I woke up with the light streaming through the windows. For a moment, with my eyes still closed and with the warmth of the sun on my cheeks I felt peace. But only a few moments later I remembered who I was, my story and Jack. Though I would have liked to have had the power to not succumb to these painful thoughts, they gripped me and I found it hard to move. Everything seemed pointless. Getting up was pointless. Moving was pointless. Eating was pointless. Living was pointless. I lay there with the weight of Jack’s death pressing me down and making me feel frozen.
Finally I sat up. My stomach rumbled and I was determined to eat. Today I would. If there was one goal for today it was to eat. One step at a time, piece by piece, I could at least try to be a functioning human being again. Though that too seemed pointless. What did it even mean to be a fully functioning human being? Why try to be normal? What point was there in being normal again? It felt ignorant to strive for a more normal and stable state of mind or emotion. Why should I search for the comfort of ignorance? It felt selfish.
Shut up, I said to these thoughts. I needed to eat. My body was surely more intelligent than my mind right now. I would eat, and think nothing more of it.
I searched through the cans, scanning each label and hoping I would find a rice pudding still amongst them. It was the only thing I had a slight appetite for. The beans, the fish, they all repulsed me. After a while of rummaging through the endless mess I found a rice pudding. I took it out, along with a can of sardines for Oak, and I went and sat back down. I opened the can of rice pudding, I ate and I finished the whole thing. It seemed delicious, better than I had expected. I was hungrier than I had realised. Before I knew it I was chewing on the fish as well. I was ravenous. I finished the whole can.
The practical part of me had returned. My body felt stronger, and with it, my mind did too. I opened the door and slid out of the van. The pain in my ankle was finally subsiding, although it was still hugely swollen. I looked up at the sky. Morning dew rubbed against my bare feet. I breathed in the fresh damp air and the smell of fir and I stretched, I felt the need for it. Oak joined me. I looked at her. It’s just you and me Oak. Today I couldn’t let that thought bother me. Today I needed strength from it. I needed strength to figure out a plan. Some kind of plan, any plan.
And I needed to feed Oak. I went to the boot, rummaged through the boxes and found her some food. The mess of cans and boxes made the boot hard to shut. I tried my best to rearrange it all, but cans kept rolling out of nowhere. I tried shoving the boxes further in and jamming loose cans between them to temporarily hold them in. I was struggling and getting irritated. And in this absurd feat of humdrum human existence the box of Jack’s documents suddenly fell out and onto the ground. The files and pages exploded out and loose bits of paper started flying off in the wind. I limped after them, grabbing at the air and trying to retrieve each one as fast as I could. I managed to recover them all and place everything neatly back in the box within a minute. But it was only when I was scampering around and grabbing each one so urgently that I realised how important these pages were. How important the contents of this box would be. This box was my future plan.
I sat down in a sunny spot outside the van, leaning against it. With the box by my side, my body shielding it from potential gusts of winds, I pulled out one of the files, gripping it tight in my hands. I opened it up and I scanned the words, page by page. A lot of it was incomprehensible, written in English but in a way that made little sense to me.
I carried on looking through the contents of the box, determined, as though I knew what I was looking for. I reached down to the bottom and pulled out what looked like a small notebook. It was a passport. I opened it up. James Alan Harris. Presumably this was Jack’s fake passport. Who was James Alan Harris? Why did Jack have this fake passport and how did he get it?
Who was this man who’d briefly crept into my life and consumed it so completely?
I slumped all my weight into the side of the van, I sighed and I looked out into the space in front of my eyes, as if searching for inspiration. And suddenly I knew what I had to do with all of this. I knew what I had to do with my unfinished case and all my questions.
What was his name? Jack’s lawyer friend, the one who gave him the mescaline? He’d mentioned him so many times… Adam! I rummaged through the box, looking for Jack’s little black notebook, where he kept his list of contacts. It wasn’t in there. I got up and went round to the front of the van. I checked the glove compartment and the floor under the driver’s seat, and finally I found the notebook in the left car door compartment, jammed between a copy of The Milepost: Alaska Travel Planner and a guidebook on edible mushrooms.
I felt I was onto something. I felt determined. I opened the notebook and flicked through it, scanning each page until I got to the part with contacts. I searched for Adam’s name. Then I searched again, even more carefully. He wasn’t there. But there was one address on a separate page, which had no name. I knew San Diego well enough, I recognised the address as being near the Horton Plaza mall where we’d started the journey. I remembered Jack had said that Adam lived very near there. I remembered he’d told me that Adam was the only person he knew who lived so close. This had to be Adam’s address and number. I was sure of it. Suddenly I was overcome with a strange sense of relief.
This story wasn’t over, I was taking it to Adam.
But first, I would go to Alaska.