Goodhouse (32 page)

“Hey,” somebody called. A man was following me. I picked up my pace. “Hey!” The man started to jog. “You there,” he called. “Stop him!” People turned to stare. I gripped the warm metal handle of the scalpel. I had only a few seconds before it would be obvious that I was in flight—that something was wrong. I took a deep breath and made myself stop. I turned to let the man approach and tucked my hand, the one with the weapon, behind me. I resolved to kick him in the gut as soon as he was in range, but then I saw that he was smiling.

“You dropped your hat,” he said. He jogged up to me, holding out my baseball cap. I touched my head as if to confirm that it was gone. “Like a bat out of hell,” he said. “Boom! You took us by surprise. Where you coming from?”

I took the hat and tugged it on, pulling the brim low. I slipped the scalpel gingerly into my pocket. “Thanks,” I said, and turned to leave.

“I don't know your story,” he said, “but cities like this fly in the face of God.” The man came up beside me. He had a sign tucked under his arm. I recognized the bold black print on the white field, but I couldn't read the words. He wore brown slacks and a white shirt that was styled like a proctor's—button breast pockets and a loop on the shoulder, almost like an epaulet. “They attract the worst kinds,” he added.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. He followed me through a cluster of food carts. Trash cans overflowed with wax paper and bits of food. There was vomit on the ground. People stood at little tables, eating and drinking.

“You look pristine,” the man said. “No tattoos, no nothing.”

“I was in the army,” I said. “Is there a bathroom around here?”

The man nodded. “Right there.” The bathroom was only a few feet from us, but it required a $2 cash payment. I had only the card.

“I guess I don't need to go,” I said. “Anyway, thanks.” I'd have to find somewhere else to remove my chip. I thought of the stopwatch and I walked faster, but my desire to get away from the man only intensified his curiosity. He continued walking beside me.

“What branch were you in?” he asked. “You don't look like army.”

“Matter of opinion,” I said.

“You don't talk like army, either,” he said.

“Fuck off,” I said. “How's that?”

“Is it drugs, brother?” he asked. “I know about that trouble.”

I kept being jostled and elbowed, the sort of contact that was never unintentional at Goodhouse, that was always a harbinger of something worse. It set me on edge. And on top of that, the little bells that the pedicabs rang to announce themselves seemed to be chiming everywhere. I kept scanning the crowd for Bethany, hoping to see her familiar shape. I'd made a mistake. That was rapidly becoming clear. I'd been impulsive and irrational, and now that the crisis had passed, I was seeing my situation with more clarity. Javier's clinic was not the Exclusion Zone. It was not more of what I didn't want. If I'd stayed, it would have been my own choice. And now I was alone in a crowd, the thing I'd wanted to avoid. I felt ashamed, as if I'd fulfilled some genetic destiny, as if I'd succumbed to my own true nature even as I'd fought against it.

A pedicab almost collided with me, and I jumped out of the way.

“Somebody's trying to tell you something,” the man said.

“What?” I said. I thought I'd glimpsed Bethany, or maybe it wasn't her, just another girl in a black dress.

“Not me,” the man said, and he pointed to the heavens—at the pink, spreading dawn. “Him.”

*   *   *

The man's name was Bob Hawkins, and he wanted to sit in a café and talk about God—about how the Devil was fighting to claim the planet, using his henchmen to destroy the righteous. He offered to buy me breakfast from a cart, but I was distracted. All I could think about was finding a quiet bathroom where I could be alone with the scalpel in my pocket. I remembered the cluster of sign holders, and I asked him if his companions had a building nearby, a gathering place. “It's been too long since I've stood in a house of worship,” I said. And he must have thought I was going through some kind of withdrawal; he kept staring at my hands, which trembled even though I clasped them together

“You're a good kid,” Bob Hawkins said. “I can see you're from nice people.” He clapped his hand against the stitches on my back, sending a bolt of pain all the way to my knees. “All you have to do is put your foot on the path,” he said. “God will do the rest.”

“Amen,” I said.

The church was a large white canvas tent at the edge of the market. It had one big central room, and it was connected to another, smaller tent by an open-air passageway. Two hefty men with rosebuds tucked into the lapels of their jackets stood at the entrance. They waved us through and nodded to my companion.

