Hystopia: A Novel (17 page)

“We’ve been working together and knowing it but not openly admitting it. Keeping that tension tense.”

“And when I mentioned Rake to you in the car, when I let that out, you knew for sure but I didn’t really know for sure, so for the last few weeks it’s been a listing ship of intuitive blah blah blah,” he said. “For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to stay within the bounds of the Credo, or whatever, for your sake, thinking you were staying in the bounds—verbally, I mean—for my sake. You were waiting for me to break, and I was following your lead, waiting for you.”

“So if we’re on the same case, then you have to ponder why Klein wouldn’t care, or at least act like he doesn’t know, or if he does know and knows I know, then at least put on a pretense of not knowing,” Wendy said. “I’d say they knew all along, from the start. I’d say they have some theory that makes sense, some idea of mirroring two trainees after an assessment of their histories—mine with my father, listening to him go on about the war, and then the fact that my boyfriend came back with his legs missing.”

She lit a cigarette, nodded at the waitress, and sat back. “She’s seen couples like us come in and out over the last two years.”

MAPS

The air-conditioning was down, the vents quiet, and Klein, sweating, paused to wipe his face with a handkerchief, holding it by the corners in an unusually dainty gesture, dabbing his brow first and then his cheeks and finally his chin as he briefed Singleton on new sightings: a man found dead in a ditch north of the bridge, up along the straits, with smears of blood similar to ones Rake liked to leave but different enough, he stressed, to know, if you knew these things, that it was fraudulent. Another couple murdered, in their farmhouse near Alpena, and again the cops called the Liaison and said they were sure as all hell it was the mark of a failed enfold because there was blood on the walls, smeared finger painting, and again a residual smell of a young woman’s perfume. But Klein insisted that they had it wrong, they were simply overflowing with cases and were passing the buck.

“I have a feeling,” he said, “that you think my passing the buck back to the local law enforcement on these new cases might have something to do with the rumor that you might’ve heard about Rake being dead. But I want you to know that even if the rumor is confirmed by Intelligence—and I assure you it will be—I’m not going to buy it. I’ve seen too many fakes, and there’s nobody better at faking than a soldier like Rake, who from what we do know saw a lot of action—of course we aren’t privy to the facts, the report that came from upstairs is heavily redacted—and is versed in the art of deception, particularly a type of self-deception. Let me give you an example,” he said. He packed his pipe, took a few draws, wiped his brow on his sleeve, and then began to talk about an old friend of his at West Point who had made a study of the shooting habits of men in combat in Korea and found that in a huge number of cases men shot
away
from the target, because killing another human isn’t all that easy. He had concluded that many soldiers deluded themselves into thinking they aimed for and struck the target, whereas their internal governing systems—he stressed that he abhorred the word
subconscious
—guided them
away
from the target.

“So what do you think happens at the external level?” he asked. His eyes were unusually steady, glinting. He drummed his fingers on his desk and waited while Singleton took a guess and suggested more self-deception and he grunted and said, No, not self-deception, but honest, up-front deception, and Singleton muttered another “Yes, sir,” and watched Klein make his fish-mouth suck again around the pipe stem, even though it was on his desk, far away from his lips, and then Klein went on to explain that Rake wasn’t dead until he saw his body, bore witness to it himself, because it was easy to disfigure a body, or cut up a face, and then dangle dog tags around a neck to make it look like it was Rake. When he asked if Singleton was with him, Singleton muttered another “Yes, sir,” and Klein explained that he wanted to segue—Jesus, I hate that word, he said—into something that had to do with Singleton, and Singleton, again, said “Yes, sir,” and listened to Klein as he explained that self-deception, no, make that up-front deception, includes—and this is the segue, he said—the fact that someone who has been through the treatment, who has had the CEP enfolded, is going to feel a desire to unfold. He might think he doesn’t have that desire, and his internal governing systems might trick him into feeling assured that he is no longer feeling the desire, that he’s over the hump, but in truth it’s only natural to want to know the story. “You feel good and clean with the trauma put away, but at the same time you want to know what really happened. I’m sure you were told in post-treatment about the itchy sensation you’d feel, the fuzzball, a neurological dust bunny. But I don’t know if you were instructed, if they told you in clear terms that you’ll want to know what’s up there in your head and at the same time—and this is the paradox, son—you also don’t ever, ever want to know because to know would mean you’re back in the horrific state you were in before you got the treatment.”

