The small, squat cabin was built of thick timber that was greyed with weather. Stray red and yellow leaves skittered down the steep roof, crackling like old, dry bones. David was going to get a picture when the sun was higher and the leaves were spinning. When The Meteorite Hunter was backlit and holding a blood-red stone from outer space. The kind of picture Rick liked. He would say, Yeah, Dave, now that looks authentic.
Diana stretched in the front seat. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Just go in the bushes.”
“What, the Lord of the Meteorites doesn’t have a bathroom?”
“Just pee in the bushes.”
“This trip sucks.”
“Pretend it’s an adventure.”
Diana slammed the car door and tramped off into the brush, hiking up her jeans with defiant fists. David leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, thinking to himself what Julie was going to say about all of this, how she might not say anything at all, just turn away and hunch her shoulders, curving her spine into a question mark.
It had all been so stupid. Julie knew he wasn’t working on a last-minute story for the winter issue. She had phoned the office—four messages when he went in the next morning—before getting him on his cell, her voice as thin as a splinter.
“Deedee’s crying and the car isn’t starting,” she had said, “but I need to go for a drive to calm her down. When are you going to be home? Don’t we have a computer at home? Why did we buy that fucking computer anyway?”
But David wasn’t listening. He was looking at Tricia on the bed as she pulled the sheets over her breasts and brushed the bangs out of her eyes. He considered the possibility then that it had all been a weird coincidence, a trick of physics that made their respective trajectories collide, bodies tangling in the same space and the same time. It didn’t mean anything. It was just the kind of accidental intimacy that comes at the end of a tense conversation, or after a long wait. Tricia said the problem was they were bored with their lives but resigned to them. They should just give up. “But I can’t,” David said. “That’s what kills me.” Once for fun they took pills that Tricia stole from the hospital and David had had an allergic reaction, his tongue swelling, his breathing panicked.
“You’re the one in a million, David. Lucky you,” Tricia had said then, jamming the needle of epinephrine into his thigh as she drove him to the emergency room.
“David?” Julie’s voice from the phone, Tricia reaching for her robe.
“Julie,” David said, “I love you, you know.”
Tricia rolled her eyes and cinched the belt.
“Dave,” Julie, surprised. “That’s worse.”
“I’ll fix the Rabbit, first thing tomorrow,” he said, but Julie had already hung up the phone. Tricia looked at him like she was trying to keep back a laugh.
“No offense, David,” she had said, “but who drives a Rabbit?”
This trip to Whiteshell was going to wreck the car, if it hadn’t already. David envisioned himself at the side of the road, working uselessly under the smoking hood, telling Diana to stop thumbing for rides. Julie was going to be mad if he didn’t have her back for school on Monday, even if he tried to convince her that this meteorite guy was educational or spiritual, or even just plain crazy and interesting. David sat up in his seat and turned the key in the ignition, to be safe. The engine revved and Diana came running back, her hair long and tangled, weeds catching her feet.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, leaning over to open her door, “did you think I was leaving without you?”
Diana slammed the door behind her and locked it. She looked at David with drowning eyes, wild and dark.
“What’s wrong, Dee? Are you sick?” That hamburger. Shit. Julie was going to kill him.
“I was just going to see if I could use the bathroom,” Diana said, starting to cry, “I opened the door, and, that, that man . . .”
David’s heart cramped in his chest. She had only been gone a minute.
“Diana, what happened?”
Fuck, that’s what parents said when their children were molested or kidnapped. A minute was more than enough.
“Diana!”
But she was sobbing so hard now she couldn’t speak, her fists balled into her eyes as her small body shook, curled up in the front seat of the car, the mud on her shoes grinding itself into the torn upholstery of the seat.
David ran towards the cabin. How could he have let her go by herself? They were out in the middle of nowhere, and this guy was some kind of crazy hermit who probably hadn’t seen anything female in years, probably had fucking booby traps on the door and hunting knives lining the walls. Was Diana hurt? Christ! He hadn’t even checked. God.
