by Sean Little
“What’s cooking?” Ren stood and eyed the fatty gray-brown stew in the pot.
“Nothing you want to put in your mouth,” I whispered. At that second, a skull with bits of meat clinging to it and a melting jellied eye rose above the lip of the pot. It was a raccoon. Definitely a raccoon. The stew had a thick, gamy smell. It smelled like manure and copper pennies. It was enough to gag me.
King Francis strode toward us removing his cooking mitt. “But first, we must reward my subjects for their bravery. Kneel, and be recognized.”
Ren gave me a look that clearly said, He has a sword, should we run? I shook my head. I dropped back to a kneel and hoped for the best. The old man seemed harmless. Delusional, but harmless. Ren took a knee beside me, reluctance etched on her face.
King Francis lowered his sword to my left shoulder, lifted it over my head to the right, and then back to the left. “I knight thee Sir Twist, of the Northlands, Defender of New America.” He repeated the sword motions on Renata. “I knight thee, Sir Renata of Brooklyn, Defender of New America. I shall now hear your oaths.”
Ren’s eyes went wide and she whipped her head around to look at me. “Oaths?” she mouthed.
I stammered for a second. “I, Sir Twist, do hereby swear fealty to the Kingdom of New America, and to its rightful sovereign. I shall defend my King and his shores from all enemies foreign and domestic. So say we all.”
King Francis smiled. He seemed pleased with my oath. He repeated, “So say we all.”
Ren’s mouth worked like a guppy for a second. “Uh…I, Sir Renata of Brooklyn, do hereby swear fealty to King Francis and his country. None shall harm my king while I hold breath in my chest. So say we all.”
“So say we all,” King Francis repeated. “Rise now, my knights, and we shall feast!” He turned and walked back to the bubbling stew pot on the grill. He put on a pair of heavy leather gloves and carried the pot to the table. When the pot moved, the smell seemed to fill the entire street. It was awful.
Ren grabbed me before I could move toward the table. “Is he mentally ill?” She said it low enough so that King Francis couldn’t hear.
I nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure he is.”
“He is definitely crazy if he thinks I’m going to eat that stew.” Ren leaned closer. “Did you really quote Battlestar Galactica?”
I felt a sheepish smile play on my lips. “I did.”
“Nerd.”
“Hey, you knew where it came from,” I said. “Takes one to know one.”
We sat at King Francis’ round table. He ladled big servings of fatty, nasty stew onto the plastic plates at the table. “Wait! This shall be a grand feast!” He ran inside the tenement, plate armor clanking, and returned moments later with a large wooden bowl full of fresh, beautiful peaches, and a bottle of wine. I don’t know anything about wine, but judging from the bottle’s design and how it was corked, it looked expensive. My parents usually drank wine out of a box they bought on sale at the local grocery store. I’m hardly a connoisseur.
King Francis used his sword to smash the neck off the wine bottle. He poured wine into yellow plastic wine glasses on the table, slopping excess liberally over the edges and onto the metal table. “Eat! Drink! This is a celebration!”
Ren practically face-planted the peaches. She bit into one and her eyes rolled backward into her head. “Oh, sweet heaven…these are ah-maz-ing.”
I grabbed one and bit into it. Ren wasn’t exaggerating. I’m from the Midwest. My experience with peaches was that I usually only saw them canned in a thick syrup. Those are pretty good. I liked those. I did not know how much I was missing with fresh peaches, less than a day from being on a tree. The smell, the texture, the taste—the only word for it is amazing. I understood why the little things were on the license plates. Over the past year, I’d eaten very little fresh food. The difference in quality made me realize that I was missing something important. I made a mental note to eat more fresh food. That meant I was going to have to learn to farm, to grow my own fresh food. Prior to the Flu, the only gardening I’d ever done was helping my mother plant a few herbs in a window box. And they mostly died.
