The Book (22 page)

* * * * *

020-52409

Each of them left the gazebo that night with a plan of who they were going to reach. Moby couldn’t wait to contact a husband and wife from
The Free Thinkers
. They were the only two who showed any interest in what he said about The Book and he trusted them fully. Like Holden, they found little in much of what was said during those meetings and had stopped attending a few months back. Moby was certain that they would give themselves freely to the cause.

Winston planned to reach out to the antique dealer Holden had had an altercation with in search of his favorite book. From the man’s reaction to Holden’s persistence, and with the illusive back room he seemed anxious to keep secret, Winston was positive that the man had books and knew exactly what he needed to say to reach him.

For her own safety and for the safety of the group, Marion would not attempt to reach anyone by phone or mail or anything that could track the government back to Winston’s home. Her family, and those of her friends she trusted, could not get involved on any level. She had to remain neutral in this stage no matter how hard it would be. Instead, Marion devoted herself to Holden.

As Winston brought Moby to his car, she urged Holden to follow her to the room she called
home
. It was on the opposite side of the house and had been one of the more spacious of Winston’s guest rooms. Holden didn’t know what to expect with her eagerness to lead him there. He assumed she wanted to be alone. To talk about her feelings, whatever those may be, and he couldn’t help but adore her for it. In the face of such defeating adversity, Marion was still thinking of her heart.

Holden missed the mark on her motives, but not by much. Marion had an uncanny ability to anticipate, to the letter, the actions of others and she saw a profound struggle brewing in Holden. She truly viewed him as their leader and could see all the heartache and pain he would be forced to witness by having that role thrust upon him. When she led him by the arm to her bedroom, and eventually to the comfortable chair by the window, she had a very specific gift in mind to give him. Marion walked to the antique vanity, sat at the low-backed seat and opened one of the thin, rectangular drawers that lined its face. It glided forward with a smooth drag. Marion removed a single, small item, closed the drawer and walked back to sit on the floor in front of Holden.

“I know who you trust more than anyone. And I know it’s going to be hard to reach out to him,” she said, gazing tenderly into his eyes. “I thought you might need something to remind you of what we talked about tonight.”

Gently, she reached for Holden’s hand and took his pointer finger in her own. In her other hand, she lifted the item she had removed from the vanity drawer and brought it to his finger. With a single, quick snip, Marion clipped his sharpened fingernail. The one he, and so many others, used to navigate the unruly seas of The Book. She kissed the bridge of his knuckles and sat back, eyes moist. And, with a soft whisper, Marion gripped his hand and immersed herself in his eyes. “Don’t forget, Holden. Don’t forget what you’re fighting for.”

He looked down at his nail, its ridge dirty but smooth, and accepted his fate for the first time. “I won’t.”

* * * * *

021-53020

The opportunity for Holden to reach out to the one person in the world he trusted more than any other arose nearly a week after their decision to start a grass roots movement. The reason it had taken so long was because his best friend had still been avoiding him. Shane Dagget was as good as invisible. He came in to work early. He left late. And with seniority over Holden, if Numbskull had given him the option, Shane always chose to work with someone else. But when four of them were assigned at random to install a full system on a new high-rise in the loop, the moment Holden had been waiting for presented itself. There was nowhere that Shane could run.

The majority of the rain-drenched day was spent on a concrete slab thirty stories in the air. The men of General Fire were stationed near the open, glassless windows and were forced to work under a constant swath of moist air. They slaved in silence. Holden spent each of those grueling hours deciding what he would say to Shane the moment he could get him alone. On occasion, Shane noticed his friend making eye contact and continued to look away, almost consciously keeping thirty feet of empty space between them at all times. For Holden, under the weight of four lengthy, iron pipes, struggling each minute to remain steady on a fourteen-foot ladder, the more confusing pieces started falling into place. There was only one reason he could come up with for why his friend would be acting that way - he had seen the book.

