Chapter the 5th
Not knowing what else to do, Michael climbed to the top of the hill where Michael thought the exit ramp had appeared. The thick dew on the grass soaked his jeans instantly. At the top of the hill he found an isolated grocery store with a bright red Coca-Cola sign hanging over the front door. There was no road in sight, not even a path leading up to the store. Michael wondered how such a place in the middle of nowhere could do any business. He expected to find the shop all boarded up but, to his surprise, a torn-up screen door was swinging open so Michael walked in.
A plain-looking young woman was sitting behind the counter with her face buried in a book. Although Michael's entrance rang a bell over the door, she did not react to him. Michael stared at the shelves. Some were stocked with a few dusty boxes of oatmeal and cans of soup. A few bags of sugar lay on a couple of other shelves. Resting on the next shelf up was a bag of what he thought were cones for ice cream. Michael picked it up and found the bag was heavy, the cones hard. Printed on the bag was a unicorn's head. Michael put the bag back in its place.
Off to the side, there was a shelf of books stuffed between a carousel displaying bags of potato chips and an ice cream freezer. Michael tore a bag of potato chips off the carousel and then looked at the books. Far from being the paperbacks of gothic romance that he expected, they were large heavy volumes bound in leather. Noting the title Highlights of Dragon Lore on one of the spines, Michael picked the book up. He leafed through the crinkly pages that were illustrated with pictures of dragons and their eggs. The eggs were colored in gold, just as the insect woman on the bus had said they were. Coming to a chapter called "Finding the eggs," Michael read the first sentence:
The reason humans experience great difficulty in finding the eggs of dragons is because dragons exercise great ingenuity and imagination in their manner of laying and caring for them. Dragons' eggs are as likely to appear in a tree as on a chimney top. One inventive dragon mother exchanged her eggs with a set of juggling balls. The juggler's subsequent feats were astounding; he never dropped an egg once. The dragonlets who hatched turned out to the liveliest dragons for at least a century. The only clear hint we can give for identifying a dragon’s egg is to say that anything which is round and golden could be a dragon's egg. As to giving advice as to where such eggs might be found, we can only say that they can be found anywhere at anytime.
Michael closed the book and walked towards the counter. The young woman continued reading a leather volume spread across her lap and persisted in taking no notice of Michael’s presence. She wore a faded green dress and a necklace made of marbles. Michael peered down at the small print in the young woman's book and coughed. The young woman looked up at him blankly, then looked back down to her book.
“Are you going to ask if you can help me?? Michael asked impatiently.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I never ask a question if I know the answer."
Michael nodded with odd satisfaction. That was the kind of retort he would like to have made in her place.
"What's the answer then?"
"The answer is: Yes."
"Do you mean you can help me?"
"Yes. Provided you want to be helped in the proper way for the right end, with the right means in a realistic mode suitable to the current unfathomable state of the universe. That is to say, I can't help you with everything, but only with a finite number of things.”
"How about telling me how to get to Carelin?"
"I could help you with that."
"Good. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s heard of the place.”
“May you find many others in the course of your life.”
“So, how do I get there?"
"I don't know."
Michael slammed the book about dragon eggs down on the counter and stared at the young woman. Unruffled, the young woman shifted her attention back to her book.
"I thought you said you could help me find Carelin."
"I did."
"How can you do that if you don't know where it is?"
"Do you know where you are?"
"I'm in this store."
"And where is this store?"
"Should be outside Carelin. It's on top of a hill just off the expressway."
"Ex-pressway? What's that?"
"It’s a road where cars and trucks express themselves by going full speed! I just climbed up a hill from one!"
"Maybe so. But that doesn't mean there is an expressway down the hill from this door."
In disgust, Michael paced about in a circle, raising a cloud of dust in the process.
"Can you tell me how to get to Carelin?"
"That is a more sensible question. The answer is: Yes."
"Okay. How do I actually and truly get to Carelin?"
