Swarm

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Swarm Page 25

by Lauren Carter


  A movement through the dirty four-paned window caught my eye. A vulture’s talons touched down in the yard. Dust clouded around it. It folded its wings back onto its body like tucking away a cape and turned toward Thomson. I ran outside and threw nails until it spread its huge brown-black wings and lifted into a pine. Its pebble eyes stared from the wrinkled red head. Another one landed in the branches. And they watched. Waiting. In the shed, I found the shovel hanging from a nail hammered into the back wall. As I lifted it off with one hand, my gaze fell behind a gashed water barrel, into the dusty corner, onto a stack of red paper plates.

  Five of them. Licked clean. My sacrifice, my offering, stolen by Marvin. I stumbled back, the heavy shovel dropping. My free hand fumbled for the corner of the desk. All his arguments against feeding you flooded my mind. The way he positioned his body as he tried to convince me, leaning in, aggressive. And all the time, he was taking it, eating it, his lips greasy with his own greed. The food I had meant for you. Another betrayal. Another death because of him. My chest felt thick. The shed smelled of mould and autumn rot, the dirt in the cellar under our house. The door had closed behind me so I shoved it open, climbed out into the fresh air off the lake. With the shovel blade stabbed into the earth between my feet, I sat on the porch steps. My emotions swung from searing grief to rage as the vultures dropped from the tree, arriving like guests at a wake. I let them. They came closer and I called to them. Thomson behind me, clumsily shrouded in the flowered sheets.

  “Try it,” I enticed. “Try it and I’ll kill you. I’ll feed you to Marvin.”

  Suppertime had come and gone.

  My anger woke the savagery inside me and I had stopped thinking of you at all. Except as something else I’d lost.

  The birds were still there when Marvin returned. Coming out of the woods, he saw us—them, me, Thomson. The pile of plates on the step like a buoy marking a treacherous rock. His eyes swung from them to Thomson and he released the long yardage of green net. It fell to the ground as he ran to the body, rushing around me like I wasn’t even there. The plates scattered as he raced past. I watched them go, fluttering to the ground, flipped over, their undersides bright white.

  Marvin pulled the sheet away from Thomson’s face. He lifted his hands, moved them around, uncertain where to touch. Finally he knelt and leaned against the solid shelf of Thomson’s ribcage, laid his arms around his waist and wept.

  I had never seen Marvin cry. Not after Phoenix or anything else. His tough, tanned face collapsed at all the wind-carved lines, and I let him have his moment. The vultures shuffled at the edge of the yard as if made uncomfortable by Marvin’s grief. When they got too close, I waved the shovel, waited, but Marvin kept crying until I couldn’t take it anymore. The birds watched as I walked up the trail to where the hives had been, carrying the paper plates. There, I started to dig.

  Into that hole I put my anger, my guilt, my wasted life. I put the hope I’d felt for you, destroyed by Marvin, and my love for Phoenix and Thomson. The world had come unglued—all the pieces of my life drifting without connection—and that hole seemed to be the only central point. My arm ached from a torn muscle that had never properly healed, but I dug, throwing dirt, faces flickering in my mind. The travel agent, mascara clumped around her curious eyes. Phoenix. I remembered our garden. The first one we would have had. The seeds Phoenix and I had planted in the city. Tomato and cucumber that hadn’t even had time to sprout. When we left they were just pots of soil in a tiny greenhouse Phoenix built using the plastic sheeting that had covered the diner’s glass door. Her memory itself was like a softening seed, its walls cracking open, uncurling inside me. My lungs had to shift, my liver, my heart. It hurt, all that movement of things long fixed. I jabbed hard at the packed earth and the shovel broke and I sat on the edge of the grave with the wood handle in one hand, the iron blade in the other. Tears came, sputtering up like the poison in Thomson’s lungs. What would I do without him, without you? Without her?

  With my wrist, I pushed away the wet on my face, smearing grit over my skin. Marvin came down the trail, dragging another shovel, scoop-shaped, meant for snow. He inched out of the woods and stood at one of the forest’s many openings. More and more the woods seemed like a maze. This one room—where the hives had been, where Thomson’s grave would be—could have been the labyrinth’s centre.