Holden was sure of it. At some point during the night, Shane had opened the duffle bag and seen the illegal, printed book among his things. It was the only explanation.

This reaction wasn’t new. In fact, it was one of Shane’s classic maneuvers. He was in
Protection Mode
. He focused solely on his work and nothing more. He had probably even stopped following the Blackhawks. When tragedy struck his life, Shane tended to shut down. It wasn’t that he had been depressed or overwrought with grief; it was simply because Shane didn’t have the capacity to figure out what to do next.

Nothing new. It always took Shane longer to figure things out. Twice as long as it took Holden. As teenagers, when they would start a feral, fist-flinging, rolling in the yard argument, Holden would be over it by the end of the day. It took Shane weeks to work through all his emotions. He wasn’t trying to find the last word to set Holden straight and hadn’t even been angry. It was just that his mind was a funnel and it took a while for any issue to circle its way through to the bottom where the drain could allow it a chance to escape. The distance and the disregard made sense. Shane had seen the book and he was contemplating what to do about it.

With this as a real possibility, Holden gained more confidence. When they broke for lunch, he made a move. As Shane passed the group, Holden grabbed him by the arm and whispered, “Stay behind. We have to talk.” Shane yanked himself away, but Holden could sense that he wouldn’t go far. Once their fellow pipe fitters left the cold slab of concrete and had taken the elevator down, the two of them were alone and Shane instantly drew his shoulders back. A moment later he raised his arms in defense.

“Where did that book come from?” he blurted, curling his lips. “I looked it up. It doesn’t exist.”

“Uhm…”

Holden didn’t know what to say. He was expecting to be in control of the conversation and had already been forced to take a knee. Rather than complain about the fact that he could have faced jail time by having an unrecycled book in his possession, Shane’s curiosity about the book threw Holden off his game.

“It doesn’t exist anywhere. This guy…Ray Bradbury…he’s written some other things but nothing called
Fahrenheit 451
. What are you involved with, man?” he asked, fuming as he paced the unfinished room. When Holden didn’t respond, he stepped closer.

Expecting Shane to start sweeping his fists, he responded, “I got that book from a friend, okay?”

“From Marion? Are you hiding her out, bro? She’s wanted. And not even by the police. By like…big people. And I stuck my neck out on the line for you without realizing what was in that bag. I’m not stupid, Holden. I know what you’re going to try to do and I’m not getting involved. If one freakin’ word comes out where I think you’re gonna try and get me involved…I will throw you over the side of this building. Do not involve me. I mean it!”

It was finally clear. Holden realized the truth in that last twist of phrase and was surprised that he hadn’t figured it out earlier. Shane was not playing offense. He was playing defense. Holden tried to stop the smile that arched at the corner of his mouth as he said the words, but couldn’t help himself.

“You read it. Didn’t you…?” Shane looked away. “You read the book.”

“Yeah, so what. I read the whole dang thing. Doesn’t matter. I was just curious. I’ve never even seen a book before and I needed to know why my best friend would
risk his life
to keep it. And then…I saw that the guy was a firefighter. You know how much I wanted to be a fire fighter. But it was messed up, bro. Burnin’ books. People dying.” Shane stopped to regain his frustration. It was Holden’s fault that he felt whatever it was that he felt, and he needed to point his anger back at the one responsible. “Are you and Marion involved in some anarchist thing now, bro?”

“That’s kind of a big question and…there’s a big answer for it,” Holden admitted, since what they were starting
would
be considered anarchy.

“None of that matters. Why you gotta rock the boat, man? Everything we did and all the things we planned for our lives…you wrecked it. You changed. You’re not the same guy. And…I just….”

Shane released a visceral howl and it shook a tremendous guilt through Holden. His friend was right. He had changed. He wasn’t the same person. And he never would be again. Shane looked so dramatically dismayed, pacing near the horizontal strip of open sky and Holden could size him up in a second. Shane was mourning the loss of his best friend. Yes, he had been affected by what he read in
Fahrenheit 451
, likely more than Holden realized, but the main reason Shane had been so upset was because he knew that their friendship would never get back to the way it used to be.

