The World Without Flags

by Ben Lyle Bedard

  “Look at me,” Randy says. I don’t. “Look at me!” he cries again. But I don’t. I don’t care what happens. I don’t care what he does. It’s all been for nothing.

  “Just shoot me,” I tell him. “Stop talking and shoot.”

  I feel my head snapped back as he claws at my hair. “You listen to me,” he hisses. “You think it can’t get any worse for you? You look at me or I swear to God I’ll keep you dying for a week.”

  Reluctantly I open my eyes. For a second all I can see is Randy’s jacket, and then he strides through the cold water and turns back toward me. Grinning as malevolent as a troll, he points his gun at my forehead. Behind him, Eric’s body rotates silently in the water. I have no feeling left. Not even fear. Just a fatigue so profound, heavy as a thousand dark worlds, that I am looking forward to his bullet, looking forward to the endless rest and the comforting darkness. I don’t have anything left in me. It’s over.

  “All of this for a goddamn Zombie,” Randy hisses.

  “Eric’s not a Zombie,” I tell him. “He’s my father.”

  “No, he’s not!” Randy yells. “You stupid little bitch, look at him!” Randy points his gun toward Eric’s corpse while he looks at me. “He’s white as mayonnaise and you’re black as charcoal! You ever look in the mirror, for crying out loud?”

  I’m not sure if I’m seeing what I see. I blink. I see it again. I see Eric’s hand twitch.

  “He’s got blue eyes! Your eyes are the color of horseshit! That ever make you think?”

  Eric begins to move. His arms reach down through the water to the stones of the riverbed. His body stops rotating. My eyes widen in disbelief.

  Randy points the gun at me again. “All you had to do was let Eric die! That’s all you had to do. Just let him die! Everyone dies, you know, it’s not such a big fucking deal!”

  Putting his legs underneath him, Eric rises out of the water behind Randy. If Randy wasn’t screaming at me, he might notice. The red bandana around Eric’s eyes slips away. His blue eyes are clear as a summer sky, but his face is dark with fury.

  “Now you’ve ruined everything for me, you stupid, little bit—”

  Eric’s arms wrap themselves around Randy and lift him out of the water. Randy’s eyes go wide and he drops his gun as he flails his arms to free himself. With arms formed by years of chopping trees, Eric easily begins to crush him. Randy’s eyes bulge and his face turns red and then purple. I hear the sickening crack of his ribs and Randy squeals in pain. Eric cries out and throws him down into the water with intense violence. Striding forward, Eric puts his knee on Randy’s back and pins him under the water.

  Regaining myself, I splash forward through the water and cling to Eric.

  “No!” I cry. “No, don’t! Don’t kill him!”

  At first, Eric doesn’t listen to me. His body is like steel, holding Randy underwater.

  “We need him to talk!” I cry. “Think about it! Think!” I shake him. “Think!”

  Eric suddenly lurches off Randy and then drags the man to the shore. Randy splutters up water and then, rolling to his back, he passes out. Eric stands up and looks around him. Trembling, I walk to him and take his hands. “Eric?” I look up at him.

  He looks back, his eyes unfocused, cloudy with confusion. Looking at me, this slowly fades as his eyes come to rest on me. “Birdie?” He reaches out his arms toward me.

  It isn’t until I hear his voice that I realize I never really believed he would survive. Not until this moment. I collapse into his arms, crying and gasping for breath. The tears shudder through my body like spasms beyond my control. Eric doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just holds me and lets me cry.

  Finally, after a long time, I stop crying and look up at him, wiping my tears away.

  “Birdie,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Where the hell are we?”

  160

  Back at the Homestead, I have to help support Pest to the cemetery garden. Randy shot him, well, there’s no delicate way to put it, Randy shot Pest in the butt. I should say buttocks. When I say butt, I want to laugh, but it’s not funny. Really, it’s not. Pest has a hard time walking and sleeping, and Eric says it will probably be a few more weeks before it gets too much better. Bringing him with me wasn’t my idea, I thought he’d be better at home, resting, but the truth is, after all we went through together, we don’t like to be apart. Eric lets Pest sleep in our house, on a mattress near the stove. Sometimes at night, I have to whisper down to make sure he’s there. He always is.

  When we get to the cemetery, I take out the blankets and get a place ready for Pest. As you can imagine, it’s very difficult for him to sit, and it’s complicated to get him comfortable. He doesn’t complain or anything, but I can tell when he’s in pain. It takes a few minutes to get him just right under the tree with the blankets.

