Out There: a novel (29 page)

Jefferson did not know how this theory related to him, so he said the only thing he knew to say. “When I was nine months old, my mother left me with my grandmother and never came back. I never knew my dad, but I understand he was a hundred percent Lakota.”

The old writer had stopped walking and peered into Jefferson’s eyes. “Let’s sit,” he said, and looking around and finding no bench, he motioned toward the curb.

The two sat, and Jefferson continued. He explained that he didn’t know any stories about his grandmother, nothing very interesting, at least. That she was the one who had taken care of him as a baby, the one who had cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and run the corner grocery store so that she could buy him clothes at Walmart. He explained that she was half Mexican but had never been to Mexico, and that her mother had died when she was fourteen. Jefferson explained what he knew about his grandmother’s father, a German Scots-Irish man who built the corner store and attached home in which he and Esco still lived. And then he remembered the thing that would mean something to the writer.

“She’s a whole lot like Úrsula Iguarán. You know Úrsula? In your novel?” He opened his eyes wide in the old man’s direction.

“Ah, sí, la abuela. Bueno,” said the old man, nodding as if he understood. “A tough old woman.”

But at that moment Jefferson had realized a horrible truth. He did not know his own grandmother’s story—not much of it.  This truth set off a series of rambling thoughts in his mind. The dogs sat on either side of them and the hen and peacock continued their scratchings as Jefferson began again to speak the words as they came to him. It was his grandmother’s story, yes, perhaps similar to that of the grandmother in García Márquez’s novel, but different. His grandmother’s story as he began to imagine it for the first time. A woman living her life, reading books and cooking food and doing a whole lot of things before he’d ever known her. Yes, he had known all along that the two of them were not the same being. He wasn’t stupid. But Jefferson had never imagined, before that moment with the old writer on the curb, the secret hopes and dreams and heartaches that must have made up his grandmother’s life.

             
“She was born in Santa Fe on June 16, 19 . . .” He paused because he could never remember the year of Esco’s birth, though she had told him many times. “I think it was 1942,” he said. “But it may have been ’41. One of those two.” And then he went on, telling what he knew and what he imagined about her earliest years with both a mother and a father, how she had loved to climb the piñons near the arroyo, how she had loved to lie on her back in the grass and stare deep into the blue sky.

“Her mom was from Chihuahua, I think,” Jefferson said, thinking now that he should have asked his grandmother about that before he’d taken off on this journey, about whether she thought they had any relatives living there still, since he’d be traveling through.

“She learned how to read as a kid, but she didn’t become a real reader until I went to elementary school and needed help. She helped me learn to read, and that’s when she really started loving books.” Jefferson thought about this for the first time. It was true. His grandmother was a real reader, the kind of woman who always had a stack of books on her bedside table and fell asleep each night with one facedown on her chest. “If I had to pick one, I’d say her favorite writer is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.,” he said. “But she also really, really loves Eudora Welty.”

“Ah
 . . . ,” said the old man, his keen eyes on the ground. “Claro.”

“But she hasn’t read
One Hundred Years of Solitude
,” Jefferson said apologetically. “Not that I know of, anyways.”

“Ah, sí,” said the old man.

“I’m gonna work on her, though. I mean, not that you need any salespeople. Not that you need any help—you know what I mean? But for her, you know? I want her to read
One Hundred Years
for her. Because, you know, it would change her life.”

He talked, and the old man listened. At some point his stories about his grandmother turned into something else, and Jefferson found that he was talking about Ms. Tolan and the tears she got in her eyes when speaking the words
Gabriel . . . García . . . García Márquez.
He was telling about RT and the three Iraqi girls and their father, driving away in their little Toyota. About beautiful, plentiful Tajia and their passion among the bags of pancake mix and vats of canola oil. About the angry soldiers yelling at him that last time in the dining hall. All this went on for what must have been hours while the old man listened. He did not interrupt to ask questions or try to get ahead to where he felt the story might be headed. He did not fidget. He did not cross and recross his legs. He did not seem to have to fight off drowsiness. Occasionally he nodded, and a few times he raised his eyebrows.

Until finally the cocks were crowing all over the neighborhood and a man down the block was wheeling his trash cans down to the street, looking at Jefferson and the old man and the dogs and the birds in a funny way. They walked back toward the old man’s compound, talking about the grass and the flowers and the sky as they went, and as they neared the street where the old man lived, Jefferson said how much he’d enjoyed meeting him and that he planned to be in town a few more days (the truth was, he had no real plan) and that if it was okay, he would be waiting by the back gate, the turquoise gate carved with the visions of the cosmos, in the wee hours of the next morning, just in case the old man was free to go on another late-night walk with him.

“Sí, bueno,” said Gabriel García Márquez. “Perhaps.”

And then, because he did not want the moment to end, Jefferson explained that he had one more thing he wanted to share with the old man. Just a little something.

They were standing at the corner of Calle Miércoles and Buena Vista, the turquoise gate in view, when Jefferson began to chant. It seemed the right time to share the collage he’d been working on all that time. If he was honest, he’d begun the collage even before he’d set out on this journey, from the time he had started collecting favorite lines in his mind and in his heart. True, it was the kind of project that could go on a lifetime, forever being refined, but for the moment Jefferson believed it was good enough to share. And besides, here was the great writer standing before him as the first light entered the new day. It was Saturday, mid-December, and the morning had a luminescent mistiness about it that reminded him of the possibility of angels.

