Henry Bemis and Me: A Year of Reading in Solitude Amidst the Rubble

 

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INTRO

"'The best-laid plans of mice and men...' and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis... in the Twilight Zone."

-- Rod Serling (closing narration), "Time Enough at Last," The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode 8 (starring Burgess Meredith), originally aired November 20, 1959 on CBS

For readers the world over, it would seem--at first glance--that the year 2020 might have been from the perfect cloth. After all, when everything [Aside: And by "everything," I do kind of mean "everything"] came to a crashing halt, leaving all of us quarantined at home, alone with our loved ones and with ourselves, we all of us suddenly found ourselves with time on our hands to more or less do whatever we wanted. For movie buffs, this meant time to catch up on some quality movie-watching. For television addicts, this meant ample time to stream and binge on everything offered up by the algorithm. For car enthusiasts, this presented itself as time spent alone in the garage, the hood to your old classic propped open, droplights illuminating the old engine where you lose yourself. For music-aficionados, this meant flipping through old record albums, dusting them off, and spinning them again. For sports nuts, this meant more time than you knew what to do with to follow all your favorite games, and your favorite teams, and your favorite athletes. For online gamers, this meant unlimited time lost in the chosen game-world. And, again, for readers it meant time at last to settle back in your favorite chair--a stack of books piled on the floor beside you--and the opportunity to literally make time disappear within the pages of a book

Suddenly, in 2020, readers found themselves with something they had perhaps always quietly wished for: a chance to read, to dive into a book (or books) without having to worry about scorn or judgment from others, and without having to hear the age-old question: "Don't you have anything better to do?"

Because, quite frankly--for maybe the first and only time in our lives--readers could answer a question like that with: "No. I have nothing else to do. Now, leave me alone."

The quandary arises, of course, when you have more time than ever to do something that you love to do, how do you discriminate? How do you choose wisely? When a reader suddenly has on their hands more time than ever before to catch up on their reading, what do you choose to read?

[Aside: I know... First-world problems.]

Below is just a sampling of some of the books and writers I chose to spend time with over the past 12 months. There were other great books and writers that I had read before and that I chose to revisit and to reread in 2020 (titles like The Old Man and the Sea, The Hobbit, Catch-22, The Country of the Pointed Firs, The Plague Dogs, The Hotel New Hampshire--all of them wonderful books that definitely would have made my year-end list of Best Reads), but I decided to leave them off this list. Below are only new books (or "new" to me, anyway) that I cracked open and read during this past year. Ten books that challenged me, entertained me, made me happy, made me angry, made me laugh, made me scared, and made me glad to be alive, even in difficult times such as these--books that made me glad to have time enough at last to spend some of my time (and some of my pandemic-induced solitude) in their company.

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10.) I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story -- by Anthony Daniels (2019)

What a notably strange career Anthony Daniels has had over the past 40 (+) years as an actor and an entertainer. A returning cast member in what is undoubtedly one of film history's most lucrative and popular movie-series of all time, Daniels has been able to maintain an almost unheard-of level of anonymity. Outside of legions of diehard/convention-level Star Wars fans, an actor of Anthony Daniels' CV can walk down the street basically unknown and unmolested by hordes of autograph-seekers and selfie-hounds. To most of us, he is a veritable mystery man--which is also, unsurprisingly, his personal axe to grind in this brief memoir/autobiography. As the physical- and voice-actor of the character C-3PO in all nine of the "canon" Star Wars films (not to mention various stints voicing the character in numerous offshoots and animated Star Wars series), Daniels loves this robot that he has brought to life over his lifetime as an actor. But he also undeniably feels cheated, somewhat, out of the "normal" career that seems to have eluded him. He has spent his life as an actor behind the golden body-suit armor of one of the most well-known and beloved characters in all of filmdom. And yet...therein lies the story of his life, I suppose.

Daniels is not a writer, nor does he pretend to be. If there is a weakness in his book it is in his somewhat amateurish writing style. (At times it reads, honestly, like an over-zealous older teenager expounding on his thoughts and feelings. But...then again he's not a professional writer. And that's okay.) Would the book have been better if he had been aided by a co-writer, to help "dress up the style" a bit? Perhaps. But then part of the clunkiness of Daniels' writing is in perfect keeping with the Star Wars films themselves (clunky dialogue and all). And it accentuates the fact that it is his story--literally the inside story--of what it's been like for him, sacrificing his ego and his career for the love of a character he has spent his life creating. As a life-long Star Wars fan reading Daniel's memoir, I discovered a thing or two about the Star Wars films that I did not know. His book is entertaining. It's fun. And it put me inside that suit, if only for a while, to look through the eyes of someone else--an actor, a robot, an icon.

 9.) A Journal of the Plague Year -- by Daniel Defoe (1722)

I don't think it's a mistake that my "Best Of" reading list for 2020 consists of several titles having something to do with disaster--either natural or man-made.

[Aside: It was, obviously, that kind of year.]

Would I have picked up Defoe's book under more "normal" circumstances? I don't know. I almost doubt it. But our contemporary life being what it was in the year past (and still is in 2021--let's just accept it right now), I thought this book--written nearly 300 years ago and set, fictionally, in the bubonic plague-ravaged  streets of London--would be an interesting comment on our modern COVID-19 life that we all seem to be living. And I was right. Defoe's 18th century fictional-nonfiction is amazing.

