And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 10
"I’M A BETTER PERSON THAN THAT."
CHAPTER 14
VITRI'S FINGERS SEARCH for the grip of the 9mm. He draws the pistol but he does not aim it. The scarf is over his nose and mouth. His eyes are forward, squinting into the grey dawn light. Five hundred yards ahead, atop a gradual slope, are buildings. Buildings just built. There is the faint echo of hammer and nail, the occasional glimpse of an unmasked man walking alongside the structures. Vitri steps forward, the initial blend of confusion and terror quickly morphing to intrigue. But he soon stops once more. Watches. For moments, just watches. Listens to a small engine start. Turns around.
Reyn wakes naked and alone, fresh blood on her teeth and gums. Flakes of her tongue tickle the back of her throat. Dead grass sticks to her hair and back. Untended for hours, the fire is now a stunted heap of blackened wood.
She sits up. Slides on her underwear. Clasps her bra. Stands. Walks into the woods to retrieve the rest of her clothes, not once craning her neck, not once looking for Vitri. Because, sometime in the night—while beneath him, or while pulled close to his chest—she’d told herself to expect this.
As she does now, Reyn had thought then of the last time she saw her father. Actually saw him. Smelled him. Watched him. Wanted to hug him. She remembers that he’d risen earlier than usual for a breakfast shift, where she suspected he’d angrily flip pancakes, beat eggs and catch burnt toast with ceramic serving plates.
INSULT TO MY TALENT, he’d written to her once, on a similar day, to which he followed with: ONLY + IS HAVING AN ENTIRE NIGHT TO WASTE.
More often than not, she knew, this was a lie, Reyn’s father returning home immediately after his shift, exhausted, unable to stay awake for dinner, choosing instead to lie on the living room floor, apron still on, hands laced over his gut.
There was something about night shifts, she knew, that invigorated her father, ignited him to give that street lamp a second purpose.
Yet, on the night she last saw him, Reyn remembers her father walking into the house sometime between six and seven, half-turned and smiling, leading through the doorway a petite woman with straight purple hair. She, too, was wearing an apron and she, too, smiled and she, too, looked at Reyn. And she waved. Which confused Reyn. Never had she seen this woman. Never had her father insisted upon her, or any of them, entering the home he shared with his daughter and wife-turned-roommate.
Though her mother was not in sight, Reyn, if she knew her as she thought she did, pictured an empty desk. An open back door. An overflowing ashtray on the rotting deck.
In that moment, however, Reyn, as cruelly as she could, waved back. Stiff hand up, stiff hand down. Because she was supposed to hate this woman. Regardless of hair color, regardless of clothes, posture, smile or frown, she was supposed to want her out of here, this slut, this whore, this bitch. Out, she was supposed to think, get out of this house. Stop hurting my mother. She was supposed to hate her father. Pig. Scoundrel. Prick. Asshole. Four words fluttering in her mind, but so intangible were they, so elusive, unable to be communicated by her even if grasped by a searching hand. There was just so much joy in him, something he’d openly transmit to Reyn when around, something she thought foolish to look at, to feel, and then deny, carrying on either in anger or envy. The best she could do on that night was look away. Ignore as much as possible—an abandoned tactic when Reyn, lounging on the sofa in sweatpants, caught out of the corner of her eye her father’s pointing finger.
Don’t, Reyn thought, no. Just don’t. Don’t bring her over here. Don’t leave me alone with her. Don’t put me in that position.
She waited for the inevitable, for the two of them to enter her line of sight, for her father to frame the purple-haired woman as if she were a prize he’d won at a carnival. For the purple-haired woman’s mouth to flap a futile introduction. She waited. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. She waited until caked dust pirouetted from the staircase’s railing to the floor, until she could see the stairs bow under her father’s steps.
When Reyn looked back at the front door, there stood the purple-haired woman, clutching her purse, anxious eyes on her black server sneakers, unsure of what she was to do, unsure of what was to happen next, the likelihood of this work-fling amounting to anything, whether or not Reyn’s mother would emerge from a bedroom or closet with a knife or screwdriver. The image was enough to spur concern from Reyn. Not that her mother would do such a thing but that perhaps Reyn, too, was partially responsible for the purple-haired woman’s anxiety, lounging there on the sofa, standoffish to the lonely woman at the door. A knot of sympathy began to swell in Reyn’s stomach and, though she could opt to leave the living room altogether—sprint upstairs, to her father, to her bedroom, or outside, to her mother—within seconds Reyn was waving the woman over.
