The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (17 page)

When we asked him what he was doing there, he replied: digging a hole. Eventually the plan was to erect a rig and burrow the mantle for mineral reserves, but Standard had union problems, and the rig, always coming, never showed. The union called new arrivals like our father clod-kickers and line-breakers, and appeared to be happy to let our town crumble under the weight of its own hopelessness. People like our dad called the union guys motherfuckers, and sidled up to the bar to make plans of their own that always came to nothing.

Everything we owned was leased, and leveraged against an eventual payout. I spent my free time trying to avoid the other kids in town, who needed someone to pick on, and had chosen me. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I flinched when doors shut. I slipped when running. My forehead was an oil slick.
You haven’t spoken in four days,
my mother said when I was twelve. I corrected her, and told her it had been four
teen
.

But bad as it was for me, Tuva, I know it was worse for you. The upland diggers, most without families, wore their loneliness like wolves. You turned twelve, and our mother became distracted and agitated. You turned thirteen, and it was like all the air had gone out of the room. The other kids turned their attention from me to you. After you’d been groped at school for the umpteenth time, my mom took us to the principal. He
looked
concerned, but eventually shrugged, turned to me, and asked me where I’d been while all of this was happening. I showed him my torn jacket and a patch of bloodied scalp, and told him there was nothing I
could
do about it.
Well,
he said. He cleared his throat and made a gesture like his hands were tied. After that, my mom took you out of school, and forbade you from leaving our property after 4:00
P.M.
Above the door to our trailer, there was a sign Mom had needle-pointed during one of her near-depressions.
Home Is Where the Heart Is
it read. I remember you hard kicking your boots on the steps. “Who needs a heart?” you said, before going inside.

It won’t be like this forever, I told you. It’s not so bad.

“For you,” was your reply.

Then, when you turned seventeen, two grown men who showed up at our trailer, demanding to see you. Our mother, through the door, told them our father would be back any minute. They said: We don’t care. They swore, they kicked the door; eventually they left, said they’d be back. Mom called the police. They never came.

And where was I during all of this? Under the couch, with you, Tuva, holding your hand with my eyes closed from fear. And then, as soon as you could, you left.

I don’t know what happened to you while you were gone, I don’t know where you went. I only know that a year later, when you returned, your eyes had changed, and I left as soon as I was able.

march 4

T
hree days ago, a shout from the high-hoops roused us from sleep. Bushard spotted it: a shipper-tank, the first we’ve seen in months.

The ship—the
Waker 4
—was on her way back to the mainland, and our rendezvous was short. Over the last seven months, they’d seen a grand total of four dirwhals, of which they’d lanced two. Before that, they’d spotted, but not lanced, three. All told, they’d been on the sand for two years. They’d seen a cluster of Firsties but hadn’t been confronted in any meaningful way. They’d been called home by their backer, who’d lost his shirt outfitting them and finally pulled the plug. Not that it mattered; by the time that call came in, both of their buggies had broken axles, the ship had flaked rust into their water supply, and the first mate had fallen deathly ill. The expedition was over. Twelve days ago, as they pulled line for home, they’d seen a few black-painted shipper-tanks patrolling the distant dunes, watching their retreat like gleeful crows.

I see now it’s been five weeks since my last entry. February passed like a dream of heat. March is no better. We’ve seen no activity in the basin save for the crew of the
Waker 4,
which slipped out of sight the following morning like a ghost-ship, a mirage in the dunes. Our solitude is beginning to feel overwhelming. No messages go back and forth between us and the mainland. The sun-suits we’ve been issued seem to be near the end of their shelf life, with elbows threadbare and zippers filled with grit. I’ve developed a rash on my inner thigh, and have sewn extra fabric on the inside of my pants to ease the chafing and keep out the sand.

april 19

I
haven’t kept up here. I see it’s been many days since my last entry. My rash has healed, leaving only slight discoloration across my leg. But Tuva: today was the day we’d given up waiting for, and an account seems not only necessary but verging on the joyous.

It began this morning with an alarm—one of the mates announcing he’d seen irregular sand activity off the stern. In no time it became clear that what he saw in the distance was no trick of the overheated mind, but an honest spout—a dirwhal’s gritty exhalation; a playful fluke of dirt—and no sooner had we crowded the rail than the beast breached full, exposing its length before disappearing once more below the surface and burrowing a large and sucking indention in the basin’s floor.

