by Eisele, Kimi
“Sounds kinda educational,” Rosie said, smirking.
“Totally. But it was great, and everyone listened to it—kids, adults, rich people, poor people.”
“Sounds like what this neighborhood needs,” Anita said. “People could learn things from the characters. Isn’t it easier sometimes to learn things from make-believe? Like with fairy tales.”
“We can hope,” Beatrix said. It was a long shot. Maybe it wouldn’t do a thing. But at the very least, it could offer a distraction, which Rosie needed, which they all sorely needed. And maybe it was a way to get everyone to think about more than the Center. “We’d need a writer. Anita, do you know any writers?”
Anita’s face brightened, and she led them a few blocks down to Thelma Rosen, a woman in her midsixties with graying flyaway hair. Thelma had published short-story collections and written plays. She knew a few things about directing, too.
Thelma twisted her hair around her index finger as she listened to Beatrix talk about El Caballero. She pointed to Beatrix’s notebook. “Can I see that for a minute?” She studied the drawing of the red bird on the front. “Curious feet. What about him?”
Beatrix felt a tinge of shame as she began to explain to Thelma where she’d gotten the drawing.
“No,” Thelma said, interrupting. “I mean, what about him? The superhero.”
“Oh? Him? The crow?”
“Raven. The Red Raven,” Thelma said. “That’s got a nice ring to it.”
Beatrix nodded. “Whatever you say.”
Beatrix and Rosie walked home excited, but arrived to find a note from Flash on the chalkboard that immediately dimmed their spirits:
Dragon sick. Maria del Carmen and I went for herbs. Please check on him. Back soon.
Dragon was shivering in bed, his skin pale like a dawn sky. He opened an eye. “Hey.”
On the bedside table was a bowl of water, a washcloth resting on its rim. Beatrix dipped the cloth in the water, then placed it over his forehead. “Do you want a drink?” she said. Then she paused and looked at Rosie. “Do you think it could be the water?”
“But we’re not sick,” Rosie said.
Dragon moved his eyes around in a small circle and blinked. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a small grunt escaped.
“True. But”—Beatrix sighed—“what if it is the water?”
Dragon’s eyes were closed now. Rosie leaned over him and listened for his breathing. She looked at Beatrix. “What should we do now?”
“Take precautions.” Beatrix got up, pulled a bottle of water from their storage area under the stairs, and poured some into a cup to inspect it. There was nothing to see. Of course, you never saw a parasite, you just had them. It wasn’t worth the risk. On a piece of cardboard, she wrote, Boil all water before drinking, and propped it against the water jugs.
When he was walking, Carson often forgot that there was ever anything else but walking. As if he had been walking his entire life and would continue to walk forever, and that all there was to life was walking. The placing of one foot in front of the other, the steady glide of the world on either side.
Was he really making his way to Beatrix? Had he completely lost his mind? He wasn’t even halfway to her yet. Maybe none of the way. Maybe Beatrix didn’t even exist anymore.
He was in flat country now, the sky a perfect half dome over him. The Iowa landscape was green and gold. The breadbasket—hallelujah. He was fucking hungry.
He heard barking and followed the sound to a shade-covered road, where a dog stood alone, as if waiting for him. He crouched, and the dog trotted forward. Female, mottled gray-black, with brown eyes. She nudged her head into his palm, and he felt her matted fur and ribs.
Together, they continued along the road to where the trees cleared and a town began. The afternoon sunlight reflected off parked cars and slanted off houses and buildings. Something about the light was odd; its angle seemed too steep, the shadows too crisp, as if cast by a winter sun. It was the kind of town where folks should be sitting on the porch, waving to neighbors and drinking tea or cocktails, ice clinking in the glasses. Carson stayed alert for any movement. There had to be food here somewhere.
The dog was no longer beside him, but when he sounded a long whistle, she came happily, two twigs sticking out from the side of her mouth. “Play fetch, huh?” he said, reaching for the twigs. But they weren’t twigs; they were the two skinny legs of a bird, a common robin. The dog positioned her kill between her paws and ate.
