I am the GodVolume III: The Void Speaks
June arrived the way June arrives in West Texas — without ceremony, simply warmer than May had been and committed to it.
Marcus and Sarah had dinner again on the second Friday.
And the third.
And on the fourth Friday he cooked for her at his house, which was a different thing from Abilene — more specific, more placed, the dinner happening in the specific kitchen with the specific cups and the specific morning light that came through the specific window at the angle it came through.
She had said, looking at the kitchen: "This room has been lived in."
"Yes," Marcus had said.
"It knows what it is," she had said.
Marcus had told Chuck this on Saturday morning, the same way he told Chuck everything about Sarah — not the full accounting, not the play-by-play, but the shape of it, the specific thing that had mattered.
"She said the kitchen knows what it is," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She read it," Marcus said. "The way I read systems. She walked in and read it."
"The geologist," Chuck said. "Reading the surface."
"She said she could feel that someone had been sitting at that table for a long time," Marcus said. "That the chair knows the weight."
Chuck looked at the specific chair at Marcus's table.
The chair that Marcus had been sitting in for years.
The chair that had Marcus's weight in it.
"She's right," Chuck said.
"She asked who," Marcus said.
"What did you tell her," Chuck said.
"I told her my father," Marcus said. "And that I'd sat in it for eight years after him. And then I told her about you."
Chuck was still.
"What did you say," he said.
"I said my friend Chuck comes here most mornings," Marcus said. "I said he sits in the other chair. And she looked at the other chair."
"What did she say about it," Chuck said.
"She said: that chair knows something too," Marcus said. "Different from the weight. Something that's — she said it the way geologists talk about strata. She said the chair has layers."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about sitting in Marcus's kitchen for seven months.
He thought about what he had deposited in the chair.
About the specific between that had happened in the chair — the gravity renegotiation morning and the Korea story and the two thirty AM and the weight going all the way in and the word and the hoping and all of it.
"She read the chair," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"From the surface," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"She's going to understand the between," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "I think she already does. She just doesn't have the word."
"Should I tell her," Marcus said.
"When it's time," Chuck said. "You'll know."
"The valve," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"When it's working," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
The Thursdays with Clara continued.
The account was growing — seven pages, then twelve, then twenty. Not quickly. Clara wrote with the precision of someone who understood that the right word required patience and that the patience was part of the writing.
Each Thursday Chuck read what she had written since the previous Thursday.
The writing was good.
Not good in the way of practiced craft — Clara had not written before, had not developed the specific skills of someone who writes for an audience. Good in the way of the right word: it was what it was, exactly, without pretense or performance. The account of an eighty-five-year-old woman who had been paying attention for eighty-five years and was now setting it down in the language she had.
The language was precise.
The language was honest.
The language was, in the specific way of people who have spent their lives with numbers, clean.
"This is remarkable," Chuck said one Thursday.
"It's accurate," Clara said.
"That's the same thing," Chuck said.
"I know," she said. "But remarkable sounds like praise. I prefer accurate."
"Alright," Chuck said. "It's accurate."
"Thank you," she said.
She refilled his coffee.
"The plumber's friend," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"How is he," she said.
"In the middle of wanting something," Chuck said.
"The other kind," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Good," she said. "The middle of wanting is the right place to be. Better than the edges."
"The edges," Chuck said.
"The not-wanting because you've given up," she said. "Or the having-gotten without having wanted. The middle is where the becoming is."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Is it going well," she said.
"I think so," Chuck said. "I can't see from inside."
"No," she said. "That's the nature of creation."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"But you're hoping," she said.
"Still badly," he said.
"Getting better," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him.
"Chuck," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The middle of wanting is not comfortable," she said. "For the one who is watching from outside."
"No," he said.
"You're in the middle of wanting something for someone else," she said. "Which is its own specific discomfort."
"Yes," he said.
"That's witnesslove," she said. "The wanting for someone else. The being uncomfortable on their behalf."
