Penult (14 page)

“
What creatures? You mean
like Reapers?”

“
No, not Reapers. They
looked like men but they weren’t. They have no soul.” She clutched
my arm. “James! You need to go back. They need you.”

“
But what exactly did they
do? How did they destroy everything?”

“
I don’t know. All I know
is that it is all gone. All of it.”

“
Where did you
go?”

“
I don’t know. I didn’t
recognize anything.”

“
Were you on the
plains?”

“
There are no
plains.”

“
What are you talking
about? How can there be no—?”

She burst into tears. “I can’t
explain. You need to go and see for yourself.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“
So you will go?” She
looked at me expectantly.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Not sure I
can.”

“
But you have to! You have
to go and see!”

“
Karla. I told you. I lost
the knack.”

“
There are refugees.
Frelsians and Dusters together. They are being hunted. Exterminated
or driven underground, back into Root.”

She buried her face in a pillow. Her
body heaved. Her muffled sobs would not cease. I could only pat her
shoulder. I felt useless.

I lay down beside her. I wanted to
stay up and talk to her some more about what she saw once she
calmed down, but somehow being near her, feeling her warmth next to
me, a calm came over me and I drifted off to sleep. I could sense
the distant stirrings and probing of roots, but in the end, only
dreams came to whisk me away.

Chapter 12:
Wake

I dreamt not of Root but of Cwm Gyrdd
farm before the burning. Of me prowling the dewy meadows at dusk,
rounding up stray goats that had slipped through the perpetually
damaged fencing. The goats kept one meadow ahead, no matter how
fast I ran, how stealthily or circuitously I approached. A storm
crept low over the hills, sooty clouds smothering, lightning bolts
stabbing.

My eyes opened to the sun bright in
the attic windows and Karla snuggled against my side. The attic
steps creaked. Fiona barged in carrying a steaming tray.

“
Rise and shine you lazy
bums. You ignored your breakfast, so now I’m bringing lunch. You
have two hours before we head to the hospital to fetch Renfrew.
They’re releasing him just in time to attend the wake.

“
How’s he doing?” I
said.

“
What’s a little smoke
inhalation to a man like him? He was a two pack a day smoker in his
prime. A few burns won’t prevent him from shaking some hands. We’re
going to put him in a wheelchair and trundle him about. He won’t
like it, but we’re going to hide his fake leg. That way, he stays
under our control.”

Karla sat up and crossed her legs on
the futon, accepting the tray from Fiona. It held a small glass
pitcher of minted tea and a plate of little crust-less sandwiches
of cucumber, ham and sliced boiled egg. Fiona left us alone while
we had our brunch.

“
Did you go?” Karla
whispered.

It took me a second to realize what
she meant.

“
Oh. To Root? Nope. Just
slept. I’ll try again, after the wake. Give it a shot
anyhow.”

“
You tried.
Really?”

“
Yeah.”

“
But you don’t really want.
Did you?”

“
To be honest. I wasn’t too
thrilled about it,” I said, between bites. “But hey … I promised I
would check it out, and I will… again … after the wake.”

“
I don’t need you to be
thrilled. It is about getting your mind into the right state so
that the roots come and take you. Let in the bad, block out the
good. You know how it works.”

“
Is it any wonder I’m not
so thrilled? I’m kind of liking my state of my mind right
now.”

Karla’s eyes wobbled as if they had
been knocked off their moorings.

“
You like? We are preparing
to go to a wake. And you are happy about this?”

“
Happy? I never said … I
mean … that’s not what I meant. I just like being stable … not so
anxious for a change.”

“
This is not just about
you. It is about our friends. It is about the thousands of souls
who find refuge on the other side.”

“
Well, maybe it’s time some
of them try to work things out on this side.”

“
Oh really? Lille should
just go back to her ventilators and dialysis machines in the
long-term care facility? Bern should just go back to his prison
cell? And everything will be hunky-dory? That’s easy for you to
say. Everyone else should abandon the Liminality to come back here
and suffer?”

“
You’re not suffering, are
you? I mean … aren’t you happy?”

“
This is not about me,
stupid! I am not doing this for me. There are a million souls that
need your help, not just now but in the future. Why can I not get
this into your head?”

She grabbed a heap of clean clothes
plus one of the towels that Fiona had left for us on a card table
and stomped off downstairs.

***

We fetched Renfrew from the hospital
about an hour before the wake. Fresh bandages covered his arm. An
oxygen tube was taped to his beard. He insisted that we swing by
the farm for a look-see. Helen tried to talk him out of it, but he
could not be swayed. The fire had struck after midnight and he had
been one of the first to be evacuated, so he had yet to see the
full scale of the damage.

I watched him out the corner of my eye
as we passed through the gate. His face, ruddy in the calmest
moments, went pale at the sight of the blackened timbers poking
into to the sky.

A smattering of goats stood arrayed
atop some of the old slag heaps, watching us, almost with an air of
bemusement.

“
Damned goats. Look at
them. They’re scattered all over the place! It’s like we never had
any fences.”

“
One of the fire trucks
backed into the gate, Ren,” said Jessica.

“
But look at them! Munching
away like nothing’s happened. Nothing at all.

“
They’re goats, Ren. Only
goats.”

“
I know, but….”

“
I was crunching the
numbers,” said Helen. “And you know, there might be enough from the
insurance and maybe a small loan to rebuild something modest,
something manageable. We can still make cheese.”

“
Make cheese! And why would
I want to be doing that ever again?”

“
Because that’s what you
do, Ren,” said Jessica. “That’s who you are.”

