Cannonball (36 page)

(
Bliss
, I remembered.) “Bliss, understand me, bliss—up, out off the board, exposed,” I said to the Hearings the almost endlessly delayed afternoon after we were done with the evacuation alarm, and Storm, walking wounded, bandaged and God knows what under the bandage, had given the executive welcome clear from DC (and still no Em)—thinking what do I do now?—Scrolls, Umo, Dad, future, a going-back verbal agreement with the unspeakable Storm; but
Bliss
, Em—“you have basically three axis variants,” I went on, maybe being in myself jumping hand-in-hand off the float, what I was thinking to break down. “First, the fore-and-aft axis of your body remains constant and you turn forward or backward, spin, whatever. Second variant, body axis itself turns, as in twist, half and full; and the old fore-and-aft of number one becomes just the dive's own axis but where
is
that dive? And third”—I saw Husky, Wick, Bea, a square-shouldered, gray-haired, clean military sort younger than he looked whom I had met (if I could only remember—and so it
seemed
important—and are all these faces accredited?); and CEO and captain and between them the woman who resembled Livy who had attacked Storm a scant hour and a half ago; who, at the back, his job done, slipping out, grinning through a gauze and adhesive creation that looked like what was left of a bandage covering his whole face, Storm himself, but where was Em? gone in the car?—“number three,” I said, “‘Bliss,' I'll say, joining the first two in the slipperiest of all so you forget…you forget…how exposed you are further out—and who's watching or competing
against
you which is in your mind (excuse me) but you…” “‘Happy Returns' for Godsake,” the light changed, she was a good driver—we're not giggling in the water about a dinner guest, or in a Bureau of Land Management zone we think trudging toward that other campfire beyond the canyon ridge, or in her room, reading out loud. “He had it coming, I don't say he didn't, but you, you still don't know what was in The Inventor's envelope.”

“‘Food for thought,' Mom said.”

I hear myself not joking quite but doubled. And Em easing her pedal recalling, half-reciting,
“‘absentee slash parent we knew of you and beg to doubt
,'” from The Inventor's envelope (the fifth in my life by my count),
“‘proud father has it in his absence'
something something ‘
to be both here and not
' (wait, honey”—the endearment word from her odd again or, maybe like me, she's in two places)—“‘
tiger and fish…enigma
' (I think) ‘
For
' (what was it, Zach? didn't you tell
me
some of this?
) ‘right words will do more than all a parent'
(I forget)
‘deeds away by'
yes! something something and…‘
rue the day thinker slash dreamer doubles the single vein
—'well ‘absentee' is clear enough—hey, who knows what he means?”—Em made a sound—“he's right here with us, our Inventor—some of it's familiar though I swear, ‘rue the day' and ‘slash' spelled out, I ask you!”

“Is it us he means or—” (just words now out in the car—) I recalled whatever—it was not only board-shy and Dad's breathing but my own small wave receding down the beach like a great thing to see I nearly held onto—the envelope not quite so anonymous after all a cooked fortune revealed on the anvil of our aims to be annealed not by dumping cold water but by long rumin
a
ting, I said to my sister. Not funny. Our wheels spinning. “You may laugh,” she said—we passed a stand with lemons stacked on skewers and I remembered getting out of Umo's truck having had enough—“but it's
my
father, not just yours.” “He tried to do too much probably,” I said. I had imagined he would be present for my Hearings talk on diving.

Instead Em. Come in haste, there she'd been at the back in time for Husky's loud words with me and CEO and captain appearing front and back to grab an arm to remove him, when I was the one (and another person's gesture I took in but recalled only later). For what Husky did to speak up they were right enough to try to get him out of there, as my own admonitory interdiction to CEO and captain proved a signal hit for the majority of the assembled accredited. And our military presence hadn't gone unremarked even among such a loyal citizenry and, now on hand at the back, my own latecomer sister trying to think things through still had a car to drive me to Chula Vista a week later gathering my resources.

