The Mercy Journals Read online

  You always were a negative Nancy.

  Transportation?

  I can get us kayaks.

  I laughed. I got dressed for work and handed him the apartment key. I held it in my hand over his palm—This is only for one day. Don’t touch anything other than the fridge.

  I was cold and hungry after work that night. I wondered where Leo had our mother’s ashes, thinking I must ask him. The wind blew so hard it seemed it would strip the new buds off the trees, and the clouds were so thick that dusk was dark as night. I had to use my Callebaut.

  No one knows how long these new flashlights are going to last, but they’re definitely outlasting their owners. They were invented by a guy called Enstice Callebaut who discovered a way to isolate microscopic particles of nuclear waste, encase them safely, and convert them to light. Callebaut instantly became a hero and is honoured once a year on Guardians of the Future Day. A lesser star was the woman who found a way to wrangle wire coat hangers into devices to suspend the light from the headboards of beds, thereby expanding its radius and preserving the integrity of books’ spines.

  The flashlight gives off a cool, narrow line of illumination that has no glow. You have to point the beam directly in someone’s face to make out their features, and no one wants that, so all we see of each other at night is our feet, unless the moon is out.

  I fretted about what to feed Leo and decided to take him to the community dining hall.

  When I opened my apartment door, Leo was sprawled in my armchair, using my mobile’s precious daily charge. He wagged his index finger at me.

  You’ve broken the rules, Allen. He nodded at the goldfish.

  Mr Pure and Noble. Mr Saviour. Mr Enforcer. Mr Fucking Good of Mankind. I’m going to have to turn you in. I’m telling Mom.

  Pets were outlawed in 2033 when it was deemed immoral to keep animals for pleasure while people starved and undomesticated species disappeared forever. I’d bought cartons of fish food, plastic bins to store it in, replacement tank lights, and filters. I’d found a black market supplier to replace fish at the cost of one week’s pay. In their small, contained world, I could take care of them and do no harm. I could experience a sliver of love and appreciate their beauty—an easy pleasure, a tiny responsibility, a miniscule infraction. A life could only shrink so small without disappearing. I’d needed those fish to survive.

  I flushed with annoyance. Get off my mobile.

  Where’d you get them? He put my mobile down with elaborate care on the side table. Hunt’s Point? Medina? South Tacoma? Capitalism creeping in on the margins, eh?

  Why are you using my mobile when I told you not to touch anything?

  Allen, my brother, take a load off. Let me get you a drink.

  I don’t drink anymore.

  No shit. Wishful thinking. A cup of tea then?

  I sat down in my easy chair, and he spoke to me like the master of my own kitchen.

  I’m sorry about the mobile, but I was so fucking bored and I didn’t feel like reading War and Peace. He made air quotes. I mean, where did you get such singularly uninteresting books? That takes a special talent.

  I owned three unreturned library books: War and Peace, Brecht: A Biography, and A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. There were four books from our parents’ library: Bad Dirt, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, Learn French the Fast and Fun Way, Weekend Woodworking with Power Tools—18 Quick and Easy Projects, and two of my sons’ old classics, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

  Leo yawned, I wanted to find out what was happening in the world. It’s been a while.

  You truly live like a bum then?

  Bum is a bit insensitive. There are places. Dormitories.

  He gave me back my mobile. I checked the history and asked, what’s Occupy Now Gold Chat?

  Some buddies from the old days. Haven’t seen them in years. I was mildly curious what they were up to. He got the milk out of the coolbox.

  What happened with the leg? He nodded toward my prosthesis.

  Garbage truck ran over it after Jennifer and I split. I don’t remember much. I was passed out beside a dumpster.

  Mom and Dad would be so proud.

  Yeah. We’re starting to make quite a pair.

  We began laughing, and every time we looked at each other, laughed harder. Leo carried a kitchen chair and placed it beside the easy chair and brought in two cups of tea.

  So, seriously, Leo. Are you looking to get yourself killed?

  He looked away.

