Swarm (20 page)

Sarah, the midwife, was standing in the crowd. I waved and she walked over, carrying the leather satchel I'd found for her one day at the dump, the strap broken, a useless laptop still inside. It had been a few weeks since I'd seen her. Not since Shannon's baby was born and then, days after, when she came to treat a fungus on Marvin's foot. She asked about that and about me, my periods, but I didn't want to talk. Instead, I told her about Thomson, how his pills had been on the boat and were melted away in the big water by now. Red pellets fed to the fish. On her face was a stern expression, a sort-of serious helplessness. I realized that she didn't know what to say so I smiled and turned toward Thomson, his clothes hanging from him like robes, his hand gripping the back of the bench.

“Sit down,” I said, and he surprised me by not arguing. I sat beside him and put my bag on the ground as Sarah wandered off.

Across the field, Anthony and his wife, Deepshikha, sang while Anil poured liquid from a green wine bottle onto the blue sleeping bag wrapped around the woman's body. Above the scarf tied over his mouth, Thomson's eyes glowed in their pronounced sockets. His fingers rubbed at the scar of a heart carved into the wooden bench.
TLND.
True Love Never Dies. I stilled his hand with my own. His knuckles rough and cold. I wanted to speak, but I didn't know what to say. The woman we found in the cave wasn't alone, I could have told him. The child was there. Marvin's and my child. Melissa. Something to give him hope.

Anil set fire to the dry wood. The flames jumped up, orange and yellow, green at their base. The sour smell of burning hair and flesh quickly filled the air. Blood seeped through the blackening sheets. It boiled, foamed, seethed like a lake in hell. I stared down, at my hands curled around the edge of the bench, the worn patch of dirt under our feet.

“I've missed so many funerals,” Thomson said. “My parents'. Probably my sister's. The only one I remember is Maria's.” Phoenix's mother.

A dozen kids were playing on the rusty, spider-shaped jungle gym and I watched them. One hung upside down from her knees, long blond hair tumbling down.

“We kept the candles burning for three days. And we couldn't sweep the floor. That's how they do things.” He pointed at his face. “A jade bead in the mouth as currency for the afterlife.”

I didn't speak. I felt his daughter's body between us, a hard thing of bone and muscle that might not have ever decomposed.

“Don't do that to me,” Thomson said.

“Do what?”

He nodded toward the fires. The bodies, shrinking to sticky carbon, floating ash. “That.” And he counted off the steps on his fingers: “Take my clothes off. Put me in the ground. And tell the bees.” He cleared his throat and I braced for his choking cough but it didn't come. “People used to do that. If someone got married, they'd bring the bees a piece of wedding cake. When a family member died, they draped a black cloth over the hive. I want you to do that for me. It's bad luck not to.”

I thought of all the things I was supposed to say.
You're not going to die. You'll get well again.
Lies. My eyes stung from the smoke and I wiped at them. “All right,” I said.

He shrugged. “It's a ritual,” he said, as if I'd asked why.

We fell into silence. I watched the crackling wood, a scene I once would never have imagined. Had that woman been your mother? Your aunt? A friend from the crossing? She'd been too decomposed for identification by anyone and didn't have any
ID
. Now she was gone, as if she hadn't even existed. It could happen so easily. You could lie down in the woods over winter and melt into the silent world. Vanish, like Phoenix had.

“There's something else,” said Thomson.

“Yes.”

He breathed in and I heard the rattling start in his lungs. He sputtered and I waited, following his gaze to see Shannon, standing near the picnic shelter, staring at the men as they sorted through the boxes. “Feed the girl more,” Thomson said. “Give her my share.” I looked at him, saw the purple bruising under his eyes, the jagged red lines floating around his pupils. He squeezed my hand. “I don't need so much.”

“But you do.” He needed fish soup, softened greens, berries, beets, more than he was already getting. On his good days, he polished his plate and held it out, wanting more and ended by licking it off. That hadn't happened in a while, but how could I take from Thomson to give to you, barely more than a phantom?

“It's what I want,” he said.

“I don't know,” I said, but Thomson crossed his arms and, as if we were on summer vacation, spending a week at the cottage, he said, “I'm getting a bit tired of fish.”

