by Jeff Jackson
The swirling wind clears some leaves from the raised mound of earth and reveals the translucent grass underneath .
Neither of them mentions Florian, who has no casket at all, only a canister of ashes in Eddie’s backpack.
* * *
Xenie wishes there were some words she could say to Eddie about his friend, but she worries they would only make things worse. She wishes she could apologize to the ashes. She wishes it wasn’t too late for language.
* * *
There’s a volley of gunshots. They go off like fireworks, waves of explosive pops that ricochet through the atmosphere. It’s hard to tell whether the hunters are coming closer. Eddie and Xenie brace themselves, but nothing stirs in the forest.
—We should hurry, Eddie says.
He unzips his backpack and places the cylinder of Florian’s ashes on the ground. Then he removes a folding shovel and snaps it into shape. He sinks the blade into the dirt and scoops a chunk of topsoil from Jeanette’s grave.
—What the hell are you doing? Xenie says.
—Florian wanted his ashes buried with his mother.
—So you’re digging up her grave?
—How else are we going to put his ashes with her casket?
—That’s going to be a lot of work.
—You can’t bury bodies very deep here. The water table is too high.
Eddie shovels with manic ferocity. Sweat darkens his hair and perspiration pools in his eyebrows. He stubbornly blinks away the wet. Xenie inhales the smell of upturned earth. A fecund mix of moss, moist dirt, musty spores. Soon a pile has been amassed next to the grave. Soft clods of turf, flecked with brown clay. The ground proves surprisingly easy to move.
* * *
A fresh rifle salvo rattles through the air like approaching weather. Xenie tries to blot out images of crows rooting in the sockets of deer that have been shot and tagged. Visions of hunters artfully stacking dead bucks, shaking plastic cans of gasoline over their hides, and setting them alight. The pyramids of flesh burning bright.
Why not build shrines and organize memorials for the dead deer?
It wouldn’t be any less absurd.
A flock of sparrows gathers in the top of a nearby tree. They titter as they shift from branch to branch, their anxious song riddled with warnings. Xenie sets the guitar case across her lap and reluctantly moves the zipper around its edges. She stares down at Shaun’s violet-hued electric guitar. Its plastic coating is a codex of scrapes and scratches, scarred pickups and bent tremolo bars. She runs her fingers over the stickers, lingering over the residue left by ones worn away or peeled off. To her these scrapes represent a secret history of Shaun, but to him they were insignificant, an inconvenience. Now that inconvenience is all she has left.
* * *
Eddie stops digging. He stands in the center of the hole. Face and arms spackled with dirt. He ventilates his sweaty shirt and wipes the brown streaks from his glasses. For several moments, he stares at the soil beneath his feet. Then he sends the shovel whirling into the graveyard.
—It’s not here, he says. The casket is gone.
* * *
—I’ve dug deeper than I should’ve had to, he says.
—Maybe there never was a casket.
—I could’ve sworn they lowered it into the grave, Eddie says. I was at the ceremony. I was standing where you’re standing. I’m pretty sure she was in the ground.
—Maybe you’re remembering wrong? Or maybe they had to move the body? The flooding was threatening to wash it away?
They both look down at the empty space.
—Whatever happened, Eddie says, she’s not here now.
* * *
Xenie wonders if it’s the same for all these graves. Maybe they’re less holes than trapdoors. Escape hatches down which dead bodies vanish. Maybe these corpses did just that and left the entire cemetery untenanted.
* * *
She watches Eddie circle the gravesite. His fragile poise breaks into beads of perspiration. We can still do this, he repeats, but it’s clear he has no idea how to execute whatever comes next. He removes a candle from his backpack and places it at the foot of the grave. He lights the wick and stares into the modest flame as if it might provide some guidance. Then he arranges the cylinder of Florian’s ashes so it’s upright in the hole. The shiny surface returns their gazes, an expressionless shell offering neither accusation nor understanding.
