The Land
Page 11
“Sh!” Arwen hushed me and rightly so. The scene was iconic in cinema.
In a fogged window, Harry Lime wrote out Anna’s name. The people below, tiny from such a distance, were “dots,” mere abstractions. Their deaths meant nothing to him. As the gondola coasted to a stop and the two men stepped out, he delivered his last appeal, a speech that tried to justify evil by pointing out that during the violent reign of the Borgias great minds like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo thrived, while the five centuries of blissful peace the Swiss enjoyed produced nothing more than the ordinary invention of the cuckoo clock.
I leaned over. “The villain always gets the best lines.”
She hushed me again, the movie drawing close to the climactic final scenes.
Why this movie, Arwen? Post-war noir. A movie about the ambiguity of evil, the villain with his perfectly banal name. It’s possible for ordinary people to justify any diabolical action. I always felt terrible for Holly, the drunkard as moral compass.
We sat in darkness as the credits rolled. “He’s wrong,” I said as the orchestra music faded. “Harry Lime’s famous soliloquy on the merits of evil.”
“Of course he’s wrong,” Arwen said, her face in-shadow. “He’s a sociopath who profited from the deaths of children.”
“No, I mean about the cuckoo clock. It was invented in Germany, not Switzerland.”
Arwen laughed. “Are you going to deny the Swiss yodeling and Ricola cough drops as well?”
“No, five hundred years of peace and democracy ought to count for something. I grant them yodeling and all-natural cough drops made from thirteen healing herbs.”
Arwen held out her half-empty Dr Pepper for a toast and we clinked our cans to that. The words were there on the tip of my tongue. What I had seen earlier in the woods. I needed to be straight with her. But what had I seen? “Arwen?” I started to say something and stopped. I was thinking of Harry Lime writing Anna’s name in the fogged window, how easily this world erases us. The more I thought about it the journey seemed more dream than real. I had to make sure first.
The screen before us had long gone blank as the reel reached the end, the film slap-slapping as it revolved. Arwen stood up to take care of it. I snapped my recliner shut and stood beside her. In the dark, with the projector shut down I couldn’t read her eyes anymore. “Never mind,” I said.
She held the reel against her chest, not quite looking at me. She looked lost in thoughts of her own. With her short haircut and feral features, her dark eyes hinting at secrets, she could pass for one of the fae who held a key to the underworld. Ghost or not, I was starting to realize that I needed her. “Okay,” she said, dipping her chin and walking away.
The hour was already late after the movie finished, so I spent the rest of the evening going between my bedroom and the office downstairs where I’d rigged two computers to work on programming The Land, standing and walking around when my hip stiffened. The pain in my body reminded me of my accident, the chassis crushing around me, heat from the burning fuel line licking closer, the desperate screech of metal as the paramedics worked to cut me free. My death and rebirth. It hit me then. The answer was right here in my own body, in my memory, in the lingering pain. I didn’t have to save the fool in the woods. Let him die, so that he can be reborn. I worked feverishly, sketching the scene by hand before digitizing it: a new cutscene with the fool’s body in the woods as an unkindness of ravens descended. Instead of feeding on him, they lift him into the sky and carry him deeper into the woods before setting him down in a graveyard and flying off again. The corpse stirring in the grasses, waking, not dead after all. The screen flickering with shadows beyond the edges of the grave where it looked like something was walking toward him, either the queen or Death himself, a figure from The Seventh Seal.
When I watched it play out, I realized I couldn’t remember creating that part of the scene. My fool might have escaped death, but whatever was coming toward him spooked me.
If the world ended a month from now, billions of tiny microcomputers embedded in everything from toasters to jet airplanes dying at the turn of the clock, a programming error that went back to the invention of computers themselves, then my minor programming victory didn’t matter. Yet it felt like something I had to do.
