The Cause (15 page)

He stood up again, raising his fist in the air. “What is the true sound of the march of time? Is it the boots that march loudest, or simply those that trod a fresh path that others will follow? Just as no great change can occur without catalyst, no rebirth can start without death.”

He then asked the Sons for their words, and Merrill spoke up. “You have been chosen for The Abattoir with great care. All of you have somehow been touched in one way or another by what is happening. Those who did not fit the profile were never accepted. Those we were unsure about were encouraged to leave after the first few days. The process is not perfect. But we will tell you all, we seek brothers here, not enemies, and you must stand up and fight for us or admit you are against us.”

“So if I ask you again,” Seee said, speaking up to all of us. “Will you fight for us?”

“YES!” was the resounding answer from the chorus of men above.

“Then who will accept this challenge?”

Many hands flew up in the air, even my own. The Sons scanned the circle, gazing into the eyes of each, making a judgment right then and there. My guess was that most had sided with Seee before they even got here. They had been profiled, as Merrill admitted. But what about me? Why was I still alive? Surely they knew what I had come here to do?

Not one in the circle failed volunteering to throw his life into The Pit. And why wouldn’t they? It was blood they had come for, and I was no different. The warrior in each of us had awakened, and now
just cause
demanded a bloody conclusion.

Seee chose Atlas to step forward, eyeing me as if I had lost my chance, as if I was a lost cause. Atlas was the same build as Tongueless Downs—medium height and pit-bullish—a fair fight in terms of size.

They chose their weapons from the rack quickly—Tongueless Downs took a gladius sword and Roman shield. Atlas, sword and spear and a Saxon shield. They put on armor, shoulder plates, and helmets made of gilded steel. One way or the other, it was going to be over soon. Days of training with heavier wooden weapons and wicker shields were over. Time called out
armatura
, and instead of stopping, it steamed straight forward.

Reaction. Forces always occur in pairs. The interaction of two objects. Every force on one object accompanied by reaction on another of equal magnitude. Opposing direction.

This is what physics teaches us with the Newtonian law of motion.

Strange how a blade swings, coming at you like a sweep of light. A flash of it through the air, fleeting and brisk, swishing with the same suddenness as sun glint through windy trees. The stream of steel lasts an instant or a millennium. Never seen in slow motion. Because there is—

Reaction.

Atlas steps backward planting a foot, letting the cold streak of steel crash against his shield. A jostling of movements. He jabs with the spear grunting, but it meets shield in a metallic scraping crash. He pushes Tongueless Downs back with his shield, but it’s met with heavy resistance. The Pit is electric—amperes of attraction and repulsion, sand hoofed and scattered, bodies torqued in lunge and push. Time swift. Breath trapped in throats, suspended inside heaving lungs as if an exhale might change the outcome.

There is hard truth in steel. When it strikes, sometimes the body delays for a micromoment, as if it is unsure of Reaction. But later it will catch up and drain you. Atlas doesn’t realize he’s wounded. A short jab caught him in the side. If it wasn’t for our gasps, he might not ever have known. When he sees the blood, he doesn’t seem fazed by it. He quickly throws away the spear and unsheathes his sword.

Two worlds become loosely coupled, shadows of each lurking in The Pit waiting for an immutable ending. Action relentless in its drive forward. It pushes with impatience toward inevitability. Every breath perhaps the last. Seconds compress. Time shrinks to a pinpoint.

They clash once more, dirt flying. Grains of it shooting so high, they catch me in the eyes. Sounds of struggle, a primal cloud around them. War screams from Atlas full of rage and anger. Tongueless Downs shrieking rebel yells. The noise itself is its own combat. Bodies undulate in a rippling flow, jarred and knotted together, then thrown apart. The death dance. One man real, the other a phantom. What’s happening is beyond control, larger than all of us and ramming down a road to a laddered destination. Hysteria of an outcome pulses in the vibrating air—it’s there stamped into everyone’s eyes. A demand for a bloody conclusion. Hearts thumping in chests waiting for the critical, decisive error. For a while, it seems Atlas has the upper hand even with the wound. He’s powerful and in a frenzy—dangerous energy. The two of them face each other in swinging chainmail and glittering armor, as if they’ve slipped down a dimension into another historical world, transcending time into battles redolent of sweaty gladiators in marbled coliseums.

