by Hal Duncan
“Mad Tom. We should call you Don Quixote,” I remember Jack saying, tilting his head to look at the windmills.
And then he has to explain to me that, yes, Coyote would be a cool name, but, no, he knows I’m not Native American, and that wasn’t what he meant at all.
A FEW SNATCHED IMAGES
I don’t know, you see. I don’t know anything. I don’t know if this is civilization or a pretense of it. I don’t even know my own name. I couldn’t tell them, so they just picked a name for me, called me Tom because I looked like a Tom. I remember hardly anything about before we came here, just a few snatched images that don’t make sense. The world was already starting to come apart, they say, before I’d even reached my fifth birthday.
I mean, I remember playing catch with a little girl in a dress too big for her and wishing that my mother would go back to being a grown-up; I remember her running away giggling across a park, and me looking for her, sitting crying on a swing; I remember an uncle tickling me and the smell of his pipe tobacco and the chirping bird whistles that he spoke in; I remember feeding children at the zoo. All my memories of civilization are of a world that can’t be real.
So all that I’ve really got to go on is what we were taught by Mr. Hobbes, and he always said that Endhaven is the very core of civilization. He taught us about the social contract, how it keeps the town together, how each of us knows who we are because the rest do, because we stand defined each by the others, our status, our purpose, our meaning; in a contract. When you’re six you don’t realize that they’re talking literally.
“I used to imagine,” I remember saying to Jack, “that we didn’t really need the rag-and-bone man, that the windmills were what kept the Evenfall away from us.”
But whether we live, inside our heads, in these fictitious holiday homes or in a refugee camp at the world’s end, when Evenfall comes in, people remember how precarious our new life is, how literal that contract is, and what happens to anyone who breaks it. How one word from the rag-and-bone man might dissolve our agreement, and our sense of place and belonging, our sense of identity, would be dissolved along with it. None of us even know what Evenfall is, but when it comes in we stay hidden and secure within the boundaries of Endhaven, afraid of losing ourselves in the twilight, of disappearing.
“It’s just another handful of hours,” Jack says when I ask him. “It’s just the same as what happened in the cities.”
“Then you can see why we’re afraid.”
“No,” he says. “I never really understood why people let that happen.”
“They don’t exactly choose to disappear.”
And he just shrugs.
“It doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
LESS THAN NOTHING
“Aaaah! Fuck you!”
“Fuck you too! You’re nothing.”
A gang of kids is playing in the tall grass down around the high wooden walls of the rag-and-bone man’s barn, which sits just in the shelter of the ridge, and I figure that I must have heard him on his way out of town; the kids would never have gone near the place if he was anywhere close. I scan the horizon and, sure enough, out on the far edge of town on a dead road broken and overgrown with autumn brown, I just make out the rag-and-bone man yoked to his wooden cart like a horse, pulling it slowly westward, inland, to god knows where and god knows what, piled up in the back with surplus dried beans and peas.
I wonder what it’s like now in the fallen cities. There are survivors, I assume, that the rag-and-bone man trades with; but you can see, looking across the bay, the ruins of the buildings, just how little is still standing. Do the street plans even make sense now, is there any tiny scrap left of normality at all, or are there just other wanderers scavenging in the desolation, armored somehow, like the rag-and-bone man, like Jack, against the Evenfall that we in Endhaven are too weak to face? If the rag-and-bone man can face it, I wonder sometimes, if Jack can face it, why can’t the rest of us?
Old Man Blake thought he could face the Evenfall. I remember him spitting on the rag-and-bone man’s shoe, and cursing him to his face, saying that the deal was off, that he’d be damned if he’d live under some tinpot tyrant’s insane ideas of decency. I remember him standing among the windmills on the ridge, leaning on one and bellowing drunkenly, wordlessly, at the sunset, then turning, and staggering as he turned, to face the Evenfall as it came in from the sea. I was only eight or nine at the time and I remember lying in my bed being too afraid to get up to close the window, so I could hear his voice, little more than an animal howl of outrage, slowly drowned out by the roaring of the storm, and the wind and the rain wrapping itself around him. I don’t know if he faded away slowly or if the storm ripped him out of existence suddenly, as a tornado might tear a tree out of the ground leaving only a few broken roots behind. I just know that the next day he wasn’t there anymore and the rag-and-bone man was.
