Fallen Land Read online

  Kurt returns Louise’s shoes and another guard appears down a second set of stairs. Unlike Kurt, he does not wear a nametag, but introduces himself as Dave.

  “I’ll be taking you up to secure-side, Mrs. Washington, and escorting you to the interview room,” Dave says.

  Upstairs, they approach two sets of bulletproof glass doors adjacent to the Master Control Room, where a wall of green and red lights indicates which doors are open and which closed across the entire penitentiary. A guard in the Control Room sees them and opens the first of the glass doors. Louise and Dave step inside, wait for two other prison staff to join them, and the door closes. Several seconds elapse before the second door opens, allowing them into the secure portion of the prison where Dave leads Louise down the hall past a cage holding a dozen men, newly arrived, waiting to be processed, to be issued their ankle bracelets and identification cards with bar codes and photos, to spend time in the Diagnostic Evaluation Center where they will be assessed and assigned to a cell block. Waiting for their diagnosis, the new men all look terrified.

  Dave turns a corner and shows Louise into the room where the interview will take place. The walls are white concrete block, the trim around the doors royal blue, and across one wall are half a dozen blue-curtained bays that would look at home in a hospital emergency room, but which in this context make Louise feel uneasy, as if the space might be used for sudden triage. A dispenser filled with hand sanitizer is mounted on the opposite wall, and in the middle of the room are two molded plastic chairs on either side of a white plastic table.

  Louise sits in one of the chairs, waiting for Dave to return with the prisoner. Alone in the room she feels a flash of panic as she realizes where she has brought herself. It is not because of the proximity to all these dangerous men, although perhaps that is an underlying or ancillary fear: of what men like that are capable of doing, the harms and violations they have committed, that they are still able and liable to commit in this facility shut away from public view, where, for all she knows, even the guards are in on the act. Rather, it is because she fears that in bringing herself inside these bland walls she risks being mistaken for a criminal herself, daring the system to conclude that some error has been made in allowing her liberty and now, as she has in effect turned herself over to the authorities, permitting the prison to process her for the span of a few hours, to judge her likelihood to break the laws of the penitentiary itself, they will see in Louise a criminal quality she has not herself recognized, and after identifying this intrinsic, previously unrecognized flaw, they may lock her away from the rest of society, flush her into their own private septic system, return her to earth. Once, not that many years ago, she broke a law, risking her liberty, and escaped only through the intervention of a man who can no longer assist her. Perhaps, she worries, some record remains of her transgression.

  Just as she is reaching a peak of panic and thinking of calling the guards to let her out, to cancel the meeting, Dave returns with Paul. Louise reminds herself why she has come: not for herself, but for him, as an act of altruism. It is not an unconsidered position.

  His hair, cut shorter than when she last saw him at the trial, is a close thicket of straight dark spikes flashed with gold streaks, the color of a homebrew prison process, glinting even under the deadening effect of the fluorescent lights that hang from the ceiling.

  “So here you are,” Paul says, sitting down in the other plastic chair.

  “Here I am,” Louise says, speaking over him.

  “To be honest, I didn’t believe you’d come.” She watches him flex his hands against the table. The guard, Dave, stands at the door, clearing his throat in what sounds like a warning to Paul before glancing at Louise, offering a corresponding gaze of reassurance and, she thinks, warning as well—not to get too comfortable in this room that is as white and windowless and unbreachable as a bank vault. Dave, however, is not going anywhere. It is his job, no less his duty, to protect her from harm, from this man who has committed such a catalog of harms.

  Circumstances and environment being what they are, Paul appears for the most part no different than he did in the past. His face, the muscled curvature of his torso, the landscape of his veins make her shiver and push her chair away from the table, closer to the wall with the dispenser of hand sanitizer. She feels certain that if he wanted to Paul could catch her before she even knew she needed to escape, catch her and kill her before Dave could move his own large body across the room. Paul is big enough and strong enough that he could pick her up in both arms and carry her off, an unholy pietà. An old verse runs through her mind: And the women conceiving brought forth giants. The hard planar chest stretching his white t-shirt, the arms bulging from their sleeves seem less parts of an animal form than a system of gears and pistons, hard components moving only in one way because of the nature of their design and manufacture, elements built for a single purpose and not readily adapted to any space other than that which they were meant to occupy, a space he has now lost, which he cannot ever regain. Freedom is finished. He will never again be free, never released, not unless the country collapses into chaos. A diamond-cut file will not liberate him. It would take the bombs of revolution or apocalypse itself to free him from this prison, and for that Louise cannot help feeling grateful.

