Exit Kingdom (24 page)

But we got to go, she says. We got to go now.

He shakes his head.

My brother, he says. Do you know where they got him or do you not?

Then she approaches him, getting close, patting his bloody chest lightly
with her hands as though trying to soothe a wild child.

Moses, she says. Mose, listen to me. Are you listenin good? Abe’s okay. Your brother, he’s okay. But we got to go
now
. They’re planning—

But Abe—

He’s
safe
, I’m tellin you. But you got to take me out of here, Mose. I heard em talking, the soldiers. They’re planting explosives. They’re gonna bring hell down.
Nothing left. The
whole gasworks, the whole valley.
Nothing left
.

Safe where? he says.

Moses—

My brother, he says. Safe where?

You don’t believe me, she says. You think—

You left. I told you to stay. I told you I was coming back. You left.

Moses, Moses.

You went back to Fletcher.

It ain’t like that. No, not back to him. He found me.

You left.

Moses. Moses, I’m
dying
. There’s
somethin in me like a poison. I’m already part dead. That’s what they told me, the doctors. That’s why the slugs don’t
touch me. I’m dyin from the inside out, Mose.

So’s everybody – part dead.

She recoils from him, her face curling into a fierce snarl.

You ain’t a man, she says.

Likely I ain’t.

She spits at his feet and rushes towards the door and flings it open. Outside,
the sounds of warfare continue. Someone lets loose a ripping scream. She pauses.

You best run straight for the trees, Moses says to her back, or they’ll get you sure.

She hesitates a second longer, closes the door and turns back towards Moses.

Take me, Moses. Take me out of here. Please.

Abraham, he replies flatly. I ain’t leavin without him.

I
told
you, she says.

You said
some words all right – but I ain’t sure what exactly you told me.

She comes back over and stands before him, looking up at him as though he were sitting in the very top of a tree – as though he were so high above everything that you had to squint up your
eyes to see him against the shining heavens. It’s all a show. She puts it on. He knows now.

I told you he’s safe, says the Vestal.
He’s gone. They let him go.

Let him—

He was – he was headed back to you. But his leg, it was in bad shape. He wasn’t movin so good. They didn’t give him a car or nothing. Listen, I saw an empty garage about two
miles up the road when we were comin in. He’s probably there – probably he holed up for the night.

Let him go? Why? Why would Fletcher let him—

Moses, please. Please let’s
go – the whole place is comin down. We’re gonna die, Moses. I don’t want to – not here.

Why?
he says, his voice booming down on her now.

She shrinks back. In her eyes there is a searching, but he does not know for what. She does not wish to say what she says – but her reluctance could mean anything or nothing.

Cause of me, is what she says.

Cause of you how?

She just looks
up at him now with an expression that could be hatred or shame or simply goneness.

I acquired his release, she says. I purchased it. From Fletcher.

He looks at her. There are sounds outside the thinwalled structure, clambering echoes of moribund hordes, foolish humanity balking against its own beginnings and its own ends. Half dead.
That’s the phrase that throbs in Moses’ brain. Half
dead, half dead, half dead. He says nothing to the holy woman in front of him.

It ain’t nothing, Moses, she says. It’s cheap currency. It ain’t a thing of meaning.

No, Moses says.

He shakes his head. He feels the handle of the cudgel in his hand, and it feels right and true and hefty and thick with the logic of order and reason and purpose and all the concrete yeses and
nos that
could end all the ambiguous sentences on all the pages of the world’s manuscript.

No, he says. It ain’t true. You’re a prevaricator is what you are. You already shown it. You ain’t to be believed.

It’s true, Moses. I’m tellin it to you true. He’s – he’s in that garage. I’d bet my whole real self on it.

Your whole real self, he says with disdain.

I’m done with misdirection, Moses.
I swear it. I got nothing. Nothing at all.

You just want taken out of here. You would say anything. You would thieve my aid with your deception.

No, Moses, no. It ain’t that.