From the parallels--gleaned from history--to our own times in the haggard 21st century, Defoe charts a remarkably prescient glimpse of our world in 2020, staring down a microbial enemy. The echoes are startling, and when reading it I had to keep reminding myself that this is a work of fiction. Defoe, one of our first "novelists" in the English language, was (who knew it at the time?) one of our first genre-bending post-modernists, with this historic account told in a creative-nonfiction stylistic approach. As it is, it's an amazing "novel"/historical document that sings to the tune of our times.

 8.) Dune -- by Frank Herbert (1965)

Okay. Full disclosure: It seems I have always been aware of Frank Herbert's Dune and yet (for some reason) have always resisted it.

When I was younger, I was a sci-fi fan, snatching up whatever titles I could, devouring every piece of science-fiction (modern and classic) that I could get my hands on. This inevitably extended into the sub-genre of fantasy fiction, as well, and so early reading of novels like Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End, as well as Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, eventually melded with the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth sagas of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, as well as Richard Adams' anthropomorphic allegorical masterpieces, Watership Down and The Plague Dogs.

Along with all of this, then--always orbiting somewhere out on the periphery--was Frank Herbert's daunting Dune. I remember the stiff Permabound copy of the book on the shelves in my high school library, and I remember riffling through it occasionally, probably even checking it out from the librarian from time to time, and opening the cover, and turning to the first page, and taking a glance at the book's several Appendices toward the back of the book, as well as its Maps and its Glossary. And I am more than certain that Arthur C. Clarke's famously cryptic critical blurb on the cover (or in the inside cover)--"...I know nothing comparable to it other than The Lord of the Rings"--teased my curiosity all the more.

I have always enjoyed certain speculative fiction--I can be a sucker for fantastic fiction that deals with all the minutiae of carefully drawn-out world-building. Richard Adams had that skill. Tolkien more than had that skill. And I always knew (albeit indirectly and only through osmosis, in a way) that Frank Herbert's massive, mythological sci-fi masterpiece, Dune, doubled-down on the whole world-building thing and existed almost as a thing unto itself.

And yet strangely (for me at least) it remained unread. I just could not get into it, for some reason.

Fast-forward to 1984, my freshman year of college, and coincidentally the year of the release of David Lynch's legendary failed attempt at filming Herbert's almost unfilmable novel. 

[Aside: Let's face it, that movie is a disastrous mess, from start to finish. (Could there really be a serious dissenting discussion on that point?) Lynch is an artist of unparalleled talent and vision, in my opinion. But the book (not to mention the studio) got the best of him in this case, I believe.]

Anyway.... I do remember buying the pocket paperback movie tie-in version of the novel when I was in college--complete with the movie-poster artwork on the book's cover--orange colored sand dunes, and Kyle Mclaughlin striding heroically across the foreground, some sort of weapon-device draped over his arm and across his shoulders, looking every bit the messianic protagonist. [Aside: Cue the movie's theme music from Toto.] And I remember (because I was still intrigued and I was, already at that time, a fan of David Lynch) that I cracked open the book and tried to break into it. And I made it through the first chapter or so before quickly giving up.

I found the novel's mysteries impossible to crack, I guess. I didn't get it. It was beyond me, I suppose. And what's more, I didn't care.

But now fast-forward several decades. I'm older now (obviously). I've read considerably more (obviously). And yet another attempt to film this seemingly unfilmable book is "in the can," as they say (this time from visionary Canadian filmmaker, Denis Villeneuve--so we'll see), and merely awaiting a post-COVID green light, allowing it to open at theaters on the big screen...finally. So this year I thought would be an interesting time to once again try to tackle this cumbersome novel--hopefully making it past Chapter One this time--and finally check this book off my list of Heretofore Unread Big Books.

It's dense. It's complex. But the novel was not as daunting or impenetrable as I remember from my previous attempt 40 years ago. The book is definitely dated, I think--most definitely a product of 1965, when it was published. The drug-induced reveries of "the Spice," the ridiculously stilted dialogue, the clumsily awkward patriarchal sexism, the (supposedly) anti-Semitic take on Cold War-era views of the Middle East and U.S. relations.

It's all a mess of a mix, really. (And I'm not convinced that if the novel were to be published today it would find even half of its cult-like reverential audience--even underground. Who knows?) Herbert's classic novel is a product of its time, to be sure, but it is also undeniably the product of a massive imagination constructing and controlling a unique and singular vision.

Don't ask me what it's all about. I'm not entirely sure what all this vision finally amounts to or what it all means. But I'm glad I finally read it.

 7.) The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human -- by Noah Stryker (2014)

One upside to the whole "quarantine thing" over this past year, I suppose, is that (like many people, I'm assuming) it has caused me (or "allowed me," if you'd rather) to slow down and to take a closer look at the immediate world around me. This year's pandemic and quarantine has allowed me to take inventory, to take stock of all the things I have and of all the things I'm missing.

