Parasites Like Us

by Adam Johnson

  Eggers sucked his plastic spoon clean and pointed it at the sky. “Isn’t there a team of scientists up on that space station?”

  “What about remote weather outposts?” my father asked.

  “What about submarines?” Farley responded.

  “And islands,” Trudy said. “People have to be okay on islands. If all the people exposed to the disease are dead, then there’s no one left to spread it. Let’s say a person went to an island, a person like me—do you think I would infect the people there?”

  We fell silent. When the smoke blew in your face, the sap in it made you cry.

  “You know what I keep thinking about?” Trudy asked. “I keep thinking up questions to put on my Arc-Intro exam. I’d only written half of it, and I keep thinking ‘Humans are descended from (a) Neanderthals; (b) Cro-Magnon; or (c) Unknown.’ And now there’s no exam. There’s no school. And all the students are—”

  I stood. “Stop this,” I told them. “Stop this idle speculation.”

  It had been a hard day, and I didn’t want to give anyone grief, but this speculation would lead to nostalgia, and then regret, and everything was downhill from there.

  “None of you knows anything about what happened,” I told them. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Trudy and Eggers—you’re doctoral candidates. Since when do you form hypotheses without first gathering data? Haven’t I taught you to confront the unknown with industry and self-application?”

  Eggers said, “We were doctoral candidates. Now my dissertation was for nothing. My university doesn’t even exist. Anthropology doesn’t exist.”

  I pointed a finger at the boy. “Police that kind of talk right now,” I told him. “Look at the pathetic fire you built. Observe its lack of heat. Notice how the wind blows right through it. That’s what you learned from your dissertation? You want a Ph.D. for that? And, Trudy, I’ve seen you throw a spear, yet you settle for cold beans from a can. What happened to the woman as artist and hunter? As for the rest of you: Gerry, is this how you treat dogs, leaving them hungry and wet in their traces? My friend Farley, now is the time we need someone to go fishing, and you sit on a bucket, contemplating penguins?”

  Here my father looked at me, waiting for his admonition. He had to settle for a drink order. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in my litter,” I told him. “We could all stand to have someone fixing drinks.”

  And so we rallied. In the soft light of sunset, I followed Trudy to one of the country cabins. There a deer pawed through crusty snow, looking for forgotten onions in a dormant garden. Crouched behind a tree, Trudy readied her weapon. Then she stood. When the deer looked, she froze. In plain sight, Trudy advanced on the deer, pausing each time it lifted its head. When it lowered its muzzle to the snow a final time, she punched its side with an atlatl dart, traveling a hundred miles an hour. The animal dropped directly, though it took several minutes to die. Prey animals possess the trait of self-pacification in the face of death; a peace comes over them, then they depart wide-eyed, and, I believe, feeling little pain.

  Trudy put a knife to its throat. Together we waited for the animal to stop breathing. “It’s time to say thanks,” Trudy said.

  The animal had the finest velvet covering the base of its horns. I touched this.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” I said. “But thanks a lot.”

  It felt a little weird saying thanks to a deer, but it was definitely better than not saying anything at all. When those big eyes reflected no light, Trudy drew the blade.

  Together, we field-dressed the animal, wrapping the guts in the hide to carry back to the dogs. We could see Eggers’ fire a quarter-mile away, but the closer we came, the more the flames were settling toward coals. Eggers was at work on a roasting spit, and Gerry had rigged a tripod for the fish broth, which smelled clear and pure, even though we had to listen to Farley’s lament at not having the sage, butter, and sherry necessary for consommé. Gerry’s kids staked out the dogs, and then reveled in hacking up the guts and tossing them into open mouths. Dad had scrounged up any containers he could find to serve the drinks. All we had was bourbon with a spoonful of snow, but he fancied up the delivery. He handed Trudy the bottom half of a plastic soda bottle, saying, “Your cosmopolitan, m’lady.” My bourbon and snow came in the red plastic cap to a shaving-cream can. “Martini, double and dirty,” he said.