Jefferson took a half step back from the old man, into the middle of the narrow street, and he filled his lungs with hope. He closed his eyes, and lifted his chin to the heavens, and began to chant the words that came to him now as if they’d been imprinted forever on the canvas of his mind.

He began with what was really the title—Out There—and he chanted that a few times to warm up his voice and to make it clear to GGM that he was serious. The old man stood perfectly still, his chin slightly cocked. And then Jefferson launched into what was in that moment his favorite line, revised to fit the collage, among the Forty-One All-Time Best Quotes.

It rained for more than three years, and many months and two days.

This too, Jefferson chanted a number of times before going on.

And then,

A radiant Wednesday brought a trickle of blood,

Out under the door,

Crossing the living room,

Running out into the street.

My heart’s memory stopped,

Replaced by a viscous bitter substance.

Someone dead under the ground,

Dark bedrooms,

Captured towns,

A scorpion in my sheets.

Conservatives and Liberals, all of them wearing funny underwear.

The smell of dry blood.

The bandages of the wounded.

All of it,

A silent storm.

Me, left out there.

Dying of hunger and of love.

He stood in the street, chanting each word as if it were its own unique memory, holding the paper on which he’d written and scratched out and rewritten just in case he forgot a line next to his chest. If he had to say, it was one of his best-ever efforts as an individual, if only because he had worked so hard on the collage, and he felt it was better than trying to explain in normal sentences to Gabriel just how important the words were. One of his favorite stanzas was about the big world Jefferson had experienced “out there,” a world he believed was best described by García Márquez’s language—parrots reciting Italian arias, hens laying golden eggs to the sound of tambourines, men making gold fishes, children discovering ice. How great it was to sing a collage to the original creator of these ideas.

Although Jefferson knew that he’d taken a few things out of context, he felt as if GGM wouldn’t mind. In fact, didn’t it prove that the novel was even more universal if Jefferson could read a paragraph about falling in love with a woman and transform it into a tribute to falling in love with a book?

He chanted on, peeking out from under his closed lids to see if the famous writer seemed to be enjoying himself, and more importantly, if he seemed to be understanding all the connections.

Then I found it.

Gigantic and sturdy.

Almost enough to drown me in a cistern.

Its soft whispering,

A mineral savoring

Of love.

I hung my hammock between almond trees and made love to it in broad daylight.

I gave thanks to it.

He chanted the bit about being too young to see the things he’d seen, about finally being able to hear music again, about the hope of one day being able to smell oregano. He chanted the bit about the blessing of living beyond devastation.

That I would go on living,

Human and nostalgic,

Remembering without bitterness,

Multiplying all that is good,

Softness in my heart.

By the time he had finished, the sun was in Jefferson’s eyes, but that did not keep him from seeing the old man’s smile or from hearing his words or the heavy clap of his two hands together.

“Bravissimo! Bueno!” the old man said.

“You liked it?”

“Who’s the writer, now, huh?”

The two of them stood facing each other a few moments, no words left to say, the day breaking warm in the distance. Jefferson’s ears were beginning to play that hallelujah
song, and he was considering singing it softly for GGM, just to make the perfect moment that much better, when the old man turned and began shuffling away, offering a quiet but certain “Hasta luego”
as he disappeared behind the turquoise gate.

Jefferson
had spent the day exploring the sunken gardens and, later, drinking coffee under the umbrella of a café stand, replaying his moonlit walk with the great writer. The idea pulsed all around him—the idea that he, Jefferson Long Soldier, had lived to tell his story to Gabriel García Márquez.

No one else in the whole world knew. He passed laughing children in the park, and he wanted to tell them. He passed old men reading newspapers, and he wanted to interrupt with his news.

Late in the day he began to get excited, eating a messy plate of beans and rice as slowly as he could manage and asking for five refills of iced tea as he began to anticipate his second encounter with Gabriel. He thought the sun might never set.

But.

Eventually.

Night.

Came.

And there Jefferson sat, against the posole-covered wall, giving thanks for a multitude of things, so many people, so many devastatingly beautiful experiences, and waiting. It was just past midnight, probably at least several hours to go before GGM would come for his newspaper through the turquoise gate again, and so Jefferson did his best to organize his thoughts. Sleep would come later. He would sleep once he was back home. For now he had some thinking to do, some prep work for his second visit with Gabriel. The first one had been amazing on many levels, it was true, but Jefferson had realized during the course of the day that he’d failed to mention so many important things to his hero. So many things to remember. And stories. Jefferson began to list the things and the stories he would share on this, his second night with the great writer.

For starters, there was the list. He had alluded to it, but he hadn’t read it to Gabriel. Tonight he would read it. He was sure that would make an impact. And then there was his plan to say thank you, which had somehow gotten lost in the first visit. He’d muttered the two words, but they had come out garbled, and so Jefferson felt that after having come so far, it was worth another try. Saying thank you was not a thing that could be overdone. Then there were his favorite lines. He’d sung the collage, but that was different from reading the actual list of Forty-One All-Time Best Quotes, which he planned to do tonight. That was so important. How could he have forgotten it?

The paperboy threw the newspaper short of the sidewalk again, the thing landing in almost exactly the same spot in the street as the previous morning.