And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 9
"IT’LL MAKE YOU FEEL HUMAN AGAIN."
CHAPTER 12
AN HOUR PASSES.
Reyn adjusts, carefully buries her face into the pillow, back into the faint scent of cinnamon. This room belonged to a woman, she has thought for a while now, a woman that, based off of the strength of the room’s remaining scents, left not that long ago. She pictures a rugged woman with curly hair, but isn’t sure why. A rugged woman still valuing hygiene. A rugged woman surviving here alone, spending her days rigging light fixtures. Reyn pictures a refrigerator in one of the other rooms, a freezer the rugged woman stored underground, full of meat, the last of the strawberries she’d bartered for, a cantaloupe she’d stolen along the way.
Reyn misses cantaloupe. Misses watching her father pare cores with knives he’d taken from the restaurant. Misses opening her jaws wide and sinking her teeth in that soft orange flesh.
Another hour comes and goes.
Reyn, back pressed to the headboard, slurping soup she has taken from Vitri’s backpack, rotates her eyes from the ceiling to the window. As muted as the red interior lights of #8 are, as tight as the boards have been nailed over the lone window, in slivers Reyn can see the sun yawning itself awake. Layers peeled. Black to dark blue, dark blue to grey, lighter, and stretching lighter.
She is uneasy about the start of a new day, the previous unraveling entirely unlike what she imagined. She’d pictured the two of them side by side while slogging through Shreveport, boarding Vitri’s cousin’s boat as one. Stopping not just when hungry or hurt, but just to stop, to converse, to plan, to laugh, to smile. Carrying on, at the very least, as friends.
She wants to wake Vitri up. Wants to ask him, CAN WE? CAN WE BE FRIENDS? She wants to know what happened in the woods. Wants to know whether or not he can confirm her worry, that her being deaf, that her being young, and sheltered, that it all has made it that much more difficult to read someone like him. She wants him to explain why she continues to imagine San Juan as a sliver of paradise. Wants him to tell her what that kiss meant.
Thinking of it in such terms reminds Reyn of her mother, that time she’d written, A KISS MARKS THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING. NOT THE END. And then: A RECIPE CARD, NOT THE WARM TRAY YOU PULL OUT OF THE OVEN.
Which now, and at that time, rings to Reyn of her father. Her mother had written it for him. About him, his tendencies. Of course she had.
Based on physicality alone, Reyn still wonders often how her father had been capable of capturing the attention of so many women. Forty pounds overweight. Filthy. Scarred, and with little desire to change any of it. But, as Reyn knew, something about him was charming.
While she couldn’t be certain that others found it charming, she found comfort in his posture, how, when he wasn’t sitting or lying down, everything seemed to open up—shoulders back but lax, hands either on his hips or clasped behind his waist like a soldier told to stand at ease—as if it were an open invitation to approach, to judge if one must. Because judgment wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference in how he conducted himself.
It could also have been in the way he touched people, the warmth one could find in a man who would hold you like he did, snug and secure, or in the security one could extract from his right thumb—always rubbing, never still—massaging a neck, the top of a hand, a shoulder. For all Reyn knows, her father could’ve possessed the sexiest voice in Monroe. He could’ve whispered often, leaned in close and tickled his listener’s ear with propositions, with promises of some long-winded, multi-border adventure they’d never take.
However he’d done it, Reyn, from age twelve, up to the night preceding his departure, had watched her father walk those women back to the house. Amble, really, down that half-lit sidewalk, at 2:00am, sometimes 3:00, after the bars had closed. Passing a bottle back and forth. Taking pulls. Colliding into one another and smiling about doing so.
It had been one woman per week at first, on Thursdays. Within four months, one became three: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday—at the conclusion of each of his night shifts.
Reflecting on that first time, Reyn can’t remember why she’d already been awake at such an hour, if she’d been reading, if she’d been writing, or if it’d just been one of the many nights that she’d lain in bed, eyes open, conscious brain spending its most unsettled hours leaping from past to future, from future to past. What had anchored her to the present that night, she’d soon discover, was the flickering of light outside of her window. More than that, there was movement of that light: back, forth, back, forth across her window, in and out, in and out. So she’d risen and walked to that window. She’d pried two blinds and peeked out into the night. She’d seen her father’s black work pants at his ankles, his splattered apron draped over his shoulder. One foot on the grass, one on the sidewalk, hips thrusting into the woman who braced herself against the base of the streetlamp. She remembers the woman’s hair—auburn under the light—and she remembers glimpsing the woman’s eyes—wide, then closed, then wide again, either in pain or euphoria, neither of which young Reyn had the capacity to describe or decipher—and she remembers how two or three minutes later, up their pants went. They’d smiled. They’d laughed. They’d hugged. They’d snuggled not unlike she and her father would and then they’d sat upon the grass and shared a cigarette. They’d stood, and they’d kissed, and that was it. Off she’d gone, down the sidewalk, and in he’d come, with his bottle, more than happy to sleep blanketless on the couch.
