The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

by Meg Elison

  Roxanne laughed abruptly. “Last page. In case of emergency, call three five four six one oh. That’s only six numbers.”

  She walked to the wall safe and dialed it in: 35-46-10. The door swung open, and she pulled it wide, excited and pleased with herself for figuring it out.

  Stacked up inside the case was an obscene amount of cash. Banded perfectly pristine stacks of hundreds, from the bottom to the top. Roxanne clawed it out onto the floor, hoping for something else behind it. No luck. Bands of bills hit the floor and spread out, sliding against one another, whispering paper defeat. Nonplussed, Alex sat down again.

  Roxanne stood there, looking at it.

  “No way a guy has this much money and no gun. There’s a gun here.”

  “Roxanne, maybe he was really antigun. Maybe he had hired goons. You don’t know that there’s a gun here.”

  “There is. There is.”

  By the third day, Alex wanted to leave. Roxanne would not be moved. Alex sat, frustrated. She read the magazines in the bathroom. She did inverted push-ups on the stairs.

  Roxanne did not give up until she found it. She had been right all along, and she found it. After several days, she was muttering, all day long.

  “Little dicks. All little dicks have guns. He’s paranoid about the money. He was into something dirty. He thinks he can’t trust anyone so he needs serious firepower. Helps him sleep at night.”

  Alex had stopped trying to talk to her. Roxanne was trying to get into a dead man’s head, and it was starting to scare her. Roxanne didn’t eat for almost a day, pacing the bedroom with the corpse. She dragged the mattress off to one side, with his dried out body stuck to it. The gun was not underneath. The gun was not hidden in a flour canister or in the basement. She tore everything out of the linen closet, checked the freezer, and ended up letting out an unbelievable enclosed stink of rotting meat. It was not on top of the high kitchen cabinets, where there was an inch of dust and dead bugs. The gun was not under the bathroom sink or the kitchen sink, and there was not a single loose brick in the fireplace. They always went back into the office, where money carpeted the floor. She flopped down onto the big leather chair, and Alex sat on the desk.

  “It’s ok,” Alex told her. “You’ll find one.”

  “There’s one here,” she insisted again. “I can feel it. I know this guy. He has a big motherfucking gun in his house. Maybe his wife doesn’t know, but I know. He likes to hold it sometimes and repeat snappy one-liners from action movies. It’s here. He’s just got it hidden somewhere clever.”

  The next night, they slept on the same big couches. Alex fell asleep right away. She woke when she could hear Roxanne pacing and muttering.

  “Roxanne. Come on, lay down and get some sleep. You can’t search for shit if you’re tired.”

  “I’m cold.” She said it shortly, and Alex knew she was using it as an excuse to stay up and obsess.

  She sat up and kicked the lid off the ottoman in front of her. She had seen a hundred like it at friends’ houses, especially the ones who had kids. Sometimes they were full of toys or junk hidden just before company arrived, but usually they were full of blankets. She pulled out a puffy comforter in melon green and held it out to her. Roxanne looked over at her, not understanding.

  “Blankets. You’re cold, right?” Alex reached back into the ottoman to get another for herself, and as she picked it up, something rattled underneath.

  Roxanne perked up at the noise and crossed the room toward the ottoman. Where the blankets had been, there was a folded white sheet, and she pulled it out as a bunched blur and threw it on the floor.

  “I knew it.” She screamed out the words, and all her frustration from this week was in them. “I fucking knew, I fucking knew he had a gun.” Reaching in again, she pulled out a box of bullets. And then another. And another.

  She opened a box and held up a fat slug. “There is a gun here. This proves it.”

  “All right. Yes. You were right. There’s a gun here. Now can you please fucking relax so that I can sleep?”

  Roxanne smiled at Alex and sat down on the couch beside her. “Sorry,” she said. She pulled up the melon-colored blanket and laid Alex down tenderly. Without any discussion, Roxanne lay down with her. The couch was long and deep, and there had always been enough room; they just hadn’t done it before. Roxanne’s legs tucked neatly behind hers, and she lay her head on the opposite armrest. With their bodies close together under one blanket, they were warm immediately, and Alex drifted off fast. Alex slept deeply, sweetly, in the simple contact with Roxanne’s body.

