The n-Body Problem Read online

  “Holy shit. Are you okay?”

  I sit on the ground and pull out my pad.

  “Go back to the shed. Check the box for these.”

  I write: Diazepam. Lorazepam. Xanax. Tylenol 3. Fentanyl. Oxicontin.

  ’“But, I thought . . .”

  “This is an emergency. Emergencies are different. Don’t bring back anything but these.”

  He drops a razor, soap, shampoo, and a huge tub of Vaseline on the ground. Grabs the list and runs. I’m scaring the hell out of this kid. He does not like it when grownups shit themselves.

  I call out after him.

  “I’ll be in the goddam river!”

  Y turns the corner.

  “Hey! Is there a river?”

  It’s not quite a river. A stream. A crick. A mom nursing by the slide. A couple small bridges. Some trees. Big willows. Back up there there’s poplar. Birch. Manitoba maple. Lots of scrub. Don’t know what I was picturing but this ain’t it. Can’t live in a fuckin’ birch tree.

  I salute the mom from a distance. It’s something I’ve picked up. Saluting teen moms with rape babies. The banks are landscaped and have good dropped shoulders so I can sit out of sight. I kick off my shoes and work the pants down. Just gonna lay all this under rocks and rub myself on the grass like a dog. There is strain on my rib cage. My lungs are pulling shallow. Pain hits again. Cold, waxy sweat rubs off solid in the grass. I am really fucking sick now. Hands and feet buzzing. Peripheral neuropathy. Feel like heavy socks and gloves. Could be unrelated. Who knows? If this is a cascade then I could have minutes. Shit.

  I lie still on my side. I can feel some light on my naked body. Bad light is still bad light. I should cover up, but I’m dying.

  “Shit! Shit! Hey! Talk to me!”

  That’s Y. I must have drifted off. I’m shivering. He sits me up. I can’t stop shaking. There’s shit soaked into the grass around me. White vomit on my arm.

  “What do you want? What do you want?”

  The stroke egg is strobing. Y shoves the box into my hands. He brought everything. I thought I said . . .

  “Just take something!”

  Hard to read. My eyes feel dry and sticky.

  “Oxycontin.”

  Y flips the bottles around in the box.

  “Here! Here! How many?”

  I can feel a thick python separate my lungs.

  “Six.”

  I eat them like peanuts. Make a paste. Hold it sublingually. That’s the way. By the time it’s in my throat I can feel my toes curl a bit. A warmth in my eyes. A harmonica.

  “What else? What else?”

  “Diazepam.”

  Y digs.

  “Nope. None.”

  “Shit. Ok. Lorazepam.”

  Y pulls out a long thin bottle.

  “They 1s or 2s?”

  Read it, pal. Read.

  “2.”

  “Ok. Then four.”

  I hold them under my tongue till they disappear. Lorazepam leaves the system after about eight hours. They’re tougher in large doses than diazepam, which sits in you for a good long while. My arms turn to pillows. My shoulders into smooth falling sacs. I close my eyes. I greet the egg. It is my old friend. No one has seen you. No one knows what you are. You are mine.

  “Better?”

  I keep my eyes closed and reach out to lay a hand on the grass near Y. I can hear water moving. He’s getting my clothes. Doesn’t like to see his uncle naked in the park.

  “I’m sorry. These are wet.”

  They are. I move my head so that the egg is in my shoe. Not sure why. I salute Y.

  “Get dressed,” Y says.

  I fall asleep for a second. “Okay. Help me.”

  Y sits me up and drops the icy shirt over my head. It’s good. I wake.

  “I found something else. Look.”

  I drag the denim up my thighs and pinch the button closed.

  “Look.”

  A portable full-spectrum lamp. I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. Very expensive.

  “It was in our trunk. My dad bought it for my mom for her birthday.”

  I turn it on. Bright. Good batteries. Holy shit.

  “My dad had money. He owned the quarry.”

  I hold the light up to my face. Y keeps talking.

  “What’s wrong with your stomach? It’s huge.”

