Jeff is silent for a long time. Finally he says, “Yes. It’s a revolution.”
“But it’s legal!”
“All the better, right?”
“Sure, granted.”
“But so then, how do you get that Congress and president elected?”
“Politics, I guess. You tell the better story, and run candidates who will do what you say.”
“They would have to be Democrats, because third parties always lose. They screw the party closest to them, that’s the American way.”
“Okay, even better. Already existing party. Just win.”
“So it’s just politics, you’re telling me.”
“I guess so.”
“Jeez no wonder I tried to hack the system! Because your solution totally sucks!”
“Well at least it’s legal. If it worked, it would work.”
“Thank you for that wisdom. I am wondering now if all the great wisdom is as tautological as that. I fear maybe so. But no. No, Muttnik. You need to think again. This solution of yours is no solution at all. I mean people have been trying it for three hundred years, whatever, and it has only gotten worse and worse.”
“There have been ups and downs. There has been progress.”
“And here we are.”
“Okay, granted. Here we are.”
“So come up with something new.”
“I’m trying!”
Again Jeff is silent. He’s had to exert himself to talk this much, it’s been more than he has in him to give, and now he’s looking exhausted. Weary to the bone. Sick to death of seeing what he is seeing in his vision of the world.
After a while Mutt says, “Jeff? Are you awake?”
After a while Jeff rouses. “Don’t know. I’m really tired.”
“Hungry?”
“Don’t know.”
“I have some crackers here.”
“No.” Long pause; possibly Jeff is weeping here. Weeping or sleeping, or both. Finally he rouses himself, makes an effort. “Tell me a story. I told you to tell me a story.”
“I thought I was.”
“Tell me a story I can believe.”
“That’s harder. But okay … Well, once upon a time, there was a country across the sea, where everyone tried their best to make a community that worked for everyone.”
“Utopia?”
“New York. Everyone was equal there. Men, women, children, and people you couldn’t say what they were. All the various skin tones, and wherever you came from before, it didn’t matter. In this new place you made it all new, and people were just people, meant to be equal, and to treat each other respectfully at all times. It was a good place. Everyone liked living there. And they saw that it was a beautiful place to begin with, incredible really, the harbor, and from east to west it was just one beautiful place after another, with animals and fish and birds in such profusion that sometimes when flocks of birds flew overhead they darkened the day. You couldn’t see the sun or the sky, it was so full of birds. When the fish came back up the rivers to spawn, you could walk across the streams on their backs. That kind of thing. The animals ran in the millions. There was a forest that covered everything. Lakes and rivers to die for. Mountains you couldn’t believe. It was a gift to have such a land given to you.”
“Why didn’t anyone live there before?” Jeff asks from out of his sleep.
“Well, that’s another story. Actually there were people there already, I have to say, but alas they didn’t have immunity to the diseases that the new people brought with them, so most of them died. But the survivors joined this community and taught the newcomers how to take care of the land so that it would stay healthy forever. That’s the story I’m telling you now. It took knowing every rock and plant and animal and fish and bird, that was the way they did it. You had to love the land the way you loved your mother, or in case you didn’t love your mother, the way you loved your child, or yourself. Because it was you anyway. It took knowing all the other parts of your self so well that nothing was misunderstood or exploited, and everything was treated respectfully. Every single element of this land, right down to the bedrock, was a citizen of the community they all made together, and they all had legal standing, and they all made a good living, and they all had everything it took for total well-being for everything. That’s what it was like. Hey, Jeff? Jeff? Well, the end, I guess.”
Because Jeff is now lying there peacefully snoring. The story has put him to sleep. A kind of lullaby, it has turned out to be. A tale for children.
And then, because Jeff is asleep and cannot see it, Mutt puts his face in his hands and cries.
PART FIVE
ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT
As a free state, New York would probably rise to heights of very genuine greatness.
said Mencken
Bedrock in the area is mostly gneiss and schist. Then a widespread overlay of glacial till. Minerals to be found include garnet, beryl, tourmaline, jasper, muscovite, zircon, chrysoberyl, agate, malachite, opal, quartz; also silver; also gold.
a) Stefan and Roberto
Stefan and Roberto were subdued and even apprehensive on the day they joined Vlade and his friend Idelba on her tugboat. They had agreed to take Mr. Hexter, and that turned out to be a lucky thing, as with him along there was a certain amount of caretaking they needed to do. Without him they would have had nothing to do, and the whole point of their expeditions was to do things. But they were out of control of this one. And the stakes felt kind of high. It was hard not to worry.
Idelba picked them up on the Twenty-sixth aquaculture dock next to the Skyline Marina, and as her tug grumbled up to them the boys stared at each other round-eyed: her boat was huge. Out on the ocean they had not perceived that. Not containerclipper huge, but city huge, as long as the whole dock, meaning seventy feet long, and about three stories tall at the bridge, with broad flaring taffrails and a squared-off stern. “Wow,” Mr. Hexter said, peering up at it. “A carousel tug. And named the Sisyphus! That’s very cool.”
Idelba and one of her crew opened a passage in the side of the hull and lifted over a staircase on a hinge. The boys helped Mr. Hexter up it and onto the tug, then up narrow stairs to the bridge. Idelba appeared to have only one crew member aboard, a man who nodded to them from the wheel, which was set in a broad console at the center of a big curve of window. The wheelhouse. The view of the East River was amazing from this high up.
Vlade came up with Idelba after they had cast off, and the tug’s pilot, a skinny black man named Thabo, pushed the throttle forward and they shoved upriver. Ebb tide meant nothing to this brute, it had more than enough power to get upriver at speed. Given how heavy and squat it was, the speed was kind of awesome.
“No chance of hiding this baby,” Vlade remarked when he saw the looks on the boys’ faces. “We’re just going to have to sit there and be obvious.”
“People poke around the Bronx all the time,” Idelba said. “No one will give us a second glance.”
“Do we have a permit?” Mr. Hexter asked.
“To do what?”