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[EDITOR'S NOTE: Spinke's first short story, published in February 1919 in a small literary magazine that also featured nude centerfolds, marks a distinctive break with his earlier medical and philosophical writings. Set, like many of his stories, in what Spinke scholars have dubbed an 'eerily fatidic' future, "The Tremendous Voyage" remains entangled with its humble origins. In the original publication of
Augensüßigkeit, the story's facing pages were a lesbian pictorial of a seudo-fascist aesthetic. Spinke tried withdrawing his work from the magazine upon discovering this layout decision by the editors, but it was too late, and
Augensüßigkeit had already gone to the presses.]
The Tremendous Voyage of Adam ZwillenbergJust Another Story About ModernityAmos J. Spinke
In the middle of a moonless Friday night in the spring of his fifth grade year, Adam Zwillenberg awoke in his bed to a strange, clumping sound. In the soft glow of the nightlight, his still-focusing eyes observed, inside his tallest shelf, a most peculiar and bewildering spectacle. A baseball, one Adam’s father had purchased for him at a Royal’s game the week before, tumbled across the shelf with increasing speed until it collided with the edge. After a moment’s pause, the ball slowly started to rumble back toward the other end of the shelf, until it slammed into the wooden border on that side. Adam watched this behavior continue awhile, his forehead wrinkled and his lips pensively apart.
To my great friend Adam, Stay in school! –Willie Wilson. Adam could not read the scribbled blue ink from bed, but he remembered the inscription as the ball rolled around his top shelf.
And while, for many of us, this incident is easily dismissed as a product of uneasy sleep, a hazy fantasy of the mind due to the undercooked fish one had for dinner the night before, to Adam, it was worth investigating. As he untangled himself from his Merimekko cars and trucks comforter and climbed out of bed, the wooziness typically associated with standing quickly after a long sleep felt greatly magnified, and Adam attempted to steady himself on the blue plush carpet of his bedroom floor. The dizziness would not abate, and Adam soon discovered that the feeling of the room rocking back and forth perfectly coincided with the movement of the Willie Wilson baseball.
He hurried downstairs on his toes, careful not to creak one of the steps and wake his parents. He scampered across the hardwood floor of his living room, sliding in his socks up to the barstools in the kitchen. He surveyed the room. In a large clump, the pens in the jar by the phone were shifting abruptly from one side of the jar to the other. The Venetian blinds that cover the large windows of the house swung this way and that on the thin, white cords that connected them to the ceiling. Everything in the house, including Adam, seemed to obey the lulling patterns of a mother rocking her child to sleep. As Adam caught his breath, he began to make out the faint sound of creaking wood underneath the quiet din of sliding and shifting dishtowels and flowerpots. The noise seemed to be coming from below, and Adam followed his ears toward the door of the basement. He hovered there a moment, absorbing the swaying motion, listening to the spine-tickling creaks. His hand tensely gripped the doorknob, but refused to make any sort of turning motion. But after a deep breath, he slowly let the door swing open and studied the unfinished wooden plank steps that led downward. He fished around in the darkness for the dangling cord to switch on the lights, forgetting, momentarily, about the time he attempted to swing from it, in the manner of Spiderman or Tarzan, only to snap the cord and crash down the stairs onto the cold, cement floor of the basement.
Now, the kitchen was completely unlit, and had it not been for Adam’s overly dilated pupils, he would not have seen a thing. But as he descended the steps of the basement, the small bits of light quickly disappeared from the cold cavity of musty, basement air. The wooden creaking noise grew more powerful and more distinct, like an old swing set being used by boys who were much too big for it, threatening to shake the wooden structure down with their forceful sweeps. As he reached the bottom of the steps, he groped for the wall in front of the landing. Upon laying his hand against the boards, Adam lurched backward, shocked to find the creaking wall drizzling out tiny streams of cold water.
He ran upstairs, stubbed his toe on the final step, and hobbled toward the long, skinny windows of the kitchen. He drew back the Venetian blinds and squinted into the darkness.
