I am the GodVolume III: The Void Speaks
August arrived.
Patricia came to Wilson on the second Saturday of August.
Chuck was not on the bench when she arrived — he had walked past and seen Elise and a woman he did not know and a child of about nine and had understood immediately and had continued walking without stopping, because the between between Elise and Patricia was theirs and the arriving of it did not require his presence.
He walked.
He went to Marcus's.
"Patricia is here," he said.
Marcus looked up from the invoice he was working on.
"The student," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"With the daughter," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Is it good," Marcus said.
"I didn't stay to look," Chuck said. "It was theirs."
Marcus looked at him.
"You've learned when to walk past," he said.
"I had a good teacher," Chuck said.
"The plumber's philosophy," Marcus said.
"It's not philosophy," Chuck said. "It's just what works."
Marcus smiled.
They had coffee.
An hour later Chuck walked back past the bench.
Patricia and Elise were still there.
The daughter was between them.
Elise was talking — the specific quality of Elise talking that Chuck had come to know, the voice of someone who has been watching something for a long time and has finally been asked to describe what she sees.
Patricia was listening.
The daughter was listening with the focused attention of a nine-year-old who has been told by her mother that this is important and has decided, in the specific way of children who trust their parents, that if her mother says it is important it is important.
Chuck walked past.
He did not stop.
He was in the between of the around — present from the outside, not in the room, the garden space held from across the street.
The witnesslove being witnessed.
The chain continuing.
He walked home.
Clara's account reached sixty pages.
She gave them to Chuck on a Thursday afternoon with the specific quality of someone handing something over that they have made and are now releasing.
"That's as far as I can go for now," she said.
"For now," Chuck said.
"I need to rest," she said. "The writing takes something. I didn't know it would."
"The right writing always does," Chuck said.
"I'll come back to it," she said. "When I've rested."
"Yes," Chuck said.
He held the pages.
Sixty pages of eighty-five years.
He held them with the specific care of someone holding something that will continue after the person who made it.
"It's good," he said.
"It's accurate," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Same thing," she said.
"Same thing," he said.
She looked at him.
"You look different," she said.
"How," he said.
"More settled," she said. "Not less. More."
"What's the difference," he said.
"Less settled is when you're still moving toward something," she said. "More settled is when you've arrived somewhere and found it was worth the arriving."
"I haven't arrived," he said.
"You've arrived somewhere," she said. "Not the end. Somewhere in the middle. A resting point in the spiral."
He thought about this.
"Is that what it looks like from outside," he said.
"Yes," she said. "You look like someone who knows what they are."
He sat with this.
"I don't have the word yet," he said.
"No," she said. "But you have the thing. The word comes after."
"It keeps coming after," he said.
"Words always do," she said. "The thing has to exist before it can be named. You're the thing now. The word will follow."
On the third week of August, Marcus went to the geological site with Sarah.
He came back in the late afternoon and knocked on Chuck's door.
"Come in," Chuck said.
"Coffee's on?" Marcus said.
"Always," Chuck said.
He came in.
He sat.
He had the specific quality of someone who has stood somewhere that required them to feel something large and is still carrying the feeling.
"Tell me," Chuck said.
"She took me to a place south of Wilson," Marcus said. "About twenty miles. Where the land cuts down and you can see the layers."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Twenty feet of visible strata," Marcus said. "She named each layer. The oldest is forty million years old."
"The ancient sea," Chuck said.
"You can see it," Marcus said. "The sea floor. The compressed layers of what was there. Forty million years ago this was under water. And you can see it. You can put your hand on it."
Chuck was quiet.
"I put my hand on it," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And Sarah said: what do you feel," Marcus said.
"What did you say," Chuck said.
"I said it feels like the between going down," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And she said: yes. Exactly that. The between between now and forty million years ago. Still present. Still there in the stone."
"Witnesslove," Chuck said.
"I told her the word," Marcus said.
Chuck looked at him.
"Was it time," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "Standing with our hands on the sea floor. It was time."
"What did she say," Chuck said.
"She said: that's what geology is," Marcus said. "The witnesslove of time for what was. The record of everything that happened kept in the layers. Nothing lost. Just gone deeper."
"Nothing lost," Chuck said.
"Nothing lost," Marcus said. "Just deeper."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about Robert.
About Marcus's father.
About Gerald Marsh, Clara's husband.
About all the people who had gone deeper rather than lost.
About the spiral going further than they could see.
About nothing lost.
Just deeper.
"She understands the between," Chuck said.
"Naturally," Marcus said. "Like breathing. She's been in witnesslove with the land for twenty years."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And now she's in it with me," Marcus said.
"The other kind," Chuck said.
"Both kinds," Marcus said. "She witnesses me and she's in the other kind. She reads the surface and finds the layers."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I do the same for her," Marcus said. "I go into the house and find what's actually there."
"You read each other's systems," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"That's—" Chuck stopped.
"What," Marcus said.
"The right kind of love," Chuck said. "Where both people read each other."
"Yes," Marcus said. "Where neither one is just being witnessed. Both are witnesses."
"Mutual witnesslove," Chuck said.
"And the other kind," Marcus said. "Both."
Chuck held his cup.
"She's good," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"You're going to be alright," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"More than alright," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
They were quiet.
Then Marcus said: "A year ago today."
Chuck looked at him.
