You don’t come into the world with anyone. I mean, sure, you’re with your mother, but you didn’t leap into life holding someone’s hand, and you won’t jump out of it holding anyone’s, either.
I wish the experiences of birth and death were reversed. I wish we were more cognizant of being born. We get the full knowledge of our dying, unless it’s so sudden that we can’t, if we’re struck by lightning or something. Another one of God’s lovely mysteries at which we’re to shrug our shoulders and utter well, it’s his will, not for me to wonder why.
What. A bunch. Of crap.
Mr. Fleming had locked his door on me. Although I didn’t hear the shotgun go off—for all I know it did while I watched the Univision guy say his last words before going off air—I know he went back in there to die alone. Muttering to the nobodies there in the living room.
Did Mom wander off to do the same? Felt the choking coming on and something within her told her to walk out of the house. Or… did she…? Oh, I don’t want to think about that.
That first body, the body of a stranger in a parking lot, ratified and compounded the fear. Afraid of the unfolding circumstances, afraid that I wouldn’t be mature enough, that I’d just crater with fear and ineptitude.
Kodie.
She texted me to meet her here. I work with her at the Dollar Tree. Doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, whether it’s her standard black skinny jeans or her baggy Army-Navy store fatigues and Black Jack boots fully laced up to go with, or those same boots with a skirt, any skirt, well, let’s just say I don’t always ask debit or credit or say have a nice day because I am staring. The girl adheres in every way to the Euclidian Golden Ratio. And I don’t just mean physically. She’s in community college (studying to be a teacher or social worker) and likes Emily Brönte. A lot.
I’m not much on classics. She says I’m missing something and I say I doubt it. Customers watch warily as if a fight brews between us. When I tell her she’s a pseudo-intellectual poser while we’re restocking, she says the term pseudo-intellectual is used by pseudo-intellectuals.
“Why here?” I wonder out loud as I pull in to the lot in front of the DT’s banks of glass. Here comes Kodie striding to the front door which is flanked by huge draping plastic jack-o’-lanterns with leering faces she and I hung up in the windows the last day of September. Her hair’s dyed black but you can see the brown tint in sunlight. Half her head’s shaved almost to the skin, the half that faces me when we work registers. Her sharp jawline and full lips really jump out in relief against the wall of hair hanging down the other side. A small nose ring graces a nostril.
Through the glass I see her cruising through the registers. She’s carrying a baseball bat at its fat middle with one hand. She’s stuffing something else in a deep pocket of her military cutoffs. She unlocks the door with her master key and smashes down on the door’s crash bar. The sun reflects sharp on the glass. By the time I’ve closed the car door, she’s on me. She hugs me so tight it hurts a little.
“You’re okay?” She looks me up and down.
“Yeah. I’m okay, I think. Seeing you helps.”
I squeeze back and lift her off her feet. When I do, first she kisses the side of my face then puts her mouth to my ear and with slow hot cinnamon breath whispers, “How’s Johnny?”
I put her down and really notice her red eyes and a face that has been wiped several times over. “Gone. Not at home.”
“Oh, God, Kevin.” She stands with wide eyes, holding her elbows with her hands, smacking her cinnamon gum. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either. Couldn’t stay at the house.” I couldn’t tell her the reason was because I feared my neighbor across the street just might come calling with his shotgun.
Something was wary in the way she asked about Johnny. It let me know I wasn’t crazy. Besides Kodie, a dying Mr. Fleming, the floundering trashman, the jumpers, the SUVs and flying cop cars, I haven’t seen an adult. Not alive, anyway.
Was Kodie an adult? Nineteen. Old enough for war and voting. Probably not old enough to rent a car, but a motel room, sure. Those were legalities, business policies. The answer is: being an adult depends on the person. There’s no bright line one crosses.
“Me neither.” She spread her arms out, exasperated. “What the fuck!” She dervished round and round like the hills were alive, which was creepy because all you could hear were her boots scuffing the pavement.
Here we were on Burnet Road in the middle of greater Austin and I heard nothing but her boots echoing off the building. Glancing at the leering jack-o’-lanterns, I sensed my neck hair standing up and felt a chill.
I tried to shake it off. “I know, I know. Crazy. I don’t…” I just wasn’t able to articulate anything for the shock.
Kodie stopped twirling. In the silence of the strip mall parking lot, the fear came and I knew I had to keep it at bay or else I’d just drive home a capering mess and curl up on the floor. I couldn’t do that, especially for Johnny. I had to find him.
Kodie tried to lighten things. “You know what I keep thinking of?” she asked with a nauseated chuckle. “How last week nobody had been in for an hour or so and you said it felt like the end of the world?”
I did remember. And we both had laughed and said that’d be cool. We can live free, no mindless job, no parents, no societal structure, total autonomy. We could feed ourselves from Whole Foods until the power goes, then we could shuttle food and refrigerate it at Barton Springs pool—assuming no roving gangs of the apocalypse, no sprinting zombies. Garden of Eden—Here. Here’s a cool apple for you, Kodie. I’d pull one from out of the clever containing device I’d constructed in the spring-fed pool. And there would be no huge snake looming in the hoary live oak up the slope from the springs, its dark and bent malignancy reflected in the pool’s calm—hissing, waiting, assessing the sin—and there would be no judgment. And Kodie would take a bite and juice would run down her chin and she’d smile. Her teeth glistening with juice, we’d both smile.
“Yeah, I remember. Freedom and all that.”
“Yeah…”
“This ain’t it.”
“No.”
“Do you know anything?” I asked her. “Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, and then….” I snapped my finger.
“I was lying awake in bed, the sun up, when I heard alarms, sirens.”
“Yeah, me too.” I wasn’t yet ready to tell her what I’d heard at dawn. I wondered if she’d heard the dawnsounds too and felt the same way. Because they are the sounds of insanity that if you admitted to hearing in the old world, you’d be told to get help, and if you refused, you’d be involuntarily committed.
But isn’t that what those sounds asked of me? Committal? Involuntary… mandatory?
Kodie examined my face as if she knew the thing I hid. I broke up the momentary impasse with, “Your folks?”
“They weren’t home. Car gone. I dunno. I tried calling and texting them. They have one car and ride-share to work usually. Early for them to be gone. Maybe….” She got lost in thought for a moment but shook it off. “Yours?”
“Same… but my mom’s car is still there, her keys and phone by the door. Her hairdryer was on the floor but plugged in.”
“Oh, God.”
“Should we go try to find them?” We looked at each other. “Don’t we know what we’ll find?”
Kodie nodded, looked down, sniffed. Her chin muscle quivered. She looked up at me with moist eyes and nodded and said, “Yeah, we do,” with mucosal thickness. “I’ve got to try to find them, though. I can’t just…”