Disintegration

by Nicholson, Scott

  A million in insurance coverage had been nothing. That barely replenished what Jacob had swiped from the M & W accounts, the bad real estate deals, foolish donations to charity that had become an obligation because of his name. Now they had another million coming, and all it cost was Mattie.

  She wiped her eyes and turned. Someone stood at the far edge of the cemetery, cloaked in the morning shadows. She thought at first it was a caretaker, one of those hunched and reclusive figures prone to working in memorial parks. Then she remembered the whispered taunts from the woods the night before.

  Renee put her hand in her pocket, searching for her key. Her car was by the gate fifty yards away. But she didn't need to run. She was in no danger. If her stalker had wanted to harm her, last night provided the perfect opportunity.

  She headed toward the trees that clustered in the older part of the graveyard. The figure slipped back into the laurel undergrowth. The park had only one entrance, so the person would have to climb over the wall to avoid being seen. Renee fought the urge to hurry. She veered toward the wall, which bordered the rear of a strip mall. The buildings were brick, masonry oozing from the cracks as if a messy kindergartner had been in charge of construction. Jack vines, kudzu, and poison sumac climbed the wall and thorny locusts grew on the slope of the drop-off leading to the strip mall. No one in his right mind would scale the wall and scramble down that hazardous and itchy embankment.

  She was nearly to the undergrowth when she heard the voice. Small and childlike, but not the same recorded voice from the night before.

  "Wish me," the voice said.

  The words came like one-two punches, one deep in the hollow of her stomach and the other flush against her forehead.

  Jacob had taught Mattie the game. Wish Me usually came into play on long car trips, when fast-food stops and the occasional bathroom break weren't enough to drive away a child's boredom. Wish Me was usually a giggle game, descending into silliness such as "Wish me a zebra and paint the stripes like a rainbow." Or, "Wish me a million dollars and let's go to the candy store."

  "Come out, Jacob," Renee said, surprised she could still issue breaths from behind her clenched rib cage.

  The voice came again. "Wish me."

  "I don't want to wish," she said, recalling Rheinsfeldt's summary of dissociative behavior. It was possible Jacob didn't realize he was stalking her. "I want to know why you're hiding."

  "Follow me," the voice said. A branch snapped.

  "We already played that game."

  "Wish me your deepest wish."

  "I don't have any wishes left."

  "Except to know."

  The laurel was tangled and dense, and the disarray of the branches filled Renee with a deep dread. She required order, and this organic chaos was beyond her control. This patch of forest lived for itself, grasping for the sky and rain, pushing up out of the earth like a corpse seeking a refund. Last night, the darkness had allowed her to block out the discordant surroundings as she gave chase to the person who had eluded her. But here in the warm glare of a perfect spring day, she couldn't deceive herself.

  Disorder. All was disorder.

  She glanced back at her car parked by the gate, at the highway below the cemetery where trucks hauled frozen turkeys and Coca-Cola, venting black diesel exhaust into the air. All she had to do was get in her car and drive away, leave all this madness behind.

  "I can't follow you, Jacob," she said.

  "Wish me." A monotone, as if from a talking doll whose microchips stole souls, a Rock Star Barbie whose plastic had become flesh and who now went by the name of Wells.

  She took a tentative step into the laurel thicket. The branches crisscrossed like the arms of stunted witches, a coven of crazed and grasping creatures. "Where are we going?"

  "To the door that swings both ways."

  The same riddle as the night before. It must have been Jacob that had lured her away from the charred remains of their house.

  "What do you want?" Renee asked again, expecting another riddle or taunt.

  "Mattie sent me."

  Renee's fear downshifted into helpless anger. "She's dead, Jacob."

  Three ravens swooped across the cemetery, their wings steady. Almost simultaneously, they lit on separate gravestones. One landed on Christine's marker, a blue-gray slab of marble that had been shaped and etched by a professional sculptor rather than a monument company. She fought an urge to rush toward the bird, waving her arms and shouting, before its droppings could spoil the luster of the marble. Jacob had commissioned the monument complete with a lamb on top, and though he'd never mentioned a price, she suspected it was at least $10,000.

