There was a flower beside the bench — an allium, freshly burst from a fat green bud into a sphere of purple blossoms — and Erik watched it as he listened to Karl on his phone, asking him to flee the Twin Cities. “Are you sure?” Erik asked. He leaned into the corner of the bench, staring across University Ave towards the campus greens. The purple globes in the flowerbed beside the bench dipped in the slipstream of passing cars. A small flag, left over from the city cleanup the last couple weeks, lay discarded in the dirt, shaded by the jagged leaves of dandelions. “The protest is that weekend,” Erik said.
“Exactly,” Karl said. “You want to be around when the shit hits the fan?” His voice sounded tinny through the phone speaker. “We’ll go to my uncle’s cabin. That should be far enough away.”
Erik wrinkled his nose as an armored car passed and his nostrils were assaulted with the scent of exhaust. “Why your uncle’s cabin?” he asked. Why not your parents’?”
“My parents will be at their cabin,” Karl answered drily. “They’re trying to get away too. My uncle’s cabin’s a little run-down, but it’ll be good enough to stay for a few days.” He paused. “You know, just until everything calms down.”
Erik leaned his head back. The brick facade of the building to his back loomed overhead. A security camera was poised at the lip of the roof. A crow appeared beside the camera and made eye contact with him. The bird cawed.
“What’s your problem?” Erik muttered.
“What?” crackled Karl’s voice.
Erik blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. I thought your car was totaled?”
Karl told him that Byron, a friend of theirs, was driving. Erik lowered his hand from his eyes. The crow was gone. “You’ve talked to him?” Erik asked.
“Yeah. He says that it’s smart. Just in case things get out of hand and people start smashing windows.”
Erik looked across the street again. Beside a path through the greens people had piled flowers and photographs at the base of a fallen lamp post. Among them, partially obscured by a heap of lilies, was a sign with painted red letters. From where Erik sat, he could clearly read the word REST.
“Lucy’ll be coming too,” said Karl. After a pause he said, “I’ll pick you up at your apartment Friday at one. Bring your boots and something to drink.” When Erik didn’t respond, Karl added, “Don’t flake on me, okay? Be on the curb Friday at one. We’ll pick you up then.” The line went dead. Erik lowered the phone and leaned back again. The crow was still gone, but from somewhere he heard the sound of cawing.
Karl had been talking about getting away for weeks. They had almost managed it two weeks ago, when one of their classmates had died in a rally, but the resulting chaos had made it nearly impossible to get out of Minneapolis. Erik tilted an eye towards a pair of cops on the corner. They stood at right angles to each other, rocking from leg to leg, posted less than fifty feet from the makeshift memorial. Erik’s lips tightened.
“Why’s he making Byron drive?” he grumbled.
Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem. Byron was definitely a better driver than Karl was, and the fact that Byron owned a car was very helpful for life in the Cities. The fact remained, however, that of the four of them Byron’s skin was the darkest, and while Erik trusted Byron to maintain calm in a sticky situation, he did not trust Karl’s temper.
With a sigh Erik stood up and walked off to the right. He turned the corner and followed the 14th Avenue bridge over the bike path and train tracks. He had known these three friends since high school, when they had bonded over a mutual disinterest in everything from their classmates to their families to the world itself. They had different reasons for their shared apathy, but as a result they became a refuge for each other, a haven from the moments when the world went mad.
The streets were littered with the signs of protest. The QDOBA Mexican place was boarding up its doors and windows, and glass powdered the sidewalk beneath the window of the Potbelly sandwich shop on the corner. Across the street torn banners and graffitied posters plastered the wall of a nightclub. Passersby nodded towards some and flipped off others. Erik watched the silent exchange of ideologies unfold as he waited for the light to change across 4th Street.
He wondered what Lucy would say about all of this. Of the four of them, she was the only one who didn’t go to the U of M. Partially due to that, Lucy was the least predictable out of any of them. She would show up unexpectedly on weekends to call them out to art shows and live performances; other times they wouldn’t hear from her for months. None of the rest of them could remember where she went to school or what she studied, or even whether she did either of those things at all. She must have been studying something, because every time they saw her she always had a new factoid, a new story, a new concept to explain. One weekend it had been fungal networks in forest ecology; another had been the Heisenberg Principle; the most recent topic had been Nigerian literature. She would babble at length on such topics, reciting them like sacred poetry, practically oblivious to her audience.
The previous summer, when they had spent the week up at Karl’s family cabin in Ely, they had decided to watch the sunset from one of the many lakes in the area. They had borrowed a pair of canoes and rowed to the center of the lake, as far from shore as possible to avoid the mosquitoes. The water had stilled until it was mirror-smooth. They watched the sunset for a bit, tracing the indigo advance of night in silence, when Lucy suddenly sat up.
