by McBain, Tim
Still, Ruth seemed like a little girl for the first time since he’d met her. A kid. A child playing with the other children. He could still see her as she’d been when they’d first found her. Catatonic in the road, arms and legs all folded up inside of a t-shirt. And then there was the blood. Covering her over from head to toe. Smearing her cheeks. Speckling her forehead. Soaking so deeply into the fibers of her clothes it was hard to imagine that at some point they hadn’t been red.
He remembered the way it had matted her hair to her scalp, sculpted her mane into strange whorls and bunches, thick red bodily fluid serving as makeshift hair gel. The stuff had gone tacky and gummy when it dried, some of the bits of congealed hair almost reminiscent of the texture of Twizzlers. It’d taken an effort to get her clean.
Looking now, as she ran haphazardly around this yard outside a farmhouse in rural Virginia, you wouldn’t know any of it. She was, in most respects, indistinguishable from the other children — a fact that heartened him enough that he misted up a little as he watched her play. She was going to be all right, as all right as anyone could be in this world. She had the kind of toughness that kept someone on their feet here.
He still wondered who the hell’s blood it was that had been splattered all over her, but he knew now that it wasn’t for him to know. Maybe it was for no one but her. Talking about it would be therapeutic, of course, and she’d hopefully come to terms with that and share her tale some day, in a time and place and with company that all made her feel safe. But that would be her decision, would happen on her terms.
He adjusted his legs, his lower back growing sore from where his tailbone dug into the concrete. He scrubbed at the aching spot, his hand warm against that cool flesh along his spine.
He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it between his lips. Let it rest there a few seconds before he lit it. He realized he was savoring this moment of relief, watching the kid run and play and be happy. Whatever happened from here, he’d keep this little slice of life close to his heart from here on out.
At last he lit the smoke. Puffed on it. Let the gray cloud seep slowly out of his nostrils, two streams that intertwined before his eyes and drifted up and away.
When the cigarette was about halfway gone, he stuck his pinky and thumb into the corners of his mouth to give a whistle.
All heads snapped his way, the playing children stopping in their tracks to look after the shrill sound.
He waved Ruth over, and after a second she came running. A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth as she approached. She was a little out of breath.
“You having a good time out there?”
She nodded.
“Making friends?”
Hesitated. Nodded again.
“That’s great. I figured so, just sitting over here watching y’all play. Not that I can make heads or tails out of the game you got goin’ out there. Looks like some gibberish version of tag or something. An anything goes type of deal. Anyway, can I ask you something else?”
She squinted before she answered, perhaps mildly suspicious.
“Uh-huh.”
“You think you’d want to stay on here? Live here from now on, I mean. Play with these kids every day out here in this yard? Maybe share a bedroom with one of ‘em up here at the house.”
No hesitation. She nodded and her eyes went wide. Then she stopped, tilted her head.
“You, too?”
Delfino hit his cig before he answered.
“Nah. I think not. I’ve got to drive to make my living. Kind of make my way on the road, sleep in the Delta 88 most nights. But I could be back to visit you and everything. Probably will stay on this side of the ol’ globe from now on, if I can.”
She frowned at that. Looked at the ground a moment. Then made eye contact to ask a follow up.
“What about Baghead? Would he stay?”
“I think not. I can’t answer for him with any certainty, mind you, but I think not. He’s got his own journey to see through, I guess you could say. The ol’ date with destiny or whatever the hell. I’m sure he’d visit you, too, though.”
Ruth thought about this and then shrugged. Delfino could see that her eyes were already circling back toward the other kids, spiraling around that damn chicken wire cube like vultures.
“Anyhow, I’ll put in a word with the boss lady here, see what she says, but I think you’ll be able to stay right here. They owe me a favor. A big one. And I guess I’m ‘bout to call that sucker in and then some. Shoot, you go play.”
He didn’t need to repeat himself. She tore across the grass and fell in with the weird whirlwind of children going round and round and round.
Lorraine
Rural Tennessee
1 year, 54 days after
Louis slept in the driver’s seat, chest rising and falling in slow motion. Lorraine watched him in the quiet of the morning, feeling weird. A fog had rolled in, set up a wall of clouds around the car that seemed to isolate them further. Somehow this left her feeling a little somber, a little lonely. Even so, she didn’t dare wake Louis.
His torso wore some extra bulk, though his arms and legs were skinny, almost stick-like. There was something uniquely male about this build, she thought — all the body fat stored on the front of the abdomen. Round belly. Puffy chest. He didn’t quite sport man boobs but it was getting too close for anyone’s comfort.
Her eyes crawled up his torso and fastened on his face. Watched for a long while.
Louis wasn’t ugly in Lorraine’s opinion. Not quite. He wasn’t attractive either, though. Weak chin. Hair thinning in the front. Little folds in the flesh under his eyes that made him look tired all the time. Something froggy about all these features put together, too. What was the word? Amphibious.
