by Joseph Fink
“Guess not,” said Keisha.
“Lucy, you’re a real piece of shit,” said Alice.
“That’s not fair,” said Lucy.
Sylvia fell to the ground gasping, cutting off the conversation. She was shaking. Keisha ran back to her. The Thistle Men chortled and woofed, watching all this with hungry eyes.
“Sylvia, what’s wrong?” she whispered.
“It’s ok,” said Sylvia. “I understand now.” She scooted her body back until she was leaning on one of the minivans. “I understand what’s happening. And I’m ok with it.”
“What are you talking about?” said Keisha, but there was an awful tickle in her stomach because somewhere in there she knew.
“Praxis and Thistle are just people. Thistle Men were people transformed by hate. And the oracles, they’re people transformed by a desire to organize a better world. We’re all just people fighting for an idea of what living as humans should be like,” said Sylvia. “I didn’t get to lead too long of a life, huh?” Her voice sounded like she was shouting from hundreds of feet away. Her breath was going cold. “But I’ll live it all at once forever.” Her eyes closed, and she started to shake violently. Keisha tried to hold her, but she slipped away. Dust flew up into the air as she jittered and kicked. And then she was still again. The dust settled down around them, a fine layer of red on Keisha’s hair.
Sitting where Sylvia had been was a person in a hoodie. Inside the hood, Keisha could see Sylvia’s face, weak but smiling. When she spoke, her voice sounded layered, like there were many of her talking at once.
“This is what I wanted,” she said. “I could have refused this. I want you to know that I chose.”
She was standing. There was no in between. She had been sitting. Now she was standing. Her face receded, and even in the bright light of day, Keisha wasn’t able to see inside the hood anymore. The oracle that was Sylvia, or had been Sylvia, sprang forward at the Thistle Men, who coughed and hollered back, surging toward her. One of the Thistle Men dropped to all fours, galloping in long, athletic leaps. Another stumbled over his dead legs and fell into the dirt. The others trampled over him, and he whooped into the earth as he was pounded into it. Sylvia roared back at them, and it sounded like a huge window breaking, fragile but explosive.
Sylvia whipped into the mass of Thistle Men and they became a confusion of limbs and violence. A crusted arm with loose skin went flying into the air and another Thistle Man was torn completely in half. The oracle at the old resort in Wisconsin had been strong, but Sylvia, fired by the newness of her transformation, was unbelievable.
When the Thistle Men started to die, the rest of Keisha’s group charged, yelling and brandishing knives and bats, whatever items from their homes that seemed the most capable of harm. The Thistle Men that weren’t occupied with Sylvia converged on them. One of the men leaped high into the air and landed with a brutal weight on Sharon, who went down instantly. Lynh vaulted over the Thistle Man who was coming at her and started hacking at the one on Sharon. Keisha ignored Thistle, hoping for the best and expecting some serious damage done to their side, and instead locked eyes with Lucy and made right for her.
But Lucy was ready. She met Keisha palm first right in the nose, and Keisha was down. The pain was severe enough to take away her vision, and so she only felt the savage follow-up kick to her stomach.
“You were always foolish, Keisha.” Another kick. “You were just always also lucky.” A third. Keisha couldn’t breathe. “How’s that luck holding up?” Lucy growled, furious. “You’re a good person, and good people deserve good things.”
A little bit of vision came back. Alice was trying to get to her, but there was a line of leering Thistle Men in the way. The small group behind Alice was desperately fighting off attacks from every direction. They all seemed alive for that moment, but that also seemed an entirely changeable proposition, as they were so completely outmatched by the monsters around them. Even Sylvia, who had attacked with such utter ferocity, was disappearing under the crowd of Thistle that kept coming and coming.
Keisha wished that perhaps her vision would go again. Lucy made a kick at her head that would have obliged if she had had better aim. Instead it whiffed along Keisha’s scalp, and she felt hot liquid trickle down her forehead.
