And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 4
"He then thinks of noodles."
CHAPTER 7
IT’D TAKEN AN HOUR longer than Hammer had said it would. He’d blotched makeup across her face. He’d forced antique earrings into closed holes but, too concerned with how he was to drape the deep purple top and dirty jeans over her frail body, had forgotten to wipe the blood from her lobes. Oddly, he’d done nothing with her hair. Not a wash, not a comb, nothing. Instead, here in the Suburban, he likens it to a ship captain’s wheel, jutting every which way.
Hammer’s mother’s hair isn’t the only thing that makes Vitri uncomfortable, though; it’s the acorn eyes that, since leaving the driveway, have been on him, and only him, almost unblinkingly so. As he has a few times now, Vitri, in the passenger seat, turns far enough to see her, upright in the back, childlike beneath her makeshift seatbelt. This time, he looks at her shoes. They are the color of ash, with two Velcro straps in which lint and dust have fused.
“She likes her car rides, tell you what,” Hammer says. He smiles as he slows the Suburban to a crawl, passing exit ramps blocked off by accordioned semi-trucks. “Isn’t that right, Ma?”
Hammer’s mother moans.
Vitri turns back around. “You always take her with you?”
“Can’t leave her at the house by her lonesome when there are people like you roaming around.” Hammer shoves Vitri’s shoulder as if they are old pals, then lets out a laugh, deep and haughty.
Which, more than anything else, depresses Vitri. He is to be in this Suburban until Shreveport, with the old woman that has been doused in rank perfume, with this giddy Hammer, this guard-entirely-down Hammer, this Hammer that has emerged from the cocoon that his self-doubt had spun. He is not at all the pants-wetting hammer he’d drawn upon less than a day ago.
“Have to admit, this is exciting for me. See, I was gonna be like you,” Hammer says, “before everything went dark. Just pack all my shit up and head north, to Michigan, or whatever. Thought about it a lot.”
Vitri conceals a sigh. “What’s stopping you from going now?”
“You saw me piss myself,” Hammer says. He shrugs. “I’m a pussy. I found that out real fast. You should’ve seen when everything went dark. Didn’t leave the house. Sat in my room, wishing that, if this was it, if this was how the world was gonna end, that I’d somehow be the first to go, that somehow God would seek me out, and only me, and make it quick—”
“Mmhmm.”
“—I even told myself that it was okay to leave Mom here to die. Said to myself that it was her time, that it’d been her time, all the bullshit we tell ourselves about death.” Hammer glances at the rearview mirror, at its reflection of the woman in back. “But I didn’t go anywhere. Stayed. Watched the vehicles zoom by. Watched the leaves fall. Watched all the crops shrivel up like a cold nutsack.” Hammer sighs. “The day I heard the planes was, well, that was it. That was when I decided for good that I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Vitri leans forward. “Planes?” The last plane Vitri had seen was a commercial airliner, miles up, its exhaust cloud slashing across a clear sky. Days after the blackout.
“Yeah, planes.”
“When? How long ago?”
“How long ago did I hear them?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple weeks. Maybe three. You haven’t heard ‘em?” Hammer watches Vitri shake his head no. “Huh.”
Silence.
“You really haven’t heard them at all?”
“Who’s flying them?”
“Fuck if I know,” Hammer says.
“Military?”
“Maybe.”
“Whose?”
“Ours, Argentina’s, Kazakhstan’s, does it matter?”
“Jets?”
“No, no,” Hammer laughs. “Hell no. Old cargo planes. Cargo planes and crop dusters. Dusters have been dropping shit for months now. Pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, all kinds of cides. You have to be able to smell it. No way you can’t. Go on, roll down your window.”
Vitri doesn’t. He thinks of the fields he walked past yesterday, of the cattle, of walking to Florida drenched in chemicals, of coughing out organs. He thinks of flesh sliding from his skeleton.
“What about Florida?” Vitri asks. “Do you think they’re dropping anything there?”
Hammer laughs. “Nothing else to kill here.”
The Suburban rumbles east.
“I was what they’d call a good kid,” Hammer says. “With all those promises my dipshit brother made, you wouldn’t think it could be true, but I didn’t even take my first sip of beer until I was twenty-three years old. Twenty-three!”
