Laura Furman - The O. Henry Prize Stories 2011

August 27th . Found a dead hedgehog. Tried to peel off its spines and barbecue it over the last briquette. Disgusting. Both sick as dogs. Why did I moan about the barter system? Foraging is MUCH MUCHworse.

August 29th . Dreamed of Maia and the Swiss Army knife and woke up crying. G. held me in his shaky arms and talked about Russia, how it’s the new land of milk and honey since the Big Melt. “Some really good farming opportunities opening up in Siberia,” he said through chattering teeth. “We’re like in Three Sisters, ” I said. “ ‘If only we could get to Moscow.’ Do you remember that production at the National? We walked by the river afterward, we stood and listened to Big Ben chime midnight.” Hugged each other and carried on like this until sleep came.

August 31st . G. woke up crying. I held him and hushed him and asked what was the matter. “I wish I had a gun,” he said.

September 15th . Can’t believe this notebook was still at the bottom of the rucksack. And the Biro. Murderer wasn’t interested in them. He’s turned everything else inside out (including me). G. didn’t have a gun. This one has a gun.

September 19th . M. speaks another language. Norwegian? Dutch? Croatian? We can’t talk, so he hits me instead. He smells like an abandoned fridge, his breath stinks of rot. What he does to me is horrible. I don’t want to think about it. I won’t think about it. There’s a tent and cooking stuff on the ground, but half the time we’re up a tree with the gun. There’s a big plank platform and a tarpaulin roped to the branches above. At night he pulls the rope ladder up after us. It’s quite high-you can see for miles. He uses the platform for storing stuff he brings back from his mugging expeditions. I’m surrounded by tins of baked beans.

October 3rd . M. can’t seem to get through the day without at least two blow jobs. I’m always sick afterward (sometimes during).

October 8th . M. beat me up yesterday. I’d tried to escape. I shan’t do that again, he’s too fast.

October 14th . If we run out of beans I think he might kill me for food. There were warnings about it on the news a while back. This one wouldn’t think twice. I’m just meat on legs to him. He bit me all over last night, hard. I’m covered in bite marks. I was literally licking my wounds afterward when I remembered how nice the taste of blood is, how I miss it. Strength. Calves’ liver for iron. How I haven’t had a period for ages. When that thought popped out I missed a beat. Then my blood ran cold.

October 15th . Wasn’t it juniper berries they used to use? As in gin? Even if it was, I wouldn’t know what they looked like-I remember only mint and basil. I can’t be pregnant. I won’t be pregnant.

October 17th . Very sick after drinking rank juice off random stewed herbs. Nothing else, though, worse luck.

October 20th . Can’t sleep. Dreamed of G. I was moving against him, it started to go up a little way, so I thought he wasn’t really dead. Dreadful waking to find M. there instead.

October 23rd . Can’t sleep. Very bruised and scratched after today. They used to throw themselves downstairs to get rid of it. The trouble is the gravel pit just wasn’t deep enough, plus the bramble bushes kept breaking my fall. There was some sort of body down there, too, seething with white vermin. Maybe it was a goat or a pig or something, but I don’t think it was. I keep thinking it might have been G.

October 31st . This baby will be the death of me. Would have been. Let’s make that a subjunctive. “Would have been,” not “will.”

November 7th . It’s all over. I’m still here. Too tired to

November 8th . Slept for hours. Stronger. I’ve got all the food and drink, and the gun. There’s still some shouting from down there but it’s weaker now. I think he’s almost finished.

November 9th . Slept for hours. Fever gone. Baked beans for breakfast. More groans started up just now. Never mind. I can wait.

November 10th . It’s over. I got stuck into his bottle of vodka-it was the demon drink that saved me. He was out mugging-left me up the tree as usual-I drank just enough to raise my courage. Nothing else had worked, so I thought I’d get him to beat me up. When he came back and saw me waving the bottle he was beside himself. I pretended to be drunker than I was and I lay down on the wooden platform with my arms round my head while he got the boot in. It worked. Not right away but that night.

Meanwhile, M. decided he fancied a drink himself, and very soon he’d polished off the rest of it-more than three-quarters of a bottle. He was singing and sobbing and carrying on, out of his tree with alcohol, and then, when he was standing pissing off the side of the platform, I crept along and gave him a gigantic shove and he really was out of his tree. Crash.

November 13th . I’ve wrapped your remains in my good blue shirt; sorry I couldn’t let you stay on board, but there’s no future now for any baby aboveground. I’m the end of the line!

This is the last page of my thirtieth-birthday present. When I’ve finished it I’ll wrap the notebook up in six plastic bags, sealing each one with duct tape against the rain, then I’ll bury it in a hole on top of the blue shirt. I don’t know why, as I’m not mad enough to think anybody will ever read it. After that I’m going to buckle on this rucksack of provisions and head north with my gun. Wish me luck. Last line: Good luck, good luck, good luck, good luck, good luck.

When I first met James, he was a meth chef. This year he doesn’t need to cook because he has another guy to do it. The chef has runners-guys who take the city bus from drugstore to drugstore to get antihistamine for our special ingredient, one legal box at a time. Now James is our punisher, our savior, our iron-and-brass man. He gives us our worktable and our tools: pens, tape, change of address cards, Mountain Dew, cell phones, shards, and pipe.

When he’s not cleaning and cleaning, RJ Dumpster dives and rifles through cans and recycling bins for credit-card bills and bank statements, sometimes just feathers of paper, and then he dumps the pile on our worktable. Ripped to the winds, no problem, James says today, his hand heavy on Little Fry’s neck. She bows her head and starts sifting. There’s nothing a tweaker can’t do if she sets her mind to it, James says. Right, Fritzie? he asks me.

It’s blue-snow December outside and it stinks of cigarettes inside. Little Fry needs a shower. I need to get busy, James says to me. He tries to put his hand on my neck, but I shrug him off.

When I first met James, I was Melinda Renée von Muehldorfer and I lived at 145 South Poplar. My grandma told me once that von means my ancestors were German royalty. James says, You’re out of your castle now, babe. After I graduated, ruined my parents’ credit rating, sold everything except my ice skates, and moved in with James at the farm, I was Fritzie, no last name, just a girl good at asking for things.

Little Fry tapes strip to strip until she finds a number or a name or both. Today she looks like a cartoon of someone concentrating, the tip of her tongue working around her lips, her hands shaking. She’s not very good with numbers and names, so she turns her creations over to me.

Look at this, Fritzie, Little Fry says. Here’s one like yours.

She hands me a taped library overdue notice, all of the ragged corners perfectly matched, even the split letters lined up and repaired. Richard von Behren, it says, 653 Oak. Four streets away from my old house. I picture Richard von Behren with one of those regal profiles, a sharp face like a statue’s. He’s clearly in a hurry, so impatient with his pile of mail and bills that he doesn’t save and shred.