  You know mobs have killed people for less?

  He shrugged. I’m not sure more life is what the doctor’s ordering right now. He smiled thinly. I am bored. So bored I can barely be bothered to feed myself. Fatally bored. You know me, I don’t like having to cooperate and play nicely with the other assholes in the sandbox. I want to grab everything for myself and then not even play with it. Just savour knowing other people want it. It’s the way I am.

  He was getting back in his armour. His eyes weren’t settling on anything.

  Hence my mobile, I observed.

  He glanced at me, then raised one hand as though he were a king graciously bestowing a gift.

  One of the last pleasures of a dying man.

  Those could add up, I had a feeling.

  We finished our tea in silence.

  I replayed Ruby’s presence in the room. It was radioactive. I crossed my legs to hide an erection.

  I told Leo that the government had announced another amnesty period. All he had to do was turn himself in and he’d get set up with a housing unit, a job, a Callebaut, and a mobile. I offered to take him by the office the next morning. He said sure, sure, and asked if I had a woman.

  Something about his asking put me on edge. I didn’t feel like sharing my sandbox toys.

  Why, did someone come by?

  He smiled.

  Did she leave a message?

  Not really. We had a good conversation though. Interesting woman.

  Leo, I am going to help you out of your misery right now and permanently, if you don’t tell me word for word what she said.

  A tactical error, I knew immediately, but there was no right move. I remembered the ease with which Ruby had taken her clothes off. I replayed the way Leo was sprawled in my armchair when I got home. His talk about boredom, the last pleasures of a dying man. Still, I doubted he would have laughed the way we did at the thought of our parents seeing us if he’d just poached my woman. Then I didn’t doubt it.

  I leaned forward in my chair, hunting thoughts in his eyes. He looked back at me with a defiant glitter, then he crumpled. I will always be the one who had what he wanted and now can never have. And I have never really wanted anything he had. I realize now, writing this, that that picture of himself in the sandbox, just having all the toys and not even playing with them, is how he saw me in our family.

  She was looking for you, obviously. I offered her tea but she didn’t want anything. When I told her I was your brother, she asked me some questions about what kind of kid you were, where we grew up. That kind of thing.

  I didn’t want Leo to know I had no way to reach her. I didn’t want Leo to know anything about her. I wanted to make sure he never set eyes on her again. And I was thrilled she had come looking for me.

  Where’d you meet a woman like that? he asked.

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  It’s not hard to see why you’d want to keep her all to yourself.

  I remained silent.

  Allen, give me some money for booze. Don’t worry, I’ll fuck off soon, but I have to have a drink tonight.

  I bought him a half-litre of rye on the way to the dining hall. During dinner we asked about each other’s families to fill in the time. Leo said he used to walk by his old house and listen for their voices, but when the garden had been silent for a while, he stopped going by. He hadn’t had the courage to look inside.

  It
dawned on me to feel guilty that I never tried to contact my nieces. Luke and Sam used to bug me to visit their cousins, then they stopped. Leo and I forked our lasagne in. It had been a kind of madness not to think about my nieces during such dangerous times. I saw those two little girls with their pink ATVS and their big-screen TVS, their pom-poms and purses.

  I got unnerved amid the clatter and talk in the cafeteria. Leo asked about Sam and Luke. He latched onto them as a subject. And I thought, why is he worrying about my sons instead of his daughters?

  Allen, did you ever think they might have gone to the cabin? Did they ever talk to you about it?

  Like I said, I was planning on taking the family there when things got really bad. The boys were young then, but they probably knew.

  Allen. Let’s go. Let’s go up there. Let’s see if they’re there.

  What about your daughters?

  They might be there too.

  I looked down at his empty plate and spoke slowly.

  If the boys survived, they’re probably fine. If I start worrying about my sons, I will not be able to stay sane. My world is not big enough for that. They don’t need my shame. And I don’t need their forgiveness.

  Leo was scanning the cafeteria.

  Next morning, he was gone when I woke up.

