by Joe Hill
“Lindy,” Connor pleaded, although what he was pleading for, Harper couldn’t guess.
Because Lindy was awful, an awful person, someone who liked being a mother because it gave her a child and a husband to bully. Everything about her was horrible, from her pointy nose to her pointy little tits to her pointed, shrill voice . . . but she was right. Harper was a loaded gun now, and you didn’t leave a loaded gun where a child could come upon it. The thought crossed Harper’s mind, not for the first time, that choosing to try to live was, in some ways, a monstrous act, an act of towering, possibly homicidal selfishness. Her death was a certainty now and she felt everything depended on not taking anyone else with her, in not putting anyone at risk.
But someone is already at risk. The baby is at risk.
Harper shut her eyes. A pair of candles burned on the coffee table, and she could dimly apprehend their light through her eyelids, a sickly red glow.
“Connor,” Harper said. “Lindy is right. I wasn’t thinking. I’m just scared.”
“Of course you are,” Lindy said. “Oh, of course you are, Harper.”
“It was wrong to ask. I’ve been knocking around by myself for too long—Jakob left last month, so he wouldn’t get it, too. You spend too much time alone, you can talk yourself into some really rotten ideas.”
“You ought to call your father,” Lindy said. “Fill him in on what’s happening.”
“What?” Connor cried. “Jesus, Dad can’t know about this! It’ll kill him. He had a heart attack last year, Lindy. You want him to have another?”
“He’s a smart man. He might have some ideas. Besides, your parents have a right to know. Harper ought to be the one to explain to them the situation she’s put us all in.”
Connor was sputtering. “If it doesn’t stop his heart, it’ll break it. Lindy, Lindy.”
“You might be right, Lindy,” Harper said. “You’re the most practical of any of us. I might have to call Mom and Dad at some point. But not tonight. I’ve only got three percent charge left on my phone, and I don’t want to give them the bad news and then get disconnected. I want you to promise you’ll let me tell them. I don’t want them to hear it from you and not be able to get in touch with me. Besides, like you said: I made this situation, I’m the one who has to bear the responsibility.”
Harper didn’t have any intention of calling her parents and telling them she would likely be dead within a year. There would be no good in it. They were in their late sixties, stranded in God’s waiting room, a.k.a. Florida. They couldn’t help her from there and they couldn’t come to her; all they could do was get an early start on mourning her, and Harper didn’t see the point.
Nothing mollified Lindy faster than someone telling her she was right, however, and when she spoke again, a kind of hushed calm had come into her voice. “Of course I’ll let you be the one to tell them. You speak to them when you can, and when you’re ready. If they need someone to talk to, we’ll do what we can to comfort them from our end.” In a distraught, distracted voice, she added: “Maybe this is the thing that will finally bring your mother and me together.”
There was a silver lining, Harper thought. Maybe she was going to burn to death, but at least it would give Lindy a chance to bond with her mother-in-law.
“Lindy? Connor? My phone is about to die and I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again. I haven’t had power in the house for days. Can I say good night to Connor Jr.? It must almost be his bedtime.”
“Ah, Harper,” Connor said. “I don’t know.”
“Of course she can say good night to him,” Lindy said, on Harper’s side now.
“Harp, you aren’t going to tell the little guy you’re sick, are you?”
“Of course she won’t,” Lindy said.
“I—I don’t think you should tell him about the baby, either. I don’t want him to get the idea in his head that he’s going to have a— Jesus, Harper. This is really hard.” He sounded like he was trying not to cry. “I want to put my arms around you, Sis.”
She said, “I love you, Con,” because whatever Jakob believed about those three words, they still mattered to Harper. They were as close to an incantation as any she knew, had power other words lacked.
“I’ll put Junior on,” Lindy said, her voice gentle, hushed, as if she were speaking in a church. There was a plasticky clatter as she put her extension down.
Her brother said, “Don’t be mad. Don’t hate us, Harper.” He was speaking in a whisper, too, his voice hitching with grief.
“I would never,” she said to her brother. “You have to take care of each other. What Lindy said is just right. You’re doing the right thing.”
“Oh, Harp,” Connor said. He inhaled deeply, a wet, choked breath, and said, “Here comes the kid.”
There followed a moment of silence as he passed the phone over. Perhaps because it was so quiet, Harper caught a noise in the street, the gravelly rumble and crash of a big truck moving along the road. She was unused to hearing traffic after dark, these days. There was a curfew.
Connor Jr. said, “Hi, Harper,” bringing her thoughts back to the world on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Connor Jr.”
“Daddy is crying. He says he hit his head on sumpin’.”
“You have to give him a kiss and make it better.”
“Okay. Are you crying? Why are you crying, too? Did you hit your head?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone is hitting their head!”
“It’s that kind of night.”
Something thumped. Connor Jr. cried, “I just hit my head!”
“Don’t do that,” Harper said.
Harper noticed, in a distracted, half-conscious way, that the big truck she had heard earlier was still out in the street, still rumbling.
The thump thumped again.
