Mother glared at him over Paulie’s head. He didn’t even have to look up to see it. He knew it from the smirk on Mubbie’s face.
“Paulie!” cried a voice. Paulie knew as he turned that it was Deckie, though it was unbelievable that the older boy would seek a confrontation right here, right now, in front of everybody.
“Paulie!” Deckie called again. He ran until he stopped right in front of Paulie, looking down at him, his face a mask of commiseration and kind regard. Paulie wanted to hit him, to knock the smile off his face; but of course if he tried to throw a punch Deckie would no doubt prove that he had taken five years of boxing or tae kwon do or something and humiliate Paulie yet again.
“Celie and I were worried about you,” Deckie said. And then, in a whisper, he added, “We wondered if you stripped off the old lady’s clothes so you could look at her naked, too.”
The enormity of the accusation turned Paulie’s seething anger into hot rage. And in that moment he felt the death stir within him, the light of it pour out into his body, filling him with dangerous light, right to the fingertips. He felt the terrible fury of the helpless slave girl, raped again and again, her determination to die rather than endure it anymore. He knew that all he had to do was reach out and touch Deckie and the slave girl’s death would flow into him, so that in his last moments he would feel what a violated child felt like. It was the perfect death for him, true justice. There were a dozen adults gathered around, watching. They would all agree that Paulie hadn’t done anything.
Deckie smiled nastily and whispered, “Bet you play with yourself for a year remembering me and Celie.” Then he thrust out his hand and loudly said, “You’re a good cousin and I’m glad Nana’s last moments were with you, Paulie. Let’s shake on it!”
What Deckie meant to do was to force Paulie to shake his hand, to humiliate himself and accept Deckie’s dominance forever. What he couldn’t know was that he was almost begging Paulie to kill him with a single touch. Death seeped out of Paulie, reaching for Deckie. If I just reach out . . .
“Shake his hand, for heaven’s sake, Paulie,” said Mother.
No, thought Paulie. Deckie is slime but if they killed every asshole in the world who’d be left to answer the phones? And with that thought he turned his back and got into the car.
“Paulie,” said Mother. “I can’t believe . . .”
“Let’s go,” said Father from the driver’s seat.
Mother, realizing that Father was right and there shouldn’t be a scene, slid into the front seat and closed the door. As they drove away she said, “Paulie, the trauma you’ve been through doesn’t mean you can’t be courteous to your own cousin. Maybe if you accepted other people’s overtures of friendship you wouldn’t be alone so much.”
She went on like that for a while but Paulie didn’t care. He was trying to think of why it was he didn’t kill Deckie when he had the chance. Was he afraid to do it? Or was he afraid of something much worse, afraid that Deckie was right and Paulie had enjoyed watching, afraid that he might be just as evil in his own heart as Deckie was? Deckie should be dead, not Nana. Deckie should have been the one whose body shook so much he couldn’t stand up or touch anybody. How long would Celie have sat still if Deckie had pawed at her with quivering hands the way that Nana reached out to me? God afflicts all the wrong people.
When they got home they treated Paulie with an exaggerated concern that was tinged with disdain. He could feel their contempt for his weakness in everything they said and did. They were ashamed that he was their son and not Deckie. If they only knew.
But maybe it wouldn’t make any difference if they knew. Tanned athletic boys must sow their wild oats. They live by different rules, and if you have such a one as your own child, you forgive him everything, while if you have a child like Paulie, basic and ordinary and forgettable, you have to work all your life just to forgive him for that one thing, for being only himself and not something wonderful.
Mother and Mubbie didn’t make him go to the funeral—he didn’t even have to plead with them. And in later years, as the family reunion became an annual event, they didn’t argue with him very hard before giving in and letting him stay home. Paulie at first suspected and then became quite sure that they were much happier leaving him at home because without him there, they could pretend that they were proud of him. They weren’t forced to compare him quite so immediately with the ever taller, ever handsomer, ever more accomplished Deckie.
When they came home, Paulie would leave the room whenever they started going on about Sissie’s and Howie’s boy. He saw them cast knowing looks at each other, and Mother even said to him once, “Paulie, you shouldn’t compare yourself to Deckie that way, there’s no need for you to feel bad about his accomplishments. You’ll have accomplishments of your own someday.” It never occurred to her that by saying this, she swept away all the small triumphs of his life so far.
There were times in the years to come when Paulie doubted the reality of his memory of that family reunion. The light hiding within him stayed dark for weeks and months on end. The memory of the swimming pool faded; so did the memory of Nana’s feebly grasping hands. So, even, did the memory of the death of the Cherokee and the runaway slave. But then one day he would move something in his drawer and see the envelope in which he kept the tattered fragment of a threadbare dress and the scrap of an ancient moccasin, and it would flood back to him, right down to the smell of the cave, the taste of the water, the feel of the bones under his hand.
At other times he would remember because someone would provoke him, would do something so awful that it filled him with fury and suddenly he felt the death rising in him. But he calmed himself at once, every time, calmed himself and walked away. I didn’t kill Deckie that day. Why should I kill this asshole now? Then he would go off and forget, surprisingly soon, that he had the power to kill. Forget until the next time he saw the envelope, or the next time he was swept by rage.
