The Reckoning

by Jeff Long

  “Molly.” Louder this time.

  The door unzipped. She saw herself backed as far as possible into the corner. She saw herself with her eyes squeezed shut.

  “It’s me,” he whispered.

  She saw herself open her eyes. In the scant, cold light, Duncan hunkered at the doorway. His hair hung in long, wet strands.

  The rifles crackled, on full automatic. She glanced at the tent wall. The images had fled. He was alone.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

  She began to return to herself.

  “I thought you might be afraid.”

  She was shaking with fever fits. Her jaw unlocked. “Duncan.”

  “Keep your voice down. They’re drunk. It will pass.”

  She was convulsing. He couldn’t see it from out there.

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  She wasn’t. She had demons.

  “Lie low,” he said. “Keep your light off. The bullets fall back to earth, but the canopy will protect us. You’re safe.”

  He started to raise her door to seal her inside with herself again. “Don’t,” she said.

  He paused.

  “Don’t leave.”

  “If you need me, I’m here.” He started to zip the door shut again, still outside.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’m here, I promise.” His chivalry bewildered her. He meant to sit in the rain like some warrior monk? She needed more.

  “Come in.” It was so cold.

  Backing inside, he zipped the door closed and sat beside her with his legs crossed.

  Her teeth chattered. It finally occurred to him. His palm covered her forehead. “You’re sick.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “I can’t take you to the fire,” he said. “Not with them like this.”

  “Hold me.”

  It surprised him. She read his surprise. The halting way he opened his arm for her to lay her head on was like a remembered act. He had forgotten human touch.

  She pressed her back to him. He was warm. They didn’t talk. Eventually the gunfire tapered off. She quit shaking and fell asleep in his arms.

  27.

  The birds woke her.

  The rain had stopped. The city waited. She opened her eyes.

  Duncan startled her. She startled herself.

  During the night, she had twisted. In her sleep, she had thrown one arm across Duncan. She had one ear against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat. His ribs rose and fell in slow waves.

  She never woke this way with a man, holding him and being held. It did not happen, even with lovers she trusted. And while he wasn’t a stranger, he wasn’t a lover either. She barely knew him. And yet her sleeping self had folded against him.

  Molly lay very still, trying to sort out this new development. He was warm, and she’d been afraid. She remembered the gunfire, and those silhouettes. But they weren’t enough to explain her trust.

  He looked almost boyish sleeping in the blue-green light. There was a powerful scent of flowers. Her eyes traveled to his shirt pocket. He’d collected an orchid yesterday.

  Part of her wanted to shake him and climb back into the city. They knew their way into the ruins. She had dreamed about them last night, dreamed madly. The city was starting to inhabit her.

  But she lingered, reluctant to shatter this remarkable contact. Twice men had proposed marriage to her—seriously proposed—thinking they could overcome her nightmares. As gently as possible, she’d spared them their gallantry. They couldn’t save her. The rape had burned her. Molly had resigned herself to her clenching scars.

  What could explain this? She was a serial disbeliever. She required truth, good, bad, or ugly. Offer her a wound for proof and she would plunge her fingers right in. Which had made the search for the bones so fitting. The missing soldiers were an unhealed wound, like a hand-hold, both a story and, deeper, an appeal to her missionary instinct. So how did Duncan fit into that?

  It wasn’t that he could protect her from the perils. The plotting brothers and the typhoon and Kleat’s paranoia endangered him as much as her. Was it that she seemed to occupy him the way the ruins occupied her? He had been her welcome to Cambodia. When she was at her weakest, he had shielded her from the sun with his scarf. When the guns started going off last night, his first thought had been for her safekeeping. He’d crawled out into the rain to guard her.

  He looked twenty-something this morning. The soft light smoothed his crow’s-feet and softened the hawk profile, but it was something more. Years had melted from his face. His beard line looked…diminished. There was just stubble on his chin and upper lip. His throat was smooth. The jugular throbbed. It was like watching her own heart beat.

