by Roger Wall
“That’s okay. I’m waiting for a wife.”
“Wife!” he roared and tilted backward and slapped both thighs. His penis flopped upward. “And you don’t even know how to do it with boys! Well, I myself have attained reproductive age for national service. But government sourcing sent me a bad selection. I met her at weekly meeting. She’s got a tractor face and is uglier than I am. The coupling room was reserved for us. But I’ll tell you, com, I’d rather drive a can of lubricant than her any day. That’s why I ran away.”
“What about your uncle, and a job?”
“Mixing it up and driving, com, that’s what I’m after.”
Gooseflesh rippled down my body. I pulled on my shorts and tied the belt tightly, setting the sheath knife to the left side. I felt as though I were outside my body, watching myself. One part of me said “run,” while the other part wanted to stay on the beach and try to sort out what the stranger was talking about.
“My uncle says in the Center you can pick anyone you want and then just start doing it,” he said. His arms were straight, supporting the weight of his chest. His penis had fallen to the side.
“Usually, you meet one woman who becomes your wife and then after a day’s work you lie in bed together and make love,” I said.
“Ha! You’re spraying me again, little com! I might be from the quarry, but for sure it’s not that thing you said. It’s about hold on because here we go!”
The stranger lay back on the ground and rubbed his penis with both hands. At first he did this quietly, as though he were concentrating. Then, as his penis grew larger, he grunted and moaned and moved his hands faster. Suddenly, he began to groan, as though he were hurting himself. Then he was silent. He wiped his hands on his shorts and propped himself on his elbows. He smiled, showing a stupid grin. His cheeks were pink from his effort, brighter than the pustules that dotted them.
“And don’t tell me you can wait for the day you do,” he said.
His penis was long and limp now. Spittle was around his lips.
“I have to go,” I said.
I slid my arms through the straps of my pack. I looked straight ahead and picked out a line along the shore and up to the trail that led to the footbridge.
“Where, little com?”
He stood up and licked his lips. He wasn’t smiling. His thick muscles were puffed out, taut.
At first I didn’t answer but started to walk up the beach. The stranger followed like a shadow.
“I have work to do,” I said, not turning around. “Up the valley, the animals,” I lied.
“What, with others? I thought you were alone. You better not tell them about me!”
The stranger’s shrill voice drilled into the back of my head.
“What would I tell anyone about you?” I blurted over my shoulder. “That you can’t even ride a bike!”
“Fucking blow-out sent me over the handlebars, com!”
I knew right away that I had made a mistake, that my mouth had opened before my brain could tell it to remain closed. I ran toward the path. The stranger followed, shouting:
“Slinging poke words at me! Stalling out, com. Backsliding. No traction. Alarm, hear me? Mixer’s coming!”
He shoved me in the back, and I stumbled forward. As I recovered, he shoved me again.
“Alarm, com, hear me? You ready for it?”
I regained my balance and swung my bent legs forward as fast as I could. The stranger chased me barefoot over the footbridge, across the road, and up through the town’s grid of thistle-filled streets, swearing as shards of stone and glass and bits of metal cut his feet, which slapped against the hard ground.
“Bowlegged daddy’s boy. I’m gonna hammer you!”
I felt his hand close over my arm, and a sharp pain shot to my shoulder as muscle and nerve compressed against bone. I reached for my knife and drew it across his stomach, then shook off his grasp and zagged right and headed toward two demolished houses.
I sprinted into a jagged trough of debris—shattered vinyl siding, delaminated plywood, broken wallboard. Nails caught in the rubber of my sandals. Something slammed into my empty pack and sent a jolt through my spine—a piece of concrete, or a brick, maybe. Something whizzed over my head. Then I heard the stranger screaming:
“You’re a reject, com! A mistake! Pliered! But some clinic bitch let you live. Next time I see you, I’ll finish the operation!”
My knife seemed not to have cut him. Perhaps I’d used the dull edge of the blade. Or the stranger’s skin was so thick that it wouldn’t split without intense pressure.
