by Alix Ohlin
Angus was leaning against the far counter, using his finger to stir a glass of what I knew must be gin. His clothes were as tattered as ever, his skin as freckled, his hair as red. “Knew you couldn’t stay away from us,” he said.
I looked at him, flushed with annoyance. For the first time since that day in June at Wylie’s apartment my body had no reaction to his; no heat on my skin, no ripple down my spine, no sensations elsewhere, either. It was an unsettling feeling, like an alcohol buzz wearing off too early in the evening.
He smiled at me and lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said.
Wylie, who’d been facing the other direction, turned around and nodded. Irina came fluttering toward me, her face flushed, and kissed me on the cheek. Psyche cooed and hit her fist against Irina’s collarbone, and when I touched her cheek she looked at me, her eyes wide open, and laughed. Her skin looked rosier than usual, and I wondered if everyone had been out hiking again. Then they all started talking at the same time.
“Can I fix you a drink?”
“We’re here making preparations.”
“Your time is perfect, we are just making ready.”
“Ready for what?” I said.
“Oh, our biggest project yet,” Irina said. “It is very exciting. We have been planning many aspects of things.”
The baby now cooed in earnest, hitting Irina again.
Irina laughed and said, “She wants a cocktail, like everybody else has.”
“Cute,” I said.
Irina gave her some apple juice, and she sucked happily at the bottle. On the stereo, Frank decided it was just one of those things.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked Wylie.
He shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“No.”
“I messed up with Daphne Michaelson. She went kind of crazy—even crazier than she was before, I mean.”
“Well, that’s no surprise.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re kind of messed up.”
“Pot. Kettle. Black!”
He shrugged again, his lips pursed.
“Here’s your drink,” Angus said, materializing at my side. The ice swayed and bumped in the glass, a thin, elegant lime slice floating between two cubes.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“I brought it anyway,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. “Now if everyone has food and drink, it’s time for a meeting of the high council, and I propose the backyard as our secure location.”
“Well, if the high council’s meeting, I’ll take my drink and go elsewhere.”
“Oh no,” Wylie said. “You’re coming.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not on the high council,” I said.
“You are now. That’s why we’re here.”
I looked around at them. Irina smiled at me encouragingly. Angus winked, and I thought, Who winks anymore? Nobody winks. I paused to take a long, slow swallow of gin and tonic. “Look,” I said. “Just because Angus wants me around doesn’t mean I have to be part of your little capers.”
“I want you around,” Wylie said. “I’m the one who said we should come get you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you need us,” he said. “We’re good for you.”
By the time everyone had taken their sandwiches and drinks to the patio furniture in the small, square backyard, Stan and Berto had shown up with a case of beer and two bags of takeout from Taco Bell. They sprawled on the ground spurting hot sauce from little flat packets into their foil-wrapped burritos. The sound of children splashing in a backyard pool carried from somewhere down the street. I sat down on a plastic lawn chair in the shade, and Irina sat next to me, feeding the baby a biscuit that she gnawed and slobbered on happily. I waited for Angus to call the meeting to order, but it was Wylie who started talking first. Since the closing of the Crest, he seemed to stand taller, scowl less, and talk with greater ease, or maybe I’d started listening to him more. At any rate, everyone was paying attention.
“Now is the time for all good people to come to the defense of their country,” he said. “The mountains are catching fire while the city spreads at their feet. If you saw a murder being committed, you’d rush in to stop it; your conscience would demand it. It’s time for us to rush. We can’t let the summer pass without a grand gesture. People say that gestures accomplish nothing, but they’re wrong. If we abandon gestures, we abandon the fight to assert what we believe.”
“Hear, hear, man,” Berto said. Irina clapped prettily, one arm around the baby, the other arm reaching around to meet it. Angus, who was lying propped on one elbow in the grass, clapped too, but I could see a kind of smirk in his smile, as if he were an adult watching a child ride a bicycle: half proud, half waiting for him to fall. And Wylie seemed to know it; despite his ease in speaking, I could tell he was watching Angus watching him.
