by D Keith Mano
“No pills.”
“You can’t swallow? Just let them dissolve on your tongue.”
“I don’t want pills.”
“Why? You can trust me.”
“I don’t want pills.”
“Come. Take them.” Priest hit his hand. They skittered across the desk top. “I see. You’re a nasty man, Priest. Just don’t press your luck.”
“Yes.” Priest stood again. “I have been in prison for my anger. What will you do—tell the guardsmen?”
“Relax. What was it—did you think they were death capsules?”
“I have no time for talking. It’s late. My wife may be dead now.”
“Sit. Please.” Priest sat. “It’s an idea—I wouldn’t mind a traveling companion. How fast can you walk?”
“As fast as an old man can walk.”
“I see. Do you still want to kill me?”
“I have killed enough.”
Xavier Paul started: he did not question Priest. The lips, he thought, were very hard to read. “An angry man. When it’s too late, God sends me an angry man. Twenty-five years ago. I could have used you then.” But Priest did not watch the lips. Xavier Paul leaned into his vision. “Don’t be a jackass now. See that you’re here when I get back.”
“Then be quick.”
“Be quick. Yes.”
“And be alone.”
He left. There was a disturbance on the screen. Moths flurried away: the far wall lit up. Priest saw his own silhouette. He reconnoitered the room. Dampness had melded the books: cover dyes leaked into the wood. Priest saw Xavier Paul, a young man, hair dark, brows of smut under the eyes. Shoulders in the photograph were shrugged immensely to his ear lobes; his chest was numbered, 88. Priest limped to the screen. He elbowed it, knocked a chink in the insect shingling. Across the veranda Priest saw a fenced yard grown tumultuous and hazy. Eighteen-inch toadstools squatted, boles muscular as hurdlers’ calves, caps canted, rouged at the center. Dandelions and live-forever rooted between veranda planks. But Priest wondered: here and there through a vined trellis he saw dark plots of earth, staked out, cat’s-cradled with string. Priest looked down. The screen had come loose. The wainscoting was sugared with white powder. Insects moved in concentric half circles out/away from the powder: crippled, nerveless, spastic; at the wood’s rim, dead. Priest bent. He dabbed powder on his thumb tip, then carried it near his mouth. Xavier Paul smacked his wrist. He wiped the thumb on Priest’s chest. “Like a child, aren’t you? Put everything in your mouth.”
“What is it? The bugs are dead.”
“Come over here. I thought you were in a hurry.” He made Priest sit. With a honed letter knife, Xavier Paul slashed the neck of one rubber overboot down toward its instep. Priest admired the letter opener. Its handle was ivory, a Maltese cross. Priest stropped his thumb on the blade; it had been whetted beyond a legal tolerance. Xavier Paul watched him. Priest pinched the blade point, held it over his shoulder, hesitated, a request for permission, threw. It severed the spine of a small book; weight gradually pulled the book down/onto its binding. Xavier Paul applauded without sound. Priest was pleased. Then, using his palm as a shoehorn, Xavier Paul gendy helped Priest insert his foot into the overboot. He stayed the neck with sections of knotted shoelace. The mask and hood seemed a size too large, but there were no gaps at cheek or throat. Xavier Paul stood. He considered. He thumbed Priest’s face at the brow ridge, the long trapezium cheekbones. Priest’s eyes stared out of fat slots. Xavier Paul was baffled by their stupidity. He had brought two malacca canes, two empty canvas haversacks. He handed one of each to Priest.
“Follow me,” he mouthed. Priest held his arm.
“Why do I need the bag?”
“Just be a good boy and follow me.”
Priest stood in the crypt again. His breathing was stertorous, oral; his nostrils were shut. Along the side aisle Xavier Paul’s gait had appraised him. Step now, check; step now, check. Priest’s own cane answered, but joylessly; it was supportive, dull, not a free chorus to his walking. Priest had almost fallen on the spiral staircase. His right foot’s new bulk was unfamiliar; it could not judge surfaces. Priest realized that he was sick. Xavier Paul’s shoulder ballooned, subsided as he watched it, and the watching had become obligatory. A cymbal rush in his ears accompanied the shoulder’s transformation—an -inggg, -inggg, without the initial clash. He wanted the yellow pills now; he was afraid. Xavier Paul walked to the crypt’s western end. He waved Priest near. A family tomb had been set into the wall, McCULLOCH, two steel doors, handles of twined fruit. One quarter circle had been excised from the dust: recently someone had opened the right door. Xavier Paul wrapped Priest’s fingers around the handle. He stood behind him, chest to back, clutched his own hands around, one above, one beneath. A ring on his left hand clacked the steel. Priest was nauseated. The tiny noise echoed unreasonably, gonging, fading, gonging, a klaxon. They drove four legs backward and the door came out. Xavier Paul’s lips moved. Priest could not read them. He walked Xavier Paul back toward a single window’s light.
