Free A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnston

very there every time he pushed another heap beneath the bed or made room for another in the closet? It would be hard to convince himself that they were not the measure of how much of his life he had so far wasted.
    Perhaps he was all too typical a Druken, his nature inimical to creation, suited only for destruction.
    “What’s your book about?”
    “I’ll tell you when it’s finished.”
    “A secret.”
    “Not really. Just for now.”
    “You should read your book to me.”
    “I will when it’s finished.”
    “When will that be?”
    “I don’t know. It’s hard to put people into words.”
    While Landish was writing, Deacon would stare at him. Landish would look up and Deacon would look away.
    Landish didn’t notice anything while he was trying to put people into words. Maybe he could hear them in his head. “Characters,” Landish called them. Landish could hear them but Deacon couldn’t. Deacon wasn’t a character. Landish didn’t notice Deacon. He acted as if Deacon wasn’t there. Landish shielded his face with his hand. He hunched over the table. He pressed down with his pen so hard that Deacon heard the writing from his bed. The table shook. Landish whispered as if he was talking to the people in his book. Deacon thought they must be more fun to spend time with than a runt like him. It bothered Landish when Deacon moved or made a sound. He looked at Deacon like he was about to shout at him but all he did was sigh and shake his head.
    When Landish took a break from writing, he put a blank piece of paper on top of the pile of paper and a beach rock the size of his fist on top of that. That meant that he wasn’t done for the night, just taking a break. He would read for a while, or nap, or sit and stare into the fire. The rock was to keep the papers in place. Landish told Deacon that he was also to think of the rock as a lock. He asked him to promise not to move the rock and Deacon promised. He made him promise with his left hand on the rock and his right hand held up like in court.
    “The book is not your rival,” Landish said, and explained what “rival” meant. Still, Deacon would look at the pile of paper on his desk and feel the urge to burn it in the fireplace. Other times, when he watched Landish feed page after page into the fire, he was glad. But then he felt bad for Landish, and thought how sad and angry he’d be if Deacon burned his book. It was Landish’s book. No one else was allowed to burn it. Deacon even felt sorry for the people in the book who Landish said would “go down in mystery.” But the next night he would be tempted again by the sight of the pile of paper on the table.
    “It’s about my father,” Landish said. “I haven’t even made up a new name for him yet. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
    But then he said it was about the adventures of Captain Druken, who lived in an attic in a city where no one lived except in attics and the sealers at the seal hunt all lived in one big attic on the ship and the Governor lived in the attic of Government House and the Queen lived in the attic of Buckingham Palace and had to walk through two hundred kitchens to get to her kitchen.
    Landish always looked at the map before he started work on his book.
    He told Deacon the map stood for the world, the way the world might look if you could see it from halfway to the moon, which was too high up for birds. There was nothing halfway to the moon but empty space, nothing to stand on while you looked down at the world. A round map called a globe was even better. Landish grew up in a house that had a globe in every room, but he said that even one was too expensive now.
    A place on the map that was called the key explained the dots. Five dots in descending size. It showed one kind of line that stood for railroads. There was a broken line that connected ports of call.
    But there were no lines of any kind on Newfoundland. There were no lakes, rivers or mountains. It was featureless but