Hystopia: A Novel (23 page)

There might be something in the rumor about men having duels, she said, swiping the flies off her arm, shaking them out of her hair. He’s mentioned it a few times, so he’s thinking a lot about it.

Hank looked out at the water, his voice low and weary. Well, a duel is an arrangement, a formality, an unnatural structure around death. It’s a way to solve disputes. It’s a way to make sure two men shoot at each other no matter what. It doesn’t make sense that men up there, trying to reclaim their glory days, would resort to duels. It seems too orderly. Too pat. But then maybe that’s why it’s a rumor and not necessarily true. Maybe it’s something hoped for, deep down. Not by Rake but by whoever’s out there dreaming. Someone thought about duels and then they imagined a story behind it, or they were delusional and believed what they imagined, something like that.

He knew what he was feeling—a chill went through him and he shivered. He was resisting the urge to unfold himself, to reverse the treatment he had given himself, to go back to the water, to put his feet in the lake, to dive all the way in and hold himself under. He sat next to her and looked at the sky, at the pearly whites and heavy grays and deeper silvers out to the horizon, gripping the water as it reached up—close in color, not too different—and the sky reached down to form a slice of deeper dark where the two met, and the heavy waves, closer in, lumbering slowly with large gaps between as if avoiding each other, and he could hear—in the sound of the waves, in the lift of the wind—the way it spoke to the trees behind them, and the trees were speaking back, with a deep sigh, carrying the far-off scent of wide, boreal forests in the high reaches of the Canadian Shield, where an answer to the eternal question was forming.

RETURN

It takes two to fight and five to riot, Singleton thought, struggling to keep his attention on the road as they drove to her father’s house. Kids were throwing rocks, darting out of yards with their arms raised, aiming at whatever was moving. The trick was to keep to a moderate speed, not too fast to kill someone if they ran out, but fast enough to scare, and it was important to stay on the side streets—empty, sad-looking, arched over with trees.

“Didn’t your old man have some kind of escape plan?”

Wendy stared ahead and said, “He said he’d stick it out. We’ll have to drag him out. It’s going to take force.”

“Good old force,” Singleton said, abstractly.

The horizon was a rubber gasket of dark clouds. Looters were gathering.

“He’s incredibly stubborn. He’s been through a lot. He’ll see this as one more thing to go through.”

She spun the radio dial through static and signals of the Emergency Broadcast System. Finally she found Iggy All the Time, another spin of
Fun House
, the beat quicker than usual because the turntable was fast. Iggy’s voice had a fresh manic edge. Two blocks from Wendy’s house, they passed kids lugging cans of gasoline. A block later, they passed the kid in the yard, the one who had been striking the charge pose, and he turned with his middle finger raised.

“L.A. Blues” ended but the needle stayed skipping and popping into the runout groove.

Her father’s house sat serenely amid the unusually green trees. The Zomboid sat in his wheelchair with a rifle on his lap, the wind ruffling his long blond hair. As they pulled to the curb he raised one hand, slowly, and made a victory sign. Wendy put her hands over her face and sighed, sliding down.

“Peace,” he shouted. “It’s good to see the Cav arrive to save the day. Never too late, never on time.” He wheeled himself forward, pressing his foot supports against the chain link.

“Guess he got the use of his hands back,” Singleton said. They watched him back up and shove against the fence again.

“He’s always had the use of his hands. Believe me, he knew how to use his hands.” Her voice was low and sad. “I should go and say how sorry I am that we can’t take him along with us. I should reconcile with him somehow. But I can’t do it.”

“Man, the sound of a skipping needle,” Singleton said. “You go in and talk with your father. Tell him we’re heading north and we need him with us for support, armed support. Make sure he understands we’re heading on a mission. Throw him a bone. Make him feel he’ll be part of something big.”

She got out of the car walked up the path. He dragged his duffel into the front seat, unzipped it, and took the gun out from beneath a pair of pants. He snapped open the chamber, checked it, snapped it shut, and sighed because his hand felt a kinship with the crosshatch, no-slip surface of the grip, the heft. He thought of Rake’s face in the file, the face in the dream. He tucked the gun into his pants and pulled his shirt down and got out of the car and stood in the evening light. There was a faint tannic smell in the air. In the yard the Zomboid, his hands lax on his gun, called out, “Wait, man, wait. Come over here, man, and help a fellow out.”

