Alice Isn't Dead

by Joseph Fink

  Keisha and Alice were lying outside in the grass of a municipal park. It was an unusually warm spring night, and the sky was starlit clear. They held hands and breathed together. There was no need to talk. They had talked enough. For now, they lay together, and breathed together, unaware of all the people just then evoking their names.

  53

  The radio roared to life, shaking Keisha and Alice out of early morning semisleep, the crackle of the static interacting tactilely with their skin. A voice emerged from the noise. Both of them recognized it, although the memories it called to their minds were entirely different.

  “Alice,” said Lucy. “I’ve missed you. I know you probably don’t believe that. You’ll probably never forgive me. But I want you to know that I did what I did because I believed it was for your best. Everything I’m doing is because I think it’s the right thing to do, and you’ll never believe me, and I’m ok with that. Listen, I . . .”

  Her voice lapsed back into the static and was gone for a full two minutes. Keisha stretched, moved up to the front seat to fiddle with the radio, but the signal seemed to be coming through on every channel. Alice sat on the cot, remembering a time when that voice belonged to a friend. She couldn’t explain that melancholy to Keisha without it sounding like treason to the trauma Alice had caused, and maybe it was.

  “I want to meet,” the voice came again, sounding like a direct continuation of her last sentence. Keisha wondered if the signal had truly lapsed or if Lucy had sat there, holding the radio in silence for those minutes, building tension or truly trying to find her way to what she had to say next. “What you’ve been doing with Praxis. It’s wrong. Of course it’s impressive. Alice, you were always an impressive woman. But you’re going to hit a point where there won’t be a way back down from this. Let me help. There’s a construction site near El Paso. Abandoned since the recession. Meet me there. Bring Keisha too. We can all talk about this. Ok?”

  Another long pause. Perhaps she honestly was waiting for a reply. Keisha wasn’t going to give her one

  “Well, think it over, anyway,” said Lucy. “To get back to me, send out a message on any frequency. They’re listening to all of them. I think you knew that. I hope you were smart enough to know that. Ok, Alice. Until then.”

  The signal lapsed. Keisha was sure that she had not left the radio on, she never left the radio on. Who had turned it on while they slept? She spent the morning disconnecting it from its power supply, and then they ate lunch at a bench near a gravel lot in Utah that perhaps was once supposed to be something but now would indefinitely be an empty place.

  “So they’ve decided we’re too dangerous,” said Keisha.

  “They want to put an end to all this,” agreed Alice.

  “They think we’re stupid.”

  “They might not be wrong.”

  They laughed and didn’t say anything else for a bit. This comfortable silence was interrupted by the crunch of gravel. The two of them locked eyes and stood, ready to defend themselves. Keisha thought again of the radio, which she had definitely, for sure, left off before they went to sleep. Alice gestured Keisha around the front of the truck and she headed toward the back. Keisha crept, palms against the sun-warm grille, then popped out the other side with a shout. The teenage girl waiting there screamed with surprise.

  “Sorry,” said Sylvia. “Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  But Keisha had already pulled her into a hug.

  “I wouldn’t rather be scared by anyone else.”

  “Anxiety bros.” Sylvia laughed.

  “Anxiety bros.” Keisha hugged her tighter.

  Alice decided that this girl was not a threat and emerged from around the back of the truck. “Hi,” she said, with a tentative little wave. “You must be Sylvia. I’m—”

  “Alice,” said Sylvia, crossing her arms high on her chest. “Heard a lot about you. That was real shitty what you did.”

  “It was,” agreed Alice.

  “I wouldn’t have let you hang around, but Keisha is a better person than me.”

  “That’s definitely not true,” said Keisha, happy to let Alice be uncomfortable for a bit. Keisha was allowed to have some friends of her own.

  “Well,” Sylvia said, turning away from Alice. “Let’s talk. It’s a long story.”

  “I love a long story,” said Keisha, as she gestured Sylvia up into the cab. “It distracts me from my own long story.”

  “Speaking of, did you read the newest Love and Rockets?”

  “Maybe his best.”

  “Maybe.”

  Sylvia had gone looking for Praxis and the oracles. Started in that network of safe houses and shelters, gutter punks and activists, and also folks who just had a turn they hadn’t seen coming and had ended up on the wrong side of the crushing weight of polite society. A lot of people knew what she was talking about, but no one could point her to any useful information. Everyone knew of Praxis, but no one knew how to get their ear. Failing any specific direction, she settled on all directions, going to any place that seemed likely to attract an oracle of the roads. The bathrooms at gas stations, behind the fading backdrops of roadside attractions, in the farthest room down the hall at motels that had last seen real business in the seventies. She went to those places, and she kept her eyes open.

  It had been at one of those half-abandoned motels when she had first seen one of the oracles. The carpet had been damp. There were paintings on the wall by the motel’s owner, smears of primary colors. Sylvia had walked slowly to the room with the cracked-open door, feeling at once hope and terror. She wanted to leave, she wanted to run, but she put out her hand and she pushed the door wide. And there was a figure in a hoodie, sitting on the edge of the neatly made bed, waiting for her. The moment Sylvia saw the oracle, she felt neither fear nor excitement. What she felt was recognition. This was where she was supposed to be, and the oracle was welcoming her to it.

