Palimpsest (Book 1): Feral

by P. J. Post

  “That’s not quite it, though, you know?” I say.

  “We make the choice to live and let the newborns die, isn’t that what you’re thinking? That we have a choice? That we’re complicit?”

  “Something like that. Have you always been this smart?”

  “I’m just a kid, remember? And no, you can’t think about it like that.”

  “You’re a smart kid even if I do think you’re full of shit.”

  It’s beginning to sound like she’s trying to convince herself more than comfort me. There’s a lot of that going around these days — rationalization.

  The search for self-forgiveness.

  Justification.

  She sighs. “Remember, I told you I try to remember them, the good and the bad?”

  I nod.

  “I listen to the stories, everyone’s. I’ve been scared, touched and horrified, but I’ve learned some stuff too. If I live long enough, until things get fixed anyway, I’m going to write it all down, like first-hand accounts of everything that’s happened.”

  Is this her penance?

  I know my face is turning sour; I don’t have anything to hide behind. “The fear, the disappearing supplies, starvation, streets piled with the dying, the destruction, disease, the violence? Carlos’ boys stripping Denise back there and leaving her for the dogs? The Cart People? Parents trying to decide which kid lives and which one they are going to leave behind? That’s what you want to write about? That’s what you want to remember? The death of America? All of that ugliness?”

  “No, well, sort of, but not like that.” She stares down the road, but I have no idea what she’s focused on; perhaps it’s someplace far away — another time, past or future I can’t tell. “We’ll never be the same, not as a people, not as Americans or Chinese or Mexican or whatever we’re going to end up as. We need to remember the people, yeah, Denise, her mom, how they helped each other, how most of us came together in our time of need, but we also need to remember how we lost ourselves, how we failed — all of it.” She turns back to me, her eyes still serious. “Even the ugliness.”

  “Sounds pretty goddamn cold and academic if you ask me. So all this time I was your thing, chapter three hundred and whatever? Is that why you were watching me? Is that why you’re pressuring me to know what my problem is? You wanted my story? You didn’t have the right to go off on me about my good thing, especially considering that I was just more ugliness for you to write about, no fucking right at all.” I want to be pissed, but I’m just sad. I thought…I don’t know what I thought anymore.

  I just don’t want to be ugly anymore.

  “No, I…” She looks back to the road, avoiding my stare. She looks hurt. Her eyes are tearing. Have I misjudged her?

  My voice is so quiet I’m afraid she can’t hear me. No matter how angry I want to be, I’m still worried about her. “You’re too good for that. You shouldn’t have to hear stuff…you shouldn’t have to…it’s not right.”

  She takes a breath and continues, her tone even again. “Stop changing the subject…so you’re stuck at the house, and?”

  I don’t feel like talking anymore. I don’t want to be a chapter. I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve done? I’m afraid of Feral. She’s going to hate me.

  She shakes her head. “Stop looking at me like that. I appreciate being under your protection, but I have no illusions that I’m going to live long enough to write anything, so chill out on the invasion of privacy outrage. I don’t think you’re ugly or anything like that…I told you, I’ve seen your kindness. I can’t help with how you think of yourself, but you can’t make me share your opinion.” Now she sounds angry. Her emotions seem to be as all over the place as mine are. “I know better. I want to help you. I don’t want you to be a chapter, not like that.”

  “You’ll live to write it,” I say neutrally. I’ll see to it.

  “Thanks, I appreciate the confidence…so the story…”

  Fuck it. If I want her to trust me, I have to trust her, right? Right?

  “Okay, so dad…his best friend and his family were hiding out with us…”

  Just dipping back into the story is making me shake again, the fear is returning, just like that last morning. I can smell the coffee, the grass out back, the dirt. What were they thinking brewing coffee for anyone passing by to smell? It was like a goddamned invitation.

  “I can’t do this,” I say quietly.

  “Yes, you can.”

  I glance over at her, but she’s stone, expressionless. She said she won’t hate me. No, that’s not exactly what she said…

  “I’ve killed people,” I say, watching for her response.

  Her tone is still even, like she’s unsurprised. “I guessed. We’ve all done things, we’d rather not…things we’re not proud of. So that’s it? That’s your deal?”

  “It’s worse than that,” I say. “There was a girl…you remind me of her — you have her eyes. I held her…while…”

  Christ, this is tougher than I thought it was going to be.

  I feel my face begin to sting with tears, the emotion is like that first morning and every day after — raw.

  I feel her hand on my arm. “It’s okay. What happened? Tell me.” Her voice is soothing, like my mom’s when I’d stay home sick from school; with dad at work, she would pamper me, baby me, “how’s my little Punkin’?” she’d ask.

  I felt safe.

  I felt loved.

  It was quiet that morning, like everything was going to be okay, like deep down, somehow, we knew we were going to make it, just like Dad had said.

  It was barely two months ago.

  “I remember playing with Lisa; that was her name, Lisa. She was the youngest daughter of my dad’s friend. She had super curly blond hair that just blew around and around in the breeze that day. She kept brushing it out of her eyes. She was six, and had on jeans and new Mulan sneakers, she kept telling me about getting them down at the mall, and she was wearing this old, white Powerpuff Girls t-shirt. We were sitting in the backyard, searching for four-leaf clovers like…everything was normal.

