Walking the Bones

by Randall Silvis

  He asked himself, Are you going to get up or not?

  To lie still was to choose to die. A race between infection and starvation. Infection would probably win.

  He thought of something Thomas Huston had written, that suicide is nothing more than the period at the end of I can’t take this anymore. Choosing to live is another page, maybe a thousand more pages, all of it just one long Faulknerian sentence held together with comma splices and ellipses and conjunctions and grit.

  Screw the period, DeMarco thought. I’m not at the end of my pages yet.

  ONE HUNDRED NINE

  He looked up only occasionally, struggled from tree to tree with the help of a crutch fashioned from a windfall branch. The crutch was a good foot too short but it helped him maintain a lopsided balance. He would hop forward on his right foot, left foot three inches off the ground, then jerk the crutch parallel, shift his weight to his left armpit cradled in the fork of the crutch, and hop forward again. Occasionally his left foot would dip and catch a toe against the ground, and the brief contact would send a bayonet of pain up through the sole of his foot and into his shin and kneecap.

  Along the way a part of him removed itself from the pain and stood watching from farther ahead—detached but curious, maybe even a little amused. It wasn’t an unfamiliar phenomenon. It had happened nine months ago when he had raced through a forest to the sound of gunshots, and knew that Thomas Huston was in the vicinity of those gunshots. Before that, on several occasions while sitting in his car outside Laraine’s house when she came home with another man. Before that, while waiting for the ambulance to arrive and take Ryan Jr. away. And before that, dozens of times as a child and teenager caught in the glare of his father’s attention.

  Yet it always felt peculiar to be watching himself from a distance that way. For a long time he had believed there must be something wrong with him, perhaps something bordering on the sociopathic. Until a lunch with Huston. DeMarco had asked, with a note of envy in his voice, what it was like to live most of his life inside his own head, engaged in the godlike activity of creating and destroying people.

  “You sometimes find yourself depressed,” Huston had answered, “and you don’t know why. You find yourself irritated, agitated, nerves on edge, and you can’t figure out why. You have a beautiful life, the best family in the world, everything you’ve ever wanted. Why the hell are you so miserable? And then it hits you: you’re living your character. Everything he feels, you’re feeling it too. And he’s not just messing with your head, he’s all through you, because in a way he is you, a manifestation of yourself. You have your own emotions but his are stronger, they can drown yours out. So the only thing to do is to, I don’t know, separate yourself from that character. You have to stand apart and just sort of watch. Let him suffer whatever he has to suffer. And try not to care.”

  And now, surrounded by nothing but trees and pain, DeMarco was glad he wasn’t a writer. Glad he didn’t have to pull himself apart this way every single day. Even gladder he wasn’t God. Eight billion wailing souls inside that head. All that misery. All that desperation.

  ONE HUNDRED TEN

  Dusk seemed to come early. On the other hand, he could no longer trust his sense of time. Pain stretched it out. A few minutes of feverish sleep now and then reduced it to ashes. In any case it was too dark to continue. His right leg felt wooden with exhaustion, his left armpit was scraped raw from the fork in the makeshift crutch.

  He thought he had reached a summit but could not really tell, was too tired and brain-fogged to distinguish if he was climbing uphill or down. And the wind was picking up, the air thicker. One moment he felt chilled to the bone, the next moment on fire.

  He huddled up against a tree, hoping to put his back to the wind, but the wind was too tricky for that, it swung right and then left like a boxer, it ducked low and then came up swinging.

  He stretched his left leg out, ran a hand up and down over the tear in his jeans. The blood had dried and scabbed, patched the tear shut. He remembered the denim patches his mother used to iron onto his jeans when he was small. He had hated those patches. None of the other kids had them.

  He wasn’t hungry but had a terrible thirst.

  He closed his eyes, and his thoughts started racing again. They broke into fragments and crashed into each other. No Jayme, no television, no whiskey, no beer. Nothing to distract him from his thoughts but the trees and ground and patches of sky. The chitters and creaks and snaps. A few stars blinking on and off behind the leaves.