  For years his face has appeared in her dreams, screaming and grimacing. As if from a nervous tic or too much time spent in the dark, his eyes, large and round, the color of arctic seawater, rove and squint. He must have been in solitary confinement. It would not be surprising to discover he is a prisoner prone to fighting with other inmates or assaulting guards, the leader of brigades of men bent on escape or on nothing more elaborate than dominating the space in which they have been confined. But the skin under his eyes, across the cheekbones, although naturally olive, is an unhealthy shade of brown, a tan so deep that much of his face must be precancerous, pores swollen and popping like goose bumps. Inmates spend most of their waking hours outside under the sun, even in winter.

  At first they have nothing to say to each other and she struggles to move her tongue.

  “I came, Mr. Krovik. Here I am, just like you asked in your letter. So—.”

  His feet drum the floor, two rubber mallets in motion, and then all at once they fall still as the echo of pounding thunders around the room. In other circumstances he could be mistaken for a department store mannequin or an animatronic model in an amusement park diorama of early man. The features are primitive, with a heavy crudeness in the brow and jaw and cheekbones that is just less than human.

  Even if he no longer has full control over his appearance, he looks and smells clean. His eyes are clear, so like other eyes she now knows, irises a fine transparent glaze, crackling with iron oxide. When he adjusts his hands, searching for a position closer to comfort, the veins stand out as if he has been flayed alive. This small movement triggers a series of twitches that contort the left side of his face and brow, rolling back over his scalp until they cascade down his spine, making the whole body shake for a moment before once again falling so still that he looks lifeless but for the spasm that pulses down his arm, bringing to life the tattoo on his bicep of a bird struck through the chest with an arrow. Cock Robin it says in cursive lettering under the dying bird. He looks down at his arm as though the twitching belongs to someone else, or as if the bird were an illumination that might escape from its vellum.

  “I really never imagined you’d come see me,” he says.

  “No, I bet you didn’t. And to be frank, neither did I.”

  His twitching slows, intervals of stillness expanding until the bird is frozen again on the surface of the skin, the arc of its wing matching the curve of muscle, which flutters with sudden purpose as he pulls himself up against the table.

  “I guess we used to be neighbors, though, sort of. Didn’t we? Friends, even.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Louise says. “We weren’t re
ally neighbors, and we certainly weren’t friends.”

  Although Paul’s story made national news, after her appearance at his trial Louise found herself avoiding all the media coverage, refusing requests to be interviewed; every time she saw his face she turned away from the gaze of a man she did not wish to remember. She never could have imagined that he would contact her, an acquaintance only, hardly a neighbor, nothing like a friend. If she knows anything certain about Paul it is that he never liked her.

  The letter came to her in pencil on blue-lined white school paper. Paul’s handwriting was in block capitals and, like the houses he built, the letters were out of proportion, the strokes too long, the bars and arms too short, the words stretched along the vertical axis. Although his writing was tidy she could not suppress the feeling that there was something sinister about the exclusive use of capitals.

  DEAR MRS. WASHINGTON,

  I KNOW I HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXPECT A REPLY BUT I THOUGHT I WOULD GIVE IT A TRY. I DON’T HAVE MANY VISITORS AND I WONDERED IF I COULD PERSUADE YOU TO COME SEE ME. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO OFFER YOU, AND MAYBE THIS IS A SELFISH REQUEST, BUT GIVEN THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE A FAMILIAR FACE, EVEN YOURS.

  SINCERELY,

  YOUR FORMER NEIGHBOR, PAUL (KROVIK)

  P.S. I AM ALSO WRITING BECAUSE I COULD USE A FRIEND RIGHT NOW.

