You have to stop going out there like that, Sunny Jim wanted to say. You don’t hear what they say about you. He followed her once into the woods, watched her bed down in a pile of leaves, the rifle’s barrel lying across a fallen log. He did not see the deer, just a tensing in her muscles that didn’t disturb the leaves around her, a slight cock of her head. The rifle barrel pivoted, emitted a single shot, and a halting crash tumbled from the underbrush. Then a stillness, and his sister rose, the knife already unsheathed. Threw a quick glance over her shoulder, that wan smile again, and though she did not seem to see him, he understood at once that she knew he had been there all along. Knew, too, that he would not stay for the butchery.
The house was half-empty, all the aunts and uncles gone. The grandparents and great-grandmother on the second floor with Sunny Jim, Merry, and their parents. The third floor abandoned but for their cousin, who moved from room to room in the spring, trying to convince the insects that the floor was still inhabited. They were not fooled. He found a chain of spider nests in the molding along the ceiling of the corner room. They had built a city over his head while he slept. His rap on a window frame broke the painted surface, revealed how termites had hollowed it out and died, and flies infested the space. He heard a rustling in a mattress one day, saw a small ridge rise and fall under its skin. When he cut it open, centipedes streamed from the wound while a horde of arthropods swarmed beneath, turning the mattress to soil. For a year, something bigger than a squirrel lived in the attic. Only Merry would go up to see what it was, but when she came back down, she would not say what she had found.
The rage in Sunny Jim’s parents was by then a demon in the house. It hid in the walls, in the cracks in the floors, then roared out and smashed chairs, upended tables. Pushed a hand through the kitchen window. Howled through the place for hours, then spent itself and withered back into the wood. Sunny Jim’s father went to the veterinarian’s house twice, came back once with an angry track of stitches running from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. How did that happen, the veterinarian had said. You don’t want to know, the father said. Yes I do, the veterinarian said. But the father would not tell him.
At last, there was a fight that threatened them all. Sunny Jim’s parents were already screaming when Sunny Jim came home. He stood there in the middle of the floor while his parents tore around him. A chair splintered, and Sunny Jim’s father lifted the jagged leg high, began to bring it down. Aiming for Sunny Jim’s mother, seemingly unable to see his son. Sunny Jim had time to crane his neck upward, see the club bearing down on him. Then a flash of blood, and another. The chair leg spun in the air, and his father brought his hand down, clutched it in the other one, jammed both between his legs. Long streams of red shot down the cloth of his pants toward the floor. Two bullet holes had tunneled into the wall behind him. Two of his fingers lay half curled at his feet. And Merry stepped in, the rifle on her shoulder. Did not hesitate.
“Try to hit him again, and I’ll do the eyes next time,” she said. Smiled as if she’d enjoyed herself, and off to Binghamton she was shipped.
Sunny Jim did not see her again for two years. His parents would not let him, tried at first to scare him with stories of the place she had been sent to. They tie the children down in there, they said. Tie you down so you can’t move for hours. Your sister is very sick, they told him, but did not explain how tying her down would make her better.
His cousin left the house after he picked Sunny Jim up outside the castle, decided to depart with a flourish. Bad enough that they had to put one of your kids in the crazy house, he told Sunny Jim’s father. Now your other kid’s trying to get in all by himself? I have better things to do, he said. He had parked his truck facing the road, heaped the truck’s bed with everything he owned. A bundle of clothes, a flapping mattress. A record player that never had a needle. A pair of hunting rifles his father had given him. Then all they could see of him were the headlights of the truck, swinging around the bend toward the bottom of the hill. They learned later that he’d made it to Atlanta, died in a knife fight over a girl, a small sum of money. No one knew what became of the rifles.
Sunny Jim only understood how long Merry had been away when she came back. He had trouble recognizing her. She had grown hips, breasts. Her face had slimmed and her eyes darkened. Her hair was shorter, perhaps a different color. It was hard to be sure. Her mother was waiting for her on the porch steps, stood when the car grumbled on the gravel in the driveway. Put out her arms when Merry opened the passenger side door and climbed out, but made her walk across the lawn to her embrace. Her father trailed behind. He had gone to Binghamton to get her, driven her back to Lisle. But it was unclear whether he had even touched her.
