the mortis (18 page)

It becomes clear that no one is coming—not to release her, not even to trade words through the chainlink—and by nightfall she accepts the reality of the cage.  She delves into the wet rice tray with both hands and devours as much as she can keep down without gagging.  She drinks from the water bucket until she can’t stomach any more.  She piles all of the woven mats in one corner under the sun shelter and she fashions a makeshift mattress and sits down, her back against the fence, but she doesn’t come anywhere close to sleep.  Her cohorts go on dragging their broken bodies back and forth in front of her. 

In the morning, the two orderlies are dressed in work clothes instead of their whites, and they herd the captives—Lee included—up the ramp of a cattlebox stock trailer goosenecked to the undercarriage of a pickup truck.  Blood and piss and feces across the wall, on the plank floor.  Before the gate is latched behind her,
Lee begs to be allowed to ride in the truck cab but they refuse.  The bed of the truck then, she says.  Put me in the back.  Please.

The orderly with the kind face pauses.  He scratches his throat near the collarbone and stares off in the direction of the road.  After a moment he says,
“If you are tied, okay.”

“
That’s fine.  Tie me.  Please, yes.”

They travel along the murram, headed back toward the hotel, away from Cãlo.  Slow going.  Twenty-five, maybe thirty miles per hour.  A brown twine is knotted around her wrists and ankles.  She sits with her back against the side bed-panel next to a wheel well, close to the front cab, and her body is lurching from side to side, her head lolling, as the tires bounce over the furrows and ruts of the hardpack.  Behind her in the trailer, the sick are falling and rising to their feet and falling again. 

The direction the men are taking—northward, toward the hotel, instead of to the township—is hard for her to interpret.  There are a number of permutations to consider, but she eventually decides that the most likely interpretation is that the men are planning to take them as far from the Cãlo border as possible and let them go, similar to what might be done with a dangerous animal discovered too close to home.  A merciful catch-and-release.  But it could also be true that the men plan to bring them somewhere secluded in order to take their worthless lives from them.  Doing their small part to cleanse the islet of a foreign sickness, which in some ways would be its own form of mercy. 

Lee raises her bound hands and raps sharply with her knuckle on the tinted rear window glass.  She waits for a minute and nothing happens, so she knocks again, harder this time. 

The glass slides open and she sees the hand of her orderly on the latch, and the ring is back on.  She sees his face in the opening; the other man is the driver. 

“
What is it,” he says.

“
Where are you taking me?” she asks.  “Please.”

The man shakes his head. 
“I just go.  This is not my notion.”

“
I’m not asking whose notion,” she says.  “Tell me where.  Please.”

The man pauses.

“Hotel,” he says.  “A man is there.  One of the buildings.  He is not familiar to me.  He is like you.”  The orderly gestures to her and then to the trailer. 

“
I’m not one of them,” Lee says.  She is pressing her face up to the opening, as close to him as she can get.

“
You are not one of us.  That’s all I mean,” says the orderly.

Before he can say anything else, the driver cuts in.  He says something in Mirasai, harsh and guttural, and the orderly responds to him equally harshly.  They argue, and when he returns to the opening, the orderly says,
“He tell me to stop words to you.” 

“
Don’t,” she says.  “I need to know.”  She has her bound hands raised high, fingers entwined, but the man goes silent.

Lee can feel the truck slowing, and when she looks ahead she can see that they
’re approaching the checkpoint, the vehicle barricade with the
soldalanos
lounging.  She quickly asks the orderly again, begging, and after a short time he continues. 

“
We trade with him, this
galashao
at the hotel.  The outsider.  Or we try to.”  The orderly pauses and looks down, and when he raises his eyes to the opening again, he is staring far past her face.  “The outsider take our men and he keep them there.  Woman too.  Both.  He take the girl of the doctor, Clotilde, who is my mother also.”  The orderly looks at her.  “How do you say it right, the girl of the mother?” he asks.

“
Daughter,” she says.

“
Yes,” says the orderly.  “The daughter of Clotilde.  She is my sister also, and the
galashao
take her from us.”

“
I’m sorry,” she says.

