by Isla Morley
I wander inside the store. Nothing is left, not even water pipes. As I wander back outside, I hear that sound again. The buzzing of a lawn mower. A motorbike, perhaps. I rush over the hood of a car and race back to the street. I look in all directions, but the sound peters out some distance beyond the water tower.
I hurry back to Adam, who is sitting beside his shadow on top of the Buick, with his umbrella, tracking my return.
“Did you hear that noise?”
“There was a really screechy black bird with long legs. It landed in the field over there. I think it was looking for my little buddy here.” The egg is nestled safely in his lap.
“Didn’t you hear engines?”
Adam gives me a blank look, so I do my best imitation of a dentist’s drill, but he wants to talk more about the bird. “It was as big as me, Mom, and when it took off, its wings were as long as this car. It wasn’t like the birds they talk about in books. If that bird landed on this car, I would’ve been crushed. And it didn’t sing. It just screeched and screeched like it was real mad. I don’t like birds. Except for Buddy, here, and when he hatches, I am going to teach him to be nice. Did you find us anything to eat?”
I offer Adam an apple. He accepts it eagerly but then is at a loss. I can count on one hand the number of times he’s eaten fresh fruit, never an apple. “Just take a bite, like this.” The skin is so tough my teeth can’t pierce it. Eventually, I have to use a rock to smash it open. It is mostly core.
“I think it’s time to bury Charlie,” I tell him, pulling off my shoes to inspect my blisters. Large red craters have formed on the sides of my feet. The pain from the stinging air is nothing compared to the ache that has settled in my hips and knees. My shins are too tender even to touch.
“But you said we were going to give him back to his family.”
I look at him. If only it were a matter of walking into a police station and handing them Charlie’s remains, of having them notify the next of kin. “When we come to a town and find the people in charge, we’ll tell them where Charlie rests,” I say. What we cannot do is carry so heavy a responsibility when all the attention must be focused on taking care of ourselves. Between us passes the understanding that our plight is now desperate.
Adam fetches the first-aid kit and helps me patch my feet with the last of the Band-Aids. The overcast has turned a sickly olive-green color. Spilling through a rupture at its center are coppery clouds. It’s not so much a setting sun as it is a festering one.
* * *
Adam’s first encounter with people Above are the dead and buried. Nevertheless, he pays attention to each tombstone as though he were being formally introduced.
“Here’s another one named Rip.”
“Rest in Peace,” I correct. “It’s what people say when they bury someone.”
He examines one of the old headstones. “They should build a big house for people when they die, not just leave them outside like this.”
I find an empty spot and get out the folding shovel.
Adam insists on digging. The ground is soft and yields easily. Before long, he has dug a hole, not quite four feet around, more suitable for planting a tree than burying a body. “Did I dig it deep enough?”
“It’s just right, Adam. Thank you.” With care, I remove the bundle from my backpack and lower it into the earth. If you don’t look at the queue of abandoned cars, it’s not an altogether disagreeable landscape. Prairie grass, a gentle hill with more shades of green than what you thought existed, a view unhindered by telephone wires or electric cables. Certainly, it is a resting place one thousand times better than the silo floor. Yet, I have to ask Charlie once again to forgive me—this time, for leaving him in no-man’s-land.
Adam has collected a posy of wildflowers. He hands it to me. I gently lay them on top of the bundle.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
Quietly, so quietly even the spirits won’t hear, I say, “You rest here, Charlie, but you will always live in my heart.”
Adam digs in his pocket and pulls out a key. It’s from Dobbs’s ring. He places it gently on top of the bundle. “Everyone ought to have their own key.” He recites both the Our Father and the Pledge of Allegiance. And then there isn’t anything left to do but fill the hole.
I shovel the dirt and pat down the sod. We gather stones to circle the grave. Adam stakes a car antenna in the middle of the mound. He bows his head. I’d pray, too, but I know one of two things will happen—either there’ll be no words, or I’ll start and never get stopped. When I sling the backpack over my shoulder, it feels heavier than it did before. What things need bearing now?