Reyn remembers the short black woman that’d had the most colorful strands of beads swaying in the night, deflecting off of her chin and cheeks. She remembers the paperthin Nordic-looking woman, her straw-colored eyebrows and hair. The Latin woman who didn’t seem to want Reyn’s father to do any of the work, but bent over in the same spot as the rest of the ladies, wrapped her arms around that same streetlamp, and drove her backside into him.
She remembers the night that Mr. Hirsham, a fifty-something single father of four, walked to the end of his driveway in a mauve bathrobe and, if Reyn had read his hand gestures correctly, asked her father and some young brunette with her paisley skirt flipped up to stop, to which Reyn’s father responded with the tossing and subsequent shattering of a dark liquor bottle.
She remembers the round-faced coworker whose black-framed glasses fell off of her face and onto the sidewalk, the left lens popping out, crushed by a footstep moments later.
She remembers them all. Their smiles. How often they brought each cigarette to their lips. How long they held the hug. How, afterwards, before her father would send them on their way, they’d all look at the house, eye every window not with concern or confusion, but with promise, as if what they’d just done was being filed away as a building block, as if their entrance was one day imminent.
Reyn remembers never seeing any of them more than once. And she remembers never confronting her father about it, never asking, WHY?
There was another night that Reyn, becoming rather bored with her father’s routine (he was out there again, with a woman Reyn hadn’t been interested enough to look at), and rather hungry, walked down the stairs, into the kitchen. And there her mother sat, at the bistro table near the back door. In the dark. Cigarette glowing enough to see the how far tears had streamed before being wiped away. Initially halted by the image, Reyn eventually walked past her mother. Flipped on the light over the sink. On the verge of tears herself, she grabbed a pad of sticky notes from the counter, and a pen.
I’VE KNOWN FOR A LONG, LONG TIME
Which confused Reyn. Immediately, she wanted more. Answers. Truths she knew would only stoke anger, and guilt. Why haven’t you stopped him? Why aren’t you out there? Why haven’t you said anything?
Reyn’s mother glanced at the question. And that’s all it was: a glance. She then peeled the note from its pad and crumpled it into a crooked heap. Grabbed the pen. Wrote small.
She stubbed out her cigarette. Continued.
Reyn’s mother rose from the table. Rubbed her eyes. Adjusted the disheveled collar of her grey t-shirt, then stepped toward what from that point forward would be openly known as her bedroom, and only hers. But Reyn wrote, and Reyn followed, grabbing her mother by the arm and placing in her hand the night’s final question:
At which Reyn’s mother smiled. Smiled and shrugged her shoulders, though not in what Reyn would classify as confusion, or in a manner fueled by the unknown, but in a manner of certainty. “Look around,” her mother’s shoulders said, “I can’t.”
Lying on #8’s bed, Reyn feels as if she should’ve walked outside that night. Walked outside, interrupted her father, just grabbed his arm, brought him inside, and instructed him to enter that bedroom and kiss his wife. Something that said it was over. That all of it was over. That released her, that sent her in her own direction. Because Reyn’s mother was incapable of moving on without someone else saying to her, “Go.”
Addict, Reyn thinks of her mother. Addict. Not to that house. Not to comfort. Not to Ohapila. Addict: to Reyn’s father. Addict: a willing participant in the transformation of person to tool, to pawn, to something to be shoved around, used, misplaced.
Addict, Reyn thinks of her father. Addict: to sex, to cigarettes, to the chase of sex and cigarettes, whether the journey be short and void of obstacles, or long, country-wide and tumultuous. Addict: not to his daughter, not to their house, not to his wife. Addict: above all, to himself.
And what, Reyn has wondered often, could this possibly say about her? What does the acorn say about its tree? Was her entire path laid out before birth? Has she been doomed from the start? Can a trait be reversed simply by recognizing the trend? Can it?
Can it?
I am no addict, Reyn thinks. She sets the soup she has been sipping on the nightstand. Crawls to the food-end of the bed. Watches Vitri sleep. I am no addict.
Half an hour passes.
Reyn can feel the bedsprings recoil as she pushes herself off of the mattress. Once on her feet, she peers down at Vitri, asleep. On his back, neck twisted to the side, mouth open. Chest, heart: rising, falling, rising, falling. It pains her that Vitri won’t make clear to her what he wants. The only thing that he has made clear is that he doesn’t want her.