The crowded stars pierced the dark sky with more energy than Adam had ever before witnessed. He went for the side door, opened it, and stepped out to the porch to be greeted by a gust of brisk, salty air. Adam scanned what lay before him, and he was startled by the absence of anything familiar. There was no street, no sidewalk, no green grass, no dandelions. He did not see Mrs. Wendleson’s shiny new red car, nor could he locate the mailbox that usually stood at the foot of the Zwillenberg’s driveway, the driveway itself nowhere to be found. There were no trees with apples in them, no tire swings hanging from branches, no splintery wooden fences separating and dividing the landscape. Instead, there lay before him a panorama distinguishable only by the glimmering reflections of bright stars dancing frenetically across a vast stretch of what appeared to be dark, dark water. He bolted urgently toward the front door on the other end of the house only to be welcomed by a similarly infinite display of waves and splashes. He closed the door behind him and sat, astonished, on the woven welcome mat. Adam’s house was floating on the ocean.
The blatant impossibility of his experience, along with the lateness of the hour, prompted Adam to reach the conclusion that he was dreaming. Staring out at the ocean had at once filled him with awe and terror, but the nagging irrationality and absurdity of the experience forced him to question even his own senses. After sleeping a while longer, Adam reasoned, and awaking in the comforting light of day, he could enjoy a quiet morning at home with his parents on dry land.
Eased by the gentle swaying of the house, Adam tumbled back into sleep.
The next morning Adam stretched out of bed, cricked his neck, and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He walked on his toes over to his bedroom window and threw back the curtain. The sun was just rising over the horizon and the cloudless sky was soaked with the purples and reds and oranges of dawn. The ocean, in all its limitlessness, struck Adam to the very core in the morning light. Amazed, he ran down the swaying stairs to his mother and father. He could not wait to see what they would say. The prospect of floating around on the ocean exhilarated Adam, so long as his parents were there to make sure everything was alright. It would be like being on a big ship. Adam had never been on the ocean before. His mother and father were having coffee and breakfast, as was their weekend custom, at the kitchen table.
“Mom, Dad: what’s going on?” Adam begged with excitement.
“Not too much, sweetie,” his mom replied with a smile. “Do you want to watch Saturday morning cartoons?” Adam stood in silent mystification as the salt shaker slid from one end of the kitchen table to the other. His mother took a sip of her coffee, then a bite of toast.
Adam looked out the window at the deep blue waves lapping against the house. “What is all this?” A touch of concern crept into Adam’s once enthusiastic tone as he wondered why their thrilling and adventurous new situation had little impact on his parents’ collected demeanor.
“All what, dear?” Adam’s father did not look up from the morning paper. The salt shaker kept sliding back and forth.
Adam advanced cautiously toward his parents at the table. He sat down between them on a barstool. Fixing his eyes in thought on her plate, Adam suddenly noticed that his mother was not eating toast at all, but a regular, limp piece of bread covered in jelly. She took another bite.
“Why don’t you get some cereal? We have Cocoa Pebbles.” Adam did not move. His mom rolled her eyes with a huff and pulled a gallon of milk out of the fridge, took a bowl down from the shelf and a spoon from the drawer. “You can get the cereal yourself. You’re a big boy.”
Adam got up slowly and grabbed the cereal from the pantry, keeping his unflinching eyes on his peculiar parents the whole time. He huddled over his bowl and began munching the crisp, chocolate flakes and the surprisingly tepid milk while glaring suspiciously at his parents out of the corners of his eyes.
“Something the matter, honey?”
“No.”
“After you finish will you get the mail?”
Adam snorted viciously and bolted out of his seat abruptly.
“Son, I don’t know what’s gotten into you this morning, but this kind of behavior has got to stop.” His father returned to the paper. “Why don’t you turn on the TV?”
Adam reluctantly grabbed the remote and pressed the button. The television remained quiet. He pressed several more times, to no avail, and then marched up to the set and slammed the palm of his hand against the power button. The dark, convex screen did not blink or budge, asserting its ominous presence forcefully.
