A Thousand Miles from Nowhere (28 page)

Henry had looked at Latangi, pretending scorn.

“I am a devil, yes,” she'd said, smiling, lightly slapping his arm.

I have searched and searched for my beloved,
Henry recited at the wedding,
in the syama vines and the eyes of the gazelle, in the flowers of the kurinci and the skylark's breath, only to see now, as the dawn's mist clears, you are already here beside me, hand
to my hand, breast to my breast, hearts not two drums but a call and echo, call and echo, two silkworms weaving a sturdy house from fragile thread.

And when Henry looked at Amy, he saw that she was weeping—smiling and weeping, nodding at him, hands raised to her chest—offering another small moment of hope that in time he might be fully forgiven. He would remain here in Virginia, he'd decided. He would remain as long as Amy remained, until he knew for certain if she would choose him again. Meanwhile, he would keep well. He would do everything he could to keep well.

The insurance money from the damage at Endly's hadn't been nearly enough to buy the motel, but it had allowed Henry to make some desperately needed repairs and refurbishments and to erect a sign out by the highway, exactly what Mohit had wanted, the neon-blue outline of an elephant's head with
The Ganesha Motel
in bright red above it. He took a picture and sent it via e-mail to Latangi.

Ōyāṅḋṅāraphula!
May Ganeshvara guide you in your every endeavor!
Latangi responded.
Do not forget that although he is portly, mischievous, and merry, he is also Lord of Obstacles, Remover of Impediments. I eagerly await word of your every success.
And then as a postscript she'd added,
I am contented but miss you, Mr. Henry. My blessings.

And so far things had gone well. The motel had begun to get more and more business, and Henry had been able to hire two women to clean the rooms and another to take care of the front desk in the evening. He'd cleared out the items that remained of Mohit's import business, donating most of it to the junk store in Marimore, which was more than happy to have it.

He'd left Mohit's study exactly as it was, and though now and again he'd go out to dinner with Amy, most evenings he spent there in that room. He had a project that he'd spoken to no one about, not even Amy. He was afraid of what she'd think, afraid it would be the thing to convince her he'd not fully straightened out his head.

But he wasn't crazy; he wasn't. It might take him forever to accomplish what he had set out to do, but look at what Mohit had done all those years, what Mohit and Latangi had done together. Look at what they'd made, what they'd brought into being.

Every time he sat down now at Mohit's desk he thought about what had happened, what he'd found in New Orleans, at Endly's. At first, of course, he hadn't seen it. He'd seen his father's bass in the corner; he'd seen the bent dusty shelves. He'd called out for Tomas; he'd called and called until he understood, finally, that there wouldn't be an answer.

But then he'd seen it. On a low shelf at the end of the aisle, left there as if it were nothing to notice, the cardboard box Tomas had been holding against his chest as he peered out through the cracked window.

Henry had walked over, sat down. He'd slid the box off the shelf, let it fall into his lap. It wasn't empty, he could tell by the weight of it. He felt the chill of his sweat-soaked shirt against his chest. He pulled the top off the box, and inside were pages, hundreds of them, a manuscript, damp and discolored but not obliterated, the ink smudged but not washed away.

The words were inscrutable, nothing Henry had ever seen. Basque, of course. He could simply look at them and see that they must be Basque. He'd heard Tomas recite enough of the language to recognize it, the
rat-a-tat-tat
of consonants, the string of
k
's and
z
's and
x
's unlike any other language known to man—a language, Tomas had told him again and again, as old as stone and steel, as earth and sea and sky.

So Henry did not know what exactly he had in his possession. A manuscript, yes, but what was it? He turned from one page to the next as if he might come across a word or two he recognized, but of course he didn't. Only when he reached the final page did he see, scrawled in ink, a name and an address, the address in Bilbao, the city where Tomas had told Henry his brother's novels were sent to be published. Was this the manuscript of one of his brother's books, one Tomas had kept in his possession? Tomas had said that he did not know where his brother might be, that he had searched and searched but had never found him.

When Henry looked up from the manuscript, he saw Marge and Katrell outside, peering in through the front window. Next to them was a police officer. He imagined the officer taking out his gun. Did he imagine it or was that what the officer was doing? He tried to stand, realized he couldn't. He slipped the top back over the box and held it against his chest. He closed his eyes and, as soon as he did, felt water rising over his legs, reaching his waist; he felt the water cover his shoulders and neck. He gasped for breath, felt himself sink below the surface.

Then someone took hold of his arm, touched his shoulder, his chin. He opened his eyes and saw Marge leaning over him, her hands below one arm, trying to help him up, trying to lift him.

From the water? There was no water.

“Mr. Garrett, Mr. Garrett,” he heard Marge saying, and he saw Katrell Sparrow, felt him take his other arm. “We're going to stand up now,” Marge said. “Gentle, gentle.”

“What are you doing?” Henry said.

“We've got to get you up. We've got to go now,” Marge said. “You'll be just fine. Don't you worry. We've got you.”

“Where are we going?” Henry asked. “Where are we going?” He heard a siren; he looked down at his feet, looked for the water he was sure he'd felt rising beneath him. He heard his father's voice and Mary's. He heard the humming of bees.

“We're going home,” Marge said. “Back to Virginia.”

Henry looked around, saw the officer through the window, saw his father's bass leaning against the wall in the corner.

