Surrender (20 page)

“You moron!” he screams. “You imbecile! Shut up! You’ll die too — you
understand
that, don’t you? If I die,
you
die!”

I smile; I’m in some pain.

Ballistic with fury he careers around the room, slamming the walls, kicking the furniture, pounding his fists on the floor. He throws the water jug across the room, exploding liquid over the walls. He wipes from the tabletop rattling bottles of pills. He snaps the drip-tube that umbilicals me, and wrestles the drip-stand to the ground. His face is mottled with anger; air whistles through his teeth. He hurls tissues, pillows, blankets, bowls . . . they hit the walls and ceiling. He reaches deadly hands for me and I say, “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“Why not?”
he bawls. “What will you do,
kill me
?”

“Finnigan,” I whisper, and I must barter for air; his tantrum has drained my dwindled resources . . . I’ve little strength left to explain. “I won’t change my mind. This can’t go on. It’s too much damage. It has to end.”

Nothing can describe his outrage; he’s reduced to a black-eyed, white-fanged, wrathful silence, a dangerous thing on a chain. There’s still fight in him, but he knows when he’s doomed. He understands that nothing will change his destiny now. Somewhere inside him, he’s mourning for himself. He dredges up a ravaged voice to say, “You deserved it. Everyone laughed at you that day. I warned you it would happen — you wouldn’t listen to me. The whole town was there to laugh. The girl Evangeline laughed. I nearly died laughing.”

I nod; he’s artful.

“They’re still laughing at you. On the streets of Mulyan, after all these years. They say,
Remember that boy, that kooksville
. The birds are laughing. The buildings laugh. The skeletons under the gravestones laugh. Evangeline’s friends are laughing.”

I glance away. I’m tired. I feel his heretical gaze on me. My old, untamable friend.

“Evangeline’s probably laughing,” he says, “but we don’t see much of her anymore. After your little exhibition that day, she asked her parents to take her away from Mulyan. The thought of you must have made her sick. She couldn’t put enough distance between you and her. Maybe she caught a boat and sailed away to the other side of the world. She’s as gone as gone can be. I hope you haven’t been doing anything stupid, Gabriel — hoping she might come to visit you, for instance. Hoping she’ll understand, forgive you, something ridiculous like that. That won’t happen, never. Evangeline’s gone. She’s not coming back. She won’t forgive you. She doesn’t want to understand.”

I clench my teeth, say nothing. I don’t want to believe him, but I do — it makes sense, what he says. All these years of waiting for Evangeline to knock on the door, all this longing — it’s wasted. I could weep, but I won’t. Not now; not in front of him.

The moonlight shows the room is a shambles. Everything lies everywhere. Liquid has leaked from the torn tube of the drip and has soaked my arm and the floor. I do not speak until I’m sure my voice will be steady. “You should go, Finnigan. Surrender’s waiting for you.”

I feel him waver — he has one weakness. Of all the things I regret, I don’t regret giving my dog to him. He’s loved and tended what I could not, and kept the beloved thing safe. He crosses the room on black-pawed legs and grinds a finger into my chest. “This isn’t over,” he assures me. “Don’t think I won’t be back.”

“Goodbye, Fin,” I say. And I wish I was going with him, to some warm sheltered hideaway in the hills, wish that I, too, could lie down beside the dog, feel his unbroken heartbeat, smell the dust in his fur.

There’s only hours. I steel my courage.

Surrender.

That roaring hot summer’s day: I do not know what to call that day. The Day of the Goats, The Day in the Forest, The Day of the Dolphins, The Day of the Hatchet. Mostly, when I think of it, I think
the last day with Surrender
.

After I had waited for Father to make the tea, after I had unchained Surrender and run through the sleeping town; after we’d climbed Copperkettle Road and found the deserted lyrebird mound; after I’d slept in the heat and woken to the silent observation of the forest, knowing that Surrender could not go home — after that, there was nothing to do but summon Finnigan, and relinquish my dog to his care. And although it was a wrench, as defeat and loss always are, I was glad that Surrender was somewhere my father and Dockie May couldn’t reach him.

Then I had turned and fled, blundering my way through the bracken, refusing to cede to Finnigan’s demand. I would never give him victory: I would never renounce Evangeline. And though I ran in panic, something in me was satisfied. Finnigan, defied, could hurl threats at my back, but Surrender was safe with him: I had done a good thing.

