The Ruins (47 page)

 Mathias
was silent, his expression unchanged. Eric's eyes had drifted
back shut. Stacy was still clasping Amy's hand; she shook her
head.

 Jeff
knew it wasn't going to work, but he still felt he had to
raise the issue, felt it was his duty to do so. He plunged forward: "I'm talking about Amy. About finding a way to
preserve her."

 The
others took this in. Mathias shifted his body slightly, his face
seeming to
tighten.
He
knows,
Jeff thought. But not the others. Eric just lay there;
he might even have been asleep. Stacy cocked her head, gave Jeff a
quizzical look.

 "You
mean, like, embalm her?"

 Jeff
decided to try another approach. "If you needed a kidney, if
you were going to die without it, and then Amy died first, would you
take hers?"

 "Her
kidney?" Stacy asked.

 Jeff
nodded.

 "What
does that—" And then, in mid-sentence, she got it.
Jeff saw it happen, the knowledge take hold of her. She covered her
mouth, as if sickened. "No, Jeff. No way."

 "What?"

 "You're
saying—"

 "Just
answer the question, Stacy. If you needed a kidney, if
you—"

 "You
know it's not the same."

 "Because?"

 "Because
a kidney would mean an operation. It would be…"
She shook her head, exasperated with him. Her voice had risen steadily
as she spoke. "This…this is…"
She threw up her hands in disgust.

 Eric
opened his eyes. He stared at Stacy with a puzzled expression. "What're we talking about?"

 Stacy
pointed toward Jeff. "He wants
to…to…" She seemed incapable of saying
it.

 "We're
talking about food, Eric." Jeff was struggling to keep his
voice low, calm, to contrast it to Stacy's growing hysteria. "About whether or not we're going to starve
here."

 Eric
absorbed this, no closer to comprehending. "What does that
have to do with Amy's kidney?"

 "Nothing!"
Stacy said, almost shouting the word. "That's
exactly the point."

 "Would
you take hers?" Jeff asked, and he waved toward Amy. "If you needed a kidney? If you were
gonna
die without it?"

 "I
guess." Eric shrugged. "Why not?"

 "He's
not talking about kidneys, Eric. He's talking about food.
Understand? About eating her."

 There
was no more hiding from it now; the words had been spoken. There was a
long silence as they all stared down at Amy's body. Stacy was
the one who broke it finally, turning to Jeff. "You'd really do it?"

 "People
have. Castaways, and—"

 "I'm
asking
if
you
would.
If
you
could
eat
her
.
"

 Jeff
thought for a moment. "I don't know." It
was the truth: he didn't.

 Stacy
looked appalled. "You don't know?"

 He
shook his head.

 "How
can you say that?"

 "Because
I don't know what it feels like to starve. I don't
know what choices I'd make in the face of it. All I know is
that if it's a possibility, if it's something we
can even agree to conceive of, then we have to take certain steps now,
right now, before much time passes."

 "Steps."

 Jeff
nodded.

 "Such
as?"

 "We'd
have to figure out a way to preserve it."

 "
It?
"

 Jeff
sighed. This was going exactly as he'd anticipated, a
disaster. "What do you want me to say?"

 "How
about
her
?"

 Jeff
felt a tug of anger at this, without warning, a righteous sort of fury,
and he liked the sensation. It was reassuring; it made him feel he was
doing the right thing after all. "You really think
that's still her?" he asked. "You really
think that has the slightest thing to do with Amy anymore?
That's
an
object
now, Stacy.
An
it
.
Something without movement, without life. Something we can either
rationally choose to use to help us survive here,
or—irrationally, sentimentally, stupidly—decide to
let rot, let the vine eat into yet another pile of bones.
That's a choice we have to make. Consciously—we
have to decide what happens to this body. Because don't trick
yourself: Flinching away from it, deciding not to think about it,
that's a choice, too. You can see that, can't
you?"

 Stacy
didn't answer. She wasn't looking at him.

 "All
I'm saying is, whatever our decision might be,
let's make it with open eyes." Jeff knew that he
should just let it go, that he'd already said too much,
pushed too hard, but he'd come this far, and he
couldn't stop himself. "In a purely physical sense,
it's meat. That's what's lying
there."

