“But of course,” I told Sydney, “hardly anyone imagines disaster will befall them.”
“I’ve read your article on the Corbins,” she said. “Help me understand: why only write about them and not the Ashes or Wilkes?”
“The Corbins were the first to come, last to leave. Ultimately, they had the bigger arc, unlike the Ashes and Wilkes clans who were a fairly dour lot.”
“I disagree. All of their contributions built the community and should be valued,” she said.
“Ah, and here I thought you were a kindred spirit.”
“I think I am. But you come across as obsessed with the Corbins.”
It wasn’t a new criticism. I’d even heard people at the conference calling me a Corbinite—such puerile designations already cropping up. “I admit I’m fascinated by the tension between those who became considerably entrepreneurial, or sort of low-level cornucopians, versus those who were Utopian survivalists with your standard back-to-the-land composting toilets—not to imply there weren’t those in between.”
She considered me with those bewitching green eyes. “Have you been here before?”
I wasn’t sure why she asked, since the dig had only just opened. “No,” I said.
“I’ve been coming back here for years, long before they built this hotel. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?” She turned to face the desert.
I didn’t think it was beautiful. Nor would I have described it as such. It was too powerful for beauty.
The armored convoys pulled up and I could tell that despite their geriatrically sized sunglasses, the sordidly muscular guides were annoyed that we were standing unattended. Suddenly aware of the time, I excused myself and returned to my room to change. As I buttoned up my shirt, I mused that Sydney had never told me where we’d met, she’d managed to thoroughly evade the question.
Chad looked nothing like I’d been imagining. For one, he was much older than he’d sounded, on the short side with large watery blue eyes. He had donned a straw hat that could have been a sombrero and seemed to be constantly gorging on a toothpick. This was the man who had discovered the dig, and if rumor were to be believed, he had opened the hotel in hopes of a tourism boom once the dig became public. Bit of a crass move, but while others believed that the community had long since fled, Chad realized that a few diehards had tried to wait out the cataclysmic dust storm and had uncovered their preserved bodies.
“I’m a big fan.” He shook my hand with clammy ardor as we met outside of the largest square of the site near the remains of a shed that had once housed the community’s livestock. “I’ve been following your work ever since you found the recording of that underground commune—that was amazing, really masterful.” He led me over to the mob of academics assembled around a wheelbarrow.
In their midst, the anxious desire to view the bodies was amplified, and the scene suddenly struck me as rather ghoulish. I was gratified that Sydney was not among us, although I surmised this was because a select few had been invited, conference attendees being virtually the lowest rung.
Chad, briefly removing his sombrero to reveal a bald dome, marched us assiduously down the dirt-hewn stairs and we descended into the site, which was roughly the size of a small town square. He chummily insisted I be next to him and as we walked, pointed into the various squares identifying animal bones, battered remnants of plastic water bottles, and scattered metal pipes—relics of the community’s modest plumbing.
What was in the last square was simply extraordinary: an unearthed house, its boards peeling white paint; then to its left, an empty inground pool, the blue tiles misted with sand; and finally, across what had presumably been their main street was an empty diner, its floor partially filled with drifts of sand, the occasional red stool peeking out, and the jagged edges of what was left of its windows winking in the ruthless sun. Amidst the collective approbation, I massaged my temples, feeling a bleak headache beginning behind my eyes.
Chad motioned us inside where tufts of sagebrush and shale rock had broken through a floor littered with bits of rotted ceiling and fallen beams. “The house,” he told us, “was one of the earliest built, and used, we believe, as their community center. Later structures, like their houses were much more architecturally advanced. If you look at the back of the pantry door in what was their kitchen, you can see evidence of a wonderful tradition where they recorded the children’s heights over the years with lead. Some of the names still remain.”
Here I noted that unlike the scholars, Chad and his coterie of guides acted as if this were a military operation. They were visibly armed, and with the exception of Chad’s sombrero, in soldierly garb.