  "Do you have the mirror?"

  "I told you last night, I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Who's the fairest of them all?"

  "Mattie."

  "Mattie. Not Christine."

  The silver-plated mirror was heavy in her jacket pocket, covered by the brown bag.

  She looked back at Christine's grave. The ravens were hopping along the ground, searching the grass for insects and worms. Nasty birds. But at least they were moving away from her baby.

  A truck pulling a small flat-bed trailer stopped at the gate. On the trailer sat a stand-behind lawn mower and several gas-powered Weed Eaters. A man got out of the truck and pushed the gate wide. He waved to Renee.

  "He sees you," Renee said.

  "He thinks you're talking to yourself."

  "Wish me, then," came the voice. "Wish me the money."

  "Why can't you face me?" She glanced back at the groundskeeper, who was ignoring her, busy checking the fuel levels in his machines.

  A shuffle of leaves came from within the thick stand of vegetation, the sound moving away from Renee and closer to the vine-clotted wall. Renee stooped and surveyed the ground beneath the lower branches. A worn path appeared to run just inside the perimeter of the wall. Cigarette butts and two crushed and dirty beer cans lay in the weeds. She took a deep breath, wondering if she could force herself to crawl through the narrow opening, where bugs and spider webs and dirt and thorns awaited.

  The groundskeeper started his lawnmower and the gargle of the four-stroke engine drowned out whatever words the hidden stranger might have said. The three ravens lifted into the air, and with a crisp flapping of wings they soared over the thicket and settled on the roof of the strip mall. A stagnant puddle of water stretched across the wrinkled tar roof. On the water's surface, the sky was reflected, the thin silver clouds floating, the sun suspended, two seemingly endless worlds meeting in the face of a mirror.

  She pulled the mirror out of her pocket, looked into it, and saw Mattie. Her racing heart fluttered, skipped a beat then thundered on toward its eventual finish line.

  "Who's the fairest of them all?" Jacob shouted.

  Her hand clenched around the mirror handle. She forced herself to look at the reflection again. Nothing but her wild, glittering eyes, hair as crazy as that of a rubber Halloween mask's, mouth creased with anxiety. She touched her hair, tried to smooth it straight, then gave up and slipped the mirror back into her pocket.

  "Wish me," she yelled into the thicket. The lawnmower was coming close on its first lap around the cemetery, the blade trimming to putting-green closeness. The mower would soon be rolling over Christine, disturbing her sleep. She would awaken crying. She would need a blankie and a snuggle, "Hush Little Baby," her mother's breast.

  Renee stepped back a few yards and the man on the lawnmower rode past her, lifting one gloved hand and nodding, the machine throwing clippings into the thicket. He was wearing headphones, his boots and jean cuffs stained green. The smell of cut grass filled Renee's nostrils, irking her allergies. The mower roared onward and soon the man disappeared behind the mausoleum and the far side of the hill. In the relative quiet, Renee called into the thicket again. "Wish me, Jacob."

  "Wish me the fire didn't happen."

  At her feet, a greasy earthworm stretched itself toward the sh
ade, carrying off bits of the buried dead. Renee shut her eyes and pulled the brown paper bag from her pocket. "I brought the money."

  The lawn mower buzzed over the hill, following the inside curve of the far wall. The groundskeeper was hunched over the handles, oblivious to everything but whatever amplified audio source was bombarding his ears.

  "Throw it to me," Jacob said.

  Renee peered into the tangled growth, trying to spot movement. She twisted the bag into a denser package and hurled it with all her strength. It landed against a hemlock, caught in the branches for a second, then vanished into the shadows. Renee knew this was her best chance, but her knees were weak, and she felt like a skeleton shivering on an October wire.

  She was afraid to see her husband, afraid of what he'd become.

  "Is this all?" he said.

  "All that's left."

  "I need more."

  "Jacob, you don't have to--"

  "I'm not fucking Jacob, all right?"

  "Please, honey."

  "Wish me."

