The Wildlands

by Abby Geni

  Tucker stopped to refill the gas tank. He parked the pickup in the shade of a burger joint beside a thicket of nettles. We sat side by side in the truck bed, sharing sips from a water bottle.

  “What are the rules of our trip?” he asked.

  I sighed. We had gone over this before, but Tucker was fond of pop quizzes.

  “Always pay cash,” I said. “Speak only when spoken to.”

  “What else?”

  “Stay under the speed limit. Don’t shoplift. No littering.”

  “That’s right. Obey all the little rules so you can break the big ones. People only get caught if they slip up.” He nudged me with his elbow. “I read about a guy—an arsonist, I think—who’d been on the lam for almost two years. Then he stole a candy bar from a convenience store. There was a security camera, and that’s how the police finally got him. Can you imagine? After all that time, a goddamn candy bar.”

  I nodded, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Holy shit,” Tucker said.

  I glanced at him in surprise.

  “Look there,” he said, pointing across the road.

  A row of small shops languished in the midday glare. On the parkway there was a fire hydrant, a skinny three-armed saguaro, and a hound with mottled fur flopped on its side in the dirt, panting heavily.

  “The dog?” I said.

  “Behind the dog,” he said.

  I shaded my eyes with my fingers. It was hard to make out the words of the sign in the shop window against the flare of reflected sunlight.

  “It’s time for a project,” Tucker said.

  WE SPENT THE REST OF the day in the pickup truck, parked in an alley between two dumpsters. My brother kept an eye on the shop in the rearview mirror. He would not let me get out to stretch my legs. I did not know what we were waiting for—what was supposed to happen—and Tucker refused to explain. There was a six-foot saguaro beside one of the dumpsters. It was too young to sprout arms, an undifferentiated oval of green flesh. It reminded me of a hardboiled egg, dyed for Easter and balanced on its end. I kept catching it in my peripheral vision, worried that it had started to roll my way.

  Then Tucker began to lecture me. This was soothing for both of us. I settled more comfortably in my seat, letting his voice flow around me.

  The Great Dying occurred 250 million years ago, he said. The worst mass extinction in history. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere had become toxic. Tucker recited all this from memory, without pause. He possessed that sort of mind, retaining both the grand ideas and the factoids. He told me that 96 percent of the species on the planet had perished. All life today was descended from the 4 percent of flora and fauna that had survived.

  “That happened over millennia,” he said. “Guess how long it took humans to cause the Anthropocene Mass Extinction? One hundred years flat.”

  The saguaro by the dumpster caught my attention again—a bald dome, at once prickly and smooth, roughly human sized. Its bulbous trunk was corrugated lengthwise and garnished by starry clusters of spikes.

  Tucker told me that sea levels were rising faster than scientists thought they would. The character of the saltwater, too, had begun to change—the acidity and chemical makeup of whole oceans. Snails in California were dissolving in the shallows; the same environment that was once their natural habitat now melted them like candles. The seabed was pocked with hypoxic dead zones. No algae, no krill, nothing.

  “Let me tell you about the animal kingdom,” Tucker said.

  “Okay,” I murmured. I was beginning to feel sleepy. The warmth of the day pressed on my chest and made my breath shallow.

  At the bottom of the food chain, Tucker said, were plants. They produced the food that everything else depended on. Then came the herbivores, who ate exclusively vegetation. Above that were the omnivores, who consumed both plants and smaller animals. Then the carnivores, who ate only meat. At the pinnacle were the apex predators. They preyed on everything else, and nothing else preyed on them.

  “Humans aren’t at the top,” Tucker said. “We like to think we’re the peak of evolution. Right up there with polar bears and orcas and eagles. But when you take away all our technology and guns, we end up somewhere in the middle of the pyramid. I read an article about it when I was still with ECO. Humans are at the same level as pigs and anchovies.”

  I glanced at him with my eyebrows raised. “Pigs? Really?”

  “Put a human and a tiger in an enclosed space. No tools. No armor or weapons. Just two animals. You’ll see pretty quick where we belong.”

