He pauses and takes in a deep breath. I am about to ask him why he is telling me all of this when he continues.
“Except for me, Stalls. I slunk back into the house thinking of my mother who had given birth to me at eleven o’clock even, the third night after going into labor. She died shortly after I took my first breaths. So I sat sweating by the window until the last oil lantern had shut off and the only light left was the blue shifting shimmer of my mother at the top of that tower. I made my way silently to it, wondering how many people were watching from their darkened houses to see who would go. Watching me. I found the doorway, broke the latch with a stone, and ascended the winding staircase. When I got up there, I saw her, standing placidly at the edge of the platform, staring south, over the woods. I stood by her side for a moment and looked with her. I could just make out the form of the Cannery. I thought I heard her whisper, ‘Please,’ but when I turned to look at her, the apparition was gone. That’s why I’m here, Stalls, because my mother asked me to come.”
“And what did she ask you to come for?”
“I’ve spent each and every day of the last twelve years trying to figure that out. What would be so important for me to come here for? Something worthwhile amidst all this useless, futile crap the General has us doing day in and day out. The only thing I can figure is that it’s not here that she asked me to come, but there, that island. My destiny is on that island. And if I wait long enough, I’ll be given a way to get there.”
“Do you ever think that maybe you’re wrong?” I ask. “Maybe, there was no reason for her to send you here.”
He looks down at me. “And what would be the point of that?” he asks. “What would be the point of anything if there was nothing waiting for us at the end of it?”
“I left,” I say to him, “because back home, there were only two people I could trust, who I really believed in. My mother was one of them, and my priest was the other, Father Benji. My father, he was an awful man, crude, self-interested. I had been thinking for a few days of signing up to come here, I wanted to make my father miserable, I wanted him to regret telling me I should go. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it because of my mother, I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her and making her suffer like that. Then I came home from school one morning, sick, and I saw her through our front window. She was on the couch, naked, with Father Benji. My father, he’d been having an affair with the mother of one of my little sister’s friends for years, that was—well that was status quo. But seeing the two of them, my mother and Father Benji like that, I went straight to Reverend Wiley. I had about half a dozen half-assed reasons to sign up. But in the end, I did it because I wanted to spite the two of them for what they’d done. So I did the last thing either of them would have wanted for me.”
I use my rifle to stand back up and we go back to camp. When we get there, our supplies are destroyed, burnt, or they’re gone—stolen. Tens is crumpled on the ground with a bullet in his head, and Robinson is a few yards away gutted like a tortoise. We check pulses silently, then we grab what we can and run for the Cannery.
* * *
The Cannery is a steel-tubed monstrosity, gleaming with a separate shade of sunlight for every passing hour. A squatter’s village of tents and poorly-constructed shacks surrounds it like worshippers at a shrine. When Peck and I arrive, we are greeted with salutes. Appraisals of the blood stains that coat our uniforms. We ignore them and hurry for the Cannery. Peck doesn’t say anything but I can see in his face, in the way the muscles beneath the skin twitch to remain under control, that he is frantic. That what happened to our camp, to Tens and Ja-Ja and Robinson, is as bad as the slaughters in this petty war have ever come.
A small administrative building is set at the base of the Cannery. I follow Pecker in and stand behind him as he approaches the hooded woman who is behind the front counter. The thin fabric shifts, she is giving us a secretary’s smile. “How did it go, boys? Looks like a productive trip.”
Pecker turns his head. His periphery meets me but he refuses direct contact. He hangs his head. “We need to talk to the General,” he says. His voice is uneasy, cracking, and you can tell that the woman’s smile has vanished. She looks at me. I don’t know what she sees exactly, but it makes her hurry out from behind the counter and tell us to follow her. The Cannery is raucous with the metallic ratcheting and jangling chains of fish pulping machinery. She leads us through a series of steel mesh catwalks, higher and higher above the stinking vats, through alternating clouds disseminated from chemical freezing agents and funnels of steam bursting from the joints of pipes. It occurs to me that the two weeks I’ve been there I hadn’t seen the General’s face once. The few times he shows up himself to our training sessions, he always does so at dimly lit hours, and manages to keep the rising or setting sun at his back so as to shroud himself in dusk.
