Afterland (30 page)

“It doesn’t do well to let your past control you.”

“Don’t deny who you are.”

“I’m not killing anyone. That’s the end of the discussion. And I’m leaving.”

“Oh, I don’t think so Mike. Let me say one more thing.”

“Nothing you can say will convince me.”

“Give me thirty seconds.”

“You have ten.”

Augustus leans over and whispers something in Mike’s ear. Mike frowns. Both of us lean forward and try to discern what he’s saying, but we can’t even see his mouth moving from this angle. After what I count to be eleven seconds, Augustus pulls away.

“Well, what do you say?” he asks. Mike pulls at his hair and frowns. His face is itching with the urge to scream. He paces several times back and forth, but finally gives his heavy response.

“Who’s the victim?”

CHAPTER 20

Smaller Sally nearly jumps out from behind the tree. I pull her back hastily.

“Don’t blow our cover,” I whisper.

“That bastard,” she whispers in response. “That goddamn bastard. He thinks he can make Mike do whatever he wants? That’s not true,” she snarls. “That’s not true.”

Meanwhile, Augustus is pulling out a pencil and a small scrap of paper.

“I’ll write it down for you.”

“Just say it out loud. Nobody can hear it. We’re alone.”

“Mike,” Augustus smiles enigmatically, scribbling several letters on the paper, “You should know. You’re never alone.” Then he adds, “I need this done by Friday.” He fold the small piece of paper several times before handing Mike the paper and walking away. Mike crumples it in his hand and looks at the sky for a moment before opening it. He reads it over several times then explodes in a burst of fury.

“I can’t do that, Augustus, you know I can’t do that!” He shouts into the woods throwing the paper down. Nobody responds. Mike screams again, picks the paper up, and throws it into the woods. “Goddamn it, Augustus!”

He paces around the clearing for several more minutes and screams again.

“Goddamn it!”

He makes several more circles around the clearing and screams again.

“
God! Damn! It!
”

He pulls at his hair and bites his lip. He sits down and stands back up several times. He looks like he might implode. I watch with horrified fascination as Mike, the most calm and composed person I know, begins to fall to pieces. Finally, he closes his eyes and evens out his breathing, picking up the parts of himself that he let slip.

“Friday,” he says. “That’s three days.” He paces around the clearing several more times and then says, “If I don’t...” He looks up, putting things together in his head and then screams again.

“God damn it, Augustus!” He shouts again. I’ve never seen him in a state of such agitated agony. I didn’t even think he was capable of it.

“Always move forward,” he says hollowly. “Even if…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

He picks up the piece of paper he threw away and begins to walk out of the clearing. Smaller Sally and I press back against the tree. Smaller Sally waits until he walks out of sight and then turns to me. She looks like she has a lot to say but she can’t even open her mouth to say it, because that would make whatever plight Mike is in more real.

“He’ll be going to the nearest town,” she says emptily. “If we leave now, we’ll get back before him. Let’s go.”

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We ride in silence for several hours. Smaller Sally’s driving is much more subdued and I find that I prefer her raucous, dangerous driving much more than this lifeless cruising. She stops in several hours and gets off the snowmobile. I follow. She walks around and pulls at her hair in the same way Mike does. I let her pace for several minutes and then ask,

“Um...are you alright?”

“No.”

“Um…”

“He’s gonna kill someone.”

“No. He can’t do that.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because, there’s no way Mike can take someone else’s life.” Smaller Sally looks at me and doesn’t respond. “You seriously think Mike will kill someone?” I say in disbelief.

“Yes, I do.”

“No. That’s ridiculous.”

“He can do it. Don’t doubt him, he can do it.”

“I don’t think he will.”

She looks me straight in the eyes and says, “Yes he will.”

I don’t know how to respond to the level of confidence in her voice so I join her in pacing.

“So what do we do?” I say finally.

“I don’t know,” she responds. “Ugh. I just...Mike will do it, you know. And then he’ll feel guilty about it forever. It’ll break him.” She sighs. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

“No, no, don’t be sorry.” I smile. “I’m always ready for an adventure.” Smaller Sally smiles in response and I suddenly notice how pale she is.

“Even if it involves murder?”

“That makes it even more of an adventure, doesn’t it?”

She smiles shakily and says, “I guess. You know, sometimes,” she sighs, “I feel like I’ve had enough adventures. Sometimes I just want to settle down and live my life without the constant danger and all of...this.”

“But?”

“But what else is there to do but this?”

“You always have a choice,” I say, just as I said to Mike several days ago. Smaller Sally shakes her head.

“I used to think that too, but it’s not true.”

“What do you mean? You have to choose well, but you always have the choice.”

“No,” she says. “If you make a choice to do something outrageous and stupid, what kind of a choice is that? It’s just a sacrifice.” She sighs again. “You know, the older I get, the more I think that our lives are predetermined for us and we have no choice but to go along with the flow. Bad things happen if we don’t and at that point, we don’t have any choices to make except for how to end.”

“Challenge the flow,” I say, only because I can’t think of anything else to say.

“You can’t challenge the flow. You are part of the flow.”

“Then how is history made?”

“History...I have my opinions about history.”

“For example?”

