by J. T. Warren
It sounded like something he had read in that daddy/daughter book. Like he was trying to convince himself of its truth even while Mercy tried not to reveal how torturous this whole thing was getting. Irony in books was funny and could lead to intellectual exploration. Irony in real life was too depressing to even ponder.
He asked if she was hungry but she shook her head. Her breakfast had condensed into a hard ball of lard in her stomach.
After a few minutes in which it seemed Dad was debating whether to pick back up or make this an extended stay, Mercy fished through her bag for one of the books she’d stuffed in there last night. She found her copy of The Collector by John Fowles. The book that spawned the the serial killer genre. It was the copy she’d used in college, complete with her margin notations, pages with fold lines and a binding bent so many times that the title was no longer visible through all the vertical creases. She loved the blue butterfly on the cover. Dad probably thought it was some girly book. He only ever read accounting or money management books. That was until he’d picked up the one about bonding with your daughter.
She opened to a favorite section, the part told from Miranda’s point of view and was immediately in the world of the story before Dad asked if she wanted anything to eat.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Apple?” He lifted one out of his bag.
She shook her head and dove back into the book. The students in one of her courses had gone on the war path when Mercy dared to suggest that Miranda felt sorry for her abductor and that perhaps she even enjoyed his lavish attention. The girls in the room wanted to rip out Mercy’s throat or, better yet, remove her sex so she could no longer be counted as female. The professor had encouraged Mercy’s views in the face of student opposition and Mercy wrote her term paper on the topic. She’d earned an A. That paper was part of the reason she came back to this book at least once a year.
What would it be like to be the subject of a man’s undivided attention? Obviously, the man in The Collector was psychotic, but if she were Miranda, Mercy thought she’d enjoy the man’s attention, at least for a little while. She wouldn’t be stuck-up like Miranda.
She could never tell anybody that, not even Dad because he barely understood women any way and the couple friends she still kept in touch with via Facebook would say she just needed to get laid. And there was that, too, she supposed, for why she enjoyed this book so much. If she were Miranda, she would have given it up without protest.
She always reread the part where Clegg takes pictures of Miranda in her underwear while she’s unconscious and then later when he demands to take pornographic photos of her. She wasn’t even bothered that the man preferred the pictures with Miranda’s head excluded. That pure physicality of the man’s urges (even though he’s never able to perform) tingled every part of her with a warm gush.
At some point, Mercy was dimly aware of Dad glancing through the bonding book and then closing it and staring at her the way customers at the store did when she was reading at the checkout and they wanted to purchase something.
She pulled herself out of Miranda’s doomed world. “Yes, Dad?”
“No, no,” he said. “Keep reading. I’m just watching you.”
“I saw you reading that book. What do you want to say?”
He glanced at the book closed in his hands. “It’s embarrassing to admit that there’s so much about you I don’t know. I’ve been a lame father. The book calls me a ‘Non-active Daddy.’ I love you. I care about you. But I don’t know who you are.”
“Maybe you should stop reading that book.”
“What are your dreams?”
“Dreams?”
“When you were seven, you wanted to be a Rockette. We went to that Christmas show and then you went around the house kicking your legs. Then you took ballet.”
“And quit after three sessions.”
“You loved it, though. You’d twirl around and put on little performances for Mom and me.”
“I’m not that little girl anymore, Dad.”
He looked down. “I know, I know.”
“You’re a great dad.”
She expected him to get teary and ask if she really meant it and then she’d get teary and they’d share a hug. Instead he said he wasn’t a good father.
“But I’m trying. I hope it’s not too late.”
“Why would it be too late?” she asked.
He stumbled over words before finding his voice. “You’re a young woman now. Soon you’ll be out on your own and then I’ll just be some guy.”
She sighed. “Dad, you’re never going to be just some guy. You’re my father and you’ve been a great one.”
“I’m sorry to keep putting you on the spot. I’m so lost without your mother.”
“It’s okay. I know.”
“I know you’re not a child anymore but whenever I look at you, I see that little girl kicking her legs all over the house. You’re my little angel.”
“I always will be.” She should get up, go to him, hug him, but her legs refused to move. Maybe stopping had been a bad idea.
He was on the verge of crying and Mercy’s eyes began to water too.
“There’s something else,” he said.
She waited.
“I have cancer.”
SEVENTEEN
Victor stopped at the place where he had once thrown his knife at a deer. He ate sardines from a can and then tossed the empty can away. He loved how the sardines coated his mouth and liked to imagine that the little fish came back to life in his stomach only to die a painful death in the pool of acid. It was childish but no less amusing.
He continued on his way.
There was no path here but the faded marks on the trees guided him in the steps he had taken several times over the years. As usual, he hoped he would find his knife but did not hold out much hope. If he was meant to get it back, the universe would give it to him. Perhaps someone else had found it. Maybe that person was now a cleanser too. Sometimes that’s how it worked.
