"Cecil!" Julia called.
"He"s just hiding! We have to go, now!"
Julia shrugged and sighed.
"So how"s it done?"
"You won"t need your keys, but take them if you want," he said. "Hold my hands."
For a moment, Julia began to feel the room spin. And then, she wondered how it was that she had reached the exact center of the universe.
25. When it hits the fan "Truth is the only safe ground to stand on."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
When Prof. Sigger found himself standing three miles outside of town on County Highway A, he was, to say the least, chagrined. He tried thumbing a ride from a couple in a pickup, but no luck. They were too busy necking. One of them, however, did throw an empty beer can to him.
After studying his situation carefully, he decided that he either must walk the three miles or try that new method of movement that was supposed to be listed in the gray section of the clipboard. And considering that he hadn"t exercised regularly in years, the clipboard seemed to be the better option.
With only the starlight behind him, he began to read his way through the higher math. It wasn"t easy, but at the end of four minutes, he decided that the section in question had to be interpreted subjectively. This had been a theme of his academic career, so the conclusion hadn"t come as a surprise. It was amazing how elastic a text could be given the right kind of reader. In fact, he had often convinced himself (when lecturing to a room full of stupefied students) that only he and his method could arrive at any kind of coherent, but highly tentative, meaning. When he had debated the subject years before, the experience of reading had come down to an indeterminacy that left out the possibility of conclusive understanding. This disappointed many of his undergraduates, but then, reality was more often than not a disappointment. His writings on the matter had taken him a long way at the beginning of his career, but after years of more ardent methods of spiritual exploration, late at night, with several friends keeping a bloodshot eye out for the police, his writing had lost something of the cohesiveness it once had. He had always a.s.sumed that he would get it back one day, but lately, the face he encountered in the mirror looked more like his father"s than his own, and although he had taken some positive strides to get back into the lit. theory game, he hadn"t enjoyed much success. This new venture, however, seemed to be the turnaround. Having this kind of power would turn not a few heads -- networking being the prime ingredient in any good, tenured position.
Skimming through the pages one last time, he decided that he had arrived at a justifiable understanding of the matter. Perhaps he would make an entrance at the exact spot where he had left. Or just outside the theater. Or perhaps on the roof. Too dramatic? He settled for just outside the theater"s back door, in Seltsam Way.
He closed his eyes in order to concentrate on the math, felt that peculiar sensation of vertigo, and felt a cool wind blow on his face.
He opened his eyes to find himself hovering a thousand feet above Tranquil. His heart stopped beating as he began to fall, but began again, much to his relief as well as anguish.
He nearly let go of the clipboard, but managed to clutch it to his chest as the pages, his clothes, and the Earth, began to flutter violently around him. The fell past some kind of balloon, reached out to catch hold of it, but it was too late. Now, the only thing that could save him were those few pages whose contents he had just forgotten, thanks to a somewhat reduced short-term memory. The only numbers he could recall (as he struggled to find and not lose his place) was his rate of descent: thirty-two feet per second per second.
Something inside him wondered how long it would take to reach the end of his fall, and something else answered that this could not be known without ascertaining one"s starting alt.i.tude. Strange, he thought, what you think of when you find yourself airborne without a parachute.
But he forced himself to focus on what little he could read as he tumbled toward to the ground. And though he had spent the bulk of his academic career teaching his students that truth, with its duplicitous and mutable definitions, could never be found in a text, he began to search, quickly and sincerely, for meaning.
26. It Falls Together "Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case."
-- William Saroyan
The station-wagon swerved around the corner (as it had all the previous), jolting and jarring its pa.s.sengers from one side to another. Tom and Alona, in the back seat, were thrown next to each other at near regular intervals, wondering how long their luck would last. With a final, sharp turn of the wheel, Ritchie half-drove, half-skidded off Central and into the back alley known as Seltsam Way.
"There it is!" he shouted.
"This isn"t a cavalry charge, dear," Betty muttered, having braced herself in the pa.s.senger seat as best she could throughout the horrible ride.
"Now we"ll see what"s going on around here!" he replied.
It was when a man dressed in a lab coat plunged from the sky and slammed into their hood, pitching the car forward and then back onto its wheels as the body rolled off the windshield and into the alleyway behind them that Ritchie finally applied the brakes. The wagon skidded to a stop, turning as it slid until the vehicle became lodged in the narrow alley. After the occupants caught their breath, Betty spoke.
"I think you hit him," she said.
"I didn"t hit him, he hit me!" Ritchie replied.
"Look at the hood! The car"s totaled!" Tom cried.
"He fell on us! How could I know he was going jump and land on my car?!"
"Who are they?" Alona asked, looking past Tom as they sat pressed against the door.
"Who?" Ritchie asked.
"That old guy and... isn"t that what"s-her-name from Osco?"
"Do the doors still work?" Betty asked in a shaky voice.
They did, and the four of them crawled out the driver"s side and slowly made their way on unsteady feet toward the body.
"You got one!" shouted the old man.
"Justin..." the girl admonished.
"You know him?" Ritchie asked, pointing to the man the coat.
"Never seen him before, but I"m guessing he"s one of them."
"How do you know?" Betty asked.
And, coincidentally, the contents of a clipboard came fluttering down upon them like leaves.
"Justin Nelson," Justin said, extending his hand to Ritchie.
Introductions were made all around.
"Didn"t you work at Osco?" Alona asked.
"Until they fired me!" Julia replied. "And then they hired me here."
"Here?" Tom asked. "Doing what?"
"Concessions."
"My job?!"
"Be glad you were out of it," Alona said.
"Yeah, but I wasn"t even told I was fired!"
"So who is this guy?" Ritchie repeated.
"I don"t know. No name tag," Justin replied.
"He"s moving!" Betty shouted.