by Alden Bell
Temple’s seen enough, and she leaves the lobby and climbs many flights of stairs—until she’s out of breath—to a dark quiet floor where she can feel a curious breeze that she recognizes as authentic night air and not just the recirculated air from the ventilation system. She follows the breeze until she finds the source—a hole in the building itself. At the back of one of the wide-open office spaces there’s one set of windows, floor to ceiling, about eight feet wide, that has been broken out entirely. There are some chairs set up in front of the hole. An observatory.
There’s no one around, so she goes to the hole and, bracing herself with both hands, looks out across the rooftops of the city. She must be twenty-five stories high, and it makes her dizzy, but she forces herself to look anyway. Down there, in the yellow pools of the streetlights that are not yet broken or burned out, she can see them moving lethargically, the dead, without direction or purpose. They move, most of them, even when there’s nothing to hunt—their legs, like their stomachs and their jaws, all instinct. She raises her gaze and her eyes blur teary in the cool wind and all the lights of the city go wild and multiple, and she wipes her eyes and sits in one of the chairs and looks out beyond the periphery of the power grid where the black rolls out like an ocean. It’s a place she knows—knows beyond the telling of it.
She must be gone deep down the well of her brain, because she is not even aware of the man until he sits down beside her—a massive bearded figure who makes the chair groan metallic when he leans back on it. Moses, Abraham’s brother.
I was just looking is all, she says, glancing around and finding that the two of them are alone. I wasn’t doin anything.
The big man shrugs. He takes a cigar from the pocket of his jacket and bites off the end of it and spits it out the hole and strikes a match with his thumbnail and puffs the cigar into life. When he’s done with the match he flicks it out the window, and she watches the pale red ember disappear down into the dark.
She watches him, not knowing if she should make a run for it. But he pays her no attention at all, just puffs on his cigar and stares out into the night.
Finally she says, What you want anyway?
This is the first time he turns to look at her, like she’s a ladybug landed on his knuckle or something.
I want lots of things, he says. But nothin you got the power to deliver.
She squints at him a little while longer but determines the threat is not an immediate one, so she sits back.
That’s just fine, she says.
And for a while their gazes over the city are a perfect parallel.
He takes a puff of his cigar and then asks her a question.
You ever seen a slug with no legs?
She can’t figure out the direction of the question, but it seems safe to answer it.
I did a few times, she says. Walkin all arms and elbows like a katydid.
Uh-huh. He puffs the cigar again and goes on. You know, I heard of one commune over in Jacksonville decided to make a perimeter of gaspipe fire to keep the slugs scared off. What you think of that?
I think that commune’s dead reckoned by now.
How come?
Because meatskins ain’t scared of fire. Too stupid. March right through it. Then all you got is a bunch of walkin torches trying to eat your guts.
He nods slowly, and she sees that he already knew that about fire and meatskins. He was just testing her.
Sarah Mary Williams, he says, pronouncing each name as though reading it on a billboard in the distance. My brother Abraham doesn’t believe you come up from the south. He’s suspicious-minded like that. Me, I believe you.
Go ahead and both of you believe whatever you like. It’s a free country.
They are quiet for a while. She inhales the smoke from Moses’s cigar, and it tastes sweet in her lungs. When it seems like he has nothing more to say, she gets up from the chair and turns to leave. That’s when he speaks again, without looking at her, with no recognition of her going or coming.
This hole here, he says, gesturing to the dark space of night sky in the maw of the broken-out pane. It was here when they first came. Somebody must of jumped. When they took up residence, they just widened it and made it into a scenic lookout.
Who’s they? Ain’t you one of them?
I’m a traveler by nature. I been lots of places. The provender of the earth’s good enough for my kind. Abraham, he likes this place. I ain’t so sure though.
How come?
Right at this moment, this place is a fortress. But if a man was inclined to do so, he could open up one of those loading bay doors in the middle of the night, and suddenly we’re in a death house.
That’s when he looks up at her, his eyes level with hers even though he’s sitting and she’s standing, squinting at her through the smoke of his cigar, his fingers picking flakes of fallen tobacco from his beard.
You know what I think? she says.
What do you think?
She points through the hole into the dark throat of the diseased landscape.
I think you’re more dangerous than what’s out there.
Well, little girl, he says, that’s a funny thing you just uttered. Because I was just now thinkin the same thing about you.
She leaves him sitting there, glancing back just once before she goes through the stairwell door and observing how the cloud of smoke from his cigar gets pulled in wisps out the dark gaping hole in the glass wall—as though it is his soul, too large for his massive frame and seeping out the pores of his skin and wandering circuitous back into the wilderness where it knows itself true among the violent and the dead.
BACK IN her small room she takes a Nembutal and falls asleep almost immediately. It’s probably the pill that makes her slow to comprehend what’s happening an hour later when the key is slotted into the door. She is so deep down inside herself that it’s difficult to climb that ladder to the top where things are actually happening. The key in the door, the rattle, the turning of the knob, and the airy squeak as the door swings inward once and then back shut. She scrambles to the surface of her consciousness, arriving there and shaking herself awake just as the light in her room is turned on.