And she wondered if these were weird things to think. Rude judgments to pass on someone she considered a friend. It wasn’t like she could control her opinion of the aesthetics of his features, though. And it wasn’t like she was expressing to him how underwhelmed she was with his appearance.
They were just thoughts, right? Idle thoughts, that was all. The endless stream of words that poured through one’s head whether they were wanted or not, same for her or anyone else.
Our thoughts are our constant companion, closest confidant, and most effective tormentor all rolled into one. More a compulsion than any kind of choice of our own. Something that happens to you.
She turned. Flicked her gaze away from his face to look at the fog outside the window again. Instead her eyes focused on her reflection in the glass. Another face, this one translucent and feminine.
Faces seemed strange whenever she really considered them. They were capable of being so beautiful, so striking, they’d inevitably make an onlooker feel like this set of shapes was meant to be. Brought into existence by fate, by destiny or divinity. Crafted by a God or angel or brilliant architect from above. And yet another face could be so wrong as to turn the stomach. Crooked eyes and receding chins and wormy lips. Repulsive.
She licked her lips and watched the see-through version of herself do the same in the glass, somehow making this simple act look reptilian and strange. Christ. Even her own visage looked wrong just now. Old and tired and perhaps a bit puffy, one side of her brow stretched out where the glass curved along the edge, distorted like something in a fun house mirror.
Maybe a face — any face — started to look strange when you sat in a car with it for hours and days. Staring at nothing else. Or maybe if someone sat still long enough all the faces started to look strange. Warped and sinister.
Maybe all the people started to look like Others to you if you did that, Lorraine thought. Or maybe it was worse. Maybe you became the Other. The Outsider. Something apart from humanity, apart from all the people, walking among them but no longer of them.
Either way, it was strange to realize after a time that your face was yours, but it was not you. It had nothing to do with who you were inside — your values, feelings, bel
iefs, opinions, etc. It was just an image, wasn’t it? Just flesh and bone and blood. To the outside world, it became an avatar that represented you, but it was not you. Your face was a mask you didn’t even get to pick.
It occurred to her that it was much like her thoughts in that respect — not you, not your choice, more like something that happened to you. The endless stream of words in your head, nothing more, just as your face was the skin stretched over the front of your skull, nothing more.
She licked her lips again, the lizard version of her mocking her in the glass. Misshapen. Wrong.
If your face isn’t really you, and your thoughts aren’t really you, who the fuck are you?
Father
Rural Maryland
9 years, 39 days after
Father slept again on the way home from the meeting, his chin somehow finding his chest on that short ride. Fiona woke him with gentle words, and he was surprised to find himself back in the foyer. His eyes scanned everywhere, sliding over everything in the room as though he might find a flaw or misplaced item that would tip off that, somehow, this wasn’t really happening, wasn’t really his foyer. A dream. An illusion. Surely a trick of some kind.
But no. He’d slept, and now he was home. That was all.
She wheeled him into the kitchen. Asked if he wanted anything to eat.
“Not now,” he said. “Maybe in a bit.”
“OK. Well, then I’ll ask you again in a while.”
She did do a good job taking care of him, he knew, pressing the issue sometimes to get him to eat even when he didn’t want to. He should make sure to tell her that at some point, that she did a good job, even if he didn’t feel like doing so right now.
“I thought the meeting went well,” she said. “You were all worried, but once you’re out there in front of everyone, you always do well. I don’t think it’s like how you say it is, the council trying to do away with you or any of that. Whenever they hear you talk, you win them over again. They love you as much as ever, Father. As much as we all do and always have.”
Father blinked, stared at the linoleum floor.
“I’m the one who keeps the peace. That’s all. The others want me gone so they can start their war, especially Lucas. That’s the problem with councils, though. All that rational talk can walk itself down any avenue, convince itself that going to war for no good reason, of all things, is the most reasonable choice in the world. The rationality of the group mind always lets fear get the better of it, always ends up veering toward insanity.”
He shifted in his seat, tried to get comfortable as he went on talking.
“You don’t get that with the benevolent dictator. The innate selfishness of an individual somehow works out better, avoids the pitfalls. When I was running things, had the council firmly in my grip, we never had any of this kind of talk. Because a war would be of no benefit to my power here, to my life here. In a way, sheer selfishness kept the peace. My appetites steered us away from trouble, kept this machine of our camp running so I could extract what I wanted from it. Hilarious, isn’t it? My selfishness led us to a better world. Not as good as we all wanted, but better than before. No doubt. So all this time, I was the voice of reason. Even still, it remains so. Who knows what will happen when I’m gone?”
Fiona shook her head.
“I don’t think you believe about half of the things you say, Father. You know that? Safety and security are hardly selfish choices, way I see it. A lot of the time, what’s good for you would be good for the group. Don’t make it a selfish choice.”
He grunted. Still writhing in his seat. His back was getting sore. That stiffness taking hold in the lumbar region, as it often did. Muscles there squeezing until it felt like someone was pricking the nerves with knitting needles, twisting them around a little.
