59
TOBY. SAINT ANIL AGARWAL
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
Here comes famine, thinks Toby. Saint Euell, pray for me and for all who starve in the midst of plenty. Help me to find that plenty. Send animal protein quickly.
In the meadow the dead boar is entering the afterlife. Gases are rising from it, fluids are seeping away. The vultures have been at it; the crows are hanging around on the perimeter like runts at a street fight, grabbing what they can. Whatever’s going on out there, maggots are a part of it.
When in extreme need, Adam One used to say, begin at the bottom of the food chain. Those without central nervous systems must surely suffer less.
Toby gathers the necessary items — her pink top-to-toe, her sunhat, her sunglasses, a water bottle, a pair of surgical gloves. The binoculars, the rifle. Her mop-handle cane, for balance. She finds a plastic snap-top and punches some holes in the lid, adds a spoon, and stows everything in a plastic gift bag with the winky-eye AnooYoo Spa logo on it. A packsack would be better, it would leave her hands free. There used to be some packsacks around here — the ladies took them on strolls, with picnic sandwiches in them — but she can’t remember where she put them.
There’s still some AnooYoo All-Natural SolarNix in stock. It’s stale-dated and smells rancid, but she spreads it on her face anyway, then sprays her ankles and wrists with SuperD in case of mosquitoes. She has a good long drink of water, then visits the violet biolet: if panic arises, at least she won’t piss herself. Nothing worse than sprinting in a wet top-to-toe. She hangs the binoculars around her neck, then goes up to the roof for a last double-check. No ears in the meadow, no snouts. No furry golden tails.
“Quit stalling,” she tells herself. She has to leave immediately so she can get back before the afternoon rainstorm. Stupid to get struck by lightning. Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no matter how much you’ve been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It’s the cry of a child being called home at dusk, it’s the universal protest against Time. Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
A question — Toby says to herself very firmly — that I will not ask myself just now.
She puts on the surgical gloves and slings the AnooYoo bag over her shoulder, and lets herself out. She goes first to the ruined garden, where she salvages one onion and two radishes, and spoons a layer of damp earth into the plastic snap-top. Then she crosses the parking lot and walks past the silent fountains.
It’s been a long time since she’s been this far away from the Spa buildings. Now she’s in the meadow: it’s a big space. The light is dazzling, even though she has the broad hat and the sunglasses on.
Don’t panic, she tells herself. This is how mice feel when they venture onto the open floor, but you aren’t a mouse. The weeds catch at her top-to-toe and tangle her feet as if to hold her back and keep her with them. There are little thorns in them somewhere, little claws and traps. It’s like pushing through a giant piece of knitting: knitting done with barbed wire.
What’s this? A shoe.
Not to think about shoes. Not to think about the mouldering handbag she’s just glimpsed nearby. Stylish. Red fleather. A tatter of the past that hasn’t yet been drawn down into the earth. She doesn’t want to step on any of these remnants, but it’s hard to see down through the nets and meshes of the ensnaring weeds.
She moves forward. Her legs are tingling, the way flesh does when it knows it’s about to be touched. Does she really think a hand will come up from among the clover and sow thistles and grab her by the ankle?
“No,” she says out loud. She stops to calm her heart, and to reconnoiter. The wide brim of the hat impedes her view: she swivels her whole body like an owl’s head — to left, to right, behind, then to the front again. All around her is a sweet scent — the tall clover’s in bloom, the Queen Anne’s lace, the lavender and marjoram and lemon balm, self-seeded. The field hums with pollinators: bumblebees, shining wasps, iridescent beetles. The sound is lulling. Stay here. Sink down. Go to sleep.
Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It’s a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We’re no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can’t drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
Ahead of her in the middle distance is the line of dark trees that marks the edge of the forest. She feels it drawing her, luring her in, as the depths of the ocean and the mountain heights are said to lure people, higher and higher or deeper and deeper, until they vanish into a state of rapture that is not human.
See yourself as a predator sees you, Zeb once taught. She places herself behind the trees, looking out through the filigree of leaves and branches. There’s an enormous wild savannah, and in the middle of it a small soft pink figure, like an embryo or an alien, with big dark eyes — alone, unprotected, vulnerable. Behind this figure is its dwelling, an absurd box made of straw that only looks like bricks. So easy to blow down.
The smell of fear comes to her, from herself.
She lifts the binoculars. The leaves are moving a little, but only in the breeze. Walk forward slowly, she tells herself. Remember what you came to do.
After what seems a long time she reaches the dead boar. A horde of glittering green and bronze flies dithers in the air above it. At her approach the vultures lift their red, featherless heads, their boiled-looking necks. She waves her mop handle at them and they scrabble away, hissing with indignation. Some of them spiral upwards, keeping an eye on her; others flap towards the trees and settle their dust-rag feathers, waiting.
There are fronds scattered about, on top of the boar’s carcass and beside it. Fern fronds. Such ferns don’t grow in the meadow. Some are old and dry and brown, some quite fresh. Also flowers. Are those rose petals, from the roses by the driveway? She’d heard of something like this; no, she read it as a child, in a kid’s book about elephants. The elephants would stand around their dead ones, sombrely, as if meditating. Then they’d scatter branches and earth.
But pigs? Usually they’d just eat a dead pig, the same way they’d eat anything else. But they haven’t been eating this one.
Could the pigs have been having a funeral? Could they be bringing memorial bouquets? She finds this idea truly frightening.
But why not? says the kindly voice of Adam One. We believe the Animals have Souls. Why then would they not have funerals?
“You’re mad,” she says out loud.
The smell of decaying flesh is rank: it’s hard to keep from gagging. She lifts a fold of her top-to-toe, clamps it over her nose. With the other hand she pokes at the dead boar with her stick: maggots boil forth. They’re like giant grey rice.
Just think of them as land shrimp, says the voice of Zeb. Same body plan. “You’re up to this,” she tells herself. She has to set down the rifle and the mop handle in order to do the next part. She scoops up the twirling white maggots with the spoon and transfers them to the plastic snap-on. She drops some; her hands are shaking. There’s a buzzing in her head like tiny drills, or is it only the flies? She makes herself slow down.
She turns her back on the forest, heads back across the meadow. She doesn’t run.
Surely the trees have moved closer.