by Peter Liney
God knows what prompted me to head over toward the Old City. I guess I just had this urge to be as near Lena as I could. Not that it mattered which way we went; we were as likely to find building materials there as anywhere else.
It was a helluva weird feeling, I can tell you; knowing she was somewhere beneath us. I kept trying to figure out how things up here related to her world. The living quarters, the garden—where she might be at this moment.
At one point I even led Jimmy and Delilah into sight of the tunnel entrance just so I could hang around for a little while, stealing glances, feeling that familiar excitement percolating away inside me. Not that I went any closer. I didn’t want Lena misunderstanding what was going on.
After an hour or so of scrabbling and scratching and finding nothing more useful than a handful of nails and a rusty old sheet of corrugated metal, it began to occur to me, as I’m sure it did Jimmy and Delilah, that there was a real possibility of us having to spend the night in the open. Worse still, that the chances of another fog after how warm the day had been were uncomfortably high. Why this should move Delilah to sing, I don’t know, but it did. She suddenly burst out with this real chilly old blues number that echoed around the ruins of the Old City like a requiem. I guess it’s just her way of coping, a refuge, a place to take herself when things start to look really bad. Whatever, for however long it lasted, it was a delight to hear.
A little later, and without anyone actually saying anything, we started to work our way out of the city. At one point I glanced over to the spot where I’d decided the living area might be, smiling to myself, and Jimmy turned and caught me.
“What?” he asked.
I shrugged, like I didn’t even know myself. “Nothing.”
He stared at me for a moment, then bustled impatiently on, plainly of the opinion that there was nothing to smile about, nor worthy of discussion, other than the building of a new lean-to.
Taking one final look back, I followed along behind him. I mean, what could I say? How could I explain that, just at that moment, I really didn’t give a damn about our situation or prospects? That all I cared about was this young woman living beneath us and what the two of us had gotten up to that morning. Let’s face it, sometimes what happens fast has to be let in slow. I needed time to go over it, to savor in minutes what had happened in a split second, stretch it out into endless fine detail, and every time I did it made me smile.
As soon as we got back out onto the landfills, I was reminded of one of the major disadvantages of warm weather. I mean, I hate winter. Especially out here, it never leaves without extracting a cruel sacrifice. People die all the time. We just ain’t no match for it. But the one thing it does do for us is to freeze up some of the smell of this place. With all this sunshine, the process of decomposition was starting up again in earnest. You could sense it oozing back into life, rising up out of the ground, like the spirit of decay: stale, flatulent, rotting. Every year I forget how bad it is. How sick it makes me feel. There were flies, too. Millions of them coming out of nowhere, buzzing excitedly around. Delilah tied a handkerchief around her face and pretty soon Jimmy and me copied her. I mean, it didn’t do a great deal of good, but it did make us feel a little better.
We still hadn’t found much. A couple of lengths of wet and bowed timber, some fresh sheets of plastic (always the easiest thing to come by) to add to the sheet metal we found earlier, but not enough to build one lean-to, let alone two. Delilah dug out the broken side of a wooden crate we could use, but Jimmy kept getting distracted by other things—junk to fill a lean-to that hadn’t as yet been built—and she was getting angry.
“Look at him,” she grumbled as he started tugging on this length of corroded wire poking out of the garbage. “Another name for useless.”
As if to prove the point, the piece of wire suddenly came free and Jimmy fell backward onto his ass.
“See! See what I mean?”
I immediately pretended to notice something a little ways off, anxious not to find myself in the position of being a reluctant arbiter in yet another of their disputes.
“Tell you something, Jimmy, I ain’t sleeping in the open tonight,” she hollered across. “Even if it means sleeping with someone else.”
“We’ll find something,” he told her, more embarrassed than intimidated by her threat.
“You ain’t even looking!” she challenged.
“Sure I am.”
I tried to calm things down, to remind them of the urgency of our situation, but even though they stopped arguing, their silence was no less hostile than their words had been, and in the end, Delilah lost it altogether. Storming off to a spot thirty or forty yards off, plopping herself down, idly picking up bits and pieces and angrily tossing them down in front of her, saying she wasn’t gonna bother if no one else was.
Jimmy kept calling her to come back, promising he’d keep his mind on lean-tos and not junk, and then made great play of digging out another sheet of plastic packing.
“Hey! Cool! Lile, look at this!”
It was a game, the kind all couples play. He was attempting to win her back, acting the fool, trying to make her smile, and she was equally determined not to let that heavy scowl off her face.
I just didn’t see it coming. Everything seemed so normal, so familiar. I remember poking about in one of those huge industrial waste bags that you sort through at your peril. Someone had already slashed it open and taken a look, but I was hoping they might’ve missed something. I tossed some of the contents out, squatting down to sift through it, and just as I leaned forward there was this almighty explosion behind me and I was blown off my feet.
Next thing I knew I was facedown in crap, the back of my head feeling like a flame-thrower had just scorched the hair and skin off me.
It was only as I looked up, in that split second when I thanked God for sparing me, that I realized we were in one of those awful vacuums where time has stopped and won’t begin again until tragedy takes its form. I didn’t have long to wait. There was an awful wail, a high-pitched scream behind me, and I knew it was Delilah.
