by Mina McShady
“Don’t you move!” yelled Bearded Man, who reached out with a long tool with a loop at the end, which he put around the bear’s neck. Angry, the bear reared up on its hind legs and made a noise that was part bark and part long sigh. At the same time, the Gym Teacher took out a gun and shot the bear with tranquilizer darts. After what seemed to be just a few seconds, the bear stopped crying and became woozy, finally slumping onto the ground. The Gym Teacher pulled out a walkie talkie and asked somebody for a “pick up.”
“What’s going to happen to the bear?” asked Eli.
“We’re going to put him to sleep,” said the Bearded Man, absently scratching his gut. “He keeps coming around people, and we can’t have that. Someone, like you, could get hurt.”
“But the bear wasn’t hurting me,” Eli cried, in a rage that these two men, or someone like them, were going to kill this beautiful bear for what seemed like no reason at all.
“Doesn’t matter. Bears can be unpredictable. Better safe than sorry, you know.” As he said this, the Bearded Man looked at the ground as though he was ashamed.
“It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” yelled Eli.
“I agree. It’s not fair,” said the Bearded Man, raising his head and looking into Eli’s angry child’s eyes. “This ain’t the bear’s fault at all. It’s people’s fault. People who feed the bears and get them used to takin’ handouts instead of fending for themselves in the wild.”
Eli’s eyes stung with tears that he refused to let go. He knew what the man was saying: it was his fault that the bear was going to be killed. He shouldn’t have been feeding it. He watched while four more rangers came out of the forest with a travois and restraints. They heaved the bear onto the canvas in one fluid movement, muzzled its powerful jaws, and hog-tied its tree-like legs. Everyone left, except the Gym Teacher.
“Hey kid,” he said. “Where are your parents?”
“Mom’s in the tent over there. She’s sleeping.”
“I can’t believe she just slept through all that ruckus.”
“See for yourself,” said Eli, opening the front door of the tent and exposing his mother’s gently snoring body wrapped in a dirty, khaki-colored sleeping bag.
For a moment, the Gym Teacher seemed to be puzzled by the sight of Eli’s mom. He looked at Eli and then at his mother and then at Eli again, as though he were trying to decide upon a course of action. Finally, he just shook his head.
“Don’t feed any more bears, you hear?” he said, heading into the forest.
Eli sighed. Nasty was gazing at him with a disturbing intensity. He also noticed that her eyes were not normal. Where they should have been white, they were a brilliant shade of arterial red. Although he knew there was a logical explanation for her hellish look—he figured that her violent coughing spells had broken a few capillaries—it still made him uneasy, standing there talking to a dying red-eyed woman about mountain lions and chicken parts.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said in what he hoped was a convincingly solicitous voice. Nasty twisted her face into an exaggerated, painful smile and tried to say something, but wound up coughing instead. Eli guided her indoors.
-Helen Kale-
Helen was, if nothing else, decisive. In the same confident way that she had once seized upon Eli as her one true soul mate, she picked out a pre-made platter of cheese, jalapenos, and tortilla chips for the Death March planning meeting-slash-potluck dinner. Everybody loves nachos, she thought, placing the saran-wrapped platter into her cart. Once this crucial decision had been made, however, she lost her focus and began idly scanning rows and rows of herbal teas.
Bonzai Blast. Chamomile. Chai. Cold Remedy. Dandelion. Green. They all promised greater energy, happiness, and serenity—or at least relief from an annoying stuffy nose. Suddenly Helen felt so drained that she wanted to get into her car and drive home instead of to Sue’s enormous mansion that overlooked Mt. Overreach. Going through the motions of her life seemed pointless. Since she’d run seven hilly miles after work, all she wanted to do was to go home and fall asleep, letting her mind go as blank as death.
She glanced towards the checkout area. Some hard nugget of discipline embedded deep in her brain knew that she had to stand in line, pay for her purchase, and drive to that stupid meeting that she’d promised to attend. It won’t be fun, growled the nugget, which Helen imagined to be hard and black like a lump of coal, but it will be good for you. Helen sighed and tore her eyes away from the tea.
She turned around and smacked right into a large, scurrying woman.
“Ow! Oh, excuse me,” said Helen, unsure whether in her tea-induced haze she’d actually caused their collision.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frickin’ mow you over. Are you okay?”
Helen looked up at the tall and broad woman who’d smacked into her. Her hair was black and purple and slicked back. She wore a safety pin through her nose, an homage to past generations of punk, and she had a young, round face that reminded her of a baby owl. It was Goth Girl, she recalled, a fixture in downtown Crawford’s Notch who traded insults with drunken frat boys and snowboarders.
“Sure, I’m—” Helen choked on the word “fine,” because, standing behind Goth Girl, with greasy hair, dingy skin the color of tan that hasn’t been diligently maintained, dirty sweatpants, and balancing between crutches, was Jennifer Champion. For a fraction of a second, surprise blotted out all other emotions. What is she doing here? wondered Helen. But then something warm and energizing burned away her cool shock. It was hate.