It was nothing short of chaos on deck. Half of us were without our sun-suits, the other half stood dumb and awestruck. This creature was enormousness itself, more viscerally alive and mobile than I’d thought possible. We watched as it surfaced again: a dark stain against the sand, winding its rounded bulk across the basin floor, rolling sideways rather than cutting in a straight line as I had always imagined it would move. I could make out its rear flukes against dunes as it dove again. There was a mad scramble for the munitions locker. There was banging, yelling; gear dropped; gear found. All the while, Captain Tonker stood atop the rear-deck shouting instructions into a megaphone that no one, in our rush not to be left behind, heard. Space or no we jostled into the buggies, were lowered from the rail, fired up the engines, and took off in the direction of the thing itself.

What was going through my head at the time I can’t say. In my memory, oft replayed, it feels as if I were traveling through a tunnel, though we had been below open sky. Sand peppered my visor, and kicked up behind us in twin arcing flumes. Bushard was in one of the other three buggies. I held my bomb-lance to my chest, tip pointed overboard to minimize the damage caused by accidental misfire as we careered across the flat expanse. All of us leaned forward into the wind; everyone crowded the bow. The creature surfaced again, and this time lay atop the sand, as if sunning itself. And though we were moving as fast as the buggies would carry us, our progress felt excruciatingly slow. We all feared the same thing: that the monster would slip away quietly, never to be seen again.

When we were within darting distance, the beast dove once more, leaving a large, sand-sliding crater in its wake. We cut our engines. No one spoke. It was so quiet you could hear the sand running over itself as it filled the crater, a high-pitched desert whistling that brought to mind nothing so much as the wind-sound I remembered from my youth. I felt hot, but understood that the heat was inside my suit, was coming from me. My heart pumped as if I’d been running.

The order came to prong the sand. Tom jumped from his buggy, and drove the hollow aluminum staff into the lip of the crater. As soon as he was back aboard, one of the mates juiced it. There was an electric buzzing, the sand hopped, but other than that, nothing. The seconds passed like minutes.
Again,
someone shouted. The voltage was recalibrated, and the mate hit it again.

At that point there arose from the sands a muffled shriek, and from behind where we had parked came a sound like the earth squishing open. We turned in time to see the dirwhal leap his enormous bulk directly out of the sand. For a moment in his breach, he crossed the sun, hung in the air, and we were in shadow. Then he landed like a hammer of God directly on top of the second mate’s buggy, which disappeared below his belly with a muffled and sickening thud of dust.

It’s possible we heard the call not to fire. It’s possible in our haste we ignored it. The moment before impact, I saw a flash of razor teeth, a perfectly smooth gullet; a breath-smell that was like ammonia wormed up my nose. Then twelve bomb-lances landed more or less simultaneously, and burrowed their tips in its skin. We had been instructed to aim for the head. In our enthusiasm, we did not. The bombs concussed; the center of the beast atomized into a red and white mist, and we fell back in wonder at what we’d done.

Immediately we’d known the chance of survival for our friends was negligible—if they had not been crushed and killed instantaneously by the dirwhal’s crashing bulk, the explosion from our lances would certainly have finished them—but we also knew enough to try. Bushard and I affixed chains to the dirwhal’s flukes. The mates hoisted the carcass onto the sled. As we moved that great body, we saw our three companions, half-buried in the sand. It was impossible to tell if it was their blood or the blood of the dirwhal we were seeing. That somewhere below the boredom of our expedition lay tremendous risk was something we’d forgotten, or stopped considering, or purposely ignored. Renaldo sat down hard in the sand. The rest of us removed what we could from the crushed buggy, zipped most of that in bags, and we set toward our ship. We were greeted by those still aboard the
Halcyon
as if we’d conquered Rome.

