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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Cry Wolf
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I remember the day after the crash. Several of the passengers were sitting around our fire, laughing. It was just like Lost- only this wasn’t some mystical unfindable island and rescue was sure to be swift.
After the first week we stopped being so sure. We ran out of water, but managed to set up a boiler to clean salt out of the ocean water to drink. But we couldn’t find food. There were a dozen species of local plants, but after Martin died eating roots and mushrooms nobody dared follow suit. It was the night after Martin died that I met Claude. He was going to the World Vegetarian Congress, like the rest of us, with his fiancé, Sandy. We hadn’t found her. She couldn’t swim. He tried to teach her, once, and she almost got dragged out to sea. I fell asleep holding him by the fire; it was good not to be alone. There wasn’t a doctor on the plane, but an elderly elementary school teacher named Mary became our de facto leader. She had cautioned everyone against wandering or trying the local foods, because people can go three weeks without food and be fine. “Hunger will hurt,” she said, “but it won’t kill you.” But she failed to explain the weakness the hunger would bring. By the end of our second week we had to develop a buddy system, because otherwise people would pass out on the beach for hours, only to wake up dehydrated and very badly sunburned. Then Mary collapsed. I thought it was just heat stroke; we’d all collapsed from the heat at least once. But water didn’t help. She was hallucinating, unable to remember any of our names. Claude stood up. It was the first time he’d really spoken to the group, but he kicked up from where he was sitting and said, “I’m not going to let her die for principle.” We’d been keeping Martin’s corpse just over a ridge of sand, far enough away that the smell didn’t hit our camp, but near enough we could bring him with us if we were rescued. On his way, Claude grabbed the knife from the plane’s kitchen we’d been sharing. We knew what he was about to do. Even I had thought about it, but… I kept holding out hope that help would come. But it hadn’t, and even the most optimistic of us was beginning to suspect it wouldn’t. Claude was gone a while, but eventually carried Martin back to the fire. He had “cleaned” the corpse, cut away the genitals and cored out his organs; the body was halfway to being a Martin-skin rug. For some reason I’d hoped he would only bring back meat, so at least I wouldn’t have to think of where it had come from, picture which slab of muscle had been his legs, his arms. The rest of us huddled around Mary, past the edge of the fire’s light, pretending we couldn’t see or hear the abattoir our campsite was becoming. After about an hour he called Tony over to find him sticks that he could use for a spit. Even though it was getting dark, Tony was glad to have an excuse to go farther into the trees, and away from the sounds of knife on flesh. Soon after, he returned, and the camp was filled with the sounds of sizzling fat. I hadn’t had a burger since middle school- but it smelled so good. Claude brought over a slab of meat on one of the plane’s small white dinner plates. He tore off a piece in his fingers, and put it in Mary’s mouth. She tried to push it away with her tongue, and when that didn’t work, she bit Claude’s fingers. He leaned in close to her and said, “Don’t start with me, Mary. You need to eat- and we’re out of options.” Reluctantly she put her lips around the morsel of flesh, rolled it around, and began to chew. Claude looked up at the rest of us, packed in tight, and suddenly none of us could hold his gaze; he realized we didn’t have the stomach to feed her meat, so he kept at it, pinching off tiny bites and pushing them to her lips. When he was done he went back to the fire and continued cooking. He was up all night; I dreamed of my sister’s softball game, and my dad bringing us hot dogs. He’d forgot the condiments, and you could taste every pig intestine and chicken anus, but somehow it was the best meal I’d ever eaten. Claude was just finishing up when I woke up; the sun was already rising above the horizon. “Why’d you cook the rest of it?” I asked. “The meat was already starting to go bad. I wanted to make it as clean as I could- in case anyone else needs to eat.” After that Claude went to bed, and stayed out most of the day. Tony and I carried what was left of Martin, bones, tendons and fat, back to where his body had been, and buried them with the decomposing mush of his organs. That night Mary had regained enough of her strength that she stood up. I’d suspected she was playing opossum, but she must have been feeling much better