Authors: Robert Zimmerman
I think of the way I stand at the edge of the small clearing cursing Henrik, the tall crop-haired one who is in charge, for letting Jaspers stay behind because of his ankle. I'd spent more than a few evenings sharing dinner and conversation with Jaspers over the years. Always platonic, though his underlying romantic intentions are always obvious. If he hadn't been so shy about it I might have let him have me once or twice. He looks up at me, confused because he's only seen me a few times without my hood and it has always been in dim candlelight. He tries to stand up from the log, smiling at me and probably thinking that, unable to resist his subtle flirtations any longer, I have come to ravage him in the woods. Instead I shoot him in the face.
I give him the dignity of closing his eyelids on my way past him to the tents. The papers my father sent me for, the ones I am to steal for no reason other than so that he can bitch out the boys for letting them get stolen by the fabled conservationalists who supposedly haunt the woods, are tucked away somewhere in Henrik's belongings. I can't find them, and I curse Henrik again for being so responsible with them. I curse a third time when I hear Bjorgne come into camp early and run to Jasper's body. I shoot at him from the tent where I'm still hidden. He's a smart boy, he doesn't wait to see who shot at him and missed to merely graze his shoulder, he just runs. So I chase him and I tackle him, and I roll him over so he can see my face, and then I reach into his coat and take his butcher's knife. The butcher's knife my father gave them to massacre the tortoises. And I massacre him with it.
I think of the reflection I see on his canteen, clipped to his belt, as I stand up off of him. And I'm making the same grimace, the same horrid grimace, I see in the mirror now as Billy Wiley massacres
me
. My father the General would never approve if he knew I took my hood off every time he sends me out to help meet his precious quota. But I have always done it and always will. On the day God comes to me for judgment, I want them all lined up there behind Him. And I don't want them to have any confusion about who I am or where I should be sent.
I feel the magnetic weight of Billy's body lift itself off and away from me. I pull my eyes away from the mirror because I can't yet stand to see the face that's waiting for me there. I pull my shirt down from where he had deposited it folded above my breasts, and then I bring my jeans back up. When I turn back to look at him, he is sitting calmly on the sofa again, composed, with his glass of brandy still in one hand. “How was it?” he asks me. Though he asks it with the same exuberance he'd said that he had missed me, which is to say none. Mechanically, lifelessly. It occurs to me that I am living a mechanical life, and that everything I do, I do only to appease the routine of things. His attention is not on me but on the newspaper he has folded on the coffee table next to the bottle. He leans forward and picks it up. The paper ruffles and the sound sickens me.
It has been years since my father gave me the hood and it has always been a reviled thing to me. My hand goes to my back pocket without my approval. Recently, I have found myself beginning to crave it at moments. Crave its secrecy and the fact that when I put it on I disappear entirely.
“Wonderful, Billy,” I say. “I love you.”
At first I try to notice some way in which the town has changed since the last time I was here. As I walk from the train, across the desert and into town, I find nothing. The dust blows the same way. The sun gleams off the bulb of the water tower exactly as it used to. Scattering the light in long rays upon the sand. I inspect the people I pass. I am a stranger to them but I know them all well. Their inflections are the same, their mannerisms. Not even God could have recreated it with such precision, such accuracy. I head toward the hotel, a squat three-story building that casts a wide square of shade onto the town hall. Only its bell tower rises above the shadow.
I find myself standing in front of the old ice cream shop my mother used to take us to when we were little. It's still abandoned, a thick sheet of dust streaked with happenstancial finger marks. I press my face against it and peer inside. The counter has been torn out, frayed wires and the jagged edges of pipes reach out of the ground like the claws of a beast trying to pry the earth open from the inside. I see the flutter of motion of a rat scurrying across the floor. It disappears into a shadow but it's enough to enrage me. I step back and punch the glass. It doesn't break but a backlash of sharp pain rinses from the knuckles of my fist up to my elbow.
“Is there a problem?” I turn around, rubbing my fist with my other hand. A stocky, bordering on fat, man is standing there with a star pinned to his bland beige uniform chest. Tony Barilla, the town's sheriff. He's cradling a packet of papers in his arms and the way he is avoiding paying them any real attention, they seem to be the source of the misery that he wears on his face.
“I'm sorry, Sheriff,” I say, bowing my head slightly in an attempt to convey that it was a momentary lapse in judgment and that I realize it. “Just having a bad day.”
He pats me on the shoulder as he walks away. “There seem to be a lot of those going around these days. Just watch yourself, buddy.”
I watch him walk away down the street and turn a corner and then I take a final look into the ice cream shop. The rat is gone. I continue toward the hotel that, by now, I can see looming like a monolith against the sky. This is the street, I think to myself, inspecting the tire tracks that are dug through the dust that covers the road.