And so she is going to leave him, just like this, in peace. Do them each a favor, and journey into the still-rising sun alone, toward Idaho, toward that flawed father of hers, as risky as it is for a deaf girl like her to do so alone. She knows that Vitri won’t be concerned enough to request an explanation, but if he were to wake, and scramble, and present the notebook and pen with a look that asked why, Reyn would write: THANK YOU. For saving her from the red-masked. For doing what he could to heal her. For showing her more of what it is she does and does not want.
Secure in her plan, Reyn, as stealthily as she can, walks to her backpack and bends over to pick it up. It’s at this moment that Vitri stirs—not because of Reyn, but because of something else, something soft enough that he sits up with only mild urgency. Yawns. Swipes balls of green-grey gunk out of his eyes. Runs his fingernails through his greasy hair. Stands. Stretches his neck. Rolls his shoulders. Reyn, aware of his state now, unzips her backpack and begins to pull the notebook and pen back out of her bag.
Before she can, Vitri, feet planted, motions for her to stop. His brows furrow as he turns more of his attention to the door. From what Reyn can tell, there is nothing of note. There are no shadows beneath. There are no tremors. No jiggling of the knob. Just a door and its deadbolt. That is all.
Then, slowly, Vitri bends to the floor for his scarf and backpack, slipping each to what have become their natural resting spots on his body. He also grabs his pistol, readies it to fire, and rises as slowly as he’d bent, ears still attentive to the door, eyebrows still angled in confusion. With his free hand, he motions for Reyn to stand, for her to put her backpack on, and then, for her to go to the door. Which she hesitantly does, tiptoeing past him, stopping only when he places his hand on her shoulder.
Vitri takes one step to the left of the doorframe, then tries to explain to Reyn what he’s hearing. PEOPLE, his free hand says. PEOPLE TALKING. Vitri imitates what he wants Reyn to do: stand where she is, turn the knob, pull the door open as quickly as possible, and hold.
Reyn nods. Puts her hand on the knob. Waits for the pistol to once again become an extension of Vitri’s hands, of both outstretched arms. Waits for his look.
Vitri nods.
And when he does Reyn turns the knob, yanks the door open—pinning herself between it and the wall, the only things in her line of sight being the bed, the television, the bathroom door—and holds. There’s a flash, a crash of sound that follows, ending quickly enough for Reyn to feel Vitri’s boot scrape across the door sweep, a slight careen into dawn. Seconds later, another flash. The sound waves from Vitri’s pistol embeds in her skin. Then, she sees a hand—his hand—reach around the door, presumably for her, waving her out of the corner. Tentatively, Reyn steps out and around, until Vitri can grab her sweatshirt. Out of #8 she is pulled, toward him, toward a thin black man with stiff silver hair lying on the pavement, clutching his shoulder. His eyes are shut. Mouth open, teeth clenched, interstate-like wrinkles up, down and across his bare arms.
No more than ten feet from the wounded man stands two more men and one woman, all elderly, all with their hands in the air, all shivering. One of the two men—wearing a thin grey t-shirt and bent horn-rimmed glasses—blinks back tears. The other’s skin looks like a used coffee filter, soggy and creased. The lone woman, in a baggy white t-shirt with a red American Queen over an image of a riverboat, refuses to look up at all, focusing instead on her equally baggy pants and open-toed shoes.
Vitri is yelling something. Reyn can feel it through his fingertips. He is pulling her south. Three yards, four yards, across the burnt lawn, Reyn’s feet failing to fully comprehend the situation, slow to match Vitri’s long strides. Ten yards, fifteen yards. Reyn looks back to see the three huddled around their wounded, speaking to him, caressing his cheek. They do not give chase. They cannot give chase. They are harmless.
Reyn wrestles her hand free of Vitri’s and, expecting him to react—to tackle, to shoot, to shout obscenities at someone, who, even if she could, would not listen—unzips her backpack, extracting from it two cans of tuna. When she turns back around, Vitri is twenty feet ahead, pistol still in his hand, waving her forward. She wants to deliver those two cans of tuna. She wants to write to them how sorry she is for what just happened, to pen THIS WAS MY FAULT, BUT THIS WAS NOT MY CHOICE, to lend any kind of helping hand.
But she stares at Vitri. She stares and she doesn’t know what she sees. Stares and doesn’t know what she wants to see. She stares and wishes she knew why she feels compelled to set the two cans of tuna here, on the ground, rather than to deliver them, and, more importantly, why—maybe it’s her body’s instinct to survive, maybe it’s her heart’s inability to accept rejection— she can’t choose communicating with the elderly over the man striding south without her. Addict, Reyn thinks. And she drops the cans.
Late morning. Sun nibbling through fog as it climbs, a breeze stirring. South again, Vitri leading, twenty yards ahead of Reyn, pistol still out. More woods, more birds startled from bare branches into the sky, more dried creekbeds, more yellows and browns and dull greens. A squirrel, skinny, heaving its heavy tail across scattered leaves. In the distance, a three-legged deer, still alert, still determined to evade the slightest threat.