“What? I didn’t see.”
Priest went down. The roar drummed along his spinal cord, clamped his nape. And Xavier Paul was shouting again: “Well? Well? Can you understand me now? Can you, damn it?”
Priest held his ears, but that exacerbated the sound. There was an echo under his muffled palms. He made no sense of it.
Xavier Paul’s mouth was wide, ferocious. “Priest,” he bellowed. “Priest, I’ve been in prison too.” He clacked teeth together. “For eating.” He stepped forward.
Priest crawled away on his elbows. He mouthed, “You spoke. You spoke.”
“God damn right I did.” Xavier Paul laughed. The sound seemed to pullulate in Priest’s head; it spoke crazily of some third person. “God damn right he didddd. God damn right he diddd.” Priest glanced at the staircase, at the open window.
“Guardsmen.”
“Use your voice. Speak, man. Don’t be a coward.” Priest flopped onto his stomach. Xavier Paul hauled him upright by the empty haversack. “Priest. You know what I’ve got in there? Vegetables. Raisins. Figs. Celery. Big fat mushrooms. Salted dog meat.” He clapped Priest’s shoulder. “And wine. Six bottles of wine. Did you ever drink wine?”
Priest shook his head.
“Three bottles for you. Three bottles for me.”
“Speak. Speak!” He yelled. “I want company! I want talk!”
“Don’t—”
“Speak, you coward.”
“I’m sick. I’m dizzy.”
“Speak! How can men without voices know each other? I’m sick to death of this mincing and miming.”
“Give me the pills.”
“I’ll give you whatever you want. Just speak. Speak. Now.”
“The p-ills.” At the second word Priest’s voice appeared. The “p” remained a suggestion, a pucker, but the plural was hissed.
“Go on. Go on.” Priest murmured,
“What if they catch us?” Xavier Paul smiled. “If they catch us, then we’ll beat their heads in with our canes. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll beat their stupid heads in.”
Priest acted out laughter. Air rasped the membrane of his vocal cords. Priest laughed aloud tentatively, then gleefully. He brayed.
Chapter 7
They walked north on Route 17. Priest was uncomfortable. Xavier Paul had fed him cautiously: three small figs, water for the antibiotic pills. His stomach had clenched nonetheless. It moved as though with knuckles under the skin, a shut fist crushing an insect. He heard trickling: juices overproduced by his enthusiastic, unpracticed glands. For the first time. Priest began to sweat. He found the sensation disconcerting. Saliva troubled his tongue. He spat again and again, for he felt bloated, afraid to swallow. And he had gas: the initial popping bursts had startled him. Priest jumped, looked behind. Xavier Paul laughed. He thought Priest amusing.
Priest talked about Mary. He kept slightly ahead of Xavier Paul, torso turned three-quarters back
ward, as if to shoulder into head winds. It was useless—his lips were blurred, incoherent under the plastic mask—but Priest didn’t yet trust the efficacy of speech. He commented with a free left hand. The words were unelided, set apart for visual reading. He stumbled again and again. Xavier Paul, who had evoked Priest’s speech, became silent now, a constraint. He rapped warnings against Priest’s knee with his cane. There were numerous guardsmen on Route 17, particularly near the crowded Lesbian Convocation Center at Waldwick. Often Priest yelped words, his voice obstreperous, an unbroken animal. The wine bottles clinked in his haversack. Xavier Paul knew Priest’s ankle was destroyed. He would never walk normally again. They were making good progress, however; by three o’clock they had accomplished five of twelve miles to Suffern and the old New York State border.
