Fallen Land (42 page)

“What would you have me do here, Paul?” she asks. “I want to do something for you.”

“You mean now?”

“There is no other time. This is the end of your time. This is the last time I will see you and the last time you will lay eyes on me. You notice I don’t assume that you will
see
me, only that your eyes will rest on my body. I don’t think you’ve ever really
seen
me, not in the way that I have seen you.”

The cockiness drains out, smoothed away, the smirks and quirks and eye-rolling stares exit left and right, all of them gone, until there is just the hardened dark face of a boy with lime-blue aquamarine eyes and the heaviness of loss about him, pulling him down now that the mask can no longer do the looking for him, propping him up in performance.

“No, I see you. I can see now,” he says, folding his hands on the table. “That’s enough. You don’t have to do anything else. Just sit there. Just look at me.”

A
T TEN TO MIDNIGHT,
LOUISE
tells Julia she is going out for the walk she has been planning since dawn, knowing she wants to be nowhere else but on the open fields of what was once her farm when one day turns over to the next, and another life, the fire and horror of that specific life, goes out of the world.

Although it is December the air is cool but not yet cold, the sky clear, the familiar winter constellations appearing where she expects them to be. The pavements are dry, the floodwaters of three years ago receding even as the unfinished houses remain in their hazardous state, eye-socket cavities rotting and dark, all the empty land untouched, weed-wild, pocked with utilities points and streetlights, waiting for houses that may never come. The grass is long and brown, wildflowers dried out rather than frozen and disintegrating into nourishing muck, everything tinder dry and aching, splitting, the soil seething with roots. Still good land, rich land, acres that could produce again, but it needs renewal, a new start. Taking the head of a tall prairie stalk in her fingers she scatters seeds on the wind, laughing at herself as if an invisible companion has seen through her intentions. Yes,
all
the time, every day, the fingers itch, the impulse flutters along the nerves, the hand reaches for what it should not touch, for what hangs in the pocket tonight, rattling light.

When she is out of sight of the houses, down an incline, past one of the old gullies where the cottonwoods still grow, a confusion of limbs in the moonlight, angling tree-beasts, she stops and finds a sheltered place in the open fields where the dead grass lies in bundles gathered together by the passage of wind and the movement of deer. According to her watch the first injection will occur in thirty seconds, the death following shortly thereafter. From the pocket of her coat she takes out the box, slides it open, removes two sticks, slides the box closed, and snaps the sulfurous heads against the friction panel on one side. Two yellow darts appear and merge as she drops the box back into her coat, cupping her hand round the flame, leaning close to the earth and waiting as the fire catches, draws oxygen to its heat, and takes hold.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For assistance and advice of various kinds, thanks to Michael Holtmann, Deborah Seddon, Aimée Stoffel, Skyler Dalley, Dr. Claudia M. Toth, Sonja Amber Kuchma Hosler, Ana María Sánchez-Arce, Paul Tick, Jim Owens, Katy Breuer, Fernando Melendez, Clemens Mackay of Solstice Hill Farm, Carolyn and Frederick Wellington, and the staff and inmates of the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

Profound thanks to everyone at Atlantic Books, but most especially to Margaret Stead, Ravi Mirchandani, Karen Duffy, Toby Mundy, James Roxburgh, and Tamsin Shelton, as well as to Sarah McGrath at Riverhead Books.

For their tireless efforts on my behalf, thanks to the incomparable Victoria Hobbs, Jennifer Custer, and George Lucas.

For being nothing like my characters, thanks to my parents.

For wisdom, patience, and love, thanks most of all to Andrew van der Vlies.