The General’s personal offices are on the floors above the industrial warehouses. When we arrive, the hooded woman sits us on a plush velvet-cushioned bench outside a set of tall wooden doors. She tells us to wait a moment, knocks twice lightly on the door and then enters, bowing her head as she goes.
“Maybe he’ll let you go home,” I suggest. Our heads are both bowed between our knees.
“Stalls, my five year conscription ended eight years ago. If I wanted to go home, I’d be there by now.”
“So why do you—?”
“Why do I stay? Because I need to find a way to get to that island, Stalls. And that ocean belongs to the General.”
The door opens. A man neither of us has seen before steps out. He looks us both over quickly, puckering in his lips in a sort of smile, and then walks away. The hooded woman comes behind him and beckons us in. We follow her, and stand back close to the doors after she’s hauled the heavy things closed again. It is a wide office dotted with windows that, from the outside, are half-obscured with slithering pipes. The General sits behind a long hardwood desk. Besides the windows, there is a small lamp sitting on one corner of that desk, the bulb far below the level of his face. Again, he is shrouded in dusk.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“They killed Carrusoe, Bjorgne, and Jaspers, sir,” Peck blurts out.
The General looks from Peck to me and then back to him. “But you two got away?” It is an accusation, even I can tell that.
“They shot Carrusoe as soon as we stepped out onto the beach. There were no other shots fired. Bjorgne returned to camp when he finished purging his sector. Fasch and I held back for a while longer to make sure there were no late arrivals. When we returned, Jaspers and Bjorgne were both dead. Our papers were in camp with them, sir. They were stolen.”
“Stolen? The roster, the manifesto, the schedules?” Peck nods. “I noticed you didn’t mention that Jaspers was out on the beach with you?”
“No, sir. He hurt his ankle so I let him stay behind.”
“And you sent Bjorgne back to camp early, by himself?” Peck nods again. “I would have expected better from you two boys. You know that sort of thing is strictly prohibited. You’re supposed to stay together.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that.”
He waves Peck silent, takes in a deep breath and leans back in his chair. I can hear the shifting of the hooded woman behind us. He reaches into his drawer for something and a moment later we hear the clackle of dice on the wood top of the desk. “I’m sorry to say I can’t excuse this sort of a thing. You’ve given valuable documents over to the enemy, and you’ve allowed three of my officers to be killed. Two of which could have been directly prevented if you’d followed regulation.” He doesn’t speak angrily, but factually and with unusual calmness. Pecker’s eyes are transfixed on the dice that lay on the table in front of him, glowing in the lamplight like snake’s eyes. “So—” the General leans forward and inspects the dice. “Adolphus Henrik, I’m relieving you of duty. You will be escorted off the premises and taken home.”
Pecker’s body jolts.
He puts his hand up to his face, pinches the bridge of his nose, and seems about to break into tears. I step forward. “Yes, sir.”
Peck looks at me, as does the General, and I swear that I feel the hooded woman’s eyes on the back of my head. “You are Adolphus Henrik?”
“Yes, sir.” Peck makes a motion to step forward but I cast him a look that locks him in place. It is a look that tells him, I want to leave and you want to stay. Don’t be stupid.
“So be it,” the General assents. He draws up his dice and casts them on the desk again. He looks at them, gets up and comes around to us. “And Emery Fasch, then?” he asks, addressing Peck. Peck gives a quick nod. “I’m sorry, son, your number came up death.”
“Sir?” his last word is one of crazed disbelief. I cannot see the General’s face yet, but I do see the pitying though unmerciful smirk on his face.
“I’m sorry, son. It’s out of my hands.” He grants a nod over Pecker’s shoulder at the hooded woman behind us.
