The Mercy Journals Page 10

  The spokesworm climbed up to the bridge of my nose and lifted his arms for silence. The others moved back to listen. I was cross-eyed watching him.

  David he wrote words of sin

  Goliath came and clocked him

  David tried to write some more

  Goliath feigned a little snore

  Then up and got ’im in a headlock

  Mussing up poor David’s dreadlocks

  Let my memories go, D cried

  Golly’s laughter was rather snide

  Hey there Moses of the mind

  It’s your meat I’m going to grind

  Golly said, you’ll never win, see?

  Which made Allen Quincy

  Even more wincy!

  At this last line all the worms broke out dancing and singing again, waving their arms in the air and blowing whistles. Those closest to my left eyelid began to exit the stage by ducking under and the others followed. C’mon, Quincy, what you got to lose? asked the spokesworm.

  As I was considering my answer to this question, I heard pounding. The noise persists and I am thinking maybe it exists outside my head. Maybe someone is pounding on the door.

  Allen! Allen! I know you’re in there, bro. Open up. I got a plan I want to tell you about.

  I lay my pencil down. My mother’s journal is puffy now, the pages crinkled from the force of the pencil lead pressing down on the paper. He can’t be certain I’m here.

  C’mon, Allen. Hear me out, he thumps again. It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you before I die. One last thing. Open the door.

  I see now that a writer is a kind of tactician with a limited array of materiel. One must consider how to deploy one’s weapons and plan the order, timing, and pacing: attack, ambush, invade, surrender. I believe I have failed. My strategy has failed.

  Leo thumps on the door again, a frustrated whack. C’mon, ya bastard, open up! It’s a good plan. You owe me a hearing at least. Then, in a wheedling voice, I heard your boys are there. We gotta go find them.

  I leap up and pull the door open. Leo’s crouching by the keyhole. He looks up at me.

  My boys! How have you heard from them? Do you have their coordinates?

  No, no, I don’t.

  You’re lying. You don’t know anything.

  I heard. I heard from a guy.

  I am going to close the door now. Don’t bother me again. I close the door.

  C’mon, bro. What you got to lose?

  I feel like I pulled the pin on a grenade but I’m failing to throw it.

  I go to pour a drink. One of the goldfish floats up to the surface. Its beautiful, translucent fins, white and long, look like the thing at the end of a wedding dress.

  April 8 |

  My story becomes a betrayal in the writing down of it. It’s a sordid little deal: in exchange for exposing the suffering and death of other people to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who might happen to read my words, I, their murderer, get my life back.

  No.

  Not doing it.

  Grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins: I could whisper the description of the victim’s last minutes to them, but not to a stranger who never loved them. (That word, “victim,” how I loathe it. The people trying to cross the border were people, not a subset, “victims.” They should not be defined by the genocide, defined by an act they had nothing to do with. Only we, the murderers, the genociders, should be defined.) I don’t even know if this will be read, or if you, my theoretical reader, a stranger, will indulge in the schadenfreude that you, at least, are still alive, or worse, if you’ll get a manic jolt, a whiff of omnipotence, the pleasure of power over others ignited in you, but I must assume the possibility because you, my reader, if you exist, will also be human.

  Writing is pornographic. It is like forcing prisoners to perform a striptease of their suffering in front of an anonymous crowd–their exposure a final, sadistic, posthumous indignity.

  I grasp my head between my hands and squeeze.

  They’re dead, I whisper. What expense to them if I pinch their pockets? Their souls, already long released, what does it matter to them if I tell their story to save my soul?

  I get up to pour myself another depth charge. My hand is shaking. I’ve lost count, but I just drained another bottle of R & R that, mere hours ago, was full. Two empties stand beside it. There’s still one more full bottle waiting under the kitchen sink. I haven’t been outside in three days. I haven’t returned Velma’s text messages. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to work. I haven’t slept and I’m down to a jar of pickles and a box of stale crackers.