Vitri leans his head against the passenger window. Fields upon fields upon fields. The occasional giant tree dying. A paint-stripped home here and there, siding as grey as the sky, sedans and SUVs still in the driveway, some flipped, others on jacks, others not.
There are no planes, Vitri thinks.
“Mmhmm,” Vitri says.
Not in Texas, not in Louisiana, not in Florida.
“That’s no joke, either. And, just my luck, the whole world goes to shit by the time my palate declares that any sort of alcohol actually tastes good.”
He opened a store when there are no customers. He pissed himself at the sight of you.
“I’d have to say that my favorite was this one that they call a hefeweizen. That wasn’t the brand; it was the type of beer, you see. And they didn’t sell it in bottles either, at least not this kind. You’d have to go to a bar, and I don’t mean one of the grey-beard-regular bars, I mean an upscale place, a trimmed beard and eyeglasses type of place.”
He gave you mayonnaise to stroke your dick with. He dolls up his dying mother.
“Were you a beer man, Freddie?”
Look at him.
“Freddie?”
“Whiskey.” What the fuck does he know? “I liked whiskey.”
Clouds overhead are lifting, yanked spaceward by an invisible puppeteer, remains rallying into thumbprints. To the north, however, it looks like rain. A mauve wave hovering over the distant treelines.
Vitri props his face with his elbow and hand.
“And then I had these two cousins, two cousins on her side,” Hammer says. He points to his mother. “Melvin and Marvin—we called Melvin ‘Haha,’ and Marvin ‘Giggles’—anyway, they were, as you can probably tell by their nicknames, of the prankster mold. Little hellions that couldn’t tiptoe that line schools draw in the sand and label, ‘suitable’. I mean, you probably know the type, being an officer of the law and all. I’m sure you ran into people like Haha and Giggles all the time.”
There are no police officers. There are no courts. There are no jails.
“Well, one day, the two of them—they were inseparable, let me tell you—well, one day, they, without telling anyone, decided to drop out of high school. Just up and quit. Said fuck it all. Didn’t go anymore.” Hammer pauses, glances at Vitri. “You wanna know where they went? You wanna know what they were up to?”
There are no judges. There are no consequences.
“Huh? Do you?”
“Sure,” Vitri says.
“Those dumb fuckers thought it was in their best interest to cook crystal meth. That’s right, crystal meth. How fucked up is that?”
“Real fucked up.”
I could elbow your jaw right now. I could press the barrel of my pistol to your temple.
“They never got caught or nothin’ because the dumbshits couldn’t even get the operation off of the ground. Something about not being able to perfect their recipe.” Hammer licks his lips. “So, months down the line, they come to me—they came to me because they’d had my smoked meat before, and knew how skilled of a smoker I was—they come to me and they ask, ‘Hey Hammer, how about you come work for us? We’ll give you eight percent.’”
I could kill you right here. And no one would care.
“So I say to them, ‘Hell no.’”
The Suburban comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the road, just before an overpass. Its brake lights shut off; its engine stays on. There are no screams. No sound at all until the driver’s side door opens and onto the highway steps Hammer, arms raised. He stares through the open door. Says nothing.
“Get her the fuck out of here,” Vitri says from within the Suburban.
Hammer listens. Hurries to the back door, opens it and lifts his mother out, pivoting his body so that her legs don’t smack the vehicle.
The passenger door opens. Closes. Circling around the front of the Suburban is Vitri, scarf over his mouth, 9mm drawn and aimed at Hammer and his mother.
Still holding his mother, Hammer backs away.
Vitri shuts the back door and, without another word, climbs into the driver’s seat. Shuts the door. Takes off.
East he goes, 9mm still in his lap, east, east, east.
East. That’s all you need to think about.
He glances once more at the rearview mirror, at himself, at the twirling picture of Hammer’s mother. He sets the 9mm on the passenger seat. Tugs the picture and its string off. Rolls down the driver’s side window. Tosses it out. Leaves the window open, leaves the rearview at a severe angle. Finally smells the chemicals on the air.
