The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  'I've tried not to,' she said. They stood in the kitchen and watched it together awhile. There was no real news. They still didn't know why the man might have done it. A search of his house had turned up some generic hate literature, another gun, a computer full of porn, and a very bad painting of a number of dark figures against a white background, like wraiths in front of snow.

  None of it was judged to be important.

  Chapter 18

  'You have to give me something more than water,' Sarah had said.

  Her voice sounded weak, even to herself. She had repeated this sentence many times. It had become the first thing she said every time the lid was removed.

  'Don't you like the water?'

  'I like the water. Thank you for the water. But I need something more. You have to give me something more than water.'

  'What do you want?'

  'I need food. Something to eat.' She coughed. She seemed to be coughing a lot now, and when she did it made her feel nauseous.

  'We eat too much these days,' the man said. 'Far too much. It's killed for us and grown by the ton and then delivered to our door and we sit like pigs at the trough. We're not even hunters any more. Just scavengers. Hyenas with coupons who pick through the shrink-wrapped leavings of people we've never even met.'

  'If you say so. But I have to eat.'

  'I have to eat I have to eat I have to eat,' the man chanted. He seemed to like the sound the words made, and continued repeating the sentences for some minutes.

  Then he was silent for a while, before observing: 'Once we would go for days without food. We were lean.'

  'Right, the Great Depression. Dust Bowl years, blah.'

  The man laughed. 'That was yesterday and of no interest to us. I meant before the invasion.'

  'The invasion?' Sarah asked—thinking: Okay, here we get to it. Little green men. The Russians. The Jews. Whatever. She coughed violently again, and for a moment everything went white in front of her eyes, and when he answered his voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off or as if he was using one of those things like Cher did when she sang 'Believe'.

  'Yes, invasion. What else would you call it?' he asked.

  She swallowed, screwed her eyes shut and then opened them again. 'I wouldn't call it anything. I'm too hungry.'

  'You can't have any food.'

  Something in the man's voice made her suddenly very afraid. He didn't sound like he meant she just couldn't have any today. He sounded like he meant she couldn't have any, period. In a surprisingly short time she had adapted to her current circumstances, aided by an increasing sense of dislocation. But the threat of nothing to eat, ever, was enough to momentarily jog her completely back to reality.

  'Look,' she said, voice unsteady now, 'you must want something from me. There must be some reason you are doing this. Please just get on with what you want and either kill me or give me some food. I have to have something to eat.'

  'Open your mouth.'

  She did so eagerly, saliva immediately flooding into her mouth. For a moment nothing happened, and then a hand appeared. It wasn't holding anything that looked like food, but only a small piece of white paper. The hand pressed it to her tongue briefly, and then withdrew. Sarah started to cry.

  The man said nothing for a while, and then tutted. 'No change,' he said. 'Stubborn little genome.' The piece of white paper fluttered down into the hole to lie beside her. 'You haven't really learned anything, have you?'

  She sniffed. 'You haven't told me anything.'

  'I'm beginning to wonder about you,' he said. 'I thought you were different. That you might change. I came for you personally. I had plans for us. But now I'm Wondering if you'll do after all.'

  'Oh yes? Why's that?'

  'You're lazy and spoiled and not coming on very well.'

  'Yeah? Well you're a wacko.'

  'And you're a silly little bitch.'

  'Fuck you,' she said. 'You're a fucking nutcase and I'm going to escape and smash your head in.

  She kept her mouth shut as he poured the water.

  He hadn't come back for a long time.

  Chapter 19

  We got to Hunter's Rock at three o'clock in the morning, after a short flight and a long drive. When we landed in Oregon I drove down the highway over the state line, and then along roads that I recalled from long ago—feeling as if I were retracing the steps of an explorer I'd only read about, rather than revisiting old ground of my own. Gradually we began to pass places I had known better, and it got harder. I chose routes that I would not have taken for directness. I think Bobby realized. He didn't say anything.

