Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

I tore out the page, folded it, and tucked it in the back.

Her journal will be the container, the object, external to me in which I enter what is anguished and exterminating. By giving the memories that threaten me existence outside myself, I hope to degrade their presence inside me and pry loose their death grip on my mind. Once I finish writing this document and close the cover of this journal, my story will be sealed inside, until perhaps an unknown reader in the future, with cool detachment, opens its faded black cover and reads: My name is Allen Levy Quincy. Age 58. Born May 6, 1989.

That is the only reader I can write for.

You might be thinking that Ruby was a bit on the easy side, promiscuous even. Definitely not fussy. Such thoughts crossed my mind too, especially the not fussy part, but as far as desire for her was concerned, those thoughts crossed the room and just kept right on going out the door.

She was a force field.

Having sex with her was like colliding with a meteorite.

The closest comparison I can make is to a fight where afterward, the only thing left is a whirlwind of impressions of violence: bone underneath flesh, something striking your jaw, the feeling of striving against gravity and, at the end, you stand up and you’re still alive and time winks and goes back to normal. You know you’re probably hurt, but you can’t feel it yet; you’re not sure how badly your opponent is hurt or even if the fight is really over.

I surfaced the next morning, red lipstick on my face and tangled sheets the only proof I had that I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. A flurry of images and sensations came at me — red mouth, green rods in her brown eyes, long dark hair against my cadaver skin, an open mouth laughing, startling in its lack of missing teeth, breasts dense, small, and close to the chest, muscular haunch, and in the middle, myself, dizzy but closing in at every turn, the synesthesia caused by my vertigo making everything smell of the sea and fresh dirt.

It was six a.m. when I stepped out the door, exultant and clear-headed. The streets were empty, the fog thick. When there’s no wind, the fog usually hangs around all day except for maybe a couple of hours in the afternoon when it lifts to mere cloud. On the rare occasions when the sun comes out, people rush to wash their clothes and hang them out to dry. In spring, farmers check their watches and count the hours to see when they need to roll the tarps back over seedlings and less hardy crops so they don’t burn. Birds and insects take cover. Nature becomes still until the cloud cover rolls back in.

I walked down the street, stump and foot, stump and foot, throwing my peg leg out in front of me like a land paddle, cooked oats and tea warming the inside of my ribs. Over the years I’ve come to like the new rhythm of my gait, the syncopated double beat, the rubber thud of my real foot followed on the off-beat by the higher-pitched shuffle-pad of the prosthesis in its shoe. I picked a simple prosthesis, a single-axis, constant-friction model with an adjustable cell that prevents the shank from swinging forward too fast. I’ve never regretted it.

I felt exultant, yes, light-footed and bouncy, yes, but also like a man who had been picked out of a herd and savaged. Far behind my happiness, in the dark shadows at the farthest back of backstage, was a whisper of alarm. I ignored the whisper and focused on how the morning light changed gradually from dark slate to pearl, and the sky’s weight changed from a blanket of darkness to a basement ceiling of wet stone to swirling white mist. The dark green leaves of vines on buildings threw no shadows in the grey light.

I walked through the old Chinatown below the viaduct where the majority of buildings are abandoned. The ones that are inhabited are packed with people. Pink or yellow insulation cannibalized from empty houses has been tacked up inside windows and doors and stapled to ceilings to keep in the warmth. The neighbourhood looks like a gang of twelve-year-olds swept through and turned everything into a backyard fort. I made my way along the broken sidewalk that I have to take now that the viaduct has been condemned. I miss walking high above the city, mountains and ocean to the left, sky surrounding my head.

Still, on the route under the viaduct I get to see street art, which is miraculously appearing again. I passed a painting I particularly like of a giant, bald, putty-coloured man peeping over a stone wall. One of his eyes, which are emerald green, had broken off, exposing the rusty rebar beneath. I found the missing chunk and leaned it against the wall, so one eye looked up at the other.

As usual, I arrived at the Civic Security Station at 6:45 a.m. Velma looked up from the desk, bundled in two sweaters and a scarf, her dyed red hair done up stiff as a pine tree, her skin white and pouchy and covered in a flesh-toned powder that made the tiny hairs on her face unmistakable. She frowned. The changes in the world have left her irritable, and she probably won’t cheer up before she dies. She wants to blame somebody for encouraging her to believe that the old world was real in some absolute, permanent way. She’d been pacing herself for life in that reality and says she has no interest in making adjustments to this new one. She feels ripped off, like someone should pay, but has no idea who so she’s always on the lookout.

I myself was done with the old world.

Done.

My old house had abutted the freeway, which was how Jennifer and I could afford to buy off the base. We could taste the exhaust. Every night sixteen lanes of drivers sat in their cars, waiting to get where they were going. Taillights and headlights, strings of them, extending out of sight — drivers impatient to get out of the city, drivers impatient to get in. Everyone knew, on some level, that it couldn’t go on. The sheer numbers of us precluded it. I was planning to move my family up to Mom’s cabin. I’d laid in a rifle, ammunition, seeds, canned food, water purification kits, loads of matches, a generator. The key would be knowing when to leave the city for good. The Green Planet Brigade started to bomb roads. In retrospect, I see that would have been the time to leave, but you never leave with the first big crisis, because you think it might be a one-off and there’s all the other noise on the bandwidth — the promise of quantum computing, of physicists harnessing the energy of the geospace vacuum, nuclear fission plants, etc., etc. Then the next crisis hits, and you’re already invested in riding it out. You’ve already adapted to the new pattern. Anyway, Jennifer and I were glad the Green Planet Brigade was doing what they were doing. We thought it might be the beginning of something good.

When I was certain it was time to leave, I was on a bus headed south to the Mexican border, and Jennifer and the boys had moved back to the base. She had no way to reach the cabin by herself.

A whisper of warning. No thinking about the past. I smacked myself in the head in the change room. Put my uniform on. Ruby’s presence had already, after only one night together, made a chink in my armour.

Velma snapped her fingers in front of my face. Hey. Pretty boy. Here’s your scanner.

Larry, who works in vehicle reclamation, came out of the can wearing his bright yellow jacket with reflector tape and our unit name, Transpo — Squad B. He looks like the bloodhound version of a human being — baggy flesh, enormous eyes, grey face. He doesn’t look well. Maybe heart disease, maybe cancer — the blood isn’t moving where it should, but you’d think he didn’t have a care in the world.

Quincy. You’re looking kind of cheery. What happened, you get laid? Zipping up his fly.