  March 24 |

  I checked if Leo had taken anything, then fed my fish as my tea was brewing and my porridge was setting. I watched them eat while I ate and drank. The males have longer, lighter-coloured feathery fins, while the females are rounder, bigger, and more efficient. Three of the fish darted with golden brilliance after the desiccated flakes drifting down past the plastic plants to the treasure chest with skull and crossbones that Luke gave me, but the fourth fish, a male, remained hovering near the bottom. I tapped the glass beside the fourth fish with my spoon. It spurted forward a bit, keeled over, then righted itself. They never get better. I tapped again and the sick fish shimmied slowly up to take a few unconvincing bites of a flake on the surface. One of the other fish swam over and jerked the flake away.

  The sick fish sank back to the bottom. I finished my porridge. The sick fish depressed me. I washed my spoon and bowl and went to take another sip of tea when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sick goldfish give a sudden jerk. Two of the others had muscled into its corner behind the plastic plants and—I saw it—one of them swam up to the sick one and took a bite out of its fin. The sick fish jerked again and moved a couple of centimetres forward.

  I sprang into action. I got more food and tried to fob the sons of bitches off with extra flakes. The new food distracted them for a minute or two, but then they closed in again. The sick one flapped its tail and moved a few centimetres as they approached.

  My father used to say that only man is truly cruel because he has free will and is conscious of what he does. He said only man kills for fun. I wish he could see this. Try to imagine, I’d like to say to him, two men, stuffed to the gills, so to speak, so definitely not hungry, taking nibbles off a dying man—biting off an occasional toe or ear lobe, unaffected by his cries of pain. They wouldn’t be abnormal men, I’d explain to my father in a deadpan tone, just regular, everyday guys.

  I filled a glass bowl with water, matching the temperature as best I could to the tank’s water, and got out my green fish net. I should’ve just flushed the sick one down the toilet. Without a miracle from the fish god—who never seems to dish out miracles—it was going to die. But because this tiny brainless flash of orange was my pet, I felt responsible for it.

  I lowered the net into the tank. The sick fish scurried through the plants to the opposite side. The healthy ones also fled. Piscatory helter-skelter. After a couple of passes and a flick of my wrist, I caught the sick one and transferred it to the bowl. I picked out a sprig of fake greenery so the invalid would feel at home and sprinkled in a few flakes, in case it wanted to eat before going belly up.

  Experience has taught me that there is no green net in life. I have only seen the opposite. When the other fish in your tank attack, you need your own army to survive, no matter how many representatives you have at the UN or OneWorld’s Regional Council.

  I scrubbed the green net gently using dish detergent and a nail brush, rinsed it thoroughly with water from my rainwater bucket, dried it first with a towel, then by waving it in the air, and returned it to its place in the utensil drawer. By the time I pushed the drawer shut, the tremors had come on and I had to get to work.

  March 25 |

  I was tired that day. Leo’s visit had drained me, but when I handed my scanner back to Velma and hung up my uniform jacket, I got a surge. Ruby! I checked the time on my mobile, thought it must be about the same as the last two times I’d met her. I lounged against the stone wall like a man with nothing to do but wait for a woman. I picked out the sound of her heels from a distance and waited with a silly grin. I invited her for dinner.

  I live in an old office building near the original railway yard. It was converted to apartments at the turn of the century. Its front entrance has been boarded shut and a small door fitted inside the old one to minimize heat loss. I unlocked the door and held it open for her. We still had just enough daylight to make our way up the three flights of stairs with me touching the wall and leading the way. I got my key out of my pocket and lifted it to the keyhole. The air in the hallway seemed suddenly sucked away and a shyness came over me, which I tried to hide. I unlocked the door to my apartment, switched on the light, and held the door open.

