But I could probably suffice for dessert.
Something fuzzy occupied space in my brain, other than the bloody, bizarre scene in front of me.
The gun.
I turned away from Gideon and jumped from the gazebo, sprinting for the pretzel stand. I looked around for the gun, finally dropping to my knees to check under the stand.
There it was.
I grabbed it, racing back to the gazebo, recognizing the bloody state of Gideon’s fingers as they grazed the lion’s fangs.
I held the gun with both hands and pulled the trigger.
The first bullet to enter its hide just seemed to make the lion angry; it roared and leapt from the gazebo, lunging toward me, away from Gideon. The second bullet brought the lion down. The third bullet ended its life. The stench of filth met my nose.
I looked at the gun in my hand, then opened it to check how many more bullets I had. Only five. That would have to be enough.
I walked back to the gazebo.
Gideon was pushing himself back to his feet; his knife was nowhere in sight and, with my gun trained on him, he wouldn’t have an opportunity to fetch his spare – the spare I had originally taken from his attacker three weeks before.
Gideon met my eyes, not even glancing at the gun.
Waiting.
Chapter 7
This was the moment I had been anticipating. A month had passed since the deaths of my parents. The loss was still fresh in my mind, in my gut, in my chest. I could immediately recall the horror I felt when I saw my father’s glazed eyes. I ached with hurt, with loneliness, with pain. The death of their killer would give me the triumph, the closure, I so desperately needed.
Gideon didn’t say a word. His brown eyes never left mine; his arm dripped blood.
What would it feel like to kill him? Satisfying? Liberating?
Lonely.
When he was gone, I would have no one. I would have to face each day on my own. There would be no one to talk to. No one to think about nothing with. He had been preparing me for that, for the inevitability of being alone. He had been teaching me how to savor life for the peaceful moments, and how to block out the bad.
He had taken so much from me.
But he had also given me a sense of peace.
No, I didn’t feel peace for my parents. But, even though their deaths were still a raw wound, there had begun to grow in me an understanding.
And he’d apologized. He’d had a family of his own, and knew what it was like to lose them.
If I killed Gideon, what would I gain?
At this point, I might lose more.
“The stars,” Gideon murmured, coaxing.
I shook my head at him, stern. But the words had already crept into my brain.
The stars. If I killed him now, we wouldn’t watch the stars together that very night. I would be alone. I would move on, and never look back at this place. I would have to be on guard constantly, ready for anyone that might hurt me.
Gideon had never hurt me. Not physically, at least.
I wanted revenge. It pained me to know Gideon was alive.
But now, after spending a month with him, it might be more painful for him to be dead.
I sighed, closing my eyes. Then I lowered the gun.
I heard some scrabbling around and looked up to see Gideon pocketing his knife, still watching me.
“Do you want the gun back?” I asked, offering it to him. “You’ll probably swipe it from me at some point anyway.”
“You know what? You keep it. Why would I take it from you when you’re not going to kill me? It’ll be useful for us both to be armed.”
“But what if I change my mind? What if I decide to kill you after all?”
He looked at me again, his eyes boring into mine. “Candace, after the month we’ve spent together, I trust you. You’re not going to go back on your decision.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve been dwelling so much on the anticipation of killing me, and I could always see that deadly potential in you. . . If you were going to kill me, I’d already be dead. You might lack resourcefulness, but, if you had been desperate enough, you would have come up with something. I already knew you wouldn’t kill me. I knew the moment you looked at the broken glass back there.” He nodded in the direction we’d come from. “You looked at it and didn’t see it as a weapon. Just as something broken.”
He was right. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. This carnival had so many things that could be used against Gideon – there was a lot more broken glass, hoards of it everywhere – and I hadn’t seen any of it.
Gideon had known – he had suspected all along. He wouldn’t have taken me here if he hadn’t. He would never have let me near anything he thought I could use against him. Not until now. Not until he thought I wouldn’t use it against him.
My eyes dropped to the ground. I backed into one of the columns, then slid down, resting my forehead against my knees.
“I’m going to go slice up that lion. I’ve never had lion before – I think he’ll be a bit gamey, but will probably taste just fine.” I heard him shuffle off.
What was I going to do now? The hole that was my parents gnawed away at my chest.
There was nothing I could do.
Except maybe continue to follow Gideon.
After a while, Gideon came back carrying long pieces of lion flesh. I noticed he’d wrapped my mother’s shirt – the one I had previously used as a bandage on his leg – around his bloody arm. I probably should have offered to cut the lion for him, considering the injury. It would have been a common courtesy. I couldn’t quite bring myself to care enough, though.
He set the meat on the stone floor before leaving me again. He came back ten minutes later with fire wood. He was quiet; I could tell he was trying to leave me alone with my thoughts.
He started the fire, and laid the meat to cook.
“Where will we go tomorrow?” I asked.
He sat back against a column and looked at me. “I have nowhere specific in mind. I tend to just go wherever I feel like. That’s one nice thing about having no society: no one to tell you where you can’t go. We go anywhere we want, see anything we want, and then do it again. Where do you want to go, Candace?”
