by Lydia Millet
As the tree climbers struck out together across the field, I felt surprisingly fond of them. Two small figures, a little hunched over, who might have been related. Raised close together in some monkey tribe. Humble, efficient clamberers, at home up in the canopy.
We’d made it to the farm, and it was all because of Burl. Out there the roads had turned into dead ends. Without him we would have driven and driven and got nowhere. Only Burl, Burl and the spark of energy that was his knowledge, had found us a refuge.
JACK AND I were setting down animal cages in the barn when a car horn honked. I went out the creaky wooden door to behold a dreaded thing: a mother.
The fat one.
She got out of her car and stood there, hands on hips, red in the face. She was wearing a long, flowing dress, as though she’d raided the peasant mother’s closet.
“Sukey!” she bellowed. “Sukey!”
So she was Sukey’s mother, after all.
Well, Sukey had bluffed her way out of that one. For a long time. No one had called her bluff, and bluffing was certainly allowed.
But now she’d lost. Miserably.
IT TURNED OUT the fat mother had used her phone’s location tracking to find us. The two of them yelled at each other in the yard. We weren’t coming back to the house, shouted Sukey, so her mother could suck it. We’d stolen cars and had to bring them back, yelled her mother. Actual stolen property! They could report us!
In your dreams, said Sukey.
The others emerged one by one from the cottage and the barn, except for Val and Burl, who were off climbing. Juice even parked his ATV. We were pretty much there for the fat-mother show. Though also nervous. There would be repercussions.
“What are you doing here, trespassing?” shouted the mother. “You could be arrested! You want to land in juvie?”
“Oh please,” said Sukey. “You know I already got a full ride to Brown.”
“You think that gives you immunity?”
“We know the owner, so yeah,” said Sukey, stretching the truth. “It’s all good.”
“Horse pucky,” said her mother.
“We do,” insisted Sukey. “A hobby farmer from SoHo!”
“TriBeCa, actually,” said Terry.
“Then let me talk to her,” said the mother.
“Not here now,” said Sukey. “Obviously.”
“I worry,” said the mother. Her voice changed. It got quavery. “We’re worried about you.”
This was something we hadn’t suspected.
“Huh,” said Sukey. Belligerent. Disbelieving.
“Oh no,” said the mother, and doubled over.
“What,” said Sukey, arms crossed.
“Oh no. My water broke!”
We all stared. I think I can fairly say the general thought was, What the fuck.
“Are you making this up?” said Sukey. “It’s supposed to be another month!”
The fat mother wasn’t so fat.
Or at least, the fatness was temporary.
We saw the so-called water, then. We saw it and we didn’t like it.
“Oh, oh,” moaned Sukey’s mother. “Contraction.”
“Goddamn,” said Sukey. “Goddammit! You mess up everything! Why did you have to come here? Jesus!”
“You have to drive me. Oh! You have to. I can’t drive now. You have to drive me Sukey!”
Sukey looked around at us. Despairing.
“You can always come back,” I suggested.
But it didn’t have the ring of feasibility.
Sukey trudged into the barn, came out with her duffel. She looked down at the ground. Shook her head in defeat.
Then they got into the car, the mother staggering.
And Sukey drove away.
IT WAS ONLY a matter of time until another parent showed up. We should leave too, said Rafe—put our phones in airplane mode and clear out.
He barely had the heart to celebrate his victory. The game was done, but its ending hadn’t left any of us happy.
So we gathered around a campfire when darkness fell trying to find a route to Juicy’s mansion for the morning. Even our former route, with the sparking power lines and downed trees, didn’t come up.
Juicy wanted to smoke the parents’ pot, but we voted against it. We had to keep our wits about us, said Terry.
He tried to drape his arm over Jen’s shoulders, but she shrugged it off. Irritated.
“They wouldn’t resort to force, would they?” said Rafe.
“They can’t outsmart us,” said Terry.
“Don’t be an idiot. If Sukey’s mother could do it, then so can anyone,” said Jen. “She’s borderline retarded.”
Technology was a bitch. Short of disabling or ditching the phones, David said, we couldn’t isolate perfectly.
“Maybe we stay here even if they know,” said Dee. “They’re not going to call the police, are they?”
“We’re not a priority,” said David. “Plus they’re still looking for Amy.”
We noticed Val at the edge of the circle of light. And Burl. They’d come back.
“Went up a hill,” said Burl.
“Hill,” nodded Val. “Went up it.”
“Hill?” asked Low. “There’s a hill around here?”
“Couple miles. Cell tower on the ridge,” said Burl. “Solid reception. Talked to the owner of this place. She said to pass along some ground rules, if we stay.”
Val stepped nearer the fire and lifted her arms, pulling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. We saw words written on the skin in small letters. Ballpoint. She squinted at her right arm first.
“First rules. Uh. She’s the owner. So we gotta do what she says. And also respect her.”
“But how would she know if we didn’t?” asked Juice.
Val shrugged. “Don’t make noise on the weekend.”
“In case the other city people make it up here,” Burl explained. “The weekenders tend to want peace and quiet.”
“Next,” read Val, “respect your elders.”
“Huh. Easier said than done,” said Rafe.