  A long, welted scar ran in a line above his left ear. She’d never seen it before. Normally his long hair hid it. He’d survived some terrible violence, but had never mentioned it. She’d have to ask him about that someday.

  She wondered. What would he be like in Boulder? With his long hair and seven-league boots, they’d take him for one more globe-trotter with an athlete’s veins. Every other man and woman you met there seemed to be in training for some imaginary Olympics or Everest. She’d written an article on the legend of Boulder, average age 29.5 years, average body fat 11 percent. She’d dubbed it an orthopedist’s paradise, with all the skiers’ knees and climbers’ shoulders you could wish for. Duncan would move among them like an aging lion. They could go to the movies on snowy afternoons, drink tea at Turley’s, chart new travels. With Duncan, she might finally feel at home.

  But there were the ruins to decipher. His destiny was here, and hers, too. She felt it powerfully. She had not ended up here by accident.

  Her thoughts wheeled pleasantly.

  Slowly she noticed the bamboo. It stood on the far side of his face, a slender, glossy green shoot poised almost like a snake. The trespass surprised her. The forest had invaded her tent.

  She lifted her head from Duncan’s chest. The bamboo had pierced the tent floor and pushed right through the thin sleeping pad. Its point was hard and sharp, the shaft slick and phallic. They could have been impaled in their sleep. That was too dramatic, of course. They would have woken at its first touch.

  Only then did she notice her tent wall. It was deformed. Half caved in. A tree limb must have fallen across them.

  A wall tent or pup tent would have collapsed altogether. Her dome tent had spread the weight through a system of poles. The rain must have torn the limb loose from the canopy and it had dropped during the night.

  Duncan woke. He started to smile, then jerked his head away from the bamboo. He saw the deformed tent wall. “How could we have slept through that?” he said.

  He pushed at the branch with his foot, but that only tightened its pressure. The tent creaked.

  “These poles might not hold it,” she said.

  Despite the quiet destruction of her tent, Molly was grateful for the quick exit. It was too soon for pillow talk and holding hands. In escaping the tent, they would be escaping any awkwardness.

  They couldn’t sit upright. Then they saw more bamboo shoots sticking through the floor. Duncan got over her on his hands and knees, and put his back against the tree limb. She slid between his legs.

  Unzipping the door dumped the dome’s remaining strength. One of the long poles snapped, then another. She slid out and helped Duncan crawl from the shambles. They faced the wreckage.

  It wasn’t a fallen branch, but a vine. The thing had come untethered from the ledge above and was strapped across the tent. Its tip had burrowed into a joint in the stone. In the space of a few hours, it had muscled down and broken her tent. Molly looked around at the mist and its shapes. A giant god floated with his serene smile, and sank away.

  “It’s like a tidal wave, a green tidal wave,” she said. “Do things really grow so fast here?”

  “The forest must have been thirsty. The first taste of rain and it takes off like
a rocket.” Duncan aimed for levity, but it troubled him.

  “I’ll come back for it later.” Who was she kidding? The tent was a write-off. She felt violated and put on notice. This place was not her friend. She jerked her camera bag from the collapsed doorway.

  Duncan had to use his Swiss Army knife to free their shoes. A filament of roots had invaded a rip in the floor and corded them to the ground. He pretended it was normal. “Man versus monsoon,” he intoned. “Who will win the primordial struggle?” But it bothered him, she could tell.

  They walked along the ledge around little pickets of bamboo growing through the joints, and stepped across cablelike vines. His tent was collapsed as well. Lowering himself to what remained of it, Duncan cut an opening through the side and extracted his steel briefcase.

  They finished descending to the terminus floor and wended their way through the mist.

  Molly kept looking for the names carved into the trees. “There they are.” She tugged Duncan after her, but then she got a closer look.

  The letters were bleeding.

  “It’s tree sap,” Duncan said.

  “But they weren’t like this before.”