  "Let me get you some help. This has been hard on both of us. Dr. Rheinsfeldt--"

  "Wish me, goddamn it."

  Tears stung Renee's eyes. Grief caused one kind of crying, anger brought on another. Hopelessness brought a third kind, a clear, sulfuric emission that was more akin to bleeding than weeping.

  "Wish you what?" she whispered over the distant hum of the mower.

  "Wish me a million dollars so we can live happily ever after."

  "Jacob, please."

  She brought the mirror from her pocket, afraid to look into its surface. The mirror lied. Mattie and Christine had both been the fairest. Tied for first, the most beautiful princesses in all the kingdom. They should both be reflected in that mirror, and they deserved to have lived happily ever after.

  "Jacob," she called. "Come by the apartment. I'll give you the rest."

  The lawn mower had completed its circuit and was making a return path toward Renee. She could think of no reason to continue standing there. Jacob wouldn't come out. He was hiding because he was ashamed. He had lost face in more ways than one.

  The fire, the new pink skin of his cheeks and forehead, his raw nose, the eyelashes that were singed short and stunted. Jacob had died in that fire as surely as Mattie had. She needed to bring his new incarnation back from the ashes, a reluctant phoenix. That was her only remaining purpose, her last chance at redemption.

  In the end, it always came down to the selfish need to mortgage your own sorry soul.

  "Wish me, Jacob," she shouted, voice cracking.

  The lawn mower came closer, roaring like a swarm of man-eating bees, its exhaust hanging blue and pungent in the air. The groundskeeper eyed her, slowed the mower as it approached, shouted "Are you okay?"

  She nodded. Grief. Playing a role to fit the surroundings.

  We all wear masks, all the time, happily every after. Wish me not to be in my daughter's graveyard.

  The man adjusted his headphones, hit the throttle, and accelerated across the grass. Exhaust rose, bitter and gray. The mower lurched toward the mausoleum, weaving between the oldest rows of markers. The smoke settled, thick as a battlefield's.

  The smoke. Gray now. Surrounding her. Gushing from the thicket.

  The woods were on fire.

  "Jacob!"

  The first bright flames leapt from the evergreen branches, leaf litter crackling, the wind lifting the smoke and pushing it across the earthen beds of the dead. Renee thought she heard a final "Wish me," or it may have been the roaring echo of an earlier fire, one whose embers glowed deep and red and ceaseless inside her heart.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Carlita had taken Joshua's virginity at the age of fourteen, the same age at which Jacob had discovered the brutal numbness of alcohol.

  On the backside of a hill on the southern corner of the Warren Wells property, a row of cramped mobile homes housed the Mexicans who worked the Christmas tree farms, spraying pesticides and planting seedlings to replace the spruces and Fraser firs that had been harvested in previous years. Many of the workers had temporary agricultural visas, enduring thirty-hour bus rides each season to earn American dollars. Illegal aliens were cheaper and never complained about working conditions, so the papers were often passed to different hands if a worker said "No mas" and caught an early bus back to Guadalajara.

  "Who the hell can tell a Jose from a Joaquin?" Warren Wells used to say in his unassailable logic. "They're all brown beaners to me."

  The twins were fascinated with the small tribe of strangers that were their closest neighbors. Jacob wasn't allowed to go near the tree fields because of the pesticides, whose stench cloyed the air for weeks after a spraying. Mom had warned of the drunken fighting that went on in the Piney Flats camp, and she implored her husband to hire "honest white men" who attended Baptist church and kept their drinking and violence behind closed doors where it belonged. It was at the family dinner table that Jacob's imagination had fired, and the dark-skinned men he had seen moving like silent ghosts between the Fraser firs took on a mythic quality. After Mom died, the twins found more and more freedom as Warren Wells grew preoccupied with his ever-expanding empire.

  He and Joshua had talked about them one night in July, weeks before the sailboat incident. Dad was on the porch smoking and looking out over the mountains, plotting ways to buy and build on more of them. Joshua had played a game of "Wish Me," and Jacob had answered, "Wish me a peek into the Mexican camp."

  "You're too chickenshit for that, brother."

  "No, I'm not."

