The Age Read online

  The girl loses herself easily in sleep, the hut filled with the wheeze and growl of her snores. But for the boy, nights are torture. He imagines the thing as it churns in its liquid den, presses its scaled, stumpy limbs against the walls of her stomach. As the birth approaches, nightmares grow worse, and the boy forces himself to stay awake until the subtle shift in darkness, the first hint of dawn, when he can close his eyes for a fitful few hours.

  Fear of sleep drives the boy to approach Dan one evening by the fire. At first Dan pretends not to hear him, turns his head to the water. Finally, he sighs and nods. Two nights later, Dan taps on their door.

  The girl doesn’t make a fuss, stands mute and angry in the centre of the hut, arms cradling her belly as he puts on his jacket. He tries to kiss her forehead. She turns away, refuses his touch.

  Around the fire, men offer warm greetings, smiles, cheers, claps on his arm. The boy’s relief wells up as gratitude as he shakes their hands.

  The walk from camp passes quickly, and in no time they are on the road. The boy’s rifle feels lighter, natural in the crook of his arm. Though the men don’t speak, the mood is optimistic, the air full of pine and the salty perfume of the sea, so that he can almost believe this is pleasurable: silent company, the expansive night. But when he looks up to the sky, the dark canopy confuses him. He has grown used to perpetual dusk, the sun’s faint circle a distant flashlight behind layers of fabric, has adapted to see a full spectrum in the constant grey, the same way, as a child, he saw colours in his neighbour’s black-and-white television. But the dearth of stars always disturbs him, and tonight, he is jarred by the blank heavens, the moon’s absence.

  As they approach the city, the men grow tense, raise their rifles. The boy carries his low at his hip. Muffled shouts or maybe barks sound in the distance. Two men take aim, but no one fires.

  At the divvy, Roger teams the boy with the investment banker, Michael, and Bruno, the bald handyman he chums around with. Michael kicks the heel of the boy’s boot.

  Hope you can keep up. He says it with a wink.

  Roger gives Michael a list. Michael glances at it, nods as he presses it into his pocket. He motions with his head for the three of them to get started.

  Instead of following the avenue to the water, they walk up, into the winding streets of neighbourhoods. Bruno leads, zigzags a seemingly arbitrary path. Michael follows like a man who trusts the instincts of his dog. After an hour of walking, Bruno stops at a corner, points to a small bungalow in front of them.

  Here. He cocks his rifle.

  Michael turns to the boy. Just stay back. If no one’s home, you can join in.

  Bruno and Michael approach the front door. Their knees rise in unison to kick it open. The boy stays on the sidewalk, rifle against his chest, as they shout their arrival and step inside.

  A minute later, Bruno waves a thick arm. Michael instructs the boy to find and bag anything useful. Bruno starts in the basement. Michael moves purposefully from room to room, digs through closets and drawers, searches for specific items on the list.

  Portraits adorn the living-room wall. A large Asian family, several generations. The boy wonders where they have gone. The glass verandah door has been smashed through, the kitchen ransacked. In the back corner of one of the cupboards, the boy finds two packages of dried noodles caught behind a shelf, a box of bouillon cubes. The meaty smell makes him salivate. Even the cartoon chicken on the front looks appetizing. He could open the box, peel back the foil, and taste one of the cubes. His fingers pick at the packaging. He drops the box into his bag, afraid the men will smell it on him.

  Michael comes out of the bathroom, vials of prescription pills clutched in his hands. He pinches the lid off one bottle and shakes two pills into his mouth.

  What are those? the boys asks.

  Do I care? Michael says. He offers the open bottle.

  The boy shakes his head, wishes he had eaten the bouillon cube. Bruno comes up from the basement, eyes the pill bottle between them. The boy knows how it looks.

  Those are for the hospital, Bruno says.

  Michael pushes the lid onto the bottle and throws it into his bag.

  Though he’s done nothing wrong, the boys feels guilty. He waits with Michael by the front door while Bruno finishes the bedrooms.

  The next two houses are the same, cleaned out. Michael grows impatient, paces the front hall while the boy and Bruno do all the work.

