Hystopia: A Novel Read online

  “Don’t worry, son,” the old man said, putting his hands on Singleton’s shoulders. “We should eat something, right now, pronto, before the rotgut starts to rot the gut.” And that was it. They were all back in the present moment and facing hunger they had put aside to listen to the old man’s story. He scurried around the kitchen, removing a string of franks from the refrigerator, cutting them apart, oiling up a pan and getting them sizzling and then bringing out a bowl of potato salad he had made that afternoon, and Wendy set the table. He said a prayer over the food, and they ate for a few minutes without a word, just the clink of silverware. Then he turned and said, “At least we weren’t yellow-streaked slackers. At least we weren’t that, son. We might’ve had our troubles but we weren’t hiding out in the Red Cross or home at the YMCA, or none of that.”

  “No, sir, we weren’t yellow, not at all,” Singleton said.

  * * *

  Pulling out of the driveway, they spotted the Zomboid, moonlight glinting off the spokes of his chair, a cigarette glowing in his mouth. “You’d think he was put there just for us,” Singleton said. “For me and your father. You’d think God would think: Man, I’m not going to put a Nam guy like that next to a Second World War grunt, because it would be too obvious. But God says, Hey, man, it’s just statistically there, man. I had nothing to do with it. You get fifty or whatever vets living in the same area, it’s gonna happen. Don’t blame me, God says. You send them over from Flint and they’re gonna come back to Flint.”

  “So long,” the Zomboid was calling. His hand, waving, was clearly visible. Wendy was at the wheel—he was too drunk to drive—and they slipped into the dark streets, past the moldering houses. The little boy was still in the yard, standing in attack mode, pointing his finger into the charge. Everything was navigable thanks to the glow in the east. On the radio Iggy was hollering against the fury of noise in a way that somehow seemed to match the stench of charred wood as it mixed with the faint benzene smell from the canal.

  “We have a history,” Wendy said. She turned the radio down. “The guy in the wheelchair and I have a history.”

  “What kind of history?”

  “We were close when I was in high school. Then his number came up and he went over and came back and we were even closer and then he went back for a second tour.”

  “How close,” Singleton said. His heart was pounding, the nut in his head beginning to throb. To go from an old vet, all that talk, everything that wasn’t said and was said, and then to hear this.

  “Too close to talk about right now.”

  If he had learned anything, it was that she made confessions when she was high. She’d hint at a fact, put something out there between them and let it fester until she was ready to talk. He’d have to be more patient, he thought. But he couldn’t resist and he asked again, how close was close, and as he’d expected, she remained quiet, her fingers curled around the wheel, until she was at her place, parking, and they went upstairs into the apartment and licked a tab and sat, waiting for the high to kick.

  Even before she spoke—because she did, finally, when she was tripping—he understood that she had loved the guy in a carnal way. (No other word, he thought. He hated that word but it was the right one.) He imagined a puppy-dog teenage love, fumbling at first but then smoothed out to delicious first touches and then an understanding. He imagined Old Spice cologne on his shoulder blade, her nose down in there as he kissed the smooth skin behind her ear and then the nape of her neck in the backseat of a car. A young man whose draft number came up, went over and served and came back with his legs gone and his arms not working and a smart-ass new language and a new way of thinking. The new language was the biggest change, he imagined. She had had to confront that vacant look in his eyes and his physical infirmities but those were nothing next to the aberration of his language, the defeat that hovered between his phrases, the tight, edgy bark. Taking advantage of a temporarily clear mind—the kick hadn’t kicked yet—he tried to imagine it from her point of view, as a young woman, seeing him off, maybe even throwing a small party on the beach with a few friends, drinking beer, somber with the fact that in the morning he would be in boot camp. A beautiful young man with long cornsilk hair, almost girlish, and a smile (it was still there) that was loose and sloppy, who came back damaged. When he got back she was finished with nursing school and working at the hospital during the days, hours and hours of serving up medication—not drugs, she had explained, but medicines—and hanging out with the other nurses, smoking in the break room, listening to them gripe, worrying because they had the patients’ lives in their hands (the doctors were blunt, well tanned, always talking about their golf games). One wrong dose, one forgotten IV change, one wrong mark on a clipboard and death might be at hand. But when her boy was discharged from the VA he had stumps where his legs had been, still glossy and wet-looking, and she had tried to nurse him, helping him change the bandages, listening to the pure postwar silence between ranting and raving. Then a line had appeared and that line was a choice, to take care of him and live up to her obligations, the promises she had made to herself and her God (she mentioned that she used to believe, that her mother had been a devout Catholic), in honor of her father (she had mentioned that her father had instilled in her a sense of honor and a sense of humor), or find a way to let him go. It was easy to imagine the whole setup. His high was starting up, but he had a chance to hear himself ask if she wanted to talk about it.

