“I can’t feel it now,” he said. “It’s waitin’ on me. But yeah, it’s pretty big.”
I rubbed at a ground-in patch of limestone dust on my knee, and just as I glanced up, the water seemed to lift directly in front of Euliss, to bell upward, and something huge leaped half its body out from beneath the surface. A fish. It resembled a giant bass more than anything, but its scales were mud-brown, barely distinguishable from one another, and set in its mouth were double rows of triangular teeth the color of old ivory. It twisted in its leap, angling its massive ancient-looking head toward Euliss, and as it fell, its mouth—which was the size of a garage door—came down over Euliss and snapped, biting him with such force that it took the old man’s upper half and left the lower sitting there on the ledge, wobbling and spurting blood.
I’ve had to put together the detail I’ve related in retrospect, because at the moment it happened I was too stunned to do more than record the event. It just seemed that some vast darkness had sounded from the depths and severed Euliss’s body, then vanished with a splash that went forty feet high. The old man’s lower half sat for a second or two, rocking slightly. Despite the blood staining his britches and the rock beside him, the sight seemed unreal, a cartoon. Then it toppled into the churning water. I fell back against the wall of the gorge and pissed myself. I think I may have screamed. I pushed hard against the wall, wanting to disappear into the rock behind me, certain the thing was going to leap up again and have me for its second course. I couldn’t muster a thought, I was all fear and trembling, no more mindful than a bird hypnotized by a serpent, empty of life already, knowing I belonged to death now. What broke me from my freeze was a dry slithering sound from above. I looked up and saw the nearest elder was letting down its tentacle, ready for some fishing now the danger had gone. All the rest of the elders were doing the same. The water flowed green and unperturbed.
I wasn’t sure I could walk, but I managed to cross to the elevator and pull myself up to the top of the gorge. There I sat down and shivered, holding my drawn-up knees. Whatever the chemicals are that combine to make fear, they must trigger a hellacious amount of heat, because I had never felt so cold. As the cold subsided, I told myself I should get back to Annie. I wanted to touch her, to be sure of her, of something. But I wasn’t ready to take that long walk alone. I stared at the water. Smooth as a jade floor. I imagined Euliss’s blood threading into pink rills beneath it, and that got me moving. All the way back to the tree, my head was full of a dark shape that didn’t separate out into thoughts until I was almost at Annie’s door.
When I entered she glanced up from her sewing, and said happily, “You’re back early? You catch all y’need?”
I sat cross-legged on the mattress facing her, leaned forward and rested my head on her shoulder. She stroked my hair, and the warmth of her hand pointed up the cold that was still inside me. I wrapped her in my arms, and she said, “What’s that smell?” She touched my thigh, drew back her fingers. “You pissed your pants! Get off my bed!”
“Euliss is dead,” I said.
“What?” She peered at me. “What happened?”
As I told her, as I described the event, what I wanted to do became clearer and clearer, until finally it was solid in me, the rightness of its shape discernible, like a ruby in a glass of water. “I’m going over the Wall,” I said. “Today.”
Annie had been listening with her head down; she looked at me now in her steady way and said, “It’s a horrible thing…Euliss. But you’re overreacting.”
“Come with me,” I said.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Annie…for God’s sake! We can’t just sit here and wait to die.”
“What else is there to do? It was the same back in the world. And if there’s a world other side of the Wall, it’ll be the same there. It’s what folks do.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But it don’t make it right.”
A couple of people passed by outside, talking, and for no good reason, as if we had a secret to keep, we remained silent until the voices receded.
“I’m going,” I said. “I want you to go with me.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“Goddamn it!” I smacked the mattress with my fist. “If you were back home, living in a country that lost twenty-five percent of its population, you’d do more than just sit.”
“The hell I would! I’d stay right where I was, and I’d try to build up what was knocked down. It’s what any reasonable person would do.”
“All right,” I said. “But this ain’t the world. Every year the fritters come…and things like whatever it was took Euliss. Every year you got ’bout a one-in-four chance of dying.”
“So you’re gonna leave me?”
“I asked you to come along. You stay, it’s you leavin’ me.”
“You ain’t changed a bit!” she said. “You’re still…”
“Yes, I have! We both of us changed. And we don’t have to act like the people we used to be. Like a coupla fucked-up drunks can’t agree what kinda wine to kill themselves with.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “You know I’m right about this, Annie. You’re all the time hangin’ out there with the trains ’cause you know what I know. It’s death to stay here.” I thought of Josiah Tobin. “And it’ll come sooner than later.”
She refused to budge, and I said, “Anybody ever seen a fish like the one ate Euliss?”
Sullenly, she said, “Way you describe it, how can I tell?”
“A big brown fuckin’ bass with big yellow teeth,” I said. “It looked like a picture out of a children’s book more’n a real fish. Like the kind of monster a child might make up. That’s plain enough.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “’Least I can’t remember if anyone ever said anything to me about it.”
“See what’s happenin’? This place keeps comin’ up with new ways to kill you. It’s gonna get worse.”
“I don’t care what you say, I’m not leavin’!”
A silence wedged between us.
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” I said.
“I guess so.” After a couple of ticks, she said, “I don’t want you to go.”
I was tired of arguing, but I couldn’t think of a response.
“Maybe if you wait a while,” she said. “We got a year ’fore the fritters come again. Maybe if you let me build up to it…”
“I could do that. A couple hours ago, I was sittin’ with Euliss with our lines in green water, and then somethin’ tore up from hell and took him. It don’t seem anybody could change my mind on leavin’ after seein’ that, but bein’ here with you now, all the comfort you are, I believe I could fall back into the way it was. But that doesn’t mean it’s what I should do.” I tapped my head. “This here’s tellin’ me to leave. I never listened to my brain before, I always went with my heart, and all that did was bury me in deeper shit.”
“Oh, I see! That’s what I am. Deeper shit!”
“I ain’t gonna argue. You know that’s not what I mean. You gotta listen to your brain, too. You do, and we’ll be catchin’ out of this goddamn place in a hour.”
She stared at me for a second, then lay down on her side, facing toward the leafy wall.
“Annie?”
“Just go,” she said in a small voice.
I dropped down beside her, but she said, “Don’t! I want you to go if you’re goin’.”
I made to warm her up by rubbing her shoulder. She snapped at me and curled into a fetal position. It felt as if a hundred pounds of wet cement had been poured into my skull, but that wasn’t nearly enough to extinguish the bright point of certainty that was urging me to leave. I got up from the bed and started stuffing clothes into my pack. Several times I stopped packing and tried again to convince Annie to join me, but she wasn’t hearing me. My movements grew slower—I didn’t want to abandon her. But I kept at it until my goods were all tucked away. I shouldered the pack and stood looking down at her.