  What a pauper’s gesture! Come in to my garden of earthly delight, my nest, lovingly built to attract a mate. I had never really seen my apartment until this moment. Other than the one coat hook, I had taken no steps to make it home. There were no curtains, no pictures, no vases or trinkets or photographs. The place was the civilian version of a barracks. I also smelled it for the first time, the heretofore invisible scent of self, like the smell of clothes brought out of storage—the musty skin oils that laundering never quite removes. The overall ambience would not be helped by the goldfish, now floating belly-up in the glass bowl beside the kitchen sink, luckily mostly hidden by a tall jar of oats.

  Ruby ducked under my arm. Of course she’d already seen my apartment, but not formally, not by invitation, not with my conscious awareness. I followed her in, went directly to the living room window, and opened it. I invited her to sit in the stuffed chair, grabbed Leo’s bedding from the corner, took it into the bedroom, and shoved it in the closet. I had the thought of changing the locks; he was the kind of guy who would get a key copied. Then I picked up the glass bowl, holding it in front of me so my body blocked her sightline, and rushed it to the bathroom. I poured the contents into the toilet, briefly admired the beauty of my fish, and flushed, but the water pressure was too low to push even a raisin down the pipe.

  I went back to the kitchen for a soup ladle. Ruby was crouching in front of the shelf under the windows, looking through my micro library. Her jacket had fallen open. She wore a slip of sky blue silk—an arresting garment in these times. Its shimmer reminded me of the fish’s scales.

  Just be a minute, I said, and disappeared back into the bathroom where I spooned the fish out of the toilet bowl back into the glass bowl and, for lack of any better place, hid it under my bed. I came back out and put the kettle on, closed the window, put the soup ladle in a pot to sanitize later, plugged the heater into my battery, set it in front of her, and asked if she was hungry. Before she answered I went to the coolbox, opened the door and announced, egg, sausage, and toast on the menu tonight.

  She was back in the armchair, feet up on the ottoman, immersed in a book she’d chosen from the shelf. That blue silk clung to her. Starved, she said. Are you a decent cook? You don’t mind if I read while you work?

  I can find my way around a frying pan. Read. More peace for the chef.

  I was glad of the chance to get used to her presence without having to talk. I lay the sausages in the frying pan with a sizzle and stared out the window
while they cooked, then broke the eggs into the pan and watched the tide of white move from the edges to the vortex.

  She had ravaged me the last time and there was a predatory aspect to her now, like our family cat who used to pretend to sleep in the backyard while birds hopped closer.

  I forked the sausages onto two plates, and the egg and toast, and called madam to dinner. I had one hand on the back of a kitchen chair while the other hung by my side, fluttering, as though I were playing alternating notes on a piano with my thumb and baby finger. She looked at that hand and lay the book down.

  We sat at the table watching the goldfish while we ate. I berated myself for offering her dinner. It was much more awkward than just having sex. At least she was hungry. She ate voraciously.

  Do you come from a large family? I inquired.

  No. She took another bite and asked with her mouth full, Why?

  Usually people who eat that fast had to compete for seconds.

  No, I was an only child. I guess I just like to get to my pleasures fast.

  I choked and laughed at the same time.

  It was then I asked about her, where she grew up, that kind of thing. She gave me the thin version. A résumé.

  I’m from Bellingham, former Washington State. Only child, older parents, both dead. Before the die-off I was a custom’s officer at the Peace Arch/Blaine border crossing. I did that for seven years. It got tough when people started trying to move north and the Canadians made us turn everyone back. The job got a lot better after annexation and all we had to do was direct people to the nearest resources. When OneWorld came into play I could’ve switched to doing city borders, but a lot of folks wanted that gig and I was done. I travelled for a couple of years, then I started performing. I sing and dance now to cover my rations and such. Though I could use a larger food ration.

  It wasn’t hard to notice what was not being said. I travelled for a couple of years. What that would have meant for a lone woman in the early days of OneWorld. And then the next thirteen years—I sing and dance to cover my rations. I sensed a fellow loner marching with oblivion’s band, yet she seemed also to be facing forward, taking risks the way I used to. I admired her. She finished eating and lay her fork and knife neatly across the centre of her plate, pushed her chair out from the table, and tilted it back on two legs.