Later, I would try to remember everything about the scene. The symbols on the felt banners that hung like colorful pennants along the walls, the faces of the faithful, and the woman who stood at the lectern speaking in a singsong voice. But, at the time, I was too consumed with my own purpose. I felt as if I were drawing the school toward me. The chip was a hot, glowing coal in my belly.

A spray of roses stood on the altar, a thick mat of crimson petals—blooms that seemed almost waxy in their perfection. My companion nudged me. Everyone around us got to their feet to sing. Wind tugged at the taut canvas sides of the tent, causing them to snap and vibrate. The air smelled of a woodsy incense—pine pitch and myrrh. In Oregon I'd visited the logging camps, and I remembered that the whole forest had smelled like this—like the hearts of the trees had split open.

I excused myself to use the bathroom. I told Bob Hawkins I'd be right back, then I walked to the rear of the church and inched down the far aisle, feeling conspicuous, heading toward a little blue curtained door that had the word
RESTROOM
stenciled above it. The scalpel tapped my leg with each step, and I covered the blade with my hand so no one bumped it. “I know you are frustrated,” the woman at the pulpit was saying. “I know you are hurting. But you are not alone. Not anymore. You need God, but he also needs you. There is a fight coming. You will be asked to commit everything. He will test you. He will have you feel his mercy, even as you are the instrument of his wrath.”

I ducked behind the blue curtain and followed a passageway that opened into a larger room. Two portable toilets stood in the middle like green plastic towers. One was occupied. I stepped into the empty stall, and the stench reminded me of a boxer. I breathed through my mouth. The person in the toilet beside mine coughed, and the sound was depressingly loud. I would have to be totally silent.

I lifted the front of my shirt and tucked the hem in so it would stay up and away. I unwrapped the gauze that the doctor had used to cover the stitches on my back. I wound it around my arm, saving it, trying to keep it clean. The light in the restroom was very dim. I couldn't see the black dot on my skin, but I'd marked the site so many times that it had left a small raised scar on my stomach. I knew I had to cut deep to be sure I got the chip. I thought an inch should do it, roughly the depth of a finger joint.

I stuffed the whole roll of toilet tissue into my waistband below the chip site, then leaned forward, my head pressed against the green plastic wall, my legs as far behind me as I could get them. I needed to keep blood off my pants, if I could. I withdrew the scalpel and tensed. I kept almost pressing the blade into my skin, thinking I was going to do it, but pain stilled my hand every time. I took a blob of sanitizer gel from the little canister affixed to the side of the toilet and smeared it over my belly and hands. I tried to imagine that it wasn't a body, that my stomach was just a piece of cardboard, but this made it even more difficult. Someone knocked on the stall door.

“Just a minute,” I called back.

I was angry with myself for being squeamish. I tried calling myself a coward, but this only made it harder to cut. It wasn't until I thought of my belly as something beloved that I was able to press the knife in. When I imagined this work as delicate and gentle, then I was able to part the skin and the fat. I imagined my hand was like the soft fabric of the shirt, caressing, caretaking.

I was terrified of going too deep, of cutting into my intestines. I tried to stop when I felt the resistance of muscle and then angle the knife in a wide circle about an inch across. Blood soaked the toilet paper almost instantly. I imagined that the hole was already there, that I was simply finding the strength to empty it, but the pain was disorienting. It flowed through my back and into my arms. I removed a bloody mass of something and it was done, or I hoped it was. I tossed everything into the toilet. I stuffed the wound with gauze and wrapped it tight. Someone knocked again on the door. “A minute,” I said.

I didn't have any place to wipe my hands, and the tissue at my waist was useless. I tried to use the sanitizer to wash away the rest of the blood, but it turned everything into a pink goo. There was a filter at the top of the toilet, some kind of air-purifying screen, and I reached up and used this to wipe off whatever I could. I was dizzy. I adjusted my shirt, stepped out of the stall, and almost lost my footing.

A long line of people waited for the restroom. One man pushed past me and slammed the door. The sound was like a gunshot. Another man in line had his eyes closed, head bowed in what appeared to be prayer. Two others were deep in murmured conversation. A black fog hovered at the edge of my vision. I stepped into the hallway. I had to get out of here. My body was liquid with pain. One of the heavy canvas walls of the tent undulated slightly. I pulled on the edge, to see how far it would lift. Only about an inch. I was going to have to walk out the front door.