That was it. Adam had to get to the bottom of this, and he glared around the house with determined purpose. Out the windows were miles and miles of ocean, he could still hear the subdued creaking of wooden boards from the basement, the digital microwave clock was out, he could hear no hum from the refrigerator or the computer upstairs, he could feel the gentle rocking of the waves: he knew he was imagining nothing. He wondered how the paper boy could have possibly delivered his father’s newspaper without some sort of boat or helicopter, which seemed altogether too unlikely. He snatched an idle section of the print and scanned the upper right corner. “Adam, put that down that’s the business section. Funnies are in the recycling bin.” Friday, April 20th. Just as he suspected.
He turned on the sink. The water ran. He craned his neck and stood on his toes to drink from the faucet. Salt water. He spit it out disgustedly.
“Dad, your coffee,” Adam implored, pointing.
“Excuse me?”
“How can you drink that?”
“Well, Adam, it’s very simple: I hold the cup, like so, and then move it up toward my lips. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m going to my room.” He went for the stairs.
“Wait, Adam, turn off the TV before you—” Adam’s mother and father looked at each other with bemused confusion as the salt shaker slid once more across the granite kitchen counter.
When he got to his room, he sat on the bed Indian style and began to cry. He did not close his teary eyes, but keep them fixed upon the horizon outside the window of his bedroom. This was not going to be as fun as Adam originally thought. He did not understand his parents. He worried about being stranded on the ocean. Where would they buy clothes? How would he go to school? How would his mom make macaroni and cheese for lunch? Eventually, his tears subsided and he heard their voices downstairs.
“Black and Veach’s downsizing again.”
“Hmmm.”
“150 jobs.”
“Hmmm.”
He heard his mother’s footsteps move toward her bedroom. He heard the sink running, then the shower. He cringed at the thought of his mother taking a salt water shower. Then suddenly he thought of the police. The police could help, he thought. He ran downstairs to the phone. His father was still finishing his coffee. He picked up the receiver. No dial tone.
“Who are you calling?”
“The police.”
“The police, eh?”
“Yah.”
“There a fire?”
“Dad, if there was a fire I’d call the fire department.”
“Oh, right. The police. Don’t tell them how you acted at breakfast. Might bring you down to the station. Honor you father and mother.”
“Yeah, right Dad.” The salt shaker slid once more across the granite. Adam snatched it from the table. “Dad, you notice this?”
“Notice what, son?” He was still reading the paper.
“The salt shaker.”
“Mm, the salt shaker.”
“It was moving.”
“Moving?”
“Back and forth across the table.”
“You don’t say?”
“Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“
The salt shaker.”
“Of course I saw the salt shaker I can see it right now can’t I?”
“Dad?” Adam was pleading.
His father looked up from the paper for the first time. “What?”
“Nothing, Dad.” His father took a final swig of his cold, salty coffee. Adam looked at him with disgust.
***
Back when Adam was just learning to walk, his father made for him a small play area underneath the staircase that led upstairs to Adam’s room. He carpeted the floor with a low, colorful shag, ran electric wires in for a light, and even built a fully functional, but shortened, door for the entrance. His parents filled it with all sorts of toys, board games, and action figures, anticipating the day when Adam would make the room his secret hideout or clubhouse. Adam had indeed loved the lair, but had, sometime around his fifth birthday, removed from the room all the expensive toys and games his parents had planted there. Instead, he filled the room with an eclectic array of pictures he had either discovered or drawn from his own imagination. He would, every once in a while, but not too often as he was usually busy with friends or baseball practice, sit for hours on end in his little lair making up all sorts of crazy tales about the creatures and objects taped onto the walls of the room. He would act out these stories to himself, playing all the characters with different voices and providing helpful narration to keep all the many events and people and places clear for his audience of shag carpet strands and a dangling light cord.
