McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

by Michael Chabon

  There’s a little sort of porch in front of the cave. I watch her till she’s out of sight, lumpy little figure, accepting everything that comes along—though what else can children ever do?

  I sit down on a rock and look out at the mountains—for once without falling asleep. A long time ago these peaks used to be the border—a no-man’s-land several miles long between my country and theirs. But no need for any borders now. It’s all theirs. The beauty is still as it was and will be no matter who owns it. Does it matter? Grandma and Loo? Why do I even wonder what side they’re on?

  The search parties below have already camped for the night. I see their smoke.

  I start to chant to myself as I did when I was a child locked in solitary. I rock back and forth. I remember the cell, too small for a man, but big enough for me. I remember my classmates called me Rubbish all the time and I called myself that to myself. If I slipped I’d look at my feet and call them Rubbish. If I dropped something I’d call my hands Rubbish. Rubbish, I said about myself.

  My parents were murdered before my eyes and I, taken to an enemy school to be educated as one of them. I didn’t even know their language. Even when I began to understand, I refused to speak it. I didn’t know their food. I finally got hungry enough to eat it. I profited by that education. I got to know them as I used to know my own. Better in fact. I almost forgot my own language. I almost forgot our ways. I was told my people were a lower order of civilization, but I couldn’t see much difference.

  In the beginning of military school I ran away a lot. Escaping wasn’t hard; it was not being found afterward that I never managed. The enemy was everywhere. After four or five times it seemed useless. The punishment was solitary confinement. (They don’t believe in hitting children. Besides, we were not to be marked in any way.) I burned my uniform three times, but there were plenty more. After a while I obeyed. It seemed a waste to go to all that trouble of running away for nothing.

  I tested myself every chance I got. Heat, cold, fire, hunger, thirst . . . On our matches, I stood out in storms and let icy rain trickle down the back of my neck while the others took shelter in a shed. I wondered how high a ledge I could jump from. (I found out by breaking my ankle.) I tested myself in the cold until I almost lost my toes. After that I realized I might go too far, cripple myself and defeat my own purposes.

  Being in solitary . . . that was a test, too, and I passed it to my own satisfaction. How I managed was through chants and songs. I chanted myself up into the trees I used to climb. I chanted to make myself into a cat. I practiced stalking the mice in my cell. When I finally caught one I made it into a pet. First I named it Sang, and then I named it Sans.

  I never cried. Crying was a waste of valuable energy that I needed to fulfill my promises. My father would have told me that.

  But then I realized there was a better way than all this escaping. (My father would have said that, too.) I did as I was told. I spoke their language when called upon, I excelled at everything, and became, at the age of twenty-eight, their youngest general ever. Years later, I fled and became one of ours.

  They trapped us in our caves. Killed us except for me. I was saved for worse things than mere death.

  We had learned to laugh at death. (They taught us that.) Death holds no terror, but we didn’t learn to laugh at the torture of our loved ones, therefore I have no loved ones, neither wife nor children. After they killed my parents, my aunts, and my grandmother, I made sure there was nobody else, ever, to take from me.

  In those early days I fell in love so often I thought to change my plans and be their general after all. I would marry and live on the hills above the towns, but I stayed true to the vows I made when I was nine.

  At our graduation from military school, a eulogy full of kindness and humor so that we not only laughed at death, but laughed along with the dead. Their dead were to be my dead, and yet I thought only of my own. Even though I could hardly remember them alive, I thought only of their deaths.

  It was hard keeping to my resolutions when I got to know the enemy. I began to care for them—those who treated me well, though many didn’t, but I had knelt by my parents, covered with their blood, and swore . . . not to any God, but to myself—to the man I would become. I said, “You! You, as a man. You will remember this right here and now. No other thing will ever be as clear as this.” And that has turned out to be true. I’ve remembered nothing more clearly than the blood, and the gurgling and coughing and the jerking back and forth of dying.

  I ran, and thought to hide in a closet full of my father’s uniforms as if they might save me, but they guessed where I was. I bit them, so then they put me in a dusty bag that smelled bad. I remember the taste of their sweaty, salty wrists.

