by Owen Egerton
Things pop and bubble in the fire. The smoke is oily, greasy to the skin.
A family of campers hike by, calling from the road, “Smells delicious!”
And it does. A barbecue-sweet smell that makes my mouth water in spite of me.
I shift the coals and the logs, keeping the heat high, throwing in the Start ’Em Sticks and lighter fluid, keeping the orange and red moving over the charred body.
The sun sinks and Lyle is out of cigarettes and panicking.
“Go buy some,” I suggest.
“I spent all the money.”
“Well, it’s a good night to quit.”
“Fuck you.”
It’s a gray dusk that moves quickly into black, heralded by hoots and chirps. And the bugs swarm, mad for the smell, nipping and drinking and Lyle slaps himself over and over, leaving his neck red.
We sit silent as he drinks beer and I watch the fire. He grows bored and sick and crawls into the back seat of the Cadillac with the last beer.
And I’m alone with Sam’s body. So much less than Sam now. Less than Sam’s corpse, even. Just a loose combination of meat that once moved and talked. Charred flesh and burning gristle and parts I don’t recognize. I don’t move from the flames. I sit and watch the yellow and red and orange and the leather squeezing dry and black.
It’s dark outside the circle of firelight and bugs chant a rhythmic hum.
I know his questions are done. His thinking is done. His all is over. And I add more fuel and I think perhaps if it were me lying there or if Lyle had let me drown, my dying would cost the world nothing. My absence would mean nothing at all. I suppose that was always true, but the world and I conspired to keep it a secret from me for most of my life. Maybe a handful would miss me. But they’d die, too, before long. Death is very small and death is everything.
I was first to find Miles.
Christmas morning in his cot, his body still, empty. I touched him and smelled him and I knew. But I also didn’t know. I grabbed him to me, a cool, plastic non-ness. Something invisible, something internal in the world ripped. They wouldn’t let me keep him, that was what my brain screamed, they won’t let me keep him. They don’t let you keep the body.
Miles alone. The dark of his room. The quiet roar of white noise. Did he call out for me? Did he call out for his dad?
That means something. It is in my throat. I know not one thing in this world as holy as Miles’s heart seizing up and his breath failing.
That is holy.
More than meaning, Miles. Beyond meaning. Holy.
And this man burning is holy.
I promise you, Miles, you and me and Sam and my guilt and all anyone in anyplace ever loved ever ever ever all transient as smoke and holy as daybreak.
The heat and smoke swirl and my eyes blur. The rain slows to a stop. I look up at the branches stretched across the moving sky, twisting and curling like dark water cutting a dozen streams into the sandy clouds. Exhaustion circles me like a viper, darting in with sudden snaps of sleep. I keep my eyes on the fire, but the flames change, the body shifts. Under the cracking and clucking of the burn is a voice-like hissing. A secret whispered.
You cannot send me. You must take me.
“Where,” I reply.
And he sits up, his face veined in red and orange, his grin lipless and white. He leans forward until the smell of his hot dead flesh fills my nose.
Wake up.
And I do. He’s not sitting. He’s not talking. He’s only a body curled beneath burning logs. It’s clear now, this body is not going to burn away. Not completely. The fire is too small, the body too thick, the air too wet.
Lyle doesn’t stir as I remove the shower curtain from the trunk. It takes some time removing Sam from the fire. I use a corner of the curtain as an oven mitt and pull at his shoe, a gooey melted mess. I snatch and tug, like removing a baked potato from the oven. Bit by bit, I drag the body—most of it—from the fire pit and onto the curtain. I wrap it around him, cinching the curtain with my belt. I take hold of one end and walk, dragging Sam behind me, from the light of the fire and into the dark of the night.
The shower curtain crackles as it scrapes against the road, sounding hideously loud in the quiet. When I pause to catch my breath, the plastic settles, like insects scurrying over paper.