  They talked all night, and Sylvia could feel the oracle wanted to tell her more but was trapped by the nonlinearity of their thoughts. And so she tried to meet them halfway, tried to think and talk in a way that was untied from time. Even after she left the room, having found herself alone at the instant of daybreak, she continued this practice. If she was going to help them, she would need to think like them. She found that the state she was trying to reach was the kind of thinking done right before falling asleep, when thoughts flatten out and mix with dreams. Each night, she would try to hold on to what that did to her sense of time, and gradually she was able to create that feeling for herself even when wide awake.

  Soon Sylvia found more oracles and learned as much as it was possible to learn of what they knew. She, too, found out that the Thistle Men were human. She learned how powerful the oracles were, that physically a Thistle Man was no match for an oracle, although Thistle had a vicious advantage in numbers. She noticed that the oracles smelled of heather, in the same way that Thistle smelled of mildew. Each reacted strongly to the smell of their natural adversaries. Sylvia started to truly love the smell of heather.

  “Their timelessness is their power, but it also causes great suffering, because every moment is happening for them, all at once. So if they’ve done something, they have to keep doing it, all the time. They are always having to maintain what has already happened. They can never rest.”

  She curled her arms around her knees in the passenger seat, looking out at the sunset through the windshield.

  “I never found the oracle that saved my life all those years ago, but I don’t need to, I don’t think. I found a whole community of them, and they are doing good in the world, and I can help them do that.”

  “I think I know how you can do that. How we all can do that,” said Keisha. “It’s time for the Anxiety Bros to face their fears.”

  54

  “Thank you for coming,” said Keisha. “Likely this will be our last meeting.” The faces looking back at her were confused. Tanya, and Lynh, and Sharon, and Je
ff, and all the others from their original meeting. They had met less and less, as everyone had gotten more focused on leading their own groups. But this meeting had been called, and all of them had immediately come from all over the country to be there.

  “Bay and Creek has asked to meet with us, and we are going to go.” The confusion turned to frowns. “I know,” said Keisha. “But we are strong now. We aren’t alone like we were before. We are going to meet them, and fight them, and finally make use of this movement we have been building all this time.”

  “What’s the plan?” asked Tanya.

  Keisha laughed. “You just heard it.”

  This wasn’t quite true. She had set into motion one aspect that she wasn’t going to share with them, because if they were going to walk into this, she needed them to walk into this thinking it was only them against the monsters, and to still come willingly. She couldn’t have them depending on anyone else to save them.

  “We can’t go against Bay and Creek,” Lynh said. “Not without some trick.”

  “We don’t need a trick,” said Sylvia. She hadn’t introduced herself, but she hadn’t needed to. Young as she was, there was a confidence to her that was immediately absorbed by the group. She had seen things that they hadn’t, and here she still was. So when she spoke, they listened. “We are stronger than we think. They are weaker than they realize.”

  “I’m a pretty confident guy,” said Tanya. “But I’m not that confident. I’m not dangerous confident, you know?”

  “This is what we’ve been preparing for,” said Alice. “This is what this group has been about from the start. If we weren’t going to confront them, then what was all this organizing for? It’s time.”

  Jeff, quiet as usual, nodded. “I’m tired of waiting.” He put his arm around his friend, who nodded. “We’re in.”

  Once Jeff agreed, the others did too. The quiet woman with the knee brace. Sharon, who shook her head and said “this is crazy” over and over, but stayed anyway. “I’m not going to be the least foolhardy in any group,” said Tanya. “I’m in, of course.”

  Finally it was Lynh left. She had her arms crossed.

  “It’s ok if you want to go,” said Keisha. “You’ve done a lot. It’s ok to walk away.”

  Lynh began to cry. “I’m not going to walk away,” she said. “I’m crying because I’m a fool and we’re all fools and we’re all about to die, but I’m not going to walk away.”

  “Ok then, it’s settled,” said Keisha. Then they were quiet. No one knew what else to say. They felt themselves sliding down a steep slope toward a cliff, and they had no idea what lay over its edge. They sat in silence together, waiting for the drop, and for the long fall after.

  Keisha had thought a lot about what she was going to say before she started speaking, but still her cheeks went hot and the words felt heavy and clumsy coming out. It’s easy enough to map out in your head what should be said, but another thing to find the voice to say it. But it had to be said. Because after that night they were going to be dead or they were going to be free to go on with their lives, and either way she couldn’t do it with the weight of Alice’s actions slung over them. This had to end.

  “Alice,” she said, and Alice looked up, worried, hearing the earnest intensity in Keisha’s voice.

  “Honey, what is it?”