  I can’t answer. The light and the pills are profound in me. It’s like the cells are giddy. Everything is turning in every direction. There is so much good.

  “My mom’s gone.”

  That’s good. Made the pick-up.

  “She’ll be up there.”

  I grunt. I feel freshly split cedar in my marrow. Dark rich hardwood in my veins.

  “We could clean up the car.”

  Nope.

  “I mean. It’s a car.”

  Not a chance.

  “How you feel now?”

  I pass Y the spectrum.

  “Much better. Here. Take a turn. Five minutes.”

  I have stopped the cascade. Not solved the problem but at least I won’t die in the park this morning.

  “Thanks. Your belly is still big.”

  It is. Not getting bigger any more. But if this is what I think it is then it’s left me a little present. Y looks thirty. Teen mom appears behind Y.

  “What are you guys doing?”

  She takes it in. She turns, runs.

  “Shit.”

  Y stands to see where she goes.

  “What?”

  “We just lost an advantage.”

  Y looks like he’s going to run after her.

  “Why?”

  “Your Seller knows we’re still alive.”

  Y takes a step back. Attaboy.

  “Let her go. Can’t go around killing moms in the park.”

  I try to stand. There is pain but it’s not from anything advancing. It’s from the volume in my abdomen. I can walk.

  “Let’s go find a sharp knife. I’m gonna need you to cut me open.”

  can a toaster cry?

  I remember Barack Obama. I re-member terrorism. Higgs-Boson. I remember a cure for AIDS. Charity walks for breast cancer. I remember when they told us to sit up straight at computers. To clench and unclench our buttocks while we sat. Guns going off. Iron Man 4. It’s strange that you stop thinking about things. Even further back. I remember Iggy Pop. Safe havens in Bosnia. Me as a teenager. I didn’t really know it at the time but there was nothing to it. It’s not that things fade in time. It’s that they were never really there at all. All of it. Light as birthday cards. Gone.We are at the loading dock behind the hardware store. Y has snuck in to steal a blade. Narcotics have encased my bowels in concrete. It’s better than collapsing in shit, but it hurts. It’s hard to move freely.

  What I think I have is . . . it’s a cancer that coats organs in the abdominal cavity. Doesn’t enter the lymphatic system. Not for a while. I hope it hasn’t anyway. It starts like a coating on the spleen. A woman’s shawl. And it triggers peritoneal fluid to build up. Ascites. The bells thicken and the cancer cells are released into the fluid-like spores from a bumped fungus. They drape the liver. They drape the colon. The stomach lining. The fluid accommodates this by separating the packed bodies. Creating living space for itself. And the more this cancer silt builds, the thicker and heavier the mucous becomes. Eventually the spleen sloughs off its new deadly skin and releases it as a transparent tube, a hovering jellyfish in a dark thick sea. It is a new part of you. It is a distinct creature looking to live in you. Your body recognizes it. Even in the insensate mash of glue and fatted lungs, it is awake to this new thing, the birth of this tube. And your body trusts its origin. It is a child of the spleen. It is your tissue. It is splendid and structured and hungry. So the body feeds it. That’s how you die. Your body is so desperate that this tube survive that it takes all the blood and oxygen away from what you really are and feeds this new child. This lovely tube-shaped wonder. It flattens and expands and floats. It
is free. It is alone in you. It is wonderful. And then you die. Not of cancer. The cancer is just starlight. The cancer is a maker. You die of a neglected liver. Abandoned to necrotize like an old city. You are ruins.

  So I’m cutting it out. I’m waiting for Y. I look around for a place to do this. I can’t walk far. I walk bowlegged to a derelict car by the dumpster. I will sit with my feet on the ground and my belly hanging. That way when we cut the base it’ll drain straight away. The cut will have to be big enough for his hand to get in. He’s going to have to pull this out.

  Y rolls across the loading dock and drops, crouched, on the dirt. He has something in his hand. Before I look I put four oxys and a couple Lorazapam under my tongue. Liver spot on his hand.

  “Here.”

  Y holds out a box cutter. Still in the package. Not sure what I was expecting, but I guess nothing’s gonna be great.

