The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  The three of them and the dog came, at last, to a yurt — eight sided, as far as he could tell — with a roof of cedar shakes and with window boxes filled with last year’s desiccated flowers. At the door, Charlie played butler, bowing low and waving Jilly and Minos inside but staying Donovan with his hand. He pointed out back to a shed. He was about to enter the yurt himself when Donovan spoke.

  “Did someone come through last night?” Charlie closed the door softly and turned to him. “More like early this morning?” said Donovan.

  Charlie nodded. “Man,” he said, “you sure messed him up good.”

  Donovan didn’t have the energy to refute the statement, let alone proof to the contrary. “Where’d he go?” he said.

  Charlie stared at him, but his gaze softened a bit. “I just get them here, man.” He shrugged. “After that . . . well, there are all kinds of paths.” He threw out his arms expansively.

  Donovan looked around. “But it’s an island, right? How big can it be?”

  Charlie pushed his hair back out of his face. “Maybe not so big in, like, area,” he said, “but, when you add the dimension of time . . .”

  Donovan stared at him. Had he missed something? Had Charlie lit up a spliff when he wasn’t watching and was now talking Canabian?

  Charlie laid a big-knuckled hand on his shoulder. “There’re paths, man. Trails you gotta take. Shit you’ve still got left to do. Right?”

  It took a moment, but Donovan nodded. Yeah, sure . . . all kinds of paths. Why not? Then he turned and looked back down the long, slow hill, where he could catch, from this vantage point, only a glimpse of the river.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” said Charlie.

  Donovan turned to face him. Charlie’s pale-gray eyes said more: Don’t even think of leaving. If that meant rowing back across that river, Donovan couldn’t imagine it, but the look the man gave him made him shudder.

  “Get some rest,” said Charlie. Then he left him there, on the stoop. Donovan waited for a good minute or two. It wasn’t just exhaustion, inertia. He was hoping against hope that the door would open again and Jilly would be smiling there, waving him inside, where there would be fresh bread and farm eggs sizzling in an iron frying pan. Honey in a ceramic pot and coffee percolating on the stove. When a good few minutes had passed, he took a deep breath of the pine-scented air, which would be all the breakfast he was going to get. It gave him just enough energy to make his way up the narrow path to the shed, lost in the gloom and up against the rock face of the cliff. He craned his neck and stared up. It seemed far too high to climb.

  It wasn’t a work shed or gardening shed, as he had supposed. It was actually just one huge bed — well, a mattress anyway — from wall to wall to wall, with just enough floor inside the door for an old stick-back chair to sit on to take off his muddy chucks and peel off his stained and reeking socks. The pine floor felt smooth and refreshing on his bare feet. The windows were open and the curtains billowed in the chilly breeze. The deep sill was lined with old hardbound books, shells, and pretty stones. He closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, just enjoying a silence that was filled with newly born light and a kind of sweetness that came from he wasn’t sure where. Then, with his last bit of energy, he undid his belt and clambered laboriously out of his drenched and clinging jeans, his sopping boxers, and, last of all, his shirt, stained and torn and bloody.

  He crawled across a handmade quilt and slid under the covers. His head hit the pillow as if it had been guillotined from his aching body. His last thought was of childhood and a cottage with flannel sheets.

  It wasn’t here but somewhere near. The flannel sheets, the light, the piney air. He knew these sensations. He was six? Somewhere that smelled like this. And . . . And his parents arguing through a too-thin wall. His mother crying. A screen door slamming.

  Donovan drifted down, down, down into a vision of his child-self alone on a dock, watching dragonflies patrol the waters. He saw a fish leap and splash down into silver. Waves radiated from that disappearing act until they lapped feebly at the posts of the dock, his naked toes. He recalled his mother calling him for supper. Everything was okay except that Dad wasn’t there. They ate alone, him and Mom. He remembered getting up from the table.

  “Dono, where are you going?”

  “Just to the window.”

  “Sit down, please.”

  But by then he’d seen what he needed to see, and he came back immediately. “Sorry,” he said, and he dug into his food again. The canoe was gone.

