The Best People in the World (28 page)

“Get me to a hospital,” he said. His voice sounded as if it was trapped inside his head.

The mask looked like a cross between a catcher's mitt and his mask. There were two recessed eye holes and a beakish point, but no mouth. Sweat-damp hair almost hid the strap and buckle that held the mask in place. Lifting it off revealed Shiloh's damaged face. Vessels had hemorrhaged in both his eyes. His face was in the process of swelling and it made his skin appear newborn and wrinkle free. Blood flowed out his nose, over his lips, and stained his teeth. His tongue pushed at his lips as if it considered leaving its damp burrow.

He let out a labored hissing sound.

“Man, I think you're blind.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. “And Alice?”

“Shiloh, what happened to you?”

He reached a hand up and held it before his eyes. I didn't believe he could see.

The hand was seized with tremors. I replaced it on his chest.

The other arm was pinned behind his body. Struggling to free it I discovered why he'd settled so low in the sofa. An X-ray smock was draped from his shoulders to his knees.

He picked up his free hand and studied it again.

I moved my face in front of his. “Why are you dressed like this?”

“See if any blood's coming out of my ears,” he said.

Everywhere I looked I saw blood.

I said, “I can't tell.” I tried to lift the lead blanket off his chest. Ties at the waist and neck held it in its place. I got a knife from the kitchen, sliced the cords. His strange costume felt like a casualty in my arms; I laid it on the floor.

Shiloh turned his head ever so slightly in my direction. “Where's my other hand?”

I tracked his arm from the shoulder to where it disappeared behind his body. There didn't seem any way to get a look without having him shift his position. “I'm going to have to get Alice.”

“Thomas, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done.” He kept talking to me as I ran up the stairs.

I burst into our room. Alice recoiled. Maybe, like me, she only wanted to be sure that this wasn't the opening to a frustrating and confusing dream. She had no choice but to follow; I hustled back to the living room.

Shiloh's hand fluttered above the crotch of his pants. “I think I peed.”

He had. The urine puddled on the floor.

Alice came down the stairs one at a time, unwilling or unable to commit to our drama. She walked over and stared down at us.

“I'm so sorry, Alice.” He could see.

Together she and I rolled him toward us and I followed my hand down past his elbow and lifted his arm.

“Your hand is fine.” It wasn't exactly true. His index finger bent behind the other fingers at a strange angle. And something about his wrist…

“I still have my hands.” He was crying.

Alice sat back on her heels and quit both of us. I mean she ceased being a participant and became a spectator. “What do we do?” she asked.

“I'm taking him to a hospital. You ready to go?” I asked Shiloh.

It wasn't really a question.

“How are we supposed to get him to the car?” Alice wanted to know.

I slid my arms beneath Shiloh and pulled him to my chest.

“You can't carry me,” he said.

But I stood up with him in my arms.

“Okay,” he said.

To avoid the tremendous front step, I had to carry him through the kitchen and out onto the porch. I stumbled across the yard. Alice trailed after us, like a hostess relieved to see her final guests departing. I leaned Shiloh against the car and opened the door for him. When I got in on the driver's side, Alice still stood by the open passenger door.

“You have to hold him up,” I said.

After a look back at the house—the lights still burning inside—she got in. With all the potholes and washboard, we crept along until we reached pavement.

Alice flipped on the car's dome light. It felt like we had God's eye upon us. “What did you do to yourself?”

Shiloh reached up and dabbed at his smashed nose. He touched his rubbery lips.

“I don't think he can hear,” I said.

“Shiloh?” said Alice. “Shiloh!” she screamed.

Everywhere we looked, dark cars docked beside dark houses. We were the only three people left on earth.

“You have no clue where you're going.” Alice sounded like a person talking to a television.

“Just make sure he's comfortable,” I said.

“Did he try to kill himself?” Alice asked.

I didn't know the answer.

Shiloh reached his mangled hand out and set it beside mine on the steering wheel.

“He smells awful,” said Alice.