  While I’m shoving crackers in my mouth Leo comes back. I want to strangle him. He bangs on my door and calls my name, then I hear the fabric of his clothes rub the door as he slumps to the floor. He’s breathing heavily. While I’m wondering if he’s passed out and whether I can tiptoe back to the table, another set of footsteps comes up the stairs. I cringe and crouch into a ball.

  Who the fuck are you? Leo slurs.

  Is this the apartment of Allen Quincy?

  Who wansa know?

  I’m Mr Quincy’s nephew.

  Well I’m Mr Quincy’s only brother and I don’t have sons, so that’s gotta make you my stepson.

  Silence.

  Leo?

  No shit.

  Uncle Allen wasn’t sure he’d see you again.

  So sudge luck.

  Silence.

  You wanna come to Nirvana?

  The cabin?

  A grunt.

  He’s not here. Take me downstairs. Grabba bite.

  I bring my drink back to the table, glad they’re gone.

  When I told Ruby about the genocide on the border, the words were warm from my breath, but when I wrote them down they turned hard and armoured, and this fills me with disgust. Of course writing doesn’t destroy memory, I’ve known that since just after I started, yet it does alter memory and it does destroy living memory. I thought that might be enough. Who can shoot the written word? Who can punish it or kill it? Does it die from lack of oxygen? From a broken heart? From shame? Can it lose its soul? But writing also turns private memory out onto the street like an underage runaway and makes me feel like both a pimp and a john, as well as a murderer.

  My plan has failed. I’ll never be cured.

  Instead I’ll keep guard over the only thing left to my dead: their place in my memory. I’ll keep them nestled in the warmth of the pinky–grey, plushy folds of my brain, singing their requiem with electric pings leaping from neuron to neuron, spreading out in myriad branches behind the armour of my skull, their existence only as immortal as I am, tender and private, for as long as we both shall live. I will heave my shoulder to the door and use my mind as a weapon to protect them from oblivion.

  I have arrived at the exact opposite result of what I intended, a turn of events that, I imagine, is not unfamiliar to writers. I’m so tired. I’ll pour one more R & R and slip into the black velvet arms of sleep.

  April 9 |

  I talked to Ruby well into the afternoon that day as the light brightened then waned. I emptied my memory onto her, obscenely, and she lay there and took it. Two people alone in a room.

  I don’t know what I expected. I was compelled to speak, regardless of the result, there was no other way out, but I suppose what I hoped was that the universe, like some kind of divine escort service, had sent Ruby to bring me happiness. All the sex of the previous six weeks—I had mistaken the experience for rebirth, but rebirth doesn’t happen from the outside.

  When I stopped speaking she made no comment. It was around four in the afternoon. We stared at the ceiling for a while, side by side.

  I’m hungry, she said, and that was proven by an outrageous growl from her belly.

  I had laid my intestines out for her to see and now I had the humiliating task of looping them up again and trying to tuck them back in, in front of her. It was going to take some time and the smell wouldn’t be the best. Meanwhile, she had shown m
e nothing.

  I dragged myself into the kitchen, to get away from her, to hide the horror that was Allen Quincy. I made her dinner. Her appetite, which had been such a delight at first, such a surprise and a joy, had become oppressive.

  What did I cook? I took out some potatoes, kidney beans, a can of tomatoes. I made her a mash. It took an hour in the pressure cooker. She stayed in my bedroom, for which I was grateful. When it was cooked I added salt. I called her and managed to tuck in the last loop of guts before she came into the room and sat down. I slopped the mush into the bowl in front of her. Not my most appetizing looking meal.

  She looked at it. She picked up her spoon and leaned over her bowl, my bowl, and spoke. I’m fighting my own battle Quincy. I don’t have the strength to fight yours. She turned her head and glanced quickly at me. There were tears in her eyes. She looked back down at the slop I’d dished out. Whatever you want from me? What do you want? Whatever you want, her voice rose, you’ve opened a door here. She looked around, like a cornered animal. She was getting ready to bolt. You’ve opened a door here, she repeated.

