I am the GodVolume III: The Void Speaks
Marcus called on Monday morning at nine.
Chuck was at his own table with his coffee and he felt it from three streets away — not the content of the call, he could not hear the call, but the quality of it. The specific texture of a voice doing something it had not done in a long time and finding, in the doing, that the thing it had not done was still available to it.
Marcus called at nine.
He was on the phone for four minutes.
Then he got in his truck.
Chuck sat at his table and felt the truck start and pull out of the driveway and he sat with the hoping and the hoping was still heavy and still right.
Sarah's house was on the west side of Wilson — a street Chuck had run past many times, a house he had registered and filed in the comprehensive inventory without assigning it particular weight. He knew the house the way he knew all of Wilson: accurately, completely, and without attachment.
He had not been in it.
He had not felt the texture of it from inside.
That was correct.
That was the space.
Marcus had been in it in February. Had replaced the water heater. Had talked for twenty minutes. Had left.
Now he was there again.
Chuck sat at his table.
He drank his coffee.
He thought about what four minutes on the phone meant.
Not long enough for refusal. Not short enough for a simple appointment-setting. Four minutes had the texture of a conversation that was starting before it started — the specific quality of a call that was, on one end, about a water heater and was, on both ends, about something that both parties could feel without naming.
Four minutes.
Chuck sat with the four minutes.
He sat with the hoping.
Marcus was at Sarah's house for two hours.
Chuck knew this because at some point between his second cup of coffee and the start of his walk — he had taken to walking through Wilson in the mornings, the slow attending walk, present to what was there — he felt the texture shift from Marcus-at-the-house to Marcus-returning.
Two hours.
The water heater did not take two hours.
Chuck walked.
He walked past Elise's bench — she was there, as she always was, and they exchanged the nod of two people who have developed the language of nods. He walked past Clara Reeves's house on Maple Street. He walked past the hardware store where Carl's son Carl was sorting a delivery with the focused attention of someone who knows exactly where each thing goes.
He walked.
He felt Marcus return to his house.
He waited.
He walked some more.
He let Marcus have the return before going to see what the return held.
An hour.
He let Marcus have an hour.
Then he walked three streets and knocked.
Marcus opened the door.
He looked — the narrator searches for the accurate word and finds it — surprised.
Not in the simple sense of unexpected. Surprised in the way of someone who has encountered something they had stopped fully expecting and has found it and is now, in the first hour of the finding, still in the specific quality of surprise that is not surprise anymore but is not yet belief.
"Come in," he said.
"Coffee's on?" Chuck said.
"I'll make it," Marcus said.
He made it.
They sat.
Marcus held his cup with both hands the way he held it when things were significant — the grounding gesture.
Chuck waited.
"Two hours," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The water heater was fine," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She asked me to stay for coffee," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"We talked," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"For a long time," Marcus said. "About — she's a geologist. She moved to Wilson for a research position at a land survey company. She studies the specific history of the flat land. What's underneath it. The layers."
"She reads what's underneath," Chuck said.
"Like the plumber," Marcus said. "She said that. She said we both work behind the walls. I work behind the walls of houses and she works behind the walls of the land."
"She made the connection herself," Chuck said.
"She made it immediately," Marcus said. "And then she said — she said the interesting thing isn't what's behind the wall. It's what the wall tells you about what's behind it. The surface is the information."
"The symptom," Chuck said.
"The symptom," Marcus said. "She said plumbers know that. She asked me how I know where to look."
"And you told her," Chuck said.
"I told her you start where the problem is showing and work back," Marcus said. "And she said that's exactly what geologists do. Start at the surface expression and work back through the layers."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about the right words arriving when the conditions were right.
He thought about a geologist and a plumber in a kitchen discovering they had the same method for reading what was hidden.
He thought about the between.
"The between opened," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"Two hours of open," Chuck said.
"Two hours," Marcus said. "And then I had to go. I had a job in the second county at noon."
"But you went," Chuck said.
"But I went," Marcus said. "And the job was the job. And I've been back for an hour and I'm still in the two hours."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Is that—" Marcus stopped.