At the fence he saw that the Zomboid’s eyes were slightly off in some kind of high.

“You’re packing, man. I saw your gun.”

“I’m not packing.”

“You can’t fool me. My own eyes saw you in the car.”

“What do you want?”

“You see these hands? They’re of no use to me. On occasion they come to life, but for the most part they’re attached to my arms, and my arms are dead. Maybe my hands are fine and the arms are dead so my hands won’t work. Or maybe it’s the other way around. How would I know?”

“You got ahold of that gun, somehow.”

“My old lady put it there for me and told me to guard the fort.”

“Where is she?” Singleton scanned the lot—the same accumulation of garbage, old bed springs, a car chassis (on blocks), and a double set of ruts from one corner of the yard to the other and then from the house to the fence, forming a cross.

“She split to Port Huron to pick something up. Then she’s going to truck her ass over to Sarnia, Canada, where her folks are from.”

“You’re alone?”

“I’m alone, partner. I need a hand. If you could just position the gun higher, I’d appreciate. Lean it on my shoulder so it looks menacing. I’ve done it before. Scared the fuckers off. Nothing scarier than a guy in a wheelchair with a gun.”

Singleton went through the gate and gently shook the Zomboid’s hand. It felt dead.

“Up against my right shoulder,” he said. “Lift my arm up slightly and I’ll use the dead weight to hold it in position. Then when they come I’ll heave my ribs—because I can at least do that much, for Christ’s sake—and the gun’ll fall into position. I’ll depend on the luck of gravity to make it look like I have the complete and full control of my faculties.” His eyes, two dried-up beads in a sea of tears, were set deep below the dirt and grime of his brows.

“You sure you can’t will those hands to work?” Singleton said.

“I was sure the hands were dead the second that RPG hit my ass, man. The minute I was in the air, I knew. Legless slash handless. Right up there, spinning head over heels, I knew what was coming.”

Singleton backed away a few steps, gave a salute, and then went back around to Wendy’s house while the Zomboid shouted, “You’re going to at least back me up, right? You’re gonna help a fellow out, enfolded or not…”

*   *   *

The picture on the television was in disarray, not only riding the vertical but also twisting around an invisible pole, as if trying to straighten itself out but failing because the main towers were down and the station was on backup. The old man was sitting in a massive easy chair, a rifle on his knees. A cigarette was burning in the ashtray next to a glass of something—it looked like scotch—with ice. He had a grim look, working his jaw side to side.

“Don’t explain why you’re here,” he said, glancing at Wendy. “Wendy, you go upstairs and check through your room to see if there’s anything you want to save. I’ve got a good plan and I’m sure we can hold out here for a while, and maybe save the place.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I want,” Wendy said.

“Just do it for me. It’ll make me feel better knowing that you went and took one last look. Look in my room, too, and see if there might be something of your mother’s you want.” He waved her away and reached for his drink. “This is just a precautionary measure. I don’t mean to scare her, but you can’t go fooling yourself in these situations.” He lifted the rifle and sighted through the scope and held aim on the television.

“I can see that you’re thinking this old man’s crazy to think he might have a chance. You’re standing there—and this isn’t a friendly visit, we aren’t going to sit at the table again and trade stories—thinking I want one last hurrah. But let me tell you, you’re wrong. I’m just helping out that kid next door, with his wheelchair and his gun and his delusions. He thinks I’m going to go up into the attic and snipe while he lures them in. They’ll hesitate to kill a vet in a wheelchair, he thinks.”

“Well, sir, we’re going to take you with us.” Singleton sat down. From outside came a pop of gunfire and the sound of the Zomboid laughing. On the television, Cronkite’s voice was reporting calmly that riots had broken out in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles. The Year of Hate was back in swing. It was unclear if Kennedy was officially dead. Had it been confirmed? The voice was steady, avuncular, calm, and dissociated from the reality at hand.

“Wendy wants to help you, and she needs your help. It has nothing to do with me.”