This
is the street. It must have been years ago. I've quite forgotten my age by now. Not to say that I'm old or that I interpret myself as old. Only that such things have really stopped having meaning enough to pay them any attention. I think of the day it began. I think of sitting in the backseat, the hem of the vinyl seatbelt rubbing into my shoulder, singing together. A senseless song we picked up from the cartoons we used to watch mornings before being rushed out to catch the school bus. Watching the occasional appearance of our father's eyes in his rearview mirror as he glances back at us and tries weakly to harmonize.
I remember the sun catching my eye, reflected from the sideview mirror as we turn the corner and head out of town. I remember it is bright. But not blindingly so. And as I stare at the little bouncing bubble that rolls along the wrinkles of the old silver-painted plastic that transforms that piece of glass into a mirror, I forget the words to the song and my sister laughs and punches me in the shoulder. And when I finally look away from it and I look into the rearview mirror, my father's eyes are there and the pupils and irises have disappeared and they are just two large, black spots, like a demon's, staring back at us. It is an illusion of staring into the sun, though at the time, I may not have realized it.
I find my way to the hotel and go to the counter. As I reach for my wallet, the woman looks up from her computer and apologizes because there are no vacancies. It comes as a surprise, because the town itself is practically vacant. Though I suppose the faceless men and women, the ghosts of all those who lived here before and who are still to live here in the years to come, need someplace to wait. She tells me a school bus heading for the coast came in just the day before, full of young men waiting to listen to the Reverend preach about General Anselmo's work and all of the selfless things he's trying to accomplish out there. On top of that, she tells me there is a small medical convention being held right now at the hospital. I ask her if she knows of any other place in town where I might be able to stay the night. She shrugs and I start to walk away. Before I leave again, she calls me back and says, “Actually, there's a woman, Elizabeth Hesse, she sometimes rents out her spare room.”
There's a brief moment when I consider ignoring her and continuing on my way out. But I really do need a place to stay. At least a place to nap and wash myself off after the long and unpleasant train ride I've just rid myself of. I return to the woman and let her write an address down on a card and hand it to me. I don't need the address, but I take it anyway. As though seeing it in writing, seeing it come from another person's hand, solidifies that the house actually exists. That Elizabeth Hesse actually exists, and exists
here
, nevertheless.
When I arrive at the house, I knock and hope that nobody's home. That hope dies as soon as I hear the flurry of hurried footsteps stampeding down a staircase. A moment later, she is standing there. I realize that I am sweating. I wipe my forehead and smile and wonder if she can see the way my lips are trembling. She looks at me for a moment and then over my shoulder as though she's expecting someone else, as though there
must
be someone behind me and all she has to do is spot him to make him materialize there.
She looks a mess. Her hair is a nest, her eyes are sunken little balls nestled in tired sacks of puffed dark skin. Her lips are dry and cracking. The house releases a puff of heated air, but she is hunched over and burdened with the weight of a heavy coat. There appears to be something unnatural about the way it lays on her back but I can't quite determine what it is. At least, I think to myself, I have found the subtle difference I had been looking to find. The Elizabeth Hesse I knew was a young and vibrant woman. Not this aging wretch.
When she finally looks at me again she asks, “Can I help you?”
“I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am,” I say. I run a hand through my hair and she watches it with all the intent of a child seeing the world for the first time. “I need a place to stay for the afternoon. Possibly overnight. The girl at the hotel sent me here. They're full.” She says nothing for a moment, only continues to inspect the motion of my lips and the muscles twitching beneath my face. I pull out my wallet and a small fold of bills. “I can pay in cash, of course.” I add.
She takes the soft fold of money, counts some out and hands me the rest. I tuck it into my pocket. “Come on in,” she says. She steps aside and holds onto the door as though it is the only crutch holding her up. I notice that she takes another long look out into the desert before closing the door.
The lights are off. I push through the dust that floats in the stripes of sunlight sneaking in from between the shades of the windows as though I'm God and they are my futile little planets. As she leads me toward the staircase, I look at the pictures hanging on the walls, pictures of a smiling family huddled together in front of a hung sheet of cheap canvas. I glance down a long antechamber that leads into a garage. There is a light on down there, hanging from the ceiling, but the doorway only remains in my field of vision for a matter of a few degrees and then we are past it.
I go up the staircase before she tells me to. It doesn't occur to me that she might ask me how I know where the spare room is at, but before I reach the second floor I realize that she is far too preoccupied to notice me. I lead her past the first room and pause. There is a little girl sitting on the edge of the bed in there with a doll in her lap. She is separating out the long strands of plastic hair so that she can braid it. I feel confused, disoriented. I have to check behind me to make sure that it actually is Elizabeth Hesse standing there. “Isâshe yours?” I ask.
The woman urges me forward with a hand on my back. “No,” she whispers. “Her parents justâ” She considers her words carefully. “Passed away. I'm watching her until we can figure out where she belongs. Her name is Ingot.”
I nod. We come to the second room on the side of the hallway and I let myself in. Behind us, on the other side of the stairway, there is the master bedroom and a bathroom. Mrs. Hesse points the bathroom out to me before we go into the room. It's a small plain room. Pale blue wallpaper, a single window with white curtains trimmed with blue ribbon. A twin-sized bed with a comforter to match the walls. A small closet without a door and a small bureau against the wall.
