Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth

  His name was Dev—Dev and Dill—but Dill had thought of him as the banker from the earliest hours, at first for the humorous incongruity of himself with a banker, later as an endearment, and eventually as a symbol of the alienation between them, the banker.

  “We aren’t helping each other. That’s the problem. If I thought I could help—but that’s not happening.”

  But now Dill was no longer listening. His mind was drifting, first into the past, the banker’s fingers in his hair, a flash of it, then into the future and all it might hold, the horror. And then he found he was deciding. In fact he found he’d planned to all along.

  Come on, it was a great idea. Of course it was a great idea.

  “We need to move on, both of us.”

  Dill would have the old space for six weeks. Plenty of time. He’d always been best when he was working.

  “Who knows. This is my fault too. I let you do whatever you wanted …”

  The auditors were right. They needed Annabelle. Green Farm was perfect. Only she could begin to get the number of people needed together. Only she could inspire the kind of crazy necessary to pull the threads of this rug. Yeah, couldn’t do it without her. Could he convince her? The auditors thought so.

  But no.

  No way. Not a chance.

  “Maybe some of your friends could put you up for a while until you get back on your feet.”

  But what if he sent the auditors? Right to her place, because of course he knew where she was. She needed to see them, get a load of these two in their getups, let them ask her face to face, in her home—and Dill thought the shed was bad! He would tell them exactly what to say, and what not to (who sent them, for one, best to bring in Dill later, after she agreed. It’d never occur to her that he’d reveal her location).

  All he needed was to make her intrigued enough to listen, to imagine.

  It’d give him something to do while utterly falling apart.

  “Hey, are you hearing me?” said the banker.

  To give the auditors a chance, yes, not to put a finger on the scale or slide an ace into their hands, but to give them the slightest chance.

  The banker had come and put it in his lap, saying, Here you go. Here’s how you’ll do it. It’s all right here.

  “See, this is what I’m talking about. This is exactly what I’m not going to miss.”

  So that night in the shed he texted them, Let’s talk, and when they arrived, he gave them directions and instructions. To give the auditors a chance and, yeah, he’d admit, also to royally give the banker the finger and, sure, maybe to send Annabelle a little salute, a teasing wave (knock, knock, who’s there?), a gesture in the form of two auditors, nudged forward toward her, to say, I see you your disappearing act and I raise you two auditors, to say, I dare you, and also—he realized after they’d driven off and after the banker had packed his suitcase and said, “So we have an agreement, yes?” (hey, it was his own fault if he wanted to make another “agreement” with Dill) and left in a car, and Dill heard nothing for a while, not from them, him, her, or anyone, and he was alone with his seventeen animals (he’d kept a few hens)—to say, to whisper (but to whom?), Come back.

  A: No, I’m not “comfortable.” You tell me how I’m supposed to be comfortable.

  Q: That was a courtesy question.

  A: Why don’t we skip you being courteous?

  Q: All right, can we bring you anything before we begin?

  A: There you go again. What are you going to bring me under the circumstances? Let’s get this over with. What do you want to know? They showed up and asked if I would help and I saw no reason not to. That’s what happened.

  Q: Were you expecting them?

  A: No, the biggest surprise was them showing up in the first place. I’d been there over a year and not one person had found me.

  Q: You were hiding?

  A: I was … resting.

  Q: You were “resting.” On a chemical waste contamination site.

  A: Yeah, and as soon as I saw them out there in the fog I thought, That’s it. I’m done for. I took them for you, you see. Not you specifically, but your kind. Come to make me pay for my sins. Word had come down, I figured. My name was on the board. I was surprised by what they came in on—a plastic raft, a level up from a blowup.

  Q: What did you imagine?

  A: I mean, I didn’t think you’d float in from overhead, blowing the trees around.

  Q: Not our style. That’s a myth.

  A: Figures. Still I thought they’d be more professional. But no, they’d driven down the dirt road, past the signs that said Keep out unless you want to grow an extra finger. Left their car in the debris, carried the raft through the stalks to the cold muddy river. Then, my name in their fists, they pushed off the shore with their plastic paddles, drifted between low clouds and brown water, until there I was, hearing the unmistakable sound of paddles on the water. “Quiet,” I told the birds, and looked out. Sure enough, the fog opened, and I saw them coming crookedly toward me. I was ready for them and they for me. We eyed one another like that—with knowing—so there was no fooling around when they lifted their paddles and let the raft float over the oily water the final few feet.

  Q: And they were wearing disguises?

  A: Yeah, I knew you’d have them, uniforms of some sort, but I thought they’d be different. Robes or something.

  Q: Robes? Like graduation?

  A: Well, no.

  Q: Like a shower?

  A: Just forget it. Anyway I called out, “Those are some rotten clown costumes. Are you trying to make the kids cry?”

  Q: That sounds like fooling around.

  A: They can take it.

  Q: So they came onto your … house?