“Hey, I count,” said Burl. “Just try to respect me.”
“No breaking the law,” said Val, and switched from her right arm to her left. “And no sex.”
“What?” squealed Jen.
“Puritanical,” said Terry.
“Frigid,” said Juicy.
“Disrespect. You already broke rule two,” said Jen.
“The other ones are, don’t steal her stuff, tell her what’s up if she checks in, and don’t try to hook up with the neighbors’ kids. Or steal the neighbors’ stuff.”
“She’s pretty hung up on the neighbors,” said David.
“And sex,” said Jen. “Why does she even care?”
“What’s there to steal?” said Rafe. “Donkeys?”
“That’s it,” said Val, and pushed down her sleeves again. “Food, please?”
“So what’s the penalty if we break the rules?” asked Dee.
“Yeah. Are there punishments?” asked Juice.
“How can she punish us if she’s not here?” said Jen.
“Surveillance?” asked David.
“Hey, Evie!” called Jack. He’d just come out of the barn, Shel tagging along behind him. “We took the bandage off. He flies!”
A blur of bird flew away from them onto the roof. It landed and perched on the peak.
Fast healing, was what struck me first.
What struck me second was, maybe the bandage had actually been the culprit.
I mean, they were little kids. Not vets.
But I didn’t say it. Of course not. Jack was my boy.
“That’s amazing!” I said, instead.
David’s phone dinged.
“Huh. The parents are getting sick,” he said, reading.
“Sick how?” I asked.
“Fever and chills. Headaches.”
We looked at Burl.
“Could be anything,” he said modestly.
“Or it could be a plague,” said Dee.
We sat there, saying little.
“Food, please,” repeated Val.
“Pot’s on the stove,” said Jen.
Val and Burl headed off.
The rest of us were silent. I hadn’t taken the plague seriously. For me it had mostly been an excuse to get out. But now?
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I wasn’t sure what we owed the parents, either. Were they desperate? Did they need help?
No one wanted to talk about it. But we were thinking.
Then David’s text alert dinged again.
“Huh,” he said.
“What?” asked Jen.
“My mother says not to come back now.”
“What?” asked Rafe.
“She says it could be catching.”
We sat there in the flicker and glow. I marveled: the parents, caught in a selfless gesture.
I almost wanted to thank them.
RAFE PUT OUT the fire after a while, and that was when, walking back to the barn, I saw the sky and pointed. We stopped and gazed upward.
“What the hell,” said Jen.
There were shifting waves of light above us, green and purple. Bands and rays. Beautiful.
“Psychedelic,” said Juice.
“Impossible,” said David. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s the aurora,” said Jack.
“Aurora borealis,” said Terry.
“I thought those were at the North Pole,” objected Jen.
“And South,” said Rafe.
“Yeah. Penguins can see them,” said Jack.
“My relative saw them. When he conquered the Siberian wastes, one thousand years ago,” said Low. “His name was Genghis Khan.”
Old banana.
“Where are we, anyway?” asked Jen.
Burl was chewing on a stick of something. Beef jerky, maybe. Or red licorice.
“Pennsylvania,” he said. “Near the state line.”
“Did the storm do this?” asked Jen.
“Is it a sign?” asked Low.
“Doubt it,” said Burl, still chewing. “Technically, it’s magnetic activity on the sun’s surface. A solar maximum, maybe.”
He was pretty smart, for a yardman.
Long after the others had slipped into their sleeping bags and tents, I lay out in the grass and watched the green waves. Finally had my alone time.
It was the best light show ever.
Genghis Khan had seen the waves, if you believed Low. The Inuit had seen them. Walruses and penguins. And now I was seeing them. But who would see them later?
I thought of sparkling platforms in space, silver airships moving in front of the billions of stars. I thought of vines that grew over the ruins of buildings and monuments.
I felt an itch and thought, Is there a tick crawling on me? Right this minute? Burrowing into my skin?
And then I thought, Wait. Forget the tick. Why are we always complaining? We get to be alive.
6
IN THE DREAM I was happy to see Sukey’s face. Dear Sukey, I thought, half-asleep. Our ringleader. Dear ringleader. I missed her already. There was brightness around the face, and prickly things stuck into me. I had to get the sharp things out.
They were pieces of straw, because I was in the hayloft and had rolled off my sleeping pad.
“Fuck,” said the face.
So it was really her.
I scrambled up. She knelt next to me, puffing from climbing the loft ladder. Her flashlight was blinding.
“We couldn’t get anywhere,” she panted. “Not even back to the house. The bridge over that stream we crossed coming out? It was caved in! There was, like, half of it left. I tried all the routes. But she won’t walk anymore. I had to practically carry her in.”
“Is she still having a baby?”
What can I say, I was half-asleep.
“She’s downstairs. What am I going to do?”
“What happened to your stepfather? Where’s he?”
“He’s not my stepfather.”
“Whatever, Suke. The baby’s father.”
“They broke up. She found out he hooked up with someone else.”
“What, in the Ecstasy deal?”
“Nah. Before the summer. Whatever. He said he never wanted the baby. Took off for the city when they were buying supplies for the storm. She was going on about it in the car, but I was just like, I told you he was an asshole.”