I still have my butcher’s knife in my jacket. I react more than act as I draw it out and lunge it into the stomach of the General. The hooded woman shrieks and cries out, “Dad!” but stops herself from running forward because the General does not fall, in fact he barely twitches. He merely reacts in turn, plucking the knife out of his belly and slicing it through the air. It draws a line down my chin and the side of my throat and slices a muscle of my shoulder. I fall to my knees bleeding and waiting for the final stroke to send me off. Instead, the General throws the knife to the ground and gives me his hand. I take it and stand. “Understandable, Henrik. And since you’re leaving anyway, I’ll forgive it.”
The crack of thunder comes from behind me and Pecker falls over with a bullet lodged in his brainstem. The hooded woman replaces the small pistol into its holster and grabs my injured shoulder. “Come on,” she says. “It’s time to go home.” And so I go.
Five: The Daughter
At first I don’t notice how old I’ve gotten as I pull off the hood and slap it down on the counter. All I see is the face of the young woman who, fifteen years earlier, comes to live in a fish cannery with her father and all the best intentions a girl that age could have for herself. There is a spot of blood like a Rorschach rose on my cheek. I find the spot of fabric that had been there and I wash it under cold water, then I rinse my cheek off with it. I dry myself with one of the scratching hand towels hanging on the varnished stainless steel ring. It’s as old as I am, not much more than a flat fabric swatch with mildew in its creases, but this is what we have on hand here. Our budget has more interesting things to dispose itself on than cleanliness and comfort. It’s only when I turn to leave that I notice it. The way the dull light from the solitary bulb hanging above me lies on my skin. I hadn’t realized how soft and loose the skin has gotten. No wrinkles yet, no, but it’s dry. The pores are wide, soon they will coalesce and become great chasms. I even notice how the light no longer reflects off my hair. I pause and study the mirror with the corner of my eye. I can’t stand to meet myself head on yet. I pull the hood down over my face, tuck the cowl into my shirt, and leave.
The boy, the damned fool, waits on the bench with red eyes, red swollen eyes. I look at him for a moment before putting my back to him and shuffling through the papers on my desk. I can hear the hitching of his breath. He’s trying not to cry in front of me. I’ve always found it somewhat sweet to see these boys try to act men in my presence. Of course, if they were ever to see me without my hood, see the aging face atop this form to match, oh they would cry freely then. Cry for lack of their mother, cry for lack of a need to impress. It is why he keeps me hooded, the General, to keep his boys strong. If not in faith then in farce, he says. An army of boys dedicated to looking like men is, in many ways, more reliable than an army of men afraid to be boys. I find the papers I am searching for. My fingers pause above the bent corner of their pulp. A retch, a ratchet, grinds in the back of my throat. I swallow it down and swipe the papers up with a bolt of defeat.
I circle to the other side of the desk, I place the papers in a folder and that into the slim soft leather folio. “Are you okay?” I ask disconcertedly.
He tries to speak but catches himself and nods emphatically instead. A trail of mucus streams from one of his nostrils as he does so and I see it land on his boot.
“Good. We can eat on the train. Come on.” I tuck the folio under my arm and stand in front of him. “I can take the cuff off the radiator or I can take it off of your wrist. Depends on how you’re going to behave out there.”
“Wrist,” he says. He is staring down at my feet, at the floor whose tile cracks have re-grouted themselves with sand and dirt.
I balance the key in my palm for a moment considering. Then I unclasp the handcuffs from his wrist. As he rubs the sore spot around the bone, I collect the cuffs off the radiator and tuck those along with their key in the folio case.
I hold the door of the administration office open for him. How many boys have been led in here with all the intentions of the world brimming in their chests, with daydreams of defiance and courage, with a blank resume waiting to be filled with enough machismo and barbarism to woo whatever girl back home he had come here to woo. How many boys have left all the thickness of a soul inside this building. My vampire of a pen, with its one swipe in their sweating hand, leaves them to walk back out into the squatter’s camp stripped, husked, exoskeleton mockeries of what they thought they had come here as, feather-light shells bobbed and bounded along the ground by the strings of a puppeteer, oh glorious father. The intestinal convolution of the Cannery stands just across the dust path, a towering wall of steel reflecting the sunset into our eyes.