because she was almost light on her feet. She marched to where Claude was, tending the fire. She was angry. She wanted to slug him, and there was a tense silence through the camp as everyone watched, expecting an explosion as the two heads of our group collided. She seized him in her big arms and pulled him to her chest. “Thank you,” she whispered. She was happy to be alive, happy to be strong; but she felt responsible for Martin, responsible that she hadn’t been able to keep him from eating what killed him. She moped for a few days; I think that’s what finally killed her. I remember falling asleep to the sounds of her snoring, and when I woke up it was quiet for the first time. Eugene was pissed off; Mary had reminded him of his favorite first grade teacher (it’s amazing how much you’ll find out about other people when there’s nothing to do but talk). He accused Claude, because obviously whatever killed Martin had gotten into his flesh and killed Mary, too. “That’s not possible,” said Claude. “Mary wasn’t the only one who’s eaten some of the meat. I’ve eaten some. Who else?” Guilty hands rose around the circle, including Tony’s. “Does anyone else feel bad- like sick?” The hands all went down. Claude sighed. “Mary was old. She convinced us we could hold out for three weeks without food. But we shouldn’t have let her try.” Eugene said something after that, but he didn’t have the courage to say it so it carried over the wind. Claude walked away over the sand, and I followed. “He might be right,” he said to me as he dropped down against a lazily leaning palm tree. “We can’t know what killed Martin. It made sense to let Mary eat, because she was dying anyway, but everybody else- what if someone gets sick? I got so caught up in wanting to help people- what if I killed them?” I didn’t have an answer for him, so I curled up next to him. And I kissed him. I couldn’t believe I’d done it but I had. I laid my head against his shoulder and we fell asleep. Nobody else got sick. In fact, those who’d eaten the meat (we learned pretty quickly it was less gruesome than calling it “Martin”) regained some of their strength, while the rest of us looked like Holocaust survivors; we’d started rummaging through the suitcases of the dead, looking for smaller clothes that wouldn’t fall off us. Three days after Mary died Claude brought some of the meat back to the palm tree where we’d started sleeping. It smelled just as good as the first night he cooked it, maybe even better. I couldn’t even look at it, because I knew if I did, if I saw as well as smelled it, I would have to eat it. I rationalized that I couldn’t- because it was Claude’s food, he’d brought it back for himself- and it was impolite for me to even think about having some. He held the meat out to me, wrapped in a tattered t-shirt. I had to look at it, but forced myself to keep away, until my stomach gurgled. He smiled, and said, “I care about you. I like you. And I don’t want to watch you waste away.” “But the diet’s been good for me; I can almost fit into that suit I brought.” I said; it bothered me how weak the words came, and that laughing actually hurt. “Stop it. Don’t be brave.” He fixed me with his eyes, put his hand on my cheek and kissed me. “Eat. Please. For me.” I couldn’t refuse him. I ate quickly. It had looked like so much food, but it was gone after only a few bites- and still I felt like I would burst. “Your stomach has shrank. You have to take it easy until it gets back to a normal size.” I slept soundly in his arms; I was still dreaming I was in his arms when he woke me with a kiss, and another tattered shirt of meat. This meal was bigger, and I thought about demurely protesting, but the smell, my god, the smell, I couldn’t get a word out, just shoved a bite into my mouth. It was better than sex, or at least better than what I remembered sex had been like. It seemed like forever- and it was at that minute, rolling a piece of meat over my tongue, that I realized I was going to sleep with Claude. Not at that moment, with the camp busy with morning’s activity, but I knew then it would happen, and it did, the very next night. I woke up a very different woman. I couldn’t believe I had “cheated” on Harry. I say cheat because I haven’t been with anyone since Harry died, and I don’t think I would have, not under any normal circumstances. But I hadn’t eaten meat since Harry’s heart attack, either. Sometimes you do things in extreme circumstances you wouldn’t have thought yourself capable of. But after little more than a week, the meat ran out. Claude did what he could to ration the pile, but most of us were starving by then. We’d already eaten most of the good meat, and all that was left was some muscle sticking to the ribs. I thought Eugene and Bob were going to get into a fight over that last piece, but