My back yard--as it reveals itself to me now--is a remarkably interesting place. My back yard is its own little ecosystem--its own little world--of rabbits, and squirrels, and raccoons, and snakes, and possums, and chipmunks, and deer, and coyote, and birds.

I have lived around birds all my life, obviously. For 50+ years now I have listened in the back of my mind to their voices singing to one another, calling, laughing, searching, ringing through the air, and I have watched our little winged neighbors flit so casually and effortlessly in and out of the corners of my eyes, up and down, floating from tree to tree, from limb to limb, from branch to branch, from tree to ground, and back again. And I have barely noticed them.

The more I began to watch them over this past summer, the more I wanted to make time to watch them. To observe them. To note and to infer what in the world could possibly be going on with them in their airy, leafy world above my back yard.

So I got my hands on Stryker's book, wanting to maybe gain a little more educated insight into what I was watching and listening to, and I couldn't put the book down. It has changed the way I watch and listen to the ecosystem, the little world above me and all around me, the daily avian drama in my trees in the back yard.

 6.) Whale Day: And Other Poems -- by Billy Collins (2020)

From the beginning of the quarantine, the former U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins, took to taping and recording short little daily poetry readings and discussions from the comfortable book-strewn confines of his home and study in Florida. These continuing "sessions," then, are posted to his social media sites--a daily visit and conversation that Collins has taken to calling "The Poetry Broadcast."

Subsequently, he also published his 13th collection of new poetry this past year. Like all of Collins' work, his persona's voice in this book sidles up next to you like an old friend, and you simply find yourself once again picking up the relationship since the last time you'd met. 

He's just so good at what he does best. I don't mean this simile to sound like a detriment or a criticism, because it isn't meant that way at all: Collins' poetry reads like a comfortably worn-out pair of shoes, or jeans, or sweatshirt--the kind that you're so used to you have forgotten just how good they feel, just how much you like them, until you slip them on again, and settle in to them, and find yourself saying, "Oh yeah.... This is it. This is what I like...."

It's inevitable, I think. His poetry is often--and rightfully so--described as playful, and humorous, and grounded in the everydayness of everyday life. And while those descriptions are apt, it can be too easy to simply leave his poetry there and to dismiss it and to miss what else is also there: How, for example, he so effortlessly (it seems) picks at the threads of subtle and seismic nuances in the everydayness of our everyday lives, uncovering places that we thought we had either hidden or hidden from, and all the time echoing the depths of some great and profound silence and sadness.

Collins is a contemporary master. He is a national treasure. I will read anything he writes.

 5.) Hiking With Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are -- by John Kaag (2018)

With such book titles on his Amazon page as Idealism, Pragmatism, and Feminism: The Philosophy of Ella Lyman Cabot (2011), Drone Warfare (War and Conflict in the Modern World) (co-authored with Sarah Kreps, 2014), Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition (2014), American Philosophy: A Love Story (2014), Hiking With Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are (2018), and Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (2020), you could be fairly quick, I'm sure, in assuming that John Kaag would be the life of any party. 

This book was fascinating, frustrating (at times), captivating, maddening, and finally fully illuminating.

Yes, as the title suggests, it is a book about walking. It is a book about walking through mountains, to be more specific. It is a book about hiking through the Swiss Alps, to be most specific, and about the pursuit of the19th-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, to follow--quite literally--in his footsteps, and to better understand what it means to be a human being.

Kaag, a respected professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, is haunted by Nietzsche's writings and teachings, and returns to the master's beloved area in the Swiss Alps, Sils Maria, with his wife and young daughter, to pursue his own demons, to chase them down, to hopefully finally understand Nietzsche, himself, and the meaning of his own life.

This is the kind of book that you read a little bit, put down, think about, process, read some more, put down, think about, process...and repeat. It's thoughtful, engaging, and undeniably challenging in the gauntlet that it throws down before you. Nietzsche, after all, was not an easy philosopher to either fully understand or to fully accept. The story of his life (which Kaag pursues on his own parallel track) is a story of genius, and madness, manic highs and lows, joy, sadness, and ultimately despair. Kaag--on the journey with his wife and daughter--discovers something that always eluded Nietzsche, perhaps.

And the result--at least in part--is this book. I found it moving, maddening, and beautiful.

 4.) Nemesis -- by Philip Roth (2010)

If there is another late-20th century American author of Philip Roth's stature who turned out such a surprisingly strong run of books in what came to be the "late period," I would like to know who the author is. By 1997, Roth's output (already prodigious and worthy of cementing him in place as one of America's great contemporary writers) was further solidified with the publication of American Pastoral, which would go on to win him the Pulitzer Prize the following year in '98. That book would be followed by 2000's much applauded, The Human Stain, and later, in 2004, by his alternative-history masterpiece, The Plot Against America.

All told, that is an incredible run of fine novels for any "older" writer to achieve. At a time when a writer (of such a lauded reputation) could normally relax and set the pen aside and step away from an honorable career of great books, Roth seemed intent on doing the opposite. He found a second wind at the tail end of his career and produced what many critics consider not only some of his own personal greatest work yet but also, perhaps, some of the greatest work by any contemporary American writer at the time.

