Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Seems like a lot of work, just not to eat potatoes,” said Raymond.

  “He buys supplies, too,” said Bruce. “He’d starve if he only ate what he grew. And Ben Barth takes care of a lot of stuff. Those are Ben’s chickens.”

  “Me and Morris went down there yesterday,” said David, pointing. “We didn’t come this way, though.”

  “You scare away the deer?” said Pella.

  “We tried,” said David.

  “Probably all came back five minutes later,” said Morris. “We should of killed them.”

  “You can’t catch them,” said Bruce. “So don’t even start talking about killing them.”

  “I did, once,” said Morris.

  “You’re a liar, Morris,” Martha shot out. She looked to Bruce for support.

  “Well, did you get your dollar?” said Pella. “He should give you a dollar either way. You did the work.”

  David shook his head.

  “Let’s be in bed, let’s be in bed,” said Morris, under his breath.

  “Quit,” said Raymond.

  “He promised you a dollar?” said Bruce. “You should go get it. Efram wouldn’t cheat you.”

  “He said only if they were gone,” said Morris, interrupting his chant.

  “He’ll give it to you,” said Bruce to David, ignoring Morris. “Want to go ask?”

  “He gave it to me, already,” said Morris. “He gave me both of our dollars.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Bruce. “If anyone gave you two dollars you’d be at Wa’s in a minute. You’d have candy smeared all over your face by now.”

  “Go ahead and ask Efram,” said Morris. “He’s probably not home anyway.”

  “Okay, and if you’re lying I get to keep your dollar, right?”

  Morris fell silent, instantly incriminating himself.

  “You jerk,” said Bruce, shaking his head. “Come on,” he said to David. “Let’s get your money. And Martha can get some water to drink. Even if he’s not home.”

  “I’m thirsty for lemonade, not water,” said Martha.

  “You and Ray can see the place,” Bruce went on, looking at Pella. “Let’s go.” He included everyone except Morris.

  But Pella didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to see Efram, didn’t even want to see his place. She ached to be away from the group, away from her brothers, away from Bruce Kincaid’s demanding attentions. “You go,” she said. She tapped Raymond’s shoulder. “Watch David.”

  “David doesn’t need anyone to watch him,” said Morris Grant, asserting himself, desperately. “He was there with me yesterday. Ray wasn’t even there.”

  “Get out of here,” said Bruce. “You can’t come with us.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” Morris panted. Again, he seemed weirdly happy to be attacked.

  Pella could feel how it was this perverse delight of Morris’s that got under Bruce’s skin especially.

  “I’m just telling you to get lost,” said Bruce, his tone annoyed and pedantic. “You can do whatever you want after that.”

  Morris started for the path down the bluff, toward Efram Nugent’s farm. Bruce reached out and caught his shoulders and pushed him down to one side of the path, hard enough that he toppled backward and landed on his open hands, then slid in the rubble.

  As he came to rest Morris Grant began weeping. Bruce frowned at him. The other children stood in silence, waiting.

  It was Raymond who finally spoke. “Where are you going?” he said to Pella.

  There was a quiet complicity to his changing the subject, ignoring the noise Morris was making. The group was sealing up again, with Morris on the outside this time.

  “I don’t know,” said Pella. “I’ll see you later.”

  Bruce had already started down the steep path. Raymond half-ran to catch up with him. Martha looked back at Pella, quick and wide-eyed, then down at Morris in his dust and tears. Then she too ran to catch up with Bruce.

  David marched after them, singing softly to himself, “Lesbian bed, lesbian bed—” The syllables were tentative, over-precise. The words meant nothing to him.

  Then the group was over the crest, and Pella and Morris were alone.

  Morris stood, crying quietly, undemonstratively now, his attacker and audience gone. He examined his palms, which were pink from their slap against the rocks.

  “You okay?” said Pella.

  “Don’t baby me,” said Morris, sniffling angrily.

  “Okay. God.” Pella wanted to leave him there. She’d wanted to be alone anyway.

  “Bruce is in love with you,” said Morris sneeringly.

  “Is not.” Then, hearing her own response come out so petulant, she added, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “He is so,” said Morris, gathering steam. “He only hit me because he’s trying to look big. He’s showing off for you.”

  “He didn’t hit you.”

  Pella regretted that, too, the moment it was out. She didn’t mean to defend the brutal shove. That was Morris Grant’s power, seemingly. He could make you regret anything you said to him. And say things you regretted.

  “Everybody’s on his side,” said Morris, looking at his hands again.

  “Are you bleeding?”

  “I said don’t baby me.” He was done crying, and the words were free of their mournful aspect. He was just spiteful, now. Pella felt she was paying, somehow, for giving him the cookie on the porch at Wa’s.

  “Whatever,” said Pella.

  “I’m gonna get him,” said Morris, looking up angrily. “You can tell him, too. I don’t care.” That said, he turned and ran off in the direction they’d come, feet kicking frantically out to the sides, as though somebody was chasing him.

  Pella watched him go, feeling an unaccustomed dislike.

  Then she ran too, wanting to leave the spot.

