by Isla Morley
He aims to lock me up. The silo!
We get to the utility tunnel. I jut my leg against the doorjamb and propel myself backward. He lunges against me with his shoulder, as though I’m a gate he is determined to bust through. I stumble forward and quickly do an about-turn. I grab his shin and sink my teeth into it. As Dobbs screams, I scramble out of the tunnel and fly up the stairs. I make it all the way to the living room before he tackles me from behind. He cinches his arms around my narrow waist and tries jostling me upright. My hands clamor for something to hold on to—a table leg, a chair. The only thing within my reach is my crochet work.
Somehow, Dobbs manages to sling me over his shoulder. He stumbles toward the exit.
I can see where Dobbs is balding, see the scabs between his hair follicles. He has a wet-dog smell. He grunts as he tries to get me through the doorway.
I free the crochet needle from its stitching. I raise my hand. Before he steps across the threshold, I slam it into his neck as hard as I can.
The hook plunges in with little resistance, kind of like driving a screwdriver into a bag of seed corn. It’s the sound that’s off-putting—the emptying of a pail of slop. I drive it in even farther. His grip around my thighs tightens. I wonder if I am going to have to pull the darn thing out and stab him again. But his arms loosen and then become slack, and next, we are making a graceful arc toward the floor.
DOBBS LIES WHERE he fell, on his chest, his knees folded up beneath him, his arms beside him, palms up. He hasn’t moved. Around his head is a bloody halo. His eyes are fixed on some distant horizon. I intend to rob him of it. No gazing into a soft-bellied twilight. The truth at hand is what he must face: blood, guts, death.
After checking on Adam, I unlatch the keys from Dobbs’s belt. They jingle when I shake them. The sound seems to distress Dobbs. It is less of a groan, more of a gurgle as he tries to speak. I bend down. His fingers beckon me closer. I put my ear right up next to his mouth.
“Don’t,” he manages.
“Don’t what?”
The darkness is edging in, the walls are stooping forward, the ceiling is lowering itself. Something of the hell I’ve lived with comes for him now.
A shudder runs through him. “Don’t . . . leave me.”
Ah, yes.
I make sure he sees me put the keys in my pocket before taking his head in my hands. His eyes close slowly, mistaking the gesture for a caress perhaps, then flick open when I pivot his head to the other side. He now has nothing to obstruct the view of me walking about, able for the first time in years to do as I please. I step over him and follow the stairs down. Not something I please, but something I must. As much as I want to grab Adam and dash outside, I cannot leave Charlie at the bottom of the pit.
At the entrance to the utility tunnel, I take a deep breath. I unlatch the flashlight from its mount on the wall and take determined steps to the silo door. The padlock and chain are lying on the floor.
Penetrating the rank darkness of the silo takes every bit as much will as stabbing Dobbs. There are no lights in here. A beam not much wider than my index finger is all the flashlight can muster against the immensity of the darkness. Dobbs used to frighten Adam about this place with tales of demons, just as he did with Scalpers Above. “The ladder goes all the way down to hell,” he’d say. I believe it. I tell myself it is the air finding release, but the sounds coming up from the depths are like the dead calling out a warning.
A narrow platform of rusty metal grates runs alongside the perimeter of the outer wall. Separating me from the yawning void is nothing but a puny rail. I aim the flashlight above. Somewhere up there are two massive doors that used to open for a rocket. I have to take Dobbs’s word for it because it seems nothing like being in the earth. Deep space is what it feels like. I shift to the right. Huge metal contraptions are attached to the wall. What I see bears no resemblance to those old blueprints. To me, this looks like the decaying innards of a beast.
With the flashlight trained to the platform and my steps ringing out across the hollowness, I concentrate on not falling. Some of the platform’s grates wobble like loose rocks. In several places, the going is slow, especially near the rickety landing of the freight elevator, which seems in danger of coming unbolted from the wall.
