June - The Liars 22 страница

"A system is a system is a system," Daniel told me after I had explained my realizations about the crate, our last night together. "All structures can be used for something. But they only work through consensus. The smallest particle can disrupt that. What does matter is not the plan of the attack or the rebellion, but the intention behind it. All actions look the same from the outside, so we must look in."

I merely nodded. I was too tired and exhausted to fully understand all that he was telling me before we left. He seemed to talk forever that night, even when all I wanted to do was just lie down on his bed with him and hold him in my arms. He was going to be coming with us in Paul's van the next morning, but that was a different space. It wasn't as personal or intimate as his bedroom was. It was the intimacy I had wanted, but he kept talking.

"I need to tell you things," he told me, brushing my hair back over my ears. It was long enough to curl behind now. "And you need to learn how to listen."

So that was what I did. He touched my back softly and we kept our clothing on as we stretched out together. He went through and told me the story of The Bear again, this time from yet another angle. He told me about Paul and Tonya and Kristen, and what was going to happen here next. He told me more about Gwen, but he was still evasive with that topic, not fully out of that relationship yet. He told me about his time as a child on a reservation, though those memories were so precarious and he didn't trust them anymore. He told me a lot of things, many of which I promptly forgot as soon as I awoke the next morning, but I listened to him soundly before he was done.

"Have you been listening to me, young Frank?" he asked quietly, whispering in my ear before he shut off the light.

"Of course," I told him, and he seemed satisfied. We both lay in the dark, and I waited for morning to come.

I recalled his words on ants and the world again on my last run before I left the community. I had to get up at nearly four in the morning in order to get out and see the cows for the last time. I had waited for that fox every morning too, but she never came back to me. I hoped, that like the dove that had flown from my hands and out of my life, that they were okay. I hoped those cows never got slaughtered, never saw the end of their traumatic history. As Jasmine wrote gibberish for fun in the morning with Gwen in her bed, I went on my last run around the community and took my last shower in the stalls. Daniel heard me come back from his window in the kitchen, and came promptly down and into the stall with me. He had been asleep when I left, and he cursed me then for getting up so damn early.

"You could have waited until we left and then we could have hung out in the car," I told him, teasing him because I knew that that ending wouldn't have been satisfying for either of us. He just shook his head and got under the water with me. We were done listening and speaking out loud, it was time to reacquaint ourselves with another language before it became too far and foreign for us both. We jerked one another off outside, just as the sun was coming up. We kissed and kissed, even as the water stream got horrifically cold, and even after we shut it off, I didn't want to let him go. He was so normal to me now, so comforting. I had gotten used to the small ticks about his body, the way he squinted his eyes when he was thinking, and his ability to just not care about where he was when he had to pee. I had seen him urinate far more than I ever needed to, and squat to shit in the bushes, but I knew I would miss those things. I always missed those weird trivial habits that stuck to a person.

"Don't get all weepy on me. This is one of the reasons I didn't want you to speak the night before. That listening stuff was actually bullshit," he teased as we dried ourselves off. I knew he was lying a little bit. He needed to, especially being as vulnerable as he had been. We needed to use humor to keep our feelings, at least the strong ones, at bay. "This is not goodbye. I will come up and see you two. I live here, but I still leave. Jasmine and I can go to Food Not Bombs and bring home some free food for the babies."

"Babies?" I said. "Has Jasmine been calling me a baby now?"

I looked up at him and he took in a deep breath. Oh. I understood, then. She had been talking about more children, like I had been. She would often back track her statements and tell me that it was all hormones, all talk. As soon as our daughter became a fact and she lived through childbirth, she would change her mind, she said. But I had seen that smile in her eyes, and I felt something inside of me pang with realization.

"But first!" Daniel said, bringing me back to reality. He kicked open the shower door and stepped outside into the sunlight. "Let's say goodbye to this place."

We had breakfast with everyone in the morning, and then, with just Paul, Tonya, Daniel, Jasmine, and myself in the car, we headed out. Jasmine and Tonya had been getting close the past couple days since the phone call. Most of their conversations took on an urgent tone, as if there was something that they both needed to accomplish by the time she left. Jasmine was evasive about it, and that was fine with me. I had been busy myself.

We left behind the Bear community, but not really. I knew it would be all over me, a part of my body as much as it was a part of my mind and memory. Jasmine and I sat in the backseat together. Her stomach overwhelmed her and she was still wearing my clothing. My green plaid shirt looked back at me, overtop of an eight month pregnant belly with an outie belly button now, and dark denim pants. I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and my new muscular and skinnier body was contained underneath. Both of us were tanned, and my beard was still there. I had debated shaving that morning, but then Daniel had come to see me and time melted away. I figured it was a fair trade off, and I kind of liked it. I stroked it, feeling very stereotypical, as we drove back to our home. We all looked out the windows and made small talk, but we were mostly inside our own minds, dreading departure. I held Jasmine's hand the entire way.

My thoughts swirled, and I realized how everything had changed. Though our bodies would not stay the way that they were now; I would no doubt lose the muscle and put on fat again when I was no longer going for runs. Jasmine would have the baby. We would both shave. But these images of us and this collective image of us together at The Bear, inside of The Bear, that would always exist. I kept thinking of what Daniel told me about Gerard, about how I could keep living my life the way I wanted to, the way it needed to be lived, but that did not damage what had happened back then. Back then was safe from time, in a way. It was locked into a safe house of my interior and I kept it well preserved. It was tiring, though, and it often felt like I was keeping a dead museum. I didn't want to forget him, and I knew I never would, but it felt pointless to have this part of myself not being used or shared with anyone. I would soon lose Daniel as an audience member and a friend who knew what I meant without ever having to meet Gerard.

I looked back on the forest, the hugeness of it all, about to become catalogued and categorized away by us. I knew that Jasmine was probably now plotting her article on this place, perhaps even an entire theme of the magazine devoted to The Bear. I knew she would focus on the facts in her story, but between those letters, there would be spaces, and in those spaces was where the real story was. I thought of Jasmine and her zines, and how she and Hilda had worked at piecing themselves together in the mess that was the trauma of everyday life. I thought of being invisible, being lucky that I was invisible, but knowing that like Jasmine, it would always feel as if I was living that double life. I had so many faces, three or four or five, and sometimes it felt like the people who talked to me didn't really see me. They didn't really understand me and what I meant when I was talking out loud. I thought of talking to people I knew, the people I worked with, and then I thought of talking to strangers.

L’Étranger, I said to myself, knowing that the translation was off. But I asked myself what felt like a million questions as we weaved in and out of populated roads, and back and forth together. If I let strangers into my house, would it still be safe? If we were all irrevocably linked, could we all be free? What part of the collective conversation, unconscious, memory, could I represent and where did my story tie together? If Gerard had lost his memories, could I find them again?

I sat up straight in the car. Vivian's voice had cut through my head. "Don't drink, Frank." And then my thoughts converged, and I knew that option was no longer a part of my own landscape. My house would remain safe where I kept it all and no drinking would pass. I would always keep these feelings safe of The Dove Keeper, The Dove Man, L’Étranger. No, I thought correcting myself. No, no, that wasn't right at all. He was Gerard, and Gerard was just a man. None of those monikers from before fit him anymore. He was just a man, and he was a man who was dying, every day, just like the rest of us. In the car, halfway home, I realized what I needed to do. I needed to recreate the man and not the myth, Gerard Wyatt, and Gerard Wyatt alone.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14