South

by Frank Owen

  Vida bent and felt the puff of air that crept under the door. And then, giving in, she opened it and stepped out in the road, the hem of her shirt fluttering against her stomach.

  She’d forgotten how uncomfortable wind was, how it scoured and stung and pressed against her body, electrifying the hairs in their follicles. She caught a grain of sand in her eye and it started watering like hell. Fuck it, she told herself. She stumbled back into the clinic.

  While she was rinsing out her eye, a new patient had arrived and was standing at the threshold.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Vida snapped. ‘Close the damn door!’

  The old woman just smiled at her and smoothed down her peppery hair. Her left hand was encased in a black fingerless glove. As she stroked, Vida saw the fingertips set stiff, at right angles to the digits.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vida told her. ‘This wind makes me nervous.’

  ‘You better get used to it, girlie.’ The old lady sat herself down with a sigh. Now she was shaking her faded hair out, fluffing and primping, dragging at the strands, and Vida saw the grit that sprinkled the floor of the clinic. Then she eased the glove off as Vida watched, fascinated. She held the twisted hand out, obscene, naked.

  ‘You seen it before.’

  ‘Arthritis. Sure. You know what causes it?’

  ‘Same thing that causes all a woman’s troubles. Having kids.’ The old lady wheezed at her own joke and massaged the fingers with her good right hand. ‘But what are you going to do? Send them back where they came from?’

  ‘You know about honey and cinnamon, right? You also need to make sure that you’re eating as well as you can, to slow the demineralization.’

  ‘Sugar, it’s too late for me. I done my time. I just came to see if you had anything new to tell me.’

  Vida turned away and got busy pulping the yarrow.

  ‘Poultice, every day. Sleep with it on. Then make the tea too.’

  ‘Ah huh.’

  She kept her back to the old woman. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘You can ask, but that don’t mean I’ll answer.’

  Vida could hear the endless friction of the twisted hands.

  ‘What happened to the last doctor?’

  ‘The last one?’

  ‘The person I replaced.’

  The woman sighed. ‘People die. People move along. You get to my age and you know that. My husband, Geraldo—’

  ‘And when they die, where do they go?’

  ‘Heaven or hell, sugar. Di’n’t your mama teach you nothing?’

  ‘The bodies, I mean.’

  ‘To the earth. Dust to dust. Where we all going.’

  Vida would get nothing out of her, she saw that. She gave up.

  ‘Every evening, yarrow. And in the morning too, fresh. You come back if you need help.’

  The old lady ducked her head. ‘Thank you. I will surely give that a try. And I think the wind’s dropped. You can come out of your burrow now.’ She snickered; was still snickering when she made her way out.

  Vida sat and felt the itch in her own scalp where the wind had settled the dirt. She reached up and rubbed, then looked at her hand.

  The fingertips were brownish and oily.

  She reached into her hair and scratched again, harder, and passed her fingertips under her nose.

  Her own smell, still there, but something else: something earthy, bridging the living and the dead. From the mushrooms? She had to get hold of Dyce and ask him what really happened down there. He must have seen how it all worked up close.

  There were no more patients. Vida closed up the clinic and walked down to the mines. She met Dyce as he came out of the mouth. Like everyone else, he looked as if he’d been spat out: dirt under his nails, hands cracked, shirt sweated through. He pulled his headscarf off and smiled with relief when he saw her – and it was genuine.

  ‘How’s work?’ she asked.

  ‘Hard.’

  He didn’t ask about hers, still queasy from the stories she’d told him from the day before as he’d drifted off to sleep.

  ‘Want to go for a walk?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Come on. Just a little one.’

  Dyce conceded, and she took his arm. The two of them walked slowly up the main street and beyond, past the clinic, to the ponderosas at the top of the slope.

  ‘Ah, you’re going to kill me,’ Dyce complained.

  ‘Ah, but you’ll enjoy it.’

  Vida pulled him down beside her. They sat there and looked at the town and its wall and the grasslands beyond.

  ‘Gale blew through at lunch time.’

