by Frank Owen
The three boys fanning Beth’s body had been replaced by six others with a paddle of bark in each hand, and by then the funeral lunch was served and done. In the old times there was a side of ham, but those days were long gone, and they knew it. Now the women were washing the plates and pots on the lake shore, scrubbing at the grease with handfuls of sand. They saw the harrier take flight from her tree and watched as she wheeled above them and came to rest on the arm of a man. Tye Callahan had not been to Glenvale in forever.
‘I hope that you’ve not delayed the funeral for me,’ he said as Hugh greeted him.
Why send the bird if you didn’t want us to wait?
Instead Hugh answered that they had indeed waited, that they’d wanted as many Callahans as possible to attend.
‘Well, let’s get it going then. I got other business I need to get done. New place called The Mouth sounds like trouble. Heard about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’d be wise to keep a better eye on things down here,’ Tye said. He carried two packs but did not set either down.
No one mentioned the smell as Beth was brought out of the church, down the steps and across to the birch tree. Children were pinched by parents for pulling faces at the stench, and many in the crowd adjusted their face cloths to fit tighter.
Beth’s father emerged from his house, weak and pale from grief. They led him over and he stood at the head of the grave and watched as the body was lowered into the dark.
He spoke, faltering, as the shovelfuls of sand covered her over, about her life and the gift she was, what she loved to do on sunny days and how she’d never been a burden, sewing things for her little cousins when the wind confined them to their houses, doing her share of fetching water and fire wood. He also spoke of the courage it took for her to overcome the illness she’d caught when she was nine, an illness that had taken three grown men to their graves.
But it was really only he among the Callahans who grieved the loss of Bethlehem. As he spoke there was among the congregation a restlessness, a shuffling of feet stilled only by the fingering of cold steel triggers standing ready in their holsters. Bethlehem had been a totem for the Callahan name, not a person. The totem had been tampered with, desecrated and spoilt, and that dispossession called for revenge.
Beth’s father had barely finished speaking when Tye made his way to the head of the grave. His harrier swayed but never lost her footing, the scales on her feet as dry as the puckered skin on his hands.
‘Enough of this,’ he said, his hands shaking. ‘We’ve all come here from a long way off for a common purpose. A girl is dead: but worse than that, a Callahan is dead. Drop your flowers on her grave and let’s go put this right.’
He adjusted his packs and walked out the gates of Glenvale. It took a minute before anyone dared follow, but when they did they left together, polite at first until they were some way off and then waving their rifles in the air and hollering.
Even the men with shovels had gone. Hugh and Beth’s dad were left beside the unfinished grave. The two of them took up the implements and replaced the remaining soil, spade by sorrowful spade, patting it down. And then they ringed it with stones and hammered a rough cross into the earth.
When it was done, they looked out across the empty grass, trampled by the vanishing crowd – and they saw one man returning.
Paul Callahan walked back into Glenvale proper, past the church, until he stood beside the grave once more.
‘I didn’t ask,’ he said, out of breath. ‘Bethie’s baby. Did it live?’
8
Vida couldn’t help looking sideways at Dyce as they walked, scanning his face for signs of sickness. When he caught her looking, she made excuses.
‘Thought I saw a jackrabbit.’
Maybe the virus had died on the rim of the cup. It could’ve done. It was cold in the attic. Maybe Dyce had somehow managed to avoid infection. Could he have sipped from the clean side?
It was just when Vida had convinced herself that Dyce was in the clear that she saw him grimace and clutch at his stomach. She said nothing.
‘Smell that?’ said Garrett.
‘Something’s burnt.’
Vida lifted her face and took in the air. Yes, it smelt like pine ash: the acrid aftertaste of it meant that it was not fresh. Vaporized resin from a blaze usually stung the nose, but this was aromatic and delicate.
Over the next rise, they saw what it was.
Fieldstone Camp was gone.