  A: Not at first. Their raft just bumped against the side and bounced away before they could grab on. I was laughing. “Bring that scrap of plastic around this way,” I said. I keep (excuse me, kept) a boat at the ready and a couple more in the stages of dis/repair that I like, my birds’ names painted on the sides, Poquito Más, Wayway, Waygo, bobbing there in my contaminated river. I held out a plank for them to grab onto. I said a little grandly, “Come for me at last!” to let them know I knew what was happening and that I wasn’t going to make a fuss, I’d go quietly, because why waste everyone’s time. We were all excessively polite. They apologized for getting river water on my dress when they came aboard.

  Q: Your dress?

  A: The blue one with the lace edging. The perfect dress for the occasion, I was thinking, and I didn’t even know they were coming.

  Q: Somehow we can’t imagine you in a dress.

  A: Then you can’t imagine much. They don’t make you do research? I always wear a dress. Well, not now, of course. But this hardly counts.

  Q: So they came onto your “house” and got water on your “dress.”

  A: Yeah, I sat them at the table and gave them each a short glass of rum because I like to see people with a drink in their hand. “You came a bit sooner than I expected,” I said.

  They looked surprised. “You knew we were coming?”

  “I had an idea,” I told them. “I didn’t know when. I’ve been having symptoms. Headaches, blackouts. It’s fine. I’m done here anyway.”

  They were shifting in their seats, ducking under Roy. I had the windows out. It was, what, the first week of April? Warmer than usual. Roy was flying in circles in and out the window, screaming. They looked so nervous, I felt like telling them, Relax, I’m the one who should be worried. The cicadas were making sounds like sprinklers.

  “Let’s start with you telling me what comes next,” I said. I folded my hands. “I’d like to know how it all works.”

  They looked at each other. “That’s why we came to you,” they said. “We need your help.”

  Help? I studied their faces. I was confused. Help with what?

  Wait a minute.

  My understanding that I understood what was happening rotated ninety degrees from yes to mayb
e, and another ninety degrees to no, and then another ninety degrees back to maybe, until I was dizzily seeing the situation. Fucking hell. I was almost disappointed.

  Dill. He’d gotten me good this time. He must think a lot of these two to tell them where I am, I thought. These two must be the second coming. They damn well better be for him to compromise my security like this. Nice of him to drop in, the asshole. I realized right then, wistfully, how much I wanted to be gone, out of my house, far from this land, the only earth I’ve known.

  “Oh, I thought this was something else,” I said.

  Of course I’d been living off the grid, so to speak, for quite a while. It is really hard to be hard to find. But it came naturally to me. It was no problem for me not to be around. When I first started out, we used fake names. You invented a past, that was part of it, you did up the documentation. But that’s old-fashioned now. These days the investigators go legal all the way down, birth to dying days—farm to table, as they say. But for me it was easier to have nothing to do with it. Captain Nemo style, submerge and emerge and resubmerge, let the water close over your head, sink thousands of leagues, leave only a ripple.

  Q: So you realized they weren’t us.

  A: Yeah. Now I knew who they were. I’d been hearing about these two, and they looked exactly like that in those uniforms, like postal workers come to deliver the mail.

  Q: You had been hearing about them, though you were “off the grid.”

  A: I hear things. Don’t shut every faucet. Let one drip.

  Q: So what did you say to them?

  A: “You’re the auditors,” I said. “Okay.” Not what I expected, but no doubt we all expect different from what we find out in the river with the junk, expect different from the world and from ourselves. But we learn soon enough that expectation is for amateurs.

  “So you’ve gone postal,” I said. “I can respect that. Or at least relate to it. What do I have to do with it?”

  Then they piped up with their plan. Empty a farm, they explained for a while.

  “That,” I said, “is the weirdest idea I have ever heard.”

  The thin one did a thing where she looked around and said, “I doubt that.”

  Q: Did they say how they would do it?

  A: That’s what I said. “How are you going to pull off a stunt like that?”

  The bigger one swiped off her hat. Dropped it on the table between us. “We’re going to pick them up and carry them out,” and I said, “Why?” and she said, “What kind of question is that?” and I said, “If you can’t answer it, what are you coming to me for?” and she said, “Why would I be here if I didn’t have an answer?”

  The thin one shot down her rum.

  “All right,” I said. “How many investigators do you think you’ll need?”

  “You tell us.”

  “How are you going to transport all those birds?” I said.

  “Are you going to answer questions or ask them? Because so far you’re wasting our time.”

  I said, “What makes you think you’re not wasting mine? Hey, you came to me.” I stood up. “Get out.”

  Q: At which point they left?

  A: No, no, I got up to get the rum bottle. I poured us out another round. Old habit. The hostess’s version of “keep your hands where I can see them.” I sat back down and we were all a little calmer, Roy crawling on the back of my chair.

  “Do you have a farm in mind?” I said.

  “Yeah,” they said, “we do,” and they didn’t say anything else.

  We sat there and I let it wash over me, the whole story. I knew. Green Farm. I could feel the air pass by me, the water swish around me and away, the sky go by, as if I’d come to a heavy stop and the earth had moved on without me.

  Q: We’re familiar with the sensation.

  A: Yeah, Dill’d gotten me good this time. I’d followed the bread crumbs of his mind. It isn’t as though it had never occurred to me, of course.