  “What you did . . .” I said, lifting up the plates. I threw them and they scattered, polka-dotting the ground. Startled, the birds lifted from the trees into their safer arcs. They looked down, dipping lower, assessing. Did he even realize what he’d done, how he’d pushed you into exile, probably sentenced you to death? “Do you believe in anything anymore? Do you even have a conscience?”

  “There’s no more room for ideology,” he said, his voice cold.

  “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

  “That isn’t what that means. It isn’t so base.”

  “Not like stealing food from a child.”

  He banged a fist against his chest. “I’m real, Sandy. I’m taking care of us.” He came closer to me and I hardened, knowing I’d do whatever it took to keep him away.

  “And what is she? A ghost?”

  “Every day I go out on that boat, that tiny leaking prison cell, and bail like mad to keep from sinking. Fish and fish and fucking fish. I stink of it.” He glanced off at the open trail, the criss-cross of drooping goldenrod in full yellow bloom. “But I can’t stop because the whole house of cards is built on my back. And then you take it all and start giving it away like it comes from nowhere, like it’s this fucking magical bounty.” He was breathing hard by the time he finished.

  “You think I’m home watching television?”

  “Protein. That’s the hard part.”

  I paused. “So you went ahead and ate it.”

  “I tried to stop you, but you wouldn’t stop.”

  “You condemned her, like you did him.” I jabbed at the shallow trough where Thomson would soon be lain out. In the silence, unspoken truths drifted between us: the others who had lost their lives because of Marvin. The forest shifted like the switching of a set.

  “And me,” I said quietly. Her name hung between us. Finally I said it out loud: “Phoenix.” My eyes burned, dangerously hot.

  “You came willingly,” he said. “You both did.”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “So it’s my fault? You’re a victim? An innocent?”

  “You used me. I was a tool to you. Somebody to do your dirty work.”

  He leaned toward me, his hands bunched around the shovel’s handle, like cedar roots. “You were a grown-up, Sandy. You made choices.”

  He looked like a stranger, like someone I’d never really known. I shook my head, broke a hard clump of dirt into powder under the heel of my hand. A blue jay screamed its accusations. My head was full of the image of him in his shed, acting in secret, like he had in the city. He and Walter, who had long turned to ash and that one claw of metal that had been his hand. Twisting wires, taping together explosive pipe. I thought about Thomson’s words about forgiving him, making amends, and wondered how that would ever be possible.

  “I know you wish it was me and not her. As if the three of you could have survived.” He laughed: a dry outburst of air.

  “We were doing fine.”

  “Right. I shouldn’t have bothered coming back.”

  “Do you want praise for that?”

  I didn’t want to delve into history, think about what might have happened if Marvin hadn’t returned to the dark zone that last night. Looking back with him was like a dangerous crossing on a rickety bridge.

  “The girl,” I said, my voice strained. She could have been mine, I wanted to say but couldn’t. That pain was a hole I couldn’t show him. Behind me the tall, straight pines creaked like the sound of someone crossing an old wooden floor.

  “She’s fine,” Marvin said.

  My eyes jumped to his face. “How d
o you know?”

  “There are things I know. There are things you can trust me with.”

  “Tell me.”

  He looked away. Anger roared up in me. I sucked in my breath and hollered into the woods: “All your fucking secrets. You’re allowed to have them but I’m not.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Marvin scraped the shovel along the rectangle of dirt I’d outlined for Thomson’s grave, loosening another layer. “Really? Where would you go?”

  “I don’t know. Town. I could go to Mr. Bobiwash. Jack.”

  Marvin considered me. “Jack,” he said. He bent over and picked up the smoker, its side caved in. “And Shannon?”

  I shrugged, staring at the sunset, bleeding red through the trees.

  “You have two choices, Sandy. Stay or leave. Decide.”

  He started shovelling, tossing dirt at the base of the pines. I knew what he meant: live or die. There was once a time when we could have had it all, gambled for the chance at something better like I’d done by leaving my parents—setting out for greener pastures. But Marvin supported me, fed me, kept me warm and alive, and I him. Long ago, in that fire-lit city, my fate had been determined. It was how things were in my great-grandmother’s time. It’s how they were again. Still what I wanted more than anything right then was to leave, seek out that other life I was always supposed to have. Marvin stopped, the shovel blade half buried in a heap of earth.