“Is there more than what you’ve dug up here? Or is this the bulk of it?” I asked, feeling a tight nausea in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if it was something I ate, then remembered that I hadn’t eaten this morning.
“Do you think you’ve found all of the bodies?” asked the paunchy sycophant who’d tried to corner me yesterday.
“Absolutely, but we think there’s much more to be found,” Chad said, unable to contain a significantly self-satisfied smile. “We’ve been spending most of our time preserving the bodies.”
A surge of heat flared up the back of my neck. In vain, I tried to take deep cooling breaths. But felt myself starting to drift, dark edges crackling at the corners of my consciousness, then I slipped and was a boy walking alongside my bike, the chain having slipped off yet again. I could feel my child’s frustration like steam from the road after a summer rain. I was wheeling my bike home along our main street, the road’s black-gray scarring the gold grass. The center of town was starkly deserted, the general store closed and the sidewalks empty, though in the distance I rather thought I could hear other children playing in the community pool. As I passed the dry fountain in the town square, I was transfixed by its stone serpent coiled in the middle with an open mouth, its ominous red tongue bleached pink from the sun. I was longing for shadow, for a glass of water, for a mother’s touch on my stinging knee—the most immediate of balms.
Outside of the house the grass was dead, even the poor succulents had curled in on themselves. I heard a bell tolling in the distance as I opened the front door, calling for my mother, the chilled air swallowing my child’s voice. I walked through the sunlit living room and into the kitchen where I found a mug in portentous shards on the floor.
“Mom? Dad?” I wandered up the stairs but only heard the perpetually sucking sound of the air-conditioning. In my bedroom, I washed my hands in a bowl of water and dabbed the water with a finger over my cracked lips. Then downstairs, the door slammed shut and someone came panting up the stairs. Quite soon, my mother appeared in the partially open doorway, her eyes pink and swollen.
“Here you are,” she said, coming in and taking my face in her sonorous hands. “I thought I told you to be home an hour ago?” Then she let me go, her mind full of something else, but she continued to speak rather automatically. “You had me worried—I was out looking for you.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said too cheerfully, wiping her nose. “We’re going for that trip. Get your bag.”
“I unpacked it.”
“What? Why?” She seemed momentarily aghast.
“I had to use it for school.”
“Pack it again. Now.”
“Where’s Dad?”
She suddenly shook me roughly by the shoulders. “Just do as I said.” Then she was gone.
“Can I still go to Mark’s birthday party?” I asked.
“Five minutes,” she called back.
However, two minutes later, she was in my room in sneakers and a backpack. I’d only just located my bag and slowly unzipped it. She snatched it from me, haphazardly stuffing clothes inside. “Downstairs,” she said.
Before we stepped outside, she had me crouching down with her in the foyer while she peered through the front window, then herded me down the driveway.
“I d
on’t want to.” I tried to get loose.
“Humor me,” she said, staring grimly ahead.
“Lee?” Chad had a hand on my forearm. “Are you all right?”
I turned and looked at him. “I was . . . I was dreaming.”
“Your eyes were open,” he said.
I became aware that the entire group was staring rather blankly at me. “I’ve been feeling nauseated.” Though I was confounded myself, something not dissimilar had happened before while I was doing field research on the collapse of a literally underground cult. I’d felt faint in one of their tunnels and the annihilating darkness invoked an otherworldly hallucination. A peril of the job.
“Okay,” said Chad, glancing at one of the guides. “Let’s get you somewhere you can sit down and recoup.” He smiled at the group and handed me his canteen. “Hangovers and the desert definitely don’t mix.” Everyone gave the usual parsimonious social laugh.
One of the guides stepped forward and began leading the group through the salient features of the white house. Chad remained with me until they were out of earshot. “Look man, I don’t want to unveil the bodies without you there. Like I said when we first spoke, I really dug your article on the Corbins—you nailed their mentality. I almost felt like it was a guiding voice telling me where to look.”
