While we ate lunch we looked out over the lake. The wind had blown the forming ice into sharp, angled ridges and chunks between the shore and the open ice.
The snow was white, the sky was white, the sun was white. Susie’s face was white.
Me: It’s 12:20. If we walk five kilometers an hour for the next six hours, we’ll be in good shape to make it to the United States by breakfast the day after tomorrow.
Susie (in a small voice): Bill doesn’t even know you’re doing this.
Me: Yes, he does. I e-mailed him in care of his publisher, and they will have forwarded my letter to him. And I also sent a letter to the editor at The Plain Dealer. If the paper published it in their letters section or turned it into an article for the front page, Bill will read all about it.
Susie: Maybe he’s drawing the comic right now so you won’t have to do this.
Me: Bill didn’t save Calvin from much. He let Hobbes tackle him every day after school.
Hobbes: He let him ride in his wagon with me on the back.
Me: He let him sled down that steep hill with Hobbes in the winter.
Hobbes: He let him jump out of his bedroom window on the second floor and let him get attacked by his food.
Me: He left Calvin alone with a tiger.
Susie: Yeah, I guess Bill isn’t going to suddenly pop up and say, Hey, don’t do it.
She turned to me.
Susie: He’s not going to save you. I’m going to save you by telling you this is the craziest idea ever, and it just proves you’re sick.
Me: It’s a creative idea. I’m creative. The doctor says lots of creative geniuses have this problem. I read somewhere that John Lennon saw God in his living room.
Susie: Well, that was John Lennon, so it probably really was God.
Me: True.
I looked out at the lake again, and now I could see all the different colors of white in it. Blue-ice white, and lavender-white in the shadows of the drifts, and every kind of white ever invented. I looked at Susie and she looked back at me.
She couldn’t be real. Nobody could be that pretty.
I looked up at the sky.
Me: Okay, universe, this is your chance to stop me. Send me a sign and I won’t do it.
Universe:
I stood there and, Bill, I felt powerful somehow, like I was in control of me again. It was like the lake was invented for just this moment, and for me to walk across it. I packed our things in the duffel bag and roped it and the tent onto the sled.
Susie: I’m scared.
Me: It’s beautiful.
Susie: It’s empty.
I stepped onto the ice.
I didn’t want her to come.
But I did.
I picked up the sled handle and looked back. Susie was staring down at her feet as if wondering why they weren’t moving.
Me: Susie, meet me on the other side. How’s that? Talk to Bill in case I’m a bit late.
Susie: You’ll never make it without me. Do you know why you have to store your bottled water upside down?
Me: Why?
Susie: Because water in the bottle freezes from the top down. If it freezes up a bit, we’ll still be able to drink some.
I didn’t tell her I already knew that.
Susie: You need me.
I left it at that, Bill. I knew she would come. I guess I thought I could take care of her. That’s how crazy I was.
I turned back to the lake.
Susie came to my left side, Hobbes to his spot just behind and to my right.
Me (to Susie): Okay. If we die, we die together.
Susie: You die first.
Hobbes: I’m already dead. Washed to death.
Me: Yukon ho!
We had begun.
* * *
The wind only whines and whistles and wails when it’s trying to get into the cracks of windows and doors. It only thumps and bellows when it bumps up against trees and houses and cars. But on a big flat empty lake, it’s just a force. It’s a big soft hand that pushes and presses at you, silent, steady. Soon you realize the wind isn’t flowing around you, over you, it’s flowing through you, penetrating the electromagnetic field that gives you the illusion of being a solid entity, whipping straight through you, spinning your atoms like tops and leaving them dizzy and frosty and deeply impressed.
Me: Calvin likes snow.
Susie: Then you should be super-happy because I’ve never seen so much snow.
Me (pointing): All we have to do is head that way and we end up at Cleveland.
Susie: Bill Watterson would hate you to be doing this. He would call it a flare-up of weirdness. He would think you’re trying to keep him from moving on in his life by wanting him to do another Calvin cartoon.
Me: I just want one. One comic, Calvin, aged seventeen, being of sound mind. Besides, what do you know about Bill Watterson?
Susie: As much as you!
Me: Nobody knows Calvin like I do.
Susie: How can you say that?
Me: Okay, when was Bill born?
Susie: July 5, 1958.
Me: Wha—? How—?
Susie: Is that the best you can do?
Me: What’s his brother’s name?
Susie: Thomas. Father, James. Mother, Kathryn. Wife, Melissa. Cat, Sprite, who has passed on.
Me: What did he almost call Calvin?
Susie: Marvin.
Me:
Susie (grinning):
Me: I told you all that stuff.
Even though I had no memory of telling her.
Susie: Yes, you did. And I remembered.