  “You know you can’t lay everything on me. You still think there’s some magic doorway.”

  “And to you it’s all doom and gloom. Shatter the illusion until we have nothing left.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “It is what you meant. Wasn’t that why we did what we did?”

  “That’s not what I mean now,” Marvin said more gently. “Things are what they are.” He kicked at the ground. “Life.”

  “How very Buddhist of you.”

  He glanced away, toward the house, the few birds spiralling like sparks from a fire.

  “Thomson would say, Look at how the birds are trying to eat me.”

  “Don’t,” I said, flinching. “He wasn’t just meat.”

  “I fucking know that, Sandy. Christ.”

  He pushed the snow shovel back in, awkwardly breaking away the inches. I shoved in the metal blade, loosening the soil’s hard weave. When Marvin stopped, his forehead gleamed with sweat.

  “But you know there are some tribes that eat their loved ones after they die. It’s a sign of respect, of the great circle.”

  I stared at him. His eyes shone. The low sun lit the waxy skin of his cheeks. I noticed the sharp point of his elbow, the skinny trunks of his legs. He grabbed at the taut skin of his stomach. “And if you’re hungry enough,” he said. “If you’re fucking hungry enough.”

  I saw, finally, that he wasn’t far from that, but when I spoke, my voice was hard.

  “She was hungry like that too.” He blinked once. His gaze slid off into the bone forest.

  “I know,” he said as I left him on the edge of the grave.

  Eric and Graham were standing in the yard. Clumped together, staring at Thomson’s body on the porch. The birds gathered at the peripherals, lifting their wings as if they’d been invited to supper and made to wait. I rushed over to the boys.

  “It’s all right,” I said as I slid my arm around Eric’s narrow shoulders and tried to pull him against me. He tugged away from me and ran off, around the side of the house. Branches cracked as he entered the forest. My thought was that he’d scare you away. But then I remembered that you were not here. You never had been. The plate, the offerings of food, taken by Marvin and gobbled up in the shadows of his shed. Like a burrow for an animal.

  “Eric,” I shouted after him. Graham went to Marvin’s shed, scaring the vultures away. He leaned against the corner, staring. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to contain my grief. That morning came back. How I’d asked Thomson to stay, to hold on, instead of helping him leave, saying goodbye. It had been chaos, like it was with Phoenix, not a desirable parting.

  Eric walked out of the woods, staring sideways at Thomson’s body, afraid. He came to me and I put my arm around him again. Graham stomped on loose nails, slivers of shale that had worked their way up from the water. Those boys had seen so much. I pushed tears into the skin of my cheeks as I led them through the kitchen door to find something to eat. We should have been laughing around the table like family, friends. Not retrieving corpses and burning them. But death was everywhere.

  Inside, I used the last of the water to wash my hands.

  “You know he was very sick,” I told the boys. “He’s in a better place now.” The words came automatically, like I remembered my own mother talking about my aunt, others who had passed away.

  “Can we see him?” Eric said, surprising me.

  We walked through the house to the front door. Dusk shadows filled the front porch, but we approached Thomson together and I let them look, uncertain what to say. After a minute or so I tugged the sheet off, briefly, so they could squint at his pale face, the mouth slack. I was glad I’d cleaned him. Marvin came out of the woods then, the front of his shirt stuck in the waist of his pants, the back trailing like a tail. Eric looked at him.

  “Dad sent us,” he said.

  “Everything okay?” Marvin asked.

  “Shannon—” Eric started, but Graham interrupted him.

  “Hungry,” he said, one hand flat against his belly, palm cupped over the knot of the blue rope that held up his pants.

  “What about Shannon?” I asked.

