Mira Corpora (4 page)

In the following days, the other kids in camp avoid Daniel and Nycette. Both their bodies give off a rank and fleshy odor. Even the canines aren't sure how to deal with the smell; their carrion instincts are scrambled and they can't decide whether to make a move. Nycette and Daniel are too pleased with themselves to care. They're often seen together on nightly strolls talking cosmology in the meadow. A pack of dogs always trails a few paces behind, their noses vibrating.

After the cremation, I start thinking it might be time to leave Liberia. The idea appears one morning, like the sticky residue of a forgotten dream. I pull on my damp socks. Swallow a few teeth-pulls of beef jerky. Roll up my hammock with the plastic sheet inside as carefully as if it were a pastry, spend the morning wandering through the muddy ravines of camp, not meeting anyone's gaze, hands sunk in the pockets of my rotting jeans,
feet scuffing the spongy ground, feeling like I'm already half gone. Even my footprints seem lighter.

That afternoon I pack my bag. I know where I'm headed. I scale the chain-link fence and scout the perimeter. Nobody is around. I creep through the empty grounds, careful to avoid the cement janitor's shed. I run a moss-covered branch along the bars of the cages, soothed by the metallic reverberations. I wonder what the animals remembered of their time here. On a lark, I squeeze inside one of the cages. Sniff the dirt to determine what creature lived here, but there is no tang of musk or finely scented urine. I make myself at home. Pace back and forth. Hop up and down. Swing arms from side to side. Make chattering and hooting noises. But the play-acting seems half-hearted, even to myself.

While I hang upside down from the bars, someone strides past the cage. He doesn't seem to notice me. I follow at a discreet pace as he heads toward the overgrown arcade where the carnival rides once thrived. Only a few dilapidated husks now remain, their paint faded to a sickly pallor, peeling and infested with scabs of rust. They're like misshapen boulders deposited by some receding glacier. The boy marches into the ring of dirt where the carousel once sat. He kneels at the center of the circular pit and starts to dig.

Crouched in some scrubby bushes, I can't see his face. The boy methodically scoops out a small hole with his hands. He slides a bag off his shoulder and removes a yearbook snapshot of a teenage girl flashing a stiff half-smile. He places it in the hole and smothers it with dirt. The boy pulls out a series of small china plates, none larger than a sand dollar. He arranges them in a precise circumference around the hole. The remaining contents of the bag are scavenged scraps of food—half-eaten apple, moldy dinner roll, frayed threads of beef jerky—which he lays on the plates as if setting out a meal.

Entranced by this private ritual, I forget myself and rustle the
bushes. The boy wheels around. It's Isaac. A contorted expression of anger and desperation ripples across his face. For a second, he looks like a colicky baby before it screams. But then his features snap back into blankness. He motions to join him in the carousel pit. I feel weird about interrupting, but he's insistent.

“My girlfriend killed herself three years ago today,” Isaac says. “She overdosed by swallowing a bottle of pills. Not many people know that.” I give an empathetic nod, as if I can possibly understand. We sit together with our legs crossed Indian-style. My eyes are trained on the white plates, two of which are still missing food. Isaac doesn't offer any explanations. His fingers knead the lip of a plate, as if trying to conjure sound from the ceramic grooves.

There's something about this strange and touching offering that makes me realize what I need to do. I start to offer Isaac my condolences about his girlfriend, but instead I blurt out: “I'm leaving Liberia tonight. I'm going to the dead village. To the oracles.”

I expect him to try and talk me out of it, but instead he offers a weary smile. He sets about completing his ritual, taking the last gnarled strands of beef jerky and positioning them on the empty plates. As he surveys the circle of food, his expression oscillates between anxiety and melancholy. I dig inside my knapsack for the filthy plastic bag filled with crushed blackberries. My favorite meal. “I'd like to add something,” I say.

“You'll need those for your trip.”

“It's okay,” I say. “I want to.” I'm not sure why but I know it's important to make a contribution. With an appropriate sense of ceremony, I kneel next to the china plate that holds only a half-gnawed crab apple and slowly shake the berries from the bag. They form a soggy black pyramid and spill over the plate, which is soon encircled in a pool of purple juice. “For your girlfriend,” I say.

Before Isaac can respond, we hear crackling sounds and
hushed twitters from the bushes and trees. The leaves shudder. Fleetingly familiar shapes dart through the foliage. Isaac stares into the underbrush, gradually working his gaze round the perimeter. “They're here,” he says. “We'd better go now.”

Without seeing them, I can feel their presence. The small faces, hairy paws, arched tails. “They're real,” I say.

“Quiet,” Isaac says. “Back away slowly. Don't spook them.” We take a series of deliberate and measured steps toward the entrance of the midway, as if this too is part of the ritual. The whistling whoops and belly growls begin to escalate. A shiver ripples through my body. I imagine a mass of furry backs hunched in the shadows, anxious for us to leave so they can swarm the plates and devour their offering. We keep walking with our gazes trained on the ground, but I can tell we're encircled by countless pairs of tremulous golden eyes.

The dead village is silent. A hushed crowd waits inside a decaying house to see the oracles. We huddle along the wooden staircase and stare up at the water-stained ceiling. Black mold spreads in fern leaf patterns across the plaster walls. A fractured kitchen sink rests at the end of the hallway. A partially disassembled motorboat engine lies in the bathtub. The pilgrims are a combination of vagrant tourists and weary travelers. Most of these patient souls have been waiting for hours. I've been here longer than any of them.

