Sherwood Nation

by Parzybok, Benjamin;

  “It’ll be OK,” he whispered. “It’ll be OK,” he said again, feeling fairly certain it would not be OK.

  He felt her slipping into some icy state, a place where she might sleep down here forever, deactivated, her job over or failed. She was going to a still and shielded place in which she need not wonder if friends were dead or a country wrecked, or more likely, a place of her own making, to punish herself for those things. He felt like shaking her suddenly. Maybe she needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, maybe she needed those memories dislodged from her esophagus.

  He felt he needed to evoke something, anything, so she didn’t slip away into some coma. He kissed her and bit her shoulder but she did not move. “Renee,” he said again, feeling desperate now, as if, unmoored, her soul would slip away if he didn’t fight against the doom that pressed in on them. He leaned up and slapped her lightly across the face and her head turned where he’d slapped it and she said nothing.

  “Please,” he said.

  He shook her shoulders but she was limp. “Please don’t do this!” There was a thread of panic building up in him. He worried who she’d wake up as if he allowed emotional rigor mortis to set in overnight.

  “Come on,” he said. He put his ear up close to her face to listen for the sound of breathing. It was shallow and jagged, her mind no longer attentive to her faculties. He imagined her stuck reliving a single scene somewhere or just the barren echo of all the day’s scenes. Her silence was foreboding, as if she’d already succumbed and he would wake to her dead beside him, the flesh beginning to rot, in sympathy with the country.

  It seemed so small, such a tiny act, a mending thread of a life line thrown out, but next to her on the bed he whispered into her ear, weaving for her stories of what could be and what might be. Telling her how he loved her. Impossible outcomes, some so ridiculous he retracted, course corrected over his course corrections, until finally she moved, emitting a low groan or growl, and pulled him on top of her. He sighed into her neck and held on tight.

  Jamal was speaking to his father about other potential neighborhoods that could add clout and resources to the territory. It had all been too easy. One day they were one size, and the next they’d ballooned, taking one of Portland’s wealthier neighborhoods under their wing.

  The neighborhood welcomed them. They were heroes.

  “No more,” Gregor said.

  “But—” He imagined the entire city under their control—the stretches of farmland and resources they could plumb. Maybe the stabilization could spread past city limits. “Listen Pop, it’s not about craving power, it’s thinking about what we could do for the rest of the city. It’s about how it’s working here. The city should give up. We fit the new world. We are the government for what the world has become.”

  “It’s power,” Gregor said, “everything is only about power. This is an emergency government. We’re a clan. Do you expect us to pave streets? To run sewage treatment?”

  “Well, yes, of course. We’ve done everything else.”

  “We took the area by force. You don’t think this is permanent, do you?”

  Jamal started to speak, his mouth open. Of course he thought it permanent. They were efficient, they were loved, they were making change, it could go on forever.

  Gregor poked him in the chest with his drink. “That we’re here is a symbol of incompetence and chaos and corruption in the city. We’re here because they let us, we’re here because they fucked up. We’ve played a good game and helped a few people along the way, but the moment Maid Marian named Sherwood was the beginning of the end. What we should hope is that Sherwood sees us through to the other side, no more.”

  Jamal shook his head with disgust and scanned the party. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be in this conversation. “You’re such a fucking pessimist, listen to you.” Jamal took a sip of his champagne and felt how woozy he was. Around them the map room had turned into a real party. Bea was asleep or passed out on the couch and people sat on the edge, mashing her in. Others were shouting and stumbling around. He realized his father was tapping him.

  “I’m going to take a leak—hold my drink.”

  Jamal took the proffered champagne and saw that his father hadn’t touched his drink yet.

  After Gregor walked from the map room, Jamal drained his father’s glass as well as his own. It was truly delicious having the sensation of champagne on his tongue. He’d been so dry, drunk nothing but water and tea endlessly and the distilled ration swill—something you drank for what it did to your head, not your tongue—and now here was the sweet and biting glory of champagne. His first sip brought with it a wave of nostalgia, from dozens of parties of the past.

  He could feel his vision going unpredictable and he looked about the room for someone he wanted to talk to. There were Rangers and Going Street Brigade, neighborhood leaders from Irving who had long petitioned Maid Marian, a few water carriers and other Sherwood significants, but no one he felt compelled to slide over to. The map room was prettified up some—they’d taken down any secret data and the status indicators, but it was the same old map room, and he liked the idea of a party underneath the giant map. It made a sandwich of them, the drawing of the nation above, then them, the citizens, the meat of it, then the soil of the nation below. He watched citizens study the walls like tourists. He wondered what was taking his father so long. Perhaps the old fart had walked home to piss.

  There was a soft touch on his shoulder and he turned to see the Ranger who had ridden him to the TV interview. He couldn’t place her name. She handed him a drink and he juggled the cups in his hand to take it. “It appears the two you were holding dried up.”

  “What? Oh. Yes—thank you.” He fitted the stems of the other glasses between his knuckles and sipped from his new drink. “I was supposed to be saving this for somebody.”