I shook my head. “You can't give up.”

The fires made two tiny flares in his pupils. “I'm hoping she can help you.”

“Help me?”

“Move on. Maybe even forgive.”

He drew in a deep breath and I knew whatever he had to say would be important, part of his final words. “Marvin. Yourself. When I'm gone—” he started, but something caught in his throat and the scarf billowed from the force of his hacking cough. He bent forward, pushed his stick in the dirt. Gaining leverage against the violence of expulsion, his lungs working and working to push out the rot. I rubbed his back, looked around for help, and spotted Marvin and Shannon arguing by the picnic shelter. Shannon half turned away, her face red, her fingers like bars around the baby's form.

When he had finished, Thomson pulled his scarf down and spat on the ground. A clot of blood, dark like a period at the end of a long thought. A fresh slick of sweat covered his bald spot. Marvin ran over and I pushed the blood into the dirt with my shoe, burying it, making it into nothing but a smear of dark mud.

“Look at this,” Marvin said. Two bottles of pills rattled in his cupped hand. I reached for them, but they vanished into the side pouch of his cargo pants. “Albert found them in a ration box. They weren't even with the doctor's stuff. We might not have even gotten them if the boat had come in like normal.”

He was looking at me, his face glowing like a kid's. The medicine would keep Thomson going. Hope prickled in me, but Thomson was bent forward, elbows on knees, taking long breaths that sounded like someone filing down a rough edge. Marvin tipped one pill from each bottle into his hand. He tugged Thomson's scarf down and fed them to him, Thomson's lips working Marvin's palm like a horse.

“We should get home,” I said as Shannon's voice carried across the clearing, angry, arguing:

“That medicine's for everyone.”

I had an urge to run. To take the pills and leave. I'd walk home if I had to, along the south shore. I'd go into hiding. In the caves. At the lighthouse.

Shannon rushed toward us, the baby a lump, like a growth, that she ignored. She held out her hand and said, “Give them to me.”

I stared at her. “They're his,” I said. “Without them he'll die.”

“Not the Rifadin,” said Shannon. “Anyone can use that. You can keep the other.”

“It won't work on its own. It'll wreck his kidneys.”

Her eyes were bright green, like the deepest part of a fire. I tensed, unsure what she was capable of. The baby arched its back, its small wrinkled face blazing red, and I suddenly wondered if I could use the pills for you, to keep you healthy. Crush them into your food, into the extra rations.

“They're his,” I told Shannon, with anger powered by guilt.

Shannon ran a hand through her dirty hair, pulling it off her face, forming troughs, while we waited for her next move.

“Water,” Thomson said, tugging on my sleeve. I pulled a jar from my bag and handed it to him. Shannon watched as he drank, hunched over, the liquid spilling from his lips to the ground. The jar was too heavy.

“Help him,” I said to Marvin at the same time as Shannon started to speak.

“He's old. He isn't the only sick one.” She pulled the sling aside, tugging at the baby, and started to unbutton her blouse.

“Oh my God,” I said, stepping forward but unable to stop her from pulling open her shirt, folding down the nursing bra that Sarah had made for her. A red nipple appeared, encrusted with pus. I turned away, embarrassed for her, enraged, and saw the men staring, even Thomson, the jar lowered to his knee. All of them, frozen, except for Mr. Bobiwash, who raced across the lawn toward her. The warped tattoo writhed as Shannon hoisted her breast. The baby screamed, shoved awkwardly against her mother's bony side, reaching for the available breast. The sound seemed to break the spell. Shannon tipped her chin up, smiling, proud.

“All right,” said Marvin, his voice choked.

I swivelled to face him. The jar leaned precariously on Thomson's knee, about to empty down his leg. I grabbed for it as I said Marvin's name, but his hand was already slipping into his pocket. Shannon opened her fingers, the lines on her palm drawn in dirt. Marvin put the pills there as Thomson coughed again, a hard hacking. Mr. Bobiwash slid his arm around Shannon, but it was she who turned them away, moving toward the wagon.

