by James Morrow
“The windows are rolled up,” Nora explained, rubbing her sore knee.
Predictably, the gas cap was locked, but they’d come prepared. Nora held the flashlight while Douglas wielded the hammer and chisel. Seven blows, and the fuel tank was theirs. Eagerly they inserted the rubber tube and switched on the Siemens siphon, powered by four C batteries from Kevin’s toy robot. When the first ounces spurted into the milk jug, brother and sister cheered in unison. The gasoline kept coming, and within five minutes they had successfully pirated an entire gallon.
As the night deepened, they repeated the procedure, again and again, until nine jugs of Gansevoort high-test sat along the edge of the hole like severed heads ringing a chopping block. The graverobbers were filling jug number ten when a male voice exploded from the darkness.
“Hold it right there!”
Nora directed the flashlight beam toward the intruder. A young man, stripped to the waist and skinny as a whippet’s fetch, stood on the far edge of the pit, gripping a revolver. His smile, like God’s, was scornful.
“Guess you had the same idea as me,” said the young man. “These rich people, they can afford the really good embalmers. The best-preserved meat in Massachusetts.” His face suddenly contorted, a caricature of astonishment. “Hey—you’re Mrs. Burkhart. I had you for ninth-grade English. Remember me? Curtis Padula?”
“I remember you,” said Nora, climbing out of the grave. Though not fondly, she was tempted to add. Curtis had been one of those semiliterate slouch masters who read Strumpet magazine under his desk and fell asleep in class. “Stop pointing that gun at me, Curtis.”
“Mrs. Burkhart, wow, I never imagined meeting you here.”
For Nora it was a familiar phenomenon: the student who was amazed to discover that his teachers had lives outside the classroom.
“The gun, Curtis.”
The revolver remained frozen. Cradling the Siemens siphon, Douglas exited the hole and joined his sister on the grass.
“You don’t need that,” said Curtis, indicating the siphon. “I’ve done experiments. Hang the corpse upside down from a road sign, slit the throat, and the formaldehyde runs out like sap from a maple tree.”
“Like sap from a maple tree,” echoed Nora. “An impressive simile, Curtis. What did I give you?”
“A fucking C minus.”
“You could’ve earned a B.” Cautiously she began loading the milk jugs into the wheelbarrow. “Did anything from our Greek mythology unit stay with you?”
“’Fraid not.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I remember Zeus had a really busy pecker.” Keeping his gun trained alternately on Nora and Douglas, Curtis approached the monument and leaned against the Korty Madonna’s hip. “Your husband?”
“Brother. What about Jason and the Golden Fleece? Icarus and Daedalus?”
“Go home, Mrs. Burkhart. These burgers belong to me.”
“We came for the gasoline.”
“The gasoline? Maybe you didn’t hear, but the world has ended. There’s no place worth visiting anymore.”
“Put your gun down, Curtis,” she said firmly. “I mean it.”
Evidently she’d hit the right note, for Curtis now engaged in the atavistic action of obeying his former teacher, slipping the pistol into his pants pocket.
“You’re probably disappointed in me,” he said.
“I admire your initiative,” she said.
Throughout the rest of the week, Nora and Douglas pursued their careers as gasoline ghouls, exhuming a different Gansevoort each evening and plundering the coffin: motorcycle, speedboat, private plane, stock car. By midnight on Friday they’d stolen the last of the lot, for a total of fifty-two gallons. Assuming she drove Phaëthon slowly and efficiently, she had enough gasoline to reach the Texas-Louisiana border.
“And then what?” asked Douglas, siphoning the final ounce of Gansevoort high-test.
“I’ll commandeer a horse and buggy,” said Nora.
“I don’t know where you get your ambition, Sis. Mom didn’t have any. Dad neither.”
“Heredity is not destiny.”
“Martin Luther would agree with you there. We’re all born equally depraved, regardless of chromosomes.” He set the jug inside the barrow and groaned. “I want you to promise me something. That thing Curtis Padula has been doing—you’d never resort to that, would you?”
“‘Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.’ Herman Melville.”
“You’ve got a quote for everything,” said Douglas. “It’s going to be the death of you.”
