“You’re really not on an even keel, are you? You haven’t even threatened to impregnate my sister with your devil wrigglers yet. I feel... I feel slighted.”
I reached up, pinched his cheeks like your favorite Auntie would, and explained thusly, “Don’t worry, that’s still the plan. We just haven’t had time to get buck naked and bang the stuffing out of each other yet.”
“I beg your pardon!” Charlie sounded a tad incensed. “We have had a number of opportunities to summon the devil wrigglers over the past couple of days, Mister. You,” she gave me a very stern finger pointing, “have evaded every one of them. Damned ‘gentleman’! What a pain in my ass!”
Omura looked back and forth at all of us like a spectator at a tennis match, completely befuddled by all of it. “People, I realize I’m new here, but this seems like an incredibly strange conversation to be having in the aftermath of a zombie attack and cannibalistic healing, and while standing in the middle of the road surrounded by corpses. At night.”
Jayashri put a companionable arm around his shoulder, smiled in her winning way, and said, “They are always like this when something awful happens. I do not understand it either, but I choose to see it as a mark of being touched by the Gods.”
“Touched by the Gods? Like geniuses and artists?” Omura looked like he was starting to get a solid grip on things.
“No, like the insane. They are lovable, but quite mad. You understand?”
“Oh.” The poor guy deflated like a balloon with a slow leak.
“Now, cheer up!” Jayashri jollied him along. “Let us all make our neighborhood a cleaner place and drag these bodies to the street. Hm?”
For a moment, I didn’t feel bad about being a madman. I saw I was not alone in my madness; we were all a good bit around the bend. How could we not be, in a world as insane as the one we lived in?
We followed Jaya’s lead and started dragging bodies out to Glebe Road. Omura remarked that it seemed an odd thing to do, and Shawn explained he knew a guy who came by periodically and picked them up to grind into fertilizer. He continued to explain that all sorts of interesting kinds of work appear in the niches of life when it becomes clear there’s a demand for some sort of service.
I don’t know if Omura was convinced, reassured, or vaguely disquieted by the thought of a local body hauler. It took me a bit by surprise the first time I ran into the man and got a serious look at his bio-fuel garbage truck of doom.
He called himself “Rancid Sam.” I would have to say his heart was definitely dedicated to truth in advertising, based on that alone. Yet, it wasn’t the smell or the name that got to me, nor was it his jovial personality, which was several shades darker, yet distressingly perkier, than my own. Those sterling qualities were compounded by the fact that he was also a “fabulous, raging queer, tranny teddybear,” by his own description. The resulting frothing frappé of fabulous, the quim de la quim of boyish good times, the concoction of ... You get the idea.
I had to stifle a giggle at the thought of our guest getting a serious eyeful of our local color. I had nearly died on the spot when Shawn first introduced us, and I could only imagine how Omura, who appeared to be quite straight-laced, would react to the luminous, flamboyant, Master of the Peppermint Garbage Truck.
Charlie shot me a concerned look from the other side of the body we were carrying, and I looked up at her to reassure her that I was fine. I told her I thought of something funny to share with her later. I looked back down to the ground in between the arms of the body that I was helping her carry.
This particular body was missing a cranium. I was able to stare down into the remains of the upper sinuses, and I was intensely grateful that it was dark outside. Even with the occasional patch of light from the remains of the gently burning Humvee and one or two sodium streetlights, the bloody bones, empty eye sockets, and parade of shredded tissue lost some of the Technicolor impact daylight would have provided.
I felt blessed I didn’t have to face the visceral emotions that sight would have brought forth, had it been the middle of the day instead of the belly of the night.
Something, another tiny thought, clamored for my attention in the middle of my moment of gratitude for being spared a small horror at the end of my day. When I took a closer look at that wriggling tail of a thought, I realized that my memory contained every color of that broken and torn flesh, in pure Hollywood detail.
My eyes started burning when I realized that the last time I’d seen this particular corpse was when I had bashed its head open to get at the brains. This body had been someone, even after she’d been killed and come back to life.
I’d killed and eaten the brains of some poor, silly girl who got caught up in the wrong things with the wrong people... Me, and my family even before I’d brought her existence to a brutal end, since my little brother had set this little raid in motion. I couldn’t even process what I hated more.
My survival high came to a screeching, gut-wrenching end.
Charlie turned around when the top end of the corpse hit the ground and discovered that she was dragging the whole thing by herself. There were probably some interesting and sharp words lurking behind her lips, but they never had the chance to be expelled into the world.
She dropped the feet of the body, rushed to my side, and did her best to comfort me. I was sitting on the pavement, rocking back and forth in silence. I wasn’t able to do much more than stare at the brown remains of the blood dried on my hands. Lady Macbeth would have been so proud of me.
When Charlie put her arms around me, I stopped rocking back and forth, but the emotions were so huge I wasn’t able to make a noise or gesture to acknowledge her kindness. I also noticed I was unable to move because she was embracing me so tightly, but that held so little significance it was shoved away almost as soon as the thought arrived.