  Bee was with him, lying behind him, naked and spooning. He snuggled into her, felt her right hand find its way slowly, slowly across his shoulder, stop before sliding down his collarbone and then onto his chest. Felt her breasts press into his back as her fingers roamed his chest hairs. He groaned with pleasure. Then she was kissing his neck; he could feel the compression of her lips, the wetness of each kiss, until her fingers pushed back the hair to expose his ear and her eager tongue explored that cavity, flicking in and out.

  I’m too tired for this, he thought, even as the one part of his body that never did much thinking rose to attention.

  I’m too tired. Tired of running. Tired of wanting. Tired of fire and muck and surly strangers. I want to go home . . . Home to —

  His eyes shot open. The flannel sheet he was clutching in his fist, the billowing curtains, the books along the window’s ledge — nothing he had ever read. And these fingers on his chest with their bitten, black-polished nails.

  He froze.

  “Shhhhhh,” said a calming voice from behind him. A woman’s voice. He cautiously turned to face her and she pulled back, the better to see him and for him to see her in her nakedness.

  “Wha . . .”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “But I —”

  “Don’t know me? Does it really matter? Isn’t this all that matters?” Her hand slid down his chest, across his stomach, and disappeared under the covers.

  “Wait!”

  “But why?” she said, taking hold of him.

  Why? A difficult question, one requiring a lot of concentrated attention. He closed his eyes, not up to the mental challenge. He groaned again. His penis, always the keener, had known the answer right away to the question that his brain couldn’t handle, like the kid in class who’s always throwing up his hand and saying, Me, me. Ask me — all attentiveness and knowing. The only answer his penis seemed to know was, Why not?

  “No!” he said. “No!” And he pulled himself away and up on his elbows, gasping for breath. He grabbed the sheets and dragged them up to his chest. She only smiled, pulled her mane of auburn hair out of her face and smoothed it behind her shoulders. She was not a girl but a woman maybe twice his age, still smooth-skinned, with full breasts and a tattoo of a dragonfly perched above where her heart would be. There was also a tattoo of a salamander, delicately colored, appallingly realistic, curved down her belly as if darting toward the warm shelter of her groin.

  She had Charlie’s pale, almost iridescent white skin, dappled by the blue light seeping through the tie-dyed curtains. She rested on her haunches, her back straight, her fingers intertwined almost primly in her lap, but too decorous somehow, as if she were posing — on display. And he was drawn to her despite everything that told him not to be.

  “There is only now,” she said, her voice like syrup. Then she placed her fists on the bed and leaned toward him so that the long muscles in her arms stood out and her breasts swung freely — temptingly. “There is only this,” she said, crawling on her knees until she had straddled his legs.

  Her eyes closed, her neck arched, her mouth opened with longing, and Donovan felt his resolve slip away — like a boat caught in a sudden offshore breeze. He was stranded. Overwhelmed. None of this was real, and you weren’t responsible for what was not there. What happened in hell stayed in hell. His hand reached toward her, toward her breast, wanting to touch the dragonfly . . .

  And then he saw the millipede. />
  It was on her neck, and at first he thought it was another clever tattoo, hidden until that moment by her wild hair. But it moved down and down until it disappeared under her right arm. He snapped his hand back while she groaned in anticipation, her eyes still closed, waiting. He blinked. Had he dreamed it? Was it a hallucination? If it was, then so was the spider that shinnied down a strand of web from her hair onto the bedclothes and scuttled off. And the sow bug that appeared on her forehead. Her thick auburn hair quaked, alive with movement. Donovan pulled away until he could press his back against the log wall as her face drew nearer and nearer. As he watched in horror, a thick, black worm slithered out of her mouth, over the bottom row of her tiny, neat teeth.

  He screamed.

  He screamed again and, tugging on the bedclothes, covered his head. He squirmed under his flannel tent, sure that the very bed was alive with vermin.