“That depends on how true and actual a Carelin you wish to find. You can find an untrue and not so actual Carelin anywhere at all. As for a true and actual Carelin, there are a few undefinable conditions for finding it.”
“Which are?”
“Wanting to find it is one of the conditions.”
“I’ve been wanting to find Carelin for several hours and I haven’t gotten anywhere!” Michael complained.
“Are you in the same place that you were those several hours ago?” asked the woman.
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess not, but I’m as lost as ever.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“You can’t? Then how am I going to get unlost?”
“By finding yourself and finding where you are.”
“And you can’t help me with that, I suppose.”
The woman turned a leaf over in her book and read a bit before replying.
“I didn’t say that I can’t help you find yourself and where you are. I only said I can’t help you in getting lost and in sustaining your lostness.”
The woman looked down at her book once more. Michael paced back towards the strange book shelf and back again. He heard the sound of some children singing from what might have been another room in the store. Michael walked about some more, glancing at shelves with unappetizing cans of food on them. The music the children were singing didn’t sound like anything Michael had ever heard on the radio, which he decided was an improvement. He took that as a sign that music also became strange once one reached the outskirts of Carelin.
“Is that your Muzak?” Michael asked the woman.
“My music, you mean? Why no music is my possession.”
“What about copyrights?”
“What about them?”
“If I write a song, I own the copyright and people have to pay me for singing it.”
“Then I infer from what you say that you then own a copyright but not the music.”
“You don’t understand!”
“I am afraid that you will never find your way to Carelin if you keep arguing with me about who owns the music that the Carelin Boys Choir is rehearsing just now.”
The music stopped suddenly in mid-phrase at the sound of a handclap. A man said something about staying on pitch instead of falling off of it. Then the boys began singing again.
“Why are they rehearsing here?” asked Michael.
“Why should they not rehearse here?”
“It isn’t usual for a choir to rehearse in a store like this.”
“If that is your reason for believing that the Carelin Boys Choir should not be rehearsing in the store room of this store, you will never find Carelin, since Carelin is not usual, either.”
“WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET TO CARELIN AND LEAVE IT AT THAT?” Michael yelled.
The outburst stopped the singing. Michael was quite sure he heard some boys laughing.
“Turn left as soon as you get out the door and follow the road in," said the woman, and she turned another page of her book.
Michael turned to leave but then remembered he still had the book and the bag of potato chips in his hands.
"How much do these cost?"
"What can you give me for them?"
"Uh—“
Michael put the book and the chips on the counter and dug into his pocket. He had not a penny left. The singing of the choir started up once more.
"I don't have any money. Can I—buy on credit?"
"What do you have?"
Michael pursed his lips. The young woman did not look at all clever but she managed to twist everything he said out of shape. He found the empty pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, crumpled it up in a little ball, twisted a corner so that it resembled a misshapen head, and tossed it on the counter.
"How's that?"
To Michael's surprise, the young woman looked at the crumpled pack with interest.
"Not bad. Can you give it wings?"
Michael grimaced and tore at the pack until one scrap stuck out on each side, then presented it to the young woman. She took the paper bird into the palm of her hand, fluffed it up, and released a little bird whose feathers matched the red color of the cigarette package. The boys’ singing soared as if they knew their song was needed to send the bird on its flight. Michael’s mouth hung open, but the young woman watched the bird fly off as if nothing unusual had happened.
"I will accept the bird as payment for either the chips or the book. Do you have anything else?"
Michael folded his arms and stared hard at the woman.
"I CAN GIVE YOU MY LOUSY STINKING HEART!"
The young woman did not bat an eyelash.
"You will need that. Don't you have a magic ring or something?"
Michael gave the young woman a look as if she were a retarded child. Then he took an invisible ring off his finger and placed it in the palm of the young woman's hand.
"What does it do?" she asked.
"It makes you grateful for the things you can't see."
"Hmm. And does that leave you with anything to make you grateful for the things you can't see?"
"What if I don't want to be grateful for anything I can't see?"
