and picnic tables. He broke out through the opposite corner of the park, leaving a dotted line of footprints behind him, along with a dish-shaped circle where he had put the trash can down so that he could adjust his pants.
For the past few weeks he had been conducting long conversations about the end of the world in his head. They were simple discussions that, if he wasn't careful, quickly degenerated into savage arguments and then into swiftly moving imaginary debates in which various people, sometimes judges and prosecuting attorneys, sometimes just disembodied voices, accused him of bearing direct responsibility for the effects of the virus. They insisted that he ought to have done something to halt its spread, or at least to have warned people that it was coming. Why didn't you? they needled him. Why didn't you do anything? But it wasn't his fault. It wasn't. Fuck you. He was just a regular guy who happened to land a public relations gig with Coca-Cola. Public relations was all about generating or occasionally deflecting interest in your particular brand and then channeling that interest down the most appropriate pathway. Generating and deflecting interest: that was all he had done. What thinking person could blame him for it?
It was true that he might have broken his vow and told the press what was going on, announced that the virus was being disseminated by way of his company's product – we're very sorry and all that sort of thing – but what good would it have done? The virus had already spread beyond all its original vectors. Coca-Cola or no Coca-Cola, there was no way of stopping it.
He didn't see how anything he might have done could have changed what happened in the end. And that was what the accusers in his head really wanted from him, wasn't it? They wanted change – a change in the fate of the world – and they wanted him to be the one who brought that change about.
Well, it was too much to ask. They could all go to hell.
'You can all go to hell.' He said it out loud.
He was going down an open set of stairs, on a side street that had been used so rarely since the weather changed that the individual steps were almost impossible to distinguish beneath the snow. He held the trash can in one arm and used the other to steady himself, stomping and sliding his way to the bottom. Then he cut through an alley between two high buildings and turned right onto what he could tell had once been a major avenue. He took the sidewalk past an automotive supply shop and a toy store and a real estate office, then past a newspaper kiosk, and then past a whole foods store and a coffee bar, all of them abandoned in the days following the evacuation. The farther he moved from the center of the monument district, the fewer people he saw. The snow seemed to be getting deeper and deeper.
He realized he was heading toward the river. Though he hadn't planned it that way, he figured that it would be as good a place as any to get rid of the trash can. He would let the current carry it out of the city, past the streets and the buildings, past anyone who might be expected to discover it, until it sank into whichever lake or ocean or larger river eventually swallowed the water.
As a boy, on empty afternoons, it had been one of his habits to hike to the creeks and rivers that lay within walking distance of his house. He would throw everything he found along the shore into the water: plastic spoons, baby dolls, pencils, sticks, pieces of waxed cardboard – anything that would float, basically. Then he would try to hit the things and make them capsize, using stones and chunks of dirt. He called the game Bombardment. He remembered the long marches he had to take through the strips of high yellow grass that ran along the highway to get to the river, and the way the water always moved more rapidly toward the center than it did along the shore, and he remembered the day he caught a minnow in the shallows and poured it out of his hands into a Coke bottle, screwing the cap on tight, then slung the bottle end over end into the quickest part of the current. The minnow kept trying to swim away, thrashing around so that the bottle rocked back and forth on the river's surface. Lindell felt a giant surge of horror and pity rearing up inside him – poor fish – and so he threw off his backpack and waded into the water and almost drowned trying to reach the damned thing. It was moving too fast for him, though, and eventually he lost sight of it. He must have coughed up half a gallon of green water when he finally reached the shore. He spent the next three days trying to smack the rest of the river out of his ears.
What a sentimental pussy he had been.
It was amazing the things you would remember if you let your mind wander.
This particular river lay at the bottom of a gentle slope. As he plowed through the drifts of snow, the trash can swung and rattled in his arms, the plastic lining breathing in and out as it caught the breeze and let it go, and caught and let it go again. He could see the suspension bridge that joined the two sides of the river together, its cables white on black with the snow that was covering the steel. He was only a hundred yards or so from the water now. It was obvious that the still places closest to the shore had frozen over. At first he thought that the whole enormous river had crystallized, but when he listened he could make out a quiet swirling and spilling sound. As he looked more closely, he spotted a dark channel of water flowing down the middle of the ice.
He walked to the end of a wooden dock and climbed down the ladder. The ice was thick enough to support his weight, and it did not groan or snap as he made his way toward the center of the river. He paused when he reached the gash.
There was nobody in sight. The wind was blowing softly.
He had walked so far that he imagined some sort of ceremony might be in order, but then he realized what he was proposing – a ceremony for the disposal of a rinky-dink trash can – and he thought, To hell with it. He threw the trash can into the current and watched as it rolled over, gulped at the water, and sank a couple of inches, but kept gliding downstream. A few shreds of paper drifted out of the bag and snagged against the ice at his feet. He was able to read the worn from 'sworn' and the cul from 'culpability.' Then he kicked at the ice, and the river tore the pieces away. The trash can kept drifting on.
His sense of relief was immediate. He felt the way a dam must feel when its gates are finally opened, the way a bomb must feel when its pin is finally tripped. The document had been the last – and, as far as he knew, the only – piece of tangible evidence connecting him to the whole end-of-the-world affair. As long as he and the others kept quiet about it, no one would ever know what had happened.
And so, in a sense, nothing had ever happened.
That was the way it worked.
The trash can had already vanished downstream. He couldn't see it anymore, not the slightest trace or sign.
He had ended up at the river purely by chance, and he had no other business to complete there, so he turned around and climbed the ladder back onto the dock.
The snow was just as thick on the uphill climb as it had been when he was going the other way, but he found it much easier to make the hike with both his hands free. Why, it suddenly occurred to him, had he taken the trouble to haul the trash can all that way when he could have removed the bag from the can and simply jettisoned the rest? It would have saved him a whole lot of effort, that was for sure.
Well, there was certainly enough idiocy in the city. Maybe it was catching.
There was no sun for him to track through the sky, but it did seem to him that the light filtering through the clouds was slowly growing dimmer. By the time he caught sight of the monument again, evening had fallen over the city. The streetlights flickered on and made everything glow: the bus benches, the fire hydrants, and the millions of leaves on the thousands of trees, carrying their hilly little deposits of white snow.
He was almost at the door of his building when he heard the sound of footsteps stealing up beside him. 'Well, if it isn't Mr. Cups-Runneth-Over again. How are you doing, my friend? Has this freezing cold day of ours taken any of the son of a bitch out of you? Tell you what, then, why don't you loan me a few dollars? Just enough for a hot meal and a cheap cup of coffee. And 'cheap' is the operative word here, am I right? Am I? Yeah, you know what I'm saying.'
Lindell lowered his head and pretended not to listen.
It never failed. He could walk halfway across the city, accomplish everything he set out to accomplish, wear his soles down, tire his legs out, and wash his mind clean of any sense of culpability, and when at last he had made it home and was ready to take the keys out of his pocket, there he would be, the man with the black gloves, holding his hands out and begging for change.
TWELVE. THE BIRDS
