The Best American Short Stories 2019

by Anthony Doerr

  Treatment

  The drugs have started—she’s doing better on the tests!

  Tree, the doctor says.

  She shuts her eyes and breathes deeply.

  Take your time, the doctor says soothingly. Tree . . .

  She gathers all her powers of concentration. Tree . . . , she says, hesitantly.

  Good! the doctor says, looking up from the dials, excellent. He pats her shoulder. Tired? You’ve been working hard.

  His approval emboldens Therese to speak. She has been working hard, she concedes. And all that loud banging at night keeps her up sometimes.

  Ah, yes, the fireworks, the doctor says. He smiles—she’s sure of it—and she’s ashamed to have complained.

  National holiday season, he adds, and pats her shoulder again.

  A Doctor Reflects

  A taxing week, but one with its rewards. Patient T716-05 is showing great improvement. She’s a touching little thing—limited comprehension, but eager to cooperate.

  It’s gratifying to think of the strides she’s made with the help of treatment—he’s looking forward to writing this up! It was only about a month ago, after all, that her responses in the Verbal Identification tests indicated apparently almost hopeless ideation-capacity. He shakes his head, recalling: “Piano” for “Tree”!

  Any answer is valid, of course. In fact, there is a certain proportion of the population with very slight surplus-associative disorders who will respond quite spontaneously to “tree” with “leaf” or “branch.” Even “bark”—even “trunk”—yes, even trunk. But such responses are considered to be within the periphery; such individuals are generally classified as “normal.”

  “Piano,” however—clearly extrapolated from wood (itself an outer-sphere coordinate: tree>wood>piano)—is far beyond the scope of what can be regarded as healthy.

  Failure to recognize the confines of words (words, the building blocks of achievement, to quote from his recent article on the subject in Neural Function Today) indicates an underlying degradation of those node clusters that enable the brain to comprehend the world in which its proprietor organism finds itself, and puts that organism at risk of potentially dangerous misinterpretation of data.

  What if—for example—an organism were to identify a large obstacle in front of it as (for example) the “foot” of an immense tree rather than, correctly, as the foot of a giant prehistoric animal? Consider the possible consequences!

  There is, however, a strain of current thinking in the field that categorizes those rare individuals subject to pronounced hyperassociative disorders as in some way viable: Visionaries of the Banal, as one pretentious colleague’s paper on the subject styled it. (The fellow won some sort of prize for that bit of foolishness, the doctor recalls.)

  In any event, it has been demonstrated that productive work can often be found for such individuals—for instance, in the field of branding.

  The doctor, alone in his office, chuckles (somewhat self-consciously) at the thought of a former patient, whose bizarre (though, fortunately, curable) conviction that thousands of people were being shot as they returned to their homes at night and stood fiddling with their keys at their doors, turned out to be linked to his extraordinary (and ultimately very well-remunerated) ability to think up names for paint colors.

  (Giant prehistoric animal possibly poor example, unconvincing, revise? Ha ha, maybe he should take a couple of those fuzz-offs himself!)

  Sunday

  Therese wakes just before dawn, gasping for breath in the gray glass-dust mist between sleeping and waking, surrounded by a static of phantoms. Can she manage to put some of them into her book? She starts to open the drawer where it is, but the whispering and flimmering is already winking out around her.

  Just as well—she has been making high scores on the tests; she daren’t risk a relapse. She closes the drawer firmly and walks back and forth in her room to shake off the phantom remnants.

  The noise of the night’s fireworks is still in her ears. The moon is there or not there, behind the metal shutters.

  They’ve strongly suggested that she rest today. And that’s just what she plans to do. She’s calm enough now to fall back asleep, she thinks, and when she wakes up in the true day, she’ll be careful to take it easy. Maybe just lie around and play some games.

  She still hasn’t seen any of the City though—what will she tell her friends at home?

  Oh, but she knows how it looks out there, they all know how it looks, beyond the hospital complex, out on the broad avenues . . .

  The pealing of the bells comes faintly through the metal shutters, and when she closes her eyes, she sees the sun shining, shining, a gold veil in the air, and gold reflecting over the entire glorious city from the Tower at its summit.