  “The forest is having a growth spurt. The bark pulled apart. It’s only sap.”

  Thick and crimson, it seeped down from the beloved names. She regretted waiting to take the picture. Yesterday morning, they had been radiant on the gleaming bark. Now they wept, though maybe that was the more appropriate mood for the photo.

  Farther on, they heard a low roar building.

  “Is that the truck running?” she asked.

  They hurried, thinking the brothers were leaving.

  But the roar was the sound of the fire. Kleat was there, piling logs onto a small inferno. The flames leaped taller than the hut, eating a jagged hole in the fog, throwing sparks with pistol shots of sap.

  The furnace heat had him pouring sweat. He’d shed his shirt, but was wearing the flak jacket. His face and scalp were as bright as mercury. He looked insane.

  “What are you doing?” asked Duncan.

  Kleat loaded on another fat log and straightened on the far side of the flames. His glasses reflected the light. He had showers of red and orange sparks for eyes. Inside his fury, he looked afraid. “Up late?” he yelled at them.

  Molly had been almost ready to pity him. “We heard the shooting last night,” she said.

  His chest hair was singed to black steel wool. She smelled the burned hair and Caucasian sweat, but also caught other smells in the smoke, potent smells, the scent of different kinds of wood, of ferns, flowers, nuts, coconut, even cinnamon. Once part of a royal garden, spices grew wild here. The fire was opening up the forest’s abundance.

  “You missed the hunt,” Kleat said.

  “Is that what they were doing, hunting?”

  Kleat looked at them. “He should have known better.”

  The fire forced her back with its hot breath. Her chills were gone. She felt fine this morning. Molly glanced around. At the edges of dissolved mist, half-formed shapes moved between the vaporous white Land Cruiser and the larger bulk of the truck. She counted three shapes with rifles. There was only one man unaccounted for.

  “Where’s Samnang?” Duncan asked.

  “He brought it on himself.”

  “Be clear,” said Molly.

  “He fucked up.”

  “What happened, Kleat?”

  “He waited until they were drunk, then he got his revenge. But there was no way he was going to get away with it. Of course they found out.” He toppled a decaying stump into the flames. White termites came flooding from its cavities.

  “What revenge, what are you talking about?”

  “He destroyed their artifacts, smashed them to pieces, the pots. Hid the rest. All the heads, they’re missing. That’s what they were trying to beat out of him. Don’t ask me. I don’t speak the language. One thing led to another.”

  “You saw it? They beat him?” While she slept soundly.

  “I only came for the bones.” Kleat glared at her. “You know that.”

  “But you were down here.”

  “I heard them arguing. I came down and they had him. They were pushing him around, hitting him with their rifles. He’s KR, I keep telling you. They hated him enough as it was. Then he pulls a stunt like this.”

  They’d gone hunting.

  “What did they do to him, Kleat?”

  “I didn’t see anything.” He bent for more wood.

  It was obvious. “They killed him.”

  She cast around for bloodstains, but the rain must have flushed them into the earth. It occurred to her that they were scorching the evidence out of existence. That would explain this manic bonfire at the crack of dawn.

  “They were working themselves up to it,” Kleat said. “But then I came down. They weren’t going to do it in front of me. So they gave him a head start. That’s the last I saw of him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He went off into the night. He’s a slippery old bastard, and they were drunk. They chased him and came back and went out again. They were afraid to leave the fire for very long. It went on for hours. You heard the gunfire, they were all over the place.”

  “And you just sat here?”

  “I kept the fire going. That was my job. They made it clear. A big fire. That’s the important thing. I kept them on our side. Someone had to make sure they wouldn’t leave us. They could have driven off. They still could.” He threw on more wood. “But not for a while.”

  “This is murder,” she said. “And you did nothing.”

  Kleat’s glasses flashed. “I stopped an execution. I came down and they set him loose. I saved his life.” He had it all worked out in his head.