On the porch of a modest house stood a woman in a once-white terry-cloth robe. Her hair was messy, as if she had just woken up. She waved him over. “Can you help?” she said, barely audibly. “Please. My daughter.”
Carson approached the house. Maybe she would give him food.
“Have you come with medicine?” the woman said. “Please tell me you’ve come with medicine.”
Inside, the house smelled of mint and rotten meat. On the sofa was a small, pale girl. In the dim light, she resembled a fish, silvery and damp, her mouth open and hollow. Each gurgle of breath shook her.
“Tea,” Carson said, imagining a lemon and a sharp knife. He would slice up a lemon. “Give her tea. With lemon.”
There was the sound of coughing. The fish flopped onto its side, and a thick yellow liquid spilled from her mouth. Carson backed up to the door and let himself out.
He knocked at the next house, where two wooden ducks in the yard held up a welcome sign. When no one came, he risked it and went in, heading for the kitchen. A weak voice called out, “David, is that you?”
Carson followed the sound to a bedroom, where a thin, ashen woman lay beneath the covers, her head like a prune against the pillowcase. He heard the liquid in her lungs.
“Are you the doctor?” she said.
“I’m not a doctor,” Carson said, and the woman’s body seemed to shrink. She brought her hand to her mouth, bony fingers failing to cover the cough. Jesus, everyone in this town was sick. Carson stepped out of the room and hoped David, whoever he was, would return soon.
In the kitchen, he opened a pantry door onto more food than he’d seen in six months.
The woman made a noise, and Carson stood very still, his heart racing. Then he moved back to the doorway to her room.
“Take whatever you want. Stay alive,” the woman said softly.
Carson knew she would not last long. He went into an adjacent room and looked around. He grabbed a small ceramic duck from the top of a dresser and returned to the woman, placing the duck on the nightstand next to her. “I wish there was something more I could do,” he said.
He stuffed his backpack with all he could fit—canned beans, soup, pasta, Tabasco sauce, two mason jars full of fine cornmeal. He moved down the hall to a bathroom. Below the sink, he found toothpaste, soap, and gauze bandages. A windfall. In a closet in the hallway, he found a pair of men’s boots.
Before leaving he called out, “Thank you. Bless you.”
Outside, he whistled for the dog, but she did not come. A man shuffled by, his head damp with sweat. On his face was a look of resignation.
Carson walked with his hand over his heart. Bless these poor, sick souls.
He continued out of the town and dropped his pack. With the soap, and water from one of his bottles, he scrubbed his hands and washed out his mouth, nose, and eyes. He tended the wound on his arm, cleaning it and wrapping it with a gauze bandage.
He rested against a tree. He’d been foolish to go inside those houses, to expose himself like that. None of those people were going to survive. Was he?
He took off his boots and rubbed his feet, wishing for an icy-cold stream. He tried on the new boots, which were slightly too big. Good enough, he thought, tying the old ones to his pack as backup.
He pulled the radio from his pack and wound it up. The voice was deep and familiar. “So many are still tethered to the material world. But there is something beyond that, magnificent and magical. If you listen, you can hear it. Right now,
I hear the sound of birds. Crows. Listen, my friends.”
There was a distant caw in the background. But it was a raven, not a crow. A raven had a deeper cry, slightly more guttural. It cawed again, and Carson imagined a devoted disciple squawking in the background—the whole thing a sham.
He turned the radio off and looked at the sky, half expecting to see a bird careening toward him, mocking him. That would be a crow. If any bird could mock a human, it was a crow. They were smart, fierce birds. They used to perch on the telephone wires outside King High, calling out as the kids straggled into the building, teasing whoever passed below as if playing a version of the dozens: You’re so late you missed graduation.
