And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 6
"Reyn tries to remember the day her father wrote that."
CHAPTER 9
UPON HEARING THE ENGINE, Vitri halts. A small engine weaving through Shreveport for an hour now, high-pitched when throttled. The first time he’d heard it, Vitri hustled up the opposite staircase, to a window not yet boarded, and peered out into the night, locating the vehicle, a dirt bike of sorts, its lone beam of light wandering. Scouting.
The second time Vitri had heard the engine, the hustle had slowed to a jog. And now, chin to chest, he waits on the staircase. Annoyed at its persistence, he sighs as he, with the scarf over his right hand, re-grips the warm lip of the trashcan and moves it in a circular motion, stoking flakes of ash at its bottom. This is his last trip for the night and, when within seconds the engine wanes—proof that the scout has found something of interest elsewhere—he’ll surmount this staircase and, anxious for fatigue to finally conquer him, enter into what he’s certain was once a showroom on the second floor of this furniture store.
The showroom is small, twelve by twelve at best, with ten-foot ceilings. As Vitri enters he again looks at the torn maritime-themed wallpaper and wonders if it once represented a child’s bedroom, the gold anchors and white sails something for a cribbed infant to stare at, to misunderstand and reach for. He pictures sea blue nightstands, and paintings of schooners, miniature yawls and sloops. He pictures cruise ship bunk beds pressed against the north wall, top bunk and its view of the city through three casement windows something to be bickered over by children forced along on a Sunday afternoon, children who moments prior worked as a team to spring themselves from their parents and the endless first-floor testing of office chairs and bedsprings. He pictures the room alive, warm with foot traffic, not cold and gutted, as it is now, save for end tables whose legs Vitri has snapped and piled.
Save for one bloodied girl asleep at its center, neck propped by her backpack.
Vitri sets the trashcan in the doorway, fearing that the dusty quilts he’d found and rigged over the windows with wire won’t entirely conceal their presence. He quietly feeds two more table legs to the dying flame, then wads of TIME he’d found in the girl’s backpack. He watches the varnish sizzle off; listens to the wood pop; runs his index finger over the candle wax that has solidified on the hardwood floor; runs the same finger through the lone candle’s flame. Walks to the girl. Stares.
Her right cheek looks like a halved blood orange, outer ring thin and bright, interior dark and risen. Right eye swollen, brow and lash crusted red. The last time he checked her tongue was over an hour ago, after he’d lifted, carried, and placed her here. As for how it will heal, if he’d truly sealed the wound, or if it’ll reopen hours from now when she tries to speak, Vitri hasn’t a clue. He’s never cauterized anything before. He’d spent nearly the entire trek here contemplating it and when he looks at her he kicks himself for waiting as long as he did. He thinks back to the beating she took, how it trumped the violence he’s witnessed throughout his life, the four bar fights, the parking lot brawls after everything went black, watching water jugs and soap flats and generators tugged to pieces from vehicles across the lot.
He worries that what he’s done won’t be enough. She’ll live, he thinks, but maybe not well. Maybe not like he assumes she once had.
The girl rolls onto her back, her blood-crusted left hand finding and settling upon Vitri’s boot. Vitri crouches. Feels the notebook shift in his waistband. Unwraps the scarf he’d wrapped around his hand so that he can grab hers. Rolls her back to her side, in case the seal won’t even last past sleep.
“Get some rest,” he whispers into her ear.
Vitri walks to the right side of the casement windows and inches his face between the chilled glass and draped quilt. The sun is rising, hues of orange and pink evolving, from thin rays to slices. He used to love seeing cities in shadow, how the darkness of night could level playing fields, if only temporarily. A skyscraper no longer some symbol to be pointed out on an architecture tour, reduced instead to the rectangle it actually was, those who built it, or operated it, not hoisted to some pedestal, but asleep just like anyone else. For a long time, nighttime had brought Vitri peace. And sunrises had always delivered him strain.
Shadows below house the sound of that engine. Vitri can hear it, the scout again on the move. But not for long. Distant now, idling somewhere in the blue-grey. Vitri walks left, along the window. Stares north until, four blocks out, he spots one brake light, one headlight aimed at a white brick building. While from this distance, from this height, the bike’s operator is featureless, he or she dismounts without panic and proceeds to kill the engine. Gone are the lights. Gone is the rider.
Vitri stays at the window. Thirty seconds. One minute, two minutes. He remains long enough for the sun to reject his assumption: the bike is yellow.
CAREFUL WITH YOUR TONGUE. WHEN YOUR BRAIN SLOWS DOWN, JUST READ. IF YOU CAN, WRITE. THAT CUT IS DEEP. COULD TEAR AND GUSH AGAIN. DON’T SWALLOW ANY MORE BLOOD, THOUGH. NONE. WHEN YOU’RE ABLE, SWISH SOME MORE ALCOHOL AROUND YOUR MOUTH. CAN’T HAVE IT GETTING INFECTED. BAD NEWS THERE.