He never saw Deckie again. Or Celie. Or any of his aunts and uncles or cousins. As far as he was concerned he had no family beyond Mother and Mubbie. It was not that he hated his relatives—except for Deckie he didn’t think they were particularly evil. He learned soon enough that his family was, in a way, pretty ordinary. There was money, which complicated things, but Paulie knew that people without money still found reasons to hate their relatives and carry feuds with them from generation to generation. The money just meant you drove better cars through all the misery. No, Paulie’s kinfolk weren’t so awful, really. He just didn’t need to see them. He’d already learned everything they had to teach him. One family reunion was enough for him.
NOTES ON “VESSEL”
This story began when I was invited to tour an area on the grounds of Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I have lived for the past twenty-five years. I knew that it was a Quaker college, and that the Quakers had been a vital part of the Underground Railroad that brought runaway slaves to freedom during the Civil War, but until that tour I had never put it together that Guilford College itself might have been involved. (I grew up out West, where history is something that happened somewhere else.)
I was especially stirred by the stretch of a stream that had eroded its way under the broad roots of huge old trees. The runaway slaves would climb up under the roots and hide; the stream masked their scent from the dogs, and yet the runaways were dry, above the water level.
I was taken on the tour in hopes that I might be able to do something to publicize the historical importance of the site. It was slated to be in the path of a (useless) freeway that was planned to be built as a beltway around Greensboro, a city notorious for having roads that, like this beltway, don’t actually go anywhere. Fortunately, without any help from me, the route was changed and the site was preserved.
Meanwhile, I had this place in my mind. Whom would I put there? Someone from our modern world. And what would happen to him because he was there?
This short story was the res
ult. Acquiring the power to be a vessel of death was merely the first thought to come to mind that intrigued me enough to think about at length. It’s a fantasy—I don’t believe people can actually acquire such powers. Nor am I a believer in euthanasia—quite the contrary, I believe that allowing one person to “help” another die is a broad fast highway to murdering the old and crippled, a way to turn our society into something monstrous.
And yet there are people who are simply ready to die; what if there were someone who was ready to help them? Not only did I come up with this short story, I also had a whole novel planned out. But when it came time to write it, I simply didn’t have it in me to write it. The prospect was too bleak. How could I find any hope in the story to make it worth reading? I ended up fulfilling the contract with Treasure Box instead—a bleak enough book!—and the novel version of “Vessel” died.
Meanwhile, the story had been held for a long time by a friend who wanted to publish it as part of a project that never got off the ground. So, years after I’d forgotten about the whole thing, I suddenly found myself with the rights back to a story that I thought was powerful and that had never been published. Just at that time I made my first visit to Spain, to attend a convention in Mataró. There it occurred to me that it would be cool to offer the Spanish sci-fi magazine BEM a story of mine that had never been published anywhere before, so that Spanish was the language of first publication. The editors liked the story, so it was published there first.
DUST
Through the Door in Oglethorpe’s
Enoch Hunt wasn’t the first kid who got lost in the toy department of Oglethorpe’s. He wasn’t even the first kid to get lost on purpose. But he was the first kid to hope that he wouldn’t get found in time for Christmas.
Because on Christmas he wouldn’t be in Dowagiac, Michigan. He’d be in Tucson, Arizona. No snow on the ground, no friends to show his stuff to, his grandparents a couple of thousand miles away. And with all of that, his mother probably wouldn’t get better after all. Fifty-fifty chance, that’s all the doctor gave her.
Enoch’s dad treated him like a grown-up. “Son, you’re twelve years old, I can tell you the truth, I don’t have to pretend the way I do with the younger kids. Your mother isn’t just a little sick. The disease she has is very rare, and they don’t know a cure.”
“How long does she have?” Enoch asked. This was a realistic question. Enoch always asked realistic questions when he could think of them. It fooled people into thinking he was very adult.
“They don’t know,” his father said. “I think I’m telling you this because I’m as scared as you are. They don’t know if she’s going to get better or not, they don’t know when they’ll know, they can’t tell us anything except that some people who’ve had this have gotten better in Arizona. So we’re going to Arizona.”
“I don’t want to go to Arizona,” Enoch said. What he really meant was, “I don’t want Mother to be sick,” but he knew that wouldn’t be realistic.
“If you were the sick one, Enoch, we’d go to Arizona for you, too.” His father pulled out a little key ring, just like his, with one single key on it. “We’ve already rented an apartment there, Enoch. I got a key made up for you.” It was a strange-looking key, with a hump right down the middle. They even had weird locks and keys in Arizona. “This key means we trust you,” Father said. “This key means we care about Mother.” Enoch took the key and hoped it would fall out of his pocket.
That was a few days ago. Today Enoch’s dad took him to Oglethorpe’s and let him look around in the toy department. Within a few minutes Enoch decided to get lost, hoping that they wouldn’t find him until his mom was better. Or maybe wouldn’t ever find him at all. Because Enoch didn’t want to live in a world where mothers got sick and fathers got scared. Mothers were supposed to live forever, and fathers aren’t supposed to be afraid of anything. Didn’t they know that?
