Lost Everything

by Brian Francis Slattery

  “…”

  “…”

  “You can handle a gun?” Reverend Bauxite said.

  Sunny Jim shrugged, was gone. Reverend Bauxite followed him up the stairs, past people running to their rooms. Saying their prayers. The ship lurched again as they reached the open air. The hiss of bullets in the moonlight. The crew scrambling, firing. On the darkened shore, shapes ran along Sunbury’s broken wall. More shots. It was an ambush, an organized attack. Someone had seen the Carthage coming, rallied people and weapons to the river’s edge, and they were all firing now, though nobody on the Carthage could say why or even who was doing it. It was not the army. If it was the resistance, then someone had made a terrible mistake. Seven arrows lodged in the deck’s wood. A spear. There was no way to call any of it off. Andre, Elise’s boy, crouched just below the rail, eyes stark, muscles locked in terror. Before Reverend Bauxite could say anything, Sunny Jim was moving. Grabbed the boy’s ankle, dragged him across the deck into the stairwell. Then strode to the rail as if the bullets were afraid of him, would curve around him in the air. Picked up a rifle, loaded it, stood by the rail, and dug the butt into his shoulder. Took his time and shot. Brought the gun down and reloaded. Took his time again. Shot. Amid the shouting and stumbling, the bleeding and crying, his chest rose and fell in complete calm. More sure of himself with a gun than Reverend Bauxite had seen anyone be, even Aline.

  But there were seven dead on the deck already. The second mate was sprinting from bow to stern, passing an order to all along the rail, when an arrow slid its point between her ribs, twirled into her left lung and a major blood vessel. She fell, coughing and spluttering, the horn clanking against the planks. She knew what was happening. She was bleeding out. She felt like she was drowning, though she could not say it. Lifted her eyes to the dark sky, as if she were sinking in the ocean, twenty yards down and dropping, and the clouds above were the sea’s rippling surface. It was not true what they said, she thought, that the end was peaceful.

  The first mate ran to her, looked once at the arrow, at the second mate’s face, then got down next to her and stroked her hair. The second mate wanted to thank her. Ask her if she ever did drink a fifth of gin and then shoot eight out of ten bottles from fifty yards, like she’d said she could one night. To tell her that it was a good thing she did, taking that boy in. But she could not make the words come.

  Then the sky tore open into blinding color and it seemed as if there were voices all around. The second mate felt a multitude of hands pulling her away, though she could not be sure.

  In the theater, they had put out all the lights. They all lay on the floor, weeping, listening. The ship vibrated again, with less violence than before. A sign that perhaps the worst had passed. Yet the screaming, the shots, persisted, and Sergeant Foote, in the darkened theater, felt that old feeling again, the terror she was resigned to. That she would die very soon. That she would suffer a grave hurt. A limb taken off, organs loosed from their cage. It was happening on deck right now, she thought. A man on his side, legs digging into the wood, staring at his own intestines. A woman missing both legs below the knees. A man slumped against the pilothouse. Blanched skin, emptied bowels. Hands spidering across a clammy scalp. It was happening everywhere, the maw of war opened wide enough to eat a continent. They could see the flames at night to the south, from Millersburg, from Liverpool. The land on fire behind them, giving off too much light, with too much darkness ahead.

  It took Sergeant Foote a minute to understand that the people next to her were huddling together, arms around each other. A hand on the small of a back. A gasp, a stuttering breath, a moan, as if of surprise. Clothes rustling against the floor.

  Someone crawled to meet her, put his hand on her shoulder, his face close to hers. “I’ve been looking for you all night,” the con artist said. Foote said nothing. But she did stand up, take his hand, pull him up to her. They stepped over the couple beside them, headed up the stairs to her room, and closed and locked the door as the ship bucked and stuttered all around them. Shutting it all out to be open with each other, as they had never been with anyone. Kicking death in the teeth.

