Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (11 page)

He steps forward and stands
next to the creature. It looks at him and puts out a hand. Perry
extends his own to waist level expecting a handshake. The creature
grunts twice, places a hand on its chest and turns to Perry. It
sticks out one of the lower arms, opening the claw at the end.
Perry, startled, begins to withdraw his hand, but freezes. Russell
eyes the Admiral, sliding a hand to the gun on his side. Perry is
distracted by this moment, so doesn’t pull his hand back. However,
he reasons, if the creature wanted to hurt him, then they wouldn’t
be having this moment. Perry puts his hand near the claw and waits.
Everything his Mom had ever told him about playing with lobsters or
crabs on the beach returns in this moment. He imagines his fingers
snapped off or crushed.

The claw closes, and the
creature sets it in Admiral Perry’s palm. The pincers are warm to
the touch and feel soft, near to brittle. He closes his hand around
it, but doesn’t shake. The creature nods. Admiral Perry hopes that
his settlement has a chance now, and that his choice to land early
hasn’t killed them all.

“
Welcome
home,” Russell says.

“
I believe
the phrase you’re looking for is ‘powder keg’,” Perry
responds.

“
I’ll start
breaking out the wine.”

“
There was no reason for
what
would come,” Davion said. His sudden break from describing the
landing of the original colony ship jarred us as a transition. By
then, we were halfway through the woods. “But you can see how I’d
hoped it wasn’t them. Perry was peaceful; he never had any ill will
towards the Belovores. He wanted it to work out.”

“
As a colony
ship, they were just looking for a home,” Lancaster piped in. He’d
grown a tad more comfortable in the group. Kayt had not, remaining
vacant and distant.

“
How would
you know that?” Davion asked.

“
Well, if you
were a colony ship, wouldn’t you? Just following your own logic,”
he mumbled the rest of his sentence away.

“
I read about
them when I was just a boy,” Davion said. “Back at the commune we
had dozens of books on the colonization, but only one had been
written for a child of my age to understand. I was grateful for it.
I thought it was fiction. The book had been available for all to
see, but very few cared. You see, the Primary Divinity cares mostly
about the future we’ve earned, not the past, if we are to be
forgiven for the sins of our parents.”

“
So why did
you read it?” I asked. I pulled back a leafy branch and Melanie and
Kayt slid past it, while Lancaster did the same for
Annalise.

“
Because I
wasn’t afraid of its contents. Fiction has a great deal of impact
upon its reader when it tells the right story.”

“
He means it
wasn’t a dry textbook,” I whispered to Kayt. She
smirked.

“
But it was
all a mistake,” Davion started.

Davion stopped. “Let’s stop for
a moment. Rest our knees.”

He’d noticed a small
undercurrent of fallen brush leading to the first open area barren
of life, though having an implied feeling that people used to come
here often. Two thick logs had been set across from each other.
Neither one of them belonged in the setting, as they’d been
fashioned into benches. They sat at a ninety degree angle to each
other. False rotting had been painted onto the wood. Davion tested
the first one, pushing his robes out beneath his backside and
lowering himself onto it. It bent – I suddenly recalled Melanie
sitting on the Blanc de Noirs cask – and paint chips crackled
off.

In the centre of the angle was
a hollowed out campfire surrounded by pearlescent pebbles and logs
stacked in a pyramid.

Melanie sat next to Davion;
Annalise sat on the other bench, followed by the kids on the far
end of one, and then I sat next to Annalise. None of us mentioned
how the place resembled a campground, or how the deliberate placing
of the logs made us think of the places boy scouts used to go when
they wanted to pretend to be woodsmen. With the neighbourhoods
nearby, I suspected Annalise could have confirmed that the local
troop used the area for their ghost stories, marshmallow roasting,
or singing. But the less I referred to normal life, the better.

“
I’m fucking
starving,” Lancaster said. He tried to lock eyes with Kayt. She’d
responded with a distant glare and scooted closer to me.

“
I could do
without the coarse language, young man,” Davion said.

