by Frank Owen
When the black of true night had set in, Vida stood at last and shouldered her pack. Dyce turned to watch her go. He felt that he could remember every detail of her leaving.
It was only when she was merged with the mess of shelters that he realized he’d been watching her in pitch darkness, his eyes seeing in the starlight, clear as day, Sam’s nocturnal vision passed invisibly along.
25
Vida was asleep on her feet, stumbling along. Sam had tied her wrist to his waist with a band of cloth, as if she was a toddler on reins. I may as well be, thought Vida. She was more than useless. High clouds blocked the moonlight and created a dense black through which they moved quietly, left alone by the night creatures that were their companions, as well as the Callahans. Vida kept expecting to come to a clearing where the men would be arranged in a tight circle, their sleeping forms guarded by the old man, the one Dyce called Tye Callahan. The harrier would be beside him, man and bird yellow-eyed and watchful with hate.
Sam had been pushing her hard, and she was grateful, even when her legs were not. When Vida tugged on the tether, he stopped and let her sit, and they put their small packs on the ground to rest. But it was never any longer than a minute and then they were up and moving again – down, down, down. It was better to keep going. The route back to the house was turning out to be not as far as Vida had thought. She’d cut back a long way on her journey to the ghost colony.
They crossed the river at a shallow point, hardly higher than Vida’s ankles, and began the climb up the other side in the direction of her home. When this was all over, she promised herself, I am going to have a mustard bath. A real hot one. She didn’t care how many kettles she had to set over the fire to get the water hot enough. It would be worth it. A bath, and a trim for her nails, fingers and toes. She was tired of being dirty. It wasn’t always the kind you could see.
Sam himself had stopped twice to vomit, and each time it was a reminder to Vida that the man was really sick. His willingness to help her had not been offered out of boredom. She wanted to ask if he was okay, but they’d spoken about being quiet, about attracting as little attention as possible.
Sam must know that the double virus had worked on Dyce, but he was unwilling to test it himself. Vida didn’t know why. Maybe he wanted to wait and see the side effects. Maybe – and this made sense to the reptilian part of Vida’s brain – he didn’t want to risk losing his night vision.
Sam had stopped. He yanked on the cloth and pulled her close to him, and she bumped into his pack.
‘That your house?’ he whispered.
Even if she hadn’t been able to see anything, the smell would have told her where they were. The scent of the night-blooming herbs in the medicine garden wafted to Vida and made her throat close with longing. She wanted her mother back – soft and aproned, spooning the rooibos leaves into the teapot, her back against the window, safe from everything outside. In Vida’s dreams there was always an electric light bulb directly over her mother’s head, like a halo.
Now she squinted into the dark, expecting to see nothing – but there were little streams of light spiking through the holes in the downstairs window boarding.
‘Shit.’ Vida felt the familiar, hot rush of adrenalin. Another fight coming.
‘What?’
‘Someone’s in there, and it’s not my ma.’
There were folk camping in her lounge.
Of course there were. There’d been no sign of anyone home. Usually the smoke from the chimney or the washing hanging on the verandah would be enough to put off the wrong kind of travelers. There was no point in risking getting too close to lone strangers. Better to just pass on by. But an empty house: that was an invitation.
‘Stay here,’ Vida whispered. She unknotted the cloth loop and moved forward, keeping her eyes trained on the windows. There was no sound coming from the upstairs room where she had left Ruth, wrapped blind in her blankets. None downstairs either, where the squatters would most likely be camping out, counting their blessings and drinking her wine.
At the side of the house she stood on a broken cinder block and peered inside the room. A muffled man lay on the floor in front of the fireplace, while two others sat dozing beside him in armchairs, rifles at their feet.
And they were wearing her shirts, the soft fabric stretched tight against the trespass of skin.
Vida stepped down from the block and moved to the next window for a better view. The man on the floor, she could see now, had one of her ma’s hospital bandages wrapped tight around his neck, bright-red blotches seeping to the surface like the outlines of lost continents.