  Loo and Grandma? I wonder if they even know which side they’re on. This side of the mountain . . . no one was sure who it belonged to, but the other side used to belong to the scattered armies of my childhood. My home was over there somewhere. I wonder if I would recognize it? I wonder if it still stands?

  Ever since I was taken away, I haven’t had much to do with any but military people. Even my women were soldiers. I don’t know what civilians are like. And I’ve never had anything to do with children, though I guess we all remember how it was to be one. Except I doubt if my memories pertain to many other children. I hope they don’t. Loo is ten, the age I was when I first escaped and was recaptured and put in solitary as punishment.

  I look out from the porch of my cave. I can hear the stream rushing down. I can see it sparkling below if I lean over the cliff. The sound will soothe me as I sleep. I begin to chant. I chant, You, and Loo, and owl. Owl meant ouch in my childhood language, and row, row, row, meant remember, remember. I chant You, you, you, as I used to chant it to my grown-up self. But I also chant, But, but, but. . . .

  But . . . There were no buts in my chant language back then. But . . . I’ve seen plenty of blood on both sides. But . . . Isn’t it best to look forward? See to it that children, and this one child, Loo, never see such things as I did? But . . . She already has. Those men’s clothes behind the door. Next time she comes up I’ll ask her about herself. I wonder if she’d like a doll. I have a kitchen knife. I look around for some wood.

  She comes the next morning, bringing fried rattlesnake and dried crawdads. She sneaks in. I had my eyes shut, my face to the rising sun. I was chanting, Jolly, jolly, joll, joll. My secret words for my aunt June Harvest. When I open my eyes, there’s Loo, watching. She’s not surprised. Not wondering that I’m sitting cross-legged, nodding, muttering to myself.

  I show her the doll. She receives it as though she’s never known about dolls before. Perhaps she hasn’t. She doesn’t say a word, but I see her pleasure on her face. How nice to give something and have it so well received.

  I sit on my porch stone. There’s room for two. “Come, sit with me. Eat some yourself.”

  “I’ve had.”

  She examines the doll as I eat.

  I had made it a dress out of pieces of the clothes I’d stolen. I hooked the arms and legs on with threads. “When I get some fishing line I’ll put the arms and legs on in a stronger way. I’ll find better cloth for a nice dress.” (Too bad I hadn’t saved a little piece of my orange suit.)

  “I like this cloth,” she says, even though it’s a piece from the leg of my long underwear.

  We sit quietly for a while; she turns the doll this way and that. I did a good job carving the face. It has a nice smiling look. I was always good at such things.

  And then I ask what I’ve been waiting to ask. “Your father? Are those his clothes hanging behind the door? Is he all right?”

  She starts to cry but turns away and stops herself.

  I say, “I know. I know.” And I do know. I wonder if, as I did, she had to watch it as it happened. I wonder if I dare reach out to her. I’m not used to touching people. My awkwardness would show all the more clearly to a child.

  But she comes to me of her own accord, leans against m
e, still not crying. We hold each other. All I can think to say is, “I know, I know, I know,” though I wonder, What good does that do? It’s like another of my chants. So I chant, I know, and rock her.

  I can feel there’s not much to her. Skin and bones. Take off all these clothes and she’d look like a wet cat inside there. Grandma is probably about the same under her wooly petticoats and shawls. I could easily see to it that they got enough to eat. If I’d be let, I could live up here for the rest of my life. Wood gatherer, gatherer of acorns and pine nuts, trap setter, fisherman . . . I could make a bigger, better doll. I’d look out at mountains. I never knew . . . or never let myself know how much I’d like a quiet life.

  Then I see the search and capture squads on the path below, three groups of three. They’ve passed the cottage. I’m afraid for Grandma. I don’t think they would hurt an old woman, but Grandma might have said something, or there may have been some sign that I’d been there. Even a larger woodpile might be suspicious. She’d be in as much trouble as I am.

