David Means - Hystopia

You do that, Rake said. You be a good son and tend to your loving mother. But before you do that you look me in the eye and say you’re not on her side. You show me that in your eyes so I can see, he said, and they looked at each other and to keep his focus Hank thought of a man chopping into a thousand-year-old sequoia. Then he envisioned two men and a long saw working back and forth while the tree cried and sprayed phonemes that would catch the breeze and ride across the Great Plains, touching the goldenrod and the quack grass until it reached Wisconsin, where the other trees, tasting it, gave out their own anguished cry and released a blast of pollen that, on the same breeze, rode to the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. He put into his eyes his hatred of the men who cut that particular tree. It allowed him to forget his mother.

Out in the yard MomMom was babbling about the mercy of the Lord, about Jesus on the cross, about the wounds and the blood and the pain of the crown; something about a cave, about pissing in the wind, about King David, and then she was crying in the chair, her hands bound lightly, rocking slightly from side to side.

* * *

When they put me in that chamber — we’re talking down in New Mexico, in some big aerodrome-type thing that they used to use for war blimps or whatever — this was in that scrubby desert, must’ve been somewhere near Santa Fe. They put me in chains, really tight because they knew I could pull a Houdini, and they took me on a train from there through the desert, up toward the mountains, and then they put me in with all kinds of half-assed props and such, guns and mortar rounds, but with blanks, Rake said a few nights later. They were in the yard. He stopped speaking and lit his cigar, rolling it in the flame, and Hank watched his face, a primitive death mask in the darkness.

Anyway, they put me in a fake firefight and a double dose of Tripizoid — the guard told me that much — and I just laughed and popped off rounds from the blank gun, and then they tried a tie-and-torture routine, using a Phantom Blooper type, an American over to the other side, who spoke perfect Yankee English but was in NVA gear — and the torture thing wasn’t faked; they must’ve seen in the test they ran — when we took breaks they kept me handcuffed — that they would have to go the extra mile on me to get me properly enfolded. Man, they doubled down, and when I laughed that off they stuck me in a cell and the next day they put me back in the combat reenactment and I began to fake it, made a full-blown art of it. You see, I did all that to earn their trust.

He turned to Hank in the dark and spoke in a low voice, as if sharing a secret.

You’d know about earning trust, wouldn’t you, Hank?

Hank stared at the faint outline of trees and brush in the moonless dark.

I’d know about what it’s like to make damn sure I look like I give a shit, he said. If that’s what you’re saying.

I feel like killing something, Rake said. He got up and crossed the yard to the shed, the coal of his cigar an orange point, and when he came back he had the ax.

You feel like killing something?

Sure, I feel like killing, Hank said, resisting the urge to wrest the ax from Rake’s hand and put it into his head, to unfold and feel the old primeval rage retroactively. To kill and then locate the impulse to kill in the act itself.

You’re thinking this is some kind of test, Rake said.

No. I don’t think you’re the type to test, Hank said, rubbing his sweaty palms on his pants. I think you’re the type to go ahead and make a move. He stood up in front of Rake and waited. He knew that one wrong move and Rake would be upstairs in the house, raising the ax over Meg.

I think you’re the kind of man who strikes first and takes a look at the ramifications later. And I’m the same kind of man, Rake. So if what you’re saying is you think I’m a different man, or that I betrayed you somehow with Meg, out there on my run, then we might as well kill each other right here, he said. Then Rake had his arm on his shoulder and they were hugging, saying fuck fuck, and Rake was still saying, I want to kill something. He took the ax and went back to the shed, with Hank following beside him, and killed the new dog with one swift chop, a jangle of chain and a single, soft yelp, and then he stepped away and Hank, who felt sorrow akin to a tree sorrow, followed him back to the chair and had another drink. In the false camaraderie, Hank imagined winning an acting award, hoisting the trophy into the air as he thanked his beloved Meg for being with him when he needed it, and MomMom for all her demented wisdom, and the stars in the sky and then, finally, above all, the trees for being such good role models over the years, strong and stable and outside of the human realm, and when he laughed he did it from his belly and Rake joined in.

Summer had begun to push north through tense days. The days seemed long, with the sun coming up early and setting late, but they weren’t that deep into the summer. What was it? Late June? Early July? Nights were still cool, but in the middle of the day, in the seething tension and silence, the sun baked the grass in the yard and curled the leaves in the trees. A stench of decay wafted in from the shore, because things were dying in the sun, rotting all around the state. On the beach blackflies were rising into the sky in swarms from the crags along the shore, spinning outward and coming back together like migrating birds. There was the smell of the dog, too.

He was watching her bury a dog again, out by the shed. He leaned down and looked at the hole. It was deep and wide — deep enough for the dog. He needed more time so he told her to keep going. When she took another break he looked into the hole again and spoke softly. Look, Rake’s wound up more than usual, and his suspicions are high. I think we can take advantage of his state, channel it back at him somehow.

He gave her a soft swat on her back and watched as she put her heel on the shovel and tried hard not to look at the remains of the dog, sagging but not part of the earth yet, just like the other dog but sadder this time. The smell was fantastic, burning into the nose and staying there.

I’m getting scared of you, she said. Nothing moved on her face and he saw that she was completely serious. Her shoulders were pink from the sun and he longed — more than anything in the world — to touch them, to run his fingers along her back, to pull her up against his chest and feel her looking up at him in a sweet release from fear. He gazed around the yard and saw Haze in the trees, standing as straight and still as a Buckingham Palace guard. His eyes and face were in shadow, but he was watching carefully. Suffering seemed to slip into him and stay there forever; he knew how to hold himself when it came to military-style actions. He had gained back some of the weight he had lost on his last run. On the other side of the yard, MomMom was again taking laundry down and putting it in a basket, wooden pins in her mouth, and then taking the same sheets she’d folded and putting them back up again, pinning them in a long line — standing back and walking along amid them, weaving through them as they sailed in the wind — and then taking them down and repeating the process.

It wasn’t true, but he thought he saw this in her eyes, as she looked at him without blinking, anger and fear and something terrible, some judgment: Why don’t you do something, or let me do something. To bide time in a strategic manner is foolish beyond a certain point, and if you could remember your war experience you’d know that for a fact. And he wanted to say (but he couldn’t, with Haze in the woods, watching) that he was sure that what he was waiting for would come. He was trusting his instincts: a sense, deep, deep inside — tied most likely to his love of trees — that told him that when things got to a terrible climax they would somehow resolve in a plan of action. He lost his train of thought and pushed her away and ordered her to dig deeper, because Rake had shouted something from the upstairs window, not a word, at least not anything discernible, but a barking sound, or a howl.