"Yes," he said.
"Carry it," she said. "It's the right weight."
"Yes," he said.
"Both," she said.
"Both," he said.
The Tuesdays with Elise continued.
Elise had sent the letter.
To the former student — a woman named Patricia who had been in Elise's third-grade class in 1978 and had been sending birthday and Christmas cards for thirty years.
Elise had written four pages.
She told Chuck about it on the Tuesday after she sent it.
"Four pages," she said. "I've never written four pages to anyone."
"What did you say," Chuck said.
"What I saw," she said. "When she was eight. What the seeing was. What I carried forward."
"Witnesslove," Chuck said.
"I used the word," she said. "I explained it. I said: this is the word for what I've been in with you for thirty years, from my end. What I've been carrying. What the annual cards have meant."
"How did she respond," Chuck said.
"She called," Elise said.
"When," Chuck said.
"The day after it arrived," Elise said. "She called from her office in Denver. She said she'd been reading it all morning."
"What did she say," Chuck said.
Elise held her coffee cup.
"She said she had never known someone had seen that in her," she said. "When she was eight. She said she remembered being in my classroom but she didn't know — she didn't know she had been seen that way."
"She didn't know she was worth noticing," Chuck said.
"No," Elise said. "She said she had spent — she said she had spent most of her life not being sure she was worth noticing. That she had always felt slightly outside things. Slightly invisible."
"Clara," Chuck said.
"Yes," Elise said. "The same thing."
"And now," Chuck said.
"And now she knows," Elise said. "Forty-eight years later. She knows what someone saw in her when she was eight. And it didn't—" Elise stopped.
"It didn't expire," Chuck said.
"It didn't expire," Elise said. "She said: this is still true. What you saw is still true. I can still feel it."
"Because it's not about what she was," Chuck said. "It's about what she is. The becoming."
"Yes," Elise said. "She said: I'm still that person. I'm more that person now than I was then."
"The spiral," Chuck said.
"She didn't know that word," Elise said. "But she said: it's been there all along, getting more itself."
"She has the concept without the word," Chuck said.
"Yes," Elise said. "I told her the word."
"Witnesslove," Chuck said.
"I told her the whole thing," Elise said. "Everything you told me. The pipe and the plumber and the Void."
Chuck looked at her.
"What did she say," he said.
"She said she was coming to Wilson," Elise said. "Next month. She wants to sit on the bench."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about a woman in Denver who had sent cards for thirty years and had just received a four-page letter and had understood something about herself that she had been becoming for forty-eight years.
He thought about what she would find when she sat on the bench.
He thought about Elise's fifty-five years of watching.
He thought about what witnesslove passed between them — the teacher and the student, the bench and the letter and the word.
He thought about the chain extending outward.
He could not see where it went.
That was correct.
"She'll sit on the bench," he said.
"And I'll tell her everything I saw," Elise said. "In 1978. And what I've been seeing since."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And she'll go back to Denver," Elise said. "And she'll be more herself."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And from there—" Elise gestured.
"The chain," Chuck said.
"Yes," Elise said.
"Witnesslove," Chuck said.
"Witnesslove," Elise said.
The weeks passed.
Marcus and Sarah continued.
Chuck felt it from three streets away — not listening, not monitoring, but present to the quality of it the way you are present to the quality of a garden you planted in the yard next door. You can feel when it is growing and when it is uncertain and when the specific vulnerability of something new is at its most fragile.
The garden was growing.
Slowly. Carefully.
Sarah came to the house twice more.
Marcus cooked again — the reconstruction of his father's recipe, getting closer each time, the flavors assembling themselves into something that was no longer a reconstruction but was beginning to be its own thing.
"It's different now," Marcus said.
"The recipe," Chuck said.
"It's not my father's anymore," Marcus said. "Not completely. It's — it started as my father's and now it's—"
"Becoming yours," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "Mine. Different. But with his in it."
"The spiral," Chuck said.