Abraham, she says.
I came to kiss you good night.
She squints and rubs her eyes against the sudden light. He’s standing, hunched over and swaying a bit, drunk. His leer makes her take stock of what she has on—just a T-shirt and underpants.
Get outta here, Abraham.
Hey, he says, looking around, is this your blade? Pretty nifty.
He picks up the gurkha from the table and unsheathes it. Then he swings it through the air a few times making swishing sounds with his mouth like a boy playing swords.
Put it down.
He sets it back down on the table, but not because she asked him to.
You played some good cards tonight. You’re one of those tough girls, aren’t you? One of those rough-and-tumble girls. You like to play with the boys.
She pulls herself up on the mattress, her back against the wall, her head still cloudy and muddled.
You better get, she says.
But you’re still a girl where it counts.
He comes around the table and steps up on the foot of her mattress and stands over her. She draws her knees up under her but can’t quite fold herself into a crouch. Then he unzips his pants and pulls out his flaccid genitals. It looks like a bouquet of deflated birthday balloons.
Put it in your mouth, he says. Make it big.
You best stow that. I ain’t kiddin with you, Abraham. Put it away now.
Come on, Sarah Mary. Everyone around here’s the family type. All the girls want to nest. Sometimes a man’s just gotta get his nut and go back to killing creepers. What do you want and I’ll give it to you. Pills? Liquor? Just do me this one favor. Just put it in your mouth for a little while.
I said stow that business. I don’t go in for silliness with the likes of you. I ain’t playin now.
/> The fog around her head begins to lift, and she can see him take two steps toward her, his crotch getting so close to her that she can smell the thick mustiness of it.
But you’re so pretty, he says. I just want to cum on you a little bit.
That’s it, she says.
She curls her hand into a fist and drives it forward hard into his crotch. It feels like punching a sack of warm giblets. It makes a smacking sound and sends him collapsing backward, his pants falling down around his knees while he writhes on the floor at the foot of the mattress.
But his groans evolve into something like growls, and he picks himself back up, his face tomato red, his eyes wet, and his teeth clenched.
I didn’t wanna have to do it, she says. Come on, Abraham, I’m just tryin to get along round here. Don’t muck it up for me.
He doesn’t listen. With one hand he cups his genitals and with the other he reaches and grabs her gurkha knife.
You little cunt. I’m gonna split you in half.
He lunges forward and she ducks and puts her hand out to divert the blow and the blade goes over her head, but she feels a quick iciness on her left hand and when she looks down she sees that the knife has taken off half of her pinky finger. The blood spills down her wrist and makes her hand feel slippery.
There’s no pain yet, just cold—but she knows to expect it later, so whatever she’s going to do, it better get done now.
She’s got her back to the window and he’s coming at her again, but when he raises the knife over his head to strike, her hands dart up and grab the wrist and twist it backward so his whole body falls forward facedown and then, still holding the arm up at an angle, she brings her foot down on it at the elbow and hears it splinter-snap like a wet tree branch.
Except now he’s wailing loud and guttural, all the blood driven up into his face and the tendons of his neck standing out hard and long.
Shush up, she says, trying to quiet him. Shush up now, people are gonna hear you.
But he keeps screeching, and she turns him over and slaps his face like you do with hysterics, but she supposes it’s not so much hysteria as it is excruciating pain that’s his current problem. So she looks for something to stuff in his mouth and finds the bra that Ruby got for her, which is padded and has some bulk to it, and she jams it between his teeth with her fingers.
Hush that noise, she says. Come on, hush it.
She puts her left hand over his mouth to hold the bra in place, and the blood from her finger streams over his cheek and into his eye and down into his ear. She kneels on his chest to keep him quiet and presses down on his mouth trying to leave his nose free—but something is wrong because in a minute he begins turning purple and convulsing and then he stops moving altogether.
She takes her hand away from his mouth and looks into his heavy-lidded eyes, which are already beginning to cloud over.
Doggone it, she says. Why do livin and dyin always have to be just half an inch apart?
She goes to the desk and takes a ballpoint pen from the drawer and puts the tip of it in his nostril and drives it upward sharp and hard with the heel of her hand to keep him from coming back.
Then she takes the elastic band from her hair and winds it tight around her pinky finger to hold the blood in and sits back against the window to take a breath.
She shakes her head.
I liked this place too.
4.
It’s almost four o’clock in the morning when she knocks on Ruby’s door.
What’s wrong, Ruby says with a mother’s instinct and immediate wakefulness.
You gonna have to sew me up.
Temple steps into the room, carrying a heavy green duffel that clatters noisily when she sets it down. Then she shuts the door behind her and lifts up her hand for Ruby to see.
Oh my God, what happened to you?
I got hurt.
We have to get Dr. Marcus.
