Via Dolorosa (40 page)

Though the day was pleasant, the beach was not nearly as crowded
as he had anticipated. It was just starting to get cool now, too; he could
see the gray threat of thunderclouds just beyond the horizon. Perhaps it
was the cicadas that kept everyone indoors. The giant, blind bugs stuttered
through the air, frequently thumping into his chest, legs, the back
of his head. He batted them away with his one good hand; it was like
swatting slow-motion bullets from the air. They congregated, too, on the
sand, many of them having already been crunched dead in the center of
an errant footprint. Mostly, they clung to the reeds and azalea bushes, the
trees and magnolia blossoms. He couldn’t walk five steps without stepping
on one—couldn’t hear the sea without first hearing their radio-hiss
din in the air.

Isabella was not on the beach. He walked about a mile south from
the hotel and could not find her. He could not find Emma, either. He
could find no one. Everything was immersed in that eerie quality of silence
that comes just before a storm. He wondered if Emma had become
disgusted by the cicadas and had gone back to the hotel room. Cicadas,
it seemed, would disgust her…

Walking back toward the hotel, cresting one of the many ribbed
dunes, he could see the faint silhouette of the
Harbour
Town lighthouse
hovering just slightly above the trees. Out on the water, he could see the
Kerberos,
a dull glowing light coming through the pilothouse windows,
rocking peacefully beneath the steel-gray sky.

He walked quickly through the lobby. It was empty—evacuated.
As if afraid to be seen, he hurried across the lobby until he disappeared
within the bank of elevators at the opposite end of the foyer.

On the sixth floor, he found a notice taped to the door of their hotel
room:

LIMBO!

How low can you go?

Every night this week in the Riviera Room!

The hotel room was empty. No room service tray sat on the writing desk; no opened bottles of wine or carafes of coffee. Emma’s clothes were still here, as were the keys to the Impala…but all her seashells had been cleared away from the bathroom countertop. Had they been there this morning? He couldn’t remember…

There were a few books on the writing desk. The room’s Bible, as well as Emma’s poetry books. Absently, he picked one up, thumbed through the dog-eared pages. Byron. He picked up a second—Dante’s
Inferno—
and, without thinking, brought it up to his face, smelled the paper cover. They smelled of sand and the beach, the pages themselves sticky with sea salt. Eyes closed, he was back in Iraq, working over rough sketches in one of his sketchpads as the Eastern sun settled behind a caustic archipelago of ruins. Joseph
Bowerman
was again at his side, asking broad questions about love and life, of women and God, of faith and sex.
Karuptka
telling them to shoot the bitch. Myles Granger, silent, stoic, too young and too green and just about the wettest damn thing Nick had ever seen. Angelino and
Hidenfelter
flipping over cards, attempting to outdo each other with the most outrageous binge-drinking story from their own personal catalogues…

Nick opened Emma’s book. Flipping the pages, his thumbs smearing the print, his eyes scanned the text. Then something fell out of the book: a folded slip of paper. Outside, cicadas
kamikazied
the patio doors.

He picked up the slip of paper, unfolded it.

In Emma’s handwriting:

Sleep-stirred,

Caught awake

You here with me—

My soul doth quake.

Downstairs, he located the Riviera Room, but it was empty. The night’s festivities had not yet started. The calm before the storm. A dais was pushed against one wall, stacked with paper cup towers and an empty punch bowl. A few crepe streamers were draped over the doorway and the windows. It was just barely daylight now, but the sun still managed to peek over and creep in through the high windows. The Riviera Room was a dance floor for dust motes.

He went back to their room and grabbed the Impala’s keys. Back downstairs, he was still only faintly aware that he was practically all alone in the old hotel. Before leaving, he poked his head into the restaurant but it was empty. There was no Roger behind the bar, either; there was no James waiting tables. A ghost town.

He heard a bang come from the lobby. Nick hurried into the main foyer and saw it, too, was deserted except for the broad-shouldered, hulking shape of the handsome Palauan coming through the lobby doors, wheeling behind him his table of trinkets. The banging had been one of the lobby doors yawning open and slamming into an aluminum trash receptacle. From across the lobby, Nick watched, unmoving, unspeaking. The
Palauan’s
shadow stretched long and tired across the lobby floor. The wheels of the trinkets table shrieked like a thousand souls in sufferance; a few string beads swung like a hypnotic pendulum from the side of the table. Securing a corner of the lobby, the handsome Palauan proceeded to rearrange the items on his table while humming gently to himself. At one point, he became aware of Nick’s presence and looked up.

“Bugs,” he said. “Outside.” Said, “Very big bugs.”

Nick only stared at the man—stared at his dark, densely-lashed, hypnotic eyes.

“Is there something you are looking for?” the Palauan asked.

“Someone,” he said.

“I have things,” said the Palauan. “Only things.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Your pretty wife—she has purchased many beautiful shells.”

“Yes.”

“She will be back?” asked the Palauan.

“I don’t know,” Nick said.

“Perhaps, then, we can find something for you.”

“There’s nothing I need.”

“I am certain, my good brother, that I have something you need.”

“I have to go.”

