Хлоя Бенджамин - The Immortalists

‘Daniel,’ says Gertie. If she doesn’t stop repeating his name, he’ll scream. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘You don’t believe in God, either, Ma,’ he says. ‘You just want to.’

Gertie blinks, her lips pursed, though she keeps very still. Daniel puts a hand on her shoulder and leans down to kiss her cheek. She’s still standing in the kitchen when he leaves.

He walks behind the house to the shed. Inside are Mira’s gardening tools: the half-empty packets of seeds, the leather gloves and silver watering can. He moves the green hose from the bottom shelf in order to reach the shoe box behind it. Within the shoe box is a small handgun. When he joined the military, he received firearm training. It seemed reasonable to have a weapon. Besides an annual trip to the firing range in Saugerties, he hasn’t used it, but he renewed his permit in March. He loads the gun and carries it to the car inside his jacket. He may need to intimidate Bruna to make her talk.

It’s just after noon when he pulls onto the highway. By the time he realizes he forgot to clear his browser history, he’s already in Pennsylvania.

He passes Scranton in early afternoon. When he hits Columbus, it’s nearly nine. His shoulders are tight and his head pounds, but he rattles with cheap coffee and expectation. The cities become more rural: Huber Heights, Vandalia, Tipp City. West Milton is denoted by a small green and beige sign. It takes less than five minutes to drive through the town. Flat houses with aluminum siding, then soft hills and farmland. There’s no trailer or trailer park to be seen, but Daniel is undeterred. If he wanted to hide, he’d go to the woods.

He checks the clock: ten thirty-two and there are no other cars on the road. The waterfall from the message board is at the corner of Routes 571 and 48, behind a furniture store. Daniel parks and walks to the overlook. He sees nothing except the staircase, which is as rickety as reported. The steps are slick with wet leaves, the railing scabbed with rust.

What if Bruna has left West Milton entirely? But it’s too soon to give up, he tells himself, walking back to the car. The forest extends unbroken to the next town over. If she has left, she might not have gone far.

He continues north, following the Stillwater River into Ludlow Falls, population 209. Beyond a field on Covington Avenue, he can see the bridge that carries Route 48 over another waterfall, the most impressive one yet. He parks at the edge of the grass, pulls on his wool coat, and tucks the gun in his pocket. Then he walks downhill, under the bridge.

The Ludlow Falls are almost two stories tall, roaring. An old stairway leads at least thirty feet into the gorge, to a pathway skirting the river and lit only by moonlight.

He descends slowly at first, then faster as he adjusts to the width and tempo of the steps.

The gorge is jagged, more difficult to navigate. His coat keeps catching on branches, and he trips twice over gnarled roots. Why did he think this was a good idea? The gorge is too narrow to accommodate a motor home, the entrance too steep. He keeps walking, hoping to find another staircase or a trail that leads to higher ground, but his anticipation soon turns to fatigue. At one point, he slips on a slick ledge of sheet rock and has to drop to all fours to avoid falling into the river.

His hands scrabble over moss and stone. The knees of his slacks are soaked through; his heartbeat has dropped to his stomach and settled there, wrongly. There’s still time for him to turn around. He could rent a motel room, clean up, and arrive home by morning, telling Mira he fell asleep at the office. She might be perturbed, but she would believe him. Above all, he is loyal.

Instead, he peels himself carefully off of the rock, rising to his knees and then to stand. He finds better traction farther from the water, where the underbrush is dry. As the gorge narrows, it begins to rise. He’s not sure how much time has passed when he notices that the falls have become distant. He must have walked around them, to the south side.

Daniel sees flatter land above. He stumbles more quickly, grabbing tree trunks and low branches to help pull himself out of the gorge. As he climbs, straining his eyes in the dark, he notices that part of the clearing is blocked by something angular. Rectangular.

A motor home is parked in a patch of flat land beneath dense trees. By the time he reaches the upper lip of the gorge, he’s out of breath, but he feels like he could do the climb twice over. The trailer is speckled with mud. Snow clumps on the roof. The windows are covered, and the word Regatta is written in slanting script across the side.

He’s surprised to find the door unlocked. He mounts the stairs and steps inside.

A moment before his eyes adjust to the dark. It’s difficult to see with the windows covered, but the basic layout is discernible. He stands in a cramped living area, his left knee touching a dingy couch in a terrible abstract pattern. There’s a table across from the couch, or barely a table – a surface that folds out from the wall, currently stacked with boxes. Two metal folding chairs are wedged between the table and the front seats, also covered with boxes. To the left of the table is a sink and another strip of counter space with an assortment of candles and figurines.

He walks farther into the trailer, passing a spare, cramped bathroom before he comes to a closed door. In the center of the door, at eye level, a wooden cross hangs from two thumbtacks. He turns the doorknob.

A twin bed has been pushed up next to the wall. Beside it is a crate with a bible on top, as well as a plate, empty except for a plastic wrapper. Above that is a small, square window. The bed is covered with plaid flannel sheets and a navy blue comforter between which extends a single foot.

Daniel clears his throat. ‘Get up.’

The body stirs. Its face is turned to one side and hidden beneath long tendrils of hair. Slowly, a woman shifts onto her back and opens one eye, then the other. For a moment, she looks at him blankly. Then she inhales sharply and pushes herself to a seated position. She wears a cotton nightgown printed with tiny yellow flowers.

‘I have a gun,’ says Daniel. ‘Get dressed.’ Already, he’s disgusted by her. Her foot is bare, the heel rough and cracked. ‘We’re going to talk.’

He brings her into the living area and tells her to sit on the couch. She carries the navy comforter from the bedroom and keeps it wrapped around her shoulders. Daniel removes the black shades from the windows, so that he can see her better in the moonlight.

She’s still heavy, though perhaps she looks larger this way, swaddled in the comforter. Her hair is white and unkempt and hangs down to her breasts; her face is covered with delicate, capillary wrinkles, so precise they could be drawn by pencil. The flesh beneath her eyes is a sallow pink.

‘I know you.’ Her voice is rusty. ‘I remember you. You came to see me in New York. You had your siblings, they were there. Two girls and a little boy.’

‘They’re dead. The boy, and one of the girls.’

The woman’s mouth is pursed. She shifts beneath the comforter.

‘I know your name,’ Daniel says. ‘It’s Bruna Costello. I know your family, and what they’ve done. But I want to know about you. I want to know why you do what you do, and why you did what you did to us.’

The woman’s mouth is set. ‘I don’t got nothing to say to you.’

Daniel takes the gun out from inside his jacket and fires two bullets into the aluminum floor. The woman shrieks and covers her ears; the comforter falls to one side. There’s a scar, white and shiny like dried glue, beneath her collarbone.

‘That’s my home,’ she says. ‘You got no right to do that.’