The Indestructible Man Page 12
We loved her from the beginning, though none of us had the courage to admit it. When she was taken from us, alive and breathing but still absent, it was as if our hearts had been blasted from our chests. We have had others; there are still a few women unafraid to touch us. In our loneliest moments we even pay for such comfort, taking what pleasures we can in alleys or gas station restrooms. But these meetings are brief and mechanical, empty, devoid of passion. We chide ourselves for our faithlessness and, heads bowed to our sunken chests, we begin our journey back to the girl. We return for her, though this goes unmentioned except in moments of drunken vulnerability, which have become increasingly rare as we grow older and more guarded. It is simply understood.
We searched a long time for the old woman after we discovered the half-eaten apple beside the girl’s limp body, hoping to make her undo the curse. We bludgeoned her with hoes and rake-handles, venting frustration and loss and rage with each stroke, trying to force her to reveal the antidote for the poison.
This much we learned: the girl had fallen into a deep and timeless sleep, and a kiss would wake her. But—and the old woman smiled, though blood and bile clogged her throat and streamed down her chin—none of us could be the one to break the curse.
We do not know whose blow finally killed her, and for that we are grateful. But even at the last we pleaded with her to undo what she had done.
When we returned to the girl we stared at one another over her sleeping form, tried to decide what to do next. After much debate we agreed not to take the old woman at her word, that we should try to break the spell in case she had lied.
One by one we kissed her, several times over, varying the duration and pressure and level of intimacy, the others watching in fear and awe that she might wake before their chance came. Each of us hoped above all else that his kiss would be the one to wake her, that her eyes would flutter and peer into our gray whiskery faces, that her small ivory hand would reach up and touch our wrinkled cheeks, scrunched like cauliflower buds. It was not to be, and we finally agreed it was hopeless. We were saddened, to be sure, but none of us knew how the seven would continue if one were to break the spell. Our failure was, perhaps, for the best.
In our desperation we consulted experts, rail-thin men with eyes black as beetle shells who examined the girl, the old woman’s body, even the apple. It was a special kiss she required, they said, our role to simply care for her and wait for the one who could administer it. As far as we know they are all dead now, their bodies merged with ancient earth, and we are still here, waiting for the promised stranger to come.
We have moved about frequently since the old woman came, every few years packing our belongings into tattered, overstuffed canvas bags, laying the girl gently in our trailer to continue her ageless sleep while we move to each new refuge. Our motives are not altruistic; we cannot say we wait only for the one who will end her sleep. We cannot wake her ourselves—that honor belongs to another—but it would not break our hearts if he did not come at all. Until then, though she sleeps, she is ours.
But in our constant moving we delude ourselves; when the time comes, he will find us no matter how we try to evade detection. We cannot deny this, and though we do not speak of it openly we know that, eventually, we will have to ignore our selfishness and step aside.
For the last nine or ten months we have lived in a small wooden shack near the turnpike. Its foundation has begun to sink into the earth and its thatched roof dips; only a few patches of faded purple paint remain on its walls. We are blocked from the view of passing eyes by the steep grassy hill of an overpass and surrounded by a sea of cornfields so vast that at first glance it seems impossible to traverse. We have chosen this place carefully. During the growing season the corn is hostile and unnavigable, and after the harvest the fields are a barren no-man’s land, any possible intruder visible to us long before he reaches the shack. We have ample room to hide in the tunnels we have dug underneath, canned foods and powdered milk enough to sustain us for months. A mile up the road is a rest stop with a Bobcat Bob’s convenience mart and gas station. Some nights, when the moon is dim and there are few cars, we wander, spreading out among the aisles like guerrillas gathering necessary items—shaving cream, bar soap, cheap Scotch whiskey, the best ladies’ musk one can find at a convenience mart to scent her bathing water. The store clerks have come to expect our visits, seem to find the spectacle of us entertaining. Inevitably, one of us encounters an item too high to reach, and one of the clerks—usually a gangly teenager in a green baseball hat and shirt emblazoned with the smiling bobcat logo—must assist us with a condescending snicker. When we are finished we file out and disappear into the night, warily clutching our supplies to our chests.
We wake before dawn with the first wave of tractor-trailers; their passing often causes the roof of our little shack to shake and shed small wood shavings that find their way into our nostrils and eyes. The girl is protected, of course, a wide sturdy vinyl canopy over her bed sparing her from any falling debris. We stretch our arms and backs in unison, and in turn we each kiss her parted sleeping lips. We have long since given up on waking her ourselves, but it has become an old and comfortable ritual we are loath to give up. We change her bedclothes, trim and brush her straight black hair. When drifting dust begins to coat her skin we bathe her, each of us stroking an arm, a leg, a breast, with lathery sponges, rinsing every part of her with damp cloths. We feel a giddy confusion at these moments, our implements sometimes slip from our trembling hands, our fingers free themselves from the moist barrier of the cloths and find themselves running over the soft skin of her hip, the smooth white junction between neck and shoulder, the wiry blackish-brown hairs at the base of her abdomen. These are accidents, and we do not mock one another, since we have all at some point committed them. Every few nights, when the rest are asleep, we each in turn tiptoe around the snoring lumps of our brothers, wander into her room, pull back the sheets and her nightgown. We feel the lines of her ribs with our thumbs, marvel at the two tiny moles just under her left breast, trace circles around her soft flat nipples with our fingertips. But we all understand that to take her this way would be empty, meaningless. Instead we creep outside and stroke our withered members until we spurt onto the grass, and then return, shamed, to our beds.