WE’RE ON THE SECOND FLOOR. NEEDED HIGHER GROUND. FOURTH WAS TOO HIGH TO CARRY EVERYTHING. QUIET OUT THERE FOR NOW. I HAVE SOUP FOR YOU WHEN YOU’RE READY.
- VITRI
I LIKE THAT
I LIKE VITRI
HOW’S THE SOUP?
GOOD. DOES YOUR HAND HURT?
YEAH
I’M SORRY
DON’T BE
I AM
YOU HEAR THAT?
I DO
WHERE YOU HEADED?
I DON’T KNOW
NOT A CLUE?
IDAHO
FAMILY?
FATHER
ALIVE?
MAYBE
MOTHER?
DEAD
I’M SORRY
WHERE YOU HEADED?
TALLAHASSEE
WHAT’S THERE?
COUSIN
ONLY FAMILY?
HAS A BOAT HE’S SAILING TO SAN JUAN
NEVER BEEN
ME EITHER
JUST YOUR COUSIN?
DON’T KNOW
WHEN?
LEAVING FOR GOOD IN A FEW DAYS
NEVER COME BACK?
NEVER
HOW MANY PEOPLE?
DON’T KNOW
ROOM FOR ME?
MAYBE
I CAN’T STAY HERE
NO, YOU CAN’T
CAN I GO WITH YOU?
WE’LL NEED MORE SUPPLIES
I CAN HELP
YOU REST. IT WON’T TAKE LONG
OK
DON’T LET THE FIRE DIE OUT
OK
There is something beyond the concealment of Vitri’s lips that makes Reyn uneasy about that scarf, how its placement renders him featureless—gone is his gently aging beard, hidden are his cheekbones, high and weathered and, now that the blood no longer inhibits her vision, handsome; circled by fatigue, transformed are his eyes, the burgundy fabric of his shirt somehow extracting shades of deep brown from the center, layered instead in bright paranoia.
Even his posture changes with the scarf on. Shoulders back, spine straight, weight shifted from his heels to the balls of his feet. Ready to pounce, Reyn tells herself, ready to sprint from her and back into the world. Why wouldn’t he? Why not run? Because of her he has been stuck here, in this building, not making his way to Tallahassee. Because of her, he is readying himself to stalk streets for supplies her presence deems necessary, streets he one day ago left two men to die on.
So she waits for it, the walk off, the jog, the sprint, whatever speed he adjusts his escape to. Because Vitri, she knows, owes her nothing else.
Vitri walks to her and crouches. In one hand is a pistol, this one slightly smaller than the one he has in his waistband, and narrower, the same matte black, the grip just as ridged.
He doesn’t know she’s deaf. She assumed he’d known when she woke to a note, assumed he’d figured it out at some point, in the night or on their way here. But it’s clear to Reyn now that he doesn’t even suspect it—his mouth moves beneath the scarf as he points at, presses and pulls mechanisms on the pistol. Sights to safety to trigger.
When he hands the pistol over to her, his eyes shift to the window, then to the floor. He loops his hand as if he is signaling some kind of scheme that Reyn, though she is not following, is to play a critical role in. And then, as Reyn thinks about raising her hand and writing out her deafness, without so much as a nod or wave Vitri stands, pulls his backpack over his shoulders, and walks out of the room.
Maybe this is goodbye, Reyn thinks. Maybe everything he’d written was bullshit and the pistol is a parting gift. A, “Good luck, kid.”
She hopes not. She really hopes not.
Petrified of its weight, Reyn sets the pistol on the floor. She tries to stand but dizzies herself doing so. Her tongue throbs. Her cheek throbs. Her entire head throbs. She thinks of the skinned knees she never really had, the scraped elbows, the fat lips, thinks of the classmates she’d watch once she turned seven, the odd-shaped balls they’d toss with their friends, the discs, how they’d fall, and fight, and cry, and bleed. She thinks of their pain and cannot shake the exaggerated image of their collective rising, of their collective limp back home. Home. Home—where wounds turn to scars.
Reyn tries to remember the day her father wrote that. A Saturday or Sunday. She was five, maybe six. He had a moustache then, and shoulder-length hair he’d, per the restaurant’s requirements, bundle beneath a hairnet, which lent to the nickname of Honeycomb, as coined by one of his prep cooks. Reyn remembers he’d just woken and was tying around his waist the grease-splattered apron he hadn’t washed for weeks. And it was there, on that couch she’d so often watch those children from, he’d sat next to her and lit a cigarette. She remembers not being able to take her eyes off of his fingers, filthy as they were, scarred as they were, nicked by various knives over the years. She remembers asking about his scars that day, to which he smiled, and wrote what he wrote.
