Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

When we asked him what he was doing there, he replied: digging a hole. Eventually the plan was to erect a rig and burrow the mantle for mineral reserves, but Standard had union problems, and the rig, always coming, never showed. The union called new arrivals like our father clod-kickers and line-breakers, and appeared to be happy to let our town crumble under the weight of its own hopelessness. People like our dad called the union guys motherfuckers, and sidled up to the bar to make plans of their own that always came to nothing.

Everything we owned was leased, and leveraged against an eventual payout. I spent my free time trying to avoid the other kids in town, who needed someone to pick on, and had chosen me. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I flinched when doors shut. I slipped when running. My forehead was an oil slick. You haven’t spoken in four days, my mother said when I was twelve. I corrected her, and told her it had been four teen .

But bad as it was for me, Tuva, I know it was worse for you. The upland diggers, most without families, wore their loneliness like wolves. You turned twelve, and our mother became distracted and agitated. You turned thirteen, and it was like all the air had gone out of the room. The other kids turned their attention from me to you. After you’d been groped at school for the umpteenth time, my mom took us to the principal. He looked concerned, but eventually shrugged, turned to me, and asked me where I’d been while all of this was happening. I showed him my torn jacket and a patch of bloodied scalp, and told him there was nothing I could do about it. Well, he said. He cleared his throat and made a gesture like his hands were tied. After that, my mom took you out of school, and forbade you from leaving our property after 4:00 P.M. Above the door to our trailer, there was a sign Mom had needle-pointed during one of her near-depressions. Home Is Where the Heart Is it read. I remember you hard kicking your boots on the steps. “Who needs a heart?” you said, before going inside.

It won’t be like this forever, I told you. It’s not so bad.

“For you,” was your reply.

Then, when you turned seventeen, two grown men who showed up at our trailer, demanding to see you. Our mother, through the door, told them our father would be back any minute. They said: We don’t care. They swore, they kicked the door; eventually they left, said they’d be back. Mom called the police. They never came.

And where was I during all of this? Under the couch, with you, Tuva, holding your hand with my eyes closed from fear. And then, as soon as you could, you left.

I don’t know what happened to you while you were gone, I don’t know where you went. I only know that a year later, when you returned, your eyes had changed, and I left as soon as I was able.

march 4

Three days ago, a shout from the high-hoops roused us from sleep. Bushard spotted it: a shipper-tank, the first we’ve seen in months.

The ship—the Waker 4 —was on her way back to the mainland, and our rendezvous was short. Over the last seven months, they’d seen a grand total of four dirwhals, of which they’d lanced two. Before that, they’d spotted, but not lanced, three. All told, they’d been on the sand for two years. They’d seen a cluster of Firsties but hadn’t been confronted in any meaningful way. They’d been called home by their backer, who’d lost his shirt outfitting them and finally pulled the plug. Not that it mattered; by the time that call came in, both of their buggies had broken axles, the ship had flaked rust into their water supply, and the first mate had fallen deathly ill. The expedition was over. Twelve days ago, as they pulled line for home, they’d seen a few black-painted shipper-tanks patrolling the distant dunes, watching their retreat like gleeful crows.

I see now it’s been five weeks since my last entry. February passed like a dream of heat. March is no better. We’ve seen no activity in the basin save for the crew of the Waker 4, which slipped out of sight the following morning like a ghost-ship, a mirage in the dunes. Our solitude is beginning to feel overwhelming. No messages go back and forth between us and the mainland. The sun-suits we’ve been issued seem to be near the end of their shelf life, with elbows threadbare and zippers filled with grit. I’ve developed a rash on my inner thigh, and have sewn extra fabric on the inside of my pants to ease the chafing and keep out the sand.

april 19

Ihaven’t kept up here. I see it’s been many days since my last entry. My rash has healed, leaving only slight discoloration across my leg. But Tuva: today was the day we’d given up waiting for, and an account seems not only necessary but verging on the joyous.

It began this morning with an alarm—one of the mates announcing he’d seen irregular sand activity off the stern. In no time it became clear that what he saw in the distance was no trick of the overheated mind, but an honest spout—a dirwhal’s gritty exhalation; a playful fluke of dirt—and no sooner had we crowded the rail than the beast breached full, exposing its length before disappearing once more below the surface and burrowing a large and sucking indention in the basin’s floor.

It was nothing short of chaos on deck. Half of us were without our sun-suits, the other half stood dumb and awestruck. This creature was enormousness itself, more viscerally alive and mobile than I’d thought possible. We watched as it surfaced again: a dark stain against the sand, winding its rounded bulk across the basin floor, rolling sideways rather than cutting in a straight line as I had always imagined it would move. I could make out its rear flukes against dunes as it dove again. There was a mad scramble for the munitions locker. There was banging, yelling; gear dropped; gear found. All the while, Captain Tonker stood atop the rear-deck shouting instructions into a megaphone that no one, in our rush not to be left behind, heard. Space or no we jostled into the buggies, were lowered from the rail, fired up the engines, and took off in the direction of the thing itself.

What was going through my head at the time I can’t say. In my memory, oft replayed, it feels as if I were traveling through a tunnel, though we had been below open sky. Sand peppered my visor, and kicked up behind us in twin arcing flumes. Bushard was in one of the other three buggies. I held my bomb-lance to my chest, tip pointed overboard to minimize the damage caused by accidental misfire as we careered across the flat expanse. All of us leaned forward into the wind; everyone crowded the bow. The creature surfaced again, and this time lay atop the sand, as if sunning itself. And though we were moving as fast as the buggies would carry us, our progress felt excruciatingly slow. We all feared the same thing: that the monster would slip away quietly, never to be seen again.

When we were within darting distance, the beast dove once more, leaving a large, sand-sliding crater in its wake. We cut our engines. No one spoke. It was so quiet you could hear the sand running over itself as it filled the crater, a high-pitched desert whistling that brought to mind nothing so much as the wind-sound I remembered from my youth. I felt hot, but understood that the heat was inside my suit, was coming from me. My heart pumped as if I’d been running.

The order came to prong the sand. Tom jumped from his buggy, and drove the hollow aluminum staff into the lip of the crater. As soon as he was back aboard, one of the mates juiced it. There was an electric buzzing, the sand hopped, but other than that, nothing. The seconds passed like minutes. Again, someone shouted. The voltage was recalibrated, and the mate hit it again.