“Have you guys ever heard of Debussy?” Her voice was eager and interested, as if she had been waiting the entire evening to ask that question.
Karl cocked his head at her. “Who?”
“I’ve heard of him.” Byron turned his head slowly, a brow raised. “He was a composer, right? A piano player?”
Karl frowned. “Wait, who’s this guy?”
“She just said, dumbass,” Erik said, still watching the sky and striving to ignore the growing patch of wetness where his rear met the bottom of the canoe.
“Shut it,” Karl bit back. “You didn’t know what she’s talking about either.”
“Debussy,” Lucy said as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “had an interesting idea of the nature of reality. He believed that imagining something was the exact same thing as experiencing it.” She turned in the boat to face Karl. “For example, he once dreamed that he visited the bottom of the ocean. When he woke up, he maintained that it was exactly the same as having visited the bottom of the ocean. Dreams equal reality.”
“How many drugs was this guy on?” Karl asked.
“Probably opium,” Erik said. “He lived at the end of the eighteen —”
“No one asked you!” Karl’s eyes flashed. “God, why can’t we just have a normal conversation for once?”
Lucy had gone back to watching the stars, so Erik turned his head to look at Byron. They exchanged a look and smiled.
– – –
True to Karl’s word, Byron pulled up to the curb in his old silver Acura at Erik’s place on Friday at one o’clock. Byron rolled down the window as Erik stepped forward. “I told them you would get shotgun.”
“Thanks,” Erik said, moving around the car to throw his bag — packed with a few changes of clothes, swim trunks and a towel — and a case of Shiner Bock into the trunk. He shimmied along the passenger’s side and climbed in.
The first part of the drive was uneventful. Karl and Lucy started to argue as soon as Erik sat down, and from time to time he glanced back to watch the show. In reality, the “argument” consisted of Lucy jumping from one topic to another, springing out of pocket after pocket, with Karl telling her how weird she was the entire time. Now and again Lucy would shut him up by pointing out something about Karl that would make Erik laugh and even bring a smile out of Byron.
Byron guided them out of Minneapolis along highway 94. As they drove they ignored signs of the impending rally, which would include a march on the Capitol. Protesters bearing signs were already crossing bridges over the highway towards Summit Avenue. Traffic was heavy for an early Friday afternoon, and the police cruisers posted every half-mile along the highway slowed their escape. Erik watched Byron eye the cruisers warily, wondering if any of them would suddenly activate their lights and pounce.
It took several minutes for them to make it to the Interstate 52 bridge over the Mississippi. Byron seemed to relax slightly once they passed over the river. Erik blinked at the passing strip malls and parking lots. Karl and Lucy were arguing about Star Wars. He dozed off to the rhythm of their voices and the undulation of the car’s engine.
A jolt in his stomach roused Erik. He opened his eyes to see empty cornfields stretching off into the distance. The city was long behind them.
“Where are we?” he asked drowsily.
Byron answered, “Just south of Rosemount. We passed by the refinery a little bit ago.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “We’re making good time. Traffic really cleared up once we got out of the Cities.”
Erik stared into the distance. The razed cornfields, newly planted, accentuated the bare brown flatness of the landscape. The sky was a blank hazy white. The only green was on the roadside, where the swaths of johnsongrass were interrupted on occasion by thistle. In late summer goldenrod would bloom beside fields thick with corn.
“We should stop in Chatfield,” Lucy said. “They’ve got awesome sandwiches.”
“We aren’t even going to pass through Chatfield,” Karl argued. “We’re going to Saint Charles. As soon as we hit Rochester we turn east.”
“What about Northfield? We could stop there.”
“What’s in Northfield?” Erik asked. “Isn’t that where Saint Olaf and Carlton are?”
“Nothing’s in Northfield!” Karl huffed. “Everyone at the colleges will be up in the Cities for the march. Everyone but us, for God’s sake.”
Byron glanced at Karl in the rear-view mirror. “I thought you said you didn’t want to go,” he said.
Karl heaved a sigh, and Erik heard him sag in his seat. “I don’t. I just want everything to go back to normal.”
Erik glanced behind him. Karl was glaring at his folded hands. Lucy was leaning her head against the window, her hair partially obscuring her face. She chewed on a strand.
The land outside their windows faded into cornfields and farmsteads. At some point in the past, before the words free and colony were spoken over it, prairie had covered the vast expanse, tall, green and interrupted only by the occasional oak tree. Erik tried to imagine what the landscape had looked like before the grasses were razed to plant corn. That had been another one of Lucy’s infodumps, though Erik couldn’t remember the context that had prompted it. With Lucy, context wasn’t always needed.
