A Different Alchemy Page 2

  Maybe the search’s end should have been a warning that one day men might realize optimism could only get them so far. Once every group of people, no matter how remote or disinterested in the rest of the world they had been, were declared to be affected by the same disorder, it should have been obvious that better days weren’t possible. Maybe the day that lone man from the jungle died, a man who strove his entire life to get away from other men, only to be scared to death by them, was the day the first ember of that fire actually started.

  For people like Jeffrey, even the appearance of babies born into silence, an end that could finally be seen in the distance, didn’t mean life had to be complicated. In some ways, life had become simpler. Sure, there were some new worries, but they were counterbalanced by the slew of traditional concerns that faded away. Crooked politicians, global warming, national debts—all of it became irrelevant. On the nights he sat outside on the porch with his son, it was impossible for Jeffrey to see the Blocks as ever possibly being a bad thing.

  Ever since Galen’s birth, father and son had sat together on the chairs facing the street just the way they had in generations past. There were no children outside yelling or playing anymore, though. No deliverymen made their daily rounds. Barely a sound bounced off the sidewalks or ran through the back alleys. This time of day brought with it a unique stillness that was impossible not to enjoy. It was that special part of the evening, only lasting for a couple of minutes, when everyone was home from work, either eating supper or sitting around after the fact. The dogs were sleeping following their dinners too.

  Only the birds, hidden in the trees, continued offering beeps and blurts, reassurances that the world had not come to a complete stop. The flock’s hiccupped chorus allowed Jeffrey a chance to close his eyes and completely forget where he was, and, for a moment, even who he was. It was during these minutes of silence over the years that his job seemed tolerable, that he stopped worrying about what the next day would bring for him and his family, that he managed not to worry about anything really.

  Then, after the momentary intermission, in which only the birds tried to make peace with the world, the noises slowly came back. A car horn would honk. A neighbor would yell at his TV. It always happened. And each night, when it did happen, Jeffrey was brought back to the porch and to his quiet, sweet Galen.

  Somewhere off in the distance, a dog started barking. The birds were startled into silence. Almost immediately, a slurred voice yelled that somebody better shut the animal up or he would shut it up himself.

  Jeffrey opened his eyes, sighed, and began talking to Galen again. He squinted across the street to see inside their neighbor’s front window. There were no lights on anywhere in the house, and the curtains were still apart.

  “Looks like the Becks left last night,” he said.

  Most likely they had packed whatever they held dear and driven south to Washington to join the others. If they left before everyone else, they could have their pick of vacant apartments in Dupont Circle or near the White House.

  He leaned back against his wicker chair before adding, “Thank God they didn’t burn their house down before they left.”

  If he said the same thing to Katherine she would give him a light nudge and comment that it was that same cynicism which had made her fall in love with him. If he said the same thing to his mother she would tell him he needed to learn to be happy for other people. His father would simply grunt, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. But his son, his son would never offer those responses or any others.

  Jeffrey looked over at his boy. Galen was in the exact same position he had been in since being wheeled onto the porch. There were no stifled yawns in which the boy—the young man—tried to hide his impatience so he could get back inside and watch the rest of the game. There was no irritation that he had to spend each evening with his father on the porch rather than going out with his friends or girlfriend. Jeffrey leaned over to make sure his son didn’t have saliva forming at the corner of his mouth. More importantly, he inhaled to make sure Galen was still accident-free. It was always a pleasant treat when they could get through this ritual without the air becoming foul; the nights they had to go back inside early to get Galen cleaned off were the same nights Jeffrey went to bed irritated, feeling like the day had been a waste.

  The dog’s echoing bark sounded again. Then a growl, not the dog’s but a man’s, and an empty beer bottle shattering. Another slurred threat followed: the next bottle would hit the dog instead of sailing over its head.

  Jeffrey sighed before looking at his son again. Every once in a while Galen would blink. There was never a reason for this. It wasn’t because of an eyelash or because a fly tickled his eyebrow. Other than this blinking, the eyes remained still, never wavering from side to side, never focusing on new things. They didn’t even scan for where the drunken man’s threat had come from. His son had been born without the ability to know what was happening in the world around him, not even understanding his father was there to protect him. Every child born after Galen was the same way.

  In the years prior to the Great De-evolution, Jeffrey and Katherine had talked about having three or four children. Galen wound up being their only child—one of the many times Jeffrey had a plan that the world laughed away with a shrug. By the time Galen was born, there wasn’t even a remote possibility that their next child could be any different.

  “Beautiful night,” Jeffrey said to his son. And it was true. They were surrounded by rows of houses, but the sycamore and the small flower garden made him feel like he was separated from everything else. “Maybe we’ll head south too. What do you think of that?”

  He smiled at his boy. Galen’s breathing was always perfectly steady and low. It reminded Jeffrey of the wind pushing gently against the trees—never a violent thunderstorm or a completely still day, but always the reassurance that kept the leaves awake. While Jeffrey was clearing his throat more often than he used to, a sign of old age, his son never rasped or choked for a next breath. Nor did the breathing ever stop completely. It was a calming thing to be around.