He found himself half in a daze, taking the Impala through the dark-twisted, wet streets of the island. There were very few vehicles on the road. He drove as if with a purpose, although he was not completely (or consciously) aware of his destination. Cicadas exploded like mortars on the windshield. Turning on the wipers only created a milky yellow glaze across the glass.

I can spin you out,
he thought, directed at the car.
I can spin you out
and cough up dust just like Emma did that day on that dirt road.

He motored the Impala west along the evacuation route. Indeed, there were large blue signs on which had been printed a picture of a tornado, just as Emma had seen on the drive into the town. And thinking of this reminded him of the day he and Emma had crossed the causeway from South Carolina onto the island, and he could picture it as clearly as if he were watching it unfold in real-time before his own eyes. He recalled how excited Emma had been to see the island settled in the water as they approached. But there had been no seeing it: almost as if they had never gone anywhere, never left the mainland, there was no seeing it. He’d explained to her the peculiar topography—the reasons for her not seeing the glittering span of water that separated the mainland from the island—and she had tucked her poetry book down into the seat and had listened to him.

Now, around him, night was beginning to fall. Driving west, chasing the sun, a bright yellow glare sprawled across the Impala’s gluey windshield. He dropped the visor and squinted against the setting sun. He could still hear the sound of the solid little pellets thudding and popping against the windshield, too: the cicadas. Five minutes of driving and the windshield was smeared with muck. The wipers continued to worsen the condition.

It became apparent to him that he was now the only vehicle on the road. He did not know if that was the result of the cicadas or the threat of another impending storm. All he knew was that he drove and did not pass a single car.

After several more minutes of driving, the Impala rolled across a transition in pavement and began to climb the gradual incline preceding the causeway which communicated with the mainland. Still, he was the only one on the road.

In the seat beside him, Myles Granger said, “Shoot me. Shoot me in the head.”

“Hang on,” he told him.

“Shoot me in the head. It hurts. Please, Lieutenant. Kill me.”

“You’ll be okay,” he promised the boy.

“My legs,” groaned Myles Granger, his voice hitching and sounding extremely small, far away. “I don’t want to lose my legs, Lieutenant.”

“You’re not going to lose your legs, Myles.”

“I don’t want to die, Lieutenant.”

“You’re not—we’re not—you’re not—”

He couldn’t find the words. It was peculiar, all of it. They could all envision themselves killing others, killing countless others and never slowing. They could do it as well as any machine. But in the same breath, it was impossible to imagine your own demise. They were immortal; they would never die.

“You’re not—we’re not,” he stuttered.

But there was no one in the seat beside him. Iraq was gone and dead. Myles Granger was gone and dead.
Bowerman
was gone and dead, split open and stretched like human taffy across the sand, his books scattered about his prone body: Pynchon,
Kosinski
,
Bukowski
—all of them, strewn, wing-clipped and fluttering dead in the sand. Book-birds. Flightless and lifeless.

Dead.

And where am I going?
he wondered.
Home? Alone?

The Impala shuddered to a halt. His foot on the brake, the car strumming and bucking around him, he looked through the smeary, grime-caked windshield at the expanse of bridgework that lay ahead. An odd breeze rustled the trees. Even at a standstill, the cicadas were unrelenting, propelling themselves at the windshield, their tiny carapaces exploding in a burp of yellow fluid upon impact.

Home?
he thought.
Alone?

Lieuten
—

Something thick, whole, and black loomed just over the western horizon. At first he thought it was a storm cloud…but on closer inspection, he realized it was too full, too tangible, moving too rapidly. An airplane? But there were no lights. Then he finally realized it was comprised of a million living, moving things, and he thought it was a flock of birds, must be a flock of birds fleeing the storm. It drew closer, ever closer, and he recognized it for what it truly was: a massive swarm of cicadas baring down upon the island in a plague. He had been driving with the driver’s side window cracked; now, aware of the onslaught, he quickly sealed the window shut. And he was just in time: a mere second later, the swarm collided with the Impala, pelting the grill, hood, windshield with hundreds of wriggling, buzzing shells. The sound was like a million gunshots. Most struck the windshield and disintegrated in an asterisk of yellow mucus. Others somehow managed to survive the impact, albeit for a brief few seconds, their cellophane wings zipping against the glass, their split torsos thrusting futile black legs into the muck of their unfortunate predecessors before dying. Behind the wheel, Nick turned his head and shut his eyes as if in preparation of a second shockwave attack. He could hear the swarm continue to strike the Impala, overtake it, even rock it slightly on its shocks. Like gunfire, he heard every pop, every explosion, every thud and crack and bump and twitter against the cast-iron body of the car. The chiding of their wings was like rain falling on a tin roof. Eyes still closed, he reached out and jerked the car into reverse, slammed down on the accelerator. The Impala shuddered then roared backward in a frenzy. Flipping open his eyes, ill-prepared for the speed at which the car had taken off, Nick pawed uselessly at the steering wheel. Somehow he managed to swing the car around—but not before he felt a jarring thud at his rear, the car seizing to a sudden standstill. A tree—he’d struck a tree. Slamming the car into drive, still spinning the steering wheel, Nick gunned the Impala forward. It lurched over a swipe of grass and mud, taking with it a section of azaleas, then propelled down the vacant expanse of highway back in the direction it had come.