Reyn looks up from the notebook to see that fifteen yards from her, and closing, is Vitri, scarf off, pistol in hand. Run, she thinks, run now, anywhere, any way, to anyone. Yet it is that same fear that keeps her still, that pulls the string that produces the twitch in her thigh.
At first, all Vitri does is examine her. He squints at her bruised cheek. Thumbs her lips apart to view her tongue.
And Reyn is shaking.
After placing the pistol in his waistband, Vitri asks for the notebook. Plucks the pen from her hand.
THEY WERE HARMLESS
NOBODY IS HARMLESS
Before a confused Reyn can reply, Vitri takes the notebook back. He at her as he hands it over. Takes out his pistol. Resumes his pace.
There is—the woods Reyn and Vitri walk through eventually lead to what was once a winding shoreline of sorts. Mounds of displaced gravel. Sawn stumps of oak and ash. It smells here of stale transition, from a harsh winter to a late spring, surrounding trees, shrubs and grass playing catch-up. To the north, one hundreds yards from where Reyn and Vitri stand, is a riverboat tipped on its side, captain’s deck pointed south. Water runs where it can beneath the boat, through its multiple decks, its blue-trimmed windows, trickling into what the river has become: a soggy six-hundred foot crevice layered like a robin’s nest. Dried grass woven with roots and twigs.
Vitri steps toward the riverboat. Reyn follows, eyeing the shattered rocking chairs and wooden tables that have fallen from the boat’s promenades. An inverted porchswing is still chained to a lower deck’s overhead pipe. The red paddlewheel on the boat’s stern looks to still be relatively intact, neither the breeze or weak current enough for it to rotate. Closer now, Reyn pictures the boat upright, operating at full tilt, the river high, the decks populated by men and women, eyes peeled for wildlife but, in finding none, resorting to observing the wake the crew creates. The two large black pipes would be flapping steam into the sky instead of lying like two broken chess pieces, snapped the second they hit the ground. That paddlewheel would be turning, turning so fast, and it would be so bright in the sun, just painted, the boat’s sides too, a glossy white instead of an off-grey, covered in the soot and silt of a river bled dry.
AMERICAN QUEEN, Reyn can see now it once was called, white lettering on the black hull. MEMPHIS, TN. American Queen from Memphis, Tennessee. She is parallel with Vitri now. He does not move. He does not blink.
Vitri’s wife sits on a porchswing outside of the River Bar & Grill. She wears a lavish scarlet dress, thin straps taut against her collarbone, tied behind her neck. A matching shade of lipstick has smeared onto the rim of her martini glass. Beside her is a white plastic mask that, if worn, would cover cheek to cheek, from upper lip to eyebrow. In her sight is a churning paddlewheel and, beyond that, St. Charles, Missouri, a city prepared for night, the neon lights of boutiques and taverns barely visible in the fading sun. She can hear the honks of cars and buses miles off. Above her is the faint jetstream of an ascending seven-thirty-seven. Sunlight bends through trees plugged into riverbanks, growing large and strong and crooked from competition. The river is high but calm, the boat’s wake gently slapping the shore. She watches this. She listens to the flags on the top deck flap in the wind, then takes off her black heels and sets them next to the white mask, feeling as if, in doing so, she will maybe appear less bewildered, more sure of herself.
Fellow American Queen passengers mingle nearby, speaking low but emphatically about the strength of their cocktails, the weather forecasts they’ve studied on their cell phones, the relatives of theirs in Minneapolis that intend to show them the city once the boat docks. Crewmembers in radiant white calmly scurry about, refilling drinks, asking the passengers how they are enjoying their trip. All smiles, all teeth, all likening it—the mystique of the river, the design of the boat, the company they keep—to a fairy tale.
Emerging from the propped wooden doors of the bar and grill is Vitri. His hair is cropped short, his face shaved clean. The dark blue polo shirt he wears has come untucked from his khakis. House whiskey sloshes in his short glass as he walks to his wife, slowly, an anxious hand in his pocket, mauling the thin lining that this very action has already loosened. But then he stops. Feet from his wife, he stops. He looks at her. He studies her. He loves this woman. He wants to hug this woman. Despite where this discussion is bound to go, he’ll want to stay with her on this porchswing, and he’ll want to kiss her, and he’ll want the two of them to watch the river tonight.
“You had to bring that up here,” Vitri’s wife says. She doesn’t address him with her eyes. Takes a sip from her martini instead. Watches the paddlewheel. “Just had to.”
Vitri sets his wife’s mask and heels on the deck so that he can sit on the porchswing. “You would’ve reacted differently had I asked you in the car? In the living room?”
Vitri’s wife still has not looked at him. She keeps her eyes on her glass.