Then what? Then give me to understand why you would of purchased his life, his freedom. The life of a transgressor. A reprobate who for two decades has been only
my
obligation to keep and
defend – and that only
cause I’m his blooden kin. A transgressor. The world seeks to correct him and it’s only
my
duty to exempt him from his rightly course – succeed
or fail as I might. And succeed I have, over and over. Except I
will
fail. One day. A man, he can’t hold on for ever – his fingers loosen. And who are you to intervene on this
transgressor’s behalf?

But it wasn’t for him, Mose. Don’t you see how
it wasn’t for him?

Then what? For the cheapness of the price? The ease of credit granted you by your sorry lot in life?

No, not that either.

Now he says nothing, because he can tell what she will say next. There is a look in the eyes that precedes some words – as though the foundation for language is laid with look. You roll it
out with the eye and then you utter it with the tongue.
He is already recoiling from it. The calamity of a lie so big it devastates decency itself. For in lies such as these there is the unbearable
possibility of truth.

She gazes up at him. So small. Her pale skin. Her chopped red hair. Her eyes gone wet.

It was for you, Moses, she says. For you.

Impossible, says Moses Todd. You got to know what it is – to hear such a thing
and crave for it so to be true but also know at the same time that it ain’t. The
more wished for some words are, the more unlikely they are to carry truth when finally uttered. Language is criminal that way. As though your wishin for something is the very thing that makes it
impossible. We should none of us ever wish on anything – shootin stars or dandelions or eyelashes or pennies in wells.
I say no more wishing. That’s my covenant and my directive. Life
comes. It comes willy-nilly. It’s best to open your eyes to it and cease the buildin of lofty castles in your head – or you could blind yourself with earnest prayers.

Eleven

A Christening » Fletcher’s End » The Destruction of the Gasworks » An Identification by Boots » A Death » The Compass of the Self »
Nature » A Dream of Dolphins » A Search » A Vision

It ain’t true, he says and shakes his head in absolute refusal. My brother’s still here. I can feel it.

Then the Vestal spins on her heels and unleashes her full fury, like a poison capsule
broke into a cup of water.

Goddamn you, Moses, she says. Why don’t you just for once in your life shut up about your piss-ant brother. You want to die here, then die here. What’s happening out in the world
ain’t nothing compared to the civil war you got in you, Mose. Jesus, you’d follow those little codes of yours straight into your grave. You don’t always have to take the bait, you
know.
Sometimes you can just let it go.

She walks to the door, still talking as her back is to him.

I ain’t dying here, Moses. I’m dying all right – but it ain’t gonna be here. And if it is, I want it to come from the back as I’m boltin to get the hell out. See
you in heaven, Mose – I hope it’s designed to your specifications.

She is nearly out the door before Moses Todd calls to her.

Hold up, he says.

She stops, but she does not turn to face him. Her back is to him, and she grips the handle of the door.

Your name, he says. What is it?

My name?

I know it ain’t Amata. And I know it ain’t that other name Fletcher calls you. So what is it? Your true name.

You want to know my name?

She says the words to the door in a voice so small he can barely hear.
He wonders how long it has been since she has last said her own name – how long since she has been simply
herself.

Yes, he says. Your name. I’d like to – I’d feel privileged to know it.

There is quiet for a moment – a brief interim in which even the sounds of the battle outside seem suspended – as though the whole world takes a breath and waits on the exhale.
Everyone is heartbeats
in their ears.

Then she says something, but it is so low and mumbled into the door that he can’t hear it.

What? he says. I couldn’t—

Mattie, she says, turning towards him and showing him her painted, sparkled face one last time. Her eyes are wet and shot through with pinpoints of brightness – as if all her fears, so
many of them, bleed out like trapped light. My name’s Mattie.

He opens his mouth to speak, but there are no words. He would like to take the name and affix it to his cudgel as another blade to rip and tear at the world – and then he could feel the
whole true talon sharpness of it.

The only thing he can say is her name, a repetition that is just as questioning as it is confirming:

Mattie.

Do you believe me? she asks.

Is it true? he replies.

Goodbye, Moses, she says.

