The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

by Ethan Rutherford

  Our engines have been shut off for an undetermined amount of time, and we’re sitting deep in the sand. The silence, though shot through with expectation bordering on panic, is a relief. Bushard has just reminded me that yesterday, August 28, was your twentieth birthday. When I asked him how he’d remembered, he reminded me I’d asked him to do so, five days ago. I am losing the thread of our expedition. I feel I have lost the thread of everything. But what should I have done? No messages go through from here, of that I am certain.

  august 29; evening

  At first the boys—there are two of them—told us they were alone on the sand. Then they said that just beyond the ridgeline, there was an entire fleet of repurposed shipper-tanks, which would be coming for us shortly. Then they stopped talking altogether. We’d hauled them on deck as soon as the buggy docked. They were raggedly dressed, but wore matching boots and outdated sun-visors, dark green jackets that even in their threadbare state lent a military impression to their overall appearance. Neither looked to be older than eighteen. One of them, the smaller one, didn’t have much English, and apparently stuttered when under duress. The larger looked even more frightened. One of the coopers had zip-tied them together at the wrists, so they were back-to-back with each other. Captain Tonker approached and asked if they’d been mistreated. When they said no, he punched the little one in the sternum. “Not yet, you mean,” he said.

  They were separated for questioning. We were told to hold the tall one, and not let him out of our sight until Captain Tonker called for him. The other guy, still catching his breath, was pushed below deck with Captain Tonker on his heels. Bushard called for water. When no one moved, he went to get it himself.

  While he was gone, no one said a word. Eventually the kid slumped over, and sat cross-legged with his back against the rail. His hair was cut short, and a small scar wound around his chin like a piece of white thread I kept wanting to wipe away. At some point Bushard returned with the water. The kid politely held up his hand and waved it off.

  “I’ve got a question,” Renaldo finally said. “And that question is: what are you even doing out here in the first place, protecting these things?”

  The kid looked down at his lap, adjusted his hands. “Someone has to,” he said. “They’re on the verge of extinction. They’ve got nothing else.”

  Renaldo asked him to look around. He said: this whole basin is the embodiment of nothing else. It touches nothing at all. “That is where we part ways, philosophically,” the kid said.

  “So how many shipper-tanks have you destroyed?” Tom said.

  “That’s just a small part of what we do,” the kid said back.

  “From where I’m sitting, that’s all you do,” someone behind me said.

  The kid closed his eyes, as if no matter what came next we’d simply agree to disagree. “This is illegal, you know,” the kid finally said. “This ends it for you.”

  Renaldo grabbed the cup of water from Bushard, set it down, and told him we had him on that one. Legal or illegal; teeming or desolate sands: our hold was empty. This expedition had never even started for us. So he could save his industrio-accountability speech for someone on the winning end of that particular stick. The kid reached for the water, and said he’d keep it in mind.

  Suddenly there was a scramble middeck. Word got passed that we were to take our temporary guest to the galley, zip him to a table-bolt, and suit up. As we made our way below, the engines roared with an unholy and squealing intensity, then settled into chugging life. Later we heard what everyone else apparently already knew: that Captain Tonker had squeezed some knowledge out of the stuttering Firstie, and that the cove we were looking for was less than seventy miles away. “Birthing grounds,” one of the mates said as he inspected our lances. “A hotbed.”

  “Heavenly days,” I said, and slapped Bushard on the back.

  “Imagine that,” he replied.

  august 31

  Tuva, it took two days on our full-throttled engines before we spotted the walls of the cove. At first these walls were a speck on the horizon; as we pulled closer, their sheer size became more plain. They rose darkly out of the sand; smooth, deep red and sun-baked rock formations high enough to cast long shadows across the dunes. A fortress rising out of the basin, glacier cut millennia ago. They must have formed a ring four miles around. If we hadn’t seen it ourselves, we wouldn’t have believed such a thing existed.

  During the night, we’d run through our equipment, checking and rechecking cartridges, sharpening cutting tools. Captain Tonker had informed us that we would most likely meet resistance in the cove. He asked us if we were prepared to face this Firstie opposition like the men he knew we were. We nodded. We trial-fired our lances off the rail in unison, enjoying the sand-muffled concussion. Someone asked if the whole point was to not draw attention to ourselves, and as a thank-you for expressing concern he was sent below to mop the latrines. As the sun broke over the sand, though, we spotted two shipper-tanks in the far distance. They were dots off the stern, half a day behind us. Captain Tonker gave the engineers permission to try harder in the grease room, and ordered Bushard and me to bring the two Firsties on deck so their presence aboard would be more visible. As we zipped them to the rail, the smaller one saw where we were headed an instant before his friend did, and became inconsolable. Renaldo stuffed a face towel down his throat.

  As we neared the mouth of the cove, one of the mates called for positions. I hitched my leg over the rail, next to Bushard, and eased my finger over the trigger-guard on my lance. The sun was merciless; we felt no different. The glare and heat off the sand shimmered a water-mirage on my visor. I felt one of my ears pop, and then the Halcyon made a sharp, arcing turn, moving us into the shadow of the high stone, and we came to rest perpendicular with the mouth of the cove, using our ship to block the opening.

  Set up near where rock-base met the sand was a ring of small tents. I counted four or five unmanned buggies, parked in the shade next to what looked like a copse of monitoring equipment. Half of the large cove was gridded with wire, which divided the calm sand into rectangular segments measuring roughly fifty by one hundred yards. The other half appeared untouched, even by wind: not a tread mark, not a divot, not a single rake stroke. We stood at the rail for what felt like a small drop of eternity, expecting something to happen. Nothing did.

