Cloud Cuckoo Land (33 page)

AETHON MEANS BLAZING

AUGUST 2019–FEBRUARY 2020

T
he instructions say to use a Tor browser to download a secure messaging platform called Pryva-C. He has to load several updates to get it to work. Days pass before he receives a response.

• MATHILDA: thank u 4 reaching out sry for delay just needed
  
• SEEMORE6: ur with bishop? at his camp?
  
• MATHILDA: to verify
  
• MATHILDA: ur not with authorities
  
• SEEMORE6: not I swear
  
• SEEMORE6: want 2 help want 2 join fight
  
• MATHILDA: i have been assigned to u
  
• SEEMORE6: want 2 break machine
  

At the end of the summer, a hurricane shatters two Caribbean islands, drought squeezes Somalia, the global monthly average temperature breaks another record, an intergovernmental report announces that ocean temperatures have risen four times faster than anyone expected, and the smoke from two separate megafires in Oregon rides eastward currents into Lakeport, where it collects in shapes that look to Seymour, in the satellite images on his tablet, very much like whirlpools.

He has not seen Janet since he smashed the big side window of the RV at the marina and ran. As far as he knows, she didn't call the police; if the police somehow found her, he doesn't think she
told them about him. All summer he avoids the library, avoids the lakefront, works at the ice rink cleaning locker rooms and stocking sodas with the drawstring of his hoodie pulled tight. Other than that he stays in his bedroom.

• MATHILDA: they say eighty dead in the flooding what they don't count is how many depressed, how many PTSD, how many have no $ to relocate, how many will die from mold, how many
  
• SEEMORE6: wait which floods
  
• MATHILDA: will die of broken hearts
  
• SEEMORE6: the smoke here is v bad today
  
• MATHILDA: in the future they will look back and marvel at how we lived
  
• SEEMORE6: not us tho? not you & me?
  
• MATHILDA: our complacency
  
• SEEMORE6: not the warriors?
  

In September collection agencies ring Bunny's phone three times a day. The poor air quality keeps Labor Day tourists away; the marina is practically deserted, the restaurants empty; tips at the Pig N' Pancake are nonexistent, and Bunny can't find hours to replace the ones she lost when the Aspen Leaf closed.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden's Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they're good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God's warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they're participating in a pyramid scheme that's chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they're all congratulating themselves for it.

• MATHILDA: sorry im late we only use terminals at night when chores are done
  
• SEEMORE6: what chores
  
• MATHILDA: planting pruning cutting hauling harvesting preparing pickling
  
• SEEMORE6: vegetables?
  
• MATHILDA: ya super fresh
  
• SEEMORE6: don't rly love vegetables
  
• MATHILDA: tonight all the trees are standing up big and straight around camp so beautiful
  
• MATHILDA: sky purple like eggplant
  
• SEEMORE6: another vegetable
  
• MATHILDA: ha u r funny
  
• SEEMORE6: where do u sleep? tents
  
• MATHILDA: tents ya also cabins barracks
  
• MATHILDA:…
  
• SEEMORE6: u still there
  
• MATHILDA: they just said I could have ten xtra minutes
  
• MATHILDA: because u are special u are important u have promise
  
• SEEMORE6: me?
  
• MATHILDA: ya not just to them to me
  
• MATHILDA: to every1
  
• SEEMORE6:…
  
• MATHILDA: night birds flying over greenhouse creek trickling full tummy good feeling
  
• SEEMORE6: wish I was there
  
• MATHILDA: u will love it even the veggies ha ha
  
• MATHILDA: we have showerhouse rec room armory plus beds are comfy too
  
• SEEMORE6: real beds or sleeping bags
  
• MATHILDA: both
  
• SEEMORE6: is it like boys in one place girls in other?
  
• MATHILDA: its whatever we want we don't follow the old ways
  
• MATHILDA: u will sees
  
• MATHILDA: soon as u do your task
  

During classes his eyes cloud with visions of Bishop's camp. White tents beneath dark trees, machine-gun nests atop stockades, gardens and greenhouses, solar panels, men and women in fatigues singing songs, telling tales, mysterious brewmasters brewing healthy elixirs from forest herbs. Always the imagination rotates back to Mathilda: her wrists, her hair, the intersection of her thighs. She comes down a path carrying two pails of berries; she is blond, she is Japanese, Serbian, a Fijian skin diver with ammunition belts crisscrossing over her breasts.