Gus Callahan.
Fuck.
The man was made of iron. She watched his chest rising and falling, the breath sending the sweat to his hairline. One of the men got up and dropped another piece of wood on the fire – Vida’s wood! The wood she’d spent days collecting! They were blazing through it, luxuriating in the stolen woodpile. She wouldn’t be surprised if they torched the place when they went, just because they could. Sums up everything you need to know about a Callahan, Vida thought, sourly.
She tiptoed back to Sam.
‘Three men. Two with rifles, one injured.’
‘What’s the plan?’ In the light from the house Sam looked pale and sweaty.
‘Are you sure you want to get involved?’
He shrugged. ‘Kept you safe this far, didn’t I?’
Vida eyed him. ‘Okay. I need to get my ma down here so we can get her back to camp.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Upstairs. I’ll try get in and out through the kitchen.’
‘No offence, but can you carry her by yourself?’
‘I think so. But I’ll need a distraction outside beyond the sliding doors.’
‘What sort of distraction?’
‘Shouting in the dark? Angry home-owner with a rifle? That kind of thing?’
‘Okay.’ He tucked in his shirt. ‘I think I can do that.’
‘And I’m going to need you to spit in that cup again.’
He rooted it out from his small bag. She wanted to turn away. What if it didn’t work this time? What if it was an accident, a fluke, and Dyce was dying even now?
She heard the rasp of Sam gathering the phlegm from his throat. He hawked it into the mug and handed it to her. The tin mug felt heavy, like a grail, weighted with its own importance. It made Vida sick to imagine the lump of dense, gray mucus it carried.
‘Thank you.’ The warm spot made by the phlegm was making her want to drop the mug. ‘I’m going to get Ma now. Try not to get shot.’
‘Yeah. That’s pretty much my life philosophy.’
The two of them tiptoed to either end of the house, and then Vida ducked down beside the kitchen door and waited for Sam to get going.
And then it came.
‘Who’s that in my house? I got a gun here! I’m not kidding! You all better get yourselves cleared out of here!’ Sam had turned hick in his performance, Vida noticed, channeling pure hillbilly outrage.
She heard the startled cussing of the two Callahans, and then some stamping around on the floorboards as they went for their guns. Vida twisted the kitchen door handle and moved inside. The old smell of home, damp and inviting, enfolded her and she breathed it deep. Keep moving, baby, she told herself. Otherwise this will be your last whiff of it.
‘Finders keepers, Daddy!’ one Callahan shouted. ‘We not going nowhere!’
‘I ain’t playing around!’ Sam was bellowing, really putting his heart into it, fired by indignation and melodrama.
Vida moved into the passage. She could see Gus lying dead still on the carpet, feet towards her, a cushion propping up his huge damaged head. Even if he did see her, what was he going to do about it? She went on her way, stepping quietly up the stairs – heel-toe, heel-toe – remembering where each one squeaked. It gave her time, and it was as she ascended the attic stairs that she understood that she might be too late.
Sh
e might have come all this way just to pay her respects.
Vida stopped. Please, she thought. I don’t even know what I’m praying for. Just, please.
Downstairs, Sam was embracing his role. ‘The Lord above knows whose house this is! He ain’t gonna find it hard to judge the souls I’m about to send Him!’
Vida waited for her eyes to make the most of the dim light in the room, and tried to make sense of what she saw. Under the window the bundle of blankets was flattened.
Ruth was gone!
Vida ran to the bed and reached down to feel inside the covers, sure that the body had been removed like a leper. Would the Callahans have had the respect to bury her in the garden among her plants? Maybe the false grave had found its use after all.
In the dark Vida’s hand settled around a wrist. She’d forgotten how frail her ma had become in her sickness. And since Vida had been away the woman had become a skeleton, the flesh shiny where it stretched over her bones.
But it was still warm, wasn’t it? If she was dead, it hadn’t been for very long. Vida kept her fingers there, feeling for a pulse, but there was no sign of the flicker she expected and her own thudding heartbeat was getting in the way. She moved her hand to her mother’s throat, feeling for life.