The orderly nods at her. 
“So one day the
galashao
send us the cut-off head of a man, one of our men, and also a message.  He say to all of us living in Cãlo: bring me the sick, and then I give you back the Mirasai people, no harm to them.  Fair trade.”  The orderly moves his hands back and forth between himself and her.  “So what can we do?  We start bring him the sick.  Many, many.  But no amount is enough for the outsider.  Always more, more.  So we bring more.  And we hope tomorrow we will see the people free again.” 

There is quiet for a time, and then the man focuses on her. 
“I tell you what you want me to tell.  You have what I know, and I am sorry for you.”  Abruptly, he leans back and slides the black window glass closed.

The truck passes through the checkpoint barricade and
continues north—probably the worst section of the rugged murram.  A serpentine stretch where the road winds first in one direction and then another, tortuous, cutting its way haphazardly through the densest portion of La Sielve.  At each blind curve, the driver slows down sharply and sounds the horn, two punctuated blasts, before easing the truck around the bend.  Several times Lee considers spilling her body over the side, rolling clear of the trailer tires, and then trying to stand up and make her way into the woods, but with her ankles bound she wouldn’t get anywhere. 

At one of the blind curves the driver taps out the warning signal, same as he
’s done a dozen times now, but instead of slowing down and easing through the turn, he brakes hard.  The truck skids to a full stop, and Lee’s body is thrown against the cab, and she hears the sound of the captives behind her collapsing heavily to the trailer floor like baggage.  A plume of dust is kicked up by the tires grinding the murram surface, and through the haze she can see the sick as they struggle, bloodied, to their feet and then immediately step forward again to press themselves tautly against the trailer slats.  The wide, lidless eyes and the gaping mouths. 

The driver-side door opens, then the passenger door.  Lee hears the voices of the two men calling out words in Mirasai and the words sound salutatory, as though the men are hailing a close friend.  Immediately there are answering calls—many of them, all made in the Mirasai language—equally familial, and the two men dismount from the cab, shouting.  Soon the men
’s voices blend in with the voices of the others and together they swell into the purest exultation, an expression of unalloyed jubilance, and she can feel the skin of her arms break into gooseflesh.  There is the sound of rhythmic footfalls, and she leans over the side to look.  She can see a group of men and women with interlocked hands raised.  Maybe fifty, sixty Mirasai.  Everyone is dancing, whirling.  Only one man out of the group isn’t taking part—he is sitting, weeping, in the brittle sedge grass at the road shoulder, his face buried in his hands. 

The celebration continues for at least half an hour.  Songs with words that everyone in the circle knows by heart.  Lee looks on achingly even though she shouldn
’t.  It’s a spectacle she has no right to witness, and she knows it, having been long ago emptied of everything remotely related to clan.  The good of it.  The connecting language, the structure, the birthright, the beliefs handed down, the undeniable bond to a given swath of earth—everything good about it.  All she can manage to carry inside of herself is the legacy.

The singing gradually
gives way to quiet exchanges—one voice at a time.  The locution of storytelling.  Gestures are made broadly with the hands.  Spoken narratives with tones rising and falling. 

After a long while, the orderly comes around to the rear of the truck and drops the tailgate.  He puts a boot on the gooseneck connector and steps up into the truck bed.  Smiling, he kneels down in front of her.  The sweat is beading at his hairline, and the rate of his breathing is much higher than the resting rate.  He has taken off his work shirt, showing
a white tank top underneath, and she can see his shoulders lifting and lowering.  He looks down at her feet and starts to unknot the ankle bindings. 

“
It is done with,” he says. 

Lee stares at him, silent.  She doesn
’t want to say anything to stop his hands moving.

“
There is no cause to deliver you,” the orderly says.  He’s still smiling.  “The ones who the outsider take from us are free now.  So you are.”

Lee watches him unwind the cord, passing it under and over her legs, hand to hand.  Cadenced.  Once there is enough slack he pulls one end until the full length slips away.  He balls up the cord and pockets it and then he starts on her wrists.

The orderly is working on the knot, and after a short time the Mirasados begin to trickle up the road—their slow, labored gaits.  Various states of undress, various wounds.  All of them are emaciated and haggard, but all of them are unreservedly beaming.  Rapturous expressions across their gaunt faces.

A number of them stop at the side of the truck bed where Lee sits.  They address her directly.  She can
’t decipher the words, but they are being delivered with a tone that sounds like praise, like tribute.  Some of the women are touching her face gently, and she is nodding and thanking them and closing her eyes. 