  “You want to talk about it?” he said.

  Now the ceiling was sparkling with starlight and the moonlight streaming through the window became a rhombus changing shapes and texture, smooth marble one second—he got up and went over to touch—and then quivering and liquid the next. He went back to the bed, navigating through his high, still in control, he thought. When he looked again the moonlight was smoking, steaming. He’d seen that kind of moonlight in Nam. Maybe, maybe not. High or not high.

  “I loved him,” she said, touching his shoulder, running her finger along his scar. “He was a sweet boy, just a kid, and then he went and came back and I tried, for a little while, to take care of him. I nursed him until I couldn’t handle it. I wanted him enfolded but of course you know they couldn’t do that. I began to think about men and war, about stupid men and stupid wars, about getting inside somehow and fighting for change…”

  “Wow, will you look at that,” he said. The moonlight was striking the floor, vibrating the floorboards, which looked a yard wide, old barn-floor boards, and he heard a mooing sound and the cackle of chickens feeding and smelled the sweet hay as he got up and got his lighter and held it, monolithic in his fingers, with the eagle and etched words: Tet, Tet, Tet. On the bottom of the lighter was the stamp he had studied (he liked to imagine) countless times during the rage of firefights, to keep his mind steadied (he could hear the chur-chunk of the stamping tool machine at some factory in Pennsylvania) while Wendy, for her part, in her own high, also looked at it as he rolled it in his fingers, and said, Wow, wow, and studied it in her own way. For an hour, maybe more, they passed the Zippo back and forth.

  Zomboid’s real name was Steve Williams.

  She remembered his downy lip and his smooth hairless chest.

  His fingers along the waistband of her jeans.

  A pulse between her legs.

  Williams rocking gently. His boy body against her girl body.

  His body back from Nam, washboard stomach, wiry arms.

  Getting up to make her father breakfast. Her hair in curlers.

  Her father’s black lunchbox on the counter, ready to go.

  TREE HUNTING

  Lumber runners raced to put their claims in. Still do. It was said there were men who could hear a queen pine from a mile away and identify it by the sound of the wind through its needles. I’m one of them, he said.

  The man’s name was Hank. He spoke of races to the land office through virgin forest. Tracts so brambly that men came out bleeding. The hardships of the lumber busi
ness, the corruption and the glory, stripping an entire state from top to bottom in a few years.

  I’d just as soon be out here amid them than with just about anybody.

  He turned and looked at her with eyes intense and icy blue. At any moment he’d put his big hands on her, she thought. But it was good to be out in the forest. The trees—a second regrowth after the great scalping harvest of the last century, when the small-gauge lines fed the logs down into the mills, and in turn onto the steamers, and in turn to Chicago, where they went to market. The rails were gone but you could still find traces of their tie work, trails in the deep woods, and you still stumbled upon old encampments that were now nothing more than stone foundations and, when you dug with your trench shovel, the charcoal remains of sawdust fires.

