Swarm (17 page)

“I think she's in the caves,” I said, looking up. He grunted, his eyes showing only a sliver of white. I wondered who he thought I meant but then he spoke.

“You know that caves are portals.”

“To where?” I asked. It was better than talking about Phoenix.

“The Underworld.”

I rubbed a froth of soap on the cloth.

“Bring an offering for the deities. That's what the Mayans do; they'd leave jadeite pendants and ceramics next to huge stalagmites.” His arm lifted to emphasize the height. I rinsed his feet.

“Do you believe that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

Marvin
came back when I was crossing the yard. “Where are you going?” he asked, lifting a turtle with both hands. The creature's webbed feet dangled heavily. I stared at him, still angry.

“A walk,” I lied.

“Wait for me,” he said and moved toward the house. His slow lope, not even hurrying.

“Don't wake him,” I shouted. After his bath, Thomson had quickly fallen asleep.

When Marvin returned, the turtle left in the cool burrow of our cellar for me to make into soup, he said, “I saw something shiny. Up the shore.”

We stared at each other. “What is it?”

“I don't know,” he said, and we walked together, him in the lead, without speaking.

At the beach, the wind pushed hard off the lake like it was trying to get us to leave. Water beat against the shore, steady waves, smashing. Anything we said had to be half yelled so we didn't really speak. I wrapped my hand around the flashlight in my pocket, the wind-up one we'd taken from the dark zone, years ago, that last night. It was the only thing I had. I'd brought nothing to give to you or the ancestors or demons Thomson had warned me could be in the caves. I figured I was already sacrificing enough.

At the edge of the water, we stopped. I looked to the east where the land humps like the curved back of a sea monster. In that limestone body are the caves.

“This way,” Marvin said, turning in the opposite direction. I hesitated, glancing at the dark sliver that was the mouth of the nearest cave before following. We moved closer to the lake. Riffles of water sucked at the soles of my boots. My socks grew damp and heavy.

“There,” Marvin said, pointing at a metallic glint, a spot up ahead on the edge of the forest. Nausea rose in me as we approached. I felt the prickle of sweat in my armpits. I already knew what it was. We both did. A cargo box, sitting on its side. Marvin kicked it. The lid fell open. It was empty. Flour, sugar, tea, and Thomson's medicine, all washed away, swallowed by the lake.

“Some of them are sealed,” Marvin said, his voice tight, as if he was holding in smoke.

I looked out at the water, searched for a shadow in the waves, wished for a sighting like you do when you can't believe something has happened. A death you refuse to take in. Looking for evidence that you're wrong.

Marvin stepped closer. I smelled fish on him—that sour, metallic stench that never goes away. The light press of his fingers was supposed to offer reassurance. I let him touch me. “It'll be okay,” I said before he could. We both knew I was lying, like many times before. We didn't stay long like that. The empty box shuffled in the wind and Marvin kicked at it before we moved down the shore, looking for others.

Yellow daisies grew in thin layers of sand. The ratcheting cry of red-winged blackbirds came from an inlet that became wetland. The waves were the colour of lead. A rancid smell hung in the air. Rot, like the stench of a deer we'd found one afternoon, its belly hollowed out by coyotes and maggots. Marvin thrust his arm out, blocking my way. Too afraid to be annoyed, I stretched to look past him and he grabbed me roughly and pulled me forward. Up ahead, a man lay on the shore. Bloated, bare feet in the water. His swollen face mottled with shades of blue. Cheeks torn. One eye missing. The puckered socket rimmed with a black tar of blood.

Over the years, I've seen dead bodies. In the city and on the island. An old woman decomposing in a house we'd thought abandoned. A stillborn baby I helped Sarah bury like an expired seed. Each time is awful. My hand covered my mouth; I forced myself to keep quiet. Marvin turned away, vomiting into the underbrush, and I didn't say a word as he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked at the sky. The sun was sinking, a watery streak of orange dissolving into the lake. The trees dulled by the deepening shadows of evening. All colour turning slowly into a palate of greys. He grimaced and spat on the ground.

“We can't leave him,” I said.

“We need help.”