  We sawed the venison off as it cooked, but what won me over was the broth, which consisted of nothing but sides of perch fillets, a pinch of salt, and whole stalks of winter dill. We spoke only of today—which dogs were unruly, and how the mushing order would be shifted tomorrow. There was talk of whose muscles were more sore, and much debate over the sleeping arrangements. For dessert, Gerry’s kids treated us to a show. There were several knock-knock jokes, a push-up competition, and then they sang a winded version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” with key words switched to carry the motif of flatulence. We skipped the ghost stories.

  Finally, before Farley and Eggers brought out the wacky weed, I rose, calling Trudy and Eggers to the fire. In the crackling light, I stood them side by side.

  Farley, Dad, and Gerry rose from their buckets as I produced my regalia. The robes were not at all shabby for having taken a spill in the snow. I put them on, the heavy velvet draping blue and dark brown at the cuffs and collar. Even Gerry’s kids stood in a row, their ribby, hipless bodies long-limbed in the firelight.

  When everything was in order, I greeted Trudy and Eggers. “Welcome,” I said.

  I shook each of their hands, then lifted my arms for silence.

  “I’ve devoted my life to anthropology,” I told them, “and all of my work has come to no tangible end. My book no longer exists. I have little hope of researching another. My theory that the Clovis vanished as a result of resource depletion has been dealt a serious blow by the contagion we have witnessed. Am I a failure? That’s for the future to decide. It is of no matter to me. That’s not the reason I became an anthropologist.”

  The fire was warm on my back. My students’ eyes were attentive and expectant.

  “A few basic questions have been behind all of my work,” I continued. “Throughout my life, I’ve wondered, Can people just vanish? What makes them leave? Where do they go? To test whether the answers to these questions were true for the people closest to me, I asked them of the most inaccessible people on earth. The reason I spent my spare time fashioning Clovis spears and tools was so I could come closer to knowing the Clovis’ hearts. Did theirs contain the same stuff as mine, I needed to know, or were there people who were different, who, as with the wave of a hand, could do what is unthinkable to another? I wanted to know what reason on earth the Clovis had for leaving the lands of their birth, traveling into a dangerous and unknown land, with little hope of return. Standing here today, on the brink of a similar journey, I’m beginning to understand such motivations. Have I solved the riddles of the Clovis?” I shook my head no. “Do I feel closer to them? Yes.”

  I removed my robe and draped it around Trudy.

  Over Eggers’ head, I placed first my hood and then my octagonal mortarboard.

  “Gertrude Labelle and Brent Eggers, never have I had the honor of guiding such bright and original students. As of late, our roles have begun to reverse, and I feel more under your tutelage, which is the natural order of things. I hereby proclaim you doctors of anthropology. I charge you first to discover the questions that underlie your passion for discovery. Seek these answers, not esteem and acclaim. Second, remember the words of the Pima anthropologist Tohono: ‘Unearth the heart, then the bones will speak.’ Finally, I charge you to go forth and propagate the science.”

  With that, I again shook their hands, and many congratulations ensued. Another round of drinks was produced, and the celebration was a grand one. It really was a fine night. Trudy asked if she and Eggers could make a speech. “You have many speeches ahead, Dr. Labelle,” I told her. “But tonight, we make only toasts, and they’re all aime
d at the two of you.”

  Eggers and Trudy wanted to swap a few stories from the past, and I indulged them. In these stories, the humor was derived from some goof-up or boner that they always attributed to me. Dad and Farley joined in, and it seems everyone on earth had a story in which I looked like an idiot. Still, we were having a fine time of it. Gerry gave little sips of bourbon to the kids, and joined in the laughter. When he opened his mouth, I braced myself for a ridiculous tale from Mactaw High.

  But instead he told his kids, “This is just what it’s like at a dude ranch. Your mom’s probably camping by a fire just like this one. Wait till we tell her about the swell time we’re having.”

  Things became quiet.

  Dad looked at his drink.

  Farley said, “Maybe I’ll turn in.”

  Gerry’s kids simply stared blank-faced at the flames.