We guard the girl carefully, wary of hitchhikers or road crews who come too close. We would willingly die in her defense, though rivers have dried into dust since the old woman put the sleep on her and we have not yet been called to do so. It would make things more interesting if we were faced with that possibility, and we sit up nights drinking Scotch and devising plans to defend against potential assaults. We have contingency plans for every conceivable scenario, can hold out against siege indefinitely with the supplies we have amassed. Send an army against us and we can, theoretically, stand against it.
Our confidence in such plans falters after we wake hung-over from the previous night, but the joy is not so much in the testing of these plans as in their composition, contributing something to her care other than the usual maintenance. It is much easier than sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the one incident which we know will happen eventually, which we anticipate with longing and dread. We have no defense against that.
Some morning or other it will come: a soft knock, a small white envelope pushed under the crack of the door. Inside, on thin folded yellow paper, a telegram: Have found you and am coming. Wait for me.
We often argue about how we might respond: burn the shack, load the girl up into our trailer and set off down the turnpike again, search for another cornfield or hidden underpass or cave to hide in. We might carry her into the fields, ignoring the sharp edges of the cornstalks as their leaves scrape the rough skin of our faces, dividing into smaller groups so we are more difficult to track. We cannot avoid him forever, but we can elude him for a day, even a week, before he finds us.
The more ruthless among us suggest that we actively seek him out, intercept him before he locates us. What w
e do when we find him is another matter. We could kill him as we did the old woman. But a look at the sleeping girl, the thought of her eyes finally reopening, reminds us that such a thing is too ruthless, too selfish, even for us. We remain open to all possibilities, but for now all we can do is drink and plot and wait.
We lie awake and imagine him wandering across the cornfields until, finally, he stumbles upon us and we hear his gentle knock at our door. He will kneel at her bedside as we have so often knelt, bend his neck and kiss her lips, in an instant undoing what we have failed so many times to undo. Her eyes will open and flutter, and when they do she will see only him. When this moment comes we will not be crushed, will not shed tears, will not cower in the corner. We will hold our heads high, our chins firm, what remains of our chests barrel-like before us, as we accept her gratitude—a gentle hug, a kiss on the cheek. We will follow as he carries her still-drowsy form out the front door and into daylight, watch as they speed down the highway and out of our lives, will perhaps even cry as his car finally slips beyond the vanishing point. We will gather at the grassy edge of the cornfield and silently say goodbye to one another with nods and grunts, until our shoulders sag and we disappear one by one into the green concealing stalks.
The Edge Of Solid Ground
I am dating a woman who believes the earth is flat. Her ideology is silly and sometimes childish, but she has a slender, elegant neck and perfect rounded hips, and when she holds her warm skin against mine all arguments are forgotten. She has made it her mission to show me the truth, photocopying stacks of books and articles which, she insists, provide irrefutable evidence of the flat-earth theory—the research of scholars who have spent their lives calculating its exact dimensions, the points of termination where soil and rock and ocean drop off into empty space. These drop-offs are mainly found at the edges of vast oceans, places where the churning water hangs suspended, frozen waterfalls refusing to give up their captive streams.
The key, she says, is this: the earth is shaped not like a sheet of paper, but like a sliced orange peel pressed onto a tabletop, its folds spreading out like a Mercator projection. It is, allowing for mountain ranges and deep ocean chasms, slightly more than two miles thick, with a solid barrier of impregnable rock at the bottom to keep us from digging too far and falling through into dark vacuum. Once revealed, she claims, this evidence will undermine the very foundations of modern science—which is exactly why those in power have held these radical findings to a whisper.
I do not argue, though I sometimes offer her subtle prompts to consider: we have seen the earth from space; we can reach the east by sailing west; we have drilled deeper into the ground than any of her sources allow. But she has counters to every misgiving, and speaks without a trace of doubt. Early explorers like Columbus and the Vikings, she explains, had at least a rough idea of the points of termination and were able to skirt the boundaries until they reached the outlying islands of North America. Magellan did not heed the ancient notes and the warnings of his experienced seamen, who knew them well, and thus fell off the edge to wallow forever in the airless void. According to her sources, one can still see him floating there, arms and legs spread out like a scarecrow, his face a grimace of horror and sadness. One needs only a powerful telescope and to know where to look. One day, she says, we will see for ourselves.
The early scientists who claimed the earth was spherical were, she argues, victims of a severe brain-swelling which left them prone to delusions: Tycho Brahe, suffering from such an ailment, refused to urinate for two days and subsequently died when his bladder exploded; Isaac Newton, in the later stages of dementia, regularly ingested near-fatal amounts of mercury. More recent photos of the earth from the moon landings and from satellites she dismisses as fictional, a conspiracy forged in remote darkrooms and computer labs to preserve the myths taught to children. She views this as a crime, and has vowed to see it corrected, beginning with me.