  * * *

  HER ROOM WAS VERY hot after a few hours. They lay on a thin mattress, their clothes all around them in a ragged halo. He on his back, one arm behind his head, the other around her. She on her side, nestled against him, her head on his shoulder, fingers on his chest.

  “So why can’t I trust you?” she said.

  “Because I survive by lying.”

  “What, like a con artist?”

  “Exactly like a con artist.”

  “That’s no different from what any of us are doing.”

  “But now I want to tell you everything,” he said.

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “I won’t reciprocate, you know,” she said. “There are certain things I need to keep secret. At least for a while. Until certain other things are settled.”

  Does this involve the pistol in your bag? he wanted to say. He had seen the glint of light off the handle even in the near dark. Like the eyes of a rat, he thought. But he knew it was not only about the gun, not even only about the war.

  They could not let the Big One into their heads. What good would it have done if they did? It would be as if the war had caught them at last. They were lucky that it had not, even though they had seen so much of it, her far more than him. The black night sparked with oily fire and the screams of the wounded. The constant odors of flesh—raw, burnt, rich with fresh blood, beginning to decay. They had not had the chance to figure out why they had survived, make it mean something. Would not accept being denied that.

  “I understand,” he said, and felt the reply in her fingers, moving up his chest to curl around his shoulder. He could feel the air thickening with morning, the light changing through the cracks in the shutters. Someone was moaning through the wall, from love or injury, he could not tell. He would have kept them in that second forever if he could, kept the air suspended in their lungs until the dead receded far enough away that they could live with them without having to forget them.

  * * *

  BY MORNING THE CARTHAGE was clear of Sunbury, and there was a service for those who had died the night before. The bodies lay side by side on the deck. Captain Mendoza managed words even for those she did not know well. Made the attendees realize she was watching them closer than they thought. They rowed the dead to an island in the middle of the river, buried them in the damp earth amid mosquitoes and poison ivy and immense ancient trees, the wrinkles in the bark deep and dark. Reverend Bauxite presided over it all. Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that thy Holy Spirit may lead us in holiness and righteousness all our days. Grant to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind. Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that they may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love.

  The congregation spoke their amens, first hesitant, then stronger and stronger, until they were speaking as one, and Reverend Bauxite felt the walls of stained glass rising around him, the vaulting ceiling over his head. Was grateful for the chance to build another church, even if it was out of the air, even if he would have to tear it down again. He was at the head of a congregation, and so, at the end, looked heavenward, spoke within himself. Jesus, of late, my people have had many funerals, and they are tired. He looked over the graves, the treetops, the moving river. Trying to listen, trying to hear. His faith staggering on its feet. Knife wounds and bullet holes in its skin. Defiant, shouting at the world: Give me what you got. It made him so strong. But revealed to him, too, his smallness before the creation—and what a creation it was turning out to be.

  Behind them, a charcoal line slithered into the sky over Sunbury, as if from a burning house. Only the pilot
noticed it, and he did not make much of it. There were so many fires now. He could not hear the voices rising in grief. Could not see the flames framing the pyres, already taking apart the bodies who the people of the Carthage had killed. A father of three. A mother’s only daughter. A cousin, a friend. The one who could not shoot a gun to save his life. Three girls, none over fifteen, who had fired off volleys in unison. They had attacked because they thought the Carthage was the war coming for them at last. The ship was too big to be anything else, the scouts had said, even though they all thought the war had passed them over, followed the highway, left their part of the river alone. They had hidden everyone who could not fight in houses away from the river and boarded the windows. The people sequestered inside saw the last light fade through the spaces between the planks, lit no lanterns to replace it. Debated in the dark what to do until the firing began, then hit the floor as one. The children mewling, held in trembling arms, parents pleading with them to be quiet. To them, the shooting was a week of no sun, no food or rest, and death racing across the water. Then a shout from outside, a voice they recognized. Come on out. A woman pried a board away, spied into the gloom.

  “Is everyone all right?” she said.

