THE LAST BOY (59 page)

“This is all too much for any person to grasp. When I learned all this my reaction was probably like most people's: numbness. The
whole thing seems dreamlike, an abstraction. Maybe I could comprehend this intellectually, but I could not quite feel it in my heart.

“At about the same time that this wave of devastation began spreading across the globe, a dear childhood friend of mine died. Rosie was a young woman, a loving mother and good wife, an honest and caring human being. She felt that her cancer had been triggered by a work-related exposure to organic solvents in an auto body shop. I tend to believe she was right.

“After her death, I spent a lot of time walking in the countryside near my home, trying to pull things together, trying to make the connection between the wave and my friend Rosie.

“I thought about all the cars in our county, one hundred million, certainly more. The number of cars in the world—how many hundreds of millions of them are there? I did a little multiplication. Each car dripping oil, leaking a little gas, and the drips and spills became a flood, a wave. I thought of the time I damaged my car and had a fender replaced, the body repainted, and then I understood. In some small way I caused Rosie's death. In some small but significant way, I precipitated that killing wave.

“For me, guilt isn’t the answer. It accomplishes nothing. And it's getting awfully late for that. My son Danny had been trying to tell me something, but my life was too noisy, too busy for me to hear. I regret that, but I’m listening now. It's a promise I’ve made to Danny and myself. A promise I made to my dear friend Rosie.”

On Sunday morning, a week after Rosie's funeral, Molly was working in the garden. The Indian summer had continued with no sign of frost, and she was harvesting the last of the fall crops. Ed had the twins for the day, Tripoli was covering the weekend shift, and she finally had some free time.

Keeping the baby close, Molly placed her in the shade of the nearby birch tree as she set to work. It had rained the day before, and
in the early morning the earth smelt fresh. Although Tripoli had already brought in some of the tomatoes and started a sauce, there were lots of large succulent ones remaining and she started gathering them.

Baby Rachel seemed content to lie under the tree, staring up at the sky and watching the birds flitting through the branch tops. When Molly finished gathering tomatoes, she started in on the late crop of green beans that needed picking. Thanks to Tripoli's persistent watering, the beans were long and thick and juicy, so plentiful that a single plant required nearly five minutes to pick it clean.

With the sharpness of her nail, Molly snipped off each bean, tossing it into the swelling pile. Someone in a house far down the road was chopping wood, and she could hear each blow of the axe echoing off of the distant hills. The sun was hot, and when she licked her upper lip it tasted salty of sweat. Reaching the end of the row, she heard the phone ringing in the house. It kept ringing until the answering machine picked up. A moment later it was ringing again. Then again, and she realized someone was urgently trying to reach her.

With Rachel in one arm, she made it to the phone on the fourth try. It was Tripoli on the other end.

“Molly!” he gasped. He sounded like he was winded.

“What's the matter?”

“Come to town. Quick.”

“What's up?”

“You’re not going to believe this.” He was on his cell phone and running. “Somebody spotted Daniel and the Hermit coming in to town. Try to get to South Hill as fast as you can. Can you handle the baby?”

“
Danny?
”

“Yeah. Yeah!”

She ran for the car.

As she entered the valley, she came upon crowds of people hurrying into town. They were not only in cars, but on foot, riding bikes, and pushing strollers. It took her ten long minutes just to creep towards Green Street. Was there some mistake? she wondered. Could all these people be wrong? The days and months since Daniel had disappeared seemed endless. Did she dare hope she would see her son again? Actually touch him? Hold him?

By the time she got to Cayuga Street, traffic was at a dead standstill. In their haste, people were double-parking, some were simply leaving their cars in the roadway. Lifting Rachel out of her baby seat, Molly stepped out of her car and stood for a moment in the flow of passing people. The citizenry appeared to be streaming in from all directions. They were sweeping in from the north and south flats, and Molly could make out an unending wave of people pouring down from East Hill. Everybody, it seemed, was converging on the east side of town.

As Molly moved ahead, she caught sight of familiar faces. Stan Goldberg, who owned Bishop's Hardware, flashed a broad smile and gave her a big thumbs-up. Harry Gesslein, the president of the bank, who she had only met once in her life, greeted her with a hearty pat on the back as if she were an old friend. Sandy, who was standing on the hood of a car, spotted Molly over the sea of bobbing heads and waved. She cupped her hands and shouted something, but Molly couldn’t make it out above the hubbub of the crowd. What was Danny doing at this end of town? Molly wondered as she joined the crowd and hurried to the base of South Hill. And how did everybody know?

There were uniformed cops everywhere, city and state police and sheriff 's deputies, hopelessly trying to contain the mob and keep the roadway open.

“Have you seen Tripoli?” she asked Officer Paolangeli, who was trying to move an ambulance through the throng.

“Up the hill,” he gestured, pushing aside a group of teens. Someone had fainted in the heat and the ambulance was trying to reach them.

As she neared the focal point, the crowd became incredibly dense and Molly had to fight her way in, shielding Rachel with her arms as she inched forward. How would she ever find Tripoli in all this? she wondered, wedging herself through the midst of the crowd.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” Molly kept saying.“Could you please let me through?”

