The Cabin at the End of the World(55)

Wen marvels at how much bigger Leonard is than Andrew. Despite the size difference, they continue to wrestle to a stalemate over the gun. Leonard lowers his right shoulder and drives it into Andrew’s chest. Andrew twists enough to avoid the brunt of the force, which throws Leonard off-balance, and the two of them crash into the wall next to the doorframe with a cabin-shaking thud. Their arms fall from over their heads like a plummeting castle gate. Their hands swallow up the gun, but as they sweep their arms left and then back right, the black eye of the short, stunted barrel is visible, sunken into the entangled tree roots of their fingers. Leonard twists and slams his weight back into Andrew, pinning him against the wall.

Leonard yells, “Let go! Just let go!”

Wen yells, “You’re hurting him! Stop!”

Eric is almost free from the rope and chair.

Andrew’s face is red, and his body shrinks under the assault of Leonard’s insistent size and strength. Andrew’s breaths are coarse and irregular. His feet slide and stab out from behind Leonard, desperate for purchase and a path to freedom, but he isn’t going anywhere. Andrew drops suddenly—perhaps purposefully—to his knees as though his ankles and shins are made of thin cardboard and crumple under his weight. Leonard stumbles, loses balance, and bashes the side of his head against the wall’s wooden panels. He pops back upright and vigorously attempts to shake the gun free, yanking Andrew’s arms up and down, and side to side, and then Wen doesn’t see or hear or feel anything anymore.





Bloody Like the Day You Were Born





Five


Leonard


Andrew and Eric are with Wen’s body. They are huddled on the floor to his left. They hold her. They surround her. They shield her from Leonard. They wail and scream her name, and then they are just screaming.

Moments ago, the gun and Andrew’s hands were nested dolls inside Leonard’s hands. Andrew was fatigued, weakening, and ready to yield. Leonard felt the waning resistance in Andrew’s quivering, failing attempts to push him away. Leonard was going to graciously accept surrender without judgment, without threat of reprisal, and gently guide the gun out of Andrew’s hands, and salvage salvation from ruin, but then Andrew wrecking-balled himself to the floor and pulled Leonard off-balance, bouncing his head painfully off the wall. Anger flashed like a bright and hissing road flare. He was not cold, blank, removed. Leonard was not not-him as when Redmond was killed. Leonard was as angry as he’s ever been and he wrenched and torqued Andrew’s arms like he wanted to rip them off, discard them, and tear the rest of the cabin and then the world into irretrievable pieces. Andrew’s hands were a fistful of hornets inside Leonard’s hands, and he squeezed, trying to crush them all. And when Leonard squeezed, he felt the subtle vibration and click of the trigger under his palms. (Leonard’s hands are currently pressed flat against the floor, yet he is still feeling that trigger click, which is now a physical time stamp delineating his brief history into before and after.) There was the gunshot and the jolt that reverberated up his arms. It was only after Wen fell that he noticed the heat of the passing bullet glowing on his fingers still wrapped around the gun.

Leonard wasn’t looking directly at Wen, but in the instant after the gunshot, there was a blooming flower of red, a sunspot in the blur of her face. He wasn’t looking directly at Wen, but he saw her fold backward.

He is on all fours and he is crying. His head is down. He will not look at Wen now. He cannot look at what happened to her. He won’t. He is a coward and a failure, and he doesn’t deserve to see her ever again.

Leonard whispers, “I’m sorry,” over and over. He says it out loud and he says it in his head, hoping someone will believe him.

He is still going to do what must be done, what he was asked and then commanded to do. He crawls and Adriane’s legs pass below his carriage like the yellow lines of a lonely mountain road. He makes sure to witness and remember every detail of this small journey over the length of her body. This is the first penance of many to come for breaking a promise to a child, for the hubris of issuing the promise in the first place.

Adriane’s death, he knew, was a possibility, a probability even. Leonard says, “Sorry,” again, and this one, the quietest one, is for Adriane. He is sorry because when she was shot, he felt relief and a spark of joy that the burden of her death was taken away from him; he wouldn’t have to kill her like he killed Redmond. That Redmond might have had another name and assaulted Andrew (right now, he believes Andrew) shakes his faith in what he is doing here more than he has let on. But what choice does he really have at this point other than to continue? Continuing is neither brave nor cowardly, and it is both. Having seen what he has seen and felt what he has felt, Leonard puts his faith in the soothing power of having no choice. He reminds himself that he is only a vessel, and an imperfect one, but he fears all that has gone wrong—so terribly, horribly wrong—is his fault and his alone.

Leonard continues to crawl over Adriane’s body and his hands sluice through her still-warm blood. His hands have always been bloody and are finally being honest about it. He was born in blood like we all were.

He slides his right hand under Adriane’s waist and backside. He retrieves her mesh mask from a back pocket. It is soft and as fragile as a baby bird. He tries to not get blood on the mask, to keep it white for as long as he can. He has the same mask in his pocket, too. He imagines what he will see when it slides over his face. Will he see the world through it or only outlines and dark shapes? Will he no longer see the blood? He wonders if he’ll be afforded the opportunity to put the mask on himself or if there will be anyone left alive to fit it over his face after he is dead.