  “Thanks,” he tells me. “Now stop worrying about me. Do your thing.” He smiles at me and takes out a book that Eric gave to him. For a minute, I see him look out toward the fields. Like me, I think he sees the people he misses. Rebok and Crypt and all the others from the goon squad. His eyes look tired for a second and then he turns his attention back to the book.

  I sit down and get out my drawing materials. The paper is yellow and brittle with age, and reminds me that I’m going to have to learn how to make paper, but the pencils are top notch. Boston and Sydney brought them to me from Boston. After the Barber funeral, which, by the way, also stopped the war, at least for now, Boston and Sydney have been coming regularly up north, establishing a safe, but not entirely safe, trading route. They always visit me and bring me stuff. I don’t know if they do it to make me feel better or for themselves. It’s awkward. As I look at my fancy pencils, I think Boston and Sydney must feel pretty guilty for almost shooting me to hunt these bad boys down. By the time we dragged Randy back to camp, they had found some oatmeal bars laced with Worms in Randy’s bag, and when he tried to lie his way out of that, they found a lot more of them back at the warehouse where Dr. Bragg did his. . .work. Not only that, but there were a lot of idiots there who were more than happy to tell them the whole process of how they kidnapped people with the Worm and gave them to the Doctor. The warehouse itself was full of evidence, including several notebooks penned by the dear departed Doctor. There was plenty of evidence to hang Randy, but they didn’t. They shot him instead.

  I begin to sketch out the cemetery. It’s not the time of year to start thinking about the new calendar, but this year, I want to do something special. It’s been a rough year for everyone, and we all need to remember it. Summer is nearly over, but a lot of the flowers are out in full bloom. There must be twenty different species, all different colors, all different shapes, red triangles and orange ellipses and buttery yellow circles. It will take a lot of work to sketch them out, but for now, I just outline them.

  I’m just about ready to turn back to my drawing when I see a flash of black and white fur, followed close by a little bundles of yipping mayhem. It’s Queen, the new mother, leading her four puppies to Pest. When the fire started in Cairo, it was too much for her and she ran away. When we left Cairo, she still hadn’t returned, and we all thought she would never come back. But just a few weeks ago she returned, just in time to give birth to four puppies in the barn. They are all glossy brown in color except for one fluffy white one with brown spots which has taken a liking to me. I was going to call him Prince, but with the Good Prince living with us, I thought it would be more appropriate to call him Duke. Now Duke comes up to me, wagging his tail so wildly that he falls over, nipping at my hand as I pat him.

  When the puppies bound away to play in the grass and Queen follows after them, I turn back to my drawing. I’ve been so busy running with Eric and then coming home again that I haven’t had time to think of the people we lost, the people I called my family. Once it was all over, I thought there would be time, but it never seemed to be over. There was always something else to take my time. First there was the
burial at Cairo. Almost everyone in the town was dead. We didn’t get there in time to stop the Stars from shooting everyone with Worm. All we could do was help the few that were left gather up all of the bodies and burn them. The worst was the Good Prince. The day after the Worm broke out in Cairo, they dragged her out of her home, and almost hung her. The man we met on the stairs, Jim, he didn’t let that happen, but they locked her up in church like a criminal in one of the jail cells in the basement. The fires that burned down Cairo spared the church, mostly. After it was all over, the Good Prince left Cairo. Too much had happened for her to stay. Now she lives with us here, in the Homestead, in Beth’s old house. We’re happy to have her, but losing Cairo has broken her heart. She doesn’t talk much anymore, but even so, Eric and I still go sit with her to look out over the fields.

  I begin to sketch out the tree and the roots, the branches and the spreading leaves.

  The days right after the burning of Cairo were hard. Although Boston and Sydney knew we were innocent, after President Barber was shot and killed, there was confusion in the Stars. There were rumors of insurrection, assassination, some fiendish plot by the Gearheads to take control. We had to stay and tell our story at something like a trial held in the church of Cairo, or what was left of it. Some of the back wall was burned out. It was unsettling, but by the time it was over, everyone seemed satisfied that the truth was out. They gave the President a decent funeral. They shot their guns in the air and wrapped up Barber’s body in a flag before they burned him. It was all very solemn, and, I have to say, a little ridiculous. I remember Pest told me after the funeral when we were sure that we were alone that it was a lot of show for nothing. “No one will remember that flag in ten years,” he said. “Someone should have just talked about who he was.” But no one talked about Barber. Maybe no one knew anything about him. Maybe that’s why the flag was so important to them, something that marked him, something that told everyone who he was and what he thought and felt and believed when no one really knew that much at all.

