I'm Fine, but You Appear to Be Sinking

by Leyna Krow

  “I’ll take them outside,” Kenton says. “You can go wait upstairs.”

  The two snakes are probably mates, but that’s not what I think of at first. My first instinct is to wonder if they are brother and sister, hatched from the same clutch of eggs and together everywhere since. I worry if Kenton returns them to the field one at a time, skittish as they are, the first will bolt as soon as it’s released, with or without its twin. Then they will be separated and it might be hard for them to find one another again. I do not want this for them.

  “No,” I say. “I want to help.”

  I can see my brother is surprised by this offer.

  “Okay,” he says. “Go grab them. I’ll hold the door for you.”

  “Don’t tease. I might change my mind.”

  We look around for some sort of containers to corral the snakes into. Since we’ve spent the past three weekends emptying the house of everything that isn’t (and in some cases, that is) nailed down, options are limited. Kenton runs out to the tool shed in the back and returns with a piece of firewood and a stack of those plastic pots nursery plants come in. I can’t remember anyone ever planting flowers in our yard. I think about how they must have been in the shed since before our mom died.

  “How do you want to do this?” Kenton asks.

  The snakes still haven’t gone very far from the hole. I wonder if they are disoriented, or if it’s just a temperature thing—something about that specific patch of floor that’s particularly pleasant.

  I tell him to trap the first snake and give it to me and I’ll hold it while he gets the second one. Then we can take them out to the Greenspree where they belong.

  Kenton does this, cornering one against the wall and ushering it into the container using the firewood. He fits a second container against the top of the first and, with both hands, holds the whole arrangement out to me.

  “All yours,” he says.

  Inside the container, my snake is freaked. It thumps against the thin wall of plastic that separates it from my hands. I imagine it squirming around, knocking its head as it flails, looking for any possible way to escape. I do not like this feeling. But I hold the container tight and wait while Kenton wrangles the second snake. After what feels like forever, he says, “Okay, let’s go.”

  We walk up the basement steps, out the back door, across the yard that used to be grass, but is now just dirt and a few weeds.

  Kenton’s in the lead. He’s got longer legs than me, moves faster. Two more ways my sibling has the advantage. He reaches the place where the yard meets the fields of Greenspree well before I do. He bends like he’s going to set his container down. Too soon.

  “Wait,” I say.

  Kenton straightens up and waits. My snake thrashes and shakes. I wonder what it will do when I let it out—if it will be angry or relieved, if it will follow Kenton’s snake or go an entirely different direction. It occurs to me that releasing them together may not actually ensure their continued partnership.

  Still, I tell Kenton I want us to open our containers at the same exact time, on the count of three, and he agrees.

  July 15, 2090, Bainbridge Island, Washington

  Parker Timothy Olstead II

  The dog follows them up the beach and down the trail to the cluster of low houses with sloped, mossy roofs. They stop at the second house from the street, Camden and Twila’s, and Spud tells the dog to wait, even though he knows it will anyway. His aunt says he’s “got a way with animals.” He spends hours observing the creatures that live along the beach and in the woods. He tries to read them like he would a book. He knows their habits, and usually he can get them to do what he wants. Frogs will rest on his knees if he puts them there. Once, a heron ate breadcrumbs from his hand, its long neck stretched out to reach him. The dog is loyal and shows no interest in anyone else.

  Inside, Camden leads him to the basement—ostensibly toward paper-work she’s found relating in some way to his father. He only half way trusts such a thing really exists. Camden has always been a liar. Though it’s only the last year her lies have turned mean. Or, if not mean, manipulative. Lies to control, lies to confuse.

  There’s part of him that wants this to be just another one of those lies. That way he won’t really be breaking the promise he made to himself on the beach just an hour ago—no more pathetic pining for his dead and absent parents.

  He’s been in this basement before, but not for a long time. Not since he and Camden were small, back when they were real friends and used to play hide-and-seek while his aunt and Camden’s mom clipped coupons in the kitchen and did whatever else. In the basement, there’s a couch, a desk, three mismatched chairs and a file cabinet. Camden opens the bottom drawer of the cabinet and makes a big show of sifting through it. He wonders if she actually found the file somewhere else in the house and re-hid it here as a means to get him down to the basement, where, even if Twila does come home suddenly, they won’t be interrupted. That would be just like Camden—always thinking one step ahead of him, getting him to do exactly what she wants, when she wants, where she wants.

  After what seems like too long a time, Camden pulls a worn-looking manila envelope from the drawer and holds it up. The envelope is, as Camden promised, fat with papers. The edges are creased and torn in some places, exposing white pages within.

  “See?” she says. “I told you.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Olstead” is printed neatly across the top and a return address for the University of Michigan in the right corner. He grabs for the envelope and is surprised when Camden drops it into his hands without a struggle. Inside are pages with numbers: cholesterol, white blood cell count, height, weight, pulse. Spud feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. He ignores it. He knows it’s his aunt because she’s the only person who ever calls, and she only calls when she has some chore she wants him to do. He doesn’t want to do her stupid chore today. As a man of thirteen years old, he shouldn’t have to, he decides. He keeps flipping through pages, but none of them mean anything to him. A red stamp appears on the last sheet of paper. APPROVED.

