Someone, a uniformed officer, had poked her head in the doorway after Agent Jorgensen left and asked if she’d like to call her lawyer. Wren thought about it. She didn’t have a lawyer. And she sure as hell didn’t want to call her parents right now to see if they had a lawyer. So she waved the woman off and settled into her straight-backed chair. Besides, she knew what lawyers would tell her. Keep quiet. Don’t admit to anything. Even if the lawyer told her to take the deal that was being offered to her, she wouldn’t dream of it.
So even with no one in the room, she sat quietly and admitted nothing, not even to herself. They said they had evidence of her participation in the Liber-teen hacks and said they had evidence that she’d hacked the ME report. But she doubted it. She refused to believe that they could have cracked her IP encryption. They were only operating on a hunch. Just sit still. Be quiet. If they’re lucky, they’ll be able to charge you with hacking Nikolas Wilson’s phone and bank account, but that’s laughable compared to the charges they’re threatening. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. But still her fingers twitched, looking for something to do, something to hold, some task to complete that might save her from this place.
Ignore the camera. Stare at the table. Count out the digits of pi.
Once again, Wren imagined Parker sitting in a room much like this one, an FBI agent seated across from her, trying to leverage information from her. And Parker, baring her teeth, stringing together inventive curses. Throwing up innumerable middle fingers at the man, at the camera, at the moment itself. Opposing this reality through sheer force of indelible will. And this made Wren nearly smile. Parker would relish any opportunity she had to share her thoughts on the police, the feds, the entire apparatus of the security state with whatever suit sat across from her. She would quote from memory Marx, Foucault, Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade. She would spit in the suit’s face and smile. She would stare into the camera hanging in the room without fear. Wanting to be seen, daring to be seen.
There was an electronic blip outside the door before it swung open. No knock. A man entered, shutting the door quietly and quickly behind him. He wore suspenders, tight slacks, sleeves rolled to his elbows revealing veined and muscular forearms that he seemed intent on digging into his pockets. Around his neck, a chain lanyard with a CPD detective badge resting against his stomach. He stood there pressed against the door, eyeing the camera suspended over his shoulder. He spoke in a whisper she struggled to hear.
“Three ‘yes,’ one ‘no,’ one ‘yes.’ Trust me.”
She stared at the table. The FBI must be getting desperate for a confession, resorting to theater.
The man stepped from the wall. His stare on the camera turned to her, and he walked in long, casual strides. He pulled the chair out from the table in a quick motion, the chair legs scraping against the cement floor in an ear-piercing screech. He sat down, legs parted, and folded his hands in his lap. He cocked his head at her.
“My name is Detective Jeremiah Combs. But you know who I am already, don’t you?”
She raised her eyes to meet his own. They were wide open, magnetic, begging her not to look away. She saw the camera in her periphery and she saw this man’s eyes widen even further as a warning.
She accumulated every reason she had to ignore this bizarre interaction altogether. Why should she trust this detective? What was Agent Jorgensen’s game here? But she recalled the way this mystery detective spotted the camera from the corner of his eye, a true fear in his stare. If it was all an act, it was a convincing one. And if it wasn’t, if he really wanted to help her, then he was evidently risking himself. But why?
“Yes.” She nodded. Beneath the table, a closed fist. One finger unfurled. The first “yes.” “I know who you are.”
“You sent a file to Marcus Waters yesterday, didn’t you?” Before she could respond, he added, “And you told him to do what he thought was best with it. Is this true?”
Wren tried not to be impacted by these words. How did this detective know what she had sent to Marcus Waters? Had Marcus Waters sent it to the police? And if he had, why hadn’t Agent Jorgensen mentioned it earlier?
“Yes,” she said. Two.