“You’re less than nothing.”
One girl is dragging an old pram behind her along the track, a second younger girl riding inside. They stop in front of me and the younger one leans forward to whisper in the first girl’s ear; both of them laugh, and the older girl makes some comment about how she reckons that I’m sick. Children playing at judgment; it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. The whispers of children in Endhaven’s still, dead air are far harsher than the wind upon the beach.
I reckon you’re alone, I want to say, every one of you in this plastic concentration camp, with nothing to hold on to in the night, nothing to keep your soul alive, nothing to remember you when you’re lost. I want to say it, but I don’t. I walk on, silent, hunching my shoulders against the cold, scared laughter.
A POSTER OF MARLENE DIETRICH
The pastel-green plastic prefab bungalow that I call home sits raised off the ground as if it doesn’t want to be there, as if it’s been dropped accidentally from the back of a truck. It has the crawl space under it, the porch, the low, slanted, overhanging roof, the fake wooden board walls; it’s near enough identical to every other house in Endhaven, and I hate it with a passion. There’s no garden as such, just a square of land churned up and planted with root vegetables or trellises of legumes. I cut round the back, between the water tank and the hydroponics unit, get a leg up on the cellar doors (fake, they actually open up onto the generator) and climb in through my bedroom window.
The room is small and spartan: an air mattress and a couple of quilts for a bed; a chair; a desk; and a bookcase of lost-and-found junk. A faded black-and-white poster of Marlene Dietrich is taped to one wall for decoration and, on the back of the door, there’s a grainy polaroid of Jack. My lunch has been left for me on the desk, a plate of the usual slop, covered with a bowl to keep it warm—a minute portion of some chopped, canned meat and a large dollop of bean stew, bland but substantial fare. There’s been a run on spices in the last few months. I eat it almost unconsciously, without tasting, without thinking.
Ms. Dalley opens the door and stands on the threshold of the room, not a toe inside, saying nothing, just staring at me with silent judgment, picking invisible hairs off her black suit jacket and skirt. She should be worrying about the all-too-visible hairs on her grizzled chin, I think. When I look up at her she holds the eye contact and, after being avoided so long, strangely, the gaze of accusation is actually a relief. There’s still the strained silence, though.
“That was nice,” I say, and swallow the last cube of processed ham (I think).
No answer. Ms. Kramer appears behind her in the doorway, equally silent, equally fierce. I can’t say it doesn’t hurt; they’re the closest thing I’ve got to family and even as they stand there doing their best impression of bitter old maids, I can’t forget the time when Ms. Dalley was Aunt Stef and Ms. Kramer was Annie, and one of them had multicolored beads in her gray hair and a nose ring, and how Annie kneeled down on the ground to wipe away the snot and tears from my filthy face and I couldn’t remember my name I told her and she just sa
id, well then, we’ll call you Tom then.
“I was ready for that,” I say. “I was hungry.”
“The rag-and-bone man was here,” says Ms. Dalley. “For you.”
She bites her bottom lip.
“For a reckoning,” says Ms. Kramer.
I swallow.
“When?” I say. “I mean—I saw him leaving for the city. He’s out of town.”
“He’ll be back tonight. He’s coming back to speak to you tonight.”