 Stacy
gave him a look of loathing. "What the fuck is the matter
with you? Are you even upset? She's dead, Jeff.
Understand?
Dead
.
"

 It
took effort to keep his voice from rising to match her own, yet somehow
he managed it. He wanted to reach forward, to touch her, but he knew
that she'd recoil from him. He wanted both of them to calm
down. "Do you honestly think Amy would care? Would you care
if it were you?"

 Stacy
shook her head vehemently. Amy's mud-stained hat started to
slide off, and she had to lift her hand to hold it in place. "That's not fair."

 "Because?"

 "You
make it seem like it's a game. Like some sort of abstract
thing we're talking about in a bar. But this is real.
It's
her
body
.
And I'm not
gonna
—"

 "How
would you do it?" Eric asked.

 Jeff
turned toward him, relieved to have another voice involved. "‘Do it'?"

 Eric
was still lying on his back, his wounds seeping those tiny threads of
blood. He kept pressing at his abdomen, probing—a new spot
now. "Preserve the, you know, the…"
Meat
was the right word—there wasn't any
other—but it was clear Eric couldn't bring himself
to say it.

 Jeff
shrugged. "Cure it, I guess. Dry it."

 Stacy
leaned forward, openmouthed, as if she might vomit. "I'm going to be sick."

 Jeff
ignored her. "I think there's a way to salt it.
Using urine. You cut the meat into strips and soak it
in—"

 Stacy
covered her ears, started shaking her head again. "No, no,
no, no…"

 "Stacy—"

 She
began to chant: "I won't let you. I won't
let you. I won't let you. I won't let you. I
won't let you…."

 Jeff
fell silent. What choice did he have? Stacy kept chanting and shaking
her head; her hat slid sideways, dropped to the dirt. Watching her,
Jeff felt that weight again, that sense of resignation. It
didn't matter, he supposed. Why shouldn't this be
as good a place to die as any other? He lifted his hand, wiped at the
sweat on his face. He could smell the orange peel on his fingers. He
was hungry enough to feel the urge to lick them, but he resisted it.

 Finally,
Stacy stopped. There was a stretch of time then, where no one had
anything to say. Eric kept probing at his chest. Mathias shifted his
weight, the jug of water making a sloshing sound in his lap. Stacy was
still holding Amy's hand. Jeff glanced toward Pablo. The
Greek's eyes were open, and he was watching them, as if
he'd somehow, despite everything, managed to sense that
something important was being discussed. Looking at him, at his
ravaged, motionless body, Jeff realized that the discussion
didn't necessarily end here, that Amy's death
almost certainly wasn't going to be the last. He pushed the
thought aside.

 They
were all avoiding one another's gaze. Jeff knew no one else
was going to speak, that he'd have to be the one, and he
knew, too, that whatever he said would need to sound like a peace
offering. He licked his lips; they were sun-cracked, swollen.

 "Then
I guess we should bury her," he said.

I
t didn't take long
to realize that burying Amy wasn't a possibility. The
day's rapidly growing heat alone would've ensured
this. Even if it hadn't, there was still the problem of a
shovel; all they had to dig with was a tent stake and a stone. So Jeff
dragged one of the sleeping bags out of the tent, and they zipped Amy
inside it. This involved a struggle of a different sort;
Amy's corpse seemed intent upon resisting its enshrouding.
Her limbs refused to cooperate—they kept snagging and
tangling. Jeff and Mathias had to wrestle with her, both of them
beginning to pant and sweat, before they finally managed to shove her
into the bag.

 Stacy
made no attempt to help. She watched, feeling increasingly ill. She was
hungover
, of course; she
was dizzy and bloated and achingly nauseous. And Amy was dead. Jeff had
wanted to eat her body, so that the rest of them might, in turn, keep
from dying, but Stacy had stopped him. She tried to feel some pleasure
in her victory, yet it wouldn't come to her.

