Hold on, Noah said. I need to know more about this appointment. Where am I going, and why is it so important to me?
It doesn’t matter, Ferguson replied. The car trip is just an example, a proposition, a way of talking about the thing I want to discuss with you — which has nothing to do with roads or appointments.
But it does matter, Archie. Everything matters.
Ferguson let out a long sigh and said: All right. You’re going to a job interview. It’s the job you’ve been dreaming about all your life — Paris correspondent for the Daily Planet. If you get the job, you’ll be the happiest person in the world. If you don’t, you’ll go home and hang yourself.
If it means that much to me, why would I leave at the last minute? Why not start the trip an hour earlier and make sure I won’t be late?
Because … because you can’t. Your grandmother has died, and you had to go to her funeral.
Fair enough. It’s what we call a momentous day. I’ve just spent six hours weeping for my grandmother, and now I’m in my car, heading for the job interview. Which road do you want me to take?
Again, it doesn’t matter. There are only two choices, the main road and the back road, and each one has its good points and bad points. Say you choose the main road and get to your appointment on time. You won’t think about your choice, will you? And if you go by the back road and get there in time, again, no sweat, and you’ll never give it another thought for the rest of your life. But here’s where it gets interesting. You take the main road, there’s a three-car pileup, traffic is stalled for more than an hour, and as you sit there in your car, the only thing on your mind will be the back road and why you didn’t go that way instead. You’ll curse yourself for making the wrong choice, and yet how do you really know it was the wrong choice? Can you see the back road? Do you know what’s happening on the back road? Has anyone told you that an enormous redwood tree has fallen across the back road and crushed a passing car, killing the driver of that car and holding up traffic for three and a half hours? Has anyone looked at his watch and told you that if you had taken the back road it would have been your car that was crushed and you who were killed? Or else: No tree fell, and taking the main road was the wrong choice. Or else: You took the back road, and the tree fell on the driver just in front of you, and as you sit in your car wishing you had taken the main road, you know nothing about the three-car pileup that would have made you miss your appointment anyway. Or else: There was no three-car pileup, and taking the back road was the wrong choice.
What’s the point of all this, Archie?
I’m saying you’ll never know if you made the wrong choice or not. You would need to have all the facts before you knew, and the only way to get all the facts is to be in two places at the same time — which is impossible.
And?
And that’s why people believe in God.
Surely you jest, Monsieur Voltaire.
Only God can see the main road and the back road at the same time — which means that only God can know if you made the right choice or the wrong choice.
How do you know he knows?
I don’t. But that’s the assumption people make. Unfortunately, God never tells us what he thinks.
You could always write him a letter.
True. But there wouldn’t be any point.
What’s the problem? Can’t afford the airmail postage?
I don’t have his address.
THERE WAS A new boy in the cabin that year, the one first-timer among Ferguson’s old comrades from summers past, a non — city boy who lived in the Westchester town of New Rochelle, which made him the only other suburban dweller in Ferguson’s circle of acquaintances, less boisterous and verbally aggressive than the boys from New York, quiet in the way that Ferguson was quiet, but even more so, a boy who said almost nothing, and yet, when he did speak, the people within hearing distance found themselves paying close attention to his words. His name was Federman, Art Federman, universally know as Artie, and because Artie Federman was so close in sound to Archie Ferguson, the boys in the cabin often joked that they were long-lost brothers, identical twins who had been separated at birth. What made the joke funny was that it wasn’t a real joke but an anti-joke, a joke that made sense only if it was understood as a joke about the joke itself, for while Ferguson and Federman shared certain physical characteristics — similar in size and build, both with big hands and the lean, muscled bodies of young ballplayers — they bore little resemblance to each other beyond their common initials. Ferguson was dark and Federman was fair, Ferguson’s eyes were gray-green and Federman’s were brown, their noses, ears, and mouths were all shaped differently, and no one seeing them together for the first time ever would have mistaken them for brothers — or even, for that matter, distant cousins. On the other hand, the boys in the cabin were no longer seeing them together for the first time, and as the days passed and they continued to observe the two A.F.s in action, perhaps they understood that the joke that was not a joke was something more than a joke, for even if it wasn’t a question of two flesh-and-blood brothers, it was a question of friends, of two flesh-and-blood friends who were rapidly becoming as close as brothers.
One of the odd things about being himself, Ferguson had discovered, was that there seemed to be several of him, that he wasn’t just one person but a collection of contradictory selves, and each time he was with a different person, he himself was different as well. With an outspoken extrovert like Noah, he felt quiet and closed in on himself. With a shy and guarded person like Ann Brodsky, he felt loud and crude, always talking too much in order to overcome the awkwardness of her long silences. Humorless people tended to transform him into a jokester. Quick-witted clowns made him feel dull and slow. Still other people seemed to possess the power to draw him into their orbit and make him act in the same way they did. Pugnacious Mark Dubinsky, with his endless opinions about politics and sports, would bring out the verbal battler in Ferguson. Dreamy Bob Kramer would make him feel fragile and unsure of himself. Artie Federman, on the other hand, made him feel calm, calm in a way no other person had ever made him feel, for being with the new boy brought the same sense of selfhood he felt when he was alone.
If either one of the two A.F.s had been a slightly different person, they easily could have wound up as enemies. Ferguson in particular had every justification to resent the newcomer’s arrival on the scene, for it turned out that Federman was better at sports than he was, and for the past five years Ferguson had been the best, especially at baseball, which meant he had always played shortstop and batted fourth for the traveling team, but when Federman showed up for practice on the first day, it quickly became apparent that he had more range and a stronger arm than Ferguson, that his bat was faster and more powerful, and by the next day, when he hit two home runs and a double in an intrasquad game, eliminating any doubt that his first day’s performance had been a fluke, Bill Rappaport, the twenty-four-year-old coach of the team, pulled Ferguson aside and announced his decision: Federman was the new shortstop and cleanup hitter, and Ferguson was being switched over to third base and would bat one notch up in the order. You understand why I have to do this, don’t you? Bill said. Ferguson nodded. Given the strength of the evidence, what else could he do but nod? Nothing against you, Archie, Bill continued, but this new kid is phenomenal.