* * *
This is the moment Xenie has been dreading: Eddie lifts the electric guitar from the case. Handling it like a prop, he begins the task of tightening the strings. He looks at her expectantly. She finds it almost endearing how he tries to wrestle the acerbic strums into a recognizable tuning. The wind carries off the mangled notes, but not far enough.
* * *
Xenie removes the song and unfolds the paper to its full length. She scans the writing for the first time, encountering the familiar slant of the script and the fastidious flourishes. Her heartbeat swirls in the ridges of her fingerprints. Her breath grows choppy.
One day you’ll crawl back to me, she reads to herself, with a mouth full of ash.
As her eyes soundlessly navigate the lyrics, she pays extra attention to the end rhymes. She can hear the chord changes and experiences the hurtling pulse of the tempo, the plaintive voice of the singer ringing in her head, making certain to stretch the vowels the way Shaun loved to do.
When your heart shatters, the refrain goes, it makes a beautiful sound.
The song is a tingle in her skull. The melody thrums in her throat. She plays with adding her own pauses, then catches herself.
Her lips stop moving.
* * *
Xenie’s eyes burn. Her shoulders quaver. Her tears collect in a single scalding mouthful.
* * *
It’s a love song. She can’t keep pretending it’s not a love song.
* * *
—I can’t do this, she says. I know I promised you, but I can’t sing.
—This is for Shaun, too, Eddie says.
—There’s no way to connect with them. I thought performing at the concert would help, but it made things worse. Everything with Florian never would’ve happened if I hadn’t done that.
Eddie removes his glasses and leaves them off, as if he doesn’t want to witness her distress.
—This is your chance, he says. Your chance to make up for all that.
Xenie stares into the empty hollow. She pulls the sweater tighter against herself. The harsh scratch of the wool helps to maintain her resolve.
—I keep getting stuck deeper and deeper, she says. After that show, I went home and I had to face the hard drive full of music that Shaun left me. All those songs he’d written and recorded. They’d been haunting me for months. I couldn’t think straight. Finally I realized I had to delete them.
—You didn’t.
—They’re part of the problem, she says. Why hold on to those recordings if I’ll never listen to them? Nobody will. They’re more clutter. More noise.
—You shouldn’t have done that.
—You know what? she says. As soon as I did, there was this huge sense of relief. It’s the only thing I’ve done that’s made me feel better.
Xenie looks down at the yellow sheet crumpled in her hand. Her index finger has gouged a hole through the first verse.
This song is suffocating me.
Shaun is suffocating me.
I need to scour it all away.
Eddie says: It’s awful to see you keep punishing yourself.
He says: You can run away from it, but you’re a natural performer. Everyone in the club felt it as soon as you stepped on the stage. They couldn’t take their eyes off you. People would sell their soul for that talent.
He says: You were singing the first time we met. You were walking toward the woods and thought nobody was around. But I heard you. Your voice was beautiful.
He says: You’re itching to sing. Just now I saw how you held that song. I
saw how you read the lyrics and the way your lips moved.
He says: I see you, Xenie.
* * *
Xenie picks up the guitar. She adjusts the tuning pegs until there’s a melodious strum, then executes a few chords and a fluid progression of notes. She notices how surprised Eddie seems that she can play. She plucks the thin high string, evaluating the trebly sound, then snares it between her fingers. She snaps it off. Methodically she pulls off the other strings, one by one, until she finally grasps the bass string. She rips hard, red faced and resolute, her hands crisscrossed with blood. As the coiled thread snaps, the instrument emits a metallic alien cry.
* * *
—Shaun always wanted me to sing, she says. He kept asking me to make recordings with him.
—I kept begging him to quit music, she says. He thought I was crazy, but it turns out I was right.
—I stole his guitar because I thought it’d stop him from playing that show, but I should’ve known better, she says. I got drunk by myself at a bar that night and refused to answer his calls. I have so many regrets they’re choking me.