The air felt hot and heavy and was pungent with the smell of baking pavement and diesel. The trees on the side of the road were yellow and brown and, when a wind blew down the street the leaves fluttered down, settling on the people like confetti. Everybody was standing on tiptoes, craning their necks trying to see. People had their kids propped up on their shoulders and were pointing.“Look. Look!” they were saying.

Molly spotted Tripoli not far from the head of the crowd.

“Trip! Trip!” she shouted, and he barreled his way through to her, quickly taking the baby from her.

“Come on,” he said, and, holding Rachel above the press of the crowd, moved further up the incline, Molly following tightly in his wake.

Then, suddenly, the sea of people ahead of them began to part, opening a path down the hill. The sound of loud cheers and applause washed backwards like a wave. Some people fell to their knees and for the first time Molly finally caught a glimpse of the street ahead. When she did, her heart leaped and she let out a cry of surprise. There was Danny, coming down the hill. And he had the Hermit by the hand, leading him into town. His hair had grown full and long and curly again, and in the brilliance of the midday sun it glinted like a golden halo. Danny's walk was slow and measured, his bearing regal and confident. And there was a look on his face that spoke of
goodness and peace and wisdom. My God, he's beautiful, she thought as the noise suddenly died and the crowd fell into an unearthly hush. And in that instant she saw Danny not through the skewed lens of a mother's eye, but as others saw him, might see him, would certainly come to view him in the future when he would be a strong and wise young man, a man of vision and learning.

Molly squeezed Tripoli's arm and, as he turned to smile at her, she thought of his foresight and conviction, and knew that everything he had said would truly come to pass. She thought of poor Rosie and how from the very beginning she had recognized Danny's promise, knew all along that he was still alive and would return to the people when they were finally ready, ready to listen.

The crowd closed ranks behind the boy and old man and finally Danny was standing right in front of them, encircled by the people.

“Hello Mother,” he smiled, triggering in Molly shivers of delight. “Hello, Trip. Hello, little sister.” He reached up and stroked the baby's head. The baby laughed.

“Daniel,” uttered Molly, falling to her knees and hugging him. “Daniel.”

Tripoli wrapped his arms around them, pulling them all into a tight circle.

“This is my friend, John,” said the boy, pointing. “We’ve come home.”

The old man smiled warmly and held out a calloused hand. Molly took it, clasped it, and brought it gratefully to her lips.

The novels that I’ve written seem to fall into two distinct categories. There are those that write themselves. An example of that is my novel
Baby
, which magically spilled forth upon the page. Then there are those books which are sheer agony, that require repeated rewrites. This novel is the perfect example of that. It went through four (or is it five? I prefer to forget) complete rebirths, each time almost a different story.

I’d like to say that I did this with no help, but the reality is that that I relied on many friends. How do I even begin expressing my thanks?

My gratitude goes to Linda Johanson for helping with the first pass. Then to Don Smith who once again took time from a busy law practice to read and toss out ideas. Josh Goldman, a gifted physics student at Cornell, who started off by copyediting and then surprised me with his ability to analyze plot. I’m eternally indebted to my dear friend and novelist Tony Caputi who spent countless hours helping me fine-tune this book.

Additional thanks go to Allen MacNeill, biologist, for his fertile ideas and expert help. To Tom Corey and Alan Friedlander for their readings and comments. To Cornell University and my colleagues in the Physics Department who have been so supportive over the years, enabling me to pursue my alternate career of writing and filmmaking.

Thanks also to Lt. Beau Saul of the Ithaca Police Department (a one time student of mine who lets me ride shotgun in his squad car), who read this book and checked it for procedural accuracy.

Liza Dawson, saw this book in one of its earliest incarnations, believed in it, and proved to be an agent extraordinare.

Hillel Black, my editor, was enormously helpful in his reading and suggestions, always available when I needed him. As was editor Peter Lynch, whose remarkable attention to detail helped put the finishing polish on this novel. Needless to day, I am grateful to all the people at Sourcebooks for their hard work and enthusiasm.

And then there is Gunilla, who has ridden with me through a wild and crazy life, who has willingly and stoically read and corrected all my books (even typed them before the advent of computers, poor woman). Needless to say, she has been instrumental in any successes that I have had.

If there are others who I have omitted mentioning, I hope they will pardon this lapse. I humbly confess that the creative process does not occur in a vacuum.

Robert H. Lieberman is a long-time member of the Physics faculty at Cornell University. Initially, he came to Cornell to study to be a veterinarian, but ended up becoming an electrical engineer and doing research in neurophysiology. He has also been a professor of mathematics, engineering, and the physical sciences.

In addition to writing novels, he makes movies. He directed and wrote the newly completed feature film
Green Lights
, and his documentaries have been shown nationally on PBS. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to lecture at the Academy of Performing Arts and Film in Bratislava.

Mr. Lieberman lives on a 120-acre farm in Ithaca, New York, on which he compulsively grows fruits and vegetables and raises fish in his five ponds.

His Swedish-born wife is a classical ballet dancer and teacher. His two sons live in San Francisco. They neither farm nor make movies, but do make money, one as an entrepreneur and the other as a corporate counsel—at least for the moment.

Mr. Lieberman is presently working on a new novel, creating the screenplay for the film adaptation of
The Last Boy
, as well as learning how to tap dance.