They drive into low hills, fancy houses set far apart. A few private vineyards, rows of stumps just starting their spring growth. Spring is so much further away in Alaska.
It’s a paradise, this place. He can see that now. Oak trees and shade, narrow winding lanes, all newly paved by the rich, and so much open space. Not wild, not a place to hunt, but he asks Gary to pull over when there’s no house in sight, and they all get out.
A wooden fence meant only for looks, just one heavy log low and one high, very easy to duck between. A fallen oak wet and covered in white lichen, or is it something else? Does lichen grow only on rocks? So delicate, like lace all along the dead bark. But is all bark dead, even on a living tree? What is it that’s alive about a tree? How is it he knows so little at almost forty? His birthday is in three months, if he makes it that long, but he knows he won’t. He’ll die at thirty-nine, a more awkward number. They’ll say he was forty, just to keep it simple, or “almost forty.” Gary will speak at the funeral. He’s the executor of the will, so he’ll be doing everything, including fighting the IRS to keep the few assets away from them. That won’t be easy. Jim is leaving his brother with a terrible job.
David has been talking this whole time, but Jim hasn’t heard a word. He knows only that there’s talking and that it doesn’t matter. And he should care more but he can’t. He’s watching the dark red meat of the tree where termites have opened it up. So much like flesh. Why do trees have to have skin too, with their sap and raw meat hidden beneath? Why did there have to be that correspondence? Why doesn’t the sky also have a skin? Earth does, and just as changeable as human skin, always shifting, but more slowly. He’d like to understand something before he goes, something about all of it.
Gary has a hand on his shoulder now, so he must stop ignoring everyone. “Okay there, buddy?” Gary asks.
“Yeah,” Jim says. “Just looking at how beautiful this is and wondering why it has to have skin like us. And why doesn’t the sky have skin?”
David is looking at him intently. Standing there in his rain gear like a little man, holding his pellet gun. “The sky does have a skin, if you look at it upside down,” David says. “The atmosphere is the skin, in a few different layers, and then outer space is the meat. We’ve been studying it in science. There’s the troposphere, which is what we live in, then the stratosphere after seven and a half miles, then the mesosphere and thermosphere. Heat is the last thing, and space isn’t far away. Less than two hundred miles. If we could drive on a highway straight up, we’d be there in three hours.”
“Wow,” Jim says. “I like that idea, driving into the sky. It would have to be a convertible. A fifty-five Olds, red and white. Remember those?”
“That’s before my time,” Gary says.
“Well they were the thing. I’d have my arm resting on the door, driving with one hand, heading for the stars. The sky would get darker, an intense blue like winter in Fairbanks, the sky the richest blue you can imagine, cobalt or navy or royal or something, I’m not sure what they would call it.”
“It would have to be night,” David says. “Because otherwise it would just get brighter and you’d get cancer from the radiation. And even at night, if you went far enough you’d leave the shadow.”
“Like father like son,” Gary says. “How old are you? Thirteen? I’ve never had any thoughts like that, even now.”
What Jim realizes then is that his son could end up with the same depression and mood swings and endless unstoppable thoughts about his life, second-guessing everything. Mental illness a curse to pass down through generations. When did it begin in the past, how far back? And how many new generations will suffer?
Tracy laughs, that kind of low nothing laugh kids do just to be delightful and get attention. She has no idea what’s going on, but she wants to be a part of it. So he reaches down and takes her hand. “Do you want to drive up into the sky, Tracy? Take a nice car and just drive straight up?”
She looks worried, and he can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t understand or because she does understand and believes it might be possible and they might do it, which would of course be terrifying. “It’s only a joke, sweetie. No one can drive into the sky. So we won’t be doing that. We’re just going to walk here and look for quail.”
“Did you believe it?” David asks her.
“Be nice to your sister,” Jim says, but David is laughing.
“You believed people can drive into the sky!”
“Shut up,” she says, and Jim doesn’t have the energy for this, so he walks forward over ground that has been grazed. Cow pies black and rippled, grass chewed, ground rutted by hooves during rains, every opportunity for weeds, thistle spreading wide spiny leaves to steal the sun. Laced with white, an indication of poison. It doesn’t have any that he’s aware of, but it’s following the pattern of brightly jeweled spiders and snakes and frogs that announce their poison, and the showiness must be enough, along with a few spines. No thistle has been touched. All free to grow.
Are there any signs in Jim? If he walks past someone on the sidewalk, someone he’s never met, can they tell he’s poison? That’s a problem with humans. There’s no sign at all. No warning. It’s a time his family should help him, but the safest for all would be if they stayed away. The solution would be to strip him bare of possessions and set him walking in an earlier time, before fences or roads, let him walk from here to the other coast, three thousand miles, and by then the poison might be out of him. He needs something as extreme as that, something as elemental and basic and external. He can be fixed only from outside, by doing. Thoughts have failed.
