Surrender (17 page)

I kept my hands on the dog. Without looking up at him I said, “If I do this, you’ll owe me.”

“Of course!” He laughed. “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything from the goodness of your heart.”

Like a saint, I closed my eyes. “If I take him, he’ll be mine. You can’t have him back.”

The angel didn’t answer; he swayed like a tree. He ran his knuckles down his face and tugged his knotty hair. The forest leaned against him, rose round him like a cage. Finally I felt him nod — he didn’t have a choice, after all. I touched the dog, deeply pleased. Everything is mine. I skimmed a palm across the wound and in one quick movement plucked out the bullet — an art I’d learned through necessity. I heard the angel catch his breath; Surrender hardly flinched. I tossed the pellet into the scrub, saw it vanish in brown dry leaves. “All right,” I murmured, and the dog clambered to his feet. I stayed crouched, patting him, tidying his fur. Gabriel stood in sulky silence; from the corner of an eye I saw a vein pulse inside his hand. Smooth and cool as water I said, “Shall I tell you what you owe me?”

“No.”

Another time I would have laughed. Now I asked, “Because you already know?”

“You’re wasting your time, that’s why. I won’t do it.”

“But we agreed you owe me something if I take Surrender. You promised, Gabriel.”

He stepped backward, knocking into a tree. His breathing was harsh, as it is now. I saw he was suffering, which was good. But there was still some life in him — he wasn’t a husk. “Not that,” he said. “No.”

I sighed, very patient; then got to my feet and edged near to him. I looked into his eyes. He was watching me, biting his lip. “You’ve already lost me,” I explained. “Just now you’ve lost Surrender. Do you want to lose everything, Gabriel?”

He lifted his chin. “There’s nothing else worth keeping. Only her.”

The wind gusted between the eucalypts, sweeping over us. “You’re wrong,” I said. “There are things worth keeping. Things you don’t even know you have. You can still walk down the street. People don’t run when they see you — not yet. You’ve still got your sad little life, even though you live it creeping like a rat. But things could get worse for you — don’t think they could not.”

“Get away from me,” he said.

I gouged my eyes with frustration. “I’m trying to help you, Gabriel! That’s all I’ve ever done.”

I was close enough to see dust on his face. We looked into each other’s eyes. By rights he should have dropped to his knees. Instead he said stonily, “Go away, Finnigan.”

I groaned like a martyr. “What don’t you understand, Gabriel? Evangeline can only hurt you. Even if she doesn’t mean to, she will. Do you know why? Because she doesn’t love you. She
does not love you
. It’s not the way you hoped it would be.”

He gazed at me with his heaven-blue eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” he said eventually. “Things don’t have to be how I want them. Nothing’s ever been that way. They’ve always been how
you
wanted them. My whole life has been how you wanted it to be. I didn’t decide to be Gabriel. You decided for me. But that’s not happening anymore, Finnigan. This is mine —
mine
— not yours. You can’t have it. It belongs to me. This is how I want it.”

Inside me a flicker of fury caught and burned within my bones. Calmly I said, “I’m warning you, Gabriel.”

He laughed like a dog. “Warning me of
what
? How can you possibly threaten me? What’s left to take? What’s left to wreck? If people run when they see me, if I can’t walk down the street — what difference will that make, Finnigan?
No
difference — hardly none! I’m
immune
— I’m untouchable — I’m free! You don’t have to stay — you can go. I don’t need your help. If I must live like something worse than a rat, I’d rather do it alone. So go on — go! Scat! Take Surrender with you. I don’t need to see you again.”

He shoved me with his weak arms, tears falling down his face. I stepped sideways and watched him shamble into the brush. I saw he was deranged, haywire; it did not make me pity him. I wanted to break my knuckles on his pathetic rebellion, crack his skull on his poxy immunity. I halted, watched him stagger, called, “You’ll regret this, Gabriel!”