  “Go away!” he shouted. “Fucking go away!” He didn’t stop shouting until he realized he was alone. He dropped the sheet from over his head and opened his eyes in time to see the door gently closing. But as he watched, it opened again — just a whisper — caught in the breeze, as if the little shed were breathing. He listened and was sure he heard the sound of laughter.

  It was growing dark when he woke again. Not full-bore night, but the dusk that gathered first under the boughs of pine trees at the foot of a sandstone cliff, blocking out the west-leaning sun. Donovan sat up and trained his eyes on the door. It was properly closed now. Someone had been there recently, by the looks of it.

  And by the smell of it.

  He craned his neck to see past his feet. There was a tray on the floor at the end of the mattress: a plate piled high with sandwiches, a bowl of fruit, a tall glass of some reddish brew with a creamy head, another bowl of something, still steaming. The aroma captivated him. Smoothing aside the covers, he crawled across the bed and stared suspiciously at the fare. The glass was frosty cold. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. Beer, sweet and hoppy. Suddenly he was overtaken with thirst. If it was poisoned, so be it. He drank. He tipped the glass on a steeper and steeper slope, as if he were drinking against the clock, as if his life depended on finishing this glass before the illusion ended. But it wasn’t an illusion. He brought the glass down hard on the tray. His mouth hung open, beer drizzling down his chin and dripping onto his naked chest. He belched gloriously. Then he stared into the steaming bowl. Soup, thick with vegetables and chunks of meat. He breathed in tomato and herbs. His stomach rumbled. He belched again. He had eaten a couple of Tic Tacs sometime in the early morning, and before that . . . He could barely remember before that.

  He sat naked, crossing his legs, and leaning forward, he carefully lifted the soup toward him. He saw nothing suspicious, nothing with legs, and anyway the peppery smell was driving him mad. If anybody was going to mess with him here in Lower Limbo, it wouldn’t be poison, he thought; more likely some psychotropic drug — or an aphrodisiac, judging by his visitor. He shuddered at the memory — part repulsion, part insane pleasure denied. Some soup slopped hotly onto his inner thigh. Swearing under his breath, he lifted the soup bowl away from his body, then with one hand he pulled the bedcovers over his lap. He brought the bowl back carefully, grabbed a spoon, and dug in. Let them drug him senseless; how much worse could life get?

  When he had finished the soup, he mopped up the broth with a thick slice of bread. He ate a sandwich of some rich semisoft cheese with avocado slices, cucumber, and bean sprouts. The fruit bowl contained a pomegranate, halved, revealing its ruby-red seeds; bananas; apples; and plums. There were walnuts and squares of chocolate mixed among the fruit. Greedily, he helped himself. And then when it was done — when there was hardly anything left — he lay back down, his arms flung out to the sides, and waited for whatever was to happen next.

  What did they want from him? Were they fattening him for the kill? Who was that woman, so beautiful and so lived-in! Did he know that face? He was afraid he did, and afraid he’d remember who it was if he gave it any more thought. She frightened him — her need. Who could ever satisfy it?

  He sat up again, energized and resolute; he had to get out of here! Which is when he noticed his clothes. They had been washed and, by the look of it, ironed. They were folded carefully over the back of the chair. His shoes had been cleaned of muck, and when he reached out to touch them, he found they were dry. So if this place was some kind of purgatory, at least they did laundry.

  His cell phone! He grabbed his pants. Not in the pocket. No, no, no! They couldn’t do this to him. Then he saw it, the glint of its silver edge. It had been tucked safely into one of his shoes. He opened it. No bars. Not down here. But there was still most of the juice he’d managed to top up back at the farm.

  Dressed, he stepped out into the failing light. He could see man-made lights already twinkling between the trees, although it was not quite dark. Then his sight traveled far over to his left, and about halfway down the hill, in a meadow at the end of a long driveway, there was a large building he hadn’t noticed on the way up. It was brightly lit now, and seemed to be some kind of community center, for he could see a crowd congregated inside, and if he listened he could hear a congenial-sounding hubbub. Pathways led down to it from all around. He saw a couple and a child. The man had a mandolin strapped to his back. The child — a girl — ran ahead in a long white dress, did a wobbly cartwheel, and then called back to her parents excitedly, “Did you see that? Did you see that?”