I turn from the road and push into the cedars and brush. Branches snag at my hair and scratch against my cheeks, but I keep moving, away from the road, climbing up at a slight incline. The ground is stony and hard, the cedar roots protruding in and out like frozen sea serpents, as if the ground were constantly rejecting the roots and the roots were just as vigilantly pushing back in.
I walk into a clearing where the ground has won and I drag Sam on, making white noise against the rootless soil. From here I can make out the expanse of inky underbrush surrounding me. Far to the east I can see the white promise of the rising moon. Down the opposite side of the hill I’ve climbed, I see a cliff wall. In the side of the cliff there’s a cave, small and black.
I make my way down, dragging Sam behind me. It’s not so much a cave as a crack, narrow at the top and expanding to the width of a man by the base. I have to duck to enter and maneuver Sam’s body so he can squeeze through. Inside smells of cool, wet stones, a fresh loamy scent. As dark as it was outside, it’s darker still. I move deeper in.
The hole widens the farther I go. I glance back and the opening crevice is now a strip of lighter shade. I move forward, my eyes adjusting somewhat, but the dark is so rich, so nearly complete that I am close to walking blind. I could drop the body here, but I don’t, I drag it deeper in. Soon, even the light of the entrance is gone.
In the dark, I can feel the ground steadily decline. Occasionally the curtain slips from my sweating hands and I have to blindly search until I find it again.
My breaths echo back to me, the sound made strange. But I’m not afraid. I’m keenly awake. The ground is steeper now, rockier. The curtain snags on a stone and I imagine creatures nipping at the ends, pulling it back, cave-dwelling rodents, blind and hungry, crawling from the cracks and scratching at the body. Or maybe I hear them chattering, whispering. I do not stop. My movement keeps them at bay.
My throat is dry and my skin tingles, but I keep moving on. I could be a mile in, more, I can’t tell. I walk on, letting the decline pull my legs. Then the ground evens out and my steps catch the rhythm of my breathing. And now I do hear something, or more accurately, feel something. A vibration, a hum. I come to what seems like an end—a wet rock wall. But I don’t turn back. I grope along the wall searching for a way to go deeper. Low to the ground, I find a horizontal gap. I push Sam in first, then press my body to the ground to squeeze after him.
It’s awkward and slow, pushing the body ahead of me inch by inch. The space narrows. Sam won’t move. I can’t move. And the chattering, the chattering is closer. I maneuver around Sam’s body, crawling beside him. And then we are face to face, buried beneath a mile of stone, his face pressed against the thin plastic. And for the moment I’m not afraid. I’m just here. And the chattering is nothing but crickets and wind.
I stare at Sam for several minutes before I realize I can seem him. There’s light—subtle, but undeniable. I look ahead. The light seems to be coming from a shelf of glow only feet beyond me. I crawl on, reaching back and pulling Sam free.
I turn my head, squeezing and scrapping against the rock beneath me, wrenching myself on and prying myself out, to my knees, to my feet. I breathe in, then kneel, reach back into the crevice and yank Sam out.
My eyes slowly adjust, and I see a large cavern glowing. I look up expecting some hole letting the moonlight in, but there’s nothing but the high, jagged ceiling. I walk on, my eyes growing more accustomed to the low light. And now I see the source. In the center of the cavern is a pool, green-blue and utterly still. It glows.
I leave Sam’s body,
step to the edge, and look down. I startle at the face, but it’s only mine. The surface is still as glass and reflects my face like a mirror. My eyes surprise me, my pupils wide and dark as if my insides might spill out. I watch my face, scraped and bleeding, then let my eyes focus past my reflection, and beyond me I see the emptiness of the water illuminated by something deeper. A few specks float, catching the soft light. All of me seems to slow as if I’m floating, too. And deeper still, miles and miles deeper, I see light. A gold and fiery sourceless light, a nothing glow.
I kneel and gaze. There it is, the hum, the joy, the center. All the names and all the nameless.