  He questioned her. What was it like when you were released into the Grid after being treated, and how the hell did Rake lure you out? What was his technique? Do you think you had something to do with Rake, some connection in the past? Did he grab you and force-feed one of his fucking concoctions into your mouth? She yielded up nothing more than a few grunts. (Make a story up if you have to give a story, if someone asks you for one, a nurse in the Grid had said, his voice soothing. If it comes down to it, you just have to dig deep and put two and two together and spin something out. It won’t be hard unless you let it be hard. If all else fails, remain silent. If that fails, give the enfolded sign. When you’re done with your rehab in the Grid area, you’ll feel strong enough to take the questions. Here in the Grid, you’ll find a mutual understanding. They won’t ask. The enfolded respect the enfolded, that kind of thing.)

  Deep inside a grove of pines, he got the tent poles in place and unfolded the canvas and pegged it down.

  We’ll camp here, he said.

  She sat down and watched as he gathered kindling and used his hatchet to sliver bark and carefully built a cone formation, sprinkled dry needles on it and lit it with a match and then blew lightly and then harder as the fire burst, threading a dark trail of smoke up into the higher reaches of the trees where there was still sunlight, and then he stretched out, with his legs tight together, and patted the ground and told her to come up close, to sit.

  Thanks, she said, and she went to him and sat. Whatever trust she had once had was gone, but she could imagine a time when she could trust. A guy would introduce her to a guy on a Harley-Davidson, who would offer her a ride upstate, and she’d get on and go.

  She had a fragment memory of a hippie encampment surrounded by a biker gang, the leather on their chaps squeaking. The memory had the quality of being dreamed, a false creation. That’s what they said. You’ll make stuff up, drawing from images you’ve seen recently. The rest was in the so-called terminal confusion, the faint memories of the reenactment, residual aspects that formed a shell around the central trauma, the real trauma, that was buried and gone in her memory. A nurse had explained that. His voice was deep. He was gentle.

  A mother lode tree, Hank was saying. The queen of the forest. You feel the lure of a giant tree. Catch the sound of needles singing in Canadian wind. I mean even toothpicks have tripled in price. Those lovely dispensers you see behind the cash register at your mom-and-pop. They’ve been moved behind the counter.

  He lit a cigarette and dug through his pack and came out with a can of beer.

  Do you think I could go with you? she said. Do you think you could take me up there?

  He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and stared into the flames and waited a moment.

  We’re in a weird moment in history. I know that’s not an answer to your question, but that’s what came to my mind when you asked.

  But you’d take me with you?

  I’ve promised not to touch you. I gave Rake my word. It might sound strange to say, but it’s a matter of honor. Mine, not his. If he has a sense of honor, and my gut says he still does, it’s linked with the past. I like to think he still has it.

  That’s not an answer, she said, standing up.

  You’re getting your lucidity back.

  If you heard that queen pine somewhere. If you picked up the sound of it, or the feeling, would you take me with you?

  He stared at the fire some more and then went to his pack and took out a pan, a can of beans, some potatoes, and he began to prepare a meal, taking his time, working carefully, opening up the can and then peeling the potatoes with his knife while the sun set and the wind picked up. He was still talking about trees as he worked. His fingers were long and nimble and the care he took made him look less heavy. From time to time he stopped and rubbed his beard and looked at her and shook his head and then returned to his work, stirring the pot with a spoon, adjusting it on the fire.

  Would you take me along? she said.

  I suppose if I got a sense that the tree was anywhere near here, and I’m talking a proximity of about a hundred miles, because that’s what I think my range is for picking up a scent, then yeah, I’d take you along, but only because I’m governed by larger impulses.

  When the potatoes were almost done he took the pan off, holding the handle with a stick, and put it to the side. Then he put a smaller pot on and poured the beans in and began to stir.

