Lost Everything

by Brian Francis Slattery

  So was Merry thinking of her brother as she took her third shot from the window under the roof, Aaron on the other side of the attic, wanting to know what was going on. Wanting to see.

  “Stay there and be quiet,” she said. A razor in her voice to make him obey. She shot again. Now three of the soldiers had stopped moving. The fourth, whom she had hit only once, was crawling backward, back down the road. He had left his gun behind, was only trying to get away. She could not say where she had hit him, but she knew it was bad, bad enough that she did not have to shoot again. She could feel their thoughts rising around her. A warm, sunny place, a beach. A couple old enough to be grandparents, their arms out. Welcome home, boy. The interring of a pile of guns in a field, a shovel working with purpose to cover them good. Then a wad of spittle from the laborer’s mouth on the fresh dirt, good-bye to all that, and a quiet decade raising sheep, shearing them in the spring, letting them go in the summer. Largeman could have survived it after all.

  She would move them into the woods before dawn, so that Aaron would not have to see. Would bury them the best she could the next night. The war still had not yet touched the boy, and she would not let it now. She had only a few bullets left, but it did not matter. She left her perch, pulled the crates and blankets away from the boy. Looked out the window on the other side. The rip in the sky was wider, longer. It lay open above their heads, plunged behind the trees. She knew it reached the horizon. Touched the earth. She could hear it, a rushing whisper, almost make out words. Somewhere north and west of them, the storm was a curtain parting. She knew what was pulling it open and wanted, with a yearning she had not felt in years, a keening like swooning love, to step through. But would not do so until she saw her brother again, gave him his boy back. Told them both everything they needed to know.

  She turned to Aaron. Put the rifle on the floor.

  “There,” she said.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  She looked at the gun. “We don’t need it anymore.”

  The River

  AFTER TOWANDA, THERE WERE broken hills, fields of water. Derelict houses sliding under the surface. The Carthage half-empty, a brittle shell. The musicians settled into skulking blues, country ballads sung in soft falsetto, as if a loud note would crack the ship in half. They passed from Pennsylvania into New York. There was nobody in Athens, nobody in Waverly. From over the ridge of the crumbling dikes, they could see sagging roofs, shingles like rotting teeth. Then the monsoon draped a downpour onto the river that melted the town away, and it was just the Carthage, and the water touching her hull. The drops rattled against the pilothouse until Faisal Jenkins could conceive of nothing else. But the river was speaking loud and clear. This is your last rain. Do not miss it, as your grandmother missed the snow. He closed his eyes, listened as Judge Spleen Smiley had told him to, to the spaces between the raindrops, the groans of the ship beneath him, the thunder sweeping the sky. Began to tap his foot, his finger against the wheel, to the pulse he was sure he could feel. It was easy then to believe that it was all arranged, the work of an unseen orchestra. That the river, sky, and land were speaking to each other. He waited until they gave him an opening, then raised his own voice, to his mother, his grandmother, for teaching him so much.

  Down below, the con artist and Sergeant Foote lay side by side on the mat in their room. They had been spending more and more time in there, closing the door to the fights, the music, until the voices and sounds were just dusty signals, half-heard reports from far away, and they pulled their own gods and myths from the room’s walls, their own history, of a dissolute people coming to move in the same direction, walking toward a goal they could not see but had to believe was there.

  “Let’s get married,” the con artist said.

  “What?” Sergeant Foote said.

  “Let’s get married.”

  She turned to look at him. His eyes were big and deep, the patterns in his pupils the map to an unexplored territory, the promise of fertile fields, rich forests. Enough to sustain them for their lives.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “…”

  “Why not?”

  The mission. The end of the war. Then the river’s bank, under broad leaves. She had not imagined anyone else there with her. And yet it seemed he could be there, a ghost, a trick of the light. He would come if she let him.

  “We could do it right now,” he said. “Go find the band and bring them all on deck. Have the captain blow the horn and gather everyone around. They could salute us with rifles.”

  “No rifles.”

  “Fine, no rifles. But there could be a party afterward, just a small one. And that priest could do the ceremony. I’ve always liked him, you know. Ever since I met him at the Clarks Ferry Bridge.”

  “…”

  “What?”

  “Say that again,” she said.

  “I’ve always liked—”

  “—No. Where did you meet him?”

  “At Clarks Ferry Bridge.”

  “When.”

  “Just before I got on. We were all up there together, me and the priest and the man he’s always with.… Where are you going?”

  She was putting on her pants, her shirt. An expression on her face he had never seen before, could not read. It made him afraid to speak. She was out the door without another word, closed it too fast. He sat up, looked across the room. She had taken her pistol.

  On the deck, the captain and the first mate were squabbling. The bass player sat against the pilothouse tuning a zither, a wrench and a screwdriver lying next to her. The pilot drove with one hand on the wheel, serene, squinting into the straining sun. None of them noticed the gun. But the boy from the camp did.

