White Horse

“Where did they go?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much. Not as much as him.”

“That’s true enough. A few months ago I was living a normal life, doing a whole lot of not much, and a couple weeks ago I was stopping a rape in progress so that a young woman might have a chance at survival. Who knows what he was learning during that time.”

“Thanks,” she says. “I don’t think I ever said that.”

“You’re welcome. I’d do it again.”

“Because you have to?”

“Because it’s the right thing. And because I like you.”

“Even though I’m stroppy and ungrateful?”

I manage a laugh. “You’re stroppy, ungrateful, and prettier than me.”

“Am I really?” Her face glows with pleasure.

“Much prettier.”

“Do you think he could love me?”

“The Swiss?”

She nods.

“If he can’t, it’s not your fault. We’re all different now.”

“I can fix him,” she says. “And he can fix me.”

If only wishes weren’t white-colored horses.

An uncomfortable silence choke-holds us. The Swiss is no prophet, and yet, Lisa still faces the direction in which he disappeared as though she can bring him back with sheer wanting. Man as Mecca.

The fire sputters, limps across still-damp limbs until the residual moisture sizzles to steam. I sit back on my haunches, satisfied and worried. Stare into the flame as though it can foretell the future.

A crack whips through the night.

Lisa leaps from her invisible prayer rug. Hugs the fire.

Another crack.

I know the sound. I’ve heard it on television and in the streets after the war and disease struck. Gunshots.

The soldier must have a gun. That’s not unreasonable. It’s a tool of his trade, just like a mop was mine. At least, I hope it’s him and not some unnamed foe.

What if he is the enemy?

“We should hide,” I say. If that’s not them, we’re sitting here with a beacon, announcing our position. My cheeks flush hotter as my ire rises. We’re two little sitting ducks, Lisa and I, rendered helpless because two men told me what to do and I followed orders as though their will was more substantial than my own.

Lisa won’t come. “He’ll come back for us.”

“We have to rescue ourselves.”

“Go, then. I’m staying.”

“If there’s something out there, it’ll come straight for us. The fire has made sure of that.”

“I don’t care.”

We stay, Lisa hugging her knees by the fire and me staring into the dark, keeping the monsters at bay with the sheer force of my will. The minutes slouch by. The night settles into its easy chair for the duration. I lean against the tree’s stiff bark.

“If you want to sleep, I’ll keep watch.”

Lisa stares blindly at me through the flames. The fire is a thin mask concealing her emotions. I never noticed before, but fire is not constant. It’s a shifting landscape of peaks and valleys. Mountains rise and fall only to soar again before sinking. When one flame dies, another surges and takes its place. This topographical dance takes place on Lisa’s face. From here she appears to be melting upwards, rivulets of her pouring into the gradient. A possible future has slipped through some crack in time to taunt me. I see Lisa’s skin shrivel away like celluloid, what little fat she has bubbling until it’s nothing more than a residue in the air, in my lungs, on my skin.

A memory chooses that moment to step forward, as though it’s been waiting a lifetime for this. The voice belongs to Derek Keen, back row, ninth-grade science.

If you can smell a fart, it means you’re breathing in molecules of the farter’s shit.

That one earned him a detention, but more important it won him a grudging Technically you’re correct, Mr. Keen from a teacher rarely pleased. Mr. Crane. I wonder if he died from White Horse. Surely not. He was an artifact from antiquity even then. James, in later years, used to joke about how he wished he could carbon-date Mr. Crane’s face.

I don’t want Lisa to burn. Not in the future and not now. I don’t want to suck molecules of her into my lungs, where they’ll mingle with me.

The crunch of boots on grass drags me from my morbid fantasy. The soldier emerges first.

“We bring food,” he declares. When he grins it transforms him. This man is proud to provide. He’s a trained protector, although from the victory in his eyes it’s clear this is not simply a learned skill but part of his fabric. For this I must thank him in his own tongue.

“Grazie.”

He laughs, hugs me, slaps my back. “Good, good.”

The Swiss melts into the golden aura wearing a dead goat across his shoulders like a biblical portent of evil. The beast’s head hangs at an unnatural angle, its throat a gaping second mouth. When he drops it at the fire’s edge, I see where the bullets have punched through its hide.

“You already shot it. Did you have to cut its throat, too?” I ask.

“How else do you expect the blood to drain? Cook it.”

Lisa leaps up, stumbles from the circle. The sound of her retching drowns out the insect cries.

“My experience with meat is limited to what’s in the supermarket in neat packets,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn.” From my backpack, I draw out the cleaver with its honed edge. My hands shake.

The soldier takes the Swiss’s rope. “I will help.”

Though there is abundant light, the Swiss’s eyes remain hard and dark. He crouches by the fire. “It is women’s work.”

We do what we must. The president’s words, just before anarchy squeezed the government from its fortresses of power. We do what we must. I’ve done that. I’m doing that. Because if I don’t, I’ll topple into the remnants of my life where I’ll languish and turn to dust.

We do what we must. The words give me no comfort as I peel the goat’s skin like it’s a bloody banana. The guts spill at my feet; I tell myself it’s just Grandma’s sausage stew heaped upon the grass. When the goat no longer looks like an animal but like a random slab of meat hanging in a butcher’s window, I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and find it wet.

The soldier appears at my elbow. “Show me.” He holds out his hand and I give him the knife.

“Where you go?”

“Brindisi.”

“Ah. For the boats, yes?”

“Yes.” The blade gains confident speed in his hands. “Have you done this before?”

“Yes. My family, they have a farm with…”

He stops, pushes his nose flat.

“Pigs?”

“And chickens. I learn very young to cut meat for my family. My father he teach me.”