  She dreamed she was with Jack, and when she woke up, she had a ghost of grief beside her. She put the ghost away and looked over at Roxanne.

  We should do this every night.

  They packed up what they wanted to take. Alex searched the kitchen again and found a jar of instant coffee. Bliss. Roxanne was so focused on finding the gun and didn’t give a shit about the coffee. She turned down the expensive lotion and the jar of marshmallow fluff.

  Out of things to do, Alex paced the living room. She stopped to check the side windows over and over again, to see if anyone was in the neighborhood. She saw nobody out on the street. She turned back to tell Roxanne and saw she was walking across the room to the mantel. It held an old wedding picture, a college grad photo, and some small pictures of grandchildren in tasteful frames. In the middle there was an ugly little mantel clock, the kind that’s round in the middle with little wings off the sides.

  She turned back to Alex suddenly. “What time is it on the clock in the study?”

  “I dunno, like three thirty or something.”

  “Right, and three thirty in the bedroom, too.” She looked back at the mantel clock. The hands pointed to dead midnight. She put both her hands on it, searching it all over. She pulled the plug out of the wall. On the back of it, she found the catch, and the face of it dropped open like a drawbridge.

  Inside was a .357 Magnum. A ridiculously large gun, a cannon. An expensive prop for an insecure man. Roxanne picked it up and held it.

  “It’s so heavy.”

  Alex watched her raise it in a two-handed grip toward the far wall, testing the weight of it. She looked at it through one eye, using the sight at the end of the barrel.

  It’s loaded. Any asshole who owned Dirty Harry’s gun and kept it in a hokey little hideaway like that clock would be stupid enough to keep it loaded and ready to kill imaginary intruders.

  It was on the tip of Alex’s tongue to tell her.

  Before she could, it went off. Roxanne had squeezed the trigger just enough. The gun bucked hard and just missed her face, landing on her shoulder, but she still held it in both hands. The sound of it was like an explosion. Alex crouched instinctively with her hands over her ears. The hole it put in the wall of the room was wide and jagged. Alex could see the pitted drywall and the stud underneath. She turned to Roxanne, furious.

  She took one look at Roxanne’s face, and the anger drained out of her. Roxanne looked terrified.

  Stricken. She had had no idea what would happen, or that the gun had been loaded at all.

  “Have you ever shot a gun before?” Alex could hardly hear herself over the ringing in her ears.

  She shook her head. Alex sighed and walked over to her. She looked so shaken Alex couldn’t help but hug her. Roxanne held on to the gun but wrapped her arms around Alex anyway. Alex could feel her struggling to get control of her breath.

  “Sorry.”

  Alex pulled back to look at her. “It could have been worse.”

  She nodded and kept the gun carefully pointed at the floor.

  “We’ll have to practice.”

  “How did you learn it?”

  Alex thought about all the time she had spent with her dad, and the momentary lapse into nostalgia triggered an empty howling in her heart. His face was sharp in her mind, and she ached with grief. He was holding her; he was holding his guns. Using the range at the station to practice wit
h the little 9mm he let her use when she was small. She remembered the .22 she got for her sixteenth birthday and how much her mother had hated it. She called her husband a Tea Partier, a gun nut, a throwback. Nothing stuck. He didn’t care. He voted Democrat with the union, every time. He voted for gun control and the assault weapons ban and any move toward licensing or registration that came up. Alex had heard him say more times than she could remember that people who didn’t know how and when to use a gun had no business owning one.

  He was a good man. Not the last one.

  She looked back at Roxanne. Her face was so naked and lost that Roxanne was shocked for a moment, waiting for her to focus and toughen up.

  “I learned from my dad. I’ll show you.”

  In their last two days at the house, they worked on the gun. How to hold it, how to stand. How to use the safety. How to load it, clean it, carry it. Alex wished Dirty Harry had a pancake holster for this thing. Alex hated the gun in Roxanne’s waistband. It was too heavy, too bulky, and there was no hiding it. Roxanne didn’t care.

