Echo Lake: A Novel (13 page)

They were at the very back of the library now, far from the bright, new tables in the fiction section or the plastic-covered magazine stand between two aging leather couches, the old skin cracked. Two rows of cubicles lined the back wall, each with a hardback wooden seat. One was occupied by an older man, his hair gray and yellowing at his temples. The table around him was covered in balls and scraps of paper. On the floor around his feet were grocery store bags full of something, though Emily couldn’t tell what. His hands were red and peeling. He must have spent most of his time outside in the sun or the cold. He held a pencil in the fist of his left hand and wrote hurridly on a yellow legal pad. When they passed him, he moved the pad closer to his chest and bent his head, hiding his work from them.

Every library has them, women and men writing their manifestos or novels or letters of grievance to people dead or alive, real or imaginary, important (the president, God) or mundane (their fathers, mothers, daughters, men or women they have loved). They hunch over their words, afraid that other people might take them or see them and understand and use that knowledge against them.

Emily and Jonathan followed the woman into the small room. She switched on the lights. The room contained four enormous machines, all clearly from before the digital age, featuring enormous knobs and convex screens that reflected them back distorted, their midsections doubled and their heads small.

The microfilm is over there, the woman said, pointing one red nail at a wooden cabinet shoved against a wall. It used to be a card catalogue, but now it kept the boxes of microfilm and micofiche, each fragile, yellowing envelope of film separated by year and periodical.We have the Harshorne Star from 1935 to 1990, the Keno Gazette, too, the librarian told them. She looked up at the ceiling, wiping her hands on her navy skirt. The room as dusty, and each time she touched the surface of a machine or cabinet, dust stirred and coated her hands. I think we have some tribal papers, too. The Choctaw paper. And some from the City, of course, and Tulsa, but we keep them out there on the main floor.

Jonathan switched on one of the machines. It made a whirring, heavy sound, like an animal kicking inside the plastic box that held the machinery. A light illuminated the screen.

Let’s get started, he said. The librarian left them alone and Jonathan turned to her. How can I help? Emily’s head hurt from the dust and she felt small and stupid, as foolish and the man out in cubicle writing books that only he would read. The room was so small and shabby, the task so boring.

I’m sorry I brought you here, she said. She saw him in the dim room, his hands in his pockets, and imagined him gritting his teeth, balling his hands into fists hidden in his pockets, hating her politely. This isn’t any way to treat somebody who has been so—

He laughed. Jesus, it’s ok, he said. You don’t have to apologize. I’m the one that gave you The Tower. It’s my fault. He pointed at the cabinet. It’s interesting anyway, right? Who knows what kind of crazy shit we’ll find. The murders and the scandals and the accidents. And we’ll go somewhere else next time, he said.

He walked over to her and touched her shoulder. Hey, it’s okay, really, he said. Next time, it’ll be my turn to choose.

She nodded, unsure what to do with his hand. Ok, then. I’m officially done apologizing, she said. He slid his hand down and touched her elbow. He wore a gray, long-sleeved shirt with holes in the cuffs where he had pushed his thumbs through the fabric. In the small room, she could smell his aftershave, something cold-smelling, like mint.

Really, I’m happy to help, he said. I don’t go where I don’t want to go. She nodded and gently turned out of his touch.

That’s a rare thing, she said. Most people go where they don’t want to go all of the time.