  ‘Did you go out?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I learnt today that wind was always terrible, even before Renard. Uncomfortable. Made me itchy in my skin, you know?’

  ‘You feel okay, though?’

  ‘Fine. It was annoying, but it wasn’t fatal. You? What’s happening down there?’

  ‘Okay, I guess. Good, even. But that fucking Julia. She looks at me funny. Then it’s not so good.’

  ‘What happened to that family? They all just . . . broken.’

  ‘Beyond help. They should never have let her in.’

  ‘They let us in.’

  Dyce smiled. It was true. But their kind of damage was under control, wasn’t it? He and Vida weren’t exactly whole people: Dyce was still half Garrett and Vida was still half Ruth. Maybe soon there would come a time when they’d have a talk and realize how different they really were, how they’d only come together as a by-product of desperation. Dyce wondered whether Vida remembered the drunken I love you and the ever-after it signified.

  ‘What you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. You?’

  ‘Something’s been bugging me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The three – the ones we replaced.’ She was scratching at her head again.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘What happened to them? Where are they? I asked this lady at the clinic and she didn’t want to answer, like it was a secret.’

  ‘Maybe they left.’

  ‘Yeah, right. And went where?’

  ‘Maybe they died: an accident or something. Still a lot of building going on here.’

  ‘Seems like a lot of people out of a hundred and fifty to die off real sudden.’

  ‘But it’s possible.’

  ‘Okay. Where are they buried, then?’

  Dyce was quiet. Then he caught where Vida was going.

  ‘Oh, man.’

  ‘It’s the only place.’

  ‘In the mines?’

  ‘Beyond the signs, where you’re not allowed to go.’ Vida wiggled her fingers, the way Ed did. ‘Am I right or am I right?’

  48

  Vida lay awake beside Dyce. He had dropped off right away: they really were hitting the hay. She lay staring up at the corrugated roof. It was like the township shacks her mother had grown up in back in South Africa – a square box with a bed, no lights, no toilet, just the bare earth beneath and a waterproof sheet between the bed and the sky. Who knew that it would turn out to be the best preparation for the end of the world?

  Dyce slept on. They’d found the energy to have sex, but he was tired. He had drifted off straight after, apologizing as he went under. Still, for someone who said he was a virgin, he was doing pretty fucking well. Vida rested her head on her elbow and looked him over again. She still wasn’t used to having this much access to another human body, especially one this good.

  Vida ran her hand through his hair: it was smooth even though it was dirty. They said hair cleaned itself after six weeks, but that had turned out to be a lie. He smelt peculiar too. It wasn’t the dirt of the straw and mulch composite, though. Nice lips – very nice lips: curved and full, the kind that would set in a smile by the time he was fifty. His chest was alright. No one was chunky anymore, except a few people like Ed, and that wasn’t healthy. Dyce’s chest was
flat and hard, and that was fine with Vida. She trailed her hand over his stomach, the twin curves of the muscle on very young men that signposted the abdomen becoming the groin. Dyce groaned in his sleep and Vida imagined him waking up as she sat astride him, guiding his penis back inside her.

  Poor guy. Let him rest. They had lots more nights ahead, didn’t they? Plenty of time.

  She dropped her hand and lay back on her own side of the bed, listening for sounds. The wind moved, restless and searching among the shacks. She couldn’t stop the wheel of thought. Is it midnight yet? she wondered. Am I the only person awake in this place?

  Vida sat upright.

  Yes, she thought. Yes, I am the only person awake in this place. Which is exactly why I ought to get up right now.

  She would sneak into the mine and take a proper look. Why the hell not?

  Because it’s the only place they said not to go.

  Extra quiet then, is all.

  Vida slid her feet off the bed and began to dress, feeling in the dark for her underwear, then everything else. The wind outside disguised the sounds of her shuffling, the clink of her belt buckle – and besides, Dyce was dead to the world. It would take an army and their band playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ to wake him.

  She found the hurricane lantern on the floor beside the door where they’d left it. She shook it to feel the slosh of oil – still full, thank God. One less thing to do.