In the years immediately following The Plot Against America, Roth then released a trio of short, gasping little novellas, as if finally, at long last, maybe the air was gone. But then in 2010--as if in one last, closing burst--came this novel, Nemesis, which though while just falling short of being a "great" Roth novel, perhaps, at least finds the strength to be filled with its author's typically formidable writing and some of the usual Rothian narrative trademarks.

Set in a sweltering summer of 1944 in Roth's own hometown of Newark, NJ, the novel (one of his last), signs off on his career with a story that looks back to an imagined outbreak of polio that sweeps through the city's Jewish Weequahic section, devastating countless lives--the victims, their families and loved ones, as well as the novel's doomed protagonist, Bucky Cantor, fated through the course of his life to suffer ignominy, loss, and loneliness.

While maybe the book won't be mentioned in the same breath as many of the other novels that make up Roth's pantheon, I still found Nemesis to be powerful, relevant, and moving. (I would imagine practically every writer alive would be honored to write such a "lesser" novel.)

 3.) The Topeka School: A Novel -- by Ben Lerner (2019)

I must admit, I was surprisingly unfamiliar with Ben Lerner's name before coming to this novel. As a young poet and novelist, Lerner does not have a long catalogue behind him. The Topeka School is only his third novel--his first, the acclaimed Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) was closely followed by 10:04 (2014). All of his novels (to date) are experiments of postmodern self-referential reflectivism, resulting in a clever play of fictional autobiography (or autobiographical fiction--take your pick).

This story's protagonist--Adam Gordon--is coincidentally the narrator in Leaving the Atocha Station, while 10:04's narrator is interestingly named Ben. 

[Aside: That's the limit of my knowledge of his first two novels, at this point, having only read this book, so far. But knowing even that small degree of Lerner and of the arc of his novels paints an exciting portrait of a young writer--hailing from my home state of Kansas--who is not afraid to push some boundaries and some buttons with his literary experimentalism and his deft poet's eye and ear for language.]

So, what's going on here? What are we to believe is real and what made up? Lerner is hardly the first writer to trip down this experimental metafictional Proustian lane, but this is a pretty fascinating contemporary addition to the genre. With scenes of mesmerizing wordplay and character-building, the book moves along quickly. It is compact, with passages of aching beauty and awkward humor and mounting dread and implosive sadness and explosive violence.

A depiction of late-20th century/early-21st century America--with its boiling angers, and hatreds, and manipulated rhetoric, and blunt-force trauma divisiveness--it feels as if Lerner somehow has his finger on the pulse of a nation, not to mention a voyeuristic telescope trained on all of us.

I plan on getting caught up on Ben Lerner, the writer.

 2.) Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster -- by Adam Higginbotham (2019)

I remember the days when I could say something as casual as, "I don't know that I've ever actually been legitimately frightened by a book before."

I can't say that anymore.

 1.) Gravity's Rainbow -- by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

I've written about this reading experience elsewhere [emptyshipoutward-bound.blogspot.com/2020/07/] and so won't belabor the point revisiting things I've already said and resaid ad nauseum about this one-of-a-kind novel.

Except by saying this: Pynchon's novel is an exhaustive and exhausting work--maybe the work--of 20th century American post-Cold War encyclopedic Menippean satire. It is funny. It is tragic. It is exciting (in places). It is boring as hell (in places). It is singular, and massive, and it is a crazy fucking masterpiece, in a world that unrelentingly needs exactly that.

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OUTRO

"Witness Mr. Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself--without anyone."

-- Rod Serling (opening narration), "Time Enough at Last," The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode 8 (starring Burgess Meredith), originally aired November 20, 1959 on CBS

The Train Station at LaSalle and Van Buren

 

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"You realize the sun doesn't go down. 

It's just an illusion caused 

by the world spinning 'round." 

           --  The Flaming Lips, "Do You Realize?" 

________

She didn't dream much anymore. Or if she did dream, she certainly didn't remember her dreams these days. Often she would wake in the middle of the night or early in the morning--jump awake, usually, from a sound that had startled her or from the familiar feeling of falling--and she would take a moment to remember where she was. Take a moment to familiarize herself. To let it all come back to her. The fear. The anxiety. The dread. The hiding.

    She could remember that upon waking, but nothing in the way of her dreams. Those seemed lost to her. Lost as the thought that woke her this afternoon from her sudden, much-needed nap--a memory from long ago. A song that her dad had liked and that he used to play for her and her sister when they were both younger, riding together in his car--the three of them--coming back perhaps from a trip to the Area Club, or from a shopping excursion, or from fishing, or from a movie. Or from just wherever.

    She thought of the song this afternoon upon waking, and she thought of her memories about the song. But she could not recall the song's name, or the band's name, or the song's chorus, or its lyrics.

    She just remembered that the song existed. Which was enough, it seemed. That was all it took this afternoon to rouse her, to give her a reason to open her eyes, and a reason to wake up and to face the day. 

    There was the sound of gunshots off in the distance somewhere, echoing down the empty thoroughfare of Halsted Street. The sound of the repeated fire from an automatic rifle bounced and ricocheted off the sides of buildings and abandoned cars parked alongside the street. A siren blared somewhere not far away, its bleated warble rising and falling in the crisp air of late November. It was coming from up north, it sounded like. Somewhere in the direction of Greektown. But she couldn't be sure. 