“Eat up! Eat up!” Francis insisted. He wiggled out of the apron and breastplate of his armor and cast them aside. Underneath his armor, he was wearing an Atlanta Hawks basketball jersey. It looked like a real one, like he’d taken it directly from the locker room. I was willing to bet that was where he had found it, even. King Francis sat and picked up a fork. He used his sword to cut his meat, awkward as it was. He didn’t hack at it, either. He used it daintily, sawing back and forth like someone would with a standard table knife. It did not work too well, but I was not going to argue with him about it.
I stuck my finger in the sauce of the stew and brought it to my tongue experimentally. When I tried to wipe the sauce on the tip of my tongue, my body rebelled, and I gagged. The stew went untasted. I wiped my finger on my napkin. I devoured the peach I had and picked up another one. “So, King Francis…” I didn’t know how to breach the subject of the past year. I wasn’t certain how far gone his mental state was. “Do you have…a queen, to whom we could pledge ourselves?”
King Francis’ eyes narrowed, and he smacked his lips. He chewed some of the filthy meat and swallowed. “Ah, you speak of Good Queen Denise.” He set down his fork and touched his fingers to his forehead. “The pox, I’m afraid. She has been gone from us a year, at least.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “That is a tremendous loss for the kingdom.”
King Francis didn’t seem to hear me. He was looking off into the sky. “A year, at least,” he repeated. “And then Prince Francis, the second, fell…and then Princess Janelle, and Princess Michelle…and the grand-princes…and grand-princesses.” Francis’ lower lip trembled for a second, but he inhaled sharply through his nose and snapped back to whatever his reality was. He squared his shoulders. “A great loss for the kingdom, indeed.”
Francis stood. “Come, come.” He beckoned me toward the tenement. I followed and so did Ren. We stepped into his home. The living room was a disaster, cluttered with all manner of odds and ends scavenged from all sorts of places, scraps from museum exhibits, hospital supplies, and expensive cookware from a restaurant supply shop. There was a single recliner, well-used, that could be accessed from the entry, but that was it. All the other furniture was buried in junk. The bathroom in the home was filthy. King Francis used a five-gallon bucket for his business, and then took it out into the alley behind the home to dispose of it when full. The smell of urine and feces was thick in the hall.
Francis led us to the second story. He took us down the hall to a bedroom, paused, and whispered, “The queen rests waiting for the day that the goodness of my service inspires the angels to resurrect her.” He opened the door. Inside, the dried corpse of Good Queen Denise was lying in the center of a queen-sized bed. Her decomposed body was melding with the sheets. Her face was dried and stretched tight to the skull. Her hair was scraggly and limp around the skull. The room was immaculate, though. It had been dusted frequently. Everything was in its place. There was no clutter.
“Jesus,” Ren whispered. She backed down the hallway to the stairs.
“The pox claimed her,” Francis said. “But in my wickedness, I was not claimed. I was not allowed to join her. So now, I must repent for that wickedness and hope that my efforts please the Archangel. They will bring her back to me. This was promised.” Francis knelt by the foot of the bed and pressed his hands together in prayer. “Each day, I beg forgiveness and pledge my service to the kingdom. Soon, the angels will return to resurrect her. Very soon.”
I wanted to say something, but nothing was coming to me. What do you say in a situation like this? This was far beyond my paygrade.
King Francis turned his head to the side. He spoke to the empty air. “I know, children. I know. Mother will come back to us; I promise you this.” He turned to me. “The children—they miss their mother.” He turn
ed back to the emptiness. “Settle down, all of you. The day is coming. The horns will blow, and Archangel Gabriel will bring her back to us just as he promised!”
I backed away from the room. King Francis began telling his “children” to clean the living room, like he asked them to do yesterday. I walked down the steps to the street where Ren waited.
“What do we do?” Ren was chewing on the corner of her lower lip. It was her nervous tic. “This guy needs help, but…there’s no help.”
“I know.” I said. “We should bring him with us.”