“
Count your blessings,”
said Helen. “You were damn lucky to have come out as intact as you
did.” She turned to me. “He was in the barn when it
collapsed.”

“
Lucky, she says,” said the
old man.

***

At the funeral parlor, Renfrew was
cordial most who came by to express their condolences to the
family, but he avoided the father of the deceased, his own brother
Ralph, who evaded Ren just as diligently. The sat at opposite ends
of the first row of chairs facing the open coffin.

Ren and Ralph weren’t the only ones
having communication issues. Karla had withdrawn deep inside
herself. She kept her arms clasped tight. As the night went on, she
grew less and less responsive to my futile attempts at
conversation. I half expected her to drift off to Root, but as far
as I could tell, she stayed with us.

Ren also grew more and more taciturn
as the flow of visitors slowed to a trickle. Eventually, he sat
slumped in his wheelchair, alert, but unable to conjure much more
than a smile and a nod. As calling hours drew to a close, Jessica
leaned over.

“
You don’t suppose Ren is a
candidate for this Root place?” she asked. “I have never seen him
so down.”

“
Ren?” said Helen,
overhearing. “Don’t you have to be suicidal? Him? Never. He’s much
too stubborn. The kind of man who would live to be a hundred just
to spite the world.”

Karla said nothing. She wouldn’t even
look at me. When we filed out of the funeral room, she refused to
take my hand.

“
What’s wrong?” I
asked.

She didn’t answer.

With Jessica pushing Ren’s wheelchair,
we walked a few blocks to the sprawling house of Ren and Ralph’s
cousin. Jamie Boyle was a banker and by far the most successful of
his clan.

The tables were piled with dishes
people brought to share. Shepherd’s pie. Homemade lamb sausage with
mint. Leek soup. Casseroles and cake. Bitters and spirits flowed
freely. Karla ate sparingly. She mostly sat in the corner and
sulked.

Apart from occasional forays for food
I sat beside her like a loyal dog. Spirits flowed freely and the
chatter was vigorous. No one else seemed to notice that anything
was wrong between us. This was a pot luck dinner after a wake.
People grieved differently. A wide variety of reactions were
expected and tolerated.

But Karla’s quietude left me feeling
extremely uneasy. This was more than grieving for her friend. She
was mad at me for not going to Root like I had promised. We had
never had a real spat before, so I didn’t know how to think or act.
So I just sat there awkwardly, wondering if it would make things
better or worse if I tried to take her hand.

About an hour into the reception, she
abruptly rose from her chair.

“
I’m going back to the
house.”

“
I’ll come with
you.”

This time, she let me take her hand,
which I took as a major victory, and we made the rounds together,
saying goodbye, passing on yet another round of condolences to
Sturgie’s family and friends.

Out on the street, an unusually sultry
wind swirled through the gutters. The air was dank and heavy and
smelled like rain. We walked several blocks in silence.

“
So tonight? You will
go?”

“
Yeah,” I said.

The wind captured some candy wrappers
and set them dancing around the base of a waste bin.

“
You think you can
cross?”

“
Yeah. I think
so.”

“
Good.” The tension in her
hand relaxed and her fingers slipped more naturally into mine.
“Maybe … we should sleep apart tonight.”

“
Why?”

”
So you have space … to
surf.”

“
I’ll be fine. No, stay
with me. Please?”

She gave me a sidelong, expressionless
glance. “It is better you be alone.”

The way she said it hit me hard in the
gut.

“
Things are bad over there,
huh?”

“
Yes. Bad.”

The light was on in the townhouse.
Britt had apparently snuck home before us. She had some paperwork
spread out on the kitchen table. Paying bills, it looked
like.

“
Things finally breaking up
over there?” peering up over her reading glasses.

“
Yeah. Starting to,” I
said.

“
Ren talk to Ralph at
all?”

“
Not really. They just sort
of grunted at each other.”

Karla released my hand before I
reached the attic stairs.

“
Aren’t you … coming
up?”

“
I will sleep on the
sofa.

“
Karla. That’s not
necessary.”

“
But it is.” She went up on
her toes and kissed me gently on the lips. “Be careful.”

***

I found an old easy chair in the
attic, turned it to face the window and stared out into the
streetlights like I used to do at the farm when I wanted to visit
Karla in Root.

I brought my mood down as low as I
could bring it, thinking only bad thoughts, filling my heart with
all of the accumulated darkness I had deflected for months. I
reached deep, bringing up stuff I didn’t like to think about:
childhood regrets, my parents death’s, living in that storage unit,
failed attempts at meeting girls, Karla’s first death at the hands
of that wicked Fellstraw, everything ghastly or embarrassing and
uncomfortable that I could ram into my head.

The problem was, all that bad stuff
came from the past. Its power over me had faded. The kernel of love
and hope that now blazed in my heart was way too hot and bright to
let the darkness prevail. All of the horrors and disappointments
that had for so long haunted me just went up in smoke,
incinerated.

The roots again kept their distance.
At least I could tell Karla in the morning that I had tried. I
really had.

Chapter 13:
Gone

The other gals had returned a little
after midnight. I could hear Britt hush them as they stormed in all
drunk and raucous, warning them not to wake Karla. Someone took a
shower. Someone else brewed some tea. And now the house was
still.

I was still in that easy chair, curled
up with a blanket, as a sultry wind swooped in though the open
window. I considered lying, pretending I had crossed, but Karla had
share so little of what had happened on the other side. If she
pressed for any details whatsoever she would sniff out my lie. I
had no choice but to admit defeat to her in the morning. Hopefully,
she would understand. Some things were just not meant to
be.