P A R T T W O
Gilgamesh in
Greensboro
The God’s Ear Brigade
NORA HADN’T DRIVEN the Mass Pike since 1994, when she and a select group of her ninth graders went to see Diana Rigg play Medea at the Longacre Theater on Broadway. Except for Wendy Katzenbaum and a few other teacher’s pets, the students had reacted doltishly to Euripides’ tragedy, finding it boring and pointless. But Nora was shaken to the core. Killing your own children to spite their philandering father…to Nora it was unthinkable, and yet two weeks after seeing Medea, she’d learned that her divorced friend Elyse Phillips had seriously contemplated this very crime, and the following year an Arkansas woman had captured headlines by going through with it. Abominable fantasies of revenge, Nora had concluded at the time, were probably more common than most people cared to admit.
Seagulls wheeled across the ubiquitous skull, looking for dead abulics not yet picked over by the buzzards and crows.
Maybe she’d made a mistake in taking only her smartest students to Medea. Perhaps a future cannibal like Curtis Padula would have better grasped its essence. Dining on the Gansevoorts each night, he had probably, like Medea, concluded that a life lived in extremis was better than one of inertia and resignation. In the end Curtis, too, would doubtless feed on gall and wormwood, but at least he’d said no to the Fates.
Nora owned the turnpike. The concrete stretched nakedly before her, mile after mile. The impulse to speed was strong, but her circumstances argued against it. Phaëthon was a traveling bomb, the cargo bay loaded with forty gallons of Gansevoort premium confined by HDPE recyclable plastic. Complementing this cache were thirteen additional milk jugs, still empty despite her recent raids on a dozen derelict cars in Cambridge—but she refused to regard that failure as ominous. Surely some unguarded gasoline lay between Massachusetts and Texas, free for the stealing.
Kevin lay in the cargo bay, sprawled across a Posturpedic mattress and guarded by his old stuffed monkey, Rodney, central to a trick called “Tarzan and the Witch Doctor.” With the arrival of the boils, he’d become too flaccid for the wheelchair, but she’d brought it along in case his recovery included a temporary return to stage two. Besides placing his mattress as far from the gasoline jugs as possible, she’d surrounded him with plastic pots of hyacinths. The hydrocarbon stench prevailed, but that hardly mattered: he seemed oblivious to olfactory data these days, along with visual, auditory, and tactile data. Only the subtle rising and falling of his chest differentiated him from those abulics whose fetches had consummated the relationship.
Reaching her exit, Sturbridge, Nora enjoyed the trivial thrill of cruising through the tollbooth without paying, snapping off the crossing gate like the lead runner breaking the tape at the Boston Marathon. As she headed south along Interstate 84, a thundershower broke, sheets of rain cascading out of the macabre sky. She turned on the wipers. The surrounding funeral pyres blazed through the storm like signal beacons, their flames writhing and guttering beneath the squalls. Nora knew that the roasting corpses stank, but between the ghastly familiarity of that aroma and the gas fumes filling the cab, the sensation barely registered. In a peculiar way she drew comfort from the pyres, a rational public-health measure undertaken by a civilization otherwise in chaos.
Normally a motor trip from Boston to Manhattan would last only four hours, with Nora reaching the George Washington Bridge well befor
e 2:00 P.M., but normalcy had long since succumbed to abulia. A mile outside Hartford, she pulled over preparatory to the lengthy business of feeding Kevin his lunch, dressing his pustules, and exercising his limbs. As the rain slackened, she dumped some uncooked macaroni into a saucepan of water and set it on her Sterno stove. While the macaroni softened, she changed her son’s diaper. His stool was bilious, the color and consistency of guacamole. During her first months of motherhood, Nora had vaguely enjoyed diapering Kevin—it was earthy, reassuring, and imparted a certain order to the universe—but now she could extract no pleasure from the process.
She fed him, attended his boils, and had just begun his physical therapy when the rear doors swung back, releasing a flood of damp gray light into the cargo bay. A young woman stood in the drizzle, wearing a black motorcycle jacket studded with silver nodes, her neck encircled by a long white aviator’s scarf that hung down her chest like a tallith. She glared at Nora and spoke, her voice resonant with a confidence that doubtless sprang from the Uzi machine gun balanced on her arm.
“Got anything to eat?”
“Macaroni,” said Nora nervously. She was pretty sure Curtis Padula wouldn’t have shot her, but she couldn’t predict the behavior of this total stranger. “Also beef jerky, raisins, baked beans, and chili.”
“I’ll take the jerky.” Glossy chestnut hair framed the stranger’s face, the tresses pasted to her cheeks by the rain.
Nora reached into her picnic basket, removed the plastic-wrapped package of Tillamook Country Smoker, and reluctantly surrendered it.