I know from Dobbs that the shaft is 174 feet deep. This information is of no use. I take out the glow sticks, snap them, and throw them over the rails. I count to time their descent. They make no sound when they land. Might as well be no bottom.
I come to the creaky, spiral staircase. Armed with the sliver of light, I take a deep breath, tighten the straps of Charlie’s backpack, and test my foot on the first rung.
The wall beside me is pitted and pocked and stained with brown streaks, as though the place has been weeping for all time. Best put aside such thoughts. I lower myself to the next rung and then the next. With my left hand, I grip the rail. I count the rungs as I go.
If this is a skyscraper, I am scaling it with a fraying rope.
It’s just a building, I keep telling myself. Yes, but what building is large enough to create its own weather? The air was dry where I started; now I am descending into something dewy. I can smell it too—coppery. Like thunderstorms.
I can hear my breath running too fast and too shallow. I am beginning to feel light-headed. I am very grateful for the handrails and the rungs. Until all of a sudden there isn’t a rung. My foot dangles in the air. I wave the beam of light until it catches the place where the ladder picks up again. To continue going, I have to breach a gap almost the length of me.
It is a tricky feat, maneuvering the dead space. My arms ache and my hands are sore from gripping, but I make it. The rungs, if not entirely stable, are again evenly spaced. My breath becomes more regular, and with the repetitiveness of putting down one foot after the next, my mind begins to drift. I wonder if I haven’t gone to sleep, haven’t entered the dream of landing on the moon, when my foot finally finds solid ground. I put a second foot down and even then do not trust what I am standing on.
Turning from the ladder, I sweep the light in front of me. In the green fog is a reeking heap. Burst garbage bags, a tangle of hoses, aluminum tiles, old consoles, an upholstered chair with the springs poking out. Most of the stuff appears to be fixtures from when the place was operational, but there is a lot of Dobbs’s trash, too. In an old toolbox is a bolt cutter. I put it in the backpack. I come upon a couple of Adam’s notebooks. They go in the backpack, too.
I scramble among the rubble until I find the tiny clothes—a blue shirt, a gray pair of pants. I scoop up the bundle and wrap it in my sweater. Even if I live to be a hundred, there will never be enough ways to atone. “I’m taking you home, Charlie.”
* * *
According to Dobbs’s watch, I have been gone thirty-three minutes. How is it there is still a trickle of life left in him?
“See this?”
Dobbs parts his eyes slowly. A gargle comes from his throat.
“No, don’t say anything. I want you just to look.” I show him Charlie.
More gurgles.
“When you’re burning in hell, I don’t want you to think about me. I want you to see this child. I want you to picture Adam, too. Picture them in a meadow. Picture them free.”
His mouth moves into a “What?” shape, and then a “Why?” shape, and finally it is the shape of a dark, deep well. From it seeps the last that’s left inside him, spit and blood. If there are regrets in his last breath, they’re lost on me.
* * *
Groggy, Adam moans and holds his side. I help him sit up and give him half a painkiller and a cup of water. He scratches the rash around his mouth and nose.
“It’s from the chloroform. It’ll go away soon,” I tell him.
His face looks blotchy, his lips are cracked, and his shirt is damp from sweat. He folds a corner of the bandage to look at the wound.
“Does it hurt real bad?”
He shrugs. “It’s okay.” He notices the
suitcase. I’ve packed what we can carry: a change of clothes; the knitted stuffed toys I made him; the family of orphaned sock monkeys; Grandpa’s watch; the notebooks. “Maybe we can get someone to come back for the rest of your stuff.”
“We’re leaving?” He struggles to his feet and notices the body in the doorway. “Is he . . . ?”
“Yes.”
There comes no how or why or when. Just that same wounded look of someone who’s been lied to his whole life. “We weren’t here because of the Disaster,” Adam says.
“No.”
“Because there was no disaster.”
“That’s right.”
Adam starts shaking his head. “I don’t understand. Why are we here?”
“He stole me when I was a girl, two years before you were born.”
“And Charlie?”
“He stole him, too.”