He took ’50 to ’65 and she took ‘66 to ‘85 of the Heartshorne Star. In 1965, her mother had been thirteen years old. She had been beautiful in that wholesome, cone-breasted way that girls had been in the fifties and early sixties, before women allowed their hair to fall down relaxed. Emily had seen pictures, the few that her mother had. The oldest picture was Connie at sixteen, taken with a polaroid. The edges had peeled up, the metal and plastic between the white sealant exposed. It was at home, in a pine box, along with the other things that Connie had left as a hint of what her life had been before Emily was born: a tarnished silver heart necklace (so cliché, so sweet in its simplicity, that it could be nothing but a love token), a birthday card that said “To Connie from Paul” with a bouquet of roses on the front and the words “Happy Birthday” in a calligraphic scrawl. The card had to be at least twenty years old. Emily didn’t remember a Paul. Her father’s name hadn’t been Paul. His name was Charles, and he lived in Troy, New York. She had never met him or tried to meet him: he had made a choice thirty years ago and Emily figured she had no right to take the choice away from him and force herself into his life. Now, she would be easy to find if he wanted to find her. She didn’t think much about it. After her father, Connie had dated a succession of men with names like Bill or John or Bob, mostly working-class men that Connie had met through friends or work, men that she invariably left because they lacked something: ambition, a sense of self, a spiritual side, something ineffable that she was searching for in other people but could never find.

That had been her mother’s problem, Emily thought. She always thought what was missing was in somebody else.

As she fed the microfilm into the machine, Emily felt the old twinge of shame that she always felt when she breached her mother’s deep love of privacy. Emily had had a desperate curiosity about her mother’s things—what she kept in the battered shoe boxes in her closet, the fancy clothes she kept under plastic in the closet, her jewelry boxes and stacks of letters still in their envelopes--but Connie’s anger teetered on the verge of violence whenever she found Emily in her things or even suspected that Emily had rifled through them.

Get out of my things, she’d shout. Stop snooping. Once, she had slapped Emily the face when she found her standing in Connie’s closet, a tube of red lipstick just touching Emily’s lips. Connie would be upset at what Emily was doing now, combing through the past, bringing along a stranger to help. That would be the worst part. Emily could almost imagine her mother coming through the door along with the smell of spearmint Certs and hairspray, her shoes hard and clicking, coming to shout at her for
snooping
. For
bringing somebody else into her business
. Emily fed the spool microfilm through the machine and the screen shouted a headline:
Echo Lake Flood
. A grainy newsprint of a flooded street was directly below the headline, and nothing more, the picture sufficient for the explanation. Below it, she read that the Heartshorne High School Bears had defeated the Broken Arrow Warriers and had taken their place at the state championships. A photograph accompanied it, the ink faded down to a uniform gray. A group of young men in shorts gathered around a plaque. One held the ball against his hip. It was March 15th, 1966. They were all old now, some maybe even dead. She tried to see the details of their faces: which boy was handsome, which was plain, which was pockmarked and which had a weak chin or protruding ears. They all looked the same, though—their hair short, their faces white without variation. She flipped through the paper, skimming the small tragedies: housefires and car accidents and inclement weather. That spring, a tornado had gone through the heart of Keno, throwing trailer houses and sheds and cars aside as it rolled down to the valley and exhausted itself just before Echo Lake.

Hey. Jonathan leaned back in his seat, the old wood creaking. I found a Collins in the paper. Look. She hung over his shoulder, squinting to see the print on the screen. His newspapers were even fainter, the pictures more grainy, rubbed down to shade. It was an article in the
Births
section of the paper, wedged between weddings and obituaries.

Mr. And Mrs. Edward Collins welcomed a baby girl,

Constance Beth Collins, on November 21st, 1952.

That’s my mother, Emily said. That’s her birthday. Emily stood, aware she was breathing close to Jonathan’s hair, her chin almost brushing his shoulder.

Edward. That must be my grandfather’s name, she said, excited.

You didn’t know him?

No. I didn’t know anyone but my mother. And I guess I didn’t know her very well, either. I didn’t know her middle name was Beth. Emily remembered the bracelet around her mother’s arm at the hospital, the “B” initial that she’d never thought to ask about, not at that point, when it was too late to ask anyway. Emily took a pad of paper from her pocket. I’m writing down all of the names, she said. Edward Collins, Constance Beth Collins. I wish they had my grandmother’s name here, a picture, something.

Emily went back to her slides, scrolling through days and days of records that proved that events had passed, events important enough to be marked down in ink and kept, though the people that had experienced them were old or dead. Emily was happy to see babies as she scrolled through the births sections. At least the babies were still alive, maybe, and proof that what the newspapers said was attached to something real.

