by Jack Vivace
nearly fell out on top of her. She screamed, caught off guard, and I dove forward to catch him before he hit the ground.
The door across the street opened and a middle-aged woman looked out. “Jane, is that you? You okay?”
“I’m fine, thanks!” she called back. The woman didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t go back inside, either, just watched as the two of us did our best to carry Saul up to the house and inside.
We got him onto the couch and I pulled one of grandma’s afghans over him. He was more pale than I’d thought. It didn’t look good.
“I should start dinner,” Janie said. “Can you get some firewood from out back? I’ve had to rough it for cooking, I ran out of charcoal and there’s no stove.” She pointed toward the kitchen. I passed through on my way to the back door and admired the BBQ grill she’d turned into a fire pit. There wouldn’t be room for a lot of the wood, I figured I just needed to grab one or two pieces.
When I went out back, I noticed there wasn’t much left in the wood pile. Good thing we didn’t need much. What stopped me, though, was the pile of dirt in the far corner of the yard. Janie had rigged up two crosses at the far side of it.
“I should have warned you,” she said quietly, coming up behind me.
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have left you all. Dad was right.”
Janie put her arms around me. “Maybe you’d be dead too, if you’d been here.”
“Maybe,” I told her, but I didn’t believe it.
When we got inside, Saul’s breathing was ragged and he was shaking under the blanket. I suspected then that it was a lost cause. I got a fresh washcloth and started to clean the wound again, but by this point I could see the angry red lines of infection darting across his skin. I put a cold compress on his forehead and he calmed a little.
“He’s not going to make it,” Janie said, matter of fact.
“He saved my life,” I told her. “The least I can do is sit with him.” She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. I heard the backdoor open. An hour later, she came through again, told me she was going to bed, wished me well.
I stayed with him through the night, changing out the cold compresses and trying to soothe him as much as I could. In the big picture, though, it didn’t make a difference.
The sky outside the window was starting to lighten when I realized I couldn’t hear him breathing anymore.
I went out the back door for some air and realized what she’d been doing out here last night. A second grave waited next to our parents. I went back inside, exhausted, but too wary of his infection to wait. Maybe I’d already been exposed, maybe it was a regular infection and not plague. But there was nothing to gain from waiting.
Instead I brought him out into the lightening back yard and lowered him into the hole as gracefully as I could manage. Janie had left the shovel nearby, and I took my time filling the grave in, saying as many prayers as I could remember from funerals I’d gone to, and then reciting whatever came to mind.
By the time I was done, my hands were numb. I went back inside, exhausted, and went through the living room. My old bedroom was just as I’d left it aside from the thick layer of dust on everything. I didn’t even bother to pull back the quilt, just fell on top of it and went to sleep almost instantly.
Salt Lake City and Beyond, April 2013
The banging on the door woke me up. It startled me, and I didn’t remember where I was right away, or what I was doing there. The memories sorted into place, slowly, interrupted every few seconds by more banging.
Eventually Janie came out from the bedroom and walked past me to open the door.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
Oh, right. She’d said the doctor would be around today. Little late, though.
“Good morning, Janie. Missus Morris across the street said you had some trouble yesterday.”
That was a very genteel way to describe it. I thought about Saul, immediately forced it away. There was company. I knew how to act in front of company.
“My sister came; you remember Lacey, don’t you?”
I looked over and smiled my best polite smile. I did remember him, now that I got a look. He’d been our pediatrician as long as I could remember, with a tiny office attached to his house. It didn’t surprise me that he was taking care of everyone.
“Hello, Doctor,” I said, walking over to the door. I didn’t think I was shaking, though I was sure I still looked a mess. I hadn’t had a chance to change out of the stained dress.
“Good to have you back, Lacey. Something you need me to take a look at there?” I told him I’d been shot and done my best to clean it. I didn’t go into the exact circumstances; it felt like I’d been shedding parts of myself the whole way here, details left strung across the desert. All I had left was who I’d been before I left here.
He told me my stitches looked good. “What about the fellow Missus Morris saw you carry in?”
“He died.” I was surprised how flat my voice was.
“We buried him right away, same as you had me do with Mom and Dad. He was hurt pretty bad, didn’t even look like plague. And Lacey’s not showing any signs.”
The doctor nodded. “You know the rules, though, Janie.”
“But…” She looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. The doctor gave me some more advice for looking after my shoulder, and he left. I heard banging again on the porch.
“Quarantine,” she told me. “It’ll be a couple of weeks. Nobody’ll come around, and we can’t go out.”
It should have bothered me, but it was easy to stay put with Janie. I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone, and she didn’t care if I broke down crying. Sometimes she broke down too. There was food my parents had put up, and there was a semblance of order in Salt Lake. But I’d grown up in those halls, and after a couple of days I started to feel them closing in on me.
Janie and I had forgotten how to talk. What could we talk about?
“So what happened after I left?”
“Well, I made the varsity cheer squad at school, and dad told me I wasn’t allowed to do it…” she trailed off. She always trailed off when she started talking about mom or dad, or everyday life.
I re-read all the old books in my bedroom – my horse books, Black Beauty and Misty and the others. The Little House books. Nancy Drew. Janie had her sketchbooks out all the time, and she drew people I recognized – not just mom and dad, but family friends, too. People I didn’t know, who must have been from school. And once, Saul as he’d looked lying on the couch. She gave that one to me, and I hung it up in my bedroom.
We talked about everything except our past, but we were surrounded by it.
I thought I’d shed everything I didn’t need in the desert, gotten down to my base self, but I was starting to think I’d just found another shell.
One morning I stood at the back door, staring into the yard. Waiting, and knowing nothing would happen. That’s why I’d been in such a hurry to leave the first time.
“Lacey?” She was still bleary-eyed with sleep when she found me.
“I can’t stay here anymore, Janie.”
“But- the quarantine. We have to.”
“They can’t stop us if we just drive.”
“I’ve never been further than Provo, Lacey. Where would we go?”
“Someplace nobody knows us. I want to see who I am when no one else is around. I think I met her in the desert. I think I liked her.”
Janie looked around the kitchen. “Let me pack?”
An hour later, we were throwing her pristine pink luggage in the back of the truck. She grimaced at the dried blood in the passenger seat, but climbed in anyway.
I saw Missus Morris across the street, watching from behind her curtains. When she saw me look at her, she disappeared in a rustle of fabric.
The part of me that cared waited on the porch of my parents’ house. The rest of me started the engine and drove away.
“Where do you want to start?” I ask
ed Janie as we reached the main street.
“How about Las Vegas?”