White Horse

by Alex Adams

  “How else do you expect the blood to drain? Cook it.”

  Lisa leaps up, stumbles from the circle. The sound of her retching drowns out the insect cries.

  “My experience with meat is limited to what’s in the supermarket in neat packets,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn.” From my backpack, I draw out the cleaver with its honed edge. My hands shake.

  The soldier takes the Swiss’s rope. “I will help.”

  Though there is abundant light, the Swiss’s eyes remain hard and dark. He crouches by the fire. “It is women’s work.”

  We do what we must. The president’s words, just before anarchy squeezed the government from its fortresses of power. We do what we must. I’ve done that. I’m doing that. Because if I don’t, I’ll topple into the remnants of my life where I’ll languish and turn to dust.

  We do what we must. The words give me no comfort as I peel the goat’s skin like it’s a bloody banana. The guts spill at my feet; I tell myself it’s just Grandma’s sausage stew heaped upon the grass. When the goat no longer looks like an animal but like a random slab of meat hanging in a butcher’s window, I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and find it wet.

  The soldier appears at my elbow. “Show me.” He holds out his hand and I give him the knife.

  “Where you go?”

  “Brindisi.”

  “Ah. For the boats, yes?”

  “Yes.” The blade gains confident speed in his hands. “Have you done this before?”

  “Yes. My family, they have a farm with …”

  He stops, pushes his nose flat.

  “Pigs?”

  “And chickens. I learn very young to cut meat for my family. My father he teach me.”

  “Is your family still alive, do you know?”

  “They are dead. My sister … maybe. She lives in Roma with her family. And you?”

  “Gone.”

  His eyes are soft with empathy. “But we are here, yes?”

  “For now.”

  “You must have the hope.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard.”

  “Yes, is hard. Maybe hardest the mans and the womans have seen. But we are here.” He holds up two goat’s legs. “And tonight we have food.”

  Soon we are satiated in a way none of us have known for weeks. The goat is tough, stringy, overcooked, but I don’t care. As each hot bite slides down my throat, I lose myself in a fantasy where I’m in a fine restaurant devouring a steak, and a wine waiter hovers nearby, eager to refill my glass.

  The soldier tears into his portion, ripping away the fibrous tissue. “Sorry,” he says when he realizes I’m watching.

  I stop chewing long enough to answer. “Don’t be. It’s good to enjoy food with friends.”

  He toasts me with his canteen.

  Friends. Is that what these people are to me? Lisa withdraws further daily, and the Swiss is incapable of anything warmer than a snarl. Only the soldier, the newest of our group, feels like someone in whom I could confide. Even now they remain in character. The Swiss gnaws at the meat, gaze darting around the group as though someone will wrestle him for his prize. Beside him, Lisa carves her meal into doll-sized pieces with my paring knife. Her hair is a limp greasy waterfall concealing her face as she chews and swallows.

  Soon my belly swells with food, and I feel that now-familiar flutter.

  Stabbing his knife into another chunk of meat, the soldier smiles and offers me the handle. “Eat, eat.”

  “I can’t. Too much food.”

  “You are too skinny.” He laughs. I laugh, too, because we are all too thin, and we’d need more than just this meal to regrow our padding.

  “You’ll be fat soon enough,” the Swiss says abruptly. “If that monster inside you does not die.”

  I chew, swallow, wonder if the Swiss ever had manners or if this world snatched them away. The soldier looks at me.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Lisa stares through the fire with her one eye, her mouth no longer moving.

  “You didn’t say,” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because we’ve had other things to worry about.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  The Swiss laughs. It’s not a happy sound. “Women.”

  Afterward, when we’ve buried the scraps and settled around the fire, the Italian inches closer to me.

  “You have bambino? I will come with you to Brindisi, make sure you are safe. My country, my people are …” He makes a motion like snapping a twig in two.

  “Thank you.”

  He’s a hero. Streets all over the world are littered with people just like him.