Registering as brown from a distance, Reyn could see that the woman’s eyes, now under light, were closer to burnt orange; a perfect complement, Reyn eventually thought, to that hair, to those dark eyebrows, to that silver hoop through her bottom lip. Despite the odor of fried food, Reyn could smell the melon-scented perfume on the woman’s wrists as she sat down. Faint, but noticeable. Despite exposure to splattering grease and fluorescent bulbs, her skin was smooth, and glossy, presumably prioritized ahead of her stained teeth when it came to hygiene. As she sat down, the purple-haired woman pulled from her purse a notepad the size of her hand. Then, a pen. She smiled as she wrote.
Aside from thinking the name pretty, and fitting, Reyn believed Faye’s handwriting to mirror her physical appearance, both choices and genetics. She either didn’t believe in, or was incapable of, straight lines, even the vertical line in her I curved, elegant.
I KNOW. YOUR FATHER CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT YOU.
WHAT DOES HE SAY?
TELLS ME HOW SMART AND PRETTY YOU ARE
Reyn pictured her father weaving around dishwashers and prep cooks, chatting up his daughter. She pictured him on break, puling out his cell phone, waving the servers behind the line to show them the pictures of her reading, the pictures they’d taken together—at the zoo, in front of the lion exhibit, at the very top of a ferris wheel. In doing so, Reyn’s cheeks began to tingle, to warm. Flattered that the words SMART and PRETTY had been used but embarrassed, with wonder, at the prospect of CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT YOU.
HOW THOUGHTFUL YOU ARE. HOW GLAD HE IS THAT YOU’RE MORE LIKE YOUR MOTHER
Faye must’ve seen Reyn’s worry over the matter, or felt it, understood it enough to smile as she asked for the pen back.
In which Reyn found immense comfort. The warmth left her cheeks. A grin took hold of her lips and eyes.
HATE IT
WHY?
YOUR FATHER IS THE ONLY ONE THAT TREATS ME LIKE A PERSON
Though Reyn asked for her to elaborate, the request was met by a shoulder shrug from Faye. And, from there, their conversation took a nosedive when it came to substance. Faye’s favorite color was, unsurprisingly, purple. She was twenty-six years old. Originally from New Orleans. Mother to one calico tomcat. Filler. All filler. Faye knew it was. Reyn knew it was. But, as Reyn saw it, it was the best thing to happen to her in that house for a long time. An informed outsider had entered, sat down, and had been patient enough for ten minutes of written small talk—an effort that made Reyn feel as if she had a friend outside of these walls. An effort that, when Reyn’s father descended the last stair and turned toward the living room, doused her heart in sadness—this, Reyn knew, would be the only time Faye stepped foot in this house.
What made Reyn so certain was something beyond his slicked hair, beyond the clean-shaved face, beyond the khakis, beyond the tucked plaid button-up and dark brown loafers. It wasn’t even his smile. It was in how Faye’s smile mirrored his. Absolute joy, a reciprocal joy that neither Reyn or her mother could share with him. An understanding that need not be spoken, written, or realized pants-down at a lamppost. As if he were a model at the end of her runway, Reyn’s father stopped near Faye, and playfully placed his hands on his hips before performing a spin. He looked at Reyn. Exchanged words with Faye. He then asked for the notepad and pen, passing it to Reyn once he was through.
Reyn wanted to. Wanted to nod her head, leap from the sofa, sprint upstairs, change, and sprint downstairs, to her father, to Faye, to the car, into the theatre, where she would watch them, and only them, not needing subtitles, not needing narration of any sort, inference and intuition more than enough to make sense of what was in front of her.