I sipped my drink. The breeze that ruffled my hair was almost cool, with August moving toward September. In the days of unceasing sunshine, in my visits to various crazy women and my nights with Angus, I’d almost forgotten that summer would ever end. Looking at my brother, I thought that he was right: I was messed up, and he had it together, with a life built on his beliefs. At least he actually had beliefs.
“Wylie,” I said, “I still don’t really know why I’m here.”
He smiled at me then, genuinely, for the first time in recent memory. “You have to drive,” he said.
Wylie and Angus were consulting a pad of paper covered in mysterious diagrams that reminded me of the plumbing model I’d seen over martinis. Maybe they were going to break into people’s houses and start installing low-flow toilets. It was early evening. I could smell the spicy smoke of piñon wood, people so eager for fall that they couldn’t wait for an actually cold night. Angus came over and sat down next to me against the back wall of the condo. He put his arm around me, and I let him. On my other side the baby huddled against Irina for warmth; she kept turning and squirming restlessly, and knocking her head against Irina’s chest as if she couldn’t get close enough to her body and whimpering. Everyone was talking, their lips thick with spittle, the words tumbling out fast as the evening shaded into darkness. All around us lights went on in houses, and the habitual blue glow of televisions. The baby started crying and Irina took her inside, bouncing her up and down in the sling.
I wondered where my mother was, if she was coming back soon, if she would forgive me when she did. I stood up and almost lost my balance. “I’m going to bed,” I said.
“Oh no you’re not,” Wylie said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Now?” I said.
“Of course now.”
“Wylie, I really need to talk to Mom.”
“After,” he said.
So I found myself driving my brother’s car through the neon-lit streets of Albuquerque, with the whole group chattering and happy, except for Psyche, in Irina’s arms beside me, who kept squirming and muttering angry complaints. Nothing her mother did could soothe her.
“Maybe you should take her to the doctor,” I said.
Irina shook her head. “Everything will be fine,” she said, smiling sweetly.
I drove to Wylie’s, as instructed. The place looked different, and I noticed that the dog was gone.
“Where’s Sledge?” I asked Irina.
“With a friend of Angus,” she said.
“What friend?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.
The walls, previously bare, were plastered now with topographical maps of New Mexico, region by region, its mountains graphed in pale green ink, shot through with thin strands of blue rivers and red roads, the old Spanish land grants neatly labeled. I walked the room, passing from map to map, the contours of the state traced before my eyes in awe-some detail; it seemed like a crazy thing for a human hand to have accomplished, to have charted each rise and dip and curve of the land. On the last map, by the kitchen, was Berna
lillo County, and the Rio Grande washed across the sheet. Albuquerque spread red and pink at the center of it, the land parceled into tiny geometrical squares. In the context of the green blobs that defined the wilderness around it, the city looked belated and sad, a cluster of cubbyholes and closets and shoeboxes that people called homes. With my finger I traced a route from Indian School to Central, then over to this apartment. Wylie came and stood beside me, and together we looked at the map, the foothills where our childhood home stood and the edge where, high in the Sandias, Bernalillo County gave way to Sandoval.
After a few minutes of loading the van with backpacks and boxes of tools, Wylie, Berto, and Angus climbed inside it. As they left, Angus kissed me good-bye and whispered, “Stay close.” I said I’d try, and got behind the wheel of the Caprice. Without Berto beside him, Stan seemed a bit lost, crossing his arms and frowning at me when I met his gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Just follow the van, please,” Irina said.
I trailed the van through light evening traffic onto the interstate, switching lanes every time Angus did, worried that I’d lose them. These maneuvers continued even when there were no cars to pass, and I suspected he was just playing a game, smiling and watching me follow in the rearview mirror. Irina sang “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” over and over to Psyche, the repetition—like some inventively childish form of torture— driving me insane. I kept glaring at her, to no avail, but after a while she switched to a Czech melody whose words, at least, I couldn’t understand, and Psyche’s irritated babble finally subsided.