  I don’t want you to carry anything, I said.

  What did you imagine would happen? What could you have imagined?

  I couldn’t speak.

  She stopped looking around. She took a bite of her food, chewed rapidly. Eyes fixed on her plate, she said, Either you want sympathy Quincy, or you want sex. I’m not giving you both.

  I had no words.

  She took another bite, chewed quickly. Her shoulders floated down from a hunched position and she reset them in her dancer’s posture. She lifted her head, ready for an audience.

  I’m not here—on this earth, Quincy, she pointed at the floor, to look after you. My milk days, she lifted one of her breasts the way a nursing mother does to offer the nipple to a baby, are over.

  A black rage exploded through me. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed it until she dropped the spoon.

  I am not here—on this earth, I said between clenched teeth, to feed you. And at this particular instant I want neither sympathy nor sex, so maybe you should leave.

  My heart was breaking. I looked wildly around the room for help, at the corner of sky I could see out of my window from the kitchen. It was raining hard.

  A second passed. She leapt to her feet, twisted under my arm, and broke my grasp. She backed away in a crouch, arms out, panther-like, moving side-to-side, back and forth, in a state of readiness to attack. She must have known that Brazilian martial art, Capoeira. I put my hand up and dropped my head, signalling no further attack.

  She backed up to the coat hook, got her coat, and put it on. She took rain boots out of her bag and a pair of socks and perched on the arm of my easy chair to pull them on. She came over, grabbed my shoulders, dug her nails into the backs of my arms, and kissed me hard, hard enough to split my lip against my teeth.

  I’d risked it all for a chance to keep her. I’d had no choice. I was in a boxed canyon.

  She looked at me. I was disconcerted because there was blood on her teeth from my lip. She looked at me for a long time and went out the door.

  I am still trying to comprehend that look. It wasn’t goodbye. It wasn’t despair. It wasn’t hatred. There was rage, fiery rage, an intent to destroy, and maybe the merest flicker of curiosity.

  April 10 |

  The cupboard’s empty, the fridge is empty, the bottles are empty, my journal is almost full. I put my pencil down and stare at the wall. I hear a noise, a hesitant throat clearing, from near the window. The last hue of slate-grey sky darkens and wind gusts against the windowpane.

  The spokesworm steps out from behind the curtain into a pool of white light. He is wearing a top hat and tails and carrying a cane with a silver top. He holds a cordless mike and gazes out into space as though over the heads of an anonymous crowd. He looks down at his feet at the end of his short threadlike legs, as though waiting for the crowd to finish their applause and get out their last coughs and whispers, then he looks up, directly at me, and starts to sing the old 1970s classic “Send in the Clowns.”

  As he begins, “Isn’t it rich …,” a chorus of worms dressed as clowns shuffles into position in a pool of light floating just behind his right shoulder. They are wearing red, orange, yellow, and rainbow wigs, floppy hats with daisies in them, big red noses, big shoes, and loose onesies with pompom buttons. Some are happy, with big smiles painted over their mouths, and others are sad, with a teardrop painted on their cheeks. Once they are all assembled and in position—a process that involves quite a bit of jostling, friends trying to stand together, showboats striving for the centre of the spotlight—they stare soulfully straight ahead.

  The song has a melancholy, world-weary, ironic tone and the spokesworm sings with all the rich smoothness and shabby grace it demands. As the lyrics contrast one of the lovers’ frenetic, constant motions with the other’s complete paralysis, lights come up softly on a raised platform floating behind and to the right of the chorus with a steel coffin on a viewing stand. Two worms are frantically trying to pry the lid open with crowbars.

  The spokesworm looks meaningfully at me and croons the refrain, but instead of “clowns” he sings “worms”—send in the worms—which gives the song a whole new twist. He goes on to describe how one of the lovers finally decided to stop philandering and make a commitment only to find that the object of their love was no longer there, they’d moved on.

