In the darkness of the Cave, he could see Sergio fishing, the shining line arcing over the river. The contented look on his face after he emerged from the river, the wet fish hung from a rope in his right hand. Sergio was never more at ease, and Eric wanted to know this man.
The grief was he never would.
_
What they called the Cave was a dugout basement next door to the church. Two men dragged Eric there, tugging at the rope around his wrists until they burned. They pushed him down a flight of wooden stairs. Eric fell the last few steps, stumbling forward, smelling mildew and cold, moist air. He lifted his face from the ground and spat out damp earth. One man jerked him up so roughly that Eric cried out in pain, though he meant to keep silent.
They shoved him through a brown, dirt passage shored up with boards. It was lit by hanging light bulbs shining like a yellow disease. The passage sloped down, and as he descended, he felt the air grow more stagnant. Dangling roots brushed against his face like cobwebs. Soon it seemed to Eric no living thing existed anymore. Nothing but mildew and worms.
But he was wrong.
They came to a small, square room, lit only by the light from the dirt passageway that led to it. Huddled in the corners of the room, chained to lengths of rebar stuck to blocks of buried concrete, were several people. A few of them were wearing jerseys of Boston sports teams, marking them as Minutemen. But their clothes were in rags and their faces were gaunt as skulls. The room smelled like an outhouse. Eric stumbled to his knees as a man jerked him downward to cuff him to a loop of rebar.
"Please," one prisoner rasped near him. "Please give us water." His voice was sand. When none of the guards said anything, he repeated, "Please."
One of his guards, a huge man, suddenly stepped forward, and quick and brutal, smashed the prisoner down with the butt of his rifle. "I told you fuckers not to say anything," the guard hissed. He lifted his rifle and struck the prisoner again, shattering his jaw against the cold earth.
The rest of the prisoners moaned in sympathy, but crawled closer into their shadows, cringing away from the guard.
Eric sat and said nothing.
When the guards left, Eric listened as the man who had been struck choked on his blood.
No one said anything. Eric doubted they had the strength.
So he had come to it at last. This was what he had been running from. This was what had made him avoid gangs. But it had found him anyway. Sitting in the Cave, Eric felt as if he had always known it would come to this. He was destined for this.
Eric had found his hell.
_
There were no guards in the Cave. They just left them chained there. There were no visits. No water. No food. Most of the prisoners were too weak to speak. One of them was already dead, the body chained uselessly to the ground. The man who had begged for water died the first night Eric spent there.
When the guards left, the Cave was darkness. Cold, utter darkness, of a kind Eric had never known. Soon light seemed to be nothing more than a memory. In the complete dark, Eric could not believe in the dazzling sun. Within hours it was hard for him to imagine he had once hiked underneath a summer sun. As the days passed and no light touched his eyes, he listened. Smelled. Felt the ground around him. With each passing hour, he felt less like a human and more like a worm. He felt like those worms baked alive on dark asphalt in summer, dried out into coils of stiff flesh.
Eric the worm.
_
Eric thought of Birdie, somewhere alone up above. He thought about Lucia and her grief and hoped she would find a way to conquer it, to be strong for Birdie. He thought of ways of escaping.
He imagined he pulled the steel rebar from its sheath of concrete. Like Arthur and Excalibur. He imagined he held the steel like a sword, and advanced with stealth back up through the passageway. He broke through a door. When the guards turned to him, he crushed their skulls with the rebar, grunting with the effort, and listening to the crunch of their shattered bones with careless exultation. Holding the steel in his hand, which dripped a trail of blood and gore, he entered the church where the green-eyed man held Lucia and Birdie among a crowd. Into the crowd he waded, his steel bar flashing. He fought his way to them, blood arcing from his swinging steel. The dying moaned about his feet, but he did not care. He took Birdie in his arms, Lucia by the hand, and led them from that place, back into the green forests, lit by the hot sun.
But it was fantasy. He was no King Arthur. He was Eric the worm. The rebar was solid in its cement home. The steel cuffs were tight against his wrist. He could not move. When he could hold it no longer, he had to piss in his pants. The warmth of it sickened him with grief and shame. He tried not to cry in the sensitive silence, but tears came anyway.
The fantasies stopped.
All he could think of was water.
_
All the different kinds of water. Rain water. River water. Water in lakes and water in ponds. Dew caught in the grass. Water that collects in your hair when you walk through a fog. The cold water of melted frost. Water in puddles, on roads, dripping from roofs. Loud water rushing down a waterfall. Silent water, still and contemplative as a monk. The first glass of water of the day and the one you have at night. The water that waits for you in a glass. Water in an aluminum canteen and water from a plastic jug. Boiled water. Fresh rain water. Frothing water and pouring water. Blue water, green water, water the color of sand, and water as dark as night. The gold water of the reflected sun and the pale water of the moon. The turquoise water of curling waves cresting, with their white hats. The gray water of storms and the brown water of floods.
Clear water.
He could think of nothing else, even when the thinking became something worse than desire. When the pain began.