  Eventually we stopped at an old motel I didn't recognize, twenty miles out of town. I had been all for sleeping in the car, but Bobby, ever practical, pointed out we'd do a better day's work if we got a few hours in a bed. We walked over and banged on the door to the office. After a pretty long time a man in a T-shirt and pyjamas emerged, and was frank in expressing his dissatisfaction at our presence. We allowed that the hour was late, but suggested that now he was awake he might as well turn a buck by giving us a twin room.

  He took a long look at us. 'You a couple of perverts?'

  We looked back at him, and he evidently decided that worse than renting to two potential homosexuals was the prospect of having those same homosexuals beat the living crap out of him in the middle of the night. He handed me a key.

  Bobby lay down on one of the beds and went straight to sleep. I tried to do the same, but couldn't get it to stick. Eventually I got back up and left the room. I bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine and went out to the centre of the old court, where a rusty fence surrounded the remains of a swimming pool. I pulled a battered chair up to one end and sat there in the darkness. There was no light apart from the dusty pink of the VACANCY sign over the office, a smudge of moon, some glints off peeling hard surfaces. I got out the gun Bobby had given me and looked at it for a while. It didn't have much of interest to say, so I put it back in my jacket.

  Instead I stared at the shadows of the empty pool, wondering how long it had been empty. Quite a time, by its appearance: the sides were cracked and the six inches of sludge at the bottom looked as if it could have provided the forum for the first emergence of life. Once it had been full of cool water, and families would have gratefully dispatched their children to it, glad of the relief after a long drive. The sign for the motel, faded and unloved though it was, dated it to the late fifties. I could picture the way life had been then, but only as still images: snapshots of the glory years, the colours slightly off and everything frozen in an advertisement for the kind of life we've always been promised is inevitable. A backyard of sweetness and light, cookouts and firm handshakes, of hard work and true love and fair play. The way life is supposed to be. Instead we wander about, short on charisma and direction and script—and in the end the whole business just stops and we realize no one was watching anyway. We're so used to events being portrayed in particular ways that when they actually happen to us, and our life bears no resemblance to expectation, we don't really know how we're supposed to respond. Our lives are unrecognizable to us. Should we still try to be happy, when everything seems so flawed and out of kilter and grey? How are we supposed to be content, when everything on television is so much better?

  I believed that Bobby had already found the truth, and that my birth was not recorded in Hunter's Rock, but I had to check for myself. All of the time I'd been driven around by Chip Farling, my childhood had been pulling at me with cold fingers. If my parents had gone somewhere else for my birth, maybe it wasn't that important. Could be they'd gone away for the weekend, a last chance before their family expanded, and had been caught short somewhere far from home. But surely that was the kind of story you tell your child, the kind of anecdote that makes each life unique? I could only assume that it had not been revealed because of the fact that wherever this birth had taken place, it had been of twins. Why this should have made a difference, and why they had
done what they had gone on to do, I still had no idea. Perhaps this was the gap that I had unconsciously sculpted my life around. Everyone feels that way some of the time. But I felt it a lot. And maybe I'd finally found out why.

  I don't know how long the noise had been going on. Not long, I think. But gradually I realized that I could hear a quiet lapping sound. It seemed very close by, so close that I turned in my seat. There was nothing behind me. When I turned round again I realized I had misjudged the direction, and that it was coming from the far end of the pool. It was a little too dark to see, but it sounded as if water was sloshing quietly into the far end. I sat forward in my chair, surprised. The water in the pool was getting a little deeper: slowly, but noticeably. It was no longer only a few inches deep, but about a foot. It was only then that I realized that there were two people in the pool. Right down at the far end. One was a little taller than the other, and both were at first no more than bulky shadows. They were holding hands as they struggled forward, pushing against the viscous water as it rose. The watery sounds got louder as the pool began to fill more quickly, and the movement of the figures became more vigorous as they tried to come up toward the shallow end, up towards me.