• MATHILDA: u will feel so much better after you act
  
• SEEMORE6: all the girls here are clueless
  
• SEEMORE6: none of them get me
  
• MATHILDA: u will feel so much power
  
• SEEMORE6: none of them r like u
  

He looks it up:
Maht
means might,
Hild
means battle,
Mathilda
means might in battle, and after that Mathilda becomes an eight-foot-tall huntress moving silently through a forest. He leans back in bed, the edge of the tablet warm on his lap; Mathilda stoops through his doorway, props her bow against the door. Bougainvillea for a belt, roses in her hair, she blocks out the ceiling light and wraps one leafy hand around his groin.

B
y mid-September Alex, Rachel, Olivia, Natalie, and Christopher want to transform the
Cloud Cuckoo Land
fragments into a play, dress up in costumes, and perform it. Rain falls, the smoke clears, the air quality improves, and still the children walk to the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school and gather around his table. These are the kids, he realizes, without club volleyball or math tutors or boat slips at the marina. Olivia's parents run a church; Alex's dad is searching for a job in Boise; Natalie's parents work days and nights in a restaurant; Christopher is one of six kids; and Rachel is visiting the U.S. for a year while her Australian father does something involving fire mitigation at the local office of the Idaho Department of Lands.

Every minute he's with them, Zeno learns. Earlier in the summer, all he could focus on was what he didn't know, how much of Diogenes's text wasn't there. But now he sees that he doesn't have to research every known detail about ancient Greek sheepherding or master every idiom of the Second Sophistic. He just needs the suggestions of story offered by what remains on the folios, and the children's imaginations will do the rest.

For the first time in decades, maybe for the first time since the days with Rex in Camp Five, sitting knee-to-knee beside the fire in the kitchen shed, he feels fully awake, as though the curtains have been ripped off the windows of his mind: what he wants to do is here, right in front of him.

One Tuesday in October, all five fifth graders sit around his little library table. Christopher and Alex engulf donut holes from a carton that Marian has produced from somewhere; Rachel, rail-thin in her boots and jeans, leans over a legal pad, scribbling, erasing, scribbling again. By now Natalie, who barely spoke for the first three weeks, talks practically nonstop. “So after this whole journey,” she says, “Aethon answers the riddle, gets through the gates, drinks from the rivers of wine and cream, eats apples and peaches, even honeycakes, whatever those are, and the weather is always great, and no one is mean to him, and he's still unhappy?”

Alex chews another donut hole. “Yeah, that sounds crazy.”

“You know what?” says Christopher. “In my Cloud Cuckoo Land? Instead of rivers of wine, there'd be root beer. And all that fruit would be candy.”

“So much candy,” says Alex.

“Infinity Starburst,” says Christopher.

“Infinity Kit Kats.”

Natalie says, “In my Cloud Cuckoo Land? Animals would be treated the same as people.”

“Also no homework,” says Alex. “And no strep throat.”

“But,” says Christopher, “the Super Magical Extra Powerful Book of Everything in the garden at the center? That would still be in my Cloud Cuckoo Land. That way you could just read, like, one book for five minutes and know everything.”

Zeno leans over the mound of papers on the desk. “Have I told you kids what Aethon means?”

They shake their heads; he writes
αἴθων
across an entire sheet of paper. “Blazing,” he says. “Burning, fiery. Some say it can mean hungry too.”

Olivia sits down. Alex puts a fresh donut hole in his mouth.

“Maybe that's it,” says Natalie. “Why he never gives up. Why he can't settle down. He's always burning inside.”

Rachel looks off over the table, her eyes faraway. “In my Cloud Cuckoo Land,” she says, “there'd be no droughts. Rain would fall every night. Green trees for as far as you could see. Big cold creeks.”

They spend a Tuesday in December at the thrift store hunting for costumes, a Thursday making a donkey head, a fish head, and a hoopoe head from papier-mâché. Marian orders black and gray feathers so they can construct wings; everybody cuts out clouds from cardboard. Natalie collects sound effects on her laptop; Zeno hires a carpenter to construct a plywood stage and wall, offsite and in pieces, so he can surprise them. Soon there are only two Thursdays left and there's still so much to do, an ending to write, scripts to make, folding chairs to rent; he remembers how Athena the dog, when she sensed they were going down to the water, would vibrate with excitement: it was like lightning was ripping through her body. This is how it feels every night as he tries to sleep, his thoughts ranging across mountains and oceans, weaving through stars, his brain a lantern inside his skull, blazing.