“She can't take those,” I shouted as they left. The prayer group looked over but I didn't care. Those people were already dead. I started to follow but Marvin grabbed my arm and I felt Thomson, too, fumbling for my fingers, his hand damp, clutching like a child. He held on to me as they walked away.

I woke in
the bed where I'd fallen. The empty jar inches from my face, its wide mouth reeking alcohol. Reaching out, I shoved it aside, heard Margo groan from deeper in the bed as the glass clattered across the floorboards. Marvin loosened his arm from around my waist and turned over. We were crowded together and his shoulder blade jabbed into my arm. I shifted away from him as scenes from the night before sharpened into focus in my mind. A clunking noise came from the kitchen. I sat up. Steadied the boulder of my head. Found our clothes, my jeans and Marvin's, Margo's shiny silk top, all heaped together like fruit at the base of a tree, still damp.

Walter was in the kitchen, his naked ass a fat white moon as he dug around under the sink. All the cupboard doors and drawers were opened. I remembered the look on his face, that slim, doubting smile while the three of us watched Marvin standing on a chair, his leather jacket flapping open, eyes lit wildly from the wind-up flashlight shining under his chin, as he read out pieces of his manifesto—
for a long time we have walked the cliff's edge of resistance, always mindful of the steep drop a single crumbling footstep away
 . . . Half naked, he'd gone on and on. Margo beside me with the tip of her finger between her teeth.

I'd felt outside myself, Melissa: like I was two people, one standing in the doorway, sandwiched between Phoenix and Thomson, watching across the room with judgment and disgust, the other raising my fist with Margo's and cheering Marvin on because what he said made sense. I thought I was on his side. But we were playing. Like birds of paradise, the male moving in a crazed dance of bright feathers to attract the duller female. And I fell for it. By the end of the next day he would have me. There was a river and I was in it and it was sweeping me along where it would. Everything happens for a reason.

I went outside and threw up. An acidic gush of moonshine and the few bits of food I'd eaten the day before. Descending the porch stairs, I tried to scalpel away the images of the four of us—Marvin and Margo, Walter's eyes on mine as he . . . I shuddered.

Margo came outside. The acrid drift of her cigarette made me retch but nothing came out. “You okay?” she called.

“Will be,” I said when the nausea had passed.

She climbed down and rubbed my back and I leaned against her, feeling like she got it, like she understood, like she was soothing the ache of my shame. Hot tears filled my eyes and vanished into the soil, already dark from hours of rain. I thought of Thomson's warning about strong feelings. That urge to sink myself, to dive into every last dark corner, had brought me far the night before. A fervour like a hungry black hole. I groaned.

“Hey,” she said, and I waited for her to tell me it would be all right, that I didn't need to cry. But that wasn't what she said. “Marvin has coffee!” she told me, her voice a loud whisper like she didn't want them to hear her glee. The heel of her boot crushed the cigarette butt and together we went back inside.

I
sat at the kitchen island, a mug of black coffee in front of me. The others weren't nearly as hungover as I was. Head in hands, I tried to anchor myself in the moment, listening to the crinkling of Marvin's rolling paper as he made the morning's cigarettes and conversation about what to eat.

“Found these,” Walter said, tapping his metal hand against the dusty surface of a sardine can, and Marvin told us that there were chickens.

He pointed with his chin. “A couple streets that way.”

“I'll go,” Margo said, and Marvin pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket.

“Pink house. Guy's name is Chan.” Walter followed her out the back door, carrying a mug in his good hand. It was only the two of us then, the scratch of Marvin's tobacco against the clean white squares of paper, the soft calls of pigeons in the upstairs rooms. Then the flick of a lighter and smoke drifted through the room's dim light. I groaned. Marvin dunked an empty mug into a bucket of water and slid it over to me. “Drink this,” he grunted, the cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. I tasted the bleach and could only swallow half of it. I supported my head on one elbow.

“You going to make it?”

“Don't know.”

“You didn't seem so drunk last night.”

“You did.”

“Not drunk. Excited.”

I pulled my fingers out of my hair, brushed a tangled bunch behind my ear.

His lips curved into a shy smirk that he wiped away with two fingers. “About the future,” he said.