 There
was an odd moment of hesitation before the boys zipped shut the bag, as
if they sensed the symbolic importance of this act, its
finality—that first shovelful of soil thumping down onto the
casket's lid. Stacy could see Amy's face through
the opening; it had already taken on a noticeable puffiness, a faintly
greenish tinge. Her eyes had drifted open once again. In the past,
Stacy knew, they used to rest coins upon people's eyes. Or
did they put coins in the mouth, to pay the ferryman? Stacy
wasn't certain; she'd never bothered to pay
attention to details like that, and was always regretting it, the half
knowing, which felt worse than not knowing at all, the constant sense
that she had things partly right, but not right enough to make a
difference. Coins on the eyes seemed silly, though. Because
wouldn't they fall off as the casket was carried to the
graveyard, jostled and tilted, then lowered into its hole? The corpses
would lie beneath that weight of dirt for all eternity, open-eyed, with
a pair of coins resting uselessly on the wooden planks beside them.

 No
casket for Amy—no coins, either. Nothing to pay the ferryman.

 We
should have a
ceremony,
Stacy
thought.
She tried to imagine what this might entail, but all she could come up
with was a vague image of someone standing over an open grave, reading
something from the Bible. She could picture the mound of dirt beside
the hole, the raw pine of the coffin bleeding little amber beads of
sap. But of course they didn't have any of this, not Bible
nor hole nor coffin. All they had was Amy's body and a
musty-smelling sleeping bag, so Stacy remained silent, watching as Jeff
leaned forward, finally, to drag the zipper slowly shut.

 Eric
pulled his hat back over his face. Mathias sat down, closed his eyes.
Jeff vanished into the tent. Stacy wondered if he was fleeing them, if
he wanted to be alone so that he could weep or keen or bang his head
against the earth, but then, almost instantly, he reappeared, carrying
a tiny plastic bottle. He crouched right in front of her, startling
her; she almost backed away, only managed to stop herself at the last
instant. "You need to put this on your feet," he
said.

 He
held out the little bottle. Stacy squinted at it, struggling to
decipher its
label.
Sunscreen
.
Jeff's khaki shirt was stained through with perspiration,
salt-rimed around the collar. She could smell him, the stench of his
sweat, and it gave strength to her nausea; she was conscious of the
chewed fruit in her stomach, those scraps of peel, how tenuous their
residence within her body was, how easily surrendered. She wanted Jeff
to leave, wished he'd stand up again, walk off. But he
didn't move; he just crouched there, watching as she
hurriedly squirted some of the lotion onto her palm, then leaned
forward to smear it across her right foot, careful to avoid the thin
leather straps of her sandal.

 "Come
on," Jeff said. "Do it right."

 "Right?"
she asked. She had no idea what he was talking about; all her attention
was focused on her effort not to vomit. If she vomited, the vine would
slither forth and steal those slices of orange from her, those pieces
of peel, and she knew there'd be nothing to replace them.

 Jeff
grabbed the bottle from her. "Take off your
sandals."

 She
clumsily removed them, then watched as he began to massage a large glob
of sunscreen into her skin. "Are you angry with
me?" she asked.

 "Angry?"
He wasn't looking at her, just her feet, and it frightened
Stacy, made her feel as if she weren't quite present. She
wanted him to look at her.

 "For,
you know…" She waved toward the sleeping bag. "Stopping you."

 Jeff
didn't answer immediately. He started in on her second foot,
and a drop of sweat fell from his nose onto her shin, making her
shiver. Pablo's breathing was worsening again, that deep,
watery rasp returning. It was the only sound in the clearing, and it
took effort not to hear it. She could sense Jeff choosing his words. "I
just want to save us," he said. "That's all. Keep us from dying here.
And
food…." He trailed off, shrugged. "It'll come down to food in
the end. I
don't see any way around that."

 He
capped the bottle, tossed it aside, gestured for her to pull her
sandals back on. Stacy stared at her feet. They were already burned a
bright
pink.
It'll
hurt in the shower,
she thought, and had to fight back tears
for a moment, so certain was she, abruptly, that there wasn't
going to be a shower, not for her, not for any of them, because it
wasn't only Amy; no one was going to make it home from here.

 "What
about you?" Jeff asked.