by Demers, Matt
“Pa?” Jenni shouted, but the only response came from bullfrogs and crickets. God was doing Good Work, she supposed. About darn time.
Jenni stood, reached in her pajama pockets, took out the vial and poured the remaining holy water into the swamp. She tugged on the rope to pull the green two-seat canoe closer. She got in.
She barely registered the details of the swamp as they appeared under the cloudless sky: dry tamarack trees stood in bunches, some 150 years old, their dead needles strewn over sludge. Fungus hung over everything, feeding off dead branches and scaling shrubs and sedges.
She paddled to where the muck was thinnest; where spots of black water appeared beneath moss. She steered around clumps of rotting cattails and entered a small opening between two thickets.
“The eye of the bog,” Jenni said to herself. The sludge billowed thickest here. If anywhere could kidnap a two-hundred pound man it would be this deep spot. The eye.
She saw him — fifty feet out. His eyes shimmered even though the shadow of an elm tree shrouded him. Jenni’s heart thumped.
“Papa?” She called and sent the boat in closer. “Why do your eyes glow like that, Pa? Even in the dark?”
His mouth hung agape, his eyes starred, but didn't see. Dried sludge ran from his tongue down to where the muck began at his chest.
“I should’ve known you’d be here, Pa. Under your favorite tree.”
Bogs didn’t take kindly to elm trees, but this one defied all odds. A Siamese, the main trunk split into two just above the waterline. Pa always claimed it was magic.
She stopped the boat three feet from his face. She recognized his shirt, the LaSalle Bowling short-sleeve shirt he’d worn the day he fled.
“I feel it, Jenni,” he told her that day. “I feel it through my bones and in my toes. I won’t let it happen to us. I won’t.”
He fled that night. Said he’d come back once he “put it right.”
“Did you put it right, Papa? Did you pray the Lord sends His angels?”
She reached over the side of the boat to touch his neck with her middle and index finger. His pulse felt faint, yet steady. He’d been living off bog water for at least seven days.
A clicking noise escaped his throat.
“Pa? You still with us?”
She pulled him closer to the boat by an arm, and then, with, balancing carefully, she got hold of both of his arms. She draped them over the canoe seat. Water ran from his soaked sleeves and puddled between the wooden ribs of the boat. She pressed his hands against the seat and reached for the worn scrap of painter that usually kept the boat fastened to the dock. Pa’s arm slipped and his body nearly slithered back into the water.
She lassoed his wrists and lashed them to the seat and then scooted to the opposite end of the canoe. She wedged the blade of the paddle between the twin trunks of the elm for torque.
She couldn’t see in the shadows, but didn’t need to. She shoved hard, and the boat strained against Pa. She took a breath, re-set the paddle, and pushed against the elms like she was birthing another child. Papa came out from the mud with an audible Foooop! It sounded like a wine cork popping, only squishier.
Jenni paddled back with her father in tow. The canoe tilted toward her father, but Jenni balanced the boat, paddling deep and strong and they slowly made their way back. She continued past the dock, beaching the canoe on the lawn.
“I’m strong, but not that strong, Pa,” Jenni said with a smile. She needed help to get his large, water-logged body onto dry land.
Her back reminding her of how much work she'd done, she hobbled up the wet lawn to the garage. She started the Ford F-250 and steered it onto the lawn. It wasn't much of a lawn, anyway. Not with all this dry weather.
She stopped the truck at the edge, set the parking brake, and got out. She ran the winch cable out and looped it around the bow thwart, snapping the latch back to the cable. She walked back to the winch and flipped the switch.
The winch pulled the canoe and Pa came with it.
“Sleep…” His voice was gravelly.
“Here? Not much choice. I can’t drag you up them patio steps, Pops.” Jenni turned to grab the emergency blanket from the truck bed, but something growled; a thick gurgling growl from deep down somewhere, where even the grinning moon could shine no light.
“Pa?” Jenni called out. She grabbed the blanket and rushed back to him. She undid the painter and laid him in the recovery position like she learned in the “Super Moms!” home safety workshop and draped the blanket over him.