"Then you will just have to be ungrateful, ring or no ring, I suppose," the woman replied. She thumbed through her book as if she were looking up something in a dictionary. "If you had to take just one item, which would it be?"
"The potato chips."
"Thought so. However, you will need the book, and you will need the ring in case the time comes when you need to be grateful for whatever you can't see. But if you don't pay for the book, it won't do you any good."
"And if you won't take anything I’ve got to pay for it with, what am I supposed to do? Sweep the store for you?"
The woman looked about the store as if she noticed the thick dust on the floor for the first time.
"Broom is next to the flour bin," she told him while she continued to thumb through her book.
Michael picked up the broom that was made with just a few sticks for bristles. Michael didn’t see how this broom could do any good but, not really caring anyway about the result of his labors, he swept angrily at the dust. With the boys singing away, there was no need to whistle while he worked. The dust rose up in such a cloud that he could hardly see what he was doing. As a result, he swung the broom against a set of shelves he didn’t know were there. The shattering of glass cut off the music coming from the storeroom.
"Sorry about that," Michael called out.
But he could see the woman no longer, and she did not answer him. Michael sneezed and swept some more, then sneezed again. He put down the broom to rub his eyes as they started to water. When he reached for the broom again, what he gripped was the screen door. Michael rubbed his eyes again, then looked through the screen. He found himself on the outside of the store looking back in where all he could see was the cloud of dust he had raised. No woman, no counter, no shelves were visible. If the boys had started singing again, he could not hear them. Propped up against the screen door were the leather book about dragons and the bag of potato chips so Michael picked them up.
Although he could have sworn it wasn’t been there before, Michael now saw a gravel road running along in front of the store. Deciding to follow directions for once, Michael turned to the left and followed the road. He did not travel far before he came among small plexis-glass houses on each side. In front of each house was a newspaper tube. Each tube was inscribed with name THE CARELIN GAZETTE. The tubes were empty. It felt strange to Michael to walk past empty newspaper tubes without a paper to deliver. He was tempted to stuff the book about dragons into one of the tubes, but he had a feeling that he should save that joke for some unemployed steel worker in Milton.
The little red bird he had inadvertently created in the store fluttered in a circle around Michael. It teased him by flying around his head, then suddenly gliding away. Michael beat the bird off with his book. The bird soon tired of the game and flew off into a tree. Michael ripped open the bag of potato chips and stuffed them into his mouth. The chips made Michael so desperately thirsty that he could have kicked himself for not buying ice cream instead. Up ahead, he saw a fat child walking along the side of the road, dressed in a black coat. Michael hurried his steps until he caught up with him.
"Good morning!" Michael called out to the child.
But when the child turned around, Michael found that a black bushy beard covered the rotund face before him.
"Good morning to you," the dwarf answered in a deep, cheery voice.
"Uh—can you tell me if this is the way to Carelin?"
"Yes, I can tell you that."
The dwarf continued to walk on without saying anything more.
"Well, is this his the way to Carelin?"
"It could be."
“It seems to me that either this is the way to Carelin or it is not the way to Carelin," said Michael.
"Not necessarily."
“Doesn’t anybody around here speak sense?” Michael cried.
"I see you don't understand, poor thing,” said the dwarf. “Come with me if you like, and then this will be the way into Carelin."
"Thank you."
To Michael’s surprise, the dwarf walked quickly and it took quite an effort for him to keep up. When Michael looked at the houses he passed by, he saw that they looked like the same ones he had seen when he first stepped out of the store. He occasionally spotted a housewife hanging out the wash to dry or a horse-shaped tricycle left on a front walk, but there were few other signs of life.
"Is it a long walk?" asked Michael, his breath growing short.
"Not necessarily."
Michael's mouth hung open and then snapped shut. The dwarf stopped and looked sympathetically at Michael.
"You don't understand, do you?" the dwarf asked him,
"No."
"What are you going to do here?”
“You mean I have to do something?”
“Can’t be avoided. Even doing nothing is doing just that—nothing.”
“I guess I’ll be the paperboy if you need one here," Michael replied.
