We Leave Together

by J. M. McDermott

  She had rats because her little room was filthy all the time. She was too old and tired to clean it. She wrapped her arms in dirty bandages. She walked the halls and stared beautifully, terribly at the young men there. No one helped her, there.

  Once upon a time, young men would have killed each other to follow her into her little room.

  Now, there were rats.

  Jona passed this old woman’s open door. She sat on her dirty floor, looking up at him. He looked long enough to avert his eyes. He kept walking to Rachel’s door. His boots were in his hand so he wouldn’t stomp her awake with his footsteps. He didn’t know if Rachel was home or not. He picked her door open with a knife. He peered inside, at the demon’s child sleeping there, half in shadow and half in the sun of the open window. All thoughts of the hideous woman of the rats faded, for the horror of the rats was a mundane thing, and the beauty of his beloved resting there was the unspeakable beauty that had no place to him, in this city.

  Another memory rises, then.

  Outside, standing on the corner, a girl waited for her lover to return from the abbatoir. She smeared her skin in white chalk, like dusting herself in corpse lime. She did it to make her skin beautiful white, and to quiet her body’s smells. Her hair, all braided and smeared in greenish-hues from the lime, hung like vines from her ceramic face. Her dress was sewn like a quilt from scraps, but it fit her well.

  She was a dirty thing, wearing mud like it was her true skin and all that lime on top of it. She looked up into Jona’s eyes with no artifice to hide her contempt for him.

  And, she was a pretty thing.

  Someday the street-sweepers would come, the engineers with golden hammers, and the king’s men, and rat bite death and they’d scrape away all the things that made the girl beautiful.

  Until then, Jona walked past her. She was the queen of the corner and sitting in the only place she’d ever know.

  Her lover waved to her somewhere behind Jona. She left to kiss that man on the horizon, waving to him. She ran off past Jona’s eyes, into the crowd behind him, after her lover.

  Pup smacked Jona’s arm. “You hear something?”

  Jona’s attention returned to his job. His ear caught a sound bouncing around the narrow brick walls of alleys and small streets and crowded places. He gestured to the other King’s Man on that walkabout.

  Around a corner and around another corner and then one more, and all the bodies in the mud were swinging fists like monkeys in the animal Pits. A local stevedore gang fought kids in crowns. Grown men with hands like bags of meat swung at kids that had never had a real meal they hadn’t stolen. The kids climbed up and down the big brutes like apes climbing moving trees. They got thrown off. Little ones sat and cried. They clutched at their heads and twisted limbs.

  Pup reached for his bells.

  Jona stayed Pup’s hand with a touch. “We ring the bells over a turf war, they’re just going to fight somewhere else,” said Jona. “Just watch. Anybody gets killed, we roll the killer when they’re done.” Jona shouted at the crowd of men. “You hear me! You can fight with your fists, but I see anybody swinging bats or teeth, I’ll roll you now and save ourselves the paperwork!”

  Pup had his bat up and out. “We just let ’em fight?”

  A man peeled a boy off his back, and threw the boy into a wall. The boy made this sound like dice rattling in a cup. His broken ribs showed through the holes in his shirt, like kindling wood in a skin bag. He sat there, clutching at his chest, trying not to cry. He would not survive this wound, but he would survive long enough it wouldn’t count to Jona.

  Pup’s hand went for the bell in his pocket again.

  Jona snorted. “I’m no scrivener, Pup. You the one to scribe it for Calipari and me both.”

  That stopped Pup.

  Jona saw a shimmer of metal in the corner of his eye. A boy tugged the crown from his head, and raised the jagged teeth of the thing up like a lamprey’s jaw. He swung down once, not strong enough to draw blood. He pulled it up again, poised to strike harder with both hands.

  Jona jumped over broken boys in the battlefield. Jona plucked the crown like plucking fruit. “I said no teeth!” shouted Jona, “That means these crowns of yours, too! These’re all teeth!” Jona leaped back over the broken boys to Pup.