“I’d like to go with you but I’ve got my honor and like I said I’ve got to take care of that kid out there, even if it’s the last thing I do. You know, I worked the line at Ford and made a living and put her through nursing school.” The old man pointed to the ceiling, there was a thump of footsteps and drawers opening and closing. For a second, Singleton again felt an urge to go up and to throw her down on her childhood bed and have a wartime fuck, Graham Greene–style, the way they’d done it during the Blitz, with bombs blasting and walls crumbling and the fear of death. The urge swung through him and dissipated into the buzz in his eardrums, disappearing, one more shameful thought arriving from his primal past.

The old man said, “I did what a man’s supposed to do, I tried not burden Wendy with too much of
my
past. Your generation doesn’t understand. Which is to say I’m going to go in the style of a man my age and time.”

“But we’re still going to take you with us,” Singleton said flatly, so that he could tell Wendy he’d said it.

The old man shook his head knowingly. “Let’s do it like this. I’ll tell her you tried. Better yet, when she comes down here we make a show of it. You can even try to take me out to your car by force, but I’m not going with you, no matter what. But, see, if we do it that way we both win her forgiveness. I’m her father, and she knows it’s not in my nature to run from this house that I built with my own hands—and the help of Sears—and you did your best to help her out. That’ll be your gift to me. It’ll be the last thing you do for me until we see each other again, hopefully, and then I’ll talk to you not only as a fellow soldier but like a son-in-law.”

Singleton stood up and shook his hand. When Wendy came downstairs, carrying her mother’s wedding dress (resting on top: a small maroon jewelry box, and a copy of
Little Women
), the two men began the act. Singleton, as a member of the Psych Corps, a direct link to the commander in chief, ordered her father to head out. The old man, standing up, arms on his hips, a fireplug of a torso, countered by arguing that the commander in chief was dead now, so his orders were worthless.

“I’m ordering you, as an outranking officer, a former captain, to come with us,” Singleton said.

Wendy’s father touched his shoulder and said, “Kid, I outrank you. You must’ve forgotten. I’m not budging. Wendy, believe me, honey, I’d like to go but I can’t cut and run as the last thing I do.”

*   *   *

In the neighborhoods on the outskirts, most people had fled ahead of the riots. As soon as Kennedy was shot, or presumed shot, the few remaining millworkers had probably headed to Chicago, which for some reason had a low response to historical upheaval, or to their fishing cabins in Canada.

A new sense of mission seemed inherent in the road as it crossed the Flint line and entered a no-nonsense desolation. They stopped at a gas station with two old pumps and a big orange round Gulf sign. The attendant had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a holster on his belt. As he came around to the front of the car, he patted the gun and nodded as if to say: no funny business. Singleton said, “Fill her up,” and then, “Pay phone?” The attendant pointed at the side of the building. “She’s all yours.”

“Good luck,” Wendy said.

On the phone, Klein’s voice was weirdly soft and muted as he explained that they were in lockdown mode. The connection was weak and filled with clicks—they were being monitored—and his voice seemed to struggle through the wire. “You get it, you’re getting it,” he said. “I sense you have a clear sight line now.”

“Yes, sir, I think so, sir,” Singleton said.

Done pumping, the attendant was eying him suspiciously, his hand on his gun.

“You don’t really get it, do you?” Klein said. “You can’t put two and two together. I’m under orders not to say to you what I really want to say right now. You’re a good kid. Can you put two and two together now? Can you do that for me, son? Can you think a little bit about whatever you’ve unfolded? Because I know you’ve unfolded, and I can’t say it, so you’ll have to say you’ve been fraternizing with a young lady, a fellow agent, against orders, against the Credo. From me it’s just speculation—you get it, son, speculation—but from you it would be a confession that I could confirm and send up to Command.”

Singleton held the receiver out and looked at it—earholes cracked, the handle smeared grimy with grease. Wendy was in the car, waiting. Nothing wanted to make sense except the sky, milky white, holding the world together.

“Say it, Singleton. Say it and I’ll respond. I can’t say anything until you say it. Say it. Say it.”

“Say what, sir?”

“Say what I said you might say, about your fraternization state.”