  Loo feels my fear. I must have suddenly held her tighter without knowing it. She turns around and looks, too. Then looks back at me as if I’d know what to do. “Loo, is there a back way?”

  But she should stay up here, safe. She wouldn’t. She should lead me. “I’ll go down with you, but first I have something that needs doing.”

  At least they’ll have a harder time coming beyond this point. Why didn’t I think of this before?

  We had brought him up as one of our own. Spared no expense. And now look. He has worn us out. Fooled us. Played tricks. As if climbing a mountain peak were a game and he won. They say, Once a savage, always a savage. And now yet another game. He has rolled boulders down and started a landslide. Our second team had to rescue our first team out from under gravel and dust. It could have been worse; they only received a few bruises. But that slide shut off the upper part of the trail. That will be proof he’s gone on higher. We’ll drop our squads off above the slide area.

  There’s no trail as Loo leads me down a back way, so it’s hard. We scramble over rocks. Loo tears her skirt and unravels her knit petticoats. She’s upset by it. She says Grandma can’t see well enough to sew or knit anymore. I say I’ll repair them for her. She says, “Men don’t sew,” and I say, “Many’s the time I’ve repaired my clothes myself. I’d have made the doll clothes better if I’d had a needle.”

  When we get almost to the hut it’s beginning to be twilight. We curve around to the side and see a guard. He’s across from the door partly hidden by a currant bush. Had we come straight in by the path he might have shot us.

  Loo wants to run right out but I hold her back. I clamp my hand over her mouth just in time to stop her yell. “Wait. One of us should stay a secret. I’ll find out if Grandma’s all right. You stay here.” I find her a good spot farther back. “We may need you later. You may have to rescue both of us.”

  I take off my cap so the guard will know it’s me. I give it to Loo. I was thinking she needed something to take care of, but all this time she’s been holding the doll, tight in her mitten. I had forgotten about it, but she hadn’t. I say, “Find it a name.” But she’s a child like I was a child so not a child at all, yet she hung on to the doll through all this scrabbling over rocks. Makes me think of my pet mouse. This last time in solitary I had not made a pet of any of the rats. I had not chanted and still I had escaped. Is that proof of the uselessness of chanting?

  I walk straight in from the path with no hat. By now it’s starting to get dark. The guard recognizes me with delight. He points the automatic straight at me.

  I say, “Hold it. Not as much of a reward for me dead. Where’s Grandma?”

  I don’t think any of his men are nearby. Why would they need more than one man to guard Grandma? Earlier we heard their copters dropping men off above my landslide. “You know all your teams are busy elsewhere.”

  He looks uncertain. He’s very young.

  Then we see rockets lighting up the sky far below us. I think: But there are no more armies. And then I think: Loo! Will she be frightened? By now it’s almost dark.

  The guard and I turn to look out at the sky, but I turn back before he does. I grab the automatic and use it to knock him down. I hold the butt against his throat. He chokes. I let up some. He gags.

  “Grandma!”

  When he tries to talk his voice is hoarse. I leaned too hard. Another little bit and his Adam’s apple would have pierced his esophagus.

  We are celebrating Victory Day with the usual cannon volleys, fireworks, and flag waving. Even though a most important enemy is still at large, no need not to celebrate. We are unlikely to be harmed by this single escaped general. We have taken down the WANTED notices. To us he is no more than a gnat, though vexatious. Some are laughing, enjoying the fact that one man has eluded us all this time. They are traitors. We are putting up new notices that say: NO LONGER WANTED.

  Winter is coming. The weather will worsen. We’ve postponed our search, perhaps until spring, perhaps forever.

  I had forgotten about Victory Day... Victory over us day. Not forgotten about it, but I’d lost track of time. I’ve had to celebrate it ever since military school. At least now I’m not forced to cheer and dance or wave a hated flag. I can yell my rage if I want to. I do. The soldier looks up at me terrified. I yell louder. I’ve not let myself do that ever before. I yell and then here’s Grandma hobbling out. I fall on the young man, the automatic hard between us. He doesn’t dare move. Then here’s Loo, holding my head. Still I yell. I roll away from the soldier and the gun. I have to stop yelling because I can’t breathe.

