I am the GodVolume III: The Void Speaks
The Void being less present was not dramatic.
This is worth noting because the narrator had half-expected it to be — had half-expected the withdrawal of the oldest thing from ready availability to produce some measurable change in the quality of the world, some atmospheric shift, some cooling or thinning of the space between Wilson and the edge.
There was none.
The space was the space.
The morning was the morning.
The eggs were the eggs.
The difference was internal — not in the world but in the quality of Chuck's morning practice, the going inward that had become as habitual as the run and the watch-winding and the coffee. The going inward that had always found the Void available.
Now it found the prior.
Not nothing — the Void had been clear about this. Not gone. The prior of everything, which was where the Void had always been before the conversations, was still there. It was simply prior again in the full sense. Present as the before of things rather than as a conversational partner.
Chuck went inward on the first morning and felt the prior and said: "Good morning."
The prior did not respond in language.
But it was there.
That was sufficient.
He made his eggs.
He went to Marcus's.
"Coffee's on," Marcus said.
"I know," Chuck said.
They sat.
The cups were on the table.
The morning was the morning.
August continued.
The geological site visit became a regular thing — Marcus and Sarah drove south on Sundays, reading the land the way Marcus read houses, finding the layers, the ancient sea floor, the forty million years visible in the cut of the rock.
Sarah had come to dinner at Marcus's house twice more.
She had sat in the chair that knew the weight.
She had said, the second time, looking at the chair she was in: "This chair knows something different from the other one."
"What do you think it knows," Marcus had asked.
"Arrival," she had said. "It knows what it feels like when someone arrives."
Marcus had told Chuck this on Saturday morning.
"She read the chair," Chuck said.
"She said: this is the chair of someone who was looking for something and found it here," Marcus said.
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about arriving.
About the specific quality of arriving somewhere after a long route.
About Wilson, Texas.
About the pipe.
About two cups in a rack becoming the cups on the table.
"She's right," he said.
"I know," Marcus said.
They drank their coffee.
"The chair knows arrival," Marcus said. "And the other one—"
"Knows the weight," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"The weight of the between," Chuck said.
"The weight of everything the between contained," Marcus said. "The Void conversations. The answer through the edge. The not-knowing."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The chair holds it," Marcus said. "Even when you're not in it."
Chuck looked at his chair.
He thought about what it held.
He thought about what it would hold after him — years from now, decades, however long the chair stood in Marcus's kitchen.
He thought about nothing lost.
Just deeper.
"The chair is an archive," he said.
"Everything is an archive," Marcus said. "That's what Sarah says. Everything holds what happened in it."
"The layers," Chuck said.
"The layers," Marcus said.
Elise's correspondence with Patricia had become, the narrator observed, something neither of them had expected it to become.
Not the careful exchange of two people who had found each other again after a long absence. Something more alive than that. A genuine friendship conducted on paper — the specific friendship of two people who had shared something significant and who were now discovering, in the discovery of each other's current lives, that the sharing had always been the beginning of something larger.
Patricia had sent photographs of the daughter on the bench.
The daughter was not smiling in the photograph — she had the specific serious expression of a nine-year-old who has been told something important and is considering it. But her hand was on Elise's arm in the way that children touch people they have decided to trust.
Elise showed Chuck the photograph on a Tuesday.
"She listened," Elise said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The whole time," Elise said. "Children don't usually listen like that."
"She knew it mattered," Chuck said.
"Patricia told her," Elise said. "Before they came. She told her: we're going to meet someone who saw me when I was your age and I want you to know that being seen is possible."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And then I told her what I saw," Elise said. "Not what I told Patricia in the letter. What I see now. In Patricia. What Patricia has become."
"The becoming," Chuck said.
"I said: your mother is the person I saw when she was eight. More herself. The same becoming, more fully arrived."
"And the daughter," Chuck said.
"She said: what do you see in me," Elise said.
Chuck looked at her.
"What did you say," he said.