The crowd moves on.  They go to the trailer and gather at the back gate, and they are watching the occupants with expressions of disgust; they seem to be deciding what to do with
the infected.  Lee turns her attention to the orderly, who is staring down at the truck bed.  His fingers are resting on the knot at her wrists. 

“
What were they saying to me,” Lee asks him.

The orderly refocuses on the cord.  His hands begin moving again. 
“They say thank you.” 

It isn
’t the answer Lee was expecting. 

“
They’re thanking me?”

The orderly starts to nod, but then he pauses to think about something for a moment.  His fingers stop. 

“No.  They give thanks for the outsider,” he says.  “You are one also.  So you are receiving thanks that they cannot give him.”

Lee shakes her head. 
“They give thanks for the man who took them?”

“
No.  Not him,” says the orderly.  He leans to spit over the side.  “This is the way they forget him.  They don’t give him any area here.”  The man taps his temple a few times.  “They are thinking only of the outsider who free them from Makoa.”

“
From the Makoa.”

The man nods. 
“They recall him only.”

“
They were in the Makoa?”  She is staring at him now.

“
Hotel building.  Where
galashao
kept the people locked.  Makoa.”

“
I know the Makoa.  Someone got them out?”

The man looks annoyed with her now.  He gestures toward the group behind him. 
“The people say this.  Different
galashao
come.  A new outsider.  He put key to the door.  That’s it.  Poof, free.  All are running.”

Lee takes hold of his hands. 
“Who was it?”

“
Allawei
.  Who was who, girl?”

“
The outsider.  The other one.”

The orderly shrugs.  He extracts his hands from hers. 
“How I know this?  It was an outsider.”  He shrugs again. 

“
Ask them,” she says.  She points toward the trailer.  “Ask them.  Please.”

The orderly finishes with her wrists and then leaves her; he rejoins the group.  They congregate closely together behind the trailer, and he addresses them for a while in Mirasai.  There are sporadic responses, and after every few sentences, a man or woman turns and stares at Lee briefly before looking away. 

She needs to get out of the truck bed.  Touch solid ground.  Be unconfined.  Seeing her this way will help them understand that the decision has been made—she is free now, irrevocably—but she also wants to be ready to break away into the woods if need be. 

She swings one leg over the side, then the other, and she slides from the truck bed.  Both feet down in the hardpack ruts of the murram.  She watches the group, ready to bolt at the first sign of anything, but after a few moments she is approached by a woman walking slowly, one she hadn
’t seen previously.  The woman is wearing a man’s work shirt buttoned up to the collarbone and nothing else, by the looks of her.  The hem goes down to her thigh. 

The work shirt is the same one that the orderly wore earlier, and she looks like she could be his twin, so Lee decides that this slight woman must be his sister, the missing daughter of Clotilde.  Twenty years old, at the absolute most.  The woman stands at a distance, barefoot, and crosses her arms over her chest. 

She shows no sign of speaking, so Lee starts.  “Someone released you,” she says.  “An outsider.”

The woman is frowning.  The bruises across her legs are evident even from ten feet away.  She nods. 
“
Galashao
come.”

“
Describe him,” Lee says.

The woman doesn
’t respond right away.  As she stands in the road, arms crossed, her frown changes almost imperceptibly into a smirk.  “
Galashao
is your man?”

“
Just tell me.”

The woman nods. 
“The man go up to this.”  She puts a level hand in the air above her head.  “Little bit handsome for a
galashao
.  Little bit brown skin.  He key the door and open for me.”

“
Which door?”

She shrugs. 
“Doors are the same,” she says.  “When I come out I have no clothes and he give his eyes up and down this.”  She runs her hand from her chest to her pelvis.

Lee ignores her. 
“Did he say anything?”

The woman rolls her eyes and then spits in the dust.  Without another word she turns and walks back to the trailer.   

The orderly trades a few angry words with the woman—everything is said in Mirasai but the underlying emotion is plain—and when the exchange is finished he walks ahead to the truck and leans against the side panel near the gas cap. 

He smiles at Lee, but it isn
’t convincing.  His face seems vaguely sad.

“
I won’t ask what she said to you,” the orderly says.

“
Yes.  Don’t.”

“
I apologize for her,” he says.  He lowers his head as a sign of his sincerity, she guesses.  The smile is gone from his face.