  When I was a kid my old man took me up here a couple of times a year and we fished and hiked. A couple of weeks in the woods and the rest of the time up on the bridge welding, or out in New York with his Iroquois buddies. He worked high steel until he signed up as a deckhand on a ship. He slipped and almost died on a project in New York, and he used to say, “I almost slipped and went to the ship.” That’s what he used to say. Maybe that’s what he still says. I wouldn’t know because the truth is I don’t see him much, not really at all, and I’m not even sure where he is out there, except to say he’s on the water, I’m sure of that, from spring thaw to winter freeze, and when he’s not on a ship he’s living somewhere down in Toledo or up in Duluth. He’s in Duluth when he’s not in Toledo, but I’d guess he favors Duluth because like me—and I’m guessing here, again—he’s a man who likes the glimmer of northern light and the solitude and—guessing even more—a proximity to good forest of the sort you only get up here, or farther north.

  He chewed his food and stared across the fire. The tin plate in her hands felt soft and smooth on the edges. The food was simple and good. She could smell the way the pine sap and smoke mixed in the air, and taste the way the butter melted into the potatoes and then, when she sipped, the whiskey on her tongue.

  My taste is coming back, she said.

  That’s a good sign. That’s the first step, he said, and then he began to clean his plate with dead leaves. She watched the muscle on his arms and the care he took. She removed her socks, put her feet close to the fire, and enjoyed the feeling of the cold night behind her, against her back.

  At one time, he said. At one time the forest could’ve gone on forever, struggling to find light, the small saplings dying off so that the mighty could prevail—over time. That’s what I love about the forest, man, he said.

  The bones of his face looked fine in the firelight. He continued talking about lumber barons. He talked about how there were men who went into old houses and took core samples from main beams and dated them and how they could read history from an old stump and see back to the age of Christ, the plagues of bark rot and forest fires, the dry years and the flood years that the tree had survived while humans in their fucking folly marched off to one war and then another and saw their supposedly eternal civilizations fall. He spoke of his time out west, learning a trade, studying the western species, and how one night he had slept in the crook of a beastly old tree, not far from Santa Cruz. He spoke of how it took three men to properly run a cut from one end to the other, taking a beautiful thing, a trunk, and turning it into something even more beautiful—good board feet that could be used to build the west, man—and then he talked about the wastage, the way mills used to dump it until they began to use it to fuel the steam engines themselves, so that the whole thing became cycli
cal, and the trees were shorn into lumber while they fed the fire with their own sawdust.

  The trees might’ve understood what was happening. I might sound crazy saying that, but I’m saying it. You see, if I want to understand something I eventually have to talk about trees. If I don’t talk trees, I don’t really hear the words. If you know what I mean, Meg, he said. The thing is, the stuff I enfolded when I treated myself with the Trip must include a lot of what I once knew about Rake, or maybe I should say know, I can’t remember all the bad shit he did to me and I did with him as his sidekick, the real trauma, and so I have to make a guess that a lot of it was war trauma and not just the shit we did when we got back, because I know we were in the same unit together, he mentioned that, and I think it’s connected somehow with the way I feel about trees, which I can admit have become an obsession, do you get me?

  She remained silent for a few minutes—listening to the hiss of wind through pine needles—and then, finally, said, I think so.

  If I talk enough I can figure out how to think about something, and if I can think about it, then I can begin finding the right way to talk about it, like the sawdust feeding the mill saws, he said, and then he laughed and took another sip of beer.

  A steady breeze was coming in from the lake. He was another male fury of verbiage, and all she could do was listen, to really, really listen, using what seemed to be a newfound ability, because she was starting to hear what this man said, keying into the words, his musical voice, and before she knew it he was onto the subject of Rake.

  You know how I think he got his name? He got his name when he took a garden rake and raked this kid’s face. I didn’t see it because I wasn’t with him. This was when he was running with a cluster of vets who had formed a coalition, the one that became the Black Flag gang, and were doing reenactments of battles up at Isle Royal, that island in the middle of Superior. Some kid crossed him the wrong way and he took what was at hand, an old hay rake, and struck him across the face with it. No, not struck, that’s not the word—is there another word? He cut three deep paths in the guy’s face, taking out his eyes, is what I was told, and that’s how he got the name Rake.