Nick Gevers - Other Earths

“By ‘the boys,’ you mean men like us? Thomas Cradles?”

“Yeah.” He groped for something on the floor beside his chair, found it—a rag—and mopped sweat from his face. “Not all of them look like us. I guess their daddies slept with somebody different. But they all got the same name, least the ones I talked to did. Most push on through without stopping, they’re so damn eager to get into the tea forest.”

“Apparently you weren’t that eager.”

“Look at me.” He indicated his massive belly. “A man my size, I’m lucky I made it this far, what with the heat and all. I was about half dead when I got here. Took me a while to recover, and by the time I did, the urge wasn’t on me no more. That was strange, you know, ’cause I was flat-out desperate to get here. But hey, maybe the animal can’t use fat junkies. Anyhow, I figured me and Bian would squat a while and make a home for the boys. You know, give them a place to rest up, drink a few beers …get laid.” He shifted about in his chair, raising a dust. “Speaking of which, twenty bucks’ll buy you a ride on Bian. She might not look it, but she got a whole lot of move in that skinny ass.”

Bian cast a forlorn glance my way.

“I’ll pass,” I said. “What can you tell me about the tea forest?”

“Probably nothing you don’t know. Some boys been coming back through lately, ones that didn’t make it all the way to wherever. They’re saying the animal don’t need us no more. Whatever use it had for us, it’s about over with …Least that’s the feeling they got.”

“The animal?”

“Man, you don’t know much, do you? The animal. The creature-feature. It’s painted on the wall outside. You telling me you never seen it before?”

I told him what I had seen, the murals, the creature in my opium dream, and that I had sworn off drugs for fear of seeing it again.

“Well, there’s your problem, dude,” he said, and gave a sodden laugh. “I mean, shit! How you expect to pierce the veil of Maya, you don’t use drugs? You sure you’re a Cradle? ’Cause from what I can make out, most of us stayed stoned the whole damn trip.”

It was in my mind to tell him that if he was any example, most of us were serious fuck-ups; but instead I asked what he thought was going on.

“ ’Pears we all see it a little different,” he said. “This one ol’ boy, he told me he figured what we saw wasn’t exactly what was happening. It was like a symbol or a …I don’t know. Something.”

“A metaphor?”

He didn’t appear familiar with the word, but he said, “Yeah …like that. Everyone I’ve talked to pretty much agrees the animal needs us to protect it from something.” His brow furrowed. “Those splinters you saw when you were high? I reckon they’re like these stick figures I saw. Every time I did up, I’d see them standing around parts of the animal, guarding it like. Fucking weird, man. Scared the shit out of me. But I kept on seeing them ’cause I couldn’t do without ol’ Aunt Hazel.”

The reference eluded me.

“Heroin,” he said. “I had a monster habit. First week after I kicked, it was like I caught the superflu.” He had a swallow of beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Now the next question you’re going to ask is, How come it chose us? Everybody’s got a theory. Some I’ve heard are fucking insane, but they all boil down to basically the same thing. Something about us Cradle boys is pure badass.”

His prideful grin told me that he was satisfied with this explanation and would be unlikely to have anything more intelligent to say on the subject. “You said some of them came back? Are they still here?”

He shook his head. “They couldn’t get shut of this place fast enough. If you’re after another opinion …way I hear it, some boys are still wandering around the fringe of the forest. They didn’t feel the urge strong enough, I guess. Or they were too weak and gave out. You could talk to them. The ones that come back used park boats, so getting to the forest ain’t nothing.”

Bian said something in Vietnamese, and the man said, “She wants to know if you’re going to fuck her.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

He relayed this information to Bian, who appeared relieved. “You can always change your mind. Bian don’t care. She’s a regular scout …ain’t you, darling?” He reached out and chucked her under the chin. “You don’t know what you’re missing. She’s got a real educated pussy.” He settled back in the chair and gave me a canny look. “I bet you’re a writer.”

Surprised, I said, “Yeah,” and asked how he knew.

“I didn’t know . Us Cradles tend to be literary types more often than not. And seems like the boys who ain’t interested in Bian are mostly writers …though there’s been a couple like to wore her out. But what I was getting at, seeing how you’re a writer, maybe you can make sense of their scribbles. I got a whole bunch of their notebooks.”

“You have their journals?”

“Journals …notebooks. Whatever. I got a bunch. The boys that stop in, they figure they’re going to need food and water more than anything else. They buy provisions and leave their stuff for me to hold. If you want to check it out, it’s in the back room there.”

It took him two tries to lever himself out of the chair. Going with a rolling, stiff-ankled walk, he preceded me into the room and pointed out the possessions of other Cradles scattered willy-nilly among crates of canned goods and stacks of bottled water and beer: discarded packs, clothing, notebooks, and the usual personal items. Copies of The Tea Forest could be seen poking out from this mess, as ubiquitous as Lonely Planet guides in a backpacker hotel. I squatted and began leafing through one of the notebooks. The handwriting was an approximation of my own, and the words …The notebooks were a potential gold mine, I realized. If this one were typical of the rest, I could crib dozens of stories from them, possibly a couple of novels. It struck me anew how odd all this was, to be seeking clues to a mystery by poring over journals that you yourself had written …or if not quite you, then those so close to you in flesh and spirit, they were more than brothers. Intending to make a comment along these lines, I half-turned to the fat man and caught a blow on the head that drove splinters of light into my eyes and sent me pitching forward on my stomach into a pile of clothing. If I lost consciousness, it was for a second or two, no more. Woozy, my face planted in a smelly T-shirt, I felt him patting down my pockets, pulling out my wallet, and heard his labored wheezing. My right hand was pinned beneath me, but I was able to slide my fingers down until I could grip the Colt and, when he flipped me onto my back, I aimed the gun at the blur of his torso—my vision had gone out of whack—and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. My finger was outside the trigger guard. He grabbed the barrel, tugging and jerking at the Colt, grunting with effort, dragging me about, while I hung on doggedly, trying to fit my finger into the guard.

Everything moved slowly, as if I were trapped beneath the surface of a dream. I recall thinking what a dumb son of a bitch he was not to knock my arm aside and use his weight against me; and I had other thoughts as well, groggy, fearful thoughts, a dull wash of regrets and recriminations. And I realized I should have known from the disorderly state of the various Cradles’ possessions that the fat man was not holding them in safekeeping, that he had simply emptied their packs on the floor while going through them, and the men whose lives they represented were probably adrift in the canal …and then my finger slipped inside the guard. There was a blast of noise and heat and light, a searing pain in my hand, and two screams, one of them mine.