  “Okay.”

  Y bites it open and removes the knife. He pushes the small triangular blade out.

  “Is this clean?” I take the knife and smell it.

  “Factory fresh. You ready?”

  I take my shirt off and push my stomach down closer to the ground.

  “Now? Here?”

  I hand him back the cutter. “No time like now.”

  He takes the knife.

  “Is this going to kill you?’

  He wants to know what happens to him.

  “Maybe.”

  We look at each other for long moment. I’m supposed to say something.

  “If I die, you have to leave town.”

  Sorry, kid. That’s all I got. There’s not much else, believe me.

  “You ready?”

  He’s holding the cutter like it might jump outta his hand. Good grip.

  “Ok. We’ll go easy here. Nothing fast or too big.”

  I point to the base of my stomach, where it’s closest to the ground.

  “You wanna cut here. The full depth of that blade. Then let’s see what comes out.”

  He looks at me expecting more.

  “If I pass out, this is what I want you to do. There should be lotsa fluid. Let it drain. You can squeeze the sides of my belly to help it along. But easy! Go easy. You don’t wanna pop my guts out onto the ground. Right?”

  He stares.

  “Right?”

  C’mon. I need you in this moment. He nods.

  “Say it.”

  “Right.”

  I look at the way he’s holding the cutter. Not sure if there’s a right way and a wrong way.

  “Cut just enough to get your hand in.”

  He’s looking at my massive white belly hanging over the gravel. He looks sick.

  “Hang on. I should swallow some antibiotics. Pass the box.”

  There’s amoxicillin and tetracycline . . . I take three of each, let them turn to paste, then swallow them.

  “You’ll have to flush my guts with the hose. Quick though. Like, seconds. That alone’s probably gonna kill me.”

  Y squats in front of me. He is very pale.

  “Staple it up when you’re done. I don’t know how aware I’m gonna be.”

  I tap the underside of my belly and give Y a quick shallow nod.

  “Don’t pull the skin. Let the blade lead the way.”

  He presses the point against my skin. A bright pain.

  “C’mon. Get in there. That hurts.”

  I feel a hot throb and the piercing pain stops. He slides the knife across. It feels like fabric separating.

  “Deeper, Y. You gotta reach the stomach.”

  He drives it in and I feel a blunt pulse until—pop. The stomach wall.

  “That’s it.”

  It feels like the claw of a cat drawing a line inside. He stops.

  “What’s happening?”

  Y is staring down.

  “Nothing. Hardly any blood even.”

  “Do it again. Same place.”

  This time I feel no pain, just a bubbling sensation in my lower back. I can hear splashing on the ground between my feet.

  “Okay. Okay. Squeeze that stuff out.”

  Y’ s forehead on my chest while he milks the mucous from my torso.

  “Good enough. Go in. Stick your hand in.”

  I look down and see Y’s hand disappear into my stomach.”

  “Look for it. Something loose. Squishy. Don’t pull on anything attached.”

  Uh-oh. Okay. World of wonders. Goodbye.

  EDITOR’S NOTE:

  The following chapter is encoded. The code however is not available for this publication and will appear in H.A.M.S. Lesson 4. The publisher’s objection to this gimmick is on record.

  H.A.M.S. and egg.

  shirley.

  Not wanting to die is hardwired into every living thing. Part of the dynamic. You remove that and there’s not much more than a couple crazy days left. I don’t want to die. I know exactly what will happen when I do. I’ll be up there. Right there. Less happy. Naked. In full view of the universe. No. I can’t die.

  I am unconscious for three weeks. No dreams. No fitful awakenings. Just an anvil-heavy black. My starless mind. My thinking started up rapidly however. I knew I was surfacing as I did, and it was surfacing, I could feel my arms break the top. My face pulled up. Warmth and light and buzzing.

  We are in the walk-in clinic. I am on couch in a quiet room. A picture of the inner ear.

  I lay my hand on my stomach. I can feel the bones in my back. I look down, my wrists and hands sit up like mantis limbs. Thin bones and crispy yellow skin.