  By now the moonlight had caught their features and I knew it was my mother and father. They could have made better progress if they had let go of each other, but they didn't. Even after the water was over their waists, their hands were linked under the surface. I think they saw me. They were looking in my direction, at least. My father's mouth opened and closed, but if he made any sound it never reached me. Their free arms cut down into the heavy water, but made no splashes, and still it got deeper. It made no difference how close they got. The pool did not become more shallow. The water did not stop rising. It did not stop even after it had gone up to their chins, even after it had begun to slop over the edges of the pool and spill like dark mercury around my feet. My mother's eyes were calm until the end: it was my father in whom I saw panic, for the first time in my life, and it was his hand that was the last thing visible, as they almost reached the end, still sinking, but reaching up for me.

  When my eyes flew open it was dawn, and Bobby was standing over me, shaking his head.

  I sat up, eyes wide, and saw that my pack of cigarettes was no longer in my lap but lying in the six inches of crap at the bottom of the pool. I looked at Bobby, and he winked.

  'Must have twitched in your sleep,' he said.

  •••

  By late morning it had been confirmed. No Ward Hopkins, no Hopkins of any flavour, had ever been born in Hunter's Rock. I talked to a nice young lady behind a desk, who said she'd see if she could find any other information. I couldn't see what else would be helpful, and it soon became apparent that she couldn't either but was trying to help out of a combination of compassion and boredom. I gave her my number and left.

  Bobby was standing on the pavement outside, talking on his phone. I looked dumbly up and down the street until he was finished. Even though I'd known it was coming, I felt dispossessed. It was like being sat down and told that you hadn't come out of your mother's tummy after all, but really had been deposited under a bush by a stork. I'd had my tonsils removed in that little hospital, visited it to get two separate sets of stitches in youthful knees. On each occasion I'd believed that I had been revisiting the place where I'd been born.

  'Well, my friend,' Bobby said eventually. 'The upstanding men and women of the Dyersburg police department would surely like to know where you are. You'll be gratified to hear that this appears to be out of a concern for your well-being. At the moment.'

  'And the house?'

  'Extensive damage to living room and hallway, chunk of lower stairway destroyed. But not burned to the ground.'

  'So what now?'

  'Show me your old house,' he said.

  I looked at him. 'Why?'

  'Well, honey, because you're big and blond and gorgeous and I want to know everything about you.'

  'Fuck off,' I suggested, supporting the notion with a weary hand gesture. 'It's a dumb and pointless idea.'

  'You got any better suggestions? This doesn't look like a town with limitless entertainment options.'

  I took us out along the main street. I couldn't work out whether it was the new or the old stuff that looked most unfamiliar. The most noticeable thing was that the old Jane's Market had been knocked down, replaced by a small Holiday Inn with one of the new-style boxy little signs. I miss the big old googie ones. I really do. I don't understand why rectangles are supposed to be better.

  When we were nearly there I drove more slowly, and finally pulled over on the opposite side. It had been ten years since I'd last looked at the house, maybe more. It looked pretty much the same—though it had been repainted in the intervening time and the trees and shrubs around it had changed. A family vehicle of Far Eastern provenance was parked in the drive, and three bikes were stowed neatly around the side.

  After a minute I saw a shape passing behind the front window and then disappearing from sight. Just a nondescript suburban dwelling, but it looked like a gingerbread house in a fairy tale. Its reality was too strong, too compelling, as if overloaded with MSG. I tried to remember exactly when I'd last been inside. It seemed inconceivable that I hadn't wanted to visit again before it passed into someone else's hands. Had I really been so bad at seeing how things might one day be different?

  'Are you ready for this?'

  I realized that my hands were shaking a little. I turned to him. 'Ready for what?'

  'Going inside.'

  'I'm not going inside.'

  'Yes you are,' he said, patiently.