“I’ve spoken with Agent Jorgensen, whom you have had the pleasure of meeting, and I would like to propose something to you,” he said, leaning forward, folding his hands on the table. “Forget the ME report and the file you sent to Mr. Waters. Forget all of that. We’re worried about who made that video right now. And none of us believe for a second that you don’t know who made that video. We want to help you, Wren, but only if you can help us. Now, look, I’m not with the FBI. I promise you can trust me. Because there are people out there right now, Wren, who are in some real danger. But if you can tell me where the hostages are, I can help you. Do you know where they are, Wren?” He paused, waiting for her reply.
She swallowed. “Yes.” Three.
He smiled, relieved. “Good. That’s good. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to tell me where they are right now so that we can send people to check on them. Time is running out, OK? So tell me where they are.”
“No,” she said.
He leaned forward. “What? There are hostages’ lives in danger right now. This is bigger than you. You need to understand that, OK?” His voice was rising, entering into a shout. “People are going to die if you don’t start cooperating with me. Do you understand that? You may as well be killing those people, Wren.” He paused, but brought his hand to his mouth, holding out a finger as though shushing her from speaking. He spoke in a convincingly manufactured calm. “Tell you what. You got a problem with the FBI. I get that. You and your Liber-teen friends, you hate the fucking feds. Whatever, all right? You don’t want to cooperate in any way with them. That’s fine. But what if you come with me, just you and I, and you tell me where they are? How about that? I’ll even promise you no one will follow us. It’ll be just you and I, OK? I promise it. You’ll tell me where they are and then I’ll take it from there. What do you think? Just you and I.”
She waited until she was sure he had finished. “Yes.” The final yes.
He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Let met check with my superiors, but I’m guessing they will allow it. This is brave of you, Wren. You’re doing something good here. Hang tight, all right?”
And then he was gone, just so, leaving behind not even a question to be answered.
30 HER BOY
BETWEEN THE WOODEN SLATS of train car paneling, beyond the gaps of twisted and rusted metal sheeting, the stars hang still and patient. A fire burns in the center of the train car, an old, ashen charcoal grill casting lights and shadow puppets of bodies onto the cosmos. Half-drunk bodies slanting, their voices laughing at the shapes of themselves in a greater beyond. There is music from a weather-warped acoustic guitar. The notes, the chords—a bouncy and jousting little tune. Something enough to dance to. But the worn strings have a way of twisting it into something darkly melancholic, and the laughter May hears is also a response to this. To this music that shifts as she shifts against the wooden floorboards, a woolen blanket beneath her.
There is Turnbull screaming. He is the latest arrival to the Wasteland. Just last night, a twilight pilgrim garbed in military fatigues, a rucksack slung from his shoulders like an afterthought. He came to the Wasteland seeking shelter. Maybe he’d heard he could find it here. Fresh out of Vietnam. Eyes dulled to a colorless sheen, body perched midstride like a coil. And here he is now one day later—a wall of a man, naked as the night after stripping down to his skin between songs. Sweat pouring down his hairy chest. Veins in his neck like piano strings, drunk as the day is long, and he’s screaming at no one or maybe everyone. He screams, “Don’t let it, don’t let it, don’t let it get you down.”
And May watches the scene, smiling at it all, even though it—or something like it—happens every night. The guitar, the dancing, the passing gallons of liquor and wine. The days, the nights. The Wasteland consumes them all, spi
ts them out into a seamless memory.
Her boy lays beside her, throws an arm around her, pulls her close. Closer than she knew two bodies could ever be. He’s shirtless, denim-jeaned. She’s turned away from him, but she knows the face he wears. She can see it, practically feel it with her fingers. A smile half-cocked. The teenage assurance that each moment is his own. She’s told him he does this. In a matter of words. And he smiled right back like he’d known she would say this. Because he always seems to know these things—the words on the tip of her tongue.
He tucks her into his body, which is warm and cold and beating. Even though he arrived just a week ago, she believes he is a body born of the Wasteland. A product of this static, yet itinerant world. He carries himself with the same sharpened edge of the barbed wire fences meant to keep people like him away. The same displacement of the rusted train tracks leading from the stockyards to nowhere. She recognizes it in him, because it is also in herself. In the rare moments the two of them speak, he seems to pause moments to hold to them. To memorize details, here and gone. His eyes record every motion she makes in those dark and rare hours when they are both alone and their bodies are interlocked, joined by a cold wind through the cracked wood and metal walls.