  "You wouldn't last five minutes. They fight cocks and spit blood."

  Unformed sexual imagery flashed in Jacob's mind. "How do you know?"

  "Don't you know nothing? What do you think I'm doing after school while you're up here doing your stupid homework?"

  "Liar."

  "I'll wish you, then. Put on your pants and shoes and let's go." Joshua sat up in bed, the crescent summer moon bathing his shoulders, his eyes glinting like wet beetles.

  "No way. Mom will kill us."

  "She'll have to catch us first." Joshua slipped on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he put on his jeans. His legs and arms were more muscular than Jacob's, and the hair that rose from his groin to his belly button was thicker than his twin brother's. Joshua always said that though he had been born second, he had become a man first.

  Jacob trembled with a mixture of dread and excitement as he hurriedly dressed. They climbed out the window onto the sloping roof, edged to the back of the house then worked their way down by leveraging against a long metal pipe that contained the utility lines.

  The dew was cool and crickets fidgeted their legs. Fireflies blinked against the black curtain of forest and a sullen moon hid behind clouds of warship gray. Jacob's heart jumped like a trapped rat in his chest as he followed Joshua past the barn and across the hay fields. From the top of the rise, he looked back and saw the Wells house with its small yellow squares of light. The structure appeared to be a stage set, a lifeless thing that was waiting for something to happen.

  They slipped into the trees and down a worn path the Mexican workers used when they carried hand tools from the barn. A creek ran below the trail, and its silver music played against the night sounds of the woods. The canopy overhead blocked most of the moonlight, but Joshua appeared to carry a map and compass in his head, leading Jacob through the stands of oak, buckeye, and maple without pausing to get his bearings. Soon they emerged into the regimented rows of Fraser fir, the trees a little taller than the boys and soon to feel the chain saws of autumnal harvest. At the bottom of the slope, the trees gave way to seedlings and a clearing where the box-like trailers lined an uneven dirt road. Music and laughter spilled from the open door of one of the trailers then someone shouted what sounded like a curse in Spanish.

  "They're playing cards," Joshua said. "They do that on weeknights. They only fight cocks on Saturday night."

  As if to punctuate Joshua
's words, a rooster let out a cackle, seven hours too early. Joshua could make out the gray walls of a pen behind the trailers, chicken wire wound between crooked posts and plywood nailed across the openings.

  "How many times have you been here?" Jacob asked.

  "Not enough. Not yet."

  They hunched and crept through the dwindling firs, then crouched just beyond a power pole whose lamp cast a cone of pale bluish light. Inside the noisy trailer, men sat around a table, shirts off, skin moist in the heat. Cigarette smoke wended out the door and rose toward the moon. The clink of glass was sharp and dangerous, as if bottles would soon be broken and used as weapons. The men were talking rapidly in Spanish, flipping cards, stacking American bills.

  "They're gambling," Jacob said.

  "Big deal."

  A short, barrel-chested man exited the trailer and stood in the soft rectangle of light that spilled from the door. He wore a ragged bandanna on his head and smoked a turd-colored cigarillo. He hawked loudly, spat toward the darkness, then fished at the front of his pants and sent a stream of piss arcing into the dusty yard.

  "Over here," Joshua whispered, shifting between the brittle bones of dead ornamental shrubs. "This is where the action is."

  They worked their way to a tumbled outbuilding near the chicken shack. The shed was constructed of warped planks, tarpaper, and bulging plywood. Joshua opened the door with a shriek of rusty hinges, and Jacob glanced back at the urinating Mexican. The man swatted at a mosquito, sending his stream oscillating out in front of him. The boys entered the shed, the only light a dim, lesser gray that knifed between the wall's cracks.

  Jacob bumped his head on something dangling from the ceiling, and a rain of grit went down the back of his shirt. He put his hand up and felt the leathery object. It was a salted rack of ribs, smoked and cured and hung where the rats and dogs couldn't get it. The room smelled of wet hay and used motor oil, and the air was stale. Joshua moved to the wall, motioning Jacob forward, his arm like a strobe against the lighted cracks.