“Where’re you heading?” asked the stranger.
“South.”
“How far?”
“Pretty far.”
“You’re not with the Anglos, are you?”
“Who?”
“My worst enemy. Yours too, maybe. I’m Rachel Sorkin. Your truck says Ray Feldstein, but that probably isn’t your name.”
“Nora Burkhart.”
“Hey, Nora Burkhart can you give me a lift as far as Jersey?”
“What if I said no?”
“I’d probably shoot you.” Tearing open the package of Tillamook Country Smoker, Rachel took out a jerky hunk and chewed it with the zeal of a child devouring a candy bar.
“Come out of the rain. You’ll catch”—a smile twisted Nora’s lips—“your death.”
Rachel snorted, shouldered her gun, and climbed into the cargo bay, her sharp leathery fragrance mingling with the gasoline fumes. “Clever idea you’ve got here, turning your truck into a hearse.” She pointed toward Kevin and the hyacinths. “I didn’t know anybody still bothered with funerals. How much’re they paying you?”
“This isn’t a hearse, and we aren’t going to a funeral,” said Nora, annoyed. “Our destination is the Lucido Clinic in Mexico.”
“Never heard of it.”
“My son happens to be alive. The flowers are a deodorizer.”
Rachel grimaced. “People say callous things these days. I’m sorry.” Her tone was more defensive than apologetic. “Thected, right? My father’s fetch entered him last month”—she patted her gun—“so I’m going to Paramus in his place. You got any more beef?”
“There’s a war in Paramus?”
“Among other towns. I’m still hungry, sweetie.”
“Nora.”
As Rachel consumed her second piece of jerky, she explained how the entire metropolitan New York area was presently convulsed by civil strife. The Greater Manhattan B’nai B’rith had dispatched heralds to the farthest reaches of Connecticut and New Jersey proclaiming that all decent people, regardless of ethnic or religious heritage, should arm themselves and come fight the good fight. Rachel intended to enlist in the Army of Northern New Jersey, whose commanders were committed to engaging and defeating the Anglo-Saxon Christian Brotherhood, currently inflicting pogroms on Jewish communities throughout the northeast.
“Look, I’m sympathetic to your cause,” said Nora. “I’m half Jewish myself. But I can’t get involved in a war right now.”
“Nobody’s asking you to get involved,” said Rachel. “Just drive me to Paramus.”
“One stray bullet could turn this truck into a fireball.”
“Drop me off in Emerson, and I’ll walk the rest of the way.” Rachel climbed into the passenger seat, locking the Uzi between her knees. “Now let’s get going, okay? If I miss the big battle, I’ll never forgive myself.”
All during the trip to New Haven, Rachel chattered, placing the pogroms in historical context. Among the collateral insanities accruing to the Black Death that had devastated fourteenth-century Europe, she explained, was a systematic attempt to assuage the Almighty’s wrath through Hebrew blood. Still angry over the Jews’ role in His son’s assassination, per Matthew 27:25, God would purportedly lift the bubonic plague only after the Gentile nations demonstrated a serious commitment to anti-Semitism. In Basel, thousands of Jews were locked inside wooden buildings and burned alive. In Spyer, the victims were sealed in wine casks and rolled into the Rhine. Now history was repeating itself. For the past six months, the Anglo-Saxon Christian Brotherhood—which had first gained public attention when its terrorist arm, the Sword of Jehovah Strike Force, appointed itself the Corpus Dei’s guardian during the great trial—had been sending its divisions north, mostly to New York City, “where the Jews are,” in the words of the coalition’s commander-in-chief, a West Virginia snake handler named Durward Montminy. At the moment Manhattan was besieged: traffic arteries severed, tunnels barricaded, rivers patrolled. Additional Anglo-Saxon regiments had penetrated what Montminy called “the Jew-contaminated strongholds” of northeast New Jersey and the Bronx peninsula, but the communities had mounted impressive counterattacks. From Nutley to Englewood, Mount Vernon to Scarsdale, the two sides had fought each other to a standstill.
A profound sense of dislocation overcame Nora, as if she’d walked into her apartment and found a family of bears in residence—except it was not her apartment but a significant portion of her country that had fallen to invaders.
“When we leave Connecticut, be sure to get on 287 north toward the river,” said Rachel.
“Wouldn’t the George Washington Bridge be faster?”
“Anglo saboteurs dynamited the G. W. last week. The God’s Ear Brigade. God listens only to them. The Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck are open, but Long Island is now in enemy hands.”