“See, it's heating up,” Livy said, she'd been wondering about my California campfire just beyond the canyon ridge, in fair flame though mysteriously deserted, but she meant the car now. We approached the bridge in low gear. “That's what you told your…” A smile between us—
boss
, I meant. “In case,” she says. “You must have known,” I said. “What I know is…” “Well, you're never wrong.” “That campfire above the canyon? when you were looking for water late at night?”

“Bliss.”

“Bliss?”

“‘
…the plaything of the child,'
Livy
—‘The secret of the man
'—yeah that's it—
‘ The sacred stealth of Boy and Girl / Rebuke it if we can
,' it comes right back.”

“I wouldn't know,” said Livy; “that campfire, though, was your father.”

“We found two gallons of water but left them,” I said, stunned, not exactly agreeing.

But now exposed by the bridge, oncoming.

Improvised by our own Corps of Engineers, a floating bridge, if we speak of the foundations laid across the river for a modest span to handle fifty thousand of us a day. You would hardly know what lay below arriving on foot. No vast perspective of six miles of Seattle concrete pontoons, and, once on, not the vibration of a suspension bridge, the constant flood beneath. Yet like why you enlisted, a swirling voice transmitted from the river and the structure to our feet having left the car to walk for the sake of it.

I was exposed. It was ahead always. It was base and banal news whatever the major had phoned in.

Through the burden of vehicle sound Livy heard the cries ahead and looked at me. She said, “That photographer? They gave up on him. I believe he was a Chaplain.”

News, I thought. “Lost in action maybe,” Livy said, eyeing me.

No link to our trip, of course. Her assignment, her men. “Where is the
cam
era?” A shout, a shriek coming up from below. “And that Nosworthy?”—her voice behind me now—“with the face?”

From the barrier I could see a sturdy child in the water swung overwhelmingly by the surging tracks of river that came together there. He hung on to some projection he could just reach with one hand below the roll of currents, it might be trying to pull him lower. The cries not his. I ran ahead and found a way down. Not a high bridge but a serious crossing. Below me two women on the ledge of a pontoon a dozen feet above the water seemed unable to move turning back and forth calling for help, calling to the children—there were two children in the water. It seemed like one. The women, their heads covered, found themselves trapped by need, not their own risk.

On the ladder I heard Livy call. She couldn't leave the car.

I looked up at her. I had stopped for a second. “Stay,” she said. She meant don't come back up. What would I do, climb back up the ladder to see if my father was the one who'd caught up with Storm? Never in the world, and I do not forgive him even for not being the one who trained the flashlight on two naked kids racing for a beach towel that comes into view, huge and yellow draped over a rock, but figure he was behind the government's almost unprecedentedly turning Umo down, finding
his
decision unacceptable when, just before I left, he had reportedly declined our offer of citizenship. Umo's value as an Olympic prospect? China's part in this.

A paint job on a door may be a job with some exchange value to split your heart between here and there—what did Umo owe The Inventor?

I have the time of others to work with, more than they know, and another father though this old mole died but not to me, and a faint ringtone is neither here nor there but like family to be gathered in and understood in its time: look at a half twist on tape, rerun it, the arch all but inertial, at the top the head-tilt leading the way for the shoulder and its extended arm to bank into what becomes a back dive, an axis that was always there, timeless, and you're unbeatable you know then, but what (I ask the Hearings) is this half or full twist like?—it's that you have no competitors, they're another zone. This was my Chinese diver's secret the day of the palace, his dive a jump—feet
first
, as they describe how the Reservist gets mustered out of this war—(
laughter somewhere
)—his twist and the three different positions his somersaults assumed capturing time itself and with it, better still, an understanding better than any dive. Which must be like my real job. To see the ground coming up, and from a long angle winter wheat growing out of it. Be the Bedouin born without eyes or a bald child's shaved-head hairline, or a tongueless.

And what gives me, through having worked my way down to semiretired Reserve photographer reportedly of the Scrolls' landfall, eighteen-inch capsule turning and aiming, turning some more, along the currents of the great system of wells restless as undulating rooms I hear my sister reading when we think of water, the right to hold forth on competitive full twist or answer if the President should be on the short list for the Peace Prize? At least I do not dream of training on the job as CEO of the nation having owned a chain of prisons or laundry slash dry cleaning establishments or a baseball team or for a thousand days read the Tao in a public place to learn how to do nothing, or studied how to be a photo op against strong backlight.

