Hystopia: A Novel Read online

  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.

  (“Had to risk it, man. You see, I thought maybe Rake would freak and demand that they switch guns, become suspicious, something like that. In that case, I figured he’d switch and then freak and switch again, but he was unusually calm. Hearing the name Billy-T did something to him, I think. He was killer-calm, and he put his trust, such as it was, in me as his second. I’d fed him a line about the seconds being the only ones to get the guns ready—that’s their job, man, I told him. Seconds are duty-bound to make sure all the conditions are correct. I know how it sounds, hearing it from me. The plan was drawn from my gut, from a sense of whatever it was that had been enfolded, maybe.”)

  * * *

  As expected, Haze seemed to open fire first but they’d never know who got the first trigger-squeeze. Maybe there was a hollow click as Rake squeezed in frustration, realizing that his gun wasn’t kicking, tha
t his clip was empty. Maybe not. Across the empty space between the two men in that split second everything seemed to freeze up. Haze fired until his clip was empty, stepping forward with the shots until he was over Rake’s body aiming down into it and then his clip was empty and he continued to press the trigger, clicking until Hank had his own gun to the back of Haze’s head.

  Hank held his gun against Haze’s neck and told him he’d done the honorable thing, fighting Rake. You’re going do the next honorable thing, now. You’ll start walking down the beach to the east and you won’t stop.

  His gun jammed or something, Haze mumbled. What makes you think I’d start walking?

  The fact that I’m saying it makes me think you’ll do it, Hank said. The fact that I’ll shoot you now and bury you in the sand is another.

  Rake owed me some cash, Haze said.

  I’ve killed for the hell of it, but killing you would be for fun. Now, killing you because you mention cash, that would be priceless, but the only reason I’m not going to do it is because I don’t feel like digging a hole and I’d rather watch you walk away from me with that good eye working. I’d rather watch you make a run for it, but you’d better be quick because believe you me every single fucking man who was betrayed by Rake will be after you as soon as the word slips out that he’s dead. You understand me? They’ll start tracking you because they’ve built up in their minds that he’s some kind of figure in history and that’s part of the price you pay as his sidekick. Rake’s a mythic figure out there and so are you, my friend.

  Haze staggered away down the beach. They watched him until he was out of sight.

  Now’s the hard part, Hank said, holding Meg. Now we have to go into whatever strength we still have and use that part of ourselves that we’d rather not use to burn him and take him downstate. We’ll go to the house and get the wheelbarrow and we’ll put him in it and then I’ll build the fire and I’ll put him in while you stay inside and pretend it’s not happening. I’m sorry you even had to see this. I’m sorry it had to be done this way.

  That night, after the fire—he put the body on it, leaving it to burn—it began to rain and they lay in bed listening.

  I’m tired of this, she said.

  I’ll leave in a few hours. You stay here and take care of MomMom. Nobody will know until the Corps sends someone up here, or word gets here from Flint. They’ll see his body and report it and then it’ll have to go through a vast network of bureaucratic bullshit before they identify. They’ll see what they want to see.

  Out in the yard, a few hot coals still hissed. He went down to check it, casting the flashlight beam onto Rake’s face. His mouth curled back into a leathery smirk. The rain had passed and clouds scuttled across the moon. He caught the scent of honeysuckle and trees happy in the rain. The body seemed almost weightless as he moved it onto a blanket. He went back to the fire and put the dog tag into the coals and let it sit there for a while. Then he rubbed it with ash and, lifting Rake’s head, drew it around his neck. He patted it once, gently. He carried the body to the car, put it in the trunk, and went back to the house for his bag: a gun, some food, a grenade just in case. When he left around three, the trees hung with wetness. Tendrils of fog threaded across the road and through his headlights. He had the radio on, and when the state forest signal came in he scanned for music and, finding none, settled for a talk show out of Canada. They spoke of the spillover riots that had somehow crossed the Freedom Bridge to Sarnia before subsiding into a tense peace. A caller spoke of the potential for long-term peace. There was hope in the air, she said. She had a wonderful Canadian tartness to her voice that reminded Hank of his mother before she had gone mad.

  He got to the bridge before dawn and pulled over to scan with his binoculars. The bridge lights were out and in the twenty minutes he sat looking only two sets of headlights went over, both heading from south to north. The water in Lake Michigan sat leaden. He resisted the familiar urge to go down and take a swim. Instead, he thought of Meg lying in bed, her hair pooled around her face. Her beauty seemed to him the only thing that could save him from himself. His mother would be asleep, too, snoring and then snorting and settling into that breathless silence that was near death. The weakness apparent by day in her weirdly unfocused eyes was even more apparent in those silences. He took a deep breath and shook his head and listened to the tense fuzzy hum of blood against the thin membrane of his eardrums.