Before Reyn could do any of that, before she could even nod, her father turned. Faye turned. And there, between them, walking through the dark dining room was Reyn’s mother. Slowly, arms crossed, mouth moving, eyes scanning the three of them. Guilt panicked within Reyn, shoulder to shoulder, waist to throat. She watched Faye snatch the notepad and put it back into her purse. Saw her father straighten his back and puff his chest. Watched calm turn into chaos. Strained necks. Overworked jaws. Stamping feet. Screams. Arms and hands structuring individual arguments, deflating all others. And Faye, eyes down, more than just her feet guiding her to the front door.
Reyn eventually did sprint upstairs, to her room, but only to watch Faye and her father walk hand-in-hand down the street after Reyn’s mother chased them off of the yard.
When her father didn’t return the next day, or the next, or the next, or the day after that, Reyn knew that he was gone.
Gone, gone, gone.
And, each day afterward, she forcefed herself the idea that he and Faye were in love, that they had mutually realized that love, and that they’d ran off together to celebrate that love, to prove that love, to consummate that love.
All good things, Reyn thought. Revisited. Justified. Clung to. A thought, however, that would be disproved when, months from then, days after her mother drowned the Idaho postcard, they’d stop at a gas station that had within days of the blackout been sucked dry and Reyn would spot a purple-haired woman slumped against an overflowing dumpster.
Faye had died wearing a violet leather jacket and white pants. Bootprints were up and down her legs. Burnt orange eyes for all to see.
It isn’t a mystery to Reyn why she thinks of Faye now. Her thighs ache. Saliva and wind have made her neck and nipples raw. Shards of pain stretch from groin to abdomen as she steps toward her sweatshirt.
You have been raped, she thinks, used, abandoned, trampled. A ginger-colored squirrel parked on a low-hanging branch seems to watch her as she dresses. You allowed this to happen. The box of bar soap has been shredded by the squirrel, the bar itself nibbled, corners rounded, flies, beetles and whatever else staking their claim. Never again.
After stomping into her shoes, Reyn turns to see Vitri sitting by that charred wood heap, atop a tree stump. Backpack: on. Scarf: on, and tight. Pistol: in his waistband, bulging both the thermal shirt and raincoat. Eyes: down. Thumbs: twirling.
Grab your backpack, Reyn thinks. Grab the fucking backpack and leave.
She fights through the pain in her groin in order to stand straight. Forces herself to the heap, staring at Vitri as she does so, unsure of what she and her body are expressing but hoping with every ounce of her that it will be interpreted by Vitri, should he have the nerve to lift his eyes, as something between rage and disappointment. She walks directly to her backpack and hoists it over her shoulder, intending only to obey the thoughts of leave, leave, leave. But when Vitri rises from that tree stump and steps toward her, the thin film of reluctance is torn by the same fury she felt before JOHN went beneath the Jeep. And that fury urges her to unzip the largest pocket of her backpack. It takes her fingers, wraps them around the nearest weapon, around the handle of RALPH’s sickle. And it points the blade at Vitri. Dares him to take just one more step. Just one more step.
Whether it is the mere sight of the blade, or what it is he sees in Reyn’s face—the enlarged eyes, the flared nostrils, just how tight she is holding that thing—Vitri stops. He holds up his hands. Takes a step back. And another. And another, until he rediscovers that tree stump. They stare at one another, Vitri changing posture only when Reyn breaks eye contact. He holds up his right hand, shapes his fingers as if they were holding a pen, scribbles in the air.
No. You had your chance. No.
He scribbles in the air again as if his initial message weren’t received. But it was. Loud and clear. Reyn knows what he wants to write. He’ll write what his deflated eyes put on display: I’M SORRY. He’ll write, and she’ll read, and he’ll expect her to forgive, to forget, to provide him with what he thinks he needs. No. Never again.
Yet, she wants that SORRY, wants to see how difficult it is for him to write it, wants to see him acknowledge how he has mistreated her. Needs to see that. Needs to feel that, as small of a victory as it may be.
So she sets her backpack down. First exchanges the sickle for the pistol, which she holds loosely in her left hand as she plunges her right hand back in for the notebook. Still crouched, she hurls the notebook at Vitri as hard as she can. The pen follows, just as fast. She stands, watches Vitri pluck the pen from the ground and situate the notebook on his lap. Notices how easily the words bleed onto the page.