“We have to call 911.”
“I called from the road. But I couldn’t get through.”
“Keep trying.”
“But the contractions—they’re, like, often.”
I reached over and poked Rafe. He grunted and woke up. Then I poked Jen.
“Stand at that loft door till you get three bars,” I told her, bossy. “We need an ambulance. Or medevac.”
The three of us put on our headlamps and followed Sukey down the ladder. I heard the others stirring. A couple of donkeys had wandered in.
On the ground floor was Sukey’s mother. She sat on a blanket, her legs sticking out in front of her and spread open.
“Thank you, sweet Jesus, for sending that long dress,” murmured Rafe.
The mother was rocking back and forth, moaning.
“We need to get her in the cottage,” said Sukey. “Don’t we? It’s cleaner there.”
The mother shook her head. “I’m not moving,” she said. And moaned again. “I’m not. I’m not moving!”
“Put her in that stall,” called Dee from the loft. “The one with no hay on the floor. I was going to sleep there so I scrubbed it down with bleach. But then I came up here anyway. It still smelled disgusting.”
SUKEY AND I pulled the blanket with the mother sitting on it. We held the two leading corners, the way you drag heavy furniture on a towel or rug. We had to steer around a donkey that wouldn’t move.
The mother swayed backward and fell over like a sack.
“I’ll get Burl,” said Val, swinging down from a rafter. Everyone but the little boys was awake by then.
We sat the mother up again when we had the blanket straight, and then we leaned her against the back wall of the stall. Her eyes were closed. She breathed noisily.
“Pillows?” said Sukey.
“Maybe some ice. Look how she’s sweating,” said Rafe.
“We don’t have ice,” said David.
“I’m sleeping outside,” said Juicy, lugging his sleeping bag across the floor. It swept up pieces of straw, dust, and probably donkey manure.
“Me too,” said Low. “This shit’s hairy.”
“How’d you get born?” yelled Jen, from the hay door. “You think it was a holy stork? All white with virgin choirs singing a hymn? As it flew by and dropped you in a golden crib?”
“It was a vag,” said Sukey.
“Was not,” said Juicy. “I was a C-section.”
“Hold music!” shouted Jen from the loft. “I got the hold music!”
Sukey perked up at that. Until her mother screamed.
And Burl came in. Behind him was a small group of bedraggled people we’d never seen before. Four of them. Beards and greasy hair. Long backpacks loomed up over their shoulders, and as they got nearer, I smelled feet and armpits.
Three men and one woman, if I was pegging the sexes right. Only the beards tipped me off. Their skin and hair and clothing were all the same color: dirt.
“Who are these jokers?” asked Sukey.
“Came off the Appalachian Trail. They’re trail angels,” said Burl.
“That sounds gay,” said Juice.
“I warned you not to say gay like that,” said Rafe. “Now I have to rain hellfire down on your stupid head.”
“What’s a trail angel?” asked Jen.
“They go to spots on the trail and leave water and food there,” said Burl. “Charity. You know, for long-distance hikers. The ones that hike the whole two thousand miles.”
“Someone walk
s for two thousand miles?” asked Sukey.
“Thru-hikers. Most trail angels just leave stuff where they can drive to. These ones were more hardcore,” said Burl.
“We were on a weeklong backpack for food delivery,” said one of the men. “Just finishing up when the storm hit.”
“Hey. Anyone with a medical background?” asked Burl, turning to the group. “We have a woman in labor here.”
“Here. Name’s Luca. Had some EMT training,” said one of the angels.
Sukey beckoned him over. Her mother screamed again—less of a scream than a roar.
“I’ll do what I can,” said Luca, and swung his pack off his back. The other angels were putting their packs down too. I might have asked Burl how he’d picked them to join us, but I was too relieved to think of it.
“Sukey! I need Sukey!” grunted the mother.
“I’ll be back,” said Sukey. “Just gotta wash my hands.”
“What’s our address?” called Jen from above. “I got someone! I got an operator!”
Burl scrambled up the ladder and took the phone.
“It’s a dirt road,” he said, and gave some directions. “The nearest town? Uh, so. It’s in the middle of nowhere. But east of our location is a town called Alpha. West is Bethlehem.”
Luckily Jack was a heavy sleeper.
MOST OF US left the barn then, claiming the scene was none of their business. I didn’t think it was mine either, but Jen and I had to stay, because Sukey asked us to.
No ambulance ever showed.
When the top of the baby’s head was emerging and angels were murmuring words of encouragement, I stepped out of the stall. The mother was squirming and growling. I wanted to look at anything else so I chose one of Jack’s brown mammals, maybe a groundhog. I squatted next to its cage and tried to see its face, but it had its back to me. I stared at its fur. We were both mammals, I thought.
So we had that in common.
The baby wailed.
That was how Sukey got a sister. But her mother wouldn’t stop bleeding.
And so her mother died.
WE FELT FAR away for a while. In shock, I guess. On the one hand, we hardly knew Sukey’s mother. Along with the rest of the parents, she’d pretty much gotten on our nerves. Though I didn’t want to dwell on that.