Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  “I know where Doug is,” she said. “I want to see Morris.”

  “You ought to stay away from Doug,” said Snider Grant, ignoring her, mashing his words gracelessly in his mouth. “He’s bad trouble. He’ll get you in trouble.”

  “Morris isn’t here either,” said Laney Grant. Her weary eyes flickered past Pella, into the dark valley, as if she feared Pella might be the advance scout for some ambush of the house.

  “Neither of them stay here,” said Snider. “Neither of them, anymore. I don’t know where they go. Ask Efram Nugent.”

  “You haven’t seen him?” said Pella.

  “You heard him,” said Laney. “They don’t stay here.” Morris appeared to be a bare afterthought to Doug, impossible to consider singly.

  “Go on,” grunted Snider Grant, turning away from the doorway. His wife nodded at Pella and closed the door.

  Bruce Kincaid found her on the path back toward her house. He surprised her, coming out of the shadows. She felt her heart beating all the way to her fingertips, her toes, as she ran.

  “What are you hiding for?” she said angrily.

  “I snuck away,” he said. “I had to talk to you.”

  “What?” Bruce couldn’t help her with the thing she needed to do. He didn’t know about the Archbuilder in the shed, couldn’t possibly be made to understand. He was from another life. His own urgent problems, whatever they were, only made her desperate with impatience.

  “I was looking for you,” he said. “I went to your house.” He stood blinking at her there in the growing darkness, the time ticking away.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “What’s the matter with your dad?”

  “Nothing,” she said, staring him down. She didn’t want to think about Clement now.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said.

  “You heard about Martha.”

  “I heard something.”

  “My parents are packing up our stuff. We’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “Southport first. They’re coming in the morning with a truck. But my dad’s talking about Earth.”

  There is no town, thought Pella. There never was one. There had always only been Efram and whatever he wanted. A frontier, a prison, a fire.

  The ones who might have made a town were gone, chased off or defeated, turned against one another, or themselves. Joe Kincaid. Ben Barth. Clement in his bedroom and Hiding Kneel in a shed, the useless ones, penned, made insane. Diana Eastling, gone. Now Ellen Kincaid and her bread. Pella hated Joe Kincaid now, as much as she’d ever hated anyone. Let him go. Let him protect his family and kill an Archbuilder on his way. Let him escape the Planet of Efram.

  Pella wondered if she would ever know what really happened to Martha Kincaid.

  “Are you crying?” said Bruce.

  “No,” said Pella.

  “I might not see you again,” he said.

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then don’t go. Don’t go back tonight.” She surprised herself with the force of her yearning. Let her have Bruce here. He seemed precious now. That would be the cost of Joe Kincaid’s going, the price for the Archbuilder in the shed.

  Let her rob Joe Kincaid of his son. Let him know loss.

  Bruce was silent, eyes lowered. Then, almost whispering, he said, “I can’t, Pella. My family isn’t like that.”

  Pella nodded.

  “I should go back now,” he said apologetically.

  She understood that her family was like that, now. Hers and Morris’s. So they would linger, while the Kincaids left. They would stay in the ruins. Families that weren’t in a town that wasn’t. Shame flooded her. And sadness.

  She choked away the feeling, made herself hard again for what she had to do. As they stood together on the path the deepening night pooled around them. Soon it would be too dark. But Bruce could help her.

  “I have to find Morris,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s important,” she said. “I can’t explain. Where does he go at night?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Bruce.

  She followed him off the path, out past Wa’s store, far into the valley. She watched him measure his direction by the jagged silhouettes that loomed on either side, making his last expedition, his silent farewell to the valley. A ghostly household deer whistled past them, into the dark. He guided her to the top of a ridge where a few distant lights were visible, Wa’s, probably, and Bruce’s own house. Then down again, through a twisting gorge, in absolute blackness. When they emerged into light again he took her hand.

  “I should go,” he said. “Morris is over there.”

  She squinted to see.