  On the steps of the fourth house, Michael puts his finger to his lips, leans over to peek through a narrow pane of glass beside the door. He nods to Bruno and readies his flashlight. Bruno kicks the door in. The house is dark, but immediately the boy hears movement, whispering.

  Hold it! Michael shouts. His flashlight beam catches two men trying to scuttle out of the living room. The men freeze, their backs to the door.

  I got ’em, Bruno says, rifle cocked.

  Turn around! The sharpness of Michael’s voice makes the boy want to run.

  The two men turn slowly. One of them covers his face with his hands, Jesus, oh please.

  Do it, Michael says.

  Bruno fires and the boy jumps, shrieks in the doorway. Neither Michael nor Bruno look at him. The man with his face covered buckles forward on his knees as if in prayer. The second holds up his hands, stares down at his fallen friend.

  Bruno fires again. The second man topples, pitches to the side, lands neatly on top of the first.

  Okay, quickly, Michael says.

  The boy stands dumb in the entryway as Bruno and Michael scour the house for the other men’s stash. They crisscross in front of him with bags of food, knives, bandages, extra flashlights. Bruno passes with a water purifier tucked under his arm. When they join the boy back at the front door, their bags bulge.

  Michael stands with his hands on his hips. You see what we do here?

  Unable to speak, the boy nods, eyes the two bodies.

  Michael follows his gaze. Don’t feel bad for them. They did a lot worse to get this stuff.

  To the boy’s relief, the next few houses are empty.

  This block is sucking big-time, Michael says when they’re back on the sidewalk. Let’s try that one. He points farther into the trees.

  Bruno shrugs, lopes in the direction of Michael’s finger, toward a bungalow built into the hill.

  As they mount the stoop, the boy hears voices. Women. Instead of kicking the door in, Bruno shoulders it with a forceful but easy step.

  Four women huddle on the living-room floor in a spill of blankets. Michael’s flashlight skims their faces. One in the middle, older with thin, grey hair, is clearly the mother. The other three, teenagers, the boy’s age and older, emaciated, like wires in soiled pyjamas, hair knotted away from bony faces. The woman raises a gun with a thick, stubby muzzle.

  Get out of our house, she says. She stares the men down. Her girls have the same fierce eyes.

  The boy takes a step back.

  Michael steps forward, shines his flashlight on her gun. It’s a fucking flare gun, he says. Put it down. Or we’ll blow your head off.

  The boy prays for her to put it down.

  The woman’s hand trembles. One of the girls grabs for the gun, not to stop the mother, he can tell by the lunge, but to end her stalling. The gun goes off with a screech that tears at the boy’s ears. A sear through the air, then a whistle pop as the flare hits the ceiling in a burst of sparks, falls to the carpet where it sizzles and flames.

  With a hand over his mouth and nose, Bruno stamps out the small fire. The boy tries to blink away the neon squiggle burned into the centre of his vision, cough out toxic smoke.

  He prays the girls have scattered, sprinted for secret exits in the back. As the fog clears, he sees they’ve clung closer together on the floor.

  Michael drops his bag. He and Bruno approach the girls, their huddle of crying. The men each grab a girl and pull to separate them, a tangle of limbs and kicks and screams.

  Michael looks at the boy, then poi
nts to the older woman, who holds the remaining girl in her arms. Watch them, he says.

  The men drag the two girls out of the room and down the hall.

  On the floor near the door, the boy sits, unable to look at the woman and her daughter. He rests his rifle across his lap and tells himself that if they try to escape, he won’t stop them. They make no move.

  From another room, shouts and pleas, the slap of a hand, and a duller series of thuds, like bone hitting bone.

  Bruno growls, Hold her, hold her. Then Michael’s impish laugh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. The sounds get quieter. This scares the boy more. He breathes as loud as he can, tries not to listen. For a while, there is silence, and he thinks it must be over. The woman and her girl lean against each another, eyes closed.

  A gun fires.

  The boy leaps to his feet.

  The woman wails into the girl’s neck. Beside her, the girl stares down at the puddle of blankets.

  Jesus, Michael cries. What the fuck?