“We should—but we’re not going to.” Ren was adamant. “Listen--I did an internship in a hospital, right? We had to go to all the wards and spend time. In the psych ward, they had this old guy—Mr. Blue, everyone called him. Mr. Blue was a jolly fat guy, kind of reminded me of a Currier and Ives Santa Claus. He wore old-fashioned pajamas, one of those Hugh Hefner robes, and leather slippers every day. Sometimes he had a paisley ascot. He was really smart, could talk about anything. Someone told me that he used to be a professor of physics at NYU. I don’t know if that was true or not. He was kind. He was sweet. You’d think he was the sort that wouldn’t hurt a fly. Turns out, he wasn’t taking his medication at night and the night nurses weren’t doing their job checking on him. One night, he had a break with reality, and he picked up a steel bedpan and beat a nurse almost to death with it, raging that she was trying to kill his wife. She had to quit nursing. She had severe brain damage.”
“I get it. I know.” I put my hands on my hips. “Moral questions like this were never brought up in my philosophy class in high school.”
“They weren’t in philosophy classes in college, either,” said Ren. Through one of the upstairs windows, we could hear King Francis raging at invisible children and their misdeeds. His royal inflection and syntax were still intact. “We should just leave.”
“Leave?” I didn’t like the sound of that. It felt cruel.
Ren nodded. She was already drifting toward the alleyway. “We run. If he’s as far gone as I think he is, he will probably think we’re still here, just in hallucination form. Maybe he’ll think he dreamed us up.”
“But, he’s old, and he’s probably suffering.” The idea of abandoning him made guilt churn in my stomach. It made me queasy. I thought about Doug. Doug was probably the same age as King Francis. Maybe King Francis was a little older than Doug. He looked like he was in good health, still getting around well, able to wear a full suit of armor. Those things aren’t light. Upstairs, King Francis was screaming at the world, demanding to speak to the Archangel Gabriel or one of his messengers.
“I don’t like it, either,” said Ren. “But this ain’t the world we knew anymore. We have to make tough decisions like this now. Can we take care of him? No. I don’t even know what sort of anti-psychotics he needs to be on, nor do I know if we’ll be able to find them. It is hard enough making sure we’re okay every day. We can’t do it for him. Fish or cut bait, right? We have to cut bait, Twist.”
“But, to just leave him?”
Ren grabbed my arm at the elbow and started to pull me toward the RV. “It’s not like we were taking care of him to begin with. He’s gotten along on his own over the past year. He’s eating. He’s drinking. He’s definitely taking care of his excretory needs. What more could we do for him? Do you want to stay here in this alley with him?”
“No.”
“He’s not going to leave his wife without a fight. Mark my words on that.” That was a big trump card. Ren was right. There was no way a man who believed his wife was going to be resurrected by an angel was going to abandon her, and there was no way I was going to haul a dried corpse around in the RV. Ren stopped pulling at me and put her hands on my shoulders. She looked at me with her dark eyes. “We have to go.”
She was right. I hated that she was right, but she was right. There was still enough daylight left that we could get into the countryside beyond Atlanta before stopping for the night. If a year had gone by and no one else had found King Francis, I was willing to bet that Atlanta was empty. There was nothing there for us. We had to leave. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but later, after reflection, I realized it was our only logical choice.
“Come! Eat up! The feast recommences!” King Francis was standing at the door to his home.
I looked at Ren. I couldn’t even hide the pained look from my face. “What do we say?”
Ren stepped forward and curtsied. “My king! A herald has just delivered a message. He says there may be an army to the east!”
“My word.” King Francis loped down the steps and grabbed his longsword from where he’d left it on the patio table. “We shall be ready for them! Man the parapets, men. They’ll not take us unaware. Send word to their herald that I am willing to meet with their leader to parley. If he will swear fealty, there need not be bloodshed. If he does it quickly, there may be a province in it for him to lord over in my stead, provided he pays his taxes!”
Ren saluted by closing her right fist and tapping it over her heart twice. “My king, it will be done. Sir Twist and I shall deliver the message immediately.”
“Good, good! Go forth! Bring back any other survivors of the pox. We shall rebuild my kingdom together. I shall await your return.” I copied Ren’s salute, and we backed away. King Francis turned to the hallucinations of his children. “Did you hear that, children? Another army! The angels will be pleased. Your mother’s resurrection is nigh!”
