Noctuidae (5 page)

—I know that—It’s the
time
I wanna check. What about a watch?

—Ha! Not for years. . .

—I’ve got a watch but it’s too dark to read it. I was hoping you had something digital. He dug out his own phone, flipped up the cover, cupped the screen’s glow with his left hand and angled it away from the entrance best he could. —3:37. Does that seem right to you?

—I guess.

—I don’t know. It feels wrong somehow. Too late, or too early. Anyway my battery won’t last much longer so I’m shutting down to conserve power. We can check the time again in an hour or so. Right now it’s all we got.
We
are all we got. Each other. We’ve got to work together to survive.

Sue-Min hugged herself. She knew
she
was all
she
got, the only one she could trust, and she had to rely on herself. The rest of Pete’s ideas made some sense though. Wait and see what happened at sunrise. And if the thing was still there at that point, well at least she would see better what she was dealing with.

—What time does the sun come up? she asked.

—This time of year, 6:00? 6:30 maybe? But we’re in a canyon, so it may take another hour or so for it to shine down here.

He stared at her as if expecting her to run calculations in her head and announce the results to contradict him, but she neither replied nor met his gaze. After several seconds passed she felt him turn away.

—We should take turns keeping watch.

—Fine, you first. Her response came without hesitation, and she spun at once and crawled back to her bedroll. She had to think these things through. Lie down, maybe rest. Maybe sleep through it all if she could, wake come morning, deal with what was left to deal with then. From one side she heard Pete’s mumbled —Okay. I’ll wake you after what I think is an hour.

—How about you don’t wake me
at all
unless it’s life or death, or you find some sign of Ron. Turning away from Pete once more she bent and gripped the matched edges of the tandem bedroll she and Ron had shared, hands splayed wide as leverage allowed, dragged it toward the cave’s back wall as far as she could get from Pete, though careful not to disturb the moth wing Sargasso.

Once arrived at this terminus she wriggled down inside the sack, back against the wall, head bent on bended knees, not caring if Pete witnessed her undisguised display of weakness.

She crouched and cried in silence. Thoughts of the thing outside never left. Thoughts of Ron never left. Sleep refused to come. Her tears oozed in slow soundless streams. She knew it was in no way logical but she felt abandoned, so much so she wanted to curse Ron for whatever stupid thing he must’ve done to draw the monster’s attention. She pictured him cocky enough to try talking to it, same as he had with the ranchers. He thought he could talk to anyone if he knew even two words in their language—French and German tourists, an old Navajo couple in a truck stop near Thoreau, the waitress at a Greek restaurant in Albuquerque. Those occasions were awkward at best. Worst of all was when he tried speaking to her in broken Korean. That always ended in a fight. Could he have imagined himself a monster-whisperer?

More likely though he just staggered groggy and clueless to the cliff edge and unzipped, little LED light on his forehead, and then what? Maybe the thing snatched him up right then. Maybe it hadn’t and Ron simply stumbled and fell when he saw it. Either way, wouldn’t he have yelled? Why hadn’t they heard? The canyon’s acoustics? Perhaps Pete
had
heard and that’s why
he
woke up. Or perhaps Pete had been there too. Perhaps Pete had pushed Ron. Would she really put that past him? Perhaps it was not an owl Pete saw dissolving but Ron

. . . maybe Pete actually offered Ron up as some sort of sacrifice. . .

Maybe Pete had known this thing would appear outside tonight,
known it all along . . . maybe that was why he brought them here.
Why hadn’t he sacrificed her too then? Was it because he wanted her for himself? How would the monster feel about that? Could she somehow offer Pete in
her
place? Would the thing let her go if she gave it Pete? What were the protocols for offering a sacrifice? Just pushing him from the edge didn’t seem enough. Did she need to know some ritual, a chant, wave a crystal or a magic staff? In any such case she was fucked.

It wasn’t fair to Ron for her to feel abandoned. Not if he really were dead. What if he were still alive somehow though, trapped perhaps on the opposite edge of the canyon, trying to get back to them. If the monster disappeared and she left at sunrise, wouldn’t
she
be abandoning
him?
She remembered her birth mother handing her a worn and sweat-stained
Hanji
doll before retreating forever down a plain gray hall, not looking back, other women coming to fawn over Sue-Min, complimenting the doll, saying how lucky she was in a language she no longer spoke but still partly understood, sometimes heard in her dreams. She remembered that doll, its white smiling face, its tiny red kissy mouth. But she had no memory of it past that moment. What happened to the doll? When had she lost it—or when had it left her, who took it away? Had it even traveled with her out of Korea? She’d been nearly four then. Her next major memories were American TV, animal shows mostly—
Flipper, Lassie, Big Ben.
She needed one of those friendly entities to rescue her now, chase Pete away and lead her to safety past the creature in the canyon.

But no animal helper came. She was all on her own here. And she knew it.

Her mind cycled through every level of consciousness except sleep. She might as well have been cranked up on caffeine. Sleep was not going to come easy, not any time soon.

After what felt like several hours but was probably less than twenty minutes—and just as she slipped into sleep’s first light stages—she felt Pete’s hand on the back of her neck, his breath on her cheek. That awful sweat and Polo smell. She stiffened before he could speak, shook his hand off and wriggled away, the zipped together bags bunching about her right elbow and foot.

—What the fuck Pete? What do you want?

—Nothing. I just thought . . . you know . . . we’re all alone here . . . and we may not make it out . . . I saw you shaking, like maybe you were crying . . . I thought I should hold you, help you get through the night.