“You want me to help you onto your couch?”
He tried to conceal the grimace as he nodded, but he didn’t think the attempt was all that effective.
She rolled him into the living room and then scooped him around the chest and helped him stand on wobbly legs. He was frail now, almost birdlike. He could feel that more clearly with her hands on him, the boniness of his body being reflected in her touch.
He leaned forward, half crashing onto the couch sideways, her arms taking some of the weight so he didn’t hit down full force. How did his hips get so tight that something like this became difficult? He couldn’t remember the progression very clearly. Felt as much as anything like something that just happened one day. Like he went to stand up one afternoon and found the mobility in his hips reduced to nearly nothing. Of course, it must have been slow, happened in stages over the years. Almost imperceptible at first.
He adjusted. Got into something of a fetal position with his top half draped over the back of the sofa. With his knees tucked up toward his torso, his back usually loosened some, at least enough to kill much of the pain.
He looked up, and Fiona was staring at him. Something in her expression suggested that she was waiting for him to say something. So he did.
“It’s going to fall apart when I’m gone. I used to think that was an egotistical thought, some self-absorption finding a way to keep me at the center of things, keep me important to the camp even after I was gone, but now I believe it with the whole of my heart. Kind of funny, you know.”
Delfino
Ripplemead, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Eventually Marissa came out and gave a report on Baghead’s condition, spitting out a lot of numbers that meant next to nothing to Delfino.
“Will he live?”
“I can’t say that for sure, but I think we were able to head off the septic shock. If he makes it through tonight, he’ll have a good chance of pulling through it.”
Delfino reached out and took Marissa’s hand.
“I want to thank you for what you done, no matter what comes of it. Thank you.”
For a moment, the woman’s hard eyes softened. She nodded once.
“I’d better get back inside,” she said, sliding her hand from Delfino’s grip. “We’re pushing fluids to keep him hydrated, and it’s my turn to man the syringe.”
Delfino watched Marissa go up the steps and disappear into the house. A few seconds later, Erin banged out through the screen door, untying a surgical gown and wadding it into a ball.
She stomped over to a picnic table not far from the back of the house, and Delfino immediately wondered what the hell he had been thinking to sit on a slab of concrete about a foot off the ground all this time with an honest to God seat not ten feet from him.
He stood, back screaming out with a twinge of sharp pain. He tried to stretch it, sort of bending over and sticking his ass out to get at those afflicted muscles. Moderate success at best.
Then he moved to the picnic table, back still twinging with each step. He sat on the corner opposite of Erin, as far from her as possible, some effort to give her space.
She looked, for lack of a better term, pissed off. A sour expression on her lips. A small knot between her brows. He wanted to broach the Ruth topic with her, but he sensed that he should wait for the right moment, lay low for a while.
“Beautiful afternoon out here,” he said. “You’ve got a lovely place here. I think it was a little dreary last time I came by. Middle of winter or something, but this? This is something to behold.”
Erin’s nostrils flared before she answered. She didn’t look at him.
“Thanks.” She said it so it almost sounded like a question, which he took as a bit of sarcasm.
“You’re pissed. I get it. We might as well just have it out here and now rather than do the whole passive aggressive song and dance.”
Now her eyes locked onto his. Demon eyes. Crazy eyes. She spoke in a tight voice, hushed and sharp, which only made her seem more angry.
“OK, how’s this? You’re a lying, cheating, disloyal piece of shit, and when I told you I never wanted to see you around here again, I meant i
t. Is that direct enough for you?”
Delfino winced and scratched the side of his head.
“So I take it you’re still sour about the salt?”
Erin crossed her arms.
“If the roles had been reversed — if you’d told me about three pallet loads of salt, and I agreed to haul them for you, but then I turned around and sold the whole lot to someone else — tell me, would you be fucking sour?”
He pursed his lips and bobbed his head once.
“I suppose I would be. Although I think the sourness would have faded some over the course of three years. After all, I was only doing what made the most sense, economics-wise. Selling to the highest bidder and whatnot. It wasn’t personal.” Delfino shrugged. “Just business.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Erin said, scoffing. “You didn’t even give me a chance to bid higher.”
“I knew you couldn’t beat their price,” Delfino said, but Erin kept talking as if she hadn’t heard him.
“It should count for something that I told you about the cache to begin with. You wouldn’t even have known about it if it weren’t for me.”
“To be fair, I did give you a finder’s fee.”
“Fuck your finder’s fee!” Erin’s hands balled into fists. “You sold the salt — my salt — to the SS. The absolute worst shitstains on the face of the planet. So yeah, I know it was just business. But I thought we were more than that. I thought we were friends.”
She wasn’t looking at him now. Had her head turned to face away from him, and he knew then how upset she was by that last part. She was mad about the business deal gone wrong, sure, but he thought maybe she was more hurt about the friendship going south. And that? Well, that made him feel like an old dusty turd.
Delfino let his shoulders slump. He nodded slowly.