“Well,” Vitri says. He sips from his drink and looks out to the river. “It’s out in the open now.”
“It was out in the open before we even got married. You made sure that it was.” She finally looks at her husband. “Didn’t I tell you then that kids were the last thing I wanted?”
“People can change.”
“Didn’t I tell you how scared I am?”
“You did.” Vitri watches his wife sip her martini. He loves how the lipstick smear on the rim of the glass bothers her, how, because it does, she immediately smoothes it out with her thumb. “You’ve never told me why, though, why you’re scared.”
Vitri’s wife sighs. “This isn’t the same world we grew up in, Vitri.” She waits for her husband to ask a question. When he doesn’t, she continues: “We’ve pissed the earth off real good, for one. But kids just want their screens. That’s it; that is their life. Don’t give me that look. You know it’s true. You’ve seen it. You’ve commented upon it how many times? The only reason they want this, anything like this—” she raises her free hand as if it can, and does, encompass the entirety of the scene, the river, the sun, the air, “—the only reason they step out into the world is so that they can make whatever they see on their screens real. They join a gang online. ‘Huh, let me see what that’s like.’ Next thing you know they’re packing dad’s gun into a backpack.”
“You don’t think our parents thought we’d ruin the world? You don’t think they were scared?” Vitri places his right arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’ll raise our kids differently. They’ll work at the store as soon as they can. They’ll hike. They’ll see mountains. They’ll ride their bikes instead of buying dumb trucks.”
“They’ll be shunned.” She leans forward, away from her husband’s consoling arm. “If that’s the plan, we’ll be keeping them from the world. And by the time we no longer can do that, they’ll be shunned, Vitri. How cool is it to have your parents as your best friends? How healthy is that?”
“Mine were.”
Vitri’s wife sighs. “Not the same thing.”
“Why? Because my parents were first-generation?” When his wife doesn’t answer, Vitri continues, “They’ll have us. And they’ll have your parents. They’ll have my parents.”
“I wouldn’t want any of them involved.” Vitri’s wife gulps the rest of her martini. The expression on her face says it was a struggle, says that she knew better than to say such a thing.
“Okay then,” Vitri says. “Jesus Christ. I don’t know what you want me to say. I really don’t. But I want a son, and I want to have that son with you. I want you to be his mother. That’s what these rings mean, isn’t it? That together we’ll bring something into the world? Something new, something that has an opportunity to thrive?”
“‘Something new’ doesn’t have to mean a human, Vitri.”
Silence.
Footsteps along the deck. Chatter from the fellow passengers. A butter knife clanging a glass; a toast being made.
“One son?” Vitri’s wife asks.
“One son.”
“Just one?”
“Just one.”
“No girls?”
Vitri laughs. “I can’t even handle you.”
Vitri’s wife smiles. Watches the river. “This son, what does he look like?”
“I don’t know,” Vitri says. He shrugs his shoulders. He thinks for a moment. “Fat, skinny, tall, short, blonde, brunette, it wouldn’t matter. None of it would matter.”
“And what if he was born disfigured? What if he came out of me with only one foot? What if he had Down syndrome?” Vitri’s wife swivels her body so that all of it—her chest, her legs, her eyes—are facing her husband. “What if he was deaf? Or blind? What then?” She lets her questions linger. “Because, if we were to have this son, if were to give life to this Roy or Billy or John, that’s what I’d want, Vitri. I’d want him to have something that would always alter the rules of the game. I’d want him to know from the start that the world has no good plans for him.” She waits for his eyes to shift. Watches him nibble his lip. “A mother isn’t supposed to want that for her child, is she?”
Somewhere inside the River Bar and Grill, a violin begins playing. Doo-doo-daaahh-dah-doo-doo-daaahh-dah, low, slow, sorrowful strings. A trumpet joins in, a trombone, a saxophone, percussion, until low and slow turns into high and fast, swinging, stringing into melody. The other passengers, the crew, all the smiles file inside, some of the women already swaying their drunken hips into their partners’ groins. Vitri and his wife remain on the porchswing, neither appearing as if they intend to rise, eyes not on each other but directly in front of them. The paddlewheel. The river. The sun.
The American Queen’s riverlorian, a stout man with shaggy hair named Hank, begins closing the propped doors of the bar and grill. In doing so, he sees the couple on the porchswing. “Come on, you two, the ball’s starting,” he says. His voice reeks of feigned excitement, an act, a veil over the disdain he has for such events, the regularity he plays in them, the ignorance it induces of the reasons he feels anyone should board this vessel. “I have your mask right here.” This is true. In his right hand he carries one black plastic mask.
“Thanks Hank,” Vitri says, “but it’s too nice out here tonight to pass up.”
Pleasure stretches across Hank’s face before he says, “Have a good one,” and closes the doors, a smile that shows how refreshing it is to him to see someone more enamored with the natural offerings this boat can provide than they are with such a charade.
