Cataract City

by Craig Davidson

  The man withdrew his knife from the fire and stood up. “You’re never getting out of here. You know that, don’t you? You little fucks are going to die. Die without your parents and friends. With shit in your pants and your tongues sticking out like clowns. Alone. By the time anyone finds you the birds will have pecked out your eyes. Maggots overflowing your bust-open bellies. And me? I’ll be laughing like a bastard … Well, toodles.”

  He picked his way down the slope gingerly, knife tip weaving a faint orange trail through the darkness.

  Dunk held the pistol for hours, pointed out into the night. His shoulders must have ached. His wrists surely must have seized up. But he never put it down. The barrel never even dipped.

  It rained overnight. It began as a sing-sing pattering on the leaves and rocks, moon-whitened needles falling like shards of starlight. By the time a grey dawn washed over the hillsides it was sheeting down. Thunderheads crowded the steely sky; every now and then a giant flashbulb would go off inside one of them, turning them translucent like tadpoles and showing the swirling purple-silver nimbus within. We edged under the overhang and drank the water that collected in our cupped palms.

  The forest spooled out in the misty-hazy morning, spruces and pines holding a blue tint. The downfall had doused the fire. We sat shivering.

  My hunger had fled overnight. All that was left was a dull gnawing in the bowl of my belly. My stomach was eating itself, I figured, or the nearby organs. I pictured a toothy split opening in my stomach as it devoured my liver, pancreas, spleen. Maybe that was why starving people had swollen bellies: their stomachs had eaten everything else inside them. The thought made me laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Dunk said.

  “Nothing,” I said, because in fact there was nothing funny about starving to death.

  I must have closed my eyes—that, or my consciousness was stolen away for a few minutes—because when I snapped to, Dunk was staring at a spider’s web in the corner of the cave. A grasshopper was caught in it. Its body was the green of a twig snapped off a healthy tree. Each time it thrashed, another part of it got glued to the web. The sticky threads vibrated like guitar strings.

  A spider exited a hole in the cave wall. Its legs came first, flicking tentatively before spreading out like the metal ribs of an umbrella opening. It was as black as an oil bead, with red bell-shaped shadings. It picked its way down the web, walking upside down on a single strand before reaching the heart of the web where it spread its legs further. The grasshopper flung itself around madly. The spider paused as if in wonderment at the bounty it had been given.

  We watched silently, hunched close, Dunk’s head cocked, chin balanced on his fist. It didn’t enter our minds to save the grasshopper. We would never have thought of kicking a dog or tossing firecrackers at a tomcat, but we watched nature in all its fascinating forms—as boys should watch, I think now, unapologetically, a right and ritual of childhood.

  The spider raised its front legs like a bucking horse, then clambered nimbly over the grasshopper’s head and sank its fangs into one convex eye. Its thorax pulsed as it pumped in venom. The grasshopper went still. Next the spider was log-rolling the grasshopper, spinning its body rapidly, cocooning it in gossamer.

  “Sucks to be him,” Dunk said softly.

  My heart pounded behind my eyes, each beat a miniature earthquake. I phased in and out of consciousness, sometimes rocking forward and other times snapping out of a dream state where the world was not so much different than this one, just slightly warmer and safer.

  Eventually, the sun fought through heavy clouds to speckle the valley with light that pricked my eyeballs. I nodded my head at the world outside our cave. “We should try,” I said.

  “Okay,” Dunk said docilely.

  He set the gun’s safety and snugged it in his pocket. The baby bird was sitting on his lap. It was still alive, breathing shallowly inside the rag.

  The smell of sweet potato seeped out of the earth, which was raw and cold and flushed green from the rain. A curtain of mist was strung across the horizon. I inhaled the heavy musk of a deer’s scat, rich with whatever it had digested. Worst of all I smelled Dunk and myself: sweat, sickness and desperation.

  We came to a forest of tall pines through which the light slanted in dusty beams like rays falling through the stained-glass windows of an old cathedral. The ground was carpeted in layers of brown needles; it felt like walking on a horsehair mattress. At one point Dunk turned to me, distressed. He held his empty palm out, the one not carrying the bird.