He hadn’t told me it wasn’t my business. He hadn’t even questioned whether I was going with him. I had asked him a question, searching out a future that didn’t involve his death. He gave me an open answer, inviting me to choose.
I looked down. “I’ve never thought about where I want to go. I’ve always just followed along with my parents, wherever they thought we should go.”
“Ah. Well, how about this? Tomorrow, we’ll choose a direction. Then, we’ll walk in that direction until we see something that interests us. Sound good?”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
“Gideon?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t mind having me along?” I looked up at him again; he met my eyes.
“Candace, I’ve been alone for a long time. No matter how well I handle that, it’s nice to have your company.”
“You thought that even when I was going to kill you.”
“Yeah, I suppose I did.”
“You must be desperate for company, then.”
“No. I’m just open to the possibilities the world offers.”
We ate. The sky grew dark. We settled in on either side of the fading fire. The stars came out, one by one, framed by the gazebo’s open roof.
“Do you know any of their names?” I asked.
“No. Humans naming the stars is just a way for them to try and understand what can’t be explained. I’d prefer to just lay back and focus on how they make me feel.”
“How do they make you feel?”
“Small.” He paused. “Insignificant. Like everything in this country – all its flaws and problems, all the death, hunger, and despair – none of it matters. Because there is so much else out ther
e besides ourselves. One day, the earth is going to get swallowed by a black hole, and all of this will cease to exist. After that, will it even matter whether there was a man named Gideon who killed a girl named Candace’s parents? Will it matter that Candace wanted to kill Gideon, then decided that might not be the right answer? Will it matter whether we head east or west tomorrow? Whether we stay in Oregon or go visit the coast where Florida disappears into the ocean? Whether we even hop the border to Mexico? All of that will be just one tiny blip in earthen history. We wouldn’t even make the text book. No one will ever write any sort of book about us. All of our problems? They’re nothing, compared to the world.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Focus on the serenity of it. If it doesn’t matter, there’s no pressure. We just do what we want. We live. We survive. We die. There’s a certain peace in that.”
“I suppose.”
“You can’t think about it in such technical terms. Words can’t really capture the sentiment. You have to separate yourself from humanistic goals and think about things in terms of time, in thousand year segments.”
“For example?”
“For example, what would be a one sentence summary of the last thousand years of humanity?”
“Uh. . .”
“How about ‘Humanity’s greed and selfishness led to wars and contentions.’”
“I guess that sums it up pretty well. But how is that sentiment serene at all?”
“It’s not. How about this, though, as a description for the last twenty-five years in the United States: ‘Government shattered, and the land returned to its rightful state.’”
“Its rightful state? A shattered country is the land’s rightful state?”
“No, Candace. There is more to life than humanity. That lion we just ate a part of? He was alive. I saw the desperation in his eyes before you killed him. He attacked us for survival. It was either him or us.”
“Like when you killed my parents.”
“Or when you killed those people who attacked me. It was them or us, and you chose us.”
“Logically.”
“Well, let’s think about it in larger terms. There are two types of existence in the world: nature and humanity. They are constantly warring with each other, fighting for survival. Which should win? Nature, or humanity?”
“Humanity, naturally.”
“You only say that because you’re human. But what if you were a tree?”
“I’m not a tree.”
“But what if you were? You could either be cut down and burned for firewood so a girl named Candace can stay warm, or you can live long and tall, while a girl named Candace dies of cold.”
“I think, if I were the tree, I would choose death.”
“You’re not picturing it the right way,” Gideon replied roughly; I could hear him shake his head at me.
“Are you telling me that you’d rather let a tree live than have this fire we’re lying next to? I’m certain you didn’t feel that way when you cut that tree up for wood.”
“You’re missing the point.” He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, despite how drained I knew he should be at the moment. I quickly stood, too, eager not to give him such a height advantage on me. “Follow me.” He left the gazebo, starting past a dark stage once used for acting, then past a hotdog stand.
I followed, then tripped over something I couldn’t see.
He pulled me up by the elbow. “You okay?” he asked; he didn’t let go.
“I’m fine,” I replied roughly, but I let him use my elbow to guide me forward.
We came to the edge of the carnival, which merged with a small wood. He stopped me in front of a thick tree.
“See it?” he asked.
“The tree?”
“As I was describing it.” He let go of me, walking forward to rest his hand on the bark. “This tree stands against all weather, a fortress of power. It grows leaves to collect energy from the sun. Its roots collect water and nutrition from the soil. In the fall, it bears fruit. In this case, walnuts, it seems.” He reached an arm up and shook one of the branches; nuts rained down on our heads. “We’ll need to come and collect as many of these as we can carry in the morning,” he added as a side note.
He plucked a leaf from the branch and handed it to me. “Look at the color. The veins. How they branch out, reaching.” He raised his arms up, turning to indicate the entire tree in a grand gesture. “This is a fantastic organism,” he told me. “But, one day, a man might be desperate for survival and resort to cutting it down. When he does, he’ll be able to count the years this tree stood; it leaves rings in its trunk to indicate its age.