    Directions were meaningless to her at this point, it seemed. Nothing was where it used to be--where it was supposed to be. And nothing made any sense. 

    "Are you really going today?"

    She heard the voice before she noticed she wasn't alone in the room. It was Dara, her roommate. Of course it was. She wasn't alone.

    More gunshots in the distance woke her up even more. The sound trailed along some distant valley of concrete, stone, steel, and glass in the world outside. The shattering of windows followed. Raised voices, yelling. The sound of vehicles roaring by (was that Taylor Street? Halsted?....) Pickup trucks most likely, with diesel engines rattling and with flags flapping behind in their beds. And riders huddled in the cold, bundled in the back of the trucks by the flags, all of them wearing warm hunting gear and all of them shouldering rifles, guns of all makes, RPGs, military-grade hardware.

    This is what a coup looks like and sounds like, she thought to herself--her first real, coherent thought since her dreamless sleep. If it weren't so real she might have laughed.

    "Yes," she answered Dara. "I'm going. Tonight. Once it's dark."

    "Surely you're not thinking of going by yourself? You can't do that. I won't let you do that."

    "You won't let me?"

    Dara laughed quietly and moved to sit down on the bed beside her. She reached out softly. "You know what I mean."

    Silence.

    "Do you think it's even real?" Dara asked her. "The text from your dad, I mean. Do you think it's true?"

    She got up from her bed. Dara's hand fell from her shoulder as she stepped in her fuzzy, pink socks to the window in their confined little dorm room. The University of Illinois at Chicago. A nexus of neighborhoods all around them--Maxwell Street to the south, Pilsen and Little Italy to the west, Greektown to the north, a thin wisp of new smoke withering overhead like a thread into the late November sky. Off to the south and east, Chinatown--it had been the first to fall in the days immediately after the election. The Chinese. The "Chinese Virus," as it had been labeled by some.

    After the delicate days of waiting and wondering following the election, and after the new president had been officially declared the winner, that was when the problems started. And it had happened so fast. Militias. Violence. Chaos. The new president-elect and vice president-elect had been kidnapped, both of them, and murdered, piecemeal, all of it recorded on video and uploaded online. Gangland-style. Execution-style. Terrorist-style. Immediately the sanctioned murders had gone viral, as expected. "The better angels of our nature have fallen," the pundits moaned. And it seems, for once, they weren't wrong. Anger, hatred, viciousness was the rule of the day. The current, sitting president had been restored, all as if the election process had never happened. Because the election hadn't happened. None of it. Orwell had been right, as it turns out. And the death of a democracy was never pretty, history could tell you. The death of a republic. The death of a dream, a bold experiment that had lasted...for a while.

    That was about the time the neighborhoods had begun to fall, one by one. And it had started with Chinatown--just blocks away, minutes away from them here on campus. An all-out war one night, it had sounded like, the dark city skyline lit up as if it were, ironically, the Chinese New Year. Explosions. Gun fire. Screaming. More explosions. And shooting. The CPD and the National Guard all caught off guard to the level of destruction, to the animosity of the violence and the genocide, to the frightening thoroughness of the planned revolution and takeover. Chinatown now lay under a thick, oily cloud of smoke--it was still burning, and this had been a week ago. Stories were filtering to them, hidden as they were in the dormitory on the UIC Courtyard. Stories of dead bodies piled up on Cermak, right at the Gateway of Chinatown. Corpses of Chinese-Americans piled up, rotting, reeking, burning.

    She was Chinese. Adopted, both her and her sister, when they were only 11 months old. Adopted by white parents and brought to live in the United States, in Illinois, in the suburbs just outside of Chicago. America was her home, the only home she could remember. She was an American citizen. But she was also Chinese. And for the first time ever, in the recent unfolding of days and weeks, she found herself genuinely scared for her life. Her father had sent her a text late last night--it was his number at least on the other end of the message.

    But was it really from him? she wondered. Who knows anymore? It was so short and so abrupt, she couldn't read into the mysterious words any of his usual flippant, sarcastic personality. Was it really him who had sent it? She didn't know. And why was it so abbreviated and so rushed? Why so many typos? He would never write and send a text like that. Would he?

    She didn't know the answers. And she didn't want to think about it.

 

The trains are running again but only tomorrow night.
Last train out of teh city at midnight, take it all the way
to the end. I wll meet you @ Joliet. Any way you can
get to the train station at LaSalle and Van Buren.

Tomorrow! Be carefull. I love you....

    And that was that. She did not know any more than that. She did not know if that text had in fact come from her father. She did not know if the trains were running again. She did not know if there was a train leaving tonight from LaSalle Street Station. She didn't know if it was real, any of it. She didn't know whether or not to trust it. She didn't know who or what to trust. She didn't know how she would get to the train station. And if she did, would the train be there? Would it be full? Would there be room for her? Was it all a trap, perhaps? Would the black, and silver, and white pickups--the flags hanging from the backs of their beds, coiled soundlessly like snakes at rest--be waiting for her once she showed up at the Metra station, diesel engines purring, sending out clouds of sweet-scented exhaust behind them? Is this how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper? Is this how her world ends? Is this real, any of it? Is it true? What is truth anymore anyway?

