In Constant Fear (11 page)

“You reckon?” I said, taking a quick look out the window, but it was too dark to see if they were still there.

“Yuk!” Hanna squealed, finding a couple crawling up the back of her leg. She brushed them off and stamped on them, that green liquid squirting out again. “Disgusting!”

“Did they bite or sting anyone?” I asked, but no one had suffered anything more than a fright. “Weird,” I commented. “Just weird.”

“What about the wheat?” Hanna suddenly asked, and everyone paused for a moment. I mean, none of us were that knowledgeable about farming, but I guess we kinda knew that was what weevils did: they ate the stuff you tried to grow.

“I ain't gonna look,” Delilah quickly chipped in.

“I'll go,” Gigi said, as always, out to prove a point.

“No one's opening that door again tonight,” I said, going to check that any gaps were completely sealed.

“I don't mind,” Gigi persisted.

“Well, I do. We're not chancing letting those things in again. We'll worry about what they've done in the morning.”

One by one we returned to our beds, but for once, I wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. We had this real fear that they might be trying to get in elsewhere, that there were thousands of them climbing all over the house searching for a weakness. Thank God, 'cuz of the cold winter nights, the windows'd all been double-glazed and sealed and the floors were solid. The only possible other entry point—and once I thought about it, it did really concern me—was
the chimney. Would they climb up there and find a way down? It worried me so much that, no matter how unlikely it might've been, I went and built the fire up so high, flames were leaping halfway up the chimney. No way was a weevil gonna come down there.

When I finished, I made one last inspection of the house, then rejoined Lena in bed. Not only was she awake, she had Thomas sleeping with her.

“Okay?” she whispered.

“As if we ain't got enough problems,” I grumbled, gently sliding into bed beside her, not wanting to bounce Thomas awake.

For a while we just lay there with the baby fidgeting and whimpering, the light left on in case we had any more unwanted visitors, then finally Lena said, “Clancy?”

“Mm?”

“. . . I'm scared.”

“It's okay,” I told her, “come morning, they'll all be gone.”

“Not just of them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to face her.

She had that slightly wild intensity about her she sometimes got, when I reckoned she'd've given anything to have her sight restored, if only for a few seconds. “Don't you see? The animals, the insects, even the plants . . . there's something's wrong with them.”

No matter how badly you sleep, it's surprising how you can easily make it worse. Sometimes when people say “I never closed my eyes all night,” what they really mean is, “not so I noticed, but pardon my snoring every now and then.” When I say, “I never closed my eyes all night,” I mean it: not so much as a blink.

At first I didn't pay too much attention to what Lena'd said; it was pretty far-fetched—she'd just been upset about all those weevils crawling over Thomas—but her words kept coming back to me, worrying me a little more each time. It
was
kinda odd, as if Nature was going against its own nature, and that
couldn't
be right. Those last few days had really been something: seeing Nora Jagger again, the invasion of the weevils, not to mention those two
punks spontaneously combusting. What Doctor Simon had said about them probably being implant guinea pigs, that did kinda ring true, but it also added to this growing sense that in some way our existence was being distorted. I just didn't get it. Not that I felt I was lacking in any way—'cuz I don't reckon anyone else got it either.

I did finally manage half-an-hour or so of “death sleep”: that narrow crevasse you fall into around about four or five, that when you wake, it feels as if you were mighty lucky, that death played with you for a while and then let you go. I forced myself up, leaving Lena still sleeping, and Thomas, too—probably 'cuz he was exhausted by the previous night.

The first thing I did was to take a good look out the window, but there wasn't a weevil to be seen, not even a dead one. The stuff we'd used to block up the gaps around the front door—wadded paper, torn-down curtains, whatever—had been removed, so I guessed someone'd already gone out. From the porch I could see the barn door was open, which presumably meant Jimmy was already over there and working. I ambled across, needing to talk to the little guy, though I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to say.

As I walked in, he was struggling with the bent front wheel of the tandem, muttering away to himself.

“Sorry,” I told him.

“Not cool,” he complained. “Fork's bent, wheel's buckled.”

“I'll help,” I told him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, both of us knowing he was never happier than when solving a mechanical or technological problem, no matter how mundane.

For a while I just stood there watching him, how comfortable he looked with a wrench in his hand, like an artist with his brush.

“Those damn things last night—what the hell was that all about?” I eventually commented.

“Frightened the life outta Lile,” he said, as if it hadn't been a problem for him.

“Didn't do a lot for me,” I told him. “It was almost like they were attacking us.”