We’re not gettin Doctor nobody. I already been to the clinic and hunted myself some lidocaine. I figure you got a sewing kit, and I just need your help on this—just a stitch or two—and then I’ll be on my way.
You tell me what happened to you.
I promise to give you the entire picture when I’m not bleedin out here on your carpet.
Ruby looks again at her hand.
Come here into the light, she says and brings Temple around and sits her on the side of the bed and lays her hand out on the tabletop under the lamp.
Here, Temple says, handing Ruby the lidocaine and the syringe.
How much? Ruby asks.
I don’t know. Just a little, I’m gonna need that hand.
Ruby injects it into the fleshy part of her palm just below the finger.
I don’t know why Dr. Marcus can’t do this.
Come morning the men around here ain’t gonna like me much. Sometimes they get curious notions of brotherhood, men do. You got a needle and thread?
Ruby goes to a drawer and sifts through it. What color? she asks, flustered.
I don’t guess it matters—it’s just gonna be blood black in a minute.
Oh, of course. It’s silly—I just can’t think straight.
Come on now, it’s just like mendin a sock.
Ruby gets the needle and thread, and Temple can feel her hand numbing. She reaches under the nightstand for one of the magazines piled there and puts it down to catch the blood. Then she takes a good look at her pinky finger. It’s gone just above the first knuckle, a clean cut through the bone that shows as a yellow twig poking through at the end. She uses her other hand to draw the skin up over the end of the bone and pinch it shut like a foreskin.
There, she says to Ruby. Now just run that thread through there a few times and tie it off. It’ll be okay.
Ruby does it and Temple looks away, staring at a picture of a vegetable garden Ruby has hanging over her bed. In the middle of the vegetable garden are three bunny rabbits and a girl wearing a bonnet. The pain comes sharp through the dullness of the lidocaine. She feels dizzy but clenches her teeth to keep from passing out. She pulls one of the Vicodins from her pocket and pops it in her mouth.
When it’s done, Temple undoes the elastic hair band from around her finger and watches to see what will happen. A little blood oozes out the seam at the end, but not much. She wraps her finger in gauze and tapes it.
You did some nice work, thanks.
I never did that before.
Well, I reckon I should—
But when she tries to stand, the room spins around her and she has trouble looking forward and her neck feels loose and squirmy, incapable of keeping her head arranged straight.
Are you all right? Ruby says, but her voice sounds like it’s coming through cotton. Like it’s coming through lollipops made of T-shirts. Like it’s coming through the cottontails of all the bunny rabbits in all the vegetable patches in the world.
Temple says, I’ll just sit a sec—
And that’s when the darkness comes and swallows her complete.
THE NEXT thing she knows, she’s lying under the covers in Ruby’s bed and there’s sunlight shining full and bright through the window. No one else is in the room.
Doggone it, she says and swings her feet to the ground. Her head still feels afloat on purple ether, and her eyes seem a step behind where she’s trying to look. She’ll have to move slowly. She stands and supports herself against the wall and makes it to the window and back to the bed—and for a few minutes she just walks back and forth between the window and the bed until her eyes start seeing straight and her head gets anchored to her body.
Ruby comes in.
You sure stirred the pot, Sarah Mary Williams. They’re out looking for you. Say they just want to ask you some questions and get to the bottom of things—but I don’t like the look in their eyes, some of them. I’ve seen it before.
She opens the closet door and begins to sift through the clothes hanging there.
They say you made a mess of that Abraham Todd.
I wouldn’t of done it if—
You don’t have to tell me. Those Todd boys have hearts as black as I’ve seen. God help you, I’m sure he deserved whatever you gave him. But now his brother Moses has you on his agenda, and that’s a man without an ounce of foolishness to distract him from his set course. And that means we have to get you out of here. Put this on.
Temple’s hand is throbbing now, so Ruby helps her take off her clothes and stuff them in the duffel bag.
What happened to the bra we got you?
Temple says nothing and raises her arms so Ruby can drape her in the yellow cotton sundress she has taken from her own closet. It has lace trim, and it itches against her skin.
What’s this for? Temple asks.
It’ll attract less attention. Everyone around here who’s not out hunting you is dressed up for services.
Services?
It’s Sunday, sweetie. That’s what we do on Sundays.
It’s been a long time since Temple has distinguished between days of the week.
Then Ruby scrubs Temple’s face with a washcloth and takes a hair clip and puts it between her lips and does something with Temple’s hair and then slips the clip in and locks it down.
There now, Ruby says. Don’t you look nice.
Temple looks into the mirror. There’s a soft pillowy girl looking back at her.
I look like a muffin. Where do those men think I got to?
They think you already left. They’re out looking for you in the streets. Apparently someone also broke into the armory last night.
Ruby’s glance lands on Temple’s heavy duffel bag sitting by the door.
I just took one or two is all.
It’s all right, Sarah Mary. You’re going to need some help. I don’t like to think of it—you out there with all those things. I wish you could’ve stayed with us, but that Moses Todd isn’t going to let it happen. Come on, now. We just need to get you as far as the elevator.