  “I know what you’re doing.” Standing on his hands, kicking his feet in the air. “I know what you’re doing! Rawhead and Bloody Bones!” He sprang off his hands, rolled into a stand. Took a huge breath, planted his feet, and screamed until he ran out of air. Breathed in and screamed. It was all coming for him again. The giants were destroying the landscape, reaching down from the firmament and dragging his parents into the sky. He had spent two days surrounded by corpses, trying to wake them up. Hallucinated for three hours that they had, but all they would talk about was taking him with them. They crawled around on the ground, pointed to the poison. It is so easy. All you have to do is drink. But he could see through them, was starting to smell them, and pushed himself against the cinder block walls, covered his nose and mouth.

  The first mate ran to him, but he thrashed away, slashing at her with his fingernails. Don’t come near me, don’t come anywhere near me. The musician put down her instrument.

  “Hey,” she said to the boy. “Don’t treat her like that, after she’s been so good to you.” Then she sang a song, slow and sweet, to quiet him. The first thing she thought of.

  I never can forget the day

  When my dear mother did sweetly say

  You are leaving, my darling boy

  You always have been your mother’s joy.

  He screamed through the first two lines, but it got to him on the third line, began to calm him down. She kept on.

  Now as you leave in this world to roam

  You may not be able to get back home

  But remember Jesus Who lives on high

  Is watching over you with a mighty eye.

  Later, the bass player would wonder why she thought of it then, this old hymn. She was not a religious woman, respected those who were too much to pretend otherwise. But somehow it was the only song that seemed right. She hoped those who had come before her would forgive her for not sharing their conviction, could hear that she shared their hope. Hoped, too, that she could convince the boy that the earth was worth staying on.

  * * *

  SERGEANT FOOTE MOVED THROUGH the Carthage’s halls, tracking down the few passengers who were left. Have you seen the reverend? They had not. Not for hours. At last she found them both in the theater, sitting alone at a ta
ble, speaking too low for her to hear. There was no one else there.

  “Father,” she said.

  Reverend Bauxite turned. They both looked at her.

  “Can I help you?” Reverend Bauxite said.

  “Tell me again how long you’ve been on this boat.”

  The two men both looked at the floor.

  We tried, didn’t we.

  Yes, we did.

  Almost made it, too.

  Almost.

  “I’m the man you want,” Sunny Jim said. You have to get my boy now, Reverend.

  I will.

  Don’t die on me first.

  I won’t.

  I need you.

  I know.

  Reverend Bauxite got up.

  “No way,” Sergeant Foote said.

  He sat down again.

  “I know who you are,” she said to Sunny Jim. Then recited his full name, the name of his wife. Their place in the resistance. The things they had done, the people whose deaths they’d been charged with. The accusations arrayed against him, a litany of crimes that had curdled into judgment, a sentence.

  “Do you deny it?” she said.

  “No,” Sunny Jim said.

  “Then you understand why I am authorized to use any force necessary against you.”

  “Yes. Like your people did in Baltimore.”

  “This is different.”

  “If you say so.”

  She pulled out her pistol.

  Sunny Jim looked at Reverend Bauxite. Don’t die on me.

  I won’t.

  You have to live.

  I will.

  For Aaron.

  Yes. For him.

  He looked back at Sergeant Foote. “How good a shot are you?”

  “What?”

  “I said, how good a shot are you? Because if you’re going to do this, I want to be hit clean.”

  “You want this?”

  He sighed, and the word floated in the air—yes—down through the floor, the planks of the hull, into the cold current. “You seem to know a lot about me. Don’t you understand yet?” he said. “I just want my boy back. If I can’t have that, I don’t want to be here a second longer than I have to.”

  Then Sergeant Foote saw everything. The war was over, and the criminal and saboteur she’d been looking for was gone. There was just a man here, his wife in the water right below their feet, whispering to him. Growing impatient with him that he had not yet gotten their son. And he was not alone in being so haunted: All through the halls and rooms of the breaking vessel, the masses of the remembered dead lingered over the living, waiting for that livid second when all would be set free, and all could reunite.

  “I see,” she said. “I just needed to know.”

  She married the con artist six hours later. It began with a small ceremony, a flourish of strings, ended with a shower of broken glass, cuts on their ankles, bleeding dancers laughing and stumbling as the musicians lurched through another tango, the only thing they could think of to play. Then a violin string broke and they all cheered, rolled down into their rooms as though impelled there. And with her new husband asleep beside her, she at last pictured him with her on the riverbank, the sun flooding them with heat, then sinking into a final serenity in the blinding orange light off the water, and her laying down her arms for good.

