The line of anxiety that had been strung so taut across her snapped; she thought she could feel her baby, falling from that uncomfortable balance, back into an easy sleep.
“We don’t want water,” Frida said.
“Look,” Cal said. He laughed. “I was almost about to say, Take me to your leader, but that makes me sound like some kind of alien invader.”
“Please,” Frida said. “We just want to meet you all and get some help.”
“Not going to happen,” the man said, shaking his head. Frida saw that his ponytail had been secured by one of those hair ties with two red plastic balls, as if he were a little girl.
“We believe in containment,” he said.
“So we’ve heard,” Frida said.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
“We know August,” Cal said.
Recognition passed over the young man’s face, but he said nothing. He was holding the rifle tighter now, as if more conscious that the weapon was at his disposal.
Cal wasn’t giving up. “I’m Cal.” He put a hand on Frida’s back. “This is my wife.”
“My name is Frida.”
It was if she’d said, Open sesame. The young man looked up suddenly. “Frida?” He shook his head as if he were emerging from a cold pool of water.
“That’s me,” she said.
“Frida? That’s your name? Really?”
“Why does it matter?” Cal said. “You don’t know us.”
The young man bit his lip. “You better come with me.”
8
The kid’s name was Sailor. “That’s my real name,” he explained, after Frida asked if he’d been christened that by friends. She had gestured to his forearm, and Cal saw that it was tattooed with a solid black anchor fit for Popeye. Sailor shook his head, told her his parents had been whimsical people. “Child as art project, that kind of thing.”
Cal wouldn’t have noticed the tattoo if Frida hadn’t pointed it out. But she had probably recorded everything about Sailor; she probably liked his narrow shoulders and his nervous bravado and the way he just kept saying, “Follow me,” whenever Cal asked where they were headed. Frida was obviously smitten—she couldn’t hide it.
Or maybe she just felt protective of the kid, her maternal instinct kicking in. He looked so young. Sailor had told them he was twenty-two, but that seemed impossible. He reminded Cal of certain first-years at Plank who ate and ate and never gained an ounce, who had yet to grow chest hair or even a passable goatee. In other words, a Planker like Cal had been. He hadn’t been malnourished when he arrived for college, just young, boyish.
Cal was relieved to have a guide, at least. Someone who understood these Spikes and the labyrinth they formed, who wasn’t intimidated or enamored by them. The latter was Frida’s problem; she walked around each one with awe, as if the Spikes were brilliantly rather than sloppily constructed, as if they were any better than the découpage and found art projects his mother had done with her friends every other Tuesday night when he was a teenager.
Her salon, she’d called those get-togethers.
Cal was impressed with how mazelike the Spikes were, though: how they could confuse and terrorize a stranger, keep him out, force him to give up, go home. He longed to see the intricate route from above. He wondered if together the Spikes formed a beautiful design, like a crop circle. Or maybe a word. Boo! Or a phrase. Crown of thorns.
The words had shot across his mind as if from Sailor’s rifle, catching him by surprise. The crown of thorns that surrounds the city of God.
“What’s that?” Frida said.
He hadn’t meant to say the phrase aloud. If he remembered correctly, the quote was about Rome, about the shantytowns that encircled the city. He couldn’t recall who had said it.
“Pasolini,” Sailor said. He was walking just ahead of them and turned to smile.
How had this kid known that reference? Because he didn’t want to betray just how impressed he was, Cal simply nodded at Sailor and kept walking.
“What are you guys talking about?” Frida asked.
“Famous words by famous men,” Sailor said. “That’s all.”
He led them around another series of Spikes, and then another. For a moment it seemed they were doubling back unnecessarily, and then Cal realized they had done so to avoid a veritable castle wall of Spikes, built so close together their trunks kissed.
And then Sailor pointed to the ground and said, “Careful.”
Before them, in various places, pieces of glass protruded from the dirt and grass. Cal had read about places in Latin America where they lined walls with bottle shards to keep people from climbing over. These pieces of glass, which he and Frida tiptoed warily around, had clearly been placed for the same purpose: to slice people’s feet, to maim them or, at least, wreck their last pair of shoes.