    "Yes," she answered Dara. "I think it's real. My dad sent me that text. There is a train going out tonight, and I'm going to be on it. Somehow."

When darkness came it came fast. Streetlights had been shot out all along Halsted days ago. They had been huddling with some friends in the dorm at the time in a makeshift "panic room," of sorts, down in the basement by the washing machines when the gunfire had started on the streetlights. The requisite roar of the pickup trucks. Potshots at first. Howling. Shouting. Cursing. Laughter. The shooters must have been drinking before this, obviously. The dinging on metal of missed shots. The explosion of glass from direct hits. All around the campus now there was an inky, thick blanket of blackness that descended on them once the sun slid past the bare limbs of the trees and below the rooftops. This was a new kind of darkness.

    They stayed in whenever they could, she and Dara, and their friends in the dorm. Of course there were emergency runs to the commissary on campus, to pick up some essentials--snack food, toiletries, other stuff, whatever they needed. More than anything trips like that were just an excuse to get away from the dorm room and the familiar hallway upstairs. But when they made their heroic mad dashes to the student union or to the commissary, they did it sparingly, and quickly, and always in pairs, at least. They never went alone, anywhere, the two of them, she and Dara. They had made it their practice anyway--before all of this--to never go anywhere without the other. This was common knowledge and accepted fact between the two of them. But now they really didn't go anywhere without the other. Now it was life or death. And so they stayed together.

    Of course what no one talked about, ever--not her, not Dara, not any of their friends holed up with them for the time being on campus--was how long any of this was going to last. How much longer could they hide, like mice, in their dorm rooms in the middle of an obvious college campus in the middle of the city? How much longer before someone on campus forgot to turn off a light bulb at night and left a window burning to the city streets beyond--a flare marking their presence. A neon arrow pointing to their existence. The college would be the next target, then, left in a burning pile of rubble, like Chinatown, and Little Italy, and Greektown.

    It was like checking off boxes, she knew, and they would be next. It was just a matter of time. They all knew it, even though no one would ever mention it in conversation. Maybe the revolutionist militias--these self-styled "New Patriots," as they had taken to calling themselves--hadn't forgotten about the college after all; maybe they knew about them hiding here, scuttling around, trying to be safe. Maybe it was the case that the gun-toting mobile armies simply hadn't worked their way to the campus yet. It's just a bunch of stupid fucking spoiled privileged college kids anyway. What the fuck are they going to do? We'll get to them in time. No worries.

    How long could this last? How long could the food hold out? How long could their nerves hold out? Winter would be here soon. What if the heat got turned off? What if the water pipes froze? And what if the food ran out? How long could she do this? She didn't know, and she didn't want to know.

"So, you're really doing this?" This was from Diego, their friend from down the hall. He was in their room now, as he often was. "You're really going to try for the train station? Why?"

    "Yes, I'm really doing this."

    "Show him the text from your dad," Dara said.

    She showed Diego the text from her dad.

    "That is some crazy shit," he said, shaking his head. "I have a bad feeling about this. Seriously, girl. Come on. Do you hear and see how fucking crazy those maniacs are out there? Are you kidding me right now?"

    "Well, I didn't say you had to go with me, did I?" she said.

    "No. You didn't say that. But you need someone to go with you."

    "No, I don't."

    "Yes, you do. I'm not letting you go out there alone. Not in this shit."

    "I've been hearing that a lot lately."

    "What?"

    "Never mind."

    "Let me see what Will's doing tonight," Diego said. Will was Diego's roommate.

    She laughed at that.

    "What? You have a problem with Will?" Diego asked her.

    "No, it's just I don't see him as the 'My hero' type. He may have to tear himself away from Call of Duty."

    "Well, you're not going on this little jaunt of yours alone," Dara said, as if she were putting her foot down and speaking the law. "Do you have a better idea?"

    She had to think for a moment. Her silence told the others that, no, in fact she didn't have a better idea.

    "Besides," Diego said, "I know for a fact that Will can get his hands on a gun. Tonight. No questions asked. And you're going to need a gun."

    "I have some questions about that," she said.

    "Smartass," Diego said. "I said 'No questions asked.'"

    "Oh, that was literal?" she said. "I thought that was, like...you know...just a cliche' phrase. Something you heard once in a movie."

    "I'm trying to save this foolish little girl's life," Diego said to the room, "and listen to the way she talks to me."

    "Whose gun is it?" she asked.

    "Like I know? I think he said it was, like, his cousin's friend's gun, or his friend's cousin's gun... One of the two. Either way, it's a gun. Let me text him now. He can probably have it here, in your hands, within the hour. When are you leaving?"

    "In a couple of hours."

    "Do you really want a gun?" Dara asked her. "Have you ever shot one before?"

    "No."

    "Do you know how?"

    She looked at Dara. "Take a look outside. How hard can it be?"

    Dara laughed. Or tried to. "Girl.... Are you sure about this?"

    She suddenly found that she couldn't answer that question.