  Streams of people, their arms laden with aromatic leaves and sprays of flowers, are coming from all the great houses; processions pour through the boulevards to worship. The women are so beautiful—their wrists flash with jewels, and their legs gleam. Their long, pale hair flows down their backs.

  At home, her friends bow their heads and kneel. Julia has put a pretty Sunday ribbon in her black curls. Therese thinks: we are grateful.

  Later today, the others will take their weekly salaries to the Mall, as they do every Sunday. Earrings, nail polish, maybe a new game, a T-shirt, some candy . . . what would she get if she could be with them?

  Tomorrow, a new week will begin, with more tests. And they say they’ll be able to measure exactly how well the drugs are working.

  Therese opens the drawer in her table and surveys the tidy stack of her possessions. She tucks her book away on the bottom.

  A little dry crumb clings to the cardboard box. Do her friends at home still remember her?

  She unfolds her good dress, smoothing the soft fabric and admiring the sweet flowers printed on it. She puts it on and lies down again, falling toward sleep.

  Yes, she can hear the doctor’s voice. Tree, he says.

  Tree, she says, and a peaceful sensation radiates through her, as the word locks down.

  But then for a moment she feels her unruly heart, her skin, her neurons—the secret language of her body—sending evidence of treachery to the sensors and dials. All around her, behind the wall of locked words, hums the vast, intractable, concealed conversation.

  Coin, the doctor says.

  She closes her ears and strains to shut out the noise.

  Coin, she says. Tears of effort cloud her eyes.

  Good, says the doctor—mirror. His voice is growing softer and more insistent.

  Mirror, she says—and her voice, too, is low and urgent.

  Tower, the doctor says.

  She takes a deep breath. Tower, she says.

  Fireworks, the doctor says.

  In her sleep, she struggles to scream, but she cannot make a sound.

  Let’s try that one again, please, the doctor says: fireworks.

  Fireworks, she says . . .

  Moon, the doctor says . . .

  JULIA ELLIOTT

  Hellion

  from The Georgia Review

  “Y’all put that gator right back where you found him or I’ll pepper your asses with 177s.”

  I aimed my Daisy right at Butch, the more chickenshit of the pair.

  Mitch held Dragon by the jaws while Butch tried to steady his lashing tail.

  “Feeding him Atomic Fireballs again, I see, which might could kill him. Why you want to mess with an innocent beast?”

  “Come on, Butter, we just wanna see him fart fire,” said Mitch.

  “Y’all idiots and cruel. Now go on and lower him into his tub.”

  They couldn’t grab their rifles with Dragon all thrashing and ready to bite, so they eased him down into his number-two tub, which was getting right snug now that he’d grown.

  “Put that chicken wire over the top and get them latch-action toggles clamped.”

  Mitch kept Dragon’s jaws shut while his little brother Butch cr
ouched with the cover, slammed it down fast as soon as Mitch let go. Then Dragon went ape-shit, snapping at the wire, so mad I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him for a week.

  “Was a dumb thing to do but we did it,” said Butch, lighting a cig butt to play it cool. He leaned on his Beeman like John Wayne.

  I lowered my gun.

  “You do it again and I’ll sick the Swamp Ape on you. I’ll get Miss Ruby to put a hex on your entrails. You’ll wake up at midnight with wasps in your belly, stinging you from the inside.”

  “What’s entrails?” asked Mitch.

  “Guts, idget. Now promise you won’t mess with Dragon again.”

  “Promise,” they said.

  “Let’s spit on it.”

  We spit into our palms and did some funky hand jives.

  “You heard about the citified pansy at Miss Edna’s house?” asked Butch.

  “Who?”

  “Your third cousin from Aiken, Butter, according to our mama. They got a mall there and a nuke reactor.”

  “Something tells me he’s gonna be achin’ real soon.” Mitch laughed so hard he upped a lump of snot. He spit the loogie in the dirt and slid astride their Yamaha Midget X-7. Butch hopped on back, holding the sport fender as they sped off.

  Miss Edna, postmistress of Davis Station and widowed a decade, didn’t take crap. She allowed me use of her library, told me I could be a career girl if I’d apply myself. Tried to get me in a dress now and then and said my towhead was too pretty for a pixie cut, especially since I was almost thirteen.

