Secret Lives Read Free Page A

was so small, it wouldn’t show up on a map?
    He shook his head. Well, it was probably a fake stamp. A postal employee had stuck it in there as a joke. Why should he waste his time with it?
    But that night, as he tried to get to sleep, he recalled the weathered quality of the stamp, the yellowish stain on the back, the high quality of the image on the front, and something about it worried at him, made him toss and turn. When he did finally get to sleep, he dreamed he stood in front of a huge rendering of the stamp that blotted out the sky. The image in the stamp was composed of huge dots, but the dots began to bleed together, and then swirled into a photograph that became a living, moving scene, and the edges of the stamp were just a portal. On the plains, strange animals were moving. In the river, birds dove for fish. The mountains in the distance were wreathed with cloud. A smell came to him, of mint and chocolate and fresh days far from the choking, clogging pollution of cities. Then the stars came up in a sky of purest black and blotted it all out, and he woke gasping for breath, afraid, so afraid, that he might forget this glimpse, this door into the Republic of Sonoria.
    For a week, the dreams were enough. They came to him more and more frequently—sometimes even while he nodded off after lunch during the daytime—and the details of them grew more and more vivid. He woke from them refreshed, reinvigorated, and everything around him seemed brighter, more intense. Sometimes, in his dreams, he walked along the river bank. Sometimes, he ran through the plains. Sometimes, he walked toward the mountains, although he never reached them. He never saw a single person in these dreams, but animals and plants and birds and fish were all around him, performing their ancient routines.
    Once a day, he took out the stamp and stared at it, fixing it in his imagination. But, each time he did so, the stamp lost a little of its intensity for him. And, after a time, so did the dreams. The dreams became as faded as the stamp. The stamp became as faded as the dreams.
    Normally, for Minneman, this would have been enough. It was not that he lacked a spirit of adventure. It was more that he had done many things in his life, and he liked a certain sense of order.
    But now, he fidgeted. He walked back and forth across the living room, upset that he could not fix the image from the stamp in his mind as clearly as he had before. The Republic of Sonoria. Where might that be? He didn’t know, but he knew that in his dreams, he had drawn his hand across the surface of the water of a mighty river and felt the thick wetness of it against his skin. He knew that his pants had been stained with the yellow-green of the grass of the plains. His face had felt the breath of that place upon it. He had smelled the essence of it. No dream had ever been so real, so true.
    After seven days of this, Minneman could take it no longer. He called the post office, asked to speak to whatever employee might have sent him the Lewis & Clarke stamp set. Was told it was impossible—it could have been anyone. Asked if they had ever heard of the Republic of Sonoria—was it in their system as a destination? Was told it was not, with a sort of heightened concern in the voice of the woman he was speaking to. Hung up. Sat down at the computer and began a search for “Republic of Sonoria,” and when that didn’t work, “Republic of Slonoria,” “Sembla,” “Shonoria,” “Sonora,” hoping ludicrously that the name on the stamp might be misspelled. Hopeless again in the thought that the stamp was simply a fake, and all this effort a waste.
    The more the dreams faded in intensity, the more the little weathered stamp failed to anchor his imagination, the more frantic he became, the more lost, even though surrounded by the familiar.
    His friends and family became worried, but said nothing. “Minneman’s on a mission,” they muttered to each other, rolling their eyes.