Parasites Like Us

by Adam Johnson

  The deputy was the one who lit the match and tossed it through the dormer window. There was quite a flash. Sheets of metal flew off the building. A charge of smoking feathers rolled out. The deputy got the worst of it. The concussion blew his hat and mask off and knocked him down. When he stood up, he was holding his ears. “What?” he yelled at us. “What?”

  That’s when Bondurant raced for the woods.

  Yellow snarls of smoke flashed through gaps in the metal siding, and we looked from the deputy to Bondurant, running full-bore for the tree break.

  When the deputy’s eyes cleared, and he came to understand what was going on, he didn’t chase after Bondurant. Instead, he yelled at us: “Did you hear the rasp in his lungs? That’s a ghost running through the woods. Nobody survives it. That’s a dead man. I promise you, that man will be dead before the moon rises tonight.”

  I bent over, breathing in and out, listening. A couple of the guys looked at me, but I didn’t care. I could hear it, down there in my lungs. I was sure I could.

  * * *

  We returned to town with the Rolling Stones blaring. In the truck bed, none of us spoke. Several patches in the road were red and green with spent shotgun shells. We maneuvered around an abandoned car, doors open, then slowed as we passed a burning farmhouse, the entire downstairs of which was a stream of orange, while above, all was roiling black. We heard the discordant jangle of a piano falling through an upstairs floor and crashing into the parlor below. No one fled these flames. No one watched them burn. No one tried to extinguish them.

  We came upon a man crouched in the gully, firing a deer rifle at the telephone poles and power transformers. If he was shooting birds, I couldn’t see them. Near the outskirts of town, a helicopter, rigged with crop-spraying arms, flew low overhead. The mist it laid down looked milky and sweet but tasted like mosquito repellent when it finally floated in. Crossing the Jim River, two women were struggling over the bridge. They tried to flag us down, and when we didn’t stop, one threw cans of tuna at us.

  The dark laughter of gunfire rose as we entered town. Short pistol claps alternated with long rolls of rifle fire. Askew on the corner of Clark and Pine was Bill Hasper’s taxi, with its “In Case of Rapture” sticker in the rear window. Bill’s head lay sideways against the steering wheel, as if he were listening to an important message from the cruise control. He was clearly dead. On his face was an expression that said, Wow.

  Outside the new middle school, a team of men with pistols ran down the street, shooting at everyone’s rooftops. And any of us who were planning on jumping out of the truck and making a break for it sank lower in the bed at the sight of another string of armed people running backyard to backyard, jumping people’s fences.

  Cars roamed aimlessly, and random houses were on the ground, smoldering. Every so often, there was a person or two down in the snow, or slumped over a vehicle. Strange how it was possible to view these neighborhoods as almost normal. One could choose to observe the seasonal decorations hanging in windows. Doors that stood open could be seen in a welcoming way. Newspapers sat on porches, people’s mail flags were up, and recycling bins sat at the curb, awaiting their midweek collection. Even a human sprawled in the open could be imagined fixing a testy sprinkler or inspecting the underside of a car for that loose muffler bracket.

  At Broadway, we hit the first roadblock. A deputy in a dark mask held at bay a woman in a suit who was demanding passage. She was waving a stethoscope in his face. Behind her, an old man in a sedan revved his engine as if preparing to ram the deputy’s cruiser. When we neared, the deputy waved us through. With that mask, I couldn’t get any real look at his face, though there was something personal in his wave to a fellow deputy, suggesting he’d been standing out there a long, lonely while.

  When we reached the intersection of Douglas and University, there was a fire truck parked sideways, blocking the downtown’s main entrance. With this thing in the way, no one would be able to reach the firehouse or city hall, let alone the sheriff’s station. With the road blocked, you couldn’t get to the park, the university president’s house, the Red Dakotan, or any of the businesses, not to mention the Odd Fellows building.

  The deputy honked, and for a few minutes we just sat there, listening to the shooting going on in the center of town. The gunfire was too much to believe. It was silly how many guns were going off. I grabbed hold of a kerosene can, just to steady myself. Finally, a young fireman came and backed up the truck enough for us to enter. He wore yellow fire-gear, and was finishing a hamburger. He thew the white wax paper on the ground and licked his fingers as he fired the engine up and dropped it in reverse.