Laid from treeline to treeline—across the highway—are tree trunks and telephone poles, stacked eight feet high, all of which have been paint-brushed vermilion.
The Suburban approaches. Stops. Vitri steps onto the highway. He walks north along the stack. He walks south and eventually comes back to the center once he sees there is no way he can maneuver the vehicle around or over. For a moment, Vitri puts his hands on the wood. Tries pushing the stack. He pushes, and pushes, and pushes, grunting as he does so, the pushes soon becoming punches, the grunting soon becoming screams. Once exhausted, he turns around. Looks west.
And then he walks back to the Suburban, to the passenger side. He pulls out his backpack and slings it over his shoulders as he walks around the stack, leaving Hammer’s truck for the taking.
From the hill where Vitri stands, Shreveport is in view, mustard-colored land risen like dough around its outskirts, buildings appearing tall and robust from this distance. The air smells like sulfur. Potent. Seeping through the scarf, stinging Vitri’s nostrils. With watery eyes he looks to the sky to see three sickly crows circling, obsidian feathers descending as they battle a swirling wind.
On the grass near a tree stump is the box of matches, the .22 pistol, the bar of soap. Vitri finds the can of soup he was looking for in the bottom of his backpack. He removes the lid he’d rubber-banded shut and, still standing, takes one brief, calculated sip. It tastes as advertised: like tomatoes. Expired tomatoes. His tastebuds don’t fight it, though, nor does his stomach. All the sip seems to do is make Vitri hungrier. He finds himself craving a salad. Spinach leaves and halved olives, garlic-doused croutons and feta cheese, the tomatoes diced and smothered in the Greek dressing his wife fought to keep out of the house.
He takes another sip. Thinks of bacon, and melted sharp cheddar cheese, and wheat bread, a slice or two of tomato somewhere between. Then, pork altogether. And chicken. And beef. Meat he’d marinate overnight and flip on the grill the following afternoon. He takes another sip and misses the corn his wife would shuck and season, the green beans, the cauliflower and broccoli. He remembers cooking with her, the graceful routine they’d perform in the kitchen, pans in hand, swiveling around one another to open drawers and cupboard doors, lifting, dicing, mixing, shaking, exchanging smiles in one of the few moments between them that no words were needed to know what the other thought or desired.
He then thinks of noodles. Big noodles, fat noodles, wheat noodles, white noodles, noodles slathered in tomato sauce. You will make it to Tallahassee, Florida. Vitri stretches the rubber band from the lid to the bottom of the can, then places the can back into his backpack, forming a mound of support around it to prevent the tipping and spilling that surely would occur with his strides. There’s nowhere else. He stands, places the remaining items into the backpack, zips it shut, then walks down the hill.
Vitri walks through Broadmoor Terrace, the 9mm in hand. Within the subdivision are abandoned but still-gaudy homes whose front lawns house sumacs and cedars barely toting their leaves and needles. Around the homes are shriveled yet still colorful beds of transplanted wildflowers, petals under consistent shade still pink and purple and white. Homes of attorneys, Vitri thinks, officials, angel investors, physicians. One—the same home with street-facing windows the height of hunting shacks—has three marble pillars extending from ground to roof. The next has a secluded walkway to a guesthouse larger than what the majority of Waco had called home. Two more down is a ransacked backyard greenhouse, its protective mesh torn, wilted stems drooped over clay pots. Oddly, almost as if homeowners were still lobbying for a local politician, draped over each garage door are red banners, twitching in the wind.
Entering what he may have once considered downtown, Vitri clings to the shadows. When he can’t, he carefully moves at a quicker pace, something closer to a crouched jog than to a walk, using parked cars as cover. There’s just too much to stand still for. Countless windows, countless buildings, countless doors, a plethora of streets. The city itself is decaying but, like Waco, it has not been thrashed. Brick buildings aren’t charred, bulldozed to rubble, or left impaled by crane arms. Flagpoles are bare and bent but not down. Parking meters haven’t been uprooted. Bicycle racks, though vacant, remain upright. First and second story office windows aren’t blasted but are instead corner to corner with thin fractures, all glass higher intact and tinted.