He paused, glancing backward through the leaves — then tore his way through the bracken more frantically than before. Surrender came to stand beside me, and I laid a hand on his head; we watched the angel plunge madly until the forest swallowed him whole.

I’ve spent this long day remembering; now it’s night. My recollections have reached the place beyond which I don’t wish to go. Yet there’ll be no point to this exhumation if I do not continue it now.

Finnigan, I see, is observing me closely. My friend now. He knows only I can save his skin. He would swear otherwise, but he’s largely indifferent to the fate of my own.

I’ve been fearing the grave, its loneliness — yet I’m alone now. I have waited years for her to come here, but she’s never arrived. I’ve been worried I’ll lie forever unvisited, yet that’s already the way things are.

Rigor mortis
: deprived of their life-source oxygen, the muscle cells start to go rigid. Stiffening begins in the jaw and neck and progresses inexorably down. Within twelve hours, the frame is stiffened by a force that can be bent only by the breaking of bones. Within forty hours, it will have relaxed again.

Algor mortis
: the body’s temperature falls in a generally predictable way, given the environmental circumstance.

Livor mortis
: red blood cells float slowly toward earth, settling in accordance with the dictates of gravity. Their congregation results in maroon staining on the areas of skin closest to the ground. Other colors will follow with time, the sedated shades of blood’s limited palette. Olive, yellow, scarlet, black.

I am dreading the first heavy rain, which will seep through the soil and pool at my shoulder blades, elbows, heels. I am dreading the drip of it from the lid to my face.

I do not want to go.

My mind jumps hectically across the recollection of that last day. It lands at one memory and is horribly jolted, leaps for salvation to another, finds itself equally horrified. For this reason I’ve never liked recalling or speaking of that day.

After leaving the forest, I went home; I had to.

Later I left the house again; once again, I had to. “Don’t tell me what happened between returning and leaving,” says Finnigan. “I don’t want to hear.”

When I left the house again later that day, I went to Evangeline’s. I was extremely disheveled after the hours spent in the forest, but I tried to tidy myself up. I stopped in the garden of a derelict house and washed my face under the tap. I remember how the water poured from the faucet as red as sundown, and how it did not soak into the dirt beneath the tap but ran away slickly, as though the ground were glass. I wet my hair and the back of my neck, scrubbed my knuckles clean on my palms. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Mulyan suffocated in silence. The heat was heavy as earth, lying weightily across my shoulders. You could not rush through such dense air — I couldn’t quicken my pace beyond a walk. I met no one as I went. In the broiling heat Mulyan was crouched behind curtains, prone before fans. I walked the deserted streets and saw Christmas decorations hung around doorways, cats melting into the shade. A dog barked once as I passed, but not again. My feet in their loose boots scuffed the burning concrete. My hands felt twice their size. My mind had been hammered thin as foil and drifted somewhere near the clouds.

At her garden gate I did not linger. I remember its squeak as it turned on its hinges. The garden was deeper and wider than ours, but not so nicely decorated with flowers. I remember the path was crazy with cracks — my father would not have endured that. I remember rapping on the front door, my knuckles hurt by the timber.

I waited, breathing evenly. My eyes on the door handle. As I stood there waiting, I found I could hear music.

It was she who opened the door. She stood in the doorway, just as I’d hoped. She put a hand on her chest, where her heart would be. “Anwell,” she said.

You’re safe
, I wanted to say; of course I couldn’t — it wasn’t true. It left me with nothing to say. My mind, like a kite, skinned empty air. Noise was coming from inside the house — music and laughter, competing chatter. From the doorstep I could only see Evangeline and the wall behind her, where Gainsborough was unhappily framed. But inside the house, beyond the wall, a swarm of people were gathered. I heard glass, platters, party hats. Someone blew a whistle and laughter galed down the hall. A bottle clinked, a cheek was kissed, conversation cluttered against the ceiling. “You’ve got visitors,” I said.

She was leaning on the door, working the handle up and down. She looked lovely in her party dress. “Just a few. Just drinks — for the New Year. My parents invited them, not me.”