There weren’t meetings or secret websites only accessed with some special, constantly changing password. There wasn’t a monthly magazine or any public figures to represent the cause. If anyone ever tried something like that, they would be brushed aside as a freak. But that was beside the point. If someone dared to expose the Great Plan, at least as he understood it, that person’s place in that plan would vanish and he would be revealed as a fake. True cleansers didn’t need unity or reassurance or followers. They had each been chosen in a unique way and the universe would manipulate events to get them where they needed to be. But that didn’t mean cleansers couldn’t work together. In fact, the universe might unite several of them for one purpose.
When looked at the right way, Victor could almost see the inner workings of the world. That didn’t make Victor special, just specially attuned. And through that understanding, he knew peace. He knew purpose.
He moved through the woods slowly. He enjoyed deep inhalations of the air sweet with the dry remnants of decay. When the trees bloomed, the smell would become fresh like renewed hope but he loved being in the forest just before that. It was a walk through a barren land on the cusp of a great reawakening. The world had known cleansers before and it would know them again.
He picked up a pine cone from a pile of dead leaves. Something scurried across the ground up ahead. Another squirrel. Victor turned the cone over in his hand slowly like it was a bomb that might explode at the slightest disturbance.
He kept the cone in hand as he continued through the woods. He tried juggling it a few times and had to pick it back up, once out of a small puddle of sap. The thick blood-tinged stuff got on his hands and he grew interested it its sticky texture. He tossed the cone aside for good.
Blood was smooth like silk. This sap that looked like blood as it seeped from trees and coagulated on the ground was also smooth but much thicker than blood. It slipped between his fingers and he made a fist. He opened his hand wide, s
preading the fingers to form a webbed hand made from glutinous sap. He turned his hand slowly back and forth like he had done with the pine cone.
Sometimes Victor felt like he was seeing the world for the first time. Often, those epiphanies happened here, engulfed by trees and miles from civilization. This was a place of a billion revelations. Out here, the world was born afresh repeatedly before Victor’s eyes.
EIGHTEEN
Mercy did get up now and go to her father. She stepped around the abandoned fire pit and noticed a small pile of snow a few feet deep in the woods. That was so odd. The last snowfall had been at least three weeks ago and yet some still survived on this mountain. Perhaps there was lots more, up higher near the peak.
Then she was in her father’s arms.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What cancer? When did you find out?”
“It’s okay. I’m not gone yet.”
She hated that word--yet.
“Tell me.”
“A couple weeks ago I went to the doctor’s.”
“Weeks ago?” She wanted to slap him.
“Just for some tests.” He shrugged. “I have prostate cancer.”
The world went blurry. She clutched her father close and fought off the images cascading through her mind of the ensuing chemotherapy and sickness and the vigil at his bedside while he withered to nothing and the last breath and the wake with all the pictures of him on some magnetic board and the burial and her all alone with no one to hug. She wouldn’t bury him. She would have him cremated and then she’d re-climb this mountain and scatter his ashes from the summit.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “But there’s still plenty of reasons to hope.”
Mercy sat back, wiped her eyes. “You need to tell me things,” she said. “You need to be upfront about everything that happens. I need to know. I’m not a little girl.”
“I know, honey. I just didn’t know how to tell you. After Mom, this seemed too cruel to be true. I was holding out, hoping the doctor would call, say it’s all been a mistake. Mixed up blood work or something. I didn’t mean to wait so long. I am sorry.”
They embraced again. This was too much to process. She had watched him go from her strong, healthy dad to a withered, living corpse to a pile of ashes in a flash and that’s all she could see right now. His death. This was too cruel to be true. God couldn’t be this mean.
“When do you start treatment? What happens next? What’s the prognosis.”
He rubbed her back. “No more of that now. This outing is for us to enjoy ourselves, okay? I don’t want you harping on my situation.”
“Harping? I’m concerned. I need to know. You’re my father.”
“Before she died, your mother said she knew I would be okay because you would take care of me. You’re so strong, Mercy. It makes me feel so old.”
“I don’t feel strong.” In fact, she felt like she never wanted to stand up again.
He broke the hug and held her at arm’s length. “You’re much stronger than you think. You need to believe that because I won’t be around forever.”
“Jesus, Dad, don’t throw in the towel yet. You said there’s hope. You said--”
“No more,” he said. “No more discussion of this today. Let’s continue up the mountain, find a good place to set up a tent and spend the afternoon exploring or playing cards or talking. But not about my prostate. That’s not proper for a daughter to discuss.”
He was trying to make her laugh but she wasn’t biting. She wanted to weep and throw herself against the ground and scream that this wasn’t fair. She wanted to hit her father and curse him for being so selfish and not telling her what he knew weeks ago and also for telling her today on this stupid mountain. She didn’t want to know. Why couldn’t she live her life in complete obliviousness? Yet, that thought pissed her off the most because that was the coward in her, the girl who never tried to make friends in elementary school, the girl who studied her childhood away, the girl who stayed in her dorm when others went to frat parties, the girl who didn’t want to end up in a comprising situation with some drunk jock. That coward inside her had given her this closeted life in which her virginity was bound to her like a yoke that binds to oxen.
