Parasites Like Us

by Adam Johnson

  A lone glass stood in the sink. I sniffed it—bourbon—and tipped it up so the ring of liquor that had settled in the bottom ran toward my lips. The bourbon rang in my teeth, finding all the old fillings and the sites of a couple cavities to come. I knew about bourbon—it was part of the reason I was never invited on the lecture circuit anymore. Another couple sips, and it would start to gruff your voice. Then it would muss your hair, pull your shirttails out, and finally settle into your real soft spots—ego, adolescent urges, and the fear that at any moment your fraud would be discovered. In my case, this all translated into a talent for boring people, unintentionally belittling them, and failing to get laid.

  After The Depletionists came out, I was invited to speak at all the big universities, places where I pulled up in a classic Corvette, greeted everyone like chums, then lectured endlessly about the against-all-odds drive of the lone scientist and the self-sacrifice of the maverick fossil-hunter—anything but the six years I’d spent in a library researching the book. Naturally, there’d follow the reception: I was the one eating all the shrimp, copyrighting my wit, and saucing my talk with me. Even now, as I stood at my sink, the thought of the two graduate students I managed to sleep with sent me looking for a drink.

  I found the bottle, three fingers gone, in the cupboard, and though I was no longer much of a drinker, I poured myself a glass, examining its smoky color through the swirls of my father’s fingerprints. I’d bought the bottle years ago, on a whim really, not long after Peabody left. I had this notion that he’d begin to miss me and sometime soon invite me down to fish under that warm Florida sun. After we’d rigged our poles and thrown the first cast, I imagined pulling this bourbon from my pack. Old Man Peabody and I would have a high time of it: sipping from the bottle in turn, arguing anthropological theory until night came on, and as the stars rose, maybe pulling out cigars.

  I dropped a couple cubes of ice in the bourbon, then added a splash of water. I leaned against the counter, noticing how Janis’ houseplants were drooping from their hanging pots, thinking there was something particularly suspicious about the way my father was excited to attend a university function even I had forgotten—he could already barely stand them when Janis was around. After I considered it, though, I figured Dad would feel right at home in the savanna of a university-sponsored social event, a watering hole where the sheepish wolfed the liquor and the catty dogged the meek.

  A copper watering can sat at the end of the counter, and I picked it up. I held the can under the faucet, felt it take on weight. Normally, I’d just slop a little water on each plant, never enough to drip down to the carpet, trying to get the whole thing over with before the fertilizer turned my fingers blue. Tonight, though, I played some Latin jazz, then turned the shower on full-blast, leaving the curtain open to steam the house.

  Moving from pot to pot, I watered each plant till blue fluid ran from its weep holes to a bucket below. Then I began misting the plants, dabbing the dust off their leaves in rhythm with the music. As I sipped my bourbon, I began examining the plastic tags tucked into the soil of each pot. Here were the care instructions for Perisporus clavinerum: plant in southern subtemperate conditions under canopied light, allowing room for wandering roots. Genopedia cordoba, native of Bolivia, needed pumice for drainage, potash for alkalinity, and, for optimal pollination, I should plant near a colony of kissing bats.

  I studied the raised veins of Genopedia cordoba, felt the bristly hairs that frosted its tiny blossoms, each one smeared with amber pollen, thick as resin, that stained my fingers the yellow-brown of nicotine. Somewhere in the world, a bat was seeking out this bloom—I pictured a dark rain forest, warm fruit drooping, bright birds asleep, their colors muddied by night, and I tried to hear the navigational singing of a bat I could not see or feel. It sounded near.

  I’d always seen these plants as ferns and ivy, as interchangeable creepy things of the dentist’s-office variety. I never looked past the ironic artificiality of growing them here in South Dakota, where they wouldn’t last a minute without climate control, constant care, and their precious blue food. But suddenly I saw something miraculous in their journey. They’d evolved in the Cenozoic era, in the long isolation before South America crashed into North, and then they’d made the rest of the migration by jumbo jet, five thousand miles in a Federal Express evening, simply because someone desired them.