  The letter took Louise so much by surprise that, after reading it the first time, she put it aside, looking at it from time to time where it lay on the desk in the room she now occupies in a house that is not hers. She wondered at first if the letter was genuine or some kind of forgery. The return address was the state penitentiary and the zip code on the postmark corresponded. When she passed the desk in the morning or late at night, the paper seemed to emit an odor that reminded her of gunpowder, dried cornstalks, and manure.

  It took her weeks to decide to visit. Reservations aside, she found herself intrigued by the possibility that Paul could think of her as a friend (in fact, against all her instincts, she was moved by the suggestion), while being unsettled and alarmed that he might have ulterior motives, or that any avowal of friendship was only a way to seduce her into helping him. The lighter notes of gunpowder attached to the letter faded, and those of decay mellowed, sweetened, grew as fertile-smelling as good compost.

  Louise knows she has nothing to fear from Paul at the moment since the guard remains just inside the door and two cameras monitor the room from opposite corners of the ceiling. When Paul slides to one end of the table, she can hear the camera behind her shift, reframing and focusing on his new position. It is unclear whether sound is also being recorded.

  “You know what the hand sanitizer is for?” he asks, nodding at the dispenser. “It’s for when they have to do a body cavity search.” He cocks his head in the direction of the curtained bays and glances over at Dave, who grins. “They wear gloves but they still clean themselves afterward. Just to see you today, I had to be strip-searched. Every time I get a visitor, I have to take everything off, put my arms out at my side, lean over, cough, spread my ass, let them finger me if they think they have cause. And after this interview is over, they do it all again. I say to them, come on, just let me do the visit naked, it’ll save a lot of time.” He raises an eyebrow as if he expects some kind of response: laughter or disgust. Louise looks at Dave, but his face goes blank, hands tucked into his armpits.

  “I didn’t realize,” she says, wondering if Paul wants her to thank him, if he believes that he is somehow doing her a favor by initiating this meeting.

  “You know, I guess you’re right.” His eyes jerk up to the camera. “I guess we weren’t even neighbors, not really.”

  “I’d be curious to know what it was I did to make you so angry, Mr. Krovik. Why did you hate me?” She wants to say, You are the agent of my destruction, Paul Krovik, and you have no right to be so glib. After everything that’s passed between us, all the ways you worked to destroy my world, your tone offends me.

  Paul throws back his head and laughs, as though he cannot begin to count the number of ways Louise inspired his hate. “Whoo. What didn’t you do, Mrs. Washington?” He sounds cocky and defensive, a kid still testing the boundaries. It is an attitude she remembers from countless boys she taught in the past, a quality that never failed to put her on guard. If he did not look so composed, if it was not clear that any hatred is now long spent, Louise would be out the door and running down the hall. Paul swallows his laughter and makes a strange warbling grunt, as if he knows it would be safer to leave the hills of hate between them unexplored. “Never mind all that, though. Because, you know, it’s really, really nice to see you here now.”

  As his eyes blur wet and sultry in an almost feminine way, he fumbles the air across the table, his thin fingers, white nails cut in straight blunt lines, clawing at the empty space between them. She has never seen anyone make a movement like this, as though he is blind and has no sense that the hands he wants to grasp are within easy reach, just below his own. Louise understands that he wants her to take his fingers, to turn this interview into something like a conjugal visit under the eyes of the guard and the fish-eye lenses of the prison’s security cameras. She leans back in her chair, and then, almost losing control of her body, begins to extend one hand to Paul until, regaining sense at the last moment, she pulls it back. No part of her wants to touch him. She needs to get out of this white room and back into sunlight and open space, where visible distance is measurable in units greater than feet, where she can think with clarity, remember her purpose in the world, put her feet on earth instead of concrete. It was a mistake to visit him. There is nothing he can say that will change what he has done.