I lurched home along Copperkettle Road, scratched, parched, exhausted. A million cicadas sang on the roadside, the wind cracked my lips. I guessed it was near midday. Finnigan’s warning
(you’ll regret this)
clung to my shoulders alongside the bush-flies. Occasionally I heard the cotton-ball sweep of dog paw on the road, four long brown hound-legs stepping lightly over stones and weeds. I refused to look back, covered my ears. “Stay with Finnigan,” I said. “Don’t follow me.”

And as I drew closer to home, the tall forest petering and becoming instead the squat stained weatherboards of Mulyan’s poor fringe, the sound of the paws faded until they were finally gone. His body stood beside me, true — but his spirit had returned to Finnigan. And it was spirit that mattered, I had to believe.
I had to make myself believe
the body did not matter. “Good dog,” I murmured. “Stay with Finnigan.”

Maybe I’d expected our house to be ruined by the strength of my father’s anger at finding me absconded, the criminal Surrender unchained — I was surprised to see it standing as it always had, white and mundane. Everything looked as it always had: no passing neighbor would guess that everything had changed.

Inside, though, things were different. My mother and father sat at opposite ends of the sunroom. A mail-order gardening catalog spread across Father’s lap. My mother had nothing to occupy her, so was staring into space. The room smelled of furniture polish — Father never brought his fragrant blooms inside. Mother glanced at me, fidgeted with a loose thread of the armchair. None of us said anything. The room seemed to spin on a mysterious axis; suddenly Father was in front of me. He didn’t look up from his catalog. He said, “Go and ask Martin Shin for his gun.”

Surrender was safe: it was possible to obey. It was easiest to obey, and have it over and done. I turned and traced my steps into the parched street.

Martin Shin lived three houses along. His house and his yard smelled rancid as cat water. Three dogs on chains barked ferociously as I approached. My mother wanted this man’s house demolished. There was something inappropriate about Shin, something that belonged on the outskirts of town. Now Father was borrowing a rifle from him.

It was waiting in the hall, its slim dark muzzle touching the wall. Father had been here before me.

I was surprised by its heft when Shin set it in my hands. There was nothing to it but it was heavy, as if aware of its somber potential. Its muscle was metal, its sweat grease; its dense, proud odor rose above the reek of the house. Few things are so perfectly formed. “Be careful,” Shin warned. He was dressed to go somewhere and tugged uncomfortably at his collar. “It’s loaded. Don’t trip on your feet when you’re carrying it.”

My throat was packed with gravel. My hands were bloodless as clay. “All right.”

“Bring it straight back when you’ve finished.”

“I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

I walked the distance of three fence lines carrying the rifle. No one saw me; no one was around. No cars passed on the road, no birds flitted through the sky. The heat draped like a lion skin on my shoulders, swirled like liquor in my wake. I thought I could hear laughter burbling from a distant TV.

At our fence I hesitated. Once, years ago, I had leaned against this fence and met a wild boy. His name, scratched into the wood, had worn away with weather and time. But he had stayed. He would never go. He would threaten to leave but he would return, volatile, unforgiving. There would never be just me alone. Where I went, so would he.

If I went to Heaven or Hell, so would he.

Father was waiting in the backyard. I walked down the garden path and his simmering stare tracked me. I stopped short of his reaching hand. He took the rifle and examined it. He prided himself on understanding the way elementary things worked. “It’s loaded,” I cautioned. “Beware.”

In the minutes I’d been absent he’d caught and tied Surrender to the chain. Surrender dragged the links clinking through the grass and stopped beside me, his tail waving. I looked down at him, telling myself that gristle and bone were not the things that mattered. The real Surrender, I remembered, had stayed in the forest with Finnigan. Good dog.

My father pushed the rifle at me. I stepped backward, confused. Father stepped after me, proffering the weapon, his face pink with the heat. “Do it.”

I stared, disbelieving. The world spun again on its unnatural axis. Gravel tumbled from my throat to my stomach, and drained out my eyes. I shook my head painstakingly. “No.”

“You’ll do it. It’s your dog — it’s your duty. You’ll learn to face what must be done — not run away from it.”

I stood, wavering.

The world seesawed.

“The sooner it’s done, the better.” It was against his law to back down.