  “You’ll see his flashlight,” said Bruce. “He has a hideout, kind of like yours. He calls it his clubhouse, but nobody’s allowed except him.”

  He turned to her. She nodded. Then he released her hand and touched her shoulder, and leaned his head into hers, without closing his eyes. Their noses bumped, nestled together. She felt his lips touch hers, barely.

  “Goodbye, Pella,” he said. She could feel his breath on her face.

  She moved closer and kissed him, catching his mouth with her own, holding it. He was dewy and soft. They were both startled by it. Without meaning to, she thought of Efram, of standing with him in the empty valley an hour before. And then she thought of Doug Grant, and Hiding Kneel. Her breath skipped.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping back. She put her hand to her lips. This part of her was unfinished, lost. It couldn’t be found now, not here.

  A deer darted away.

  Bruce turned back into the entrance of the gorge. In another moment he was swallowed in the gloom. She stood and watched him go, then went in the direction he’d pointed her, up a little rise. When she reached the top she saw the light, leaking out of the crevice at her feet.

  She felt her way down off the rock and through the entrance to Morris’s Archbuilder nook.

  Morris was in the corner, lying on a blanket, reading his worn comic book by flashlight. He stared at her as she climbed in, his eyes wide and cowardly, his mouth sullen.

  “I heard you and Bruce sneaking around,” he said.

  “Who cares?”

  “You didn’t surprise me. I knew you were coming.”

  Pella brushed the scuffs of dirt off her pants and knelt down on the corner of his blanket. “You knew I was coming because you were out there looking at us,” she said. “As a deer.” She only had to look for a moment to find it. Sitting on a crumbled shelf beside expired flashlight batteries and crusts of bread was an open jar of blue pills, perhaps twenty or thirty of them, with the blue sugar coating half smeared off by Morris’s saliva. He’d pretended to take them, she knew, and hidden them under his tongue or in his cheek instead.

  Morris watched her for a moment, then said, “So? I can if I want.” Then, searching for an advantage, he said, “I saw you kissing.”

  She ignored it. “You sleep here now?”

  “Sometimes,” he said defiantly.

  “Hiding Kneel comes here?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Hiding Kneel.”

  Morris stared at her again, and nodded. He was trembling.

  She’d wound her way to the center. Outside the crevice where they huddled, night and silence covered the valley. Out there in the distance the Kincaids were packing their belongings, waiting for daylight, for their chance to escape, while others slept or lay awake, alone in various rooms, in ignorance, in loneliness, in distress. Outside Efram waited, ruling more than he knew. But here with Morris, in a hole lit by flashlight, Pella was at the core. She felt as cold and furious as a knife, one that would cut to the truth.

  “You and Hiding Kneel spy on people together,” said Pella. “You run around, outside. As deer.”

  “He made me,” said Morris. “I swear. He taught me how.”

  “Hiding Kneel didn’t make you stop taking the pi
lls,” she said. Morris just stared, still trembling. “What did you tell Doug?” she said.

  “What?”

  She crowded him in his corner, putting her face near his. His flashlight rolled away, its skewed light reeling across the floor. “What did you tell Doug? What did you make him think?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie.” Pella grabbed his hair. “You told him something about Hiding Kneel,” she said. Flecks of her spit appeared on his face. She wanted to rub him in the dust. “About Martha and David. Tell me.”

  “I didn’t lie,” said Morris, his voice on the edge of panic. “It’s true. Martha and David—”

  “Martha and David what?”

  “They were fooling around,” said Morris, beginning to cry. “I saw her playing with his penis—”

  “You were there as deer,” said Pella. “Just like now, when you saw me kissing. You and Hiding Kneel were both deer. Martha and David don’t know you saw them.”

  Morris started crying. “Don’t hurt me.”

  “Doug doesn’t know about household deer,” said Pella. “You let him think you were really there. You and Hiding Kneel. You made him think you were all there together.”

  “He asked me—” Morris shrieked.

  “You said what he wanted you to say,” said Pella acidly. She let go of his hair. “Anything to make Doug happy. And Efram. Their sick minds. You’re sick too.”

