Go on.
Name her.
Rae will do.
It did for him.
He called her that, Rae. He went by Frank, and Hal, and Tom, Wayne, Wade, Enoch, and also, once, in a by-gone place, by Juan. Need, he said. Need and latitude. Depending, he said. She could depend, Rae could, he said, on this, the need, whichever way it was he went — by land, by ditch, by various, sometimes-legal strategies, chap-lipped, largely loosely strung, unevenly featured, if fair. “Hans?” he said. “Lars?”
She called him Vern.
It got darker faster the farther north they went.
They went far.
There were scenes, of course, some quiet. Does it matter what was said? And who did not answer? And how it was that she, Rae, might have looked, in a setting, from an angle, in sleep? “Still,” he said. “Too still,” he said. A quiet prod. “I am sleeping,” she said, turning — never a blanket, no pillow. “Not me,” he said. “I never am sleeping. Rae?” he said. “Doll,” he said, some other place. Her cheek on prayered hands, her hair, its darkness spilling in a dark arrangement as if in the wave of a dream.
There was something like a smile on her lips.
He smiled, nearly. What he did, it seemed, was watch.
“Mercy,” she said. Awake in a changed landscape, saying it, mercy, or something like it, like a curse. Such fists she had — a child’s. The eyes she was born with. A rub. “Where am I?” she said, was everywhere saying.
Bent. Trapped. A too-small and vastly horrible enclosure. The world inside her mouth. A roiling basin. Her wan face — flipped, a mole on the opposite cheek, the only way to see herself, reversed. Knocking. A clockwise rush, as was correct. A trickle in a drain.
Knocking.
Coffee from somewhere.
“Vern?” she said.
“Milk?” she said, not too much farther on.
“I could rightly eat,” she said.
“You could?” he said.
“Could you?” she said.
“Could I?” he said.
Thick crepe soles. An aproned, creamy hip, belonging to a woman awaiting an order. A pencil, apparently gnawed.
“If wishes were gravy,” Rae said.
“What then?” he said.
“We’d both be as big as a house,” she said. She cupped a cup with ashy, slender fingers as if absorbing sustenance.
“We’ll get there,” he said.
“Will we?” she said. “Where is it, this house?”
She, it seemed, could scarcely sit.
“Vern?” she said.
“George,” he said. “What was the question?”
Knives, stubs, crumbs, a map on a place mat, locks she’d picked, and pilfered, cut-rate condiments were barely concealed in dubious sites about her person. There was something in her bosom.
“What is it?” he said.
“We’ll starve,” she said.
“No,” he said.
“You’re right,” she said. “Likely we’ll freeze first.”
Picture a low-slung man. Low-slung men slunk by. Eggs, meat, fat slung-out stacks of cakes. “Mercy, mercy me,” she said. All belly, these eaters, and just about visibly silver-lined pockets — hip, front — and cloudy expressions and humid, insinuating posture.
“Not much of a question, is it?” he said. He rolled his sleeves, his gait. “Gents,” he said.
She predicted travel.
“Myself and my wife,” he said.
“Shove over,” she said.
“Crook,” she said. “I knew it.”
His skin was bright. They were bumping in the bed of a truck. Distended tracks lay on the earth. Small stones were flying. “Rae?” he said. “How can a person sleep?” she said. Glazed, raw — a plaintively lovely vegetation. She tasted herself. This was not sex: vagrant, edgy union — theirs — conjoining in an alley, a pew, in the middle of some earthly nowhere, planted, lying, lying down. This was not that. “I am freezing,” she said.
It snowed.
“Listen,” she said. “Are you listening?” Thick snow lit on her lashes. Her hair went slowly gray. Her face she held slantwise.
“Look at my hands,” she said.
“Feel my hands,” she said. “Ice.”
His shirt was drenched. His back seemed somehow to vibrate, distinct from her, apart from the bump and grind of riding, herky-jerky, on too many threadbare wheels.
“I am burning up,” he said, when what he was doing was seizing up.
A low moon slid.
Rae formed a syllable. Shook dark her hair. Blanketed him with the insubstantial wrap of her body, little of it as there was.
Gourds, a branch, a rootlike object — things showed warped, defying their rightful contours.
“Vern,” she said.
“You,” she said. “Are you listening, you?”
She sat. A stain defined her dress.
Something glinted.
“Quiet,” she said. “Brother,” she said. “This is the actual plan.”
IT had a snout. Hair. A piggy-looking countenance. Sores traversed its sides and creepy insectile creatures were greedily rooting in its flesh. One of its eyes was gone, was nothing but a bloody, yawning aperture. It wouldn’t have even half-wanted to look at itself — so compromised and disaligned, all tumor and gristle, a tumorous plug at its rear. It leaked. Trodden, spat-on, bled-on, lumpy, leaked-on and festering hay — or something similarly haylike — was all that passed in this place for floor. Stuck on the walls, as if they had grown themselves, there were parts. Teeth. Gears. Implements bristled with rust. A trigger, a hammer.
Someone or something sneezed.
A flame gleamed faintly.
“Vern,” Rae said.
He did not answer, save to moan.
“What is that piggy thing?” Rae said.
“What does it look like?” a woman, apparently tender of it, asked Rae. The woman’s dress seemed wrongside out. Her gaze was moist. Her stockings were pouching at her ankles in a fallen condition.
“Whatever it is,” Rae said, “it stinks.”
The line in which they waited twitched, scratched — another rank thing, afflicted with its own supplication. Steaming on the exhale. Its end, or rather, its head, was a brittle-looking man, guiding, as best he could, a doubly brittle-looking needle. Obviously, he was old. His purchase was poor. The needle was bloody.
“Hold your tongue,” the woman said.
Something brayed.
“There,” the old man said. Trembled. Patted a lavishly vaccinated joint.
Rae angled toward the flame.
“Hold your place,” the woman said, stroking her charge’s snout.
The old man’s hands were singed.
“Where?” Rae said. “Where am I?”
“Next,” the old man said.
“That would be us,” the woman said. “Doc?”
It wouldn’t have wanted to look at even half of itself as singed hands poked, hazarded a thump.
“What do you reckon?” the woman said.
Out of the brittle lips, a word: “Deceased.”
“No,” the woman said.
“I reckon,” he said.
“Vern?” Rae said. “Vern? Doc?”
“Some doc,” the woman said. “This here is breathing.”
The old man thumped again, slightly southward, provoking a high, corrosive squeal.
“See?” the woman said.
“Dead,” he insisted. “Or equally good as.”
Down off the wall came a bristly shotgun. “Stand back and duck,” he said, taking awful aim.
Teeth clattered. Something pinged. A wind blew biting through a hole.
“Vern?” Rae said.
An ominous sound, possibly terminal.
“Stop,” the woman said.
“Give it here,” Rae said.