I held up my shaking hands. My father laid the gun in them.

I could kill him with the bend of a finger. He would fall in the grass and the flies would come, sailing over the roses and out of the blue blue sky. The worms would turn, and creep as if summoned. My mother would run, afraid to look behind. It would take one moment.

Instead I looked at the dog —

— who was safe with Finnigan, I reminded myself. No matter what happened here in the yard, Surrender was safe with Finnigan. This animal before me was merely a shadow; but —

“I can’t,” I breathed.

“You will. It’s a mercy, Anwell. It has to be done.”

“Surrender,” I murmured, and the dog pricked his ears. I stroked his head, smelled the wheat dust of him, all his wild traveling, all the world he’d seen. I ran a hand across the things he’d chased in his dreams, the soundness of his sleeping before the fire, the pleasure of the sun on his spine. I buried a hand in his cinnamon coat and felt his warmth in my palm. Good dog.

Good dog.

The muzzle sat neatly between his brown ears where the broad skull was near-perfectly flat.

He looked at me. I looked up; not at him.

You’re Finnigan’s dog now, boy.

The percussion sent the chickens haywire. I felt the body slump at my feet. Specks of blood landed on me.

I dropped the rifle and walked away. My knees and elbows creaked. Gravel was waterfalling from my pores; I left an arid river of it behind.

The house was dim inside, every curtain drawn against the heat. The kitchen radio was playing a faint tune. I wandered through the rooms, touching nothing. Everything seemed otherworldly, as if this dimension wasn’t my own. Strange, the shape of a spoon and fork; strange, the flypaper hung by the window. Strange, the pattern on the loungeroom cushions, writhing, royal-blue; strange, that porcelain animals should cavort in the confines of a glass-shelved pen. I paused in the hall, snowy flowers in my head. It was hard to think past the bulging white blooms. I could hear the radio, the sound of the rifle, the hysteria of the hens.

I pressed my forehead against the wall. My arms were dotted scarlet and black. My head hurt as if crushed by iron. My fingers slid down the wall.

I reminded myself that he was safe — he was safe as could be. Finnigan had him, would never give him back, but at least he was safe. Finnigan had told me I’d regret it, but I didn’t. There was peace in having nothing left to lose. That’s what I knew: there was nothing left to lose.

Except Evangeline.

I realized I was on my knees, my knuckles curled on the carpet. My mother was staring down at me. Her eyes scanned me with unhappiness. “Stand up, Anwell.” With effort, I did so. My thoughts ran ahead.
You’ll regret this
.

“It’s done, I take it?”

I nodded.

“It had to be done. It couldn’t be helped. I’m sorry for it. It couldn’t be helped.”

I shrank from her, her diabolical pity. Flowers and darker things unfurled in my head.

“In this life, you have to take responsibility. Even for what’s unpleasant. It’s a lesson we each must learn, however painfully.”

You’ll regret this, angel
. Finnigan had said that, out in the forest.

We must each learn our lesson, however painfully
.

I did not regret giving Surrender to Finnigan. He must have known I wouldn’t. But he’d promised I would have cause to regret
something.
. . .

I lifted my eyes. “He meant Evangeline.”

Mother frowned at me. I stumbled away. He meant I would regret Evangeline. He’d meant Evangeline would regret me. I said, “Evangeline’s going to pay for this.”

“Anwell, stay!” my mother cried, but I was running for the door, the street, the withered day; I made my way through the swamp-heat of the afternoon to arrive at Evangeline’s house and told her to flee before the devil descended from the hills and came looking, remorseless, his ears pinned back to his sleek skull, his pitch sights set on her.

My mother followed me and found me there, in the bedroom, again on my knees.

Probably she was relieved to find Evangeline safe. I suppose my words, in the hall, may have sounded threatening. I didn’t think of this at the time. It is yet another instance of how Mother always failed to understand me.

She ordered me home, and I followed.

Only then, home again, the day mostly gone, did I cover the dog with hessian to give him privacy from the flies.

There’s a knock on the door and my aunt Sarah comes in. I expect her to gasp at the astonishing mess Finnigan’s made, but she apparently fails to notice it. She steps right over the felled drip-stand, splashes without comment through puddles on the floor. Perhaps she is simply being kind; perhaps, in these final hours, there are things more important than the state of the room.