"What kind of gun is that?" she asked Will. He had shown up at their room 30 minutes after Diego had texted him the request. That was fast. And now he unwrapped the gleaming silver pistol from a cloth that he carried it in. He unwrapped it lovingly almost. She watched Will's face as he did so. He was interesting.

    "It's a Walther .22," he said, as if he knew what he was talking about. From the front pocket of his jeans he pulled out two clips for the gun. "These go with it. They slide in here, at the base of the handle."

    "Where did you get this?" She looked at him, as if she had never seen him before. "And how did you come by this so quickly?"

    He looked at her and smirked. "That's really your main question right now? Are you shitting me?" He was cute, when he wanted to be.

    She continued looking at him, watching his mouth as it moved, watching the fluttering movements of his hands--like a nervous bird in flight, almost--as he explained to her the workings of the Walther .22. She paid attention to what he was saying and the way he was saying it, or tried to at least. 

    "It's going to have a bit of a kick for a little girl like you," he said. "That is if you fire it." He paused and watched her. "And hopefully you won't have to. I mean, of course you won't have to. I'll be with you."

    "What?" she asked him.

    "I'm going with you."

    "No, don't. Please stay here. Please be safe. You don't have to go. No one has to go with me."

    "No, there's no way I'm staying here, knowing you're out there, wandering the city."

    "Well, I wouldn't exactly put it that way, 'wandering the city.' I know where I'm going."

    "I don't care. I'm going with you."

    She looked at him, and after a moment of thinking about it she smiled at him. A little. "Okay," she said.

It was later that evening. The hours were drawing on. Temperatures were dropping. Shadows were deepening outside. Sounds of explosions from homemade propane-bombs, and the rumble of gunfire, and sirens, and the return of gunfire. Shouting somewhere in the distance. Followed by more explosions--one of the tank-bombs exploded just blocks away from the college, from the dormitory, close enough to rattle the window in her dorm room. She was packing a small nylon shoulder bag with some of her belongings, some of her things, essentials, stuff that might tide her over for the days ahead. Something light that she could carry easily and run with, if necessary. Anything. She didn't even know what to bring with her.

    There was so little she knew. So many uncertainties. So much in the shadows, so much that couldn't be seen. So much that asked her to rely merely on faith, or on blind luck, or on chance. She was uncomfortable with everything she didn't know, but she knew she didn't have a choice.

    "I feel like there's something I should say." Again the voice behind her. As always, Dara. She loved Dara. They had quickly formed a bond, like sisters almost. And this hurt.

    She turned to her roommate. Poor Dara.... She knew what this was doing. To both of them. But there was nothing she could say or do to help make things easier or better. This was one of those wounds that ended up cutting both ways.

    "Come here," she said to Dara. She momentarily dropped the bag she had been packing, and she opened up her arms. Dara came to her, then, and let herself be wrapped in an embrace. It felt good. They both needed this moment. They were inseparable, that was true enough. And yet she was going, she was leaving, and there was no changing her mind on that. She had to go. And Dara was staying.

    "You don't have to say anything."

    She could feel Dara starting to cry.

    "Don't...." she said quietly. "You're going to make me cry, too."

    They both laughed, sort of, a nervous, anxious, upset sort of laugh, the kind of laugh that sounds forced and fake, the kind of laugh that only barely masks the fact that just underneath its surface is a cry.

    "I want to go with you," Dara said. "But I can't. But you know I want to go with you...."

    "You can't go with me."

    "I would...."
    "No, you can't. You need to stay here. Wait for your family to get ahold of you. Because they will."

    "I don't know."

    "They will. Just give them time."

    "That's not even it," Dara said to her. "The biggest part, the main part, is that I'm scared. I'm scared at the thought of leaving. Hell, I'm scared of the thought of staying. But I'm even more scared at the thought of leaving." She wiped at her eyes. "I think I'm losing my mind. There, I said it. I didn't think I would say it to you, and I said it: I'm scared of leaving here. Of going out there. And yet I'm watching you leave...."

    "Don't...."

    "What kind of friend does that make me?"

    "Shut up," she said to Dara. "Stop it. Don't talk like that. I love you. Your family will reach you. I know they will. You have to be here for them, when they get ahold of you. Maybe they'll come get you."
    "Why haven't you heard from your sister?" Dara asked. "Or your mom? How come they haven't called you or texted you? How come they haven't made an effort to come get you? When was the last time you talked to either one of them? I don't understand where everybody is...." She tried to laugh again but once more found that she couldn't. "Did everybody just forget about us here?"    

    "No. They haven't forgotten," she said, more to convince herself than anything. "They're trying. It's just difficult for them out there right now." She glanced briefly out the window. "God only knows what it's like out there for them.... But I know they're all right. I know we'll hear from them. Like I heard from my dad."

    "Yeah...." Dara whispered.

    "You have to believe that."
    "I know. I do."

    "I love you, girl. You know that."

    "I know...." Dara smiled at her. "And you and Will are really going?"

    She looked at Dara. The two held their gaze for a moment. This was real. "Yes," she said. "We're going soon. We'll be all right. I promise you."

    They hugged each other. Tightly. Neither one of them wanted to let go.

    "Tell your dad I say, 'Hey.'" Dara whispered to her.

    "I will."