At 6 a.m. on the twentieth of February, Zeno does his push-ups, pulls on two pairs of Utah Woolen Mills socks, ties his penguin tie, drinks a cup of coffee, and walks to Lakeport Drug, where he makes five photocopies of the latest version of the script and buys a case of root beer. He crosses Lake Street, scripts in one hand, soda in the other. A silver-blue sky is braced over the snow-mantled lake, and the high ridges are lost in clouds—storm coming.

Marian's Subaru is already in the library parking lot and a single upstairs window is illuminated. Zeno climbs the five granite steps to the porch and stops to catch his breath. For a split second he's six years old, shivering and lonely, and two librarians open the door.

Why, you don't look warm at all.

Where is your mother?

The front door is unlocked. He climbs the stairs to the second floor and pauses outside the golden plywood wall. Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you.

When he opens the little door, light spills through the arched doorway. Atop the stage, Marian stands on a step stool, touching a brush to the gold and silver towers of her backdrop. He watches her climb off the stool to examine her work, then climb back on, dip her brush, and add three more birds swinging around a tower. The smell of fresh paint is strong. Everything is quiet.

To be eighty-six years old and feel this.

J
ust as the first snows stick to the ridges above town, Idaho Power shuts off the electricity to the double-wide. The propane tank in the front yard is still one-third full, so Bunny heats the house by turning on the oven and leaving its door open. Seymour charges his tablet at the ice rink, and gives his mother most of the money he makes.

• MATHILDA: cold tonite been thinking of u
  
• SEEMORE6: cold here 2
  
• MATHILDA: when its dark like this I want to take off clothes run outside feel air on my skin
  
• MATHILDA: then get back in bed all cozy
  
• SEEMORE6: rly?
  
• MATHILDA: u have 2 hurry have 2 get here i can hardly stand it
  
• MATHILDA: have 2 come up with ur task
  

On Christmas morning Bunny sits him at the kitchen table. “I'm giving in, Possum. I'm going to sell. Find a place to rent. After next year, you'll be off, and I don't need a whole acre to myself.”

Behind her the gas whooshes blue inside the open oven.

“I know this place has been important to you, maybe more important than I realize. But it's time now. They're hiring a housekeeper at the Sachse Inn, a longer drive, I know, but it's a job. If I'm lucky, between the job and the house sale, I can pay off all this debt
and have enough left over to get my teeth fixed. Maybe even help with college.”

Out the sliding door the lights of the townhomes flicker behind an icy fog. A terrible sensitivity has been building inside Seymour: a hundred voices in the basement of his head speaking all at once. Eat this, wear this, you're inadequate, you don't belong, your pain will go away if you purchase this right now. See-More Stool-Guy, ha ha. Out there, in the ground beneath the toolshed, waits Pawpaw's old Beretta and his crate of hand grenades, nestled in their five-by-five grids. If he holds his breath, he can hear the grenades rattling lightly in their places.

Bunny sets her palms flat on the table. “You're going to do something special with your life, Seymour. I know it.”

He stands in the night in his windbreaker at the corner of Lake and Park. Christmas lights dot the gutters of the Eden's Gate showroom at perfectly spaced intervals. Black cameras have been mounted under the eaves, and stickers shaped like badges gleam in the bottom corners of windows, and complicated-looking locks protect the front and rear gates.

Security systems. Alarms. Getting in there and leaving something behind without being noticed is not feasible. But the west side of the realty office and the east side of the library, he observes, are less than four feet apart. In the space between, there's hardly room for a gas meter and a frozen stripe of snow. Smuggling an explosive into the realty office might be impossible. But the library?

• SEEMORE6: I came up with a spot
  
• MATHILDA: a target?
  
• SEEMORE6: a task, my way 2 disrupt machine 2 help wake people up begin real change
  
• MATHILDA: what have you
  
• SEEMORE6: 2 earn my way 2 the camp
  
• MATHILDA: come up with?
  