Before and during the crossing of the intersection nearest the shopping district, Vitri performs a three-sixty turn, arms and eyes fixed, both hands on the 9mm. He passes shoe stores, he passes sports stores, lamp stores, thrift stores, bookstores, furniture stores, stores, stores, stores. He slows his pace when passing a clothing store—not because of the wadded jackets on the back counter, nor the navy blue briefcase leaned against the wall—for nothing but memories. He sees the empty hangers, the shelves on their sides, the vacant S hooks, the tipped racks, the stripped mannequins. He thinks of when he first took over his father’s store, how the displays weren’t optimized for the minimal foot traffic he was receiving. He thinks of how his wife and Carmen came in one day, before Carmen moved east. How his wife leaned on the counter and flirted with him, how Carmen, arms crossed, walked around the store alone, critical eyes behind gaudy sunglasses. He remembers how she approached the counter, interrupted, took off her those sunglasses, looked at him, and said, “You’re in the wrong century here.” He remembers her suggestions—the jackets up front to be nearer to the back, the fedora and bowler displays not only to be updated, but to be swapped, from one side of the store to the other. He remembers ignoring her at first. Remembers voicing to his wife afterward that Carmen didn’t know shit. Remembers how over time it ate away at him, standing at that counter, imagining a new layout. Remembers how he walked around the counter, went outside, stood on the sidewalk, looked in through the glass, and thought: Goddammit. She’s right.
Vitri examines the damage of the store before him now and cannot deny that more than an inkling of him wants to walk inside, wave some sort of wand, and take the first steps toward rehabilitation. The thought halts him, drops his arms, even, the prospect of erecting those shelves, of buffering the hardwood floors, of tagging armfuls of clothes and overloading each hook, bowing each rack.
But then there are sounds—distant sounds, southeast, but approaching. Clanks of metal. Metal on metal. Glass on metal. Thuds, pings, items shifting.
And footsteps.
Jolted from his trance, Vitri takes cover behind an aluminum garbage can still bungee-corded to a lamppost. He peeks over its rim, at the crosswalk.
Clank. Thud. Ping. Louder now. Nearer.
Vitri readies the 9mm to fire. Glances back over the garbage can. Holds.
Holds.
And holds, until one block from where he crouches, there is a girl. An unarmed girl no older than fifteen, in loose jeans and a purple sweatshirt, with dried blood across her face. In the middle of the road, walking north. Just walking, casually spinning to check her surroundings, wisps of light brown hair latching to the backpack she holds tight to her shoulders. She does not see him. She hardly even looks his direction. Nor does she seem to care at all just how loud she is, how insecure the items are within that backpack. Which should mean nothing to Vitri. Neither her bloody face nor her ignorance should concern him at all. He does not know her. She has not seen him. And those should be the only things that matter. Walk on, he should think. Stay away from me. Go forth however you wish.
Yet Vitri finds himself wanting to stand, to say something, to walk to her, grab her shoulder, turn her around, and say, “You’re being too loud,” or, “Stop,” or, “Go home.” But soon she is out of Vitri’s sight, through the intersection, her noise trapped between northern buildings, faintly echoing.
Vitri rises from his crouch. His eyes stay east, until, in partial shadow, he sees a wooden door flung open. Out pour two red-masked men, facing west, facing him. Vitri crouches behind the garbage can once more.
“That way,” one of the men says, his voice husky, muffled, notches above a whisper. And then there are only footsteps, ascending into a jarring series of sandal slaps on the pavement.
Vitri peers around the garbage can to see the lead man—the thinner of the two—turn north where the girl did. He is shirtless, toned, and with, from this distance, either scabs or tattoos that appear as if they are cradling his shoulder blades. In his right hand is a spiked club the length of Vitri’s forearm. Limping behind is a bull of a man in a too-tight red t-shirt, gripping a rusted machete. Only when he turns north does Vitri stand, both hands on his pistol.
South, he thinks. Go south. They are occupied. It is clear. Go south. You do not know this girl. You do not need to know this girl. You do not need to help this girl. Go south. It is clear. Go south.
Listen to Part 4 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 4 with author Garrett Francis.