  The door opens. Y sees me. Stops.

  “You’re awake. Okay. We gotta go. Now.”

  Y lowers me carefully into the passenger seat of a red Toyota in the clinic driveway.

  I find I can’t move and breathe at the same time. I have no strength to ask what is happening.

  There are five bodies on the road. A heavy wire has been strung through their temples and fixed to lamp standards. They hang like blood candles.

  “They’re doing pick-ups starting past the Foodland. We can miss them if we stick to Warrington all the way out. They see someone alive they’ll kill us and throw us in. These guys.”

  Y is driving. He’s big for thirteen. I remember he said he was thirteen. There is grey in the bristles on his chin. An arrangement of bodies on a lawn. Each has another’s genitals in their mouths. They move in small shakes.

  “The Seller got everybody.”

  A hydro tower. There are at least a hundred people on a long rope, like fish on a stringer. There are random flips of tails and clapping gills. Blood in a bathtub dragged beneath them. The bathtub sits in a lake of blood.

  “I know where he went.”

  I lay my thin hands on my hips. The points are sharp. My knees are pointed.

  “WasteCorp got here yesterday. They’re picking up everybody. Dead, half-dead, anything. They’re tossing everything in.”

  The sky is full of vultures and rain. That always happens. As soon as the animals realize the people are dead, they move in. Take over. Rats. Raccoons. Possum. They disappear into the corpses.

  “You okay?”

  Y looks at me. Impatience. I’m guessing he almost left me to die. Probably did a couple times.

  “I’m not doing that again.”

  Y is disgusted. He has contempt. I imagine myself thanking him but can’t. My brain feels dry and hot. I have crammed myself into a very small hole up there. To survive.

  Y gives me a suspicious look.

  “You better not be dead.”

  A long arm with heads nailed into its muscles reaches across the road and crumples the roof. I’m hallucinating. Carnival sounds. The feeling that I am in clown makeup. Why does delirium use such stock figures?

  “You better show me you’re alive or I’m rolling you out this car.”

  I need anti-psychotics. I need to say something. He’s going to drop me into a sea of bodies. I have to say something.

  “Comme ci, comme ça.”


  “What?”

  I try to make saliva.

  “Comme ci, comme ça.”

  Y Laughs.

  “Really? Comme ci, comme ça?”

  I nod.

  “Well, okay. You’re doing better than you look.”

  There is a wide hole all around me. The underside of ground. Red tree roots and broken mason jars. The snipping teeth of mice. Everything needs to dive. Get below. The bones of dogs. The fat death mask of a grub. The yellow plans of beetles and worms and a moon princess.

  Goodbye.

  a weeks.

  There is a soft light in the clouds this morning. I swing carefully on the porch. Y is in the field. It has been weeks. I saw terrible things. I was kept alive by these jolts. These images. And Y’s portable lamp. I am, for now, in old body. No syndrome. No disease being cooked up by winds in my blood. Y is heading to the house. Pail of radishes. Carrots. I am an old woman swinging on the porch. Grateful to her son. He drops the pail and wipes his brow.

  “Surprised these are growing.”

  I look out to a copse across the field. It appears like a lead shroud. There is no green anymore. Leaves are grey and black. It gives the land a metallic look. Grass is silver. Odd behaviour in birds. They circle trees in mad spins. Small bushes take on the look of manic gyroscopes. I stop swinging and peer into the pail. Something grew anyway. Carrots look like long teeth. Radishes like filthy buttons.

  “Let’s eat them. We got oil and vitamin D. We’re fine.”

  We eat inside by candlelight. The vegetables are tasteless and, worse, ugly. Y had followed Dixon out of town while I was out. He was going back and forth between two towns. Y thinks this second town is his next target. I have to call it in to the school board. I can’t afford to be feral. This is my job. I want to get paid. I want to get out.

  “I’m calling the school board after dinner.”

  Y doesn’t react to this. He pulls a thong of carrot from the back of his throat. He saw it all back there. All of Dixon’s merriment. He wants to hunt. So do I.