Adam now sat on the floor of this lair as he thought quietly about his present predicament. The light cord swung slowly back and forth as he tumbled one thought after another through his head. He was extremely thirsty, and had found and gulped down the last two juice boxes from the fridge that were left over from the week. The milk was already starting to stink. He had not yet resorted to opening any of his father’s beers, but figured at some point, these would be gone as well, and there would be nothing in the house to drink. His parents didn’t seem to mind the salt water. His mother had helped herself to a tall glass with ice earlier in the day. The ice, of course, was mostly melted and Adam, who at that point had already started to feel the stitch of thirst in his throat, gasped to see the only beads of fresh drink in the house plop into a glass of salty seawater. There was plenty of food in the pantry, of course, but Adam, noting that no land was in sight even from the high vantage of his bedroom window, could only assume that at some point, the family would have to start fishing. He figured his father had a fishing pole somewhere in the house, probably in the basement or the garage. Then Adam considered the garage doors; surely they couldn’t keep water from leaking inside, he thought. He jumped up from the floor, pulled the light cord habitually, though there was no light to turn off, and trotted anxiously over to the garage.
“Where’re you going?” asked his mother. She was staring at the blank television set.
“Garage.”
It was indeed filled with water. Several feet. The bottoms of the two cars could not be seen. The water line was just at the tops of the tires. Adam shuddered and thought of the basement. He ran back by his mother.
“Adam—”
He stopped. “What are you watching, Mom?”
“Oh, it’s just a rerun of
Cheers.” She picked up the remote and pressed a button. “I really shouldn’t be watching TV anyway. I need to get to the supermarket. Tell Dad I’ll be back in a minute.”
Adam ran to the door to the basement. He listened for a moment to the creaking studs and opened the door. Adam almost fell over with dizziness as he took in the sight below him: tons and tons of water swishing and slopping lethargically over itself on the cement floor. The walls continued to spurt streams, only with much greater intensity than the night before. Adam went back upstairs to look for a bucket.
“Honey, the car won’t start!” his mother shouted as she came in from the garage, soaked to her waist.
“Mom, what happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The car won’t start. Your father must’ve forgot to change the oil or something. It’s practically a new car.”
“You’re soaking wet.”
She laughed. “Nonsense.”
“No, look, Mom. You’re soaking wet. Can’t you see that?”
“Sweetie, I don’t know what’s gotten into you today.”
“Mom, feel your shoes. They’re squishing around the floor. They’re wet.”
“Is this part of one of your plays? I saw you in your secret hideout today. You haven’t been in there for years.”
“Mom, I’m serious.”
“I’m sure you are. Honey! Oh, where on earth is your father?”
She squished over to the bedroom. Adam listened from the kitchen.
“Honey, why’re you in bed? The car won’t start.”
“What sound does it make?”
“Like a glug glug glug glug shooooosh sound.”
“Glug glug glug glug shooooosh?”
“Yah.”
“Think it’s the battery?”
“Well,
I don’t know, honey.”
“Let’s try jumping it.”
Adam listened to his father climb, with considerable difficulty, out of the big waterbed in his parents’ room. He was wearing only his boxers and a gray t-shirt.
“Are you feeling okay, honey?”
“I just have a kind of bellyache, that’s all. Do we have any Advil?”
“That’s for headaches.”
“Well I have a headache too.”
“Go jump the car and I’ll look.” Adam’s mom ruffled through an upper shelf in search of the pills. She filled a tall glass with salt water and placed it neatly on the granite counter next to the two brownish-orange Advil tablets. Adam went into the garage to get a bucket and found his dad wading about the cold water, struggling to open car doors and fix the jumper cables on the batteries.
Adam grabbed a large bucket hanging from the wall by a nail. “Dad, everything okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Tell your mother to call Dr. Bloomberg. I’m getting chills.”
“Dad, you’re wading around in three feet of water.”
“That’s sure what it feels like.”
“Dad, when you’re done with that, you need to help me with something in the basement.”
“Not today Adam. I don’t feel too great. Ask your mother.”
Adam dashed away and scuttled down the basement steps and scooped up a couple gallons of water, the bucket pulling his arms almost out of their sockets as he struggled to carry it up the steps. He passed his mother in the kitchen, who was leaning over the sink clutching her stomach.
“Adam, what’s in the bucket?”
“Water.”
“From where?”
“The basement. It’s filled with water.”
“You didn’t clog up the toilet down there did you?”
“No. It’s coming from the walls.”
“What is?”
“The water.”
“Okay alright Adam that’s enough.”