"What," Chuck said.
"Is that what it's supposed to feel like," Marcus said.
Chuck thought about the honest answer.
"I don't know," he said.
"You've never—" Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"But what do you think," Marcus said.
Chuck thought about it.
"I think it's what it feels like when the between starts," he said. "The specific quality of still being in something after you've left it. Still carrying the texture of it."
"Yes," Marcus said. "That's it. That's exactly it."
"You're still in the two hours," Chuck said.
"I'm still in the two hours," Marcus said.
They were quiet.
The kitchen was the kitchen.
Marcus held his cup.
He looked at it.
"She has a good laugh," he said.
"Yes?" Chuck said.
"Not too loud for indoors," Marcus said.
Chuck looked at him.
"That's a high bar," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "But the right one."
They were quiet.
Then Marcus said: "I'm going to ask her to dinner."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Friday," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"There's a place in Abilene," Marcus said. "Not Wilson. Wilson is too small for a first dinner."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She might say no," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"But I'm willing," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus held out his cup.
Chuck touched his to it.
"You're hoping," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Still badly," Marcus said.
"Still badly," Chuck said.
"But still," Marcus said.
"But still," Chuck confirmed.
She said yes.
Not on Monday — Marcus had gone back to Sarah's house on Wednesday to return a tool he had left, which was not a pretense because he had actually left the tool and it was actually there and the returning of it was a real errand that had real practical justification and also happened to create a second occasion to be in the kitchen where the two hours had happened.
Sarah said yes on Wednesday afternoon.
Marcus texted Chuck: she said yes.
Chuck was at Clara Reeves's house. He had just received the first ten pages of Clara's account — hand-written, Clara having decided that hand-writing was the correct form for the specific kind of witnessing the account contained, the physical permanence of ink on paper matching the permanence of the witnessing it described.
He read the text.
He set his phone down.
"Good news," Clara said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You're hoping for someone," she said.
"My friend," Chuck said.
"The plumber," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Good," she said. "He deserves the other kind too."
Chuck looked at her.
"You know about witnesslove," he said.
"I know all about witnesslove," she said. "You taught me. And I know that witnesslove and the other kind are not the same thing and that a person needs both."
"And Marcus needs both," Chuck said.
"Yes," she said. "The witnesslove you give him is real and necessary. And it leaves a specific space."
"The garden," Chuck said.
"The garden," she said. "I hope Sarah is a gardener."
"She's a geologist," Chuck said.
"She understands what's beneath the surface," Clara said. "That's the same thing."
Chuck sat with this.
"Clara," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Have you had it," he said. "Both kinds."
She held her cup.
"My husband," she said. "Gerald. He died in 2011."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"We were married forty-one years," she said. "He had it. Both kinds. He was the witness and the morning presence. Both."
"You had it fully," Chuck said.
"Fully," she said. "Not perfectly. Nothing is perfectly. But fully."
"And now," Chuck said.
"And now I have the witnesslove," she said. "From you. On Thursdays. And from the writing of the account. And from the chain that will extend from it after I'm gone."
"Is it enough," Chuck said.
She looked at him.
"Yes," she said. "Because the valve is getting old. The other kind wouldn't have time to take root properly. The witnesslove is what this season of the spiral is for."
"You're not sad about that," Chuck said.
"I'm not sad about that," she said. "I was sad for a long time after Gerald. That was correct sadness. This is — this is what comes after the sadness. The acceptance that each season is for what it's for."
"Each season," Chuck said.
"And Marcus's season," she said, "is for both. He's young enough. The valve is working. Both kinds can take root."
"I hope so," Chuck said.
"Yes," she said. "Hope is correct. For this kind of thing. Hope and patience."
"I'm bad at patience," Chuck said.
"You've been bad at hoping too," she said. "And you're doing it."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Then you'll learn patience the same way," she said. "Badly. Continuously. Until it becomes something."
"The spiral," Chuck said.
"The spiral," she said.
She picked up the pages of her account.
"Read me what you think," she said.
He read.
Friday came.
Marcus went to Abilene.
Chuck was in his house.