Ren and I backed around the corner. I grabbed the shotgun from where I’d left it propped up against the wall. Then, we ran. We ran like scared rabbits back to the RV, jumped in, and started it up. I slammed the gear-shift to drive and tromped the gas pedal. The rear wheels squealed as the RV lurched forward. We got the hell out of Atlanta as fast as we could.
Neither of us said anything. We didn’t even look at each other; we just stared straight ahead through the windshield. The guilt we both felt filled the RV like a heavy, wet fog. It hung on our shoulders and pressed us into our seats. It made breathing a chore. I felt like crying, but I didn’t. I swallowed those emotions and tried to convince myself that this was for the best.
We set up camp outside of Atlanta in Fairburn, a good-sized suburban town along Highway 85. We stopped at a Shell station across a wide, four-lane main thoroughfare opposite one of the South’s finest institutions, a Waffle House.
While I dredged the ditches and the trees around the gas station for firewood, Ren walked off by herself, crossing the highway. She had no weapons. She took no supplies. She just walked away and hid somewhere nearby. I saw her shoulders shaking slightly as she walked away. I knew she was crying. It was for the best, I had to remind myself. It was for the best. I wonder how much absolutely horrible stuff has happened throughout history because someone convinced himself that it was for the best. No—scratch that. I never want to know the answer to that question. It would just depress me.
We could not have taken King Francis. As much as I wanted to, we just couldn’t. He wouldn’t have left his wife’s corpse. He needed more help than either Ren or I could give. I had to repeat it like a mantra, It was for the best. It was for the best. It was for the best. It was for the best. If you lie to yourself enough, maybe after a few decades you might believe it. That was my hope, at least. I did not know if I would ever forgive myself for abandoning the old man. I knew I would remember the moment we lied to him and scampered away for as long as I lived. It was burned into my brain with crystal clarity. If it was one of those character-defining tests we get every so often, I’m pretty sure we just failed it.
Every good moment in my life is ephemeral, nothing more than vague passing thoughts. A first kiss. Dancing with my old girlfriend at a friend’s house. My first football game at Camp Randall. All just snapshots, fading afterimages. Every bad moment, every blunder, every stupid mistake and dumb thing I’ve done lives in a part of my brain that replays them constantly, without being asked, in brilliant 4K HD and stereo surround
. This moment leapfrogged all other previous stupid moments to take the lead. As I gathered wood, my brain played the old man’s face on a loop. I saw his wagging beard and warm smile. My brain didn’t play the images of the decaying woman in his bed or his diatribes at his invisible children. It only played the parts that would make me feel guilty.
I crawled down a small slope behind the gas station and walked through the trees and came upon a farm field. The field had been a cornfield at one point, but now it was choked with weeds. Thistles grew as tall as the new corn plants. I dropped the wood I was carrying, walked into the middle of the field, and just sat. I hated myself at that moment. I hated everything about the world. I hated the fact that I had to make a judgment call like that. I should be a freshman in college. My biggest decision should be between going to a house party or a campus-sponsored alcohol-free event. My biggest decision should be whether or not I was going to try to chat up a blond or a brunette at the party. Instead, I had just condemned a mentally ill man to die alone, trapped in his own delusions. I hated myself. If there was a god, I hated him. If there wasn’t a god, I hated the universe.
I eventually went back to the campsite and made up the fire. I strung up my nylon Bear Butt hammock between the RV’s rear ladder and a tree. I lay in it with a book on my chest, Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It was a book I’d been meaning to read for months, but just never felt like starting it. On that day, the book would continue to go unread. I lay in the shade of the tree idly swaying, staring at the leaves in the tree above me and the sky beyond them. Fester came out of the RV to explore the surrounding area. He disappeared into the weeds for a while, but eventually emerged and leapt into the hammock with me. I picked a couple of burrs from his fur and cast them aside. I rubbed his ears and scratched his chin. He purred happily.
It was almost dark before Ren came back. Her eyes were puffy, her nose red, but she put on a brave face. She walked to the fire and sat in one of the canvas folding chairs. Neither of us spoke for a long time. I hadn’t made any food because I didn’t feel like eating. Ren didn’t ask about food. I think she felt the same way.