A black smudge ran down the mountainside. At the bottom, the camp gates were a mess of splinters, like charred and broken bones.
‘Looks like you won’t need us to vouch for you,’ said Garrett. ‘No, looks like I won’t.’
‘I’m keeping the gun.’
‘Yeah. Fine.’
‘What you going to do?’ asked Dyce. The sweats had begun, but he was fighting to keep the pain from showing. ‘We could take you on to the next camp. Nothing I know of between here and the coast, though.’
‘Yeah. This is the last one. Was the last one. You go on. Not like you have time to waste.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ll see what I can find here and then head inland. Maybe find another settlement.’
‘If you change your mind, we’ll be heading along this ridge.’
‘Jesus, Dyce! Hey, everyone! We’re heading along this ridge. But shhh. Don’t let the Callahans know!’
Garrett turned and walked on. Dyce nodded his reluctant head at Vida and turned to follow his brother.
Within a minute, they were gone, swallowed up in the thickets of mesquite.
The stub of the camp was huddled against the mountain for protection. The rest of it sprawled up the slope of the ravine that cut into the rock. A stream poured down the center, splitting the settlement down the middle. Where the water ran deep or wide, the people had built little wooden bridges. Vida followed the line of the stream with her eyes, squinted up the slope until it disappeared under the cover of low trees. High at the lip of the cliff the stream reappeared as a waterfall, the water hard against the ears in the hush. In a hundred years there would be no sign that humans had ever lived here.
Only one structure still stood in the ruins, a ramshackle barn of thick logs. ‘Little house on the prairie,’ Vida breathed. How pleased they must have been to raise the new roof on that one, the sap rising to sting the builders’ nostrils, everything possible, green to the touch.
By the time she got deeper into the camp she was resigned to the bodies. A pair lay side by side outside their burnt shack, two mounds of soot, like the place that fell under the volcano. Vesuvius, Vida’s mother said in her head. Vesuvius. Never forget. It could happen to you, baby girl. In a splintered pine tree sat a row of turkey vultures, squabbling among themselves but waiting for her to pass so that they could glide back down and peck at the crispy flesh. ‘Family, hold back,’ Vida told them.
Further up the slope was another corpse, curled up beside the river as if the woman had made for the water when the fire came. Vida bent to examine the scuffed earth around her scorched skirts. Bear prints. A scavenger, she told herself, just like me. No shame in it.
If anything of use had survived the fire it would have to be inside the barn, right? Vida followed the bank of the stream upwards, stepping over the pale-green shoots of bullrushes that spiked out of the ground. She could see no life in the river, no frogs or newts plopping terrified into the water. Here a dead heron lay twisted around a rock: the water tugged relentlessly at its head and feet so that they waved, animated. Vida picked up a stick and lifted its body up and over the stone. She watched it tumble downstream, losing feathers as it went. Not worth the risk of eating a dead bird. Hardly any meat, anyways. She moved to drop the stick, then hesitated. No harm in being prepared.
The stairs that had once led up to the barn door were gone. Vida hooked her boot on the plinth and pulled herself onto her stomach. She had expected darkness inside like a cow’s stomach, but the roo
f tiles had fallen away in patches: jagged light streamed through the holes. She stood up, the shattered tiles crunching under her feet.
It looked as if the interior had been untouched by the blaze. There was a counter at the far end, a couple of stools. Vida couldn’t see all the way along, but there were other rooms coming off the main space, curtained like the whores’ bedrooms in an old-time saloon. Vida felt the homesickness rising in her and choked it back down. Not so long ago people had come here to feel that they still belonged to one another: to pass along their warmth and light and conversation – all the things that make us human, she thought.
Behind the counter sagged a shelf of half-empty bottles and a range of dead insects. Vida flicked idly at one upturned carapace. Spiders and roaches mostly, roof-dwellers smoked out by the fire. Looked as if the bear had been in here too: there were prints in the dust, and gashes in the wood on the counter corner.