“I hit my head again!” Connor Jr. said happily. “We all hit our heads!”
“No more,” Harper said. “You’ll give yourself a headache.”
“I did give myself a headache,” he announced with great cheer.
She kissed the phone with a loud wet smack. “I kissed the phone. Did you feel it?”
“Uh-huh! I did. Thank you. I feel better already.”
“Good,” she said.
The knocker slammed on the front door. Harper came up off the couch, as startled as if she had heard a shot in the street.
“Did you just thump your head again?” Connor Jr. asked. “I heard you thump it real hard!”
Harper took a step toward the front hall. The thought was in her that she was walking in the wrong direction—she ought to be headed for the bedroom to get her carpetbag. She couldn’t think of a single person who might be at the door this time of the evening that she would want to see.
“Do you want a kiss to make it better?” Connor Jr. said.
“Sure. A kiss to make it better and a kiss good night,” she said.
She heard a damp smooch, and then, in a soft, almost shy tone, Connor Jr. said, “There. That should do it.”
“It did.”
“I have to go now. I got to brush my teeth. Then I get my story.”
“Go have your story, Connor Jr.,” she said. “Good night.”
Out in the hall she heard a sound she didn’t recognize: a rattling-rasping click-and-clack. A muted bang. She waited for Connor Jr. to say good night back to her, but he never did, and at last it came to her that there was something different about the silence on the other end of the line. When she lowered her phone she discovered it was dead, had lost the last of its charge. It was just a paperweight now.
The raspy click-clack-bang came once more.
Harper stepped into the front hall but held up, two yards from the door, listening to the stillness.
“Hello?” she asked.
The door opened four inches before the chain caught it with another loud rattly bang. Jakob peered through the open space into the hallway.
“Harper,” he s
aid. “Hey, wanna let me in? I want to talk.”
13
She stood just beyond the entrance to the den, looking down the hall at the piece of Jakob she could see through the gap between door and frame. He had a four-day growth on his long, hollow-eyed face. They had talked, the way people do, about who would play them in the movie version of their lives (why anyone would want to make a movie about an elementary school nurse and a man who answered phones for the Public Works Department was another question). She had thought Jason Patric, or maybe young Johnny Depp for him, someone dark and wiry who looked like he could do a handstand and who might occasionally write poetry. Right now he looked like Jason Patric or Johnny Depp in a movie about heroin addiction. His face was damp with sweat, and his eyes glittered with a fever brightness. (Casting Harper had been easier—Julie Andrews, obviously, Julie Andrews at twenty-eight, not because they looked anything alike, but because Harper wouldn’t consider anyone else for the part. If they couldn’t get Julie Andrews at twenty-eight, then they’d just have to call the movie off.)
He had not come home on his bike. Beyond him, idling alongside the curb, was one of the town trucks, a pumpkin-colored 2.5-ton Freightliner with a big snow-wing plow on the front, battered and blackened from hard use. They had kept the plows running day and night, clearing wreckage out of the roads. There was always a car burning somewhere that had to be moved.
She started down the hallway, hugging herself. The air coming through the open slot of the door was cool and smelled of fall, that spicy-sweet odor of apples and crushed autumn leaves and distant smoke. Always smoke.
“You should’ve called,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming over. I was going to sleep soon. I probably wouldn’t have heard you.”
“I would’ve got in somehow. Kicked a window in.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. There’s no oil in the boiler. It’s hard enough keeping this house warm without windows bashed in. It’s getting cold out there.”
“You aren’t kidding. Want to let me in?”
She didn’t much care to answer that question, not even to herself.
Harper wished he had come during the day. She could readily imagine unthreading the chain for him on a bright, sunny afternoon. But with the October darkness behind him, and the October chill coming through the gap between door and frame, it was impossible not to think about the last time they’d talked, and how he had made coming home sound like a threat.
She pushed out a deep breath and said, “How are you?”
“Better. A lot better, Harp. I’m sorry I freaked you out.” He gave her a hangdog look from beneath his long, almost girlish eyelashes.
“What about the spore? You were worried you were infected. Have you seen any other marks on you?”
“No. Nope. I panicked. I lost it. No excuses. I’m all right—except for an incurable case of shame. You’ve got the Dragonscale, but I’m the one who has been acting like—like—” He looked away, back toward his Freightliner, then said, “Shit. Should I go? Come back tomorrow? I just—wanted to talk about stuff. I was overcome with a sudden late-night desire to convince my wife I’m not a hysterical piece of shit.”
“I want to talk, too. I think we need to.”
“Right?” he said. “About the baby? If we’re going to do this thing—if we’re going to have this kid—we’re going to need a plan. Next March is a long way off. You want to unlock this gun, though? I’m cold.”
“Hang on,” she said. She pushed the door shut and put her hand on the chain. She slid it down the slot, to the open hole, then caught herself, playing back what he had just said. She had misheard him, she thought. Her ears had played a trick on her.
“Jakob,” she said, holding the chain in place. “Did you say something about a gun?”
“What? No. No. I don’t—would you let me in? I’m freezing my narrow little ass off out here.”