  She dashed toward a cluster of ruins, neither following Morris back the way they’d come nor taking the path down to Efram’s, but instead forging a third direction. She set out over obstacles, refusing to run a path, wanting to go the way that wasn’t any option at all. She didn’t care to be choosing, just running. Her steps clattered on rubble, and she winced, wishing to be invisible and silent, wishing to be unknown. She didn’t want to remind herself of Morris, running.

  She didn’t even want to remind herself of herself. Just nobody running nowhere, unseen. That would be fine.

  But instead of silence and invisibility, her foot plunged into a gap in the rocks with a sickening liquid sound. She was jerked to the ground, falling forward on her palms just as Morris had fallen back on his. She collapsed there helpless, twisting around to accommodate her leg, still up to the knee in the crevice that had felled her.

  Wrapping her smarting hands under her knee like a sling, she pulled her leg out of the hole. Her shin was bleeding, and her sneaker was wet. She moved her leg, turned her ankle in different directions. It wasn’t broken. She held off tears.

  She looked down into the opening. Her weight had ruptured several potatoes, including a fish. As she watched, the little glistening bodies slid to the edges of the crushed, oozing mass. Dust rained down from the crumbled edge of the hole and flecked the dark, moist membranes. She turned away.

  Unexpectedly, she was glad to be stopped. Stilled. Her breath rasped in her own ears as she sat, peeling down her sock, wiping her blood away from her shin. Now that she was sitting she saw there was no need to run. It was enough just to be away from the other children, to be in a place by herself.

  The bleeding stopped. She leaned her head back against the rocks there, and closed her eyes.

  “They’re putting up the new house today,” said E. G. Wa, leaning over his counter.

  “More customers, eh?” said Efram Nugent.

  “More customs,” said the Archbuilder who was sitting in the rocking chair behind them.

  Efram pointed at a drink in a plastic bottle. “Give me one of those.” He was leaning on the other side of the counter.
Behind him sat the Archbuilder, rocking rather frantically, waving its fronds. Standing near the door was a teenager, who Pella recognized from his sullen features as Doug Grant, Morris’s mysterious older brother. She might have even mistaken him for a grown man, if he hadn’t been standing in the same room as Efram. He didn’t hold up to that comparison.

  Household deer stirred in the corners and dashed across the shelves all through the room. Pella spotted them more easily than ever before. They almost seemed bigger. Was the light in the room somehow different? Or were her eyes growing more accustomed to finding them?

  “Here you are,” said Wa, handing Efram the drink. “You want one, Doug?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thought so. Put it to your dad’s account?”

  “No, I’ll pay.”

  E. G. Wa didn’t offer anything to Pella or the Archbuilder. Of course, Pella didn’t have any money with her. How odd, she thought, to carry money here. It was like the men were playing a board game. Or playing store, just to humor Wa. They knew it wasn’t worth anything here.

  “Yeah, old Ben Barth is right. Soon this place’ll be running with people,” Wa mused. “People and Archbuilders, all mixed up together. Need organization—I guess that’s what Marsh is here for.”

  Pella was surprised that they were talking about her father with her in the room.

  She was even more surprised when Efram answered, “Marsh has got some things to learn around here before he does any organizing.”

  He said it very evenly, without looking at Pella. Nobody was looking at Pella. She watched them all, silently waiting. She wondered if they even knew she was in the room. She felt oddly incapable of speaking. Invisible.

  “I hope Clement Marsh has got some things to learn around here,” said the Archbuilder, still rocking un-restfully, “because I am hoping to do some learning.”

  Doug Grant stepped in front of the Archbuilder, cutting him out of the circle. His movements were impatient, jerky, sprung, almost as though he were struggling to free himself from a web. He said to Efram, eagerly, “I always thought you were going to be the one doing the organizing.”

  E. G. Wa leaned forward and smiled, as if he’d meant the conversation to take this turn.

  But Efram said, “You’re jumping the gun—a couple of women take a house and you think you’ve got a town. There’s nothing to organize, unless you need someone to organize your wishful thinking for you. Hold on to the customers you’ve already got, Wa.”

  “Earth’s getting real bad, Efram,” said Wa. “People are coming.”

  “This place doesn’t have much to recommend it,” said Efram with a kind of satisfaction. He sipped and swallowed. “Those two women might not like it here, go back. Marsh might go back. Not everybody turns out to like breaking new ground. And nobody’s seen as much of this place as I have, spent as much time with these fools—” He tipped his drink at the Archbuilder. “Hell, maybe I’ll go back.”

  “You’ll never go back,” said Wa.

  I will, thought Pella. First chance I get.

  Efram turned, and looked at her for the first time, his gaze shockingly cold. Still nobody had spoken to her, used her name. Efram stared, made a face, and stepped toward her, and she found herself flinching.

  “You ought to clear this place out sometimes, Wa,” he said over his shoulder. “Or do you like these things staring at you all the time?”

  And then he raised his hand and with a big easy motion swept Pella off the windowsill where she had been perched, and onto the floor. Her four tiny legs scrabbled for traction, and instinctively, she ran.

