But he’ll be just as dead.
33
I can’t shirk my duties. I don’t see Norman or Franky around the farmhouse, but I feel like I’m being watched. I can’t lead them to Eric, so I can’t draw attention to myself. I follow Crystal down to the farmhouse where the both of us work like dogs until noon time. All day I want to run to the Land Rover to check on Eric, to make sure he’s okay. To be there when he dies. But I can’t. I have to act like Eric’s gone somewhere to think, and I’ve decided to act a little angry about it, as I’ve observed other people are angry at his sudden disappearance. I have to act like he’s abandoned us when really it’s the other way around. They’ve abandoned him. The only thing that keeps me together is thinking. I’ve got a lot of planning to do.
While I plan, I peel. I peel potatoes and carrots and apples. I peel turnips and parsnips and beets. I peel until my fingers are red and my right forefinger is bleeding a little from a blister. Then I help boil the peelings down into a base that Crystal uses for soup. The slop that’s left goes to the pigs. Crystal is brilliant when it comes to efficiency. She uses everything. Crystal says she doesn’t cook food so much as maximize food. You don’t have to work for her for long to know what she means. When I was about thirteen or so, she banned me from the kitchen for throwing out “a perfectly good stem of broccoli.”
Because of the Worm, Crystal sets the vegetable base for soup to boil. It seems to boil a long time before she takes it off the wood stove. She looks at me through the corner of her eye, and I can tell she has questions about Eric. Everyone does. I keep my façade of anger. It seems to discourage people from interacting with me, from bothering me with any of their questions.
Finally though, Crystal can’t help herself. When she puts the vegetable base on the counter to cool, she crosses her arms over her ample breasts and looks at me. She has great, fleshy white arms, dotted with moles. Her hands are red from washing dishes all day in hot water. I keep looking at her hands. I can tell the questions are going to come and I hate lying to these people I’ve lived with my entire life.
“Do you know when Eric’s coming back?” she asks finally.
I shrug with one shoulder like I’m so angry with him that I can’t even stand thinking about him.
“Do you know where he went?”
“Who knows where he goes?” I say this with as much acid as I can muster.
Crystal stands there watching me quietly for a long moment. Then she sighs and picks up a towel and begins wiping down the countertop. “Hell of a time to leave us,” she says. “We’re hardly holding ourselves together.” The acid I had a hard time conjuring comes naturally for her. I grunt and nod like I agree, but it hurts. Eric is up there dying and it’s like everyone is stabbing him in the back. I get a little angry about that, which is useful. I can use it to seem like I’m angry with Eric.
“He can do whatever he wants,” I say. “Like I care.” I don’t meet her eyes, but I can tell by the way she pauses for a moment to look at me that she pities me a little. This statement seems to be just jerky enough to be convincing. The great thing about being young is that people assume you’re selfish and ignorant. That can be annoying, but it can also be handy.
“He’ll be back, dear,” Crystal says. I can tell that she has interpreted my anger as anxiety, which is great. If some of my anxiety is showing through, I hope people interpret it the same way. The conversation has become sufficiently emotional. I see my window.
“I need a break,” I say. I look up at her. “I need to go for a run.” It’s the first time I’ve looked at her during the whole conversation, so it’s got the power I need it to have.
Crystal walks over to me and takes my shoulders. “Of course, dear,” she says. “Anything you need. I can finish up here. You take all the time you want.”
Which is exactly the amount of time I need.
With a quick nod of thanks, I turn away from her and stride outside.
As I leave the farmhouse, I feel a great sense of relief. I’m not used to manipulating and lying and it’s not much of a consolation that I’m good at it.
In fact, it feels like hell.
34
The rhythm of running feels like thinking to me.
My breathing is one rhythm and my feet moving is another. It’s like keeping one thought in mind while you work through another. Like braiding. Or music.
I can’t run straight back to the Rover. I can’t be that obvious. Instead I run down past the back fields where newly-planted crops are budding and leafing despite the death all around it. I run past the lookout and then turn around, brushing away the memory of Artemis and I up there together, studying the southern road. Meanwhile I keep myself busy thinking. Planning.
If Eric is dead or when he dies, I will have to act like he vanished one night in anger and never returned. That will have to be the story from now on. I flesh out the details. I imagine the scene, the lie as if it really happened: Eric’s anger when I tell him what we did and my own argument for killing Sam and Rhonda. At one point I imagine myself having said, “Sam was useless anyway!” (which he was), and to this I imagine Eric having said, “We can’t start killing people because they aren’t useful to us!” And then I imagine he packed. Which means I have to return to my cabin, find his backpack, and stow it away somewhere. People might ask questions if they see it. I imagine him packing and I think I will pack what I imagine he would have taken if he had actually done what I’m imagining he did. This whole thing will have to be hidden. Maybe in the Land Rover. I could burn it, I realize. I could get back and burn his backpack and a few of the things he would have taken. But the thought hurts me so bad that I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.
I stumble at the pain of it and come to a stop in my run. I breathe heavily and feel my consciousness swirl and a dark pain sear through me. I shake my head. No, I can’t burn his things. Maybe I will hide them and then, then, maybe next winter, maybe then I will burn them. Or just hide them under the Land Rover forever.
This seems to calm me enough so that I can run again. Now I run uphill to our house. I go inside and smell deeply. No trace of the sickness. Just smoke. Maybe there’s something underneath it, but it’s hard to tell if I really smell it or I’m just imagining that it’s there. The Worm. An image of Eric’s eyes, dark with blood, flashes through me, the little white tubes wriggling at the corners. I nearly choke with despair.
Think, Birdie. Think. As I calm down, I stoke up the stove so that the coals are burning red hot.
I go up to the loft and go to Eric’s bed. Just as I thought, the blankets are bloody and so is the old mattress. I throw the blankets down and then turn over the mattress, so that the bloodstain is facing the floor. I climb down from the loft and start cutting up the blankets with my knife, throwing the shreds into the fire, hoping that no one notices the billows of smoke coming from our stove pipe. Then I go back up to the loft and look around for blood spatters. Thankfully, I don’t see any. I grab Eric’s backpack and then throw in a few things that I think Eric would have taken with him, including the book he was reading, The Left Hand of Darkness. Then I see a bundle of papers held together by rubber bands. I recognize his handwriting. On a whim, I grab the papers and throw it in the backpack.
Without wanting to, I pick up Eric’s holster and the gun he’s had forever. It’s heavier than it looks. I don’t like the feel of it. Strange how personal a gun feels. I feel like I’m trespassing somehow. But I need the gun, just in case, in case Eric… I try not to finish the thought, but for the briefest instant, I picture Eric running for me, cracked, and my hand going up and my finger pulling the trigger. I can’t breathe for a second as I shake off the thought. To throw off the thoughts, I pack all the ammunition I can find. I realize I’m whistling loudly, and I stop. It feels unnatural.