The World as We Know It Page 18

  It became apparent that whatever he was holding back seemed to him as much a burden spoken as it was kept within. If I were to have an answer to my own frenzied curiosities, I would have to inquire.

  “I see you looking at that envelope, Joshua,” I said. “What’s in it?”

  He looked up at me silently.

  “If you need me to make a delivery, you can ask. It isn’t a problem. Lord knows I owe you for the hospitality.”

  “You owe me nothing,” he said. “The sacrifices you’ve made are more than payment enough.”

  “Either way, I can take it off your hands if you need.”

  “It’s not outgoing.”

  “No?”

  “No. I received it some time ago.”

  “May I ask why you haven’t opened it?”

  “Because it isn’t addressed to me.”

  “Who is it addressed to?”

  He paused for a moment and took a breath.

  “It’s addressed to you, Joe.”

  13

  THE CITY OF ANGELS

  I was back on my horse early the next day, having slept very little that night. I spent most of it up writing. And reading the letter over and over. That is, after I had finished harshly berating Joshua. When he handed me the envelope, I saw the origination mark from Eden Valley—my home. It had been delivered some weeks prior with specific instructions to hold until I arrived. Because the postal center at the Bay knew not whom to expect or when or from where, it was decided at the time that Joshua would be the ideal custodian of the mysterious piece of mail. After all, nearly everyone still in the city knew him, or at least knew how to find him. If anyone were to hear of the stranger on a mission, it would be him. It was only by coincidence, or perhaps fate, that he had happened upon me in the park that night.

  Looking back, I can understand Joshua’s reservations and why he hadn’t given me the letter that very night and had decided instead to wait until I was preparing to get back on the road. He, of course, had no idea what was inside. It was an unknown and mysterious thing, and he dared not venture to guess what joyous or devastating news it might bring me in a time of such personal strife so far from home. It was obviously important, he knew, based on the distance it had traveled and the orders that had accompanied it. Would it bring news of death? Some catastrophe? Those were his fears, and though he was perhaps not as forthcoming as I might have wished he had been at the time, I’m glad now that he did wait. I would not have spent that valuable time in the Bay Area had I received the letter on the night of my arrival. I would have been off again immediately.

  My reaction to Joshua waiting, though, was one of anger. In truth, I wasn’t sure exactly how to react when I saw my name in Maria’s handwriting on the front of the envelope, and for whatever reason, anger was the emotion that presented itself. I stood in Joshua’s dining room with the unopened letter in my hand, yelling terrible things at him. Perhaps that arose out of my own fears of the words that might have been enclosed. He sat quietly, enduring the abuse with no rebuttal to my volcano of tension poisoning the air as we breathed it.

  I left the room to read in private, my hands shaking as I tore open the envelope, and I didn’t emerge until early the next morning before the night gave way to the day. I was gone before Joshua had risen, leaving my outgoing mail on his dining table and not taking the opportunity to say good-bye. I wanted desperately to be home, but after reading the long-awaited words of the person I loved more than my own life, I understood more than ever the importance of the two envelopes in my satchel. Regardless of what might have been inside them, it was my responsibility to ensure that they were delivered. The city that had once been Los Angeles would be my next stop.

  As October rolled into November, Nomad and I traveled southward on Highway 1, the blue Pacific following alongside over the immense cliffs. Breakers exploded in white clouds below as the wind picked up from the west. The road wound like one in a painting and traced the coast, the ocean to our right and the mountains to our left. We crossed old bridges built into the cliff faces and suspended over deadly chasms, which looked as though they might collapse at any moment. I read the letter so many times that I had it memorized, and then I kept reading just to see Maria’s handwriting on the page.

  Dear Joe,

  I don’t even know how to begin this letter. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, and between the letters you send, each of which makes me break down into tears of joy, all I feel is fear. I know I shouldn’t tell you that, but you’re all I can think about. Every moment I have to endure without you is agonizing. I miss you so much, and I love you more than words can say. It’s been hard, Joe, I won’t lie. I can’t even imagine what it’s like out there for you. When you get home, I want to hear the real story, not the sugarcoated one I get from your letters, but for now, that will do. You were always trying to protect me.

  Things are good here, though. You wouldn’t believe how big this place has gotten. We’ve taken a few trips back home, and things have calmed down there too. I’m still calling St. Louis home, out of habit, I guess, but for all intents and purposes, the farm is home now. I guess it’s time I got used to that. It doesn’t feel like home without you here, though.

  Everyone else seems to have settled into this new life all right. Mail comes in and goes out every day now, and I know we all have you to thank for it. They’re more organized now than they were at first. A person came in today with mail all the way from California. You should have seen how happy people were at the post office. I figured since the last letter I received from you came from Chicago a few weeks ago, I could send this one back to California to wait for you. I don’t know how they’ll find you, but I’m hopeful.