Atlas’s wound opens up, ripping wide like a crowning baby. The skin furls away, a hint of a flayed intestine peeks out, the man unraveling before our eyes.

Exhaustion in Atlas’s eyes. The hard truth about to reveal itself.

Tongueless Downs notices the fatigue. Everyone senses the change, as if it is a scent in the air easily smelled. We are engulfed in the swell of this anachronistic battle. We are glutinous and base, unable to push the magnetism of the primordial back inside.

The shape of destiny forms. Carved out like one of Kumo’s sticks. The real man dims, and the phantom pushes in. Only one
way it can end. Atlas’s shield falls to his knees after he takes another stab in the same side. He falls to his knees, and the strain in his eyes to get back up is like a plea to every man who can see.
Save me
. Brave Atlas has succumbed. The sword is still in his hand, resting at an oblong angle, but strength has drained from him, and only will is left to lift it. Tongueless Downs takes no liberty with time. He steps forward and with searing scorn pushes the sword deep into Atlas, pitiless, spitting in his face after it’s done. Fully adapted to the new world, he is the victor, raising his arms. The phantom edges away, up the unseen ladder. We watch wordless with wounded egos, a disappointment in the result because it was not our man that won.

Most angry is Seee, an engine of roar who leaps into The Pit and bends over the limp body of Atlas. Seee closes the dead man’s eyes softly with his fingertips. To all, the anguish in his face reflects who he thinks was the best among us. Then Tongueless Downs comes after Seee, observing he is turned around and defenseless. But Seee slithers away, anticipating the move, offering his back as an antagonization. He rolls to Atlas’s shield and comes up in a crouch with it overhead to meet the downward swing of the shiny blade. The cling of metal sounds. Seee stands and twists, maneuvers to the sword in the sand. Downs lunges at Seee with the blade but catches only the heart of a metal shield. Seee swipes Atlas’s sword lying in the sand, and then they are on equal footing.

Seee offers Tongueless Downs fifteen minutes of rest, water, and food if he wants it. He offers Downs release if he wins—tells every man to obey his command. Then, he offers the man revenge. He pulls a bloody cloth from his pocket, loosens it, and throws it to the man’s feet. A lump of flesh falls out of the cloth, flat and cylindrical, and Seee says, “You might need it back if you’ve something to say.”

Downs pounces in an overhand attack. But Seee’s shield is like a disk from the sun, bright and shiny twisting and turning in
angular momentum. He blocks the plunging sword, deflects it, then turns the shield laterally, smashing into Downs’ helmet. The blow stings Downs and blood spills from his nose. Blinded, he lunges wildly with a stab, keeping his shield tight. Seee anticipates the move, sidesteps it, and swoops under the overcommitted Downs, razor steps racing past him, the glimmering shield guarding from above. Only afterward we see the gash. The men stare open-mouthed at the open wound bleeding on the upper leg. The strike quick as a snake, the red-tipped tongue of the sword a flashing glint from the shell of the shield.

“I do not wish to let the moment linger,” Seee announces. “This man has had enough, and has fought bravely against a man who himself was as brave as they come.” Downs turns, breath heated, lungs pumping. He throws off his helmet and glowers at Seee, screaming an obscenity everyone can understand, even without a tongue. A sad look appears in Seee’s eyes. “I only wish you were among us, but with regret you are not.”

Downs charged, and it would be his last act of heroism. Seee maneuvered skillfully away from the man rampaging toward him with sword slashing. Reversing the run, he charged with a flurry that showed us the meaning of attack. His blade swept downward and tore into Downs’s shoulder not stopping till it had slashed through his heart. Within a second, Downs was dying in the Laddered Pit, ascending the same rungs as Atlas. That night, he would not receive the same honors as our fallen comrade. His head would be nailed on a spike in the middle of The Abattoir for all to see.

At the burning altar of Atlas, Kumo announced two more invitations to join the ranks of The Minutemen—Split and Geddy Drake. They accepted, knowing that in the morning they would have the next battles in the Laddered Pit against two more who hadn’t arrived. The ledger of the missing would be balanced against the two new men accepted into The Minutemen. For those remaining,
le esprit de corps
was alive and well. Wishes of
joining The Minutemen no longer weighed against ideas of being a traitor to country. Everyone had decided Seee was right. The word traitor applied only to those who didn’t agree. Certainly, I was suspect, and I knew that destiny would follow me into The Pit to live and die as either patriot or traitor.