I gather Sam’s body and unswaddle him from the shower curtain. I roll him to the edge of the pool, pause for a moment, then tip him into the water. He moves through the surface without a ripple, and I watch him sink away, past the still, past the miles, into the glowing and gone.
I could sink down, too. Submerge in this pool and drop deep enough that I reemerge below. But I won’t. I am still of this world, a world of touch and being. I understand that now.
I lower my face into the water. Questions—all my questions—don’t apply. It would be like asking music to hold my hand. And though there’s no face to see and I have no words to say, I am praying. I’m praying in all directions. What I’m given is enough. Seeing this is enough. This—what is it? Love? It’s too weak a word, but there is no other. This love. This radiant hollowness.
It is now one hour past midnight . . . I shall not live to see the rising of another sun.
—Olaf Jansen
After three years of living inside the Earth, Olaf and his father prepared for home. They were gifted gold and a ship of supplies. They had entered in the north, but you can’t leave the same way. The current drove them down, as deep into the center as one can go, and they emerged in the south.
They laughed aloud at the blue in the sky, remarking that for all the wonders within, that particular color was not to be found. The world—our world—looked surreal to the two men.
Relearning the stars, they charted a course for home. But an iceberg, warmed by the south summer sun, calved before them and shattered the boat. Olaf watched his father, caught in a web of rope, sink with the ship and gold. Olaf remained stranded on the iceberg itself—a lifeless, salt-ice island.
He would have died within a day, but a passing whaling ship took him on, amazed to find a solitary man alive on the ice, asking how he came to be there.
He shared his story: the journey north with his father, the mazes of blue and white ice, the thrashing lip and swirling whirlpool, the race of wise singing beauties, and the red inner sun they worshipped as a god. He described the gold, the teachings, and the return to the surface.
He could see the disbelief in their eyes. What did he look like to those whalers? Had his skin a strange tint from his years under the misty inner sun? Had the fruit of that land and the inner air changed his face? He knew they thought him mad, a danger to others. To protect himself, Olaf said nothing more for twenty-seven years.
Only on his deathbed did he again try to explain all he had seen, but people called it a delusion, a fiction. Some journeys cannot be shared. Some stories cannot be told. Some paths are found only by those who are lost.
I let Lyle sleep as I stomp the fire out and shovel the ash into a grocery bag. The moon is sinking when I finally load the last of our camp and head out. Lyle whimpers and snores in the back. I’ve given him new nightmares.
The drive is quiet, dark, the headlights hinting at direction. Austin glows white and yellow against the night. I turn south toward pastel suburbs and park along the curb outside a closed neighborhood pool. I quietly climb from the car and leave Lyle sleeping.
In three blocks I reach her house. Their house.
The back door is guarded by a menagerie of small plants and muddy children’s shoes. My first guess is the drooping cactus in the HOWDY pot. I lift it and find a single silver key. Finding it feels like touching a woman in a way you know will make her sigh, because you know her and she has shown herself to you. I turn the key and step into the house. This is watching your lover when she is alone. The kitchen smells of toast and coffee. Reminder notes and child art cover the fridge.
No furniture from our home made it here, but other bits and pieces did—the wooden cutting board in the kitchen, a few books on the living room shelves. With the logic of a dream, elements of our life position themselves in new places, new contexts, new meanings. To the side of the mantle is our elephant—the white heavy piece Jeffrey clung to years before. I pick it up. Heavy—heavier than I remember.
Up the stairs, carpet soft as grass. The air hums quietly. One soft hall light. Three doors, all ajar. At the end of the hall I push the door open. It’s darker inside. Her breaths I recognize. His breaths are just short of snores. On his nightstand lies a hardback topped with his round-rimmed eyeglasses and his wallet.
I open the wallet, and find, as promised, a cashier’s check for $5,500. I place it in my pocket and move to her side. She still sleeps on the left side. She still sleeps belly down. Her T-shirt rolls halfway up her back. She slept in the nude before. All before. I watch her sleep. I watch them sleep.