For an hour or so more, there, on the porchswing, Vitri and his wife will remain, silently, and blank, reserving their energy and emotion for when they stand and walk back to their suite, for when they throw themselves into one another, her face pressed against the wall, his hands so tight around her thighs that welts—the only physical wounds of the night—will remain for hours. Ten months from that moment, nearly to the day, a healthy son will be born. And, in six years, Vitri will be alone, on a cold floor, and naked, the memory turned to nothing by a flicker of light.
Eventually, and without signaling to Reyn, Vitri turns away from the American Queen and walks back south, taking giant strides along the shore, peering at the enveloped river. He grabs an oblong chunk of wood and pokes the top layer, dragging grass and pine needles aside. Reyn walks behind and watches Vitri press the tip of the wood down further, into the second layer, which, in a matter of two seconds, snaps shut on the wood. Vitri pulls the chunk of wood out. On its tip: a bear trap, clamped.
Reyn watches Vitri toss it all to the ground, then grab another chunk from the gravel. As they walk south, Vitri drags more and more grass from the top layer of the river, exposing the occasional putrefied carp or catfish. Several more traps—bear, fox, coyote. Thirty or forty feet later, Vitri, struggling to accept that they cannot cross here, furiously tosses that chunk of wood as far east as he can, then presses on. Reyn follows several feet behind, looking back from time to time at the American Queen.
CHAPTER 13
Piles of wood flank Vitri’s feet. Chunks of all sizes. Enough to last the night. Yet Reyn, crooked arms overflowing already, continues to search the shoreline for more. She is frightened enough to practice avoidance. Vitri knows this. Understands this, but does nothing to ease her fear. Seated on a tree stump, he swivels to watch her bend, and crouch, her jeans inching further down her hips each time she does so. He sips the last of the tomato soup, then fills the empty can two-thirds full of water.
“Truth is, Reyn,” Vitri says. He grabs a chunk of wood and, with it, shifts the burning logs. Flames leap from one log to the next, burning dark green for a few seconds before settling on orange. Blue-grey smoke spurts into the air. “I shot that man—I pulled the trigger without knowing who or what it was. Truth is, Reyn—” He sets the soup can in the gap he has created on the fire’s floor, atop of and surrounded by glowing coals. He grows more comfortable with the idea of talking aloud, to everyone, and to no one: “—I haven’t stopped thinking about him since we left. I’m worried that I killed him.” When Reyn turns and approaches, Vitri averts his eyes from her.
Reyn unloads her armfuls of damp wood onto Vitri’s piles, then half-circles the fire to sit on a shorter tree stump. Vitri watches her struggle to remove the raincoat, sweatshirt lifting while she does so. A glimpse of hip flexors. Flat stomach. Ribs. Bellybutton. Strung tight. He watches until she settles, until he can feel her eyes on him. He looks away. Watches the fire. Pokes the flame. When his eyes drift back to her, he cannot tell what her face is saying: wounded yes, scared, quiet, humbled, on edge yet still somehow optimistic, lips curling into the tiniest of smiles, some unique blend of resiliency he wishes he had a camera to capture, something that seems to say, “Throw what you want at me. I’ll move forward.”
In the picture, bruises would be mended, and cuts. He’d ask her not to wear makeup, but to pull her hair back into a ponytail, to get those strands out of her eyes and off of her cheeks.
Vitri shows Reyn the message, and then reveals the boxed bar of soap he has pulled from his backpack. Reyn nods.
Reyn reads again. Nods. Nods as if she knows, as if she has always known but has opted for silence. She hands the notebook back. Stares at the fire.
Reyn smiles. Motions for the pen.
Vitri says, “Blah, blah, blah” and “Waco, Waco, Waco” over and over, each time slower, dragging out the words, splicing syllables never intended to be there.
FIGURED
Reyn smiles as she hands Vitri the notebook. Seconds later, she is on her feet and walking behind Vitri. She takes the scarf from his neck, then gently places her chilled fingers around his throat, fanning them from clavicle to larynx, searching for a sound.
“You don’t want to do this,” Vitri says, fighting the tingling sensation escalating in his groin, up through his core. He shuts his eyes, trying to think of the last time he has been touched like this. So gently. So curiously. Over a year, he thinks. Well over a year. Well before the blackout.
A bonfire in their backyard, his wife, tipsy from wine, taking a seat on his lap. Stroking his cheek as if it were the first time they’d ever been that close, able to be intimate among a small crowd.
As if she were through untangling the intricate coding of his throat, Reyn takes her hands off of Vitri. Back to the short tree stump she walks, smiling, sore cheek stretched as far as it can go. Back to the notebook.
