Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan

Author:Erin Swan [Swan, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

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That afternoon I tried. I sat on my balcony with my ream of paper, pen in hand. By Council’s end it had seemed easy. Write a history. I would sound like a textbook. Authoritative. Commanding. Like the ones I read in middle school, with their maps and illustrations and declarative chapter headings. Grand Expeditions. Colonial Conquest. A Path to Revolution.

I bent over and scratched a few words. The Flood. A Family’s Journey. First Days. But what I’d hoped would sound grandiose looked stupid on the page. I tried another heading. Society Building. Then I scribbled each word out.

I was a poet, not a historian. I knew how to string together images, feelings, impressions, not the logical progression of events. Cause and effect. This, then that. I couldn’t, like Gandhi, start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, I could have written, Pa and I took a bus ride south, then a boat. Or, once upon a time my father’s legs were sheared off with surgical precision when his Subaru collided with a bread truck, two sedans, a Smart car, and a convertible. Or, once we lived in a tree-shaded neighborhood in Kansas City and my mother, who was very beautiful and very angry, scrubbed our house until it glittered. Once she and Pa argued about a city flooded with filthy water. Once she refused to accompany us south. Once we left her behind.

That was the problem. I had too many ways to start. Pa had been unrealistic in his expectations. He should have realized history couldn’t be written in the present moment. One had to see the end to recognize the beginning.

I put down my pen. I couldn’t write a history, not then. Instead I rocked in my chair, contemplating my world. My balcony was one in a string of balconies. Its railing was wrought iron, its floor laid with maroon tiles, the grout between them splotched with mold. From its ceiling of warped wooden boards dangled a motionless fan, its blades rusted through. The balcony was attached to a Creole Townhouse, not to be confused with a Cottage or Shotgun or Double Gallery. Those others were too low to be of use. Our Townhouse boasted pine boards, polished oak, glass wavy with age. In other buildings—along Canal, on the other side of North Rampart—the glass was bulletproof. That was a necessity before our Flood, Pa said, but the city is safe now.

The wood of my rocking chair was fat with moisture, its veneer sticky under my elbows. Another rocker waited to my left, in case of visitors. Behind me lay our sleeping place. My camping mat was gray, Pa’s black. We each possessed a plastic shower curtain for privacy. In our shared space, we kept a collection of jugs for rainwater, two candleholders, the can of house paint I used for my poems. The walls were burgundy, chipped here and there to reveal pale blue, and underneath that, ugly yellow. The walls told their own history,

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