  The town square was the gateway to everything I’d known in Parkton. It was home to the old movie theater, the courthouse, and Glacier Days. From here I could walk to my office, my home, to Trudy’s grad dorm, and just about anyplace Eggers might be sleeping at the time. Yet it felt as if we were entering the Coliseum when the deputy pulled forward. The streets glittered with spent bullet casings like Coronado’s Seven Cities of Gold, and so many windows had fallen into the street, we could have been entering the fabled jewel mines of El Dorado. The truth, once the light shifted, was not so pretty.

  Though plumes of smoke rose from all quarters of town, two fire trucks were also blocking the downtown’s other entrances, with the pumper covering Main, and the ladder—cherry picker extended as a sniper nest—controlling Park. We drove slowly toward a makeshift command center at the corner of the square, where all the park’s ducks and geese lay dead in a heap, and most of the city’s municipal workers—sewer workers, ambulance drivers—were eating hamburgers, grilled by the young man, obviously conscripted from Dairy Queen, who’d brought me a burger on the day I was first arrested.

  In the park, two teams of men were attempting to flush the keening ravens from the trees. The only plan was to pour boxes of cartridges into the sky. After an initial volley of lead went up, the men followed the birds as they swept low, toward the old carousel by the fountain. Beyond the shooting, chips of brick flew off the downtown buildings, circles of paint leapt off car fenders, and an entire row of windows dropped from the bank. The statue of Harold McGeachie, “The Farmers’ Farmer,” took a gut shot. Only one bird fell, and heads lowered in unison to reload.

  We pulled up to none other than Sheriff Dan, standing near the hamburger grill, talking into a radio, gesturing with his thermos. Some other men wore their masks around their necks or on top of their heads as they ate, but Sheriff Dan had none on him. Our driver stopped, got out. He took a few steps toward the grill.

  Sheriff Dan glanced at us. “Is that it?” he asked the deputy. “Is that all of ’em?”

  The deputy nodded.

  Sheriff Dan shook his head. “Any of them sick?”

  The deputy grabbed a hamburger bun. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Well, put them to work cleaning up those birds,” Sheriff Dan said. He looked like he was going to go on, but then he paused, looking up to the sky. He peered into the blue above, squinting, then drew his revolver. “Get ready, boys,” Sheriff Dan said. “He’s coming by again.”

  Other people drew their pistols.

  Sheriff Dan pulled an extra box of bullets from his back pocket. “Until someone can verify that chopper’s one of ours, we take him down.”

  Suddenly, that little helicopter swooped low over the park, pearly mists curling out behind its prop wash. Bug-eyed, the chopper hot-dogged in, its black bubble windows expressionless, then banked like a dragonfly, spraying us all good, before it zoomed away over the library. Sheriff Dan cracked off six quick shots. A half-dozen men followed suit. If anybody hit the thing, I couldn’t tell.

  Sheriff Dan told the deputy, “Now get those convicts to work.”

  That spray was already settling into the trees, and those ravens had about five minutes until they would start dropping from the branches.

  We got out of the truck. The ground was littered with brass shells, and th
e way they rolled under your feet, it was worse than walking on ice. The other guys started hauling rakes and hoes and kerosene, but I approached Sheriff Dan.

  “My father’s in that building,” I told him. “And I need to see if he’s okay.”

  Right then a fireman yelled, “Power’s out again.”

  Sheriff Dan looked up to the traffic lights, which were off. “Cowards,” he said to no one in particular. “That’s just great. That’s all we need. Deserters.” Then he lifted his radio and yelled into it, ordering someone to find those dam-keepers, drag them back to the turbines, and get the power working again.

  He turned to me. “Sorry, Professor, but nobody crosses quarantine lines.”

  “I don’t even know if he’s alive,” I said. “I have to see him.”

  Sheriff Dan looked at me. “I sympathize,” he said, “but we have a situation here. It takes everybody. I’ll thank you to respect those quarantine lines and join the officer here in disposing of those birds.”