She looked through the peephole. He stood very close to it, so she could only see his right ear, part of his face.
“Jakob,” she said. “You’re scaring me a little. Will you show me your hands?”
“Okay. I think you’re the one being paranoid now, but okay. Now watch. Here are my hands.” He took a step back from the door and held out his hands to either side of his body.
His left foot shot up and into the door. The chain flew loose. The door smashed her in the face and drove her stumbling back and down onto her ass.
His right hand came up with the gun, a small revolver, pulling it from one deep pocket of his track pants. He did not point it at her. He stepped in through the door and elbowed it shut behind him.
“I want things to be nice,” he said. He held his free hand up, palm out, in a placating gesture.
She got up on all fours and started to scramble away, trying to stand.
“Stop,” he said.
She didn’t stop. She thought she could get around the corner and into the kitchen, make it down the stairs to the basement and out the back door. When she stood, though, he kicked the back of her left leg, behind the knee, and she went down again.
“Babygirl, stop,” he said. “Don’t.”
She rolled onto her side. He stood over her with the gun, giving her a perplexed look.
“Stop,” he repeated. “I don’t want it to be like this. I want things to be like we talked about. I want things to be nice.”
She began to crawl again. When he took a step toward her, she grabbed at the side table, the one with the driftwood lamp on it, and twisted it, trying to throw it at him. He batted it aside, hardly glanced at it, his gaze fixed on her.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. The thought makes me sick.”
He reached out with his left hand, offering to help her up. When she didn’t take it, he bent forward and grabbed her upper arm and dragged her to her feet. She struggled to pull loose but he yanked her off balance so she fell against him, into his chest. Then he wrapped her in an embrace, holding her against him.
“Please,” he said, rocking back and forth with her. “Please. I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. We have a right to be scared. We’ve both got this thing and we’re dying.” The gun was there, against the small of her back. Her shirt was hiked up and she could feel cold metal against her spine. “I want it to be like we talked about. I want it to be nice. I want it to be good and easy. I don’t want to go out desperate and scared and crying, and I don’t want you to die that way, either. I adore you too much for that.”
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “We don’t know if you’re sick. I don’t want to pass it to you.”
“I know it. I know I have it. I know I’m going to die. We both are. It’s just a matter of how.”
He loosened his grip on her. He was kissing her—sweetly, devoutly. He kissed her hair. He kissed her forehead. When she shut her eyes, he kissed her eyelids, each one, and she shivered.
“You shouldn’t kiss me,” she whispered.
“How am I supposed to keep from kissing you? It was the sweetest thing I ever had.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his face. “Jakob. I can feel you’re hot, but I don’t see any marks on you. How can you be sure you’re infected?”
He shook his head. “My hip. It started yesterday and it’s got worse and worse. My whole hip is on fire.”
Jakob had his right arm loosely around her waist, the gun grazing her spine. He reached up with his other hand and drew his knuckles along her cheek in a gentle, smoothing gesture. She shivered helplessly.
“Let’s go sit down. Let’s have it like we talked about. Let’s have it nice, just like we both wanted.”
14
He steered her into the den, where, half a year before, they had sat together drinking white wine and watching people jump from the top of the Space Needle. He gripped her upper arm like he was preparing to disjoint it, twist it loose from her body the way a person might wrench a drumstick off a roast chicken. Then he seemed to realize he was hurting
her and he let go and slipped his palm—gently, almost tenderly—along her biceps.
The shadows in the room shifted this way and that in the red candlelight.
“Let’s sit,” said the shadow beside her, one among the many. “Let’s talk.”
Jakob sank into his favorite chair, the Great Egg of Jakob . . . a chair made of wicker with an egg-shaped frame and a hole in the side, a cushion nestled within. He was a small man and he could cross his legs Buddha-style and still fit himself entirely within the wicker teardrop. He put the gun in his lap.
She perched on the edge of the coffee table to face him. “I want to look at your hip. I want to see the ’scale.”
“You want to tell me I don’t have it, but I know I have it.”
“Will you show me your hip?”
He paused, then stretched one leg out through the egg, and rolled a little onto his side. Jakob pushed down the elastic waistband of his track pants, to show her the hollow of his right hip, which was a bloody, abraded mess. The flesh was yellowish-black beneath a cross-hatching of deep scratches. It appalled her to look at it.
“Oh, Jakob. What did you do? I told you, if you find a mark on you, leave it alone.”
“I can’t stand to look at it. I can’t stand to have it on me. I don’t know how you can bear it. I get a little nuts. I tried scraping it off with a razor.” He made a choked, ragged noise that could not quite pass for laughter.
Harper narrowed her eyes, looking it over, “The ’scale calcifies into bright flecks. I don’t see any flecks.”
“It’s yellow. All around the edges.”
“That’s bruise. That’s just bruise. Jakob . . . is this the only mark on you?”
“On the inside of my knee. And an elbow. Don’t ask to see them. I’m not here for a medical exam.” He turned to sit properly and allowed the waistband of his track pants to snap back into place.