The Mercy Journals

by Claudia Casper

  The bearded guy took a long bead on me.

  What is this life to me? he said. Surviving to survive? I don’t give a flying fuck about what the public thinks, now do I?

  Larry pulled up, which meant that certain things were out of my hands. He unrolled his window and pointed his thumb at the infractor.

  Is he giving you a hard time?

  Reclaimers like Larry are armed. A couple of passersby stopped and watched the three of us.

  I looked at the infractor, and he looked right back at me. Was he just an aggressive prick or was there something else? People were starting to gather to see what the commotion was. I thought he understood that his life was in my hands. He didn’t flinch, yet neither did he take the next step.

  We were just discussing, Larry, what we’d like to do to people who cheat the system. We’re incensed. We’re just incensed.

  Yeah, well, how do you think we got here in the first place? A lot of assholes in our species, let’s face it, Larry said as he leaned out of the driver’s side window. Comes with the territory, he said. Natural selection never got rid of ’em, so we have to. He pulled ahead and backed the truck up at an angle to the booted vehicle.

  Everybody references evolution these days. I guess coming face to face with extinction does that. If the last half a century showed us anything, it’s that human behaviour is not as malleable as we might have thought. It’s like our species is on a boat so enormous that no matter how hard we turn the wheel, it takes centuries to register a change in direction, and meanwhile everything around the ship changes a million times over.

  Larry got out and took the boot off, lay down on the road, and looked under the vehicle. More people gathered.

  Larry, my friend, I said by way of a hint that we might be finding ourselves in a situation, I want to get back to the office for lunch.

  He came out from under, sized up the gathering group, and grinned. Yeah, Allen, now that you mention it, I’m bloody hungry too. Why don’t you two hop in, and I’ll give you a ride?

  A young guy, shaved head, medium height, built, called out from the crowd, Who’s he, then? and jerked his head toward the infractor who still faced me. And why’s he—he jerked his head toward Larry—looking under that vehicle?

  The questioner had me stumped. Usually infractors are aware of the danger they’re in and slink away as fast as possible. I’d never been in this position before, and I had no idea what to answer—A friend? A passerby? A beggar? I didn’t think the crowd would buy any of those.

  Him? Larry answered for me. Just some nutcase who wants to change the world. Larry opened the driver’s side door, lowered the hook, got out his jack, and went around to the front of the offending vehicle. Hop in, boys, he said to us, but the young guy moved between us and the truck and the crowd followed. The questioner looked at the infractor’s feet.

  Those are some fancy shoes, he said in a hyper-loud voice, playing to the crowd. How’s he want to change the world then? He asked me the question.

  The infractor had been looking at me the whole time. I figured he was crazy, but when you looked at him, looked him in the eye, he didn’t seem crazy.

  You can go, the young man said to me, nodding at my uniform.

  It would start as a beating. There was no predicting how far it would go. Climate vigilantism was not prosecuted yet. The government wasn’t strong enough, and the rage was too strong. Someone in the crowd yelled out, Cheaters are killers! and in response another voice called out, Absolute adherence!

  You’re wrong, I started to say. This man is not the driver of that car. He’s … Here I tripped up. I had no plausible explanation for him.

  Who the hell are you? the infractor yelled at the young man. His voice was louder than the young man’s by a factor of ten. Everyone went quiet.

  One of the new fascists? You posturing skinhead scum! Who the hell … The questioner launched himself at the infractor and punched him in the jaw with a force that sent his head cracking back, then rammed him to the ground with his shoulder. The questioner took a step back, then kicked him in the stomach. The infractor groaned. The crowd moved in. I don’t know why I got involved because the infractor seemed not to care what happened to himself. Maybe it was because I was standing so close or because Ruby had just opened me up like an oyster shucker, but I went in and punched the questioner in the head. I got him in a plumb, my forearms on either side of his neck, hands clasped behind his head, and kneed him a couple of times in the liver. I whispered, Get lost now or I’m going to kill you. He nodded.

  Several people in the crowd had begun to kick the infractor, but I landed a few more blows and pulled him back to his feet. The crowd backed off, but no more than a couple of feet.

  I stood beside him and shouted to them, You’re wrong—you’re dead wrong about him. Larry heard me and started to drive gingerly into the crowd. I locked elbows with the infractor and held my arm out to push the crowd back.

  We reached the truck, and Larry popped the passenger door. I pushed the infractor in ahead of me, but had difficulty climbing up with my leg. By the time Larry ordered the infractor to lean out and give me a hand, the questioner had come back with something to prove. He threw a punch at the back of my head. My endocrine went into hyper-drive. I unleashed on him, this time making sure he wasn’t getting back up. I tried not to kill him but I know I broke bones and teeth. When I turned back to the truck door, Larry reached past the infractor and yanked me in. I started to tremble top to bottom and stared out the side window as we drove away. Tears ran down my cheeks, yet even then, in that stressed state, I sensed something about the guy in the middle seat. There was something about him. The bulk of him next to me felt different from other people.

  Larry took us to the impound lot. I stayed in the truck, working to bring myself back in. He brought us two cups of hot sweet tea. My mom always told me to drink something, any liquid, to stop tears when I was a kid.