  ‘Where you going?’

  Vida jumped.

  ‘For a pee.’

  ‘You’re not. You are fully dressed.’

  She’d forgotten that he could see her, despite the darkness. Obviously she wouldn’t have gone to all that effort just to use the toilet.

  Dyce sat up. Vida put the lantern down and found a space on the bed to sit.

  ‘I need to see what’s in the mines. If this place is going to be our home, I need to get a handle on what’s going on. I can’t be lying awake, wondering what’s down there. They don’t get to, to, restrict our movements that way, Dyce. It’s weird. There’s something going on.’

  ‘But sneaking in there is crazy. You know that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And what do you think you’re going to find?’

  ‘I don’t know. An answer.’

  Dyce was quiet.

  ‘I’ll go. I know the place better. Plus, I can see in there.’

  ‘And me? What will I be doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just stay here. I’ll be fifteen minutes. Then we can both get some sleep.’

  Dyce dressed, yawning. When he was ready he kissed Vida, his mouth pliant, and she found that she didn’t want him to go, after all. What if he found an answer she couldn’t live with? Then it would all be over, the sleeping tight beside each other and the coming home before it: the kiss, like this; the touching; the fucking.

  But when she tried to protest, no sound would come, and she watched Dyce slip out the door and into the gusty night.

  She sat for half a minute, making up her mind. She couldn’t bear the idea of just sitting on the bed in the dark, waiting for him. What kind of candy-ass woman did that? Not Vida Washington, that was for sure.

  Outside the door of the shack the cold blast pushed at her. Vida stood still, waiting for the lenses of her eyes to adapt and reveal her surroundings.

  The town was dead: even the saloon was closed, all the lights extinguished. Vida had in mind to get to the main street and keep an eye out. Sentry duty, she figured. It was the least she could do.

  She stepped cautiously between the shacks, her eyes misjudging her feet, so that she jarred her spine as she went. As she turned onto the main drag she found herself beside the barber shop, out of the wind. She peered blindly down at the mines.

  ‘Now, what are you two doing?’

  Vida shrieked and then damped it down into her throat. The voice that came from behind her was high and girlish. Julia was a silhouette, shape-shifting in the dark, her eyes silvery pinpricks set somewhere in the center of her lank hair. Her nightdress shimmered.

  ‘Fuck, Julia!’ Vida whispered. ‘Why are you awake?’

  ‘I don’t sleep so good these days.’ Her hands were knotting themselves together in her nightdress. ‘Me and Ester used to share a bed. I get lonely. Don’t you get lonely? No,’ she said to herself. ‘No, you don’t, because you have Dyce.’

  ‘So you just wander around? Like a, a, fucking ghost?’

  ‘I like to look at things. And listen.’

  Vida pictured her with her head pressed up against the thin wall of their shack, sharing their most private sounds, their groans and panting, their sighs. She felt herself flushing.

  ‘Where’s Dyce gone now?’ Julia asked.

  ‘He’s got, ah, Restless Legs Syndrome. Sometimes he just needs to get a walk in.’

  ‘I saw him go toward the mines.’ Julia shifted and stepped back, her shape blurred for flight and discovery, and Vida knew the game was up. This would be the revenge for killing Ester: Julia would go straight to Mister Ed. And then there’d be trouble.

  ‘It’s not what you think it is,’ she said, but Julia had already turned and disappeared. Fuck! They were dead meat.

  Vida pelted down the road towards the mine. She didn’t care who saw her. When she got to the entrance, she chanced a quick look back at the collection of shacks: the lights were flickering on.

  They were coming.

  ‘Dyce!’ she called into the tunnel, but there was no reply. She hadn’t really expected one.

  Vida inhaled her last breath of fresh air and stepped into the velvet blackness of the mouth. It swallowed her whole.

  She ran her fingers along the wooden walls and walked as fast as she could without falling against a splintered strut or lurching headlong into a chamber with its precious mushrooms. There were too many junctions. Which chambers were the ones Ed had shown them? Where did the known world end? It was a nightmare.

