Hystopia: A Novel (33 page)

Without a word Wendy reached over and turned on the light and got up and went to the bag on the floor and came to bed with four zip pills, popping two and swallowing them dry before he could stop her and then putting her hand out as if to say: Now you. He popped his and laughed because it was already coming over the edge of his grief, a bright, delusional sense of being able to see anything and everything, and when Wendy turned off the light the room was suffused with phosphorescence, greenish in hue, trickling through the window and around the floor and across the sheets, which roiled and shimmered. She touched his scars and ran her finger down his arm, leaving a trace of green light where the warmth remained on his skin, and he traced his name on the soft curve of her belly and then watched her as she got up, went to the window, pulled the shade up, and called him over to look as beyond the trees, in flashbulb bursts, the lightning flared out the yard, metallic silver—and then she turned to him, offering her mouth, kissing him with the taste of ash and mint, everything accentuated by the pills, sharp and acute, her tongue twisting with his own.

“Not yet,” she told him, pushing away. “We’ve got all night.”

The edge the pill created seemed acute and sharp but with a wave of sadness pushing behind. He imagined that Billy-T had felt the same way, just before he was killed, and that the Zomboid had had a similar feeling, a kind of refinement of his senses shoved forward by sadness into a precise, particular moment. As if she had read his thoughts, Wendy was quietly crying, her tears bleeding, glistening with sparkles down her cheeks, and when she rubbed them away there was a violet bloom of color that faded into green. He could only imagine that she was thinking about her own loss, or about the mutual shared loss she had with Meg. He wanted to ask her, but when he began to speak she put her fingers to his lips and shushed him and got up and began to get dressed, slipping into her pants and then pulling a shirt on and telling him—with a wave of her arms—to do the same, motioning to the door and then leading him down the hallway, past MomMom’s room, past Meg and Hank’s room, down the stairs, and through the kitchen to the back porch, where they sat watching the yard burst into brightness and then diminish into residual light, pale silver and green, as another gust arrived—the sound raking the air far off, reeding through the dry grass and through a million dying leaves with a low, toothy hiss—and she raised her voice to speak through it, and he listened as she told him that when the Zomboid came home—when Steve came home, she said, softly—he was angry and violent, first at his legs, at what was missing in his body, and then at her, at what was missing in her, because no matter what she did, it wasn’t enough, not even close.

“Nothing’s missing from you,” Singleton said. “Nothing at all.”

“Nothing that you can see,” she said, taking his hand.

*   *   *

When the rain started they went inside, back through the kitchen, up to the bed. The pills—he’d later think—provided them with the necessary acuity, funneling all sensation into the fingertips and eyes, into the sensations that under normal conditions would simply be erotic.

When she told him to fuck her—that’s how she said it, direct, no buildup,
fuck me
—he drew himself over her in the bed but she stopped him and turned him onto his back, holding her hands flat on his chest, fanning her fingers over his scars again, leaving a faint handprint when she moved them back. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them a few minutes later he saw that her head was tossed back like a floating swimmer, keeping her head above water for air, her lips parted, her hair sizzling with static. The nearness—a tenseness at the back of his cock, deeper still—caused him to ease up, because he wanted it to last a long, long, long time, but it didn’t because he was pushing up into the sweet vacuum, the airless zone somewhere deep inside, the same one he had felt months ago, and he felt himself slipping away not into another unfolded vision but into something much calmer. Then there was the same backdraft as another wind gust gathered far off, and for a few seconds—maybe it was minutes—while the clouds recharged, there was a pause in the lightning and thunder and the house was silent except for her moans, and his, and then she came and he came, a flutter and tightness, and when she was done she collapsed against him and he wrapped his arms around her back and they stayed still for a few minutes, rocking gently.

They talked deep into the night and at some point he heard himself declaring his love for her, and she listened and accepted it. It was that simple. He was not finished with his sense of mission, of being inside something that was larger, a conspiracy or whatever, but the fact that he had admitted it, that he had met someone with a shared memory, had released him, freed him.

“You’re full of shit,” Wendy said. “But that’s OK. I think you meant what you said.”