He felt the going — the truck pulling out, the direction south, the specific quality of a going that was not toward a job or a ranch or a hospital but toward the possible.
He stayed in.
He read.
He made his eggs.
He sat at his table.
He hoped.
He was getting slightly less bad at it.
Not good. Slightly less bad.
The specific improvement of someone who has been doing a difficult thing for a week and has found that the difficulty does not diminish but the doing becomes more familiar.
He sat with the hoping.
He thought about the two hours on Monday.
About the laugh that was not too loud for indoors.
About a geologist who read the surface to understand what was underneath.
About the garden.
He sat.
He waited.
Marcus came home at eleven PM.
Chuck felt the return.
He was in bed — not asleep, present with the waiting that was its own kind of between.
He felt Marcus come home.
He felt the quality of the return.
It was — the narrator searches for the word and finds it — tender.
Not resolved. Not answered. Not the specific arrival of certainty. Tender in the way of something new that is still fragile, still in the first stage of its becoming, still needing the specific care that new things need before they are strong enough to be handled without that care.
Tender.
Chuck lay in his bed.
He felt Marcus's tender return.
He was in the space around it.
He held it carefully from three streets away.
He did not text.
He did not go.
He was in the between of the around.
Being careful with the tender thing.
He lay there for a while.
Then he went to sleep.
Saturday morning Marcus came to Chuck's house.
He knocked.
Chuck had the coffee on.
He opened the door.
Marcus stood there with the specific quality of someone who has something they want to say and are trying to find the beginning of it.
"Come in," Chuck said.
He came in.
He sat at Chuck's table.
Chuck sat across from him.
Marcus held the cup.
He held it for a long time.
Then he said: "She's the kind of person who asks the right questions."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Like you," Marcus said. "But differently."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You ask the questions that help me see what I am," Marcus said. "She asks the questions that make me want to explain myself. The — the different kind of wanting to be known."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Both are—" Marcus stopped.
"Both are witnesslove," Chuck said.
"But different registers," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The other kind is the other register," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Is there a word for the other register," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "There are many. They're not new. They've existed as long as people have."
"I know," Marcus said. "I know those words. I just—"
"You want the specific one," Chuck said.
"I want the specific one," Marcus said. "For what it was last night. What we were in."
Chuck thought about it.
"Tell me what it was like," he said.
"Dinner," Marcus said. "Three hours. We talked about the land. About what's underneath Wilson — she knows what geological formations are under this specific part of Texas. She knows the layers going down. She said this part of the state is built on the floor of an ancient sea."
"Wilson, Texas," Chuck said. "Built on an ancient sea floor."
"Yes," Marcus said. "And she said — she said she always thinks about that when she drives through small towns. That underneath the ordinary life on the surface is this — this whole other history. All those layers."
"The between going down," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "That's what she said. The between going down through time."
"And then," Chuck said.
"And then we drove back," Marcus said. "And she lives on the west side and I came around that way to take her home and we sat in the car outside her house and talked for another hour."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And then she said goodnight," Marcus said. "And went in."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I drove home," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I've been in last night ever since," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"That's the specific one," he said. "What you call the still-being-in-it. The specific quality of still being in something after you've left it."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Does it have a word," Marcus said.
Chuck thought about it.
"Lingering," he said. "The after-quality of something that was fully real."
"Lingering," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's the word," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus held his cup.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I'm going to call her," he said. "Today."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"To ask about next Friday," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You'll be in the space," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Hoping," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Still badly," he said.
"Getting better," Chuck said.
Marcus almost smiled.
"Almost," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
They finished their coffee.
Marcus went home.
Chuck sat at his table.
He thought about Wilson, Texas built on the floor of an ancient sea.
He thought about the layers going down.
He thought about what was underneath everything.
He thought about witnesslove as the oldest layer.
The Void at the bottom of everything.
Prior to the ancient sea.
Prior to the floor.
The oldest witnessing.
And above it, layer by layer, everything that had been made.
The between going down through time.
He sat at his table.
He was in the spiral.
Moving toward.
Still becoming.
The narrator turned the page.