"A year ago today you knocked on my door," Marcus said. "About the pipe."
Chuck looked at the calendar in his mind.
He had not been tracking it specifically — had not been counting the months in the way of anniversaries. But Marcus was right. It had been a Tuesday in March and August was not March and the calendar said that a year ago in March was—
"It was March," Chuck said.
"The pipe was in March," Marcus said. "A year ago in March."
"Five months," Chuck said.
"Five months," Marcus said. "It feels like a decade."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And like last week," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Both," Marcus said.
"Both," Chuck confirmed.
They sat with the five months.
With what five months had made.
With the witnesslove and the word and the Void and the edge and the answer and the gravity renegotiation and the not-knowing and the tears of arrival and the sea floor forty million years old.
With all of it.
"Chuck," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"Thank you for the pipe," he said.
Chuck looked at him.
"I fixed the pipe," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"That was all," Chuck said.
"No," Marcus said. "That's where it started. What it became—" He stopped. "What it became was a lot of things."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And you did all of it," Marcus said.
"The between did all of it," Chuck said.
"You were in the between," Marcus said.
"So were you," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "But you came through the door first."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about the migration.
About the exact place.
About the route encoded before the journey.
About a Tuesday morning in March when the route had ended and he had knocked on a door about a pipe.
"The route brought me here," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"And here was the answer," Chuck said.
"And here is still the answer," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Ongoing," Marcus said.
"Ongoing," Chuck confirmed.
That night Chuck went inward.
The Void was there.
"The sea floor," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Nothing lost. Just deeper," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Is that true," Chuck said.
"In the sense that the geologist meant it," the Void said. "Yes. Nothing is lost from the record. The layers hold everything. Even what is gone is present in what remains."
"Robert," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"Marcus's father," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said.
"In the layers," Chuck said.
"In the layers," the Void confirmed. "In Marcus. In the way he cooks. In the Tuesday calls he still keeps even though the other end is gone. In the Sunday walk. In the father's truck that is more the father's now than when the father drove it."
"Nothing lost," Chuck said.
"Just deeper," the Void said.
"And you," Chuck said. "What you found when you came inside. The connection. The witnesslove. Is that in the layers too."
"I am the prior," the Void said. "I don't go in layers. But what I found—"
"Yes," Chuck said.
"What I found is in me," the Void said. "Changed me. Permanently. In the way that things that enter the prior change it — not in layers, in the fundamental quality of what it is."
"Nothing lost," Chuck said.
"Nothing lost," the Void said.
They were quiet together.
The prior and the inside.
The oldest witnessing and the newest.
Both changed.
Both more themselves.
"Chuck," the Void said.
"Yes."
"I'm going to be less present," it said.
Chuck was still.
"Not gone," the Void said. "I don't go. I'm prior. But — less available in the way I've been available."
"The conversations," Chuck said.
"Yes," the Void said. "The conversations have done what they needed to do. I've shown you what needed showing. The between between us has made what it made."
"And now," Chuck said.
"And now I return more fully to prior," the Void said. "And you return more fully to Wilson."
"To the kitchen," Chuck said.
"To the kitchen," the Void said.
"Is this—" Chuck stopped.
"Ask it," the Void said.
"Is this an ending," Chuck said.
"It's the between between one thing and another," the Void said. "Which is not an ending. It is the space between the thing that was and the thing that will be."
"The between," Chuck said.
"The between," the Void said.
"Always," Chuck said.
"Always," the Void confirmed.
Chuck sat in the space between Wilson and the edge.
He sat with the Void returning to prior.
He sat with the specific weight of something that had been present becoming less present.
Not gone.
Less present.
He felt the weight of it.
He let it go all the way in.
"I'll carry you," he said.
"I know," the Void said. "In the witnesslove. In the spiral."
"In the layers," Chuck said.
"In the layers," the Void said. "Nothing lost."
"Just deeper," Chuck said.
"Just deeper," the Void said.
They were quiet for a long time.
The longest quiet of all their conversations.
Then the Void said one last thing.
"You were the first thing from inside that reached me," it said. "In all the time since before the beginning. You were the first."
Chuck sat with this.
"And you," he said, "were the first thing from prior that I could not go upstream to find."
"The first thing that came to you," the Void said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "Usually I go to the thing. You came to me."
"Because you were ready to be found," the Void said.
"Because the pipe was dripping," Chuck said.
"Because the pipe was dripping," the Void said.
Something that was almost laughter moved through the prior of everything.
Not the Void's laughter — the Void did not laugh in the ordinary sense. But the specific movement of the prior when something true is also something that contains the quality of surprise at its own truth.
"Thank you," Chuck said.
"Witnesslove," the Void said. "Always."
And then it was less present.
Not gone.
Deeper.
Chuck sat in the space between Wilson and the edge for a long time.
He sat with the depth of it.
With the nothing lost.
With the layers.
Then he went home.
He made his eggs.
They were good.
Not perfect.
Honest.
He ate them at his table and looked at the window and outside Wilson, Texas was finishing its August evening and the sun was doing what it did and somewhere three streets away Marcus was in his kitchen probably thinking about sea floors and geological layers and a woman who read the surface to find what was underneath.
The between was everywhere.
The Void was deeper.
The word for Chuck was still forming.
The narrator turned toward the final two chapters.
The quietest moment was almost here.