David sprinted, bursting through the door of the cabin ready to kill the sonofabitch.
But he was already dead. The Meteorite Hunter was sitting in a chair, his face on the oily wood table, his bloated black cheek touching the rough edge of a blood-coloured rock. David might have thought he was sleeping if not for the strange and broken angle of his neck, the way his arms dangled ridiculously, his blue skin dotted with industrious ants that pooled in the rotting practice cuts on his arms, his stomach. The knife handle that stuck out of his bare chest like an accidental bone. The dried blood and the flies. The stink, like cabbage left in the sun.
“Don’t come in here, Diana!” David shouted over his shoulder, knowing that it didn’t matter anymore. She was sobbing in the car while David, gagging now, rushed into the stale emergency of the rank cabin, shouting brave-sounding, stupid things like Don’t come in here, Diana. Shit.
David saw a pad of paper under the blood-red stone. Careful not to touch the man, David moved the rock, heavy for its size, and picked up the smudged notebook. FOUND, it said at the top. In the left-hand column was a list of numbers, latitude and longitude. Then a weather report, followed by a catalogue of stones. A record of a lifetime spent searching. David looked at Diana in the car, how small she was against the landscape of dying trees. He wondered how he was supposed to know what to find. Where to look.
The Meteorite Hunter didn’t have a phone, which was no surprise. They were going to have to drive to a police station and file a report. The officers were going to ask Diana about what she saw, and what could she say to that? David looked at the Meteorite Hunter rotting in his chair. Who was going to bury him? He hoped someone was going to mourn what had been lost. That there had been something to lose, after all.
David walked slowly back to the car with the notebook in his hand, opening the passenger door as gently as he could but Diana still jumped. He picked her up and slid into the seat, rocking her as she cried.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, even though he had seen the expression on the man’s face, flies feasting on his eyes as they stared unblinking at the one dusty window of the cabin, the glass as thin as paper at the top of the pane. The hunter’s lips were purple and peeled back from his teeth. It might have been a smile or a scream, David didn’t know, but it was a silent answer to the one question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“It’s okay,” David said again, and Diana buried her face in his shoulder the way she had done as a baby, tired and squalling. It was almost a selfish thought, but he knew there was a small chance she still somehow remembered that, him cradling the warmth of her tiny body as it howled against the night.
Falling IN LOVE
THIS HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. It is nothing all that special, despite the fact that you have worn uncomfortable shoes and underwear that gives you a rash. More wine, he offers, pouring without a question mark. The heart is an involuntary muscle, you think to yourself.
His aftershave smells like your father’s. You scrape your face against the stubble of his beard and wonder if the little hairs from his razor are still in the bathroom sink where he left them, bleeding from his chin then and already late to meet you at the expensive restaurant where you sat crossing and uncrossing your silk-stockinged legs, wondering if you wou
ld be able to find a 24-hour drugstore that sold Vagisil. He panted his apology, you with one arm already in your good wool coat, and you saw the wrinkles between his eyes. Yes, yes of course you would stay and have a glass of wine, a nice meal, with the man whose cheek, when it brushed against yours, sharp but not unkind, reminded you of climbing into the rope hammock, your father folding his newspaper and saying, Well there’s my girl, him playing with your hair as you listened to the strange smallness of his heartbeat.
Would you like to come in? followed dinner, dessert, coffee that came in a tall glass with a long silver spoon. There were thirty-two steps up to his apartment, each one crooked, the grey enamel worn by the generations of transient footsteps carved into the staircase. More wine, he says again now, the point being that there are too many obstacles to your leaving. Your teeth already blackened with tannins. Your lips stained.