  “She’s crazy,” Eric said, his eyes large, and Graham laughed, a high-pitched, half-mad little giggle that usually made me smile. Marvin gestured at the flies landing on Thomson’s face and I waved them away and replaced the sheet. The bees, I remembered then, and told the boys how they had made a new home in the car engine as I led them back inside. Marvin grabbed a pickaxe and went back to finish digging the hole as night came on. Inside, the boys and I made what we could for a late supper. We didn’t have a lot, but we cored a few apples and stuffed them with the last of our beet sugar and I had Eric light a fire in the cookstove. While we worked, I told them about you, the shadow girl who moved through the woods. I made it sound like a story, but when I finished, I asked them if they’d seen you, if they knew about you, and they both said no. I wanted to ask more—what was going on with Shannon, if they knew why Jack had been at the lighthouse—but it was Thomson’s funeral so I decided to wait. At least until we were sitting down, our stomach rumbles quieted by supper, or until I tucked Eric into bed, if they stayed.

  When Marvin came back, his hands and neck were smeared with dirt and his armpits wet from sweat. “We’re ready,” he said as he went to wash his hands and discovered that the water bucket was empty. I didn’t look at him; I didn’t care what he needed or wanted. The apples were wrinkled and steaming on top of the stove. Graham whimpered. When Marvin got back from the lake, the four of us went outside and circled Thomson. I fought not to cry.

  “Can you carry him?” I asked Marvin.

  “We all can.”

  “The boys shouldn’t have to,” I said, but Eric stepped forward, tugging Graham’s sleeve. Marvin lifted Thomson’s shoulders and I supported his middle while the boys carried his legs. Clouds covered the half-moon so we moved slowly, creeping along the trail to the hives and the hole at its end. The flashlight, tied to Marvin’s belt, scattered bits of diminishing light. I wished we could have waited until morning but that wasn’t what Thomson had wanted. Right away, he’d said. Plant me like a hungry seed.

  “Slow down,” Marvin said, and I heard him skid his foot over the ground, searching for the hole. When he found it, we manoeuvred ourselves around the grave, the body hanging between us.

  “Okay,” Marvin said, and as I kneeled to lower Thomson in, the boys let go and Thomson’s shoulders slipped out of Marvin’s grasp. The sud
den weight pulled me down and I fell in the grave, tangled with Thomson, my arm pinned under his waist. I felt his body beneath mine, his hip joints poking into my thighs. My stomach pressed against his. Thomson’s last lesson: Sooner or later, this is where we all end up.

  Dirt tumbled in on me. Dry clods falling on my arms and legs as I lay there. My face was close to his, but there was no breath coming out of his mouth. His body felt fragile beneath mine, like a rotted floor that could easily give. He had been my teacher, my friend, the father I’d hardly had, but he wasn’t anything now except a memory, a form that would be gone by spring. The sobbing came like coughing, an expulsion I couldn’t control. Part of me wanted to be buried with him, but I pushed off his chest and saw their three faces staring down.

  “I’m okay,” I said, wiping my wet face on my sleeve.

  Marvin’s flashlight illuminated the arteries of cedar roots in the soil surrounding me. When his hand came down, fishing for me, I grabbed on to it. My fingers were slippery from tears, but our grip held and he pulled me from the grave.

  At the table, we ate as if in ceremony, a special family dinner. The boys split open the soft yellow flesh of the baked apples with tarnished dessert spoons. I pushed an underdone potato, dug up early, around on my plate. We had half a smoked fish, split in four. The flesh of it like cold metal on my tongue. The only sounds were the boys’ smacking mouths and Marvin’s knife blade scraping against the ceramic plate and Graham humming a rhythmless song while he ate. My eyes avoided the empty couch. Marvin and I were silent, but I kept thinking about the story he’d told over Thomson’s grave, one I’d never heard before, about Thomson taking him and Phoenix to the city zoo. “He showed us the elephants,” he’d said. “And told us how they work together, even grieve for their dead, visit the graveyards of their ancestors’ bones. But we were teenagers. We thought we were too cool for that.” I felt the boys, listening hard, and thought about all that had come after that, for Marvin and for me. “Elephants,” I heard Eric mutter, and Graham’s clammy hand had fumbled for mine in the dark. It hurt me to sit at the table, thinking, buried in the same heavy fog that had lived between Marvin and me for years. I wanted to leave, like we’d left the city that night, our pasts falling away in a mess of glass and blood and bombed-out wreckage. Or so I’d thought. I hadn’t realized the wreckage had stayed, still intact, like a bee colony’s abandoned home. I laid down my fork and looked up.

 

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