  Nothing to do but to let them all go…

  ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN

  The night burst open like an electrified hell, waking him with neon-white lightning spiderwebbing above the trees, thunder exploding in sudden, startling bursts inside a continuous rumble and growl. He scooted away from the tree and leaned back on his elbows and opened his mouth. Drank the rain until his open jaw stiffened. Closed his jaw, worked it open and closed. Then opened his mouth and drank some more. Again and again until the rain stopped as suddenly as a faucet turned off.

  The wind continued to whip the upper canopy back and forth, sending leaves and acorns and brittle branches ticking down through the underbrush while the trunks creaked and swayed. DeMarco scooted back to the tree, pulled his soaking T-shirt up by the hem and sucked the moisture from it. For warmth he pulled the silver locket out and clutched it between his hands.

  ONE HUNDRED TWELVE

  Asleep again. DeMarco is standing in an empty bedroom on the second floor of his home. There is a large picture window in the rear wall. He knows that this window didn’t use to exist, but he is not disturbed by it. Nor, when he looks out the window, is he disturbed by the huge gnarled and twisted oak that now stands in his backyard, leafless and black, far taller than his house. What he finds most unusual is that a large brown cow stands calmly atop one of the upper branches.

  He goes to the threshold and calls downstairs. Laraine! There’s a cow in the oak tree out back!

  No answer. He returns to the window, looks again, and now realizes that the cow is in fact a huge old bull with long yellowing horns. Very curious. And as he watches, the bull calmly walks out to the end of the branch, pauses for just a moment, and steps off. It falls to the ground with a heavy thump. Lies motionless. Obviously dead.

  How strange, he thinks.

  He turns from the window, exits the room, walks briskly downstairs to the rear door. Opens the door and steps out onto the patio for a closer look. And now sees not only the huge, motionless bull on its side on the ground, but his son, Ryan, twelve or thirteen years old, reclining on a thick lower branch like a Caucasian Mowgli. He is barefoot and bare-chested, wearing nothing but a pair of loose white trousers, and he is smiling, gazing off toward the distant hills. On the branch above him a white tiger sleeps, its legs hanging down.

  DeMarco steps out a little farther onto the patio. Says as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake the tiger, Ryan, could you come inside, please? I’m not comfortable with you being out there with that tiger.

  Ryan does not respond, but his smile broadens. All is well, his smile says.

  And DeMarco stands there watching, perplexed, taking it all in, the deceased bull, the sleeping tiger, the enormous tree, the serene and beautiful boy…

  ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN

  He awoke to gray light, a heavy fog rising from the ground. His body was stiff and sore and shivering, clothing still damp from the night’s rain, his injured leg still throbbing from ankle to knee. A few twittering birds had begun their morning greetings. The scent of the forest was strong—wet leaves and ground, ferns and greenery. He felt good despite the pain and chill of his body, felt strangely optimistic; the calm of his dream still lingered.

  And then he remembered the locket, his hands empty. He froze. Don’t move. It couldn’t have gone far. He had slept lopsided against the tree, and now peered over his left shoulder and into t
he wet leaves, then down along his arm, moving his gaze slowly, covering every inch, and saw it there against his hip, wet and shining. Delicately he picked it off the leaves, wiped it clean on his shirt. Cupped it to his hand and raised the hand to his mouth. If I had lost you, he thought.