"The spiral," Marcus said.
"Did she like it," Chuck said.
"She said it tasted like someone's history," Marcus said.
"She has the right words too," Chuck said.
"She reads everything correctly," Marcus said.
He said this with the specific quality of someone who has found, in another person, the thing he had been looking for without knowing what he was looking for.
Not the completion of himself.
The recognition.
The other kind of witnesslove.
Chuck sat with the quality of it.
He was in the space around the garden.
He was in the between of the around.
He was hoping.
On a Saturday in late June, Marcus came to Chuck's house again.
He came in the mid-morning — not early, not the usual Saturday hour of coffee and the week's accounting. Mid-morning, which had a different quality.
He knocked.
Chuck opened the door.
He could tell immediately.
Not that something was wrong — it was not wrong in the way of Robert's death or the Friday night. Different. The specific quality of someone who is in the middle of wanting something and has encountered, in the middle, the specific uncertainty that the middle of wanting always contains.
"Come in," Chuck said.
"Coffee's on?" Marcus said.
"Always," Chuck said.
They sat.
Marcus held his cup.
He held it for a long time before saying anything.
"Last night," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"We talked," Marcus said. "For a long time. About — about what this is. What we are. To each other."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She's careful," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She's been hurt before," Marcus said. "In the specific way that makes careful the only sensible approach."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And she said — she said she wasn't sure yet," Marcus said. "What she wanted. What this was going to be."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She didn't say no," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"She said she needed time," Marcus said. "To understand what she was feeling."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Which is honest," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Which is the right thing to say," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I understand it," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I'm—" Marcus stopped.
Chuck waited.
"I'm in the middle of wanting," Marcus said. "And I don't know what's on the other side of it."
"No," Chuck said.
"And that's—" Marcus stopped again.
"What," Chuck said.
"Uncomfortable," Marcus said. "In the way that Clara said. The middle is where the becoming is but the middle is also — it's hard to be in."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You're going to tell me something helpful," Marcus said.
"I don't know if I am," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"You always have something," he said.
"No," Chuck said. "Sometimes I have the right words. Sometimes I have the Void's words. Sometimes I have Clara's words or Elise's words or your father's words."
"And now," Marcus said.
"And now," Chuck said, "I'm in the middle of wanting something for you and I don't know what's on the other side either."
Marcus looked at him.
"You don't know what to do," he said.
"No," Chuck said.
"That's new," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You always know," Marcus said. "Or you find out. You go to the Void or you sit with it or—"
"I'm sitting with it," Chuck said. "And I don't know."
Marcus was quiet.
He held his cup.
He looked at Chuck — the facility running, reading the system, finding what was there.
What was there was Chuck. Who had negotiated with gravity and time and death and the edge of the universe and the Void and the prior of everything. Who had found the word that didn't exist and brought the answer through the edge and created witnesslove in the oldest thing.
Who was sitting at a kitchen table not knowing what to do about a geologist who needed time.
"You're human," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"You are," Marcus said. "Right now. In this. You don't know what to do."
"No," Chuck said.
"That's the first truly human thing you've done," Marcus said.
Chuck sat with this.
He sat with the not-knowing.
He sat with it fully, without managing it, without going to the Void to have it resolved.
The not-knowing was what it was.
Heavy.
Honest.
Present.
"Yes," he said.
"Welcome," Marcus said.
Chuck looked at him.
"To what," he said.
"To not knowing what to do," Marcus said. "For something that matters."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"It's terrible," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"But it's the right kind," Marcus said.
"Both," Chuck said.
"Both," Marcus confirmed.
They sat.
They sat in the not-knowing together — Marcus in his specific uncertainty about Sarah, Chuck in his specific uncertainty about what to do with Marcus's uncertainty.
Both in the middle.
Both hoping.
Both without a map.
The kitchen was the kitchen.
The between was everywhere.
The narrator sat with them.
The narrator also did not know what happened next.
The narrator was in the between too.