  “It’s just medical stuff,” he says.

  “Does it look important?” Camden asks.

  “Well, he’s dead, so it can’t be that important now.”

  “I mean does it tell you anything about him as a person, idiot.”

  “Tells me my dad once got a physical at the University of Michigan. So what?”

  Camden reaches for him and he shifts to avoid her, but she only puts her hand across his. The touch surprises him—tenderness he’s not used to from his neighbor. He feels hot tears welling up behind his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Spud,” Camden says. “I was really just trying to help. I don’t have a dad either and I know how much...” But he hardly hears her. He needs to get away from her. She’s lured him into breaking his promise to himself and for what? The tiniest scraps of information. As if information would bring a person back to life. Stupid.

  Worse still, the information she presented him with was useless. Whatever’s in the file holds no value for him. And now, here’s Camden, being nice to him, feeling sorry for him. How fragile must he seem if even Camden—conniving, catty, horny Camden—has to treat him with kid gloves? He doesn’t want her pity. It’s ten times worse than her baffling flirtations, or even her blatant cruelty.

  He scrambles to his feet, pushing her hand away. He feels, suddenly overwhelmed in his loneliness, like a flood of water has washed over him. No, not a flood. The whole ocean. He is inside the middle of an ocean, vast and crushing pressure from the unending water surrounding him.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he mumbles.

  Then he’s up and out of the basement, out of the house fast and the dog is there, waiting. He bends over so he’s down at dog-eye level. He considers pulling the dog in, holding it to his chest. He wants desperately to be close to someone. But not Camden, not his aunt, not any of his aunt’s dull, cow-eyed friends. He wants someone, or someth
ing that understands him. Then he’s mad for that, too. Mad that he’s been put in a position where he has to convince himself that dad and dog are interchangeable. Fuck the interconnectedness of all things, he thinks. If it were true, he could not possibly feel so lonesome.

  Really, he decides, the truth is the exact opposite. Nothing is connected and everyone is isolated, spinning quietly on their own private planets, victims of gravity and time. Any illusions of shared experience are just that—illusions. And on the rare occasion people in their sad, private planet bubbles do interact, it only leads to pain.

  This idea comes as a relief.

  Pain is better than loneliness, he decides. After all, he can choose to feel pain, and he can choose to inflict pain. This is a power he possesses. This is a power he, today, as a man, can exercise.

  So, he doesn’t hug the dog. Instead, he slaps it in the face as hard as he can. For an instant, the dog just looks at him. Then it does what Spud knows any animal full of teeth and muscle should. It lunges.

  Excitable

  Creatures

  The animal sitting in the middle of your backyard is not a dog. It is also not a pig, or a bear. It has a wide, muscle-y body, a pushed up nose, and big, sympathetic eyes. It looks at you like it wants something from you. You go back inside and cut up chunks of cheddar cheese, which you offer to the animal, first on the ground, then from your hand. The animal is wary, but after a few moments grows comfortable with the idea of eating from your palm and even licks the last crumbs of cheese off your fingers when it’s done. You tentatively scratch at the top of its bulky head, which it allows. This is the most satisfying interaction you will have with another living being all day.

  Your yard has no fence. A row of trees separates you from your neighbor on one side and a shallow creek marks the boundary between your property and the woods. A subdivision of prefab houses has recently gone in across the street, much to your chagrin, but here in your yard, it’s still easy enough to pretend that you are alone—the sole homesteader carving out her niche in the rugged western wilderness. Or something like that. It is reasonable to assume the animal simply wandered over from the neighbors’ house. Or out of the woods if it’s wild. But the way it looks at you as it sniffs the ground for cheese remnants makes you think its arrival is somehow more deliberate. As if it was put there just for you. This day, in particular, you feel you deserve something special.

  This day is a Wednesday and it is also your third-to-last day at work. This is not your choice. You’re being laid off. Or you’re being fired. Or you’re being let go. You’re unclear about the distinction between these phrases and it hardly matters anyway. Today you will go to work and answer phones. Tomorrow you will go to work and answer phones. Friday you will go to work and clean out your desk and say “Thank you” when someone hands you a goodbye card everyone else in the office has signed and you will promise to keep in touch with this person, and maybe even accept a hug from him or her, even though you do not actually like him or her. On Monday, you don’t know what you will do. Probably start looking for another job answering phones.

  You decide to leave the animal alone and if it’s still in your yard when you get home, you’ll do something about it. You aren’t sure what.

  The company that has employed you for the last four years—and the next three days—manufactures small plastic parts for other companies that make electronics. Your job is to take orders for these small plastic parts and then to let the customers know when their orders have been filled and shipped. Although no one has said as much to you explicitly, you suspect there are computer programs that could do your job. This is likely why you are being laid off/let go/fired.