  “I can still picture her sitting there giggling.

  “The sky was blue blue and had these great fluffy clouds. It had been quiet for a couple of days.

  “We didn’t know, but I found out later that the invasion was already happening and the front lines were forming to the North in Connecticut. The Army would have been there in the next day or so, passing through. If we had a few more days we’d have been okay and Dad would’ve been right about everything — just a few days more.

  “But that’s not what happened…anyway, our backyard fence has these missing boards at one end so we can get into the Bradys’ yard behind ours. They used to take care of us when we were little, so Dad never fixed the fence. I was daydreaming, zoning out on the clouds and the next thing I know, Lisa’s gone. So I’m up and looking for her, I can’t shout her name, plus I don’t want to freak out her parents, so I look around the backyard and the sideyards, and since she’s not there, I figure she’s gone through the fence.

  “I’m beginning to panic, you know?

  “The Brady house has a sliding door off a big patio. It’s open. I find Lisa in their breakfast room. She has a funny look on her face. It smells awful, that ripe odor, when bodies…”

  “I know it,” she says softly.

  “The house has been trashed. I remember wondering why they skipped our house. Isn’t that weird? Anyway, I go upstairs, because that’s where the smell is coming from. I can’t help myself.

  “And I find them. They were pretty old. It looked like they killed themselves. The gun was lying on the shag carpet floor next to Mr. Brady. I think he shot his wife first and them himself. There was a lot of blood.

  “I’d never seen a gun in person before and I knew we didn’t have one and that we probably needed one. A box of shells was open on the night stand. I’ve always wondered why whoever trashed the downstairs left the pistol and bullets
up there, you know?”

  I draw little circles in the dirt in front of me.

  I try to push the emotions away, but they have a mind of their own.

  “I’ll never figure that one out.” I laugh nervously, alone. “Anyway, I take the gun, you know, and the shells, and head back down the hall, but I see something out of the corner of my eye, something is moving outside, so I stop at the top of the stairs, you know? A window overlooks the backyard and I can see into my house from here, through the transom windows — there are people inside, people I don’t know and they have guns.

  “That’s when I hear the first shot.

  “I run downstairs, all brave and shit, like I’m going to save the day. I tell Lisa to stay behind the fence, so they can’t see her, and I’ll be right back. I tell her not to worry, even though her eyes are tearing up and she’s so afraid…so afraid. I tell her everything is going to be okay because that’s what you tell kids, right?”

  A tear falls to the dirt inside one of the little circles.

  I sniff and continue.

  “I mean when they get scared — that’s what you tell them, right — everything is going to be okay, so they don’t worry and freak out. But she’s six so I have no idea what’s going through her mind, you know, how she’s processing any of this. She just looks up at me with these big watery blue eyes…

  “And then I run up to the back of the house and sneak a peek through the open kitchen window. Stuff was happening. They were…they had my mom and…and my sister…I couldn’t watch, I didn’t want to see…I covered my eyes and…”

  The memory is seared into my consciousness — something else I can’t unsee.

  I choke back sobs.

  “I collapsed to the ground and buried my face in the grass. I couldn’t move, but I could hear everything. And then I’m pretty sure they killed my dad. He was threatening them and shouting and then there was a gunshot and I didn’t hear him anymore after that.

  “But I heard my mom and sister scream and beg for a long time...a long long time.

  “And you want to know the fucked up part?” My nervous laugh returns as I wipe my eyes. “The whole time, I’m holding a Glock with a nearly full magazine. And I do nothing. I just let those guys…do…they hurt them…they hurt my family so bad…I listened to them…kill…my family. I could have saved them, I could have done something, but I didn’t.

  “I was a coward, but I was so scared. I let my family…die.”

  And I’ll never forgive myself, not for them, not for any of it, but they aren’t the reason I’ve lost the right to live — the reason the sun brings new pain every morning.

  She lays her hand on my shoulder reassuringly. “No, how could you be expected to…” she starts.

  “Don’t…please. I know what I did, who I was that day, what I was. And yeah, I’ve changed; I’ve changed a fuck load. It’s not up to me to judge if it’s for better or worse. But that same coward used to rescue feral cats, take them to the vet and find them homes. For all of his faults, he was a good person.”

  Before all of this happened, he wasn’t ugly at all.

  He was a good kid.

  She shifts closer, her voice soft. “Like I said, I’ve seen you helping others. I’ve seen your kindness, even if we thought you were scary, you were giving. You’re still a good person. I have a sense about these things.”

  I wish she was right, I do. “Not this time. I’m not sure how long I was there, but I hear them ransacking the house and eventually it gets quiet. Even the moaning stopped.

  “I’d pretty much forgotten about Lisa. She sneaks up on me and scares me.”

  The tears are flowing down my cheeks because I know what happens next.

  Those big blue eyes, crying all over her Powerpuff Girls t-shirt. Her little shoulders heaving, her face is all twisted, her little lips quivering — she’s so scared, so scared.

