July 2085: the answers

Charlie Roseland is 20, Ingrid Thompson is 22.

The first post card: no words, just a sun-shiny Florida beach, his name and address in her handwriting. In the message box was a kiss in pale pink lipstick.

He held it to his nose and inhaled, waxy like makeup, like girl, like Natty. He tried to guess which dress she wore when she had this lipstick on, as if he had any idea which lipstick went with which dress, so he just imagined her in his favorites. Then he wondered how many guys she kissed with that lipstick.

No, he told himself. Stop. This has to mean something good. She sent me a kiss.

---

Charlie's summer internship went as internships tend to go: he was a glorified errand boy. He was told what buttons to push and in what order.



"Mom, can I have twenty bucks?" Ingrid stood in the doorway to the lab and something told Charlie that she wasn't here for the science.

"Ingrid," her mother said. "We’re in the middle of something."

"Hi, Charlie," Ingrid said.

Charlie mumbled, "Eurrrgh..." He tried to hold an input sequence in mind while Ingrid, the way she smirked at him with only one corner of her lips, ever so subtly winked, and he might have thought he imagined it. She hoisted her butt up onto the counter. He suspected Ingrid wasn't really here for her mother’s money either. He shook his head. Button sequence.




A dull, steady, clod, clod, clod. Charlie looked up. It was the heels of Ingrid’s sandals clicking the counter, swinging her feet as she watched him work—try to work. She pointed her fingers at Charlie like a viewfinder. He looked at her strangely. She shrugged.

He tried to pretend she wasn't there.

"You sure seem poor lately," her mother said. "You needed twenty dollars two days ago. Where did that go? Are you buying—" Dr. Thompson lowered her voice to a whisper. "Marijuana?"

Ingrid laughed. "No, Mom. Not with your money, anyway."

"Why don’t you go sell some of those photographs you say you're taking?"

"My camera broke," she said.

Dr. Thompson's face went aghast. "That camera was brand new. That camera cost as much as my car!"

Charlie wondered if he should step outside to let these two fight, but he buried his head in the microscope instead.


Dr. Thompson composed herself and returned to their work. "The university has a partnership with some farmers out in Bluewater. Go see if you can find a red valerian root seed. Not too big. Or see if you can find a sweet grass, bumbleleaf, or chamomile seed. Not a mandrake though. We have so many already."

"What if I don't find any of those?" Charlie said.

"Just grab something interesting then. If we tell you exactly what to look for, you might miss something better. You might miss something really great."

"Is this some kind of test?"

"Life is a test," Ingrid said dreamily from the counter. "The wind has answers to questions you didn't know you were asking."

Charlie was mystified. "Is that supposed to be a fortune cookie or something?"

She winked at him. He laughed. She smiled, coquettish but not innocent. He had to look away. She was like a lovely insect that wouldn't stop flying at his head. 

He picked up a notebook and directions to the planting grounds, and he went.

---

He followed a map to the harvest site. He filled his pockets with what he found.

Natty had her dad call him three times since she'd gone. Once he heard her in the background. "Ask him about his work. Did he go out to see fireworks last week?" She couldn't ask him herself, she'd said. They couldn't talk, because she didn't want him to ask questions, she didn't want to give him answers, because that would spoil the illusion that she was on her own. She needed to pretend, to experience this just one time. This was her only chance, she said. She wouldn't do this to him again.

The second post card she sent didn't have a kiss, but said, “Don't worry. I love you.”

The third post card only said, “I don’t know what I'm doing.”

He didn't have any post cards, so he went across the street to the bookstore where she used to work. All they had were cards with their university logo, or aerial shots of their campus along the river. He picked one at random and wrote, “You don't have to figure it out on your own.”

He put his dry lips to the card, but they left no mark. He sent the card off on its journey.


Now Charlie was finding all sorts of things that he never cared about finding: basil seed, ginseng, porcini mushrooms. Leave the mandrake root, he was told. They had plenty already. But he found it anyway. It was everywhere. He was practically tripping over it. Some things were found even if you didn't want them, while other things would maybe never be found. What did it all mean, anyway?


Charlie found all kinds of things. He found an old saw mill, out of use, on the edge of a field, a stack of lumber, partially decayed. He found earthworms burrowing under the lumber and that bees had made a hive of an old outhouse. He found that wind turbines make a steady whir, a quiet electric hum, if you listen hard enough. He found that the very tip of the lighthouse is visible from all the way out here, miles from the water. He found that people do like him sometimes, and that he can make friends. He can survive without Natty, if he needs to, but he doesn't ever want to have to.

Is that what he was supposed to be looking for?


A bird flew from the roof of the saw mill and landed on the lumber where he sat. The wind had all the answers but Charlie didn’t know what the questions were.

“Tell her to come home," he said to the bird.

The bird flew off, away, south, maybe. Charlie tried to imagine it would fly for a thousand miles with a wish on its wings.