I got into Penn Station at the end of August 2005 with just forty dollars to my name, five dried sausages, and three rolls the Mayer-Cravens had stuffed in my backpack before I left Vermont. I said no to the beer. Not that I don’t drink—Thomas wouldn’t touch a drop of that stuff—but I couldn’t risk anyone making off with my stuff while I was on the train. Come to think of it, that wasn’t much of a good reason, seeing as I didn’t have anything a thief would care about, but I’d gone clear across the USA, from a place almost nobody lived in to a massive city so full of people, I thought I’d never get a moment’s peace.
Getting off the train, the heat was something I couldn’t believe. I’d been through temperatures like that in California and Texas and elsewhere along the way. But that day the whole city slow-roasted me, asphalt sticking to my soles like chewing gum. A furnace that cooked me right there and sucked up every drop of saliva in my throat. I was so tired after that whole trip and I had no idea how humans could bear it, but all around me they seemed to think it was normal to live in a city like this, as hot and sealed-off as a greenhouse, with the sun bouncing off the glass skyscrapers and this heat that could turn us to toast.
I managed to find the subway and, thank God, go in the right direction. All I had was a last name and an address and I went there, telling myself that, whatever I found there, that was the end of the line for me. I’d crossed the country from west to east and I wasn’t going any farther, what with this ocean I didn’t know. In the subway, people wouldn’t look at me, they stayed far away. With my huge beard, my hair a mess, and my raggedy backpack, they probably figured I was one of those guys who lived on the street and who had forgotten how to be civilized, and, I’ll say it, that was probably what I was right then, a bit. Sitting there, I wasn’t completely Benedict, son of Magnus and Maud Mayer, but some lost soul, from a faraway place who had no idea why he was there. I didn’t hold that against them, I was at loose ends from having to travel so much and for so long, from having to keep going when it wasn’t in my nature and I was a man of a single place: my house in Alaska.
When I got out of the subway, I walked for a while before I found the address, people ran off whenever I tried to ask for directions. I finally clapped eyes on the right building but I couldn’t bring myself to ring the bell. It was my last chance to find him, to bring him back or go home alone.
I sat down across the street, right on the ground, at the foot of a tree so scraggly compared to those around my own house that I almost had to laugh. I ate two sausages and a roll. I was thirsty, but I didn’t have it in me to move anymore. I dozed off for a minute and I think I really did look like what those people on the subway took me for: a man on his last legs, with too little money to get back on the straight and narrow.
I woke up, and the sun was hidden behind the buildings. The heat wasn’t much less stifling, but there was a bit of a breeze that seemed to be the only real human and welcoming thing in this city. I got up, I tried to smooth down my beard, I ran my fingers through my hair and pulled it back, and I went and pressed the buzzer. After a minute a woman’s voice came through. I said that my name was Benedict, that I was the brother of Thomas Mayer, and that I’d come to take him back to our parents. There was a long pause and then I heard the building door unlock as the voice told me to go up to the fifth floor. When I got to the landing, she was waiting for me. All she had on was a T-shirt she’d thrown on over her jeans. She was barefoot, and her red hair was like a fire crackling around her head. I immediately thought he had to have liked her and I felt a bit jealous, like he’d always gotten the better end of the deal as the older brother. She looked at me with her face all screwed up, the way she did when she was thinking. She stared at my face like she could find an answer to her questions in it, and then at long last she said, “So, you’re Benedict? You’ve come a long way.” And she had a sweet smile on her face.
I didn’t know if I’d finally found what I was looking for, but I did want to put down my bag for a minute and catch my breath, right there where Thomas was. Or had been.