by Nancy Mauro
CHAPTER 33
Blood
Some subtle noise from the lean-to has Lily walking out of the house to investigate. Much later she’ll realize how the gravest confrontations are always precipitated by the inconsequential; the sound of a pickax chipping into packed dirt, the intermittent creak and snap from the hobblebush.
She finds Skinner in the lean-to, poking through a set of wooden shelves that her father had salvaged from a tack house and which Duncan had stacked with gardening supplies. Lily’s outrage is only slightly mitigated by fear.
“Excuse me?”
If the old man is surprised by her appearance, he gives no sign. He turns slowly to her, scratches the hollow of his throat. “You never answered me yesterday. Where’s your husband?”
“What are you doing in my garage?”
“You call this a garage?” Skinner looks up to the sloped beams, the lines on his forehead cast in triplicate. “Where is your car is what I want to know?”
Lily folds her arms across her chest, remembers the night of the torches, how successful Duncan had been at leading the entire clan off their property and into the woods. “Duncan is in the city today,” she says, without half the charm or ease he might be able to muster. “What can I help you with?”
“How did you know the boar was in the ditch?”
Lily shrugs, tries her best for casual though she had spent all of last night thinking about the slip. “That’s the rumor. Among about a dozen others.”
“Wakefield says he saw your husband in a car. Outside his shop. Says the front end was smashed in. Says that something was very wrong with him.”
“I don’t follow,” she says, and truly doesn’t.
“I’m thinking it was the two of you all along.” Skinner waggles a crooked finger at her, at her invisible husband.
“The two of us what?” Lily reminds herself how dogs always smell fear. But to make matters worse, she finds herself eyeing the old shovel Duncan’s left propped against a wooden stud. She’s caught suddenly by a glint of light reflected in its metal fender.
Skinner turns, follows her eye to the tool in the corner. “You did the boar in. And Christ knows what else.”
Lily forces herself to meet the old man’s pouchy eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Not at all. It’s making good sense to me.”
“What’s next? You’re going to blame us for your missing dog?”
“Who says my dog is missing?”
A pause then, the click at the end of a reel. Her voice is a faint projection on a white wall. “It’s a joke.”
Skinner lifts a blue dog collar from the top of the wooden shelf. “It’s no joke,” he says.
The ringing sound is just an alert, an audio charge to startle him from the sofa. What actually forces him out of sleep is the burning agony of his right hand and the search for the telephone in the squalor of the condo.
The receiver is under a chair cushion, which is under the kitchen table.
“Jesus Christ, tell me you’ve got the boards!” Anne’s shriek paralyzes him.
Duncan rests his head on the chair cushion and looks up at the underside of the wenge table. “Yes.”
“Thank fucking God,” Anne yells. “What the hell happened last night?”
He decides that he liked the shriek better.
“Duncan, it’s all over the agency—no, look, I just got an e-mail from Ravi. It’s all over town. It’s only ten a.m.!” There’s a break in Anne’s shouting voice and Duncan hears her hiss as she reads the e-mail to herself. He wonders if it’s a bad sign that the underside of the table is rotating.
“Jesus, Duncan. You and I have to go present now. Where the fuck are you?”
“Under the kitchen table. You called me.”
“What happened? Kooch is waiting for surgery—” Anne takes a breath. “Wait, you have all the scripts and boards? We have no copies here.”
“Yes. I’ve got it.”
“And Leetower was fired, so it’s just you in front of the client.”
“What?”
“They walked him out this morning.”
“Why?” He tries to sit up, but the table looms too close to his head.
“He fucking put Kooch in the hospital!” Her voice peaks and flattens as though she’s wary of someone listening outside her door.
Duncan rolls out from under the kitchen table, keeping to his knees in case he faints. “Who told you that?” he asks. His voice is just the tail end of a voice, hardly registering. “Did Leetower say he did it?”
“Listen, Duncan. You’ve got to get there now. I want these boards in front of them before they hear about this nightmare.”