Adam gives the graveyard one last look. “I don’t want to be buried in a place like this. When I die, I want to be put on a boat and get pushed out to sea.”
* * *
By the time we get back to the Buick, Adam is shivering uncontrollably. My joints have seized up. I can’t seem to bend my knees. After wrapping the drape tightly around Adam, I check the survival kit. Dobbs has sealed in a Ziploc bag three packs of matches. I crack the window just enough for fresh air, then pat Adam’s leg. “I won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to collect some wood so we can build a fire.”
Adam begs me to reconsider. “It’s not safe out there.” He stares out the window. Evening is almost upon us. “I don’t want you to leave me alone. What if that horrible bird comes back and breaks in and attacks me?”
“Birds don’t attack, son.” I don’t want to explain how much more the temperature will drop or what it will be like a few hours from now when the cold goes after our organs, so I hand him the egg. “You’ve got your little buddy to keep you company. And I’ll be back in two shakes. You can’t see it from here, but just a little ways up the street is a dead tree—”
“Dead?” He looked nowhere near as appalled as when we were in the graveyard.
“It’s not just people who die, Adam. You know that.”
He is shaking his head as though this is all news to him.
“If you get scared, just honk the horn.”
I close the door and hurry up the road again. It is the thought of a warm fire that keeps me from falling down. That and the insects. The road is now teeming with millipedes the length of garden snakes and cockroaches so bold even the threat of a shoe coming down on them is no deterrent. Beside me, the field is awash in strange blue phosphorescence, and the same unsettling noises from last night start to ring out from every direction, as though some otherworldly animal kingdom is starting to stir.
I collect as much wood as will fit in the backpack and what my arms can carry, not nearly enough to keep a fire burning through the night. Perhaps my legs have it in them for one more trip. I hurry back just as a car horn begins blaring.
“I’m coming; I’m coming.”
* * *
The fire sends sparks into the air and Adam back behind the Buick door. It takes much coaxing for him to get close enough to benefit from the heat. I hold out my palms toward the flames. It pops and cracks and spits out an ember, and Adam gives a cry of alarm. He fetches his umbrella. I tell him it’s not a good idea to prop it so close to the fire, so he sits three feet away with his egg instead. After a while, he draws closer. Once he’s sure that the flames aren’t going to reach out and grab him, he kneels and leans toward the warmth. He smiles, closes his eyes, and tilts his head a little.
In one long sentence come a dozen questions about tomorrow, none of which I can answer. Adam is accustomed to certainty. It has to be terrifying, a mother whose best is, “I don’t know.”
The flames burn green at their tips and give off a faint whiff of boot polish. The deadwood is quickly reduced to coals that tinkle like Mama’s wind chimes. There is a physical ache to thinking about Mama now, a pressure that builds up behind my eyes and turns everything blurry. I’ve always thought of Mama waiting—maybe not waiting for me in the house on Fall Leaf Road, but waiti
ng in some living room where she knows the exact number of hours I’ve been gone. That Mama might have moved her waiting to the shores of eternity is too much to bear.
Adam is transfixed by the glowing embers and the short bursts of flame they occasionally throw up. Just as with the body of water earlier today, he becomes brazen. More than once I have to caution him not to touch the white ash. He blackens the end of a stick and then scrapes it against the ground. Adam, he writes.
“I’m starving,” he says, after a long silence. We’ve finished off the apples and the blackberries, and there is nothing left in Dobbs’s survival kit except a packet of powdered milk.
I fetch the pot from the car. Away from the hearth, the cold is an assault. I can’t remember ever being this cold before. It’s like being gripped by a burglar and shaken vigorously enough to empty the contents of my pockets.
“But we haven’t got anything to cook,” Adam remarks.