  When Michael and Bruno come out of the room, Michael’s shirt and face are splattered with blood. Bruno picks up his bag and stalks out the front door. Michael wipes his face with his hand, reaches for his bag, then shakes his head as he passes the boy.

  From the other room, low, guttural moans. The woman stands and tows the girl along with her toward the sound. The boy stands alone in the entrance.

  Are you coming or what? Michael shouts from the sidewalk.

  The boy stumbles out of the house and pulls the door closed. His hand comes away greased with something warm and sticky. He tries to rub it off on the bag.

  Bruno stalks ahead on the street, guides them back to the meeting point.

  Michael walks beside the boy. He shines his flashlight on his shirt and groans. As he shakes the shirt, flecks of red grit spray into the air around him. The boy steps away.

  Fucking freak, Michael says.

  The boy hesitates before speaking, gathers strength for his voice. We have to tell Dan.

  Fuck Dan. That holier than thou man-cunt. I don’t see him out here in the trenches, do you?

  The boy shakes his head to feign agreement, tries to keep the shock from his face.

  Michael wipes his cheek on his sleeve. Dan has no sense of the future. I mean, how long do we keep going on like this? There’s nothing fucking left.

  The boy realizes he has spent the past months thinking only minute to minute, hour to hour, to gaze ahead days or even weeks sways him with vertigo.

  Now you, my friend. Michael stops and points his finger. He makes two fists and pumps his hips back and forth. Repopulation. He laughs as he says it, smacks the boy’s arm.

  The boy smiles to get along.

  That’s what I’m about. Others too. Following your lead. Michael taps his finger to his forehead. The future in mind. He turns and continues down the hill. The boy struggles to keep up with the brisk pace.

  They approach a wooded yard. The boy mutters about needing a piss and veers off to the right. Buffered by a stand of trees, he covers his face with his jacket and cries, pounds his fist into ragged bark until it feels raw and torn. He opens his jacket and wipes his face, blows his nose. His hand quivers, stings with pain. He runs down the block to catch up.

  Close to the meeting point, voices whoop and howl. Bruno and Michael holler, Yeeoow! The catcalls boomerang back.

  It’s clear from everyone’s bags, they’ve done well. Roger looks pleased. No one questions the state of Michael’s shirt.

  On the walk back, weighted with their secret, the boy keeps his hand ready on his rifle, convinced they would sooner shoot the truth out of him than trust him with it. It is no longer the rustle of roadside trees or the skitter of pebbles that makes him nervous but the throaty breath of these men, the stomp of their boots, the twitch of their trigger fingers. He worries that at any moment one of them will set their gun on him, press its barrel to his temple, and smile a polite goodbye. Every sigh, every throat clearing warns.

  They make it back to camp as the sky lightens at the horizon. He enters the hut and with his clothes still on climbs into bed beside the girl. Men’s voices carry down from the campfire, laughter crackling with conquest. The boy wraps his arm around the girl, closes his eyes, and waits for their baby to be born.

  SHE WAKES IN A PANIC IN THE DARK, chest tight, acid and beer souring her throat. The bed rocks as she turns, a pulse thumps behind her eyes. She crawls to the floor, rolls the last of her stash, smokes at the window until the day whittles itself into mechanical details: the route, the times. Her fingers count, press out codes, flick the device switch. Morning arrives with orange light across the neighbours’ lawn. Nerves simmer low in her gut. She scrubs her hands over her face, gives up on waiting to feel ready.

  The ache in her head marks each moment as distinct. In the bathroom, she counts the strokes of her toothbrush, wets the nap of her hair to raise the flattened back and sides, roughs a dry towel over her arms and face until her skin tingles. Panties, jeans, bra, T-shirt, socks, jacket, she examines each piece of clothing before putting it on. For what, she isn’t sure.

  Downstairs, she shakes a heap of puffed cereal into a bowl, drowns it in milk, feels as if she is playing the role of a girl eating cereal, the workings of her body out of sync, unconvincing. She settles in front of the TV to scan the news.