“So it’s the Tappan Zee Bridge or nothing?”
“You’re lucky I came your way, Nora Burkhart. Without my guidance, you’d be driving right smack into Hell.”
At noon the rain stopped. The storm clouds lifted; the skull resumed its celestial hegemony. New Haven came and went. An elaborate yawn seized Rachel Sorkin, traveling the length of her body.
“You need a nap,” said Nora.
“Can I trust you not to steal my gun?”
A tempting thought, Nora had to admit. An Uzi was probably exactly the sort of gift that would get Kevin into the clinic. “You’ll have to take your chances.”
Weapon in hand, Rachel crawled into the cargo bay, stretched out on the floor between the wheelchair and the empty milk jugs, and drifted into an unquiet sleep. Snoring and twitching, she held the Uzi to her breast like a child clutching a rag doll.
Nora didn’t know what to make of her companion. She suspected that Rachel’s coarseness disguised an essential fragility: sandpaper gift-wrapping a china figurine. No doubt the young woman could fire her Uzi, but she’d probably never drawn blood with it.
Absently Nora flipped on the radio and rotated the tuner knob. Pops, crackles, wows, and whines filled the cab. She left the receiver fixed on a rhythmic discharge of static, oddly soothing, like electric surf caressing a platinum beach.
A mile outside Bridgeport, a new sound arose, a pathological thump, thump, thump. The steering wheel jerked left, fighting her attempts to straighten it as the truck lurched toward the shoulder. “Damn,” growled Nora. “Hell.” Pulling over, she kille
d the engine and hopped out. Her guess was correct: the driver’s-side front tire had become a shapeless mass of rubber. Nora was up to the task—during her nine years in Ray Feldstein’s employ, she’d changed as many flats on Phaëthon—but the uncertainties always rattled her. The wrench might be missing, the lugs frozen, the ground too soggy to support the scissors jack.
She opened the cargo bay doors, inhaled the mixture of gas fumes and hyacinths, and got the necessary tools. The tire swap went smoothly, and soon she was reversing the scissors jack and lowering the chassis. She paused briefly to eat two handfuls of Sun-Maid raisins, then shoved the box back into her Celtics jacket, picked up the lug wrench, and gave each nut a final twist.
On the opposite side of the highway a banana-yellow bus emblazoned with the words SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PROVIDENCE pulled over, its tailpipe spouting black exhaust. Oddly, the school bus’s passengers were all adults, their expressionless faces pressed against the windows, eyelids drooping, irises milky.
Throwing his transmission into neutral, the bus driver activated the pneumatic double door. An unearthly stink wafted across the road. The driver grabbed a battered suitcase and eased his bulk onto the gravel. He was middle-aged and bushy-bearded, with the belly of a man whose pre-plague exercise regimen was probably limited to separating six-pack cans from their plastic tethers. A baseball cap protected his head, a ratty fisherman’s sweater warmed his chest, and a double-barrel shotgun teetered in the crook where his left hand entered his pants pocket, the dual muzzles angling toward Nora’s knees.
Why was everyone pointing guns at her these days?
“Let me offer my services,” said the driver.
“I’m really just finishing up,” said Nora, struggling to place the stink. She had a theory, but she hoped it wasn’t true. “Thanks for stopping, though.”
“I’m not talking about lug wrenches. I’m talking about everlasting life.” He leaned his shotgun against the bus, then set his suitcase on the ground and lifted the lid. A hundred paperback books spilled forth. Like a miser fondling gold coins, he pushed his hands into the mass of recycled pulp and buried his arms to the elbows. He extracted two volumes with a theatrical flourish. “Look, I wrote these—The Myth of Oblivion and The Mortality Hoax, both best-sellers!” A staccato giggle, at once vain and desperate, issued from his throat. “That’s my name on the cover, Harvey Sheridan, award-winning spiritualist and president of the Institute for Afterlife Studies!” He displayed another pair of paperbacks. “E-Mail from the Dead, that’s mine too, and look here, Postmortem Phone Calls!” Dipping into his suitcase a third time, he pulled out a cluster of audiocassettes. “Eleven hundred hours of recorded conversations with departed spirits! There is no death, dear lady, and I’ve got proof—proof!” He flung the cassettes aside and seized his shotgun. “Mortality is a fraud, do you understand? The skull is a lie. Right before they passed over, my passengers all grasped that essential truth.”