  “I need you to hear what I’m going to say clearly,” said Keisha. “Because whatever happens next, this is important. You left me. You left me to think you were dead, and to mourn you. You spent all those months hiding from me as I tried to find you. All because of some stupid sense that I needed protecting. I don’t need protecting.”

  “Baby, I believe that now,” Alice whispered. She fidgeted her hands in her lap. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t care,” said Keisha. “This isn’t about you. What you did is not about you, because it wasn’t done to you. It was done to me. And so I get to decide what to do next. Here is what I’ve decided. I’m going to forgive you.”

  Alice’s smile broke like sun through clouds. “Oh, Keisha,” she said.

  “Not yet,” Keisha said, putting a hand up to keep Alice’s distance. “I need you to hear all of this, not just the parts that you want to hear. I’m forgiving you. But I’m not doing it for you. I don’t know if you deserve forgiveness, and maybe I don’t care. Maybe there isn’t some great balance sheet of forgiveness where the equation of guilt can be figured until it’s all equal on both sides. Maybe it’s just what the person who was hurt feels, right or wrong. And if so, then I don’t want to think about what you deserve. I want to think about what I deserve.”

  She breathed. The heaviest part was out of her now, and she could see clear through to the finish. She didn’t look in Alice’s eyes.

  “I deserve to live a happy life. I deserve to have my wife whom I love at my side. I deserve to breathe easy in the morning and to fall asleep easy at night. I deserve to not have what you did intruding into our lives. So I want you to understand this. To have what I deserve, I must forgive you. But I’m not forgiving you for you. I’m forgiving you because it’s what I deserve.”

  Alice was quiet. Quietly she said, “Ok.”

  Keisha took her face in her hands, met her eyes. “I love you,” she said. She leaned her mouth toward Alice and then stopped. “Hey, you never told me. How did you find out that Bay and Creek was working with Thistle? How long had you known?”

  For the first time, Keisha met Alice’s eyes, only a few inches from her own.

  “I didn’t know,” said Alice. “I had no idea until you told me. I only knew that they were trying to hurt you. And if they were trying to hurt you, then I was against them, no matter what greater good they were working toward. I realized if I had to pick a side, it was always going to be yours.”

  Keisha kissed her wife, and the feeling of their lips together, the smell of her skin that close, it felt light and true and fine for the first time in years. The kiss was a door to home, and she gladly stepped through it.

  This is love, she thought. This is what it’s made of.

  55

  Their ludicrous caravan of sedans and minivans pulling into the meeting spot looked more like a church group on a day hike than an army marching into battle. There were still a few pieces of construction equipment left behind by a company that had stopped existing abruptly, gone to the point where it wasn’t even worth selling off assets. And stretched out across the mounds of dirt and the leveled-out area seeded by wisps of dry grass were hundreds of Thistle Men, grinning at them as they stepped forward. Beyond that, Bay and Creek commandos, black balaclavas hiding their identities. There would be no attempt, then, to hide the purpose of this day. They intended to finish Praxis.

  “Hoo,” one of the Thistle Men cried out. “Ha.” Others giggled or coughed.

  Lucy stood before the monsters.

  “I’m glad you decided to meet,” she said. “Alice, this isn’t how I wanted it to happen. But at least we’re doing this in person.”

  Alice wouldn’t even look at her. Stared straight ahead with fixed determination. Keisha spat into the dirt.

  “I see you brought some backup.”

  Lucy looked back at the twitching, loose-skinned men behind her. “I had to go all in,” she said. “If I was going to choose to work with them, I had to go all in. I wish you could understand, but I don’t expect you to. Besides, it looks like you brought backup of your own. For instance, a couple of teenagers. And one of our employees. Hi, Lynh.”

  Lynh shrank back behind Sharon from Poughkeepsie, who moved without thinking to step in front of her.

  “Now,” shouted Keisha. She and all the rest of her Praxis group pulled out bottles of heather oil, started pouring them on themselves.

  Lucy nodded. “Smart move. I would have done the same. Won’t help, only slow things down, but still smart.”

  Sylvia was slower opening her bottle. She stumbled a little. Her hands were sweaty.

  “I don’t feel ri
ght,” she whispered to Jeff, who looked back at her worried. He had looked worried all morning. His friend hadn’t even come. Had decided to stay behind. But Jeff was here anyway. Sylvia started to stumble, and he caught her arm.

  “You ok?” he said.

  “No, I don’t think I am at all. My vision is going all . . . I don’t know. Not blurry. There’s more of it than usual.”

  Meanwhile Keisha and Alice stepped forward, dripping with the heather oil.

  “I know the boys don’t like it,” Lucy said, “but honestly that smells pretty nice.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any other way than fighting,” said Keisha, not because she actually wanted to know, but to pass the time, because it felt like she should be saying something before the violence started.

  “That’s up to you, I guess,” said Lucy. “You all could give up. I know that seems crazy, but it’s actually an option. I’d do my best to protect you. It might not work. I’m being honest on that. But look at you. You don’t even have any of the oracles. You don’t stand a chance.”