And then, of course, there were the crows in the field behind his and June’s farmhouse. In October of the year June died, they were like a sign. The last time she had asked him to help her end her life, he had looked at her ravaged and brittle body, and then he had gone outside and walked around the field. The sky was a pure gray but for a single cloud in the shape of a whale, large enough to swallow everything—the field, the house, June’s sickness, his sorrow. He had wanted to rouse the crows, startle them, drive them up into the whale, but he could not move his arms.
He had wanted so badly to find June curled up in the reading chair, a book fallen into her lap, eyes closed in a little catnap. At the sound of the door closing behind him, she’d sigh, set the book aside, and stand, stretching her arms above her head and arching her back.
But that day, like so many days before it, June lay frail and pallid, on a bed in the middle of the living room. They’d moved it there so she could see out the windows, so she could be a part of the living room. The living. But that bed had made the whole room feel sick.
June had stirred as he approached her. There was no book to take from her hands—she held not even the smallest sliver of desire to continue. He placed his hand over hers. When he went to move it away, she turned her palm upward, as if to hold him there. She looked into his eyes, pleading.
Finally, he had nodded, almost imperceptibly.
She blinked. “Thank you,” she’d said without a sound.
He hated this single, pivotal decision. Of course they should have planted peonies along the back deck as she wanted, not the geraniums he had bought. Why had he always insisted they have red wine, leaving her to add a cube of ice? (I prefer cold wine, she’d say.) Why couldn’t they have gone to Mexico instead of rainy Portland? All those decisions. He would have given them all over to her if he could have just persuaded her out of this one.
He had placed his hand on her forehead. He bent over her chest and rested his head there. Minutes passed. Possibly hours. When he was sure that the afternoon was over—the cawing of the crows had begun and they had lifted into the darkening sky—he stood and carried the container of pills to the kitchen. One by one, he emptied the capsules into the lightest cup they had, a thin bone-china teacup with flowers painted inside. Then he boiled the water and steeped the tea.
He propped pillows behind her back, placed the cup in her hands, and put his hands around hers to help her hold it. With effort, she drank. Afterward, he placed the cup on the table and sank to his knees. There was nothing inside him. No blood, no bones, no nerves. No sound, no smell. He closed his eyes.
Technically, she had done it herself. She had sipped the tea. He had not forced her to swallow. It could have been Earl Grey or chamomile. He could have spooned in honey. All she had said was, “Add lemon.”
And so he had.
August 20
C.,
Are the angry kids circling your neighborhood, too? Have they infiltrated all the cities? I am afraid of their weapons but cannot bring myself to carry one.
Would it be wrong to put a lock on the gate and not give the key to Maria del Carmen? To keep her here, I mean. To keep her from going off to this mythical Center and taking Rosie with her. They’ll have to walk. There are no trains.
At this point, the only train I’d consider boarding is one that would take me to you. It’s not that you fade from me, but I can’t always hear you anymore. Is this what they talk about when they talk about faith?
Tell me about ravens, please.
Love, B.
After five days, Dragon was still sick. His skin was more pallid, and his eyes were darker, more sunken. Anything he ate came right out again.
“Just give it time, Beatrix,” Maria del Carmen said, pouring a jar of dried herbs into a pot. “These herbs are for the stomach. Eventually, it will be able to hold the food we give him.”
Beatrix went to the fire and leaned over the pot. “But when?” she asked.
Maria del Carmen kept stirring. “Patience, Beatrix.”
She seemed so sure of her medicine, Beatrix noticed. So sure of Jonathan Blue. How could that be?
She tried an appeal to Maria del Carmen’s confidence. “What about a radio segment on herbs?”
“I’m no good at talking like that,” Maria del Carmen said.
“It could be an interview. Me asking, you answering. Talking like we are now.”
Maria del Carmen shook her head and handed Beatrix two hot mitts and gestured to the pot. “Can you set it here, please? It needs to cool and infuse now.”
Beatrix did as she was told. “I think you’d be great at it,” she said.
Maria del Carmen scooped a cupful of water from a bucket and tossed it into the pot.
Beatrix sighed. What was the way through? Did only Jonathan Blue matter? How was he promising so much?