  “My knife,” he said. “It’s gone. It was in my pocket and now it’s not.”

  He walked in a circle, lead foot stabbing out as though he was going to set off in one direction, then stepping back in, his free hand hitching at the loose hem of his jeans without seeming to realize it, round and round in a circle.

  “It’s okay, Dunk. How long do you think since you lost it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, staring at me as though I was a stranger—but no, it wasn’t that: he was just stunned, the way I was the time Sam Bovine accidentally kicked a soccer ball into my face. “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay, okay? Want to go back and look for it?”

  “My dad gave me that knife—not for Christmas, Owe, not for a birthday, just gave it to me. I don’t get things just ’cause, man. He’s going to kill me.”

  I couldn’t remember ever seeing him so freaked, and over what? A pocketknife. I didn’t like seeing Dunk like this, antsy and weird, running a hand nervously through his tangled hair so continuously that he’d surely strip it out at its roots.

  “Listen, man, your dad’s not going to kill you. He’s going to put you on a leash so you can’t ever get out of his sight again. My dad, too. All he’s going to think is how happy he is to have you back, right? Your mom, too, and my mom, and everyone else we know … except maybe Clyde and Adam, but screw those shitballs.”

  Dunk’s pacing slowed and after a while he stopped, bouncing gently on the balls of his feet. He let out a shuddery breath and then laughed.

  “Yeah, okay. It’s just a knife. We’ve still got the other one.”

  “Totally. We’ve still got a knife if we need it.”

  “And my dad …”

  “Your dad won’t even remember the knife.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I think.”

  We kept walking. We found a stream and followed it until it emptied into a bog that gave off a sweet mulch smell that reminded me of the garden centre on Tamarack Road. Our sneakers squelched, footprints filling with grey water, so we headed for higher ground.

  My muscles couldn’t prop me up anymore—they were nothing but frayed balls of twine under my skin. I was constantly stumbling on stones and slipping on wet grass. My jeans were soaked from the brush of leaves. I walked with my chin tucked into my chest, hands flung out in front of me. I tripped on an exposed root and tried to get up, leveraging myself on a fallen tree limb close at hand—it splintered in my hands, rotted through with damp. I squawked as I toppled towards the broken end, turning my head so it wouldn’t pierce my throat. My nose slammed into another exposed root, forcing stinging tears out of my eyes. I lay on the ground, staring at the woodlice squirming from the rotted branch in revolted fascination and thinking: If I don’t move soon those things will fall right onto my face—my mouth.

  I curled onto my side without quite realizing I’d begun to cry. My chest unlocked and the sobs doubled me over like punches. I thought my ribs might splinter but I couldn’t stop. Dunk walked a short distance away; I saw him watching me through the fractured, watery prisms that sat over my eyes, standing with his hands in his pockets.

  After a while he said, “Come on, Owe. Get up. Please.” He offered me his hand.

  I wouldn’t take it. He sat on a fallen log and exhaled, chest caving in below his slumped shoulders. My sobs became sniffles. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and said: “He was right.�
��

  “Who?”

  “That guy. We’re going to die out here.”

  “Maybe,” said Dunk. The fact he’d finally acknowledged it made me want to cry all over again. “But I don’t want to die yet. I want … I want to see brake lights again.”

  “Brake lights?”

  He nodded. “Last year Dad took me to a Blue Jays game. On the way home there was a line of cars down the highway. All these brake lights were lit, a bright red chain through the dark. Around it were the lights of skyscrapers and the CN Tower. I thought how each one of those lights equalled at least one person. I hoped they were doing something cool with someone they loved, like I was with my dad.” He searched my face and when he didn’t see what he was looking for, he said, “I guess that’s pretty stupid … You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want me to spit in your mouth?” He grinned. “You probably dried yourself out with all that bawling.”

  “Man, that’s just gross.”