Reyn reads. Lifts her eyes. Lowers them, reads once more. Contemplates stowing the notebook and backing away, pistol aimed at his throat so he won’t follow. She looks again at his eyes. He wants to say it. She shoves the pistol in her waistband, reaches for the pen. He’s going to say it.
PEOPLE THERE. NO MASKS. BUILDING SOMETHING. HEARD AN ENGINE
Reyn draws an arrow to THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY? She delivers the notebook, steps back, re-grips the pistol.
Reyn circles THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?
THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?
DON’T CRY
She wishes she could help it, wishes she were stronger, wishes she could force the tears back to her eyes, wishes Vitri would sit back on the stump, wishes that he’d stop writing and walk on, leave, walk on, go away. But on he walks, toward her, arms extended so she can read.
Vitri steps closer and closer, until he is three feet from her. He holds the notebook steady. Studies her. Five seconds. Ten seconds. He slowly tosses the notebook to the ground and reaches his hand toward her. Reyn swats his forearm away. Grits her teeth. Raises the pistol. Shoves the barrel into his chest and walks him back to the stump. She motions for him to sit. She wipes her eyes and, without turning around, retrieves the notebook.
South. South again. South, for just a bit longer. South, for the last time, along the shore, under a clear sky, Vitri in front, Reyn forty yards behind, raincoat on, pistol in one hand, a stick in the other, unable to quell her curiosity of the traps she’d seen the day before. She pokes, she prods, she swipes dead grass and pine needles off the surface. A dozen feet from her, a kingfisher dives into what had been the river, its beak slicing through the topmost layer. But that is all. There it stays, spindly feet twitching, then motionless.
Reyn drops the stick. Carries herself forward, grimacing with each step. She hates this. Hates this shoreline. Hates this river. Hates that she’s walking south. Hates that she still holds the pistol. Hates that she doubts she’d even use it. Hates that, at any given moment, she can turn around and walk north, or veer west. She hates that she hasn’t, that, for upwards of two miles now, she has allowed herself to be led to what could be a lie. She hates herself.
There is no town, she thinks. You fucking idiot. You have no idea what you’re walking toward. You have no idea what you’re chasing after.
Reyn stops. Right there, she just stops, and sighs. She watches Vitri continue south. You have no idea.
She takes a deep breath as she watches Vitri, the smell of mold breached momentarily by something faint but sweet, berry-like. Forty-five yards are between them now, fifty, his eyes on the gravel, shoulders somewhat slumped. She wonders if he notices the absence of her footsteps, and continues anyway, or if he has decided that now is as good of a time as any to let her go. Fifty-five yards, sixty. Sixty-five. Reyn looks west. Woods. Thicker woods. Thicker trees, straighter trees, healthier trees than she has seen in some time, sickly grey and yellow leaves punctuated by small green ovals and spades, a path begging to be made through the budding fescue. She looks east, across the sludgy river. Trees, sure, but with space between, moderate clearings, gradual yellow hills rolling into faint shades of green.
There is enough distance between she and Vitri now that Reyn could blot his body out with a raised thumb. I hope you get to where you need to go, Vitri, she thinks. And she means it. She can’t do this anymore. She won’t. As she turns, she slips the backpack from her shoulders and shoves the pistol in the largest pocket. Facing north, feeling lighter, feeling weightless, she begins upshore at a quick pace, and with long strides, ignoring the pain in her groin and abdomen, digging into the gravel, shoving off with power, with optimism. To what, she isn’t certain, but she intends to return to nothing—the rolled Jeep, her dead mother, that home on LaFontaine. Emotional suicide, she knows. Steps back. And so forward she goes. Fifteen yards. Thirty, thinking not of where she will go, but of what it is she needs to find, a search immediately stifled by the sight of three masked boys cresting a hill across the river.