  For those kids, the fire contained a light of possibility that shone on none of our faces. That’s what I thought about when I finally drifted off to sleep, the way those kids turned away from talk of dude ranches, the way they managed not to see all of us sloshing the last of our drinks in the snow. Instead, they let the fire hypnotize them. Lowering their lids somewhat, they released themselves to its endless sleight-of-hand. Within the glow, you could see yellow fingers roll flashy quarters down burning knuckles, or, deep inside the coals, make out the shuffle of white-hot shells. And if you were patient enough, if you waited and watched, you would receive a message from the fire, in that sign language peculiar only to dying flame.

  * * *

  In the morning, I could smell nothing but Farley’s feet.

  I rose before the others and washed my face—the skin was raw from my accident. I flossed, employed the use of four Q-tips, then went to the sled, where I found my box of Greenlandia Ice Sheet data. It was the only paper we had. The first dozen pages were meaningless introductory notes, so I tore out a few sheets and put them in my pocket. I was a man of routine. I required privacy and concentration. So I headed for the woods to get some personal time before the others were up.

  But when I crept past Gerry, curled up with all his kids, I saw his eyes were open. His face was dark from fire smoke, and his eyes were troubled.

  I knelt beside him. Peaceful kids dozed around him, but I couldn’t tell if they were really asleep or pretending to be asleep, as I often had in the presence of adults.

  “You have to tell them,” I whispered.

  His eyes fell away.

  “Gerry,” I whispered, “they already know. If they don’t, they suspect. You’re the one who’s pretending. Face it—the charade is for you, not them.”

  His voice was barely audible. “Maybe she was one of the lucky ones. What if she—”

  “You didn’t go see her in the hospital, did you?”

  Gerry shook his head.

  “Listen,” I whispered, “they need you. You’re a father now. They’re not going to sob, if you’re worried about that. There’ll be no bawling. Trust me, they’ll just be stunned.”

  Gerry looked at me. “You’re a professor,” he quietly said. “They’ll listen to you.”

  I shook my head. “No one can do this but you.”

  “You could be there,” he said. “What if you just stand there while I do it?”

  I shook my head.

  Gerry closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep, too. He scrunched his face up in pain, then relaxed. “Okay,” he said, “okay.” I left him that way.

  * * *

  We broke camp and began our trek along the river. Lacking a sled of my own, I switched off among the three teams, riding in turn with Trudy and Eggers, Dad and Farley, and Gerry and company. The morning was clear, but by lunch a fierce wind descended from the north, flapping our clothes and gear. A burst of hail drummed us, hard as Christmas candy, followed by an afternoon of murk. The skids made a pocky sound moving over the hail. Whenever we came to a wire fence, Farley dismounted with his cutters to let us through. More than once, there were cows at these fences, their legs buried to the pasterns in the snow, their feed bins long since empty. Cows I stared at anew. Their whiskers moved like oars as they chewed tall stalks of river weed, and they seem somehow solitary, even in herds—a very human trait, it seemed to me. Their eyes I’d always seen as vacant, but now there was something ancient and seaworthy about them. We often went to great lengths to fell game on our trip, but never did it occur to us to butcher one of these lost, humble beasts.

  We encountered no living humans. A flotilla of burned boats drifted past, and for a while train tracks paced the river, leading to a stalled Amtrak special that gave me the willies. A couple passengers still leaned against the windows, and you’d think they’d been rocked to sleep by the scenery and locomotion, were it not for the crystalline sprays of red on the glass. When Europeans colonized this hemisphere, 93 percent of the indigenous population died, from the tip of Chile to the Hudson Bay. But this process took many years, and the culprit was an all-star team: smallpox, cholera, typhus, diphtheria, typhoid, rubella, measles, and mumps. The Clovis disease only took ten days to devour everyone in sight.

  And what a poor form of life it was. By consuming the kindling of humanity in one stroke, it burned itself out. Anything that rages so, quickly flickers. The successful forms of life are the parasites, the ones who bleed their environment to optimal exploitation, who stunt everything by taking a lion’s share, who leave their hosts alive but shriveled.