Since the incident at Bob’s house, Helen had thought of Jennifer as being somehow better than her. After all, Eli had chosen Jennifer, hadn’t he? They were both genetically gifted thoroughbreds, while she was a stocky Clydesdale. And there was the way she had just let Helen attack her, as though she were somehow too refined or evolved to actually defend herself. Helen clenched her fists and whisked past a surprised Goth Girl, and a confused Jennifer, who stammered out a weak “Hi there.”
Back by her car, Helen stood quietly, letting her breathing and heart rate return to normal. She’d never thought of herself as the kind of emotional person who really hated people. But, evidently, she was. And it was exhilarating.
-Eli Hawthorne-
“Can you give me my shot?” rasped Nasty, who hovered by the sofa, clutching at her oxygen tree.
“Um, sure,” said Eli faintly. Although living with Jennifer had somewhat inured him to less than stellar housekeeping, he had been completely unprepared for the visual and olfactory assault of Nasty’s house. Every available square foot of surface area was covered with something—an unwashed garment, a used and crusty plate, an overflowing ashtray, a magazine—so that his eyes could barely focus. Instead, they flickered from one random object to the next, unable to find stable purchase anywhere. And a miasma of stale cigarettes and a sweet, strangely insinuating smell overwhelmed his nose.
“Do you know where I could find your syringe and, um, your medicine?” Eli noticed himself shuffling his feet and then stopped himself.
Nasty opened her mouth to answer and then doubled over, overcome by a fit of violent wheezing. Eli moved to put a hand on her frail, bony back—he wasn’t sure why, maybe it was the ghost of the idea that you should beat a choking victim between the shoulder blades—but she waved him away. So he just watched, becoming more and more frightened as Nasty’s face shifted color from pink to mottled red to queasy purple and, finally, to outright blue.
As she began to sink to the floor beside her sofa, clutching its stained, cloth arm, Eli realized that he might have to take action. His first thought was CPR, which, like the Heimlich maneuver, he had learned in 7th grade health class. He cringed at the idea of putting his mouth on Nasty’s thin-lipped orifice. He imagined the sour smell of her breath, the sliminess of her saliva, and then berated himself for his squeamishness in the face of real danger to fragile human life.
Willing himself to put everything out of his mind except usef
ul, practical thoughts, he knelt down next to Nasty and supported her head with hand. Now what do I do, he wondered, faintly terrified by the limitations of his knowledge. On the old reruns of Baywatch he watched as a kid, the hero in the red swim trunks always knew exactly what to do. But Eli was clueless. Do I check the pulse or do I clear the airway of obstructions? he asked himself. Pulse or airway, pulse or airway, pulse or airway, he just couldn’t decide.
Fortunately, before Eli could put his dim memories of CPR into action, Nasty took a rough sounding breath that seemed to go on forever.
“Oh Eli,” she said, arranging her lips into a weak grin. “I didn’t think you…cared.”
Eli, so relieved that Nasty hadn’t died on his watch, began laughing hysterically. He had been reprieved, escaping both intimate contact with Nasty’s sour mouth and the horror of inadvertently presiding over her death. Nasty also smiled, and her eyes glistened with tears that Eli attributed to purely biological processes.
“Would you, um, like to sit down?” asked Eli, who was still disoriented by the clutter.
“Sure,” coughed Nasty, who appeared to be swallowing a great ball of phlegm. “Just…clear…a space on the…couch.”
Eli grabbed armfuls of clothes and books and magazines and tossed them on the floor. He figured there was already so much stuff on the floor that a little more wouldn’t matter. Then he lifted Nasty, being careful to avoid tangling the long ropy tubes that connected her to the oxygen tree, and placed her on the couch in a sitting position. Eli held her for a moment, amazed at how insubstantial she was. Once he let go, however, she sank into the couch and sprawled backwards. Seeing her struggle with the couch’s soft, swollen pillows, Eli pulled Nasty by the shoulders until she was lying on her back. She closed her eyes and took another long, ragged breath.
“That’s…better. My…medicine.” Nasty panted as if the handful of words had cost her an enormous effort.
“Where is your medicine?”
“Kitchen…by…the…refrigerator.”
Eli nodded, glad for a legitimate opportunity to leave Nasty’s presence, which he still found oppressive despite his sincere wish to find it otherwise. It’s not her in particular, he thought, although he wasn’t exactly fond of her. It was the totality of her illness that hollowed out his stomach and caused his heart to sputter and skitter. It was how the squalor of the house, and the perverse independence of its occupant whom he believed should have been safely confined to a hospital weeks if not months ago, reminded him of his mother who had also fallen victim to a self-inflicted disease. In her case, alcohol rather than cigarettes had been to blame.
As he entered the kitchen, Eli encountered a fresh assault to his nose. Decaying produce was the most pungent fragrance, but undertones of pine scented disinfectant and charcoal rounded out the mix. The refrigerator was a brick red monstrosity, which, externally anyway, was surprisingly clean. Perhaps out of curiosity, or perhaps as a delaying action, he opened it and studied its contents. Whole regiments of jars and cartons were crammed together, cheek by jowl, and their expiration dates formed a historical record. Milk hailed from May, June, and July. Jars of pimiento-filled olives from February were filled with fuzzy blue blobs floating in murky depths. Only the bottled water remained ageless.