They left by the side door of the Courtyard dormitory, she and Will, the two of them bundled up warm as they stepped out into the cold late-November night air. If they weren't wearing face masks you could have seen their breath. It was good to hide such a thing, now. The steam of their breathing could have possibly given them away if they weren't careful.

    "These masks are finally good for something," Will said quietly as they stepped outside into the turnaround cul-de-sac by the side exits. "Who knew?"

    They moved to the corner of the building, Will in the lead with his pistol drawn. He halted and slowly peeked around the edge of the building out onto Halsted Street. He looked to his right and to his left--down south Halsted and up north Halsted--and then held his finger up to his lips, hidden behind his mask. She had to imagine him making a "ssssshhhh" sound to her, and then he waggled two of his fingers at her, motioning her forward.

    It was all she could do to not say something about Call of Duty. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. He's helping you, she had to remind herself.

    "It's just a couple of blocks north," he said to her, whispering. "We'll come to Van Buren, then, and cut to the right. Head to the east."

    "I know that Will," she said. He's trying to help you.

    "I know you know. Just stay close to me."

    They headed out, slowly. Cautiously. Always watching, always listening. The sound of pickup trucks, their flags flapping in the cold air, their diesel engines always roaring. The sudden glare of headlights coming from behind them or turning in front of them. They were watchful for everything, jumping at shadows. Careful to move slowly and quietly through the darkened streets. It was slow going. She didn't realize how slow their progress was going to be. She thought of her dad's text to her. The train left at midnight, he had told her. Did they finally get around to leaving the dorm at the right time? Should they have left sooner? She hadn't accounted for how slow their going might be in the dark and the cold of night, mindful of everything they thought they saw and heard. Were they going to make the train station? Would they be late, she and Will? Would she miss the train?

    "Did we leave on time?" she whispered to him. "Should we have left sooner?"

    "What do you mean?"

    "I mean are we going to miss the train? This is slow going," she said. "And it's so cold."

    "We'll get there," he said to her. "We'll make it."

    "And then what?" she asked him. "What are you going to do once we get there?"

    "Well," he said, "something tells me that whatever's going to happen it isn't going to be the way they called it back in Nha Trang...."

    She looked at him. "What?"

    "Nothing...." he said. "It's just a line from a movie. A good movie, though."

    "Are you fucking kidding me with this right now? What is wrong with you?"

    He laughed, quietly. "I'm joking," he said. "Take it easy. Jesus."

    "Will you stop? I can't even...."

    "And here we are," Will said. They stopped. "Van Buren." He motioned with the drawn pistol to the green street sign above them. "That was easy. Piece of cake."

    "Are we ready?" she asked.

    "So far so good. I'm ready when you are," he said. "Wait, though..." He took off one of his gloves and reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled out one of the clips for the Walther .22. He slipped the clip neatly into the handle of the pistol, as if he had done it all his life. It clicked into place. The sound seemed loud, magnified in the stillness of the frozen air. He tried not to look at her. "Don't say anything."

    "What did you just do?" she said to him. "What just happened?"

    "I said not to say anything."

    "Are you joking me?" she said. "Do you think this is one of your games, Will?"

    "I forgot."

    "Oh my God...." 

    He sighed, loudly. "Maybe you'd like it back in your cell, your highness?"

    "Please stop," she said.

    "I'm sorry."

    Silence.

    "No, I'm sorry," she said. "I mean... Thank you...."

    "Don't mention it," he said. "You're welcome. No way I'm letting you do this alone tonight."

    "You didn't answer my question, though."

    "What question was that?"
    "Once we get to LaSalle Street Station, what then? What about you? What are you going to do?"

    He paused for a moment. He looked around the two of them in the darkened city street, standing alone at the corner of Halsted and Van Buren. "And then I give you the pistol," he said to her. "And I say 'Goodbye' to you. And I kiss you, if you'll let me. And then I make my way back. Or try to...." He rethought that. "I will make it back."

    "No," she said. "No, you're not doing that. Come with me."

    "No," he said. "I can't do that."

    It was her turn to pause. She looked up at him in the dark. She could make out his eyes. They were kind eyes. She liked them. "Then you'll keep your pistol. It's yours, anyway...."

    "It's actually not mine..."

    "Shut up. It's yours. You keep it. You'll need it."

    "No. You're taking it with you." He paused and looked at her. "Not that you'll need it, you know. You'll be fine. But.... You're taking the gun with you. I'll be okay."

    "My hero..." she said, and tried to laugh but was surprised to suddenly find tears, cold, in her eyes.

    They hugged each other then, standing there in the dark at the crossroads of the two streets. They held each other for as long as they felt they could. They knew, both of them, there would not be a time when they could do it again.

    "It's okay...." he whispered. "Are you ready?"

    "Yes," she said. "Are you?"

    "Yes. I think so."

    "All right then," she said. "Let's go."

    The two of them took off running east from Halsted Street, staying close together, their breath coming in short little gasps, their face masks pulling restrictively at their mouths, their legs like frozen fence posts with the cold November wind cutting around them. They ran, not gracefully but steadily, into the dark, the two of them, alone, in the direction of the train station at LaSalle and Van Buren.