"The paper boy!" exclaimed the dwarf as he took off again and almost left Michael behind. Michael had to run hard for a few seconds to catch up. "That explains some things,” the dwarf resumed. “Perhaps we should take you to the newspaper office and see if they have any newspapers for you to deliver.”
Michael and his companion passed a large red courthouse which Michael was sure he had not seen ahead of him a moment before. A cannon and a war memorial statue occupied the center of the courthouse's vast front lawn. Michael hesitated a moment to look at the statue a second time. His eyes had not deceived him. Far from looking like a US Marine, the figure was a knight in full armor. He was holding a long sword in one hand and a flying banner in the other. Inscribed on the banner was a dragon, much like the dragon drawn on the letter from Uncle Martin.
With a jolt, Michael suddenly realized that he had fallen well behind the dwarf. Fortunately, the dwarf stopped at a traffic light, giving Michael time to run after him. But even after Michael had run for some time, it seemed that the curb where the dwarf was standing was as far away as ever Even so, the dwarf did not cross the street. Finally, out of breath, Michael slowed down to a walk, and then found himself standing next to the dwarf before he knew it.
Although the traffic light was still red, Michael started to cross the street anyway, since there was not a car in sight. But no sooner had he stepped off the curb, then a shrill whistle stopped him. Only then did Michael realize that a goat, wearing a police uniform, stood in the middle of the intersection. The goat was making all the motions of directing traffic, as if there really were vehicles all round him.
"You don't want to be trampled by the mastodons, do you?" the dwarf asked Michael.
"No," Michael replied, not that he had any idea of how he could be trampled by mastodons when there weren't any for miles around. The light turned green, and Michael started to cross the street, but the goat blew out another blast on his whistle and held up his hand to stop Michael and the dwarf. Then it waved its arms in the other direction as if traffic were still coming.
"Beautiful!" murmured the dwarf in awe of what he saw.
Michael shot a glance at the dwarf as if to ask him if he was crazy, but the dwarf was too rapt in what he was seeing to notice Michael.
"Beautiful!" he cried again in a whisper.
If the empty street and the common stores along it were that beautiful, Michael wondered, what he would see if something really beautiful came along? All he could see were shoe stores, clothing stores, a hardware store, and a dingy cafe. If this was Carelin, it was just another sleepy little town. Occasional shoppers came out of one store and went into another. When they did so, they stopped, as if startled by what they saw, and stared at the invisible parade. These people looked as dull as the people who populated Milton. A black car pulled up at the traffic light and waited for the invisible traffic to pass. Another black car pulled up behind it, and soon there was a long string of black cars lined up along the road. Michael expected them to honk their horns impatiently, but nobody made a sound.
"Beautiful!" the dwarf cried again.
Michael wanted to yell out: What in the stinking heavens do you see? But he held his tongue. He began to hear the sound of cantering horses. The goat's eyes glittered. For a few seconds he heard the sound of a marching band, then static filled his ears as if a radio’s reception were failing. Michael passed the time by finishing his bag of potato chips. It made his thirst unbearable. He threw the empty bag into the street. Something stepped on it. A crunching sound exploded through the street. The wrapper turned into a pigeon and flew above the street.
"Beautiful!" cried the dwarf, shaking his head over what he saw.
The pigeon was joined by the red bird and, together, they flew away. Michael began to wonder what would have happened if he had kept the potato chip bag. The goat vigorously waved on another group in the parade. The static in Michael’s ears cleared for a few seconds and he heard the sound of the boys choir before the static drowned them out again.
“Is that the Carelin Boys Choir?” Michael asked.
“The one and only,” said the dwarf.
“Why can’t I see them?”
"I suggest you complain to the Visual Arts Society in Carelin. Time to cross."
Michael nodded and crossed the street with the dwarf. The goat looked straight at Michael as if it were sharing a joke with him, only Michael was not in on the joke.
"Do goats always direct traffic around here?" Michael asked the dwarf once they were on the other side of the street.
"Not necessarily," was the reply.