Could it be—did the kid really take the bullet for him? Duncan is surprised, touched. His right hand throbs with an unpleasant regularity.
“Leetower didn’t hit him, Anne. I did.”
“You did not.”
“Kooch got in some good shots.”
“Never mind! Don’t tell me, Duncan. I don’t want to know—I don’t care.” She takes a deep breath that rattles a bit. “You’ve got the boards, right?”
“Yeah.”
“TAKE THE BOARDS TO THE CLIENT. NOW!”
Lily swallows, watches Skinner twirl the collar around his index finger.
“I don’t know where that came from.” She is genuinely surprised. Duncan had failed to mention the existence of this little trinket.
“I’ll tell you where.” He takes a step toward her. “Off the neck of my dog.”
“I’ve got nothing to tell you,” she says, turning from the lean-to. The front door is unlocked, a quick twenty yards, seconds away if she runs. She doesn’t take a step before the old man’s got her by the arm.
“I said, where is my dog?” His old claw is pincer-tight against the soft flesh of her inner elbow. He holds her arm up to his veined cheek as though it were a telephone receiver he was growling into.
Lily’s mouth is parched, her tongue full of grit. “Let go of me,” she manages, tugging to free herself.
Skinner laughs. “You thinking of calling the cops?” But he lets go with a shake. “Now don’t make me ask twice, when’s your husband get back?”
Lily backs away. She moves out of lunging distance but does not run. She refuses. The old man is not going to move her. She straightens her spine, roots herself to the gravel drive, then swallows deeply to unstick her mouth. “Get off my property,” she tells him.
Skinner clears his throat, spits at her feet. “That’s what I think about your property.”
Lily looks down, surprised at the fine spray of saliva that has caught the toe of her sneaker. Same sneaker she once lobbed at his dog. When she looks up, Skinner is already hobbling down the drive.
“I’ll be back when he’s back, hey?” he calls to her. “Count on it.” She kicks gravel over the ball of phlegm. She is certain that he means it. Taking down a single woman is no great feat; he’s waiting for the bigger billy goat to cross.
The Saab, with its leprous shedding of paint and trail dirt, looks hideous in the apartment’s underground garage. Duncan notices how the cars on either side have been parked as far away as their yellow-trimmed stalls will allow.
In the trunk, the portfolio case is squeezed in between some of Lily’s books and the accessories he had packed for this misguided summer: a small hibachi, two tennis rackets, and running shoes. Duncan digs out an old bottle of water he’d stashed in case of an overheated radiator and uses it now to wash down two Vicodin. He’s going to need it, he thinks, as he eases into the driver’s seat. Duncan takes the sling off his arm and pulls two fingers of his ruined hand out of the gauze in order to work the gearshift.
When the pain subsides a bit, he reaches over and turns the key, adjusting some controls so that the AC blows awake. A few dead leaves scatter off the dash, along with a maple bud. Helicopters, he remembers calling them in Minnesota, for the whirling pattern of their descent. He watches the bud, animated by the blast of air, as it strik
es the sunroof and then choppers down to the passenger seat. It lands in the seam of the upholstery where a yellow pencil is neatly tucked.
It takes him a couple tries to dislodge it from the seat. Duncan’s left hand won’t quit shaking. When he holds it up, his fingers are vibrating so violently that the pencil turns to rubber; an illusory golden wand, chewed from pink nib to lead tip.
He places it between his teeth. It’s a perfect fit.
When the Marines burned Cam Ne, they got it on film. The footage was sent home where, despite controversy, it aired on CBS. The attack on the complex of villages was documented. It existed, Cam Ne. If you wanted to, you could spool that film backward and watch, in monochrome relief, as flames in the grass-roof huts slip quietly back into upheld Zippo lighters. Watch a minute longer and you see soldiers lowering these lighters, taking the fire back. Only in the world of artifice can there be this dialogue between the before and after. A man can watch what he has done and rewind it so that the act is undone.