_
Alone in the darkness, dying of thirst, Eric felt himself begin to shrivel. His body seemed slow, his blood moved through him like mud. His mouth burned and his tongue felt like a dry dead thing in his mouth, except for the pain.
When he had first come to the Cave, he had tried to speak to the prisoners. "Hello?" he had asked the darkness. "Is there anyone there?" There was no reply, maybe a whimper or two in the darkness, the other worms, wriggling on the floor. He had thought then that they were too afraid to speak, but now he understood.
It hurt. His tongue was so swollen and dry, he could not imagine speaking with it anymore. It hurt to swallow. Speech was impossible.
_
A blazing yellow light appeared. And then the raucous sound of their captors. They emerged from the light like burning angels. Their movements seemed effortless, weightless, blessed. What a miracle it was to be whole. Before he could accustom his eyes to their presence, they grabbed him up and dragged him out.
"Fucking stinks in here," one of the guards said to the prisoners as they left, as if it were their fault.
They dragged Eric up the passage. He stumbled, trying to follow. It was astonishing to him how weak he was. It was not like in the movies where the prisoners managed to keep their dignity despite all their inhuman treatment. In reality, it was easy to break someone.
They carried him through a room and dumped him down in front of a desk where he groaned and coughed through a dry throat. Using what little strength he had, blinking in the blinding light, Eric struggled to stand. When he did, he saw the green-eyed man sitting behind the desk, studying him cooly. There was no sympathy there. If anything, the man was casually amused.
He saw Lucia first. She was in a corner, looking at him, her face bruised and her lip split. One of her eyes was swollen shut. Beside her was Birdie, staring at him with quiet anguish. He knew they had been told not to utter a word. Eric turned away. He didn't want them to see him like this.
"My name is Daniel Sullivan," spoke the man with green eyes, "and I'm going to give you two ways to die. I want you to choose."
_
Eric didn't move as Daniel Sullivan spoke. He fought hard not to tremble. Not in front of Lucia and
Birdie.
While Sullivan explained his choices, Eric concentrated on his green eyes and the little crescent shaped white scar on his forehead.
It was difficult to listen to him.
There was a glass of water on the table, full and glistening.
_
"Well, Eric," said Daniel Sullivan, "this is how it is." He picked up a pen and twirled it in his hand. "I've talked with these two lovely ladies, and I know the whole story. I understand your position with Carl Doyle. I also know that you are not responsible for the deaths of my fellows.
"But that doesn't matter much to me, Eric. I know it's going to be hard for you to understand, maybe impossible, but I'm going to explain to you once why you have to die. It's up to you to decide the manner of that death. That's the best I can do for you."
Lucia made a hissing sound, but when Daniel Sullivan turned his head toward her slightly, she shrank into the corner.
"Carl Doyle is a menace, but he's dangerous. After what beautiful Lucia told me, I'm not sure we could take him without suffering grievous losses. We've had enough of that. I won't put my people at risk. Yet this leaves me with a quandary, Eric. Because my people need justice. Justice binds us together, you see. Without justice, we're only a gang. With justice, we're a people, a culture, a civilization. We are brothers and sisters. People are the bones of a society. Justice is the muscle, the cartilage, the flesh."
Daniel Sullivan revolved in his chair, picked up his pen, twirled it in his fingers, and then silently studied him for a second.
"This leaves me with the question, what is justice? Have you thought of that? What is it? Is it knowing right and wrong? Or is it simple, animal revenge? I thought about this for a long time. And it came to me finally. We're just human beings, we don't know right and wrong. Only God Almighty can know that. Revenge is unsatisfying and leads to reprisal, enmity, feud, war. I understood it finally, one night, while I was at prayer at the feet of Our Lord.
"Justice is sacrifice. We need people to die for what we believe. We need them to make the ultimate sacrifice. Their blood gives life meaning. Their final exhalation breathes life into a society, Eric. That is the lesson of Our Lord, the son of God. Sacrifice is the root of justice. We ask these people who have done us wrong to sacrifice themselves for the good of us all. Everything else is mere machinery toward that end."
Daniel Sullivan let his pen drop. His chair squeaked as he leaned toward Eric. His eyes were terrible upon him.
"It doesn't matter if you are guilty or if you are not. What matters is the sacrifice. When my people see you die, they will come together. Be it in grief or rage, be it in agreement or disagreement, it won't matter. Your death will bind us as one, make us a stronger people. That is why you have to die, Eric, for the good of us all. You must die."
Daniel Sullivan's eyes grew gentle, almost grateful, though Eric saw there also a bright mote of pleasure that made Eric's skin crawl with revulsion.
"But I can let you choose the manner of your death," he said. He rocked back in his chair so that it squealed again. "These are the choices open to you. I can take you and your two accomplices here, I can truss them up, put a gag in their mouths, and line all of you up against a wall and shoot you. That would be sufficient."
Eric felt a groan rise up in him, but the only sound he made was a dry rasp.
