Christopher Rice - The Vines

“Mother of God,” Willie whispers. “Whatever’s in that gazebo, they’re pollinatin’ it.”

They’re transfixed by the play of shadows around the gazebo’s tilting ruins, when suddenly a fierce flicker illuminates the front parlor. To Nova it looks like a small, contained lightning storm. They’re too far from the house to see the chandelier in any detail, but she’s sure that’s the source. She’s sure that the bugs gathered around its dangling crystals are on the move, taking the next step of this unholy process that’s turned the property before them into a launching pad for winged demons.

The sound of shattering glass from the front parlor is loud enough to mean at least two of the front windows have just been broken through. And when she realizes the violent little electrical storm has ceased, Nova whispers Blake’s name and grips her father’s right hand.

“Nova—”

“We’re stayin’. This is my house now and I’m sick of this shit.”

Her father just stares at her, and she can’t tell if it’s exhaustion or shock that’s drained any discernible expression from his face. “Well, all right,” he finally says. “Then I’m gonna get us some help.”

Blake has seen the outside of Vernon Fuller’s house before, but he’s never had the nerve to cross the entrance to the long driveway. The place was once the family’s modest weekend retreat, but ever since Vernon abandoned his wife and his career, it’s become his permanent refuge. In other parts of Des Allemands, this one-story L of weathered red brick would be just another unimpressive tract house, but the lot here has frontage on a secluded, tree-lined corner of the bayou, and the boat dock floating in the inky water looks taller than the house itself.

The 1988 Suburban, the same vehicle Blake so often finds waiting for him outside the hospital where he works, is parked at the head of the driveway, its chunky nose kissing the half-open door to a garage that looks like it’s been turned into some kind of toolshed or workroom.

By the time he reaches the front door, the tree frogs and crickets are accelerating their frantic song in anticipation of sunrise, and he wonders if their music will mask the approach of his fate.

He knocks and hears voices from a television inside. They make it impossible to hear whether or not someone is approaching the door from the other side, so when it opens suddenly, Blake finds himself standing almost nose to nose with Vernon Fuller. Both men jerk back, but it’s too late for Vernon to hide the revolver he’s got in his right hand. He’s got no choice but to act tough; he tucks it firmly in the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back.

“Can I come in?” Blake asks.

The man once had an angry, seductive slant to his eyes that used to remind Blake of the handsome Eastern European politicians he sometimes glimpsed on cable news. But like most of his facial features, it has collapsed some with age, giving him a perpetual suspicious squint. He’s wearing jeans and work boots and a white tank top that displays the lingering huskiness of a former athlete, and it’s clear Blake has disturbed him in the middle of getting dressed.

Blake smells coffee, not the stink of hard alcohol, and the living room behind Vernon is cluttered but not the reality-show ruin Blake had hoped for. The fact that Vernon Fuller isn’t living in his own filth as penance for his sins, that he’s preparing for his day like some normal commuter, fills Blake with a rage that drives him to cross the threshold without being officially invited.

Beneath his shirt, the vine clutches his chest more tightly, thirsty for the hot pulse of anger in his veins.

A wall of sliding glass doors looks out onto the plain swell of grass that tapers down to the water’s edge, and in the corner of the living room the WWL Eyewitness Morning News plays on a boxy television piled with unopened bills. Police lights splash a haggard-looking roadside motel, and then the screen fills with the face of some pimply teenager, his jaw tensed as he squints into the harsh glare of a camera light. The reporter just off camera says, “You do realize this story is hard to believe, don’t you, sir?”

After the reporter sticks the mic back in his face, the kid answers, “I do. I do realize that and I know what I saw, and what I saw was a lot of bugs killing those people.”

“Right. But you’re also saying—”

“It was the cheaters,” the kid says. Dazed, but slightly perturbed, as if he’s being asked to give simple directions once more to an elderly and confused relative. “They killed the cheaters.”

There’s an empty two-second beat while the reporter gives the kid a chance to recant this insane statement, and the kid does nothing of the kind. Instead he lifts a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the camera light but remains rooted in place, ready and willing, it seems, to answer more questions.

Vernon kills the television with the remote, settles into a tattered leather Eames chair, and begins shaking a cigarette out of a rumpled soft pack. On top of a short cabinet just a few inches from his right elbow sits an eight-by-ten photograph of John Fuller, taken only months before he was murdered. Blake knows this because Blake took the photograph, on the levee, not too far from where he was later killed. John is beaming, revealing small, unobtrusive teeth, perfectly aligned by braces he’d shed the year before. It’s a smile that crinkles bright eyes with the same beautiful Slavic slant his father lost to old age. His swath of black hair, lightly gelled as it always was, is tossed by the wind off the lake and covers most of his forehead.

“Do you want me to stop?” Vernon asks.

For a second or two, Blake thinks he’s referring to the cigarette he’s just lit. He exhales smoke through both nostrils like a parody of a dragon, but his glassy-eyed stare searches Blake’s face even through the cloud.

“My… visits , I mean,” he continues. “Is that why you’re here? You want me to stop?”

Blake had planned to take his time and uncover as many more secrets as he could. But the news report just reminded him he doesn’t really know how much time he’s got left. An hour? Two or three more? They will come for him out of the sky, and they will take him just like they took Caitlin. And if Vernon Fuller fails the test Blake is about to lay out for him, he will be forced to watch, which isn’t exactly what Blake wants, but it will be better than nothing.

With a start, Vernon realizes he’s sitting on his own gun—that he failed to remove the revolver from the back of his pants before he sat down. He eases forward slightly, eyes on Blake, and pulls the gun free. Blake expects him to slide it in a drawer, but instead he sets it atop the cabinet nearby, just inches from John’s photo. He does, however, take care to turn the barrel so that it isn’t pointing directly at Blake.

“I know why you come and see me at work,” Blake says.

“Do you?”

“Yes. You killed your son.”

Vernon Fuller’s eyes water. First his lips purse so tightly it’s as if he’s pressed one finger to them, and then his jaw tightens so much his chin quivers in response. His hands are resting on his knees, but he’s leaning forward as if at any second he might propel himself out of his chair and close his fingers around Blake’s throat.

And that will be just fine. Fine, but not perfect. Blake is hoping for a gunshot, because a gunshot will unleash enough blood to feed the vine on his chest. Because that’s the deal Blake has made with himself, to confront Vernon with what he knows, and allow Vernon’s response to seal his fate. Not Blake. Not the vines. Not Caitlin. And not the furious ghost of Virginie Lacroix. No one but Vernon should decide his fate. It might not be the justice of the earth the slaves at Spring House saw before they escaped its destruction, but it’s as close as Blake can get in the final hours before he’s ripped from this world.