I made a left out of University Village, heading to the Parents Weekend mixer to see what dark trade had engaged my father. I passed the empty courtyard of Graduate Village, the sad row dorms where Trudy lived. The metal tops of the picnic tables looked galvanized through layers of frost, the volleyball nets sagged with ice, and the windows in her upstairs room were dark.
The mixer was being held in the new student art gallery at the end of the quad. I cruised through the faculty lot, hunting for a parking spot. I kept an eye out for my yellow Corvette, but as I scanned the rows of cars, something was wrong: though the night was cold and clear, the cars I passed looked storm-battered — dirty snow was driven into their hoods and grilles, while twigs and trash stood frozen to windshields.
I backed into a handicapped spot and climbed out of the van. Everything had been pelted with grubby snow, and it only took me a couple steps to realize that the twigs stuck to car fenders and sunroofs were actually little bones, as if someone had eaten buckets of chicken and tossed the remains so their half-frozen grease glued them to cars. A Doritos bag, chips still loitering in the bottom, was skewered on an antenna.
I pulled one of these bones from a windshield and, wincing at its texture, examined it. In my hand was a tiny skull, its sockets filled with a gelatinous gristle, its fine cartilage stubbed from impact. I was no expert on comparative rodent anatomy, but I was pretty sure this had once been a squirrel. Holding the bone to my nose, I sniffed — urine.
I turned toward Eggers’ lodge, shielding my eyes from the parking lights. In the middle of the quad, I saw the menacing green fuselage of a tremendous helicopter, its great blades drooping under their own weight, tail rotor spinning casually with the breeze.
Moving toward it, I crossed from slush to powder, my dress shoes plunging stiff, flat holes in the crusted snow. I came across an animal skin in the half-dark. I threw it over my shoulder. In a few more yards, I found a copy of my own book, wet and battered, but I could clearly see through the running ink that Eggers had underlined dozens of passages.
The helicopter loomed larger and larger — its intake cowlings flared like haunches, and the landing gear raked forward, suggesting a sinewy brawn. I admit I’d never been this close to a copter before, but encountering it could have been no different from wandering out to this spot an eon ago and stumbling into the five-meter tusks of your first mastodon, or chancing upon a short-faced bear, claws long as speed skaters’ blades.
I swung wide of the copter. It was frightening how the campus security lights glared off its lifeless windows, how the throbbing hum of its engine heaters made a digestive noise. When I reached the site where Eggers’ lodge should’ve been — there was nothing. The helicopter had blown everything away. All that remained was an open patch of muddy clay surrounding a ring of hearthstones. It looked like every site I’d ever excavated — a few surface artifacts, a dusting of charcoal, and the anonymous stains of humanity. It could have been ten thousand years old. The irony was that I was glimpsing the future. When I look back, it is to this image that I return as I reflect on what became of our culture. Of all the things I had yet to behold — a night sky lit by the laughter of muzzle fire, a river changing gear, the day that dogs would forsake us — this empty ground would prove to be the oracle.
Across a field of white, I made out a lone figure in the dark. I headed that way, walking downhill toward the Missouri. The snow was deeper here, my shoes sounding as if they punched through sheets of aluminum with each step. Ahead, I made out Eggers, toiling to find the remains of his shelter. He had fashioned a litter using two mastodon tusks as skids, with a pallet lashed between them to carry all the skins he’d rescued. He picked something out of the shadows, shook out the powder, then tossed it on the pallet, which he pulled like a rickshaw toward the next outline in the snow.
I fell in behind his footprints, framed by the twin tracks of the litter.
I waved a copy of The Depletionists at him, but if he saw me, he gave no notice.
“Hey,” I called, “I found your book.”
“That’s all right,” Eggers said. “I already know how it ends.”
When I caught up, his face was serious. He wore a poncho cut from a shaggy dark pelt that made him appear broad-shouldered and stout.
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened to your lodge,” I told him.
I tossed the animal skin atop the others.
“It’s okay, Dr. Hannah,” he said bitterly. “In case you forgot, I’m a nomad.”
“You’re upset about the bones,” I said. “I understand that. But this won’t mess up your dissertation. We can extrapolate your caloric intake through other means.”
Eggers turned to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “This isn’t the end of the world here. Think of it as a second chance. How about we go to the party, and in the morning you can rebuild your lodge over at University Village. It’ll be a better lodge, and we’ll be neighbors.”
Eggers was silent. Standing with our backs to the school, we were spared its harsh light and concrete, its trees planted in perfect geometry. Instead, we gazed upon a river valley of dark farmland, our only company the rising white of our breath. High above, the jet stream pushed tight clouds against a backdrop of stars, making it look as if our breath reached the heavens and raced toward the horizon, as if there were some distant place it was meant to be.
I put my hand on Eggers’ shoulder. “So — what do you say?” I asked him.
He shrugged me off. “It’s getting a little crowded around here,” he said. “I’m going to bunk with Keno.”
“Don’t be like that, Eggers. What about your parents? They’re probably up there right now, waiting for you.” I pointed toward the school. “You owe it to them to at least say hi.”
“I don’t owe anyone anything, Dr. Hannah. I use nothing and spend nothing.”
“But they came all this way,” I said. “You took a bath. You even brushed your teeth. I mean, don’t you want to see them?”
Eggers leveled his eyes at me, in sadness or anger, I couldn’t tell.
He said, “They’re not really here to see me.”
“Nonsense,” I told him. “It’s Parents Weekend.”
“Dad’s old accountant is in Club Fed,” Eggers said, nodding uphill to the prison. “My parents have a big interest in keeping him happy. If they’re in South Dakota, it’s to sweet-talk him.”
I held my hands out, as if to say, Come on. “Eggers, they practically landed their helicopter on the party. Of course they’re here to see you.”
“Wardens don’t take kindly to private helicopters landing in their prisons,” he said. “And what you’re not getting, Dr. Hannah, is that I’ve chosen to live in a time in which people don’t have the luxury of only pretending they care. In my world, relationships aren’t about lip service or social calls. In my time, family is all that matters.”
“But you’re all alone,” I told him. “You’re the only Clovis on earth.”
Eggers picked up the ends of the tusks and held them at his waist. “We’ll see about that,” he said.
Now I was angry. “You don’t walk away from people who care about you,” I told him. “No Clovis would ditch his parents this way.”
Eggers leaned forward, breaking the sled loose from the snow. “My parents are wonderful people,” he said over his shoulder. “Three gin-and-tonics and my father’ll fund any fellowship you want. A couple rum runners to wash down the mood pills, and my mother will—”