  I had a scratch on my check, a sore scalp, and sore ribs. The infractor had a bloody nose, a swollen eye, scraped hands, and probably bruised or broken ribs. We got out of the truck. Larry unloaded the vehicle and returned to us.

  You can say goodbye to ever driving again. He demanded the infractor’s identity card, keyed in the particulars. The infractor watched closely.

  You want a drive to the office? Larry asked me.

  Sure. Yeah.

  And how about you? Larry looked at the infractor.

  He nodded.

  I cleaned up in the office washroom and let Velma confirm my companion’s information and tell him what to expect by way of penalty. He was still hanging around the front door when I came out. He’d wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve.

  Sorry for giving you a hard time, he said.

  Yeah, well. Times are hard.

  I have nowhere to go.

  No home?

  The wife kicked me out. I gave her everything and then, “my behaviour was maladaptive.” Just as everything was going to shit.

  That’s a long time ago, man. You’re milking it a bit, aren’t you?

  I can’t get hooked up.

  Why not?

  I’m an outlaw.

  I shrugged and turned to go for lunch. I was hungry.

  You don’t know me, do you?

  I stopped and turned back. Something about you seems familiar. There’s something about your voice.

  I’m your brother, asshole.

  I looked into the burning eyes I’d been avoiding. How could I not have seen it? True, I wasn’t looking for connection with the outside world, even less with a cheater, but I should have known him, even after twenty years, even with the hair and the beard.

  I suppose that means I have to keep you? I said.

  March 23 |

  I let Leo have my shower that night. Then I fed him. Then I’d had enough of him. He complained that there was no booze in the place. I wrapped a sheet around a pile of my clothes for a mattress, gave him the seat cushion from the easy chair f
or a pillow and my army blanket to supplement his coat and retreated to my bedroom.

  I wanted to be rid of him. It was Ruby I wanted to find and bring back to my apartment, not my brother. I had worked seventeen years with pure discipline to tamp down my past, and now here was this hairy, smelly, demanding emanation threatening my hard-won equilibrium because he had nowhere else to go?

  But as I folded my clothes and put them away, threaded my way into my pyjamas, turned out the light, and lay on my back waiting for warmth, I remembered how I used to crawl into Leo’s bed after a nightmare even though I was the older brother, and he’d pat my head with his smaller hand and we’d look out the window at the chestnut tree as I whispered my nightmare to him, and he’d say, Don’t worry. Hamschen (our dead pet hamster) is watching over us, and we’d start to giggle and drift back to sleep together. I remembered that he always used to ask me to feel his muscles, and they were just tendon and bone, like a frog’s quad grafted onto a humerus, and he’d be looking at me with unguarded hope. When my own boys were that age and they did the same thing, I’d feel their walnut-sized biceps, knowing they wanted serious acknowledgement, but all I had was affection and the memory of Leo underneath.

  Sometime in the middle of that night, with Leo sleeping in the living room, I sat up and was flooded by memories of my old life. I missed Jennifer so much. I think I’d been reliving in my sleep the last time we’d had sex, and I kept trying to wind the dream back the way you used to rewind a DVD by jumping back a chunk, watching a bit of the beginning of the previous scene, then jumping back to the beginning of the chunk before. I was making love with her, and then the dream would leap back to making love when the kids were little, then to when Jennifer was pregnant, then to before we had kids when I returned from a tour in Afghanistan and the sexual excitement was explosive, so to speak, but the dream kept sliding back to the last time we’d made love and somehow Ruby was there but invisible.

  I’d come home from Mexico, before the final collapse of the United States of North America, my last tour of duty, and we only managed to get back because we’d carried all the fuel for the return journey with us on the buses when we deployed. I was going through the motions of being a father to the boys—picking them up, swinging them round—but I was numb inside. Everyone in the military knew about PTSD by then, but somehow I figured my life had to have been threatened for me to have it. Jennifer and I made love that first night I came back, and I managed to hide what was going on inside my head, but after that I always begged off tired.

  A year later, I took her out for a romantic dinner at one of the few restaurants still running in all the chaos and talked obsessively about the Mexican landscape, the cacti, the rodents and birds and insects. It was her birthday. She asked if I was all right, and I said I was. We drove home through a windstorm, paid the sitter, went upstairs. I kissed her, felt nothing, led her to bed and undressed her, felt nothing, which was, ironically enough, agony. I managed a fragile erection—my penis must have managed to have its own memory—and I entered Jennifer as quickly as I could before the whip cracked and horrible images stormed my mind.

  My erection faded almost immediately. Jennifer tried to get me going. It was unbearable watching her from a thousand miles away. I put my hand on her head and whispered, stop. She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling, not breathing and then taking in the lightest wisp of air through her nose. I have never seen a human so alive yet so still.

  What about me? she asked eventually. Then looked to the wall away from me. Is this ever going to end?

  It’s not that I don’t want you. I actually suggested that they’d put too much potash or whatever in the bagged meals, and that maybe it would wear off. I put my arms around her, pulled her against me, and tried to console her, but it was like holding a giant bagged meal. She stuck with me for another year.