No one here believes her boy is fifteen. He’s taller than the men, more powerfully built. His body, an oil drum carved into the shape of a demigod. Arms hang at his side like the limbs of some ancient, time-beholden tree. But she believes him when he insists quietly that he is fifteen, because she knows liars when she sees them. She’s seen them before. And this boy, this fifteen-year-old boy, is not a liar. She doesn’t know what he is, but he isn’t a liar.
She asked his name when she met him. He didn’t answer. A liar would have answered, would have made something up if he didn’t feel like telling her.
“What do you hear?” she whispers into his ear as Turnbull screams even louder.
“The music,” her boy says.
“Past the music. What do you hear?”
Her boy falls quiet, and she feels his muscles tighten as he concentrates his entire being. “A boy,” he says. “A young boy. He’s crying. In Logan Square. A young boy crying in Logan Square.”
It’s a game they play. Or at least she once thought it was a game. Her boy told her one night, shortly after he arrived, he could listen to the world if he tried hard enough. She took it as a romantic gesture, but it evolved into these late night back-and-forths, something to simply fill the narrow silence. Of the things he said he could hear, she wondered what was fiction, what was real. Or if it even mattered at all.
“Why’s the boy crying?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” her boy says. “He’s just crying.”
The music picks up. Turnbull kicks the wooden paneling of the train car in a sudden fit. He reaches a hand into the wooden guts and pulls apart the boards, grimacing and screaming. Rusted nails, shards of wood fall at his feet. Dee tells him to cool off. John Q. keeps playing his guitar, but a different song. Something lighter, but it comes out even darker.
Her boy has dirt in his fingernails. This boy whose name was withheld from her, and this is what she first loved about him. That he kept his secrets. Because she keeps her secrets, too. And because love happens like that sometimes, or so she comes to understand. Or thinks she understands. That love might occur in a moment so simple as a brief instance in which neither of them probe into the unspoken and unasked questions that hum over bared skin like an electric current. And for the first time in her life, she finds beauty in silence.
Her boy squeezes her arm, maybe to let her know he’s still there. Just like he was last night. And the night before. And the night before. And the night before. The many nights that she hoped would follow.
Turnbull throws his shoulder against the wood panels. They crack beneath his weight. Wendy leaps back. Landon chokes on his wine. Dee shouts, “Jesus, man. Chill out.” John Q. stops playing his guitar. The dancing stops. The shadows fall still. And this, above all else, is what seems to bother Turnbull the most. He spins in a tight circle, raising his hands above his head, challenging the silence he has created.
“What the fuck is your guys’ problem?” he shouts, laughing. “Come on. Let’s go. Don’t let it. Don’t let it. Don’t let it get you down. Let’s go. Play that guitar, boy. Come on now. Play it. Let’s hear what song you got ready.”
John Q. plays a slow chord, but another doesn’t follow. The train car is quiet.
“Fuck, man.” Turnbull is laughing hysterically, clutching his stomach. “Fucking pussy. Play that goddamned guitar and we dance. Play it, boy. Do I got to beat the music into you?”
John Q. searches the rest of them for direction. His eyes drift to May, and she wishes like hell they hadn’t. But, as she knows, eyes have a way of finding her in these forbidden lapses in time. Turnbull traces John Q’s stare and finds May.
“What do you think, girlie?” Turnbull asks, a drunken step forward, but no less uncertain. “Shouldn’t this colored boy play that guitar a little bit?” He throws a thumb back at John Q. “Make us happy, wouldn’t it? If he played that guitar? Don’t you think?”
She lies frozen, manages a shrug. She feels the eyes of everyone in the train car, but she focuses on the hand draped over her shoulder, warm and cold and beating.