  Minutes later, with the fog slowly lifting, he worked himself into a kneeling position against the tree, and gradually pulled himself erect. He leaned sideways to pull down his zipper and relieve himself. Much of the woods still lay in deep shadow, though brightened by the bluish cast of fog. But some twenty yards away in a clearing no bigger than his living room, only partially revealed in the low sunlight broken and blocked by its trip through the leaves, the silhouette of a fat little man stood against the side of a tree. The silhouette itself was not unbroken, gray light here and shadow there, but in outline it resembled nothing more than a little fat man in a peaked hat, one hand upon a hip. DeMarco smiled with the unlikeness of such an illusion. What were the chances that light would stream down from ninety-three million miles away and form itself into something so unfamiliar yet recognizable? As far as he could remember, he had never actually seen a little man in a peaked hat. Maybe in a school book when he was a child, in first or second grade. Maybe in one of the many picture books he had read aloud to baby Ryan. In any case, there it was before him, as familiar as the trees. He couldn’t help grinning at it, enjoying it as a clever trick of the light.

  But then the little man leaned to the side, stood, and elongated, grew into a full-sized human made of silhouette and half-light—a silhouette that now turned and walked away from him, merging into the concealing depths of the foggy trees.

  A minute later a small engine roared to life, held steady and strong for ten seconds, then soon faded with distance, leaving behind only trees and fog and DeMarco and his questions.

  ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN

  Where the shadowy individual had hunkered down against a tree, the ground was disturbed, leaves flattened or scuffed away. And because the ground was still damp, the trail of footsteps away from the tree were also visible, as were the tire tracks of the ATV he had ridden away on.

  DeMarco studied the tracks. “Four-wheeler,” he muttered. Two clear tracks left by wide, low-pressure tires. Following the ridgeline. The scent of gasoline exhaust lingering in the air.

  The individual had made no effort to conceal himself. What did that mean?

  It might mean, DeMarco thought, that it wasn’t Emery. Or wasn’t the person who shot at me. Or he thought I’d already spotted him, so didn’t bother trying to hide himself.

  It might mean I hallucinated him.

  He looked again at the ground. Do hallucinations leave tracks?

  There was only one way to find out.

  ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN

  DeMarco hunkered behind a tree on the edge of a clearing of relatively level ground. Of approximately an acre in size, the clearing had not been stripped of trees but allowed for a wide patch of blue overhead, more sky than he had seen since the long trek began.

  Some hundred feet ahead, near the center of the clearing, a small stone building. It stood perhaps five feet wide by eight long, was built of the same sandstone rocks he had rested upon, climbed over, or avoided with muttered curses for forty hours or more, but these were roughly chiseled into rectangles and stacked eight courses high, then topped with a steeply pitched roof of rusty corrugated panels. The end nearest him had an opening five courses high. The interior was darkness.

  Another twenty yards beyond this building stood a plain but well-made cabin with a stone foundation and unpainted plank walls. Two wooden stairs led to a solid, windowless door. Two small windows on what he guessed was the southern side. No movement other than the leaves overhead, and the pulse of hot pain thrumming from ankle to knee.

  He had started the climb at approximately three on Monday afternoon. It was now, as best he could figure, Wednesday. Somewhere between seven and eight in the morning. He had been stripped of everything but the clothes he wore, stripped of all means of communication and self-defense. His face had been peppered with tree shrapnel, his skull rattled and bruised, leg ripped open, body twisted and pulled in every imaginable way. He ached in every muscle and bone, was hungry, thirsty, scratched, gouged, feverish, sleep-deprived, and insect-gnawed, and now hid behind a tree while staring at his first glimpse of anything not borne of nature: a strange stone building that looked in morning light like a dollhouse mix of cathedral and ammo bunker. And asked himself, So what now?

  Whatever its purpose, the building would provide good cover for observing the cabin. He limped laterally behind the line of trees until positioned in direct line with the building and the cabin beyond it. Then hurried forward as best he could, stifling a yelp each time his left foot creased the earth.

  He had to duck to enter the building. Its darkness reeked of wet earth and rancid meat. The stench froze him in his crouch as he squinted to discern what lay beyond him, but with the sun still low he could see only shadow upon shadow.

  The nearest shadow appeared to be hanging in the air a couple of steps away, head high and as big as a beach ball and alive with an oscillating buzz. It partially obscured the opening at the far end, a duplicate of the one he had entered. He stood motionless, breathing shallowly through his mouth, waiting for his rods and cones to adjust. And gradually he could make out the object ahead of him, the head of a deer, suspended from wire attached to the antlers, and blanketed with flies.