Three boys. Northeast. Three boys, all with blue faces, blue legs and bare torsos, one tall and slender, one shorter and stockier. The last, trailing behind, stands no higher than Reyn’s waist. For reasons unclear even to her, she does not run. She does not seek cover. She doesn’t even tighten her grip on the pistol. She just stands there, watching as the tallest, carrying a shovel, no more than forty feet from their side of the river, starts digging a hole. The stocky one stands nearby and swings a white cylindrical pail to and fro, swaying either to something Reyn cannot hear, or something on repeat between his ears. The shortest boy twirls, then hops, then jumps, stopping only when his blue mask falls off and is swept away momentarily by a gust of wind. She watches him chase after it, bend over, pick the mask up with his left hand, place it back over his face and return to a standing position. She watches him notice her. Watches him raise his right arm, the stump she now sees it to be, amputated somewhere near the elbow. Watches him wave at her. Back and forth, back and forth, back-forth, back-forth, until turning to the other boys, who, Reyn sees now, are pointing at the sky. Without so much as one more glance at Reyn, the small boy sprints toward the other boys. The tall one lifts a stack of inch-wide silver circles from the ground and places them in the lone pail they’d brought. Over the hill they all then sprint, out of Reyn’s sight. Only then does she look up.
At first, there is nothing. Clouds, high and swollen. One small bird skimming the western treeline. And then it is there, one large but quick shadow moving over her, over the river. A red and yellow plane flies low, flies northeast, a mist spreading from its tail, descending, arcing as the plane does, over the hills, over the trees. It circles southwest, releasing more of the mist as the initial supply reaches the ground, smelling, and tasting, to Reyn like some stale relative of vinegar. As she follows the plane with her eyes, she spots Vitri, sprinting the shoreline, fifty yards from her and closing, a sight that urges her to take off her backpack and dig for the pistol. Vitri slows to a walk. Plugs his fingers into the sky. Looks back, looks up, looks at Reyn as the plane approaches once more, and then waves his arms, waves his hands, all toward the western trees. He pulls his scarf down. Waves. Shouts. She reads his lips:
“Go! Run! Go! Now! Run!”
As it dives low, the plane’s engine is so loud that Vitri cannot hear himself scream. He can only feel it, those long strings of sound from throat to armpit, dissipating when Reyn sprints to the woods, when he stops shouting, when it gives way to a chain of coughs. Though he struggles to maintain a straight line, Vitri follows Reyn, the blur she has become that not even a squint can focus. Forward. Forward. Forward, gasping for air between coughs. Forward, until he stumbles beneath trees. Until he is on his knees. Then on his cheek, pine needles sticking to his lips. He massages the earth with his fingers. Listens to the plane fly back and forth. High and low. Near, far. He shuts his eyes.
Vitri wakes on his back. Reyn stands over him with an uncapped water bottle in her hand. As soon as she sees that he is awake, she proceeds to drench his face with what water remains. He sits up. Spits. Smears water over his face. He figures he’ll try to stand then but, when he sees that Reyn has sat on the ground, feet from him, notebook on her lap, there he stays, wiggling his legs awake, awaiting another swoop from the plane. Hears nothing. Sees nothing.
Vitri nods. He nods again when Reyn waves the notebook in front of his eyes. Reaches for the pen but resorts to watching her write when she yanks it all away.
“Yes, I am,” Vitri says. He reaches for the notebook and pen once more. She pulls away. Writes hard, writes fast. In the days they’ve spent together, he hasn’t seen her this driven, this certain, and though a part of him is impressed, he can’t quiet the part of him that wants to rip the notebook and pen from her grip.
“Yes.” Vitri nods as he says this. Convinced he’s capable to move, Vitri pushes himself off the ground, progress stymied by Reyn, who rises and points at him. YOU SIT DOWN, the gesture says. I’M NOT FINISHED. Vitri does. And, like he’ll do when they resume their trek to the town, when Reyn won’t be able to stop turning her sight east, across the river, he is left only to think of what he’d say if she’d just pass the fucking notebook.
He’d write that her pointing the .22 pistol at his chest reminded him that he’d done this before, that he’d driven away someone like her, driven her to take her life and the life of their son.
He’d write that he’d driven her to this, driven her to this anger, to this hatred, and that it should’ve never gone this way. All of them different variations of something he’s already written, and something she’s already read, and something that won’t repair a goddamn thing: I’M SORRY.
Vitri reads. Nods. Watches Reyn put away the notebook and pen, stand, and offer him her hand. Once on his feet, he tightens the scarf over his face, then stumbles forward.
Listen to Part 10 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 10 with author Garrett Francis.