The Cabin at the End of the World(36)
The weaker artificial light is trapped inside the cabin. It quickly grows too dark outside to see Redmond from within the glow of the common room. The color and the topography of the blanket cover for his body are not visible and there’s only a vague sense of something there, dumbly occupying space on the deck. It’s as though he isn’t there at all, like a decaying cultural memory of a deep, dark historical past (a something that happened to someone else; those someone elses are always so hapless, aren’t they?), one we actively wish to forget even as we claim to acknowledge the danger of forgetting.
Leonard announces he is going to turn on the grill and cook the chicken. He says it like he’s reading the first steps of the how-to manual for the bizarre evening ahead. He walks over to Wen and gently plucks her from Eric’s feet. She does not resist. Andrew and Eric shout and tell Leonard to leave her alone, to not touch her, responses as automatic as they are feckless. Leonard says she will be fine and she is just going to sit with him on the couch while her dads use the bathroom to wash up for dinner. Then he asks Wen if them going to the bathroom is a good idea, and shouldn’t everyone wash their hands before they eat? She is adrift on Leonard’s lap, positioned like a ventriloquist’s dummy. She squirms and slouches, obviously trying to slide off his lap. He readjusts her. He tells Andrew and Eric that they will not try anything stupid while their legs are untied. He says, “We’ve reached a critical point, the point of no return, and you must cooperate.” It’s less what he says but how he says it. Adriane retrieves the dual-ended weapon, the largest one, the one that cratered Redmond’s chest, and leans it against the couch next to Leonard and Wen.
Sabrina and Adriane untie Andrew’s legs first. Andrew makes a joke about needing more than his feet to go to the bathroom. Sabrina says she will help and, “I’m a nurse and I’ve seen it all.” Standing up from the chair is difficult and his nearly forty-year-old legs are practically numb; a painful rush of pins and needles swarms his lower extremities. Eric has the same experience when he first stands, and he has to move slower as the act of standing fuzzes his head with light and heat. Both men, their hands tied behind their backs, have a turn at shuffling feebly into the bathroom. The door remains open with Adriane standing in the doorway as a guard. They are positioned in front of the toilet and suffer the indignity of Sabrina loosening their shorts and underwear to allow them to urinate.
Leonard keeps a one-sided dialogue going about him and Wen having a nice visit together on the couch. He asks her questions. He pretends she answers him to continue the conversation.
Both men, at certain points during their odyssey to and from the bathroom, consider running and/or bashing themselves into Sabrina and/or kicking Adriane. Both men decide this isn’t the time, not while the others are at their most vigilant. They do not want to believe Leonard would hurt Wen despite his clearly being more than capable of extreme violence. They rationalize an escape attempt will make more sense the next time they are allowed to use the bathroom. Having coordinated this successful, uneventful maiden trip, the three others can’t help but slacken their guard just a little bit the next time, or the time after that.
After they are returned and retied to their chairs, they notice the ropes wound around their hands and wrists have slackened, or perhaps that’s wishful thinking. No, their bodies’ change of position and leverage, their movement, their walking across the cabin and reshaping themselves into the tighter space of the bathroom alongside Sabrina has to have loosened the ropes. They can feel it.
Leonard clumsily washes and preps the boneless chicken breasts before Adriane takes over. She forgoes the deck floodlighting (insisting she doesn’t need it, yelling at Leonard until he shuts the exterior lights off) and works in the near total dark. She says the grill sucks and she can’t be judged by what such an inferior product produces. The smell is simply exquisite, and Sabrina says so with a smile on her face as she prepares a large bowl of garden salad. Leonard sets the kitchen table: four plates, four forks, and four plastic cups. Adriane ducks through the broken sliders with a platter of steaming, grilled meat, warning the room with, “Watch out. Hot stuff,” and she barks at Leonard to shut the screen door behind her before they let in every moth and mosquito in New Hampshire. There is already a gaggle of winged insects swarming the wagon wheel light fixture, their bodies relentlessly pinging against the bulbs. Eric spies two thick, black flies (wondering if they are the same ones he saw earlier) and when they smack into a bulb, Eric is convinced the wagon wheel sways with the impact. Their buzzing is a low hum, like a chant.
Leonard takes Wen’s hand, and with a small, gentle tug, she stands and follows him to the kitchen table. She sits on the far side, next to Leonard and facing her parents. Sabrina made her a cup of chocolate milk with chocolate kisses she melted in the microwave. On Wen’s plate are a small pile of bite-sized pieces of chicken and a minisalad composed of lettuce, two cherry tomatoes, and three cucumber wheels. Wen holds one cucumber slice up and looks at Andrew and Eric. The rind was peeled off, the way she likes it.
Andrew says, “Go ahead. You can eat.”
She eats everything on her plate, grim and determined to complete the task. She will later leave the table with a faint chocolate milk mustache coloring her lip.
The three others are seated at the table. Leonard and Sabrina praise Adriane for how moist the chicken is. Single-word delicious declaratives and I didn’t think I was hungry are passed around the table along with the pepper, BBQ sauce, and raspberry balsamic dressing. Busy knives and forks clink and scrape on the plates.