Read Online Hystopia: A Novel by David Means - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Means
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to yearn north. She dozed against the window, feeling the engine—all eight cylinders firing in a grumbling vapor lock of piston rings and sealed systems. Rake nudged her shoulder. When she opened her eyes it was dark and the fields of dead, unharvested crops had given way to a farmhouse. He pointed to it, cocked his thumb back, made a spoof sound to indicate gunfire and then slowed the car down, and when they got to a mailbox, he began to talk softly about the Jones family, saying, We’ll have to pay a visit to the Joneses. You got a name like Jones, a common name, Smith or Jones, and you make a target of yourself. You got all the lights on like that, you’re opening yourself up to the potential of someone like me coming your way. You sit in the house and wait. You know I’m coming. You got that sensation under your skin. You build a notion that it’s impossible and so forth, you pray to your God to sustain your safety, but he’s not listening and you know it, he said, and then he went quiet and she knew what that meant. She was only half-awake. She wiggled her fingers to see if they’d move (they did) and then her toes and pushed back against the seat.
She felt him staring at her in the darkness.
You move and you have to move somewhere, he’d said. I’m going light on the substance. I’ll learn you, as they like to say down south. I’ll learn you a new way of thinking so long as you move with me. A new way of moving. I’m gonna hold the death card close to the vest and then slap it down on the table when the time comes. I’m kidnapping you for your own sake. To keep my word of honor made way back. Not that I want to keep it. You’re bound to me by things you don’t even know. If you knew them, you’d know. If you were to know, you’d understand. Now you see a house here, a house there. A house passing in the night. It means something, just by itself. You remove the inhabitants and it means something more. Smoke coming from a chimney. Down in a valley, covered in snow. Means one thing. Tucked against another house in a street burned out, means another.
On the left side of the house was a tree with pink blossoms in the window light.
The farmhouse, surrounded by spring mud, was absurdly neat, with two stories and dormers and black shutters.
The whole package, he said. They’ve got the whole package here.
He parked the car up the road. Together they walked down the drive, hunching slightly, until they were at the side of the house. He pointed at the tree and she knew what he wanted because he’d made her climb a tree at a rest stop somewhere, an old one with a stone barbecue pit and a pump with a broken handle, just to watch her do it. She’d gone up into the branches, clutching, shaking, until she was caught like a cat, unable to get down, and then he made her jump into his arms.
I’m the bad luck brought home. I’m taking the bad luck I had and foisting it on somebody else.
The tree reached as high as the second-story window, and she got into the middle of it, against the trunk, found a branch and pulled herself up. (Light as a bird. Your bones are hollow, he’d said at the rest stop. You’re high enough to fly high.) In the tree, amid the blossoms, she took a breath. Threading through the floral perfume was the smell of spring grass.
Look forward, move through it, a nurse said, the one with the deeper voice. He looked at her the way you’d want to be looked at, with a calm and steady nonjudgmental gaze. You’ll feel it in there and at some point you’ll take comfort in knowing it’s there, the ball of old memories.
Through the window was an oriental rug and a big easy chair with a man reading a paper and smoking a cigar. Smoke roiled over his head and caught light from a television set. He seemed to be hiding behind the paper from his kids, who were at his feet with their legs crossed, looking forward.
She adjusted her grip and held still, feeling the serenity of the tree, the rustle of
She felt him staring at her in the darkness.
You move and you have to move somewhere, he’d said. I’m going light on the substance. I’ll learn you, as they like to say down south. I’ll learn you a new way of thinking so long as you move with me. A new way of moving. I’m gonna hold the death card close to the vest and then slap it down on the table when the time comes. I’m kidnapping you for your own sake. To keep my word of honor made way back. Not that I want to keep it. You’re bound to me by things you don’t even know. If you knew them, you’d know. If you were to know, you’d understand. Now you see a house here, a house there. A house passing in the night. It means something, just by itself. You remove the inhabitants and it means something more. Smoke coming from a chimney. Down in a valley, covered in snow. Means one thing. Tucked against another house in a street burned out, means another.
On the left side of the house was a tree with pink blossoms in the window light.
The farmhouse, surrounded by spring mud, was absurdly neat, with two stories and dormers and black shutters.
The whole package, he said. They’ve got the whole package here.
He parked the car up the road. Together they walked down the drive, hunching slightly, until they were at the side of the house. He pointed at the tree and she knew what he wanted because he’d made her climb a tree at a rest stop somewhere, an old one with a stone barbecue pit and a pump with a broken handle, just to watch her do it. She’d gone up into the branches, clutching, shaking, until she was caught like a cat, unable to get down, and then he made her jump into his arms.
I’m the bad luck brought home. I’m taking the bad luck I had and foisting it on somebody else.
The tree reached as high as the second-story window, and she got into the middle of it, against the trunk, found a branch and pulled herself up. (Light as a bird. Your bones are hollow, he’d said at the rest stop. You’re high enough to fly high.) In the tree, amid the blossoms, she took a breath. Threading through the floral perfume was the smell of spring grass.
Look forward, move through it, a nurse said, the one with the deeper voice. He looked at her the way you’d want to be looked at, with a calm and steady nonjudgmental gaze. You’ll feel it in there and at some point you’ll take comfort in knowing it’s there, the ball of old memories.
Through the window was an oriental rug and a big easy chair with a man reading a paper and smoking a cigar. Smoke roiled over his head and caught light from a television set. He seemed to be hiding behind the paper from his kids, who were at his feet with their legs crossed, looking forward.
She adjusted her grip and held still, feeling the serenity of the tree, the rustle of
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