“Is history factual?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that history is factual. Prove it.”

“Well, um...there’s evidence, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Evidence like what? Like cave paintings and literature and a broken spearhead. What does that mean? We can only guess and we accept it as fact...because. That bothers me.”

“But…” I say, “It fits together too well to be a coincidence.”

“There was a point in time,” she says, “In which people thought that the Earth was flat and that you could sail off the edge of the world. And why would they ever challenge that? How could it be anything else? It was pure logic: if the Earth was round, how would the people on the other side stay on? They didn’t know about gravity. We accept it as a law now, but back then? They stayed on the Earth because there was simply no other way to exist. And that’s why I hate history. We accept it because there is no other way for us to get to this point, and I think that that’s ridiculous. We think in a straight line, but what if there’s more? Having a linear history, which, like it or not is what we have, boxes us in. I think that there’s more. There has to be more. I think that we’re seeing only the flat side of a sphere.”

“Oh,” I say. “Wow,” and suddenly, it occurs to me that everyone in the Rebellion has incredible monologuing skills.

“We need to help Mike,” she says.

“Right.”

“All right, um...Ugh, I can’t concentrate!”

“Let’s just start with the most basic points: what do we know? Mike is going to kill somebody to pay off a ransom for those three people...what were their names?”

“Veronica, James, and Drew.”

“Right. Veronica, James, and Drew,” I repeat. “So he needs to kill somebody to pay off their ransom and this Augustus whispered something that convinced him to do it.”

“Right. So the next step is, what do we not know? We need to fill the gaps starting with, who does he need to kill?”

“What did Augustus whisper?”

“Yes, that’s important,” Smaller Sally nods. “Also, a little more about the histories between Augustus, Veronica, James, Drew, and Mike would help.”

“Who are the Carviates?”

“Mhhm. So that’s what we can consider the most basic information that we need to find out.”

“Okay. And the next step is?..”

Smaller Sally laughs nervously.

“This is the hard one: fill the gaps.”

“Oh. Um...I got nothing.”

“Okay, so Mike’s getting alcohol tonight. If he gets drunk enough, and he tends to drink more when he’s stressed, then maybe I could ask him about it directly, get the answers, and he won’t remember about it in the morning. That’s not at all a very reliant plan, however, so we need backups. He put the paper with the name in his back right pocket-”

“You noticed which pocket he put it in?”

“Yes, of course. You didn’t? Anyway, the point is, assuming he doesn't throw it away, I can just find it in his pocket while he’s sleeping or something like that. Then we’ll know at least that. Any ideas for the other ones?”

“Um...no.”

“In that case, let’s just start with what we have. You always have to start somewhere. Now let’s eat lunch and get back to camp.”

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We get back to camp during a time when most people are off at training. Only Anna and Big Sal are at camp. Big Sal nods knowingly at our arrival and Anna doesn’t ask about where we were. She must either know or sense that she she shouldn’t ask. We quietly push our snowmobiles into the shed and hurry off into the woods to try to find a new perspective on Mike’s plight. Smaller Sally grabs a board from the weapons tent
—
“Shooting things always helps,” she says in explanation, and we head off. We don’t speak until she puts the board down.

“So,” she says, shooting her first bolt. It lands smack in the middle of the board. “Any new ideas yet?”

“No,” I say, shooting a bolt as well. It lands right next to hers.

“I don’t know, Molly,” she sighs. “I’m just so concerned for Mike. I don’t even mean with this whole murder thing, I mean in general. He doesn’t take care of himself. He’s really strong but everyone can crack. I can’t let him crack.” She shoots another bolt into the center.

“He’ll make it.”

“You sound so sure of that.”

“It’s Mike,” I say.

“What’s your point?”

“He’ll always make it,” I say bluntly. Smaller Sally doesn’t respond for so long that I practically forget what I said in the first place. Her final response is so quiet and so subdued that I see a completely different person in her.

“Except when he doesn’t."

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Mike arrives slightly before dinner. I notice that he acts differently somehow. It’s so subtle that it could easily be a trick of my imagination, but I’m sure that it’s there. I also notice that Smaller Sally and Mike hug each other tighter than usual, as if they’re both trying to hold on to the other. He whispers, “I missed you,” into her ear and then faces the rest of the Rebellion and picks up his bag.

“Alcohol,” he says wearily.

After the racket dies down, Nathan and I detach ourselves from the crowd and walk down to the oak tree with a small bottle of sweet wine for him and a thermos of tea for me, as we did last time. Nathan brings along the guitar. We sit down and Nathan pulls out a ceramic cup.

“I didn’t forget cups this time,” he says.

“Hmm. Good.” I find it really amusing that he is drinking wine out of ceramic cups and not glass. Having  worked as a bartender, I  know which type of alcohol belongs in which type of glass.

“Cheers,” Nathan says.

“Cheers.”

We drink. He looks at me in concern for a moment and moves a strand of hair out of my face and behind my ear.

“You okay? You look kind of worn out.”

“Mhh? Oh. I don’t know. I’m just tired.”

“Have you gotten enough sleep recently?”

“Yeah.”

“‘Cause you look really tired.”

“You’re right,” I say, suddenly realizing how exhausted I really am. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why.”