  In the year before she began to decline, Janis became obsessed with these plants, and now I saw them as she would—as snapshots of jungles and mountains she would never see, as souvenirs from a journey she wouldn’t get to take. In the face of fate, when people see a last opportunity to change their lives, Janis didn’t fly to Mexico or climb Mount Fuji. She wanted to be near us, to continue her life as it was—working as a court stenographer, inventing home improvements she and Dad could tackle together, reading books at my excavation sites in the afternoon light.

  In the shower, I began wondering what I’d do if I knew the end was coming, if I was about to fall into a lake of concrete. Junior would be an orphan—the university would simply forklift my research into the shredding bin. Soon, my book would be as dated as the Hall of Man. And, of course, if I slipped through the Missouri ice or was mauled by a breeder hog, there’d be people in this world who’d never even know I was gone—my mother, Peabody. To them, I’d always be the first chapter of a book they set aside and never finished.

  I toweled off and dressed. By the time I’d snapped the ends of my shirt cuffs through the arms of a sportcoat, I was thinking about legacies, mulling over what a sad inheritance Peabody’s Hall of Man was. I splashed on too much aftershave, and the sting somehow made me think of Trudy. In the mirror, my hair had started slimming to a widow’s peak, the lines on my forehead seemed a little deeper, but I was still young. I downed the last of my watery bourbon, then picked up the phone.

  I dialed Trudy’s number. I needed to tell her about the discovery of Keno, but when the line connected and her phone rang, I knew I would first ask her to help me update the Hall of Man. Perhaps she could chair a committee for student input on the renovation. It was a chance to change history, as all the students saw it, and a chance to change Peabody, for those who never knew him. Her line rang and rang.

  I quietly flossed my teeth, then made my way down the frozen steps to the van.

  The motor was slow to warm, and I waited in the dark, windows whited over, with only the dim yellow glow of the dash lights for company. Keno could change everything, I thought. The human clock would be set back a couple thousand years. My phone would start ringing. There’d be a profile in Anthro Today, another book, and I might even ride Keno’s back out onto the lecture circuit again.

  When the defroster had thawed two small circles in the windshield, I made out a snow-coated raccoon in my headlights. He was balanced on the lip of the garbage Dumpster, scavenging a meal from our trash, some of which was scattered on the ground below—a cellophane wrapper, aluminum foil, oil-stained paper plates. Bon appétit, I said and dropped the van into reverse. The raccoon’s ears swiveled; then its yellow eyes came to bear on me. A shimmy of snow lifted from its fur as it ducked from view.

  I made a left out of University Village, heading to the Parents Weekend mixer to see what dark trade had engaged my father. I passed the empty courtyard of Graduate Village, the sad row dorms where Trudy lived. The metal tops of the picnic tables looked galvanized through layers of frost, the volleyball nets sagged with ice, and the windows in her upstairs room were dark.

  The mixer was being held in the new student art gallery at the end of the quad. I cruised through the faculty lot, hunting for a parking spot. I kept an eye out for my yellow Corvette, but as I scanned the rows of cars, something was wrong: though the night was cold and clear, the cars I passed looked storm-battered—dirty snow was driven into their hoods and grilles, while twigs and trash stood frozen to windshields.

  I backed into a handicapped spot and climbed out of the van. Everything had been pelte
d with grubby snow, and it only took me a couple steps to realize that the twigs stuck to car fenders and sunroofs were actually little bones, as if someone had eaten buckets of chicken and tossed the remains so their half-frozen grease glued them to cars. A Doritos bag, chips still loitering in the bottom, was skewered on an antenna.

  I pulled one of these bones from a windshield and, wincing at its texture, examined it. In my hand was a tiny skull, its sockets filled with a gelatinous gristle, its fine cartilage stubbed from impact. I was no expert on comparative rodent anatomy, but I was pretty sure this had once been a squirrel. Holding the bone to my nose, I sniffed—urine.