It was seldom that I was at a loss for words, but I was floundering now. I only wanted to get out of the dig and lie down. “I wouldn’t want you to change your schedule on my account. Do carry on without me. I only need to step above ground for a few minutes at most.”
“Listen Lee,” he paused, “can I call you Lee?”
My eyes met his massive orbs. “I prefer Bibb.”
“Bibb, we can totally wait. We want you to be there, for the article. I want our debut to be something powerful.”
“It’s more of an essay actually, but that’s irrelevant. At any rate, I’ll be back shortly.” I struggled to sound rational but my desire to escape was becoming unbearable.
“Sure, sure.” He clapped me too forcefully on the back and gave some sort of complex hand signal to one of the guides.
Above the dig, I felt I could breathe, though in every direction I saw nothing but unending stretches of scrub and sand and this began to overpower me. Since everyone was apparently still on-site, it was reasonably unlikely that I was being observed so I sat down, not caring what damage the dust might do to my slacks. I let my chin drop to my chest and put my hands over my burning eyes. I knew I must put a stop to these spells before I garnered the undesired reputation of wilting. Yet it struck me as bizarre that I would dream (remember?) my mother and that the narrative would be one of flight. Was there indeed a time we were forced to run away? And who was Mark?
“It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?”
I looked up to find Sydney above me, her hair on fire in the sun. “What are you doing here?” I said.
“I told you, I’ve been coming here. You could call me Chad’s first guide, when guides were just people to show you the way and not thugs.”
“Old friends then?” I joked.
She didn’t respond to this and instead looked quite steely. “Why aren’t you down there? Isn’t this the moment you’ve been waiting for? The great unveiling.”
It was a rare occasion that I would willingly conduct myself in a manner I knew to be pathetic before a powerfully attractive being, but without further ado, I stuck my head between my knees and found that my deodorant had long since failed me. “Actually, I’m feeling under the weather, and honestly, I could care less about this silly article when I should be concentrating on the last chapters of my book, which isn’t principally based on this community but submerged secular communities at large. I’m on a deadline after all.” I kept attempting to take deeper breaths but had the impression that there was less and less room in my chest.
“Breathe out,” Sydney said. “Then you can let the air in.”
I exhaled and felt the tightness rippling over my face leave. “Thank you.” I sighed.
“I wonder why you’re here,” she said.
“Sydney”—suddenly recalling my hallucination—“I had a dream of sorts. No doubt influenced by my research on this place—I really am dehydrated.”
She gave a thick, irresistible laugh. “What were you doing in your dream?”
“Running away. With my mother.” Something tickled my throat and I coughed.
“Some say that childhood is a dream.”
“Not anyone who’s lived in an orphanage.” I got to my feet and dusted off my slacks. “What was strange was that there was no father in this dream.”
“Do you remember where you know me from?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Soon,” she said soothingly and somehow I felt that this was precisely the case.
We walked to the bottom of the site where everyone was waiting. The feeling that I might become faint again clung to me, and I went so far as to consider holding Sydney’s hand, or asking her to take my arm, lest I keel over.
“Bibb!” Chad rushed over, slowing as he recognized Sydney. “You two know each other?”
I glanced at her serene virtually noble expression. “We met this morning.”
Chad did not precisely appear pleased with this admission. I wasn’t altogether certain that he wouldn’t bar her way as he stood there with his arms folded, a guide looming at his side. “You can come if you want,” he finally said. I decided I would skewer him in my article.
“I know,” she replied.
Chad ignored this and ushered me to the front of the group outside of the diner. The moment we entered, the air changed, as if signaling some disruption in time for in front of us were roughly thirty spontaneously desiccated bodies under gauze.
