1.
On September 11, they were in the Driftless. A few days earlier, Ruth had given the keynote address for a conference on food politics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which she and Oliver had gone to visit their friends John and Laura, who had a house in the country. The Driftless is a rural area in southwestern Wisconsin, one that Oliver had long wanted to see on account of the unique geology of the Paleozoic Plateau, which had somehow escaped glaciation and was named for the absence of drift: the silt, sand, clay, gravel, and boulders usually left behind by the retreating sheets of ice. He was particularly interested in the cave systems, the disappearing streams, blind valleys, and sinkholes that characterized the topography, but Ruth was feeling anxious. Her mother was still alive then and living with them on the island, and although Ruth had arranged for a neighbor to drop in and bring food and check up on her, she didn’t like leaving her alone for so long. But the fall weather in Wisconsin was beautiful, and it felt good to be with their friends. They spent a long, lazy afternoon in canoes on the Mississippi, watching turtles basking on logs in the golden sunlight.
The next morning the four of them were sitting around the kitchen table after a leisurely breakfast, enjoying a second cup of coffee, when they heard the neighbor’s pickup truck approaching. John went out to see what he wanted. He came back a few minutes later looking serious.
“Something’s happened in New York,” he said. The farmhouse had no television. He turned on the radio to NPR just as the second plane hit the North Tower.
Ruth spent the next hour standing on a picnic table at the top of a small rise on the property, trying to get a mobile phone signal so she could call her friends in New York. Finally she managed to get through to her editor, who was watching the disaster unfold from her kitchen window in Brooklyn.
Her editor’s voice cut through the static. “It’s falling!” she cried. “Oh my god, the tower’s falling down!” And then the connection went dead.
They drove back to Madison, turned on the television, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the planes slice into the towers and the towers collapse. She thought about her mom, all alone in the little house in Canada. Her mom always watched the news, even if she couldn’t remember what was going on from day to day. Ruth tried calling, but nobody picked up. Her mom was almost deaf and couldn’t hear the phone ringing.
“Mom’s watching this on TV,” she told Oliver. “She’ll think we’re in New York. She’ll be crazy with worry.”
“Call the neighbors,” he said. “Tell them to unplug the set.”
By the time she got through to anyone, it was already the next morning. “I need you to go to Mom’s house and find out if she’s seen anything,” she said. “If she has, just reassure her. Tell her we’re okay and that we’re nowhere near New York. Then unplug the television and tell her it’s broken.”
There was a long silence on the end of the line. “Sure thing,” the woman said. “Is there a problem?”
“I’m afraid she’s going to see the news and panic.”
Again, a long silence. “What news . . . ?”
Ruth explained briefly and then hung up the phone. “We have to get back,” she told Oliver.
2.
The airports were closed, so they rented a car, a white Ford Taurus, and drove west, skirting the Canadian border. Their plan was to drop the Taurus off in Seattle and take the hydrofoil back to Canada. Canada was safe.
As they made their way across the country, American flags began popping up like flowers after a rain, fluttering from poles and car antennae, and taped to the windows of stores and homes. The country was awash in red, white, and blue. At night, in Super 8s and Motel 6s, they watched the president vow to hunt down the terrorists. “Dead or alive,” he promised. “Smoke ’em out of their caves. Git ’em running so we can git ’em.”
One evening they stopped for dinner at the Great Wall of China restaurant in Harlem, Montana. The restaurant was empty and closing early. It was an extra security precaution, their waitress explained, when she brought their bill.
“You never know who they’re gonna target next,” she said.
“You think Arab terrorists will attack us here in Harlem, Montana?” Oliver asked. Harlem, Montana, had a population of just under 850. It was two thousand miles from New York City, and surrounded by desert.
The waitress, who looked like she might be Mexican, shook her head. “We’re not taking any chances,” she said.
Later, at the Super 8 motel, they watched a news report about the spate of hate crimes against Muslim Americans being committed across the country.
“You know, I think I was wrong,” Oliver said.
“About what?”
“Our waitress. I don’t think it was Arab terrorists she was afraid of.”
3.
They made it across the border, and Canada had never felt safer. Back on the island, their neighbors expressed concern for their well-being, but news of the world had little relevance to their daily lives, and they were only vaguely aware of what was going on down south, which didn’t keep them from having opinions.
“I’m pretty sure it’s all a hoax,” one neighbor said, when he dropped in to deliver Masako’s Alzheimer’s medication, which he’d picked up for her at the clinic.
“A hoax?” Ruth repeated. “You mean, you don’t think it happened?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “It happened all right. It’s just not what they’re saying it is.” He looked around and then took a step closer, standing so that his face was inches from hers. “If you ask me, it’s a government conspiracy.”
He was American, a Vietnam vet. He had been awarded a Purple Heart, which he handed back to the U.S. immigration authority at the border when he crossed into Canada. His spinal injuries had never healed and he required a steady dose of morphine in order to control the pain. Ruth didn’t have the energy to argue. She offered tea and then sat with him, listening to his theories and thinking about the box in the basement. How nice it would be to crawl inside and fall asleep.
From their fog-enshrouded outpost on the mossy margin of the world, she watched the United States invade Afghanistan and then turn its sights on Iraq. While troops were quietly being deployed to the Middle East, she sat on the couch with her mother, in the little house in the middle of the dark and dripping rain forest, staring at the small, glowing television screen.
“What program is this?” her mother asked.
“It’s the news, Mom,” she answered.
“I don’t understand,” her mother said. “It looks like a war. Are we at war?”
“Yes, Mom,” she said. “We’re at war.”
“Oh, that’s terrible!” her mother exclaimed. “Who are we at war with?”
“Afghanistan, Mom.”
They watched together in silence, until the commercial break. Her mother got up and shuffled to the bathroom. When she came back, she stopped and looked at the screen. “What program is this?”
“It’s the news, Mom.”
“It looks like a war. Are we at war?”
“Yes, Mom. We’re at war.”
“Oh, that’s terrible! Who are we at war with?”
“Iraq, Mom.”
“Really? But I thought that war was over.”
“No, Mom. It’s never over. America has always been at war with Iraq.”
“Oh, that’s terrible!” Her mom leaned forward and peered at the screen.
Days pass, and weeks. Months pass, and then years.
“Now, who did you say we are at war with?”