“Yes, sir,” Singleton said. Sweat had soaked through his shirt and he could feel it trickling along his back.

“Now let me say something they probably didn’t tell you in post-treatment, or at least didn’t emphasize. They don’t tell you how destructive the desire to know can be. How you might turn to drugs. How you might have a desire for orgasmic states. How you might find yourself wanting to wade into cold water, and so on and so forth,” he said. He paused and dabbed at the sweat on his face again. Then he went on to explain that trainees were looking for indirect knowledge, a newspaper photo with themselves in it, or a television news report in which they appear, or better yet contact with someone who was a part of their initial trauma, the CEP, in a way that provides a little bit of information but not too much. Then they feel relieved. To find what they knew but didn’t know they knew, he said. Singleton nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

“On the other hand,” he said. “You might be tempted to test the water, to take a dip in an ice bath, or, in the parlance of a foot soldier, get laid in the best way, usually with drugs, and then unfold. Your internal governor pushes the idea that you can catch a flash here, a flash there, and be done with it. Are you with me?”

Maintain eye contact, Singleton said to himself. He was thinking about Wendy, her strange mix of kindness and care and wildness.

Klein was saying he believed that he, Singleton, would take his advice to heart. He didn’t want him to end up like his last trainee, bluer than his balls in Korea, on the rocks, like an olive in a cocktail, dead in a bathtub full of ice, just because he wanted to know what he had been through. Klein lifted a pipe and lit it and then stared across the desk. He furrowed his brow and puffed and asked if they were good, if the message had been received, and Singleton nodded and said, “Yes, sir. We’re good.”

The question came out to fill the silence. He asked it without thinking, in a sudden jerking sensation. His voice came ahead of him into the silence. Klein had said he was free to go, to head out and have an Internal afternoon. The question had been floating from day to day, in all of the secretive afternoon motions, together on the beach, in bed, in her apartment. He wanted some sort of explanation to straighten out the sense that everything—from the walls of the apartment, to the strange fate that seemed to arrange a meeting with an old buddy—was shrouded in hidden meaning. So he asked it straight out, saying, “Why don’t you just send us up there to track him down, to see what’s going on?”

Klein waited a few beats before answering, the sweat growing on his brow, his eyes shifting slightly, interrogative, swinging around from Singleton’s mouth and up to his brow and then to his neckline, looking for some betraying twitch. Then he asked who “us” was, and Singleton, catching himself, explained that he meant us as in me, as in the two selves, the enfolded part and the part of himself here, now, as someone functioning inside the structure of the Corps, of his work, the part that had been trained so far. Klein stood up and looked, for a second, unusually frail. He had thin legs and his trousers were cut wide, bagging around them, and he shook slightly. He put one hand on his desk, leaning back to assume a casual stance, and ordered Singleton to stand. Then he reached out—it was a gesture that was fatherly—and put his hands on Singleton’s shoulders. The buzz in his ears increased. He was experiencing, he’d later think, a boot camp sensation, a feeling he might’ve had (he could only speculate) when some drill sergeant ordered him to get down and give me fifty. Klein’s voice shifted, grew tender—his gullet throbbed like a turkey.

“If I had my way I’d send you on a mission immediately, but I don’t have my way, son, because I’m following orders, and even a man in my position has to follow orders. Even Haig was following orders as supreme commander. I’ll resist the urge to pontificate again about MacArthur.”

“Yes, sir,” Singleton said.

“I’m giving you an order, and that order is to get out of my sight and stay out of my sight for the afternoon. If you stop thinking about yourself in the collective ‘we,’ it might help you locate intuitive material for the mission.”

Walking back behind his desk he stumbled again and fell into his chair.

