Idaho Winter

by Tony Burgess

  Wait. Am I being an idiot here?

  I make it out the front door and try to catch my breath. I turn to look at the house and it appears normal. Inside it seemed huge, distorted to accommodate the length of the giant snake, but outside it’s just a house. Idaho has no interest in telling his story, he’s enacting a cruel revenge on it. Nothing is reliable. Reality is very badly broken. I scan the street from the porch. Everything appears as I left it. Tidy lots and small houses with driveways running up from the road. Cars here and there. I remember that white van parked on the street. I put that there. Or rather I described it there. The sky is clear except for a couple wispy clouds. That’s my stock weather. I told you, I’m not very adept at meteorological details.

  This is my story. Maybe he stopped here. Maybe after doing that revolting thing to Early, he stopped to catch his breath. Maybe he scared himself. I’m only guessing. I’m trying to get into his head, figure out what he did next. I wish I could just write what he does. Maybe I should try that. Here goes: Idaho walked briskly down the sidewalk toward home. “Briskly,” I think, suggests a kind of lightness to the mood, deliberate yes, but not dark. Not scary. Briskly. C’mon, Idaho. Walk briskly down the sidewalk, please. Pretty please.

  He’s not coming. I go to step off the porch and my toe catches on something in mid-air. I’m going to try to explain this, but it’s going to require some real imagination on your part. Because it’s not something either of us have ever seen in a book.

  What I have just described, the street, the cars, the sky, is actually flat. It’s a picture on a screen. When my toe caught the bottom it pulled the center of the screen down and the picture, from the yard to the neighbor’s house across the street, kind of dipped down. My street, the setting for my story, isn’t real anymore. It’s on a curtain or scrim in front of me, but it’s not real. I am beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. I’m having difficulty breathing. What if Idaho can stop me breathing? Why not? If he can do what he did to Early back there, then stopping my breath has to be small potatoes. I can’t breathe. I’m panicking. I go down on one knee and close my eyes. I try to calm down and soon my breath evens out. I have to stay in control. I have to keep it together.

  Voices. People talking. They sound sort of normal. Like normal people talking. I stand and look out across the street again. It stays the same. Nothing moves. It’s still just a kind of picture, but I can hear voices, growing louder. The corner of the world grows dark, then billows outward. A hand. Someone is stepping up between me and the things I see. I hope you understand what I’m describing; if I could, I would draw a picture or diagram, because I really want you to see these extraordinary things too. It matters a great deal, believe me, that you are the witness to what is happening in my book.

  A man emerges from the shadows at the edge of the screen, then another man, then an old woman. A crowd of old people is making its way across the front of the curtain world.

  “Hello.”

  The crowd stops at my voice. I smile. I’m both relieved and unsettled that they see me. It means I truly am part of this fiasco.

  “Who are you?”

  I don’t even want to think of the answer to that question, so I just bounce it back. “Who are you?”

  They give me sly looks. They are all so old. Older than old people. Their skin is colorless and their eyes are dull and gray.

  “We don’t know,” a crinkly old man says.

  They look so sad, and they look at me with great pity. Large, red-rimmed eyes that look lost. The crinkly man who spoke tries to smile, then starts to walk, leading his group in a line along the front of the street picture and off the far edge. The others following don’t look up. There are many, they seem to keep coming, each one holding the back of the shirt of the one ahead as they march feebly and pointlessly along. Then I recognize a shirt. The pattern of it. Big roses, red on a gaudy royal blue. I described this shirt once before. This is the mob. These are the people that chased Idaho through the town. They ended up chasing me, I recall, but when I originally described them, they were after him. And they were not old. How much time has passed? Have these people been marching in this line at the outskirts of the screen unable to enter the picture? I stop the woman in the rose shirt. She smiles weakly.

  “Yes, young man? Can I help you?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  When she stops they all stop. They don’t look up; they just stop. “Two hundred and forty-nine years,” she says, “three months, fourteen days, six hours, twenty-three minutes and forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven —”

  “But that’s impossible! You can’t live that long.”

  “None of us likes it, but we don’t die. Most of our organs shut down over a century ago, and we’re blind as bats, but we don’t die. Do you know what we’re doing?”

  The poor woman doesn’t have a clue. And, like the rest, she is, as far as I can tell, real. A sad and lost person. I suddenly feel very sorry for them, the weight of a terrible responsibility. I have never wished suffering on anyone — anyone but Idaho, that is — but somehow their suffering is my fault. When I speak, I hear my voice crack. There are tears on my face.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m so sorry. Do you remember anything?”

  “Oh, don’t cry, please. Nothing’s as bad as that. You mustn’t give up hope.” She removes her hand from the back of the man in front of her and touches my arm. With her other hand she touches my face. She stretches up and I can hear her tiny body breaking as she does, and she kisses my cheek. “It’ll be okay. We mustn’t give up hope.”

