The Dead Lands

“For me?” At first she seems taken by the idea. That he would offer such a thing. Then she is struck more by the absurdity than by the nobility of the gesture. “You can’t even climb a ladder without breaking your arm. You can’t even tie your own shoe. You’ll kill him? I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him my own damn self.”

 

 

He sees there is no reasoning with or comforting her, so he tries a method of thieving: distraction and inertia. If you sneak up beside somebody and hold a rotten apple to their face, ask them to buy it, they’ll naturally reel back, swing up their hands. With that momentum he’ll pop off a bracelet or slide coins from a pocket. He’ll follow Ella’s lead. “How would you do it? You could stab him. Sneak up behind him and—” Here he slashes at an invisible figure and makes a wet, shredding sound.

 

“No,” she says and wrinkles her face. “That wouldn’t work. That wouldn’t work at all. You’d have to get close and risk him grabbing hold of you. And he’s too big. You’d have to stab him a million times. And you’d have to stab him with something long, like a sword, to even reach anything important.”

 

“Then, what? How would you kill him?”

 

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d push something out a window onto him. Something heavy. An anvil. Knock his brains out.”

 

“Or poison!”

 

“That wouldn’t work either. Same as with the knife. He’s too big. How much poison would it take to kill someone like that? A lot. And how do you camouflage a lot of poison? You can’t just sprinkle it on a biscuit. You see? You need me. You can’t think anything through on your own.”

 

Her tone has mellowed. Her mouth has risen into a smile. He has helped lag her fear. Not enough to get her to sleep, but enough to get her ready for it. They share the same room, their beds separated by a night table. They extinguish their lamps and he lies there for a long time, listening to her breath, waiting for it to settle into the rhythm of sleep. Then she says, “Simon?”

 

“What?”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“For what?”

 

“You know.” He waits for her to say more, but she doesn’t. Outside the turbines turn and croak their lazy circles and sink them into sleep.

 

 

 

The next morning, it takes him a moment to shake off his dreams, to orient himself in the museum, to recognize Ella spreading the curtains and letting in a slash of sunlight.

 

He sees then his backpack, stained and patched, made mostly from canvas and bottomed with leather. He has asked for it many times—so many times that she has threatened to throw it away if he asks again—and now here it is. The flap is open, as if it has disgorged all its contents on the floor. There is a blister pack of stainless steel nails, a chisel, a hammer, a faded rubber ducky with the beak hanging off, a rusted coil of wire, three sheets of sandpaper, a corroded butcher knife and metal spatula, three bottles of aspirin and another for springtime allergies.

 

She sits on the edge of the bed and folds her hands in her lap and asks if he sells these things and he says yes, and she asks if people wonder where he finds them and he says not really. “Because I’m a thief, you know. You don’t want to ask too many questions when you’re buying from a thief.”

 

“You’re not a thief. You’re a grave robber.”

 

“No, no. I steal from the living too.” He tells her that he can pick any lock, climb any wall, slip through any door or window in the Sanctuary. This he says in a rush of pride and excitement—and then realizes whom he is speaking to and goes quiet and readies for a scolding.

 

But she only tucks her hair behind her ears, a delicate gesture for her, and says, “What about that one?”

 

She is talking about a photograph, discolored and bent in half, the picture flaking along the crease. A family on a sand dune. Two parents, three kids, all leaning into each other, their smiles bright and their hair windblown, while sunlight sparkles in a thousand crystalline points off the ocean behind them. “Why would you take this?”

 

“I don’t know.” He crawls out of bed and squats to study the photo. “I guess I like the way it makes me feel when I look at it and hold it in my hand. It’s like it’s got this charge, a little life in it still.” The mother appears to be laughing. One of the children, a boy, isn’t looking at the camera at all, his eyes on a gull riding the breeze. Simon imagines the bones beneath their faces and wonders where they might be interred. “This whole museum is a bit like that, don’t you think?”

 

Ella studies him for a pregnant moment. Then she goes to the closet and swings open the door and pulls from beneath her clothes an old toy chest with a hinged lid and a rocking horse carved into the side.

 

She shows him what she has never showed anyone. What she calls her dream box. Inside there are toy ponies, a pink plastic comb, a Renoir magnet, a pack of playing cards, an angel calendar, a yellowed copy of The Hobbit with the pages crumbling out of it, and more, much more, including a folder full of photos and clippings. She holds everything with the tips of her fingers, taking care not to bend or dirty them. He doesn’t ask her why she has it, this box full of everything. He understands. They are the same, both refusing to acknowledge that they live in a place where fantasies must be discarded.

 

Here is a vinyl record in a brittle paper sleeve. Fran?oise Hardy, it reads across it. Simon takes it from her. “Have you ever listened to this?”

 

“No.”

 

“My father had records he used to play.”

 

“Your father.” The danger of last night, which seemed so far removed a moment ago, now flashes across her face. She looks as though she might say something, but a tapping sound distracts her. They turn to the window, where Lewis’s owl waits patiently beyond the glass.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 22

 

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