There weren’t any words I could have said or thoughts I could have imagined that would have softened the rebound from all of the compounded shock, horror, adrenaline, and sheer emotional exhaustion. I doubt I could have formed a coherent thought, much less strung words together, in the grip of such an overwhelming experience. I just sat there, staring at my hands, wrapped in the arms of a woman for whom I was quickly coming to have large feelings.
Unlike so many other times in my life, I had someone who was willing and able to support me, and it didn’t matter at all if I couldn’t think or speak. There was someone else who would rise to the occasion instead of me if the situation required, and that glorious realization carved a bright line in the miasma of horror that froze my soul.
A second spark of hope joined the one that had illuminated me a moment before. I realized being alive meant having the opportunity to heal from what had hurt me. Not to be undone, the original spark reminded me I wasn’t alone, and I had someone in my life to help me heal and move forward. I could breathe again, but an older issue lingered in the space where the calm was starting to spread.
“Thank you.” I didn’t have to force those words out of my mouth, but they had the strength of my whole being behind them. I doubt I would have been able to do anything with concepts and utterances that carried less meaning than those two words.
“You’re welcome, sweetie. Are you okay to move? Maybe go back to the store and get you cleaned up?”
Masculine pride might be salvaged in that sort of situation if the man in question had been able to brush off her embrace or deny (loudly) that he needed any assistance of any kind. Then again, I could be mistaken, and all that would have done is throw my collapse into a brighter, less compassionate light. At that juncture, there wasn’t any clarity to hold the thought up to, much less the will to do so.
She helped me to my feet and got me steady and ready to walk. Shawn was on his way back from depositing the last corpse he carried and saw the two of us about to head off. With no small amount of surprise on my part, the brute hugged me.
“Frank, I just wanted to say I’m very sad for all you went through
today and that I feel very brotherly toward you.” He stepped back, still holding me at arm’s length, and looked into my eyes with no small amount of compassion showing in his own. “I also wanted to say that, unlike your biological brother, I will never, ever want your ass for anything... ” Charlie and I stared at him, mouths gaping like unfortunate bigmouth bass at a sport fishing tournament. A sane man might have stopped where he was upon such a vision, but not Shawn. He continued with, “... unless we all got stuck on a desert island with no food. Then I might want your ass, but only after you were no longer with us and had no use for it. It’d be really small BBQ, but somebody would live one more day because of your buttocks.”
He actually had water welling up in his eyes. I was moved, clubbed over the frontal lobes, but moved, and I gave him a hug in return. He mussed up my hair, told his sister to be nice to me, and nudged us along. I just wanted to wail.
As we walked, she leaned into me and gave me a little insight into that moment of surreal interpersonal interaction.
“Don’t let it worry you too much. Shawn really sucks when it comes to expressing affection.”
My emotions were still too far sideways to find that information at all comforting.
It seemed like it took forever to go back up the street to my store. Even more forever seemed to pass by as we walked down the lonely aisles toward the Spa in the back. Dimly, I remembered she was going to help me clean up, and a slow glance down at myself revealed how much I needed it. I was caked with remains.
Even in my hollow-minded state, I had enough presence about me to stop before I could begin to consider where all the dried effluvia came from. Nothing good could come of that exploration, especially if I wanted to return to some kind of reasonable state of mind. Besides, there was another pressing issue that needed to be handled.
It wouldn’t wait any longer. If I was going to fall apart any further than I already had, this was certainly the time, because I couldn’t have survived much more.
“Charlie. I need to tell you something.”
She turned back from the Spa door and looked at me, still holding my hand. “Yes, hon?”
“My name isn’t Frank Stewart.”
“I know. Most everyone here knows that isn’t your real name, but don’t worry about it. Everyone really loves you here... ”
“Charlie,” I interrupted her because I didn’t think I’d be able to say any of it if I had the chance to stop. “I want you to know who I am and I don’t want to hide from you. I won’t be able to, soon, anyway.”
“All right. You can tell me anything you need to say.”
“My name is Warren Francis Hightower, III.”
Chapter 30
Charlie froze for a moment, took a really deep breath, and gave my hand a squeeze.
“I appreciate you needed to tell me that. I can also see how much it must have been weighing on you to hold that in for so long.” She hugged me.
She actually hugged me.
I know I was back into bigmouth bass impression-mode, and that the noises I was making were very simple ones, almost pre-human vocalizations. “Duh,” I said. I followed it up with, “dur?” and “muh?” My expectations for the End of the World did not come to pass, and that added immense confusion to the top of my Existential Horror Sundae.
She smiled. It was a tiny, wry, little quirk of the lips, and it did not give me enough information or hint at anything that I could build into the End that I was expecting to have.
“I guess you’re wondering why you’re not going through even more horrible stuff. Am I right?”
“Ur!”
She nodded. “Feel like you’re going to bust a seal if I don’t explain why I’m not screaming and flippin’ out?”
“Ourg!”
“All right. It’s like this. When I first showed up, and you were busy locking yourself away from the world because you thought Shawn hated you after busting you in the chops, my brother introduced me around to people.” Charlie squeezed my hand again and seemed to change her mind about what to say next. “Tell you what! Standing here, full of crud, talking about this stuff, is not going to get us cleaned up. Let’s do them both at the same time. Okay?”