  Jona handed the crown to his fellow. “What do you think?”

  Pup had a flask in one hand and the crown in the other. He paid more attention to the flask. “I think the big fellows are winning this day,” he said. He pointed at the boys that had fallen with the flask.

  Jona spat. “You a pup and you ain’t pulling for your own? I’ll put three on the little ones,” he said. “Lots of them.”

  “I’ll take your money, Lord Joni.”

  Jona shouted into the crowd. “You’re taking forever! Hurry up!”

  One of the Pluckies chuckled through a bloody nose. “You want in on this?” he said, to Jona.

  “If I come in there, I’m fighting with the kids on account of it ending faster that way, plus I got money on them. Too many of them kids with crowns. Lots of swings of the bat. You and your fellows’d go down like broken eggs and I don’t break a sweat.”

  A stevedore collapsed under the weight of the boys on his back. He crawled a bit and tried to roll. Kids jumped on his head with bare feet.

  “Don’t just jump on him!” shouted Jona. “Get the next one down!”

  The kids listened. The new weight on the back of the nearest stevedore wore the weary fighter to his knees. Kids kicked at his face with their bare feet. They pounded on him hard.

  Pup handed Jona the flask. “Put this in your mouth and maybe you don’t help any more. You know those kids are going to be in for the real trouble if they take anything pink. They got crowns to mark ’em, too. Don’t help them. You’re rolling them into the canal, and what they ever do to you?”

  Jona took the flask, but didn’t drink. “You care about the mudskippers, now? Where’d those crowns come from, anyhow? I don’t know anything about crowns.”

  Another giant tumbled down under the weight of children.

  Pup watched with wide eyes. The children jumped on top of the fallen fighter’s body, grinding their heels like making meat.

  Jona shouted at them. “That’s enough on that one!”

  Some of the kids listened. Some didn’t.

  “Pup,” he said. Jona whipped his bat from his belt fast, and swung it backhand in the same motion. Two kids tumbled off like broken crates.

  The one they saved was the stevedore with the bloody nose who had spoken earlier. “Bunch of dirty rats!” he snarled.

  Jona handed the man the flask. “Drink up,” said Jona, laughing, “You’ll need your strength to live with the shame. I know I’m telling this one to everyone I know about you going down to a couple kids in crowns. I’ve seen ’em around, but I never saw them all together like this. Looks like something we should know about, don’t it?”

  “These kids, they think they’re something now.” He took the flask slowly with a battered hand. He drank. He gave the flask back to Jona. “You tell Calipari anything goes missing, it’ll be on his head what gets done about it. Lucky we weren’t carrying anything pink. They thought we were. Mudskippers need to learn their place. There’s more of us than them, once we get all together. And you know we will.”

  Blood was smeared all over the brass of the flask. He took another drink, then handed it back.

  The kids didn’t linger to drink with the King’s Men. They gathered the wounded, adjusted their crowns. Jona tried to stop one or two and ask them about the crowns, but none stuck around to chat. Jona didn’t really care to fight kids about a question like that. Where they got the crowns was not as important as them having the crowns, and fighting smugglers with them on their heads. Calipari would want to know about that. New gangs meant fighting over turf, bodies dropping into the canal. Both the king of the day and the king of the night preferred an orderly street for the business at hand.r />
  “We should have grabbed one of them,” said Pup. “Right by the ear and take him in. Little mice got no business fighting dogs.”

  ***

  Later, much later, Jona slipped away, telling the King’s men stories about a birdie singing a song about the kids with crowns, maybe, and no one believed him. King’s men laughed too loud about this bird’s particular tailfeather and about this bird’s song that sounded like moaning. Jona muttered at them and wandered off to Rachel’s building.

  (He walked past the old woman in the rat-infested room. He averted his eyes.)

  He broke into Rachel’s room quietly. He had his boots off and in his hands so he wouldn’t wake her stomping across the floor. He stripped his uniform quietly. He spread it on the empty bed near hers, against the adjacent wall.