“Where are we going—Bisbee?” I said. Nobody answered.
We were west of town when the van signaled for an exit onto a rough, one-lane road. The car jostled and shuddered, and Psyche woke up and started crying again. I sighed, staring out at the dark, empty land around us and the black silhouettes of power lines snaking along the horizon. When I followed the van onto a dirt road, the Caprice bucked in protest, and rocks sprayed across the windshield. On Irina’s side the glass began to spiderweb.
“Shit,” I said.
“Are we here?” Irina said.
“How should I know?” I said. The road weaved and turned back on itself, heading up into hills. It was too dark to see very well, and the car kept bouncing into ruts or scraping its bottom against the dirt and gravel. The shuddering kept getting worse, even at this low speed. I gripped the wheel at ten and two, as if this would prevent anything bad from happening. At one point the headlights flashed over the bloody remains of a deer or antelope, and I veered around it. Five minutes later, I parked beside the van in front of a cabin that was cobbled together out of adobe and two-by-fours. Sledge stood outside, barking, and next to him was Gerald Lobachevski.
I got out of the car and stretched; my right leg was numb. Wylie climbed out of the van and waved at me as Angus and Gerald disappeared into the darkness. I walked back down the road and looked up at the sky—it was a true New Mexico black, flecked with bright stars. There was just enough light to limn the contours of the desert below, indeterminate and lovely. The land rose and fell like breath. I sat down on a long flat rock. Outlined around me, somewhere between object and shadow, were cacti and boulders and squat juniper scrub. I could feel the edge of a chill in the air.
From above I heard the murmur of voices and the flat scuffle of shoes, and moments later Angus and Gerald came walking slowly toward me, their heads swaying together rhythmically as if they belonged to a single animal. Angus was talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. “Ache back,” I thought I heard him say, not once but twice, and I wondered what language or code he was speaking. Gerald wasn’t saying anything at all. I knew they couldn’t see me, so I coughed.
“Well, hello there,” Angus said. “You remember Gerald.”
“Hello, Gerald.”
“Wylie’s sister,” Gerald said flatly.
“That would be me,” I said. He turned around and walked back to the house. “He’s so gracious,” I said to Angus.
“I know it.” He sat down next to me on the rock, and I moved over to a less smooth and comfortable part, resenting him and trying not to, our hips pressed close together. I have slept with this ragged, red-haired person, I thought, multiple times. His freckled skin was practically glowing in the dark desert night. An owl hooted in the quiet. Angus put his hand on my knee, then turned and kissed me full on the lips. It was a fine kiss; there was nothing wrong with it; but it was not what it had been at the beginning of the summer. Somehow, and so soon—a fact that burst sadly inside me—I had gotten used to Angus Beam. I pulled my head away and stared down at the ground as he put his arm around me.
“Let’s go back,” I said, and stood up. Just then a thin, plaintive cry rose through the air. “Is that a coyote?” I said.
Angus laughed and said, “No, it’s Psyche.”
Inside the cabin, in the gloomy light of a camping lantern, Stan and Berto were looking freaked out as the baby screamed her head off. Wylie and Irina were bent over a blanket on the floor, making shushing and humming sounds, but Psyche ignored them, wrapped up in her own distress, and I thought I detected a certain satisfaction in her wailing. Her face was screwed up tight and red, with a kind of rash on her forehead; when I got closer, I could see it had spread down her neck and shoulders all the way to her little hands.
“Did you try feeding her?” Angus said.
“Of course I tried feeding her,” Irina said, looking sweaty and worried, her accent suddenly thicker.
“I think she has a fever,” Wylie said.
Angus crouched down next to them, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet and touching her pudgy shoulder. After Wylie finished changing her diaper, Irina picked her up and said, “I’m taking her outside.”