“
Oh,”
Lancaster said. “I’m sorry, Dad. Should I put a coin in the
jar?”

“
We’re all
hungry,” Annalise spoke over the boy.

Davion ignored her attempt at
pacification. “You accomplish less than you desire when you feel
the need to integrate foul words into your dialect. A simple ‘I’m
starving’ achieves more than I’m sure you’re used to.”

“
What’s that
supposed to mean?” Lancaster stood. His hands tensed.

Kayt grabbed him by the arm and
pulled him down. “Just be quiet,” she rasped.

“
It’s clear
everyone is a bit touchy right now. Talking sometimes helps,” I
said. A flash of recognition made me realize that I’d done to
Davion moments ago what Lancaster was doing now. I’d reacted out of
anger and distrust, and even earlier than that, allowed hatred to
well up inside. All because I was avoiding a certain subject. It
all seemed so trivial watching it happen from another
perspective.

“
All we’ve
been doing is talking,” Lancaster interrupted.

“
Lancaster,”
Kayt’s voice was stronger this time, louder. “Stop pretending to be
something you aren’t and shut up. Just because I said you were too
nice doesn’t mean you have to start being an ass. It doesn’t
impress anyone.”

Lancaster turned to her and
grimaced. He scowled at Davion. “Doesn’t she get a lecture? She
just called me an ass and you’re sitting there acting like she can
do no wrong.”

“
Few can do
wrong when they speak the truth,” Davion said.

Lancaster huffed and sat back
down. He leaned forward and, much like Melanie had when I’d dragged
her down into the wine cellar, cupped his face in his hands. He
sniffed a couple times, then leaned back up. His eyes were redder
than before. Kayt touched him on the back and patted him as a
friend would. The rapport between them wouldn’t stay quiet for
long. It had already begun bleeding into the situation.

Annalise turned to me, widened
her eyes and mouthed ‘wow’ before winking and looking out at the
group again. She leaned in close to me and rested her head on my
shoulder, whispering: “If I fall asleep, don’t wake me.” She closed
her eyes. It felt good to have someone touching me like Daniel
would have.

“
Davion,”
Melanie said. “When we get to the commune, who will be
there?”

“
Is that the
question you wanted to ask?”

“
Of course it
is, that’s why I asked it.”

“
Do you not
mean to ask if we will see your father when we arrive?”

She paused. “Will we?”

“
I wish I
could give you an answer,” Davion frowned. “The Lord knows you
deserve one. But all I can tell you is that some answers come in
the form of actions – whether or not you will ever see your father
again is up to fate. Divine guidance. Perhaps you might not ever
see him again; perhaps you will.”

Melanie took this as a
challenge. “The last place he went was the commune,” she said,
partly smiling, partly sneering. “We’re heading there now. I think
that’s about as guiding as you can get.”

“
You are
always so persistent. You do not have faith in the Lord you
worship, as I have been trying to tell you for years,” Davion
finished, shaking his head. He didn’t need to add the last bit, but
I could tell he’d wanted to. He’d said it in the way some people
have to add a provocative ‘I told you so’ to the end of their last
statement.

Melanie didn’t take this well.
Her voice raised an octave. “Trying to tell me? You call giving me
the run around ‘trying to tell me’?”

“
Is nobody
going to mention Sondranos?” Kayt interrupted. Melanie was silent
and looked at the newcomer as if she’d been slapped.

“
We can do
nothing by discussing an event that we can’t change,” Davion
said.

Melanie said, “Don’t dwell. We
need to keep clear heads.”

“
Don’t you
people have any emotion?” Kayt asked.

“
A little
dramatic, are we?” Melanie shot back.

“
Stop,” I
said. Annalise adjusted her head on my shoulder as I spoke, moving
so that her ear wasn’t placed directly on my body. “We all have
something we were coming from. Lancaster, Kayt – where were you
headed?”

They took a moment, looked at
each other, and paused before saying anything.