His thoughts were cut short by the sound of a siren. Byron’s eyes flicked upwards. He grimaced and hissed out a quick curse. Through the dust on the rear window the flicker of red and blue light could be seen.
Byron turned on the blinkers and slowed down.
“What’s going on?” Karl asked.
“We’re being pulled over,” Byron said as the car came to a stop. “Erik . . .”
Erik opened the glove compartment. “The folded — yeah, those.” Erik handed the papers to Byron as the latter dug his license out of his pocket.
“What the hell are they pulling us over for?” Karl asked.
“Quiet,” Byron snapped. “Keep your hands visible.”
The red-and-blue light penetrated the dust and flashed across the back of Byron’s seat, over the top of his close-shaven head. He kept his hands on the wheel, license and registration tucked between his fingers. Erik folded his hands on his knee. Lucy continued to lean her head against the window, still chewing the same strand of hair.
Byron lowered the window. A uniformed shadow approached the car, accompanied by the slow crunch of gravel. The shadow crossed Lucy’s face, and she paused in her chewing to follow it with her eyes.
The officer came to a halt outside the driver’s-side window, black uniform perfectly framed. His face was hidden from Erik, cropped out just below the jaw by the top of the window. Silver buttons and a silver badge with a torch on it glistened on his shirt.
“Afternoon.” The officer spoke in a slow, drawling baritone. “How’re we doin’ today?”
Byron hesitated. “Fine, officer,” he said. “Were we going too fast?”
The cop extended a hand in answer. His palm hovered in the center of the window, large and stiff and pale. After a start, Byron handed him the papers. The cop took the documents before slowly and firmly withdrawing.
“Be right back,” the cop said. He turned, and the fading crunch of gravel accompanied the shadow’s retreat.
Once the cop was out of earshot, Karl let out a scoff. “Byron,” he said, “you should not have to take it from this guy.”
Byron gave no indication he had heard. His face had gone gray, and Erik noticed that he was watching the rearview mirror with guarded eyes. His hands clutched the wheel.
“Byron!”
Byron gave a start. “Shut your white ass up, Karl,” he snapped.
Karl fell silent. Lucy watched the two of them from her place at the window. Almost furtively, she glanced backwards, as if surprised to see the police car parked there. Erik looked at Lucy and then Karl and then Byron. After a moment Byron met his raised eyebrow and grimaced in answer.
“Just stay calm,” Byron said to the car at large. “I’ve done this before. Just stay calm, and we’ll get through this.”
It sounded as though Byron was trying to convince himself. A bit of fear flickered to life in Erik’s chest.
The gravel crunched and the shadow returned. The officer appeared at the window, papers extended. Byron took them gingerly from the officer’s hand.
“How’s everyone doing?” the officer asked.
Silence greeted the question as each of them waited for the other to speak. “Good, I guess,” Erik answered. Then, because he thought it would help: “We’re headed down to his uncle’s for the weekend.” He pointed at Karl.
The officer shifted. “Is that so?” He bent until his face appeared in the window. His eyes peeked from beneath his hat brim with a fluorescent glare that focused on Karl. “How come you’re not the one driving, then?”
Karl’s cheek muscles tightened. Through gritted teeth he managed to answer: “I don’t have a car.”
“He drove it into a lamppost last winter,” Lucy offered.
Karl glared at Lucy, who had gone back to chewing her hair. The officer tilted his head until he could see Lucy’s face.
“You doing well, ma’am?” he asked dolefully.
Lucy didn’t answer. Her eyes had found something else to focus on that was not the officer’s face. “Why are you wearing a ring, officer?” she asked.
Byron shut his eyes. Karl seethed. The officer remained silent.
“You’re wearing it on your index finger,” Lucy said. “Not your ring finger. Why are you wearing your ring there, officer?”
Time stopped. No one breathed. Silence seemed to have taken the place of air, leaving everything bare and lucid.
A second passed.
“Step out of the car,” the officer said.
The officer’s words were incomprehensible until he straightened and backed away from the window. Byron was the first to stir, unlatching the door with shaking hands. Karl started and fumbled for the handle. Lucy moved slowly and purposefully, as if in a trance. Erik was so busy watching the others move that he almost forgot to move himself. He pulled the car door open and unbuckled himself swiftly.
“Line up on this side of the car and face me,” the officer commanded.
Erik moved around the hood to stand by Byron, who had frozen just outside the driver’s door. Lucy stood on his other side. Karl stumbled around the rear of the car, coughing exhaust, and stopped beside Lucy. The emptiness of the landscape was more apparent outside of the vehicle. Erik glanced to either side, up and down the highway. There was not another car in sight.