“
It’s fine.”

“
No,” the orderly says.  “My sister has anger, yes, and she has cause for that.  But you are not at blame, and so the anger shouldn’t fall to you.”  He lowers his head again.  “I am sorry.  I didn’t send her to you to act like
quantan
.”

Lee shrugs.  She doesn
’t offer any further response; she stares off northward, silently, in the direction of Lavelha.  The blind curve ahead where the untamed vegetation hangs over the road.  A stiff wind is starting to pick up; the boughs are careening rhythmically. 

“Can you tell me anything else?” she asks him. 

The orderly glances back at the group for a moment. 
“They say that the bad man take the outsider,” he says.  “Take him and lock him in Makoa.  But if this is true then he is gone to you, girl.  Even if
galashao
is still living, it is done.  He is done.  There is no coming back.” 

Lee listens but doesn
’t respond to him.  She is scanning the landscape, and her eyes settle on the solitary man still sitting on the road shoulder with his head down and his arms resting on his knees.  The lone holdout in the group.   She gestures toward him.

“
Who’s that,” she asks.

The orderly looks, nodding as he watches the downed man. 
“They tell story of his wife and boy fell during escape from Makoa.  Gone, gone.  So he is as much as dead.  Equal to.”

“
What happened to them?”

“
The sick take them,” says the orderly.  “Story is that the bad man use the sick like dogs.  Teach them.  They do as he say to do.”

Lee keeps watching the man on the road.  The man raises his head after a time, and she can see that the tears have stopped.  His face is dry.

The orderly unlatches the gearbox in the truck bed and opens the lid—she can’t see the contents.  He fishes around for a few moments and then pulls a phillips-head screwdriver with a rubberized grip.  He looks at it for a few seconds, then extends it to her.

“
Take this,” he says. 

Lee pauses but then accepts.  She gets a feel for the handle before sliding the tool under her belt. 

“Is this supposed to be a parting gift?” she asks.

The orderly stares at her. 

“You’re sending me away with a goddamn screwdriver,” she says.  “Is that all?”

The man shrugs. 
“What do you want?”

“
Take me back to Cãlo,” she says.

“
No.”  He shakes his head. 

“
Goddammit.  I’m not one of them.”

“
Doctor say you are.  So you are.”

“
You can’t all be this stupid,” she says.

The man pauses, looking surprised, and then he smiles almost imperceptibly, almost sadly. 

“Not long to wait now,” he says.  “You will learn some of what you don’t know soon.”

Lee wants to fire back, to tell him that his mother is no doctor, not a real one.  She wants to tell him that the witch would have said anything—diagnosed her with any fictional thing—if it meant the release of her daughter, but she doesn
’t say any of that.  The man’s mind is well decided; she can see it. 

Lee stares at the gearbox, and is about to ask for something more—some water in a container, something to eat, maybe something to make a fire—but then she hears the collective voice of the group rising sharply at her back.  She turns to look toward the trailer, and she sees that the man has risen from the shoulder of the road.  The distraught man, the isolated one. 

The man bears down on the stock trailer, walking purposefully, and as he comes alongside he pulls a pitchfork that hangs from a couple of iron U-clamps bolted to a side panel.  He hefts it onto his shoulder like a lance and walks to the rear gate and the crowd steps back, shouting at him, pleading.  The man shows no sign of hearing; he jacks the trailer handle and lets the ramp fall.  It slams against the murram.  The sound echoes up and down the road.

The man steps up hard onto the ramp.  Barefoot.  Shirt open, wind-whipped.  The occupants of the trailer are facing forward; none of them even turn.  The man walks calmly into the box, and without hesitation, he begins spearing the men and women with the thick metal tines of the pitchfork through their backs, their necks.  His arm is pumping forward and backward, overhand, like he
’s throwing a javelin, and the sick begin to collapse where they stand, utterly soundless.  The orderly is running away from Lee toward the trailer and the torrent of blood. 

Soon t
he grieving man emerges, dripping red, from the cattlebox.  He is still holding the pitchfork.  He breathes heavily, almost panting, and she can see the stark white of his teeth and eyes through the blood covering his face.  The orderly is saying gentle words in Mirasai but there is no sign of comprehension, no response.  The man is slack-faced, entirely lost.  It’s as though he’s alone.