  Hadn’t anybody read The Black Chronicle of Cardinal Ignatius, or Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year? Quarantine lines didn’t save Rome in 1347, and the shutting up of houses only made things worse for London in 1664. Any ghost can tell you that pestilence carves its own swath.

  “Sheriff,” I said, “cutting people off from each other is no way to help those in need. Guaranteeing that the sick suffer alone is not a public-health policy.”

  “Objection noted, Professor,” he said. “But we’ve got procedures to follow.”

  Sheriff Dan was already returning to his work. He cradled his radio against his shoulder so he could talk as he reloaded.

  For some reason I stopped him. I grabbed his coat.

  Some of his bullets spilled to the ground.

  “This park used to be full of squirrels,” I told him. “They’re all gone now.”

  He squinted at me, trying to determine if he should be angry or amused. “Is that so?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My student Brent Eggers secretly snared and ate them—a pretty clear violation of park ordinances.” In the park, the other team of men began firing into the trees as the birds, now stunned, struggled to fly. Sheriff Dan didn’t flinch at the shots. “I suppose,” I continued, “that you’ll be issuing a warrant for his arrest.”

  He couldn’t help cracking a smile.

  “Ease your conscience, Professor,” he said. “I think I can look the other way.”

  “That’s not all,” I added. “My other student Gertrude Labelle was the one who speared the hog at Glacier Days, and I further confess that I was not only a witness but a conspirator.”

  “You maybe haven’t heard,” he said. “Pigs no longer exist.”

  “There’s more. In addition, despite my lawyer’s plea of ‘not guilty,’ I am responsible for tampering with a human burial.”

  Sheriff Dan indicated a Subaru in which several frozen corpses were piled, stiff legs levitating out the back, arms locked together in ways that seemed oddly tender. “Okay,” Sheriff Dan said, running low on patience, “you are hereby absolved of improper conduct at a gravesite.”

  “Thank you,” I told him, “but my point is that, when it comes to enforcing the rules—”

  He lifted a hand to stop me. “Please,” he said, “I can see the case you’re making, and you’re right—the rules have changed. I am attempting to save this fair town. Law and order itself is under threat. Measures are called for, and, rest assured, my decisions are in accordance with Judge Connelly and of course your very own warden—God rest.” Sheriff Dan waved a hand toward some men by the hamburger grill, though many of them wore those snouted masks that obscured their faces. He picked up his bullets and dropped them in the cylinder of his revolver. “When we get out of this mess,” he told me, “I guarantee you may go where you like. Until then, consider yourself called upon.”

  From behind us, a fireman yelled, “Looter.”

  We turned to see a young man down the street, stumbling out of an abandoned market with plastic bags in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he was falling or running or what, but by the time he’d made it to the curb, the men around me had brought their revolvers to bear, and in a hail, they’d wheeled their guns empty on him. As he fell, you could see bullets in the distance tearing the bark off trees and whitening the windows of parked cars. Law and order!

  I ran to him. I found him on his back, alive, his unseeing eyes staring at the bright sun. One of his plastic bags contained video-movie rentals and a bottle of Chardonnay, unbroken, while the other spilled open with frozen dinners. Crouching, I realized I knew him. Though his name escaped me, I recognized him as the young drama professor at the university. Lord, how I felt for those sissy-foot English-department types. Their whole lives were fantasies. Their whole existence took place between the lines of obscure poems. And now look at what had happened. For some reason I was mad at him. I wanted to pound on him for getting killed over a few foreign films and a bottle of white wine.

  He coughed. His mouth was red inside, and his hands were red from coughing. He looked toward me, but I can’t say if he saw me.

  “Don’t try to talk,” I said. “They shot you. Those beasts shot you.”

  He was looking right at me, but when I waved my hand, he didn’t seem to see it.

  Voice faint, he asked, “Where?”

  “What does it matter?” I asked him. “They shot you. They shot you, and you’re going to die right here, in the middle of this stupid street.”

  That red mist was coming out of his mouth, and he could barely breathe, but he tried to sit up. I pushed him back. “Lay down,” I said. “You’re dying.”

  “My play,” he said. “Find my play.”

  “Don’t talk,” I said. “Save your energy.”

