David Means: Hystopia

The bridge was empty when he headed back. The hanger cables thrummed in the wind above the brutal currents, the contending forces from two huge bodies.

Hours later, back at the house, he found Meg in the kitchen drinking coffee.

* * *

They spent the next few days cleaning out the house, getting rid of reminders of Rake and reestablishing a sense of ownership. They built a fire and burned Rake’s junk. They hiked down to the river and he taught her how to line-cast in a clearing he knew about — the only one, really, where you wouldn’t get snagged. The word eventually would get out that Rake was dead, and then they’d have to make a move. For now they’d bide their time and take care of MomMom.

* * *

Those were sweet days, and nights. Hank took her down to the river each afternoon. She caught on quickly, wading bare-legged into the icy water, finding her footing on the slippery stones. He spent evenings studying forestry survey maps and making plans. MomMom was growing weak. When she threw a fit, she did it quietly. He held her and tried to read her eyes, to see something of the past, but it was all gone.

News of the assassination came on the radio one morning while they were sitting at the kitchen table. They listened and wept together.

Kennedy pushed his luck as far as he could and I respect him for that, Hank said. We did the same thing but were luckier.

The trees were just beginning to change, not in color but in the tenseness of the leaves, a loosening at the stems. Late summer weeds had bloomed and dried in the sun and were filling the afternoon air with chaff. Hank went out and chopped some wood and at night, when it got cold, he blessed it and fed a fire in the living room and they listened to the Stones and the Beatles and lay together on the couch. He had a loaded gun he kept on the table in case word leaked out about Rake. But the road to the house stayed quiet.

Several days after the assassination, the news reports were of the funeral train transporting the president’s body back to Washington, reversing the route of Lincoln’s body a century ago, across Ohio and through upstate New York. That night he built another fire and went outside, the grass crunching frost, and saw the northern lights through the trees. He went inside to get Meg and took her down to the beach to look at the long furls of electromagnetic radiation. He sniffed the air and said he was catching something new from the north, way, way up. He said they’d go there as soon as they didn’t have to fear being followed by gangs of agents.

That night they made love for the first time. She told him to stop saying he was sorry, that her desires had nothing to do with anything except the fact that she was her old self again, her original self.

The water had taken on a cold, wintery glint. The light had shifted, making the beach look wider, more ominous. The situation was unsafe, but before the four of them took off, they had taken one last hike together, through second-growth forest to the eastern branch of the Two Hearted River. Hank had wanted them to see it. They marched single-file, Hank leading and stopping them on occasion to sniff and listen.

They were still doing a penance for a loss, and it would be that way for a long time. The river snaked through the brambles and deep green beds of fern, hidden from the world, a river that had to be seen at ground level. From the sky it was obscured by a canopy of leaf.

Singleton, at the rear, experienced a sense of recognition. The buzz in his ear was still gone, leaving behind a feeling of having lived through battles. The fuzzball had resolved into concrete thought — images of a boy on a beach with freckles and a loose smile. From Meg he had gathered a sense of who Billy-T might’ve been, and he saw him through her eyes and she saw him through his eyes and Wendy saw her loss through Meg’s eyes and Meg through her eyes.

Hank led them to a mossy open clearing with limited snags. The only good fishing spot for miles and miles. He explained that the reputation of the stream was much greater than the stream itself.

When they got back to the house that night they found MomMom dead in the yard, her laundry basket next to her.

“Natural causes,” Hank said. “She must’ve dragged herself out of bed.”

His voice was abstracted. He stood for a moment and then walked over to her body, which looked less weighty, the apron loose around her hips, her chin flattened and her eyes still open.

“I don’t believe this,” Meg said, crying.

“I never got to know her in a sane state, because I was insane when she was sane,” Hank said. “Before that I was a kid and she was just my mom. It was clean and simple back then.” He dropped to his knees and kissed her cheek. “I treated her badly before I got the treatment. I was an evil man and I cast her aside, and me and Rake, whatever we did, it had to have been unspeakable.”

“Don’t blame yourself now,” Meg said, holding him.

“I’m blaming the man I was when I came back from Nam. I can’t remember it but I’m sure that when I came back she told me something like, ‘You’re not the boy I knew, not at all,’ something like that.”

“Blame the old Hank, but don’t blame yourself,” Meg said.

“When the president was killed I knew it wouldn’t be long. She started downhill, I mean physically, when that news came out.”

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Singleton said.

“I know you are,” Hank said.

“Nothing prepares you,” Wendy said. “I’ll go get a blanket.”

MomMom’s death was a sign. They all thought, but didn’t say, that the timing would ease the burden of travel. What would Klein say? He’d say that sometimes men died in the field to ease the burdens of other men. If they were beyond the reach of a dust-up crew it might look — and he’d stress only look, because he wasn’t coldhearted — like an act of God.

They buried her under the clothesline, along with her basket and her Bible.

“Love is the great transition of fury into stability, into the serenity of a mutual shared vibration,” Hank said, spreading his arms. “Love is when you see the forest and the trees and have a complete sense of both. Love means saying you’re sorry again and again and again.”

* * *

It was their last night on the beach. Lake Superior. Thirty-two thousand square miles of water producing waves that arrive in a sequence of four or five smaller ones and then a breaker born far out in the fury of a distant storm, where tiny bolts were caught up in the clouds, flickering their underbellies visible and then, a second later, consumed back into darkness. A log shifted and sparks were unleashed into the sky. Smoke from the embers was milky gray against the blackness. They were all aware not only of the fire’s warmth but of the dangerous dark beyond its light.

“You know what I hate,” Hank was saying.

“What do you hate?” Meg said.

“I hate it when people say something is ‘painfully beautiful.’ Pain’s never beautiful, man, never. The forest is beautiful, but I’d hope I never get to the point where I claim it’s painfully beautiful. MomMom used to rub Vicks on my chest when I was sick, and now, when I smell it, I can’t figure out why I feel this intense despair. All I can think is that it must have something to do with Nam, that smell. Is that painfully beautiful?”

“Do people really say that?” Wendy said.

“It does have something to do with Nam,” Singleton said. “I can’t tell you I know this firsthand, but when I got out of treatment and was trying to figure shit out I hung out with a vet for a day or two, and he told me they used to rub that stuff under their noses to mask the smell of death and rotting flesh.”