You met him at a party where it was easy to smile, your lip gloss shining and your hair flat-ironed, everything about you smooth. Anyone special in your life? he asked, but it was difficult to take him seriously in his tuxedo shirt with “Year 2000” suspenders, the implication being that both of you should party like it was 1999, the joke made several times, the realization dawning that you had promised yourself at midnight of the new millennium, drunk and throwing up into a punch bowl, that within five years you would be somebody’s wife. You would have a car, a dog. A baby. You thought about sleeping late on Sundays and making him coffee the way he liked it and never again wearing the underwear that cut between your legs while making your bum look so small and shapely. You saw yourself eating Chinese food in bed. Him teaching you how to use chopsticks, you getting rice all over your nightshirt, the two of you falling asleep with greasy mouths of unbrushed teeth. That is love, you thought. The kind of love that tastes like sweet and sour pork. Of tart, sticky fruit.
The bottle of wine is almost empty and you have had enough dates with him to know that soon he will bite your lip, stand you up and press you against the wall. You on the tiptoes of one foot, the other leg wrapped around him, solely for balance. And because you tell yourself you are in love, you might let him flip you over on the bed, the fingernail of his left thumb sharp and cutting as he pushes inside you, the other hand grabbing your hip bone like it was a haunch. You will whimper just like your best-friend-forever Marie taught you to when you practiced French kissing in her bedroom. Rolling on the unicorn bedspread. Touching the mohair blanket. Velvet teddy bears. Eighth-grade breasts. Until she whimpered.
No, no, it’s fine—guys like it when they can’t tell if you’re gonna cry or if you’re gonna come.
The two of you in prom dresses, drunk on the hood of the car your dates had rented, the boys getting high behind the sports equipment bunker as you soaked in the orange light of the parking lot, shining. Marie’s finger traced the path of your blood as it shuddered back to your heart, your skin a fire she had helped dress. Your hands on her shoulders, her arms open, fanning out the silky fabric you stepped into like the promise of a second skin. Her mother gave you a beer while you did each other’s make-up and said, smoothing your blush, God, you’ll never be younger than you are right now. She curled your hair and gave both of you emergency money, twenty dollars she made you safety pin inside your bras.
Marie taught you how to ride a bike in the city. She rode ahead of you, your eyes drawn to the flashing red light on her backpack as you remembered your father in the parking lot of the Catholic school, lying to you as you wobbled away: I’ve still got you, I’ve still got you. Marie’s skirt tucked between her legs and your hands cramping in the cold as you made your way to Mike Willis’ party, the Freshman Fiesta, which Marie called the Freshman Fuckfest. You were invited because Marie was invited. Because Marie invited you. You got off your bikes and chained them to a No Parking sign, and Marie, a slight blurriness to her edges, had tears from the wind freezing to her cheeks. Her eyes were blue like the Indian Ocean, water you had never seen from across the world. The air between you misty from your breath, you thought she might say that she had not forgotten the gift of your grandmother’s bracelet, the thin silver bangle you never took off, for her nineteenth birthday. That she was sorry, somehow. But she just smoothed her skirt and reapplied her lip gloss, swigging from the bottle of gin she dug out of her backpack before she said, God, are we desperate or what?
You saw her again at your high school reunion and met her husband, Thomas, who sells radio air time to companies advertising weight loss products. How did you two know each other? Thomas asked, the question in your arms as you hugged her. Her softness, the warmth of it, startled you—Jennifer, Kaleigh, and Martin, she said, opening her wallet to show you the pictures. She was drinking club soda with lime because she was trying to get pregnant again. She might be pregnant now, Thomas said, patting Marie’s stubborn belly with the hand that didn’t hold his glass of whisky. Her hair was thick and lustrous, her fingernail beds deep pink. Anyone special in your life? Marie asked in a chit-chat voice as she sipped at her straw, and you saw the dark blood inside of her, pooling in the space between her hip bones, hot and vaguely dangerous as it nourished the unspoken needs of another person who did not yet exist.
And your mother, hanging laundry in early spring. Her hands chapped and red against the green of new grass, the white of bleached sheets. You’re too young to have a boyfriend, honey (you holding the basket and the clothespins, wishing for mittens). But don’t worry, when you’re old enough, you’ll find somebody. It happens to everyone. Your mother, humming a song, here and there saying the words, Hearts and bones, hearts and bones.