  'Bobby—have you lost your mind? Somebody else lives there now. There's no way I'm going in that house.'

  'Listen to me. Couple of years ago my old man died. Didn't matter much to me—we got on like shit. But my mother called, asked me home for the burial. I was busy. Didn't make it. Six months later I realized I was acting kind of weird. Nothing you'd put your finger on. Things were just stressing me out. All the time. Getting anxious when there was nothing specific to make me that way. A panic attack kind of thing, I guess. Holes kept opening in front of me.'

  I didn't know what to say. He wasn't looking in my direction, but staring straight out of the windshield.

  'In the end some work brought me close to home, so I went to see my mother in Rochford. It's not like she and I were best pals either. But it was good to see her. Maybe 'good' isn't the right word. Useful. She looked different. Smaller. And on the way out of town I stopped by the graveyard, stood by the old man's plot for a while. It was a sunny afternoon and there was no one else around. And his ghost, his ghost came right up out of the soil in front of me and said, 'Listen, Bobby, chill.''

  I stared at him. He laughed quietly. 'Of course not. I didn't feel his presence, or become any more reconciled to the way he'd been. But since then I don't feel so anxious. I think about death sometimes, and I'm more careful in what I do and I'm more open to the idea of settling down one of these years. But the weird thing went away. I found the ground again.' He looked at me. 'Loose ends are the death of people, Ward. You think you're protecting yourself but all you're doing is opening little cracks. You let too many open up at once, the whole thing is going to fall to dust and you'll find yourself like a starving dog wandering the streets in the night. And you, my friend, have got a whole lot of cracks appearing at this time.'

  I opened the door and got out of the car.

  'If they'll let me.'

  'They'll let you,' he said. 'I'll wait for you here.'

  I stopped. I guess I thought he'd be coming with me. 'It's your house,' he said. 'And we knock on that door together, whoever opens it is going to think they're going to be starring in the mortuary end of an episode of Forensic Detectives.'

  I walked up the driveway, and knocked on the door. The porch was tidy and well-swept.

  A woman appeared, smiled. 'Mr Hopkins?' she said.

  After a beat I got it, and
simultaneously cursed and glorified Bobby's name. He'd called ahead, pretended to be me, and laid the groundwork. I wondered what he'd've done if I'd refused.

  'That's right,' I said, coming up to speed. 'You're sure you don't mind?'

  'Not at all.' She stood aside to usher me in. 'You were lucky to catch me earlier. I'm afraid I have to go out again soon though.'

  'Of course,' I said. 'Just a few minutes would be great.'

  The woman, who was in middle age and pretty and nice enough to be someone's mother on television, asked if I wanted coffee. I said no but there was some already made and in the end it was easier to accept. While she fetched it I stood in the hallway and looked around. Everything had changed. The woman, whatever her name was (I couldn't ask, as in theory I'd spoken to her earlier), was not unfamiliar with the stenciller's art. In a Pottery Barn kind of way it looked rather better than when we'd lived there.

  Then we walked around. The woman didn't need to explain why she accompanied me. I thought it pretty unusual that she would let a man into her house just on the basis of a phone call: a desire to keep half an eye on her belongings was entirely natural. I was soon able to make sufficient comment on the way things had been when she moved in that even this mild guardedness disappeared, and she busied herself with stuff in the background. I wandered through each of the rooms, and then up the stairs. I took a brief look in what had been my parents' room and the spare room, both of which had been largely alien territory to me. Then I girded myself for the final area.

  When the door to my old room was open, I swallowed involuntarily. I took a couple of paces in, then stopped. Green walls, brown carpet. A few boxes and some old chairs, a broken fan and most of a child's bike.

  I discovered that the woman was standing behind me.

  'Haven't changed a thing,' she admitted. 'View's better from the other room, so my daughter sleeps in there even though it's a little smaller. We just store a few things here. I'll see you downstairs.'