I sit on my haunches beside him. “I don’t want you to get upset now,” I begin. “But we have to eat.”
He agrees until he sees me looking at his egg. He jerks it away from me. “You can’t eat Buddy!”
“Listen to me, Adam. We have to eat. If we don’t, we won’t have energy tomorrow to do anything. We won’t be able to—”
“I don’t want to do anything! I want to stay here and take care of Buddy.”
The campfire casts a glow on our faces. Adam’s is full of indignation and hurt and fear. Mine obviously needs to show more assertiveness. “We’re going to eat the egg, and tomorrow we’ll see if we can’t find you another one.”
“I don’t want another one!” he screams. The sound echoes across the night.
We don’t have time to argue because already the fire is petering out. “Give me the egg, Adam.”
He whips away, jumps to his feet, and disappears into the blackness. I know he aims to lock himself in that car again, and the fire is going to burn out, and we are going to be two ashen stick figures by the time the sun rises. I go after Adam. I grab his arm as he reaches for the door handle, and somehow, in the tussle, there is an awful cracking sound.
Adam holds up his hands, yolk dripping from them. He turns a shrieking, crazed face to me. “Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done!”
* * *
Collecting another bundle of wood, I berate myself. In a car down the road is my child. Ever since doing Dobbs in, ever since we came Above and found it godforsaken, I have been waiting for the right moment to comfort him. Comfort him for everything, my wrongdoings especially. Now, he won’t let me.
I think he is letting me know just how angry he is when I hear the horn start up blaring again, until I realize that there is also the sound from earlier. Engines. I peer into the darkness at two headlights. They are moving very fast. Dropping the firewood, I start to run toward them.
The horn keeps blaring and the lights come to a halt next to the car and my chest feels like it is about to crack open. Coughing and wheezing, I keep running. I try shouting to let Adam know I’m coming, but my lungs erupt with resin instead. The horn stops. Voices are telegraphed across the tarmac by a cable of bright white light. We’ve been found.
I can hear Adam’s voice. He must be telling them where I am. I see three figures move in front of the headlights, Adam’s distinct by his stoop.
“Over here! I’m coming!”
I’m only a few cars away. They can see me. And yet one of the figures takes Adam to a vehicle. Shoves him, actually. “Mom!” he cries out. “Mom!”
The engine revs. With a lurch, it bounces across the ditch and into the field, taking Adam with it.
“Adam! Adam! Adam!” I dash into the damp grass thick with slithery things. “Adam!” And as I watch the red taillight bounce into the night, first a voice and then a hand comes for me. I think I am to get on a vehicle, too, but I suddenly can’t breathe and the darkness makes a fist around my chest and squeezes with all its might.
VI
I OPEN MY EYES and quickly shut them tight. Above me is a disc so bright it all but burns through my eyelids. Not the sun—it does little to push back the cold and keeps making a frizzing noise. There is a voice. Rather than coming from a single source, it seems to be coming, impossibly, from every direction at once.
It says, “No airway obstruction. Head and neck are otherwise unremarkable. Cardiopulmonary systems seem stable. Pressures normal. Start a large-bore IV. Draw a blood culture, and run a set of chemistries.”
I try to get up, see what all the fuss is about, and realize I don’t have any legs or arms. All that’s left of me is my mind. It should be fixed on a single task, but I can’t think what. Seems like I was on my way somewhere—to heaven, maybe.
An angel moves in front of the not-sun. The angel’s eyes are very red. The angel hasn’t had enough sleep. Without warning, she directs a tine of light into my eye. “Pupils are not obtunded, but she is somewhat photophobic.” The beam clicks off, but it’s too late; it has scrambled my thoughts.
Something is clamped around my mouth to keep me from talking. I try pulling it off, but the angel stops me. “No, you must leave the mask on until your breathing treatment is over.”
Heaven is a very tiring place, so tiring I can’t keep from drifting away from the brightness and the jangling sounds to the beautiful darkness.