She watched the steam rise from the pot and thought of Dragon. His tired body. She still wasn’t sure if it was flu or some kind of water contaminant. Jesus Christ, what if it was a Jonathan Blue strategy? A manufactured crisis!
“Think about it,” she told Flash later. “Everyone said he prophesized the flu. Maybe he’s prophesizing another illness.”
“Wait, what?” Flash said, bobbing his head like a spring-headed toy.
“Dragon. Sick. The water. Maybe Blue needs another a plague to prove his power. Maybe Dorn the water guy is manufacturing one for him.”
Flash pulled at a few hairs on his chin and thought for a moment. “The CDC prophesized that flu, too, Beatrix. And right now, no one else is sick. Why are you even listening to Blue? You have to drown that shit out.”
“Maria del Carmen never turns him off. She’s either in rapture, imagining ascending to heaven, or in terror thinking she might be felled by a plague, or by the hoodlums first.”
“Blue is good at what he does, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t mean you have to cave. Maybe he sent the T-Rize, too?” Flash smirked. “Beatrix, sometimes you push a little too hard.”
His words landed in her ears like whip cracks. Pushed too hard? Why were there chickens in the backyard? Why was Halcyon Radio now up and running? Because she’d pushed for them.
Flash loaded up the wagon with empty water bottles and started wheeling it down the walkway. Beatrix followed him, annoyed and confused.
Just ahead, a group of neighbors headed toward the Perimeter, luggage and carts in tow. More? The neighborhood had lost more than half of its residents already. Some to the early round of flu, and others—like Hank and Dolores—to farm country.
Beatrix caught up with the group and asked where they were going. A buck-toothed boy pointed to the sky.
“The Center,” the child’s mother said. She had short hair and the hearty freckled skin of someone who worked outside.
“What’s there?” Beatrix asked.
“Movies,” one of the children said.
“We don’t know about that,” the mother said. “But food, safety. We’re out of choices here. I need to protect them.” She patted the boy on the head as she said this.
“We will rise,” the boy said, repeating Blue’s favorite line while standing on his tiptoes.
“Maybe we will,” the mother said.
Beatrix tilted her head, skeptical. Stay here, she wanted to say. There’s a
garden here. There’s a community.
She noticed the boy’s chapped lips, his dirty hands, the way his mother’s hand rested on his head, the slack look on her face. “Maybe,” Beatrix called out as they walked away.
How was it possible that all these people were following Jonathan Blue? Could they not spot a narcissist? I can show you a new way. I will feed you and clothe you. I, I, I. Who had that kind of singular power these days?
Blue’s seemed such a simple sales pitch. Just show up, be taken care of, and merge with . . . with what, the darkness? What kind of upgrade was he talking about? It sounded so familiar—an easy fix, like a TV dinner or a mechanized car wash. Convenient. Was that the kind of pie-in-the-sky conviction that could fuel a very long walk? How was it that in all her years of organizing, Beatrix had not been able to generate anything even close to that kind of commitment from people?
She helped Flash carry the water home. “This is insane. Everyone is going there.”
“No, not everyone,” Flash said.
“We need to get The Red Raven on the air, like now.”
“Agreed.”
But could that really keep Maria del Carmen and everyone else from leaving? Was it even possible to do that with a story?
When she asked this of Thelma, Thelma hushed her. Then she pulled out a box set of cassettes—a compilation of old radio stories remastered from the 1930s and ’40s. “From my neighbor. His grandfather gave them to him when he was young. He never threw them out.”
Beatrix scanned the titles: The War of the Worlds, The Green Hornet, The Shadow.
“He also brought this,” Thelma said, gesturing to a portable cassette player. “Solar-charged batteries.”
She popped one of the tapes into the player. “Research,” she said, as Orson Welles’s voice came out of the small speaker.
After a while, she stopped the tape. “I’m thinking we need to set it in another realm. Not the everyday. Not even what used to be the everyday. They’ll go mad listening to that. Can’t have reminders of the comforts we no longer have.”