You think I’ve let go of too much, but I haven’t let go of enough.
—Maybe you’re right that I want to sing, she says. But that’s something I have to let go.
—You’re making a mistake, he says.
—Not everything has to be a performance, she says. That’s what ruined music. That’s why the epidemic had to happen.
—Forget about those people, he says. You need to do this for yourself. Otherwise you’re just silencing yourself. If everyone followed your lead, there’d be no music at all.
—I’m sorry, she says. I can’t. Please don’t ask me to do it. Some things I need to be private. Some things should stay pure.
Eddie turns away, trying to conceal the disappointment that flashes across his face. He says: But you’re destroying something that’s part of you.
* * *
She can’t deny the song is still in her mouth, the hum of those words, the thrill of those imagined tones.
* * *
She holds the crumpled yellow sheet over the candle. She expects a spark, but nothing happens. The page damp, the flame curdled. She holds it closer. Closer still. For an incandescent instant, the tongue ascends, and the fire and the song are one. Xenie holds on to the burning page until it singes her fingers, then lets it drop into the grave. She blows out the candle and tosses it into the hole after the blackened paper. Last, she adds Shaun’s unstrung instrument. Maybe in the grave these musical totems will relinquish their hold on her. Maybe they’ll become refuse, discarded, dead. Clapping her hands, she shakes loose the final sooty flecks of the song.
* * *
—I didn’t come here for Shaun, she says.
—I trekked into the middle of the woods for you, she says.
—One of the reasons I like you, she says, is you understand why I can’t sing.
* * *
The song slips down her throat, dissolving inside her, unsung.
* * *
Eddie stares at his muddy toes for some time, unable to hide his sadness. He watches the pupae wind paths through the damp soil. When he turns back to Xenie, he manages to meet her eyes.
—Okay, he says. If that’s what you really want.
He shovels the loose earth back into the pit, until all that can be seen is more dirt, until the hole itself starts to rise. He tamps down the burial mound with his bare feet. Xenie feels a surge of relief once it’s sealed with the arched oval pattern of his soles.
There’s still more to let go.
With shaky hands, Xenie strips off Shaun’s purple sweater, struggling to pull her head through the top. She’s not sure what to feel without it. Her exposed body looks unspeakably vulnerable. Her prickled flesh breaks out in bumps and she tries to welcome the chill. Her naked breasts feel strange in the air, her pores unaccustomed to being free from the wool, the slight itch that for so long has been her skin.
* * *
Xenie takes off Eddie’s jacket. She loosens his shirt and pulls down his jeans. He helps her out of her pants, their hands simultaneously unbuttoning and unzipping. Fabric pooling around their ankles. Mouth on mouth. They tumble to the muddy ground, paused face-to-face, her fingernails combing through the blond roots of his hair. Then she straddles him and pushes him into the dirt. His tongue licks between her breasts. Her hands explore his ass. She arches her back as he penetrates her, their legs knotted, thrusting together. They kiss between shudders of breath. For a few moments, the spasms of their thoughts are wiped blank.
* * *
They lie together, arms entwined, coated in a patina of grime. They’re imprinted with indentations of pebbles, pine needles, twigs and moss, the landscape mapping itself onto their pale bodies. Ants and gnats crawl over them, but they don’t mind. They explore each other with their fingers and inspect their pubic hair for insects. Xenie finds a tick, and they watch transfixed as she squeezes it, a blotch of blood popping between her fingers.
* * *
Xenie props herself on her elbows and kisses Eddie, relishing the sour taste of his saliva. Her tongue licks away the bits of soil smeared like a bruise across his cheek. As she rolls over, she’s greeted by the fire.
* * *
A strip of orange undulates across the far horizon. An exquisite cleansing curtain of flame. The entire clearing has been transformed. Xenie feels as if she’s awakened on the shoals of a new world.
She points at the distant fire.
—The forest, Eddie says.
—It’s beautiful, Xenie replies.