  They were waiting for me to answer. “To Dill,” I said at last and raised my glass. They looked uncomfortable. “What, did he think I wouldn’t know how you got here?”

  “Well, we …” said one, but the other stayed her with her hand. “So you’ll do it?”

  I set down my glass. “What happens to the birds?”

  “That part is still a little vague,” one admitted.

  “You decide,” said the other.

  I windmilled my hair into a bun, considered.

  “I don’t know about this message bullshit. Birds are freedom and Helen of Troy and all that.”

  “Free the birds,” said one.

  “We can work on the message,” said the other.

  “No message,” I said. “You take a chicken you tell no one. It’s between you and the chicken and God. It’s the only thing I like about you two and that foolishness you’ve been up to in the henhouses.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Look,” I said, “it’s my farm. My family. We take them. That’s what we do it for. We don’t do it so Americans can watch us on YouTube.”

  “But isn’t that the point?” they said.

  “The point is not to use them. For a single fucking hour. Is it so much to ask? Not for their eggs, not to eat, not to make a point,” I said. “Agreed?”

  They agreed.

  I put another rum in their hands and we moved out to the deck and watched the sun drop. The birds turned in irregular angles above us, Roy watching from the ledge. The auditors pulled their hats over their ears. It was getting cold.

  On the other side of the riverbank the lost civilization begins. It melts into the trees and spreads for two miles, the village evacuated after the contamination. Rebar and concrete, rotten wood, all the categories of the plastic family, plaster walls caved in, sidewalks broken and buckled, piles of bricks. There’s evidence of a former pier—cement posts and a few splintered planks.

  My house looks like a waterlogged ship dragged to the far bank and left there, half-submerged, a roof of tin strips. It’s part forest, part trash heap, nest-like, made from the junk I found there. It blends into the landscape like certain animals and insects. It imitates its surroundings. Architects strive lifetimes for as much. “No house here,” the visitor thinks, scanning the shore. “Wait, someone’s in there. Look, there’s a light.” Wet leaves, slow-moving water, a few trees that twist against a red sky. The contamination tints the air at a certain hour. My house leans as if it’s toppling into the river, as if it’s gripping the earth, barely hanging on. Like a photo snapped at the moment of landslide.

  But what were we talking about?

  Q: The auditors.

  A: Oh yeah. Would it be all right if we took a short break? I’d like to stretch my legs, such as they are.

  Q: Certainly.

  A: Thanks. Ah, that’s better. Will this take much longer? I should get going—

  Q: You’ve got time.

  A: Where the hell are we anyway?

  Q: So how long did the auditors stay at your “house”?

  A: A while. Let’s see. First I fixed their shoes.

  Q: Their shoes?

  A: Yeah, I said, “Tell you what, you two. We have got to do something about those shoes. You can’t wander around the farms like that.”

  “What’s wrong with our shoes?” they said.

  “Those soles look like they just walked out of a factory. Anyone could find you with a shoe like that. What you need is a good file to scrape the soles off.” And I showed them the bottom of my Mary Janes.

  I went to the toolbox to see what I could find. It was dimming by that time, night birds, dropping sky. The wind was rising, the cold settling in, Roy tucking himself into his spot. I knew they had to leave soon or they’d paddle through the puddle dark and maybe never find their way and be lost forever. But I kept them around a little. I prefer to go solo these days, but I made an exception.

  Q: All right, so you “fixed” their shoes?

  A: Yeah, I filed them
and put in a few notches so they wouldn’t slide. I could fix yours too, if you have any tools.

  A WOMAN WITH LONG DARK HAIR wearing a checked dress came up the driveway on foot. She rolled a small suitcase. The dogs met her on the path. She leaned down to greet them, then walked on. At the other end of the drive, a man was sitting on the porch. He had reddish hair and boyish dimples that appeared when he squinted at the figure approaching. He had his feet up but when he saw her, he let them drop. Then he seemed to change his mind and put them up again. He held that position until the woman arrived at the bottom of the porch steps. She let go of the handle of her suitcase. The dogs lined up behind her.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I’m weighing.”

  “I heard you weighed. I heard we’re on.”

  “The scale is too big. We can’t plan it ourselves.”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “Oh, no way. No.”

  “He’d know if it could be done.”

  “We aren’t getting the fucking band back together. He was never really part of it.”

  “He was never not part of it.”

  The man said no, the woman said yes. And the man said no, and the woman said yes. Like the old days.

  They both turned their faces to the sky.

  SPARROWS OVERHEAD. A flock circling in uneven loops. Is it instinctual, these ovals, these spirals, this retracing of one’s steps? Do all animals, even all natural phenomena, move like that, have this in common, where everything you see is moving, but nothing is getting anywhere? The solar system, time, water as it falls from the sky and rises back into it, birth and death, work and home, a father and a son tossing a ball back and forth on the lawn, chicken, egg, chicken, egg, numbers looping back to the original ten over and over with the numeral furthest to the left joining in late and slow like an old farmer going up and down the hospital corridor with his walker after a stroke. Only the universe is a long breath out.