  Not alone. Three others were with her.

  Three other household deer.

  That was what she was.

  Efram kicked at them as they ducked around the side of the counter, moving swiftly together, easily avoiding his boot, Pella moving as agilely as the others.

  Then she separated from the other three. They darted around the other side of the counter, to spy on Efram and Wa as they resumed their conversation, while Pella made a dash for the door. She slipped past Doug Grant’s feet at the doorway, and ran across the porch.

  Then out, into the valley, to find her other, more usual self.

  “Hey, Pella.”

  It was Bruce. Pella sat up. She was sitting in a tangle of vines on a flat rock in the bright sun. Bruce and Raymond stood over her. David and Martha were a little farther off.

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “Nothing.” Oozing blood had circled her ankle, then dried. She rubbed at the crusted stripe with her thumb. “I stepped on a potato hole.”

  “So why were you lying there like that?” said Raymond. He sounded more resentful than concerned.

  Pella didn’t exactly have an answer. “I was just lying down for a minute,” she said. She recalled her fugue, her visit to Wa’s store. Her dash back across the valley. No, she didn’t exactly have an answer.

  “Looked dead,” said Raymond, turning away disgusted, as if Pella had failed in some responsibility to him and David, some promise that she wouldn’t ever look dead.

  Pella felt that in some way she had failed. She got up, dusted herself off.

  Martha stood sipping from a plastic bottle. David stood beside her, watching Pella, attentive, his hands a little out from his sides. The way Pella imagined he had watched Caitlin lying helpless in her shower.

  “Anybody down there?” she asked Bruce.

  “Nope,” said Bruce. “Efram must be out somewhere. Maybe he’s up at Wa’s. We got Martha something out of his fridge anyway.”

  Pella didn’t say a word, just trudged back with them.

  Eight

  “Invite Diana Eastling over for dinner tonight.”

  Pella had located Clement out behind the house. He was tamping soil from a bag into a trench in the ground. She limped up, her ankle a bit weak after all. Raymond and David were playing inside the house. Bruce and Martha had wandered home.

  Clement looked up at her, a smudge of soil across the top of his nose. He pursed his lips. “That’s a pretty specific request,” he said. “What if she’s busy?”

  “Try.”

  “May I ask what this is about?”

  “Maybe she knows about the Archbuilder viruses, about what they do to people.”

  Now Clement looked concerned. Pella felt only annoyance. She wanted to bypass his useless, uninformed attention. “Is there something I should know about?” he asked. “Are you … already experiencing something unusual?”

  “No,” she said, certain she was lying, certain she wanted to be.

  “So what’s the sudden urgent need for information?” He grinned and shrugged at her, rubbing dirt off his hands.

  “Don’t you think—” She knew she was being impossible, unfair. She wanted him to help her without fathering her, without arousing those instincts. Still, she persisted. “Shouldn’t we find out more about it, before something happens?”

  “If you feel that way, that’s reason enough.” He’d caught her tone now. “I don’t know Diana that well, Pella, but we can ask. Do you really want to talk with the boys there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re liable to ask a lot of silly questions.”

  “I guess.” She was surprised. Clement would treat her like an equal if she insisted. If that was what she wanted.

  A good question.

  “We’ll go ourselves,” said Clement. “Find out what there is to know. Then you and me can translate for the boys later.”

  After dinner they set out into the north of the valley as the sun went down. The fragmented arches were all black silhouettes, against a sky still pink and peach beyond the ruins. It felt wrong walking alone with her father. Pella could think of only two or three times before, in the days leading up to Caitlin’s death. In hospital corridors.

  Diana Eastling’s house was lit, visible from a distance. They approached in silence, without discussion, without a plan. Deer footsteps whi
spered in the darkness on either side of their path. Pella wondered for a minute if she shouldn’t have come alone. Too late. They stepped up onto the porch and Clement knocked on the door. Pella drew in her breath.

  The door opened, but it wasn’t Diana Eastling who opened it. Efram Nugent stood with one hand on his hip, his big shoulders filling the doorway.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “We were looking for Diana Eastling,” said Clement uncertainly.

  “You’re Clement Marsh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Efram Nugent. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He stuck out his hand, and Clement took it. “Diana’s headed out south of here for a few days. In the field is how she’d say it. She asked me to keep an eye on her place.”

  “Ah.”

  “Why don’t you come in?”

  Clement looked at Pella and shrugged. “Sure.”

  Pella followed her father inside, crushed. Why wasn’t the house dark? How could they have happened to find Efram here? This was worse than merely not getting what she wanted. It seemed in some way the exact reverse.

  Diana Eastling’s house was discouraging. It was so underfurnished and perfunctory that she might have only just moved in. Cardboard boxes were stacked against two walls of the front room and under the dining table. It looked to Pella as if Diana Eastling lived elsewhere, and kept this house for storage or camouflage.

  And Efram moved through it as casually as if he owned it. They had entered his space. Possibly any space he inhabited was his, the way he moved his shoulders to carve the air. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Marsh,” he said. “We keep missing each other.”