  “Oh,” she said, and he could tell he’d not said the right thing. She turned at an angle and stared out toward the party. She looked lovely. Not in the dress he’d imagined her in, alas no, but government-worker-of-the-future pretty.

  Then he understood. It was like they were at a high school mixer, and he’d forgotten how to do all this. “No, I mean it’s for my father, the person’s this was, was my father’s,” he said.

  She tilted her head and smiled. “Cheers.” She clinked her cup into his.

  The cheers bumped a dollop of champagne out of his glass and onto his shoe and he looked down at it trying to keep his balance. He wished this were all done with, the chatting, the awkward, he wished they were in a quiet spot together, where he wouldn’t have to try to barge any more words up the inebriated passage of his throat.

  “Listen—I’d really like to sit down, got to sit down really soon here . . . want to find a place?” He turned toward the door, unable to wait for her answer, realizing with some suddenness that actually he hated champagne and the seasick, puke-in-the-mouth sensation it generated. He wanted to put his head against a pillow and let the room spin itself out. If he were there with an undressed woman, all the better, though the complications seemed too—well—complicated.

  “You did a really great job on that interview,” she said and miraculously she followed him as he moved toward the doorway. “I was worried for you. At first you looked so scattered and innocent. And then when you looked at the camera for a long time?”

  “Yeah, people say I did that. I don’t remember it.” Jamal got his hand on the door frame and turned around to smile at her, to let her know he was still involved in the conversation before making his next foray.

  Zach and Maid Marian passed them coming in. They looked as if they’d been fighting and Jamal idly wondered if that meant Maid Marian’s room would be available. First Maid Marian and then Zach shouted out something but it was unintelligible to Jamal. He could barely understand the man when he was sober. Then the two hurried out past them.

  “You catch that?” he said.

  “No,” she said and laughed.

  “That guy
’s brain is a quackmire. Quagmire, I mean. They’re dating, you know.”

  “Ooh, Sherwood gossip.” She locked her arm through his and they turned toward the exit again, and he thought, is this all there was to it? Perhaps he’d been too daft to figure it out before, perhaps the whole nation was simply pairing up and saying they’d like to go off some place together and locking arms and voilà.

  At the hallway he stared up the row of doors and tried to focus. It was wrong to sleep in Maid Marian’s bed, but he remembered Bea had a bed in that room, and she was passed out on the couch. “You wouldn’t think it too forward?” he said. “I’ve had a bit to drink and—”

  She leaned in and kissed him and then the world erupted. There was a brief moment of consciousness as he inhaled dust and his hearing went static before he passed out. He was trapped under something heavy, still interlinked with the Ranger who’d kissed him, and where there’d been ceiling and party goers he now saw, through dust and a thousand Sherwood notes like snow in the air, stars.

  Watching the party up in the map room from the backyard made Gregor feel uneasy. Celebrating a victory in such a manner was to be overly proud and oblivious. It was because his Rangers had been so afraid, he knew, and they had done well. He knew better than to interfere with such victory dances, and yet for himself, he enjoyed it rather more from the dust yard, it turned out, far away.

  And then he heard the vehicles. He crouched to the ground and watched in horror in the dim light as the the soldiers quickly assembled and began to fire on Sherwood headquarters.

  There was a terrific explosion and a section of the house fell away. Gregor sank to his knees as if a blow had been dealt him personally. So this is the end, he thought. There were screams coming from the house and people pouring out and the sound of gunfire.

  Gregor had left without his gun and wore civilian clothes as usual. He eased back into the trees. This was not a battle he could win. There was no glory in this.

  In the dark from deep in the backyard, on the other side of HQ’s garden, he watched what he’d helped build destroyed. It was a familiar feeling. There were people in there he loved. A son, young and energetic and overly optimistic. There was Maid Marian, their temporary ruler and his strange and fascinating partner in this venture. He supposed in their short time together he’d begrudgingly come to love her. There was a government he’d helped create, and yet all along he’d known it was impossible, had he not?

  “You bastards,” he breathed out silently. They could not let it stand. People destroy things that work. Nothing lasts. Only him, apparently—in some better universe he would have been in the map room and taken that shell and died there in celebration with a sense that hope was possible. What a feeling that would have been. Instead, he was always the fucking survivor, left to battle his way through hell. Now, truly, there was nothing to live for.

  He had felt hope, though, he realized suddenly, even as he anticipated its demise. He’d felt it here. He felt it come rushing around him like a deflating balloon, even as it was leaving, something he’d only vaguely known was there until now.

  Another blast hit the house and the terrain was briefly illuminated. He exhaled and felt like his heart had been gouged out. How he was a hollow man once again. He could not fight this fight. A Ranger ran by him and Gregor reached out and caught his arm, his grip causing the man to cry out.

  “Can you signal?” he said.

  “General! They—”

  “Signal immediately for all Rangers to shed their uniforms. Headquarters has been taken.”

  The Ranger was jittery and drunk and scared out of his mind and Gregor couldn’t tell if he’d heard him.

  “Understand?” Gregor shook the man.