  “Martha and David—”

  “Shut up. I don’t care what they did. They’re just kids.”

  “Hiding Kneel—”

  “You killed him. You betrayed him.”

  She turned off his flashlight. The dark was apocalyptic. The two of them were only specks now, only voices. “I could kill you if I wanted.”

  Morris was less than a voice. He was a whimper. A fearful whine.

  “No one would ever find your body,” she whispered. “Bruce is gone, you know. His family is leaving.”

  Now he just wept.

  Pella had her minuscule victory. She could undo Morris Grant. The bully whom everyone bullied she could bully too. His howling filled the darkness, filled the air.

  “Don’t kill me,” he managed, between gasps for breath.

  Pella reached out and found his wet, shocked face. He made a choking sound. She put her hand on his cheek, then his mouth, then his hair, feeling her anger evaporate as though seared by the heat of his face, turned to steam in the numbing, absolving darkness. In its place was shame, and exhaustion. She stroked Morris’s hair, touched his ear and neck, wiped the mucus that soon stretched between her fingers onto the knee of her pants. His whimpering slowed. He still trembled. She crowded him again, but this time gently, with her shoulders. He fell against them, murmuring. She pulled the blanket up around him. He wheezed, sighed. She stroked his swollen eyelids.

  Twenty

  They walked together across the wastes, in the white blaze of the early sun. The sun had wrung the night out of the rocks; even in the shade it was too bright to look. They’d slept in their clothes, the boy and the girl, slept huddled cold in the dust under an inadequate blanket, but the whitish sun wrung the cold out of them too. The sun and their resoluteness. Very little had to be said. Their mouths were parched and crumbs remained in the corners of their eyes, but the girl was strong enough for both of them, and the boy was swept up, enclosed in her fierce resolve. They tracked past the vine-tangled ruins, past the house that had been converted to a shop, and then the girl led them a few steps out of their way, to look at the house of the family that was leaving. Early as it was, the family was already gone. The house empty. The girl stopped to examine the tire tracks on the ground and then without speaking she and the boy resumed their trek. Viewed from the sky, their path would have appeared as a straight line with a single dent, a line extending from the shard of ruin where they’d slept to the largest homestead in the valley.

  “Hiding Kneel?”

  There was a sound from inside the shed. The Archbuilder was still alive. Pella said, “Are you okay?”

  Across from the shed, Doug Grant sat against Efram’s greenhouse, head resting on his crossed arms, crossed arms resting on his upraised knees. Guarding the shed, protecting his prize, his captive. But fast asleep. A deer stood regarding him curiously. The waking valley was full of deer. The whole compound was silent, the scene bleached of the night’s horrors.

  “Only sleeping,” said Hiding Kneel, in a dim voice. “I was dreaming of school—”

  Then Morris tugged on her arm. “Pella.”

  It was Efram, coming out of his house. Pella saw only the line of his mouth as he strode toward them.

  “Miss Marsh,” he called out.

  Pella stared back at him silently.

  “Come to visit the prisoner?” he said once he stood only a few feet away, hands on hips, looming. “And you brought a friend this time.”

  Doug Grant lifted his head groggily at the boom of Efram’s voice.

  “Let Hiding Kneel out,” said Pella. Her own voice sounded small, a squeak that could barely make its way out in the dead air. The dryness of her mouth and the heat of the morning seemed to erode the words before they crossed the space between her and Efram.

  “You want to tell me why?”

  “Because nothing happened,” said Pella.

  Doug Grant pulled himself up and moved toward them, blinking frantically in the sun, rubbing his legs as if they’d fallen numb. He stopped behind Efram.

  “Get out of here, Morris,” said Doug. “Go home.”

  “Morris lied to Doug, and Doug lied to you,” said Pella to Efram.

  She wanted Morris to speak, but he only stood beside her gaping idiotically at his brother and Efram.

