How High We Go in the Dark(26)

The old woman kisses the head of the infant and hands them to me. I maneuver the baby into the pocket surrounding my chest, cinching the jacket arms tighter. The baby’s breath and drool are moistening my shirt. The baby’s fingers hold on to the collar of my T-shirt— Yes, that’s right. Hold on tight. Like before, I ascend the pyramid, treading lightly to avoid stepping on too many heads and hands. I stop periodically to readjust the jacket, cinching the knots tight whenever I feel the sleeves coming loose, the sleek fabric threatening to untuck from my pants. With every layer, I check that the pocket is secure, afraid the baby might fall. Deep inside the pyramid the group shares more details about their lives, sings songs to keep up morale, reveals things they’ve never told anybody, because somehow not being able to see each other makes it all okay, like confessing to a priest or praying to the night sky. There are games of Twenty Questions and Truth or Dare alongside conversations about the soul and the future of humanity. It feels like I have been climbing for years, and perhaps in the land of life, years have passed. Will the child enter the body of a teenager or an adult, see through the eyes of an infant? Will they remember or be able to articulate any of this? The questions multiply as I reach the summit, as does the force of the pull from whatever resides above. I think about making wishes at the star festival and my parents trying so hard to read and understand the stories I’ve written. I think about my father telling me about opportunities in life floating in the wind like seeds. May all the blessed seeds find their way to this child, I whisper.

At the top, I can feel my body wanting to shoot upward into the black sky, as if a puppet master is pulling on marionette strings. Two hands grasp my ankles as I nearly lose my balance. But even at this height, the force is not enough to fully lift me. I unwrap the infant from the jacket and hold them tight to my chest. Breathe in the smell of innocence and youth.

“I bet you didn’t expect to wake up to this,” I say. “And who knows what you’ll wake up to tomorrow. I hope you’ll be okay.”

As if the baby knows what is going to happen, they begin to cry.

“Throw the damn kid up there already,” someone shouts from below.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” I say. “Remember us.”

And before I hesitate any further, I raise the infant above my head, feel their tiny squirming body sliding away from my hands. Almost immediately I regret letting go. The infant screams and I begin to sob. They are at the mercy of space now, the ether—all the invisible borders and choices between us. I remain at the pinnacle of the pyramid, looking up at nothing at all, waiting for the infant’s cries to fade before climbing back down.





Pig Son


After my ex-wife mailed half of my son’s ashes to me in an urn, I committed myself to growing the hearts and other organs that might have saved him inside of pigs. It’s Fitch’s birthday today, which means Dorrie texts me more than usual, which is pretty much never. Do you remember how I told you that he liked to fall asleep hugging his new collection of comic books? I’ve forgotten what he smelled like. I never respond to these messages. Dorrie doesn’t really want a conversation. She still blames me for not being there in the end. She’s never understood how hard I fought trying to save him. A real conversation would be too painful. It’s the same reason I’ve never addressed Fitch’s failed transplant in my peer-reviewed articles. His file sits inside my desk, rather than among the lab’s program records, like a lost statistic.

My graduate assistant, Patrice, is shouting through the intercom, telling me to come to the lab quickly. I hear another voice I don’t recognize, muffled and nasal and a little bit frantic, repeating the word doctor as if it’s trying to convey an entire thought with a single word. I pull on my face mask and lab coat, open the outer door of my office. My staff is gathered around one of the glass holding pens where we keep our donor pigs. The pigs are all destined to help infected people like my son whose organs have given way to the plague. The timing is crucial, though. We need to reach the infected before they slip into the comas that mark the advanced stages of the illness. This one, donor 28, was nicknamed Snortorious P.I.G. after an intern put a gold chain and shades on him during a Halloween party. The pig studies me as I approach, wiggling its behind, and barely opens its mouth: Dahktar. The sound seems disembodied, like a ventriloquist is throwing their voice.

“Okay, very funny,” I say, turning to my staff. “Who said that?”

They look at each other and Patrice points back to the pen.

“We think it’s Snortorious,” she says. Okay, sure. Forget that these pigs lack the necessary vocal cords for human speech, even if we have genetically modified them for accelerated growth and organ donor optimization.

Dahktar. This time the pig’s mouth doesn’t move at all. I’m starting to get annoyed, but there’s something about the voice.

“Again,” I say. I hop into the pen, nearly sliding on a piece of shit, and kneel, looking into the animal’s blue eyes. “Say it.”

Dahktar, he says. Jesus. The pig’s strange voice, like a mouth filled with cotton balls, reverberates in my mind. After several more tests, there is no mistaking it. The pig’s brain, not quite human and not quite swine, lights up like a firecracker on the MRI whenever he speaks.

“This does not leave the building. Not yet,” I say. “We need to know what we have here. And we don’t want someone else taking him away.”