Philipp Meyer - American Rust

None of it was permanent. The Swede will go back to the soil, blood goes from sticky thick to dust, animals eat you back to the earth. Nice black dirt means something died here. The things you could trace— blood, hair, fingerprints, bootprints — he didn't see how they would get away with it and there was a picture fixed in his mind of the Swede with his face shining and the bloody color of the light on him. He had never stopped looking at the spot between the Swede's eyes, even after the shot was gone from his hand. Made it go into him. With my mind I made it hit him there. He tried to call back the Swede's hands to see a weapon but he couldn't. His hands had been empty. Unarmed man, worst words there are. Why did you throw that thing at him? Because he had a look on his face. Because I couldn't get at the Mexican — might have hit Poe. The Mexican had a knife to Poe's neck but that was not the one you killed. The dead man was the one standing there doing nothing.

Basis of everything, he thought. Pick your own over a stranger. Dead Swede for living Poe. Ten dead Swedes or a hundred. Long as it's the enemy. Ask any general. Ask any priest — millions die in the Bible, no problem if God says thumbs- up. Babies, even — dash em on the rocks say Jesus made me do it. The Word of God and the hand of man. Done the deed now wash your hands.

— —

In the early afternoon he saw Poe come up to the edge of the field, two hundred yards away, and he dressed quickly and put on his shoes and coat and went out the window, hanging by his fingertips before dropping the rest of the way to the ground. His sister had come up to check on him but he'd locked the door.

As he looked back at the house, a big Georgian Revival originally built for one of the steelmill's managers, he saw the old man sitting on the back porch in his wheelchair, his broad back and thin arms and white hair, looking out over the rolling hills, forest interspersed with pastures, the deep brown of the just- tilled fields, the wandering treelines marking distant streams. It was a peaceful scene and he wasn't sure if the old man was sleeping or awake. Like an old planter looking over his plantation— how much overtime he worked to buy this house. How proud he was of the house, and look at it now. No wonder you're always feeling guilty.

High- stepping through the tall grass he made for the stand of trees at the bottom of the property where the spring came out, he knew them all — silver maple and white oak and shellbark hickory, ash and larch. There was the redbud he and his father had planted, in full bloom now, pink against the green of the other trees. Judas tree. Fitting name. Poe was sitting there, waiting for him in the shadows.

“You get any strange knocks on the door?” he said.

“No,” said Isaac.

“Whose car is that?”

“Lee's. The new husband's, maybe.”

“Oh,” said Poe. For a second he looked stunned. Then he said: “E320—goddamn.” He was looking at the house.

They made their way through the woods toward the road, kicking up last fall's moldering leaves, the sweet smell from them.

“This is stupid,” Poe said. He looked at Isaac. “I mean, I don't see a way around it, but that doesn't mean it's not stupid.”

Isaac didn't say anything.

“Christ,” Poe said. “Thanks.”

They crossed the road and picked their way down to the stream through the alder. Except for a slight coolness there was no hint it had snowed the previous night and they walked along the gravel banks or over the dark mossy rocks, the sky blue and narrow above them, vegetation spilling into the gulch, honeysuckle and chokecherry an old rock maple tilted overhead, the ground eroding beneath it.

They passed an old flatbed truck, doorless and half- sunk in the sand. It occurred to Isaac that there might be blood on him, he hadn't taken a shower or washed or anything. It wouldn't spray that far, twenty or thirty feet. Still, he thought. That was extremely stupid.

They took the long way around town, through the woods where they wouldn't be seen. It was late afternoon when they could just make out the shell of the Standard plant through the trees.

“Let's just go in and get it over with.” Poe found his cigarettes but took a long time to fumble one out of the pack, and though it wasn't hot, patches of sweat were showing through his shirt.

“We need to wait till it's almost dark. It'll probably take us half an hour to get him to the river.”

“This is insane,” said Poe.

“It was insane staying in there yesterday.”

“You know we're half a mile from the nearest road. It'll be months before anyone else stumbles in there, maybe years.”

“Your coat will still be there.”

“Guess I should have remembered to grab it on the way out. It was probably the guy with the knife to my neck that distracted me.”

“I know that.”

“It's freakin me out goin in there again.”

“The great hunter. He shoots the guts out of a deer but when it comes to a guy who was actually trying to kill him—”

“It's a lot fuckin different,” Poe said.

“Well, you should have maybe worried about that yesterday.”

“The only reason I was anywhere near this shithole was you,” Poe told him.

Isaac turned away and walked off into the trees along the river. He found a rock by the water and sat down. It was average for a river, a few hundred yards across and in most places only nine or ten feet deep. Nine feet under. Good as five fathoms. Good enough for your mother and the Swede both. Drained of heart and freed of flesh. Listen to you, he thought, just turn yourself in. Thought you'd be the one saving people.

Sometime later Poe came and found him and they watched the water in silence, there was the sound of leaves shushing, the squawk of a heron, a distant motorboat.

“You know he isn't just gonna disappear. Some fuckin Jet Skier'll run him over by lunchtime tomorrow, guaranteed. Shit doesn't just magically evaporate because you stick it in a river.”

“It doesn't take much to sink a body,” said Isaac.

“Jesus, Mental. Listen to us.”

“It's already done,” said Isaac. “Pretending we can walk away is just going to make it worse.”

Poe shook his head and sat down a good distance away.

The sun was getting lower over the hills on the other side of the river, it was a pleasant quiet scene, sitting there looking over the water, but that was not how it felt. You're just a visitor here, he thought. Look at the sun and feel like you own it but it's been setting behind those hills for fifteen thousand years — since the last ice age. Glacial period, he corrected himself, not ice age. When those hills were formed. This area was the edge of the Wisconsin glaciation. Meanwhile here you are. Temporary visitor on the sun's earth. Think your mother will be here forever and then she's gone. Still sinking in five years later. Disappeared in a day. Same as you will. Nothing you can see that won't outlast you — rocks sky sun. Watch a sunset and feel like you own it but it's been rising without you for a thousand years. No, he thought, more like several billion. Can't even get your head around the real number. You're the only one who even knows you exist. Born and die between the earth's heartbeats. Which is why people believe in God — you're not alone. Used to, he thought. It was my mother that made me believe. And it was her that made you not believe. Stop it. You're lucky to be here at all. Don't be a weak thinker.

They're simple facts is all. Your only power is choosing what to make of them. She stayed under two weeks with a few pounds of rocks in her pockets. There is your lesson from that. No different this time. They'll find him at the lock, hook him out with a pole. Or he'll slip by them— Old Man River, a long journey drifting. Catfish doing their work. Victim none the wiser. Roof of water, bones beneath. Judgment day he'll rise. No such thing, he thought. And not possible even if there was. Once you lost your water, most of your weight was carbon. Your molecules scattered, were used again, became atoms and particles, quarks and leptons. You borrowed from the planet which borrowed it from the universe. A short- term loan at best. In the eyeblink of a planet you were born, died, and your bones disintegrated.