I started to laugh. A sputter I extinguished by covering my mouth. “I'll stay,” I said, and without a word Marvin turned and ran, his body breaking through the forest, a deer escaping the hunter's scent.

Night
came quickly as I sat with the body. Crickets called. Bats darted over the narrow, marshy inlet to the north. From my seat on a log of bleached driftwood, I stared at the blind hole where the man's eye had been. In Tibet, Thomson once told me, the people brought their dead into the mountains and let animals and vultures pick apart the corpses. A sky burial, he called it. He'd told me that at a time when we hadn't thought so much about dying. Or I hadn't. It sounded beautiful, but the body on the beach reminded me of the worst things about death. How still we become. How empty. A vessel, drifting out of range, into invisibility.

I thought about the supply ship: hitting a hidden shoal, swallowed quickly by the cold bay.

Nine years ago it first came, run by a combination of government, aid agencies, and volunteers. It gave us hope. Things would never be what they were—brightly lit supermarkets with asparagus from Peru and frozen pasta in microwave-safe plastic bowls—but the ship meant less work and more food and necessary items we could trade for like winter coats that needed new buttons or lanterns.

In the beginning Mr. Bobiwash went for us. He didn't judge us by our secrets. He never asked. And after a year or so we went ourselves, at first with our heads down, my hair cut short, Thomson's dyed with walnut juice. Hidden. The medicine took a lot of our supplies in trade, but even when we didn't have enough—smoked fish, sacks of dried herbs, baskets I'd learned to weave, salvaged copper or honey—the doctor always gave us what we needed. He was a kind man. I lowered my head, eyes shut hard. I didn't want to cry. If I started, I didn't think I'd be done by the time Marvin returned.

Would another ship come? Maybe, but not in time for Thomson.

When I looked up, my eyes settled on the dusky shore, its outline bleeding into the lake. An otter scrambled into view and I watched as it fished a clam out of the shallows and ate it, the crunch of the shell breaking the silence. When I stood, it saw me and jabbered loudly before abandoning its meal to slip into the water, swim away. Marvin was long gone. I turned and headed up the shore.

In
the cave, my light floated over the walls, revealing fossils. A honeycomb pattern of ancient sponge coral and a stone mollusk. Evidence of the shallow sea that had covered the island millions of years ago. There was a terrible smell, like chicken innards left out in the sun, and fear grew in me as I moved deeper, prodding with my flashlight.
It can't be you
, I thought.
It can't be.
But I was terrified. I wished I'd brought an offering after all: a bit of tobacco, a silver spoon.

On the dirt floor, a torn lace tablecloth lay in a heap like the last spring snow. Nearby, brown tuft from cattails. When my foot crushed a pile of eggshells, a movement rippled the damp air. Quickly, I stood, stabbing the light into the darker spaces at the back of the cave. The beam landed on another storage chest, on its side, empty. A scuffed black shoe. A naked leg, cobwebbed with veins. A black skirt twisted around a woman's thighs. Her cloudy, white eyes stared out of a collapsing face and I pulled away, lurching back, slipping on the shale. The light bounced up to the roof and down onto you. Your living face. Eyes widening. I cast you back in shadow, wrestling with the sudden shapes of words in my mouth. I crouched as if approaching a timid animal and listened for the whisper of your breath, the sound of your voice.

“Melissa,” I said, and my voice filled the round, cold room. The light shook on the wall as I began my explanations. “I won't hurt you. The food on the red plates . . . The fish and greens . . .” I lifted the flashlight to my face to show you what I look like and then words gushed out of me, panicked, eager, afraid: “Come with me, Melissa.”

You moved forward, feet shuffling against the gritty floor. I waited, aware of the mouth of the cave behind me. How we could walk through it, together, start a new life. My arm was burning from the extension of my hand. I lowered it slightly and from outside, Marvin shouted my name. The charge of a shotgun boomed through the air and right then you rushed past me like a frightened cat, your warm skin briefly grazing my fingers. Running hard as Marvin hollered my name a second time. I followed as you disappeared into the abyss of the night, the forest full of steep drops, sharp edges, poisons in purple and green. Outside, I clenched my middle, stuffed down the urge to shout your name out over the bay.