Later that night Arwen visited my bed in her nightgown, slipping under the covers without a word and lying down with her back to me. Were these nocturnal visits going to be a regular occurrence? We hadn’t touched the night before, the small space between us humming with energy. Outside, the wolves returned to the birch grove, scrounging for scraps of raven revealed by melting snow. One howled as if in greeting and I thought of that amber-eyed female I’d seen when they first came and how she hadn’t seemed afraid. The others joined her, an eerie night chorus. Arwen tensed beside me in the bed, her body going rigid. It sounded like they were right outside the window. How small that sound made us feel, how large the night. A long shiver passed through Arwen, and she turned over and took my left hand in hers and pulled me closer. She drew my hand to her stomach, against the soft nylon of her nightgown, squeezed and held on. I inhaled the faint scent of cloves in her hair, felt how our bodies curved together without quite joining at the hip. In this way we held each other until the wolves wandered off. Arwen relaxed, let go of my hand. Her breathing steadied and then deepened as my hand fell away. She appeared to be one of those people who just hit a switch and went to sleep in a second, but I couldn’t and I lay awake for a long time after. Here, without my asking, was another mystery. “Who are you?” I whispered to her sleeping form.
Place of Safety
While Arwen slept in that morning I plugged the phone cord back into the wall—when had Arwen yanked it out and why?—and called my mom.
“Oh Lucien,” she said. “I was so worried about you.”
“I’m okay, Mom,” I assured her. “Better than okay.” I told her about Rose of Sharon and the new friends I had made at church, but there was so much I couldn’t say. I didn’t mention their apocalyptic beliefs, or Y2K, or the currents of white supremacy in their sermons, or the cabin barricaded against the end of the world, assault rifles leaning against a wall hammered in with sheet metal. I didn’t tell her about Arwen or the grave in the woods. I didn’t tell her about my devil dreams or the storms of ravens, harbingers of the apocalypse, or my uncertain hold on reality. I didn’t tell her I was risking my own life to find out what had happened to my lover, a married woman I’d been having an affair with.
“You sound better,” she said, and it was true. There were weeks after the accident when I had wanted to die. I had been wrecked both physically and spiritually, a drained monotone on the other end of the phone. I felt more alive than I had in a long time.
I heard a toilet flush down the hallway and then the sink running. Arwen didn’t intrude, but I sensed her, listening. I remembered my mother warning me as a teenager that every person you slept with, you would carry with you the rest of your life, even if it was just a passing encounter, and that these were sacred matters my hormones shouldn’t rush me into.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’ve been busy.”
My mom sighed. “I’m glad you met people, Lucien. When I think of you alone in that old house, it hurts my heart.”
Alone? That had been the winter I thought I wanted, but the world made other plans. “What about you? What are you doing on Turkey Day?”
“Oh, you’re not the only one who’s been going to church. There’s these ladies—they put on a supper for the homeless in the area. I’ll be helping this year.”
My heart gladdened hearing this. I didn’t want my mom to be alone on Thanksgiving either. I worried she would start drinking again, the holidays a hard time with both her parents dead, her brother working odd jobs up in Anchorage, and five hundred miles of icy highway driving between her and her only child. We chatted awhile longer and I thanked her for g
iving Noah the address. She asked me when I would be coming home again. I was coming home for Christmas, right?
“I don’t know, Mom.”
“Just for a few days, Lucien. I’ve missed you so much. You can fly into O’Hare.” She paused, gathering in a breath, her voice straining for lightness. “I don’t want you to try the drive in that ridiculous gas-guzzling boat your father made you buy. I’ll pay your airfare. That old house and dog will be just fine. You can get Noah to care for them.”
I hesitated. I couldn’t put her off forever. If Y2K happened there would likely be no climbing into the stratosphere at six hundred miles per hour in a jumbo jetliner. Even our cars would die, all that horsepower fizzled by a lousy computer, along with billions of microprocessors. Were computers the rot at the center of all that was wrong with modern society? Despite my programming ambitions, a part of me wanted it to happen. Maybe it was time for humanity to start over. But if it did, it might be a long time before I saw my mother again, if ever. I didn’t want that. “Yeah, Noah might do that for me,” I said, though I knew I would just ask Arwen. Mentally, I tallied all the things I had to do before the world ended. If. “I still have things to take care of first.”