From within the house came jeering and applause, as if the guests were being treated to a fierce puppet show. Splotches of crimson came to Evangeline’s cheeks. “My parents organized it. Not me.”

I nodded. It made no difference. It was not her parents I’d come to talk to, nor anyone but her. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, Anwell?”

I answered promptly. “No. It’s important.”

Her mouth bent; she glanced beyond me, into the heat-seared garden. Blasts of northern wind stripped the birch trees and flung green hearts across the lawn. The air was orange with swirling dust. She was searching for shade; there was none. Her lips twisted further — a beautiful mouth, now a scrap of barbed wire. “Come inside,” she said. “But I don’t have much time. I have to get back to our guests.”

She held the door open and I stepped into the house. Beyond the threshold all was cushioned and cool. My smudged boots sank into carpet that was spotless, salmon-pink. On the smooth walls hung more masterpieces closed inside gilt frames. I could hear my heart thudding, taste it as though it lay on my tongue. I glanced over my shoulder, fearful of being noticed by the partygoers — I didn’t want to see their faces, their curious smiles, I didn’t wish to be examined like an insect on a pin. So I was relieved when the only live thing we encountered in the long walk down the hall was a child who raced by clutching his shorts and humming like a motor, vibrantly. My hands were shaking and I put them in my pockets, and the trembling skipped along my arms and pained the nerves of my teeth. Evangeline turned the handle of another door and opened it, and her bedroom was there. I hesitated, smelling nectar, realized this was no place for me. Her bedspread was of the cleanest lemon, a shade I would never have guessed. Her pillowcases were white. There was a cupboard and a dresser, and a rocking horse missing its tail. On the walls were images cut from magazines; stuffed animals ringed the room. Nothing in her bedroom was as I’d imagined it would be. I looked around and the stuffed toys gazed back, mutant, defensive, goggle-eyed. Everything was wrong here, and I felt disappointed, slightly aggrieved.

“Sit down,” she said; there was a chair and she lifted up its burden of unironed clothes; then, unable to decide where to put them, dumped them back on the chair. She waved a hand loosely at the bed. “Sit there.”

She seemed nervous, and I didn’t want to make her more so, so I sat, gingerly. The mattress was soft as pudding. I kept my hands clamped in my lap so I would not touch anything. Like her, I was nervous, but relieved too — relieved to find her safe and well, to know I had reached her before Finnigan had. A cat-curl of breeze billowed the curtain and swilled the mobile of dolphins at the ceiling. The dolphins clattered and bobbed, knocking together plastically. Evangeline asked, “Would you like something to drink? Some water?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s so hot. You look hot. Look at you: you’re so . . . bedraggled.”

I repeated woodenly, “I’m fine.”

She stood in the center of the room, her fingers tied up in themselves. I wanted to remind her that she needn’t fear me, for she seemed, unaccountably, afraid. I sensed she had arrived at a brave decision when she sat down beside me, so close our knees almost touched. A frown scarred her forehead as she said, “Has something bad happened, Anwell?”

I felt the words like an elbow to the throat. I looked away, unable to endure it — I could not have nodded or shaken my head. She had closed the door behind us and her dressing gown swayed on its hook. Beyond the door, the party sounds were muted, but nonetheless they jostled, wanting in. They crawled through the gap under the door, they poked round the window pleadingly. I looked at the carpet, which was beige. Time was getting away, and I’d been struck dumb. I looked at the toys, the dresser, the silver orb cast from the mirror onto the floor. I looked at my hands and noticed that, despite their dousing under the tap, a bead of blood had marked my thumbnail with a perfect, scarlet ring.

“My dog,” I said. “Surrender.”

“Surrender? Has something happened to him?”

When I came home from the forest, Surrender had not stayed behind as I’d told him . . . Finnigan had sworn to keep him, yet my father said
get the gun
. . . I had the sudden, screeching suspicion that blood had streaked me from head to toe. “Anwell!” Evangeline said sharply. “What’s wrong?”