Adam’s father came in from the garage, dripping.
“The other car won’t start either.”
“Glug glug glug glug shooooosh?”
“Yah. It’s the strangest thing.”
“Honey, I don’t feel so good either anymore. I think we must’ve caught something. Isn’t there something that’s going around?”
“I told Adam to have you call Dr. Bloomberg. Did you tell your mother to call Dr. Bloomberg, Adam?”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
He set the heavy bucket down on the kitchen floor. The water spilled slightly over the rim as the house rocked back and forth. “The basement’s filled with water and I’m going to dump it outside so we don’t sink. You should probably help.”
“Now, Adam, listen: I understand that you want to play and be silly, but your mother and I aren’t feeling well. Alright Adam?”
“BUT DAD THIS IS IMPORTANT!”
“I know, honey, I know it’s important but it’ll just have to wait.” His father smiled warmly. Adam stared into his eyes.
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Don’t worry about it. Now I don’t know what you’re doing with this bucket,” Adam’s father continued, “but go put it away. That’s your father’s work bucket, and he only uses when he’s doing important work, okay?” He patted Adam on the shoulder and turned to his wife. “Honey, let’s see if Dr. Bloomberg has any openings today.”
“Okay. Here’re your Advils.”
“Thanks.” He swallowed them, chugging three fourths of the glass of salt water. After a moment, Adam’s father doubled over, showing Adam a vulnerability he had never before seen from his father. He exhaled deeply. “I need to lie down.”
“Me too.”
“Adam, your mother and I are going to lie down in bed for a while.” He was picking up the phone and pressing toneless buttons. “Can you manage dinner on your own? —Yes, hello? —Arnold and Sherri Zwillenberg——We were hoping for sometime this evening———No? —How about tomorrow afternoon? —————Tomorrow afternoon———3:30?” He looked over to his wife for approval. She nodded. “Yeah 3:30’s fine——————just headache, stomachache———no, diet’s normal———uh huh————uh huh———alright————you too———buh bye.” He put down the receiver. “3:30 tomorrow. She says there’s a bug going around and that’s probably what it is. Takes a couple a days to get over.”
“Oh, honey, I just can’t stand up any longer.”
They shuffled off to the bedroom. Adam overheard their voices from the kitchen.
“Do you think he’s feeling okay?”
“He’s just using his imagination, Arnie, it’s fine.”
“Well, the kid’s creeping me out, honey. Did you hear what was coming out of his mouth? About the basement?”
“Yeah, I heard. Don’t worry about it, sweetie, he’s just pretending. He’ll get over it in a couple days.”
Adam picked up the receiver. No dial tone. He pressed a few buttons. No beeps. He dialed 911 and listened. Nothing. He dropped the receiver back down, dejected. He picked up the bucket from the floor of the kitchen and went to the front door. He opened it, stepped out onto the porch, which was covered with a thin layer of water, and dumped the bucket into the ocean. It was not a satisfying feeling, adding a bucketful of water to the sea. But, he went back downstairs and got another couple of gallons. He again dumped them off the end of his front porch. All the way until sundown, Adam worked hard without dinner, and more importantly without anything to drink, at keeping his house afloat. He could not tell if the water level in the basement was lowering or not. The rocking of the house made it too difficult to tell whether he was making progress. But as the sun was setting, Adam noticed that the front porch, which had just hours ago been covered by a negligible amount of seawater, was now a good three inches under. He started to cry, sitting in the doorway of his slowly sinking house.
After it got dark, Adam picked himself up and went into the kitchen for some food. His parents were already asleep in the bedroom and the door was closed. He found some bread and cheese and started to eat. He was so thirsty. The bread seemed especially dry in his mouth, and he chewed with his lips apart and his eyes fixed on his reflection in the microwave.