I wove in and out and around the collapsed houses, occasionally taking advantage of stretches of clear but churned-up streets to put greater distance between us. A forested ravine led to the top of Windy Butte, and I crashed through its brush and trees, grabbing onto the fractured limbs of elms so I wouldn’t slide downhill. Halfway up the butte I heard a rustling in the leaves. A grouse exploded into the air in front of me. At least it hadn’t been a rattler. The sound of crashing filled my head. I slipped and fell spread out on the leafy ground of the ravine.
I listened to myself pant and didn’t move until I had calmed down.
The ravine followed a corner up the butte and exited onto the prairie, on the edge of the field of wind turbines that had once powered the town. A large yellow metal bucket, rusted and with a row of big teeth, a relic of a backhoe, had been left lying tipped on its side. I crawled through a bunch of porcupine grass. There was enough space for me to sit with my legs tucked against my chest, back pressed to the cool steel, which soothed my throbbing muscles, already beginning to stiffen and ache. The wind sang across the opening of the bucket and moaned inside. The long propeller of a lone wind turbine wobbled back and forth above me. My mind was bursting, the spaces colliding one against another. There was no room for anything new.
From the yellow bucket on top of Windy Butte, I could see across the valley to Otis Butte: the band of trees spread across its flanks and up its ravines, the grassy plain extending to the horizon, and the lone trees—one of them the juniper under which Otis was buried. I focused on the one at the far left of the line and imagined Otis’s spirit flowing through the sap of the branches.
As I stared at the distant tree, a new thought arose in my mind: the only way out of my fix was to kill the stranger. Until he attacked me, I had thought he would leave on his own. But crouched in the yellow bucket left behind on the prairie, I realized the real truth was that here in White Earth River he could become dependent on me to provide food and water and shelter—and perhaps conversation and sex, which if I didn’t agree to would result in further assault. He had everything he needed in White Earth River. He wasn’t going to leave. These were the facts.
I had never thought about killing someone. Despite Otis’s stories about the murder of Sammy Goldrausch, the destruction of the town and the disappearance of its inhabitants—and the supposed roaming bands of agents ready to pick us up—we, Otis and I, had been able to avoid the murder and genocide that had swept the continent. When the machines had arrived in our town, we had hidden in the basement. Even my parents, with bellies full of tesgüino and venison, had probably put up more resistance than Otis had. Otis and I killed only animals for food.
Perhaps killing the stranger was a necessity, too, for my survival, though killing him wasn’t the same as killing an animal. The animals of White Earth River were part of the web of life. Otis and I respected the sacrifice they made for us to live. The stranger wasn’t part of this. He was a foreign species that didn’t belong in the valley.
As I stared at the juniper far away on Otis Butte, I thought how Otis’s life didn’t offer much guidance in what to do. I remembered a story we had once read together. It was about a king who instructed his subjects to protect the kingdom from invaders and then conveniently died before any showed up. This was the portrait of Otis, a picture of unreliability.
Otis had lectured me about defending our land with my lif
e, but he had never experienced the feelings that come with battle, how blows vibrate through the body and produce pain, how the desire to strike back makes the heart race, the body jerk, the teeth grind against each other, how words stay unformed, deep in the throat. Otis had never spoken of the urge to kill and how quickly it can take over. He knew nothing about plotting murder.
I decided that my knife had cut the stranger because I remembered feeling tissue give way when I sliced his stomach. Perhaps he would lose enough blood to become weakened, perhaps enough to die, before I had to finish him.
I knew that I couldn’t fight him face to face for more than a minute. He was too strong, even in a weakened state. I remembered the tightness that came from walking long distances and squatting all day in the garden—always in the tendon above the heel. If I could sever this cord, the stranger would hobble on one leg for a moment before falling to the ground in pain, at which point I could stab him or club him to death as I did deer.
