Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(27)

He finished the bottle of water Greer had given him, then wiped his lips with his sleeve.

“Kept talking to me about papers,” he said. “I told them this was America and I wouldn’t show them my papers even if I had them. Then they asked my name. I told them it was Freeman Wayne, but they kept asking, so I said it was Josef K.”

He made a spasmodic kind of gulp that I guessed was a laugh, then reached inside his coat and started hunting around for something. He exhausted nearly every pocket before he pulled out a piece of construction paper cut to the size of a business card. “Black River Municipal Library” was scrawled at the top of it. Freeman held it out to Greer.

“Letter of transit,” he said. “Whatever you need, you come see me. I have the entire universe and all of time trapped within four walls.”

“I already have a library card. Remember? Greer Larson?”

Freeman squinted up at him and then bowed with a flourish as he turned to the girl.

“For you then, Penthesilea.”

She blushed a little and took the card. “Uh . . . thanks.”

Greer clapped his hands together. “Well then! This has been great, but if you’re feeling better, we’ll just get—”

“You’re the man in the iron mask.”

Freeman was staring right at me. He had these intense eyes, small and ocean blue, beneath snowy eyebrows.

“You look after the children on the mountain,” he said. “You and that other one. Layton. Belson.”

“Larson,” Greer said, raising his hand. “I’m right here, Free.”

“My name’s Cardinal.”

Freeman’s eyes narrowed to slits, looking at me, through me. “You must be very careful.”

“I’m sorry?”

“To not have become one of us. All this time. Surrounded by the children of Lethe. You must be very careful.”

“I keep my distance.”

He looked at my mask and my gloves; then his eyes slipped down to my waist, where my hand gripped the knife. I snatched it away. He smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you must.”

Greer stepped down off the curb. “So! Like I was saying, we have to—”

“Do any of you know how new planets are discovered?”

Freeman waited for an answer. Greer looked from me to the girl. We both shrugged.

“We, uh, don’t know. Some kind of telescope maybe?”

The librarian let out a grunt of disgust, then he reached into his coat again and whipped out a nub of chalk.

“Planets that are too distant to be viewed directly are sometimes detected by looking at the way light bends around them.”

He leaned over the asphalt and drew a stick figure with a slash of a line growing out of its chest.

“It’s the same with us. We, like light, attempt to move through life in a straight line, unchanged, but we encounter massive objects along the way.”

He drew several lumpy masses in front of the stick figure and labeled them: SICKNESS. DEATH. LOVE. The line growing from the figure’s chest was forced to zigzag around them.

“Each event bends our life into a new trajectory. It bends who we are. So if you look closely, you can perceive distant events in a person’s life by observing the ways in which they’ve bent themselves around them. The ways in which they’ve been deformed. It’s like looking back in time. But it’s also like looking into the future.”

He finished, and the three of us just stood there slack-jawed. What did you say to that? Did you applaud? Was it brilliant or was it insane? Freeman saved us the trouble of deciding. He whipped another library card out of his pocket and held it out to me.

“Letter of transit.”

I took the card. Greer and the girl helped Freeman up, and he strolled away without another word.

Greer watched him go, then turned back to us. “Who the hell are the children of Lethe?”

The girl laughed. “Who the hell is Penthesilea?”

I wondered—Who the hell is Freeman Wayne?



The backpack was right where she said it would be, sitting beside a pink crocodile in the middle of the sculpture garden. The park’s iron gate squeaked as Greer opened it. I expected the girl to run to the bag and start tearing through it, but she hung back near the fence, staring at it, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

“You want me to . . .”

She nodded. Greer knelt by the bag and unzipped it. I watched from the other side of the fence as he tossed out a pair of socks, a pair of jeans, a plain gray T-shirt. Next came an empty bottle of water and a couple energy bar wrappers. He looked discouraged until he saw another pocket on the front of the bag and opened it.

“Well, well, well. Lookee here, boys and girls!”

I let myself into the garden. “What is it?”

“We’ve got ourselves a driver’s license!”

The girl jumped away from the fence. “Seriously?”

Greer pulled an orange wallet out of her backpack, then, with a grand, Freeman-like bow, turned to her and produced a plastic card. “Please allow me to reunite you with you. Marianne.”

The girl snatched the ID out of Greer’s hand. He turned to me, grinning.

“Damn, Card, are we good or what? We’ll have her back to her folks by the end of the day.”