• SEEMORE6: 2 u
  

The PDF Mathilda sends via Pryva-C is full of typos and klutzy diagrams. But the concept is plain: fuses, pressure cookers, prepaid phones, everything duplicated in case the first bomb fails. He buys one pressure cooker at Lakeport Drug and a second at Ridley's and two padlock hasps at Bergesen Hardware and mounts these to the inside of his bedroom door and to the door of the toolshed.

Unscrewing the grenades is easier than he imagined. The explosive filler inside looks harmless, like little blond flakes of quartz. He uses an old letter scale of Pawpaw's: twenty ounces into each cooker.

He keeps going to school. Keeps mopping floors at the rink. All his life a prologue and now it's finally going to begin.

In early February he is charging three prepaid Alcatel Tracfones behind the skate-rental counter when he looks up to see Janet in her denim jacket.

“Hi.”

New frog patches line her sleeves. Her hat is the kind of wool that looks so soft that you never want to take it off, the kind he has never had. She has the tanned cheekbones of a skier and looking at her he feels as if he has matured a decade since tenth grade, as if the Janet Infatuation was an era humans lived through a thousand years ago.

She says, “I haven't seen you.”

Act normal. Everything is normal.

“I never told anyone what you did. If you're wondering.”

He glances at the soda machine, the skates in their cubbies. Better not to say anything.

“Eighteen kids showed up last week to EAC, Seymour. I thought you might want to know. We got the cafeteria to reduce food waste, and it's all bamboo napkins, now, bamboo is like regrowable, or what's the word?”

“Sustainable.”

Out on the ice teenagers in sweatshirts laugh as they glide past the safety glass. Fun: all anyone cares about.

“Yeah, sustainable. We're driving to Boise for a sit-in on the fifteenth. You could come, Seymour. People are starting to pay attention.” She smiles a lopsided smile and her blue-black eyes are on him but she has no power over him anymore.

• SEEMORE6: i made 2 from the instructions u sent
  
• MATHILDA: 2 pies
  
• SEEMORE6: ha yeah 2 pies
  
• MATHILDA: these pies how do they get cooked
  
• SEEMORE6: prepaid phones, pie cooks on the fifth ring just like on the PDF
  
• MATHILDA: 2 different numbers? one for each?
  
• SEEMORE6: 2 pies 2 phones 2 different numbers like the instructions
  
• SEEMORE6: though as soon as first pie gets cooked the other will also
  
• MATHILDA: when?
  
• SEEMORE6: soon
  
• SEEMORE6: maybe thursday, storm in forecast, was thinking less people would be out
  
• MATHILDA:
  …
  
• SEEMORE6: u still there?
  
• MATHILDA: message me the 2 numbers
  

On Wednesday he comes home from school to find Bunny packing boxes in the living room by flashlight. She looks up at him, tipsy, nervous.

“Sold. We sold it.”

Seymour thinks of the cookers, packed with Composition B, under the bench in the toolshed and eels go swimming through his guts.

“Did they—?”

“Bought it after seeing pictures online. All cash, as is. Gonna tear down the house. They just want the lot. Imagine having enough money to buy a house on your computer.”

She drops her flashlight and he picks it up and hands it back and he wonders what truths are imparted unspoken between a mother and son and what truths are not.

“Can I use the car tomorrow, Mom? I'll drive you to work in the morning.”

“Sure, Seymour, that'll be fine.” She shines the light into a box. “Twenty-twenty,” she calls as he heads down the hall. “Gonna be our year.”

• SEEMORE6: after pies r cooked how will I know where 2 go
  
• MATHILDA: head north
  
• MATHILDA: call number we gave
  
• SEEMORE6: north
  
• MATHILDA: yes
  
• SEEMORE6: canada?
  
• MATHILDA: drive north we will give instructions after
  
• SEEMORE6: but border?
  
• MATHILDA: u will be tremendous so brave a warrior
  
• SEEMORE6: what if theres trouble
  
• MATHILDA: there won't be
  
• SEEMORE6: but in case
  
• MATHILDA: call the number
  
• SEEMORE6: and someone will come
  
• MATHILDA: every1 here
  
• SEEMORE6: nervous
  
• MATHILDA: will be proud
  
• MATHILDA: overjoyed