I returned to the church and was dimly aware of two things. First, it was much more crowded. All the seats were taken and dozens of people were packed into the aisles. The early-morning service, it seemed, was standing room only. Second, a new voice was preaching. A man stood at the pulpit, his cadence rhythmic and hypnotic and somehow familiar.

“If you understand nothing else,” the man said, “it's this one thing: Just as the dawn arrives, each morning, here on earth, so does God's call. It arrives each day. God calls you, each day, to battle.” And here his voice deepened and slowed. “This is not a human war but a God-given one. And I should know.” The crowd called out their encouragement. Some people were waving, palms outstretched. Most of my attention was on the act of walking—on the simulation of normal, uncomplicated movement.

“Excuse me,” I said. I had to push past several church members. And then, perhaps because every face was riveted, I glanced at the pulpit. I saw a man in a tan sport coat with a red rosebud affixed to the lapel. It took me a moment to see beyond the clothes, beyond the context—to see the face that I recognized. I stopped and stared. It was Tim—Timothy Goodhouse, my supervisor at the factory. He stood at the lectern, transformed into a civilian, but the slight flattening of his vowel sounds, the way he leaned his head forward and looked up through his lashes, was immediately recognizable.

“Who is that?” I said to the woman next to me. She was tall, plump, and middle-aged. She had a metal stud in the side of her nose. Her long, graying hair cascaded down to the middle of her back.

“Quiet, brother,” she said. She remained transfixed, staring over the crowd. Hanging from her neck was a gold chain with a charm—a Zero bisected by a lightning bolt. I saw the same symbol tattooed on the upturned wrist of the man beside me. Above it the word
purity
. I was close enough to see the little hairs on his arm and the weave in the fabric of his clothing. I momentarily touched my face to make sure it was blank of expression. The felt banners overhead—the lamb and the lion, the dove and the cross—had been subtly altered. The halo on the dove was slashed through; the lamb stood astride a bolt of lightning. This was a Zero church. There were hundreds of believers here. We were packed shoulder to shoulder.

“You are good people,” Tim said. “You
want
to feed the hungry, minister to the sick, protect the weak. Compassion is a virtue. Right?” The crowd murmured, unsettled—some people saying yes. But Tim was shaking his head. He was holding up his hand, the one with the stump for a finger. “You are wrong,” he said. “Compassion is the knife at your throat. And how do I know? Because I was not always guided by the Holy Spirit.” He let his gaze travel slowly across the room. It was unreal to see him, to see him so altered—Tim, one of us. He seemed to be taller, more substantial, the feeling from the crowd buoying him, forming him in some way, infusing him with authority. He opened his arms wide, as if to encompass us all.

“The waters have turned to acid, the seas have risen, the heavens storm, the earth is fallow. And we know how the Devil operates. We can see the problem. God himself has called us to action. And yet—” Here he paused as if overcome. “And yet, how do we respond?” he asked. “We feed. We clothe. We educate. And I tell you,
good people
, that it does you credit. But your compassion is, absolutely, killing you.”

That pine pitch smell was back—a bitter, musky smell. I'd seen the bodies at La Pine, some of them, anyway. I'd certainly smelled the flesh cooking along with the acrid stench of every burnt mattress and shoe and floorboard. I'd thought about the water inside us. That was the only part of the boys to escape. Spongy insides turned into vapor, a gas pulled out of the little window opening, sucked into a cloud, blown into the forest.

Someone handed me a white cylinder. I just stared at it. Another cylinder was being passed nearby and people were slipping paper money into an opening at the top. Tim was generating donations with his speech, revenue for the Zeros. I quickly passed the cylinder to my left. That's when I noticed how badly I was bleeding. The woman in front of me had a large purse slung over her shoulder, a printed cloth bag, and we were packed so tight that the bag was actually wicking blood from my wound. A spreading red circle ate through the pattern on the fabric—blood rich with the doctor's drug, blood that had once carried oxygen to my organs. Now it was merely a stain.