  ‘Dyce!’ she tried again.

  This time she heard him coming. The caverns amplified his breathing. He was panicked. Oh, Jesus! He had seen something real bad down there, hadn’t he? But he was there, oh praise Jesus, he was standing right next to her, unscathed and solid and there.

  ‘Vida! Vida! You were right! There are bodies down there! Dead people! Like nothing you ever seen!’

  ‘They’re coming, Dyce!’ Vida interrupted sharply, in the direction she thought his face would be. ‘Julia saw you go in and she’s gone to tell Ed. They are coming right now!’

  ‘Already here,’ came a man’s voice from the tunnel.

  It was Ed, sure enough, all the laugh gone out of him and the rifle raised to his shoulder, his rubbery chin resting on the stock, his tiny eyes squinting down the sight.

  49

  ‘First time in a long time that I’ve found myself in agreement with the Callahans.’

  Ed wasn’t smiling. There were others congregating behind him back along the tunnels, holding their lanterns and peering at the intruders, waiting for the say-so. It was familiar territory for them, wasn’t it? Home. The light at the end of the tunnel, that’s what they say. What they don’t say is that it’s the train coming for you, head-on, Vida thought. She looked at Dyce, but he was scanning for Julia’s smug face in the throng, the avenging angel, the eyes shiny with lust, the milk turned to poison in her blood. They weren’t upon them yet, but they would be soon.

  ‘I’m a big enough man to say when I’ve made a mistake. And we can all agree that letting you into The Mouth was a mistake. Am I right or am I right?’ There were murmurs from the people behind Ed. Vida gripped Dyce. God! Are they going to drive us out with pitchforks? At least in the books Igor escapes.

  ‘You know we can’t have this sort of . . . civil disobedience. But you won’t go to waste. You’ll serve this town if it’s the last thing you do – dead or alive. We ain’t picky. We are going to make sure of that. And the best part is, all you all have to do is keep breathing.’ He mimed their panting. ‘Th
at’s it: in and out.’

  Vida tried to slow her breath, but it was no use. She needed the oxygen, especially down here, but the idea of taking the motes into her body was making her feel sick and a mite panicky. Vida felt it in her throat now, in her lungs. She swallowed. She was sure she could taste it. Her corneas begin to itch. Dyce was rubbing at his eyes. Would it be affecting him the same way?

  ‘How’s it tasting so far?’

  ‘What the fuck is in the air here, Ed? Just tell us.’

  ‘You’re dumber than you look, cowboy.’

  ‘Dyce.’ Vida pulled on his sleeve. When he looked at her he saw that her eyes were enormous. He could see every tiny capillary mapped on the whites.

  ‘We’re breathing the spores.’

  That’s what the murk in her hair was. The word came back to her from an old history book: miasma. That’s what was making the dark of the mines so thick, making the light work so hard to illuminate the place. It was alive, full to saturation with microscopic particles. Whatever end Ed had in mind for them didn’t matter. It was already too late: they had fused with the mushrooms.

  ‘Since you were so keen to see what’s down in the deep corners, that’s where you’ll be going. Sound good? Or I can shoot you where you stand.’

  ‘Easy, now,’ said Dyce, holding up his hands. They were trembling, and Vida didn’t blame him. Her whole body was in some kind of shock. ‘How about this? We’ll leave The Mouth same way we came in, put this behind us all. We got you all the horses, remember. Doesn’t that count for something?’

  Ed snorted, and the gun jerked. Weren’t his arms getting sore? Men, thought Vida. Always got to parley.

  ‘No one leaves The Mouth, Allerdyce. I’m giving you two options and there ain’t no third. So you can turn round and go back down, and I mean all the way. I’m giving you permission to ignore the signs.’ Ed paused, ever the showman. Except that this time it really was one life-or-death chance. ‘Or you can try to come on up. But I must warn you: my finger is getting an ache in it. And as you can see, I am not alone.’ Julia’s laugh tinkled in the dimness, and Dyce thought again of Ester’s lamprey jaws.