“Nah,” Jimmy sneered, spinning the front wheel of the tandem, still not satisfied it was straight, “just passing through, eating their way around the country.”

“Did you check the wheat?” I asked, realizing I should've done that first off.

“Every ripe ear's gone.”

“No!” I groaned.

“Should've brought back the lasers,” he complained, as if we could've shot them all one by one.

Without another word, I left him to go and look at the wheat fields, and sure enough, every golden grain had been stripped and eaten. I cursed repeatedly as I returned to Jimmy, finding him still bent over the tandem.

“Shit,” I commented.

“Thank God it wasn't all ripe.”

“Might come back.”

“Wouldn't think so; they just keep going 'til they get to their breeding colony, or seasonal resting place, or whatever bugs do.”

“Hope so.”

Again I stood and watched as he dismantled the front of the tandem once more, pulling everything apart with such smoothness and precision it was like watching a motor-racing pit stop.

“Lena's got this, er . . . ‘concern,'” I eventually ventured.

“What d'you mean?”

“She thinks there might be a connection.”

He turned to me, awaiting an explanation.

“The way that wheat's grown so quickly, animals and people bursting into flames, armies of invading insects . . .”

He made this kinda bewildered face, as if to say “what the hell could possibly connect all that?”

“Nora Jagger?” I tentatively suggested.

At that he stopped and stared at me. “You think she's trained an army of weevils?”

I shrugged, knowing how crazy it sounded. “I dunno.”

“I wouldn't put anything past that bitch, but enlisting wolves and weevils—I'd like to see how she does it,” he commented, starting to chuckle. “And I guess the wheat's gonna attack us in the middle of the night, too, huh? The revenge of the killer corn.”

“Yeah, okay, Jimmy,” I said, always ready to defend Lena. “You gotta admit, there
is
something a little odd about it.”

“Yeah, well . . . not gonna argue with that,” he agreed, spinning the wheel of the tandem again, this time apparently satisfied. “Okay. A little breakfast, then maybe I'll go over and have a word with Nick. It might be great at growing, but he promised me that wheat was also parasite-proof.”

A huge storm blew up later that morning, first enveloping the mountains and then sweeping down on us like some invading horde, battering the front porch, shaking the house on its foundations, bombarding us with water. The creek immediately swelled up like it was on steroids, getting all boisterous and aggressive, surging at everyone and everything, dashing down the irrigation channels we'd cut out so that soon the wheat fields were partly flooded and I wondered if what hadn't been touched by weevils might well end up being spoiled anyway.

It meant a whole day of doing nothing but staying inside. Jimmy canceled his plan to visit Nick, agreeing to do a few jobs around the house, but the kids were so fractious, it wasn't long before he slipped out to his workshop. Hanna tried to practice her ballet on the front porch, but Gigi wouldn't have it, complaining—no doubt as a matter of principle—that she'd been about to sit out there. Gordie tried his hand at peacemaker, but that only riled Gigi more, and in the end he retreated to the barn to help Jimmy. Meanwhile, Lena got into this long, low conversation with Delilah, which, though I barely heard a word of it, I had a pretty good idea what it was about.

She never made a big thing of it, but I knew Lile'd been pregnant on several occasions. For some reason, she'd never managed to get it quite right—either she'd wanted it and miscarried, or her situation'd been impossible and she was forced to terminate. Whatever, it'd been a torturous thing to have to go through, and even after all those years she still had days when it skewered deep down into her guts.

What she never told us—what the birth of Thomas eventually prompted her to confess—was that there had been one survivor. When she was approaching forty and getting acutely aware of the fact that hookers don't go on forever—taking chances, riding bareback to stay competitive—she fell pregnant yet again, and this time it presented her with a real dilemma: time wasn't only running out on her career, but also on her chance to be a mother.

In the end, the maternal tug was that bit stronger and she set out to reinvent herself, to build a new,
normal
life: renting a little apartment, fixing it up, getting it ready for the baby. She knew it wasn't gonna be easy, and no way could she see more than a month, or even a couple of weeks, into the future, but she didn't care about that, only bringing her child into the world: her contribution to humanity, her family, that would be just as good as anyone else's.

As Life and Luck would have it, little Sean was born with severe disabilities. He couldn't walk, was incontinent—he couldn't even feed himself properly—and Lile was utterly beside herself. She did her best, but with all his special needs, she found it really hard. She left him, she went back, she left him, she went back, she left him—
six times!
The problem was, she blamed herself: the life she'd led, her many customers, the numerous drugs—recreational and otherwise—all those things she'd done to keep herself from simply getting flushed away.