She gathered herself together. “Okay, Dad. Let’s go.”
He smiled.
Mercy stuffed The Collector back in her bag and mused that the kidnapped woman in the story hadn’t had to worry about her father dying. She’d only had to worry for her own life.
“You got off easy,” she mumbled.
NINETEEN
Victor found the main trail which was a wide path of beaten dirt where vegetation had ceased growing many years ago. Stepping from his private trail onto this one that thousands of hikers had used over the years was like emerging from a narrow hallway onto a vast city block. He checked both directions as if a car might hurdle right at him.
Both directions were quiet.
He started up the mountain again. There was large camping ground near the summit that had grown from a clearing into a tourist spot with permanent charcoal grills and sectioned-off tent areas. Eventually, there would probably be running water.
People were so stupid. Civilization was once a small group of happy hunters and gatherers. Then people “evolved” and created towns and cities and whole countries. They discovered oil and industrialization brought most of the amenities now taken for granted. As if that wasn’t bad enough, people had kicked this evolution into even higher gear in the past years with the Internet and wireless everything. People wanted to be connected to everyone and everything no matter where they went.
Whoever ventured up Blood Mountain, however, walked alone. There had been talk of installing cell towers on the mountain and it might happen one day but for now there was NO SERVICE up here and NO HELP for anyone who couldn’t tap into the primal lives of their ancestors and survive off the land.
After the cleansing, those weak people would be the first to perish. The approaching New Time was for those who knew that mankind’s greatest existence had been at its earliest stages when life meant harmony with nature and survival was a constant battle always bordering on the cusp of death. Up here, away from the stupidity of a world of distractions, Victor could embrace an atavistic life where happiness wasn’t something pursued; it was an ever-present state-of-mind.
Victor did not avoid the burgeoning puddles of mud as he ascended the trail. He loved the sound his boot made when it mushed into the puddle and the sucking plop it gasped when he pulled his foot free. It would be so wonderful to feel the mud surround his foot and fill the gaps between his toes.
He had been working on his feet. He wasn’t ready to go bootless but would be soon. He used sandpaper on the soles of his feet to augment thick callouses. He performed strength-training exercises with his feet and toes. There were so many muscles in the feet. Primal man had possessed incredibly strong and agile feet resistant to most terrains. The advent of shoes, more so than anything else perhaps, was mankind’s first great step away from his proper existence. Now feet were weak, helpless without thick rubber soles that had tread like tires or even spikes.
Victor had walked up here barefoot before and loved every sensation of being so intimate with the earth but he couldn’t do that today. Normal people used boots and he had to keep that facade up as long as possible.
It was sad to think that if someone came across a completely primal human being, that someone would be horrified.
“We have forgotten who we are,” Victor said. “We have lost our purpose.”
Victor, however, had not forgotten nor lost his purpose. He continued up the trail, slashing an occasional tree along the way.
TWENTY
Hiking was supposed to be calming, some great trek through nature that made you reconnect with the natural world in a profound way. That was bullshit. Mercy’s thighs burned. Muscles in her back cramped. Her feet throbbed in the hiking boots Dad had bought for her two days ago. Several times, she st
epped on a small rock or protruding branch and almost twisted her ankle. If she had it would be relief. They could go back home. Getting down the mountain with a swollen ankle posed its own challenges that might make her cry if she thought too much about it, but homeward bound was better than this ascent.
Dad stayed a few feet ahead and though his breathing grew rapid and shallow he never wavered and his every step was strong and solid. She wanted to tell him to slow down to not tire himself out.
She didn’t say anything. She had to be the good daughter. The strong one. Mom was gone and Dad might be gone soon too but she had to keep it together. Dad said there was strength in her. If she believed that, then maybe she could be the supportive daughter he needed right now.
Finally, with her heart racing and her sweatshirt forming a heated dome over her breasts, she said she needed to rest.
He didn’t pause. “We’re almost there, honey,” he said. “I promise.”
“Dad, I can’t.”
“Just a little further,” he said.
She had slowed to a crawl while he had continued up the path so the gap between them was getting considerable. He was still talking, saying she just had to dig deep, find the strength, and before she’d know it, they would be at the camping site. Remember your track days. A little belief, that’s all it took. Come on, you can do it.
She slung off her bag and let it drop. “No,” she said but he didn’t hear her. She dropped to the ground and winced as her bony ass absorbed the fall. “It was cross country!” she shouted. “Not track!”
He kept going. She glanced around for a rock or something and then laughed. Was she really going to throw a rock at her father? No, of course not. She would throw it near him, something to get his attention. Christ, he looked like one of the damn dwarfs whistling his way off to the mine. How could he not be tired? Didn’t he realize he had cancer? Didn’t he know that if he got exhausted, he could, he could . . . What? He wasn’t going to drop dead from hiking. Not unless he had a heart attack.