* * *
From far away someone keeps asking the same thing. I wish the soul being addressed would hurry up and do as told, so everything can go back to being quiet again.
“Open your eyes, ma’am.” The order is repeated, this time close enough for me to detect the smell of mothballs. “I need you to look at me.”
Through a crack in my eyelids, I see a tall white-haired woman in a white jacket. It is to me she is talking. The not-sun is gone. The angels are gone. Heaven is gone, too. To make doubly sure I am not dead, I chance a look at my body. Everything’s where it ought to be. I watch my hand raise five fingers, see the shadow forming beneath them.
“Right, keep them open.”
I look around me. Indoors, except the spatial dimensions are all wrong. Instead of being smooth and vertical, the walls are ribbed and curved. Reflexively, I bring my arms up over my head. The wall doesn’t collapse but arches over me and disappears behind a black plastic curtain across the way.
The woman holds up three fingers, and asks me in a heavy accent to count them. I inspect the tube in my arm. It runs to a bag that is hooked onto a towel rack on the corrugated wall. Also attached to the wall is a long string of bulbs.
“How many fingers?” she persists.
Minnesotan? German? “Three.”
“Do you know what day this is?”
I shake my head.
“Do you remember how you got here?”
Again, I let my body answer for me.
“Neither of you were carrying any identification. Can you tell me what you were doing in the Disposal Zone?”
It all rushes back in one quick wave: Dobbs dead in a puddle of blood, Adam and me in the car, then on foot, an ocean where streets used to be, Charlie in a poorly marked grave, a motorbike making off with my child. “Adam!” I try sitting up, but there’s a block of lead on my chest.
“Easy.” The woman puts her hand on my shoulder. “You had an asthma attack. It is best not to try getting up right now.”
“My son!” My voice is raspy and sore from screaming—vaguely, I recall hooded figures and motorbikes.
“He’s right here.” The woman parts the black curtain. Adam is in the bed next to mine, being tended to by figures in green outfits.
“Adam! Are you all right?”
He looks at me, the whites of his eyes showing, his teeth clenched as though on a piece of wood. In his fist is a mess of twine, our leash.
“We made it, my boy. We’re safe.” Found, rescued, restored—all the words I was beginning to believe would never apply to us I say to him now. But there is this stupid mask over my face and what I say sounds ghastly
. No wonder he looks even more alarmed. I give him a thumbs-up, and just as he is about to return the gesture, one of the figures draws back the sheet covering his naked torso. He reacts by curling into a ball. Instead of reassuring him, she tries to straighten his legs. Adam yelps, and scoots up to the head of the bed. “No, no, no, no.”
“Go easy with him. He is not used to strangers,” I instruct, pulling the mask away from my mouth. To Adam, I say, “Son, you don’t have to worry; these are nice people.” These are the good guys is what I mean, because we’ve both heard Dobbs talk so much about Scalpers. “We’ve been outside for two days without much to drink or eat,” I explain to the woman beside me.
“I see.” She introduces herself as Harriet Fletcher, the attending physician. Clearly, I am expected to give more details.
“He’s never been outside before. Could you please dim the lights? I think he’d do better if it wasn’t so bright.”
Adam has regained control over the covers again. Burying himself under them, he begins humming and rocking. The attendants have fallen back and seem to be awaiting further instructions from the doctor.
“He’s never been outside before?”
Shielding my eyes with one hand, I take my first look in seventeen years at another person. Her skin is a funny color, like she’s been overcooked. Either she spends a lot of time looking directly into the sun or frowning because her forehead is scored with lines. Her lips are flattened into a broad line. It does not look quite like a smile. There is no hint of makeup, but she has obviously spent a great deal of time teasing her short hair in such a way as to cover the bald spots. Curious how I have lost the ability to gauge a person’s age. She cannot possibly be a hundred and twenty.