  The bodies were already almost consumed. The pyres were ships with riggings of fire, the wind filling sails of smoke. The people of Sunbury waited until they were sure that flesh and bone had become ash, then pushed their dead away from them with a final wail. Watched the fiery vessels wend their way into the current, where they broke into pieces, cast a long line of sparks along the surface of the water.

  * * *

  WE TRY TO FIX our gaze on the consolations, the bread broken, the fruit shared, the kind words. The light that must be coming. But it is too easy now to remember other things instead. All that suffering. There must be something better than this world, and the world must be better than this. We want to know how it got so low, and we are angry when there is no answer. I am failing you, too, in leaving so much out, the people I cannot find, the names I cannot record, the places I can no longer go. The words I cannot say. Though if there is a plan, perhaps this is part of it, that we will look on those who suffer most, consider all that we have lost, and speak with their voices when we say we have had enough and we cannot lose any more. Speak, and then turn to act, with what the powers have put before us.

  I have been to so many funerals now. We bury them in the gray soil, stand over the mounds, lean on our shovels. Say the same words again and again. But there are pregnancies too, children coming. A woman like a great egg. Another just conceived. They help us dig, then turn and spit into the earth. They will not say it, but they cannot keep it all in either. For their coming children are their hopes embodied, their faith made flesh, that all that is ending is beginning again. For the world will not be fallen to their children. It will only be the world, new as they are. And perhaps if we tell them enough, if we say the right thing, they will see a way out, and know what to do.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT AT SUNBURY, Elise almost died twice. First there were the two bullets through the window, hissing by her ear so fast that she could not think to duck. She looked at the shards of glass on the floor, the holes in the wooden wall. Realized that if she’d seen the shots coming, tried to get away, they would have gotten her, one in the jaw and one in the neck. Then she ran out into the hallway, looking for her boy. Found his girlfriend, standing in the hall, arms at her sides. Where is he, she said, her voice too sharp. The girl winced, just pointed up the stairs toward the deck, where the slugs and arrows were already flying. Elise yelled her son’s name, scrambled up the stairs, just in time to see Sunny Jim pull her boy to safety, then start shooting. Andre lay in the stairwell, not blinking enough, then blinking too much. Her hands moved over him, pressing into him, rifling through his clothes, as though he were a child again. She was looking for the wound. When she found nothing, she crushed him in her arms. Andre, Andre. Started crying as soon as she felt his hands move, hugging her back.

  At the service on the Carthage, Sunny Jim stood near the back, his hands clasped in front of him. Was slow to move as the service ended, only began to turn as others moved past him. The partiers comforting each other: When we get to Towanda, everything will be better. We just have to get there and we’ll be all right.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “I want to thank you,” Elise said, “for saving my son yesterday.”

  “It was nothing,” Sunny Jim said. “You would have done the same.”

  “Maybe. You have kids?”

  “Yeah. One, also a boy. I’m going to get him now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Up north, with my sister.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Lisle.”

  “I grew up in Elmira.”

  They both nodded. A shared understanding of the country, the fits of luck and misfortune that could bend a life. How you could start out at their mercy, though that never meant you should give up.

  “You know, Andre’s never even met his father,” Elise said. Thought, for a moment, that she should be careful, then decided there was no time for it. “He’s had people in his life before that do the job, but no one for a while, for long enough. Just me. It seems a shame, doesn’t it? When it’s so much easier with two.”

  “What’s your name again?” Sunny Jim said.

  “Elise.”

  “Elise, I have a wife.” A hitch in his voice when he said that, and for an instant, she saw straight into him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. You didn’t know.”

  “I hope you find her,” Elise said. “Does she know how good you are?”

  “No. Or how bad I am, either.”