“I’d get help, but those men can’t be trusted. They want to take us from our home. You don’t want that. Do you, Pa?”
Jenni left him there and rested for a moment on the patio steps. She laid her head on her knees. It felt good. “I won't move until you do, Pa,” Jenni assured him.
She gazed at the sky for a long while, until she saw a line of thick, low clouds roll out from the tree line. Finally, rain. And not a moment too soon. She watched the clouds roll closer and anticipated the first sign of daylight, but after watching the night sky for so long, her eyes grew heavy. Before Jenni realized sleep had begun to take her, she dozed.
***
The sobbing rain woke Jenni. The sky showed no sign of daybreak and that disheartened her. Things seemed more manageable in daylight. The sounds of her children playing, fighting, or making a mess brought a sense of false normality. Rose and Alex adjusted well to this new world, in a way that only children adapt to the unexpected.
She blinked, picked her head up off her lap and glanced over at the canoe. Pa sat in the rear seat, his face painted in darkness.
“Pa?” Jenni asked.
“J...Jenni,” her father called back.
Jenni had tried to keep faith that Pa would “put things right,” but she realized then that part of her was resigned to his leaving. Jenni bolted from her resting spot and sprinted toward her father, grateful for the patience she kept to wait it out.
“I knew you’d come back to us,” she lied and wrapped her arms around his massive frame. He reeked of must and wet soil, but Jenni didn’t care.
Her father hugged her back, but it wasn't the type of hug she remembered. His hugs almost squeezed the breath out of her. Jenni's children complained that Mommy’s did the same. This hug was much softer, but not sentimentally so. No, this hug was indifferent. Cold even. Jenni didn’t know hugs could be cold. Not until that moment.
“Jenni?” Pa said to Jenni, their arms still around each other.
“Yes, Pa?” But Jenni didn't want to know.
“I've seen things Jenni. Things deep down inside. Things I never, ever, want to see again.”
Jenni let her arms drop to their sides and she slid along the edge of the canoe to put distance between them.
“Papa? What are you talking about?”
“Jenni, you have to listen to me. I’m fighting it, Lord knows I am, but it’s a losing battle.”
He talked with the same concerned tone the time he warned her of the Peeping Tom living across from Sacred Heart. Tal was it? Tal Black? It didn’t matter.
“I’m one hair’s width away from being lost completely,” Pa continued. “So you need to listen and do exactly what I say.”
“Pa, can't we talk about this inside —”
“For Christ sake’s Jennifer, listen!” Her father roared. Pa never spoke the Lord’s name in vain. She looked into his eyes. He’d aged ten-fold since last they spoke. There was something ancient about them, as if he indeed saw things.
“I don’t have long now; so, Jenni, you listen and you listen good.”
Her father spoke with the authoritative tone she hadn’t heard for twenty years or more.
“Go into the basement and grab the key to the gun safe—“
“No, Papa I won't —“
“Jenni, if you want to save your father’s soul, you’ll do it. You’ll do it before it’s too late.”
***
Jenni opened the front door and
stumbled through the kitchen. Her elbow hit a mug on the counter; it fell and shattered. She felt drunk with grief.
“Mama?” Alex called from the basement. Jenni bit down on her sobs. She opened the basement door. The keys and the safe waited for her down there.
Better leave the lights off.
“It’s just me honey,” Jenni called from the top step. “Go back to sleep.”
“Rose is hogging all the blankets,” Alex complained. Jenni returned a nervous laugh.
“Share, Rose. You’re a big girl.” The words came automatically. Jenni kept her left hand on the banister until her foot touched the basement floor. She shuffled in small steps with her hands outstretched until she felt the wood-paneled wall. She walked along it, past the cheap plastic picture frames and acrylic rendition of the Last Supper, until she touched the edges of the pine-veneer dartboard cabinet.
Jenni stopped. Her hands ran along the cabinet face and across the Woodhouse family crest. Her fingers searched along the cabinet’s top edge. She could barely reach. Her fingertips felt, collecting a thick layer of sooty dust until it finally touched what Jenni hoped wasn't there — the gun safe key.