  I dream of mice and broken men and all the promises I couldn’t keep. They hound me until I wake. The ground where the soldier had lain is empty. Beneath the tree’s rim of drooping branches, the Swiss stands watching the night. Although he’s not facing me, can’t know my eyes have opened, he speaks.

  “The soldier left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I told you, he left.”

  “Just like that? Without saying good-bye?”

  “He said ciao.”

  “In the dark.”

  “The man changed his mind and said he wanted to find his sister, if she is still alive. I saw him back to the road and pointed the way.”

  When he turns, I see he’s holding something in his hands. An icy glove grabs my heart, squeezes until I ache from the cold.

  “That’s his gun.”

  “He gave it to me. A gift.”

  I don’t believe him. But suddenly he’s the one holding a gun and I’m holding nothing as a shield. So I say nothing. I curl up close to the fire’s humble flicker and watch as he polishes the weapon with the flap of his shirt.

  I don’t say what I think. I don’t dare speak the words for fear that utterance will lend them the spark of life.

  The soldier is dead. The soldier is dead. The soldier is dead.

  DATE: THEN

  “Raoul is gone.”

  James is leaning against my apartment door, his skin on loan from Madame Tussaud’s, his breathing labored as though he’s trying to inhale soup.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

  We’ve been here before, one or both of us heartbroken. The evening usually ends with too many drinks and morbid tales of other past loves, but not tonight. On this night James looks as though he’s clawed his way out of a coffin. “What happened? I thought you guys really hit it off.”

  “He didn’t leave.” James spits out the words like olive pits. “He’s dead. Dead. Dead.” His lanky frame folds up on itself as he sinks to the floor. “Dead.”

  “Dead?”

  I can’t believe it, and yet, I’m not surprised, but I can’t explain why. Only that somewhere deep, I know something I wish I didn’t.

  “That’s what I said,” he cries. “I was going to fall in love with him. Maybe I already was in love and that’s why this hurts so bad. We’d already talked about getting a place out of the city eventually. Having a family.”

  “What happened, baby?”

  “He just died. He got sick and then he stopped breathing. Then he got cold like his fucking potsherds.”

  “I’m so sorry, James. So sorry.”

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  I crouch beside him, encircle his shoulders, pull him close until his head tucks into my neck’s curve. “Tell me.”

  He looks up, the fine threads in his eyes blazing red. “I think I’ve got what he’s had. I think I’m going to die.”

  My mouth opens but the words don’t come. And then I find them hidden in that place where you store the lies you tell the people you love so you can protect them from the world’s hard truths.

  “You’re not going to die, James. I’m taking you to the emergency room, okay?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I am, I promise. Let me get my keys.”

  “I mean I don’t bel
ieve I’m not going to die. I can feel it, Zoe, waiting for me. When I fell asleep last night, Raoul was there. Only, it wasn’t my Raoul. It was Death wearing his face, same as in that new exhibit we’ve got from Africa. He loved that exhibit. He said it made him feel good to know that there was a time and place where it was socially acceptable to wear a mask.”

  “I want you to show me the exhibit when you’re feeling better.” His head sags, sinks to his chest. “James?”

  Eyes closed, he smiles at the ground. “Still here. You haven’t got rid of me yet.”

  My shoulders sag. “You scared me.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Then he slumps over. Shudders wrack his body. He claws at his throat, body flopping on the ground. He’s having a seizure and I can’t remember what to do. Put something between his teeth so he doesn’t swallow his tongue? Or is that something they only do on TV, something completely useless in real life? I roll him onto his side and hold him as steady as I can in the recovery position while he shakes like the earth’s plates are colliding inside him. Everything scatters when I upend my purse on the floor. I scramble for my cell phone and dial 911.

  The line rings out. Rings out again. I redial just in case I messed up those three easy digits. Nothing. Just the huff of frustration that escapes my lungs.

  James falls still. I wait for the aftershocks, but there is nothing but the sound of the operator picking up.