  I turned toward Eggers’ lodge, shielding my eyes from the parking lights. In the middle of the quad, I saw the menacing green fuselage of a tremendous helicopter, its great blades drooping under their own weight, tail rotor spinning casually with the breeze.

  Moving toward it, I crossed from slush to powder, my dress shoes plunging stiff, flat holes in the crusted snow. I came across an animal skin in the half-dark. I threw it over my shoulder. In a few more yards, I found a copy of my own book, wet and battered, but I could clearly see through the running ink that Eggers had underlined dozens of passages.

  The helicopter loomed larger and larger—its intake cowlings flared like haunches, and the landing gear raked forward, suggesting a sinewy brawn. I admit I’d never been this close to a copter before, but encountering it could have been no different from wandering out to this spot an eon ago and stumbling into the five-meter tusks of your first mastodon, or chancing upon a short-faced bear, claws long as speed skaters’ blades.

  I swung wide of the copter. It was frightening how the campus security lights glared off its lifeless windows, how the throbbing hum of its engine heaters made a digestive noise. When I reached the site where Eggers’ lodge should’ve been—there was nothing. The helicopter had blown everything away. All that remained was an open patch of muddy clay surrounding a ring of hearthstones. It looked like every site I’d ever excavated—a few surface artifacts, a dusting of charcoal, and the anonymous stains of humanity. It could have been ten thousand years old. The irony was that I was glimpsing the future. When I look back, it is to this image that I return as I reflect on what became of our culture. Of all the things I had yet to behold—a night sky lit by the laughter of muzzle fire, a river changing gear, the day that dogs would forsake us—this empty ground would prove to be the oracle.

  Across a field of white, I made out a lone figure in the dark. I headed that way, walking downhill toward the Missouri. The snow was deeper here, my shoes sounding as if they punched through sheets of aluminum with each step. Ahead, I made out Eggers, toiling to find the remains of his shelter. He had fashioned a litter using two mastodon tusks as skids, with a pallet lashed between them to carry all the skins he’d rescued. He picked something out of the shadows, shook out the powder, then tossed it on the pallet, which he pulled like a rickshaw toward the next outline in the snow.

  I fell in behind his footprints, framed by the twin tracks of the litter.

  I waved a copy of The Depletionists at him, but if he saw me, he gave no notice.

  “Hey,” I called, “I found your book.”

  “That’s all right,” Eggers said. “I already know how it ends.”

  When I caught up, his face was serious. He wore a poncho cut from a shaggy dark pelt that made him appear broad-shouldered and stout.

  “Look, I’m sorry about what happened to your lodge,” I told him.

  I tossed the animal skin atop the others.

  “It’s okay, Dr. Hannah,” he said bitterly. “In case you forgot, I’m a nomad.”

  “You’re upset about the bones,” I said. “I understand that. But this won’t mess up your dissertation. We can extrapolate your caloric intake through other means.”

  Eggers turned to walk away.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “This isn’t the end of the world here. Think of it as a second chance. How about we go to the party, and in the morning you can rebuild your lodge over at University Village. It’ll be a better lodge, and we’ll be neighbors.”

  Eggers was silent. Standing with our backs to the school, we were spared its harsh light and concrete, its trees planted in perfect geometry. Instead, we gazed upon a river valley of dark farmland, our only company the rising white of our breath. High above, the jet stream pushed tight clouds against a backdrop of stars, making it look as if our breath reached the heavens and raced toward the horizon, as if there were some distant place it was meant to be.

  I put my hand on Eggers’ shoulder. “So—what do you say?” I asked him.

  He shrugged me off. “It’s getting a little crowded around here,” he said. “I’m going to bunk with Keno.”

  “Don’t be like that, Eggers. What about your parents? They’re probably up there right now, waiting for you.” I pointed toward the school. “You owe it to them to at least say hi.”

  “I don’t owe anyone anything, Dr. Hannah. I use nothing and spend nothing.”

  “But they came all this way,” I said. “You took a bath. You even brushed your teeth. I mean, don’t you want to see them?”

