I Think You're Totally Wrong (37 page)

CALEB:
We die, but I want to die old. I mean, if you die and you're forty-five and you have religion, you die thinking you will go to heaven and reunite with your loved ones. But I can't believe in something that I don't see as possible—that the afterlife is conditional on faith, that beyond being a good person you have to have “belief and swear allegiance to God,” whatever that means, in order to enter heaven.

DAVID:
There's always a rock in the garden. That rock is mortality or evil or both, but I really do love my life with Laurie
and Natalie, my writing and teaching life. I have a blessed life and I hope it continues for another forty years.

CALEB:
Then you won't outlive your father.

DAVID:
Another forty-four years.

CALEB:
If you're a religious moralist, you look for solutions within religion, but the secular or atheist moralist lacks absolutes. How do you tell people how to be happy when you can't define this for yourself?

DAVID:
I'm not sure that being a moralist means you want everybody happy in the same way.

CALEB:
Ever heard of Robert Ingersoll? Nineteenth-century atheist, way ahead of his time, loved his wife, a good father, a humanitarian, an abolitionist, a supporter of women's rights when these views were not in vogue. His speeches make for good reading. He said the most important question was, “How can you be happy?” And his answer was, “By making other people happy.”

DAVID:
Wrong question. Wrong answer.

CALEB:
Right question. Right answer. First settle the question of yourself, then those around you.

CALEB:
Money Creek Campground exit: the bridge and that tunnel are easy landmarks. We turn by that school bus sign.

DAVID:
I'm gonna go in the house and steal a few crackers—or should I not do that?

CALEB:
Khamta's mighty generous with his crackers. I don't think it would be a problem.

DAVID:
I've still got an apple, grapes, cheese; you're welcome to any of my stuff, obviously.… What do you need to do?

CALEB:
Go inside, get the key for the chain wrapped around the hot tub, open the hot tub, get the water circulating.

DAVID:
Of all the things that could have gone wrong, this is obviously pretty minor.

CALEB:
It's an extra hour.

DAVID:
Maybe a little more. If at all possible, I'd love to avoid missing Natalie's call.

DAVID:
You've traveled far more than I have, but when I've traveled, I pretty much find that worldwide there are seventeen types of people and you meet all seventeen types wherever you go, don't you think? It's not as if you arrive in Amsterdam or Seoul or Prague and suddenly realize: Oh my god, people are so different here!

CALEB:
If you don't like your boss in the United States and every girl you go out with is a bitch, then overseas you'll hate your boss and your girlfriend will be a bitch.

DAVID:
That's not what I'm saying.

CALEB:
The dynamics of prejudice change, though. Koreans don't like the disabled or physical deformities.

DAVID:
Meaning?

CALEB:
There was this one teacher, American, who got fired because he was cross-eyed.

DAVID:
They fired him for that?

CALEB:
He couldn't control his pupils.

DAVID:
Thanks for making such good time on the turnaround. Let me see if Laurie checked in.

CALEB:
If no traffic problems, we'll be home in an hour.

DAVID:
What town now?

CALEB:
We're about to hit Gold Bar.

DAVID:
All these funny names: Gold Bar, Index, Startup, Baring, Climax.

CALEB:
Delivery needs work.

CALEB:
You ever see
The Sunset Limited
?

DAVID:
That Cormac McCarthy play with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones?

CALEB:
Jackson saves Jones from committing suicide, and they talk it out. Jackson's a no-luck ex-con and Jones is a professor, but no matter how Jackson tries to convince Jones that life has meaning, Jones holds on to the emptiness of life. There's a scene where Jackson recounts a prison
fight and uses “nigger.” Not “nigga,” but “nigger.” And Jones gets offended!

DAVID:
Right. “Life has no meaning, I want to kill myself, but I'm going to be offended by the word ‘nigger.' ”

CALEB:
What do you think of Cormac McCarthy?

DAVID:
To me, he seems to be a complex and nihilistic version of
The Tao of Pooh
. His writing, from what I can tell, assumes the reader has never before confronted existential matters.

DAVID:
Your ESL teacher's guide was published by a real publisher?

CALEB:
Yes. We're talking triple-digit advance, and when you add royalties, I made well into four figures.

DAVID:
You have three books. Two self-published?

CALEB:
Technically, my sister published
Chinoku
. She publishes music and game books. She paid to have it formatted and so on. It's a puzzle book, more of a toy or game. It doesn't count for much.

DAVID:
What are the three titles?

CALEB:
Chinoku
,
This Seething Ocean
, and
The World is a Class
. My publisher spelled “is” with a lowercase “i.”

DAVID:
What do you mean? Did you just not correct it?

CALEB:
I didn't catch the error. I read galleys. She sent me a proof. I must have seen it a dozen times.
The World is a Class
.

DAVID:
It's funny how your mind can fool you.

CALEB:
Have enough Caleb for one weekend? Normally, friendship is marked by long periods of silences interrupted by selective extroversion, but I felt like silence wasted time and opportunity.

DAVID:
I know what you mean.

CALEB:
Every time I thought of something, I had to mention it. Earlier you said, “Caleb, we have to get to the point, not waste time, be succinct.” But how can we do that? Conversation is a rough draft.

DAVID:
That's where editing will come in. We'll cut from live moment to live moment, getting rid of the dross. Argue, asterisk, argue, asterisk, argue.