by Steven Price
Poor goddamn kids, one of the men was saying.
Anna Mercia hooked her fingers into the mesh-wire fence and rested her face against it. She closed her eyes. He might have been talking to her.
She left them then, went on.
As she walked she would catch herself muttering. Running old conversations in her head in a soft shadowing voice: You damn well better get those dishes done mister. Or: Kat honey I only got two hands, if you want something it’ll have to wait. Conversations without meaning. Looping them over and over. On her knuckles a tattoo of dirt and dried blood, her bad arm bound tight against her ribs. A darkness pluming out of the southeast over the bones of the city.
After a time she found herself on the sidewalk of a small block of coffee shops, banks, a dry cleaner across the way. The day was turning warm. Her stomach seemed a cold coiled thing inside her and she knew this was hunger and though she did not feel any pain she knew she must eat. She began rattling the doors, going from shop to shop. When she looked up she saw two black dogs slip out of a bakery two doors down and the second dog paused and raised its snout studying her with hard flat eyes then lowered its head and vanished up the street. She approached uneasily. The glass door stood open on its silver hinges.
Hello? she called. Hello?
The interior was dark and she waited in the doorway for her eyes to adjust. The lights were hanging in long loops of cable from the ceiling and the tables were overturned, splintered, the chairs kicked wide. The door to the back ovens stood open and a sour smell was coming from there.
She righted a sofa and slid down feeling heady and strange. She sat for some time.
At last she got to her feet and kicked her way to the counter looking for food. The glass had been smashed and the pastries had been taken. Some small cakes had been crushed underfoot and she looked at the dark smear of them and then at the blacker kitchen beyond. It was a place utterly without light. You’re not that hungry yet, she thought. She could just make out a shape fallen in the doorway and she thought then of the dogs and then she left the bakery and she did not look back.
By noon she began to encounter families camped in tents or tarped shelters built of chairs and odds and ends strung up between trees on their lawns. Pale mothers in dusty jeans with children three or four in a line staring bleakly out. Their houses largely undamaged. Foundations shifted. Garages crushed. She walked through the unnatural glow watching children wash in steel tubs in the yards or old women sit on canvas chairs in open doors and no lights burned in the houses. Sometimes there were men with them and they would straighten from whatever task and watch until she had passed.
Her daughter would be waiting. Her daughter would be. If she is not there then she’ll be somewhere else, she thought. If she is not there then you’ll go to Mason and then together you’ll find Kat. That is all you need to think about now. Keep your head. It’s not far now.
A short while later in the stark midday light a truck rumbled past with figures jouncing in the bed of it and then its brake lights flared and it turned around and came slowly back. There were two of them in the bed and the paler boy folded his elbows over the siding as they pulled smokily up. He was young and well-dressed and his companion likewise. He held a crowbar crosswise in his lap.
Hey, he said. Where you headed?
Anna Mercia stood in the gravel holding her broken arm firmly by the forearm and wiped the grime from her forehead and looked at their eyes and at the truck and at the road.
Nowhere, she said.
We’ll give you a lift. Climb in.
It’s alright.
You goin into town? We’re goin into town.
The two boys were watching her intently.
No, she said.
Come on.
No.
She turned around and started walking back the way she had come and after a moment the truck began reversing slowly behind her.
Hey, the pale boy was calling to her. He sounded angry. Hey, where you goin?
She could feel herself shaking. She did not answer him.
Hey, he shouted at her. You fucken cunt.
His companion said something she did not hear and the boy laughed. Then he banged the flat of his hand twice on the roof of the cab and the truck started back up.
Over her shoulder she watched them go and then she slipped down into the drainage ditch and crouched in the bushes holding her knees and she waited. She could not stop shaking. She crouched like that for a long time watching that the truck did not circle back. The white dust smoking off in the gravel.
The hours passed.
And then she was stumbling along a street she knew, and then another, and she knew it was close. She passed a row of burned-out houses, the blackened shells of garages and iron railings twisted from the heat. Her feet in their thin black flats were aching and each step seemed to drag heavily. And she lifted her head, and slowed, and stopped.
Her street too had burned. A fire must have swept through after the earthquake hit for most of the houses stood charred and gutted in the high sunlight and her own house had burned along its eastern wall but for some reason the fire had not taken the house. The kitchen and the garage were gutted. But the bedrooms, the living room looked undamaged from where she stood taking in the sight and she was trembling. She stood at the bottom of the driveway for many minutes but no one came out to meet her and then she crossed the lawn and approached the house. She was moving quickly.
Kat? she hollered into the dim hall. Kat are you home? Kat! Katherine!
She left the front door standing open and her shoes drummed over the carpet into the hall. The house was a mess, the furniture kicked aside, the photographs and paintings askew or fallen. She saw her television had been taken and the stereo in the dining room also. The kitchen was burned out and blackened and she could see the sky and the next house through the far window. The sink was charred and filled with drywall and strips of cupboard. The walls smelled of grey water and ash and singed carpet. She could see no sign of her daughter.