“You have to get close to kill it,” I remembered Otis saying before I clubbed my first deer. I would have only one chance to cripple the stranger. I would need to sharpen the machete, first with the file, then with the whetstone. I would crouch low and attack as a mountain lion did.
This plan made my mouth parched. I needed something to satisfy my thirst until it could be quenched by action. Embedded in a tuft of grass, I found a rock left behind by the glacier. With a bent, rusty bolt from a fallen wind turbine, I chipped off a flake and placed it on my tongue. I curled up inside the yellow metal bucket and slept fitfully, sucking on the piece of granite until daylight arrived and warmed my stiff body.
The machete was meant for hacking down plants, although occasionally I used its blunt spine on small animals and once on a doe. After testing the honed blade, I slipped my hand through the leather strap and gripped the wooden handle. The soreness in my arm and back reminded me to act with speed, to swing the tool as though I were clearing the field of dried cornstalks. Although I could have eaten and drunk, I didn’t. An empty stomach would keep me light for a quick strike.
The doors to the boathouse were open, and I advanced in a crouched position, low with feet apart for stability and my right arm raised for a sharp downward swing. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I smelled the stench of vomit. On the floor lay the stranger, wearing a life preserver. Two more were draped over his legs. His body twitched. The critical tendon in his leg wasn’t exposed. I took a step forward.
“I’m sick, com,” the stranger said.
If I had had a club, I perhaps could have smashed his skull, a blunt injury that is almost bloodless. But I couldn’t tolerate seeing the gash and blood that the machete would inflict. The thought of splitting open his forehead made me sweat, and combined with the sour air from the stranger’s vomit, I retched and spit bile on the floor. The stranger didn’t seem to hear me or see the machete, quivering in the air over him, and I lowered it.
The one aspect of killing that I never adjusted to was determining the number of blows necessary to kill an animal and then waiting for it to die. I was thankful for not having to figure this out for the stranger and said the prayer that Otis offered up whenever we trapped or killed an animal. “We accept this and offer thanks in return.” The stranger would soon die; between his sickness and the knife wound, I doubted whether he’d last more than a couple of days.
“I hate them, com, the heaves. They open up that cut you gave me. The first time I fought them and passed out. When I came to, I sat up and spewed all over myself. I have the shits, too. I’ve been doing it over the edge of the dock. Sorry.”
I recalled Otis’s speeches about germs and how we owed our health to lack of contact with other humans. Now that I was no longer at risk of the stranger’s physical threat, I faced the disease and contamination he could pass on. Even if I killed him, his germs would still be left behind.
“I’m so weak. My coms in the quarry said that if I ran away, I’d die. Runaways never return.”
If I did nothing, once the stranger died I’d need to burn down the boathouse to rid our land of his body and germs. But if I could take him away now, sail him down the lake, and leave him on a shore to die, I wouldn’t have to worry about that task.
“They don’t even find the bodies. They send agents out looking for runaways, but they never bring any back. You think they just kill them when they find them, leave them dead and alone? Shit, I’m always around people, working. Do you know what it’s like to be alone?”
“You need a clinic,” I said to him.
“They’d probably arrest me. I used my hammer. My father was drunk. It made a bad sound.”
“We’ll have to sail to the Center.”
“Can’t you just give me a shot or a pill?”
“In the Center there’s a clinic. They’ll give you something. And contact your uncle, too.”
“He won’t be happy about that.”
“He’ll be able to help you.”
“He’s not going to be happy.”
“I’ll get the canoe ready.”
“Don’t be gone long, com. Five minutes, promise?”
“Okay, five minutes.”
The stranger closed his eyes. Five minutes, I thought. What was that? Four more than the “just a minute” that Otis used to say when I asked for something?
Otis had told me that the Center was east, a fast train ride in days when the spur line from White Earth River connected to the main east–west train line, but whether it was possible to sail to the Center I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. We weren’t going there, only to a distant shore, a resting place, I’d tell the stranger. I’d make him a cup of nightshade. For his stomach, I’d tell him. After he fell asleep, I’d paddle away.