Their door is locked, but I peer through the keyhole and spy the oracles lost in their dreamy duties. Three pale girls in pink nightgowns with white athletic socks pulled over their knees. One oracle spoons mossy grounds into a trio of mismatched cups. Another lifts a kettle from an electric hot plate and sniffs the steam rising from its spout. The third removes the lid from a red sugar bowl and inspects the contents. The girls hover
wordlessly around the steeping tea. Their shoulder blades twitch involuntarily. I'm not supposed to be watching this.

There's the click of the lock. The squawk of the rusty hinges sounds as startling as a shipyard whistle. Two of the oracles appear in the door frame. Their sinewy faces are almost ectomorphic. Their condor eyes survey the crowd and seem vaguely unsatisfied with the tally. Each holds a glass ashtray filled with damp tea leaves. Everyone around me plays it cool, as if they're parishioners at some rote worship service. I'm not so suave. My heart starts to sweat. “We're ready to begin,” the two oracles announce.

I'm the first in line but let the skinhead girl with the bookish glasses take my place. The crowd pushes me into the room behind her and a flock of us hover along the nearest wall. We observe the main oracle who sits in the center of the room, a black notebook nestled in the folds of her nightgown. This must be Sara. There's nothing particularly striking about her chubby figure and greasy brown hair, but she radiates an otherworldly air of detachment.

The skinhead girl kneels in front of Sara's chair. One of the assistant oracles dabs a brown smudge of tea leaves on the girl's forehead. Sara props a foot on the girl's shoulder and presses her thumb into the spot. Her eyes turn milky white and her free hand begins to write. The pen moves at its own pace, the strokes slowly accumulating across the page. When the writing ceases, Sara rips out the sheet with a flourish. The message reads:
22, 7, 16. Bobbie Merlino
. It's unclear from the skinhead girl's reaction if the information has significance, but she creases the paper with painstaking care before tucking it inside her plastic billfold.

I let the black teenager with the infected nose-ring go next. As Sara enters her trance, I catalog the spartan contents of the bedroom. Bare mattress arranged on the wooden floor. Oval mirror draped with black velveteen. Peeling sea-green wallpaper with sun-faded sailboats navigating toward some unknown
port. Sara finishes inscribing the notebook page with a map and marks an X in the upper left-hand corner. The text reads:
This is where you will kill your father.
The boy acts unfazed but his eyes keep blinking at the paper, perhaps hoping a different message will materialize.

I signal the man with the grizzled beard to take my place, but one of the assistant oracles seizes my elbow. She motions for me to kneel in front of Sara, but instead I keep stalling. There's so much that suddenly needs explaining. I want to tell her the history of my life and ask her what destiny the stars have been cooking up for me, but I can't find the syllables. I can only stammer out the most basic information: “My name is Jeff Jackson.”

Sara's lashes flutter, as if she's struggling to bring a strange specimen into focus at the end of a microscope. She appears slightly cross-eyed, her brown orbs unsuitable for everyday tasks. Her semi-blank stare reminds me of a crab whose stalks twitch in the direction of the nearest noise.

I kneel in front of Sara's chair. She splays her legs and places a foot on my shoulder. I glimpse a few curly pubic hairs sticking out like orchid tendrils from the cotton crotch of her panties. One of the assistant oracles applies the warm tea leaves to my forehead. A brown rivulet of resin slips down the tip of my nose. It probably looks like my third eye is weeping. Sara presses her thumb against the leaves.

The spot instantly feels white-hot, an intense burning pressure, as if a hole is being bored through the bone of my skull. I bite my tongue to keep from shouting. I focus on Sara's pen as it moves across the page in swift and soundless strokes. The only noises come from the rhythmless plink of the rain, the jittery clank of the ancient steel radiator, the thin whistle of static from an unseen radio. The pen halts and Sara tears the page from her notebook and hands it to me. The sheet is blank.

A tense murmur wafts through the house. More people squeeze inside the room. Someone asks me to display the sheet
and it produces an eerie silence, as if I were an executioner raising his victim's head above the crowd. Nobody wants to tell me that the last person who received a blank page from Sara died soon afterward. Nobody wants to explain that it's akin to drawing the tarot card of the skeleton astride his emaciated steed. One of the assistant oracles leans close and whispers, “I'm sorry.” All eyes are set on me. Only Sara's gaze is elsewhere, transfixed by the coastline of torn paper that clings to the margins of her notebook.

 

 

The blank sheet sticks out of my back pocket. I stand on the lone strip of road and stare up at the oracles' house. A tireless rain spits from the sky and puddles around my feet. My clothes are soggy. My lungs burn. It stings every time I cough. The curtains of the upstairs window are closed, but eventually Sara will have to show her face.

I scoop several handfuls of wet gravel. It's easy to find ammunition in Monrovia. Everything is in ruins: the rotting porches, fallen tree limbs, incinerated automobile husks. Even the road I'm standing on—an aborted strip of asphalt that runs through the center of the village and evaporates before it reaches the woods—comes apart under your fingernails.

My first throw misses by several inches. The second ricochets off the sill with a dull clatter. But the third strikes a direct hit, the pebbles rattling brightly against the second-story window pane. There's no way she's not hearing this.