She grabbed it and felt for the wall again, and continued along in the pitch black.
“Ma? Are you still down here? What are you doing?” Rose asked her.
“I'm looking for my glasses, Rose. Now go back to sleep.”
“Your glasses? Why don't you turn the light on?”
“Get to sleep, Rose, I mean it.”
Her daughter whispered under her breath and then hushed.
Jenni trotted until she reached the back corner. She shuffled to the right and, knowing it was close, dreaded the feel of the cold steel cabinet.
Her fingertips eventually grazed the smooth exterior of the gun safe. She felt the keyhole. If Rose suspected that Jenni was getting the gun there would be no convincing her otherwise. Jenni was far from a good liar.
The key met the keyhole and Jenni twisted the key slowly. The metal latch squeaked. Jenni hoped it sounded like the click of their rusted plumbing.
The door propped open and Jenni reached in for the rifle. Her fingers felt the frayed sling and grasped the butt. She grabbed the icy barrel with her other hand and removed it from its sanctuary.
“It’s already loaded,” her father had told her moments earlier. The thought made a sob creep up from her chest, but she gulped it down.
She left the cabinet door open — Pa owned only one firearm — and made her way back along the wall, past the dartboard and Last Supper, until one foot caught the edge of the step. She almost toppled over, but stiffened one arm and grasped the third stair for balance. She ascended, afraid each creak would send her children scurrying up behind her. Easing open the door, she left the basement with the weapon firmly cradled in both arms.
***
Her father hadn’t budged from the canoe, but now his head hung low, as if staring in his lap contemplating.
“Pa?” Jenni called. The rain came hard now, and the wind picked up a knot. Beads of water dripped from the tip of Pa’s straight grey hair.
“Papa!” Jenni screamed.
His head jerked up and they gazed at each other silently. Something came over Jenni, her anger a ball of heat flung from a catapult. Anger toward her father for being weak. For wanting to leave his family, giving in.
That’s not how he raised Jenni.
She was raised a fighter. Be it boys on the wrestling mat, or the men who insisted on kicking them out of their home, Jenni fought.
“If you’re so damn set on ending your life...” Jenni shouted. “Then you do it!” Jenni threw the rifle to the dirt. It landed with a thud on the lawn between them. They stared at it for a while, two stubborn Greenville mules.
“You're right, Jenni,” his father admitted. It took a lot for Pa to admit wrong.
“You know what I saw, Jenni?” Her father whispered. She could hardly hear him over pelting rain and roaring wind. “You know what I saw those nights alone in the eye?”
Jenni drooped her head and cried with the storm. She shook her head.
“Listen to me, girl,” he snapped.
Jenni looked up and her father's eyes shone brighter still, two gold coins ablaze in the night.
“I saw you and the children.”
Jenni’s cries tremored across her body. Because she knew. By now, wasn’t it obvious?
“What were we doing?” Jenni asked her father. “What did you see us doing that you’ve come to tell me?” Her sobs became wails. Her father raised her tough, but not tough enough.
“You and the children weren’t doing anything, Jenni,” he said and grinned. He rose to his feet, imposing as he’d ever been.
“You weren’t doing anything at all. You were dead.”
#
CHAPTER 5
From the Inside Out
The three rows of campers at Mac’s stood in almost total darkness. James and Gaffer sat at the foldaway table, safe from the storm inside the Coleman pop-up camper. Storms relaxed James — the smell of ozone and soil, the pitter-patter of rain hitting the fiberglass exterior, the sour, acidic mist trickling through the screening. It reminded him that despite everything, they still had shelter.
“How’s Timmy doing?” Gaffer asked.
James pinched the last capsule from the table and placed it in his pill divider. His supply stood on its last legs.
“You know, still spreading the love. The pain’s manageable.”
“Bullshit. I hear you moan in your sleep. If we’re going to John Hopkins, we best go soon. Before you try offing yourself again.”