  Eggers leveled his eyes at me, in sadness or anger, I couldn’t tell.

  He said, “They’re not really here to see me.”

  “Nonsense,” I told him. “It’s Parents Weekend.”

  “Dad’s old accountant is in Club Fed,” Eggers said, nodding uphill to the prison. “My parents have a big interest in keeping him happy. If they’re in South Dakota, it’s to sweet-talk him.”

  I held my hands out, as if to say, Come on. “Eggers, they practically landed their helicopter on the party. Of course they’re here to see you.”

  “Wardens don’t take kindly to private helicopters landing in their prisons,” he said. “And what you’re not getting, Dr. Hannah, is that I’ve chosen to live in a time in which people don’t have the luxury of only pretending they care. In my world, relationships aren’t about lip service or social calls. In my time, family is all that matters.”

  “But you’re all alone,” I told him. “You’re the only Clovis on earth.”

  Eggers picked up the ends of the tusks and held them at his waist. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  Now I was angry. “You don’t walk away from people who care about you,” I told him. “No Clovis would ditch his parents this way.”

  Eggers leaned forward, breaking the sled loose from the snow. “My parents are wonderful people,” he said over his shoulder. “Three gin-and-tonics and my father’ll fund any fellowship you want. A couple rum runners to wash down the mood pills, and my mother will—”

  “Stop this,” I said, grabbing his pelt. I yanked him close. “You only get one mother,” I told him. “You only get one father.”

  He pushed me away, then turned to the snow. In a moment, there was nothing but his footprints, framed by the twin lines of his sled, heading off into the night.

  * * *

  When I reached the door to the student art museum, my lungs were cold from breathing heavy, and my hands were shaking—that’s how worked up I was about Eggers.

  Inside, occasional people loitered the corridors of the high-ceilinged, overly white gallery, and a quick scan for my father yielded nothing. A table at the door offered a fleet of wineglasses, prepoured with red and white. I knew better than to mix my liquors, but I grabbed a red, wondering how anyone could say such bitter things about a mother.

  I felt the hot glow of burgundy in my mouth, and pictured Eggers out in the snow, heading to a campfire that he would share with a story he couldn’t tell. If there are ghosts on this earth, they are formed by the things you cannot utter, and they’ll outlive the black in your teeth, burn hotter than any hole in your stomach. Untold stories take on lives of their own. They silently eat dinner with you. Still as shoe trees, they stand over you, watching you sleep. They’ll make you pace all-night Laundromats or hunker down to a marathon night of bottom fishi
ng—back to back in a boat with a ghost who mimes you with its heatless limbs. It’s what makes Farley stare down an ice hole, what put the tailwind on Trudy’s spear, what made Eggers’ litter so heavy as he dragged it alone. The title of my father’s untold story is Janis, and though he may want to tell it, it’s what keeps the ice in his drink from melting, what keeps him nervously turning his new ring. It’s the reason I went to a funeral alone.

  I puffed my inhaler to ease my breathing, then downed the wine. I grabbed another glass and crossed the gallery’s hardwood floor. Descending on long wires from the rafters were small artsy lamps that cast tight cones of light on stray people, making them appear to be mingling. There were no rich people here, and certainly no millionaires. A few students avoided their poorly dressed professors, while a farmer or two in work bibs squinted at the art. I realized Eggers was right’—his parents had other plans tonight.

  Everything about the gallery was making me uneasy, and I didn’t know how long I could wait for my father. I read the exhibition placard on the wall. It said the exhibit—entitled “We: The People”—was sponsored by the Thunderbird Casino, and, sure enough, all the student paintings depicted Native Americans. There was a young warrior drinking a can of Lakota-Cola, a council elder playing bingo, and a team of mounted scouts pointing binoculars toward the viewer, in the lenses of which were reflected blonde girls in bikinis, upside down. Everything hinged on the irony of culture clash, and it sickened me that none of the students had tried to tell the story of a people who, for all practical purposes, were gone.