  The sound to his rear came loud and deliberate, a clap of hands. He turned quickly, pivoting on his good leg. A gray-and-black dog as big as a wolf was sprinting toward him at full speed, and behind it stood an individual in jeans and boots, flannel shirt and ball cap, a rope dangling in one hand, a rifle in the other. The rifle was rising to the horizontal, the dog three seconds away.

  DeMarco ran. But neither far nor fast enough. His first lurching step tripped a wire strung ankle-high, and two barred doors, one in front and one behind, slammed down on metal tracks.

  The dog thrust its head between the bars behind him, and now it began to bark, incensed. The figure lowered the rifle and came forward. DeMarco raised his hands level with his face.

  “I’m unarmed,” he shouted above the barking. “And I think my leg might be broken.”

  But the individual, whom he now saw as a woman, though broader and nearly as tall as he, strode past the building without giving him a look.

  “Come!” she called, and the dog pulled its big head out of the bars and sprinted up to her.

  DeMarco watched through the exit bars as she opened the cabin door, then followed the dog inside. The door slammed shut behind them. And the world went quiet again save for the agitated buzz in the darkness of DeMarco’s sky.

  ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN

  He lay with a cheek to the cool, packed earth, his face to the fresher air beyond the exit bars.

  He tried to work up a gob of saliva so as to spit out the foul taste of his prison. But his mouth remained dry. Meanwhile the morning passed slowly. The air grew thick and hot. The world stank of rot. He watched the cabin door until his eyes grew heavy, and then he gave up trying to remain awake. Consciousness, he told himself, is overrated.

  ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

  In his sleep he has rolled onto his right side, back against the exit bars. The entrance bars have disappeared and the opening is full of blue fog. But DeMarco knows he cannot leave his prison, he knows that escape is impossible, so he makes no effort to get up, he merely lies there too heavy to move and looks at the man hunkered down close to him in the fog, his friend Tom Huston, his face clean and smiling and his hair neatly combed. What the fuck, brother? Huston says. And DeMarco, through his parched throat and dry lips, says, I could ask you the same thing. And Huston laughs, that sudden booming laugh of his that always catches DeMarco by surprise, that sheer unfiltered delight in a moment of existence that always brings a smile t
o DeMarco’s face too, just as he smiles now and says, Am I a character in one of your stories, Tom? Huston says, You mean like Goodman Brown? And DeMarco answers, That’s not your story. Huston nods, leans closer to lay a hand atop DeMarco’s head. The hand is soothing, cool. I’m a character in one of yours, Huston says. As are you, my friend. Now DeMarco wants to laugh but is too heavy with sleep. I’ve never been much of a writer, he says. You’ll get the hang of it, Huston tells him. Just keep scribbling. Huston grins, his teeth so white, then leans away, begins to rise, until DeMarco, seized by a sudden panic, reaches out to grab Huston’s sleeve and ask, What’s all this for, Tom? All this craziness. This life. What’s it all about?

  Huston says nothing for a moment, only smiles. Then, in almost a whisper, Sentipensante, my friend.

  I don’t know what that means.

  Life is a poem.

  How so?

  Mute. As a globed fruit.

  That doesn’t make any sense to me.

  Huston continues to smile even as his image fades, sleeve and hands and arms turning to mist, his body returning to the fog, until only the coolness of his touch remains.

  ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

  Something cool and wet against the back of his neck. Something moving, snuffling. And then he knew: the dog.

  He rolled away from the bars, onto his left leg and then off again, lying awkwardly on his back with head raised, one leg bent at the knee, the pain fierce and hot all the way up his side. The dog remained with its snout poking through the bars. The woman stood behind the animal, backlit by bright daylight.

  DeMarco said, “How long have I been in here? I need some water.”