But then he pointed to his left forearm, to a curved pink line from thumb to elbow that looked to Reyn like two strands of yarn braided together and stretched taut. She remembers asking him how it happened.
MOM SLEPT WITH ZEKE REY. DAD PUNCHED A WINDOW. SO LATER, WHEN MY GIRLFRIEND CHEATED ON ME, I PUNCHED A WINDOW.
After that, he’d lit another cigarette and, instead of waiting around to answer the questions he’d prompted from Reyn, he’d kissed her head and left for work, returning home later with new nicks on his right thumb and forefinger.
Inches from the window now, quilt cocooning her shoulders, Reyn opens her mouth as wide as she can. What the window faintly reflects back at her is an engorged tongue with black swirls on the top, side and bottom. Burnt organ still warm to the touch but ribbed like tree bark.
Reyn takes her fingers out of her mouth and crumbles the specks of black grit that have clung to her fingertips. She closes her mouth, twists her neck, inspects her left cheek in the window, then her right.
How swollen, how engulfed they are in bright purples and bright yellows. The panic she works to hush doesn’t allow her to understand it now, but the bruises will get worse before they get better—the swelling will decrease, and her eyes will once again approach normality; those bright purples and yellows will exhale to violet, will stretch and deepen.
Just then, through the window she sees Vitri appear, one block to the west. Out of the early morning shadows and into the sunlit street, eyes monitoring east, then west as he walks north, two hands on his pistol, avoiding piles of chipped marble, sidestepping stray shards of glass, breeze swirling debris around his calves. Once he crosses the street, he steps into an alley, out of Reyn’s sight.
As she backs away from the window, part of the quilt Vitri had wired catches the center windowsill, leaving a gap through which sunlight spills onto the floor. Reyn grabs three severed table legs from the pile Vitri has made and, despite it already being hot in the room, and smoky, Reyn places them in the fire as Vitri had written for her to do. She watches the new smoke ascend to the ceiling, faint puffs that evolve into elaborate coils.
Reyn then turns her attention to what Vitri had removed from his backpack and set on the floor: four aluminum cans, three bottles of water, one pair of socks, almond-scented candles. There is a thin magazine, too, doormatting the water bottles, its front cover face down.
She has seen that phrase before, on gas station magazine stands, and on auto-filling search engine bars. It does strike her as odd, however, that it is in Vitri’s possession, that it is something he carries so close when he carries so little otherwise. Odd, but not uncommon, that he has deemed the brunette beneath the lime green letters beautiful. She sits on a piano bench, her hands masking her large breasts. Her eyes are shut. Red lips parted. Hair and torso damp. Reyn thinks that the woman cannot be older than twenty, then wonders if her mother had looked like that once, legs thick, free of surface vein, tan and smooth, if, before Reyn ruined her, she’d had a stomach just as flat as hers, breasts just as round.
Flipping past advertisements for cannabis and vodka, and several more for cologne and phone hotlines, Reyn finds more photographs of the cover woman, the first being a severe close-up of her breasts, merlot fingernails over her large, puffy nipples. Its caption: PAINTER WHITE PLAYS WITH HER TITS. The next is of Painter’s groin, pink razor in hand, pubic hair no wider than an eyebrow: PAINTER WHITE SHAVES HER PUSSY. Reyn flips the page: Painter White is on her back. Reyn flips: Painter White is upright, staring off camera. Advertisement, advertisement, advertisement. Painter White’s arm is reaching for the erect penis that has entered the frame. Reyn flips: Painter White’s mouth is open, eyes squinted, gunk stringing across her nose and lashes, off of her chin. PAINTER WHITE GETS PAINTED WHITE.
Reyn flips back to PAINTER WHITE PLAYS WITH HER TITS. She sets the open magazine on the floor, then stands. Careful not to bump her cheek or mouth, Reyn removes her sweatshirt and tosses it aside. She has lost so much weight that the white t-shirt she has worn underneath for months has stretched so loose that if wind were to pass through the room it would flap behind her like a cape. She eases that off, too, and looks down at her breasts, squeezed by the too-small beige training bra her mother had found for her once she’d outgrown the others. She looks down. She looks at the magazine. Compares. Covers her breasts.
Reyn flips to the front cover, then swiftly kicks off her shoes and unbuttons her jeans. Gravity does the rest. She looks at Painter. She looks at herself. At Painter, at herself.
Painter, herself.
Painter.
Clumps of hair do not dwell under Painter’s arms, or beneath her waistband. Painter’s face is not busted. Stubble does not shade Painter’s legs. Painter is not pale and narrow but tan and sculpted, a work of art created for and captured by the men who desire her. Even men like Vitri. Kind men. Rescuers, caretakers.