At another point in the night—the zip pills had worn thin and an acute but pleasant exhaustion had taken over, birds were waking each other up in the trees, and the grainy twilight was materializing the dresser, the bed frame, the walls—she went to her bag and got the veil and held it in her hands, flat against her palms, and stood in the center of the room for a few minutes and waited until he got on his knees and kissed her belly and said maybe he would, and she asked would what? And he said betroth himself to her someday, and she asked him where he got such a pretentious word, and he said he didn’t know, maybe from a book, it’s not a word he would normally use, and he went down the hall to the bathroom to pee and came back and found her in bed, sleeping soundly, and he got in next to her, and in beautiful exhaustion of the diminished pill, cradled in the sounds of dawn, he fell asleep.

THE DUEL

Rake had begun sharpening all the blades in the house one day in early August, starting with the ax, using a file and whetstone, buffing it to a shine before starting on his knife collection—switchblades, his deer-gutting knives, his swords, taking them to the kitchen window to check them in the sunlight, dabbing water and running a cloth along the edge. All action a manifestation of some end point, Hank thought, watching. He went out to find Meg, who was in the yard, chained to a post near the shed.

“It’s time, tonight,” he whispered. “He’s totally charged. He’s on edge enough to believe it when I get Haze to say what he has to say. Rake’ll hear what he wants to hear and not what’s being said. He’s so high, so angry that he’ll twist anything that he hears into a provocation, and we’ll provide that provocation in the form of a name, and then if I’m right, if we’re lucky, we’ve found the right connection, and all we have to do—I should say all I’ll have to do, because what
you
have to do is just follow my lead—is to channel that anger into the direction of a duel, which, given how many times I’ve already planted the idea, he should go for—if we’re lucky.”

Hank went back to the kitchen, where Rake lifted a sword, ran his fingers along the edge, and pointed it at him.

So you’re saying this is about my honor?

I’m saying it’s about honor, hell yes. There’s a way to kill Haze with honor and then burn his body and make it hard to identify, put it somewhere agents will find it. They’ll think it’s you and not you. Both at the same time? You’ll tap their ineptitude, the fact that the cops, who’ll find the body for sure if we put it near the bridge, will send their liaison down there with the news, with snapshots and all that, and they’ll open your case even wider and send some agents up looking, he said. Get it, man, they’ll speculate that you’re fucking with them but they’ll wonder, too, and you know, I mean, I’ve been telling you that Haze has been back-talking you. Just look at his face and tell me he isn’t thinking things he can’t say aloud, the dumb shit, and like every other sidekick you’ve ever had, with me as the exception, he’s figuring a way to disappoint you. And he’s been talking. He’s been speaking the unspeakable.

Keep it vague enough to let him fill in the blanks, Hank thought. He took the sword and went across the yard and with wide, dramatic swings began shredding the sheets while MomMom, standing to one side, for the first time that summer somehow seeming to understand the nature of the situation, stayed quiet and watched.

*   *   *

Say it to him, Haze. Say what’s on your mind. Say what you said to me in the yard. Say Billy-T betrayed Rake, Hank said at the kitchen table that night. That’s what you said to me this afternoon, isn’t it? That’s what you said?

Said what? Haze said. He was stoked up on a concoction of Rake’s, his eyes were dilated into dark seeds of black, his face was pale and glossy with sweat. His voice was fluty, perplexed, full of fear.

Hank whispered to Haze. Say what you said to me the other day about the man named Billy-T.

Haze shifted his fingers on his fork and spoon.

Say what? he said.

Say what you said. Say Billy-T, Hank said.

Say Billy-T, Haze said. He spoke loudly and urgently and he looked at Rake and then back at Hank and then at Rake, who tensed up tight.

Billy-T, Haze said. That’s what you want me to say?

There were vast forests waiting, Hank assured himself, trying to stay in character, to remain completely still, drilling the kid with his eyes, ignoring Rake, who was starting to lift himself from the table.

No, I said say it to Rake, right here, right now. Tell to him what you told me. Say it to Rake. Billy-T betrayed you.

Say to Rake Billy-T betrayed you.

