David Means - Hystopia

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That afternoon the man drove her down a narrow fire road, two ruts in the overgrowth, deep into boreal forest until the road ended in burned-out pines.

This here is most likely controlled burn, he said. Most likely the Department of Natural Resources flame took the whole fucking acreage as a firebreak line. Least I can do is teach you about the forest. That’s the least. See all those green shoots? That’s nature taking her course. Spring awakening and all that. No matter how bad it gets you’re gonna have green coming up.

As he led her on a hike he told her to keep an eye out for the big one, the queen tree. There were trees that had escaped felling during the previous logging boom.

There’s a rumor of a big pine around here. The way I like to work is to follow my nose, catching the pollen, he said.

The smell of the lake drifted in through the trees, wet stone and dead flies, with the hint of cold. She clutched the coat he had loaned her, leather with fringe, and followed him out of the woods and along a swell of grass and sand. At the top of the rise, the lake appeared, grand and glossy flat. He explained how just about every day he took a look — even when the waves came all the way up to the trees. He had to see it and tempt himself with the intensity of upheaval, its hugeness and brutal cold. His heart told him in no uncertain terms to keep sniffing for trees and listening to the lake as much as he could. So when I go out to look for trees I make a habit of stopping like this, he said. Smeary green copper deposits jutted into the water. A ship sat on the horizon, a supertanker from Duluth on a run to the locks at Sault Ste. Marie (he explained) and then from there out to the St. Lawrence and into the embrace of the wide ocean. His old man had worked his way up from deckhand, captained several ships and made countless runs without sinking. Maybe it’s enough to give you hope, he said. I like to think so.

On the beach he had her sit on a rock. He stood for a minute, blocking the sunlight, and then went down to the shore and, with his hands jammed in his pockets, watched the water. He came back and hunched down, plucked his beard, and looked at her with steady eyes.

I’m gonna do my best to help you. Rake’s out on a run. The lake is still cold, bitter cold. But the air is starting to warm up. That’s something, at least. It’s not all you could ask for. But it’s something.

That night, in bed, she went over memories. Everything beyond a certain point was a fuzzy abstract feeling in her head. The Causal Events Package, as the nurse had called it, started at an early memory point. She could remember being in her mother’s arms, the coolness of a glass of water held up to her little-girl lips, but after that things vanished into a perplexing blankness until she got to the Grid and Rake’s appearance — even that was fuzzy — and then her days on the road with him.

Wendy’s father lived in a Sears house, an original kit that had been delivered on a boxcar complete, ready to be constructed, amid row after row of factory homes. On the way over they had passed houses with melted siding, a yard with the cyclopean eye of an old dryer. Dirty and forlorn, a kid stood in the yard chewing something. As they passed, he stuck one arm out, as if thrusting a sword, his leg bent at a right angle, still chewing as he posed (lead paint, Singleton thought). Then they arrived at her father’s house, exuding a working man’s pride, with a picket fence freshly painted and the only living oak tree on the block. In the yard next door a man in a wheelchair lifted his beer in a gesture of greeting. His legs seemed to have been amputated at the thighs. He had a folded bandana around his long blond hair. He had a face that was ravaged but still beautiful.

“Please don’t pay him any mind,” she said. “It pains me to call him the Zomboid, but that’s what he calls himself and wants us to call him. That’s part of what pains me.”

“Another veteran sitting out his days in his chair,” Singleton said. He returned the salute and then, against his better judgment, went over to say hello.

Freckled and pale, with his arms firmly on the chair’s handles, the man called Zomboid struck the pose of a port gunner and said, “Hey, partner. Rank and fucking serial number.”

“Can’t remember,” Singleton said. There was a worn path — two ruts — around the perimeter of his yard.

“Got anything in the way of a cigarette?”

Singleton held out his pack. Around from the side of the house, a dog barked, choked-sounding, as if pulling against a chain. Down the street, another dog responded, full-throated, and then, barely audible, another one, far away and completely free.

“Arms are shot, too, cowboy.”

Singleton took a cigarette from the pack and placed it between the man’s lips.

“You wanna know what I’m seeing?” The guy’s voice was tight and flat, and seemed to come from somewhere else, ventriloquisticly. “I’m seeing nuclear conflagration after the next, the real Kennedy assassination, which is gonna happen soon, for sure. The ghost of Oswald is at hand, my man, and he’s gonna get it right this time. No fucking maladjusted scope. No blurry vision or submerged subconscious patriotic bullshit making him quiver; no heartbeat interference on the shot because he had too much coffee or whatever. Next guy’s gonna hold his breath and do the backward sniper count thing.”

“OK, buddy, I got you on that,” Singleton said.

“’Bout that light?”

Singleton pulled the Zippo out and scratched a flame.

“Yeah, Oswald’s just the fucking tip, man, of the largest iceberg this country’s gonna hit, man, and I’m not talking the riots and so forth, or any of that shit, man,” the guy in the wheelchair said. “I’m talking about a debasement of the largest kind.”

(Now’s the moment, Singleton thought; there’s going to be a glint of something like recognition and then he’ll pop into the questioning mode: What’s your unit and where were you stationed and how long were you in and all of that.)

“Hold that fucking thing up here.” For all of his limitations — his lack of legs and fully functioning arms — the guy had tremendous agility in his torso. (But how, Singleton thought, did he wheel around without the use of his arms? And didn’t he lift a salute to me?)

“Light me another one so when this one goes out I’ll have something to sustain me.”

He put another cigarette to the guy’s lips and brought out the lighter again.

“I know that lighter, man. I know it. We might’ve seen some action together somewhere. I know you think I’m one more crazy fucker, rambling about my visions and so forth. Give me your story. Give me the whole fucking narrative.”

Singleton resorted to making the enfolded gesture: he made a fist and held it against his temple and took a couple of steps back and did it again.

“Ah, man. I thought so. I saw it right off. Saw it in the way you were standing there like you never saw a guy in a wheelchair before. Said to myself, there’s a guy who saw some bad shit. There’s a man who had the good fortune of having it all tucked inside while I sit here with my body too damaged to qualify for the treatment. When I tried to sign up they told me that if your physical damage is bad enough the mental can’t be worked on. You get a chair and a yard and a dog on a chain. That’s all you get.”

“What’d you see over there?” Singleton said. All I can do, he thought, is kick the can down the road. When you have contact, avoid having to be precise about your own story.

“I saw the five-by-six view from a gunner port and everything else in between. Gooks running through the grass with that squat waddle,” he said. He’d seen water buffalo stampeding under the blade wash. He’d seen the men in hats running under the ribbons of tracer fire. He’d seen the beautiful spin of dust-off smoke pouring up from the canopy. He’d rehabbed in South Haven, the fucking VA unable to secure for him a decent set of wheels. Then — with seething insects, the cicada in the weeds and up in the trees starting to talk directly to each other — he began making a clucking sound with his tongue and Singleton felt the sadness that came from hearing those who were way, way, way beyond help, the ones who turned to vocal tones instead of words.