Xavier Paul learned about Mary, how to hunt her. Priest’s wife had many foot shapes, it seemed; they changed with the terrain, with her speed and emotion. Xavier Paul wondered, at first, if this might not be some spirit, tracked in Priest’s delirium. But Priest was thorough, impatient: he had much to teach, though Xavier Paul would never cross Mary’s spoor. The left small toes were bunched under: you could see their hollowing even through a moccasin’s sole. In high grass the business was more challenging, but Mary’s legs would move like forceps closed: she was somewhat pigeontoed. Her breasts were small. Priest did not mean to apologize. Her nipples were fine, large and functional, mahogany colored, as if iced at their tips with translucent rime. Priest described their sexual games without embarrassment, innocent; yet when he spoke of the woman who had abandoned her child, he became reticent. The story of her death, of her self-abuse with the dildo, was euphemized, made cryptic. Priest had been shocked; he had no charity for her. Xavier Paul guessed that Priest had never known another woman. And Priest mentioned his fatherhood uncertainly. He was not convinced: he had seen neither the thing itself nor its spoor. He smiled. Priest thought he would call his child Xavier. The name had interested him. He asked Xavier Paul to pronounce it. But the name might be difficult for a child. Xavier Paul agreed. Death seemed impertinent then: Xavier Paul did not speak of it.
Near Allendale they watched a mass suicide. Graves had been excavated just inside the highway verge, arced, a lower plate of chunky teeth. Clothing and possessions had been draped on fifteen wooden scaffolds: scarecrows, simulacra of the dead. There were perhaps two dozen spectators. The men stripped; Priest saw that they had been castrated. The leader reviewed them, pausing, as he distributed capsules, at the foot of each grave. Some men embraced. The leader was four feet tall with powerful, grossly bowed legs. He had an awkward stride, as if lifting skis. His own grave faced the half circle. He took position, inclined backward, hands up, buttocks compressed like angry lips. Mosquitoes ate. The men swallowed in unison at the leader’s signal, a rehearsed present-arms. They waited, but the capsules killed unevenly. Three men dropped at once, then two: symmetry was ruined. The leader became irritated. He stamped one foot. Three men remained opposite him; one apologized, shrugging. The spectators laughed; they slapped inside their arms. Then three men collapsed. The leader, alone alive, toppled backward prematurely but missed the grave edge. He crawled in on all fours. Priest snorted. Xavier Paul examined the graves. His head was bowed. Some spectators scooped dirt in.
“Exhibitionists,” Xavier Paul said. “Poor fools.”
“They had no balls,” Priest said.
“Yes. You see things simply, don’t you?”
The restaurant had not been razed. Anxiously Xavier Paul coaxed Priest toward it. He had dined there often before the Decree. Priest was reluctant to stop, but Xavier Paul had promised him wine. Even thirty years before, the two-story hotel had been ungainly, old. Now a sedate gray lichen had broken out on the wooden façade; ice filaments. The builders had copied a Swiss chalet. In some places Priest saw the hewn log sections, unlit cigar ends; balconies with no access; ogee embellishments under the eaving, around the boarded windows. Behind, a bulldozer had completed one rush at the wall before running down. Jagged force lines radiated in the wood, a cartoon expression of impact. They edged atop the cab, under the upraised blade. Black streaks slithered over brown/yellow in the long kitchen. They had disturbed a colony of chipmunks. The chipmunks exited tumultuously through a wide fireplace, up the chimney. They cheeped as they ran, the sound of newspaper scouring glass.
The dining room preserved surprise. Tables were set, but their chairs had been wrenched to face the doorway. One lay on its back, some waiter’s tray between its legs, an exclamation point. Priest and Xavier Paul sensed that their entrance had been acknowledged. Priest set the haversack on a table. There had been tablecloths, but the wood was pulpy now, and the red/white check pattern had become absorbed, a decal. Grubs lived in necklace cells; they inflated slightly, subsided like small lungs. Xavier Paul covered another table with his plastic ground sheet. He served two bottles of Pommard. There were six figs for Priest, six for himself; six button mushrooms each, grown in the crypt; one four-inch thong of dog meat apiece. Priest grinned; the old man’s ceremony cheered him. Xavier Paul found two intact wine-glasses. He dusted them with his handkerchief. Red sediment walled the bottles. Xavier Paul drilled their corks out. He gestured to Priest, a man tossing horseshoes. Priest sat. The chair legs developed sudden knees, broke. The chair collapsed. Priest sprawled on the floor. Priest gestured to Xavier Paul, a man tossing horseshoes. Xavier Paul did not sit. They laughed aloud.