11

Christopher walked at night along the dirt roads near his parent’s house, down the same roads he’d walked as a kid and would probably walk until he died, just like that old man who lived down by the high school who had died in his house, slumped onto the kitchen counter over a bowl of soup. He faced this matter-of-factly, without anger. He wore a headlamp, the kind hunters used to spot deer, so he wouldn’t be surprised by a dog or bear. When cars passed, he jumped down into the ditch by the road. Everybody knew him—they waved from their cars and sometimes sounded the horn. He nodded, but rarely waved back. He kept to himself.

In high school, he had been a fixture, neither loved nor hated, just one of the people who had grown up in Heartshorne, who had always been there and always would be. He remembered his high school years fondly, though imperfectly. He remembered everything being easy: schoolwork, the mostly friendly and familiar people around him, the teachers in their seats at the front who didn’t ask much of him but his presence.

He lived in his parent’s basement and had since graduation, when he decided that life didn’t need to move forward. If he stayed where he was, in the same room, the same house, things could remain as they had before. And they did. Not completely, of course. He had a job. He worked at the lumber yard just outside of Keno. He drove there in his truck every morning, usually before the sun was just a haze at the horizon, and came home well before dinner, exhausted. He took a nap until hunger woke him and he wandered upstairs to see what his mother had made for dinner. He’d come back down afterwards and listen to music or watch television. He liked shows about traveling and food. The best shows were about both traveling and food—about the strange things people ate who lived in other countries. Bugs or organs or animals that people here used as pets. Sometimes he went fishing or drinking with buddies from high school, other young men who had stayed in Heartshorne, men who lived in the low-income housing just outside of Keno or with their parents, creating lives that echoed the smooth hum and movement of a school day. He had a girl who drifted in and out of his life: she didn’t seem to expect much, and he liked it that way. She’d gone to visit family in Tulsa and he didn’t miss her, but he knew that he’d be glad to see her when she showed up at a party or called him up to meet at a bar. She didn’t ask anything of him that he wasn’t willing to give. It was just like in high school, only they could drink legally and she’d sleep with him almost any time he wanted. School, he decided, had been the best time of his life. He hadn’t realized it then, but now he knew the secret that adults didn’t tell: it wouldn’t get any better after graduation. Life had never resumed that delight of daily expectation—the bus arriving in the cold at the same time each day, lunch on a regular rotating menu, and that beautiful hour of waiting for the last bell to ring to go home again. It had been so simple.

In school, you were always moving forward to a higher grade, a higher status, until graduation, when everyone recognized that you had achieved something. How could you move forward working in a lumberyard? You could go up to manager, of course, but there was only one of those. Sometimes you got stalled along the way, and at some point, there was nowhere else to go. There was no more up. You mostly just went along doing the same thing until your hands got shaky and you had an accident—crushed fingers or a broken elbow or, this was the worst, something to do with the machines, which would almost certainly mean losing a finger.

It was late July when Christopher decided to walk to Echo Lake, farther than he’d walked in a very long time. He used to ride his bike there, back in elementary school. The road must have been smoother then, because now it was impossible by bike. It was scarred with deep grooves that filled with mud when it rained and most of the gravel had washed away into the ditches. It was barely dark, but already the air had that peculiar damp, heavy scent that it carried on summer nights. He turned on his headlamp. The path before him was laid out brightly, the shadows around it darker in contrast. But he wasn’t afraid. He’d lived here for twenty years now, twenty years of nothing much happening except a copperhead in the garage or a cat dying under the house. People died here, of course, but usually from doing stupid things, like jumping from the water tower into the lake or driving drunk in the mountains, hill hopping their way into the bumper of another dumbass who was hill-hopping, too. There were urban legends about the lake being poisonous, ghost stories, and the occasional panic about prisoners escaped from the maximum security prison outside of Keno, but most of that was nonsense. His cousin had been in prison up in Keno for a year and said it was nearly impossible to get out, not worth the trouble.