There was a history there. Both of them had lost their parents before they could legally drink the sorrow away and once the funeral march ended, Shane was left with no one. His older brother moved away. His sister got married and moved away. The only person Shane could count on was Holden, his best friend from across the street. It had been that way ever since. And now, there was a battle raging inside him that could go either way. Shane would join the group in an instant, regardless of what they believed, if it meant that he could reunite with his best friend. But the other side of him was putting up a fight. He didn’t like feeling such emotions. They scared him because they made Shane realize how much their relationship meant to him. He would give up any of his freedoms to keep it safe or to regain something it once resembled.

When he was finished pacing, Shane spoke with forced satisfaction. “I’m going to lunch, Holden. And I’m done talking about this. Maybe done talking to you. That’s if you’re even around tomorrow.”

“Dagget,” Holden argued, feeling his friend slip away. “Wait. We’ve seen each other through everything, man. Can’t you trust me on this? Will you at least give me a chance to...”

Shane was already in Holden’s face, gripping his shirt and whispering ferociously, “Don’t think for an instant that I won’t turn you in if they ask me! ‘Cause guess what brother, Shane Dagget fixes himself first!”

Shane shoved himself away and, at those words, walked past the elevator and down the railingless concrete cube that held a multitude of diamond-plated emergency stairs. With each echoing reverberation, Holden felt their friendship, the closest relationship in his life, crumbling to nothing. He wanted to holler out to Shane. He even pulled out his phone to call him in a last desperate attempt to get him back, but it didn’t work. He heard Shane’s phone rattling near a pile of black pipe that was waiting to be fastened to the ceiling. He’d left it at the job site on purpose.

Rather than leave a message, Holden picked up his best friend’s phone and typed Winston’s address onto the screen before closing it and leaving work early. He didn’t care about the consequences. Moby and Winston were so excited to bring new people in and Holden dreamed of Shane standing beside him, sharing his passion for the freedoms of future generations. But they were different people. A limiting fact he had been forced to realize so many times before. No matter how well they got along, they saw the world through different eyes. Holden was powerless. No matter what logic he could develop to convince people of the truth, he could never force people to care about The Book.

* * * * *

022-54640

Weeks passed in the life of Holden Clifford like the trailing emissions of a classic, American-made automobile. The earth was still polluted and everything was accelerating. The three of them had reached out to those they wanted to bring into the fold and although Holden had been unsuccessful, the same could not be said of the other two. The husband and wife Moby had recruited, the former members of
The Free Thinkers
, were so eager to join that they began dropping by Winston’s on a regular basis. Their names were Jeff and Abby Johnson and they were a much needed ingredient.

Marion was relieved to have another woman at the house and Winston found Jeff to be a better match for him intellectually. The conversations they struck under the rain-soaked gazebo gave peace to the others because they noticed a positive shift in the wise man’s demeanor. As he had done before, Winston brought them separately to the cellar, removed the chip from the back of their Book and walked them through eighteen minutes of their favorite stories. After which, he brought them to the sitting room where they clipped their fingernail and listened to the sacrifices Dennis Wayne Conrad, Winston’s mother, Moby’s uncle and the rest of his former group had made. Winston felt that reliving these stories was a crucial element of inducting new members into their group. People needed to know the road they were on and how it could diverge to another. They needed to understand the risks and to accept them.

Each time Winston told these tragic stories, he became more comfortable as a storyteller, which seemed to bring the group unexpected warmth. Storytelling quickly became the way they relaxed. The moment that Abby discovered her favorite story along the shelves in the cellar,
Peter Pan
by J.M. Barrie, Winston encouraged her to read it aloud to everyone during the course of a few quiet, but damp, evenings. The consensus between each of their favorite lines rested on something Abby read in the final chapter.