Okay, she murmured. Okay. Okay.
The house felt very silent and strange and she did not know what to do. She could feel something in her throat and she knew it was fear and she swallowed it back down. She must keep her mind very clear, very cold. She stood with one hand on her head staring at the stained walls.
Then out of the stillness of the hall she heard something.
Boots. Scraping on stairs.
There were three sharp steps, then a pause. Then three more.
She left the kitchen and stood at the end of the hall and peered into the darkness and after a moment her basement door swung open. A man came through. He had black hair and wore a bandage wrapped around his temples and over one eye and he was sweating heavily. Hefting in his arms a box filled with jars of canned fruit and stewed tomatoes and tins of soup and when he saw her he stood dead still and stared. His knuckles were white where he gripped the box. The skin on his neck and arms looked red and sore and the hairs on his forearms were tacky with dust.
Who are you? she asked sharply. What’re you doing in my house? Her eyes flicked to the dark basement behind him. He looked to be alone.
He was breathing softly with his one eye scrunched narrow and he said in a quiet voice: The door was open?
She did not know if he was explaining his own presence or asking how she had herself got in. Her head felt hot, gluey, light. Then it was cold and clear again. Are you alone? she asked.
Yes, he said. I was just getting a few things.
This is my house.
Yes.
I’m looking for my daughter—
No one’s been here, he said. We came in after the fire.
We?
The house was empty.
We?
He blew out his cheeks. Me and my wife.
I thought you were alone.
He was silent a moment. Then he said, She’s hurt. We needed somewhere to go. He shifted the box onto one hip and grunte
d. I got to set this down. See what there is in here.
That’s my food.
I guess it is.
He brushed past her into the living room and set the box down with a clank on the upturned coffee table. He kept looking at her out of the corner of his good eye and there was something in his manner she did not like. An uneasiness. Or some other thing she could not name. He began to tell her of the quake as it had struck and how it had caught them just as his wife was in the shower. He was a barber and took Tuesdays off and so was at home and only just waking up when it hit. He said his wife’s brother had been killed in the quake and he spoke in a low voice and said his brother-in-law had been a guest in their house at the time. Had gone out jogging when it struck and a car had driven up off the road and killed him. He had found him laid out in Henderson Field amid a great crush of other corpses all nameless and mutilated. He wrinkled his brow as if surprised and turned his head and looked down the hall.
Henderson Field, she said. You mean the ballpark?
He nodded. It’s terrible there, he said. That’s where they’re taking them. The bodies.
He did not ask about her. He did not ask about her daughter. He seemed not at all curious and sat darkly on the couch after he had finished his account and he reached one mottled hand up to his bandage and rubbed at his damaged eye.
What happened to your eye?
The barber glanced at her and his eye was dark but when she did not turn from him he looked away.
I walked all day, she said. I thought my daughter would be here.
You shouldn’t be out there on your own. A woman like you. It’s not safe.
A woman like me?
The barber nodded.
Where’s your wife? she asked.
Anna Mercia followed him down the hall to her own bedroom. The floorboards creaked under his boots and his steps echoed along the blistered walls and in the half-darkness it did not seem at all the house she had lived in. She was suddenly very glad that her daughter was not here. He opened the door softly, peered in.
Aggie? Are you sleeping? the barber murmured into the gloom. We got a guest.
There was a muffled shifting of blankets, of sheets. The sound of uneasy breathing.
The barber’s wife said something Anna Mercia did not hear.
He turned back and looked at her with his one eye. His head monstrous, swollen, a blood-thick thing in the darkness. She could smell his breath.
She’s in bad shape, he said. I don’t know. Come on in.
They went in. The bedroom light was grey through the sheer drapes drawn yet over the window and Anna Mercia peered around at the chaos of that room. Her clothes had been upended out of the mahogany drawers and the drawers stacked end on end and the wall mirror taken down and leaned up against the far wall. Her closet doors had been dragged off their runners and turned sideways and kicked into the opening and even her bed had been shoved up against the wrong wall, away from the window. She sucked in her breath and wondered suddenly just who these people were.
What happened here? she muttered. What did you do to my things?
The barber shrugged. It was like this when we got here. I mean we went through it again looking for blankets and stuff. You know.
I don’t know.
He touched a hand to his head. Bandages and stuff.
Anna Mercia said nothing.
We didn’t take anything. We’re not thieves.
No. You just come into someone else’s house and make yourselves at home.
Well.
The barber’s wife lay shivering in the bed under a thin sheet and the sheet looked soft and brown with discolour from her wounds. Her eyes were glassy where she looked at her husband and Anna Mercia understood at once that the wife was dying. She was a heavy woman with brown hair fallen about the pillow and her drained face was etched by slices of glass.
What do you want, the wife hissed. This is our house.
The barber grunted. Aggie, he said. You know that’s not true.
Anna Mercia swallowed and her throat was suddenly dry. I thought my daughter might have come here, she said to the barber. I hoped— She bit her lip hard.
Get out, the barber’s wife said. Get out of here.