  Things seemed sinister even in daylight now. I wasn’t afraid of being pursued by the ghoul of Bruiser Mahoney or even the wolf-faced man. My unease came from the land itself, which had stopped changing: a flat stretch of swale grass studded with windblown trees extending to every vanishing point. The unchanging vastness of the land—that was sinister. It seemed to be running on huge hidden spindles, like a treadmill; the earth went round the spindles, the trees and prickerbushes trundling beneath the earth only to come up again in front of us. We walked the same endless expanse, bitten by the same mosquitoes while trudging through our old footprints. I cocked my ear for the sound of the Falls—the same sound that had backgrounded my entire life, reminding me (sometimes maddeningly) where I was from. I couldn’t even hear that. The space above the treetops was still and noiseless.

  We came upon a drywash and picked our way down the flinty shale. Dunk tripped, holding the bird up like the Statue of Liberty raising her torch. He slid on his knees, crying out. When I reached him his jeans were torn open, kneecaps already leaking red. We were both a mess of blood: it dotted our shirts from the ticks and blackflies and ants, which were joined by longer slashes from nettles or twigs.

  We were a pair of wind-up toys close to winding down. I thought that eventually we’d come upon some impassable junction, a high rock wall or cliff. But the land was sievelike. We had to step around stagnant pools or small rock piles, but were met by no conclusive barriers. We kept walking into the blue day, one foot here, the other there.

  Black specks peppered my sightlines. I couldn’t tell if they were insects or just spots of delirium chewing into my vision. The urine in my bladder turned hot and painful so I let it go, which felt incredibly good. I cried off and on but the tears were largely involuntary by now, constant as my own breathing. They didn’t slow me down at all.

  Dusk rolled over the plain; bat-wings of shadow arched off Dunk’s shoulders. Full dark would come in an hour, maybe less. I didn’t know what we’d do then. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  A half-hour later, cold, moving gingerly through a field of thorns, fully aware of my entire body, my hands, my mouth, my eyes stuffed with looming darkness, my ears buzzing with insects or simply my own disconnected thoughts, Dunk stopped and pointed.

  “See that?”

  Squinting, I saw a point. A triangle of black construction paper taped to the horizon. It stood out because it didn’t belong to nature. Its angles were either too perfect or not quite perfect enough.

  We walked towards this trembling apparition, this point, half expecting it to vanish. We went down a small rise and the trees closed in, making it harder to find that point in a maze of treetops. But we found something even better: a path. At first it didn’t seem much of anything at all—a trail through the grass that could have been tamped down by deer—but soon it became more pronounced, right down to the dirt, and Dunk laughed wildly.

  Light bloomed ahead, a glimmer in the dense woods. It was gone then back again, like a blinking eye. My heart expanded with joy and fear at once: joy that it was there, fear that it could vanish at any moment. We approached cautiously, barely breathing for fear we might blow it out like a match. I don’t know how long we followed that light, but it grew and took shape: a square.

  The trees broke into a clearing. A house. The light was coming from its window. Electric light, so much different than firelight. It looked impossibly inviting, as if you could connect with all of civilization simply by placing your hands on the glass.

  We crouched in the cover of the woods. Something held us back. Maybe we were half animal by then—part of the forest. Feral creatures of liquid eye, fur and claw and antler, skittish and curious at once.

  Wind rustled the leaves as the night came alive with its little motions and stirrings. We broke from cover and crossed the yard—the grass had been cut and seemed too orderly to me, every blade perfect. We went round the front. A blue Chevrolet parked on the gravel drive. A garden gnome with a chipped porcelain face. So ridiculously normal. Such happiness ripped through my chest that I thought it would stall my heart.

  Dunk knocked on the door with one grimed, blood-flecked hand. A middle-aged woman stood in the frame, light from the kitchen falling over her shoulders.

  “It’s you,” she said. “The boys … those boys.”

  She rocked forward. I thought she might faint. She opened the door. The warmth of the house hit me, almost melted me.

  “They’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “The police. Search teams. How did you …?”

  “I’ll sit out here, ma’am,” Dunk said.

  The woman nodded. “You do whatever you’d like. I’m going to … make a call. I’ve got blankets and—oh! Colin!” she shouted. “It’s those boys!”

  “Who?” came a man’s voice from inside.