For a moment I thought it must’ve been a satellite malfunction, that she’d been taken out by mistake, but when I looked, when I saw the scattering of flames around her, I knew immediately what it was. There’s always a lot of gas on the first warm days of the year. More than at any other time. The sun unlocks it, just like it does the smell. We should’ve kept that in mind. Something Delilah had thrown had caused a spark and ignited a blowout.
Jimmy let out a cry and scrambled across to her, losing his stick on the way, reaching her almost on all fours.
“Lile! . . . Lile!” he shrieked.
I slid and tripped my way up behind him, the first sight of her taking my breath away. She was covered from head to toe in blood; barely a spot on her was free of red. Most of her clothes had been blown off, and though there were no obvious major injuries, judging by her screams she was in a helluva lot of pain.
Jimmy kept crying her name, over and over, telling her it was going to be all right, but you could see he didn’t have a clue what to do. He just squatted down next to her, trying to take hold of some part of her that wasn’t bleeding.
“Big Guy!” he screamed, turning to me, his face so white I thought he was going to pass out. “What are we going to do?”
Time and time again he asked me, till it became almost meaningless. What could we do? Violent death and injury are just things you get used to on the Island. There are no emergency services. No doctors. Certainly not for anyone outside the Camp. That’s just the way it is. Until it happens to someone you care about.
“Big Guy!” Jimmy pleaded again, his voice barely audible above Delilah’s shrieking.
I looked at him, looked at her, and realized I had no choice. There was only one place I knew where she could get any kind of medical attention, and even though I’d sworn I’d never tell anyone about it, this was different. Immediately I scooped Delilah up and started
to run.
“Where you going?” Jimmy yelled after me, but still started to follow.
Delilah might be a thin old stick, but she was still a helluva weight to carry that distance. Especially with her screaming and writhing, her blood making everything all slippery and sticky at the same time. I kept saying the same thing to her Jimmy had, that it was going to be all right. As if she couldn’t feel the pain searing through her body, as if she wasn’t aware she was bleeding to death.
I reached the tunnel entrance, had a quick look around, juggled Delilah into one arm, then threw back the door and got her and Jimmy inside. The little guy didn’t say a word, just kind of gaped, like the whole day was now one big shock to him and all he could do was to helplessly follow along behind it. I lit a candle, got him to hold it, then led him down to the living area.
There was no sign of Lena. I called out to her, knowing she had to be hiding, that she must’ve heard Delilah’s screams and was wondering what the hell was going on.
“Lena! . . . It’s okay, it’s me!”
She came out of the shadows, her face frightened and confused.
“My friend’s been caught in a blowout,” I told her. “I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry, this is all I could think of.”
The situation explained, she immediately took control in that way somebody always does, digging out bandages and antiseptic cream from her stores, getting me to boil up some water.
Delilah was passing in and out of consciousness, screaming and moaning, then slipping away again as if the pain was just too much for her to bear. Lena knelt next to her and set about trying to assess the damage, touching her as gently as she could, but Delilah still couldn’t take it.
“I’ve got some hooch over there,” Lena said. “It might help deaden the pain.”
I fetched the bottle and gave it to Jimmy to pour down Delilah’s throat. Presently the screaming began to subside and Lena was able to start cleaning the wounds; slowly, tenderly, letting the water do most of the work. Occasionally Delilah would cry out and Lena would shush her like a baby, waiting a few moments then carrying on with what she was doing.
In one place on the upper arm, you could actually see the bone poking through a flap of torn flesh. There was also a piece of metal jutting out of her hip that we had to ease out as gently as we could. I tell you, it made you wince just to see it. I mean, I know Delilah, I know how tough she is. If she’s screaming, there’s a damn good reason.
As for Jimmy, the poor little guy was cradling her head in his arms, tears streaming down his face and all that love you always knew was there was out and swirling around them.
It took a couple of hours and the best part of a full bottle of hooch to get through the bandaging. I spent most of my time building up the fire, making sure Delilah was warm. I mean, she’s hurt really bad, no doubt about that, but shock’s the first thing you gotta worry about. I seen it before. Really tough guys, who didn’t care about pain, who treated their bodies like inefficient forms of armor. But that tiny spark we call life can be so frail. You’d see it in their eyes, the shock, the realization that the plug was being pulled inside them. That somewhere in there was a weakness that didn’t care how tough they were; it just wanted to die.
A little after midnight, Lena was so exhausted she went to bed. I sat with Jimmy for a while, almost as worried about him as I was Delilah. He’d barely said a word since we arrived. At one point he did ask about Lena, how I knew her, what she was doing down here, but I just brushed it aside. He wasn’t listening anyway.
Later, with the warmth of the fire and the long silences, I started to get a bit sleepy myself and, telling Jimmy to wake me when he wanted a break, I dragged the bed Lena had made up for me down the tunnel a little and settled down. It went through my head that I would’ve liked to have slept with her, that she was just what I needed to soothe the terrible sadness I was feeling, but I didn’t want her to think I was presuming in any way. However, no sooner had I fallen asleep than I was awakened by her crawling in beside me.
