Dawn Raffel - In the Year of Long Division

She sat. A stain defined her dress.

Something glinted.

“Quiet,” she said. “Brother,” she said. “This is the actual plan.”

IT had a snout. Hair. A piggy-looking countenance. Sores traversed its sides and creepy insectile creatures were greedily rooting in its flesh. One of its eyes was gone, was nothing but a bloody, yawning aperture. It wouldn’t have even half-wanted to look at itself — so compromised and disaligned, all tumor and gristle, a tumorous plug at its rear. It leaked. Trodden, spat-on, bled-on, lumpy, leaked-on and festering hay — or something similarly haylike — was all that passed in this place for floor. Stuck on the walls, as if they had grown themselves, there were parts. Teeth. Gears. Implements bristled with rust. A trigger, a hammer.

Someone or something sneezed.

A flame gleamed faintly.

“Vern,” Rae said.

He did not answer, save to moan.

“What is that piggy thing?” Rae said.

“What does it look like?” a woman, apparently tender of it, asked Rae. The woman’s dress seemed wrongside out. Her gaze was moist. Her stockings were pouching at her ankles in a fallen condition.

“Whatever it is,” Rae said, “it stinks.”

The line in which they waited twitched, scratched — another rank thing, afflicted with its own supplication. Steaming on the exhale. Its end, or rather, its head, was a brittle-looking man, guiding, as best he could, a doubly brittle-looking needle. Obviously, he was old. His purchase was poor. The needle was bloody.

“Hold your tongue,” the woman said.

Something brayed.

“There,” the old man said. Trembled. Patted a lavishly vaccinated joint.

Rae angled toward the flame.

“Hold your place,” the woman said, stroking her charge’s snout.

The old man’s hands were singed.

“Where?” Rae said. “Where am I?”

“Next,” the old man said.

“That would be us,” the woman said. “Doc?”

It wouldn’t have wanted to look at even half of itself as singed hands poked, hazarded a thump.

“What do you reckon?” the woman said.

Out of the brittle lips, a word: “Deceased.”

“No,” the woman said.

“I reckon,” he said.

“Vern?” Rae said. “Vern? Doc?”

“Some doc,” the woman said. “This here is breathing.”

The old man thumped again, slightly southward, provoking a high, corrosive squeal.

“See?” the woman said.

“Dead,” he insisted. “Or equally good as.”

Down off the wall came a bristly shotgun. “Stand back and duck,” he said, taking awful aim.

Teeth clattered. Something pinged. A wind blew biting through a hole.

“Vern?” Rae said.

An ominous sound, possibly terminal.

“Stop,” the woman said.

“Give it here,” Rae said.

“Stop, you!” the woman said.

The floor began to rise in festering pieces as shot after shot missed its target.

“Give it,” Rae said. She grabbed. Clenched. Squeezed.

A piggish expulsion hit the hay.

“Now look,” the woman said.

“Doc,” Rae said.

“Look what you done,” the woman said. “Heathen.”

The old man spit in the general direction of the flame.

“Pork,” he said.

The corpse was gently oozing.

The woman blew her nose.

Rae put down the gun. “I believe we are next,” she said.

The old man squinted at Rae. He wiped his needle with a triply phlegmy-looking rag.

Rae yanked a shirt, along with the body all but unconscious inside it. “This here is Vern,” she said.

“Hell,” the old man said.

“It won’t but a fever,” Rae said.

“Won’t do.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t be of service,” the old man said.

“Why not, I said,” Rae said.

“Basically,” the old man said, “this fellow is human.”

The woman had dropped to her fearsome knees. “Killer,” she said.

“All the more reason,” Rae said.

The line pitched forward with rancor.

“This fellow,” the old man said to Rae, “is this some relation of yours?”

“Call him whatever you want,” Rae said.

At some point, something ill-defined was passed from Rae’s stained dress. Needless to dwell on what followed. Rae shut her eyes.

The old man slapped himself, said, “Good as new.”

“Vern?” Rae said. “Vern? Do you know me?”

“Cured,” the old man said.

The eye whites were stitched through with blood.

“Where is my wallet at?” he, the newly woke, demanded of Rae.

A woman with a hen in a sack came forth.

“Never mind,” the old man said. “Don’t owe me so much as a stick.”

“Let’s go,” Rae said.

“My cash,” he said. “What is that thing? It looks to have died.”

“Heathen,” the kneeling woman said.

Gnats began to congregate.

“Come on,” Rae said.

The old man said, “You’re all shook up. Go get some shut-eye, you.”

IN stations where the lighting was dusty and northern, falling through a high, stained glass — always a bench, an old stuck clock, walleyelike, always an indeterminate voice, remote, cracked: a.m., p.m., naming the cities that nobody went to; always a paper, local and disabused of news; stubs, ash, mites, a sprinkle of if-it-rains or if-it-sleets or if-it-snows or if-it-hails old salt, in churches, all denominations, better empty, dark loft, dark nave, in airless buses, qualmishly praying for a window, one clean sink, in castoff crates with room enough for outsize limbs, damp, always damp, even deep in the shadow of somebody’s dwelling, overhung and luminous, this is where they lay themselves, he and she, to rest. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep easy.” In fields, he watched the sky, shot through, he said, with stars or with the moon, and in the morning with the planets, or the near northern lights, or with the early-morning snow. Early as she stirred, he and she were gone.

They were given to things: eating whatever whenever wherever. Of course they were. Who wouldn’t be? Rae emptied her pockets. Bit chapped lips. Hers like his. She reassessed. Reflected in the blade of a knife. Gently, she emptied other pockets. Lifted her chin. She was given to lifting a dress, a hat, a lady’s lamb’s wool coat—“Nice,” she said — some pigskin gloves, a man’s nice leather jacket. “Vern?” she said. “Look.”

He wore the jacket open.

The northern air was fierce.

A village was given to borderline criminal activity. Order in a river town was called into question. A man who was said to have called himself Phil committed a thoroughly lawless murder. Rae, over breakfast — juice, slaw, ribs — wiped her mouth, said, “Mercy.” She held up a badly doctored map. “Does this seem familiar?” she said.

He chewed.

He chewed some more.

She swallowed.

“This house,” she said, “where is it?”

“Trust me,” he said.

She was forking up drippings.

“Like I trust myself,” she said. She lifted the fork, high as his mouth, said, “Bite?”

NAILS were in evidence. So were shingles, drainpipes gagged with ice.

“Hit,” he said.

“My hands,” she said.

“Hard,” he said. “Your what?” The wind was in the trees, in the reddening gnarls of his ears. “Do you hear me?” he said.

“No,” she said.

“What?” he said. “You’re holding that hammer like a girl.”

She tightened her grip. “Lockjaw is what,” she said. “That’s what.” The nails of her fingers were gray. The ladder was feeble. The nail she was tapping was a virulent color. Between her teeth, a nasty point was stuck.

“Stop it,” he said.

She spat it, girl-like. “Likely we’ll break our necks,” she said.