I couldn’t believe the real Susie would remember all that about you, Bill. I didn’t tell her I now had proof she was a delusion. I guess I thought a delusion was better than nobody at all.
* * *
We walked a long time, taking turns pulling the sled, keeping an eye on the compass. At least it felt like a long time, but when I checked my watch it had only been half an hour. I promised I wouldn’t look at my watch again until an hour had passed.
White, white, flat, flat, white, white, flat, flat. My boots said it to me over and over. I felt like I was walking and not moving—the horizon the same, the snow the same, my boots sounded the same, white, white, flat, flat, white flat, white flat. Susie hiked with this glum look on her face, stomping like she was mad at the lake, like she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I checked my watch again. Twenty more minutes had passed.
Twenty?
My lungs were going into shock. They weren’t used to such clean air. Where were the exhaust fumes, the spewings of factories and furnaces? the burning of fossil fuels? the crop-dusting, the insect killers, the fertilizer dust? This was Precambrian air.
I started to forget about my watch, about everything—noise and color and warmth and who I was and why I was there. Then Susie would sigh or say argh when we had to climb a snow dune, and I would remember that I was Calvin, the schizophrenic kid, the kid who was going to flunk twelfth grade because he didn’t do his English and science projects, the kid who didn’t tell his perfectly decent parents that he was going to walk across a lake and they would for sure know by now their son was missing from the hospital.
* * *
We talked to pass the time. Or at least I talked. About important stuff.
Me: What would it be like to be a bottom-dwelling fish?
Susie: Why do you ask questions like that?
Me: I mean, you would spend your whole existence in the cold and dark. Born in the cold and dark and always in the cold and dark, and when you died, it couldn’t get any colder or darker than that, so you wouldn’t even know that you had died—
Susie: Bonus.
Me: Did you know that you’re probably the only one at school who wouldn’t be freaked out by me, a person with schizophrenia?
Susie: That’s not true. I am freaked out by you.
Me: I know why. I remind you that reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game.
Susie: What makes you think you know what people think?
Me: Because brains are amazing. They can guess about each other. Think about it, Susie. The brain is the only part of your body that knows it exists. Huh? Huh? It knows! Your hand, it does what your brain tells it to. Your stomach, your lungs, your heart—your brain doesn’t even ask your permission. It says, don’t trouble yourself about breathing and digestion and blood and whatnot. Let me take caaaare of it for you … C’mon, what is scarier than that? The brain is a monster! Your feet don’t know they exist. Your pancreas doesn’t. They just do their good ol’ job and die when the brain tells them to. But the brain, it says, try and figure me out, but you can only know as much as I’ll tell you. Are you following me, Susie? The brain can ask bigger questions than you can answer.
Susie:
Me: Well?
Susie: I think I lost you back there somewhere.
Me: I see a town.
Susie: Of course there is no town out in the middle of the lake. You’re hallucinating.
Me: You’re right. Sorry.
Susie: There’s a town in the middle of the lake!
* * *
Turns out it was an ice-fishing village, Bill. Just a bunch of little boxy shanties sitting on the ice—a few the size of big porta-potties, some as big as Dumpsters, a couple the size of sheds. One was painted up to look like a doghouse. One was painted with palm trees and flowers and a hula dancer. The village came complete with a chapel shanty and a theater shanty, and between all the shanties were little roads made of snowmobile tracks.
It was cool, like the lake had surprises.
A man came out of one shanty and stopped to look at us. He was carrying a fishing pole. He was six and a half feet, probably close to three hundred pounds.
Hobbes: I’m hungry.
Me: Catching anything?
Fisherman (suspicious): Just a cold.
Me: Interesting place.
Fisherman: ’Tis. Quiet. Nobody minds your business. Fishin’?
Me: No.
Fisherman: Whatcha doin’ out here if it isn’t fishin’?
Me: We’re hiking across.
Fisherman: You’re hiking across the lake? You’re nuts.
Me: That’s the point.
Fisherman (stroking his beard): What are your names?
Me: Calvin and Susie.
Hobbes: And Hobbes.
The fisherman stopped stroking his beard.
Fisherman: Calvin and Susie, huh.
He said our names like he didn’t believe us.
Fisherman: No way should you be doing this.
Me: I have to.
Susie: He has to.
Me: She doesn’t have to. Can you give her a ride back to shore?
Susie: He doesn’t tell me what to do.
Fisherman: Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to contact the authorities.
Me: Cell phones don’t work out here.
Fisherman: I have a ham radio.
Me: Please. We’re on a trek to prove our devotion to the creator—
Fisherman: Creator? Are you some kind of religious nut?
Me: The creator of Calvin and Hobbes.
Fisherman:
Me: Well, we’ll be going now.