  There was so much he had never said to Aline. They met years before the war in the basement of a house that someone had turned into a bar whose name he could not remember. He creaked down the wooden stairs and found her there with another man. They were fighting, like Sunny Jim’s parents had fought, and she was winning. It ended with her splitting the man’s forehead open with a green metal toolbox. He staggered back three steps to the wall, sat down as though he were hypnotized, the blood already halfway down his shirt. Both eyes still open, staring at her, the hatred settling into his face to stay. She dropped the toolbox and just looked at him. Almost fascinated by what she had done. An expression Sunny Jim had seen on Merry, before he left.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Sunny Jim told her. “Though, if I were you, I’d quit seeing him.”

  “…”

  “Do you have a place to be?” he said.

  He had two rooms over what had once been a Chinese restaurant. Windows overlooking the parking lot in the back. Two cars there that weather and animals were taking apart. The windshield had gone on one of them, and plants grew from the seats. Fourteen cats lived in the other. They lounged on the dashboard, mated in the footwell, slept on the engine, though it had not been warm since Sunny Jim lived there.

  Sunny Jim and Aline stumbled up the stairs together. He put her in the bed, then lay on the couch, hands under his head, unable to sleep, since he had given her the blanket. The cracks in the ceiling were dry riverbeds on a desert floor. He listened to Aline breathe all night and decided he needed it. In the morning, he convinced her to stay a few days. By the end of the week, they were sharing the bed. The sound of her breath was even better when it was closer.

  Then there was Aaron, Aaron and the war. Their pasts and futures fell away from Sunny Jim and Aline until only the minutes close to them mattered, the bullets and bombs looking for them, their son’s fingers in their hair. The three of them clung to each other whenever Aline was there, holding their little family together. There was a night two years into the war, when Aaron was only four, and it was just the three of them in a house that had been half taken apart by the fighting. The living room, the stairs to the second floor, open to the sky. Two of the bedrooms covered with broken glass. But one room was somehow
still intact. A twin bed, a dresser, a nightstand. Only the lamp knocked over. The three of them got into the bed and Aaron fell asleep between them, on his side. Soon Aline was slumbering, too. Sunny Jim could hear the war, not far off. Hear the house groaning and shuddering around him. They were in danger, there was no question about it. Tomorrow they would have to move, and he did not know where they were going to sleep then. But for that hour, Sunny Jim was happy, as happy as he had ever been. And when Aline was gone, every day was a year, a year that Aaron skipped through, stringing songs together from what he saw all around him. Broken glass, broken glass, make one slip and cut your …

  And then Aline did not come back at all.

  From the night he met her, Sunny Jim knew what people thought Aline was. She was half feral to them. They looked at her teeth and her nails before they got too close, because she looked like someone who would use them. And when Sunny Jim and Aline got together, he knew what everyone they met was thinking, that someday she would eat him alive. Leave him in a pool of his blood if he said the wrong thing. One pair of eyes after another would say it: What are you doing with her? They did not see what he saw, the loyalty coiled inside her ferocity, the ferocity that made him loyal to her. Before he met her, he could not imagine living very long. He was far from home, and the storm was coming. But with Aline, he had built a temporary shelter, and wherever they went, the rain could not touch them. When Aaron was born, he felt invincible, as though the evils of the world parted before his family when they walked down the street together, the baby in his arms. He began to dream, as he wouldn’t let himself before, of a new house, beneath trees on a hill, a place that could keep the rain out for years, and that he would not live to see fall over.

  They first saw the war feasting on a small town in Maryland one night. They were walking along a county road that skimmed across rolling land, a wrinkled map folded in Sunny Jim’s jacket pocket. Aaron asleep, strapped to his back. He and Aline thought they would round the next bend out of a stand of trees and see the lights from the windows of low houses. Instead, all the houses were dark, lit from behind by a great fire. Flares and columns of flame rose into the air. They knew what it was that they were seeing, had heard about the violence rising out of the south, and Sunny Jim felt Aline take his left hand, grip it hard. They watched the destruction for a full minute without saying anything. Did not need to. I will never leave you, Aline said, and Sunny Jim knew she wanted to believe it. But he could feel the war pulling at her even then, opening its fiery arms. Knew that he could not stop her from running toward it.