Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

“It’d been taken over,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maggots,” he said. “Blowflies. Other insects. They take over the body.”

“That is so gross,” I said.

“It’s beautiful, if you think about it.” All of a sudden, his eyes were glowing with enthusiasm. “It’s egalitarian in concept. We act like the human body is the center of the universe, but it decays and gets reabsorbed into the system, just like that cat and its kittens, just like everything else. It loses its boundaries, its privileged status.”

“Wylie.”

“We don’t like to think about it, but that’s only symptomatic of our power-driven—”

“Wylie, shut up, for God’s sake.”

“What’s your problem?”

“Just shut up, ” I said.

At that moment I smelled smoke, and Wylie started walking fast in front of me. Before long I saw a red cloth hanging from a juniper tree, and the burning smell clarified itself into a joint. A couple of hippies were sitting on a boulder in front of a rocky overhang, a scenic overlook behind them. I recognized the place then, and wondered if Wylie had brought me here on purpose. It was another place we used to hike to, when we were kids; one time we’d even spent the night here, Wylie and I in one tent, our parents in another. It occurred to me that this was probably where Wylie stayed when he lived in the woods.

The girl had long hair gnarled into dreadlocks that twisted down her back like vines. The boy had thin dark hair that fell into his eyes; he’d taken off his shirt — the cloth hanging from the tree — and was sunning his pale, sunken chest.

“Hey, how’s your life today, man?” he said calmly to Wylie.

“Could be better, could be worse,” Wylie said.

The hippie held out the joint between his thumb and his index finger. It was thickly rolled and coated at the end with saliva that sparkled visibly in the sun. We both shook our heads. The sweet, acrid fragrance of pot mingled with the scent of juniper and the heat and the buzz of insects all around us, and I started to feel faint.

“You guys want some jerky?” the girl said.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“It’s homemade, from all-natural cows.”

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, that’s cool,” she said. She took the joint and breathed in deeply, still smiling at us with her mouth carefully closed.

When Wylie stepped closer to them — wanting to take in the view, I guess — the boy took offense. “Hey, man, what’re you doing?”

“I just wanted to have a look,” Wylie told him. “We came here a lot when we were kids.”

“Well, that’s sweet and everything, man, but we’re hanging here right now, you know what I mean? It’s kind of our personal space at the moment, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t invade.”

“Yeah,” the girl said.

“We just want to take a look,” I said.

“I totally respect that, but no way,” the boy said. He stood up and faced us, his chest stuck out defiantly. “Don’t make me get rough with you guys.” At this, Wylie snorted. The girl nodded, sitting cross-legged on the rock, smoking the joint and chewing a stick of homemade jerky at the same time.

I stared at these ridiculous people and started to cry. “It’s just a fucking view, ” I said, embarrassed and choking, and what I meant was this: of my father there was nothing left, and in the taxonomy of his absence I could list only his grave marker and places like this where he’d once been and the fading memory of his voice saying my name, and these were paltry things. Snot bubbled out of my nose, and I sniffled it back in.

“Let’s just go,” Wylie said.

He set off at a brisk pace, and I had to jog to keep up with him. I kept sniffling and wiping my nose, my shoulders spasming, my breath coming in hiccups.

Finally he turned around and said, “Stop it. I mean it. Stop it.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Wylie said, looking away. “Just deal with it.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll deal with it,” I said. “I’ll go find myself a cave to live in, and eat trash from dumpsters, and stop talking to Mom, and plan absurd guerrilla actions. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

“You think the actions are absurd?” he said.

“Wylie, of course they’re absurd.”

He scowled at me for a few seconds, then shook his head. “You’re so full of shit,” he said. “You think I’m the one who avoids things? Who lives in New York and hardly comes home for two years? Who takes up with a boyfriend within two days of being back so she can run off with him all the time and not have to be around? Who’s been home all summer and hasn’t even gone to the grave?”

“I went,” I said. “Once.”

“Yeah, well.” He shook his head again. “If you’re worried about me, ” he said, “you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

I lifted my shirt to my face and wiped away my tears and snot. “I feel like hell,” I finally said.

“I know,” my brother said. Behind us, coming up the trail, were Irina and Angus. They looked red and sweaty and bedraggled, as, I realized, we must have too. Psyche was shifting uncomfortably on her mother’s chest, burbling a stream of annoyed complaint, and her skin had broken out in a rash that resembled hives.

Wylie looked at Irina and said, “Is Psyche okay?”

“I think so,” she said.

Angus smiled at me, broadly, genuinely. “Isn’t this great?” he said.

Halfway down the trail, a trailer park sitting in the scrub came into view, looking haphazard and almost forgotten. I was tired and kept stumbling. Wylie and Irina were walking together, both of them glancing anxiously at Psyche, and I thought I saw something new in the way they looked at each other, their hands nearly touching as they swung back and forth with the rhythm of their hiking. Angus stayed beside me, offering the water bottle every so often. I didn’t care what Wylie said, or even if it was true; I would cling to Angus now, and in bed later, without thinking about what it meant or why I was there.

Back at Wylie’s apartment, there was beer and gin and music, and I told myself that everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine. The August heat made the apartment claustrophobic. Whether because of the heat or the drinking, nobody could seem to agree on anything, except to question everybody else’s ideas and commitment. When Berto suggested working with Panther’s organization, he was shouted down. Wylie’s philosophical statements had people rolling their eyes, except for Irina, who nodded in encouragement even when it was unclear what he was talking about. Angus leaned against the back wall, smiling at all of this discord, sharing his bottomless gin and tonic with me.

Then Wylie stopped in the middle of a sentence and asked him, “What the hell’s so funny?”

“You are, buddy,” Angus said.

“What’s that mean?”

“You always have this need to dress things up,” Angus said. “As if that makes things more important.”

“Leave him alone,” I said.

“You’re not even part of this,” Wylie told me.

Looking back and forth at the two of them, I decided to shut up.

The talk dragged on into the night, becoming more impassioned and less intelligible. The room smelled bad, and drinking was making the group less festive rather than more. The dog slept in a corner, snoring hard, an option that was starting to look better and better to me. Outside, the din of the cicadas rose to a fever pitch. Wylie sat in a corner muttering to Irina, his skinny legs tucked beneath him, Psyche asleep against his chest, a little fist flung up against his collarbone. I fell asleep, my head on Angus’s shoulder, and when I woke up everything was still the same.