“Merp.” It wasn’t my best of replies, but she nodded and led me into the Spa. She leaned me up against the wall like a human plank and started fiddling with the water heater. Once she got it started, she filled up a bucket and sat it on top of the heater to warm up.
Charlie came back, sat down on the floor, and gestured for me to join her, which I did.
“All right. Shawn introduced me to everyone, like I said, and I spent a couple of days helping out Jaya. After Baj left, she was a little shaken up.”
The story she shared with me went a bit like this, with my elaboration, of course:
They were a study in contrasts, sitting in the lounge chairs on the sun deck. Jayashri Sharma, a slight, delicate woman with skin the color of roasted cinnamon cream and long black hair that fell in a dark river from the top of her head to almost the backs of her knees... Charlotte Marie Cooper, a curvy, almost quintessential American Girl who sported colorful half-sleeve tattoos on both arms, with a pale complexion that showed every blush or approaching storm of feelings... drinking tea.
For Jayashri, serving tea was central to hospitality, civilized behavior, and comfort, and gave her a familiar ritual to ground some of her anxiety. Only 24 hours had passed since she had nearly lost a dear friend to a hand grenade because of his own suicidal need to protect other people, and she had endured her husband’s need to do what he considered the right thing. While she understood Bajali’s reasons, as well as the logic behind them and even the feelings that ran so deeply within him, the simple fact was that his actions were potentially as suicidal as turning one’s back on a live grenade.
Being without him was not a future she wanted to contemplate, much less be a part of.
Underneath the serenity of her face, lurked a secret wish that they could have sent Frank instead. They could have pinned a note to the sutures that said, “Dear Warren, your senseless megalomania has nearly taken the life of your firstborn son. Please let us alone, and many sons and families will be spared the tragedy you nearly suffered by your own orders.” Behind closed doors, she had said as much to her husband, as she tearfully beseeched him to choose a different path.
“My darling, such a thing would make no difference at all to this man. You would sacrifice the life of your friend and betray the trust I have placed in you by telling a secret that was not even mine to tell. That would be the horrible karma of my sin in telling you what I should never have mentioned in the first place.” He shook his handsome head. “I would still... we would still be hunted for the knowledge I have. Frank would only die before his time.”
While his voice was calm, the words were like acid on bare flesh. She knew he was right and resented that he was nobler than she was.
Charlotte spoke her name, and it made Jaya’s attention shift from the painful reverie that threatened to pull her downward.
“Yes, Charlotte?”
“I am not going to lie to you. I am absolutely here to pry into your business.” Jaya found the girl’s direct approach to be endearingly fresh and utterly American.
“Why would you wish to do such a thing on a lovely afternoon when there is tea to be enjoyed and sunshine to warm our bodies?”
“Your husband has gone to do something beyond brave, and you’re left here to wait and see if he will come home. Jayashri, you’re so upset I can smell it, and you are changing the track of your thought patterns by a force of will. I can see it. Please, talk to me. I am here to help you if you let me.”
More poison! More acid on the wound in her heart!
“How dare you invade my privacy when I have invited you into my home and shown you every hospitality?!”
“I hear you saying you feel as though I’m invading your privacy.” Charlotte nodded, not even raising an eyebrow in the face of Jayashri’s su
dden outburst. “This is a situation within your power to change. You can ask me to leave, and I will, if you feel that is the solution to the pain you are feeling.”
“You have no idea what I am feeling!”
“You’re right. I don’t have any idea what you are feeling. All I can do is tell you what I am observing. You, on the other hand, can tell me what you are feeling. If you are angry at me, I am willing to listen to that, too.”
“I am feeling that you are prying into my life when I have not given you permission to do so. You are new here and I have no reason to trust you, or to unburden myself on you.”
“Then you aren’t angry at me?” Charlotte’s voice was soothing, and her manner seemed both genuine and slightly remote. It was the sort of thing Jayashri had come to associate with deeply religious or spiritual people, like gurus and Buddhist priests in India.
“I am not angry at you. I am very frightened and upset.” Those two simple admissions were enough to make the walls she built around her feelings slide out of place. Tears started to collect in the corners of her eyes, and she felt entirely humiliated that they would reveal her to be so weak in the presence of a stranger.
Charlotte’s hand found hers where it was, wrapped around the handle of her tea cup, and simply rested there. It was enough to shatter the walls and leave her weeping freely.
“I wanted to escape with him,” she whispered between the silent heaving breaths, “and leave this place, so that bastard would never find us again. Then his own son inspires Bajali by risking his life to save the children! How could Bajali think of doing anything less than risk his life as well? He was so inspired by the love of this madman’s son!”
She clapped both hands to her mouth, realizing that she had betrayed the trust placed in her a second time. From that moment on, she wept in silence, terrified there would be another moment when secrets would escape her.
In time, the tears slowed.
“Jayashri, will you listen to me?”
“You do not need the attention of someone as horrible as I am. I betray my own husband’s trust and question the love in his heart. I am a heartless, selfish thing!”
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