  I don’t know why I said that. I’d maybe seen it in a movie. Then he started to go. I mean, you could see him go—the color drain, the muscles slacking. I’d never seen that before. But there it was. Still, he wouldn’t shut up. “My play,” he said. “It’s on the shelf, beside my bed.”

  He was going to go any second, I could tell. I mean, this guy was dying.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Quit talking.”

  With like his last breath, he asked me, “Do you know any CPR?”

  “No, damn it, no,” I said. “I always meant to learn.”

  He took this big, rattling breath, and as he exhaled, he spoke:

  “In Act IV,” he said, “erase the cruel words that Lonnie speaks. He doesn’t mean it. I know that now. Don’t let him turn his back on Susan, either. Have them embrace. That’s how the scene must end, with them embracing.”

  He said this, then—bang—he was dead! It all happened—the head roll, the eye glaze, that weight coming to his limbs—but those are just the things that catch your eye. They’re nothing compared with that lifting you feel. He just lifted away.

  I looked around. I can’t even tell you what I was looking for. Sheriff Dan and those guys were eating hamburgers. The other inmates were raking up dead birds and burning them in neat piles, like last season’s leaves. The light off the Odd Fellows building was coppery, and I knew my father was in there. It’s hard to explain the buzz in me. I mean, things looked the same, but I saw them different. Suddenly it was clear that Sheriff Dan wasn’t really quarantining the town. He wasn’t quarantining anything. This was a last stand. The city workers were circling the wagons to keep the citizens out. People were dying all over town, and these guys had a cooler full of sodas. They were tearing the corners off ketchup packets and squirting it on their hamburgers. Suddenly it was obvious to me that they were all men. Where were the women? Where were the other women who worked in the courthouse, women like Janis? Would they have let Janis through the gates? Or would she be left to her dark fate out in our fair town?

  I started going through the professor’s pockets, looking for his identification. I didn’t know what I’d do with it. I just needed to know who he was. I’d tell his story, maybe. It would mat
ter to someone, what became of him. To someone, that story would be everything in the world. I started rifling through his pockets, looking over my shoulder at all those guns and burgers, and then a funny thing happened. I couldn’t find any of those bullet holes. I couldn’t find one place where this kid had been shot. I rolled him over and felt under his jacket. I checked his feet, even, but, no, all those bullets had missed. Sheriff Dan and his boys had missed every time.

  I stood. The Odd Fellows building was across the town square from me, about a block-and-a-half sprint through the dormant trees. On the horizon, dark stands of snow clouds were moving in, but for now the sun was direct and bright. Most of the snow and ice had melted, so the ground would be firm. In the cherry picker above the courthouse hung two firemen with binoculars and rifles. To get through the trees, I’d have to move sidelong past twenty or thirty pistol barrels.

  To the drama professor, I said, “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I have to go.”

  Then I bolted. I crossed the street in a couple big strides, tried to slalom when I hit the tree trunks, running in and out of them, branches whooshing past my head. For a while, it was easy. I leapt twin park benches, then leaned hard as I rounded the fountain. My arms were pumping, and I kept telling myself that I was strong, that all of Gerry’s push-ups had helped me, that dragging hogs would serve me now. But the truth was, I felt anything but strong. My lungs felt like I’d inhaled a fistful of thumbtacks. With every breath, I kept looking for the spotty blood to start coming out of me.

  I cut through the playground equipment at full speed. When I heard a booming voice yell, “Hold your horses, Professor,” I tucked and rolled under the jungle gym. The sand was half frozen, and I paused there, breathing hard. When I got up and started running again, the bullets began.

  There was lots of banging going on at the edge of the park, but I didn’t look. Sure, the guns were loud, but they were way over there, and the bullets were right here. I guess I’d had it in my head that the bullets would be invisible things, that, unless one hit me, I wouldn’t know how close they’d all come. But you could hear every one of them. Most of them sounded like a finger snap. Snap-snap, they went. Snap-snap-snap. Some bullets came by like ssst, while others went wooo, just the way kids sounded as their roller coaster plunged at Glacier Days. When slugs went through the holly, sharp leaves flew past my face, and you’ll never forget the smell of a bullet sizzling through a chinaberry bush, Christmassy and fresh.