Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“I took a cruise once,” he said, pointing to the anchored laker. “ ’Course that was another era. Best to leave it in the water.” Then he drew another, larger bird from his pocket and bit it bloodlessly in half, a tuft of down clinging to his lower lip.

As he gripped its dowels in his pocket, the garrote seemed suddenly ridiculous and toy-like in Will’s hands. Which string had he selected to make it? The highest or lowest? He couldn’t remember. Hadn’t his mother broken these strings while strumming the gentlest of folk songs? So how could this grown, lunatic of a man not be able to do the same? If Titus turned hostile, Will’s only hope would be to shoulder-check him overboard and start the engine before he could climb back in. He’d never make it to the breakwater. He could barely climb stairs.

Then Titus began to hop up and down at the back of the boat, whooping at the gulls. More water swamped into the skiff, soaking Will’s shoes. “Sit down!” Will yelled. “You’ll sink us!”

Suddenly Titus produced a sound near shrieking, and it poured slush down Will’s spine. He barked splinters of sentences and incantations as a diabolical force overrode his face, an amalgamation of surprise and sorrow and rage. But it was Titus’s avoidance of Will’s eyes that was most worrisome. Titus’s meeting his gaze seemed to form the last vestige of Will’s safety.

“No epoch but the current!” Titus roared, bending to pick up the fish knife, his eyes lustrous and blazed with gold. He pointed the tip to Will and stifled a chillingly girlish titter, then pointed the tip into the dark waves that flapped like fabric in a gale. “In we tumble,” he said.

“I don’t know how to swim,” Will whimpered, a small boyish utterance, as a great shaking overrode each of his muscles. “My mother never taught me.” What Will would give to be with her now, to be watching her snap a fresh sheet in the air over their bed, waiting for it to descend like a sweet parachute.

With that some dark spell was counteracted inside Titus, and at long last he met Will’s eyes. “She didn’t, did she?” he said. “I’m sure she had some silver explication. She’s too buoyant for it. It’s a risky businessman, swimming.” Then Titus chortled, and Will couldn’t decide if it was mirthful or maniacal.

“Be brave Icarus Number One,” he went on. “You can perform a life entire without ever getting wet.” Then he lowered himself and dipped a cupped hand into the rough water. He brought it to his lips and slurped long and loud with his eyes smashed shut in rapture.

“Here,” he said, in one long breath of relief. “This is the meadow.”

Titus set down the fish knife and began unwinding a length of wire from his arm, which was wrapped tourniquet-tight and made the veins of his thick hands bulge. Then he picked the knife back up and began snapping pieces of wire in short lengths.

Next Titus grabbed one of the many bags of stones and fixed it to the end of the hose with wire. He kissed the hose mouth like a beloved rattlesnake and tossed it from the skiff. Will watched the white bag disappear into the deep like a fleeing ghost.

Titus started the motor. “Come back here and take the tiller,” he said. “Fly us in sleepy as you can.”

Will minced his way, hands still gripping the garrote in his pocket, to the back of the boat, passing Titus in the middle, who clutched the knife at his side. Will took the motor’s vibrating handle.

As they crept toward shore, Titus fastened rock bags intermittently to the hose with wire and sent more of the coil overboard. With his own Black Lagoon subsiding, at least temporarily, Will allowed himself the momentary pleasure of piloting a boat for the first time. No wonder Marcus wanted one.

“So why are we doing this?” Will said over the low rumble of the engine. “Is it some kind of art project?” He’d nearly said “masterpiece” but caught himself.

“ ’Spose you could dedicate it so, that is if you sought some verbiage.”

“Can I ask another question?”

“I’m in an interrogative mode,” Titus said.

“I met the Butler and he said he wanted proof of something from you. Proof of what?”

“He’s dilated,” said Titus, as Will guided the skiff nearly to the shore. “Bring her in over there,” Titus said, pointing to some rubble at the foot of Pool 6. Will piloted them up on a patch of rocky sand, mostly hidden from the water. Will felt like kissing the ground when he stepped out. There he saw a shallow trench already dug, running up toward the elevator. Titus laid the hose in the trench and buried it at the waterline, then dragged the remaining length up the embankment. Following the trench, they reached the outer edge of the elevator, where Titus took the end of the hose and stuffed it into a protruding conveyance chute.

Will followed Titus at a safe distance into a chamber of the elevator he and Jonah had never explored. Inside, Titus pulled the hose from the chute and began attaching it to an ancient machine. As Titus kneeled to fiddle with its settings, Will recognized this as his final chance, and with tingling, fear-deadened hands, he extracted the garrote, pulled it tight to his belly, and for a second it rang out a high sound. Will crept noiseless as he could toward Titus.

Still crouched, Titus pulled a cord, starting the machine like a lawnmower. It puffed a foul ball of smoke and shook, running a few seconds before water burst from a spout.

Right when Will was about to hook the wire around his neck and demand Marcus’s whereabouts, Titus pursed his lips and applied them carefully to the stream. He took a long drink with his eyes shut with such profound pleasure Will felt the moment was nearly too intimate to observe.

“Superior,” Titus said, swallowing deeply. “Eventually, I’ll run this unblighted up to my quarters, but this donkey engine’ll suit for now.” Titus pushed a bucket under the stream, and it began to fill noisily.

Will laughed aloud, jamming the weapon back in his pocket, half-overjoyed, half-terrified. “This was what you were doing all this time? Trying to get pure — I mean unblighted — water?”

“I’m not as strong as I once was to fetch it myself, and I can’t go relying on you or Aurelius to do it for me anymore. I’m falling weaker each day. But I’m aiming to habitate this old premise as long as permitted. Which is why you should tumble home now, Icarus Number One. You’ve saved me in more methods than you’re privy to. But you’re a gold necessity to your mother. Boys don’t fit down here. It’s only septic things. The Butler included. I can’t shield you like I could’ve once.” Titus stood and wheezed, long and tired. He thumped at his chest violently with his big fists. “Sometimes I suspect my whole damn condition is that my head isn’t privy to enough air,” he said pitifully, “because of these old wind bags. And that’s why my nut goes turbulent.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Will said backing away cautiously.

Titus looked up and nodded again.

“Promise not to take it the wrong way?”

“No such right way here down by the bay.”

“What does it feel like to be crazy?”

Titus watched him for a moment with an unreadable expression. “So that’s what has been wobbling on your vector top this whole operation?” he said.

“Yeah,” Will said. “I guess.”

“Well,” Titus said, cutting the pump’s motor and standing there on legs bowing as though they might snap. “A ripe comparison would entail trying to fix a radio. Except the only tool that comes to hand is another busted radio. You scavenge me?”

“Is that why you helped Marcus? Because he’s a busted radio, like you?”

“I nurtured him because Aurelius has been through Hades and still managed to till some good acreage in his soul.”