“It’s over, Keisha.” Lucy frowned. “I’m not even happy about it. I liked Alice, and you seemed fine. But you made bad choices.”
Was it over? It felt pretty over. Keisha winced. The pain of their failure was worse than any of her rapidly blooming bruises. She felt that the world was slipping from her. Because now there seemed to be two of Sylvia. And then three. Keisha knew the world was not slipping from her. The plan had worked. Or, if not solid enough to be called a plan, the gamble. Figures in hoodies, many of them standing on the rise overlooking the abandoned construction site.
And from behind the oracles, a massive crowd of people marching over the rise, all of the people of Praxis, Jeff’s friend right at the front.
56
To each of the groups of Praxis, scattered all over the country, an oracle had arrived. The groups had turned, struck speechless by a presence they had whispered stories about for months, savoring the secondhand glory of their encounters, and now here were the divine messengers, in the flesh or whatever they were made of. Each group saw a figure in a hoodie, standing plain and open in the light of living room lamps and hotel conference room overheads and bar neon and sunlight through coffee shop windows. Wherever these groups met, an oracle had come, all bearing the same message.
“You are needed. Now is the time.”
And without exception, each member of each group had followed. Some had only a few miles to go. Others drove for days. But all of them had arrived at the same place at the same time. Together, thousands of strangers from all over the country assembled behind the growing line of oracles, and, unsure of what lay before them or what would be asked of them, they marched forward anyway. They had crested the hill and saw the brutal fight before them. None of them turned away. Each had a moment of understanding, and a moment of questioning, but the organizing done in those months had been strong, and their hearts had been prepared, and each of them had picked up their pace into a run and hurled themselves at the seething of monsters.
The Thistle Men were not expecting any further participants in the battle, but they moved in a mindless fit of hunger and anger, and so they lashed and bit at the people as they came. The Bay and Creek soldiers were more easily defeated despite their weapons. A gun can only mean so much to people who are willing to die for a cause. Ten of the newcomers were dead in as many seconds, but still the others ran forward. The oracles who had led them launched into the crowd, churning through the Thistle Men like propellers through water. The ground became thick with sickly yellow fat that spewed from Thistle as they fell. Thistle Men were powerful and they were quick, but there were so many people, and still more were coming over the lip of the site and charging down at them. They yipped and moaned in confusion, sensing the impossible fact that somehow they were losing.
Keisha, seeing this, struggled to her hands and knees, and then up to a kneel. Lucy pulled a vicious little knife from her belt.
“You should never have gone after her,” Lucy said as she stabbed. Her aim was good but her arm veered sideways. Alice had knocked the blade out of the way, taking a long slash on her shoulder as she did.
Alice gathered her words, tried to find a way to express all that she felt about Lucy, but all she could find was “fuck you,” and so she attacked. Lucy was faster, and far more skilled. She kicked Alice in the head, and Alice went down, stumbled back up. Lucy popped her throat with the side of her hand and Alice was down again. Keisha found the energy inside herself to move to her feet. It was painful but she was upright. She limped between Lucy and Alice and motioned her wife to stay on the ground.
“This time I protect you,” she said.
Lucy cocked her head, considering her.
“You’re brave, huh?”
Keisha laughed. “I have, never in my life, been so scared.”
She threw herself at Lucy. There was no matching Lucy’s skill, and so Keisha moved in a fever of anxiety and instinct, lashing out again and again with both hands and both legs. At first Lucy blocked her easily, but then one of Keisha’s fists slipped through and cracked across her cheekbone. Each hit was easy enough to see coming, but there were so many, and Keisha was moving so quickly and hitting with such force. Lucy began to tire, and her arms were aching where she was blocking the hits. She tripped slightly and shifted to retain her balance, and in that moment Keisha kicked her square in the chest. She went down, and Keisha was on her.