He’s beneath another oak, black oak, dark pitted bark in patterns ancient and unreadable, grown twisted out of the ground. Heavy arms flung wide, like a man staggering and bent, but no weight visible above, only the sky. Torment without source but shaping nonetheless.
A scrub jay high up, roughest call of the blue jays and largest body, banded in black. Jim points at the bird. “Shoot that one,” he says, because he knows David must be near.
He hears the pumping of the air rifle, seven times, max pressure, and the tiny bolt slid back, a pellet inserted. A pause as his son aims, then the spit of air and sound of impact, feathers loosened in the scrub jay’s chest. The delicate inner lace, a whiter blue.
The bird goes straight down. No flapping or struggle, a shot straight to the heart. “Good aim,” Jim says.
David is rushing to where the bird lies on its back. Jim takes his time, feels that he’s a giant, that his steps are slow and can sink into the earth.
Tracy is there too, squatting beside the bird, using a thin stick to poke at it. She’s wearing a pink shawl, something knit with big spaces. He didn’t notice it before. He thought she was wearing rain gear.
The bird has shat itself, a light brown ooze that looks squeezed from a tube. Legs thin and dark. Beak and eye closed. Tracy is poking at the breast, mini CPR but lazy, without any real interest in saving. Can children believe in death, even if they see it?
“We should fry up the breast,” Jim says. “I’ve never tried scrub jay. I don’t know why I’ve never tried it.”
“You can’t eat scrub jay,” David says, looking up at his father.
“Yeah,” Gary says. “Just leave it there.”
“No,” Jim says. “We’re going to try it. This bird gave his life for us. We shall partake of his noble breast.”
David laughs. Jim looks up into the sky, closes his eyes, and raises his arms. “Scrub jay maker, thank you for this gift.”
David and Tracy are both laughing now. Gary is not. “Enough of that,” Gary says. “Let’s move on and look for quail.”
Jim kneels beside his children and takes the scrub jay in his hands. He plucks the feathers from the breast, quickly, smelling the stink of the bird, the oil in the feathers.
“I can do it, Dad,” David says, and so Jim hands it over. His son finishes plucking, then rips the hinge of the breast open, scoops out the guts. Smallest heart and liver and entrails, fit for a doll’s house.
“We don’t need the whole thing,” Jim says. “Just the breast. Slice off one piece on each side.” He hands his pocketknife to his son, but David is already pulling out his own, red Swiss Army. Cutting small filets with bloody fingers.
“I’m thinking a red wine reduction,” Jim says. “What do you think, Gary?”
“Yeah,” Gary says. “Finish with some truffle oil.”
“White truffle oil.”
“Yeah.” Gary has his hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground and kicking at a thistle, ignoring the warning signs.
David holds the two filets in his palm, dark meat. What our own flesh might look like if we cut away small chunks.
Jim stands and feels dizzy. The sky and clouds tilting out of unison with the earth. Edges revealed, misaligned, like a montage in an old movie. “Quail,” he says. “We should hunt for quail. That’s what we’re doing here.”
And so they walk on, fanned out over the land, waiting for the thrum of wings to erupt at their feet, listening for the sucking sound of quail hiding, looking for small bluish bodies and dark topknots.
“We should go uphill, where there are more trees,” David says, and so they do that, following the curve of the land skyward. Jim could survive if all he had to do was walk, away from cities and other people, just walking from one tree to the next.
So much thistle and doveweed. All good grasses gone. Wide leaves of spine or velvet spreading over the broken earth, and the stink of them, all so we can have more hamburger. Clumps of poison oak, also uneaten.
The wind picks up and they feel the first drops. “You need to wear your rain gear, Tracy,” Jim says. “Where’s your rain gear?”
“It’s in your hand,” Gary says, and Jim looks down and there it is, a small blue rain jacket.
“Okay,” he says. He kneels down and helps Tracy put in one arm and then the next, still wearing the odd pink shawl underneath.
“I can do it myself,” she’s saying, and he realizes how big she is. It was crazy that he picked her up earlier. She’s not a young kid anymore. How did she become eight? And yet she’s still making him drawings. He doesn’t know where to place her.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay, Daddy.” This bright look on her face suddenly, a feeling he can’t imagine having. Her eyes so blue and large and flawless.
He can’t look anymore, so he keeps walking, head down against the rain, sound of it falling all around. Much louder than he remembers. Loudest on leaves, a smack, but he can hear it hitting earth too, brutal. His boots slipping a bit in mud and slick cow pies. He steps in anything, curious how it will feel. The ground so dark and the sky gone, only cloud in close, a dirty white, and why not pure? How do clouds become gray?
“Hey,” he hears. Some other voice, from behind. He turns, sees a man walking toward them. Wearing a brown jacket, old-fashioned oilskin. Yellow Carhartt pants. He raises one arm.