  I start to capture a little of the background. I make sure to catch the sloping hill behind the tree and the fields. This is what we believe. This is more than a place, it’s who we are. I was so happy to see it when we returned that I forgave Franky and Norman and I think they’ve forgiven me, although I do get some looks from time to time, puzzling looks, sad but also hurt? Betrayed? I don’t think they will ever look at me the same way again. I lied to everyone, but I did it for a good reason. They will have to understand that. Now that Eric is back and healthy, they have to admit that I was right to do what I did. I don’t think they like that, but they respect me more for it. They look at me different now. They tell me that I am different, that I’m not the same person I was before. I’m more talkative, they say, and I laugh more. They’re right, I have changed, but I don’t tell them how I think I’ve changed. I don’t tell them that I know things about myself now that I wish I never knew. I’m easier to fool than I ever thought, I’m capable of doing very bad things to survive, and I know a place inside me that is dark and devoid of feeling. Every time I look down at my healing wrist, I’m reminded of just how delicate this whole thing is. Not just life itself, but all the connections between us, all those things that hold us together and make us family and friends and make other people enemies. It can all change. It can all change in a moment.

  I feel a shiver of fear and take a deep breath. I’m not here to think about myself. I’m here to think about them. I open my eyes and sigh and look up at the tree. I would do anything to see them again. All of them who died because they ate an oatmeal bar given to them by someone they trusted. Crypt, Gunner, Rebok, silly boys, always fighting, but I loved them; Matt with his secret suffering; Patrick, Fiona, Peter, Beth, so many. And Artemis. I look down at my paper, my lips trembling. My best friend who always needed hugs I never wanted to give. I take a sharp breath. I haven’t allowed myself to think of her, and now that I do, I suddenly remember how she smelled like candy. I rub my nose and realize that I’m weeping.

  “Are you okay?” I feel Pest’s hand on my shoulder, and I reach out and put my hand on his.

  “I will be,” I say. “Some day.”

  Pest looks at me with sympathy and squeezes my shoulder. I can see that he’s searching for something else to say. I can see the thoughts working there behind his eyes. Such adult thoughts on such a young face. But it doesn’t make me feel weird anymore. All of us who’ve had the Worm have this strange disconnect between our hearts and our body. They don’t seem to match exactly. All the weirdness I’ve ever seen in Pest, now I recognize as part of myself too. Pest’s eyes stop searching for something more to say. He’s smart enough to know that sometimes silence is best. I give his hand a squeeze and then turn back to my paper.

  My pencil hits the page, but doesn’t move. I bite my lip. It’s not easy. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I look up. It’s Eric. Tall and strong, wearing new clothes, his blue eyes shining down on me, I can’t see any sign of the Worm on him. Just last week, he let me cut his hair and shave his scraggly beard. He sits down next to me on the boulder. It’s strange to see how quickly he’s recovered, strange and wonderful.

  “How’s it going?”

  I shrug. Eric looks down at my brief sketch, just light outlines and shapes.

  “I like the flowers,” he tells me.

  I smile at him, and then I can’t resist putting my head on his shoulder. I feel his hand gently hold me, and, for a moment, I can almost imagine that none of this has happened. Nothing has changed. But when I open my eyes, I know that everything has changed, and not all of it has been bad.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Eric. He knows that I mean to say I love him. Eric looks a little surprised, maybe a little embarrassed. He blushes, but he squeezes me.

  “Don’t forget Matt,” he says to me, pointing at the page.

  I sit up and go back to the page. I won’t forget any of them. I want to create a record of them, the people we’ve loved and lost. I want to draw them all under this tree with us, so that we remember them, not for some flag that they were buried with, but for who they were and for how much we loved them, how much they will be missed. I imagine them all standing, smiling, posing for me. Artemis pretends to be shy and then laughs. Quiet, strong Cyrus, Amber in Diane’s arms, Crypt and Rebok embracing each other. Patrick and Fiona stop arguing for a moment to hold each other and look toward me. Lucia is there too, smiling and waving. When I look at the tree again, as Pest sits underneath it, reading, I see two figures that I haven’t planned to be there, my tall, kind father, holding my mother, her slender body and long hair like a song. They’re all here. They’re all with me.

  I put my pencil to the paper, and, sighing to steady my trembling hand, I begin to draw.

  THE END