“Lucien,” she said in a shaky voice. She was doing her best.
“Okay, Mom. Let’s do Christmas. I’ll talk to Noah and then come out for a few days.”
“It’s going to be so nice. You just made your mother very happy.”
At the base of the driveway leading up to The Land, several Chevy trucks were parked just off the gravel road, half in the snow-laden ditch. I parked behind a rusted-out Pontiac Grand Am and hiked up the hill, walking where tire treads had compacted the snow, trying not to think about the man in the watchtower, likely glassing me through his scope. Back at the Kroll house, Arwen was making do with chicken nuggets and some canned yams scavenged from the pantry for her Thanksgiving.
The scene up top looked festive. They had stretched canvas sheets among the pines between the old log cabin and trailers squatting on log foundations. I felt like I was stepping into a scene from a previous century. Cook fires burned at the outer edges of the billowing canvas shelters, women in dresses and scarves bending to tend to Dutch oven pots tucked in the embers. Before a hollowed-out firepit one man turned a huge metal spit with two turkeys basting on it, juice dripping into the flames. Children chased mongrel dogs between the fires while a boy with a shaved skull perched up on one of the tables strumming his guitar, teenage girls below him locking heads as they whispered.
Mother Sophie must have known I was coming because she stood at the edge nearest the driveway. “Welcome, Meshach,” she said as her misty eyes found mine. And even though my body ached from the long climb, lungs pushing up against ribs still on the mend, I felt welcome.
“How’d you know it was me?” Had her hearing sharpened to make up for her loss of eyesight, so that she could detect who was coming by the mere sound of footsteps in snow?
From one pocket in her dress, Mother Sophie pulled out a walkie-talkie. It squawked in her hands. “He’s here,” she said into it, smiling in my direction. “Over and out.”
From out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Roland’s sister, Caroline, dragging a little girl behind her. The girl’s blond hair looped in pigtails, her small body stuffed in a pink puffy snowsuit too large for her. Tears slipped down her cheeks, her huge hazel eyes brimming. I recognized Maura’s changeable eyes, flickering green in bright light or dark as the clouds overhead. Here was Sarah, Maura’s daughter, who I’d been longing to see. I felt a catch in my throat, remembering the girl’s mother, Maura, who I’d come here for.
Caroline’s bony chin jutted out as she let go of Sarah’s hand and gave her a tiny shove in Mother Sophie’s direction. Caroline didn’t even look my way. She brushed a loose strand of straw-colored hair from her eyes, tucking it back into her scarf and puffed. “Will you take her, Mother? She doesn’t want to play with the others. She won’t listen.”
“You’re not my mom,” Sarah wailed as she ducked behind Mother Sophie’s voluminous skirts.
Mother Sophie thanked Caroline and sent her away. She rested a hand on the top of Sarah’s head. “This is Sarah,” she told me. “She lives with us now.”
I glanced toward Caroline stomping off to rejoin a circle of men under the canopy and tried to sound nonchalant as I asked, “Her mom’s not around?”
Ducking behind Mother Sophie, Sarah gave another muffled cry.
“Her mother’s not in the picture,” she said. Her eyes fixed on some point beyond me, her mouth crimping.
I decided to press matters, not knowing when I might get another chance. “What happened to her?”
Mother Sophie’s frown deepened. She turned away from me and knelt so she was close to eye level with Sarah. “Can you do something for me, sweetie? Fetch Jack and the other boys and tell them it’s almost time to eat.”
“I don’t wanna . . .” Sarah started, but Mother Sophie shushed her and brushed away the tears that had continued to spill from her liquid eyes.