“Come on,” I urge him forward with my veiled eyes and he begins down the path, down the low hill away from the Cannery, into the thickness of the camp. We go quickly and nobody says anything to us. I do not know what face the boy wears as he goes, I can only imagine that he doesn’t do any better a job covering the swollen eyes than he did alone in my office. They do stare though, even though they don’t speak. From through the flames of their small fire pits, from around the flapping fabric of the laundry they hang out on twine from one tent to the next, from over shoulders. They look for two reasons; the first is because they want to know what’s happening to their comrade-in-arms, and what happened to the other four boys he had been with. None of them will dare come to ask with me standing here behind him, though there’s no reason for them not to. The other reason they look is because I’m the only woman many of them have seen in years. It’s easy to tell the men from the boys out here. The boys check out your ass, the men check out your ring finger and then your ass. We don’t have many men here.
The boy hurries with his head down. He has blood on the back of his neck. Not his. You send five boys out to the woods, you give them guns, sticks, knives, and a mission. In the fine print you add that completion of the mission will bring great honor, great pride. Four die and one walks away, unscathed, unharmed. You can fill a milk gallon with the blood that’s scabbing in his hair, soaked in his clothes. There are probably puddles of it in his boots. And not a drop of it will be his. At least, I think to myself as we leave the barbed wire gate that is the only exit from the General’s Cannery, that separates the barracks from the long crescent of forest, at least the night ends with a bit of good news. At least I can satisfy myself knowing that this one will be safe.
I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder. He winces away from the touch at first, but then he leans into it. I feel the fabric shift along my face as I give him a smile he’ll never see. The gates close behind us, the creaking blends with the rise of the bats that have begun to screech in the woods. Once we pass the tree line, once we are walking over the humping roots and moss, I pluck the hood off. There is a line of sweat on my forehead from it. I wipe it off with my sleeve and then tuck it into my waistband. Emery, the boy, turns and looks peremptorily at my face. I’ve vanished the smile that I put on for him, but
he seems to sense that it had been there so he gives a sad little grin back. Neither of us says anything. I can feel the lump of papers beneath my arm like a heartbeat, an angry rampant heartbeat. Or a worm. I strongly consider dropping the whole damn thing in the woods and leaving. If I had someplace I knew to go.
* * *
We walk for a bit until we get to a clearing at the edge of the rise of sand dunes that separates us from the ocean. The train station is an isolated place. Cobwebs are strung from the ceiling like drapes. The starved bodies of mice and rats litter the lobby floor where they have gone, in a final act of spite, to escape the vultures and foxes and other things that were waiting outside the brick walls to destroy them. I sit Emery down on the bench between the tracks and the station and I tell him to wait here. “I’m going to check the schedule,” I tell him. I go into the building and wipe the mucky layer of dust from the doorknob, as thick as mud, off of my hand.
There is no schedule inside. There was one, I remember it from when I came here as a girl. Plastered right here on the wall. The glass from its enclosure still scatters the floor beneath the steel frame still bolted to the wall. I glance out the little window next to the door to make sure the boy hasn’t gotten the sense to go anyplace. He’s sitting there with his hands supporting his face and his knees supporting his elbows. I lean against the wall. For a few minutes our backs are together with only the wall between us. When my father was awarded the federal commission to run the operation here, he had told me that everything we’d wanted was about to come true. I am only a girl at that point, sixteen years younger than I am now and having lived only a fraction of the days I’ve now lived. What exactly had it been that I thought I’d wanted? A fairytale, for one. To live upon an enchanted beach, high atop our castle where I could watch the tortoises rise like majestic creatures from the ocean, scrawl with their flippers and stomachs the patterns of ancient runes in the sand and then descend again. It is only when I realize that what the General wants, and what he thinks—or at least pretends to think—that I want is markedly different from what I do want that I begin to come here, to this train station, late at night. I have always found the idea of trains somewhat romantic, the way they are always going someplace, even as they arrive it is only as part of a greater journey someplace else. I would come hoping I might leave again having absorbed a bit of that ideal into myself.
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