Oh well
We got home in less than two hours and the commune was empty. The RVs were gone. The barn doors were open, airing out fifteen years’ worth of semisanitary living conditions.
The only things left were the chickens and the ducks. Ellie went to spend time with them after she found her bedroom in the house empty.
Dad told me that Jasmine had come over and demanded to search the house for Ellie.
He told me that when Jasmine was rummaging around upstairs, he went to the darkroom and got Why People Take Pictures and opened the book to her old pictures “from the nineties” and left it on the dining room table so she could see it on her way out.
“You knew about Why People Take Pictures?” I asked.
He nodded.
He said Jasmine turned white when she saw the pictures. Ed was waiting on the front porch, so she couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t do anything. All she could do was wonder what we’d do with them now. Here was what we’d do with them now: nothing.
Oh well.
I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I was glad Jasmine was gone. I was glad we had the land back. I was glad we could keep Ellie’s chickens and ducks. Or, our chickens and ducks. Or whoever’s birds they were now.
But I was sad about losing Ellie. After years of wanting to lose Ellie, I was sad about it. This was not an oh well. It was something, but it wasn’t an oh well.
I went upstairs to change into shorts. Summer was coming—quickly.
When I came back downstairs, I found Dad on the front porch watching Ellie. She was hugging her ducks. One by one, picking the runner ducks up and hugging them.
I ran across the road and hugged her.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said.
“I’m never going to be okay,” she said.
I pulled out the cashier’s check from my pocket and handed it to her. It was folded in two. She opened it.
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“Don’t tell anyone. Not anyone.”
“Where did you get this?” she said. “I can’t take it.”
“You have to take it. It’s a gift,” I said. “It doesn’t matter where I got it. It’s mine. There’s more. Don’t worry.”
She looked at the check. She looked at the ducks. She looked at me.
She tried to hand it back to me and I put my hands up so she couldn’t.
“You always said you wanted to get out,” I said.
“But—I—I don’t know how.”
“Call me when you get where you’re going and I can help you figure it out. Maybe we can meet out west like you always wanted. Right? Wouldn’t that be cool? Just don’t tell anyone. It’s a cashier’s check. It’s like cash. I don’t want them taking it from you.”
“I—uh…”
She put the check in her skirt pocket. She pressed on it to make sure it was there. I did too. Then I hugged her and went back across the road because I heard a car coming.
Then, there it was, exactly as my transmission had shown me. Ellie stood in the field by herself, crying, surrounded by her ducks. The car pulled up. She stepped into it and they drove away. She didn’t look back.
I watched and my heart broke.
It broke because I knew the transmissions were true.
It broke because I knew what was coming. For Ellie. For me. For the world.
“We have to get a real oven,” I said to Dad. “We can’t keep eating this microwaved shit.”
He looked at me over his glasses.
“Electric,” I said.
He nodded.
“I ordered canvas last night, you’ll be happy to know.”
I smiled.
“I’m going to paint the ovens,” he said. “I can see them.” He tapped his skull. “I can see them in here.”
We will be surrounded by ovens. We will be gluttons after years of starvation. Ovens will be our outlet. He will paint. I will cook.
And we will have a future.
I called Peter that night from Darla’s rocking chair on the front porch. I didn’t flirt. I just told him I wanted to talk more about psychology. I told him I was interested in college.
“Will you be at the mall tomorrow?” he asked. “We can talk about it over lunch.”
“How about you move your experiment to Main Street? Plenty of passersby,” I said. “Half the restaurants have outside tables, too. We could sit all day and smile at people.”
“True,” he said. “See you there. Noon. That Irish pub place.”
When I hung up, my train—the one that had been speeding down the track for a week—came to a graceful stop. No one in the passenger car was jarred. No food spilled in the dining car. The sleepers in the sleeping cars weren’t in any way inconvenienced.
It just stopped. And I got off. It was the beginning of the history of the future and it was the end of Max Black.
And I would live.