Kayt spoke first. “I was moving
across the city to live with my fiancée in Metro Sondranos.”

“
I was
driving her,” Lancaster added. His lips had turned into a frown.
His large, sad eyes contradicted the way he’d been acting before.
Defeated was the first word that had come to mind. In that moment,
I couldn’t imagine him trying to stand up against
anyone.

Annalise perked up. “Driving
her? From here to Metro? That’s a six hour drive, clear across the
city!”

“
We didn’t
start from this area,” Lancaster said. He was proud of this. “We
started further away. I had to pick her up. My parents live in the
suburbs about two or three miles from here. We were heading in that
direction.”

Annalise smirked, bit her lip,
and rested her head back down. “You could never convince me to do
something like that,” she whispered.

“
What about
you?” Kayt asked me.

“
I came here
on vacation,” I lied. It was easier that time than it was with
Melanie. I could feel the lie growing through my teeth, rotting in
my gums to make the roots hurt. “My boyfriend and I were supposed
to come together, but he couldn’t make it on the day we needed to
leave – we’d already paid. It was an all-expenses thing, actually.
He was going to come in a few days, once his vacation days kicked
in.”

“
Boyfriend?”
Kayt asked. She seemed taken aback. “You’re…?”

The question put a pause in the
atmosphere. None of us wanted to be quiet, but we felt like we
should – like someone had begun praying again. Only this time the
prayer was to an eggplant, pointless and inefficient. I offered a
placating smile. It had been a long time since someone wordlessly
questioned by lifestyle, so the action came with a sting reminding
me from where I came.

“
Let me ask
you something, Kayt,” Annalise didn’t pick up her head, or open her
eyes. It made her look like she was sleep-talking. “Does Leon being
gay change that he saved your life earlier? Are you just a little
dead inside just because of it?”

“
N-N-No,”
Kayt stammered.

“
Then it’s
not something that will affect you,” she said.

“
I’m sorry; I
didn’t mean anything by it.”

Lancaster chuckled, and Kayt
elbowed him in the ribs. He grunted at the blunt force, and
corrected himself. “She’s right. Kayt’s never really judged people
like that.”

“
Just like
nobody would dare judge someone who’d spent time in a maximum
security prison,” Annalise said, the phrase hitting both Davion and
Melanie in the chest.

There was another pause. This
time, it was pregnant with anticipation. You can feel out pauses by
what kind of information is begging to be known. This one focused
on Annalise, who held her tongue. With Annalise’s head on my
shoulder, I could feel a tremor of awkward laughter wanting to
escape. Davion and Melanie watched with anticipation from their own
log, as if they were watching a program play out on screen before
them. Annalise finally broke the silence by laughing. It was a
healthy laugh, quiet but relieving all the same. She let her head
fall from my shoulder and into my lap. Kayt’s cheeks turned red.
The rest of the conversation went unspoken. Kayt apologized by
grimacing, and I waved it away with a smile.

“
You spent
time in prison?” Lancaster asked. His demeanour had changed. He
leaned forward and opened his eyes wide.

“
Yes –
Beaumaris Correctional Facility,” Annalise offered. She said it
strongly, and with enough confidence that it made everyone in the
group afraid to ask more.

“
If you will
excuse me,” Davion stood and brushed off the front of his robes –
they’d begun to wear and brighten in shade, the blues and gold
turning into sky and yellow. “I am going to find a suitable place
to relieve myself.”

“
You have our
permission,” Annalise joked. She sat up straight, giving up on
closing her eyes for rest. Davion held himself for a moment, and
then bowed, smiling sheepishly. Annalise then smiled, adding: “If
you can find a tree, use it.”

After Davion stalked off, we
listened to the brush cracking and snapping until it was far enough
away that we were certain he was out of earshot.

I grabbed at the attention of
the group, opening my mouth and taking a deep breath. “This has
been bothering me. You’d think he’d jump at a chance to offer
redemption, not condemn people for their past - what religion does
he follow, and what is the name of this commune we’re going
to?”