I gathered only a few things: a bladder of well water, the tin cup, the rest of the sunflower seeds, a stalk of broccoli, some leaves of kale, and the nightshade, its roots, stem, and leaves wrapped in a piece of plastic tarp so no part of the plant touched my skin.
As I walked back to the boathouse from the garden, I began to worry about whether the stranger might regain strength and try to attack me or run away. I had the machete and the canoe paddle. But I wanted some cord to bind his wrists, or maybe his feet, if I needed to.
The yellow rope was in a tangle where I had left it, more faded than when I had used it to haul Otis to his grave. I coiled the cord and slung it over my shoulder and turned to go, but the branches of the juniper caught my eye. From the way they stirred, whipping back and forth, I knew that Otis’s spirit was angry, but what could it tell me that would be of any use?
“I might be the last one here, but I’m the first to do this,” I said to the tree.
The branches of the juniper didn’t move. Otis couldn’t argue with that. He was hiding in the tree, entwined with Malèna. I brushed my hair from my face and gathered it behind my head. “I’m taking your ribbon, too. You don’t need it anymore.” For strength, I thought. But when I searched the low branches for the ribbon, I couldn’t find it. Nor was it lying in the grass. He has it, I thought. He’d found Malèna and she’d braided his hair and tied it with the red ribbon. Or maybe the overhand knot with which I had attached it to the branch had come undone, and the wind had blown the ribbon away.
His shirt had bloodstains on it from where his wound had leaked, and putting on the life jacket made him wince. His face was white, even the pustules and welts from the goose, as though blood had ceased to circulate to his head. He shivered as he walked down the boat ramp. Stomach cramps caused him to double over and drop to his knees and gag.
“It hurts when I puke,” he said, looking up at me. “You shouldn’t have cut me. I didn’t deserve that.”
He sat back on his heels and spit and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Of course you deserved it, I wanted to say but instead said, “Drink some water. It’ll help pass the germs.” Then I poured a trickle from the rubber bladder into his mouth to let him know that I wasn’t
afraid of him, that I’d cut him again if I had to.
He shook his head at the red canoe, which the current had pushed parallel to the dock, and staggered as he lifted a leg to step into the bow, sitting on the bottom, not the seat. A gloss of sweat coated his forehead, and he hugged his legs to his chest as he rocked to and fro trying to calm himself. The canoe sent ripples out across the shallow water.
I hauled the rigging from the boathouse and arranged our packs forward of the stern seat. With one end of the yellow rope, I lashed them to the mast thwart; the other end I saved to restrain the stranger, if needed.
I had never paddled, much less sailed, a loaded canoe. As we drifted in the current, I saw that it was sitting low in the water. Here, upriver from the bay and lake, shrubs and trees protected us from strong breezes, but out on open water I knew the wind would kick up. I might have to fight to make headway. Gusts would be stronger later in the afternoon, too.
I looked at the sky. The upper layers were streaked with clouds. They could go either way: build up and lower to the ground or dissipate. A hint of sun would have reassured me that the day would end with a red sunset and not a storm. Warmer air, too, would have taken the bite out of the breeze. But neither was present that morning.
I kneeled on a life preserver and leaned into the paddling, pleased at the distance I generated with each stroke, which I ended in a satisfying J-shape to keep us heading in a straight line. The geese nesting on the peninsula were quiet as we passed. Perhaps they understood my risk. I didn’t talk to the stranger, who sat facing forward, his arms locked around his legs, his head down until he needed to see the horizon to prevent himself from vomiting.
Where the river entered the bay, I beached the canoe and walked through the silt and up a grassy terrace for a better view. The stranger stayed in the canoe and threw up over the side. The wind flattened the surface of the water and stirred ripples into patches of chop. I dug a handful of sunflower seeds from my pocket and chewed them into a mush, not bothering to spit out the pulverized shells.