  I sat up a little straighter, struck by this idea.

  “The food chain is falling apart,” Tucker said. “That’s my point. From protozoa to bees to songbirds to lions—it’s all in danger. And whose fault is that?”

  “Humans,” I said automatically.

  “Who razes the rain forest and pollutes the land?”

  “Humans.”

  “Who hunts animals for sport and keeps them as pets?”

  “Humans.”

  A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead. I glanced at the saguaro outside my window again—surely it was a little closer now.

  Then Tucker laughed, a wide-open, ecstatic chortle.

  “Hot damn!” he cried. “Watch this.”

  He was staring into the rearview mirror. He had parked facing away from our target to conceal his intentions, even though there was nobody on the street to notice what we were doing. Now he swiveled in his seat to look through the back windshield. I did the same, frowning in confusion. I saw the familiar row of small stores. A parkway composed of caked earth. A fire hydrant. A slate-colored saguaro with three gaunt arms.

  The sun had moved, and the sign in the shop window was now visible, handwritten on cardboard, the print large but uneven. The words on the right side of the sign were more tightly compressed than the ones at the start of each line. Someone had not traced the message beforehand.

  BIG TOM’S TAXIDERMY & TANNING

  LIFE SIZE & WALL MOUNTS

  FURS, HIDES, PELTS, & SKINS

  BEST IN EAST TEXAS

  “Taxidermy,” I read aloud. “That’s . . .”

  “Dead animals. On display.” Tucker spat the words. “Glass eyes and sawdust bodies.”

  He pointed at the hound dog. It lay in front of the shop, its paws scrabbling in the dirt. On closer inspection, I realized that the animal was trying to stand up. This was a laborious process, requiring several attempts. Once the dog was upright, everything about it sagged—jowls, ears, belly. It shuffled to the door and pushed its way inside, apparently vanishing through a slab of solid wood.

  For an instant, I thought the heat had gotten to me. Then I realized there was a doggy door, the flap still swinging, catching the light.

  “Now we’re in business,” Tucker said.

  He put the car in gear and pulled away.

  IN THE EVENING, WE STOOD together on the sidewalk. There were no lights inside Big Tom’s Taxidermy; closing time had come and gone. The wind was strong, the world dipped in shadow. A streetlamp glimmered vaguely at the end of the block. The heat was draining from the air at last, replaced by a delicious chill. Up close, the three-armed saguaro was impressively tall and broader around the waist than I was. From my perspective, the cactus appeared to be holding the moon on its shoulder.

  At my side, Tucker held the portable gas canister from the back of the pickup truck.

  “This place is evil,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s death without purpose. Death for decoration.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go on, Corey.”

  He motioned toward the doggy door. I knelt down and pushed the rubber flap with my fingers. The hinges gave a high-pitched squeak as I peered into the darkness inside the little store. I glanced up hopefully at my brother.

  “Are
we going to free the dog?” I asked. “Like we did with the horses?”

  “Better,” Tucker said.

  The doggy door smacked my hindquarters as I crawled through. The interior smelled unpleasant—too much air freshener layered in a sickening cloud over something else. In the gloom, I could see only shapes: a rectangle that might have been a desk and a towering, uneven smear in the corner. Its contours were organic—a suggestion of shoulders and stomach.

  A brown bear. Standing upright. Eight feet tall. Paws lifted as though about to strike.

  I gaped as the creature came into focus against the murky wall. Its pose was aggressive but artificial, the lips curled back in a stilted grimace. I could see its claws, inky hatch marks scored into the darkness. I held still on my hands and knees, waiting to see if the bear would move. My eyes played tricks. The creature’s outline was indeterminate, a swarthy, shaggy silhouette against a lightless surface. My breath was so loud that I could not tell whether the bear was breathing too.

  Tucker’s voice rang through my mind: Put a human and a tiger in an enclosed space. Just two animals. You’ll see pretty quick where we belong.