  Here the clown-worms leave their pool of light and queue up by the coffin, having pried the lid open, and slowly begin to shuffle past, looking inside with exaggerated sadness. As the spokesworm sings that no one is there, the worms tilt the coffin toward me so I can see it’s empty, and I know that I was the one who was supposed to be inside.

  The spokesworm continues the song’s wry lament about poor timing and missed connections, his voice like warm clear water gliding over smooth rocks, and the clown-worms commence a series of tumbling somersaults and handsprings in and out of the empty coffin like a troupe of gymnasts, reverting to their baseline carnival exuberance. The spokesworm looks down at his wristwatch as though seeking an answer there, but finding none, reprises the chorus, “send in the worms.” The spotlight on the clown-worms fades to black.

  The spokesworm stands alone, still brightly illuminated, and looks over at me with wistful hopefulness, then he shrugs and walks off the stage whispering, Maybe next year.

  April 11 |

  I woke up this morning with my pillow damp from tears and the image of Ruby looking at me, crouching and swaying back and forth, back and forth. Unusually, the sun is shining, which means everyone will be indoors. If I can get myself out before the cloud returns, I can have the world to myself.

  But first, this final entry. I’ve made my tea—oh, it tastes good. The last few nights I’ve been Sinbad the Sailor with my dead clamped on my shoulders ready to cut off my air lest I forget them. Today something has lifted.

  I dropped the spoon with the sugar I was about to put in my tea. My hand isn’t exactly steady this morning. As I wiped the white grains of sugar into a pile and enfolded it in the cold damp cloth, something red caught my eye from under the armchair. I crawled over, lowered my cheek to the floor, and fished out a red sandal. It must’ve fallen out of her bag when she was getting her raingear out.

  Her animal face looked at me, fight or flight, focused on flight but fight was right there. Her eyes weren’t connecting with me. I remembered her squeezing my arm at the flea market, letting me know she understood how things were with her, strong and weak, but she was helpless to change them.

  I held her shoe in both my hands and rubbed its worn leather with my thumbs. I know how to find her. I have found my One Pure Thing, and when I find her, I will OPT out.

  Someone’s pounding on my door, making it hard to concentrate on writing. Brother Leo’s hand reaching out to me. I am neither alive nor dead, drunk nor sober, neither dreaming nor fully awake. It’s a race to write these last words before his pounding
breaks the catch. He is not reaching out because he wants to save me. He is reaching out because he wants something from me.

  Salvation comes in many forms.

  JOURNAL TWO

  Late April, 2047 |

  I opened my eyes. I couldn’t distinguish the morning mist from the fog. I was alert, which made me guess something external to myself had woken me. I scanned for scent, searched for a visual.

  My cheek was out of the tent on the ground. The forest floor smelled of late-winter rot, not punky, but a fresh, loamy smell. The dead leaves and needles were brown and damp, darker where they had already begun turning to earth, yet the humus on the surface seemed red, a dark, brick red, aggressively absorbing the growing white light of day through the mist until it was almost fluorescent.

  The coldest time of day is just after the sun rises, when a biting draft comes up. This morning was no different. I was frozen.

  I listened for a repetition of the sound that might have woken me. I let my breath out very slowly. I did not yet dare feel for the knife I’d left beside me when I went to sleep.

  I am alone and badly wounded.

  I listened, but all I heard was my heart straining to push large volumes of blood to my muscles in preparation for battle. All I heard was the drip, drip of moisture that had coalesced in drops too heavy to cling to leaves or needles, plinking down in the forest. What I heard was nothing from the birds. Two knives would have been better, one for each hand. I cursed myself for not bringing the Beretta.

  A new leaf on a salmonberry bobbed on its stem. I heard a swish, like a short out-breath or the back suck of a small wave on a pebble beach, and knew that she’d left. She’d been watching.