She held up her stick and poked it over the counter, half expecting the bear to be asleep on the floor, sated with whatever awful rations it had found in the ruined camp, turned to poisoning or early hibernation.
But the space was clear. The bear was smart enough to have returned to its unscorched home territory, back to the slopes, nose to the wind.
Vida scrambled over the bar. She began inspecting the unmarked bottles, uncorking each in turn and sniffing them. Home-brews, Goldilocks, her nose told her, watering. And some a whole lot better than others. The first had a fruity smell but it lacked the acetone punch of a good disinfectant. The second was stronger, but mold was growing up the bottle’s insides.
She had just opened the third bottle when the man’s voice came from behind her – gravelly, unused, left for dead.
‘I’ll have a splash of that there white lightning, if it’s going.’
Vida dropped the bottle and turned, her stick like a sword. The bottle bounced at her boots but didn’t smash.
The thin man sat on a stool as though the bar was still serving and he was in need of one for the road. His hair was dark and long; he’d tied his beard just below his chin with a piece of string like a pirate, so that from here it seemed neat and clean. Vida bet that he stank up close. They all did. But she noted that his eyes and nose and ears were dry, and he seemed pretty calm. No infection, then.
But still. It paid to be cautious.
‘Am I going to get some service here, or should I take my business elsewhere?’ He was twisting a small piece of cloth in his hands. A handkerchief?
She played along. ‘It’s been a quiet week behind the bar, mister.’
He nodded. ‘That it has.’ Twist, twist. There was something wrong with his fingers.
‘Where is everybody?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Summer camp. They all packed and left for a seaside break.’
‘Assholes. I can’t believe they didn’t tell me.’
‘You have to be a friend to have a friend, camper, ’member that.’ He set the cloth down beside him and pointed at Vida. She recoiled. The index finger was missing from his left hand. In its place was a smooth pinkish nub. He wiggled it at her. ‘How’s that drink coming along?’
Vida rested her stick against the counter and bent to search for glasses. There was a stack of clay cups there. She blew into them – a dead beetle, its glossy abdomen dulled – and then set out two. She retrieved the fallen bottle, Stringbeard’s slitted eyes on her all the while, and filled both the beakers.
He lifted his cup. ‘Cheers to the queers. Applause to the whores. May prostitutes flourish and fuck be a household word.’
Vida cocked an eyebrow but drank hers down. She’d had worse. It was strong and sour, like bad cider or mead gone musty, wrong and full of pollen. What was it her mama used to drink? Snakebite. She swallowed hard.
Stringbeard hadn’t flinched. He dabbed at his face with the cloth that he set back down again. It was none too clean, Vida saw: there were rust-colored streaks on one side. Don’t know that I’d be putting that rag near my mouth, no, sir.
He refilled his own cup. Vida let him, keeping hers out of his reach.
‘I saw you come down the pass.’
Vida nodded.
‘I hope you weren’t coming to visit family.’
‘No. Just passing through. See who’s around. Maybe stock up on supplies.’
‘Food?’
‘I’ll take whatever’s useful.’
He nodded. ‘I feel that way myself. These are hard times for everybody, little sister. Hard times.’ He picked up the handkerchief in his subtracted hand and stroked his face with it. The lace at the edge of the cloth was ragged with friction. He’s not wiping. He’s grooming himself, Vida thought with a kind of horror. That’s why his beard looks so neat. It’s all the stroking. That’s his blankie.
‘Do you live here?’
‘I am indeed a resident.’ He was slurring. ‘Lived in Fieldstone since it started.’
‘What happened here?’
‘Town got infected: some kind of crazy brain virus. Made them torch the place.’
‘And you’re not, uh, infected?’
‘Oh, some. Who isn’t?’
He dabbed at his nostrils again. Fuck, Vida thought. He IS sick. How did you get that so wrong, Veedles? She moved her hand along the side of the counter towards her walking stick.