There. Was that a pulse?
‘Ma,’ she whispered. She felt like a little girl who had woken from a nightmare, seeking comfort in her mother’s bed.
There was no reply.
Vida felt for her ma’s face. She found the mouth and parted her lips, and then she poured the lump of phlegm out of the cup and into her mother’s mouth. The glob caught on the front teeth and sat there.
Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! It’s going to fall on the floor and then I’ll never find it!
She used two fingers to shove the quivering mess into the woman’s mouth as far as she could, and then she wiped her hands over and over on the sheet, long after they were dry.
Don’t choke, Ma, please! Just swallow your muti like a good girl and don’t throw it back up!
Vida listened for commotion downstairs but the stand-off was still going on. Good old Sam.
She waited for her ma to make a sound, but the woman was motionless. Vida wiped the old face with a corner of a sheet and decided how best to carry her. She would have to keep Ruth’s head tipped the right way so that the phlegm had a chance to stay down. But compared to dragging Dyce, her ma was hardly a challenge. Her pack, with the sand-filled squirrel, weighed about the same.
‘You’re lighter than Ears McCreedy, Ma,’ Vida told her, and lifted the unconscious woman. ‘It’s payback time for those nine months you carried me, right?’
She made her slow way to the top of the stairs and listened again.
The Callahans, furious, shrill as fishwives: ‘We’re not moving till morning! Best you go find someplace else for the night before we blow you a new asshole!’
Sam, mean and loud: ‘I brought nothing into this world, but I’m taking you dickwads out! Say your prayers!’
Vida had made it to the bottom of the stairs when she heard the crack of a gunshot. Ruth jerked in her fever dream – hallelujah! – but didn’t wake.
‘You’re okay,’ Vida told her, her heart hammering. ‘You hang in there, Ma.’
She turned and peered into the lounge. The two embattled Callahans were crouched, rifles pointing out into the dark – but the gunshot had woken Gus.
When he saw Vida he struggled to sit up, clutching at his torn and bloody throat with one hand. The other was clenched. He clawed at her despite the intervening distance. Then he opened his mouth and Vida panicked and crashed out through the kitchen door into the night, heaving her mother’s limp body with her.
When she looked back she saw that her dread had been for nothing. The two gunmen had not even turned around. Gus Callahan would never be able to warn them: he was mute, the damage to his throat sealing his voicebox.
Vida waved.
She turned back to Ruth and kept going, stumbling for the few moments before Sam came to join her and take the lead back through the forest, taking turns with her to hold her mother upright on the path. He was high with excitement, and for them both the return trip to the ghost colony seemed effortless. If she had had the breath, Vida would have sung for joy. Her ma was alive, Sam had saved them, and Dyce was waiting for her – but what lifted her spirits most was the look on Gus Callahan’s face as he watched her escape: the helplessness, the soundless scream, the absolute defeat.
26
In the day or so that followed, Ruth and Dyce seemed to heal at about the same pace, two voyagers in the new country of the camp. Vida kept careful track of the changes. Their eyes didn’t lose the redness right away – they still looked like vampires caught at dawn – but in the excruciating sunlight Vida could make out their pupils, big as olives, ringed only with a band of the colored iris: blue for Dyce; brown for Ma. The vomiting had stopped and Ma joined Dyce in eating again, their jaws working, their bodies savage. It would be a few days before Ma would start talking properly, Vida reckoned, as she spooned the stewed dandelions into the two of them. They were like babies, having to learn everything from the start. When Ruth dozed off, her mouth would hang open like a wind-blown door on a loose hinge, her tongue lolling. She looked dead. Vida would gather her bones together, stuff the dry tip of her tongue back behind her teeth and roll her over to face the grass wall of the lean-to so that she didn’t scare the few kids who had made it to the camp. They had enough to deal with.