“You're going to be just fine,” I said.

“I feel like catastrophe's bride,” said Alice. A moment later, “Again.”

Shiloh watched me, through the waning slits of his eyes. “It's my fault. Promise you'll just leave me there.”

I shook my head.

“You don't know the answers to the questions they're going to ask,” said Shiloh.

He tried to clear his throat. He spit blood against the inside of the windshield. “Mercy,” he said.

“Thomas, I think he's right. We have to drop him off and get out of there.” Alice was leaning forward so she could look at me.

“I can't see,” said Shiloh.

I waved my arm in front of him.

“I think his eyes have swollen shut,” Alice said.

I was praying the road might fork, because that was the way I remembered it. I had only the foggiest idea how to get us to the hospital.

Each time Shiloh breathed we heard a percolating, liquid sound.

Alice rolled her window down and stuck her head outside the car.

I reached a hand over and patted Shiloh's leg.

“I'll be back in no time, Thomas. Don't worry.”

We came into a little town. A string of streetlights were flashing against the car like a strobe. Damp sewer grates nestled in the road. I listened to Shiloh's wheezing breath.

And then, unmistakably, on the side of a building, a red cross. I slid the car into a carport. A nurse, two orderlies, and a doctor waited
in a peculiar white light. They looked disappointed to see us. They stood on a platform about four feet above us, like a rampart. They watched me pull Shiloh out of the car. I didn't see any stairs to get where they were so I lifted him and set him at their feet. They stubbed their cigarettes on the brick wall.

“This is the loading dock,” said the nurse. A cornflower blue cardigan hung over her shoulders.

The doctor stooped and took a passing interest in Shiloh's face. He talked in that confident, pandering voice that doctors have. Shiloh was shivering and chattering his teeth.

“Were you in the accident?” the nurse asked me.

Was
I
in the accident?

“Do you know today's date?” she asked.

Her questions were incredible. “Were you in the accident?” I asked a little hotly, vaulting onto the loading dock.

“What happened to your friend?” asked one of the orderlies, a grisly old-timer.

“He's not our friend,” said Alice, blinking up at us. “We just came across him.”

“In your skivvies?” asked the nurse. I was in a T-shirt and underwear. Alice wore shorts and a ratty sleeveless shirt.

“Looks like a hit-and-run,” said the other orderly, a stocky guy with a thin red mustache.

The doctor gave me an appraising look. He saw a wild-haired kid who'd been shocked from sleep. “So you don't know then if he's on any drugs.”

The old-timer was having a one-sided conversation with our friend.

• _____You okay, pal?
  
• _____Tell me where it hurts.
  
• _____What's the other guy look like?
  

Meanwhile, mustache went inside.

The doctor had on a yellow paisley tie that ducked between the third and fourth buttons of his shirt. He looked Alice up and down. He wore a wide gold wedding band.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

“We'll patch him up. He's going to be in a fair amount of pain, though. I can't give him any meds until I know if he's on substances.”

“We have no idea,” said Alice.

The doctor nodded. “A shame.”

Mustache came back with a wheelchair.

“He say what his name is?” asked the nurse.

No, we didn't know his name.

The orderlies sat Shiloh in the wheelchair. They placed his feet on the little fold-down stirrups, then rolled him through the swinging doors.

That left the doctor, Alice, and me in the incriminating light.

Alice opened the passenger door. “Come on,” she said. “Let's get out of here.”

The doctor tamped a cigarette on the back of his hand.

I jumped down to the car.

 

The dirt roads looked as white as bone. It felt important that I get us home before morning had ushered night to bed. Alice cranked up the car's heater. She had her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Where were you when it happened?” Alice asked.

“I was next to you.”

“Right. That's what I thought. So you don't know anything about it.”