Priest was drunk at once. Talking, he bit inflamed parts of his mouth. His voice was hoarse. Xavier Paul did not often understand him. He clutched the wine bottle with both hands, alarmed by Priest’s gusto, by the fist that came down when he had no words. Loose grubs were winnowed from the under-table surface, lima beans on the floor. Priest ate wastefully: his throat was constricted and orts of food returned. Priest described Yankee Prison, then the great cable. He began talking disconnectedly of his father. Priest glanced up at Xavier Paul, frowning. He examined the old man’s face. Xavier Paul ate primly, pincering, as though he needed to keep his teeth balanced upright. Priest rolled a death capsule up/along his inside pocket lining. He put it on his plate, bisected it with tarnished knife and fork. But the yellow granules distressed him. He threw his plate against the wall. Xavier Paul flinched.
“You have one?” Priest leaned across the table, arms out in a V.
“A pill? Yes.”
“You will swallow it? Huh?”
“It’s strange. In my faith once it was a sin to commit suicide. But now—what does it matter?” He smiled. “At my age it’s suicide to live. I could drop dead, here, this minute. I could commit suicide by running, by holding my breath too long. God will forgive my htde sin.”
“Sin?” Priest screwed a fist into his eye socket: some child suppressing tears. He propped his head on it.
“Sin. Something that is wrong to do.” Priest blew at Xavier Paul; he almost spat.
“Something that is wrong to do. You’re like all the others; you think Priest is stupid. Stupid is my disguise. No one believed I was smart. So I’m stupid for them.” Xavier Paul seemed less tall, sitting. The height was in his legs. “Why do you do it? Die.”
“I’m eighty-nine years old. I’ve kept alive thinking they would need me. When the people revolted. When my God revealed himself.” He drank. “But it never happened. I hate these people who hate their own lives. People who are guilty when they breathe with the lungs God gave them, who have no way to expiate their guilt. The world is polluted with despair. They deserve to die. Yet—” he inhaled. “I have been lonely.”
“Me. I like to breathe.” Priest pounced on the air, mouth ohhed. He choked; laughed at choking.
“I do too. But my lungs seem smaller now. This wine has disappointed me. I looked forward to it. But my tongue is cardboard. There’s dust on it. I should have drunk this years ago.
“I like to breathe,” Priest repeated. “I don’t mind killing the bugs. They’re bugs. Who cares about bugs? Who c
ares for birds and dogs and trees? I want to live with my family.”
“Then live.” Xavier Paul watched him.
“Yes.” Priest smoothed the bottle’s flank, as if it had fur and a nap. “And they’ll kill me. My wife and my child.”
“You could go into the woods. I don’t think they would really kill you. They’ve lost the will. It’s just—they’ve made the world so miserable, death has become a habit with us.”
“No. They have strength.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. Don’t be a child. Don’t be gullible. They’re effete. Afraid of you.”
“I’m not a child. I know them.” Priest frowned.
“What do you know? A fool from the country.”
“Two of them. Two guardsmen yesterday.” He drew his mouth comer back, remembering. “They tried to kill me.”
“Bah, You ran away—you only think they would have killed you.”
“I didn’t run. No.” Priest drank. “The bees stung me. I couldn’t run. They tried to give me one of the pills. Push it in my mouth. They held me down.” Priest pressed the bottle stem against his lips, said, “Ssssh—“
“And? You escaped.”
“No. No.” Priest smiled. He picked up a table knife. He was wary. “I killed them.”
“Good God, man.” Xavier Paul closed his fist. A fig’s white bowels extruded from the eye of his hand, between thumb and curled forefinger. Then he smiled. “You’re lying—dreaming.
“I am not.” Priest was insulted. “I won’t tell you things if you don’t believe me.”
“No. On second thought—I do. I believe you. It was a shock to hear it; that’s all.” Xavier Paul looked away, at the floor. Some of the chipmunks had returned. Xavier Paul preferred to address them. “He killed two men yesterday. And we talk about bugs.”
“They killed the little girl. Did I say that? I didn’t want to kill them.” A fork pierced through the ground sheet, through the pulpy sheath of wood rot. It stood upright. The handle sang when Priest’s fingers released it. “They made me angry. They killed the little girl—but I didn’t know it then. No. I only knew it after.” Priest held his lower lip. “It was the bees. They stung me. But you said it too. You said we’ll bash their heads in with our canes.”
