I let
the twins pray.
Try
to stop them and they’ll just do it in their heads. At least this way I know
what they’re after.
For
Mason: split thumbs to crawl on. Tyler has more of a list. The white-hot bull,
tears moating around his feet, a thousand pen wounds from pupils.
They
are on the stone floor, asking. I up the pump flow to my tank. Marshall other
groups around so we don’t block the turret stairs. I wonder how this might
strike our ancestors. But then, an Egyptian owns their castle.
The
boys finish. Mason pushes Tyler over.
-With
a kiss I’ll forgive you, Tyler says. He goes for him. They wrestle in front of
the tapestry before halting to count the spears.
*
We
eat by the old carousel. It looks like a revolving jail- metal poles that once
kept horses in place.
My
rare broil comes. The twins don’t touch meat. They wrap their hands with
napkins, pull down my mask and attempt to feed me.
-Quit
it, I say. -I can eat. It’s the needless pieties they like best, like soaking
my toes, or leaving coins out for me.
A man
in a gray coat approaches the table.
-Good
boys, he says, -dad?
-Yes.
The
man takes out a shaving kit bag. Opens it. Shows them a set of peeling gold
hooves, strung on a necklace.
Mason
picks out a lower jaw. He mimes scooping broil up towards me.
-Two
of the best, the man says.
*
Storms.
A TV night. Nothing to be done about it.
We’ve
set the room to 59. Humidity leaks in anyway. I have to piss, but it’s better
for me to stay in place.
The
twins are wearing their parkas, jumping us between channels. Mason cuts away
from The Left Aside Fallons, back to
the apostolic youth choir. Its singers are bleached and snarling. Pointing
clubs at an audience offscreen. Mason leaves it on torture his brother, who
loves the Fallons, and prays for a voice of his own.
Tyler
covers one ear again. He punches his liver. The tactic predates everything- I
heard he did something like it in the womb.
As I
go to stand the dampness catches in my chest. I fall on the bed, wheezing,
grasp for the tank.
Both
twins run to the bathroom. I hear them soaking towels. The Fallons (all six of
them) are caught with stolen plums and handed to the Vizier. It’s a light
episode. He only takes three.
*
-About
here, the guide says.
He
stops. Our feet sink in the grass. Behind us, the woman from the depot starts
to clap. I think she is starving. She can thank the boys’ charity. They saw her
digging through the tub of brochures, asked if they could give her a ticket at
the same time.
-Want
to say, about three hundred cavalry there. The guide points to one end of the
bare clearing. -And about, three hundred there.
-Sweet
glory, the woman says.
-Yeah,
he says, -not bad.
We’re
given ten minutes to live it. The guide seems worried about nightfall, the
lighters blinking over the nearby hills. He rolls out some chewed foam dirks
and claymores. Mason and Tyler both want the losing side. It’s not especially
relevant; our clan cut a backdoor treaty with the pretender. Still, we showed
up, didn’t we.
I
lean on a rock. The twins get into position. Opposite them, the woman clutches
a little round buckler, waiting gratefully for their charge.
*
At
first I can’t tell which.
-Dad,
he says.
-Yeah,
Tyler.
-You
were choking.
-No.
-Are
you sure?
-It’s
just a bit warm, is all. Don’t bother Mason.
-He
sleeps through everything.
-Good,
I say.
-Sloth,
Tyler says. He sits next to me on the bed. I can tell he’s watching my
breathing. It grows stilted, overly deep.
-Sometimes
I’ll stick him in the ribs, he says.
-Would
you want him to do that to you?
-I
would wake up.
Voices
pass by our window. We have the yellow flag up but they turn the knob anyway.
Slide literature under the door. Tyler points at his brother, undisturbed on
their pullout cot.
-Tell
me about his mom.
-It’s
late.
-Anything,
he says.
-She
was a good swimmer. She crossed the Channel.
-Not
mine, though.
-We
don’t know that, I say. -I never saw her try.
*
The
weather lets up enough for the pool.