  These words are unbearable. I know that there is no hope. When Idaho passed by here hundreds of years ago, he abandoned them, probably because his focus was elsewhere, and he didn’t think these people very important. He neglected to give them a fate. They have no fate. They are walking nowhere, without even an end at the end. I open my eyes and see that the line ahead has moved on. The line has been broken. I grab her hands and turn her around.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  I step ahead, but the others have moved on into the darkness beyond the edge.

  “Do they come back? Will they go around and end up here again?”

  She reaches into the empty air ahead.

  “Oh, dear. This must be it.”

  She smiles and turns to the line of people behind her.

  “We’ve stopped.”

  The blind people drop their clutches from each other and smile, their wrinkled faces beaming and turned upward. Hands clap in mid-air, and joy lights these poor people’s dull eyes.

  “He’s come, finally.” The woman half turns toward me and closes her eyes. “Have you brought the end? Is this it? Will it hurt?”

  I stand for a moment and try to figure out where we are. It’s like we are at the edge of a stage and are standing in the wings alongside the curtain. It’s the only description that fits this strange scene. I should be able to lift the curtain and walk out onto the stage. I reach out and the street scene wafts back and forth. I am going to pull this up. I am going to go out there, but first I turn to the poor woman at my side.

  “It isn’t the end yet.”

  I hold her bony shoulder in my hand.

  “I promise I’ll come back. I promise I’ll find the end for you.”

  She looks confused by this, but she accepts my kiss on her cold cheek. I make a vow, here and now, that I will end these people, that I will close this book properly and I will grant everyone, even the most hastily conjured, an honorable destiny. With a heart and mind heavy with these sacred vows, I bend over, scoop up the bottom of the world, and lift it over my head so that it drifts to the ground behind me.

  Tense makes me tense.

  It is night. I think it is night. So dark. In the distance I can see a streetlight. There are several, spaced evenly. And a sidewalk visible below. This looks sort of normal. It
’s hard to tell if this is still my book. Streetlights on a street at night. Maybe things will calm down. Maybe this part of the book will be more stable. I’m going to walk closer to the streetlight. The ground beneath me feels like grass. A lawn, probably. So I’m walking across someone’s lawn at night to get to the sidewalk. That seems all right. As I get to the edge of the light, I see a woman approaching. She has long black hair. It looks like a wig. She has no body. She’s a head floating in the air. I see bulbous froglike eyes opening and a wide, heavily toothed jaw drops down. Something pushes me aside, hard against my arm, driving me back into the darkness. The head with a wig stops at the edge of light, its red, red mouth opened like a bear trap. The eyes wiggle insanely as it hovers. Snap, snap, snap! — its mouth snaps shut.

  “What are you doing?”

  Familiar female voice. I realize I’ve been knocked to the ground and I push the woman’s hands from my arm.

  “What was that?” I say.

  The woman exhales loudly through her nose. I know this person. You do, too. I wish you could hear her voice. I wonder if she can see me.

  “What was that thing?”

  “A Mom-bat. At night you gotta stay in the dark. One of those Mom-bats bites down on you and there’s not much anyone can do for you.”

  I look over to the creature still floating in the light. Its wide mouth is now closed and the big eyes are hooded. I think I can see a couple more Mom-bats at the edge of the light. They all have the same face. The face looks familiar. Hard to see under the big wigs. I feel a cold wave cross my back and a slight gag of real fear. Those heads are Idaho’s mother’s. Mom-bats. What is happening here?

  “Who are you?”

  There’s that question again. I have to come up with an answer.

  “I don’t know who I am.”

  “That’s okay. That’s pretty common. Let’s go inside.”

  She helps me up and we walk away from the Mom-bats, toward blackness. I walk quickly. I really want to be as far away from the Mom-bats as possible.

  “Down here.”

  There’s a glowing hole on the ground in front of me. I lean over to see down into it — some kind of sewer entrance. I find myself wanting to correct this, to say that manholes exist on roads, not lawns, but I give up. I’m not writing this anymore.

  I go down first. The cold metal rungs are solid enough, and the air, warm and pungent, suits the setting. I reach the bottom and find I am standing ankle-deep in water. I now see who it is that I’ve been talking to. Ms. Joost, the crossing guard, hops in the water beside me, sending a splash up my shins.

  “Ms. Joost!”

  She pushes me down and slides a stops sign under my chin. She leans into it. She could choke me. I could die in a sewer in a book I never wrote. This is why you are so important. Whatever you do, don’t stop reading. I may need you at some point.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m sorry. I know your name.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  I think I have to say something about what I’m doing here. I’m going to have to say something.

  “I come from outside.” That’s true. Isn’t it?

  “Outside where?” That’s tricky. I don’t feel safe enough to tell Ms. Joost everything.

  “Out with the old people, just over there, behind the wall. I was . . . we were walking around out there and I just came in here.”

  She gives me a steely look. She’s looking for lies maybe, or to see whether I’m crazy. The look she gives me is the hardest look I’ve ever seen. It takes a while for her to talk.