No. Billy-T betrayed you.

Billy-T betrayed you, Haze said to Rake. The words sounded flat and solid and sure. Rake turned and seemed to listen for the first time. He made one swing with his head, as if to clear water from his ears, and tossed his hair back. He cut loose, suddenly becoming all bulging muscles and speed as he sprang up and grabbed Haze by the neck, squeezing hard, producing the knife in a sweeping glint, and held the blade to the nape of Haze’s neck, pressing it hard.

Kill him the right way, in a duel, and you’ll get a payoff, Hank said, and you’ll get two birds for one stone because you’ll be able to settle the score in an honorable way and send a message. But a knife isn’t the right way.

What’s to say I can’t just cut his throat or shoot him right now and then send them the body? What’s to say there’s any difference one way or another? Rake said.

He challenged you to a duel, Hank said. You didn’t hear him because you didn’t want to, but he said that, too. He said he’s gonna challenge you to a duel in honor of Billy-T.

You say that? Rake said. You challenge me to a duel?

I guess so, Haze said.

*   *   *

(“I’m saying I played it right but wasn’t sure at the time I was playing it right, if you know what I mean, because I never knew what was going on in his head, I had to guess at it, of course, but you could sense it if you payed close attention to the way he blinked—the more he blinked, the more confused he was—and he was blinking like crazy while he held the knife to the kid’s throat, so I knew he wasn’t sure, wasn’t ready to kill yet, and I went over the whole deal again, saying we’d tag the body and put it for the Corps to find, but first we’d have a duel, tapping that rumor. But the clincher, I think, was probably the fact that it was Saturday and I told him we’d have the duel the next day. I talked that up, big time, because I knew he’d appreciate the fact that duels were never supposed to take place on a Sunday. It would be a test of God, I told Rake. I said if there is a God then we’ll find out for sure because if there was one he’d be in a rage about dueling on a Sunday, and if there wasn’t one we’d know for sure because we’d get no reaction, so to speak, and he looked up at me at that point, man, and I saw that he’d lifted the blade from Haze’s neck, and he smiled at me and I knew that we had him, that he was pondering it the way he did. His eyes stopped blinking, you see, and then the plan was in motion and one thing led to another. On the other hand, I get it. I mean I get that it seems preposterous that a psycho like Rake would suddenly give a shit about honor. But I had it figured right—and believe me, it was a guess more than anything—that when he heard the name, the precise name, he’d lock back into the old story, the Nam story; all that terror was coming out of something, a precise story—I mean, you should get that, you had it in there and when you heard the name you freaked, too, started to feel the trauma. Rake was cold-blooded in Nam, so it was a matter of getting his blood cold again. Rage is hot-blooded, is what I figure, but sorrow is cold, and
honor
is a cold word, if you see what I mean.”)

(“Sunday at noon. A cooler day, the air clear, the sun straight up. High noon was his idea. I had an empty clip up my sleeve and swapped it out after they both made an inspection.”)

(“No, I’m telling you, I’m telling the truth, man. So it doesn’t fit the story line, write it in your report any way you want if you still want to write a report. Some things don’t hold up to examination, to the scrutiny of logic; it was out of character only as far as his character was rootless until he heard that name, Billy-T—and maybe he was playing us, man, maybe it was a game he was playing, I don’t know, but I do know that what happened, happened. We’re not killers. He’s the killer.”)

*   *   *

Acting as a second to Rake, Hank prepared the duel site on the beach by sweeping the sand smooth and flat and putting one of MomMom’s white hankies at the center and pacing each man back. Meg paced Haze and Hank paced Rake, who seemed sober in his seriousness, rock solid and steady.

This is about honor, he said. This is about making amends for a lack of honor on the part of Haze. I’ve been waiting to do this my entire life.

The switch-out of ammo went smoothly. Hank palmed the empty clip against the inside of his sleeve and let it slip down and put it into Rake’s gun, letting him see it slide in, holding it out to him. They presented the guns and watched as the two men stood back to back and then counted paces east and west. Hank waited for the wind to die to pull the string, to move the hankie, to start the duel.