“What was it like in there?” Sunny Jim said.
“Crazy,” she said.
Dim hallways lit by waning fluorescent bulbs. The generator coughing and grinding outside her window. A row of broken window frames covered in plastic and tape. Someone kept poking holes in it to let the rain spit in. The other patients wandering the halls, like livestock, she thought. Like geese. Until one of them lunged, attacked another, scrambled on the floor. Or threw himself into the walls, shouts rising into a keening yelp. Then the orderlies and nurses descended, pinned him to the floor. Four-point restraints were so common that the kids in the ward put their dolls in them. Merry was strapped down a few times, for defending herself from Randolph, another patient who said he liked her. She put a fork in his hand, added six months to her stay. But after that, he left her alone, and she started getting herself out. Laid low. Said the right things. I know what you’re doing, a nurse told her once. You’re just playing the game. Merry looked to the side, stifled a smile. If that’s what I’m doing, she said, do you think it’s working?
In the evenings, a clacking projector showed movies on a stained sheet hanging from the wall, the scratches on the lens fogging the picture. Someone had gone at it with the tip of a pen. Warbling sound through a crackling speaker. Once a week, a bearded man on the staff pulled out a guitar, stood in the middle of the cafeteria, and belted out old folk songs. Forcing his voice into a strength it did not have. The patients circled him in a tightening spiral, murmuring and yelling along, mixing obscenities into the lyrics. From the door, where Merry watched, it was as if the patients were coming in to feed. The music had already ended in injury twice, but the bearded man persisted. It’s helping them, he said. I know it is.
“I tried to see you,” Sunny Jim said.
“Mom and Dad told me. I’m glad they wouldn’t let you in.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t safe.”
“But they told me you were safe there.”
“They lied.”
Her parents forbade Merry from ever touching a gun again, but they could not control her, did not realize how little she slept. Sunny Jim only caught her because she made a mistake, a noise in the hall that roused him, though he could not say what it was. A falling glass. A car crash. Then he saw her in the doorway, a finger to her lips. Don’t tell Mom and Dad, she said. But you can come with me if you want. She floated down the stairs. He drafted in her wake.
The rifle was waiting for her in the shadow of a tree. They moved out into the blunted fields. It was late fall. The land was high with crisp stalks of grasses that grew and burned out, dead where they stood and surrounded by tall woods. The trees thick around them, shivering with leaves. No moon. They waded to the middle of the field and stopped. She made him sit down and he looked up at her, could tell even in the near dark that her eyes were closed.
“What are we doing out here?”
She rapped him on the head with her free hand to shush him, then raised the rifle. Cocked her head, though there was no noise he could hear. Steadied the gun at once and shot, pivoted and shot, shot, shot. Turned and shot. Sunny Jim’s heart beat once. Then the sound of five birds falling, bodies thudding into the weeds.
“How did you do that?” Sunny Jim said.
&
nbsp; She did not answer, did not have to.
“Where is the shadow man now?” he said.
She lowered the gun, put a hand to her chest.
“Right here,” she said. “All the time.”
The River
AFTER DANVILLE, THE TREES crowded the banks again, hung their branches over the current as the Carthage passed among the bones of bridges. There were towns in the hills somewhere, cracked highways following the valleys. But the people on the Carthage could see nothing, hear nothing. As if we had all left already, and the land was eating the abandoned houses. Reaching under the roofs to pry them off, pressing against walls and windows until they broke and the ants and spiders could swarm in. The plants and insects were marauders, come to raze and pillage, to colonize spaces they would occupy for the next thousand years, even after the Big One came and went.