She didn’t go to any of the funerals for the same reason, though it was some comfort to know that the rituals were still being observed. Somewhere there were always a few brave souls keeping the lights shining against the dark. It must be some use, Vida thought. One day it would be over, the sicknesses all burnt out, and the people who were left behind would have to start over. It would be easier to do that if your conscience was clear.
People kept finding reasons to limp past their shelter, making detours on their way to tend the graves. Vida knew what they wanted: signs of improvement, signs of hope. The word had already begun to spread, and why wouldn’t it? Folks were asking around, searching for compatible symptoms, their opposite number in the camp whose unlucky virus might make them into a new sum, a fresh set of possibilities. She had seen the fresh outcasts from surrounding settlements welcomed here like celebrities, mobbed with questions, set upon by old ladies with their hands on their hips who stood over the bewildered guests. All the ordinary rules of interaction had been suspended, as if everyone had been struck with Alzheimer’s, traveling in time back to some half-remembered childhood playground.
‘Does your back hurt when you pee? ’Cause that’s only time my back doesn’t hurt.’
‘That there a boil on your foot? Looks like a boil. See here? I got boils on my scalp.’
It had taken Vida four days to sleep off her exhaustion, as if the more she slept the more she craved. The next day was another kind of trance. She spent it making traps, a dozen of them. Her fingers worked almost without her thinking about them: muscle memory, her stepdaddy would have said to her. Your body knows what it’s doing, even when your brain feels like it’s empty. Keep your mind wide open while you work, and see what you invite inside.
Vida remembered it well, the excitement of finding a dead rat in a trap of her own making, the raw pioneer pride in the wires. And the look of approval in her mother’s eyes too, when she brought the kills back home – a watered-down version of the look that she reserved for her pregnant women: that deep-set admiration of motherhood. It made Vida hot with resentment whenever she thought on it: she wasn’t going to be tying herself down with rug rats, that was for sure. She liked to walk unencumbered too much. And anyone could get pregnant. Anyone at all.
In the old days Vida had upwards of thirty traps set up around the house – outside in the fields, but inside too, as the rats grew bolder with deprivation. Vida lay in bed at night and thought she heard them advancing on the house in a rin
g, orchestrated, their eyes glittering in the small glow thrown by the fire left in the stove, their whiskers trembling with excitement and suicide. The rats had come closer as the months dragged on, and what was to stop them, really, once they realized that they far outnumbered the two humans left inside? In her mama’s house was treasure: white flour, sugar, fat – the last staples of the old regime, when there was still the possibility of birthday cake.
That day she had tested nearly all the traps and found nothing until the last. She had lifted the rock, grabbed the limp rat and run back to the house with her trophy. At the outside table Ma smiled and clapped her hands together – quickly, twice, the way she had taught Vida to say thank you when she was little – and then took it from her and laid it out, as if the raggedy gray rat was a beloved pet on a vet’s table.
‘Get me some of those little sticks, baby,’ she told Vida. ‘And a rag.’
She had pushed the rat’s unprotesting eyelids open with one of the sticks and looked right in. Then she pointed its snout up at the sun, and levered its mouth open so she could see down deep along the pink gullet. Vida saw the ridges on the roof of its mouth, the incisors like a staple remover. Ruth had once told her that rats needed to keep gnawing, to grind down their everlasting teeth and keep them from skewering their own lips. It had seemed wrong to Vida, to have that kind of anxiety built right into the species. Well, there was no more gnawing for this guy. He lay on his back on the table, his testicles big as marbles and just as useless to him now. Vida’s ma covered her hand with the rag and felt the rat’s abdomen, kneading it like dough. Then she stopped and took Vida’s hand, directing her fingers to a spot under its neck. There were two lumps under the cloth.
‘Raised glands.’ She looked down and shook her head, and Vida wanted to cry. ‘Can’t risk it. Sorry, baby.’
Vida had taken the sick rat and buried it deep in the heat of the compost heap. That way, in time, it would not go to waste – something else Ruth had passed on to her the same way that the calcium in the rat’s bones, the minerals in its flesh, the proteins in its fur would feed their small crop of carrots and beets.