  * * *

  THE SUN WASHED THE world in green and yellow light. The river narrowed again, straightened, a line pointing east. Low trees to either side, fields and train tracks beyond. The Carthage passed under the broken arch of a metal bridge, and they were in Owego. Brick buildings, ramshackle wooden balconies tilted over the water, chipping paint and bared splinters. It was easy to imagine that there had been a waterfront once, docks like piano keys, a bustle of people carrying lumber and barrels, lines of laundry strung long and bowing. There had been a bookstore in an old mill, a florist. A boy who played the violin, drove three towns over for lessons. A winter night when the houses all along the tree-shaded streets were under two feet of snow, and the cars crept through it, wipers squealing. Dropping off kids who would be gone in less than a decade, to cities hours away, for there was not enough for them there. But they were all ghosts now. Not a soul on the rickety wooden steps, or in the buildings, the streets beyond. Though two sheets shimmered in the wan wind, tied high over the current. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, C.J. LOOK FOR ME read one.

  DON’T WAIT MAGGIE I’LL FIND YOU read the other. There were already holes in both signs, tears at the corners. Only time and the river will bring my love to me.… Two hours after the Carthage passed, one of the sheets gave out and fell into the water. Five days later, he found her anyway.

  They had not yet cleared the town when Faisal Jenkins let out a sharp, rising whistle across the deck. Judge Spleen Smiley was sitting under the birds, blowing soft notes into a clarinet. He stopped, looked up. Faisal Jenkins only had to nod once. The judge took the instrument in his hands apart, put it back in its case. Walked below deck. The pilot kept the Carthage moving upriver, past the brick buildings downtown and into a stretch of water bordered by houses of wood and stucco, long green lawns that rolled, overgrown, to the river’s edge. He brought the Carthage closer to that bank, and the entire band emerged on deck with cases under each arm, lashed to backs, hanging off shoulders by straps. Trumpets and banjos, mandolins and trombones. A clattering of drums. The big shell of the upright bass. Then Faisal Jenkins gave the signal, a long, low sound on the horn by the wheel, and the crew scurried to drop the anchor. The Carthage leaned back on the chain, hung suspended in the current.

  They were loading their instruments into the rowboat when the first mate and her boy ran up to them.

  “You’re leaving?” she said.

  “Looks that way,” the judge said.

  “Here?”

  “Good a place as any.” He reconsidered. “Every place is good.”

  “But there’s nobody here.”

  “That’s not the place’s fault.”

  “You know what I’m saying, Judge.”

  The judge leaned on his guitar case. I’m trying to protect you. You and the boy. But I can’t if you keep asking questions.

  “No, I don’t,” the judge said. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The first mate looked down at the boy. Felt the river swell, as if taking a breath.

  “Do you want to go with them?” she said to the boy.

  “What?” the boy said.

  “Hey now,” the judge said.

  “I don’t mean just him,” she said. “I mean me, too.”

  The other musicians had everything in the dinghy. It rocked on the current, the cases creaking in unison. The boy looked toward the shore, back at the first mate’s cabin, the open door.

  “What do you think?” the first mate said.

  “You want to go?” the boy said.

  “If you do,” the first mate said.

  The boy clutched the first mate’s hand, took a step toward the boat.

  “All right,” she said. “Come on.”

  The musicians rowed the instruments to shore, unloaded the boat, and sent it back. She got in the boat with the boy and pulled on the oars, held it in the stream while the boy jumped out, ran across a tangled lawn, toward a dark house. She turned to the Carthage as if she might row back. Instead, she jumped out into the shallow water, kicked the boat into the current. The crew tilted their heads, jumped into the water to fetch it. And the first mate was first mate no longer. She would sleep on land that night for the first time in four years. For all that time, it was as if the Carthage had been a spider on the river’s silver thread, the earth around it smoke and darkness, heavy hills. People crawled out of it, vanished back in again. She had gazed around the ship and decided she needed nothing more. But now she was seeing it through the boy, and the ship and the land changed before her, unfolded. The Carthage was no place to grow up, she thought, and somewhere in the miles in front of them, there must be somewhere for him to track
out his years. There had to be, and she would help him find it, even if it meant losing some of her self. For she did not want the time left anymore if it was only for her. The days only made sense if he was in them.

  Sergeant Foote and the con artist were on the deck watching the musicians, the first mate, and the boy bustling on shore, arranging cases, getting ready to go. It was Towanda all over again. Smaller, quieter, but the same thing. For a moment, she did not know what she was feeling. She had not seen it coming, but now it was cresting, moving across her, subsiding. Leaving her changed. Later, she would see that the wave had snapped the ropes that held the war to her and carried it off. But in those seconds, she felt only the release, the impulse to act. She turned to her husband, took his hand. “Coming?” she said.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Together they ran to the rail, stepped up, and planted their feet on it, jumped into the water. Swam toward the people on the shore as the musicians cheered, ran to the water’s edge, extended their hands, and pulled them out. They lay for a minute in the cool grass, catching their breath, staring into the sky. His hand found hers. Then they stood up, took off their clothes, wrung them out in their hands. Put them back on again and nodded. Let’s go.