On the morning of January 7, 2023, Split would emerge victorious from the Laddered Pit against Zach Dionne, thrusting a spear through his heart after a long three minutes of tide-turning battle. Dionne, a loner throughout his time at The Farm, was not mourned. His head was rammed on a spike next to that of Tongueless Downs in what became known as Traitor Row, the same area of the clearing where Bunker’s head had once been displayed. The following day, it would be Geddy Drake pitted against the last missing plebe, John Hammond. Drake had been the victor but was dragged out of The Pit with an arm badly slashed, ribs broken, and a leg gashed and bleeding profusely. He had been taken away quickly to the Tree House, a red trail of blood flowing in the sand of The Pit while Merrill and Des put him on a gurney and lifted him out. He hadn’t been seen since, and most thought he was dead.

The next day, I awoke to a sea-blue sky with wisps of cloud feathered in the atmosphere. The early-morning dew glistened silvery off the grass, and the wind whistled through the high branches of durian trees as we ate our breakfast. I sat next to Uriah, who massaged his forehead with a finger.

“Another migraine?” I asked.

“A stinger,” he said. Uriah’s condition had worsened. His head had swollen noticeably. For those whose lives he had saved, the changes were sorely felt. We sat in silence eating until Des interrupted us, arriving with Seee’s orders to gather around The Pit.

I stared longingly at the runny scrambled eggs on my plate
wondering if they would be the last thing I would eat. I touched my forehead with the back of my hand and felt my hot skin. The previous night I had woken in cold sweats, my body shaking with fever, joints aching. By morning, I knew I had contracted a flu, or perhaps something worse—yellow fever of malaria. Now, fear of the day welled up in me, and I felt as innocuous as a puffed-up rain frog. Sitting across from us, Grus said, “Well, I guess this is it.” He stood with a tin plate in one of his hands. “Maybe I’ll get picked today.”

“I have the same hope,” Uriah said, misinterpreting Grus’s hesitant tone. “But I don’t count the odds in my favor.”

“Why not?” Grus asked.

Uriah leaned over, and I saw the swell of his back, the hunched disfigurement, a tortoise-man stuck in a shell of discontent. Split had asked Seee to let Uriah leave the camp for a hospital. Seee agreed, on the condition that Uriah would accept. But Uriah refused, laughing at the notion of doctors, saying his pending fate no doctor could alter.

“Seee has already seen me with a sword,” Uriah said, returning to Grus’s question. “He seeks courage of those untested.”

“Maybe you’ll be picked,” I told him. “But maybe one of us won’t be as lucky as Split and Drake.”

A silence crept between us as Grus moved off. Uriah and I acted as old men playing chess, taking our time, thinking three moves ahead but with bodies three moves behind. We stood and walked slowly out of the woods to the clearing. Light pushed through the trees, stabbing us in the face. As it fell on Uriah, I had difficulty finding his true features. His face changed as dynamically as a growing child’s.

“At sunrise, I imagined my death,” Uriah said. “I let my sword drop and my head was lopped off.”

“What did it feel like?”

“A relief,” he joked. We both laughed at this, him licking the
sides of his mouth with his lizard-like tongue to catch a string of drool running off his chin. He stared at me with the strange lopsided jaw as if he had more to say, but in the end he was content with silence. Gazing into his large dark eyes, he seemed to understand my thoughts. Imagining being him, my eyes saw a simple reason why he longed for The Pit. He put a crooked arm around me, and we edged into the clearing.

“Are you feeling okay, Isse?”

“I feel fine. Leave me be.”

He grabbed my bare arm. “You’re burning up.” He brought a hand up to my forehead and I brushed it away. “You can’t fight like this.”

“Maybe I won’t be called.”

“But maybe you will.”

“Then so be it,” I said. “Besides, what can be done about it?”

We walked for a ways as he thought this over. I loathed the silence, so I said, “Back to your death. Who killed you?”

“I don’t know. I normally don’t attach a face. I guess I wouldn’t mind if it was you.” I nodded. Putting my arm around him, I felt the mound of flesh between his shoulder blades, the hump a weight on him, noted its massive growth since our days of grappling near the river. He smiled, but then his face grew serious. “Are you meditating on your death?” he asked, as if this were of paramount importance.

“I am clasped in the hands of Fate no matter what happens.”