  Bushard cleared his throat. “Would I be forgiven,” he said, “for saying this feels just about right?”

  Before I could answer, a man appeared through the flaps of one of the tents. Carefully, with his hands raised and with some evident discomfort, he began limping toward us. Without his sun-suit, wearing only a vest and some sort of wrap around his waist, he looked like a lost shaman, comically out of place. “That your dad?” someone said to one of the Firsties, and got no response. When the man was within shouting distance, he stopped, and pointed. We followed the line of his finger. Scattered along the top of the rock walls were groupings of other men, who looked just like him, also unarmed. As if by witness alone they could prevent us from doing what we came here to do.

  Bushard put his hand on my shoulder, and nodded in the direction of the tents. A small dirwhal, the size of a buggy and lighter in color than the one we’d lanced, had surfaced and was winding its way toward our ship. It didn’t know enough not to.

  The man cupped his hands around his mouth. Whatever he yelled was lost over the scream of our engines. Another small dirwhal surfaced behind the first, as if it didn’t want to miss whatever was happening. One of the men on the hill picked up a stone and chucked it down at us. It bounced harmlessly off the bridge. “I think,” Bushard said, “they’re urging us to reconsider.”

  “I would imagine so,” Tom said, lifting his lance to his shoulder.

  The Halcyon lurched further into position, wedging herself more firmly in the mouth of the cove; then someone cut the engines. Renaldo mentioned that the men on the ledge were hoisting a camera of some sort on their shoulders. I didn’t se
e it. I didn’t care.

  But would it be going too far to say that as Captain Tonker gave the order to prong the sand and run a charge I felt a fleeting but deep pang of regret? As the sand began to hum with electricity, and the man, rather than running, fell to his knees, as if overcome by a great sadness, I wanted to tear at him for his stupidity and devotion. He knew—somewhere he must’ve known—this would happen; that we, or someone like us, would circle and eventually crest the dunes to take what remained from this cove. It was nothing he could stop. Bushard, next to me, gripped his lance like it was a lifeline. Next to him the two Firsties who had led us here strained at the rail, shielding their vision, and begged for someone to help.

  Tuva, years ago now, I sent a message home that indicated the scenery here could be stunning: a desolate expanse shot through with an almost alien beauty. The dunes ridged in the distance, slipped their angles, and re-formed. The ground, far from being frozen, gave and depressed with each step. The sun hung in the sky and at certain hours lent the sands an appearance of a gold and undulating ocean. My intention then had been to show you that there was a world outside the one you knew. I know you received it, because in response you sent back a picture of your closed and locked bedroom door. And I know, now, that you were right. Tuva: I felt the lance kick against my shoulder. I reloaded, and fired again. For two years we’d thought ourselves the victims of history, but as we stood at the rail and marveled at the live sand below us, we’d become something else: a punctuation mark; the coffin’s nail; agents of endurance, memorable only to ourselves. I aimed for the surfacing beasts, and eventually, aimed for the men who fired back at us. We sent the bulk of our explosives into that cove, squeezed water from stone, and nothing, no one, dug out.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation for their generous support during the writing of this book.

  A number of these stories are based on historical events, and I’d like to acknowledge two works in particular that provided the initial spark for some of the stories in this book. “The Saint Anna” owes much to In the Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov, and “The Peripatetic Coffin” found its footing only after a reading of Confederates Courageous by Gerald F. Teaster. Eventually fiction took over, and facts were bent, and broken, and used against their will, but I’m deeply indebted to the work of these two authors.

  I’d like to thank Russell Perreault, Sloane Crosley, and Nayon Cho. Charles Baxter, and Julie Schumacher. Jim Shepard. Shelly Perron, and Martin Wilson at Ecco.

  I’d also like to thank the editors of the journals where these stories first appeared, particularly Jill Meyers, Stacey Swann, Devin Becker, Max Winter, Peter Wolfgang, David Daley, Hannah Tinti, and Marie-Helene Bertino. And of course, Alice Sebold.

  I sometimes have nightmares about what these stories would have looked like without the fine attention and editorial suggestions of Libby Edelson at Ecco. And nothing at all would have happened were it not for Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company. Thank you both. Toby, Carol, and Joyce: Three Lives & Company was for years my home away from home, and you guys my family. Paul Yoon and Matt Burgess: thank you isn’t nearly enough for all the work you put into helping these stories along, but thank you just the same.

  Mom, Dad, and Anne: my three favorite people.

  And finally, finally: Maryhope. I should get you a T-shirt that says I put up with all of this for years and all I got was a lousy book dedication. You’re the greatest. And I’m the luckiest guy around. Finally and always.

  About the Author

  ETHAN RUTHERFORD’s fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, and The Best American Short Stories. Born in Seattle, he now lives in Minneapolis with his wife and son.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Cover design and illustration by Steve Attardo

  Copyright

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these stories first appeared, in slightly different form: “The Peripatetic Coffin” in American Short Fiction; “Summer Boys” in One Story; “John, for Christmas” in Ploughshares; “Camp Winnesaka” in Faultline; “The Saint Anna” in New York Tyrant; “The Broken Group” in Fiction on a Stick; “Dirwhals!” on FiveChapters.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE PERIPATETIC COFFIN AND OTHER STORIES. Copyright © 2013 by Ethan Rutherford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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