David Means: Hystopia

April’s the cruelest month, they say, but I wouldn’t go that far. At least not yet. I’m going to do my best to make it the cruelest, she heard him say, and then she slipped into darkness and woke, hours later, to the murmur of the engine, the power thrumming under the hood, the hood ornament far out, pointing the way. He had gone in and taken her out of the post-treatment Grid, slipping in, using his words and drugs. His hand was on her leg. Fingers spread. Above everything his talk, his voice ragged and deep, and then as she came up and out of it, his voice and radio static were all she had.

Something was close behind, a spiral of police sirens, the hospital’s clean simplicity, the sedation of the treatment, pre and post, that stayed with her when it was over, and she had to command herself to open her eyes and to look out the windows at the devouring slip of the road into itself …

Groggy, she found her mouth and made it speak, and she was telling him, Find the Ann Arbor channel, the one from the university, Stooges all the time .

Stooges all the time, he muttered.

Then he began coughing and clearing his throat until he had something to spit, and he told her his throat was sore from screaming in Grand Rapids.

It had been a confusing couple of hours before they’d split that scene. The houses had been old, once dignified and fine, now slipping into decrepitude, uncomfortable beneath the trees arching over the wide streets. The trees were tired of shading structures of grandeur, optimistically huge Victorians. Slate shingles gone, hauled away by the looters after the riots.

Shaky had been asleep when they entered his bedroom, treading softly. Rake put the gun to his forehead and told him what he had to give them and how he was to do it and with what kind of movement, slowly, and how much shit he was in, deep, deep unbelievable shit, and Shaky did what they ordered him to do, but when he was doing it he stumbled or made a quick move. He was a tall dark man with knobby knees. One of the tallest motherfuckers you’re gonna see in the Middle West, Rake said.

Rake shot him point-blank, producing a spongy, wet sound, and an outbound spew of bone and blood hit the wall, making another sound that she heard and reheard and heard again.

That’s that, Rake said, kicking the body.

Then they ransacked the house, pulling drawers, spilling underwear, unfurling panties, frilly things that she held for a moment and dropped to the floor.

The feel of silk was still on her fingertips. She could still see the look in his eyes as he stared at the gun. The black barrel in the black pupil.

You’re gonna come out of it, the look said . You’re gonna survive this. I’m dead but you’re going to live. I’m just one more in the wrong place at the wrong time. One more who wakes up into a nightmare. I’m not going to plead with you too hard, no girl, but I’m gonna give you this last little glance to carry with you when you go , the look said before the gun took it away.

In the kitchen he removed a loaf of Wonder from the bread box, a glass bottle of milk with a paper cap, and some cheese, and then they headed off into the morning light.

I’m afraid we didn’t leave a single print, he said. We’re on the lam. That’s part of the deal. We’ve got to mix it up. Sometimes I leave prints, other times I don’t. Got to give the Psych Corps something to think about, got to leave some tracks they can obsessively follow. He talked and talked as they drove the Grand Rapids streets, turning now and then to make sure she was listening or at least awake, poking her with his long fingers, gripping her thigh.

* * *

Do I talk too much? He said.

Do I ramble on, the king of non sequitur? He said.

Do you listen to me? He said.

Do you listen to me going on and on? You most certainly do. He said. Said. Said. He said. He said. He said.

If you’re good for anything you’re good as a listener, set to let me ramble while you nod into it. That first time back there, when I finally got to you, I tried that classic dosage, a big 400-microgram dose, the king of all tabs. You get a girl tripping on that and you’re free to do what you want depending on the structures you’ve set up for yourself and I’ll admit that I have set some up for myself. I’ve got my codes and credos just like the rest of them. That’s all we had over in Indochina. All we had to live with were the rules and regulations.

Them . It’s us against them and they know it, and the thing about them is that the only thing they really know, if you get my drift, is that they failed me. They failed me big-time by not taking care of me when I returned from the war. They took me down to Texas and put me into one of their reenactments and pumped me full of Tripizoid, and then all they did was double it down, increase what they were trying to decrease. If they knew how bad I was feeling, they’d never sleep at night. They’d lock the doors and nail the windows. They’d put me in their prayers and ask for protection specifically against me. They’d walk faster and glance back more often. If they had even the slightest idea that I was wandering their streets they’d unlock their gun cabinets and get their rifles cleaned and make sure the ammo was dry. Some of them have a vague premonition, an ill-formed vision comprised of Vetdock escapees, Black Flag wannabes, trigger-happy acid freaks, and Year of Hate troublemakers. Guys with bad scars, he said. Then he ran his fingers across the scar that ran from his scalp — the part where the hair wouldn’t grow — down his neck to where it disappeared under his collar. He touched it, pulled his shirt open, and stared down as if seeing for the first time the way the scar tissue radiated across his chest in weird formations that had once been his nipples, and into his belly button, where the splash had pooled. (That fiery goop spread over me while I watched — and yeah, I did watch it because I was hit such a blast of dopamine that I flew out of myself and stood there on the battlefield resisting the temptation to pound my chest like Tarzan.)

In Grand Rapids, before going into the house, he had pulled over to the curb, letting the car murmur and hum, the long hood shuddering, waxed, a glistening tongue touching the trees in reflection.

You want to know what my credo is? he said. And without waiting for her to answer he continued:

My credo’s: never kill for a good reason. If you’re going to be a failed enfold, then do it wholeheartedly and with all the gusto you can muster. When you kill, do it quickly so that you pluck the proper method from the situation itself. But never ever, ever be efficient. I mean don’t go for the easy kill. At the same time don’t stretch it out too much. If there’s a scream I want it to be the brutal, loud, quick kind that it goes in one ear and out the other. You can blame that on Nam or you can blame it on the way my mind works. The one thing I hated over there was hearing a fellow grunt crying, stuck out in the fire zone while we gave the Marine credo a workout (never leave the dead buddy behind and all that). He looked at her and examined her eyes and then reached up to touch her face. For a second there was a softening in his features. He had a lean, sharp chin and a gaunt jawbone that led up to an unusual fat brow. Then he gave her a swat on the top of the head and said, Shit, man. We’ve got to go in, take care of this Shaky character, and leave a calling card for the police, who will give it to the authorities, and then eventually it’ll go up the chain to some poor Psych Corps agent. Their job is to find some semblance of order in all this madness, and mine, as I see it, is to give them something to think about …