“Oh,” Turnbull says, another step forward. He crouches down, his naked body just inches from her face. A cloud of pubic hair, through which peeks a half-dormant penis. “You don’t like the music? Or is it just me you don’t like? What’s your problem? Tell that boy to play that goddamned guitar. He’ll listen to you, won’t he? Pretty thing like yourself. He’ll listen when you tell him to play that guitar.”
She closes her eyes, wishes him away. She feels her boy’s body go tense behind her.
“Girlie,” Turnbull says, deep from his throat. A plea encased within a growl. “Tell that boy to play, huh? What do you say?”
Her eyes shut tighter.
“Listen,” Turnbull says. She feels his hand reaching out to her even though she cannot see it.
But before she can even open her eyes, the moment erupts. A second split into itself, frozen in a thousand pieces.
The body lying behind her is no longer there. Her boy is across the room, and so is Turnbull. And Turnbull is shouting something wild, incomprehensible. A rustle of feet, flurry of empty and full beer and wine bottles being kicked and shattered and stomped into a thousand pieces. She opens her eyes to see her boy holding Turnbull by the neck against the splintered wooden panels. Turnbull’s feet kick, suspended a foot off the ground, weightless in his grip. The muscles in her boy’s back press against his skin like hieroglyphs. He is silent, her boy, saying nothing and making no sound at all. Not even a breath. He only holds Turnbull up off the ground like some sacrifice to the holy silence that fills them all.
And she, like everyone else, does nothing except stare in disbelieving belief.
Turnbull grips her boy’s wrists, his eyes bulging from his skull like billiard balls. He digs his nails into her boy’s skin, throws a left hook that lands on her boy’s cheek, but Turnbull only screams as he withdraws broken fingers like sunken fence posts in his crippled fist. “The fuck,” Turnbull sputters, face going red, then white. He spits, “Let me go, kid.”
But her boy doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t retreat. Turnbull’s cheeks expand with a labored, unfilled breath. His eyes gone wild, spinning around the room for a friendly face and then slowly turning back into his skull.
She sees her boy’s hands tighten around Turnbull’s neck. He is going to kill Turnbull. He wants to kill Turnbull. She knows this the same way she knows she must say something.
“Stop!” she shouts.
Turnbull tries to scream, mouth open, but nothing comes out. His legs stop kicking, his eyes close, his arms fall limp at his sides. His eyes slowly close.
“Stop it!” she shouts even louder, her voice carving rivers into the soft flesh of her throat.
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And then her boy releases Turnbull, who falls with a loud thud to the wooden floor. The light of the fire flickers against Turnbull’s purple face. The stars somewhere out beyond all of this. Whatever this is. And her boy stands there above him, fists clenched at his sides, staring down.
Her boy steps back, throws his head around each shoulder. And she feels him looking at her, but she is staring down at the wooden floor. She feels him maybe ready to say something, but she shrinks farther away without moving.
John Q. sets his guitar down and crawls forward toward Turnbull’s body. Dee watches. Wendy watches. Landon watches. Quentin watches. Everyone watches. Even the names she does not know, they watch. John Q. crawls past her boy’s legs and lays a shaking hand on Turnbull’s neck.
“He’s alive,” John Q. says after a pause.
“He’s alive,” Dee repeats, louder.
Her boy stands there for a moment, maybe two, and then leaps out of the train car. She hears his feet in the gravel, light footsteps that disappear before she realizes she was listening for them.
“What the fuck was that?” Quentin asks.
“Never seen nothing like it,” John Q. adds.
And their eyes turn back to May, as though pleading for answers to questions they cannot even phrase. But she isn’t worried about them. She’s wondering where her boy is going to on this night. She wonders how far he will wander, how soon he will be back. Because she knows he’ll be back. Because he is someone with secrets. Everyone with a secret has no home but the Wasteland. And she wants him to come back. Desperately. But after days pass and she comes to realize that he is not coming back, she takes solace when she remembers that he’s out there somewhere. Somewhere among it all. And this gives her something resembling hope. Whatever that means. He’s out there somewhere.
31 MELTED BODIES
The Reign of the Kingfisher Page 28