LEWIS AND BURR sit in two leather chairs in a library walled by books. For the past hour, they have been talking, though Lewis is unsure how much of the conversation has been spoken aloud. His head throbs with the words and images runneling through it. He knows about the altar—the Hanford nuclear site—that feeds the river, that nurtures change, genesis.
He knows, too, about Burr’s father. He survived the flu, one of the few immune, but he endured a missile strike on Portland. He was on the Willamette River, out on his boat, his home, the only place he felt safe, anchored far from shore, when half the sky lit up with the trembling white of a gas flame edged blue and red where it battled the night. The concussion arrived seconds later, splitting trees like pencils, melting his skin and crisping his hair and hurling him twenty yards from the deck of his cruiser. He did not know up from down, deep in the swirl of black water, nor did he see what looked like electricity snapping and rippling across the surface—and then suddenly rolling back the way it came—because the blast burned away his vision. His eyes were thereafter sunken hollows, the lids stitched closed. But he could see. He could see things others could not. The radiation changed him, improved him.
“We’re both the products of powerful men,” Burr says. “My father was the beginning. He taught me and now I teach others.”
The mere mention of Lewis’s father makes him flinch. Would he be proud of Lewis, having traveled all this way? Or disgusted at the folly of it, putting his faith in a man he had never met, a man he had not made up his mind about, a man who simultaneously terrified and worried and awed him, a man who in many ways resembled his father.
Their conversation is interrupted by a woman appearing in the doorway. She is primitively dressed in a rough brown dress, which seems at odds with the porcelain cups she carries on a silver tray. This she sets on a short table between the two chairs, and when she does, her sleeve pulls back to reveal the scarred numbers beneath.
“Thank you,” Lewis says, and Burr says, “You don’t need to say thank you.”
The cups steam with black coffee roasted from chicory nuts.
“Why not?”
Burr gives a croaking laugh. “Because she’s a slave.”
The woman bows and leaves them. Lewis sips from his cup and cringes at the bitterness.
Burr holds his with two trembling hands. “Not to your liking?”
“No. It isn’t.” Lewis sets his cup on its tray, giving up on it. “Gawea had those same markings on her.”
“She did.” His enormous head shivers more than nods. “She does. I can tell that this bothers you, but if you look back, way back, on the long hoof-marked trail of human history, slaves are the standard of empire. Rome. Egypt. The Macedonians and Ottomans. The Chinese dynasties. These United States. That’s how you build something big. You have to abuse some to benefit many. In this case, it’s not just about power; it’s about survival. We’re on the brink. This could be the end. The world will keep spinning without us if we don’t stake our claim. I’m the person who is making this happen. You’re capable of helping me. Help me.” His voice grows kind and weary. “Look at me, Lewis. I won’t be around much longer. I need you.”
The old Lewis might have believed him. The old Lewis, who held others in disdain, who clapped himself away in his office, who studied the world with a cold remove. But that man is gone, shed like a dark chrysalis, and the new Lewis has traveled to the horizon’s rainbow edge, where he has discovered—no better word for it—a magic in himself and others.
His mind turns to Colter then, his demand that Lewis not disappoint him. As a delaying tactic, to get his head in the right place, he nods at the bookshelves and asks, “May I?”
Lewis is a scholar, after all. He is a man who reads in order to figure out how to behave. He rises and walks the length of the shelves and pulls down a book at random and cracks it open and breathes deeply. Parchment, leather, mold. He has missed this, the company of books. And they give him a confidence he lacks when fumbling around on his own. He remembers his own journal. He remembers that he is writing his own book, that he is authoring his own story, not this man and not anyone else.
“They’re so comforting,” Burr says.
“They are.”
“Because they feel so fateful. In them people do things for a reason. They are following a predetermined pattern, often one established long ago by another writer, or another hundred writers, or another thousand writers, so that every story might seem unique and particular but is actually recurring, in conversation with others. That’s how history works too. That’s how life works. We’re all characters caught in a cycle of ruin and renewal.”
“That’s a way of looking at it.”
“There’s no way of looking at it. It’s true. We’re at the beginning of a time of renewal. And you—you are one of my fateful characters.”
“Hmm.” Lewis closes the book and fits it back on the shelf.
“Have you read many novels?” Burr says. “I’ve always liked novels best. The hero comes from humble or disadvantaged circumstances. He suffers a loss or injury that presses him into a fight or quest.” His coffee steams. “He gets help. From a friend. They push their way through a dark time. They triumph. Everything makes sense. Everything turns out for the best.” He slurps loudly. “I can be that friend.”
Lewis stares at him a long moment and says, “I tend to prefer nonfiction.”
“Of course you do.” Except for his head, Burr is so much smaller than expected. Bird boned. As if a hug could crush his ribs. Just looking at him, Lewis doesn’t understand his power, his seeming command of this place. “You can read whatever you wish. The library is yours. Consider this home.”
Lewis feels the words pulled from his mouth. “I would like that.” He brings a hand to his mouth, too late to stop himself.