  “What is the emergency?”

  My fingers search for his pulse, but there’s nothing beneath the clammy wax that just a few moments ago was his skin. I must be wrong. There’s a pulse. There has to be.

  “Hello?”

  I’m looking in the wrong place, that’s it.

  “James, wake up,” I say.

  I press a hand to his chest and feel for the bump-bump, bump-bump. And wait while my lips give out my address by rote.

  “What is your emergency?” repeats the tin woman.

  “Just hurry. Please.” The phone flies across the room, gently persuaded by my fist.

  “James? Get up now.” I slap his chest. Slap his face so hard it jerks to the right. “James?” Louder now, like’s he’s old and deaf and not—

  Don’t say it. If you don’t say it, it isn’t true.

  —dead.

  Don’t. Just don’t.

  I need to will him back to life. I throw my weight into pumping his heart, force my breath into his mouth, and … nothing. His heart rejects my touch, his lungs my breath. His soul cares nothing for my will. But I keep going until I realize there’s a thin noise coming from his throat.

  No, not his throat exactly. Further back, a direct drop from his ears.

  It looks like my mother’s roast lamb when she cuts deep slits into the meat and forces a garlic clove into each gash. Only, his neck’s covered with paper-thin flaps—

  I breathe into James, press his chest with both hands.

  —that quiver as air tags them on the way out.

  I’ve seen these before, in aquariums and seafood restaurants. Gills. James has gills.

  DATE: NOW

  It’s the noise that wakes me, small and secret and hidden. Some sounds belong to misdeeds, and when we hear them we know something is wrong.

  I keep still, eyes tight, suppressing one sense so the other can requisition its strength. The fire is dying; I no longer feel its heat raging, although there is still a gentle warmth kissing my skin that tells me not all is lost. By dawn the fire will be gone, and, soon after, so will we.

  With my vision restrained, I pick through the night’s sounds for the anomaly.

  Dark is louder than light. Under the guise of night, the underbelly of nature reveals itself. Creatures slither and slink so as to not attract the attention of their natural foe. Predators are less cautious. They flap and soar until some meat-object takes their fancy. Then they dive and snatch up what they can. There are the desperate cries of prey in those final moments as death rattles their bones. Chirps and clicks herald a desire to mate. And there’s the musical tinkle of water wending through the land, searching for its source … or leaving home.

  Even without these things, darkness has a sound of its own that has nothing do to with silence in the same way that space has nothing to do with emptiness. That’s an illusion that fools us all until we really pay attention.

  My mind drifts until it catches on that noise that doesn’t belong. A whimper with a whisper chaser. Is it crying? Because that’s what it sounds like. There’s that same hitch between breaths.

  I slowly sit, pull my body together in case I need to spring up in a hurry. Push off the ground until I’m standing.

  I’m alone. Lisa and the Swiss are missing. But not for long. I find them underneath the stars and it is here I discover the source of the anomalous sound.

  Even with his back to me, I know. I’ve been there. I’ve been her. The Swiss stands while Lisa kneels before him, servicing him with her mouth. I’ve seen how she turns to him with reverence and adoration, a twisted cousin to Stockholm syndrome. Worshipping a savior who is also your subjugator. He knows I’m there. He always does. He laughs at my shock. I am no prude and yet, there is a crudeness, an obscenity about him, that goes far beyond the bounds of love and sex and porn.

  “Watch if you like.”

  “You’re a pig,” I say. The girl tries to pull away at the sound of my voice but he holds her fast by the hair until she gags. He releases Lisa, steps back so she falls onto her hands, retching into the grass. She crawls further into the scrub, until she fades to a heaving silhouette.

  “She’s sick.”

  “Morning sickness.” He zips up, tucks the gun into the back of his pants like they do in the movies.

  “How do you know it’s not White Horse?” I ask.

