Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  This was not the way it was supposed to go. This was the little girl taking him in flatly, walking away instead of smiling, thanking him. This was the homecoming talk that fell dead on the page, too self-conscious, too hopeful. This was God resurrecting long enough to throw Jonah to the whale, then dying again, and consigning him to the dark reeking bowels forever.

  This was McLeod’s bloodied companion suddenly lunging for the fallen shoe. This was McLeod rushing forward and kicking it out of his hand. This was McLeod trying to fall astride Passos’s chest only to feel Passos’s knee instead, hard as a beam against his groin. This was the airless howl McLeod made, the feeling of drowning, of pain like the end of the world, the feeling of Passos falling astride his chest now, trapping his arms under bony knees, and landing hard, stiff, repetitive punches on his nose, his cheeks, his temples, his eyes.

  This was not the way it was supposed to go.

  After a time Passos felt McLeod’s body slacken, felt him go heavy underneath him. His companion stopped bucking, stopped struggling altogether. He lay still and just accepted the sidelong blows, eyes closed, though softly, the soft eyelids of the unconscious or close to it. The eyelids startled Elder Passos, brought him back to himself. He arrested his fist halfway to McLeod’s cheek, sharply rouged already with jags of skin-trapped blood. The entire right side of McLeod’s face looked lurid with darkening spots, like bruises on a pear. The skin broke across his eyebrow and lower lip, leaking red. A thick streak of blood ran down from either nostril.

  Passos rocked off his companion’s chest and slid back along the floor several feet from McLeod. The breath had gone out of him suddenly; he hugged his knees. He had never fought like this before, never exchanged more than a few halfhearted blows with his brothers. The adrenaline coursed through his limbs, felt dangerous, like it might overflow the banks of his body.

  Passos felt a wetness on his upper lip and tongued the tangy flavor with realization, relief: blood. His own blood. He had nearly forgotten.

  “You made me bleed,” he said to McLeod, as if to justify himself, and make sure McLeod could hear him. “McLeod? You hit me first, remember. You made me bleed first.”

  After another moment McLeod rolled onto his side, facing away from him. He let out a moan, then a sort of watery laugh. McLeod got to all fours, dripping blood onto the linoleum underneath him. “I can’t even tell where it’s coming from—my nose or my lip.” He spoke his words as if through a mouthful of food, but when he spat nothing came out except a glistening web of pink. “Fucking …” He laughed again. “ ‘You made me bleed first.’ ”

  “Well you did. You did. You had a pen to my shoe—you were vandalizing my shoes!—and I tried to stop you and you …”

  Passos heard the craven desperation in his voice and stopped. His companion, as if reading his thoughts, said, “Save it for the president. Save your story.”

  McLeod struggled to his feet, then staggered into the bathroom. For several minutes—it seemed like seconds to Elder Passos—McLeod ran the faucet in the sink.

  Passos used the time to rifle desperately through a rolodex of stratagems. He could claim self-defense, but how to explain McLeod’s face? He could blackmail McLeod’s silence, but how, with what? Maybe he should run to the pay phone now and preempt the conversation with President Mason. His companion had come home from who knows where this morning and he’d come in like that, all bloodied and swollen. Someone must have done it to him. He’ll tell you otherwise, President, he’ll say I did it, but you know him, you know how he is … But each idea was riskier, less plausible than the last. He didn’t feel confident at all in his ability to lie at this magnitude, to bear up under the inevitable doubting looks, the cross-examinations. Besides, hadn’t the president told him to help McLeod, or at least to contain him? Hadn’t he expressed his confidence in Passos? I do appreciate the challenges you face with him, and I do notice the way you handle those challenges. Passos could read between the lines. His fate interlocked with McLeod’s; he had become his companion’s keeper. He had to keep President Mason from finding out anything: a new transfer period, six weeks for McLeod to heal … It could work. He just needed to keep it from the president. But how? And how to deal with McLeod in the meantime? Even if he did keep the news of the fight from getting out, how could he survive another day with McLeod, much less another transfer? Passos half expected his junior companion to burst out of the bathroom and barrel for his head.

  At the thought of this Passos stood up from the floor, moving several steps deeper into the room. He had no desire to fight anymore, but neither did he feel any hope for an armistice. He felt nothing but the coppery mounting panic closing up his throat, burning in his eyes. If he could only change positions with McLeod, if he could only be the bloodier one, the obvious victim … But nothing was obvious anymore. Nothing had gone the way he’d hoped. McLeod had poisoned everything for him, everything.

  The bathroom faucet stopped and the sound of the pipes cutting off moved through the apartment like a shudder.

  Elder McLeod stood before Passos with swollen eyes, a wad of toilet paper in either nostril, another patch of paper, soaked red already, sticking to his lower lip, and another to his eyebrow. Flecks of blood ran down his shirtfront. His hair was wet and dripping. When he spoke, he sounded like he’d just returned from the dentist, but his tone carried a surprising amount of calm, almost warmth. “I was trying to clean your shoes, Passos. I don’t know why—it was probably stupid of me—but that’s what I was doing. I was cleaning them.” He paused. “Well, anyway, I don’t think this”—McLeod motioned to his face—“is very becoming of an assistant to the president, do you?”