I smile and nod, grunt “Mmm-hmm,” when she pauses for acknowledgment, and listen until fatigue narrows her wide eyes to slits and she lies beside me on the couch, resting her head in the crook of my neck. Her hair is light brown, with subtle streaks of blonde and red, smelling faintly of strawberries. But before I press my nose and chin into it I hesitate, unable to shake the suspicion that I have not yet earned the right.
Since it is the first Monday of the month, she and a group of friends picket the local high school, linking hands in the circle drive and forming human chains to keep buses and cars from entering. All wear the symbol of their faith: a pewter medallion with an etched sun rising over a flat, mountainous earth. I do not take part, remaining in the car and idling by the curb until the protest is over. On the way to the school, I ask her what good this will do, if there are better ways to attract attention. She shakes her head at my ignorance, insists she will continue to do this until the superintendent agrees that the children should be taught the truth.
Superintendent Partridge has yet to acknowledge their demonstrations, though today I can see him staring down at them from his office window. He does not intervene when some of the high school boys, their faded denim jackets and black T-shirts stinking of cigarettes and marijuana, walk up to the demonstrators and throw chewed-up bubble gum at them, pour warm chocolate milk from crumpled cartons over their heads, spray them with shaken soda cans. Neither she nor her friends move or try to run away. I would grab the boys by their smoke-stained collars and beat respect into them, but she has made me promise not to interfere. She accepts the abuse willingly, believing her show of moral strength in the face of humiliation will draw sympathy. Today, as usual, it brings the police.
Officer Albrecht calls me by my first name, greets me with an understanding grin and a cup of weak coffee when I follow the patrol car to the station. “Amanda again?” he says, and leads me to the holding area, a yellow-plastered room in the station basement which usually reeks of beer and urine. When he slides the cell door open she runs to me, in tears but still fiercely proud, smearing my shirt with chocolate milk and soda. Officer Albrecht neither cites her nor requires her to post bail; he merely tips his hat as she passes, exposing his thick white hair, and asks her to take it up with the school board next time.
I take her home and sit her down at the kitchen table, gently wipe the grime from her hair and face with a wet paper towel. After I have cleared away all but a few brownish patches on her clothes, she rests her head on my chest, moistening my shirt with her damp hair. “At least you understand,” she sighs.
“I know,” I whisper, stroking her forehead with my index finger, hoping she does not ask me to explain what I understand.
To make up for her ordeal we drive into the country to her favorite place, a grove of crabapple trees by a lake lined with reeds and cattails. She cannot tolerate drives of more than an hour and falls asleep, her limp hand cupped over my knee, lips hanging partly open.
I consider stomping the gas pedal, darting under the green and silver sign of our intended exit, abandoning the lake to find the point where tires lose contact with pavement and we coast into space. I do not, of course; I have yet to memorize the points of termination, and she would insist they are beyond the reach of any car. I only hesitate for a moment, press my foot to the gas a millimeter or two farther, then cut onto the exit ramp. As we round the sharp curve and my body leans into the door, a giddy pressure radiates from my chest and I laugh.
We spread out a knit blanket at the grove’s edge, close enough to see the water shimmer through the weeds but far enough to avoid the duck and goose droppings that mine the grass near shore. She tells me about her dream to start a school to prepare people like her to spread the truth, to cushion the blow when all the evidence is finally revealed. Again I nod, focus on the freshly-thawed supermarket bagel from the wicker basket, then I creep close to her, the blanket rustling the grass underneath us. She keeps talking as I pull up the front of her green-striped tank top and kiss her belly. Her abdomen is hard and flat, with gentle
crevices and small peaks where the muscles swell. Only when I begin inching her thick denim shorts down her thighs does she fall silent. We make love briefly, wrapping ourselves in the blanket, stripping down only partway in case someone should wander into view.
When it is over she points to the horizon, the warm red-orange disc sinking behind the crabapple trees. “Isn’t it much nicer to think of the sun going down over a flat horizon?” she asks. “And more romantic?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, sweaty and tired, peeling the blanket away from my damp skin.
“I always knew you’d come around,” she says. I smile and try to suppress a sigh, zip my fly and roll away from her, leaving her wrapped in the blanket, and stretch out on the grass. But I cannot rest comfortably on natural ground; I roll and fidget, struggle to lie still and face the sky, unable to flatten my back against the curve of the earth.
Schoolteacher, 30, Travels Time To Foil Murders
My mother is an experienced time traveler. When I was ten she claimed she had refused my father’s proposal and married another man, a terrible mistake she realized a few months after the wedding. So one morning she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, willed herself back to the moment my father offered her the ring, and said “yes.” She says she has repaired her history many times—taken back harsh words to her sisters years ago, exchanged gifts we didn’t enjoy, avoided numerous fender-benders and broken heirlooms. All she requires is quiet and a bit of concentration, and she can go anywhere in her past.