James smudged imaginary dirt on the table with a thumb. “Didn’t think anyone read that last email.”
Gaffer pointed to a thin stack of papers on the counter. “More than once, I’m afraid. Read it two hours before losing the internet that day. Surprised you didn’t notice the print-out.”
Chemo had done a number on his brain, mostly in the form of attention to small detail. But now that he saw it, James recognized the font. Friends and family wanted health updates and emails seemed the easiest way to give his prognosis and eventually, a suicide note. He wondered if anyone else read it before the world went wrong.
“Even if I find a cure, what’s next, Gaff? We got no kids, no family.”
“We get that boat those army boys abandoned on Belle Isle. We swim for it. You get over your fear of the water and we head to Crystal Bay. Start over.”
They both knew Greenville’s residents could never leave. Some of them never lived anywhere else. The guilt of leaving them held James and Gaffer back so far. That, and James’ health. James felt an odd sort of comfort in that. His cancer was a good excuse not to face his fear, which wasn’t the water itself.
It was never really about the water. It was the thought of seeing her face, that familiar, beloved face again. She’d had Phil Rettig’s eyes, and she had stared up at the empty Asian sky in his dreams for years,
“They better get their asses out there,” Gaffer said. He was mulling over his shredded tobacco, scraping it into thin lines with the edge of his Best Buy Rewards card. Post-Escalation, everyone in Greenville slept light, listening for the uneven chug of generators running low on fuel or the sound of acid rainfall, the survivors bolted out of bed from the slightest noise..
James eyed the green parka hanging from the curtain rod.
“If we’re the ones pullin’ the graveyard shift each night, they damn well better throw tarp,” Gaffer exclaimed. “Catchin’ a cold over a bit of rust isn’t worth it either. Not for you.”
James frowned at the wrought-iron chairs catching rain beneath the light of their trailer window. He almost died salvaging them from the aquatic center. He’d been rummaging through the center’s supply closet when a Tweak lifeguard wielding an orange spine board had come racing through the atrium. James’ Desert Eagle made short work of him.
“I tried to reason with him,” James had told Gaffer
the night it happened. Gaffer’s nephew was a lifeguard at the aquatic center before the Escalation started. “But he didn’t stop. It was me or him.”
Gaffer squinted out the window as the rain hissed down. “Here they are.”
Kerosene lanterns flickered to life inside the other campers. Doors opened and light stabbed the darkness as men and women raced into the pouring rain with garbage bags and tarps. The really young ones weren’t likely to leave their bunks, but everyone else helped cover the bicycles, generators, propane tanks, lamps, folding grills, and anything else that rusted.
Gravel crunched beneath feet as shadows worked around the lot. Lanterns bobbed in the darkness, illuminating hoods and parka sleeves. Distant thunder rolled.
“No lightning,” Gaffer observed.
“Storm must be well off. Guess this rain ain’t the least of it,” James responded.
Gaffer sighed and grabbed for the window zipper. “My stash is getting wet.” He zipped the plastic covering over the screen.
The sound of zippers made James think of the Boy Scouts. Mornings waking up in a tent, taking in the smell of smoldering campfires, the sound of the scout leaders unzipping lunch coolers and crackling Styrofoam as they opened packs of breakfast sausage. It seemed so far off now, like someone else's memory.
Another loud boom crashed in the night.
“That ain’t no thunder,” James said.
“I bet neither was the first one,” Gaffer added.
Instinctively, James snatched the Desert Eagle pistol from under the pillow and raced out the camper door. On his heels, Gaffer carried the 12-gauge. Without a word, James took point while Gaffer slid to his left flank.
Patches of window light shone on the gravel parking lot. Shadows rushed across the sparse squares of light.. A voice bellowed from the opposite end of the lot. More followed.
“Can’t see three feet in front of me.” Gaffer spoke quietly.
Beneath the last camper in the row, two bodies wrestled over a rifle in the window light. James recognized the tall, meaty silhouette of Delores. And the other was big Paul Woodhouse, the old-time Greenville bowling champ. He’d been missing for a while.