  “You hit me first,” Passos said, trying to mirror McLeod’s calmness. “I was just acting in self-defense.”

  McLeod gave a brief, grimacing smile. “I’m going to the mission office this morning. In just a few minutes, actually. And I’m not sure that version of things will hold up.”

  “If you go,” Passos said, “if you do that, I’ll tell the mission president about this morning. I heard you come in before sunrise. He’ll want to know where you were.”

  “In the drive-through,” McLeod said. “I was in the drive-through with a prostitute.”

  Elder Passos went quiet, thrown back by the words. Before he could fully process them McLeod brushed past him to his desk. He picked his shoulder bag up off the chair and slung it over his chest. He started for the front door.

  “I’ll tell him that!” Passos shouted. “If you go, I’ll tell him that—you’ll be sent home for sure. A dishonorable release, for sure. If you go, I’ll tell the president what you just told me.”

  McLeod turned to him, said, “I’m going to tell him myself, Elder.” He moved to the door and opened it.

  “Your father! What about your father? Do you want him to find out about this? McLeod, listen to me. Just listen for a second.” McLeod turned around, not quite looking at him. “You can’t go outside like that. You can’t … Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

  McLeod stared at a spot just beyond Passos’s shoulder, his eyes red and unfocused. After a moment he crossed the room to his desk again, taking up the framed black-and-white picture of his family. He held it gently in his hands. “I’ll tell him too,” McLeod said, more to himself now. “He needs to know about me. He needs to know.”

  Elder McLeod put the picture in his shoulder bag. He opened his desk drawer, raking papers around. He closed the drawer without removing anything. He ran his finger over the spines of his books tucked into the corner of his desk, passing all but the Dr. Seuss book, which he pulled from the row and held out to Passos. “Here.”

  Elder Passos stood still, arms stubborn at his sides. After a moment his companion shrugged his shoulders. He went over to Passos’s desk and dropped the book there. “In case you change your mind.”

  Passos looked at McLeod, though not to acknowledge what he’d said. He watched him hesitating at Passos’s desk, watched hi
m lay a tentative hand on the desk drawer’s handle.

  “What are you doing?” Passos said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d want to re-gift that Portuguese grammar book.”

  “I threw it away. Weeks ago.”

  “Ah,” McLeod said, a little sadly, Passos thought.

  McLeod crossed into the bedroom. Passos didn’t move. He heard a rasping dragging sound, heard the squeal of a heavy-duty zipper. He heard dresser doors opening, the chime of metal hangers, soft thuds. The sounds of shuffling, shuffling, then the heavy-duty squeal again. Elder Passos felt a catch in his breathing as McLeod emerged from the bedroom seconds later, pulling his large roller suitcase behind him, looking directly at Passos, as if he knew he’d been listening. McLeod came to within striking distance of him, then gestured down at his suitcase. “Save myself the trip back here.” He put out his hand to Passos. “This is it, companion. Shake on it?”

  Elder Passos looked at the hand and felt a sudden rage, but it acted to calm him, compress him. “No.” He shook his head. Once. “No. I don’t want to.”

  “Well, suit yourself.” McLeod walked to the front door, opened it, lifted his suitcase down the stoop, and disappeared. He returned a moment later, sticking his head in the doorframe. “Oh, and just in case there was any doubt, I can tell you that the stay in my parents’ basement is not going to work out.”

  “Good,” Passos whispered.

  McLeod hesitated, looking like he wanted to add something, but he didn’t. He closed the door behind him. Passos heard the high-pitched buzz of McLeod’s roller suitcase moving across the cement courtyard. The buzzing stopped as McLeod unlatched the outer gate—“Did you hear me?” Passos called out. “I said that’s good!”—then it started up again on the other side of the property wall. It moved down the street, dropping in pitch, in volume, until it dropped off to nothing.

  “Good!” Passos shouted. “Good!” He sobbed it now. “Good! Good! Good! Good! Good! Good! Good!” He went to his desk and fell into the chair, taking great drags of air until he had recovered himself. He thrust McLeod’s book into his desk drawer, unable to even look at it. The walls started to reel around him; he closed his eyes. He tried to concentrate, calling on his deepest reserves. He could feel something else—persistent, underneath. At the top of each breath he held the air in a fragile, crystalline suspense. He heard the sound of his shouts still echoing in the room. A ringing in his ears, a low building hum, like the after-sound of a giant bell clap, the room pervaded with something so powerful, yet invisible. Like God, he thought. Yes, like God. The Rock. He is here already. Passos held to Him, suddenly, like the last thing in the world. He is here. He is Here. And she—she is too, even now. They are near me, both of them, even now. Passos shut his eyes tighter, took another deep breath, and once again set his mind, and his aging heart, to the solution.

  I owe particular thanks to the Stegner Fellows at Stanford University, and to Alice Elliott Dark, Jayne Anne Phillips, Tobias Wolff, PJ Mark, Zachary Wagman, and Sharon McIlvain—readers, ghost writers all. I also wish to thank the editors of Dialogue and The Paris Review, where portions of this novel appeared in earlier form.