That night, a thunderstorm shredded the sky, dragged knives across the river’s skin, sent bolt after ragged bolt of lightning to scar the hills, a message from the north and west. From the hold, they could hear the monkeys screaming on the shore. The monsoon roaring to life again. The storm before the storm. In a few weeks, the pilot thought, the space within the ship’s hull would be the only dry place around, for as long as the monsoon lasted. They would drop the anchor and repair to the theater, fire up all the lanterns, and wait, like they did every spring when the rains came. By the end of that season, strangers would be friends, friends become lovers. All the quarrels they’d had and worked out. The hands of the weather would pull them tighter together, and though it meant that the pilot’s heart had been broken a dozen times, the tightening was worth the sundering later. Perhaps they could convince themselves that was all the storm was then, just a bigger monsoon.
But then the river spoke at last, told him what Judge Spleen Smiley had been asking about all the way from Harrisburg. Showed him his first glimpse of a flock of souls surging into the air, leaving the boat behind in rising water. The heart of the storm was coming, Faisal Jenkins now knew, but the Carthage would not see it.
In the gray mist of the next morning, six rafts piled with clothes and furniture and milling with people passed the Carthage on their way downstream. The people shouted and waved their arms, trying to tell the pilot something, but they were already gone before he could hear. Then, all at once, the river was filled with boats. A family of eight and all that they possessed, piled onto a raft made from the side of a garage. Another family on a piece of roof, the mother and son with long poles in the water, the daughter asleep on a pyramid of clothes. A rowboat holding three boys, a dog, and the salted remains of a half-butchered calf. Thirty-seven people crowded onto a plastic barge, taking turns standing and sleeping, sitting cross-legged on the roof, one of them blowing into a rough clarinet made from a pipe, another pattering on a plastic bucket for percussion. A lone man in a bright blue tub. It was unclear if he was wearing any clothes. They all parted around the Carthage as they passed, punting with metal poles and shovels. Reached out and put their hands on the Carthage’s hull, as if offering benediction. The Carthage’s children leapt from the rails to swim among the passing boats, hitch rides for almost the length of the ship, then reach for a rope thrown by a friend, wavering like a snake in the water.
“Where are you from?” Elise called.
Scranton, they called. Wilkes-Barre. Then shouts of warning, of despair. The war had come there, it was there now. Don’t go. Do not go. And then they were gone, and it was only the Carthage and the river again, as if there were no war at all. The wave of corpses came an hour later.
* * *
IT WAS NIGHT, AND still. The dark gray outlines of the hills to either side. Not a star or moon in the sky. No wind. The water in front of the ship a sheet of smoky glass, murmuring as it slipped past the hull. The river still whispering to the pilot, but too low for him to hear. It was easy to think the river was cruel, teasing him, playing with him and everyone he knew. But his mother, his grandmother, had taught him better than that. The river was just a river.
He heard the tap of boots behind the pilothouse, could tell who it was without turning.
“Hey. You have any more of that coffee left?” he said.
“Sorry, my man,” Judge Spleen Smiley said. “Saving it for a rainy day.”
“They’re all rainy days now, chief.”
“Point made, but still no coffee. Got you some whiskey, though.”
“Not tonight,” the pilot said.
Judge Spleen Smiley lost his smile. “You got the message.”
“Yes. The Carthage won’t make it to the end of the season.”
“Ah.”
“…”
“When’s it going to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ll tell me, right?”
“Yes.”
“We have a deal.”
“Of course.”
“Because I want to be here when…” He waved his hand north. “I want to see it. Hear it. Because I have this theory, see.”
“That it isn’t really happening. That it’s just another storm. That if we hadn’t heard the news, we’d never know the difference between it and the monsoons we’ve always had. I’ve heard those already.”
“No, no. I don’t believe any of that. It’s real and it’s coming. But I think it will be beautiful.”
“Are you giving up on me?”
“No, no,” Judge Spleen Smiley said. “It’s a good world we have here, even with what we’ve done to it, and I’ll be sorry to see it go. I just think that what’s coming might be better.”
“…”
“It has to be better.”
“I think your music has gone to your head,” the pilot said.
“Maybe. I just want to hear it coming.”
“I don’t think you’ll have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, my man.”