  Both of them armed, they got back on the road. Alex was glad for her. Roxanne needed practice firing it, but so far she was still too scared of it. She walked taller, seemed happier. Just having it made her feel better.

  1 August

  She’s gone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mid-August

  Getting used to being alone again. First thought = alone solo just lonely and scared, but now I think I hate her. Hate that she wouldn’t stay with me. Hate that I wake up in the middle of the night looking for her. Not like she was with me forever. Not like I got used to her. Shouldn’t hurt me forever. Hate hurt hate. Fuck this and fuck you.

  September

  Hoping to make it into Colorado, but Utah is slowing me down. Everything = dry. Hasn’t rained in a long time here, and I spend all my time raiding water. Coming near to Salt Lake, and there is crazy shit painted on every billboard, every sign, every house I pass. The roads are haunted.

  PERKINS-GATES FAMILY: HEAD FOR THE CAMPGROUNDS

  STAY OUT OF PROVO—EDWARD TIMSON

  THE TIME HAS COME

  THE WHITE HORSE MUST GO TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

  HOWARD AND EMILY GRAY HAVE CLEAN WELL WATER, HEAD EAST ON 80

  TOWARD JORDAN MEADOWS

  Run of houses, marked with an X. Don’t need a key to translate. X = everyone inside = dead.

  18 September maybe, just guessing at this point

  Small town called Eden—what else? Everything in Utah has a weird bible vibe. Every building I scouted was empty. Every house and office and store. No live people, no dead people = rapture really happened. Raided the general store and walked straight through the center of town with a shopping cart. Population of this town < 500 before, no sign of anyone. For months. Dust is thick on everything.

  Found a house with a pantry that was stocked with the idea of famine or siege. Enough here to keep a large family for years. Sealed drums of water, flour, sugar, Bisquick, and rice. Kits for 12 kinds of freeze-dried potatoes. Cans and cans of soup, fruit, veg, chocolate sauce. Lots of empty spaces on the shelves, but I could have skipped the store altogether. Whole place locks up tight, well out back, and three perfectly oiled rifles in a glass case. Five slots in the case stand empty. Drawer underneath is full of shells = home of a survivalist. Must have died in a hospital = there’s no sign of them here. Going to stay awhile. Can’t carry three rifles, but I can hold this place down. Wish Roxanne was here.

  Still hurts. Starting to understand why she left me.

  What happened with Roxanne was we were riding through the last bit of Idaho on a great day. Wasn’t too hot, but the day was long and golden, and we were laughing at some stupid story she had told. Looked over at her while she laughed, seeing the way she threw her head back, and started feeling for her. Not falling in love or anything but just that first tenderness of liking, of really digging somebody’s details = way more than I used to feel about a coworker who showed up with donuts or somebody who waved me in when traffic was awful. Appreciation of niceness in another person. Sweet.

  They came over a hill, and there he was.

  He sat astride a huge Harley, but it was perfectly in proportion with him. He was massive, with wide bulges of muscle in a black T-shirt under a black leather vest. His thinning dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The legs in his jeans were wide and rock hard, and his motorcycle boots were probably a size thirteen. He looked up at us rolling helplessly downhill toward him, his face breaking into a huge open smile. No sunglasses. Alex could see his brown eyes sparkle like the eyes of a puppy. He was so happy to see them.

  Alex skidded and wobbled, trying to stop. Roxanne yelped a little and fell in the road, dumping her pack behind her. The huge guy got off his bike and loped toward her. Alex dropped her pack and drew one gun on him.

  “Don’t move.”

  He didn’t hear her or he didn’t care.

  He got to Roxanne, and she was already standing up, getting her bearings. He saw the gun at her waist and drew up short. He looked back at Alex and caught on.

  “Hey,” he said, hands immediately up in the air. “Hey, it’s cool. I’m cool. We’re cool.”

  “Who are you with?” Alex was trying to look everywhere at once while keeping her eyes on him, look for signs of a group, to see if someone was coming to join him.

  “Nobody! It’s just me. I’ve been alone for a long time, that’s why I was so glad to see you.”