  There was something on the bear’s paw. A taupe object. A cowboy hat. I looked closer, and then I let out a quick puff of relief.

  The bear was dead. Somebody was using the poor beast as furniture—its arm a makeshift hatstand. This gave me the courage I needed to stand up. The door was a stain without edges or definition. I groped for the knob, tracing upward with my fingertips until I felt the metal curve of the lock.

  Something bumped my knee. An urgent nudge. Warm and damp.

  I froze, facing the wall. I did not dare to turn around. The pressure came again, a furred, bristly snout prodding against my leg. There was a living thing in the room with me. A snuffle, maybe a growl.

  I screamed, kicking out. My foot made contact with a soft, solid object, and I heard a whimper, followed by claws clicking on linoleum. I fumbled for the lock. Panting with fear, I flew outside into Tucker’s arms.

  “Good boy,” he said, patting my back.

  “There’s something—something—” I could not get the words out, gesturing desperately over my shoulder.

  It was the dog. Wheezing and shuffling, it followed me outside. I clung to Tucker for comfort, though in the glow from the streetlamp I could see that the animal posed no threat. It was ancient, its belly slack, ears nearly dragging on the ground, eyes milky. It might have been blind.

  I could not seem to calm down, cradling my head in my hands. I felt a stab of guilt at having kicked the dog, though its torso appeared sturdy and well padded. The animal sniffed my brother’s leg, then mine.

  “Level Four,” Tucker murmured. “Domesticated.”

  He set down the gas can with a slosh. Crouching low, he stroked the dog’s nape, whispering something in its ear that I did not catch. Then, without ceremony, he lifted the animal up in both arms and hurried off down the block. I watched him turn the corner, splashed in amber light from the streetlamp.

  He returned empty-handed.

  “I left it in a playground,” he said. “There’s a fence and a gate. It’ll be safe there.”

  Tucker bowed his head. A change came over him, a kind of terrible stillness. To my eyes, he seemed to grow taller. With a swift gesture, he picked up the gas can again and took a lighter from his pocket. His expression was oddly familiar: lips drawn back, brow taut, eyes wide enough to show the whites. I had seen this look before, but never on a human face. In that moment, my brother resembled the brown bear inside the shop—legs braced, teeth bared, eager for the violence to come.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, TUCKER PELTED up to the pickup truck. I was curled in the passenger’s seat, waiting for him.

  We pulled away with a crunch of tires. A fetor of gasoline and smoke emanated from Tucker’s clothes, strong enough to make me cough. Without comment, he rolled down the windows, letting in a gush of clean air.

  We drove away between the slumbering houses. A massive saguaro lurched into view on the side of the road, spreading its enormous arms like a crossing guard telling us to stop. I turned around in my seat, looking back the way we had come. Smoke was rising against the sky, a pallid river flowing upward. There was an isolated pocket of glow above the inky buildings—a small, artificial sunrise. As I watched, the illumination increased in intensity, charring the sky.

  A siren sounded in the distance. Tucker picked up speed.

  26

  We reached Amarillo on a Saturday. I knew the day of the week because we came upon an intersection that was barricaded off with a sign hanging from the stoplight: SATURDAY STREET FAIR. I could hear live music—a guitarist, a tambourine. Shops had set out tables on the sidewalk to display their wares. Though it was still early in the day, a large crowd was milling around. Mothers pushed strollers. Couples strode hand in hand. There were booths for kids: face-painting, balloon animals, and a caricaturist. There were vendors selling food and drink, the air spiced with cinnamon.

  I glanced hopefully at Tucker. I would have loved to spend the morning here, to simulate an ordinary life. I saw a group of boys tossing a football back and forth. I imagined joining their game. Perhaps Corey would be able to throw a football in a perfect spiral, something Cora had never managed. Corey would not mind getting muddy. He was not afraid of a few bruises.

  But Tucker’s face was set in grim lines. He threw the car into reverse and pivoted away with a shudder of tires. Soon we were heading down a side lane, the sound of music fading away.

  “Why did we come to Amarillo?” I said.