BILLY-T

The dank smell of the lake drifted through the window. Rake was downstairs. The radio in the kitchen poured out lyrics steeped in blood and vengeance. The house’s frame was cracking in the first real heat of the year, under the weight of the slate roof. The smell of attic dust seeped down from the cracks in the ceiling. Steadily, day by day, Hank had drawn himself into the role of Old Hank until she began to wonder if he had slipped into his old ways completely. Lying in bed one morning she imagined that Rake would take her away one of these mornings, before dawn, when the rest of the house was asleep, shaking her awake and telling her not to say a word. The gun he waved around when the evening card games didn’t go his way would be against her forehead, a cold kiss to her brow as she rose up from her dream. She’d be only half-surprised, because she had woken before to that feeling, down in Alpena, in other places. It was a game he played, to see her startled eyes going from side to side. Rake said he liked her when she slept, but he’d warned her never to sleep too deeply.
I want you to feel what I felt and what I feel now. I want you to learn to sleep with your eyes wide open. I want my exhaustion to become yours
. He’d wave the gun and she’d think, Go ahead, shoot me, get it over with, it would be the best thing you could do, but she’d keep moving because she would think about Hank and feel that feeling she knew was love; a small warm place near her breastbone (because it had to be compartmentalized), and then she’d think: Just move and do as he says, and then he’d make her go ahead of him, down the stairs, after whispering: Don’t make a noise, and avoid that second-to-the-last step, that one’s a squawker, because if you wake them I’ll have to kill them all, Hank first; and you don’t want to let Hank die, I know that because I saw you two out there behind the barn and I saw him kiss you; you think I wasn’t home but I was home, I’m always home; my eyes are always here. I might be out and about, but my eyes stay on this house.

Then they’d go to a car and drive into a morning silent except for the birds singing and the wind in the trees. The trees, she’d think, casting a single glance back at the house in its disrepair, its abjectness and sadness, and then he’d dog-feed her another pill. This one she’d have to take, and she’d fall into the stupor of her former self, curling up on the seat and listening as the car roared to life and he fishtailed out, sending a cloud of dust toward the front porch. That was as far as she could imagine. Subdued by the drugs, she’d see the rest from a place she knew well but couldn’t locate, even in her imagination.

*   *   *

I’m going on a distribution run, Rake announced later that morning. I’m taking Haze with me. We’ll give out some freebies to entice future buyers. No need to charge. Want to avoid exchanges of funds.

He stood on the porch and winked at Hank. I’m going to have to ask you for a pledge again. You’re not to touch her. No running, either.

You have my word, Hank said, glancing out across the yard. I’m just going to clear some of the dead wood out there, not far from the shore, or do a little scouting around.

Take her with you. Tie her up. Don’t let her anywhere near the water.

He had a valise, stuffed with product. All night he’d been in the kitchen, sorting and chopping, testing the product. His eyes were glazed.

The Lord will be with you, MomMom said from the doorway. Or else he won’t, she added.

I’d bet on him not being with us, Rake said. I’d bet God’s gonna take a rain check.

Haze stood quietly by the car with his hands deep in his pockets.

They stood on the porch and watched them drive off. The dust lifted into the trees. Hank put his finger to his lips and said, Don’t quote scripture to me now, Mom.

*   *   *

Outside the birds were quiet, or dead, or gone to more cheerful places. Meg showered after Hank, stepping shyly into the bathroom. He touched her on the shoulder, gave her a quick kiss, told her to take as long as she wanted, and went downstairs to brew a thermos of coffee. Out in the yard, MomMom was on the ground again, twisting in a fit. He ran water into a galvanized bucket and then went out to where she lay with her hips upthrust and her back arched. The voice is a pliant thing; the voice can do amazing things, he thought. The air hissed through her teeth. Her stockinged knees looked crooked and sad in the unforgiving sunlight. He doused her in the face with water and watched her sputter and spit. As he helped her up, she muttered, Goddamn it, what the hell you doing, Hank? and he said, I’m waking you up, you’re having another fit. I’m heading out and I’m taking Meg with me. I’d like you to watch us leave and take note that I took her with me. I’m going to tie her up and I want you to see that, too, and when Rake comes back you’re going to say, Yes, Hank had her tied, and then he asked her to repeat it and she said, What? And he said, You’ll tell Rake she was tied. Now say it to me, and she said, Tell Rake she was tied. And he said, No, that’s not what I mean. I mean when Rake interrogates me, which he’s going to do, about my handling of Meg, and when he asks you what happened, I want you to say, He had Meg tied, and she said, I don’t know what you mean, and he said, Forget it, Ma. He brushed the dirt off her back and walked her into the kitchen.