  He slid beside Rachel slowly to try not to wake her. She woke up, anyway. She adjusted herself in the bed to let him lie down with her.

  Rachel was warm in Jona’s arms. Damp sweat seeped out from the places where skin touched skin. Before her eyelids dropped again, he coaxed her voice from the dreaming.

  “What do you dream about when you dream about me?” he whispered.

  She answered quietly. “When it is a good dream, I dream of your breath moving in and out of your chest and my ear pressed against your chest, and the breath flowing in and out of both of us, and it is the same breath. Blood flows out of our skin, and into the other’s skin.”

  “Sounds like us doing this,” he said. “It’s good. I mean… I like this. I could do this more if you want.”

  “I think you are cursed, Jona, to live without dreams. I think it’s a horrible thing,” she yawned and her next word stretched like crying, “hooow… the demon stain has touched your life. It’s always horrible, but for you, you are truly cursed to live without dreams. Better to just have wings on your back instead of scars.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before.”

  “I have watched your life’s flower grow a while. Don’t speak again, Jona. Let me have my dreams. I have to work tonight. You should be at work.”

  “Work can wait. I get paid wherever I go. I’m on walkabout. I go anywhere, and do what I think is the king’s business.”

  “Please, Jona don’t be like this.”

  “I’ll be gone when you wake up. I just want to hold you a while.”

  “What will you do when my brother and I travel on?”

  “Don’t.”

  “It’s not a choice we make for ourselves. Leave, Jona. Don’t come back. We’re going to have to leave soon, he and I.”

  “Don’t joke about this. We’re it for each other. There’s no one else like us. There’s no one else. I really like you. I feel… I don’t know what I feel. I feel like I’m better with you. I feel like I’m not so…”

  She said nothing. She looked at him with tired eyes. She wasn’t really listening.

  He stood up from bed. He looked down at her. She stretched her arms over her head and rolled away from him. She placed them over her head and held very still, like sleeping.

  He put his boots on in the hall, and walked away. The sound of his boots on the wood was the loudest sound he had ever heard in his life.

  ***

  I thought we talked about this, Jona. I thought you wouldn’t come back. What if my brother shows up again?

  I’ll hide under the blanket until he passes out. I don’t want you to leave. Don’t leave. You’re safe here because I can protect you.

  I know that, Jona, but… Djoss could come back in the middle of the day. I honestly don’t know where he is. I don’t know what he’s doing. I’m frightened for him.

  When’s your next night off? We can go see a play. There’s a new play and it isn’t so serious. In fact, Geek said it wasn’t any good. Maybe you’ll like it.

  I won’t. There are only beautiful people or ugly people on the stage. There are never any people like us.

  They’re like you. You’re beautiful.

  Stage beautiful is different. I don’t want to see a play, Jona. You’re not listening to me. I wish you would listen to me. I have to leave the city soon.

  Want me to find him for you?

  You leave him alone.

  If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him and see if he wants to leave the weed behind for you.

  I said, leave him alone.

  I’m just saying that maybe your brother is caught in the pinks, and maybe you’ll spend the rest of your life dragging him out of it until his head is gone or maybe you spend it with me, instead, and we have a good life together.

  And what, then? What if we have a child?

  We won’t have a child.

  What if we do? We can’t keep it.

  We could. My parents kept me.

  No, we couldn’t. Jona, stay if you… I don’t want to argue about this. Just let me sleep. I’m so tired, Jona. I’m so tired. I wish you could just close your eyes and be still.

  ***

  My husband tells me what he learned from Calipari’s birds. I combine this with what I know from the ragpickers that used to be kids wearing crowns and with what we know from the push of the demon weed hookah on a brain. Djoss left the three crowns in a row and the whistling boys after Turco was killed. He walked where the weed took him.

  The pinks seeped into his blood. His skin began to thin like the hard users get. Eyes seeped water day and night. Clots of sleep dust needed to be brushed away all the time. They were pink clots, because they were tiny flecks of clotting blood.