Once he finished his dinner, he went upstairs to his room and crashed onto his Merimekko comforter. He was exhausted. His arms hurt. His head was pounding. He could not sleep. The thought of his house sinking into the ocean ate away at his mind. Visions of downward tumbling into eternally deep and unimaginably dark waters permeated his thoughts. He felt like they would sink forever, and expressionless fish would gnaw on their diluted flesh. But it could never happen, he rationalized, because if it were going to his parents would surely do something about it. Still, he lay awake. He stared at the Willie Wilson baseball rolling back and forth on his shelf. He watched it for a long while. Then, suddenly, he jumped out of bed, ran over to the baseball, grabbed it off the shelf and ran downstairs. He pushed open the front door and stood in the shallow water on his porch. Glaring out, he threw the baseball as far as he could into the endless expanse of sea. It was one of his best throws. He felt angry, and the anger seemed to propel the ball from his fist.
But when he saw where the ball splashed he was sorely disappointed. He had only thrown it a tiny ways compared to the stretch of the dark horizon. He could see the spot where it went in. Beyond it lay the deep blue desert where there was nothing to drink.
Again, he grabbed the bucket. He marched, determined, down the steps of the basement and began to scoop the water into the bucket and bail out the sinking ship that was his home. He worked into the late night, and he grew so tired, so dehydrated, that his mind retreated into a undulating delirium. He did not know whether he was making any headway, but he focused all the energy left in his mind on the idea of Progress and how he was working hard to make the house a more livable place. Surely the water level would lower, he thought. But after several hours of lugging and dumping, he collapsed onto the hardwood floor at the top of the basement steps. The bucket, filled with water, rumbled down the stairs, and emptied itself, floating atop the swishing and sloshing waters of the Zwillenberg basement. The front door was left open, swinging slowly back and forth on its hinges. And Adam fell unconscious, no longer capable of working toward any rational solutions to immense irrational problems.
The next morning Adam awoke before dawn, disoriented and still delirious, with a thirst he had never before known. He ran into the kitchen and popped the tab off the spoiled milk and drank from the bottle. He finished nearly half a gallon before he started to vomit. All over the kitchen. He made no attempt to use the trash can or the sink. He walked over to his parents’ door and peeked inside. His mother and father, the day before a robust, young married couple, now looked almost emaciated as they rocked this way and that, asleep on their waterbed. Adam started to close the door, but froze as his mind began to consider the vast quantities of fresh, fresh water inside his parents’ king size waterbed. He couldn’t get them up yet. It was before dawn, and in their anger at being awakened at such an early hour, they might not let him inside to drink. Adam paced around the house, waiting for dawn, waiting for his parents to wake up and get out of bed.
Suddenly, in mid pace, Adam heard a strange sound. He stopped, listened. Wood clunking wood, near the front door. Then, “Hello! Is anyone in here?”
Adam bolted toward the voice. Is was a disheveled looking, thin man with a beard. He was standing in about a foot and a half of water on the front porch. Tied to the porch post was a raft of some sort. It was constructed out of various articles of furniture: a dresser, a table, a desk, a chiffarobe. A long pole, made of lashed together rakes and shovels, raised from the center of the sea craft. Tied to the rake at the top were an amalgamation of bed sheets, a sail.
“Hello, young man.”
“Hello.”
“Thank God I found you. You’re the first house I’ve seen in weeks.” He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, keeping warm in the chilly morning breeze. He extended his hand. “Elijah.”
“Adam.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yah.”
Elijah stepped inside and shook his legs dry. “Are you alone in here.”
“No, my parents.”
“Are they sick?”
“Yah.”
“Salt water?”
“Yah. I think so.”
“Happens.”
“Yah.”
“Do you think I could get some provisions from your house? My raft is coming apart in places. I need some rope.”
“We have rope.”
“You have rope?”
“Yah.”
“Can I use some?”
“Yah. I’ll get it.” Adam started for the garage.
“Wait, hold on.”
“Yah?”
“Are you alright?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that.”
“You look sick.”
“I threw up.”
“You thirsty?”
“Yah.”
“I have some water with me. You can have some. It’s fresh.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just go easy on it. It’s all I got.”
Adam stepped automatically out to the raft and hunted around.
“It’s in the second dresser drawer.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Adam drank ravenously as Elijah watched. Then, he stopped. “Our house. It’s sinking.”
“That usually happens.”
“I tried to get rid of the water but there was too much.”