“There
were coyotes,” Marvin told me, out on the beach. He was holding the gun. I moved toward him. “Where were you?” he asked as I stepped into his light. But I said nothing about the woman's body or you. Marvin stared behind me, at the cave.

“Come on,” I said and started down the shore, a lighter brown against the huge black mass of the lake. Marvin followed, but slowly, prodding the thick cedar along the shore, searching as we went. I could see another light: Mr. Bobiwash's. He was crouched in the long tendrils of water, by the dead man's side. Marvin walked farther ahead and I thought he was looking for you, that he'd seen you, a shadow he was trying to capture, to clarify. Mr. Bobiwash opened a waterlogged wallet and stared at it for a moment.

“Shit,” he breathed at the same time as Marvin called out his name: “Jack!” Mr. Bobiwash and I both looked toward Marvin. The flashlight pointed down at a leg, shoe missing, sock torn. Mr. Bobiwash glanced back at the
ID
card glowing in his own yellow circle of light. “It's the doctor,” he said, and the three of us were still.

The next morning,
Phoenix was already gone when I woke. The bed empty, even Thomson's usual ridge flattened out. He was the only one in the restaurant, slowly turning the pages of a newspaper whose edges were already yellowing.

“They arrested eight squatters,” he said when I shuffled in.

“Isn't that old?” I asked, moving behind the counter to dunk a mug into the pot of tea. It was nearly empty so I started to make more.

“It still happened.” Thomson told me they'd been hauled out of empty houses in the suburbs not far from the place Margo and Walter and I had scoured out. I didn't know what to say so I asked what he thought, if the cops would soon be heading into the dark zone. He stared into his tea, at the shiny surface that couldn't give much of a reflection since the diner was so dark by then, with all the broken windows boarded up.

“They're following a strategy.” His finger thumped against the paper. “They think those squatters were a Jump Ship cell.” Probably he was looking for a reaction, but I didn't give him one. Not because I'm a great actress but because I didn't know much about Jump Ship other than the basic facts: responsible for a string of bombings, all for the same reason, to hasten the collapse. “The problem with them,” Thomson said, “is they assume there's a clean ending and a fresh start, as if there is no cause and effect.” The heat in his voice reminded me of my father so I automatically disengaged, snapped off the hot plate, let the boiling water sink to stillness. I reached for the herbs, scattering tiny yellow flowers and fragments of mint across the counter. As I swept the spilled bits into my palm, I heard Thomson moving behind me, the clatter of his mug on the counter.

“Where's Phoenix?” I asked as the flowers fattened in the hot water.

“They went to get donations. We've got our own duties: back to the bees.”

The night before, Phoenix had hardly spoken to me. For hours I stood at the sink, hoping Marvin would come back, wanting to go find him, but I felt Thomson watching me, holding me to my commitments. I knew if I left like that, there'd be no point coming back. After we'd closed the soup kitchen, a string of firecrackers went off outside, spreading a red wash over everything. A sound like cracking bullets. In the back room, I lay down fully clothed, my hands tender and water-softened, the fingertips ridged with puckered skin, and fell asleep. I'm not sure how long I was out before they woke me, voices sliding under the bedroom door like those of my parents.

“It isn't only up to you,” Phoenix said. “You don't even realize—”

Thomson cut her off, straining to whisper: “How long have you been so unhappy?”

Abruptly, they were silent. I was nearly asleep again when I realized Phoenix was speaking. She said something about moving on and Thomson laughed, a rare outburst, quickly muffled.

The
wind off the lake was strong. A strangely warm breeze that stirred all the wreckage. A television antenna swayed in the strong gusts. Objects skittered and rolled down the street: a soccer ball, an aluminum lawn chair with frayed yellow webbing, the deflated skin of a giant blow-up Santa.

“Snow,” Thomson said as we turned down the laneway, heading for the hives. “We should be seeing snow this time of year.” I didn't answer. It had been years since February automatically meant snow. I'd had that argument over and over with my father, who seemed to take it personally, the way the seasons had changed since his childhood, the weather's chaos, how each day could bring something different than what was historically expected. As a kid of thirteen, I blamed him, his generation. “It's your fault,” I yelled at him like a stupid teenager and slammed my bedroom door.