  Do you remember the day you proposed to me? I do. Like it was yesterday. It was the first anniversary of our first date. I was preparing a nice swordfish dinner for the two of us when the kitchen suddenly became very warm, and I swept into the dining room to find the table covered in candles like a shrine to a little red box in the middle. You had left it sitting there all day, insisting that I wait to open it until the exact time that our date had begun the year before and repeatedly asking me what I thought was in it. I was terrified to speculate. What if I was wrong? But I wasn’t wrong. You asked me to spend the rest of my life with you, and I didn’t have to think twice before saying yes. I loved you so much then, and I still do. That was the most wonderful day. Remember those days, Joe. That’s how we’ll get through this.

  How symbolic that first year seems now. One revolution around the sun. Each such revolution seems to bring a new chapter in our lives. It was just over a year we had spent here together before you left, and, I hope, it won’t be more than another since that we will have spent without each other.

  I’m sorry to be so brief when there’s so much to say, but I have to get this to the carrier before he leaves again tonight. I miss you so, so much, but I’m so proud of you. We all are. You must know that and never forget it. We’ll be together sooner than you realize, and I can hardly wait for that day. I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’ll always wait for you.

  Love Forever,

  Maria

  It was as if she had forgotten the awful way I had treated her before I left, and reading her words and hearing her voice in my head stoked that fire of guilt within me. The nightmares became progressively worse, and the void inside me continued to grow. Somehow, though I would have given anything to hear from Maria, that letter made things even more difficult. I was overcome with so many emotions. The more I heard about how proud she was of me and what a wonderful thing it was that I was doing, the more ashamed I felt. I didn’t want to be away from her anymore. I wanted to be home, holding her. What could be worth the sorrow to such an ordinary person as I was? Who was I to have taken on this great responsibility? I was no wise man and no great hero. That was a realization I had come to months before. Rather, I was simply a person who had abandoned his family for his own pride, and my wif
e, in her pure, uncorrupted love, with all the time she had waited for me, was still as loyal as she had ever been. After having been away from her for so long, even the simplicity of those handwritten words on the pages made all of the memories that had been fading into oblivion real again. My love for her was overwhelming. She was as much a part of me as my heart itself and equally vital to my survival, and it made me physically ill to be without her.

  At my weakest of moments with nowhere else to turn, I always felt compelled to pray, though I wasn’t sure exactly who I was talking to.

  It wasn’t until I saw the Hearst Castle peeking majestically through the distant haze that I realized how terrible my reaction had been back at Joshua’s home, and I decided to camp there that night and begin writing him a letter that I would send back at my earliest opportunity. He deserved proper thanks and an apology, but I don’t suspect that he ever held it against me. That wasn’t his way.

  Every passing day humbled me with the beautiful things it presented—the graciousness of all the people I had met, the beauty of the landscape everywhere I went, the love that had overtaken me at the mere sight of words on paper, and then the view of that extraordinary mansion perched on a mountainside at the coast. It was life as I had never expected to live it.

  About the time I saw the castle, as they call it, I also noticed an ominous dark cloud approaching from the west. By then, I had spent many stormy nights on the road, and I had learned to pitch my tent early and secure it well in the face of nature’s wrath. Nomad and I hiked a short way up the mountainside in hopes that it might provide some protection from the oncoming front, and I set to work on my shelter for the night. The storm, however, came on more quickly than I had anticipated, and the wind began to pick up. I struggled to stretch the worn canvas over its frame and stake it into the ground, and by the time I had finished, I was exhausted, drenched, and freezing. The sky had begun pouring rain. I crawled inside and peered through the front flaps, watching in awe as the black clouds churned above.

  The blue Pacific had faded to a dark gray under the cumulonimbus ceiling that spanned as far as I could see. It almost blended with the horizon. The white caps of the ocean had grown huge and rough, crashing into one another with force I thought could capsize the greatest of ships. Thunder boomed in the distance and clapped and sizzled as lightning spider-webbed over the water. Between strikes, I could hear the tide pummeling the rock faces not far down the mountain. Wind whistled over the canvas that sheltered me, and streams of water blew in through the holes that had formed in it over my months of travel. I sat alone, shivering in an upright fetal position with my arms wrapped around my knees as the frigid world seemed to be collapsing all around me. However uncomfortable, even menacing, it was, I couldn’t help but marvel at the power of the earth at work. It was as if nature felt all of the emotions in conflict within me and had set out to share in them.

  A sudden smack took down half the tent on top of me as I quivered inside, and I scrambled out of the flap to see what had happened. The gale had uprooted one of my stakes, and the tension of the line had pulled it into the side of the tent, tearing the canvas open. Fighting to stay on my feet, I grabbed the stake and tried to put it back into the soggy ground; when I pulled it back, the tear in the canvas caught the wind, yanking the stake out of my hand and the entire tent onto its side. There would be no recovering it in that weather, and as the storm grew more intense, I knew that spending any more time out there could be fatal.

  Just beyond, lightning struck a tree with a deafening crack and blinding flash, bringing it straight to the earth. The ground shook beneath me when the tree landed, its branches bouncing like rubber from the momentum. Through the flaming timber, I saw Nomad galloping up the side of the mountain for shelter. I dove into the collapsed tent for my satchel and went after him. All around, trees swayed, and severed palm fronds blew across the landscape in every direction.