Keisha felt panic pound through every limb and tried her best to transfer all that energy kinetically into Lucy. She punched and kicked and clawed and Lucy at first struggled to get up, and then Lucy couldn’t struggle anymore, and then Lucy would never struggle again, and as Lucy died, she wondered at how completely she had misunderstood her opponent.
Ragged breaths as Keisha tried to find herself again, although she suspected there was no way to separate her identity from her anxiety. Her anxiety was not a monster that haunted her. It was a part of her body, as much her as her blood or her headaches. Around her the lot was quieting down. Those few Thistle Men who were not dead were fleeing, making wet hissing sounds as they ran, pursued by members of Praxis who would not let them escape. All the Bay and Creek commandos were dead or had fled. Alice went to her knees next to Keisha, put both arms around her.
“I killed her,” said Keisha. “She was a person and I killed her.”
“You saved me,” said Alice. “You saved me.”
57
The lot was scattered with dead Thistle Men, and dead people. Many who had come had died. Keisha saw immediately that Jeff was one of them. His friend held him in his arms and waved away anyone who approached. He made a keening noise. Jeff’s head lolled back and his friend cradled it. There were so many other dead. People she had never seen before, whose names she would never know, who had come from all over the country to finish this fight with her. She knelt next to the body of a woman in her forties whose knuckles were bruised and whose hand was clutched around a long kitchen knife smeared with yellow fat. The woman’s face was untouched, as though only taking a nap. Keisha took the knife out of her hand and placed it neatly at her side. She held the woman’s hand with both of hers.
“Thank you,” she said. She kissed the woman’s forehead. “I will never be able to repay you.” She placed the woman’s hand gently on her stomach and stood.
The oracles, too, had taken heavy losses. Their bodies were flung violently about the field and tended to by the few oracles left alive. The dead ones lay motionless, but their bodies wavered, like digital static.
“They exist outside of time, and so endings don’t stick well on them,” said an oracle next to her. There was of course no face under their hood, but Keisha knew who they were.
“Somewhere, even now, they are still living, still fighting,” the oracle said. “As I, too, am dead, years from now.”
“Sylvia, we did it.” Keisha grasped the oracle’s arm. For some reason, she had expected it to be cold, but the arm was warm and human. “We did it, right? Did we do it?”
“We did it,” said the oracle, watching as the other oracles gathered up the ones they had lost. There was a faint whistling sound that could have been weeping and could have been singing. It seemed to come from all the oracles simultaneously.
Alice came up to Keisha and embraced her and Sylvia both. She made a choking laugh that sounded not entirely joyful. And Keisha felt afraid, a fear that was as consuming as it was impossible to trace its source.
“It was worth it, right?” Keisha said. “Sylvia, was it worth it?” She didn’t know what she was asking the worth of. This plan, and all the deaths that followed. Or her life, and Alice’s life, cast out on the roads for so long. Or Sylvia, who had given up not just her life but her entire being.
“I think so,” said the oracle. They bowed their head. “It will never be finished for me. Even now, I am still fighting. I am meeting you, Keisha, on a highway in Georgia. I am sneaking frantic out of a room at an Extended Stay America. I am watching my mother die, killing her murderer, and telling myself to hide. That is all happening now. And I will have to keep doing it forever, maintaining these moments so that time can continue as it has. I will never not be fighting. I will never not be meeting you. I will never arrive in time to save my mother. Was it worth it? In a fractal so complex, how can that calculation be made?”
They stepped away from Keisha and Alice.
“I am glad I met you,” they said. “I think I loved you. I don’t know if I can feel something as uncomplicated as love anymore. But I know that there are moments I’m still experiencing in which I love you. I don’t think you will see me again. But know that I am always seeing you, at every moment we had together, forever.”
Keisha felt a sob erupt and reached out her hand, but the oracle that had once been a runaway teenager was gone. All the oracles, even the bodies, were gone. The people of Praxis were left with their dead. Sirens in the distance. The police were coming. The living needed to be gone in minutes. All the dead would have to stay.
She turned to Alice, and Alice turned to her.
“I want to go home,” said Alice.