  Saturday, thought Donovan. It’s Saturday night.

  He walked down the shed’s narrow path until he was at the yurt. He listened at a curtained window. There didn’t seem to be any sound coming from inside. He thought of Minos. Was it worth peeking inside the door to see if Jilly and Charlie were there or not? No. He looked down the sandy road he had half stumbled up this morning. Nothing but tire tracks, really. He saw no one around. He heard distant laughter, from the meetinghouse, he supposed. Then someone started playing a guitar. A fiddle joined in, and finally voices rose in a cheery kind of folk tune. At the chorus, others joined in. It all sounded jolly, and Donovan wondered if everybody had been enjoying the well-aged gift that Jilly had brought in her backpack. Or were the contents of the backpack all just for her rowboat lover boy?

  This was his chance. He turned and, craning his neck, looked up at the cliff face that had seemed far too steep this morning. He surveyed its length. A path at its base disappeared into the shadows between the trees. He took off along the path, glancing back furtively to see if anyone had seen him. No, all the paths of Hippieville led to Party Time.

  As he’d hoped, the path curved around the cliff, and in not more than five minutes he saw what looked like a way up. It was just a narrow gash in the undergrowth that grew thickly against the sides of the cliff face, a trail, though not one used with any frequency. He climbed. The cliff blocked out the setting sun, but it was not so dark that he couldn’t feel his way forward — upward — a foothold here, a handhold there. Slowly and with many stops and scratches, he made his way until he was able to look down on the tops of the trees and the crazy patchwork rooftops here and there of the little community in the woods. Here be hobbits!

  He could catch glimpses of the river between the trees.

  Distant thunder rolled. The sound surprised him, made him turn and press his back against the rock. His breathing was labored. His freshly pressed shirt was already sweat stained. More thunder, and he scanned the sky for lightning. Nothing. Not yet, but he could make out rain clouds approaching, heavy with a darkness blacker than the encroaching night.

  He turned back to his task, and as he climbed, the breeze freshened. It would be cold up top. You never knew in this part of the world at this time of the year. Thunder suggested rain, but if the temperature dropped just enough, it might even snow. He’d seen snow in late April. Oh, but please not tonight. Or if it had to be tonight, not just yet.

  With a final push and a last bit of a crawl he made it to the top an
d clambered to his feet on the plateau. There was an area of flat stone and beyond it grasses bending in the wind, bushes rustling, trees shushhhhing and waving, their tops still lit by sundown.

  Lightning in the eastern sky. He counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . and got all the way to ten before he heard the rumble of thunder. From here he could see Highway Seven way off to his left heading east and west. He thought he could almost see the light spill of the city far off in the distance, but it might only have been wishful thinking.

  He found a boulder to sit on and pulled out his cell. He opened the phone and there she was, Beatrice, with her brown eyes, a golden comma in the left one, not so much a twinkle as something molten. It was one of the few pictures he had of her smiling; not that she was dour — not that at all — only that she didn’t tend to smile for the camera. She was downstage beautiful but with the mind of a stage manager: the one who got the lights focused and the curtains opened. The one who called everybody to places exactly when it was time. She had let him hang out backstage once during a dress rehearsal, though he’d had to sit on a stool in a corner and not move. From the shadows he had watched her at work, the show behind the show. The woman behind the curtain. Beatrice with her extravagantly thick hair pulled back in an all-business bun at the nape of her neck and her headphones on. God, she was gorgeous in headphones. He had watched her in the wings, her face capturing a little limelight that spilled from the stage, but a face that was made for deeper things. And yet somehow she had seen something in him worthy of smiling for — something worth believing in, beyond his ability to smack a ball around. Sometimes when he was with her he almost thought so himself.

  Three bars. It ought to be enough.

  He dialed and the phone rang and rang and rang and —

  “Donovan?”

  He almost couldn’t speak, he was so glad to hear her voice.