The danger is this: the walls of your heart will become thinner and thinner until there is nothing left but a void, the size and shape of which you recognize in the same way you know your own face, looking in a mirror.
TICK
THIRTEEN SECONDS is about as long as it takes to settle into the driver’s seat of your car, buckle up your seatbelt, and turn the key in the ignition. It’s about as long as it takes to eat three french fries, if you’re eating them one by one. It’s about as long as it takes to carry a bag of garbage to the curb from your front door.
Thirteen seconds is the average amount of time the average person spends washing his or her hands after using the bathroom. Please keep in mind that the average person’s hands are, on average, laden with bacteria that can be deadly to the very young, the very old, and those with immunodeficiency conditions. Thirteen seconds is not enough time to kill deadly bathroom germs. This is why there has been a nationwide campaign promoting good handwashing practices. Perhaps you’ve seen the posters? “Don’t be Dirty—Count to Thirty.”
It takes fewer than thirteen seconds to say this: “The chief problem with being a moral individual is the fact that we live in an amoral universe.” It may be helpful to adopt this perspective as you read the rest of the story.
Perspective is all about looking: who is doing the looking, and who is being looked at. Who is the seer, and who or what is the seen object? This kind of narrative theory sounds simple, but it can get tricky. Sometimes it can pose very serious problems for very serious students—students who are interested in getting it right. In the interest of helping out these scholars, should they happen to be reading, here’s a hint: for the most part, you and I will be doing the looking, and the object we will occasionally be looking at is Franklin Murdoch in the last thirteen seconds of his life.
Tick Tick
MORNING BROKE with a snap of fiery sunrise that felt like the sting of an elastic band. The members of the firing party, standing fifteen paces away from the post, their backs turned, were from Franklin’s own battalion. Each man was busy trying to pretend that his rifle was the lucky one the officer in charge had loaded with the blank. That way, each man reasoned, his rifle was just a noisemaker, as harmless as a party cracker at a child’s birthday. There was a little white circle of paper pinned to Franklin’s chest. Shining.
The Assistant Provost Marshal was there, plea
sed with himself for organizing the festivities. Franklin’s NCO was there, too, looking constipated. There was an officer, petting his pistol like it was a teacup poodle, and a sergeant there just for fun—he didn’t even get to shoot anybody. He was an invitee by obligation only. Everybody was there. It was a regular blowout.
And Franklin was there, too.
Franklin handed over his identification and his pay book to the NCO who said in a gravelly voice, “Yep, this is Murdoch. Deserter Extraordinaire.”
There was a stretcher, in case Franklin couldn’t make it to the post on his own two legs. He didn’t need it, though. Franklin was no coward, despite all evidence to the contrary. He kept his eyes wide open as the blindfold was tied.
You show up just as the last knot is cinched.
Good timing, and welcome.
Now that there are more guests, Franklin gets into the spirit of his own party. In a low voice, sweet and warm, he starts to sing. Unbeknownst to any of the other party-goers, the fragmented song he sings will resurface in the mouth of a 1960s travelling-troubadour-folk-singer who some people—people high on drugs, naturally—will think is Jesus Christ, reborn.
“’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue, and the road was full of mud . . . in a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm . . . I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose . . .”
The song will be recorded in September 1974 and become part of an album released by Columbia Records to mixed reviews in mid-January 1975. The songs will be about love and pain, love and pain, and the album title will have something to do with blood and railroads. Eventually it will be considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Franklin, if not for the unpleasantness he currently finds himself embroiled in, would first hear the song on a rainy February evening. Franklin, then seventy-six years old with arteriosclerosis and erectile dysfunction, would hear the song on his eldest grandchild’s record player and proceed to scream bloody murder: who was that curly-haired bastard who stole his song, the one he wrote in the war? But Franklin, if all this happens, will be a war veteran, the kind people make allowances for. Don’t worry about him, his grandson will tell his friends as the record spins. My granddad’s kind of crazy.
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