  We fed the dogs and took an early supper near a motor-home park that appeared suddenly by the river. The awnings were out on the recreational vehicles, and plastic chairs had been blown about by the wind. Little dishes pointed toward quiet satellites, and a couple of the rigs wore multicolored wind socks and weather vanes whose blades were cut from sprightly-colored cans. All the inhabitants, we knew, were below us in the snow. Spring, grisly spring, would come!

  I wished I could give those souls a proper farewell. I’m not talking about putting names to headstones. Names are the least telling information about a human. I wanted to document that they had been. I wanted a narrative of each person—his last meal, the tattoo inside her hipbone, the possession he clutched, and whether she was alone when the end came. Though their lives had been lost, their stories still lingered, and now was the time to study the remains. Now the site would yield the freshest data. I had the skills and the inclination, but, sadly, not the time. Passing by, all I could do was mark the location on my GPS map.

  I only hope that you, future anthropologists, are well under way in your excavation of this calamity. I dream that one day you’ll account for all its victims. What a grand project, to exhume every human lost in the catastrophe, but are you not capable of it? Wouldn’t a society consisting of anthropologists take this task as its central focus? And why stop there? Why, in a golden age of anthropology, would it not be possible to account for everyone, for each person who’s ever been, since we first stood tall in Africa? If you have not already attempted to do so, I charge you to open the graves, drain the bogs, and sift the shores. Find everyone, ever, and record their existence in a giant book you shall call The Register of Being, the volumes of which you shall house in a building here named the Hall of Humanity.

  That night, we camped near an ancient levy by the river. Only when Eggers climbed it in the moonlight did we see that it was a Native American burial mound, so large and complex we knew it was meant to be viewed from space. The next night, we camped where the river was deceptively broad, and we unknowingly placed our lean-tos and litter awnings out on the ice. We didn’t realize it until late, when the fire melted through the ice. In a steamy, ashy shush, it disappeared. The embers died like shooting stars under our five-gallon buckets as the current swept them away.

  As we moved farther north, the temperature dropped. The slightest cloud would cause the snow to ice over, reflecting things with dazzling clarity. A few moments of direct sun meant you were mushing through ice porridge. How my senses were alive. Had I never h
eard the clack of bare tree branches in the wind? Did I never before notice the scent released when a wood-boring beetle drilled into birch? Passing along the river with the sun straight up, you could make out the gold fillings and diamond earrings on fat corpses, lodged under shelves of ice. On the back of an enormous woman, I saw the green-orange tattoo of a Japanese carp.

  Dog breath, rhythmic and misty, ushered us on.

  My greatest proof of the afterlife was the fact that the land wasn’t haunted by a billion souls. You didn’t feel their weight moving through the woods, or see the light of sunset distorted by the slow, vaporous march of the newly dead along the horizon. Tree limbs weren’t laden with the departed, faces didn’t shimmer back when you knelt to drink meltwater, clouds weren’t fleshy with human forms. The world was thin and light, crisp as newspapers blowing over the snow, sharp as the aqua flash of sunlight through power-pole resistors. Were the souls of the lost sharing the earth with us, their energy would traverse it in squalls of dark weather, filled with warm, electrical rain. Their energy would melt the ice.

  Previously, it was my belief that humans left a signature on earth, a certain resonance that could be felt. Now corpses confirmed the opposite. Desiccated corpses cast their purply, deflated corneas not upon angelic light but on the freezing rust of Farm-All plows. Their cracked, withered ears heard not the calls of loved ones, but the dry whistle of fence wire. Of this contradiction, I can only offer the following: People need people, in life and beyond. When the earth was full, souls gravitated here. And now that it is empty, they have sought solace someplace else.

  On the fourth day we passed a sign that read “Entering Central Time Zone.” How bizarre it seemed at first—moving into another arena of time—but the idea grew on me. In this new time zone, the river seemed to behave a little differently. The Missouri was flowing faster, I believed, though I couldn’t be sure, because we were sledding hard upstream, and when things floated down—a beer keg, a bloated horse, a dog on a piece of ice—they already appeared to be marching double-time. We made camp near an old train bridge. Here we were sure something was up. The river looked leaner and faster, the water taking on the cocoa color of silt scoured from the channel floor.