“And that was him down in the silo?”
“Yes. I have him now. We’re going to give him back to his family.”
“Did Mister . . . ?”
“Yes, he did.” And I played my part in that tragedy, too.
“He was never going to let us go, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
I pick up the suitcase. “I’m going to do my best to answer all your questions.” I lay my hand on his arm. “But first, we must get you to a doctor.”
I look around the place one last time. It seems different. Not the blood or the smell of death—like sorghum. Everything is exactly as it’s always been. And yet, it’s all changed. You can’t see change; you can only feel it.
I bend down and pull the notepad from Dobbs’s top pocket. We step over his body and pass through the entrapment vestibule. I give Adam the notepad. He flips it open to the codes. He punches in the numbers. We look at each other, listening to the locks slide. Adam seems to pay no mind to the pain. Both of us are fixed on one thing, and one thing only—the door at the top of the stairs. Over the years, my mind turned it into the size of a ceiling, and here it is, no bigger than a closet door.
When we get to it, Adam turns around with his eyebrows raised, expecting me to say something.
What is there to say?
My keeper is dead. All that’s left of him is the secret. And what a pitiful little secret I have turned out to be. A secret, even a long-held one, can turn out to be such a liar. My son is about to know the extent of this. If only there was one thing I could say, one thing that could explain everything. And if not to explain it, then perhaps to prime the pump for the forgiveness that is his to withhold. And if not to explain it, or have it forgiven, then to prepare him before the lies come at him like starved wolves.
“There are others,” I finally manage. “They are not all like him. There are so many who are good, who will be kind to you. Let them.”
“Okay.”
As for the whole truth—it can’t be told; it can only be shown.
I nod. “Go on, then.”
He turns the handle and gives it a shove. I can barely utter the words. “We’re free.”
Part Two
ABOVE
VII
IT SEEMS UNLIKELY that Marcus would have gone to such trouble to get us away from Sunflower if he didn’t intend to come back and help us further, and yet with each minute that goes by I can’t help but wonder if Adam and I are on our own. Each minute I wait to hear the whine of engines, wait to see ATVs tearing across the prairie toward us. Under a sheet of corrugated metal at the foot of a windmill now seems the most obvious space to hide. I’m getting antsy. I don’t know how much longer I can sit here and do nothing. It’s not only arthritis that’s stiffening my joints, it’s also the dread of being found and dragged back to that place. If only killing Dobbs would be the end of him, but he’s taken up residence in my head, and in my head he grouses about my lack of skills, how I should have paid better attention to those lessons on survival. He grades our chances as slim, very slim. There is another soft voice, my own, that is inclined to agree with him.
Running all the way from the hole in the fence at Sunflower to this place, I thought I’d cough up my lungs. They are still sputtering. I fish around in the backpack for the pump and take two more quick puffs and peer out. The temperature has dropped suddenly, and the wind has picked up. Evening is approaching. I wonder if we shouldn’t take our chances, leave our hiding spot, and make a run for the forest.
We wait, and wait, until Adam announces he can’t hold it anymore. I stick my head out to check whether the coast is clear. From this distance, the camp is barely visible. It looks nothing like the rampart I took it to be. Nearby is a dense patch of ragweed. I tell Adam to crawl to it and find a spot behind it to relieve himself. He does as instructed. Even being separated by a distance of ten feet makes my heart pound. I call out to him, and the ragweed rustles back in reply. I keep a watchful eye until Adam calls for me to look at the sky.
“Get down.”
He ignores me, keeps his face turned to the west. In the last light, he is like a filament, bright gold.
“Get back in here.”
“Nobody’s coming,” he says. “Come out; you’ve got to see this.”
I wriggle out and stand up. I arch my back and shake off my stiff legs.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he exclaims.
I catch my breath. Sundown on the prairie. Either this has become more spectacular in my seventeen-year absence, or I must have walked around half-asleep before. The sun looks like a single piece of confetti against a scarlet sky. Streaks of orange and gold are unrolled across it like streamers. If you’d never seen a sunset before, it would be easy to imagine this a once-in-a-lifetime event.