  Samnang was dead somewhere, she could picture it, floating in the baray pools or slung over a root. “How did you save him? They hunted him. You said so.”

  “Three street kids against an old killer. Some hunt. They lost him.” Kleat stood on the far side of the flames. “Or he left, like Luke, out the front gate. Or he’s dead, okay? He’s gone.”

  He shoved in another log. It struck her suddenly. “What’s in the fire?” She dragged the log out. She reached for another.

  Duncan took her arm. “That won’t help, Molly.”

  “He’s under there,” she said. “They’re burning his body. They’re burning the evidence.”

  “Molly…” Duncan murmured.

  “Get a grip, woman,” Kleat said. “First cannibals, what next?”

  “He was an old man.” She turned away, tears blurring her vision.

  “He was KR. They think he killed their mother and father, I got that much. You must have heard them,” he said to Duncan.

  “How would they know?” said Molly. “Vin would have been an infant. Doc would have been four.”

  “They’ve got it in their minds,” Duncan said. “They say it’s the reason they agreed to come along, to confront him and get the truth. I’m kind of surprised Samnang invited them. It’s almost like he wanted to get it over with.”

  “They’re thieves. They were beating him to find their plunder, not to ask about their parents,” Molly said.

  “Why can’t it be both?” said Kleat. “They’re thieves. And the old man was a butcher.”

  They were quiet for a minute. Finally Molly said, “He watched over me.”

  “So he went down in glory,” Kleat said, “doing his holy deeds.”

  Duncan peered through the mist. “What are they up to over there?”

  “Working up their nerve,” Kleat said. “Go see for yourself.”

  28.

  They left Kleat building his fire higher.

  “Stay with me,” Duncan said to her. “Keep your temper, do you hear me? Don’t make it worse.” He squeezed her arm.

  “I heard you.”

  Broken shards lay scattered across the clearing. The forest floor was chopped and muddy. Pieces of pottery had been trod into the ground.
>
  “This is strange,” Duncan said. “Look at how deep some of these footprints are. It’s like a herd of horses came through. But the prints are human.”

  “The rain must have softened the earth,” Molly said.

  “Not enough for this.” Duncan stomped at the ground but didn’t make a dent. “It’s hard to believe Samnang could have done so much damage. And why only the pots and not the heads? There must have been fifteen heads. How could one man carry them off so quickly?”

  “No idea, Duncan.” She didn’t care about pots and heads and footprints. Samnang was dead.

  The brothers materialized in the mist. They were circulating back and forth, from the Land Cruiser to the enshrouded truck. Their rifles twitched at Molly and Duncan’s approach.

  At first she paid no attention to the vehicles. She’d never had a gun pointed at her. The bluing on the gun metal had worn through in places, like the finish on secondhand guitars. The guns had traveled many miles through many wars before ending up in these tattooed hands.

  Duncan announced himself, arms wide, and they lowered the barrels. Toting his silver briefcase like an insurance adjuster, he spoke in quiet tones. Doc, with his full armor of body ink, shouted back at him and shook his rifle. Duncan went on talking, moving closer.

  Molly stayed back, hating them for what they had done. It took her a minute to even look at their faces. She expected hangover scowls or bully glares, but their eyes were filled with voodoo fear. Their panic caught her off guard.

  Then she noticed the Land Cruiser, and the truck, and was frightened, too. Tilted at ridiculous angles, gripped by vines, the vehicles were trapped. The forest was car-jacking them.

  A fast-growing tree root had hoisted the rear of the Land Cruiser a foot off the ground. The back tires dangled. She went with Duncan to it.

  Creepers had infiltrated a crack in the windshield. She peered inside. Vines wrapped the plastic steering wheel and were rooting into the underside of the dash panel.

  The old Mercedes truck was being overrun, too. Vines roped its hood and doors, but it was being sucked backward into the earth. The rear wheels had sunk to the hub, tilting up the front end like a bull struggling from quicksand.