THANK YOU
YOU’RE WELCOME
As the flame eats its way through different chemicals on the wood, it transitions from orange to dark blue. Accompanying the shift are several muted popping noises that sound like a tongue exploring its limitations—teeth, cheek, lips—click-clacking as if hard-shelled pockets are heat-sensitive and bursting. For Vitri, it is a welcomed noise, something to erode the awkward silence, the brief moment of nothing between he and Reyn. No writing. No shared gaze or glance. He instead eyes the soup can, hoping that the process can be reduced to mere minutes, that steam will soon struggle into the sky.
I DON’T NEED TO
Reyn hands the notebook back and shrugs her shoulders. She guides loose hair behind her ear. Props her undamaged cheek with her palm. Anxious. Contemplative.
YOU GO FIRST
Vitri reads. Nods. Rises. Grabs the boxed bar of soap with one hand and extracts the soup with the other. Around the fire he walks, and into the woods, twenty feet in, past wilting shrubs, past thin grey brush, to a tree stump he places the soup can upon. He looks back. Confirms that his body will be at least partially covered from Reyn. Proceeds to remove his boots and socks, setting them aside in their respective pairs. The big toe on his right foot is bent, and purple, and swollen, but he does not know why, cannot pinpoint where the injury occurred, or how. If he’d felt the pain previously, only now when he can see it does it become obvious. On the bottoms of his feet are popped blisters, dead skin like wrinkled bedsheets.
He removes the raincoat, the sweater, the grey t-shirt beneath, and, for the first time in days, looks at his bare torso. Pale, irritated, nipples soft, thumb-sized rashes glowing red, chest and belly hair matted. With how loose his pants have become, he spots sea green surface veins running through his abdomen and over his hips. He hasn’t seen such veins since he was fit, and nineteen, and preparing for a cannonball into the community pool. He straightens his back, puffs his chest, eyes the veins at different angles. Feels his mind tiptoeing toward the last day he, the boy, and his wife put on their swimsuits. Nine months ago. The summer had turned hot. So damn hot. Their neighborhood: abandoned. Hope: fading.
“We can’t just sit here,” Vitri had said to his wife. He dripped sweat as he sat still.
“I’ve told you that more times than I can count, Vitri.” Vitri’s wife: exhausted. Sleepless nights. Almost a week without bathing.
“Finding something to do nearby to pass the time and moving thousands of miles away are not the same thing,” Vitri said. “We can’t just wither away in this house all day, every day. There’s still a world out there.”
They then asked the boy what he’d like to do. “Anything you want,” they said. He emphatically opted for swimming. “Swimming it is.”
Six doors down they went, to the Kendricks’, one of many longtime neighbors who’d hightailed it out of Waco in the first weeks of the blackout. They walked across the front yard, Vitri ahead of his wife and son. He told them to stay put as he let himself in through the pool’s gate and approached the pool ledge. The water had mostly evaporated, down to shin high. Bobbing in the shallow water was a litter of kittens. Calico fur, orange fur, pure black. Vitri hurried to grab the nearby net so he could fish them out, then—
Vitri fights the memory. Curls his toes into the forest floor; feels leaves crumbling in their vise. He lifts the soup can from the stump and dunks his fingers into the water. Brings his fingers to his left armpit, swipes up, down, across. Then the right. Then his face and neck and hair. Applies soap until suds run from his head to his chest, and down, to his waistband, where it soaks through to his underwear. He shivers. Tingles. Shuts his eyes. Breathes in the cool scent of the soap. He unbuttons his pants and proceeds to scrub the left side of his penis, the right, the top, the tip.
Stop it. It’s a man with his shirt off. He has shoulder blades. He has a spine. Reyn stares at the still-evolving flames. Rubs her fingers along the goosebumps that, no matter what she tells herself, won’t go away. Stop it. That man hates you. Don’t look at him. He hates you.
When she gives in, when she finally does look at Vitri, his back is arched. His eyes are skyward. His right arm is chicken-winged and moving in rhythm—backward, forward, backward, forward, backward, forward, until his pants drop to his ankles and he stumbles to a tree trunk, left arm extended to prop himself. Reyn stands. Cranes her neck not in wonder, but in worry, that, like last night, he soon will be on the ground, in need of water, in need of rescuing. But then his right arm moves faster—backward-forward-backward-forward. He shivers. His back eases. The arm stops. He bends over. Pulls his pants up. Looks back. Sees Reyn. Stomps into his boots and, in one quick, imprecise movement, grabs all that he has temporarily discarded—the shirt, the sweater, the soap, the can—and walks toward the fire.
Reyn sits on her stump. Keeps her eyes on the flames until Vitri, still shirtless, is feet from her, pouring more water into the soup can. After setting the can back near the flame, Vitri puts his shirt on, then the sweater. He pulls from his backpack another pair of socks and, once he has slipped them on, one almond-scented candle. To light the wick, he straddles the fire and inches it close to a low-burning flame, water dripping from his hair and chin and onto the coals.