“Does your father have a plan?”
“A plan? No. No plan.”
“There’s not much room, but you can come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find land. Fresh water.”
“I’ll go.”
“What about your parents?”
“They have water.”
“Your parents have water?”
“In their bed.”
“Their bed?”
“Waterbed.”
“Ah, waterbed. Are they going to drink it?”
“They don’t know.”
“They don’t know what?”
“They don’t know…”
“They don’t know about the ocean?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s the worst.”
“Mm.”
“Are they asleep?”
“Yah. I think so.”
“Can you wake them up?”
“Sure.” Adam went for his parents’ room.
“I’ll go get the rope. Is it in the garage?”
“Yah.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Adam opened his parents’ door and walked up to his father and shook him.
“Uh. Mmm, Adam. What’re you doing up so early?”
“There’s a man here. He’s getting rope from the garage.”
“A man?”
“Elijah.”
“Elijah?”
“That’s his name.”
“Adam, go back to bed.”
“Dad, you need to get up.”
“No, Adam, I don’t feel well.”
“Honey, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, Sherri. Adam’s just had a bad dream or something. Something about a man and rope.”
“Sweetie, go back to bed. It’s early.”
Adam stood silent for a beat.
“Mom. Dad. Dr. Bloomberg’s on the phone. He says he wants to talk with both of you. Says it’s important.”
His mother and father, on hearing these words, quickly roused themselves and lurched their tired bodies toward the telephones in the kitchen and the living room. Adam followed, but broke off quickly to get Elijah from the garage.
“Hello, Dr. Bloomberg? —Yes it’s Arnold…”
Adam’s mother and father quickly became busy with Dr. Bloomberg on the phone. Adam opened the garage door as Elijah was wading toward him.
“We have to get the water right now. They’re on the phone.”
“How big is the bed?”
“King size.”
“King size?”
“Yah.”
“Oh boy.”
Adam and Elijah slunk past Adam’s parents and stole away into their bedroom. Adam tore off the comforter and the sheets and Elijah attempted to lift a corner of the bladder out of the metal bed frame. Adam watched him struggle awhile, then, suddenly realizing that he could help, grabbed another corner. The bladder would not budge.
“This thing must weigh 300 pounds. How do they fill it?”
“They have—uh, uh—” Adam gestured indistinguishably with his hands, circling his finger around his other hand. “It’s—” and he walked into his parents bathroom, opened the cabinet under the sink, and pulled out a long, green hose with a special attachment for the waterbed bladder.
“We’re going to need buckets, jugs—Adam, what do you have that’s really big that could hold water?”
Adam ran out of the room into the kitchen. His parents were still chatting on the disconnected phone with Dr. Bloomberg. He opened the refrigerator and began pouring out all the containers onto the floor. The remains of the milk sloshed along the wooden floorboards. He dumped a large pot of leftover spaghetti onto the counter top. Then he started collecting the cups. He grabbed the water bottles he used for baseball practice, the canteens from boy scouts, the coffee pot, the empty juice pitchers, the ice cube bucket. He rummaged through the trash can and ripped out the discarded bottles and cans. Then he noticed his parents. They were staring at him, jaws agape, telephones held absently by their shoulders.
“Oh, Adam!” His mother was near tears. Her face was sallow and gaunt. “Why do you have to
do all this?”
“Son, everything’s going to be alright.” His father’s voice was tender, more soothing than he’d ever heard it before. “Why don’t you go take a nap and try and calm down? We’ll clean this mess up. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s gonna be fine—just fine. Oh, Dr. Bloomberg?” His father’s head popped back toward the phone. Adam went back to his task. “Yeah, sorry. You know what, maybe tomorrow isn’t such a good time for us to come it—no, no, it’s not that we’re feeling any better, it’s just, well, Adam—our son Adam has been behaving very strangely————he might need us around—” Adam started to bring the cups and jugs and pots and canisters out to Elijah’s raft. He heard his father’s hushed voice as he worked. “—Could you maybe put us in touch with a good psychiatrist? Someone good with children—yeah———yeah, all weekend. Sure—”
Elijah had attached the hose to the bed and was carrying several large buckets as he walked onto the raft. Adam’s light blue kiddy pool, one that was kept stored away until summers, sat on top of Elijah’s raft, filling with water. “I found all this in your basement. Floating. It’s almost completely full. The house is going to capsize soon, we need to hurry. Can you get your parents to help?”