Her girl’s lost, Aggie, the barber said gently. He was leaning over his wife and lifted a wet strip of cloth from a bucket and squeezed some water into her hair and she closed her eyes.
Who is she? his wife whispered. Is she alone?
She’s alone, the barber replied.
Anna Mercia did not like the way he said this. I’m looking for my daughter, she said again. Do you have a phone?
The phone lines are down, the barber said.
I meant a cellphone.
The barber’s wife opened her eyes.
What is it? Anna Mercia asked.
Nothing. We’ve heard stories. About some of the people out in the street since the quake.
What kind of stories?
You know, the barber said. Looters. Thieves. Kids driving around looking for trouble. Stealing cellphones.
You think I want to steal your phone?
He smiled but the smile did not reach his eyes.
They’re just tired, Anna Mercia thought, watching them. And then: No, that is not tired. That is something else.
They were quiet for a moment and then the barber asked, What are you going to do?
She shook her head. I don’t know.
You could stay here. Wait for your daughter.
She frowned.
You might as well stay. Shouldn’t she stay, Aggie?
The barber’s wife murmured something to her husband.
Aggie thinks you should stay.
Anna Mercia did not reply but looking at the barber’s wife wrapped in her sheets with her yellow piglike eyes peering out at her she did not think this was what she had said.
She left them then and went to her neighbours’ but found no one at home. At least they are not dead, she thought. And then: No. Be precise. You mean they are not dead here. As she was coming back down the street she heard a groan from the side of the yard and found the barber doubled over in her neighbours’ rhododendrons, a crate of tinned soups overturned in the dirt. His hands were pressed to his face and she approached him carefully and when he looked up at her his good eye was squinched nearly shut in pain.
It’s my goddamn eye, he said. It’s my goddamn eye.
You’re stealing their food, Anna Mercia said. Her voice sounded thin, impatient. They got two little girls. You think they won’t need that?
Please, he said. You got to help me. Oh my goddamn eye.
What’re you doing? Stealing food from everyone around here?
Goddamnit, he said.
She looked off up the road and then down at him where he kneeled.
Go on up there, she said.
He did not move and she shoved him with her foot as she would a stubborn dog and she felt at once sorry for it. But he unfolded and got unsteadily to his feet.
She went inside and found a pan and rinsed it with water from the tank behind the toilet and then she found some tweezers and a bottle of iodine and she held this up to the window and peered at it wondering how old it was and if it was still good. Then she went back outside to the front steps. Her hand was shaking as the barber kneeled in front of her and she took his jaw in her hand and tilted his head to the side. In the pale afternoon light she very gently began to unwind the bandage from around his head. A smell of ash in the thick air. The gauze was yellow and she peeled it softly from his socket and there was a watery pink blood and some clear fluid oozing out from his swollen eyelid. He was biting his teeth down hard.
What happened to you? she asked him.
His hands were gripping her knees tightly.
Easy, she said. Just be easy now.
She reached down for the water and ran it lightly over his forehead to clean the eye and then she took up the tweezers from the pan and she folded back the red flap of ski
n. The eye was scarlet and gruesome and it rolled wild and unseeing.
Something’s definitely in there, she murmured.
He groaned.
Don’t move. Try not to move.
She slipped the tweezers under the lower edge of the eye and he screamed and pulled away.
Do you want me to do this or not?
His head was lowered and he did not reply at once.
We don’t have to do this.
No, he said. Please.
He set his head again into her lap and she slipped the tweezers in under the jelly of the eye and felt the tip tap against something hard. And withdrew in a single long strand of sticky blood a fragment of iron a quarter inch in length. She held it up in front of him and he looked at it wonderingly.
My god, she said.
It’s a goddamn nail, he said.
And then he leaned over and was sick.
The afternoon passed. She did not know how it passed. She had some vague sense of drifting through the rooms of her house, sitting at the blown windows, standing on the lawn staring blankly up the street. She did not attempt to right anything, repair anything. The sun slid lower in the sky, the shadows thickened in the grass, the light faded. She thought of her son watching the sun descend somewhere out in the city and then she thought of her daughter and then she did not think of either for the terrible feeling was in her and she could not.
When she turned to go inside the house she saw the message in white paint on the door of the house: Kat Mason I am alive and looking for you Love Mom.
She had found the tin of paint in the basement and the brush in the wreckage down there where the fire had not reached and she was remembering this now where she stood. Then she was remembering the body pulled out of the gymnasium that morning and how the firefighters had lifted the stretcher clear with great gentleness as if bearing the injured and not the dead up into those slats of sunlight, slats of shade. How she had leaned on the low hood of a car and the sun-hot metal under her thighs. The firefighters’ steel helmets burning like halos of fire.
Then she was inside again and there was a grey blanket on the couch for her to sleep under and the house was already dark. Down the hall she could see a light burning under the door of the bedroom where the barber and his wife lay. She made her way down to the bathroom but as she neared she could hear them speaking in low voices through the door and she paused a moment in the darkness to listen.