One by one, Chad’s team unveiled the bodies whose skin had thinned to a brown parchment clinging to bone, each face arguably distinct, and some, if not all of their features visible. As my eye traveled down the rows, I fancied that the expression of one had something of the familiar about it. I stooped over her, close enough to touch and see the places where her skull showed through. My traitorous pulse began to quicken.
As far as I was aware, Chad was watching me with interest, so I quietly backed away from the open mouths and cringing postures to where Sydney stood near the entrance, not surveying our fascinated shock but seeming stricken. I took out my notepad, pretending to write. She stared at the bodies, looking like she might fold in on herself. I looked at the floor, or more specifically, a trail of ants on the floor to avoid looking at either her or the bodies. Soon I moved toward the door, my vision trembling, smiling and waving Chad over.
“Great work here. I’m wondering how I might get back to the hotel? I’ve just had a spectacular idea for the article and want to get it all down.” I dug my nails into my palm in a valiant effort to stay upright.
Chad’s face lit up and I fled.
Back in my room, I flopped onto the bed, trying to summon that scene in the driveway with exactitude. The sun was going down, leaving the desert black and splashing the walls with a lavalike light. I was strangely unable to think of much of anything until stars filled the darkening sky like shattered glass. Chilled, I wrapped myself in the duvet and sat cocooned by the window. When I closed my eyes, I could conjure the sliver of a vision: I saw my mother and myself at the end of our street joined by another woman and a little girl. Without speaking, we children agreed that something bad was transpiring—the presence of another child only served to seal the certainty of badness.
“Did anyone see you?” my mother asked her mother.
The little girl’s mother shook her head. “They’ve probably noticed we’re not there by now.”
“Nobody will come looking right away,” my mother said. “It’s not far. Keep walking.”
The other woman looked up at the sky. “We’d better hurry.”
When I looked back at our house, the sky was so dark it had put the sun out.
I jumped. A
knock at the door. Through the eyehole, I spied Sydney. I threw off the duvet and quickly dressed again.
“Was your hair always red?” I asked as I let her in.
“I dye it,” she said and closed the door behind her. “Why aren’t you down there celebrating with everyone?”
“After beholding those bodies, revelry doesn’t quite feel seemly.” I moved my papers from the room’s only chair.
“You feel sorry for them?” she asked.
“Their final emotion was one of terror.” I turned and looked at her. “I’m decidedly haunted by the children, and perhaps their mothers, holding them in that last, frightful moment.”
“But those mothers chose to stay, forced their children to stay even when they knew a deadly dust storm was coming.”
“You’re right, strictly speaking. Most of them knew the storm’s magnitude, but they didn’t know what that would mean. Please, have a seat.”
She sat, drawing her legs underneath her and twisting her long red braid in one hand. “We have something remarkable in common,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.
Despite the fact that I’d been waiting to hear these very words, I was compelled to walk to the window and pretend to look out in order to hide my expression.
“We know what it is to survive the end of the world as we know it. To be abandoned.”
Somewhat composed, I turned to look at her. “Where do I know you from?”
“You already know,” she said.
“The orphanage,” was my pithy reply.
“Yes.” The dip of her head made me think of tulips, or the stem of a tulip. Hardy yet graceful. “Let me ask you something, Lee,” she said. “Why do you advocate for a return to fear?”
“A most popular misinterpretation. I discuss the value of the emotion. Similar to pain, it is telling us something.”
Echoing my earlier gesture, she gazed out at the night sky. “I’ve always come back here. I was old enough to remember leaving here, walking out of town until we could see the canyon. I remember how frantically my mother started digging in the ground. I had no idea what the hell she was doing until I saw the steel hatch. Then we climbed down the ladder and there it was: a huge concrete bunker stuffed with supplies for the end of the world.” She smiled. “And when I asked her why are we hiding here? She told me that the biggest dust storm in our history was coming, and I was not impressed. I mean, I was a kid and dust storms had been happening ever since I could remember. They were scary and dirty but that was the way things were, you know?”
The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead Page 16