“Now we’re in the shit,” Gary says quietly.
“What will happen?” David asks in a whisper that is too loud.
“Nothing,” Jim says. “Nothing ever happens.” He steps toward the man, to bring fate closer, to speed things up. The man should be carrying a shotgun or rifle, out to protect his land, but he has nothing. Jim also has nothing. He’s left the .44 magnum in Gary’s truck. So they will have to use their fists or sticks and stones, beating each other to bloody pulps until one gives out. This is what Jim wants, some contest, no more dodging ghosts in his head.
The man is too old. At least twenty years older than Jim, and moving slowly. He seems to regret his task, doesn’t have enough will to fight. This is a disappointment.
“Yeah?” Jim asks when they’re within easier earshot, twenty paces apart.
The man stops, looks baffled. He spreads out his arms, hands open. “Well you’re on my land.”
“Yeah,” Jim says.
“We were just hunting for quail,” David says. “But we didn’t find any.”
“That’s enough,” Gary says to David. “Let your dad handle this.”
“Handle what?” the man asks. “You’re on my land, hunting illegally. You need to leave. I could call the police.”
“We took one scrub jay,” Jim says. “We carved its breast, in two pieces. You can have one. We can share our kill. Show him the pieces, David.”
“What?” the man says. “I don’t want a piece of scrub jay. Are you crazy or something? Just get off my land.”
“Are you carrying a firearm, sir?” Jim asks.
“What the fuck,” Gary says. “Why are you asking that?”
“No, I’m not,” the man says.
“Well maybe you should next time,” Jim says.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Just get the fuck off my land.”
Jim looks at the man, his weak mouth and worried eyes. He feels like he has all the time in the world. There’s a kind of opportunity here, if he could just understand what it is. So he steps closer. His boots paw at the earth, and the man steps backward, puts his hands out as if he’s ready to catch a basketball, so strange.
“Stop, Jim,” Gary says, but Jim does not stop. He will walk until some external force finally intervenes. He will walk through man and walls and trees and fences, anything that gets in his way.
The man turns and runs, a weak hobble, his feet slipping in the rain and new mud, and Jim knows he could be faster, could run him down, tackle him and beat him to death, but he likes the feel of walking, wants only to walk, nothing more.
Gary grabs his arm, holds him back, so much stronger. “We need to get out of here now,” Gary says in a low voice. “The cops will be coming. And you’re doing this in front of your children.”
Jim still is trying to walk, but he’s held back. He likes the feeling of that, likes being determined from outside, wants the gods to reach down with thin fingers of steel and keep him in place.
“Your children,” Gary repeats. “What are they supposed to think of this?”
Jim tries to care. He tries to feel something, tries to reach to wherever feelings are stored. That must be somewhere inside him. But he can’t find anything, or even why anything is wrong. Why is it wrong for them to see this?
“It’s like there are no rules now,” he tells Gary. “Or reason or what I’m supposed to do. If I tackle that man and beat him on his own land and kill him, that’s the same as never touching him. It’s no different. And it doesn’t matter at all that it’s his land. It isn’t his land. The idea is ridiculous. And the police are ridiculous. What are they doing? How do they know what to do and what not to do, and why should I care about them?”
“You’ll care about them when they beat you with a night stick.”
“Or maybe not. Maybe I’d like it. I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
Jim wonders how it would feel, to be beaten like a dog, and then he’s down on all fours in the rain and mud, and he takes off at a four-legged gallop for the man, who is still not too far away, still slipping and righting himself like a ship at sea. Jim’s hands stinging from thistle and rocks and whatever else, but he loves the feel of this, running with his shoulders, the easy lope of it, natural, his head hanging and mouth open, breathing hard, slavering. Only his knees too weak.
He tries to run on his feet and hands, keeping his knees from touching, but he falls forward, rolling, then uses his knees again.
He can hear David laughing, yelling that he’s doing it too, but Jim doesn’t look back. He’s immersing, finally, into something better, into movement and breath and mud, exactly what he needs. No therapist in an office, just this. Running down the man in the brown jacket. He’ll bite a leg first, fell him, and then he’ll go after the neck. He wants the man’s neck in his teeth, wants to clamp down and taste blood. And he’s gaining. He’s faster on all fours than he ever could have imagined, and stable, but the man is terrified. He falls, takes too long getting up, and the gap is closing. The thrill of this. Jim can feel his chest, how powerful he is, the muscles working.
But then he’s tackled, swept from the side, held face upward to the sky, his arms and legs dangling useless, and he tries to punch at his brother but Gary’s arms are in the way, tries to kick but now his legs are trapped. So much stronger. All he can do is stare into the sky as the rain comes down, open his mouth, and let out some low moan he doesn’t recognize. What it means, who can tell?