“…”
“Listen to us,” the judge said. “You’d think we’ve been friends for years.”
“I don’t even know your real name, Judge.”
“That’s okay.” He laughed. “Neither do I, anymore.”
“…”
“So, are you staying with the ship?” the musician said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too.”
But they are always here with me.
* * *
THE FERRIS WHEEL CURVED high over the trees on the north bank, an arc of yellow and red, a long chain of white lights. Carnival machinery tilted toward the clouds, rose and fell, blurred in a haze of smoke colored by neon as if in a grainy film, a projection of a fair decades ago. The illusion lasted until they heard the screams and cries, straining chords. A child’s long wail. A chorus of fireworks shot above, exploded into a garden of fire, illuminating the water, the ship, the five peaks around the town, in sheets of green, blue, purple.
“Is this Shickshinny?” Captain Mendoza said.
“Where else could we be?” Elise said. “But I don’t remember it like this.”
I don’t remember anything like this, the captain thought. The sense that everything was turning to smoke, to light. Keeping its shape only as a matter of luck. She had found herself, in the last few days, touching her own forehead with three fingers, examining the texture of the skin, the hardness of the skull beneath. Thankful that it was still there. The boy from the camp seemed to understand. He was sleeping better, the first mate said, maybe too well. Ten, twelve hours. Had begun to play with the other kids on the ship. Soccer, a frantic frolic in the water. A game of hide-and-seek through the Carthage’s dark halls, during which one of them burned an arm in the boiler room, lay in her bed with bandages from wrist to shoulder, trying to ward off infection. The boy was lying on the deck now, faceup toward the fireworks. Eyes wide open, chest heaving. As if the blooming color was a gate opening, and something was walking through it that only he could see.
“Do you still want to
go?” the captain said.
Elise looked at Andre: the ship’s child, the deck his nation. The place where his girl was. She had seen them, walking back onto the deck from somewhere darker, their clothes rearranged. Trying not to hold hands. And she had seen the looks they gave each other, eyes flashing and darkening, charging the air. It was hitting him so hard, the poor boy. She understood, for she had felt it herself, that jumping spark. Still felt a little of that thrill when something her son said, something he did, reminded her of his father. It was going to hurt him to be taken from the ship, from that girl and her green eyes, her small hands. But he would survive it, and she could not let him go.
She let him say good-bye to her, then made him climb into a small boat facing the shore. The girl stood at the rail, unmoving. For the space of two breaths, the mother felt guilty, for she had broken her son’s heart. Looked back at the girl, trying to communicate to her. You will see. When you have a child of your own, you will see. Then she took his hand, turned away, and did not look back.
The shore was thrown into shadow by the lights beyond it. She thought at first that it was choked with the wreckage of a building, then realized it was a pile of rafts and small craft, scattered across the rocks and mud, tangled in the exposed roots. A dozen bodies twisted into the debris. She rowed until she could not get any closer to the shore, then dropped an anchor, put a leg over the side into the water.
“Come in,” she said to her son. He was looking at the bodies.
“I don’t want to go. I heard gunshots.”
“Those are fireworks.”
“I know the difference.”
“Come on.”
“What do we need to find Monkey Wrench for anyway?”
If you couldn’t find me, she thought, you would understand. But she knew it was unfair to say it. “Just come on,” she said.
They waded to shore together through the crowd of boats, then up to the line of trees, of damp sandbags. Broke through to the marshy field between the town and the river. It was ablaze with light, thick with smoke and people. The carnival rides swung overhead, dropping rust, joints creaking, engines screaming too loud. With a wrenching hoot, a car carrying three people bent from its frame, fell seventeen feet to the ground, crushed its passengers. The crowd first dispersed, like water disturbed by a stone, then flowed back in again. The people waiting in line stayed there, brushed the rust off their shoulders. Only flinched a little when another car careening over them shuddered downward. A gun went off behind them. Another, another. A short burst of machine-gun fire. Weeping. On the midway, a man cutting a zigzag through the dirt, holding a bottle by its neck, sidled up to Elise, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, is this a party or what?
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