at the last minute Eugene left and Rita punched Bob right in the eye for it. Claude and Tony looked to each other and ran off down the beach, where we’d taken Martin before, and where they’d taken Mary. They brought her back a few minutes later. She was already field-dressed, relieved of her clothes and organs. She looked terrible, and I realized I’d only seen Martin in the hours after his death, and from a distance after that- until I realized it wasn’t that her skin was red and leathery, but that it had been stripped off entirely. She smelled like smoke and beef jerky. They lowered her gently down onto a pile of clothing. Claude spoke. “We didn’t want to mention it to anyone. I know how much Mary meant to a lot of us here, but she was a practical woman. In the end, I think she would have wanted us all to be healthy and safe, instead of worrying about the disposition of her bones. Tony and I did what we could to preserve her; I know that with Martin we took our chances every bite we took. Mary’s been smoked, which should have dehydrated her body and gotten rid of most of the bacteria.” Eugene was in a rage, so angry every time he tried to speak he just sputtered. I think he would have swung at Claude, but Tony stood right next to him, back to back, and Eugene was passionate, but not that foolish. For the next two weeks, Eugene refused to eat. There was even a little bit of meat left on Martin’s ribs that Rita tried to give him, but he wouldn’t take it. I felt bad for him; I knew that eating the meat wasn’t something the rest of us did lightly, but for Eugene it became the only cardinal sin. The hunger made him crazy. He was muttering to himself constantly; more than once I caught him talking to Mary’s bones. Tony and I decided to bury them next to Martin, but he continued to talk to her in hushed tones. I was afraid of what he might do, particularly to Claude. One day he fell in the jungle and hit his head, and since he was alone and hadn’t told anyone where he went, it was several days before we found him; he’d already bled out (though it must have taken a long time, because he was still warm when we found him). It came at a fortuitous time. Mary’s smoked meat was dry, and while we still had half of it, it was horrible without anything but water to go with it. Rita even hailed Eugene’s corpse as “mana from heaven” (apparently deciding to unbackslide- because for the next several days she was intolerably religious)- even though we hadn’t decided yet to eat him. Originally, I think we’d all liked Eugene, but by the time he died, he’d become so worrying that his death was a relief, and we gorged on his flesh. In one night we ate over a third of his meat. “Which isn’t bad,” Claude said, “since we know how smoking the rest of him would have gone.” We sat around the fire the next evening, talking about how to proceed. Rita wanted to eat the rest of him tonight; Bob seemed to think we should hold off, ration Gene out as long as we could (he hated being called Gene when he was alive, but as a meal it was hard to give him the benefit of the extra syllable). Tony didn’t seem to know what to do. “Rita’s right,” Claude said. “Unless we smoke Eugene, the meat’s going to go bad. And if we smoke it, then we end up barely eating again. Sure it’ll last longer, but I don’t want anyone else to die because we mismanaged our food supply. One Mary on my conscience is enough.” Invoking Mary cleared the discussion immediately; suddenly Tony knew what we should do- and I told myself that my support came with more thought than Tony’s (though it’s hard to know the truth). So we feasted again that night. The next morning, Claude realized the meat was dangerously close to becoming inedible, and smoked the rest. It took us another week to even finish what was left of Gene, and by then, no one wanted to start in on Mary again. And then Tony was missing. When Claude heard, his mouth dropped open; he didn’t ask any questions, just walked over the sand ridge to where we kept the bodies. I followed him. Tony had lashed himself to a tree, and used the knife to open up his belly; he was trying to field dress himself. In his shirt pocket was a note: Claude, I know what you’re thinking, and I couldn’t let you do it. We need you too much. So I had to. We needed to eat. Tony There was no celebration this time. Rita’s spiritual revival had lasted only a little longer than Gene’s meat, and she was back to the snarky bitch who nearly knocked me over at baggage check then barked at me to “Watch yourself.” She took a bite of Tony’s cooked thigh, then set it down, unable to take another. “Selfish fucker,” she said, and stomped off to where she slept. I felt bad for Bob. I’d seen the way he looked at Rita; he wanted to chase after her, and comfort her, but she wanted nothing to do with him, so he