“That,” Henry said, pointing. “That needs to come with us.”

“What?” Marge said, and Henry pointed again.

“I don't know,” Marge said. “I don't know as it will fit.”

“It will,” Henry said. “It will. It will.”

“Okay,” he heard Marge say. “Okay. We'll give it a try.”

She turned to Katrell, said to him, “You go fetch it. Haul it out there. We'll put the top down. I'll manage Mr. Garrett.”

She turned back to Henry, steered him forward as if he were a frail old man.

“Now we need to get going,” she told him, “or all three of us will wind up Lord knows where.”

“We're there already,” Henry said. He hadn't meant it as a joke—he wasn't exactly sure what he was saying—but Marge had laughed. “I guess we are,” she said. “I guess that's right where we are.
Lord knows where.
”

“The end,” Henry said, though what he'd meant to say was Endly's. “The end is…” But he was too exhausted to go on, to make sense of whatever it was he was thinking. He managed to climb into the car, into the backseat next to his father's bass, and Katrell sat up front with Marge. Before the officer had led them out of town, Henry was already asleep, the manuscript box in his lap, his arms folded across it.

Most nights now he sat in Mohit's study with the manuscript before him, books scattered everywhere, covering the floor. He'd made a copy to mail to the address in Bilbao; he'd kept the original in Mohit's desk drawer. He'd been afraid it might somehow get lost in the mail. Along with the manuscript he'd sent a letter explaining who he was, how he'd come to be in possession of these pages. He said he hoped to get news of Tomas if there was any word from him. They'd been friends, he said. He wanted to make sure Tomas had wound up okay wherever he went after the storm.

Since of course he'd written the letter in English, he hadn't known what would come of it, but two weeks after he'd sent the manuscript off, there'd been a phone call from a man, an editor, in Bilbao. His English wasn't very good but Henry listened to everything he said and then made him say it all again to make sure he understood.

Joaquim Xabier Otxoa had no brother by the name of Tomas. He had no brother at all, nor a sister. No one. The manuscript was a new work, not a work already known in
euskera
. A new work. A novel. Imagine. This man Henry had met was Joaquim Xabier. There could be no doubt. Still hiding, disguised now as a brother. A new work after so many years. A miracle, undoubted. Thank you. Thank you. Imagine.

Henry marveled at Tomas, at his performance. He asked if any of these novels had been translated into English, and the man told him no, though he hoped one day they would be. Our greatest writer, you know, he'd said, which was exactly what Tomas had told him, though Henry had not known then, of course, that Tomas was speaking about himself.

Two days later the man called back. “Yes, yes, Mr. Garrett, now it is very certain. I have read all to the end. You are there, in the story. You are there. Henry Garrett. Your name. You are there and the storm with you.”

Henry tried to imagine it, tried to picture Tomas writing the final pages in the midst of the terrible storm. Where had he been? How frightened? How had he managed to continue writing, to find his way toward the end? Where, now, had he gone?

One day, Henry believed, his questions would be answered. Perhaps Tomas would do precisely what Henry had done, step by chance through the front door of the Ganesha Motel to find himself treated as Henry had been treated: with compassion and care, his squandered life restored to him, his every sin forgiven.

Meanwhile, Henry knew exactly what he would do. He would try to learn this strange and ancient language. He would try to memorize its syntax, its rules, its idioms. Gathered around him, scattered throughout Mohit's study, were dictionaries and histories, atlases and maps—everything he could find on the Basque Country, Euskal Herria, and its seven provinces straddling Spain and France. It might take years and years, he knew, but the clatter in his head had grown quiet, the faint murmurings of a distant city, and he was in no hurry now. There was nothing he felt himself rushing toward.

No matter how long it might take, he would make his way through the manuscript. He would work precisely as Latangi had worked on Mohit's great poem, translating word by word into English, carried forward by gratitude, attempting to decipher and then convey all the sorrow and longing the story possessed and its every moment, no matter how fragile or fleeting, of grace.

Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an under-lying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully af- fected, sometimes all at once

Set in Virginia, the state where I grew up, and New Orleans, a city I invent reasons to visit as often as anyone will let me,
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
is tender and touching and sometimes uproariously funny. I think of it as an “Amazing Grace” story, the tale of a man who once was lost (or, more accurately, who deliberately lost everything he should have been holding dear) but then is found, in the most unexpected of places and alongside a cast of wonderfully bighearted small-town eccentrics. But for all of its deft humor, this is also a deceptively powerful story. The rich cadence of John Gregory Brown's language has the mesmerizing quality of a prayer, and his psychologically piercing portrait of a man trying to resist succumbing to the madness that took his father's life is as soul stirring and life affirming as anything I've read.

Over the course of her career, Lee Boudreaux has published a diverse list of titles, including Ben Fountain's
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk,
Smith Henderson's
Fourth of July Creek,
Madeline Miller's
The Song of Achilles,
Ron Rash's
Serena,
Jennifer Senior's
All Joy and No Fun,
Curtis Sittenfeld's
Prep,
and David Wroblewski's
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,
among many others.

For more information about forthcoming books, please go to leeboudreauxbooks.com.

About the Author

Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur;
and
Audubon's Watch.
His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award. For two decades he has taught and directed the creative writing program at Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, where he serves as the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English. He and his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown, have three children.