  * * *

  He crossed the bridge and found the side street leading to Fort Michilimackinac. The body in the trunk, charred to feathery lightness, bones and shrunken skin and the grimace of teeth, shifted slightly, curled fetal in the blanket. He imagined he could feel it.

  At the fort he parked on the far side of the lot and scanned with his field glasses. A man was asleep in a folding chair, a glint of badge silver on chest. His head rested against the log wall of the fort, which was a fake, a reconstruction for tourists, but in the predawn darkness looked real. Hank got out of the car, lifted the bundle of blankets from the trunk, and dragged it to the curb. An old oak had been violently pruned away from the entrance driveway. It had a long scab, a scrape on its trunk bleeding down to the roots. He touched the sap and took a sniff. Then he unfolded the blanket.

  You’re dead now, he said to the corpse. You’ll be dead in five years, he said to the tree.

  He lifted the body, again noting its lightness, and set it down carefully into a crook at the base of the tree. He silently thanked the tree for providing a nifty seatlike structure. For years the roots had clutched and changed direction, piling up against the concrete curb, bulging and pushing to form what he needed, a place to enshrine the body of a man who had done the same thing in his own way, struggling against forces invisible to him, responding instinctually, cell by cell, seeking nourishment in poor substrate. He adjusted the dog tag, pulling the chain straight, and wiped ash from his hands on his jeans.

  The bridge was empty when he headed back. The hanger cables thrummed in the wind above the brutal currents, the contending forces from two huge bodies.

  Hours later, back at the house, he found Meg in the kitchen drinking coffee.

  * * *

  They spent the next few days cleaning out the house, getting rid of reminders of Rake and reestablishing a sense of ownership. They built a fire and burned Rake’s junk. They hiked down to the river and he taught her how to line-cast in a clearing he knew about—the only one, really, where you wouldn’t get snagged. The word eventually would get out that Rake was dead, and then they’d have to make a move. For now they’d bide their time and take care of MomMom.

  * * *

  Those were sweet days, and nights. Hank took her down to the river each afternoon. She caught on quickly, wading bare-legged into the icy water, finding her footing on the slippery stones. He spent evenings studying forestry survey maps and making plans. MomMom was growing weak. When she threw a fit, she did it quietly. He held her and tried to read her eyes, to see something of the past, but it was all gone.

  News of the assassination came on the radio one morning while they were sitting at the kitchen table. They listened and wept together.

  Kennedy pushed his luck as far as he could and I respect him for that, Hank said. We did the same thing but were luckier.

  The trees were just beginning to change, not in color but in the tenseness of the leaves, a loosening at the stems. Late summer weeds had bloomed and dried in the sun and were filling the afternoon air with chaff. Hank went out and chopped some wood and at night, when it got cold, he blessed it and fed a fire in the living room and they listened to the Stones and the Beatles and lay together on the couch. He had a loaded gun he kept on the table in case word leaked out about Rake. But the road to the house stayed quiet.

  Several days after the assassination, the news reports were of the funeral train transporting the president’s body back to Washington, reversing the route of Lincoln’s body a century ago, across Ohio and through upstate New York. That night he built
another fire and went outside, the grass crunching frost, and saw the northern lights through the trees. He went inside to get Meg and took her down to the beach to look at the long furls of electromagnetic radiation. He sniffed the air and said he was catching something new from the north, way, way up. He said they’d go there as soon as they didn’t have to fear being followed by gangs of agents.

  That night they made love for the first time. She told him to stop saying he was sorry, that her desires had nothing to do with anything except the fact that she was her old self again, her original self.

  DULUTH

  The water had taken on a cold, wintery glint. The light had shifted, making the beach look wider, more ominous. The situation was unsafe, but before the four of them took off, they had taken one last hike together, through second-growth forest to the eastern branch of the Two Hearted River. Hank had wanted them to see it. They marched single-file, Hank leading and stopping them on occasion to sniff and listen.

  They were still doing a penance for a loss, and it would be that way for a long time. The river snaked through the brambles and deep green beds of fern, hidden from the world, a river that had to be seen at ground level. From the sky it was obscured by a canopy of leaf.

  Singleton, at the rear, experienced a sense of recognition. The buzz in his ear was still gone, leaving behind a feeling of having lived through battles. The fuzzball had resolved into concrete thought—images of a boy on a beach with freckles and a loose smile. From Meg he had gathered a sense of who Billy-T might’ve been, and he saw him through her eyes and she saw him through his eyes and Wendy saw her loss through Meg’s eyes and Meg through her eyes.

  Hank led them to a mossy open clearing with limited snags. The only good fishing spot for miles and miles. He explained that the reputation of the stream was much greater than the stream itself.