Duncan has watched this clip several times during the past month. Play it in reverse and the Marines suffer no consequences taking out Cam Ne. But Duncan will have to be prepared for consequences. At twelve-hundred hours, Tuesday afternoon, he should be on the twenty-third floor of the Stand and Be Counted offices in the Flatiron District, wrapping up the presentation that will secure his place as Head of the Ergophobes. Instead, he’s already left the Taconic behind and has reached the municipal road, the familiar turf of dirt and blacktop.
He has finally ferreted out the dissenter: it’s been himself all along. He has created enemies where there were none. Looked at Lily as though she’d pinned him to the mat, when it was his own shadow that had taken him down for the count. To have dominion over the animals, it means nothing without having gained mastery over himself, accepting the fact that he is as brokenly perfect as the day he was born.
There’s a reduction that has to take place before Duncan can become the man he’s wanted to be all along. To shed all his loose skin and pass not through the eye of a needle (that would be simple grade school physics) but rather, to gain the approval of his harshest self. The only way is to hold fast and let them burn the fort out from under him as he knows they will try to do.
Out on the dirt road, Duncan pops the trunk and, with his left hand, removes the boards from the portfolio case. He doesn’t need to look at them anymore. He’s realized that he’s not alone in his lusty taste for violence; at some point every soldier, man, and monkey wants to see just what he’s capable of doing. But the man—he’s the only one who’ll ever want to see what he’s capable of undoing. Again with his left hand and the support of the inner elbow of his right arm, he piles the boards on the road, right around the spot where he was unable to euthanize the wild boar. Then he goes back to the trunk to fish the lighter fluid out from under the hibachi grill.
Here’s where you kill your darlings, Duncan. Pledge loyalty to yourself. A sort of blind obedience that will not go unnoticed, will not leave a bad taste of decay and foolishness. He douses the pile of foam core boards and scripts with the fluid, then takes the lighter he stole from Lily out of his pocket. He knows this: he’s following a natural trajectory, turning a graceful arc. Shredding the last paper bird of his starry-eyed innocence.
CHAPTER 34
Red Marrow
The ceiling in the bathroom is being held in place by a stretch of clear plastic and green painter tape. Cradled up in the tub, Lily finds the view as curiously satisfying as an anatomy model with a cutaway window into the abdominal cavity. As long as it holds it serves as a transparent zoological divide between her and any yellow jackets smart enough to pull up stakes and colonize further down the stretch of ceiling rafters. She has no clear plans to get the drywall replaced. In fact she has no clear plans at all. What do we do now? She must consider some form of escape. Take what she can carry and hop a bus to the city, or thumb a ride. How far will the old bicycle take her? Should she call Duncan or wait? At the moment she’s out of her element, submerged in water, with nothing required from her other than dermal waterproofing and the usual oxygen intake.
Until she hears a vehicle pull up. Lily tenses, presses a sponge against her chest. Skinner? Or Skinner accompanied. Outside the engine cuts and a single door slams. It couldn’t be Duncan—not in the middle of the week and not on the day of his presentation. As she listens, she thinks she can hear the slow drag of steps up the porch, through the front door. Yes, that’s the front door opening and closing. A dilatory reminder that it has been left unlocked. Maybe it is Duncan. But what if it’s not? She thinks of Lloyd for some reason. Lloyd who wrote to say he was laying low. But the Lloyd she knows is a master at biding his time. Hadn’t he done that with Audiophile? Chose the isolated aisle of classics, set the snare, waited until the girl stepped in?
Although both her legs are stretched out of the tub, Lily is submerged to the neck. She tells herself she’s safe underwater. The footsteps cross the foyer and start up the stairs. The Protection of Water functions along the same principles as the more commonly known Protection of Blankets.
When the shuffle of feet ends at the bathroom door, she turns to look. It’s neither Lloyd nor Skinner. But is it Duncan? She sits up, her wet shoulders and breasts now exposed to someone she doesn’t quite recognize. His neck and the front panels of his shirt are scorched brown, an air of smoke and something else—industrial carpeting?—carries into the bathroom ahead of him. It doesn’t distract Lily from his hand, which is wrapped in a filthy cast. Both eyes are bloodshot and one boxed to a sickly plum, an injury visible despite the black streak of exhaust that runs up his face.