  Grandma has picked up the automatic. It’s clear she knows how to use it. She’s going to shoot. I’d try to stop her but I’m breathless. My first thought is: I’ll take the blame. I’m already blamed for many more things than I’ve done, anyway. One more won’t make a difference. I’m considered a killer though I’ve never even pointed a gun at anyone. When I was on their side I shot to miss and when I was on our side I was a general and didn’t have to shoot.

  The gun seems too heavy for her. Her aim wavers. It makes her look all the more dangerous. “Go home,” she says. Her old-crow voice is scary. “Home. I mean it.”

  It’s dark now but he goes—stumbling, tripping.

  I’m still panting—groaning at every breath as though I were in pain. Something has been let loose inside me.

  I never chanted except secretly to myself. I believe Loo is the only person who ever heard me. I’ve always wondered if chanting had anything to do with anything. As a child I thought it did. Escape always seemed so easy. I thought I’d done it with my songs. And sometimes after a good chant I thought, Any minute, people will come to rescue me. Even Aunt June Harvest would come, and she was dead with the rest. She’s the one started my chanting. I remember standing in her doorway listening. We were a family that didn’t believe in any of the old superstitions, but Aunt June Harvest believed things the rest of us didn’t or weren’t supposed to.

  As a child in solitary, I usually chanted up my father. I thought of him opening the door, letting in sunlight—Pada, in full dress uniform, bringing our kind of food. I shouted, “Pada!” Often, after chanting I knew all that I’d seen with my own eyes was false; there had been no deaths and my father was come to rescue me.

  I can’t breathe. Loo sits beside me, says, “Sang, Sang.” At first I think she must mean my pet mouse and then I remember I am Sang. She puts the doll in my hand, giving it back. I take it. I turn over onto my hands and knees, then hunker down. Even though I easily escaped this last time, I no longer think chanting has any effect on anything except for my own need to chant, yet I do it now. Though breathless, I chant. How, how, and, And. And, Row, Row. And Row begins to mean row indeed, instead of remember, remember, and I’m as if in our old flat-bottom boat on our pond with my little sister. My sister leans to pull at a water lily. Oar-locks creak. A red-winged blackbird clings to a reed. I hear the bird’s song. At firs
t so sweet and then loud and then much too loud. And then I must have passed out. That’s never happened before.

  I come to with Grandma rubbing snow on my face. Then she helps me turn over, raises my head, and holds tea to my lips. Loo and Grandma help me into my sleeping spot under the table. I shiver. They pile quilts on me. Loo puts the doll beside my pillow. I try to give it back but she won’t let me. I say, “I made it for you.” But then I let her. I sleep a sick sleep. Whenever I wake myself up with my yelling, they are there, Grandma in the rocking chair and Loo and the goats on the floor beside me.

  The celebration of Victory Day was a success. We had temporarily removed all the WANTED! DANGEROUS MAN AT LARGE posters. The mood was as it should be. We have made them forget that the General still eludes us. We shot into the air, but, as far as we know, all the bullets came down safely. We are pleased. We have toasted ourselves. “Long live and forever,” we said to each other, and “Victory Day throughout eternity.”

  Next I know good smells wake me. Grandma is baking an elderberry pie. I don’t wake up angry as I usually do even though at first I think Grandma is celebrating Victory Day, but she says it’s not to celebrate any victories; it’s for me. She says they haven’t had pie in a long time.

  “Which side?” I say, thinking to find out at last what side they’re on.

  “Just us,” she says, and then, “No sides. Lupine, snakeweed, fireweed people. Asters and rock fringe people.”

  The General is to be presumed dead. We’ll not waste any more resources hunting him. He’s no longer of any meaning. What army could he be the general of anymore? We’ll celebrate his death with another night of cannon volleys. The reward set aside for his capture is withdrawn and will revert back to the army, though, just in case, we’ll not publicize that it no longer exists. All the better if people think it’s still on.