If you already know it, I guess I don’t have to tell you what a wonderful feeling that is: having a cold bed turned into a warm one. There ain’t a dream in the whole world better than that. I woke to find this soft and drowsy woman next to me, my arms about her even before I realized, and this time I will tell you what happened. We made love. And I’ll tell you the details, too. We made love by hugging and kissing and caressing and making each other feel a whole lot better and braver about this world. But nothing else. It ain’t always necessary, you know. To be honest, at times I just think the sex thing confuses us.
Later, Delilah started moaning and I slipped away from Lena to see how she was doing. Jimmy was still holding her, his face registering every moment of her pain. He poured some more hooch into her mouth, said what he could to calm her down, though I doubt she could hear him. Eventually she passed out midwail so that for a moment, until she caught her breath again, we both feared the worst.
“Big Guy,” Jimmy whispered, stroking her forehead, “what am I going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at her.”
“She’ll be okay,” I reassured him, though not entirely convincingly.
“But if she’s not . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “If she’s not . . .”
“Jimmy. It ain’t going to come to that.”
“There’d be no point. You know that, don’t you? Not without her.”
What could I say? I knew he meant it, and just at that moment, I wouldn’t presume to argue.
I turned to Delilah. She’s one helluva tough old bird, but she’ll have to be to get through this. And you wanna know something? Something that shames me? Sitting there, with that tortured body of hers spread out before me, that proud but pained face so racked and wrinkled by life, it momentarily flitted through my mind that maybe death was her best option. I mean, I wouldn’t choose it for her myself, not in a million years, but sometimes you think, the way things are, what this life has to offer, maybe this is a battle that just ain’t worth fighting.
I shook the thought off, briefly resting a reassuring hand on Jimmy’s shoulder before going to build up the fire again.
I don’t know whether you know this or not, but in case you don’t, it’s not a fair world. When you’re a kid you got all these dumbass ideas about life. What you’re entitled to, what you’re going to get, but the overriding notion is that it’s going to be fifty-fifty—part good, part bad. Well, I’ll tell you, that ain’t nothing but shit, and I hope by now you know it. There ain’t no equal rights when it comes to good and bad fortune, no more than we all got an equal amount of money in the bank or live for the same amount of years. It don’t work that way. Maybe there are equal portions of good and bad luck slopping around out there somewhere, but that don’t mean you’re going to get your share. Some get equal bad and good, some get nearly all good and very little bad, while others get nothing but shit all their lives. And if you’ve always been unlucky, right from the moment you were born and you’re still sitting there, scanning the horizon, waiting for your great gleaming silver-plated ship to come sailing on in, then I hate to tell you this, but maybe that sonofabitch has sunk somewhere.
You’re a fool if you’re living life that way, cuz the truth is, in the real world, some slide on silk while others constantly get their asses dragged across rocky ground.
Delilah had it tough right from the moment she was found one freezing night among the garbage in some alleyway; squeezed out by some anonymous fleshy sac and then just left to die in the blood and afterbirth. I guess she was crying, but she likes to tell it as if she was singing and that’s why she’s been singing ever since. In the hope that someone else’ll come along and pull her out of the crap. And if you’re thinking that only goes to prove she’s a “survivor,” and that eventually she’ll go on to better things, well, you just ain’t listening, are you? She was rewarded for her obstinate refusal to die by being put in an orp
hanage and being physically and mentally abused almost every day of her childhood. She lost a lung to TB when she was in her early twenties, became a whore and was repeatedly beaten up cuz she couldn’t afford to be that fussy about her customers, and finally, the one great love of her life, who apparently was her pimp, was cut to pieces before her for getting a little careless on the subject of geography and straying onto someone else’s patch.
When I first saw her she was this brash and ballsy figure who used to strut around the Village in rags twenty years too young for her, still turning the occasional trick for food or whatever. But she was losing it and knew it all too well, no longer tragic nor pretty enough to keep the sniggers at bay. Jimmy heard her hacking away outside his lean-to one night and invited her in. She left the next morning, but returned a week later. This time she stayed for a few days. Then a few weeks. Then months. Even now she’ll leave him, wandering off without so much as saying a word. He worries and frets over her, terrified she ain’t going to return, that something’s happened, but when she finally does return he acts as if nothing’s amiss, like she’s just been out for a walk or something.
But now Delilah lies here, lacerated, erupting with pain, as if every scar life’s ever put on her has suddenly opened up again. And really, is it any wonder that the prospect of death, of wrapping her up in that great gray blanket, appears in your mind? Maybe she’s somewhere at this very moment making that self-same decision, with exactly the same thoughts going through her head? Should she let go, release her gnarled, bony old grip on life, or maybe try singing one last time?
She hung on throughout the next day, not getting any better or worse, but staying unconscious for longer periods. Lena and Jimmy were constantly at her side, tending to her, watching over her, while I did all the fetching and carrying, keeping things turning over. But the following morning, when I came back from the garden, Lena was sitting next to Delilah with a really worried look on her face.