kept eating, even though his heart was clearly not in it. Or maybe I was just feeling guilty that I had Claude and they were alone. Eventually, we ran out of Tony, too. We’d gotten better about parceling it out, and Bob and Claude figured out how to partially smoke it, while leaving it tender enough to finish cooking later, so the last parts of Tony ran out when the last bits of Mary did. I didn’t like that Bob and Claude were getting close, because it felt like Rita and I were being pushed into a submissive role (even though it started that way because Bob and Claude were the only two who knew enough about cooking meat like that). But I didn’t want our little society to end up a patriarchy, so one day I crashed their late night conversation, with Rita in tow. I regretted it immediately. “I don’t care about fairness, Claude. It’s the right thing to do. Tony knew it. So do you. We have to eat. And I hope, and I pray, every day, that we’ll be rescued. But I don’t- I can’t stand the thought of not doing anything for the people we have left.” His eyes flashed to Rita, then to the sand. For a moment Claude didn’t speak, and when he did he was grim. “We can start with one of the legs. I should be able to tie a tourniquet a little above the knee. That way there’ll be enough to anchor a prosthetic to, and if we’re careful, we should be able to keep blood loss to a minimum.” Rita had some first aid training, so she helped Claude with the “surgery.” I stayed nearby, in case they needed me to fetch them water or anything else. It seemed to take the whole day long. Claude half-cooked Bob’s leg, to make sure the meat stayed fresh and clean. Rita didn’t eat that night; instead she helped Bob back to the rough patch of grass where he slept. But a rescue didn’t come. And every time, the conversation with Bob was shorter, and he was quicker to anger, and every time the resolution was the same. First Bob gave up his left arm, then his right leg, and finally the right arm, until Claude told him, “You’ve given enough, Bob. We can draw straws for who’s next.” Bob sniffled, and I tried not to let on I knew he was crying. “Screw it. I don’t want to live like this. Jesus. I’ve had an itch on my balls all day that I can’t scratch, I couldn’t do a lifetime of this, not even if the government bought me a cute little candy striper whose sole job was to scratch my balls when I needed it. Just do me one favor, Claude: make it last. No one else should have to go through this.” I never asked Claude how he did it. I found myself speculating, dragging Bob out into the water (and I found myself laughing at the idea of Bob bobbing), crushing his skull with a rock, the knife. They all seemed too cruel, to take too long. Bob’s decision, like Tony’s, was heroic; I couldn’t think of a suitably heroic (or at least deservedly painless) way to end his life. But we did make it last. We made no arguments about smoking Bob. And we parceled it out, just enough to stay alive. But even being cautious, even waiting until we were so weak we passed out, Bob couldn’t last forever. We waited. We weren’t eager for any of us to go through what Bob had, until one night Rita called the both of us over to the fire. She spent a long time just staring at the flames, until she looked up. “Fuck it. I want to think there’s still hope. That we’ll still get rescued. But you two, you’re a lot of that hope. I’ll probably get back to my life as the same stuck-up, bitter bitch- but I couldn’t stand the thought that I cost you two your happiness.” She paused. “I’ll go first.” Claude spent a few days procrastinating, saying it looked like rain, or that his hand was cramping up. But our hunger wasn’t going away, and Rita’s insistence was unwavering. Rita seemed calmer after the surgery. Or maybe it was just that we spent more time with her, walking her down to the ocean to feel the surf on her foot, helping her over to our bathroom pit. I hadn’t realized how much Rita must have done for Bob after his surgery, and in my idle moments I wondered if perhaps they’d developed some kind of indentured romance. We had only just run out of meat when Rita heard my stomach growl and asserted that we would take her left arm next. She was almost happy about it; I think she caught up in how our lives revolved around hers. After a few weeks we were out of meat again. Rita passed out while we were laying on the beach; I didn’t know if she was being brave or we were, at that point. I cut three lengths of grass, and that night at the fire I held them out, and Rita’s face went pale. “Put those in the fire,” she said. “Now.” I looked down at the sand; she’d given so much already- but I didn’t know if I owed it to her to listen or to contradict her. “I can’t get around on one leg, anyway. But this is the last one.” She glared at me when she said ‘last.’ I think she was starting to feel bitter and maybe even paranoid; I imagine watching other people eat you, a piece at a time, does that. The next day, at sunrise, Claude prepared Rita for the surgery. I wanted to assist, since Rita wouldn’t be able to this time, but he told me to, “Stay where you can hear me if I shout; I wish I could spare you this completely, but if something goes wrong, I might need you.” The sounds were horrible, like all the worst birthgiving noises you’ve ever heard mixed together in a single cacophonous symphony, but I was woozy, sleepy and oh so hungry. I don’t know if I fell asleep or passed out, but at some point Claude sat down in the sand beside me. His hands were still covered in blood, but it was drying and caked on. “She died,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?” I asked, still not yet awake enough to be truly indignant about it. “Because it wouldn’t have done her any good. Her femoral artery retreated back up into her thigh; she was bleeding so fast. I fucked it up, and for that I had to hold her hand, and watch the life drain out of her eyes. But I… I couldn’t make you go through that, too.” We had sex that night, sad, angry sex. I wanted to blame him, and to think that there was something I could have done to help, but I knew blaming him, blaming myself, that was all my neurotic mess. Rita was just a part of the larger tragedy. The next morning, Claude cooked the rest of Rita. We made her last. And for a time, it was nearly idyllic, a couple with a beach and the sun to themselves; we rarely wore clothes. It was almost a honeymoon. But eventually, the meat ran out. And we waited. We wanted desperately to escape this nightmare together. And one day I knew we couldn’t, and I asked as he held me, “Could you still love me,” I choked on the words, “without my leg?” He loved my legs, spent hours touching and kissing them. He touched my cheek with his hand and whispered, “Of course.” I’d seen the progression before, but now it made all the more sense to me; one of us needed to be able-bodied, to fetch wood for the fire, and to be able to cut and cook the meat, and of course to care for the other. And it continued to make good, logical sense, until I found myself limbless, waiting by the fire as he cooked my arm. He leaned forward, the hint of a smile on his face. “I have several confessions to make, actually.” “I had something to do with the plane crash.” I waited for a punch line, but when it didn’t come I just cocked my head to the side. “I engineered it, because I wanted to eat people.” “And Martin’s death wasn’t entirely an accident. Martin ate false morals, which I misidentified as normal morels. They contain monomethyl hydrazine. He’s actually not the only one who ate them, but MMH affects everybody differently. Thankfully for the rest of us, MMH cooks off into the air, so we could eat him with few if any side effects.” “And last, I have a satellite phone in my bag, and a chartered boat anchored off Okinawa, waiting for my word. Which I’ll give, once the meat’s all gone.” “It’s a pity, really; I came to care for you. But if I took you back I have no doubt you’d turn me over at the first opportunity, and for that I could hardly blame you.” “I know this creates a strain in our relationship, but I wanted to be honest with you; I think you’ve earned that much from me. I imagine our physical relationship is over, but you should know that I did not start out to use you, or mislead you. I’ll let you live as long as you like- or at least until the meat runs out. And… I’ll make it as painless as I can. I know there’s cruelty inherent in what I’ve done, but I am sorry for the hurt that I’ve caused.” The meat on the spit began to sizzle, and for the first time I recognized my left hand, and I remembered the night before. We talked about taking one of his arms, since he could still gather firewood with one good arm, and I told him “No.” I stroked his cheek with that hand and said, “I want you to live, to be whole.” He took the hand off the spit, and offered me my ring finger, still clinging to the bone, and without thinking I bit into it. I want not to eat it, but I’m hungry and it’s so good- especially cooked with the false morels. And I want to believe that he does care, even now; otherwise, why would he share with me? He eats my middle finger, and he seems cautious not to stare at me, but also not to ignore me while he does so. There’s almost admiration in his eyes- no, it’s appreciation. I want to hate him- I want to hurt him- hell, I want to roll myself into the ocean and drown. But I can’t. I hate being helpless, and vulnerable. I want to scream out, but no one would hear me. But I’m cold, and I’m lonesome. “Hold me,” I whimper. “Of course.” He does. |
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