  “The boys on TV. The lost boys!”

  “Jesus!”

  I sat on the steps with Dunk. The porch light snapped on, so much harsher than the gilded light of the moon. Dunk shook his head slowly, smiling as you would at a joke that’s only half funny. His hands trembled and so did mine. I heard footsteps and craned my head to see a big man with one huge carpenter’s hand clapped over his mouth, watching us in awe.

  Dunk cupped the baby bird, his features set in mute confusion. Its body looked as hard as soap. Dunk touched it gently with one finger. It rolled over weightlessly, like a thing carved from balsa wood.

  Dunk’s head dipped to touch his knees. His body shook. Huge gulping sobs tore out of him, ripped out of his throat as if about to rupture his vocal cords, the most wretched noises I’d ever heard. I put my arm around his shoulders and felt the tension: it was like grasping a railroad track in advance of the onrushing locomotive. I didn’t tell him everything was okay, because I knew even then that it probably wasn’t. Not really, not ever again. I just let him cry.

  “What the hell’s the matter?” the big man said. “You’re safe, boys.” A mystified, barking laugh. “Don’t you get it? You’re safe.”

  There’s a photograph of me and Dunk taken shortly after we wandered out of those woods to find the house—which was owned by Irene and Colin Harrington, a third-grade teacher and a construction foreman with a taste for isolation. It was shot by a reporter with the Niagara Falls Review who arrived with the emergency crews, no doubt alerted by the police-band scanner in his newspaper’s bullpen. It’s a tight shot, just our shoulders and heads, and the composition is off balance—by then there was a crush of firemen and ambulance attendants, so the reporter had to fire off a hurried snapshot in the scrum.

  We are captured in close-up, in black-and-white, which amplified the stark slashes of blood on our shirts and the scrapes on our faces. My eyes shine like headlamps in the black pits of my sockets. We look like we’ve been released from a concentration camp, wearing expressions of grim futility. That sort of hopelessness grits into your face and posture, becomes a visible part of you.

  In the photo my hand is up, covering Dunk�
��s eyes. He was still crying. His head is tucked into the space where my shoulder meets my neck. The framing echoes something you’d see on the courthouse steps: a lawyer shielding his client from the hungering shutterbugs.

  If you were to hypothesize about the events of those three lost days from that photo alone, you’d think it was me who dragged Dunk out of the woods. That I was the protector and he the protected. Which is why you should never trust photos to tell the entire story.

  Our parents had arrived in police cruisers. They looked as haunted and haggard as we did. My mom gathered me in a bear hug that just about crushed the life out of me. Years later she got drunk at a cousin’s wedding and told me she’d have left my dad if we hadn’t been found. “I love your father, but I wouldn’t ever have forgiven him. Getting into some stupid fight while his son’s abducted. Celia Diggs would have done the same.”

  “Found?” I remember saying, a little drunk myself. “Mom, nobody found us.”

  Dad never spoke about that night outside the Memorial Arena when he’d punched Adam Lowery’s father, but his regret expressed itself in other ways. To this day he will grab my hand in busy parking lots, even though I’m old enough to have kids of my own. He will stare at our clasped fingers and shrug sheepishly, but he won’t let go. Which is okay by me.

  We were taken to the hospital, where our guts were discovered to be full of worms. The doctor figured it was the raccoon meat. We were severely dehydrated and covered with more bites and stings than anyone could count. I was put on an IV drip and didn’t take a dump for a week. Nothing inside me.

  Dunk and I were put in separate hospital rooms. At night I’d roll over in a dreamy fugue thinking I’d feel him next to me. I’d find nothing but the over-bleached hospital sheets like spun glass against my cheek.

  I still see Mr. Hillicker and Mr. Lowery around. They haven’t aged well; eyelids drooping around their eyes like two sick hounds. I’d assumed they wouldn’t feel much guilt for what happened, and I was right. To this day I think they ought to be thankful it wasn’t Clyde and Adam who Mahoney decided to light out with. Not to brag, but odds are those two bastards would have ended up as clean-picked skeletons in a wolf den.