I kneel down beside her, her face inches from mine, her mouth barely open. I lean in close to smell her breath—sweet, white bread smell.
“I am sorry.” I mouth the words. “I am so sorry.”
Her mouth closes, her dry lips clinging to one another.
I close my eyes. I want to sleep, to leave my head here and sleep inches from her face as I’ve done a thousand nights.
“Daddy?”
He stands in the doorway, the silhouetting hall light making him a solid shadow.
“Daddy?”
I open my mouth to answer. But it’s not my voice I hear.
“Okay, Archer, okay,” Manuel mumbles as he climbs from the other side of the bed. He walks to the boy and the boy places a hand into his.
“I need to pee,” he says.
The two walk down the hall and turn into the bathroom at the top of the stairs. I creep after them and stand outside the door listening.
As the water refills the tank, I back down the stairs. I stay in the shadows and watch Manuel carrying Archer, sleepy eyes and mussed hair. Manuel holds him to his chest, a hand beneath him and another across his narrow back. When they walk down the hall I step into the light just enough to see. The boy is already asleep on his father’s shoulder.
I pull up in front of Lyle’s apartment but keep the motor running.
“You don’t want to come in and clean up?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I think you’ve had enough of me for one day.”
“Maybe we keep low for a while. See how things pan out.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say.
He opens the car door, his body moving slow, and I wonder if he regrets ever first approaching me in that bookstore.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods his head. “Just another day in the life.” He climbs out, closing the door.
“Hey Lyle,” I say through the window, and he turns back. “If you do ever find a way in, send me a postcard, okay?”
“Yeah, well,” he says, shrugging a little. “I’ll keep trying.”
He turns and walks toward the building. At his door, he’ll search for his key and find a folded piece of paper. It will be a cashier’s check for $5,500. I hope he goes north. I hope he talks Jim Horner’s ear off. I hope he discovers everything.
It’s not yet dawn when I walk up the drive to Martin’s house, the front door swaying in the night wind and the drawn curtains over open windows catching gusts and billowing into the living room.
Inside Laika sits on the couch, still in her underwear and tank top; her gray eyes are like snow and sun. A green and white shoebox lies on her lap.
; “Laika.”
She looks at me, confused, but only for a moment. “You look even worse,” she says. Her voice rings odd.
“I need a shower.”
In the bathroom, I undress. My clothes are ripe with smoke and lake. The shower runs hot and I step in, letting the water scald my back, my scalp, my chest, letting steam fill my face and lungs. I stand until the water runs clear beneath me and my skin is free of the oil and blood.
“I found you some clothes,” Laika says from the other side of the shower curtain. Again, her voice sounds strange.
When I climb out, she isn’t there, but a neat pile of Martin’s clothes is. Older clothes—a pair of worn jeans, a thin black sweater. They would hang loose on him. On me they fit snug but comfortable.
“Have you eaten?” I ask, stepping into the living room. She’s back on the couch, the blanket wrapped around her, staring into the space before her as if she’s reading the air. “Laika, have you eaten since I left?”
“My name’s not Laika.”
Her accent is gone—that’s what rings strange.
“I’m not Russian. I’m from Fort Worth.”
She opens the shoebox on her lap, pulls out a wad of bills, and begins separating them into two piles.
“I needed a better story. Something exotic. Who wants a Fort Worth hooker?” She looks to me. “Would you have helped me kill him if I wasn’t some exotic damsel in distress?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You hid the body. That’s the part I couldn’t figure out.” She gestures to the stacks of cash. “Eight hundred dollars, more or less. I thought there’d be more.”
“Your daughter.”
Her lips twist, a frown that nearly smiles. No daughter.
“Laika was the cosmonaut dog. First dog in space,” she says. “You really should have known.”
“Martin? Does he know?”
“Martin’s gone.”
I turn down the hall toward Martin’s room.
“He’s not here,” she calls out.