The officer faced them with his heels on the rumble strips and looked at each of them expressionlessly. It was hard to meet his eyes, which still had that fluorescent quality. It was easier to stare at the buttons of his uniform, round as silver coins.
After a long moment the officer cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, “I want you folks to tell me what you all want.”
Something about the way he said it made Erik glance at the others. Lucy was gazing back towards the direction of the city. Byron was staring tight-lipped at the officer’s shoes. Karl blinked, indignity flashing across his face.
“We want you to let us go,” Karl said in a barely-controlled voice.
The officer shook his head. His thumbs tucked into his belt right behind his holsters. “Not how this works, son.” He tilted his head. “Lotta trouble up in the cities. It’ll probably get violent. I’m sure y’all reckoned it was smart to try and get away.” He drummed his fingers against his pockets. “But there are still rules. Right now, you see, you got three choices. You can turn around and go back. You can all come with me in the cruiser. Or you can keep driving south, trying to . . . escape.” The officer’s mouth thinned. “But for me to let you go . . . You gotta tell me what you really want. Do that, and I’ll let you go.”
Karl’s face had gone red. He looked like he wanted to tell the officer to go fuck himself if he didn’t cut off his power trip. Before he could open his mouth, Lucy spoke.
“I want to bring dreams to life,” she said. She looked at the officer’s face as if the fluorescent eyes didn’t bother her. “That’s what I want.” She leaned forward and looked over the rest of them. “What about you guys?”
Erik looked at Byron. His brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to see through the leather of the officer’s boots. His lips tightened. He inhaled through his nose and spoke in a voice of clear command:
“I want to be able to make people listen and understand.” He raised his eyes and looked into the officer’s eyes. His expression was solid. “That’s what I want.”
The officer gave the smallest of nods. Karl was looking between Byron and Lucy, incredulous. The officer turned and met Karl’s gaze, his head tilted to the side.
Karl stared slack-jawed at the officer. He clenched his teeth and tilted his head back to the sky. His hands balled into fists. “I just want,” he said in a thick voice, “for everything to go back to fucking normal.”
The officer stared at Karl as if waiting to meet his eyes. Karl continued to look up, his eyes clamped shut. The officer shook his head. “No such thing, son.”
His fluorescent eyes at last found Erik’s. Erik’s tongue had gone stiff. The thin mouth and hollow cheeks of the officer consumed his attention, making it impossible to think of anything else. The bare landscape eliminated all distractions. Desperate for some answer, some means of escape, Erik looked downwards. Between the officer’s feet, somehow untouched by traffic and blooming in the dry cracked gravel was a small violet.
For some reason the allium came back to him. He saw discarded flags and piled lilies, boarded shops and mouths opened in protest. The officer’s boots were hard black leather, the kind that cracked ribs and bruised skulls. He heard shouts, songs and declarations, voices of stimulus, of catalyst, vying against voices of annihilation. Through it all was a chorus, laced in vines, snarled in creepers, gripped by runners and choked in briars, which Karl had just now spoken. Over his mind’s eye the officer’s words unfurled like a banner, ragged and red: No such thing.
Was it right for him to run away, as the officer said? Was it right for him to join his friends, united in disinterest, and drive away unscathed? Was it right for him to say they should go back? What did he want to do? What should he do?
“I don’t know,” Erik said.
After a long moment the officer bowed his head and spat into the dirt. “Alright then,” he said. He turned on his heels and began walking back to his cruiser. “Y’all stay safe on the road, then.”
For several seconds the only sound was the crunch of gravel beneath the officer’s heels. On the fourth step, Lucy said, “Wait.”
The officer paused, rocking on his heels mid-step.
“Don’t you have to hear what Erik wants?” Lucy looked between Erik and the officer.
The officer rested for a moment on his back heel. “That kid knows what he wants. He told me so, didn’t he?” He raised a thin eyebrow at Erik. “My advice. Find a rock before you drown in sand.”
Without another word, the officer resumed his walk back to the cruiser. The door slammed shut, and they jumped as the siren chirped. The wheels growled through the dirt as the cruiser climbed back onto the road. The car gathered speed, flashing lights, shrinking into the distance until all they could hear of it was a hollow roar. The lights disappeared beneath a distant dip in the earth and did not emerge.
–
Elijah H. Lokensgard is a music teacher in Minnesota and a recent graduate of Luther College. A new writer and a self-described lover of language, his favorite authors are Toni Morrison and James Joyce. Beyond the pages, Elijah enjoys playing the tenor saxophone, picking raspberries, and visiting the North Shore of Lake Superior.
© 2024, Elijah H. Lokensgard
Halfway Down the Stairs 