The Cabin at the End of the World(73)
Eric asks, “What are you doing?”
“This will be quick.” Bullets, those shiny brass threats, are seeds spilled and spread over the black-as-potting-soil trunk interior. Andrew ghosts over the evidence of his earlier struggle with Sabrina and those leavings now read like tea leaves, a forecasting of the events in the cabin that followed.
Andrew pulls the handgun from his back pocket. He studies the snub-nosed barrel from which exploded a bullet that looked no different from the ones lying dormant in the trunk, a bullet that passed through his daughter’s—
“Stop it,” Andrew whispers. He’s going to reload this gun and bring it with him just in case Sabrina or anyone else has another surprise for us. Andrew says into the vehicle’s interior but loud enough for Eric to hear, “When this is over and when we are safe, I am going to throw this gun into the woods or the lake or preferably a bottomless pit.”
“I’ll help you find one and we’ll throw it in there together,” Eric says. It comes out too eager and sentimental, so it feels like such a damned and obvious lie. Andrew reloading that gun, the gun, and then Eric’s awkward attempt at commiseration is yet another microevent within the greater, grander days of horror and evil that will mark us whether we live another sixty seconds or sixty years, together or apart.
Andrew gathers the loose bullets quickly, before he can change his mind. They are small chilled things in his fingers and he loads the five chambers of the handgun. He returns the gun to his back pocket. He places the knife in the trunk next to the gun safe, leaving an offering for a bloodthirsty, violent god, were there any other kind.
Andrew faces Eric and is desperate to say something, anything besides the gun is loaded so we can go.
Eric adjusts Wen’s body in his arms and walks down the driveway, toward Sabrina, who is as still as a photographic image.
Andrew leaves the SUV trunk open, hurrying to catch up to Eric. His right knee audibly grinds and clicks, and he catches himself as the knee buckles and gives out, leg quivering like a loose spring. “Shit!”
From the mouth of the driveway and standing next to Sabrina, Eric asks, “What’s wrong?”
She sneaks glances at Eric as though she wants to tell him something that’s meant only for him. Maybe she wants to tell Eric this is his last opportunity to save the world: leave Andrew behind while he and Sabrina continue down the road and along the way Eric can make the sacrifice, a self-sacrifice, without Andrew having to suffer through witnessing his suicide, without Andrew being there to stop him, and once it’s done then Andrew will live. It will be hard but Andrew will live. And everyone else will live.
Eric says, “Maybe you should—” He pauses long enough, and purposefully, to let Andrew interrupt and to keep Eric from finishing his statement. Maybe you should stay here.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m, um, rebooting the leg.” Andrew regrets not taking one of the weapons with him as he could’ve used one as a cane. He walks more cautiously and with a pronounced, sputtering limp, only putting as much weight on his right leg as is absolutely necessary before skipping back onto his left. He scans the woods along the edge of the driveway for a walking stick and finds one that’s long enough but might be too skinny to hold his full weight. It’s a gnarled, arthritic finger and the bark is black, knotty, and dotted with green and white blossoms of lichen. It’ll have to do. He says, “All set,” and hobbles forward.
Sabrina calls out to Andrew in an overly cheery, high-pitched voice. “It’s not that far. You can do it.” And did he see a flash of a smartass smirk, the we’re-on-to-you kind his better students give him when he’s playfully obtuse in a group discussion? Sabrina holds Andrew with a look that pins him, and he now reads it as I can sprint away at any time and you can’t catch me and you won’t shoot me. Andrew quickens his pace, putting all his weight on his inadequate and warbly stick, desperate to prove he can achieve a brisk, healthy-legged walking speed. He should’ve gathered more rope and tethered a line between himself and Sabrina. What was he thinking? But it’s too late now. There’s no going back inside the cabin for more rope. There’s no going back for anything.
We make a right turn at the end of the driveway. It’s darker on the dirt road, which is narrower than we remember, only wide enough for one lane, and it might be our imaginations, but the road appears to be thinning, winnowing as we progress. The trees crowd our procession, wanting to be closer, to hold us, to stop us. They are our jurors and their whispered deliberations occur above in the canopy. The treetops sway and peer down for a better look, or a final one before they hold their thumbs down. Above the conspiratorial trees, the clouds have lost their individuality, pressed tightly into thick layers of ash. It’s darker ahead, the road leading to a point beyond where we can see, to a point we may never reach.
After a few hundred paces of silent walking, the little red cabin is no longer visible. Sabrina is a few steps ahead of us. She walks evenly and with a confidence neither of us feels. We stagger behind, side by side, glancing nervously at each other.
Eric looks down at Wen and another panicked thought slithers in: later (however long or brief his later might be), when he remembers what it felt like to hold Wen in his arms, will he only and forever remember this death march? It doesn’t feel like it’s her that he’s carrying. This isn’t what he wants to remember, and her body is suddenly as heavy as a wooden cross. Eric recalls his Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Amstutz, a middle-aged woman who always wore blue print dresses, black patent shoes with silver buckles, and tan pantyhose that made her legs look wooden. She didn’t smile and a tight-lipped pucker of disapproval was permanently etched onto her ruddy face. Eric’s mother didn’t like her very much. Mom never said so outright, but he could tell by how she referred to Mrs. Amstutz as “your teacher” and never by name. Mrs. Amstutz once spent an entire class harping on how heavy the cross was that Jesus was made to carry. She wasn’t speaking metaphorically, either. She asked each of the children in the class to give a weight comparison. The other children enthusiastically compared its weight to cars, boulders, elephants, an offensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jabba the Hutt, and someone’s overweight uncle; the kids did not take the question anywhere near as seriously as she intended. When it was Eric’s turn, he was near tears and his heartbeat was a drumroll. In a regular classroom setting, Eric was composed, confident, and according to all his teachers, mature beyond his years. Sunday school was different. It wasn’t the teacher that had him rattled and afraid. This was God’s class. God was watching, listening, keeping track of what Eric said and did, and what he thought. Mrs. Amstutz asked Eric three times how much he thought the cross weighed. He thinks of the question every time he goes to church and sees the cross hanging over the altar, and every time, he remembers his answer: the ten-year-old Eric squeaked out that he couldn’t imagine anything being that heavy.