—I don’t need your help.

—I thought I could comfort you.

—We’re not Adam and Eve here Pete, so don’t get any ideas. If you were right before and this thing outside belongs to the night, then we’re only trapped a few hours longer, and soon as the sun comes up we can make tracks back to our everyday world, contact the police or the Forest Service or whomever to come look for Ron.
If
we don’t find him on the way out. . .

She felt his hand again, harder, tighter, thumb and fingers almost encircling her left bicep, even through the bag.

—Sue. . .

—My name is Sue-
Min
. Sue. Min. Let me go.

—Listen, Sue.

She struggled to pull free again but this time he tightened the cables of his fingers round her arm through the layered bag, squeezed.

—Listen Sue. We’re trapped here at least till daylight. Maybe longer. Might be we’re both gonna die here. We could help each other pass the time, help each other get to sleep.

—Pete,
please
just let me go, okay? She spoke in a strained whisper. In response he gripped her tighter, dragged her closer across the coarse cobbly floor.

—C’mon, don’t be that way. Ron’s not here, he’s prob’ly dead. And I seen the way you look at me.

—Seriously?
How
do I look at you?

—You know, like—

She cut him off. —You know what? I
avoid
looking at you. And she knew right there she made a mistake. She had
engaged
. Offered an opening for his distorted reasoning.

—Yes you do. I seen you checking me out. You’re sly, but I know you wanna give me some of that Asian persuasion. . .

Oh shit. At once she came wide awake, scattering any stray petals of Morpheus from her brain. Pete had crossed a line, and from here on she had to be not just hostage but hostage negotiator, had to argue her own release. But even successful where would she go? Pete had played his hand. Now she had to buy time, bluff.

—Don’t you think we should focus on this thing outside, on survival? We shouldn’t be looking for new ways to draw its attention.

She could name what Pete was angling toward, but that felt dangerous in itself. Best to leave some uncertainty around her recognition of his intent, degrees of doubt, not admit they were even discussing . . .
that
. She was certain Pete would take any overt mention of sex as a sign of deeper connection, an invitation.

She felt his hand slide up to her shoulder as he craned his head to look at her.

—What’s wrong with you? You’re Asian. Aren’t you people supposed to be submissive?

She bit back an exasperated scream.
No confrontation.
In an argument he would sooner or later find reason for turning to force. And the thing outside might hear their scuffle. She calmed herself best she could then proceeded with her stock response to this and other stereotypes —Okay, first of all, I
am
from Korea, but I was
raised
here. Just like you.
This
is my culture.

—What difference does that make?

Was he that dense, or was he consciously attempting to escalate, goad her into giving his threadbare conscience the provocation it required to increase his level of physical aggression? She needed a distraction.

—What do you know about the Korean War?

—Same as Nam, right? We fought the commies. Except we broke even in Korea, didn’t lose the whole enchilada.

She cringed but continued —How much do you know about the side effects of the war—of any war?

—Casualties. MIAs. My grandfather lost his best friend in that one.

—Yeah, but do you know what war does to children?

—They didn’t have child soldiers back then. Did they?

—I’m not talking about child soldiers. I’m talking about international adoptees. Do you know anything about them?

—You’re talking about Korean kids?

His ignorance gave her a chance to assert a fragile authority. —Orphanages in South Korea were overcrowded and understaffed even before the Armistice. War orphans, G.I. babies. . . Then this missionary couple got the idea of offering the children up for adoption in the U.S. The Holts. They adopted eight Korean babies and wrote a book about it, started their own adoption agency. Holt International. The whole thing really took off from there. It was practically a fad for a while. Over two hundred thousand Korean children were expatriated altogether. An entire lost generation.

—What’s all that got to do with anything? It’s ancient history. I’m talking about now.

—It has to do with now. It has to do with
me
. I am one of those kids.

—You were adopted?

—Obviously enough.
Not one of the Holt kids—I came over later, in ‘71, and not as a baby, not from an orphanage—I was old enough I can remember my birth mother a little. I remember when she left me, gave me up. I didn’t understand. Still don’t understand. On some level I hate her. But I still love her too. How can I
not
love her—she’s my mother? And I love my adoptive parents. How do you reconcile that? I don’t even try, not anymore.

By way of response he rolled fast on top of her, pinning her legs once more with his bulk, his speed such she had no chance to react. He slid his left hand underneath her head, torqued her face toward the opening and the vast mass fixed outside in the night.
—That!
Look at that! We’ve got no time for flashbacks, for
This Is Your Life
. We’ve got life or death right outside. So what you’re adopted? Big deal. Be glad you got to come to America, greatest country on Earth. American soldiers died to bring you that freedom.

—You think Korea is third world?
I’ve been there.
In some ways it’s more advanced than the U.S.

—What are you trying to say? If you’re gonna bash America, I don’t fuckin’ wanna hear it.

—What I’m telling you is whatever you think about Asian women doesn’t apply to me. Whatever you think about
Korea
doesn’t apply to me. Whatever you think about
Korea
doesn’t apply to
Korea!
Whatever wrongheaded racist bullshit,
but she didn’t say that part aloud. —Please get off me Pete. Please? Her words came out as a wheeze because of the bulk he pressed against her chest. She could feel him twisting to align his hips above hers, his erection returned and already grinding her hip. She groped in vain along the floor for a weapon to jab in his eye but here too the cave offered nothing but pebbles. Any more likely item was still in her pack or Ron’s.