Once back on his stump, Vitri holds the candle close to his nostrils. Then, as if just realizing that Reyn is still there, across from him, he looks at her and smiles. Smiles wide. His face is different now. Relaxed. Eyes open, but drooped just so, loose, free. He sets the lit candle on the ground and reaches for the notebook.
RIGHT NOW?
BEST TIME
OK
GO WASH UP. I’LL WAIT
From shoulders to thighs, Reyn is panicking. She does not want to go for a walk. She does not want to wash herself anywhere near his view. What she wants to do is sit right here, on this stump, look Vitri in the eye, and shake her head no. He hovers over her, arms extended, handing over the cold soup can and the bar of soap. “Go on,” his eyes say, “go ahead.”
With little hesitation, she takes the items and, sloshing water as she does so, hurries to the treeline, looking back only to determine where she needs to go in order to be entirely concealed. Only when there are two modest oaks directly between she and Vitri does she set the soup can and soap on the ground. She intends to leave them there, to not touch them, to just stand here, counting the seconds as she kicks loose leaves, dabbing water on her face and hair before returning to the fire, feigning it all. Plans that, when peeking around the tree trunk, seem as if they would be successful—Vitri is occupied, eyes shut, candle beneath his nose—but plans that disintegrate as Vitri finds Reyn’s eyes. Reyn turns. Backs herself against the tree trunk. Removes her shoes and socks. Yanks off her sweatshirt, tosses it on the ground. Dunks her fingers in the soup can, swipes her armpits first, and quickly. The tops of her feet, between her toes. Then her neck, cold water drizzling to her chest, soaking through her t-shirt and bra. More water. A scrubbing of her hair, of her face.
That’s it, Reyn thinks. That’s enough. Before she puts everything back on, she once again peeks around the tree trunk—only to see Vitri storming toward the woods, toward her, working to unbutton his pants as he does so.
She wants the pistol in her backpack. She wants RALPH’s sickle. She wants to run. And she does. Barefoot, she does. She takes off, away from Vitri. Ten-fifteen-twenty feet before looking back, before seeing Vitri stagger to a halt before falling face-first into the dirt. Reyn slows. Waits to see if he’ll push himself up, push himself forward, to the side, push himself somewhere.
But there he stays, his back rising, falling, rising-falling, quicker and quicker. Wary of this being some trick, some strange way to lure her to what she is convinced is her death, Reyn continues to watch Vitri.
Rise-fall, rise-fall.
Waiting for either his body or his will to expire. For moments Reyn stares, until, overcome only with what she could classify as pity, she slowly approaches, questioning each step, batting Leave him and Help him between her ears. When she is within ten feet, Vitri stirs. Barely rolls himself over. Upside-down, he searches for Reyn. Locates her. Tries to wave her over. Reyn stays put, watches his hands, judges the severity of this, whether or not the man once again deserves her assistance. Steps closer. And closer. Sees him motioning for what she interprets as, “water,” a request she decides she can accommodate.
Keeping as much distance as possible between she and Vitri as she does so, Reyn walks to the soup can she left, grabs it, and returns to Vitri, setting the soup can not in Vitri’s hand, but nearby, within reach. She backs away. Watches him clamber to the can, watches him tilt it, watches the water splash on his face. She crosses her arms. Glances from Vitri, to the fire, and back, wondering not whether she could help him get there, but if she should, a question answered by the pain in her tongue. Get him to the fire, she thinks. Reyn steps closer. And closer. Then leave. Get him to the fire, then leave.
Reyn slides her hands beneath Vitri and helps him roll to his stomach. Grabs the back of his sweater, anchors her weight to her heels, and helps lift him to his feet, quickly side-stepping herself beneath his arm before his quivering becomes severe enough to drop him back to the ground. Together, they turn around, Face the fire. Step forward. One step, two steps, three, Reyn feeling his breath as they do so, feeling his pulse, feeling through his arm the words he is trying to say. She glances at his mouth: “I’m lonely, Reyn. I’ve been so lonely.”
Vitri points to leaves and grass off the edge of the tree line. Nods as if it is where he wants to be left. And so Reyn obeys. Helps him there. Waits for him to lift his arm from her shoulders and descend. But the arm is never lifted—as Vitri goes down, so too does Reyn, falling on top of him, flailing, writhing, but going nowhere. And then he rolls on top of her and she can feel his words on her ear, can feel his lips on her neck. She squirms, because she doesn’t want his hands on her breasts. She shoves and kicks, because she doesn’t want them unbuttoning her pants, doesn’t want them slithering beneath the elastic band of her underwear.
Listen to Part 9 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 9 with author Garrett Francis.