Fisherman: You’re doing this for … for Bill Watterson?
Me: Yes.
Susie: We’re doing this to raise awareness for schizophrenia.
Me: We’re doing this to show how much we want Mr. Watterson to draw one more Calvin comic. He might even be waiting for us on the other side of the lake.
Fisherman: I love him. I have every book.
Me: Yeah. Me, too.
Fisherman: When Watterson stopped, I felt like somebody I loved died. I mean, I cried.
Me: I understand.
Fisherman: You’re serious about this.
Me (nodding):
Fisherman: Okay. I’m going to give you the shortest lesson on ice I can. You listen up. It’s probably safe, given that we’ve had a month below freezing. But if you see logs, stumps, rocks, anything sticking up out of the ice, you stay away. They pick up heat from the sun in the day and make weak moats of ice around them. If the ice looks gray and pebbly, that’s rotten ice. It forms in a snowstorm and all those trapped air bubbles are bad news. Another thing—you see water on top of ice, you beware. Water is heavier than ice and it creates fractures called honeycombs. Honeycomb ice is deadly. Discolored snow might mean slush: avoid. If the snow is even and you see a sudden depression? Avoid. If you see a straight open crack, not to worry—they can freeze over. But if two or more cracks meet, avoid. You got all that?
Me: Yes, sir.
Susie: Got it. Logs, gray and pebbly ice, water on ice, discolored snow, depressions, and more than one crack.
Fisherman: This lake, she’s a bit o’ ocean, left over from a dinosaur ocean, and she has suffered. She has had to swallow boats. There’s a Civil War tugboat down there, preserved in the cold water. In 1841 the steamship Erie burned, killin’ 250 people, and they say you can still see it burnin’ sometimes out on the water. In 1923 Chevy made a coupe with engines that used copper cooling fins and suffice to say they were a fire hazard. So GM recalled them all—498 of them—and dumped them in Lake Erie. And then the people on the bottom, of course. She doesn’t like it. The lake, she looks pretty, but people forget she’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s a sea, and she doesn’t like any human garbage. You remember that. Don’t make her suffer any more than she already has.
Me (nodding):
Susie (nodding):
Fisherman: Lake Erie has her monsters, too. Jenny Greenteeth, she’s a monster that can see up through the ice. Then there’s the Black Dog of Lake Erie. He appears on ships before they go down to the bottom. And of course there’s South Bay Bessie, the sea monster.
I’d heard of South Bay Bessie, the forty-foot serpent that was sighted every so often in Lake Erie. Even the Seneca Indians knew about her.
Fisherman: So now I’ve told you about the lake, do you really mean to do this thing?
Susie:
Me: Yes.
He opened our duffel bag and dug around in our gear.
Fisherman: Seems like you got what you need.
He rubbed his beard a moment, considering us, and then he shoved his hands in his coat pockets.
Fisherman: Tell him about me. Bill Watterson, I mean. When you see him, tell him about me.
Me: I will.
Fisherman: Tell him my name. Orvil Watts.
Me: Orvil Watts.
Orvil: Wait…!
He slipped back into his shanty and came out with a bag.
Orvil: Cookies.
Hobbes: Cookies!
Orvil Watts put the cookies in the duffel bag.
Me: Thank you. You’re not going to make that call, though, right?
Orvil: No. I get it now. Walk on.
Susie and I walked on, pulling the sled. I looked back once, but Orvil was gone.
* * *
Trudge, trudge.
That was the language of boots.
They only said one thing now—trudge, trudge—but it was possible that boots had a sophisticated poetry that only they could hear with their rubber ears and speak with their rubber tongues.
Susie: Well, this is exciting.
Trudge, trudge.
Susie: Yes, everybody’s going to be über-impressed with this.
Trudge, trudge.
Susie: Yup, here we are, out on the bald, boring, frozen lake …
Me: It doesn’t have to be exciting. It just has to be a pilgrimage. That’s all Bill cares about.
She stopped.
She was still a moment. She bent down and picked up a wad of snow and threw it at me.
Thwap.
Right in the face.
She always was a good shot.
Hobbes laughed.
I started making a snowball and she ran away.
Me (running after her): Bill will understand. I’m Calvin, remember? I was always doing stuff he didn’t like or agree with.
Hobbes: The embodiment of human stupidity.
Susie turned back toward me. I chucked the snowball, but it didn’t connect.
Susie: Calvin, just think about it. If Bill pays the slightest attention to this, just imagine the crazies that would come out!
We looked at each other and laughed until we had to sit down.
Susie’s face changed when she was laughing. It went all soft and relaxed, and stayed that way for a while after she stopped.
Susie: I haven’t laughed like that in—
Me: In a year?
She frowned and stood up.
Susie: We’d better get going.