"I said: I've only known you for an hour," Elise said. "But I can see you're already paying attention. And people who pay attention from the beginning become people who understand things. That's worth something."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"She said: worth noticing," Elise said.
Chuck was very still.
"She used those words," he said.
"Yes," Elise said. "She said: so I'm worth noticing."
"Clara's words," Chuck said.
"Yes," Elise said. "I recognized them. I told her: yes. Exactly that."
"The chain," Chuck said.
"The chain," Elise said. "From you to Clara to me to Patricia to the daughter. The words traveling."
"Witnesslove traveling," Chuck said.
"Yes," Elise said.
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about Dr. Fitch.
About the nurse in three cities.
About chains extending into territory the origin could not see.
He could not see where the daughter would take the words.
That was correct.
That was the nature of creation.
Clara's account resumed.
She had rested through July and picked it up again in August — seventy pages now, moving into the seventies in the account, the Wilson of the Vietnam era, the specific texture of a small town that loses some of its young men and receives others back changed.
She read him a passage about a boy she had known who had gone and come back and been someone different.
"Did you ever talk to him," Chuck said. "After."
"No," she said. "I didn't know what to say. He was different and I was afraid of the difference."
"You filed him," Chuck said.
"Yes," she said.
"Under not-requiring-attention," Chuck said.
"Under too-difficult-to-approach," she said. "Which is its own kind of filing."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"He moved away eventually," she said. "I don't know where he went."
"Do you want to know," Chuck said.
She held the pages.
"I'm eighty-five," she said. "Some of the not-made can't be made. Even with the valve still working."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"But it can be in the account," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Writing it is not the same as doing it," she said. "But it's not nothing."
"No," Chuck said. "It's the witnesslove of the not-made. Acknowledging it in the record."
"Carrying it accurately," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's what the Void told you," she said. "Carry it accurately. Not as punishment. Just — accurately."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The account carries it accurately," she said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Then the account has done its job," she said.
She set the pages down.
"I think I know how it ends," she said.
"How," Chuck said.
"With a question," she said.
"What question," Chuck said.
"The same question everything ends with," she said. "What will you do with this. What you've been given."
"You're asking the reader," Chuck said.
"I'm asking everyone," she said. "I'm asking myself. What did I do. What will the reader do. What will you do."
"What will I do with what," Chuck said.
"With having been in the between," she said. "With the witnesslove you've received and given. With the word. With the Void and the edge and the answer and all of it. What do you do with that."
"I keep going," Chuck said.
"Yes," she said. "That's the answer to the question. You keep going. The spiral. You keep going and the going is the answer."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Write that down," she said.
"I thought you were writing it," he said.
"I'll write it too," she said. "Write it in both places."
Chuck smiled.
Elise had the word attending.
Clara had the word accurate.
Marcus had the phrase bring yourself and the rest follows.
The Void had the word prior.
Sarah had nothing lost, just deeper.
All of them becoming part of what he was.
All of them in the layers.
"Clara," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"The account is witnesslove," he said. "Every page of it. Every person you've seen in it, named or unnamed. It's the record of eighty-five years of being in the between."
"Yes," she said.
"It will find who it needs to find," he said.
"I trust that," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Because of you," she said.
"Because of the pipe," he said.
"That pipe," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Two weeks without fixing it," she said.
"Two weeks," he confirmed.
She picked up the pages.
She set them down again.
She looked at him.
"I'm glad you came back to Wilson," she said.
"I'm glad the route brought me here," he said.
"Same thing," she said.
"Same thing," he said.
The last week of August.
Marcus came to Chuck's house on a Tuesday morning.
Not the usual hour — earlier. Before the run, before the eggs, before the ordinary morning had fully assembled itself.
Chuck heard the knock and got up and opened the door.
Marcus stood there in the specific quality of someone who has been awake earlier than usual and has been sitting with something and has needed to not be alone with it anymore.
"Come in," Chuck said.
"I know it's early," Marcus said.
"I was up," Chuck said.
He put the coffee on.
Marcus sat at the table.