  Henry’s face takes up every channel, a stiff station promo photo airbrushed to give him kinder eyes, fewer wrinkles. She leaves her bowl on the coffee table, moves to the television, kneels in front of it. In video footage of the fire, neighbours shake their heads in disbelief. She glimpses herself in some of the shots, body cut in half, shoulder, hip, the point of her elbow, a Mobius of time that drags her from her living room to Henry’s street and back again. Near the bottom corner of the screen, Henry’s brake lights wink in the distance. They disappear and reappear, a vanishing trick that makes her smile. On camera, the blazing house threatens, menace amplified by the troubled eyebrows of the field reporter. She counts six replays of Mrs. Cross’s collapse. When they show the house again, Gerry traces the outline of her half-self, wonders if Henry is watching the same broadcast.

  The newscaster’s mouth sets in a grim line. A helicopter captures Henry’s car partially obscured by brush, angled nose down in a ditch beside the I-5, just south of the Oregon border. An apparent heart attack, the newscaster’s voice drones over the grainy film, Henry’s body found slumped over the steering wheel. From the air, tan dots of uniformed patrolmen flank the site, tails of yellow police tape flap in the wind.

  She can only blink and breathe, squeeze her arms against the shift of the room. On TV, a man Krazy Glues his hard hat to a steel girder, clings to the hat as he pretends to dangle above a construction site, knees tucked up to his waist. The dizziness spins her, a toppling sensation she has to close her eyes to fight. When she opens her eyes, she is gazing down from the ceiling at a shape on the carpet, a thin figure she can’t quite recognize. She hears soft, wet sobs and wishes she could bring comfort, sad for the suffering she can hear but not place. Solidness returns, first in her panting breath, then the heat in her face, her boiled-up tears, the rough carpet beneath her cheek, the pulse in her head.

  She lies on the carpet and stares at the room. The unexpected angle makes her feel as if she has woken in someone else’s house, in someone else’s body. Stretched out in front of her, her own arm and hand are unfamiliar. She stares at her fingers, watches them curl and uncurl. She tells herself to do each thing before she does it: find her shoes, find her jacket, open the front door, close the front door, walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, count out the fare when the bus crests the hill, get ready to pay.

  In the park, signs bob like the sails of invisible ships: Your Arms Are Killing Me, Anything War Can Do Peace Can Do Better, My Dad Went to Washington and All He Brought Back Was This Shitty Apocalypse. Gerry crisscrosses to avoid crouched bodies unfurling banners: Lesbian Mothers Against Annihilation, the Fascist Coalition, Retired Dentist
s for Disarmament, the Atheist League. Believers push their pamphlets at her, folk music, meditation, steelworkers’ rights, communism in schools, veganism, urine therapy. The hivelike urgency of agitators and instigators buzzes against her, makes her aware of the heaviness in her limbs, the focused effort of every step.

  She wades through a swarm of hippies: Kitsilano throwbacks with grey ponytails and new converts, girls her age in batik dresses and sandals, thin braids around their faces, all smiles and bralessness. Past them, the union groups, muscled working class, the brainier ones in pinstriped shirts and glasses, mouths welded into scowls. She had expected a gathering of families, young mothers and fathers marching for a better world for their children, a picnic atmosphere, ladies in straw hats, babies in strollers. Instead, the park is alive with cast-offs, axe-grinders.

  Bound in leathers and spikes, the punk-rock contingent is small but loud. Mohawks lacquered, they scream and crash into one another around an overturned garbage can. Black lips and charred cheekbones, faces painted with tears of blood, they wear their darkness on the outside, something she wishes she could do. She searches the crowd for a calming presence, school-children, pastors, but finds only a group of frat boys dressed as nuns playing freeze-tag while shotgunning beer.

  She catches herself looking for Henry, in groups of men, in the shaded trees, a glimpse of his posture, a man with binoculars, another with grey hair. Something about the oddball, griping atmosphere makes it seem the perfect place for him.

  “Gerry!” Andri waves from the far end of the planetarium parking lot. He looks ready for a funeral: dark suit jacket, white-collared shirt, his hair slick with gel. Ian slouches on the bumper of Andri’s car. Gerry blinks the wetness from her eyes, slows her walk, doesn’t speak until she’s sure her voice won’t shake. She nods at Andri. “You look different.”

  “I dress for success.” Andri grins, walks around to the back of the car.