Oglethorpe’s was in a bunch of old houses strung together with brick walls so that it was like a maze, up and down stairs, in and out of doors and corridors, and the toy department was in the basements of the buildings, so it was even more confusing. All during the summer most of these rooms were kept locked up for storage—only during the Christmas seasons did they need it all for display space. Now Enoch was in the backmost room, where the toys were years out of date and covered with dust. It was there that he saw the crazy girl.
He was sure she must be crazy, because she looked so weird. Her hair was done up in four pigtails surrounding her face, sticking straight out like the rays of the sun in a kindergarten drawing. But the back of her hair was all done up like a beauty parlor. She was wearing a pink dress, but she had jeans sticking out of the bottom of the dress. And she had this weird-looking wart just under her left eye, a big old brown one that made her look like she was crying mud.
Enoch had never seen one human being look so ugly all at once. So he began kind of following her. He wasn’t trying to meet her—she looked crazy enough to be dangerous, and Enoch didn’t like to take chances. He just wanted to look at her a few more times to make sure she was real.
After a few minutes, though, he realized she was trying to get away from him. She moved away from him faster and faster, and began weaving in and out of the display racks, and backtracking when he wouldn’t notice. It was like a game, and Enoch didn’t mind playing along. Enoch named the game “Keep Exactly Fifteen Feet Away From the Weird-looking Girl.”
He always named his games. He named everything. He was good at thinking up titles. He even kept a book in which he wrote down the important things that happened to him. Every page had a title. Like “The Day My Father Taught Me How to Throw a Football and Pulled His Shoulder,” or “Why I Will Never Again Eat Radishes Straight from the Garden Without Washing Them.”
His most recent entry was titled, “The Day My Father Told Me That My Mother Was Going to Die.” But the title was all he could think of on that one. It just sat there in his book, a title and a blank page, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
While he was thinking of that, the crazy girl got away. He had her trapped back in the corner of the oldest, dustiest room of all, and now she was gone. It made him angry. He didn’t like failing at things.
He looked, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. Had she given up and gone home? He didn’t think so. She had been playing the game as much as he was—why would she suddenly quit?—so he went to the corner where she was when she disappeared.
Her footprints in the dust went right where he had seen her go—and then they just stopped, right in front of a pile of ancient Fort Apache sets. It was like she had got this far and then decided to fly the rest of the way. He wondered if maybe she was a witch. But that was impossible. There weren’t any witches. But then—the crazy girl would look just right sitting on a broom.
If Enoch was going to be realistic, he had to stop thinking of things like ghosts or witches. Like his father always said, if something seems to be unexplainable, keep looking until you find the explanation.
He found it in the dust on the floor in front of the Fort Apache sets. One stack of boxes had been pulled out and then pushed back. The crazy girl was hiding behind the boxes.
Enoch had already pulled the boxes out before he realized he hadn’t the faintest idea of what he’d say to her if he found her. “Gotcha”? “Olly olly oxen free”?
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t hiding behind the boxes. Instead there was a little door about four feet tall, with a sign on it that said “Employees Only.” The sign was peeling away, and something was written on the door behind it in pencil. Enoch got close and read it. It said, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Enoch was not the sort of boy who went through doors that he wasn’t supposed to go through. But if this was a place for those who had abandoned hope, then the door was made for him. And so he pushed it open, stepped through, and pulled the boxes back into place.
With the door still open, Enoch looke
d around. All he could see was a sort of janitor’s closet, with rolls of toilet paper and packages of paper towels. But there were footprints and scuffs on the floor, leading to one of the piles. And sure enough there were footprints up a sort of stairway made of paper-towel packages, leading to a gap between the ceiling and the top of the wall.
Enoch inspected the door to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind him. Then he closed it. There was a dim light seeping around the edges of the door. It was enough for Enoch to make his way to the top of the paper-towel stairway. But when he tried to look over the top of the wall, he could see nothing but darkness.
Enoch was not the sort of kid who went into dark places where he had never been before. But Enoch was here to get lost, and it would be a lot easier to get lost in a dark passageway than in the back rooms of the basement toy department. Besides, the crazy girl had come through here. It must be safe—she wasn’t screaming, was she?
So he clambered over the wall, and hung his right leg down the other side, trying to find something to stand on. It occurred to him, while he was swinging his leg around, that the crazy girl might be standing below, watching him make an idiot of himself.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Tell me how far down the ground is.”
No answer. She wasn’t there, of course.
He toyed with the idea of just dropping down. But what if the ground was farther away than he thought? What if he got stuck and couldn’t get back? So he kept swinging his leg until his heel bashed into another wall.
Another wall. What he had almost dropped into wasn’t a room, it was a space between walls. He really might have been stuck.
Carefully he straddled the space, which was only about two feet wide. The far wall was stone—part of the old foundation. And instead of a drop-off on the other side, there was a dirt floor in a kind of cave. Enoch knew it was a cave because he kept bumping his head in the darkness.
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