Ladder Pandemic
Deep into pandemic, I’m home making coffee and getting into a tub to heal myself from a recent surgery.
I haven’t had to go to the hospital in thirty years (of my forty-three on this earth) but the moment the hospitals are overrun with the most catchy virus in one hundred years, I get a little cancer. C’est la vie. That’s neither here nor there. I was making coffee and getting to the bath with a story. I’m trying to make my way through the pile of literary magazines I subscribed to when the pandemic started. (Subscribing to things has become a thing - food subscriptions, wine subscriptions, news and lit, anything that can periodically show up at the door and feel like a good surprise in the darkness).
Next in the pile was the story “Summer of Ladders.” I have been thinking about the pandemic like most people probably are if you are a quarantined person - watching it from inside but also from afar. We kind of look out the window at a world so close so far. We wonder about the people wearing no masks, sort of wondering, when will it catch up with them? Are they right that the odds are in their favor? Or are they just inherently the people who enjoy risk? And, the more you see together, the more they seem to thrive on each other’s rebellious anti-Fauci demonstration. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have cancer and a wife with her own asthma issues - would I be out there with them? Or would I control the urge to run in the sun, drink at a bar, flaunt a mask-free visage for all my friends?
I don’t know.
But the striking things about the ladders story was the way it spoke about the way people’s curiosity and rebellions can be fed by small amounts of success, then suddenly leading to outbreaks across an entire once-calm world. It’s hard to imagine the story is not about the pandemic. I was pretty happy to seem such a beautiful way to depict the behavior - no shame. The story felt like praise for curiosity, the spirit of humanity, the dream of escape.
If you are interested, “Summer of Ladders” by Steven Millhausser is Free to read on Zooeytrope All-Story but I also recommend subscribing. No other periodical comes in a different print format every issue by a crazy array of designers. There’s usually only 3-4 stories - always good and curated, and usually one from the past that keeps you feeling connected to other times.