Was it possible that there might be a connection between the conversation Shiloh and I had walking his trapline and whatever had shot us into the night? What was I supposed to make of Shiloh's catastrophic youth? Was he trying to tell me something about my parents' dry little house or Mary's pork chop or Pawpaw's wheezing snores? What did he think of Fran looking down at him from his office window, or from his yellow car? All Shiloh's talk of ideology had sailed over my head. Another person might have been able to console him, but I hadn't known the perfect thing to say. Maybe he had some fantasy about exiting this world in order to join his dead lover in the next. And maybe he wanted to take us along for the ride.
That talk about not caring if everyone had drowned—you were supposed to pay attention when someone said something like that. People give out warning signs. He might as well have said, “Duck!” I should have asked him to explain his point. It must have been a burden to watch Alice and me with our joy.

Then again, maybe it wasn't about us at all, maybe all his hope and effort had proved insufficient to mend his crippled heart. And what about that mask? Maybe he just wanted to save his stupid face. I couldn't believe Shiloh was in some hospital.

Alice pressed her face against my shoulder. “It's okay,” she said. “You did exactly as he asked.”

When we pulled into the drive, Alice's fox was sniffing at the open door. We sat there holding hands. In the early morning light, he was the most beautiful animal either of us had ever seen. For all I knew, we could have been dead already. If I could have built my own heaven, it would have contained that house and Alice and our faithful beating hearts. The fox kept its dagger-shaped head pointed at us as it trotted away.

2

Unpacking

The light switch by the basement stairs had no effect at all. Alice retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment of her car. “Come on,” she said, “come on.” There were little spots of blood on the dusty treads. We might have been descending into an animal's lair. Alice made a quick inventory of the basement: the wheelbarrow lying on its back; sheets of plywood, neatly stacked; a shovel and a broom; a pile of lumber scraps; a galvanized pail; a laundry tub; a gallon can of paint. Aiming the flashlight beam at the unfinished ceiling, we saw how someone had removed the bulbs from the fixtures. In her dogged way, Alice was trying to come up with the equation that when solved would give her the missing information. She turned round again and spotted the same innocuous things.

The basement stairs mirrored the stairs above so that at the
bottom we faced the south side of the foundation, approximately beneath the front door. I took the flashlight from Alice's hand and walked over to examine the mortared wall. In some places the cement ran down the wall like candle wax; they'd just slopped it on. Unlike the round stones of the fireplaces, the foundation stone was sharp and angular. Halfway up the east wall, a stone rib stuck out, maybe three feet square, the support for the entrance-hall fireplace. The north wall, like the south wall, was unremarkable. The west wall, on the other hand, had a different character. For one thing, there weren't half as many stones sticking out. And though the living-room fireplace was somewhere overhead, there was no rib to support the weight. What caught Alice's attention was this: six dark polka dots in the dirt and, a few feet above that, a rectangular section of the wall had detached and swung in.

She got down on her knees and pushed the door open with a finger.

We both jumped backward. A voice whispered to us from the hole, then piano playing.

Alice swept the beam inside. Everywhere we looked: broken glass.

“It's his workroom,” I explained.

She painted my face with the light. “You knew about this.” Not a question.

“He showed it to me once.”

She reached through the entranceway and brushed clear a spot where she could stand. She wiggled her way inside. The radio clicked off.

“He had you down here?” her disembodied voice asked.

When I didn't answer she stuck her face out the hole and pinned me with the light. “Huh?”

“Maybe a month ago.”

I heard her sweep the glass around. After a minute this stopped. She told me to be careful coming in. “And where was I?”

She wasn't interested in my answer; she was busily trying to decipher this secret room. But where she saw things as they were, I was looking for the room I remembered. There were no things, just parts
of things. While I recognized objects—his desk, the cabinets, the light fixtures—everything had undergone a transformation. Part of the magnifying lamp lay twisted in a corner of the room. The desk's glossy white paint had been replaced with a dark scorch mark. The walls above the desk featured dark organic shapes, smoky tendrils resembling the shadows of some tropical jungles. Only one cabinet remained latched. We saw half a dozen aluminum containers marked “Red-Dot Smokeless Powder” a screw-top mason jar filled with fabric squares; mismatched batteries scattered to one side.