  When the dog barked again, the drunken man yelled, “Shut that damn animal up. I’m warning you.”

  Jeffrey reached out and took Galen’s hand in his palm. The other thing that made Jeffrey smile each time he inspected his son was how much Galen looked exactly like a version of himself from thirty years earlier. Before the grey hair started to appear. Before wrinkles formed where his eyes squinted when he smiled. Jeffrey’s face could be cut out of the wedding photos with Katherine, a picture of Galen inserted in his place, and no one would ever know. They had the same stubby nose and dark eyes, the same thick eyebrows and ear lobes. There was nothing that could make a father more proud of his son than those enduring resemblances. The simplicity of looking alike, of passing down a solid jaw line, dark hair, and yes, even hairy arms, tapped into something universal, something permanent, that no other achievement could rival. Any time Jeffrey wanted to he could see a reminder of what he had looked like when he first met Katherine, a younger version of himself always by his side to show him which path his life was taking. That by itself, even if there was nothing else between them, was enough for him to love Galen as much as any father loved any son.

  Sitting there, he wondered if he might feel the same way if he ran into someone else on the street that looked just like him. Surely not. But if not, why did he devote himself to Galen so much? There were certainly no other shared experiences that linked Jeffrey with his son. Growing up, Galen had never asked if it was OK to sleep in his parents’ bed after having a nightmare. He had never thrown a baseball with his dad, never asked for advice with girls. These nights together were the only thing they had, the two of them sitting on the porch, Jeffrey always doing the talking, Galen always the listening. The world was full of other activities to take part in and full of other people to take part in them with—wasn’t that what life was all about?—yet through all of the silence Jeffrey loved his son more than
anything else in the world.

  And how unfair was it to Katherine that she could never be loved in greater proportion than their son, even though she kept Jeffrey sane, kept him smiling and optimistic, while Galen offered nothing but silence? Jeffrey’s memories of Galen were limited to cleaning him at night, brushing his teeth, changing his clothes, and wheeling him out to the porch each evening. The two loves shouldn’t be comparable, yet they were.

  The dog’s next bark was immediately followed by another beer bottle shattering in the distance. Jeffrey strained to hear where the noise was coming from. His hearing, though, wasn’t what it used to be. What was next? His eyes? His nose?

  The dog kept barking and barking. It was a matter of time until the drunken man issued another threat. Without realizing he had done so, Jeffrey leaned forward as though his stomach hurt. The raucous dog had not only blotted out the birds, it had broken the tranquility of the night. But it was just a dog being a dog, scared of something or thinking it was protecting its owner. Both were parts of life: being scared, trying to protect the ones you loved. Jeffrey could attest to that. In fact, it was nice to have the old, familiar noise one more time—a random dog causing random sounds. That and a house and family were, after all, the American Dream.

  It reminded Jeffrey of the days when he cursed neighborhood children under his breath because they always seemed to be yelling and laughing louder than he thought should be allowed. He hadn’t been unruly when he was a child; his parents wouldn’t have tolerated it. But then the children grew up and there were no other children to replace them. Other neighborhood noises, the rush-hour traffic and the trains taking cargo to other cities, disappeared over time as well. It was the disappearance of ice cream trucks and their jingles, of school buses slowing down every other vehicle on the road, of door-to-door salesmen pestering him with their wares. He couldn’t recall the last time he had seen any of it.

  The dog’s barking burst into a yelp and then a squeal. In one step Jeffrey was at the edge of the porch. The same instincts that made him stand for action caused his fingers to curl into fists.

  “I told you to shut that damn dog up,” the same voice said from far up the street, the words slightly gurgled.

  The more Jeffrey strained to hear where the unfamiliar voice had come from, the more it seemed to echo at him from every direction. Soon, he couldn’t be sure if the voice had come from further up the street or from down the road near the highway. It might have been from the houses behind him or it could have been in front of him on one of the next blocks.

  Even as recently as ten years ago, he would have recognized whoever’s voice it was and could have talked things out with his neighbor. Now, half of the houses that still had people living in them belonged to those who had filtered down from New York or Boston. The newcomers didn’t care about being polite because they knew it was only a matter of time until the next migration south. When all you lived for was the next place to call home, being courteous to your neighbors was no longer a priority.

  Part of him wanted to take Galen back inside before wandering the neighborhood for the dog. When he found it he would whisper soothing coos until it trusted him, then he would pet it behind its ears. Once the animal forgot about the abuses that could be unfairly dealt, Jeffrey would tell it to have a good night and to be safe. Then he would start a new search, this time for the man. If things went well, the drunk would get a warning. In his younger days, a black eye or a broken nose might have been given as well.