  “Nomad, wait!” I called to my horse, but I could barely hear my own words over the sounds of the storm. Just maintaining my footing was arduous in that gale. I scrambled frantically through the grass uphill, blinded by the torrential rain and deafened by the thunder and wind gusting in my ears. The odor of burning trees that had been struck by lightning was potent in the air, and my chest vibrated with every strike. It was a total sensory bombardment that rendered me hopelessly disoriented.

  Between claps of thunder, I heard a neigh of distress in the distance, and I ran in the direction of Nomad’s call, trying to stay beneath the shelter of the trees on the mountainside as much as I could. I did my best to cover my satchel and protect the letters inside, but it was no use. Everything was soaked as if I had been entirely submerged in the ocean. I was too overwhelmed to be terrified, though I had all rights to be. Instead, I focused on protecting the things entrusted to my possession as if my life depended on it. In a way, it did. Without the impetus of those letters, I would have perished long before.

  Suddenly, I felt a paved surface under my feet. I looked up to find the façade of the mansion towering over me with the California palms on either side of the entrance, bent within inches of snapping in the wind. Between the stone fountain on the patio and the gold-accented front gate, Nomad reared and circled. I bolted past him to the door and struck it with all the force I could muster over and over until I broke it in, and he followed me through into the grand entry hall. Behind him, I slammed the door shut again and barricaded it with any furniture I could find.

  I was too exhausted to care anything for the architecture at that moment. Still trying to catch my breath, I collapsed onto the floor and lay there panting until I fell asleep, the soggy wet envelopes limp in my hand.

  When I awoke it was quiet. I was nearly dry, and the colossal entry hall was splashed in bright sunlight. It took a minute to reacquaint myself with reality and remember where I was. Beside me lay Maria’s letter, open on the floor and miraculously intact. Next to it were the two other envelopes, also somehow unharmed. I was dumbfounded by the fact that they had survived the storm. I’d been certain that they had been destroyed the night before as they had deteriorated in my hand, and for the moment, I had been lost and hopeless. I had watched the water dripping from the flimsy paper into a puddle on the floor. It simply wasn’t possible that they were then completely unscathed.

  I found myself kneeling on the floor with my arms in the air, involuntarily screaming “Thank God!” with the sound of my voice echoing in a chorus around the room. I slipped all three letters safely back into my pack and climbed to my feet, suddenly taking notice of the extravagance of the massive gallery in which I stood.

  Everywhere was carved molding, ornate tile, shimmering colors, massive tapestries, and stone. It was elegant and beautiful, a work of art that deserved great appreciation. At the same time, it was an almost gaudy icon of the self-indulgence that had plagued our culture, and I thought of the place where I was headed. It made me apprehensive about what I might find in the city that had once been Los Angeles.

  I remembered a party I had gone to once back in college—a noisy and crowded scene at a fraternity house that I never would have been allowed into had a friend of mine not been a member. I had stepped outside into the cold winter night, using a cigarette as an excuse to flee the sloppy charade indoors, and I’d found Paul doing the same. We had met one of the brothers of the house out there and held a pleasant enough conversation, though it had felt forced, as if he thought he was doing us a favor. He’d been telling us about some woman in LA, where he was from, who had been caught trying to smuggle cocaine in her breast implants.

  “Yeah, people will put coke in anything to smuggle it,” Paul had said.

  At one point, I had offered our new friend a cigarette, to which he’d replied, “Are you kidding? Do you know what those things do to your lungs?” Throughout that night, I had watched him suck down half a bottle of whiskey and snort line after line of cocaine. Touché, I’d thought.

  I quit smoking anyway, though. Some
times when we’re young, we think we’re invincible, and some of us never grow out of that. Los Angeles, I had thought, was the embodiment of a culture built on hypocritical, self-indulgent excess—a collection of entitled and self-absorbed children with no understanding of the fact that working people everywhere else provided for their elite existence.

  But had I been I so different?

  Nomad and I came slowly down the mountain in the direction of the road, and next to the still-burning tree that had fallen in front of me the night before, I found that the only shelter I had brought had been taken away by the storm. Ahead lay many more clear nights under the stars and wet ones under the clouds, but it was no use concerning myself with that then.

  I could hear Maria’s voice reciting, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” One by one, the things I had brought for protection were being snatched away by the very wilderness that they were intended to defend against. All I could do then was move on without them and hope that somehow, some way, I would be provided for.

  When I rode into the City of Angels a few days later, the first thing I did was find a post office to send the letter back to Joshua that I had written along the way, and even more importantly, to find the recipient of the first of the two letters that I had brought from that City That Never Sleeps.

  “Looks like you’ve got the wrong office,” said the clerk at the counter when I finally reached the end of the inevitable line with which those places were always laden. “Rebekah Prophet is the name?” he clarified, flipping through pages in a massive book on the counter.

  “Yes, Rebekah Prophet,” I repeated, reading the name on the envelope.

  “It says she’s registered over at the Santa Monica office.”