  Djoss felt the emptiness of his pockets when his head was clear.

  Whistles in the streets from the ragpickers in crowns went ignored. Djoss walked past the boys with scrap metal crowns, and past the boys with none. Djoss went east of the Pens, then north into a cluster of nicer houses. He walked through the yards of craftsmen’s homes to the larger houses.

  The children here played the same games as the ones in the Pens, but here the children had clean shirts, and they didn’t curse when they lost a round of dice.

  Djoss saw a door hanging open with no one in sight. He stood still, looking slowly all around him.

  Up the street…

  Down the street…

  Around the yards…

  The door was still there, hanging open, and not a soul watched this one ragged man in the street.

  The pink emptiness behind his eyes pushed his feet towards the door.

  An old woman appeared in the yard from the open door, carrying baskets of laundry. Another woman swept the dust of the house out the open door.

  Djoss walked away. His hands shook. He didn’t know if this was excitement or unrequited addiction or both. He shoved them in his pockets to keep them still.

  A pink emptiness spread behind Djoss’ eyes like a butterfly.

  CHAPTER 2

  In the night, the streetlamps masked the stars with lamp light. Men in stilts walked the darkness with casks of oil on their back, to refill the lamps under the king’s command. In morning twilight, the lamps all burned down to nothing below the brightening sky.

  Flying insects flew into the lamps and died with screams that only my husband and I could hear.

  The king’s men on the night shift stumbled back to the station, bleary-eyed and pale. The day crew was there, bleary-eyed and tan. Sergeant Calipari called all the boys together before roll call, both day and night.

  Calipari raised his hands so people would stop jabbering and listen. “We all been hearing those bloody whistles,” said the sergeant, “We seen them running like little king’s men to their little bells. They’re wearing crowns from who knows where, now. Birdies’re telling me these ragpickers are getting in deep. Dumb little ragpickers don’t know the way of things in the Pens. There’s dozens of them. More than dozens. Too many. Gonna make trouble before they know what trouble they’re in.”

  The king’s men nodded. The night shift swayed their weight from one boot to the other. The day shift
fidgeted with clubs.

  “Thing is, I don’t want to walk about clubbing kids. Do you?”

  “Better to club than hook them dead into the sewers,” said the night sergeant.

  “That’s right. It’s better to try something first.” said Calipari, “First, I want to set a mouse trap and catch all we can, and ship ’em out to sea for the king.”

  Geek snorted. “You know someplace they all go and you not telling us?”

  Calipari looked at the other sergeant once, hard. The other sergeant coughed and looked at his hands.

  Calipari continued. “The gang’s wearing crowns, right? These kids’re dumb as pigeons. I figure we got ourselves a king making crowns, hiding somewhere. Who’s running the show? Who’s making the crowns? We catch one of them, sit ’em down and talk, and maybe there’s a center one and set mousetraps where we land, and we impress every one that shows their faces into the king’s navy instead of prison until the gang’s back breaks. I’m calling a hold on the clubs until we can find the maker. Any kid you catch with a crown, drag him in and he leaves that day for the navy.”

  Moaning, all around. The night sergeant shook his head. “Nicola, I wish you had talked to me on this first. That’s a lot of work for boys on walkabout. No purse cutters, no smugglers, no breaking up the fights? Just kids with crowns and shuffling them off to the king’s navy?”

  “Now,” said Calipari, “I don’t doubt that the might of the king’s men in the Pens District can come down like Elishta’s howling demons on those little mudskippers, bat in hand. But, if we club these boys out of the district, they’re just going to get clubbed out again and again until they fall in bad somewhere else. Then, these brats grow sour until they’re old enough to hang.” The sergeant paused here. He took a deep breath, like he was waiting for someone to say something. Nobody said anything. Calipari darted his eyes around the room. “Maybe, instead, we do a little looking around first,” he said. “Maybe we turn these kids’ lives into something better than doomed for hanging.”