I tug on Adam’s sleeve. “We should get back under that cover. It’ll do this again tomorrow.”
He is a very old shaman, some holy man on a mountaintop, when he says, “But, it is happening now,” so we stay where we are. A perfect sky is mirrored in the nearby lake. On its dark surface, the lacy clouds look like doilies. There is a ravaged field beside the lake, but everywhere else the land is a thick green pelt. A bellow from the thicket startles a flock of birds into a waving flag. Cawing, trilling, tweeting—all of nature is engaged in some call-and-response, some primal litany. Adam watches the spectacle, and I watch him.
“They wanted me to be some lady’s boyfriend,” he says after a while. He says it as though he’d been asked to eat worms. “They said I was to love her. I didn’t have to love her for very long, they said. I think they wanted me to, you know . . .”
One night when Adam was about three or four, he woke up from a bad dream, crawled over to my cot for comfort, and found Dobbs, rigid, on top of me. He tugged Dobbs’s arm, insisting he get off. “You’re hurting my mommy!” Instead of pushing Dobbs aside and taking Adam in my arms, I told him to do as Mister said and go back to bed. I can’t imagine Adam having anything but the same disgust for sex that I do. I hope that’ll change for him one day.
“Don’t think about it anymore, Adam. We’re not going back there.”
We watch the confetti-sun make landfall. A squawking flock of birds drops out of the sky and settles on the remains of an old barbed-wire fence. They peck at one another, jostling for more room. One voices its displeasure when it is knocked off its perch; a devious cackle rings out among the others. Adam finds this funny, too.
“What kind of birds are they?”
“Seagulls,” I answer, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for seabirds to be nesting in the middle of Kansas.
Adam spots Marcus before I do. Hurrying toward us with a shopping cart, he is panting. Droplets of sweat roll off his forehead. He lifts a bundle out of the front seat. “She’s hungry.”
Amid the jumble of rags is a tiny face. A pert nose and a broad forehead and two dark, tear-filled eyes form the very picture of vexation. She opens her tiny mouth and belts out a full-throated yell.
“You’re going to have to wait a bit longer, little lady,” he tells the crying infant,
while Adam and I both stand, stunned.
The cardboard box in the back contains a second bundle of rags, which I confirm is another baby.
“Careful not to wake that one; I only just got her to sleep.” Marcus holds out his little finger to the baby in his arms, and the tiny mouth latches on to it. “This trick won’t last long.”
Adam has not moved. He’s staring at the baby. Spellbound.
“What? You want to hold her?”
Marcus extends his arms to Adam. I am sure my son is going to shake his head. Adam’s eyes flick from the bundle to Marcus’s face. A look of uncertainty grows into a small smile, and he accepts the package.
“You mind she don’t boss you around now.”
“She’s so light.” Adam speaks softly, as though any louder, his words might injure her.
Adam touches her tiny fingers. He studies her fingernails. He runs the tip of his finger across her arm. He glances at me to see if I, too, am witnessing this miracle. “Her head is so soft.” She startles him by squirming a little, and he clutches her close like he’s afraid of dropping her. “Why is she so small? Is there something wrong with her?”
All Adam knows of children is Charlie’s bones. “You were this small once.”
Adam presses the tip of his finger into the baby’s palm, and her fingers close around it. They search each other’s eyes and seem to make one another’s acquaintance on some other plane.
“Whose babies are these?”
Marcus sidesteps my question and instructs me to gather our belongings. We must hurry, he says. He straps the second child to his back with a towel. It is obviously not the first time he’s done this. He pushes the cart into the greenbrier. “With a bit of luck, we can get to Ginny’s in time for grub.” I take this to be code for, “We must try to outrun them.” He offers to take the little girl from Adam, but Adam won’t give her up, so Marcus hustles toward the nearby copse, beckoning for us to follow.