We
take our numbers and queue by the fence. The first slot is all old men. I wish
the twins couldn’t see them- brining in the pink water, drifting on their tubes
without colliding.
One
man gets sick on his float. A teenaged monitor drags him out, asks if we can
help chip in for iodine from the machine.
-Some
day, the dad sitting beside me says. Judging from his accent, he lives here
full time. I nod. Keep my mask on. Our flat wood chairs remind me of what we
had in school.
His
son is playing in the deep end with the boys. They stand on his shoulders, try
to weigh him down. He’s a few years older than them. Muscular. Two blonde bars
through his hair- either they’re comfortable with money or reckless.
He
emerges, throwing the twins off into the water.
-No
point. Boy’s a fish, his dad says.
Tyler
shouts his way next. He doesn’t want to play that martyr anymore. When
challenged he suggests Voigt, gripped by river snakes.
Mason
takes his feet. The son grabs him by the elbows and starts twisting. They sink
underwater. It’s hard to tell how he does. The surface is calm, there are no
clear signs of resistance.
The
son gets bored. He comes back up and leaves Mason floating there, Tyler
half-freed.
His
dad hands him a crisp devotional with a trebuchet on the cover.
Mason
lets go.
-Okay,
he says.
-You
won, he says. Slaps at the air bubbles rising around him.
*
I
tell them Enough, but Mason’s already
opening her.
She’s
seen bigger places than the battlefield. Wine smell, a sequined dress, blush
and cherry eye glitter shielded from rain by the tarp.
Mason
lacks the strength to unroll it fully. He calls to us for more hands.
I
say, -We’re moving.
But
they want her rites. Their first real chance, not counting dogs or birds. It
can be fast; there’s dirt here. Mason met a kid across the inn with a dropper
of oil.
I
say, -Someone will come.
-We
know her, Tyler says.
-Not
like family.
-Where
are they? Mason says.
The
second after-dinner bell rings. Another twenty minutes and they’ll scramble the
lock. Own our luggage.
-No,
I say. -But you can give something.
They
search themselves.
Tyler
leaves his stub from the tour.
Mason
only has one coin. He stuffs his hand in Tyler’s pockets, and, finding him
honest, nestles it in her braid.
They
look up at me. Expecting I’ll complete it, somehow.
I
clear my throat. The third bell sounds. We exit the alley, join the rest of the
latecomers heading for the gates.
*
The
land in the dream is familiar. I’ve borrowed it from a few days ago. The
clearing, what should be a hill against a fortress.
A
storm has fixed overhead. The long siege is broken. There are men on all sides,
if you can even call them that. Bannerless, rushing. Men as rain.
I am
nowhere, unable to breathe. I have no tank. Just the mask. Lately, it comes
with me.
Their
mothers lie in the mud, on two blankets. The rain makes their faces
unnecessary, though the figures look close, they’re braced in a natural
position, equally ready, bellies flooded like my chest.
I try
to suck something usable from the air. The rout proceeds in all directions. Who is with the pretender, I think. As soldiers trample around them, they
lock their pale hands over their stomachs. Who
is with the king. I can only speak for my end.
*
-Tomorrow,
we’re seeing the church, I say. -Plan to be ready by bedtime.
They’re
inconsolable. Mason falls dead on the ground. Tyler takes the set of horse
hooves, disfigures himself, clamping them over his ears and nose and mouth.
-Please,
he says, through swollen lips.
-We
can’t, Mason says.
They
quote the cereal box prohibition: raise
no sanctuary for man’s sin.
-You
aren’t raising anything, I say. -It’s taken care of. Now, let me rest.
I
turn over. Shut my eyes. Neither one moves. All I hear is rain, the hiss of the
oxygen supply, silent prayers filling the room.
*
They
come back for another look. A second kid swears by him; they open the driver’s
side, lead him out of the van to the moor.
We’re
kept separate. Allowed to stand on the sharp ground. Our driver is hooded now,
on both knees, with LENDER tagged to
his chest by a pin. The kid restraining him sports his own: WHORE.