We reached The Pit, and Seee stood staring at us. Des, Merrill, and Kumo were draped by his side, each wearing fatigues and gray T-shirts. Merrill stared at us, arms folded at his waist, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in a sleeve. Uriah and I took our places in a semi-circle around the Laddered Pit. Finally, the Cannibal Crew arrived, and as they sought their spots within the circle, Des spoke. “Edward Conroy, please step forward.”

Conroy obeyed, stepping forward with arms rigid at his sides.

“Edward Conroy. Are you ready to prove yourself worthy in
front of the eyes of these men?”

“I am,” he said.

“Do you honorably accept the challenge put forward to you?”

“I do.” Each man had been asked the question, but was there really a choice? It was Join, or Die.

“Isse Corvus, step forward,” Des ordered. Upon hearing this, Conroy caught my stare, and I was suddenly the archetype of nemesis.

I stepped forward. Des repeated the words to me, and with each question I echoed the same words as Conroy.

Seee then spoke. “With The Minutemen as witnesses, I hereby command you to fight with weapons of your choosing until one or both of you is dead.”

The men remained unmoved, but Uriah protested. “Sifu, why are we turning brother against brother?”

“Perhaps they would like to explain,” Seee answered.

Conroy quickly said, “I will admit I was sent here to report what was happening in this place.”

“But that’s not the whole of it, is it?” Seee said, deep-set eyes gleaming at Conroy. A coy smile lined his mocking lips, chiding us, as if to say,
Brothers, I know all of your secrets, do not think to lie to me
.

My eyes questioned him, asking,
If you know, why have you kept me alive?
I cleared my throat. Better to heave the boulder of fact rather than throw a rock of truth. I said, “My mission was to—”

“Reasons aren’t important!” Seee shouted, cutting the rope as I jumped from the gallows. Again, I questioned his intent. “Both of you have committed crimes against the camp, and a crime against The Abattoir is a crime against The Minutemen.”

“People don’t do this!” Conroy cried. “Pit agents against one another.”

“You aren’t an agent, Mr. Conroy. You are a mole, and pitting agents against one another is exactly what you signed up for. I’m not asking you to die. I’m asking you to fight. Are you a coward,
Mr. Conroy?”

“You will kill me anyway,” Conroy said.

“I promise you I will not. For a man without hope has nothing to fight for.”

I gazed at Uriah, but his eyes darted from Conroy to Seee in a state of confusion. I said to him, “I admit what I have done, and I am sorry if I misled you. It is in the hands of Fate now, and I am willing to accept whatever hand might be dealt to me.”

Uriah reached up and cupped me around the ears. “Fate is not your master,” he said. “You are. I know your heart has turned. Go, and prove this to yourself.”

As I climbed wearily into The Pit, I gazed up at the sky and caught a glimpse of Briana. She glanced in my direction and tried to hide her tears. This broke my heart the most. Someone actually crying for me. The last person who’d dropped a tear for me was my brother, the afternoon he hijacked and beat me, yelling how badly I had fucked everything up with Dad. Tears stopped him from killing me, his weakness the strength of blood. Staring at me now was Seee, so much like my brother in both toughness and the stark way he looked at the world. Compared to them, I seemed like a winsome dreamer.

At that moment, I didn’t know how to react to Briana’s tears. A great need willed me to not be a disappointment. Then she lipped the words, “It was me,” and “I’m sorry.” So Burns hadn’t lied. I suppose I should have felt guilt over strangling the man, but it didn’t come.

I nodded at her, lipped, “It doesn’t matter.”

Behind her in the sky, a pale contrail spread out white and foamy across the blanched atmosphere. It appeared to be heading in a straight, vertical climb. But this wasn’t reality, only a misinterpreted viewpoint. I thought about Seee’s parable of Heaven and Hell, how the taste of the fruit from the Lushing Tree was simply a matter of perspective. Perhaps I had lost perspective. The original intent of assassinating Seee seemed
clouded and obtuse. I couldn’t grasp any reason behind it beyond a promise, more to my father than to Pelletier, the act of unquestioned patriotism. How cruel it was I realized this now.

I stooped down onto my ankles and grabbed as much dirt as one hand could hold while Conroy climbed down. I closed my eyes and let the grains trickle through my fingers. Then I imagined my death—there in The Pit—Conroy darting into a flurry of offence, wearing me down with sweeping slashes, overhead strokes, riposting the scant offence I could offer, my parries losing force, and then his sword piercing my chest, deep into the flesh, tearing through muscle, shattering ribs—the pain a scourge, a cry galloping from deep within a body that hardly seemed my own. Eyes open on the wound, blood gushing onto the blade, my hands naturally float there to get it out—a quick glance down the shaft, higher up, near the hilt, I see my reflection in the steel.

