his memory before it even played onscreen. He'd pulled a neon “infinity scarf” from his tuxedo, shown the audience he had nothing else in his hands, then tossed the scarf into the air like an indoor arcing rainbow, a millisecond of misdirection so he could produce an iPod Nano (preloaded with his magic-act music) from inside his sleeve. Not to brag or anything, but it really had been a flawless performance. Now here it came, on the screen—

Benji's forehead knit.

The movie didn't match his memory.

The differences were small, almost dismissible at first. For one thing, a few feet behind Benji-in-the-past, the school principal who doubled as the emcee was standing glumly, arms folded, looking like he was in actual and literal danger of falling asleep. Next, Benji-in-the-past did a good enough job of producing and tossing the scarf . . . but he completely mistimed the next move, so the falling scarf didn't disguise his iPod grab at all. The only way it could have been more obvious that he was pulling the iPod from his sleeve was if he'd said “Lay-dees and jee-entle-men, I am now pulling an iPod from my sleeve!”

The kids in the audience are laughing at me
, Benji thought, stunned.
What the hell? This has to be the wrong tape. . . .

There was a time-cut in the video. Now it showed the boy operating like a maniac in mid-show, his hands twin blurs of activity: cards from vapor, cards
to
vapor, a magic wand appearing from nothing and then gone again in a flash. Behind the boy, the principal applauded, nodding for the audience to do the same.

Slow DOWN!
Benji thought, cringing. The boy was doing everything way too fast, like he was afraid of being caught, or
like he feared there would never be enough time to show you all the things he wanted to share, never enough time in the world. But his speed smeared it all together, so the tricks never had a moment to settle and
exist
.

The boy was trying to do everything at once, and so he wound up doing nothing at all.

He looked so terribly happy, so oblivious.

The soundtrack swelling, the video paused on a freeze-frame of the boy brandishing a wand straight at the camera.

“
Now, please welcome your Bedford Falls mascot: Benji Blazes!
” a deep voice boomed through the auditorium.

Just before the screen began to ascend to the rafters, the video faded to a new image: Benji-now, looking upward. It took him a second to realize that this was a live broadcast, filmed by a camera somewhere backstage.

“. . .
cue cue cue c'mon cue!
” whispered the freshman frantically.

Dry ice billowed forward dramatically as the screen rose and revealed Benji to the audience, who let loose thunderous applause. A brilliant spotlight flew through the dark and speared him. He took an uneasy step forward, blinded and still dumbstruck by the tape.

Speakers in the theater blared to life, the soaring violins that opened “A Mighty Magic” suffusing the world in stereo. Benji flinched, though he'd rehearsed this entrance dozens of times. He felt oddly motion sick, as if tumbling out of control and gravityless. He took a clunky step toward the footlights.

“
A mighty magic is the greatest joy,
” sang Ben McQueen through the speakers, a 1950s voice drenching the auditorium in romance, “
a mighty magic between a girl and boy.
”