He was sweating freely now. Maybe the booze had flicked a switch somewhere. ‘If you wait long enough, you get the better of this virus. The blackouts stop. The rest too. It all stops.’
‘Is there anyone else here?’
He laughed, then looked sly. ‘Sure. Lots of people. They won’t help you, though, kiddo. They’re sleeping. And you don’t want to be waking them up.’
‘How did the virus get in? Settlements are usually so careful.’
He drank, silent.
She tried again. ‘Was it sabotage or something?’
He slammed the cup down. The hooch sloshed over his ruined hand.
‘Who the fuck told you about that?’
Vida jumped. He really was crazy.
Stringbeard pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘I mean, what have you heard about the guy who sabotaged Fieldstone?’
Vida pulled the stick closer, keeping it hidden. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He poured the last of the bottle into his cup, along with the pips and rinds of some pulpy fruit, yellow as pus.
‘It was them. They locked me out. I built half this village. Who do you think chopped the wood for these beams?’ He pointed up, but Vida kept her eyes on him. He shook his head, the tendons like pulleys on his neck. ‘You can’t say that locking me out was fair. My children were inside. My wife.’
‘But you were sick, though, right? You caught something on the wind? That why they locked you out?’
‘We’re all sick! All of us. You can’t tell me nothing about sick! Or about sacrifice!’ He held up his indignant left hand. ‘I lost a finger cutting the wood that made Fieldstone. They owed me! What do you make of that?’
‘So you, what, burnt the place?’
Stringbeard subsided, the fight going out of him. ‘Ha. No. That’s not on me. I didn’t do any of the burning. That started from inside. I just tried to bring the town round to my way of thinking.’
‘How?’
‘Infecting the stream. Up top. Like cholera. It only takes one. It seemed to do the job.’ Incredibly, he was smiling at her, the corners of his eyes drooping. You and me, his face said, we know how it goes.
‘So why aren’t you . . . dead, if you don’t mind my asking?’
Stringbeard shrugged. ‘All I know is that I’ve been given a gift. I sure did catch something nasty on that wind. Stayed out too long hunting and couldn’t find shelter in time. Virus affected my brain, made me unreasonable.
‘So when I come back they see me cussing and fuming and they
won’t let me in through the gates – the gates I fucking built! Hours pass this way, and I say my prayers and stare at the night sky and make peace with my end, though, if I’m honest, I’m not going quietly: Let me in, you fuckers! I’ll kill you all! That kind of thing.’ He shook his head.
‘Now I’m outside the gates, dead sick already and along comes another wind and, blame the rage, I don’t just hide under a rock. I stand up outside the gates while everyone else is locked away, and I breathe this new pestilence deep into my lungs. I breathe it in like a, like a, knife in the guts, and I gulp it down to twist the blade – to end it all. The honorable thing, right? I know I’m going to die – two viruses means double dead.’
Vida nodded.
‘I curl up right at the foot of the gates so that when they find me there in the morning they’ll have to drag my body away. Someone I know will have to come out and take me by the stiff wrists and pretend not to recognize my face as they do it. Fuck them.
‘But instead of the eternal night, I wake up, froze only half to death – and I’m sitting there outside the gates, wet right through with dew and sweat, and I’m thinking how true it is that two wrongs can make a right. They can.
‘Two viruses were in me, and they’d found a balance, and they kept me alive. Just call me Lazarus.
‘I took that revelation to heart, little sister, and I repaid Fieldstone’s wrong with a wrong of my own. Dragged my shivering carcass up the slope to the waterfall and I leaked a little mucus into the water. ’Cause we’re all in this together, right? You should have seen it! Long strands of the stuff setting off downstream, like boats. Then the fire. Now we’re here.’
After Stringbeard’s recitation he regarded Vida closely, scanned her up and down, as though he could see through her clothes to the unmarked flesh below. To distract him, Vida let go of her walking stick and found another bottle on the shelf.