  LOUISE LEAVES THE PRISON FEELING sick, her body shaking, eyes flowing. Watching her pass out of their jurisdiction, Dave and Kurt act as though she is the funniest thing they have seen in weeks, this old woman in tears. She drives northwest, skirting the city, until she finds herself in front of a house with a sharp gable and contorted verge boards, the lace border on a starch-stiffened napkin. Despite what she might wish, this house has put down roots in her brain: she wakes to see its gable twisting, the porch fattening, the windows blinking. Under the moon and a clear sky the house stands still, the whole neighborhood frozen in hot vapors. She hears the buzzing that is now always audible, a noise that might only be cicadas, although she knows it is not: there is nothing natural about the drone.

  The house is just off the extension of Poplar Road, the main east–west thoroughfare through the city and a forty-minute drive to the old downtown that has been regenerated in phases over the last decade, the warehouses turned into lofts, derelict buildings razed and replaced with parks. Nonetheless, some neighborhoods that were genteel a decade earlier have seen their houses turned into rental properties, the porches sagging and gutters filling up with leaves that are never cleared to make way for the snowmelt in spring and the torrents of rain that come at unpredictable intervals in the warm months. Out here, on the western fringe of the city, everything remains new. Anything that ages is torn down to make way for shiny replacements.

  Downstairs the lights are off, curtains closed, the windows dark and reflective. On the second and third floors there is light and movement; the curtains are open, the people who live inside forgetting that someone might be watching. She pulls the car into the driveway, gets out, and shuts the door without making a noise.

  It is nearly nine o’clock and the neighboring houses are dark except for the small red pulse of light on each of their alarm boxes. She looks through the window in the front door and sees light seeping down the stairs from the second floor, shadows moving, someone standing still and then in motion again. Feet come down the stairs. Louise ducks behind one of the half-dozen plantation rocking chairs on the porch, listening as the body inside approaches the door. She edges into deeper shadow as the door opens for an instant and then slams shut. Somewhere a window is open.

&nb
sp; “It wasn’t locked! You said you locked it!”

  “I said I couldn’t remember.”

  “Anyone could have come in. This isn’t the 1950s!”

  This is the place she has brought herself at last, the place where she now must remain. She sits in one of the rocking chairs, looking out at the other houses, blurring her vision so the structures begin to dissolve, giving way to the black mass of trees in the distance, the dim western glow as the earth spins itself again into darkness.

  Past

  All felled, felled, are all felled . . . not spared, not one.

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

  PART I

  SHELTER

  The helicopter has been hovering overhead for the last twenty minutes. He knows he can hear the rapid thwacking buzz of a flying lawnmower cutting down clouds, and if he can’t hear it through the lead lining of the bunker then he is sure he can feel the vibration of rotors churning the air, buffeting the earth above his head, stirring up the atmosphere, designed to stir him up too.

  When people asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, Paul Krovik did not say he was going to be a fireman or soldier or pilot, as some boys will before they know the kind of drudgery and danger such jobs entail. He did not want to be an actor or rock star or astronaut, nor did he harbor secret desires to dance, design clothes, or write poetry—the kinds of dreams most in his world would have regarded as evidence that his parents had failed to raise a true man, whatever that might mean.

  He always wanted to build houses.

  And now they are trying to take away the only house that belonged to him. He is not about to give up the one thing he ever wanted.

  At first when he heard it he thought the helicopter must be circling the general area, filming rush-hour traffic to transmit to one of the local news affiliates, the shellacked Channel 7 anchors in rictus masks reporting snarl-ups and accidents and slow-motion car chases, transmitting live from a breaking story with innocents sobbing in the background or bystanders weighing in with nonsensical sound bites about the shiftiness of a suspected killer or the long-observed weirdness of a family that has taken itself hostage in a broken-down motor home none of the neighbors have seen move from the driveway in a decade. Paul remembers that story: a mother, father, three sons living in a ramshackle house. The children armed themselves, told their parents enough was enough, that life on the terms they were suffering was not worth living. Following a two-day standoff the parents yelled out the window to say they were no longer hostages, then knelt down in front of their teenage children, accepted the gun to the temple, and rolled backward, descending into death before they could watch the boys turn the guns on themselves. MOTOR HOME MASSACRE was how Channel 7 described it, the blond anchor smiling as if he were reporting the mass surrender of terrorists. How Paul admired that family, the logic of the boys and the courage of their parents.