“You are home,” said Keisha and leaned toward her. There would be better kisses in their life together, ones that were softer, or more romantic, or swooned deeply down the spine, but there would never be another that felt like the first clear breath after surfacing with burning lungs from a long time underwater.
58
One part tomato paste to one part water, a little basil, oregano, chili flakes, garlic, and a splash of red wine. This wasn’t their first pizza night in the year since they had come home. But it was the first one that felt like it had before. Dough from scratch. Sauce from scratch. Cheese from the store.
The dough was the most important part. Keisha loved the making of bread, flour and water in her hands, first separate then merging into a silky whole, the yeast and gluten giving it life and breath. Alice took her turn kneading. Both of their hands covered in flour. A flour handprint on the side of Keisha’s shirt where Alice had touched her without thinking. Love is cooking together. It’s taking ingredients and transforming them together into a meal. They opened a bottle of wine, ate the pizza, watched whatever on the TV, and fell asleep on each other in a wine-and-bread coma. And it was an hour later, when groggy Keisha coaxed groggy Alice up the stairs so they could brush their teeth and go to bed that she thought, Oh my god, we feel normal again.
A bush off a highway. It doesn’t matter what state, or even which region. Most stretches of highway look like most other stretches of highway. Uniformity of transit. The gray blank of the concrete walls. The shrubs that can survive with infrequent care providing wisps of green along a shoulder of tire skids and litter. The bush rattled. There were many people nearby, but all of them were in cars speeding past, and so didn’t have the relative stillness needed to see the movement of the bush. It shook harder and harder, like there was a bad storm only it could feel.
Then a hand came out of the bush. It was small, like a child’s hand. The hand stayed still for a moment, as though resting after great exertion. Then it hooked its nails into the earth and pulled. Gradually, under the leverage of the hand, a woman emerged from the bush. No one driving by noticed this either. The woman was skinny, and frail. She looked close to death. In a way, she was, although in the reverse of what the term usually means. Her eyes, cold and hungry, watched the passing cars. Her boys were dead, killed by those awful women and their awful organization. But Thistle had been destroyed before, and each time she woke again. There was always a place for her in the human heart. It was simple enough to find the right people and draw them together once more. She found the strength to sit up, then to stand up, then to
walk along the highway. Eventually she would need a car, but not yet. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“It’s your turn,” said Alice.
“You have got to be kidding me, trying to pull that,” said Keisha. “You know it’s your turn, don’t even try to rewrite history on that. Get in there and good luck.”
Sylvia Cynthia Taylor, at three years old, was a force to be reckoned with, and never more so than when she needed help getting dressed. Mainly because she hated getting dressed. Didn’t see the point of it. Clothes were a stupid adult invention that her parents had come up with to keep her from tearing around outside like she wanted to be. It would be, as always, an unholy fight to get those clothes on her.
“I’ve fought enough for one lifetime,” said Keisha. “You get that girl to see some sense.”
When their friend Margaret, who had gradually and with a merciful lack of questions become a part of their lives again, wasn’t insisting on babysitting so that the two of them could get a break, Keisha and Alice took turns dealing with their kid. If Keisha wanted to, perhaps she could use the guilt over what Alice had done in order to take far fewer turns than her wife, but she never did. She had forgiven Alice six years ago. And if she was going to mean that forgiveness, that meant never cashing in on the guilt. Even when their daughter made that prospect so goddamn hard.
Alice went toward the room where their daughter was already screaming. “If you don’t hear from me again . . .” Alice said.
“I will,” said Keisha. “I better.”
As her wife engaged in battle, Keisha looked through the attic and found a CB radio that she had bought secondhand. For the first couple years after coming home, she would occasionally listen to it, when she was feeling some perverse nostalgia for her life on the road. She wouldn’t talk, only follow along with the lonely chatter of a highway night. This night she took it downstairs, plugged it in, and turned the volume all the way down, the way she used to. She picked up the mic.