Then Conroy places his foot on my chest, pulls out the sword, and I fall. He is over me with the blade, dark pupils merciless, blue irises rotating inside sandy sclera. He is Hercules coming to bring me back to the Underworld, my bushido death complete.

The grains withered in my palm, and I released them to the wind. I stood, caught Uriah’s eyes and nodded, then turned to face Conroy, already at the rack.

Conroy’s lips quivered. A tear streamed from an eye, and he swept it away quickly. My mind swam in tactics, and then Blue’s voice popped in my head quoting his hero, the old fighter, Iron Mike Tyson.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face
. The air stretched, thinning with the coming moment.

My hands shook like brittle leaves about to blow off a branch. I mesmerized over the tiny fissures within my palms, rivers of fortune soon to run dry. I longed to burst into tears. I bit a lip and realized I was holding my breath.

I turned outward. The clouds above blew by in a trance, the contrail now melted, replaced by wispy sheets torn across the
blue atmosphere. Green in the fluttering leaves of trees sharpened and then dulled. The locusts rattled their wings, bewitching the men. A million little horns screeching together. A discordant battle call. Life’s clock ticked down and neither of us would escape it.

Someone was going to die here and no one above us doubted it. The cold steel truth of it waited in the rack of weapons mounted on the rolling cart on the wall of The Pit. One of the blades held a secret, and I thought about which one it might be. I gazed up at the faces looking down. The men stayed rooted, eyes bulging as they counted down each ticking second, their hearts beating with muted anticipation. Where did their eyes drift, to Conroy or me?

I turned to the rack. Selected a weapon. Split yelled out, “Do what you have to do, Isse!” The Cannibal Crew yelled for Conroy. Everyone broke out of rank and screamed for a man until Seee silenced them.

As I pulled off my T-shirt, I realized I had forgotten to wear the Earth picture over my heart. My mood sunk. Cursing myself, I put on a breastplate and a centurion helmet, the bronze metal slipping over my cheeks and coiling around my eyes. A great plume of Mohawk red stiffened the air. I must have looked seven feet tall. Vapors of the next world blew around me. I imagined myself entombed in a bomb suit like Split. Fogging up a mask with my hot feverish breath.

My martial arts career had been one without anxiety before a fight. I would loosen up in the locker room with sun salutations. I would dig into some punches—roundhouses, uppercuts, jabs—slowly pumping myself up. Then I would kick Blue halfway around the goddamned room as I psyched myself out with my own feral power. The boys would help me feel it. Wailing punches into my washboard stomach, throwing kicks into my arms, whipping pain into me so I wouldn’t feel it out there. “Pain is in your mind,” Blue had said. “It doesn’t exist. To tap is to die.”

But now, out here under the crisp sun, courage abandoned me. Sweat poured down my forehead and stung my eyes. Not the sweat of toil, but the drip of fear. I looked past the men hovering above us, out past the tree line and into the deep distance. Blue wasn’t with me now. His spirit had disappeared into the forest amongst the trees. He would be no help here where snot poured out of me in a constant drip.

Everyone fell silent with ominous anticipation, eyes hungry and fixating on Conroy and I below, waiting for the signal. The air chilled and my stomach lurched. I tried to stretch the stiffness from my joints, high-stepping, rotating my back and hips. I swiped my blade through the air. Death swept in on the wings of the wind blowing on a breeze.

We faced off, eyes already stabbing one another. In his, I recognized fear, deeper than mine, and I realized an edge presented itself to counter my physical weakness.

“No rules,”
Seee had once said.
“In Nature, the cost of life is death.”

Suddenly, my eyes burned staring into his, and the instinct to cling to life jolted me alive.

“Fight!” came the call.

We step toward each other. Conroy attacks with a thrusting sword. I retreat, slip in the sand. He lunges stiff-armed, gladius sword deflecting off my shield. Clanging of metal as the roar of men erupts. Adrenaline jolts my heart. Errant steps have almost finished me. Back and back, he pushes me. A relentless charge. My shoulders now pinned against the ballasted wall. I parry his thrusts. Block his overcuts. Push him back with my shield.