“Here you are,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything.” She walks away and closes the door behind her. As soon as she is gone, I let myself fall to the edge of the bed. It seems a stronger feat to have come up those stairs with her and keep my composure than I thought myself capable. I empty my pockets onto the bed table. My wallet, a watch, a few bills. It's all I have left to my name.
I slip off my shoes and socks and then I leave the room and go down the hall to the bathroom. I take a glance in at the little girl. She looks up at me and gives a half-hearted wave. I smile and wave back and she looks back down at her doll.
There is a guest towel hanging on the back of the door. I strip off my clothes and fold them up along the crack beneath the door so that the steam won't escape into the hall. I turn on the water, as hot as it will go, and slide the shower curtain closed over the pale pink tiles of the tub. I stand in front of the mirror for a long time and inspect myself. It occurs to me that anyone looking into a mirror must see only what they don't want to see. I can't find anything I don't want to see, but at the same time, there's nothing there that I
do
want to see, and that equates to just about the same.
A cloud rises over the shower curtain and collapses down onto the floor and around my feet. The humidity reminds me of home. A small tropical basin near the western coast of South America, where a self-sufficient community of native shepherds and American excavators was slowly developed. Rather, the native shepherds created the village and the American excavators came later to live on the outskirts and share in the economy. I arrive there when I am eight or nine, just before age stops being something of importance to me, hand-in-hand with the only person I would ever really trust. A trust that, after nearly a decade passes, I will discover one morning has been a mocking farce. The morning I wake up and look across our hut to his cot and see that he has gone. It isn't unusual for him, for Father, to leave early to catch fish or small animals in the traps we have set up around the basin. An early start on skinning and de-boning our day's meals. And so I go about my business. I go out to the field where our sheep are waiting, where I open the gate and watch them graze for an hour until the sun rises.
In the mornings, you can see the humidity form in great clouds from small pools of dew collected on the ground. Cupped ferns as huge as I, that collect rain and condensation overnight, will suddenly transform into great steaming geysers. Those that exist in the deepest pits of shade are let to keep their treasures, and small, sustained ecosystems grow in those. Hopping toads, fish, a plethora of protozoa and larger water bugs create thriving civilizations within the leaves, each presided over by a hawk or kingfisher who serves as god, to dole out death or mercy as it sees fit, perched high above in the canopy where, Father tells me, the souls of those frogs and insects and fish will go after the bird, inevitably, decides to devour them.
He hasn't returned by the time I come back from the fields. I wait a bit and then go to the schoolhouse. It is a small hut, longer than those that house us, and it serves as daycare for the youngest children, as school for the ones old enough and smart enough to realize the importance of knowledge, and where the few older children (as I was nearly twenty years by the time Father left) can go to study from the outdated books stolen from university libraries and somehow survived to find themselves in the middle of the jungle.
It is only the next morning, when he still hasn't returned, that I seek out the village elder, a wise old man with a smooth bald head and skin that clings to his bones in the same manner that an elephant wears its leather. He doesn't seem surprised when I tell him that Father has been gone since yesterday, he only smiles complacently and reaches into his tattered vest to pull out a sealed envelope. It has my name printed on it. I thank him and leave with it wrinkled in my anxious grip. When I get home, I open it eagerly and pluck out the piece of dull yellow parchment. It is from Father, and it reads only one line, “
I need to leave. I'm sorry
.”
I climb into the shower and watch the dirt and sweat create amorphous trails from the soles of my feet. It's been a long time since I've had a proper shower. It takes a minute for the hot water to soak through the dust that plugs each of my pores, to clear them out, and finally touch my body. It is a rejuvenating feel, one that I relish. I raise my head to the ceiling but keep my eyes closed and let the water hit my throat and cascade down my chest. I realize at some point that I'm also crying. I don't know why. Not in particular, at least, though I imagine it has something to do with being back in this house.
I stand there until the hot water runs cold, then I step out and dry myself and wrap my waist with the towel and I return to my room. I lock my door, drop the towel and I lay down on the bed. I try to remember whether it has been longer since I've taken a shower or since I've slept in a bed, and I fall asleep amidst the calculations.
As I sleep, I dream the same dream I have most nights. Though, it is not a dream so much as it is a memory. A memory of a woman who lived in our village in South America. Her name is Doña Gabriella Garcià . She is an older woman whom I had found instantly captivating upon our arrival, though I am just a boy and unable to articulate the attraction in any way, even to myself, because of her flawless and lightly tanned skin, the long black hair that she wears wild around her often-bare shoulders, and the small breasts that bounce, unbound beneath the loose, silky shirts that she wears and that look to point skyward when she walks through the village. I am fascinated with her, and being too young at this time to work, I sit for hours in our hut, sometimes while Father is there and sometimes while he is out trying to figure out what to do with ourselves because we have just come to live in the village and he doesn't yet have a job and isn't quite sure whether we will be able to stay for any length of time or if we'll need to leave.