Lily gets out of the tub. “What happened?” She pulls on her old robe and goes to him.
“Fire. Fight. Not in that order.”
She takes his undamaged hand and leads him to the edge of the tub to sit. She kneels in front of him, noticing the streaks down his face are just smudged cinders. There is a plug of dried blood in his nostril.
“Should we go to the hospital?”
He shakes his head. Further questions feel a bit useless at the moment. What would she do with a response? Instead of asking, speaking, she reaches for his shirt button. Thank God, she thinks. Thank God he’s come.
Duncan is watching her. Lily’s own breath strikes her with its timbre and velocity; she’s embarrassed that her breathing should have these athletic qualities when all she’s doing is helping him remove a burned shirt. She knows he’s watching and she is terrified to meet his eyes. And these buttons. She forgets how to unfasten them. Her fingers have to relearn the motion as they work higher.
Why can’t she even look at him? She has three buttons left and a thousand things to say. But words are a tangle of bicycle locks in her mouth. Lily pulls the shirt across Duncan’s chest, eases the hand—it really is set in a cast—through the cuff. She pretends to fuss with the shirt while he stands and tries unzipping his jeans with the left hand. She pauses, not like she hasn’t done it before. He can’t get the zipper down. So, what is she waiting for? Lily helps him take off his jeans and boxers and all she can see is the color of her hands pulling them away. He’s unsteady on his feet and takes the arm that she offers him for support. He gets into the bath. Into the water that was her water. Duncan hunches into the same position that she occupied just minutes ago. Lily is still kneeling. She puts her hand in the tub, not to touch him, just to have this water in common. Duncan raises his left hand, reaches for her, slips his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and closes his eyes.
Later that night, the earth takes him. He’s at the edge of the hole looking down when the ground gives way under his feet. The moment is quick. None of the slow-motion torpor of car accidents; he’s licked right down. Lily sees it all from the edge of the barley. She drops her shovel and runs to him, her path sloppy through loose dirt.
“Duncan?” True, the trench is only three feet deep, but they have a proclivity for laziness, forgetting trowels and
spades at the bottom of the pits. It’s her fault, she should have forced him to stay in bed. Duncan had washed and slept until evening and though he hadn’t wanted to talk about the arm in a sling, he did want to use the other one to sift through the dirt. It was crucial—imperative—to get all they could out of the ground before Skinner’s inevitable return.
When she reaches him he’s flat out on his back, the prongs of a garden rake scissoring up between his thighs.
“Jesus, did you land on it?” Lily drops to her knees.
Duncan touches his arm and winces, lifts his head. He spots the rake and looks between it and his crotch. Stunned or impressed, she can’t tell which.
“Three fucking inches of grace.” Lets his head fall back in the mud.
She reaches her arm down. “Here,” she says. “Come up on this side.”
But he doesn’t move. He looks at her hand and then up at her face. She thinks the Vicodin must be slowing his reactions.
“Get in here,” he says.
Lily takes her arm back slowly. Squints down the hole. “Did you hit your head?”
“Maybe.” He pats the puddle beside him then extends the good arm toward her. “Join me.”
She sits back on her heels. “There’s slugs.”
“There’s no slugs.”
“Leeches.”
“Lily.” Still looking at her.
But it’s not so easy.
First of all—she’d like to tell him—-first off, I can barely hear you over all the racket going on up here. She stares at him at the bottom of the pit. If she’s learned anything this month and anything from her time with Lloyd, it’s that there’s never going to be a consensus among her vestigial urges and logic. So which should she listen to? When it comes to this muddy, bruised, and broken man reaching his hand out to her from the bottom of a grave, what should she do? Her mouth is dry, her tongue confused. Never has been an ace with the small words.
“Are you in trouble, Duncan?”
“I think so,” he says. “Is that going to be a problem?”