  The look of shock, of betrayal…

  “Do you...know…anything…about Glocks?” I ask through my sobs, trying to catch my breath.

  Feral shakes her head, as her own tears fall, soaking into her scarf. “No…”

  “The most important thing to know about a Glock is they don’t have safeties.”

  “Oh no…” Her voice breaks and she chokes back a sob.

  “I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t. It just went off. I must have touched the trigger, but I don’t remember it. I didn’t mean too…I wouldn’t…I’d never…”

  I feel Feral’s arm over my shoulder again, hugging me fiercely. “It’s okay…”

  “No it’s not, but that’s what I kept telling Lisa, ‘It’s going to be okay, everything is going to be okay’, because that’s what you tell kids, right? But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even fucking close to okay. I didn’t know. I’ve never held a gun before. They don’t have safeties, they don’t. I didn’t mean to do it. Do you believe me?”

  She nods.

  I wonder if she hates me yet.

  “I shot her in the stomach. I had nowhere to take her, nowhere to go. ‘It’s going to be okay’, I told her, and held her, cradled her and told her stories about the kittens I rescued.

  “They all had names; Trisha and Laggy, Mister Muffles and Yogee, Mommy Kitty and on and on. I told her about how hard it was to capture Mickey because he was so crafty, she liked that story because even though it took me all day, I finally got him with a piece of chicken and now he lives on a farm in West Virginia.

  “And all the while she just bled out, all over her Powerpuff Girls t-shirt. She held my hand, she was so afraid. She got weaker and weaker and cried less and less. She stopped asking for her mother. And I remember thinking how sad it was that her mother was right on the other side of the brick wall we were leaning against.

  “And then she slowly let go of my hand.

  “I expected the bad guys to come back, but they didn’t.

  “I don’t know how long I talked to her before I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. I set her down as gently as I could and closed her eyes. I couldn’t go inside to see what had happened. I just couldn’t face it.

  “And I didn’t know what to do with Lisa. I was alone. I didn’t have anyone to ask or to get help. I’m only sixteen fucking years old. How was I supposed to know how to deal with shit like this? They don’t teach that in school.

  “It was an accident; you couldn’t have been expected…”

  “To what? Not shoot a six-year-old girl? I think that’s a reasonable fucking expectation. I couldn’t leave her like that, so I snuck around the house and broke the glass in the side door of the garage and opened it up, and got a shovel and some old blankets and dug a grave for her. I wrapped her up and buried her.

  “I left that afternoon without ever going back into my house. That was the beginning, because I‘m not that kid anymore.”

  It was me re-birth, the day of my first vow — never again. I’ll die before I ever let anyone suffer like that again. My second vow — I’ll never let a full magazine go to waste.

  She hugs me tighter. “None of us are that kid anymore. We’ve all changed and none of it is for the better.”

  “I killed Lisa, she was six fucking years old — six. There’s no excuse.”

  “You’re right, there isn’t, but you can’t let an accident destroy everything you are.”

  “But it did.”

  She shakes her head like she’s rejecting my guilt. “So this is what you’re trying to atone for?”

  I wipe away the tears and finally get control over my emotions and nod.

  “And that’s why you want to save me, to protect me? If you save me then you’ll be forgiven? Is that the idea? I remind you of her, so saving me is like saving her — retroactively? That’s messed up, you know that right? Glad I don’t have brown eyes, I’d have been screwed, huh?” She winks at me with smiling eyes.

  “No, it’s not like that.” She doesn’t get it.

  “Then what’s it like?” she asks seriousl
y.

  “I’ll never be forgiven. Atonement, repentance, whatever — it’s not a destination, it’s a journey,” I say sternly.

  I thought I wanted to take this journey with Feral. I thought she was smarter, thought she would understand, but she’s too interested in being superior or whatever this shit is.

  “Were you about to say something else?” she asks tentatively.

  “Nope. You think I’m a fool, huh, a crazy-ass fool?”

  “No, no, not at all, I understand and you’re right, it’s all very tragic, but I can’t be that for you, I can’t be your forgiveness, not how you want me to be anyway. That can only come from you.”

  “You don’t really get a vote.”

  “Don’t let your past get in the way of your present, okay?”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “I mean, you might get your chance at forgiveness, but it might not be what you think it is. You have to recognize it when it comes — you have to be ready.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re telling me to pull my head out of my ass?” This sounds familiar. I need to cut her loose — I don’t need any extra help in feeling like shit about myself.

  “Not exactly, but something like that.”

  “Get over it?”

  “Yeah, that’s more like it. But I’m not being a bitch, I know, trust me, I know how much this sucks and it isn’t about being rational or thinking your way through it, it’s dark — you have to feel your way back.”

  She pulls away and shifts to face me, rolling onto her side and propping her head up with one hand and then slides the other over mine like she’s trying to be reassuring. The effect of her hand touching mine is instantaneous. Even with the tragedy I’m reliving, my heart still skips a beat and everything tingles as she banishes the evil memories. She might really be a witch. I try to keep from trembling.