The cutting and rendering will last for the majority of the next few days, and will require all hands. Captain Tonker has scheduled a funeral for three days from now, and instructed that the remains of those lost be kept in cool storage. He mentioned that in all of his years on the sand, he’d never lost a member of his crew. It is difficult to tell if this has touched him in any way at all.

april 20

T
oo tired to relate much of the day. Everything is taking longer than it should, no doubt because many of us have never set foot on a cutting platform, let alone performed such grotesque surgery. Every part of the ship smells as if it’s been brined with vinegar and putrid rot, a stench so overpowering and permanent seeming that we’ve taken to wearing our sun-suits below deck to mitigate the odor.

In order to render properly, the meat must be cut clean from the carcass and the flanks hoisted aloft. From there, the small cutters flay those strips into liftable squares, and feed them in correctly measured amounts onto the belt so the works aren’t overwhelmed and are able to render at the appropriate temperature. The blue flame from the burner flowers at the base of the cauldrons and licks the sides with such ferocity that we have to ladle in shifts to avoid collapsing from the heat.

This evening Bushard, along with some of the other hands, expressed concern that something might be wrong with our catch. When Tom cracked the head-case, there’d been a hissing sound, which was followed by a geyser of liquid the color and consistency of cream long gone off. Everyone in the immediate vicinity became sick. Eventually the foul-spout subsided, but it took an hour for anyone to feel well enough to venture near the head in order to butcher it. There was discussion about whether the head would cook or not, given its strangeness; and if it
did,
whether it would contaminate the other batches when mixed in at the cooper’s station. Captain Tonker, however, waved his hand, and told Bushard the next time he wanted to waste his afternoon, to come find him in his quarters, where he’d be taking a nap.

All things considered, everyone is in good spirits. Renaldo informed me that even though we’re now in one of the farther circles, near the outer edge of the hunting grounds, for the last few days we’ve been receiving transmissions from outside the basin. I asked him if there were any messages for me. He shrugged, and said there was a backlog. When I checked myself, my box was empty. “No news is good news,” Bushard told me. I nodded. I must have looked upset. “I’m just trying to help,” he said, and walked away.

I’ve written to my sister with the news of our catch, and am now awaiting a response. I sit, now, in the galley near the telecomp, transcribing my thoughts in this log. For the last two hours I haven’t written a word. Members of the crew come and go. Tuva, if only you would write I could fall asleep. It wouldn’t even matter to me what you said. Describe your misery. Tell me about the cold. Call me a coward for leaving. Be angry at the world for providing you with a brother who could not protect you. Tell me you will never forgive me. Anything would be better than nothing.

april 22

T
radition holds that after an expedition’s first catch, the mates and steerers buggy a mile from the ship and her illuminated works to make a show of celebration. In our case, it would also serve as a send-off to those we lost in the hunt. At dark, those of us remaining aboard gathered near the hoops and bow-struts to watch them go. At an agreed-upon signal, they crossed their lances, and fired into the sky. According to this ceremony, wherever the farthest dart lands is where we will find our next dirwhal.

Seeing this tonight, I became so full of emotion that I had to grip the rail to steady myself. It wasn’t sadness for those we lost. It wasn’t relief that we had finally begun our journey in earnest. It was odd and expansive, a mysterious state that turned almost as quickly as it rose, to the point where all I could say about it now was that it felt like pity crossed with exultation, and as the lances blazed up on the distant sand I pushed as far back in my memory as I was able and conjured an image of family happiness inexplicable even to myself.

“Watch my arm,” Bushard said. I was holding it. I apologized, and made my way below.

may 20

F
our weeks have passed since my last entry, and in that time a bout of misfortune has found the
Halcyon
. One of the coopers put the gris through a series of tests, determined it had in fact contaminated the batch, the whole of which was now unusable. In an attempt to find new hunting grounds, we’ve pushed farther out into the basin, into relatively uncharted sand, and as a result have had our first run-in with the Firsties. They appeared two weeks ago, three small and fast-moving shipper-tanks cresting over the dunes. Most of our crew were in buggies running charges miles to the south of us; those of us left aboard were not prepared to fend the Firsties off. They struck quickly and retreated. The damage was one inoperable buggy, a tar-bomb affixed to one of our treads that didn’t fire, and a series of unwanted leaflets that were launched from a distance and rained over the deck. We are now posted on watch twenty-four hours a day to guard against further raids, but have yet to see any further evidence of their ships on the dunes. No tread tracks, no transmissions, nothing but the damage to our ship to indicate they had ever been here.