Ms. Dalley steps into the room to take the dirty dishes from the desk, eyes flicking here and there, the same old unreadable distance as a barrier between us. What is it in that look? Hatred, fear, guilt, hurt? Probably a mixture of all and maybe, I think, the slightest hint of love. Jesus, I remember her singing to me, before we came to Endhaven, or to Ms. Kramer—to Annie, rather. I haven’t seen the two of them even hold hands in what? five years? or more? The ugly sisters, Jack calls them. But it never used to be like that.
“I’m…sorry,” she says, and leaves the room without another word.
CLEAN LINES AND MODERN SURFACES
“Jack? Jack?” I can hear the slight edge in my voice hysterical, notice my hand rattling the doorhandle as it just doesn’t seem to turn. I’m already turning from the door to circle round and climb up the driftwood ladder from the beach up to the balcony of his apartment when I feel the arms enfold me from behind and the cool skin of his face nuzzle the back of my neck.
“Hey,” he says. “Qué pasa?”
I twist in his embrace and bury my mouth in his shoulder, cling to him like the ground alone can’t support me but he’s one of the pillars of the cosmos itself.
“You OK?” he says. “What’s up?”
I don’t talk, just kiss his neck, his chin, his lips.
“What’s…happened?”
I kiss his lips, his chin, his neck, his chest. His right hand works my belt.
“Tell me after then,” he says softly.
“Are you awake?” says Jack, and kisses the inside of my thigh. “Tom?”
“Not yet,” I mumble, groan and stretch. God, I could use a shower right now.
We lie in what was once the master bedroom of this expensive beachfront property, in a king-size bed that has no mattress, just a pile of thick blankets, rugs and quilts and pillows that I have to force him to keep clean. His room is even emptier than mine, the rest of the house the same, long since gutted of its glass-and-mahogany coffee tables and chromed breakfast stools and framed abstracts or whatever. I picture an architect living here before the world went crazy, designing and building his own beachhouse all in clean lines and modern surfaces. Minimal, severe, like Jack sometimes.
He sniffs me, snuffles at me like a dog.
“You smell fine to me…sweat and sex…rich stink of life.”
“Charming,” I say, give a quick kiss to his hip and twist round on the bed so that we’re face-to-face. “You’re a real romantic, Jack.”
He laughs.
“Fuck that shit.”
He rubs noses with me and I brush hair back from his forehead.
“So, are you ready to talk?” he says and I breathe deep and close my eyes.
“The rag-and-bone man’s called me for a reckoning. He’s going to judge me.”
Jack’s arms slide around me.
“You’ve got nothing to be guilty about,” he says.
“This is nothing? Jesus, Jack, this is…”
“This is none of his fucking business.”
“Everything’s his business.”
I pull away, swing my legs over the edge of the bed and sit up.
“What can he do?” he says.
He’s never seen a reckoning, I realize, not a real honest-to-god reckoning. Oh, he’s seen the rag-and-bone man totting up a person’s credit, their value to the community, health and morality indexed against financial status. Maybe he’s seen him refuse credit to a woman caught spreading false rumors about her neighbors, or to a man for swearing once too often in the presence of children, or maybe he’s seen a teenage boy caught drinking wheeled around town on display in the back of the rag-and-bone man’s cart, bells ringing out the righteous spectacle. I’ve seen more.
We owe everything to the rag-and-bone man: we needed him to bring us here and we still need him to survive; without the grab-bag assortment of trade brought back from his trips to the cities—perfumed soaps and Belgian chocolates, painkillers and vintage wine, china cups, coffeepots, antique clocks and antiseptics—I don’t think that any of us would have lasted beyond the first year.
On an individual level, Endhaven is made up of liberals, each with their own loose idea of right and wrong, but each in their acceptance of the rag-and-bone man’s contract, agreeing to let their lives be ruled by his and only his idea of morality. He weighs up our worth for us and deals out goods as each of us deserve. He reckons us and, like a priest or a judge, the people of Endhaven view him with equal measures of fear and respect and, sometimes, hate him for it as a kicked dog hates its master. In the times after Blake disappeared and before Jack arrived there’d been real troubles and I’d seen the rag-and-bone man lay some major reckonings on any of those who’d bite the hand that fed them. What can he do?