“You remember what we talked about? I need you to be my eyes in this world. You fetch those boys and then you can sit with me at the meal. How’s that sound?”
Sarah gave a grunting assent and skipped off, pigtails bouncing.
When she was out of earshot, Mother Sophie turned back to me. “What happened to her mother is a sad story. Stole money and run off. And I will tell you this honestly, Meshach. I’m glad she’s gone. That one was trouble. Too much of the world inside her. She caused Elijah so much pain. Wherever she went, she isn’t coming back.” Mother Sophie’s eyes narrowed above the hooked beak of her nose. It was clear she had not liked Maura, not one bit. Her malice surprised me. “Why do you ask?” she said, cocking her head. Her suspicion didn’t feel natural to me.
Why did I keep coming here at a risk to my health? There are some things you don’t want answers for, things you aren’t meant to know. I didn’t know, but this felt like where I needed to be. I breathed in the sweet smell of wood smoke and basting turkey. “I just don’t understand why anyone would leave such a place,” I said. I searched for the right words. “A safe place.” The phrase rang false in my mind—this place felt like anything but safe, and I supposed it hadn’t been for Maura—but I hoped I sounded sincere.
“A safe place?” Mother Sophie repeated my words. “You know The Land is our Place of Safety. That term comes from our faith tradition. It’s what we’ve been building to escape the coming Tribulation.” Her brief smile let me know I had been restored to her good graces. “Come along, now. I suppose you’ll want to see what the men are up to.”
She led me into the encampment, where eight picnic tables occupied even lines under the billowing canvas, kerosene lanterns swaying from ropes strung above. The swinging light and wind-whipped canvas gave me a sense of being on board a pirate ship heading into uncharted waters. Mother Sophie threaded her way between the tables until she came to one where a group of men huddled around something. Roland spotted us coming and flicked away his cigarette, smoke streaming from his nostrils as he tapped Elijah’s shoulder. Elijah pushed away from the picnic table and came over to greet me like an old friend. I tried not to wince when he clapped my shoulder. Her delivery completed, Mother Sophie turned away, the walkie-talkie squawking once more in her dress pocket as she ambled away to give orders elsewhere.
“What do you think of our setup?” Elijah wanted to know right off.
Mud and slush clumped my boots and soaked into the hem of my jeans, and my clothing already reeked of a smoky, campfire smell. I liked it. A lot. “This is great.”
Elijah nodded toward Roland. “He’s the genius who came up with it.”
Roland’s brief grin revealed long incisors. Wolf teeth. “If this is the last Thanksgiving of the old millennium, we might as well go out in style,” he drawled in his gruff voice.
I turned away from him without acknowledging the nickname. Birdman? I wondered how the story of the ravens changed as it was passed around.
As I came closer, I saw that the men were gathered around a chessboard of all things. Elijah gestured at the board. “You play?” Even in a Carhartt jacket and orange hunter’s cap, he still reminded me more of a college professor than an ex-con, his face clean-shaven, his eyes bright with intelligence. I couldn’t figure him yet.
“A little,” I said, with an uncertain shrug. In high school I had been second board on the team. Our chess coach, the computer science teacher who inspired me to learn programming, had been heartbroken when I quit my sophomore year. At the time I didn’t have the courage to tell him I feared that if I stayed on the team I would end up going through high school never having been on a date, chess nerdery a surefire path to extended virginity.
“You heard of Bobby Fischer?” Bjorn asked. He drizzled tobacco juice into an empty Budweiser can in front of him. He played chess, too?
“I read some of his articles. From his column in Boy’s Life.” My coach had dutifully photocopied the articles on an old mimeograph machine so that when you read them ink came off on your hands, a blueberry stain that didn’t wash off right away. I read so many I dreamed in blue, my mind puzzling over problems when I lay in bed at night. I had been so lonely then. Seeing this board now I realized how much I’d missed the game.