  Hands and face fresh-washed, I stood on her spotless porch, waiting for her to answer my knock. Saw a skink skitter over the steps and longed for my Daisy—an easy dollar down the drain. Suffering some phobia that went back to her childhood before the Civil War, Miss Edna paid me one buck for every lizard I shot. I’d present them in a shoebox, do a body count while she cringed, then bury them out back her shed.

  “Well hello there, Butter.” Miss Edna stood behind her screen door, aproned, the boy lurking in her shadow, a pale freckled scrap of male humanity who looked like he’d strain to lift an ice-cream spoon. “Come on in and meet Alex. He’s just a few months older than you.”

  I’d never heard of a boy named Alex who wasn’t on TV. He nodded, led me back to the den where he had his Atari hooked up to Miss Edna’s console Panasonic. Sat right down to play Q*bert. Kept his eyes on that creepy head with feet, jumping it around on a pyramid of cubes, avoiding bouncing snakes and balls—an exercise in mindless stupidity.

  “Come all this way to play Q*bert?” I asked him.

  “Nothing much to do,” he said.

  “You stuck your head out the door since you came?”

  “Why bother?”

  “Why don’t you let me show you a thing or two?”

  When Alex pulled away from the screen, I noticed he was long in the neck, with big eyes the color of my mama’s olive-fire agate beads. A cowlick ruined his strawberry-blond New Wave bangs, preventing them from cascading over his right eye. And his lips pouted like Simon Le Bon’s.

  “What you got to show?” He looked me over.

  “A whole ’nother universe. Teach you how to drive a go-cart, for one, how to shoot an air rifle, plus several techniques for handling a live gator. How to creep up on the Swamp Ape without making him bellow and coax him out with a fistful of Slim Jims. Show you flesh-eating plants and deer dens, the Plat Eye demon floating over black water, forest fairies swooping up to mooch from Miss Ruby’s hummingbird feeder.”

  The bragging spewed out like I was hexed. I would’ve kept going if Miss Edna hadn’t called me back to the kitchen.

  “Butter,” she said. “You got to promise me you’ll watch out for Alex, the boys around here being mostly hellions.”

  “I’m a hellion, too, Miss Edna.”

  “No, Butter, not like the rest. You’re my great-niece, after all.”

  She drew me close so she could whisper, suffocating me with her White Shoulders perfume.

  “Alex’s mama just had a premature baby boy. Know what that means?”

  “Came out before he was cooked.”

  “That’s right. A poor three-pound thing struggling to breathe in an oxygen tank. Alex, being tenderhearted, is taking it right hard. So, you got to keep that in mind and be gentle with him. You can be a lady when you want to.”

  Ladies sat still and tormented themselves with stiff dresses and torture-chamber shoes. Ladies held their tongues when men walked among them and fixed them food and drinks. As my mama, who worked the night shift at Clarendon Memorial, said, “I don’t have time to be a lady.”

  “I won’t never be a lady,” I said. “But I won’t let the boys mess with Alex.”

  The next day was one of those blazing summer mornings: sky blue as a pilot light and birds going full throttle, opening their golden beaks and warbling, Glory Be. I had Alex riding shotgun in my Hellcat KT100, a right decent yard cart upgraded by my daddy with thirteen-inch tires and a Titan engine. Wind in my hair, Dr Pepper between my thighs, one hand on the wheel while the other handled a fresh-lit cig butt: pure-tee heaven on a stick, except for Alex gripping the side rail like he didn’t trust my driving. Had a mind to race the Hellcat that day, with Alex there to witness my triumph, and we were headed over to the Cliffs.

  The boys were already there, brown and shirtless, popping wheelies and jumping gullies, flying ass-over-teacup around that eroded moonscape where a feller buncher had plucked pines out of the earth like they were dandelions. Second we arrived, Butch and Mitch did donuts around us, spitting loogies and slurs, calling Alex poontang, gerbil balls, city flower, and fagmeat.

  “Your mama’s got sweet tits,” screamed Butch, who was all of ten. “Ask me how I know.”

  I eased into a clump of upstart pines and cut the motor. Sat in the prickly shade for a spell, sipping my Dr Pepper.

