Joy Williams - The Quick & the Dead

They were playing with their fruit cups on trays locked in place, the syrup too thick for their old throats. They were stroking the wheels of their chairs.

Alice could see them, dimly.

“You never long to be a little child again? Because look at you now, an odd one, one from whom love and participation are not particularly desired.”

“You can’t hold Corvus in here,” Alice had said. “There are rules.”

Nurse Daisy’s jaw dropped. Rules, she mouthed. Alice almost turned to look behind her, for it seemed that the nurse was projecting to a distant, disbelieving audience.

“You must stop trying to impose yourself on that girl,” Nurse Daisy said. “ ‘Sit in your cell, and your cell will tell you everything.’ That’s something she’s learned and you never will.”

Inside, their names were posited in ink upon the collars of their clothes. Someone, something, was combing their old hair.

“This is not a nunnery,” Alice said.

“It’s a sexless place of contemplation. Don’t pick nits.”

“Corvus doesn’t want to be in a nunnery.”

“You’ll never know. You are not her! Maybe you wouldn’t score that nicely on the false-belief test. Maybe you’d keep going for that basket, much to everyone’s disappointment.”

Alice frowned. “Please,” she said, “I want to see Corvus.”

“Don’t demean yourself with pleading,” Nurse Daisy snapped. “Why do you always have to look at everything twice in order to see it? The short prayer penetrates Heaven, they say, but any fool can see this isn’t Heaven here. Your friend’s disappointed you. Think of it that way if it will make you feel better.”

“I’m a volunteer,” Alice said. “I can come inside.” Nurse Daisy firmly shut and locked the door.

Vexed, Alice had begun to walk, then run the four miles to the Wildlife Museum, with the vague intent of making a ruckus, of unroutine sabotage. But how could one sabotage death all doubled back upon itself, presenting itself so breathlessly intact? Still, she thought she’d knock some things over, rail at the paying customers, make them reflect on the transaction they were engaged in.

Then she had arrived, baffled, at the immense new wall encircling the place, to which small lettered signs in what looked to be a child’s hand were attached at inconsistent intervals.

CLOSED FOR RECONSIDERATION

The cement smelled fresh. There was a smoldering smell, too. Maybe everything back there was getting an air burial. No, that was something different; pyres were not involved. With an air burial something had to come and get you. Something wild. There was no telling what. But you had to be carrion for air burial to be successful. And these objects weren’t even dead. Rather, they had died but weren’t dead now. It was like a church, this museum, a death dome full of fabrication and comfort and instruction and paradox. She hated it. She threw stones over the wall. Was there a vast pit back there then, tarred and lavender, offering final decease at last? She threw more stones. A limousine moved slowly past on the road above her, paused, and then proceeded on.

Stumpp and Pickless, driving with complacent aimlessness in the blueblack limousine, were each chewing on a piece of licorice. The child was in the front, and in the back there was something breathing in a box. A sweetish smell emanated. There was always something heaving in the rear in their rides together, depleted, partial, clinging to life, trying to flutter or crawl, still breathing. Something dumb, bewildered, in a weary-unto-death panic, covered in leather jackets or silken scarves, ringed with spilt dishes of water, pans of seed and crumbs. Emily liked driving purposelessly around with her charges; the motion and the little lights inside that looked like stars served to occupy their thoughts, she believed. She had put away the tea things and was gnawing on the licorice for Stumpp’s sake. Stumpp had introduced her to it, both the red and the black. Licorice was very much an acquired taste, she suspected, pretty much like everything that lay ahead.

“Chucking rocks,” Emily noted. A little thrill rose up in her, then subsided. She maintained a soft spot for irrational behavior. She turned to Stumpp and said somewhat fatuously, “I’m glad I’m not her.” She was shocked she’d said such a thing, though it was neither true nor untrue. Lies, on the other hand, were more permissible, being nothing more than secrets.

“How could you be her?” Stumpp had finished his licorice. There was a last gummy node behind his molar. He left it there for the time being. Funny stuff, licorice. The root of the plant had been found packed in tombs in Egyptian lands. Had meant something once. Reduced to a confection now. The past was replete with lost guides.

“You can become something you’re not,” Emily said. She sensed, then, a whispering, a plunge and settle in the box of spilt offerings. She did not turn her head to confirm that for yet another, the intriguing passage had been breached.

Stumpp maneuvered the long car with incremental turnings of the wheel. Half-pint sutra, little Pickless. Unreaped whirlwind. The sun shone like oil upon the limousine’s hood, which had been waxed to the shine of water. A futuristic ark with two unmateable souls within. As it should be. Into the future. Shouldn’t even have a name, the future. Thing had died back there, whatever it was, whatever labors it had undertaken as a pup. Its time transpired. Knew she’d heard it go, little adept. Best Homo sap can do is perceive the penumbral. Yet not enough the penumbral. Not good enough for Pickless. Nothing too good for Pickless. Grateful he could see that so clearly. Scales all fallen away. For this was a rare confluence. Confluence to end all confluences, Stumpp and Pickless. Would never want materially, he’d make sure of that. All means must be put at her disposal. The rest up to her. For she was going to inherit the world. The world once more …

Was the last breath of a thing relevant? Emily wondered. She couldn’t imagine why it would be.

Now this day was passing, the dreaminess of it. Alice Alive, she thought, running. Alice Endurance, Alice Errant, Alice the Dark. Alice the Alone. Dogs barked in the distance. Unseen traffic whined. The desert became pasture, then park. Permanent toilet facilities. Basketball courts. The former site of the Hohokam Drive-In Theatre, so recently torn down, where Corvus had taken Tommy to see the movies. There one day, gone the next, as ephemeral as the ephemerals it had, in its inception, replaced. Cars and trucks, separated by the now-speakerless pipes, still lined the slotted rows, drawn to this seedless waste as to the old memories of stories not their own. The occupant of each had something used for sale. Infants screamed. People were everywhere relaxing.

At the edge of the park, people milled about holding candles, each with a white, wax-catching skirt. There was a big box of candles. A boy was scooping them up and handing them out, a skinny, shirtless boy in brand-new dungarees, his hair white as glare. He reminded Alice of that boy the three of them had tied up, when there had been three of them. He looked just as eager and dumb, though he didn’t have the same crookedness, and there was the hair of course. Still, he looked a lot like him. Everybody’s got their double, it just wasn’t good to see them. When Corvus had seen Sherwin’s fetch it had certainly not done Sherwin any good. She heard the feign of him saying, “When the two shall be one and the without as the within and the male with the female neither male nor female, that’s when the party begins.”