  She was alone. The men were gone—Joe Kincaid, Ben Barth, Clement. They were useless to her. The valley might as well have been empty. She stood alone facing Efram, with only Morris Grant to help her.

  “Hiding Kneel didn’t do anything to anybody,” Pella went on, stringing together more of the dead, hopeless words. “Open the door,” she said finally, making it as much a command as she could. She wanted it to be night again, she wanted to start a fire, do real damage. All she had were the words that died in the glare of day.

  “Who put you in charge?” said Doug Grant, sneering. A minute before he’d been asleep. Now he vibrated with anger. He moved toward Pella, but Efram put his hand up and blocked him.

  “Let her talk,” said Efram, without looking at Doug. “She’s got something on her mind.”

  “It’s lies,” she said again. “Morris lied. Tell him.”

  Morris blinked.

  “Tell him,” Pella said.

  Morris hiccuped. “I didn’t—”

  “What are you talking about?” said Doug Grant. “You’re crazy. She’s crazy, Efram.”

  Efram didn’t speak. He looked from Morris to Pella, and squinted under the shade of his hat.

  “Doug doesn’t know,” Morris said, his voice wavering. “It happened different—”

  “He’s lying now, Efram,” said Doug Grant shrilly. “She made him say it. I know what he told me. I know what I heard. And when Joe Kincaid asked Martha about it she started crying. His little girl.”

  “Hiding Kneel didn’t have anything to do with it,” said Pella. “He didn’t touch Martha, he wasn’t even there. Doug doesn’t know. Open the door.”

  Efram pursed his lips, moved just that much. Pella remembered the household deer he’d swept with such casual brutality from his path. Efram was moved that much now.

  “You think I make my decisions based on what Doug tells me?” he said sardonically.

  “What else do you know?” said Pella. “You weren’t even around.” Efram might be an edifice the words crashed against or a chasm into which they disappeared, but she could speak them now. “It was Doug and Joe Kincaid who stirred everything up. And Wa. What do you even know about it?”

  “I know more than you or your little detective here. I know what I kn
ew before you arrived on this planet, Pella Marsh.”

  “You don’t know about Hiding Kneel. You just heard.”

  Now Efram smiled. “You of all people should know there’s more than one way to learn things, Pella. What about Hugh Merrow?”

  She looked at him appalled that he could even say that name aloud.

  He was still abusing her secrets, still flaunting his crimes. Still flattering her. She felt warped by his monstrousness. She wanted to fall at his feet.

  “Why think you’re the only one around here who snuck a look at Merrow and his Archbuilder?” Efram went on.

  Pella began to tremble. Did he inhabit household deer himself? Of course. Everything, anything. He lived in the rocks and the air.

  Doug Grant stood openmouthed, baffled. The conversation had left him behind. The only thing certain was that his prize, his capture, was being taken from him one way or another. Efram had claimed it.

  Meanwhile the disputed shed stood locked, the Archbuilder silent inside. They might as well have been arguing over freeing Ben Barth’s chickens.

  “You’re a liar,” Pella said. “And a killer.” The words were unstoppable suddenly. If he didn’t hear them she would plant them in the ground, and they would grow everywhere, like potatoes. “You killed Truth Renowned.”

  For a moment nobody spoke. Then Efram, his voice bitter, said, “Truth Renowned started a fire.”

  He didn’t seem to be talking to Pella, only himself.

  He took a step toward them, and Pella flinched. But it was Morris he reached for, with a flick of his hand that was lazy, indifferent. Morris twisted away and scurried behind Pella.

  “Doug,” said Efram, “take your brother home.”

  “The Archbuilder—” cried Doug, gesturing wildly. As though Hiding Kneel were about to burst out of the shack and terrorize the valley.

  “I’ll take care of the Archbuilder,” said Efram impatiently. His voice was smoke. “And a few other things. Get your brother out of here. Leave me and Pella to talk.”

  “No,” said Pella. She stepped backward and, not looking away from Efram, fished behind her until she found Morris’s arm. She had her one weapon left. Fight spies with spies, she thought. Fires with fire.