She thought she could cope, live only for Sean, but she wasn't strong enough, and in the end, she put him up for adoption. The only problem there was, no one else was strong enough either, and he ended up in this soulless, decaying and penny-pinched institution. Every time she visited she came away with yet another piece of her heart cauterized. It hurt so much sometimes she just couldn't
go through with it: she'd deliberately miss her stop on the subway, or walk past when she got to the gate, or even get to the door to his ward and see all those that society had forgotten (most, of course, who later ended up on the Island) and not have it in her to enter.

Finally, she gave up: she was a useless piece of shit and no good to anyone or anything. She forced herself never to go there again, even at Christmas, even on his birthday, those times when it hurt the most, she'd go to a bar and drink herself into a memory-free stupor.

She never found out who sent the letter, but it made her cry for almost a week. She hadn't seen Sean for thirteen years; she'd always imagined him still in that God-forsaken institution, dying slowly, or maybe even dead—but it turned out, that wasn't the case. The thing was, just like us out on the Island, trapped in our own version of a God-forsaken institution, little Sean had been given the tiniest drop of hope, of belief and encouragement, and he too fought back. Whoever it was wrote to Lile, they wanted her to know that he was about to graduate from high school.

Lile went along to the ceremony, skulking in the shadows at the back of the hall, sobbing so loudly when Sean struggled up the steps to receive his diploma she had to leave. When she finally calmed herself down, she returned to see him with this couple—older than her, but gentle and homely, delighted smiles on their faces, taking it in turns to give him a hug: her son, who she'd given to the world, who she knew she didn't have the right to cause even the slightest of ripples in his life.

She walked away and never ever saw him again, still feeling like a useless piece of shit, but on this occasion at least, one helluva happy and proud one.

I guess that's the sorta tale you save for a special day, when the weather locks in and won't let you out 'til you confess, or a drunken night that'll have no morning, no dawn to soothe away the pain. For sure Delilah only talked about it when she appeared to have no other choice. Where Sean was now, she didn't know, and actually, I didn't think she cared that much. It was enough for her to know he was happy, and far more importantly, that he'd made a damn sight better life for himself than she had.

I could've gone out and seen what Jimmy and Gordie were up to, maybe even acted as a crash-barrier between Hanna and Gigi, but I had it in mind to give myself a bit of a treat. I still got those books I took from the bookstore in the City: Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Dickens and Pasternak. I think I told ya, when I first started reading, out on the Island, I realized two things: the first, that I wasn't anywhere near as dumb as I used to think; and the second, that reading's one of the greatest pleasures life has to offer. Books take me to another place, one that I never would've gone otherwise; they've also helped me to express myself a whole lot better. I can articulate stuff now that before I could only grunt about. And I worked at it, too, I really did, not just for myself, but for Lena as well. She inspired me that way: to be the best man I could possibly be.

I'd read all four books—
For Whom the Bell Tolls
,
A Tale of Two Cities
,
The Grapes of Wrath
and
Doctor Zhivago
—any number of times, but I could always stand to read them again. My favorite was
The Grapes of Wrath
—I'm not declaring it the best, just that it was my favorite, maybe 'cuz of all that trekking across the land, looking for salvation; it's something we could really identify with.

I thought back to the old days, when I was with Mr. Meltoni and he used to tease me for being illiterate, for never having read a book or knowing anything about what he called “the finer things of life.” But ya know, those writers he used to talk about with such authority?—Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and the like—I don't think he'd read even one of them. The only thing I ever saw him read was the racing page. He just gave off this aura of being knowledgeable and sophisticated, and everyone believed him. I bet I could speak about literature now and he wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about. All he knew was a few quotes, ones that everyone knows and can smile at with recognition so they can congratulate themselves on how clever they are.

We sealed up the outside door again that night, and any other cracks we could find, but the way it'd rained, I couldn't imagine those weevils were still around. They'd either drowned or been washed away,
or maybe they'd continued their migration up to higher ground. In fact, when I thought about it, I wondered if that was it? Instinct had told them a big storm was on its way and they'd been hightailing it up into the hills.

Thomas woke up crying at one point, sounding more than averagely distressed, and I was across that room quicker than I would've thought possible, making sure he wasn't being bothered by invading insects, but there was nothing. I picked him up, Lena sleepily inquiring if he was okay, but she was back to breathing heavy even before I could answer. It was too wet to walk him outside so I just sat in a chair, rocking him back and forth 'til he finally fell asleep.