  The dog’s owner was most likely gone, probably to Washington if not to someplace even further south. The dog would become yet another stray animal that Jeffrey would leave water for, another furry escort as he took his son around the neighborhood in his wheelchair for fresh air. Each time he saw one of these abandoned animals, his heart broke. They had been man’s best friend one day, but the next they were left to fend for themselves. Forgotten because they were a hassle.

  “God damn it,” the drunken man yelled after yet another bark. “If that dogs barks one more time—” immediately, the dog barked again and Jeffrey laughed, appreciating its sense of humor. The drunken man growled and yelled that the dog was dead.

  “You touch that dog,” Jeffrey screamed, “and I’ll kill you. You hear me? I’ll kill you.” He had to wipe his mouth when he was done yelling.

  Before the Blocks appeared, someone might call the police and a pair of men in uniforms might show up and ask Jeffrey if everything was OK. These days, however, no men in blue would arrive. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever.

  Jeffrey returned to his seat. “I’m really sorry you had to hear that,” he said to Galen.

  A moment later, Katherine came to the front door and asked what all the noise was about. Instead of explaining what she heard or what she might have thought she heard, he simply apologized and squeezed her hand.

  She rubbed the back of his neck the way he loved. “It’s time to come back inside.”

  “It got dark out when I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Funny how that happens,” she said before telling him she loved him.

  He handed his cup of coffee to her so she could carry it while he turned the wheelchair around and brought their son back indoors.

  With Galen in bed, they watched the news for a couple of minutes. When that quickly became too depressing, they flipped to a current events show, but that wasn’t much better than the real news.

  There was a story of a man in Great Falls, Montana, who had been in a coma for twenty years because of a motorcycle accident. Month after month, year after year, the man was stashed away in a back ward of the hospital. Piles of motionless bodies collected around the comatose patient. As time went by, however, more and more Blocks were being transferred to group homes.

  One day, as another group of abandoned Blocks were transported from the hospital to their permanent resting spot—a gutted high school—the comatose man was accidentally taken with them. The mistake was an easy one to make: his IV looked just like a Block’s nutrient tube. Used to inanimate bodies, none of the workers gave a second thought to this man being twice the age of the others. To make matters worse, the man’s family had already gone south to Boise, so he wasn’t missed by anyone when he disappeared from the hospital. For two years, the unconscious man received all of the care, food, and hydration he would ever need because the caretakers treated him as if he were just another Block.

  But then, the man in the coma, as people in comas will occasionally do, woke up out of the blue. Video surveillance of the Block shelter showed one of the bodies sitting up from the cot where it had been lying perfectly still for two years.

  There were, unfortunately, no caretakers around at the moment the comatose man woke up. If there had been, they could have explained the world to him. Instead, as he collected himself, he realized he was surrounded by thousands of motionless bodies. There’s no telling what he thought had happened to the world in the blank space between losing control of his motorcycle and opening his eyes in a gymnasium where track and field banners were still hanging from the rafters. All he knew was that the entire world was made up of bodies hooked up to feeding tubes. He quickly went insane.

  First, he tore the IV from his arm. Then he stumbled to the closest fire alarm, set it off, and disappeared into a stairwell. No firefighters responded to the alarm; they had already vacated the city. No one caught up to the man in time to explain that aliens weren’t enslaving us for food, or whatever scenario his mind had conjured up. The man, completely unaware that the Great De-evolution was talking place, that he was surrounded by Blocks rather than by mindless bodies harvested for some nefarious purpose, got in the first car he found and drove it straight into a wall at ninety miles per hour. He flew through the windshield and was instantly killed.

  Everyone who watched the story that night would undoubtedly have nightmares of falling asleep one day, the world seemingly normal, and then opening their eyes to find everyone around them completely motion
less and quiet.

  “Why bother turning the TV on at all if this is what they’re going to show us?” Jeffrey said, but Katherine didn’t say anything.

  With the TV off, the room became dark.

  “Remember how nervous we were when we first found out I was pregnant?” she said.

  He took her hand in his. “Seems like a long time ago. Like a different life.”

  She put her head against his shoulder. “I love you more every day.”

  Later in the night, he went back to the front door to make sure the dog wasn’t barking or that the man wasn’t wandering the streets looking for it. The streetlights hummed and made everything on the ground look slightly yellow, slightly sick. The street was still. The dog was sleeping somewhere where it felt safe. The neighbor was snoring off the alcohol and would wake up with a hangover. Both would be back the next day, both getting along as best as they knew how. And Jeffrey would take his son back out on the porch the next evening and the evening after that, and they would sit together and listen to the birds for those special few minutes of peace.

  **

  The fire behind him, still engulfing the remains of everything that had once been inside the stadium, Jeffrey continued his walk back to the base. The nights on the porch with Galen seemed like they must have been a part of someone else’s life.

  His mind was blank. Every once in a while he looked back at the smoke. How could there be a giant fire in the middle of the city? He was more confused by it—a ball of flames certainly didn’t belong there—than he was alarmed. But each time he turned and looked, it was still there.