Suddenly struck by an unwelcome fact, Eli shut the refrigerator door as though he’d received a mild electric shock and began the hunt for Nasty’s medicine. She’s not eating anymore, he thought, making a mental note to tell Jennifer later. His mother had stopped wanting to eat a few months before she died. He knew it was a bad sign, and Jennifer would probably want to know about it. Maybe she could convince her to go to a hospital or at least accept hospice care.
He found the “medicine”—morphine, actually—and a collection of individually wrapped syringes nestled in a large zip locked bag that lay on a small, incongruously empty table. The idea of administering an injection to this frail, strange woman whom he barely knew made Eli’s palms moist with a light coating of sweat. He had unwelcome visions of Nasty screaming in pain, of the needle breaking off in her flesh, of accidentally injecting the drug under her skin and causing a large fluid lump. But he took a deep breath through his mouth—to reduce his contact with the exotic smells—and returned to Nasty’s side.
“I’ve got your medicine,” he said nervously, looking down at Nasty. “But, I’ve got to warn you, I’ve never, um, given a shot before.”
“That’s…okay. See…instructions.” She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands into fists, as though preparing to experience something unpleasant.
Eli opened the bag and pulled out a small folded paper that provided a Dick and Jane illustration of how to give an injection. He studied it carefully and told himself it wasn’t such a big deal. If the instruction sheet was anything to go by, he figured that illiterates were giving injections in hospitals and doctors' offices across America every day, and they didn’t screw up all the time. If they did, there’d be a public outcry, newspaper headlines, exposés on the local news, and there weren’t any of those things.
“Um, how much?”
“Fill...the...whole...syringe...twice. Need...two...shots...today.”
Eli carefully unwrapped a syringe, plunged the needle into the bottle of morphine, and filled its barrel with the pain-killing liquid. So far so good, he thought. Then he took the rubber tube—just like the kind he’d seen used by drug addicts—and tied it around her left forearm. Because she was so wasted, the veins were easily accessible beneath her gray-white translucent skin. There were many to choose from.
“I’m going to do it now, okay?”
Nasty nodded and squeezed her eyes even tighter together. Eli picked a vein, stuck the needle in, and, using steady pressure, sent the morphine into her bloodstream. Almost immediately, her face relaxed and her mouth shaped itself into a small “o.” Feeling more confident, Eli wiped the syringe with a gauze pad he’d taken straight from its wrapper and refilled it with a second dose. He was quicker this time. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her too much.
As Eli was congratulating himself for getting through the ordeal, Nasty’s eyes opened wide.
“Thank...you,” she whispered.
“No problem,” said Eli, wondering if he just might have the ability to become a paramedic. The hours were flexible, the idea of being a hero was gratifying, and he really needed the money.
His thoughts were interrupted when the doorbell rang.
-Jennifer Champion-
Jennifer sat in the cramped back seat of her rented Ford Tempo with her eyes closed, praying that Bryony wouldn’t crash into anything. On her way out of the Organic Food Store’s parking lot, she’d scraped against a Mercedes SUV, scratching a drunken racing stripe along its forest green flank. Only after a great deal of cajoling did Bryony leave a note with Jennifer’s insurance information for the owner of “that conformist death-mobile.”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
Jennifer’s eyes snapped open. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, Bryony used the other hand to make an obscene gesture at a balding man driving a red BMW convertible.
“Small penis mobile!” yelled Bryony, now leaning on the horn.
The man in the convertible pulled in beside Jennifer’s Tempo. About half of his face—which appeared to be feline and fine-boned—was covered by oversized aviator glasses. Despite Bryony’s attempts to force more work from the aging Tempo’s underpowered V6 engine, he passed easily and tucked in front of the women seconds before a truck whined by in the opposite direction.
“Holy shit, Bry, you’re going to get somebody killed, and it’s probably me. Can you throttle back on the psychosis, please?”
“Can you throttle back on the neurosis, please?” replied Bryony with the annoyed intensity only a teenager can produce. “That guy’s an asshole. Look! He’s slowing down.”
And, sure enough, Jennifer felt the car decelerating.
“We’re only five minutes from Nasty’s house. I’m in n
o hurry. Just let him be an asshole, okay? I have a broken foot, and I don’t feel like getting into a fight.”
“But Jen, I can pass him, I can—”
“No,” said Jennifer, cutting Bryony off. “It’s my car, you just have to deal.”
“Whatever,” Bryony sighed.
After a few moments of silence during which Jennifer worried that Nasty might be justifiably angry with her for completely forgetting her groceries, Bryony began tapping her long black nails against the steering wheel.
“So how’s Nasty doing?” she asked. “She’s been dying for a long time.”
“Well, she’s dying even faster now. You’ll barely recognize her. She’s skeletal, and not in a ‘good’ model-y way. She can barely talk without going into a coughing fit. She’s still got her sense of humor, though.”