She’s mesmerized by the sight. They stand without bothering to put on their clothes. Tongues of flame wave in their direction, a series of dazzling hues smeared against the sky, a gentle set of guiding signals.
Easy does it.
Around them, hundreds of sparrows explode into the air. The birds fly in swooping arcs, twisting and torqueing in formation, carving a practiced geometry in the sky before breaking apart in loose spirals, scattering into paths too numerous to trace.
* * *
They take a few hesitant steps toward the fire’s beckoning flicker, coaxed closer. Fronds of faraway smoke drift into the atmosphere of low-hanging clouds. The glow of flames further tints the firmament. The sky is a shimmering violet.
* * *
The fire spreads in slow sighs. The conflagration continually fades and sharpens. The air is perfumed with the sweet smell of char. It won’t be long before the deer start to flee the forest. Hunters will soon be kneeling at the edge of the meadow with rifles propped on shoulders. But right now, it’s remarkably serene. Do you hear it? Xenie asks. Her head crackles with a strange music. The whisper and sizzle of smoldering bark, blistering leaves, blazing boughs. She’s entranced by the intricate slivers of this delicate symphony. They stand naked in the clearing, listening to the rapturous sound of everything burning.
SIDE B
KILL CITY
in memory of
JENNIFER MARX
Fire seeks its own form.
Often we write the word execution and pronounce it song.
—OSIP MANDELSTAM
part one
THE DESTROYERS
“How did the epidemic start?” Xenie asked. “How did we get here?”
“It started with the first shot,” Shaun said.
“Before that,” Xenie said. “What sparked the idea? How did it take root? There’s always something before the beginning.”
DAY ONE
NORTH CAROLINA • HE FOLLOWS THE MUSIC. The boy heads in the direction of the sound, drawn to the dim repeating throb emanating from down the street. Like a sleepwalker in a trance, he shuffles down the sidewalk in search of the source.
With his blank expression and rumpled clothes, the boy has little in common with the people around him. The animated drunks clustered outside the bars bumming cigarettes and perfecting their monologues. The college students in skinny jeans pasting
flyers along the blank canvas of the construction fence. These posters are adorned with the photo of a bloody panda, but there’s no time to ponder the image’s possible significance because the boy keeps moving.
The pulse grows louder as he passes the rows of telephone poles coated with weathered concert notices that rustle in the breeze like dried leaves. He marches past the clothing boutiques and thrift shops, tapas restaurants and pizza joints. At the end of the block, he crunches across a gravel parking lot toward a windowless concrete building. The home of the music.
A trio of girls hovers in front of the veterans hall. They’re dressed in matching purple, purses poised on hips, necks arched, eyes narrowed. As the boy approaches, they talk about him in theatrically loud voices, tossing out their words like taunts, as if he isn’t standing close enough to hear them.
—Here comes another one, the first girl says.
—Him? says the second girl. He’s not a musician.
—Might be, the third girl says.
—Come on, the first girl says, rolling the whites of her eyes. I was obviously joking.
The first girl steps forward and hands him a printed notice about the concert, already in progress. It’s a battle of the bands and the list of performers looks endless. The bubbly handwriting at the bottom indicates another group added to the bill. While the boy examines the flyer, the girls pay closer attention to his shaved head and the empty spaces where his eyebrows used to be.
—Is he drunk? one of the girls whispers.
The boy takes the flyer and folds it in half, in quarters, in eighths. He makes the creases perfect and the proportions exact, reducing the paper to an immaculate square. Then he tosses it onto the ground. The move is so swift and precise that it’s clear he hasn’t been drinking.
Bathed in the echoing rumble of the music, the boy pauses at the entrance. He stares at the elderly vet positioned behind the plastic folding table with a metal cash box. He hesitates, hands plunged in pockets, reconsidering. Or perhaps he’s just having trouble fishing out the few dollars required for admission. He finally produces the crumpled bills, purchases a tear-off ticket, and crosses the threshold.