"Or," Daniel Sullivan continued, "you can walk up in front of my people and confess to what you've done. You can tell them you conspired to kill our people, that you are agents of the Minutemen sent to test our borders. You can say that you pledged your heart, your mind, your very soul to President Jacobs, that you kneeled at his feet and you kissed his hand. You will say you kidnapped these two fine women for your own use. Then you will be taken to a wooden wheel and bound there, hand and foot, and you will be whipped until you die. If you do this, Eric, we will spare the little girl and the lovely Lucia. We will take them into our company."
Trembling, Eric turned his attention to Lucia and Birdie.
Birdie's face ran freely with tears and she trembled. Lucia made a retching sound, more like an animal than a human. Eric swallowed and then turned back to Sullivan.
He made a rasping sound.
"Here, my boy," Daniel Sullivan said, pushing the glass of water toward him. "Have a drink, son."
Eric took the glass and, his hand shaking, lifted it to his lips. He had never experienced anything so sweet. His mind seemed full of golden lightness, and it opened to a clarity he had forgotten existed. He took a breath and then drank again. And again. Finally, he set the glass down empty. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, savoring the feeling, which was already leaving him. Then he opened his eyes and gazed steadily at Daniel Sullivan.
"Don't call me son," he croaked. Sullivan's eyes narrowed slightly, but he waited. "I'll do it. I'll say what you want. Just don't hurt them."
"No!" Lucia cried, sobbing. "No, Eric, no!"
Daniel Sullivan turned his eyes toward her. "What did I tell you, woman?"
Lucia's eyes shut and she shuddered and said nothing more. Her lip was bleeding again and tears flowed down her face. Birdie had her eyes squeezed shut and her hands on her ears.
Sullivan turned back to Eric. "It won't be easy. You will suffer more pain than you thought possible, but you must endure. If you utter one word of your innocence during the ordeal, I will have to re-investigate the issue. If I do that, your friends will die."
Eric trembled, but he picked up his chin. "I can," he began, but a sob threatened to interrupt him. He swallowed. "I will do it," he finished with effort.
"I thank you for your sacrifice, Eric," Daniel Sullivan said.
Eric said nothing, but his eyes were unwavering.
Daniel Sullivan smiled a crooked smile, and then whistled. When the guards came in, Sullivan nodded toward Eric.
"Bring him to the holding cell," he said. "Let him have all the water he wants. He has an important speech to make."
_
When it came time, Eric hardly knew what he was saying. It was as if he was speaking through another's mouth. He stood in front of the group of strangers and said that he had plotted to destroy them, to bring them into the new state of President Jacobs. He described how he had snuck up on the two guards, shot them, and then, wanting to instill terror into them, had driven over their bodies, again and again. He said he had kidnapped Lucia and Birdie, to be used as his wives.
It was over before he knew it. They dragged him through a shouting crowd to a large wooden wheel. They ripped the shirt from his back, and then tied him down. He did not resist.
Eric kept his head down. He stared at a red, brick wall. It smelled cool and innocent. Behind him, he could hear Daniel Sullivan give a speech, but he did not listen to him. When it was over, the crowd was silent, expectant, solemn. He could hear the hard soles of boots strike asphalt. There was a gasp from the crowd, and Eric prepared himself. He prayed he would have the strength to resist, to be quiet.
The first lash was like a fire lit in his mind. He cried out in the heat and intensity of the pain. Someone in the crowd shouted that he deserved it. When the second lash hit, Eric already felt exhausted. By the fourth lash, the crowd was absolutely silent. Eric was crying now, in great sobs, but he was careful they were inarticulate. He would say nothing, as he promised. After the fifth lash, he heard Lucia scream in anguish, and it helped him somehow, the thought that he would not die without someone to mourn him.
At the sixth lash however, when the whip cut into his muscle, he no longer cared for sympathy. He only wanted the strength to die in silence, on his own terms, with something like dignity.
The seventh lash eradicated even that.
When the eighth lash burnt across his body, Eric slumped against the wheel.
_
On the island there was no pain. The lake waters lapped the shore. Chickadees and blue jays flew among pine trees. The low sun glittered on the water's surface as a cool breeze swept down from the blue skies. T
here was a house there, rough and awkwardly made. Outside the house there were two wicker chairs, whitewashed as clean as clouds. Out on the blue waters bobbed a single canoe. In it there were people, indistinct, shadows of people.
As Eric watched, a bright stroke of lightning struck the island and blinded his vision and his world cracked open like a gunshot. Through the crack poured blinding pain.
18
__________
Grafton Notch
LUCIA PULLED OVER THE TRUCK and leaned over Eric. He was pale and unconscious.
"Keep going!" Birdie cried, her voice pitched high. "Don't stop!" She was holding Eric's head in her lap. Her hands trembled.
"It's okay," Lucia whispered. "They won't follow us, okay? We're all right. Eric," Lucia continued, turning to Eric. "Are you awake?" She pressed her hand to his thin face. His skin was hot with fever. Lucia could see the blood on the truck seat. She had bandaged him as best she could, but they needed a place to stop so she could do it better. "Look," she said, pointing out the truck window to a sign by the side of the road. "You did it. You got us here."
The World Without Crows Page 24