  “Look,” I told Alex, “first thing you got to learn is ignore their insults, save your wrath for what matters. Remember that nuclear radiation has endowed you with a Hulk-like condition where you might, any minute, pop out into a raging, muscular mutant.”

  “What?” Alex smirked.

  “Well, that’s what I told them, since you live near that nuke plant. Also said you could mind-read, tell futures, and levitate.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “For one, pardon me, you’re weird. And two, they would’ve already snatched you off the cart and whupped you if I hadn’t, or peppered you with BBs. We got to keep up the mystery. Now, if Mitch or Butch mess with you, mention that their mama’s got webbed toes. They don’t know I know, so that’ll spook them. Tell Kenny Walker, a big fool who flunked three grades, that he will realize his dream and become a professional wrestler. As for Dinky Watts, the little redheaded spazz whose freckles run together, tell him redheads are mind-readers by nature and you’ll teach him this art like Merlin did King Arthur. Don’t even talk to Cag Stukes, the one in the Gamecock jersey, ’cause he speaks the language of fists.”

  Alex went bluish-pale like skim milk.

  “I should go back to Meemaw’s house.”

  “They’ll track you there. They’ll climb through your window at night and dump fire ants in your bed. Tough this one out and you’re home free. Think about it like a video game. Get to the next level.”

  I drove straight into an orange cloud of clay dust that hovered like a nuke mushroom, came out the other side, jumped two gullies, hugged the outer wall of a U-turn, and fishtailed right up to the action. Though it almost killed him, Alex loosened his grip on the side rail, keeping up a half-assed appearance of cool. The boys went crazy strutting their stuff: Cag circling with a two-wheeled donut on his Rambler X10; Butch standing on the seat of their Midget while Mitch popped a wheelie; Dinky hopping the hind wheel of his Hornet while Kenny zipped higgledy-piggledy on his Scorpion 5. I realized how stoked they were to blow this city-boy away. They finished their daredevilry, circled us twice, and then stood idling, staring a
t Alex, half-hoping my tales were real—that the boy would float up out of his seat. Instead, Alex staggered from the cart, fell to his knees, and wallowed on the ground like a bass gasping for water.

  “Aw, shit,” I said. “Looks like he’s about to turn.”

  Clutching his head, Alex stood up.

  “I can-not al-low it to hap-pen a-gain,” he said. “Too ma-ny in-no-cents slaugh-tered.”

  Alex twitched as though shaking a winged demon from his back. He tottered like an exhausted old man and then stared up at the sky, croaked out gibberish, pausing between bouts as though taking dictation from God.

  “Your mother has mermaid blood.” He pointed at Mitch and Butch. “Hence her webbed toes. She swims in Lake Marion on full-moon nights.”

  The brothers’ jaws dropped at the exact same time, and I pictured them creeping around their den at night, their mama crashed on the couch, her feet freed from the Reeboks she wore to waitress, toes moist and pale in the spooky light of their television.

  “And you.” He turned to Kenny. “Blessed with giant’s blood. One day you will know the glory of kayfabe, your name joining the ranks of Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.”

  “Last but not least,” Alex said, pointing solemnly at Dinky. “Redheaded elf of rare blood, small of stature but vast of mind, I will teach you the telepathic arts.”

  With his word-magic, Alex struck the boy-beasts dumb. They stood, dreamy-eyed in the balmy morning air—all except Cag, who fidgeted, eyes goggling, waiting to hear his fortune. But Alex paid him no mind, sank into my Hellcat as though exhausted from divining. And we sped off, cackling at our stunt.

  After lunch I fetched Alex from Miss Edna’s porch, blood thrilling when I saw him smile. The boy was bored with his video games, revved up for real adventure, and I spirited him off into the afternoon. We zipped through three backyards to mine, scooted round the shed, and rolled up to Dragon’s den. When I cut my motor, cicadas blared like summer’s engine. We scrambled from the cart, hunkered down by Dragon’s hole, dug deep by my daddy back in April when I’d found the baby gator moping motherless in the swamp. I’d fed him peepers and silver minnows, brought green life back into his yellowing scales. Now Dragon pressed against the chicken wire, flaring his nostrils and smacking his chops. He could smell the ripe chicken giblets and fresh bream I’d brought, his food bucket bungeed to my Hellcat’s rear frame.