He was quiet while the coffee made itself.
Chuck poured and sat.
"Last night," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I was thinking about my father," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Specifically," Marcus said. "Not the general way I think about him. The specific way. Like I was trying to remember the exact sound of his voice."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And I couldn't," Marcus said.
Chuck was still.
"I couldn't remember the exact sound," Marcus said. "I remember the quality. The rhythm. The way it felt to hear it. But the exact—"
He stopped.
"The frequency," Chuck said.
"The specific sound," Marcus said. "I used to hear it clearly. And last night it was — less clear."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Is that—" Marcus stopped. "Is that normal."
Chuck thought about the honest answer.
"I don't know," he said. "I haven't lost anyone to compare."
"But you know things," Marcus said.
"I know the layers," Chuck said. "Nothing lost, just deeper. But I don't know what deeper feels like from inside. I've never had someone go deeper."
Marcus held his cup.
"It's frightening," he said. "Not remembering the exact sound."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Because what comes after," Marcus said. "When other things go."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"What does it mean when you can't remember," Marcus said.
"Not that the love is less," Chuck said.
"No," Marcus said. "I know that. The love is the same. But—"
"The record changes," Chuck said.
"Yes," Marcus said. "The record changes."
Chuck sat with this.
He thought about the geological layers.
About the ancient sea floor visible at the surface.
About what Sarah had said.
Nothing lost. Just deeper.
He thought about what that meant when the specific sensory record of a person went deeper — when the exact sound of a voice moved from the surface into the layers.
"It's still there," Chuck said. "The sound. In the layers. In the chair that knows the weight. In the recipe that's becoming yours from his. In the truck. In every Tuesday morning you still keep."
"Yes," Marcus said.
"It went deeper," Chuck said. "That's all."
"That's all," Marcus said.
"Not less," Chuck said. "Deeper."
Marcus held his cup.
He was quiet for a long time.
"Thank you," he said.
"The layers," Chuck said.
"Nothing lost," Marcus said.
"Just deeper," Chuck said.
They drank their coffee.
The early morning became morning.
The town began its day.
After a while Marcus said: "This weekend."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I was thinking of going to my father's grave," Marcus said. "I haven't been since — not in a while."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I usually go alone," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"That's how I do it," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"I'm not asking you to come," Marcus said.
"I know," Chuck said.
"I'm telling you because—" Marcus stopped. "Because witnesslove means not-saying is a kind of absence. And I want you to know."
"Thank you for telling me," Chuck said.
"I'll go Saturday morning," Marcus said. "Early."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And when I come back—"
"Coffee will be on," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"Yes," he said.
They finished their coffee.
Marcus went home.
Chuck ran his fourteen miles.
He made his eggs.
He sat at his table.
He thought about Saturday.
Friday night Chuck lay in bed.
He went inward.
The prior was there — the Void deeper, prior in the full sense, the before of everything still present as what it had always been.
"Saturday," Chuck said to the prior.
The prior was the prior.
It did not respond in language.
But it held the word.
Chuck lay in the dark.
He thought about Marcus going to his father's grave alone.
He thought about the specific human ritual of grief — going to the physical place where the person was not. The grave that is not the person but is the acknowledgment of the space where the person was.
He had never been to a grave.
He had never had one to go to.
He had never gone alone to a place to acknowledge a space where someone was not.
He lay in the dark and thought about this.
He thought about what Saturday would be.
He thought about being three streets away while Marcus was at a grave.
He thought about what he would do.
He did not know.
Not the way he had not known on the Friday night — where he had stayed out and learned that the between of the around was the right thing.
Not the way he had not known with Marcus's tears of joy — where he had sat and learned that the not-knowing was the offering of himself.
Differently.
The specific not-knowing of the night before something significant, when the thing has not yet arrived and you cannot read what it will require.
He lay in the dark.
He did not know what Saturday would ask of him.
He would find out by being present when it arrived.
That was what he had.
That was what he was.
The narrator turned to the final chapter.