“I might even be that very man! I definitely would never choose to let myself die rather than eat or feel warm. Life is a story of survival; we are just one piece of that story.”
“Us against the tree,” I murmured wryly.
“Yes,” Gideon breathed, looking up at it. “Us against the tree.” He looked back at me. “Beautiful, right? The fall of humanity isn’t about the fall of humanity. It’s about the endurance, the growth, of everything else. As humanity dies, nature thrives. The world continues. The world is alive. But it might not be our life.”
“Humans are just one piece of the story.” In this perspective, everything fit as a piece to one complete whole. There was no division. There were two competing forces. When one receded, the other grew. When the other receded, the first grew. This was the story of life, and we were just a part of it. Even as civilization crumbled, life still flourished.
“Exactly.” Gideon smiled.
~ * ~
We slept, and, in the morning, we returned to the tree. I approached the bark before Gideon caught my elbow with his good hand, pulling me back.
I raised a brow at him. “It’ll be faster for me,” I pointed out, eyeing his injured arm.
Gideon rolled his eyes. “Not likely,” he replied, taking my place at the trunk and bracing his fingers against the wood. I noticed a wince.
“I won at arm wrestling just yesterday,” I reminded him.
“Candace, just wait here, will you?” He sounded annoyed.
I wanted to argue some more, but it was his arm; he could climb the tree if he wanted to.
He did, then shook down as many walnuts as possible before dropping back to the earth.
“What about the others?” I asked, looking up at the ones still attached to the tree and considering the possibilities.
“We probably don’t have enough room in our packs and stomachs for all of them. The ones that didn’t drop when I shook the tree are the ones that aren’t fully ripe yet, anyway. They aren’t as nutritious right now. We’ll leave them in the tree, and someone else can come and collect them later.” He stomped on a walnut, breaking it open. Then he scooped it up and pulled the nut out. He held it out for me to see, then put it in his mouth. I followed his example, and we ate like that for a while before collecting the rest in our backpacks.
“Do you know where you want to go yet, Candace?”
I looked at the tree, then back at the deserted, broken carnival. He had made nature seem so powerful, so beautiful, last night that the woods looked pretty inviting at the moment; birds sung in the morning air, and I could see their shadows flitting from tree to tree. The ground was a bright green, suggesting life and growth. A few tiny blue flowers snaked up a trunk. In contrast, the carnival was dark, dead; the grey asphalt it sat upon was cracked and worn, the painted yellow and white lines on its surface faded with age.
“The forest looks pretty good,” I told him, smiling.
He shook his head. “You’re still seeing things wrong,” he said, “but I suppose you’re making progress.” He started into the forest and I followed, the sunlight dimming through the veil of green canopy above us.
“How am I seeing things wrong?” I demanded.
“You’re seeing things for the life that it offers, rather than the lack of human life. That’s great, that�
��s a step in the right direction. But you still aren’t able to see the remains of the carnival for the aesthetic appeal. We’ll have to work on that.”
“Aesthetic appeal? It’s dead. Nothing remains but the carcass of the almost-starved lion we killed.”
He shook his head again and repeated. “We’ll have to work on that.”
We walked, not talking much. That evening, we ate more walnuts, stared up at the trees above our head, and slept on top of moss-covered rocks. We kept walking the next morning.
“Twenty questions?”
“Candace, when you want to ask me something, you don’t need to suggest we play a game. You can just ask me.”
I squirmed. “Okay. I want to ask you something.”
“Good. Go for it.” He ducked under a tree branch, offering his hand to help me over an uneven patch of ground.
“Why haven’t you done anything to me?”
“Why haven’t I killed you? I thought I told you, I’m only going to kill you if you’re a threat. You’re not a threat now, and I highly doubt you ever will be.”
“What if we’re starving, and there’s only one steak?”
“Tough question.” His eyes glinted as he met mine over his shoulder. “Would you kill me for the steak?”
“Probably,” I admitted. “For one thing, I haven’t forgiven you yet. For killing my parents, I mean. I . . . well, my thoughts about you are complicated. We’ve been together for a month – ”
“You’ve been following me around for a month.”
“Er, yes. I know you well enough now that I don’t really have it in me to kill you. That doesn’t mean I necessarily like you as a person, but I’m not sure how I’d feel if I killed you. I feel like I might lose more if I did that.”
“Because you’d be alone then.”
“Well . . . yeah. But if it were a matter of survival – you or me – I would choose me.”
“Like how you would cut the tree down for firewood: you might appreciate that the tree’s there, but that doesn’t mean you’ll sacrifice your life for it.”
“Yes.”
“Very reasonable.”
“Well, anyway, that’s not what I meant. I wasn’t asking why you hadn’t killed me yet. I was asking. . .” I took a deep breath. “I was asking why you haven’t touched me. Er, sexually, I mean.”
Humanity Page 7