Inferior. That’s what this exercise has confirmed. Reyn is inferior. Subjacent. Baggage left behind instead of something to be sought, if only for moments. The acceptance of this—the way it continues to burrow its way through her sore gums—eclipses her desire to be Painter White. It inflames her. She wants to rid the world of this woman. Rip her from those pages. Ball her like mountain snow, and set her into the trashcan to be slowly, and painfully, melted. Yet, without an inkling as to why, all Reyn does is gawk, and flip, gawk, and flip. Until the anger is no longer external, until she has embodied it, until she has twisted her way into becoming its incognizant carrier.
Reyn tosses Painter White back to the floor and, as quickly as they’d slipped off, she pulls her jeans to her waist and buttons them. She stomps into her shoes. With little consideration of the pain in her face, she jostles her head through the collar of her white t-shirt. She does the same with her sweatshirt. Untangles her hair. She then walks to her backpack against the wall, crouches, unzips the largest pocket, and plunges her hand in, fingers searching for TIME.
She wants to change the conversation she’s having with herself. Wants to search the magazines for more information on San Juan, on what is to become her new home, if Vitri tells the truth, more than what the tourism ads she remembers could provide: the blue-green waves, coastal castles, and designer bottles of rum. She wants an article. A profile. Something. She wants to know so that, should he return, she can converse with Vitri about it, so she can appear intelligent about at least one thing. So she can pull her weight with at least one thing. But her hands find nothing but food cans. Plastic bottles she nudges aside. The cold metal of a small, adjustable wrench at the bottom.
Confused, Reyn extracts her hand. She looks around the room as if somewhere in its emptiness the magazines have been tucked. She turns toward the quilt-covered windows. Through the gap she’d unintentionally left, the sky is graying by the second, scurrying to black, dimming the room. The quilt quivers. She can feel in her feet a dull vibration transmitting through the hardwood floor. Tremors that tell her to stand.
And that’s all she does. She does not back away. She does not walk to that window.
She stands, and she thinks: We’ve been tracked. She pictures a cluster of masked men and women—red, yellow, both—standing on the street, weapons ready, the darkness an illusion, a diversion for the rabid few sprinting the staircase, to her, to her mouth, to her groin, to her tongue. It’s a thought that motivates her to sprint across the room and shut the door. She searches for a lock—finds none.
She grabs the trashcan with the intention of swiveling it in front of the door—it’s too hot for her hands. So Reyn grabs the pistol. She backs away while her hands find its grip, and once ready, she stops. Takes aim at the door.
Ten seconds pass. Her outstretched arm trembles.
Thirty. You can do this, she thinks. You are capable.
Another ten seconds, another thirty. Nothing. The door handle hasn’t been turned. She crouches and places her free hand on the floor, feeling for sprints, for stomps, though little can be distinguished over the tremors. Either nothing is beneath her, or everything, more of the masked than she’d initially assumed, more than just a cluster.
Eight of them, she imagines, ten of them, twelve, all for her, picturing each of the masked carrying a body part of hers down the stairs—a leg slung over a shoulder; hands cradled to someone’s sternum.
Reyn waits another thirty seconds. Nothing. The tremors lessen, but only slightly. She stands. Lets her outstretched arm ease to her side. She turns to the window. It’s lighter outside. Lighter, and lighter yet, darkness from before peeled back like a scab. She slithers between the quilt and the windows. A fist-sized crack is in the upper right corner, its thin veins stretching toward the sill. The grey cloud before the building shrinks, from fifteen-feet wide to twelve, to ten, narrowing itself back into what she sees now is a manhole on the street below, fifty yards or so from where Vitri had crossed. Bits of brick and marble fall to the street. Thumb-sized shreds of wood. Paper floats about.
Miles north, another grey cloud takes shape. Up it rises, up-up-up like stairs, higher than the tallest building, then higher yet, and wider, as if there are arms within to be spread, a black hug to offer the sky. Then, another rises, miles east. Another, west.
Reyn looks back to the manhole on the street below, half-expecting to see Vitri emerge. She wonders if he is the orchestrator of this. Wonders if her panic was pointless, is pointless. Wonders if this is what he spoke of from behind that scarf: “If we want to get out of the city, we have to create a distraction.”
But, with the nearest cloud completely retracted, it becomes clear that there’s no movement to the west, Vitri or otherwise.
Two hundred yards north, however, a dirt bike skids from an alley, across the street, and into a lamppost. At the sight, Reyn crouches beneath the windowsill. Seconds later she raises her curious eyes to see the motorcycle’s yellow-masked driver stumbling in the street, dazed, searching for his balance. He falls. He pushes himself back to his feet. Falls down again. He keeps looking behind him and, after he falls once more, Reyn understands why: sprinting from the same alley are two red-masked men.
Listen to Part 6 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 6 with author Garrett Francis.