She goes through the door, leaving it open wide. The light reflected from the snow outside makes a portal through which it looks as though angels might spill. She said she would see him in
heaven, and it was a joke. But this is something he knows deeper than all things: there are doors to heaven everywhere.

Outside there is no sign of the Vestal.
He scans, momentarily, the tree line at the hill, but there is no trace of her. It is as if she has stepped out into the light and been
spirited up – a recalled angel in gaudy ribbons.

But something is happening on the grounds of the gasworks. The uniformed men, the soldiers, seem to be retreating. They take stances behind dense stands of machinery, fire off a few shots and
then fall back
to other locations. They are receding from the valley with slow deliberation. It is not that they are overwhelmed – their movements are strategic.

Explosives, the Vestal said. They would bring hell down, she said.

Moses looks at the line of low buildings. There is no time. He will not be able to search them all for his brother. Something grips him, and he wonders, stilled as a philosopher
in contemplation
of a lakeside, if he is willing to die here for the sake of Abraham. It is a quiet, unpanicked thought, and he wishes he had more time to discover the answer, because the answer is of some vague
but definite interest to him. The answer, he feels, might tell him a great deal about himself and his place in the world. His little codes, as the Vestal called them.

But there
is no time for such thoughts and speculations.

He rushes forward, unsure how he will proceed. And that’s when he sees Fletcher. The man in the sombrero emerges from one of the wide buildings, poking his head around the corner as if
looking for an opportune moment to run. A rodent, twitchy and slick.

Moses grips the bladed cudgel tight in his hand and walks slowly to the place where Fletcher
peeks around the corner. The man in the sombrero isn’t aware of Moses’ presence until the
very last moment. Then he leaps back against the corrugated wall of the building and knocks his sombrero askew.

You, he says.

Where’s my brother, says Moses.

Your brother?

Fletcher looks confused for a moment. Then he narrows his eyes at Moses.

What is it now – some kinda negotiation?
You gonna spare my life if I fess up and tell you where he’s hid?

No, I ain’t. You brought too much abomination into the world. More than your share. You threw things off balance. I’m gonna kill you no matter what.

Then why should I tell you?

Cause it’d be one good thing you done just prior to the final reckoning of your account.

Fletcher’s hand reaches up to his scabrous face
and begins to pick instinctively at the little nodules of hardened skin.

You’re a fuckin relic, he says in his snivelling way to Moses.

Fletcher is not looking at him when he says this. Instead, he looks down at the icy mud on the ground – as though he would like to dig himself into the very earth with his little rat
nose.

Did she purchase him? Moses asks now.

Fletcher looks
at him, his eyes narrowing again in the scabbed flesh of his face

Did she? Moses says again. The Vestal, did she purchase his release on her body?

Is that what she said? She told you that, eh? And now you don’t know whether to believe her or not.

Did she or did she not?

Fletcher doesn’t answer. Instead a smile creeps across his greasy face like slow poison. Then the smile turns
into a chuckle, and the chuckle into a full-blown laugh. He laughs and laughs,
Fletcher does, doubling over and slapping his thighs – as though it weren’t the end of the world at this very moment. Or as though it were.

It’s a goddamn shame, Fletcher says, coughing between fits of laughter, when the business of men and God is brought low by womanly wiles. Ain’t it? Ain’t it a goddamn
shame?

Fletcher laughs and laughs.

Far as I been able to tell, he goes on, a cunt is a cunt is a cunt. But you’re a romantic, ain’t you?

The little man begins to do a short, hopping dance, laughing and clapping his hands, teetering as if he is on all the terrible dizzying precipices of the world.

Romantic, romantic, romantic! he cries, laughing and dancing. Romantic, romantic, ro—

Moses raises the pistol and, in the very same gesture, as though a liquid movement with no real beginning and no end, fires.

The bullet goes wide, whistles by Fletcher’s ear. Fletcher, frozen in expectation, waits to see if he’s dead yet. Then, a moment later, he reaches up and feels the wholeness of his
intact face.