“Yes?” I said, the crowded Hearings room still before me, the hand raised now Husky's: “That's it,” he says, “that's it. ‘
Yes
,' you said,
Yes
,” getting to his feet managing to tip his chair into someone's lap—“I said it this morning, or I didn't say it, or I did,” Husky calls—while, edging down the aisle as if he would do something or, now in the row behind, hand Husky a mike, CE
O
broad-shouldered—while at the back who but my sister comes into view, Husky's
her
friend—“the kid with his tongue cut out, Zach,” Husky unaware of CEO, the stillness embarrassed, souls having to cope with intelligence, Christian doubtless or fascinated, and still adrift in their own seamless interruption, mortal, knowing, shy, American, Husky though trying: “Feel like I know you, Zach. Photos I wasn't meant to see—headless kids, that blindfolded wheelie going off the ramp at the Base—
you
know what you did—down by al Kut, was it? And the one-legged Specialist coming in for her layup, and someone tied up under a table biting somebody, blood on her leg, on the floor, the Wildcat of Kut, was it sex you cropped outa that shot, take a mouthful to tell what's going on there.” CEO with
captain
behind him reaches through the row. “And you're smart here and we all get the point but do we? Like ‘profit-
stricken
' country, and it's funny, it's called for, but listen—”

Captain stepping on the overturned chair in the row behind and almost falling collars Husky; CEO stepping over bodies to pull Husky by the arm back toward the aisle, who finds himself if not the word, “The trouble is you're…”—

Umo, my brother I will call him, who agreed that this Jesus must have meant business and capitalized on what he had going for him, asked if I really believed all that about proactive and gave me a look—did I believe all that? “‘Course not, but—” and Umo said, “You're so…” and found not the word but the moment.

Wind like another gravity slashed the crests and put the boy under again and rung by rung foot by foot I found a place to be hit by wind, dust, river, my own weight. The women at the other end of the ledge see what they see—that I have no rope, but a hand, a foot, to reach with, a foreigner here. Will I go in? The boy's face comes up, it knows it has lost the other. I will reach a whole level lower than the women's and crouch and find a concrete ledge to grip now half underwater for my hands and crawl out at right angles where I'm in range, it might be easy then. I miss my footing and hit my shin slipping down two rungs. It is only river wind but the current lifts even the cross-troughs, the surge rises at us on another scale, and the boy is cold, holding on and beaten. The women are speaking possibly to me, or silent. The time I have is no one's and I remember nothing, but it is in me.

Wick thinks it was good, very good, my choice words dispatching the military timed so well, public, how they just let that guy go. “Better get outa town, Zach.”

Bea and the gray-haired retired Navy, who must be Liz's husband, and others crowd me now as another speaker on algebra olympiads and middle-school mathletes is announced and we might get away in one piece, yet Wick, with an always loosely assembled face of planes and a sag from the pure eyes, and I are here. Wick so glad I had rethought that old dive. You saved my life, Wick. Thanks, he says, but—it took him back, insisting now on some “fact of the matter” for I must pay for praising him.

My sister's disappeared on me, and I'm hearing Wick out. A window is thrown up on that terrible morning after the dive unbreathable, my whole self limping like the aged, left at the door by E to my teacher who'd heard.

Not very artistic, I said. You sleep? he asked. Back to the drawing board, I said almost voiceless. No, Wick didn't think so. Not able to ease into my desk, I find a chair at the back. What was the test gonna prove, Mr. Wicklow, a girl asked. It is what it is, was the answer. Our formative years, I said from the back, and got a nonlaugh. You finish building your house, Mr. Wick? Milt asked. Wick shakes his head, Not really—it's a job (the wife, the kids, money). Now at the board he's drawing posts like pillars. An infinite house, I say, an effort for me; an infinite… Wick goes and throws up the window and I felt the frame collide in my carved, beating chest. Rethink it, Zach, rethink it, he had turned to me reserved, decisive. At the back of the room I looked up from my throbbing chest recalling I had offered to help him and his wife with the—