Adam bolted toward the kitchen. Elijah began filling the other containers with the water from the bed.
“Mom, Dad: I need your help RIGHT NOW.”
“Honey, we’re on the phone.” His mother coughed dryly and went back to the receiver. “Um hmm—um hmm…”
“THE HOUSE IS SINKING AND THERE’S A MAN WITH A RAFT THAT CAN GET US OUT OF HERE AND WE NEED TO GET WATER OR ELSE WE’LL HAVE NOTHING TO DRINK SO PLEASE PLEASE
PLEASE GET OFF THE PHONE AND COME HELP US. His name is Elijah. He has a raft.”
Adam’s father stared at him silently for a beat. “Dr. Bloomberg? Yeah, I’m really worried about Adam—can we talk to someone today?”
And right then Adam lunged toward his father, grasped him tightly around the wrist with both hands, and tugged with all his might. “Oh, hold on—” his father spoke into the phone. Adam pulled and pulled, his body angled against his father’s weight, his feet planted firmly on the hardwood floor. His father did not budge. Adam began to claw at the hair on his father’s arms, and as the hair pulled, Adam’s father recoiled violently and stared coldly into Adam’s face.
His mother spoke slowly into the phone. “Dr. Bloomberg? Sorry about that. Our son Adam is having a bit of a tantrum. We’re going to have to call you back.” And she hung up.
Adam was crying. “I’m going on Elijah’s raft because the house is going to sink any minute and there’s no water and I’ve already decided so you can’t even make me stay.”
His parents looked at each other with concern. “Oh, honey,” his mom said, “why don’t you come lie down with us in bed? You’ll feel much better if you just rest with mommy and daddy awhile and all these things will just go away and you’ll never have to worry about them again. Okay?”
Despite himself, the words comforted Adam. “Okay, mom. I’ll be there in a second, I just want to get my baseball from my room.”
“We’ll clean this mess up later on, okay?” She spoke sweetly. “Honey, let’s get some more Advil from the bathroom. Adam, you’ll meet us in the bedroom in a few minutes?”
“Okay.”
“We love you, Adam,” his dad said.
“Love you, too.”
His parents shuffled into the bathroom, their shriveled bodies hunched over as they walked. Adam watched them disappear, hunting for pills, then walked slowly back to the front door where Elijah’s raft was docked. All the containers were filled with water, including the kiddy pool, which had the end of the hose dipped into it. Adam was still crying, and he sat down in three inch of water on the front step. He began drinking from a water bottle. The cold ocean water was lapping up over the doorframe into the house. He watched more and more water spill inside, soaking the welcome mat and seeping further and further toward the living room, the kitchen, his parent’s bedroom. Elijah walked back with the other end of the hose.
“The bed’s empty. We can’t stay in this house a second longer or it’s going to fill up and sink.” He hoisted the bed sheet sail. “Adam, you’re coming with me?”
“I have to.”
“What about your parents?”
“What about my parents?”
“We can’t leave them.”
“I think they will be happier here.”
“Adam…”
“Elijah. They’re not going to come along. Not ever.”
Elijah looked at Adam with resignation. He untied the ropes and a gust of wind filled the sail and the hodgepodge raft started floating out toward the sea. Elijah, who was lashing two tables together with the rope, paused a moment in his preparations for the voyage.
“I—I think your parents are going to miss that water, Adam. Maybe we should turn around.”
“I think my parents are going to miss the bed.”
Elijah nodded and continued to trim the sail until it stopped flapping in the wind. More and more ocean was appearing between Adam’s house and the raft. Adam looked at the open front door and wondered if his parents had tried to return to bed. Then, on the back of his neck, Adam felt the warmth of the morning sun. He turned around, and was overwhelmed by the most beautiful sunrise he had ever known.