From the other side of the room, Gerald growled, “Ridiculous to bring a baby up here.”
“You be quiet,” Wylie told him.
“He’s got a point, man,” Berto said.
“What’s she supposed to do with it?” Stan muttered. “She can’t just leave it behind.”
“I’m just saying, man,” Berto said.
“You drag that baby around like a dog,” Gerald said.
Irina was staring straight at him, ignoring everybody else, the baby wailing over her shoulder.
Gerald’s voice was harsh and rasping with scorn. “You’re like a girl with a doll.”
“I’m her mother,” Irina said.
“She’s compromising this whole operation.”
“She will stop soon,” Irina said, “I know it.”
“You don’t know anything,” Gerald said, louder, glaring right back at her. “It’s a game to you.”
Irina was scowling, her face transformed without its trademark smile. “You could help,” she said. “She is yours too. You could help me!”
“I told you I wouldn’t,” he said flatly.
“You son of a bitching!” Irina said wildly. “You!” Then both she and the baby were wailing, a high and awful noise like bagpipes or cats.
“Oh, shut up,” Gerald told her.
“You shut up,” Wylie said, standing there with his fists clenched.
Angus unfolded himself from his crouch and lifted his palms to calm the two men. Gerald turned away, shrugging, and Wylie glowered at Angus—an equal contest, it seemed to me—but then subsided, shaking his head and relaxing his fists.
Cradling the baby in her arms, Irina walked resolutely outside, where we could hear Psyche’s shivering cries and her mother’s shaky, delicate singing in counterpoint harmony. Wylie glanced around, his face torqued with worry, and then went outside. Before long, the howling grew thinner and higher, falling away in the dark, until it was only a sliver of sound.
Twenty
The lamp swung back and forth, pushed into motion by the door Wylie had closed behind him. Sledge had gotten inside, and now started licking the backs of my calves, so I scolded him away to the far corner of the room.
Angus and Gerald spread out maps and sank deep into private conversation. Closer to me, Stan and Berto were arguing with each other, muttering and shaking their heads like some old married couple with longstanding disagreements.
“You can’t go around shooting cows,” Stan was telling him.
“Why not?”
“Because what did they ever do to you?”
“Yeah, but it’s ranching, man,” Berto said. “It’s completely messing up the ecosystem.”
“That’s some crazy shit you’re talking.”
Angus clapped his hands and everybody snapped to attention—relieved, it seemed to me, to finally get started.
“We’re going to shut this city down,” he said.
Grinning, Stan and Berto nudged each other, and I went outside to find Wylie and Irina, following the trail of Psyche’s distant crying, stronger as I approached. I kept tripping in the dark, but I finally came upon Wylie and Irina walking in circles, his arm around her wide back, his voice soothing and calm.
“How is she?” I said.
“Oh, Lynn,” Irina said. “I think the baby is sick.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Hey,” Wylie said sharply.
“Oh, come on,” I said. I didn’t like the idea of being on the same side of the fence as Gerald Lobachevski, but in this case I was. My voice seemed to boom in the empty mountain air. “When you have a baby, take care of it. I mean, if nothing else you should take care of your child.”
“Leave her alone,” Wylie said, grabbing me by the arm and shaking it, hard.
Irina sniffled—a sharp, anguished intake of breath—and I realized that I’d made her cry again. “I am always left out,” she said. “Not tonight.” She fumbled with the buttons on the front of her brown sack dress to offer her breast, but Psyche wouldn’t nurse. Then she began to rock the sling and pace back and forth across the road, constantly murmuring something, not quite words and not quite song, that sounded like “oh hasha hasha hasha oh.” Her voice filtered through the clear night, mournful as prayer and steady as grief. Wylie walked over to her and they leaned against the peeling, shadowy bark of a juniper tree. The baby’s cries were agonizing to hear. Wylie brushed some hair from Irina’s cheek, and Irina nodded at whatever he was whispering to her.