  “She was stupid enough to have unprotected intercourse. Recently.” His stare is cool and laced with triumph. “She told me freely, without my asking. In a few months she will be cured. Do not think I’m the father. I’m not.” He swaggers like he has a secret worth keeping.

  I know you’re not. I keep that thought safe and sound in my head. My instincts tell me not to speak.

  “It could still be White Horse.”

  “She showed me her breasts. They look like road maps. Have you seen your own recently? Are the veins not more prominent? Are your breasts not fuller when the rest of your body is slackening and growing thinner each day?” He draws up level to me, his lips curled into a cruel sneer. “You can raise your children together without fathers. Bastards.”

  He can never know who the father of Lisa’s baby must be. Ever. Because behind his eyes, just beyond the cold crust he wears as a protective shell, sits a pile of broken hinges; there’s no way to gauge which way his sanity will swing.

  “You’re only with us because three is safer than two,” I say.

  “I’m with you because I choose to be. Whether you and that little whore like it or not.”

  “Keep on thinking that.”

  “You’ll die without me. Like your stupid friend almost died.”

  Lisa’s shoulders heave. Not White Horse. Not going to die. Pregnant. Just like me. I know the Swiss is right; once again, I was too busy watching for death to recognize the signs of new life. Relief mixes with my fear and coagulates to the point where I can no longer distinguish the two.

  What a pair we are.

  The chain-link fence wears a razor wire crown, a tiara a former beauty queen has cast aside. Its tarnish and regret do not stop it from maintaining its dignity; once upon a time, it stood for something.

  We stand on the road, watching it turn to rust. After one perfect day, the rains have come again, more vengeful than ever.

  “I’m going there,” the Swiss says. There’s a capillary road that bleeds off this one and walks right up to the structure’s front door.

  I turn away, pick up my stride. “We don’t have time. The land is completely flat. That could be miles away.”

  “Maybe in America, but no
t here. Italy is made of mountains.” He waves a hand at the landscape. “In Italy, spaces do not go on forever.”

  I stop, sit on the blacktop with the rain forming shallow puddles around me.

  “Go, then,” I tell him. “But if you’re not back in an hour I’m leaving.”

  “What is it?” Lisa asks.

  “It looks like a military facility,” I say.

  She aims her question at the Swiss. “Is that true?”

  No answer. He stands there, legs spread, arms folded, maybe daring the fence to come closer, or—more likely—trying to choose the perfect insult for this occasion.

  “Stay or go, it makes no difference,” he says.

  Her body coiled in tense knots, Lisa trembles as she struggles to choose a side of the fence. Stay or go. With me or with him. She’s going to be a mother, forced to choose between far more dismal options than this. I cannot help her with one so simple. Questions form on her face, fall away, form anew. She’s a desperate kaleidoscope searching for a pattern that both asks her questions and answers them with words that will yield comfort.

  Stay. Lisa decides to stay. So we stand together as I watch the Swiss trash-compacted by distance.

  “I’m not pregnant. I’m not.”

  “If you are, at least you know that’s why you’ve been sick.”

  “I’ve got White Horse. I’m gonna die.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I do. I am.”

  “Were you on birth control?”

  “I’m going to die. You’re wrong.”

  “He says you are. You believe him, don’t you?” It’s cruel but necessary. Denial won’t do anything but damage.

  She stares sightlessly.

  “I didn’t want to believe it, either, when I found out about my baby. There was a war limping along and half the world was already dead. Old life was disappearing and there I was with the nerve to create new. Like getting a new puppy too soon after your old dog dies.”

  “Are you happy?”

  Happy. What does that even mean? I can’t recall, but I think it has something to do with ice cream cones hastily licked at the beach before the butter pecan melted all over my fingers. Once your fingers get ice-creamed, they’re done for. All the rinsing in the world doesn’t wash away those last vestiges of stickiness. But you smile because the ice cream taste still lingers, reminding you that happiness comes in double dips pressed into a sugar cone with a wet metal scoop.