  “Was there a light at your feet?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A light. Where you were walking. Was there light around your feet?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. From under the curtain. Sometimes, yeah.”

  “Okay. Okay. We see your feet sometimes. We’ve seen you. People make up lots of stories about what you are. What are you?”

  I don’t like that question. The truth is, I think I may be more of a what than a who. I decide to keep her in the driver’s seat.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. That’s possible. Come on. We’re going to see someone.” She pushes me ahead of her down the tunnel. “Let’s try another. Do you know what you were doing up there? Were you looking for something? For someone?”

  I decide to take a chance.

  “Yes, actually. I have a name, the name of someone I’m looking for.”

  “A name? That’s good. There’s not many people left with names. What’s the name?”

  “Idaho Winter.”

  She knocks me down and pins me in the water with her knees.

  “Hey! What are you —”

  She clamps a hand over my mouth and looks around frantically. She begins to undo a long cloth that’s knotted around her middle. The water is filling my ears and covering my cheeks. I think I can hear another voice. A man’s voice in a low murmur. Am I hearing it underwater? Could that be? She gags me with the long stinking cloth. I can smell something foul on it. It tastes like someone else’s awful breath. I can taste someone else’s mouth in my mouth. I’m afraid I’ll vomit. She heaves me up and slams me into the side of the icy tunnel.

  “You don’t just start talking about him. What do you want? Who are you? Where do you come from?”

  I can’t answer these questions with this wretched cloth in my mouth, so I hang my head. She sighs and looks up either end of the tunnel.

  “If I take this off, you have to answer my questions and not speak his name.”

  The cloth comes off. I spit in the water beside me.

  “What do you mean, ‘speak his name’?”

  She stares at me as if I’m mad. There’s that man’s voice again. Where is he? What’s he saying?

  “This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a little magic mystery.” She pulls the cloth around her waist. “People get hurt here. People get lost. We don’t say his name because if you do, he can appear and if he does . . . well, lots of things can happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “You can get pulled in half. Or get your head pulled off.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He! He! Lean your letters over. Apparently, he can’t see words that are bent over.”

  “You mean italics.”

  She yanks on the knot around her waist and the man’s voice, that low incessant murmuring, stops.

  “Whatever. I’m taking you to somebody who knows more about this.”

  I ask her, “What was that voice?”

  She smiles and stands. She turns to move up the tunnel and I see him — the guidance counselor. What was his name? A weird name. Oncet. That’s it. Oncet. His head is growing out of Ms. Joost’s back. The cloth she tied around herself is gagging him. Light green mossy fuzz grows on his lips. I spit and feel sick. Oncet.

  “What’s that? How did that happen?”

  Oncet’s eyes quiver in their sockets. He’s in a trance, it seems. Or he’s asleep with his eyes open. Joost yanks on the cloth and Oncet’s eyes bulge.

  “How it happened isn’t the right question. I don’t think. Anyhow, you save your questions for now.”

  “Can I ask what he’s saying?”

  “He just kinda says what’s happening. Nothing special. I tie it off because it drives me crazy.”

  Joost hooks her thumbs under the cloth on either side of Oncet’s face and drops it out of his mouth.

  “Joost, the crossing guard-turned-guerilla fighter, has released the mouth of Oncet, guidance counselor-turned-narrator, allowing him to resume his essential task. A stranger stares at him as he speaks, uncertain of what to make of the bizarre spectacle. The stranger is clearly repulsed by the infected and infested mouth of the narrator. Neither the stranger nor Joost realize that they have inadv
ertently left the manhole cover open and, attracted to the light, a squadron of Mom-bats have descended and are swooping up the sewer pipe toward them.”

  Joost leaps forward and scurries on all fours toward a joint in the sewer ahead. I follow suit, scrambling on knees and hands now numb from the icy sluice. Mr. Oncet is still talking when we reach the grate.

  “They dash like horses in a stream straight up the middle of the pipe. The Mom-bats, with their hideous shark mouths and jet-black wigs, are closing quickly. As Joost reaches the grate she glances at the stranger. He matters to her now. She thinks he may be significant to their cause.”

  Joost reaches a joint in the sewer and hauls on a swinging grate heavy with weeds and debris that blocks the way. She manages to open it enough to squeeze though. I follow and she pulls the grate closed. I can see the Mom-bats now, five or six, their mouths open so wide that their chins skip across the water. They are hideous. I hear Oncet’s voice muffle. Joost gives me a tough smile.

  “You don’t think that helps a little?”

  “We’re better without him.”

  There are terrible clanging sounds as the Mom-bats crash into the bars of the gate. They fall back into the water and roll furiously. Joost and I watch them for a moment. Awful creatures. Hellish. Their teeth are chipped and broken from the collision. They clearly are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of prey. They disgust Joost. I can see Mrs. Winter’s face in each of these twisted flying piranhas. I meant her to be someone you couldn’t figure out at first. I wanted you to resent her for not helping her son. I was saving her for great things. Here she is, a rabid flock of shrunken heads bobbing for flesh in sewer water.