I stayed there with him in my arms all night, I guess feeling a bit more secure that way, that I could keep a close eye on him. At one stage I had to hand him over to Lena for feeding, but as soon as he'd stopped sucking and started trying to blow bubbles, she gave him back and I resumed my seat, thinking there was no way I could sleep, but actually nodding off within a few minutes.

I awoke to find the little guy silently lying there staring up at me, those big blue eyes again expressing astonishment. I mean, what could I say? Get used to it, kid. I'm your old man and nothing's ever gonna change that.

It was hard to believe we'd had so much rain the day before. Even the areas that had been temporarily flooded were now more or less dried out. I went over to check on the wheat fields and was relieved to find that they'd recovered; everything was pointing skywards again, bursting with life, new ears of wheat appearing and rapidly transforming themselves into golden nuggets for us to grind into flour.

I called in on Jimmy in the barn, stopping dead in my tracks as I entered: the tandem had been given a new paint job, in fact, repainted in just about every color of the rainbow: yellow, blue, pink, red, purple, the original green. Not only that, it was now sporting stripes, spots, a pair of horns on the handlebars—and it'd been christened “the Typhoon Tandem.”

“What the hell?”

“Gordie decided it needed a little pimping,” he smirked, almost as if he saw it as revenge for Lena's and my buckling the wheel. “Cool, huh?”

“Yeah, right,” I said, ready to acknowledge that maybe we deserved it, though Lena wasn't gonna have to suffer the way I was.

“Think I might head over to Nick's later,” he told me, “if you feel like coming along?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I wanna talk to him about that weevil smorgasbord we so generously provided.”

Once again Gigi joined us. You either got her or the “lovebirds” (as she called them), rarely both, and after the big stand-off on the porch the day before, this wasn't likely to be an exception. I did ask Jimmy, as Lena was staying with Thomas, if he thought Lile might like to come along, but getting up over that hill's quite a challenge for her now. I don't know if she'd ever told him how old she was exactly, but since we'd been out in the country and she'd run outta stuff like make-up and hair dye, Lile was looking a lot older. In fact, I think Jimmy'd been under the impression that he'd taken up with a younger woman; now he probably wasn't so sure. It wasn't just her appearance; she seemed permanently weary, like an old battery that couldn't be properly charged. Not that I reckoned there was anything wrong with her—she was just getting old, like we all do eventually.

After the rain everything felt and looked that bit fresher, and when we got to that point at the top of the hill where you could look down into both valleys it was almost uplifting, like we'd been cleansed along with everything else. However, as we descended toward the other smallholdings, the mood began to change. It was Gigi who noticed first, probably 'cuz she was the youngest and got the best eyesight.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

I never said anything, just kept walking, expecting to see signs of life at any moment—a distant figure, smoke from a chimney—but she was right, there was nothing.

“That's weird,” Jimmy commented.

“They're around somewhere,” I said, a little dismissively.

We walked on, all three of us scanning the valley, trying not to react but slowly becoming more alarmed.

“I don't like this,” Jimmy muttered. “Definitely not cool.”

“Maybe they all burst into flames,” Gigi joked, but Jimmy and me didn't even acknowledge that she'd spoken.

As we approached the nearest dwelling, I started to call out, softly at first but then turning it into a real bellow: “Hello! . . .
Hello!
”

Still there was no sign of anyone and I went to knock on the door. We waited for a while; I tried again, but still there was no answer.

“Let's go to Nick's,” I said. “He ain't going anywhere, not with Miriam.”

We went over to Nick's place, again calling out, knocking on the door, but still with no reply.

“I don't get this,” I said, scanning the length of the valley, but Gigi decided on a little more direct action, trying Nick's door and finding it open.

“Hey, hey!” I shouted, but she was already inside.

We followed on behind, going from room to room, noting a few things had been taken. There was no sign of life, not even Miriam; no evidence of a struggle, they'd just upped and left by the look of it.

“Where've they gone?” Jimmy asked.

We went back outside, and stood on the porch, still half-expecting to see someone approaching.

“Something must've frightened them off,” Gigi said.

Jimmy and me momentarily exchanged looks, not wanting to say anything or ponder too much on that idea.

We checked several more dwellings, but it was the same story: looked like everyone had grabbed a few essentials and taken off.

“I don't get it,” Jimmy said. “Nick's cool. He's not just gonna up and leave.”

For a while we wandered around aimlessly, feeling helpless and confused, wondering what to do. Should we search for them? Did they need help? Did this have something to do with crazies? We even
tried shouting up to the hills and the surrounding forest, but there was nothing, not even an echo.