  The fighting was coming their way and a bullet decapitated the top of a corn stalk in the Sherwood garden a few feet from them. Gregor increased his grip on the man until he focused.

  The Ranger nodded.

  “And tell them everybody meets armed and on bicycle tomorrow at the old Safeway at noon. You got this?”

  “But—” The man was a panicked animal, his eyes wild, and Gregor wasn’t sure one message in his mind might not ricochet the other out.

  “Go on, get out of here. Signal as many times as you can. Watch your back.”

  After the man ran off, Gregor turned and watched for a few more seconds. They were dragging people out of the house and cuffing them, jamming them into the back of a bus. The whole thing had been trivial. There was sporadic fire in the distance, but it had the feel of being over. They were not prepared for this—they’d never been prepared for this type of conflict. Gregor thought of the great water tanks beneath him, of the wealth lost. Of the garden in front of him, a sparkling jewel of green in a brown city. He wished they’d distributed it out to the people now. They should have been more generous while they could.

  He turned and walked out the path Bea had made some time ago. Through fences and across other yards. There were people everywhere running, yelling amidst the gunshots. He walked without looking from side to side, he walked straight, the walk of the tin man, the purpose of a machine. The streets were chaotic at first, but within a dozen blocks he was back in the land of a sleeping populace, unaware that their country had changed overnight. That they would wake to city rule.

  It was a long way home, some fifty blocks. Gregor picked up his pace.

  At home Gregor paced through his household chores. He felt the moment he stopped moving he was at danger of turning to stone. Everything that bound him together was gone, and so he would rely on the inertia of routine to be the glue, that and revenge.

  He had a unit gallon of water fresh from the morning’s water carrier, when there was still Sherwood, and a meager stash of two more gallons. Everything else he’d stored away he’d given to the nation. He didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. He could not show his face at a water distribution point. The city knew him. With a start he realized they would come look for him at his house, and being second in charge they would do so immediately. He was not thinking clearly.

  Less dreaming, old man, more cunning, he told himself. He’d noticed himself slipping easily into reveries of late, thinking about the dead: his wife and other boy, the times he’d had when he was younger. Before Maid Marian had come to him, his life had been in contraction. He’d been winding things down. Thinking about the end of times, of quitting business, of enjoying ceremony and what few friends and family he had. What he wouldn’t give for a cup of tea with someone quiet right now. His wife, for example.

  He gathered a backpack. His load was uncomfortably heavy with his three unit gallons, a spare gun he kept for just this sort of circumstance, food and a few items. He slung his backpack on and exited through the back door. The night was a perfect summer night: stars and temperate and quiet. A vehicle pulled up to the front of his house. He shook his head in anger at himself, too close and too lucky. He wouldn’t always be able to depend upon his luck like this. He was too old to run from them, carrying a heavy bag. He needed his wits to put him far ahead on the playing field. He was not a runner by nature, having, for one, grown a paunch, and two, always been of the mind that one does not flee one’s troubles. He stood for a moment at the back fence of his yard. He steeled himself for a clumsy, rattly ascent over and then he said to hell with it and waved dismissively at the fence and that future of awkward flight. Why go against what you’re best at?

  He was a predator and he knew it. He was the eagle and the tiger, he was the tank, and trying to play the fat, aged field mouse would only get him killed sooner, or at least killed in a far less dignified way. He turned back toward his house, the only way to the street not over a fence, and trudged up the back steps, drawing his gun. It was loaded and ready. A predator is always ready.

  Inside there was a racket like a rhino had been set loose. There were streaks of light as headlamp beams pulsed through the house, searching him out. Three or maybe four, he guessed, trying to shake off their fear by the n
oise they were making.

  He entered the kitchen simultaneously with a Guardsman, but from opposite ends. The headlamp flooded light over him and he squinted against its brightness, the light like some alien tractor beam. The idiot was wearing no helmet, Gregor realized.

  “Put the gun down!” the Guardsman yelled.

  It angered him, seeing them in his own kitchen, after all they’d taken already. His only thought was to sweep the house clean of them, like some infestation that he was in charge of exterminating. This will be easy, Gregor thought, and put a hole through the center of the headlamp. The room immediately fell back into a peaceful darkness, and he squatted down while his eyes adjusted back to it. Just shoot the lights out. It’s like being a kid all over again, removing street lamps one by one until whole neighborhoods lie under blankets of darkness. The man fell heavily to the floor, the light gone black. At once there was shouting from various locations in his house, all of them eager, apparently, to let him know where they were.

  “Sorry!” Gregor hollered, “just an accident.” Hunkered down next to the body he remembered the execution, and could see in his mind Jamal’s face. The temptation loomed to simply tread through the house blinking off the lives of other men; the desire for revenge made this easy. But—and here Gregor allowed to seep into him some small kernel of emotion, for the fate of Jamal and the others. Much harder was avoiding that temptation. He would do what he could, he thought, to avoid this digression. Some settlement between the nature that came easy and that which came hard. He shucked his pack with a heavy thump and walked toward the front door. He could walk this house blind. They might as well put targets on their heads.