  “You got a gun?”

  “I got a toy gun in my saddlebags that I painted black, in case I need to scare somebody. Not a real one.”

  Alex popped her chin at Roxanne to tell her to look. She pulled it right out. “Plastic.” She dropped it back in with some scorn. She rifled through the rest of his belongings. “Nothing.”

  “Ok.” Alex lowered her gun “We are going to walk away, slowly. I’m going to be watching you. If you try any stupid shit, I’ll kill you. I’m not gonna take your motorcycle or shoot you just for fun, and you’re not gonna do anything dumb. Ok?”

  “Wait! Shit, no, please wait. I haven’t seen a single human being in months. Please, just let’s talk for a little while. Please? Look, my name’s Duke. What’s your name?”

  Alex didn’t answer, but Roxanne did. “I’m Roxanne.”

  He turned toward her, beaming. “Like the song! ‘You don’t have to put—’”

  “I hate that fucking song,” she cut him off. She lit a cigarette. “Come on, let’s take a break here and talk to him a little. What’s he gonna do?”

  Alex fumed at her. That fucking gun. She thought she was invincible with it.

  “Fine.” Alex dug in her bag and got out some oatmeal, her least favorite thing. She started a small fire on the roadside to heat it up, and Duke hauled a can of sausages out of his bag. He roasted them over the small flames. When they were crackled, he offered them to the women.

  Roxanne took one, but Alex turned him down to eat her shitty oatmeal. Roxanne gobbled up the smoked sausage and smiled at him.

  I hate them both.

  “So, where you from?” she asked him with her cocktail waitress charm turned on.

  What does she expect for a tip?

  He jumped right in. “Montana. I was on a run with a bunch of guys who got sick. When I headed back into Detroit, the city was burning down, so I just turned back out and kept going. I guess it got pretty bad and damned near everybody died. I’ve just been riding and looking for people. But there was hardly anyone in Montana before this plague. I know I saw some people outside Detroit, but they hid from me. I guess nobody trusts anybody these days. I get that. But I’m going crazy with nobody to talk to.”

  Roxanne smiled at him, and Alex knew right then. This was the end. She saw it coming.

  “Where are you two headed?”

  “North,” Alex said.

  “Who knows?” Roxanne said at the exact same time.

  “Well, I wanted to head out to California, maybe t
he cities where there used to be millions of people. The winter’ll be easy there, and I’ll find somebody. Why don’t you come with me?”

  “Nope,” Alex said. “We travel alone.”

  “Well, now wait a minute,” Roxanne said. “It might be nice to have a man around, just in case.”

  Alex stared at her. She hadn’t changed her look at all. She was clearly still trying to pass as male.

  Roxanne had just done it to make her feel exposed.

  Duke looked Alex up and down quickly but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t stupid.

  “We’ve run into some trouble on the road,” she said.

  She’s looking at him like a princess in a fucking tower.

  “Rapists and murderers. I was thinking we could use some muscle, just in case we run into that kind of trouble again.”

  “I would be happy to defend you ladies,” Duke said with a shine in his eyes. Every man on Earth thinks his dick is magic. Alex could hear Roxanne saying it in her head the day they had met.

  “I don’t need defense.” Alex stood up and kicked the empty can of oatmeal away. “I got it. Roxanne, let’s go. He’s had some conversation. We’re done here.”

  Duke looked at her, his need plain on his face.

  Now he’s the princess. Climb on up, Roxanne.

  Roxanne looked back, and Alex could see her sizing him up like a butcher looks at a cow.

  She knows she has an opportunity to trade up. She’s not stupid. Or new at this.

  “Let’s camp here for tonight.”

  “It’s not even sundown yet.”

  She made a little-girl face. “Yeah, but I’m tired. And I want to talk with Duke some more.” She turned her eyes back to him, and he smiled like an idiot.

  Alex unrolled her sleeping bag and made camp. She did her best to ignore them. She wrote in her journal and refused conversation. She looked up at one point and saw him teaching her how to hold the gun. It was exactly the way Alex had shown her, but she was pretending not to know anything at all.