  Stop, I ordered myself. Starlight from the window revealed the faint mass of the furniture in my bedroom in front of me. No reminiscing. A sudden snore-gasp came from Leo in the living room. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, taking in the lightest wisp of air through my nose.

  In the morning, Leo groaned himself awake from the floor as I made tea. He seemed to expect me to serve his tea to him, which I did. When I last saw Leo, his business was starting to tank but he was still wealthy. Our mother’s funeral. Funeral is not the right word. The state was collapsing around us and formal annexation had done nothing to slow it. Hers was one of the last cremations. We intended to scatter her ashes at the cabin with Dad’s, but we couldn’t get the gas to make the trip north.

  Nice apartment, he said, leaning on an elbow and looking around.

  Don’t get any ideas.

  You’ve taken neat to a whole new fucking level.

  As you have slob.

  He took a sip of his tea. Why did you come to Seattle anyway?

  I brought the boys here after Jennifer died. We all needed a change of scene, and I thought Mom’s relatives could help with the boys while I looked for work.

  You never called. You never wrote. He mimicked a complaining mother.

  Never did. I got out the fish food. Never called the rellies either. I fed the fish.

  I didn’t want to give him an opening, but I threw caution to the wind and asked what had happened to him since I last saw him.

  Leo had always lived faster than anyone I knew. In grade six he sold fireworks; in high school he sold dope. He invested his earnings in stocks before he finished grade twelve. At university, while barely scraping through a degree in accountancy, he put together a stock deal that made millions. He moved to Seattle and invested in real estate. By age twenty, he had a yellow Corvette and partied hard six nights out of seven. A woman was sexually assaulted at a party at his place, but no charges were laid. Even when we knew for sure what was coming with climate change, even when everyone did, he was of the school that still wanted to take the planet out for one last, hard spin before trying to fix it. He was a let’s-have-fun-and-go-out-in-a-wild-beautiful-explosion kind of guy. His philosophy distilled down to, Nothing lasts forever.

  And yet he always knew to the dollar bill what his net worth was and to the minute what time it was. He knew the exact number of kilometres his Corvette had logged, how much money friends owed him, how far he’d jogged in the past week, how many calories he’d eaten that day.

  Daytime, he lived in a rapid-fire world of numbers, nighttime, in a euphoric, somewhat paranoid, substance-induced whirlwind. I didn’t see much of him after he moved to Seattle and Jennifer and I got married. He’d tried to get us to invest in a deal he was putting together, and tried to get our parents to as well, said we’d make a lot of money, and when we said no, he amped up the pressure. He went behind my back and tried to get Jennifer on board. When I confronted him he weaselled out, saying, I was only trying to help. If we had invested, we would have lost our shirts. Leo would probably have bailed us out but then we would have been beholden. I did not want to be beholden. My mother told me that a man had come looking for Leo and asked her how Leo made his money. Shortly after that Leo met and married Evie, an Australian working at a Tokyo chat bar. He got a job in a multinational life insurance company developing actuarial models for insurance against catastrophic weather events. He copyrighted his work and started his own business. Within five years, he was able to reveal that he was very, very rich. Evie and he had two girls as well as her son Griffin from a previous relationship.

  Leo was unlucky in his parents. Our father, who adored the quasi-communal life of the army, might have accepted Leo’s wealth if he’d kept it hidden, but he didn’t know how to love a son who flaunted it, and our mother the high school English teacher was a socialist at heart. Leo was not someone I would have ever known if he wasn’t my brother, but I always felt connected.

  He put his empty teacup on the floor, sat up, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and leaned against the wall. He spoke loud enough I could hear him over the noise of stirr
ing the porridge I was making for our breakfast.

  I managed to take out enough cash for Evie and me and the girls before the shit really started hitting the fucking fan. Buried it in a safe in the garden. We moved our beds into the kitchen and only heated that room. I had no work to go to, so I hung around the house all day driving Evie nuts. She got me digging up the lawn so she could put in some vegetables. She made me teach the girls how to read and do math. One day she told me to take some cash and see if I could buy some live chickens. I ended up walking way too far—I was blown away by the changes in the city, you know what it was like—I just kept walking and didn’t get back that night. I slept in a garden shed somewhere, woke up hungry, and ate some wormy apples. I went around knocking on the doors of houses where I smelled chickenshit, but no one wanted to trade the birds for cash. I slept out a second night and before dawn stole three chicks from one of the houses I’d visited.

  I got depressed and just sat around watching Evie and the girls do all the work. She started giving me less and less food when she divvied up the dinner. I started to wander the city and sleep out more often, until finally I never went back.

  The car you ticketed was stolen. I wanted to come and find you. I want to go to the cabin together. I’ve come to the end of myself.

  I put in supplies for Jennifer, me, and the kids. Maybe they’re still there.

  Come with me, Allen. You’ve got nothing going on here. We’ll take Mom’s ashes up together. Maybe your boys will be there. We can fish and kill deer.

  The deer population is depleted, and the island cougars, who are already the most aggressive on the continent, are starving. There are hardly any fish left. And what about vegetables, scurvy and such?