-You
were just on a ride, the oldest one, maybe 16, says to me.
-That’s
right, I say.
-To
nowhere special.
-No.
-See
the moor, he says. -In mixed company.
He
goes to the glovebox, returning with our fare, plus interest. Next to him, the
son from the pool smooths his highlights flat. Stares into a butane torch.
Instinctively, I reach for my tank. But it’s a safe distance away, in the back
seat.
They
load up. The van fits all of them. Even our driver.
Before
he joins them the son removes his black deacon’s stole. He looks between Mason
and Tyler. Drapes it over both their shoulders.
*
We
hike the unmarked road. I slept most of the ride, the twins can’t tell me if we
made it more than halfway.
So,
forward.
They
walk in front of me in their parkas, tethered by the stole. Every few hundred
feet we come on a broom shrub or a rock outcropping and they run and
investigate. To save my energy, I don’t bother them about theirs. The air is
both wet and thin. The mask tube brushes my knees with each step.
Mason
starts to sing the Fallons theme. He
does so badly, out of hunger, kicking at the dirt, skipping lyrics.
Tyler
tugs on the stole.
-Shut
up.
He
sings even louder and flatter. Four,
Five, Six, on the vermin-ous streets.
-You’re
ruining it, Tyler says, and Mason yanks so hard on his end that he falls over.
Tyler
lies there wailing. It looks like he might start on himself so Mason preempts
him, thumping with one fist on his liver. He leans down for a kiss. But I’ve
reached them. I pull Mason off. I slap him knuckles-out across the cheek. Then
I drop to the ground with his brother. My vision is starred over, I’m too out
of breath to even slide the mask down, to say anything as Mason runs blindly
into the heather.
*
Dusk
comes. When I’m stronger we can search. Until then we’ll expect him.
Tyler
is quiet. Policing my breath.
He
unzips me so I can relieve myself. He pushes me to a new spot.
He
leaves- I don’t know for how long. Thunder echoes over the hills. I roll to one
side, thinking I could drown, but nothing answers it.
Dabbing
sweat off me. With his shirt, or the stole? Who has it?
All
of a sudden the mask slides away. A mound of gray and white and purple grass at
my lips.
-What
are you doing, I say.
-Nothing,
Tyler says.
-Don’t
feed me.
He
denies it. Of course his hands are empty now, he keeps showing me them like
there’s something I’ve yet to understand.
I
straighten up. I tell him that I don’t need food. That I’ll never eat again.
That just as likely he came from this soil as a woman. It’s dead enough,
there’s enough acid in it. I tell him that when Mason was born it was bloodless
and he had all his hair and wouldn’t cry and a fighter jet flew overhead. He
could squeeze my thumb. I tell him that the other fathers saw. They followed me
around the ward making proposals. One of them had twins; I went and looked to
not offend him. They were blue. Overly small. Still he thought they might add
up to more together.
I
talk until I’m alone and can lie back and face the sky.
*
I
sleep.
Every
so often my body interrupts, asking for something, unaccustomed to the
response.
I
think about the church. How far up the road it is.
Then
I remember they don’t even call it a church. A site- much safer. In the photos it looks closer to an inn with a
stump where the spire was filed off. All the relics are gone now. The physical
symbols sold or hoarded or worn. Even the bones.
After
the rout, our clan put torches to it. Loyalists had fled down into the crypt
with their families. They rebuilt it later. First they dug beneath the old
foundations, burying the dead in pairs, beside each other, to spite us. The
twins won’t be able to see them. But they can stand under the roof. Walk where
they lay.
I ask
them if that sounds alright. If we should get moving now.
I
tremble in the wind. A small coat is placed on me. Another. I feel the slick
fabric of the stole around my neck- too loose to keep the chill out.
-Boys,
I say, and both ends tighten with the same force.
Doug Ross is a writer and
photographer based in Brooklyn. He grew up outside Detroit with his
twin. Find him on Twitter @dougrosswrite.