  At work, you act like it’s any other day, even though it’s your third-to-last day. You answer the phones and you place calls. When Gretchen, your supervisor, asks how your morning is going, you say, “Good, thanks” and ask her the same question in return. She tells you about how her son scored a goal in soccer last night and when it’s clearly your turn to volunteer some piece of personal (but not too personal) information in the name of continuing small talk, you’re tempted to discuss the animal, which you found in your yard, and the way its tongue felt, warm and a little scratchy when it licked cheese bits from your fingers, but instead you talk about the movie you’re planning to see on Saturday. Neither of you mentions your termination.

  If you had to say what’s the worst part about losing your job, it wouldn’t be anything to do with the job itself. You’ve never had any real passion for the position, or affection for your co-workers, and so you won’t miss either of those things. Money, of course, is a bigger concern, but you’ll get a severance and then you’ll get another job and then things will be the same as always. The sting comes from the knowledge that at your age, which is no longer a young age, you are still so totally and completely dispensable. You have carved out no niche of your own, staked claim to no territory, professionally. You possess no skills, or abilities, or insights to separate you from the rest of the herd. You regret this, but are unsure what decisions you could have made differently.

  Back home, you sense the animal before you see it. You change out of your work clothes, pour yourself a glass of wine, and go out to the back porch. The animal is curled up in the grass, just where you first found it, asleep. You watch it for a minute. Its broad shoulders rise and fall with each breath, the fur on its back a thick black ridge. This is a powerful animal. But also, a cute animal. Its ears are little points, almost dainty. Its face has a softness to it, a nurturing quality. You clear your throat in hopes of waking it without startling it. It doesn’t stir. “Excuse me,” you say, first at normal volume, then a second time, louder. The animal opens its eyes and looks at you. Then it yawns. Is there anything cuter than a yawning mammal? You don’t think there is. “All right,” you say, “you just wait right there.” Back inside, you fill a plastic salad bowl with leftovers—chicken, brown rice, and some vegetables—and take it out to the animal. “This is for you, in case you’re hungry,” you say. You think about how you should feel foolish talking to the animal like that, like it’s a person who can understand and respond, but actually you feel totally normal.

  You make dinner for yourself, watch the news, and go to bed early. Before you do, you look into the backyard and through the darkness you can see the animal: a speed bump sized protrusion in your grass. You’re glad for this. You take pride in the fact that such an animal might deem your yard a worthy place to spend the night.

  Thursday morning, the animal is still there. And when you get home from your second-to-last day of work the animal is also still there. What it’s done while you were gone, you have no idea. There are no signs of digging or chewing in the yard. You assume it mostly slept.

  This time when you walk outside with a bowl of food (deli ham, corn flakes, apple slices), the animal stands and shuffles over to you, its hindquarters wiggling as if it were trying to wag the tail it doesn’t have. You can’t help but smile at this. You watch as the animal eats—quickly, with its whole head jammed in the salad bowl. When it’s done, you turn on the hose and let it drink from the spout. Holding the hose with one hand, you reach down with the other and run your fingers across the animal’s back. The fur is so coarse, it’s almost spiny. You move to its head next. You find a patch of soft fur behind its ears and you linger there, scratching at the spot. “Does that feel good?” you ask the animal. It snorts, spraying water from the hose onto your legs. You interpret this as a “yes.”

  You should be making plans. You should be hunting through classified pages and updating your résumé. You settle down in a chaise lounge on the back deck with a notepad. “Viable Career Options” you write at the top. But nothing comes to you and so you draw a sketch of the animal instead and when you are pleased with your work you stick the page on the refrigerator door with a magnet.

  On Friday, you wake up early. You shower, get dressed, and pack a lunch just like it was any other day even though you d
on’t plan on staying at work for more than an hour and certainly not until noon. You’ve got your keys in your hand and are about to walk out the door but you turn and walk back into the kitchen instead. There’s something so miserably pathetic about this—going to work and having to pretend it’s all fine and normal, surrounded by people for who the day is just a normal day and who won’t really notice much at all when you are gone. You don’t want to feel this pathetic. You decide you ought to have some company.

  You grab the block of cheese from the fridge and rip off little pieces, using them to lure the animal from the backyard along the side of the house to the driveway. You open your car door and put two chunks of cheese on the backseat. The animal sniffs the air for a moment, as if weighing its options, then hops, more gracefully than you’d have expected, into the car. It takes up most of the back seat and has no interest in sticking its face out the window. It lies with its head on its paws for the entirety of the ride.

  Inside the office, just holding the cheese is enough keep the animal at your side. You direct it into the elevator, down the hallway, past the girl at the front desk. Her face betrays visible alarm, but she makes no move to stop you. The animal follows you all the way through your office door and, with just a little bit of prompting, into an out-of-the-way space between two filing cabinets. It lies there, seemingly content, while you make your last phone calls. There aren’t many calls to make, really. The computer programs have probably already taken over most of your tasks. You’re done in forty-five minutes. You’ve brought a milk crate with you and start loading your few possessions from your desk. Gretchen enters your office while you’re doing this.

  “Heya, how’s it going?” She’s talking to you, but looking at the animal. The front desk girl must have tipped her off. You only shrug in response, not wanting to encourage small talk. You wish she would leave so you could finish your packing and be through with this place.