  I waited, watching him. Instead of answering, he pointed out the window.

  “A cemetery,” he said. “That’ll do.”

  He turned down a wide driveway between wrought iron gates. The lot was dappled by oak trees, empty except for our pickup truck. Tucker parked in the shade and climbed out on his side. After a moment, I followed suit.

  “Why did we come to Amarillo?” I repeated.

  He reached into his pants pocket and removed a folded note, handing it to me. The paper blazed in the sunlight, covered in long, complicated words. My reading, I knew, was subpar. Below grade level, my last report card claimed, to Darlene’s dismay. This seemed to be a roster of corporations and people’s names. Proper nouns.

  “It’s our agenda,” Tucker said.

  The letters swam and swirled in the fiery light.

  “I took it from ECO,” he said. “I took a few things from ECO, actually.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey, the gun was just lying there.” Tucker winked. “That roll of cash, too. I took a dime bag and some bullets.”

  I handed the sheet of paper back to him. He ran his finger down the roster and tapped a particular name.

  “We’re going to start with this guy,” he said.

  “Who is he?”

  “Come on, let’s walk.”

  We seemed to be in the wealthier part of the cemetery, the headstones tall and immaculate, many of them decorated with wreaths or plastic flowers. There was a marble mausoleum with ivory columns and gargoyles leering at me from the roof. In the distance, I could see where the poorer families’ headstones lay—plain markers embedded in the grass, many overcome by weeds. Tucker and I strolled in rhythm, though I took two strides for every one of his. I was wearing overalls with nothing underneath, not even underwear, since all of mine were dirty. It seemed faintly sacrilegious to be dressed this way in a graveyard, but I decided that boys did not care about that sort of thing.

  “Why did we come to Amarillo?” I asked for the third time.

  Tucker’s answer was swift and expressionless. “We’re going to take care of a bad man.”

  “Bad? What do you mean?”

  “Like Big Tom,” he said.

  There was a lump in my throat. We had not talked about the fire once over the past few days. I stopped walking. The trees surged in the breeze, and my brother slipped awa
y between the gravestones.

  Since the encounter at Big Tom’s Taxidermy, I’d been having trouble sleeping, jerking awake in the night, my throat filled with the smell of smoke, hearing the echo of a nonexistent siren. I was frightened, though it was hard to pinpoint exactly what I was frightened of. Sometimes I thought it was the bear. Dead, stuffed, and posed to be eternally vigilant—it haunted me. Other times it was Tucker himself that unnerved me: his height, his awful stillness, the lips drawn back in a snarl.

  My brother had committed a crime, and I had helped him—but I had not known what I was helping him do until afterward—and I had only unlocked a door—but I had known even that was wrong—and Tucker would not have been able to set the fire without me—but he had never asked for my consent—but I would probably have said yes if he had asked. The full measure of my wrongdoing was a tangle I could not unravel.

  When Tucker realized I wasn’t with him, he came back and stood over me. He was tanner now than he had been a month ago. We both were.

  “You and me, right?” he said.

  There was a sierra of fat white mountains floating in the distance above the horizon. I kept my gaze there.

  “What’s your name?” Tucker said.

  “Corey,” I said without looking at him.

  Once more, I heard the snip of rusted scissors. I remembered the tickle of my long locks falling around me. Tucker had done something profound that night in the tornado shelter. He began a process that was still in motion.

  “Once upon a time,” he said, then paused. He knelt down, lining his eyes up with mine. I could see imperfections in the brown of his irises, flecks of green.

  “Once upon a time, there was a tyrant. Let’s call him Chicken Man.”

  I leaned closer, smiling a little. As Tucker slid into his narrative cadence, my worry eased. There was nothing to fear inside a story, especially one crafted and controlled by my brother.

  “Chicken Man ruled over dozens of farms,” he said. “Except that’s not really what they were. You hear the word farm and you think pastures and cows, but these were huge buildings filled with thousands of chickens in the most horrible conditions you could ever imagine.”