“What can’t he do?” I say. “He’s judge, jury and…and he’s decided that I’m on trial.”
LEARN TO FORGET
“Everyone’s afraid of him but you,” I say. “You’re not afraid of him, or the Evenfall. Help me.”
Jack rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling.
“You’ve got to help me,” I say. “You’re not like us. You’ve got something. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you up on the ridge at night. I know it doesn’t touch you. I know what the Evenfall does to the rest of us; I’ve seen it. But it doesn’t touch you. How can you walk through that? How? Why? Why doesn’t the Evenfall—”
“Because you can’t wipe away what doesn’t fucking exist,” he snarls.
The violence of his voice is like a slap across my face; it’s gone as suddenly as it appeared but I’m left with this terrible feeling that I don’t know him at all, that I never will, never could.
He climbs out of the bed and wanders over to the torn muslin curtains billowing out onto the balcony, pushes one aside.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I sit up on the edge of the bed, blankets wrapped around my shoulders, hugging myself, watching. He just stands there. For a long time.
“Can’t you get some heating in here or something?” I say, to fill the silence.
“I don’t feel the cold.”
After a while, he shakes his head.
“You know, I could kill him for you easier than you could possibly imagine—you can kill his kind with a word—but whose hands would his blood be on, yours or mine? What would I become for you?”
“Nothing would change,” I say.
He looks over his shoulder at me, an open honest gaze.
“Everything would change. Don’t fool yourself. You think I’d be the savior of the town? The one who killed the wicked ogre? Jack the giant-killer?”
“I don’t know…everybody hates him.”
“And, boy, would they fucking hate me for taking him away from them.”
“You’re talking like we want him, like we have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Tom. That’s all you have. That’s all I can give.”
He turns to face me and the curtain falls back into place.
“Stay with me, forget Endhaven, forget the ugly sisters, forget the rag-and-bone man, how you got here, where you’re going, and stay with me, stand here with me, on your own two feet, and all their reckonings and judgments can’t touch you. Or go back to face him alone, like a whipped dog. Either way, it’s your choice. It’s your choice.”
“Jack, I’m not like you. I don’t have the—I don’t know—I don’t have what you’ve got. He could kill me. I owe my life to him. We all of us owe our lives to him. And now he�
�s calling in the debt.”
I can see his fists clench, muscles in his arm twitch.
“Why do you always have to hold yourself back from me?” I say, throat tight.
“Maybe I’m not as strong as you think,” he says.
“I’m scared, Jack; I’m just scared.”
He walks over and crouches in front of me, puts his hands on my knees.
“You don’t have to be afraid.”
Slides them up to my hips.
“Take it all one second at a time; that’s the secret. Stay here for an hour, then another hour, and another. Pretend you’re going back to them soon, real soon, any day now, next week maybe, or the week after, or next month, you’ll get around to it, whenever, never. Learn to live without a reckoning hanging over your head. Learn to forget.”
He pulls the blanket off my left shoulder with his right hand, smoothes his fingers over the small diamond-shaped scar where, long ago, I remember the needle inking me in black, and the scalpel that made a five-year-old child scream blue murder. He shakes his head, his blond hair brushing my thighs as he moves in closer, hands at my waist.
“I’ll try,” I say.
The tip of his tongue just tastes, touches, my foreskin.
“Yes.”
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
I’m running. I’m in the city and I’m running, my feet slapping the tarmac and the cobblestones and flagstones, echoing amongst the empty buildings, brick and concrete, sandstone and limestone. Reflected in windows, I can see whatever it is that’s chasing me leaping from roof to roof above my head, but all I can catch are glimpses of this flashing thing, a blue-white shape flickering through the gold and red of early-evening sunlight—flakes of flame, autumn leaves. The Evenfall.