The Raft: A Novel (34 page)

“Don’t beat yourself up. That day we forgot everything, that day we went blank, no one came away c-c-clean, did they? But there’s no reason to think we’re any more f-fuh
-fucked
up now than we’ve always been. Or any less.”

The first few drips of rain began to fall. The sunshine had gone and the world turned grey and gloomy.

I said nothing. With every moment, my patience with him grew thinner. He thought he knew it all. He thought he knew me. I wanted to grab that gun and invert that sneer on his face, remind him he was just a boy and that the world was not a game. It was a starving dog in the corner of a cage. If you prodded it with a stick enough times it would forget you were once its master and make you its meal. I wanted to do all these things, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I kept my eyes on the wall of cloud and prayed that the small group making its way up to the house through the jungle was just as prepared as he was—just as ready for battle.

Another hour passed and still no one had emerged. The rain was falling lightly and steadily. Anubis was pacing the deck now, raking his hands through his hair, wiping the rain and sweat from his face. He slammed the gun back on the rail and pushed his eye against the lens.

“They sh-shuh-
shuh
-should have come out by now,” he moaned, staring through the sight, desperate for action. His stutter was thickening and protracting with his growing agitation. “They sh-shuh … they
should
be here.”

I stood alongside him, on the lookout. The trees of the jungle stood motionless, with only the rain patting on their leaves.

“Something’s not right,” he said, twitching restlessly. “Maybe they ate the fruit. Maybe not even their stupid gasmasks could help them.”

He stood up and slid his gun back off the rail. “They’re down there. They’re in the jungle. Come. Change of plan. Grab your gun.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me across the deck. He sprinted quickly over the bridge and towards the stairs that spiralled down to the jungle floor. I lifted my shotgun and followed him. He landed on the soil, gun already raised and ready.

We began our walk through the jungle, over the protruding roots and across the muddy patches. The trees hung thickly overhead and the dim light of the day was all but gone. Water trickled down between the leaves—big drops, splashing heavily. Anubis held his gun and stepped carefully forward. I followed alongside him.

“You know,” he said, as if he’d been thinking carefully before choosing to speak. “My brother and I have got each other’s backs. Always have done, always will. And I don’t know what he told you out there in the cabin, but we don’t always agree on everything. He has his dreams and his future-telling, but he doesn’t know how to live in the-the-the here and now. He doesn’t know what it takes to muh-muh-
make
that future he dreams about. His perfect world. He doesn’t know how to make the big decisions, get his hands dirty for something he b-believes. Part of me thinks
he
believes my parents got what was coming to them, bringing us all here, but I don’t think he realises what they were trying to do. For him. For us. For everyone. Hey, he’s my brother. He can see the outcome, but he can’t see the way of getting there. I mean, he appreciates what I can do that he can’t. Tend to this place. Fix it up. Protect it. And I can’t see the things he sees, but if I were you I’d take some of the things he says with a pinch of salt. Just some. Though I can’t tell you what, exactly. That’s never been as easy.”

I walked silently with my shotgun pointed down. I thought about his supposed “brother” in the cabin, and everything that he’d said. Was I still supposed to believe him, even though I now knew everything, all along, had come from this reckless man with his big gun?

“This one time, when we were children,” Anubis said, lifting his feet and stepping carefully over the uneven ground, eyes ahead and focused intensely on the dense greenery, “I was walking with my brother down the street. We were coming back from school together. This was before his skin thing. He was always a quiet kid—in his own little world—but he had me, at least. I was the one on lookout, y’know. Scoping for that crazy neighbourhood dog that loved terrorising the local kids. Keeping his pocket money in my pocket in case it fell out of his own. Making sure he didn’t walk into an open man-hole or something …”

We were now deep into the jungle, the stairs and house long gone, swallowed by the trees. I thought about the old man in the bed. I had to get back there sometime and let him loose.

“But this one afternoon, we were passing the little stretch of road with the shops and bakeries … and he said he wanted something to drink. He was thirsty. So I stopped and counted our money. We’d spent our pocket money at school and didn’t have enough, and it was at least another ten minutes ‘til we reached our house. That’s when I told him to wuh-wait outside Tony’s cafe. He stayed on the pavement outside while I went in by myself and pretended to be choosing something to buy. When Tony was looking the other way, I grabbed a coke and slipped it into my blazer pocket.

“I turned to head out the door, and that’s when I saw a couple of kids standing outside, talking to my brother. Except they weren’t talking. They were hassling him. Circling him like hyenas with these stupid grins on their faces. One of them pushed him, but he didn’t budge. I hid behind one of the shelves and decided I wanted to see what would happen next. I kinda needed to know how my twin would handle himself. But he wasn’t handling himself. He was being pushed, being called these names. The kids were yelling that our father was a kook, a weirdo, and their fathers had told them he couldn’t be trusted.

“For a while, I just stood there, watching this. I wanted my brother to lift a fist, hit one of those bastards back … but the guy just wouldn’t, y’know? He just took it. He didn’t cry or anything. He just hung there like a dumb punching bag. Hung there while I hung
back.

“I think about it now and I realise maybe I wuh-wuh-
wanted
one of them to hit him. Hit him really hard. Even break his nose. Anything to make him snap and defend himself. And then one kid
did
hit him—a mean blow to the stomach, and he reeled, and I watched him reel back as these jokers kept laughing and pointing and calling our family the neighbourhood freak-show.

“Anyway, when I realised my brother wasn’t going to do anything but put himself in the bloody hospital, I finally came running. Beat the hell out of all three of them. Went nuts really. Kicking, hitting, kneeing. And then they scrambled away, and I asked if my brother was okay, if he needed anything.

“And he said he didn’t. He wasn’t even thirsty anymore. He just wanted to go home. So I drank my stolen coke myself, and we went on walking. We didn’t talk about that day again, and those kids, they never again tried their luck. But now, what I remember most about the whole thing was me, watching him from behind the shelf. Just watching. Waiting. Funny, huh?”

Anubis said nothing else and neither did I. I watched him as he spoke. He wore an expression I hadn’t yet seen on him—the one of the man who looks back at himself in the past and wonders,
Why on earth did I do what I did? What could have been going through my head at the time?

We walked for a few minutes more. He stopped and held up his hand, signalling that I too should stop. Then he put his finger to his lips and stepped lightly through the bushes before us. I could hear a rustling from somewhere ahead. I ducked my head and entered the bushes as quietly as I could.

Finally, he sprang forward.

There was a group of people standing in the middle of a clearing. They all looked the same with their matching black gas masks. Anubis thrust forward his gun, lined it with his face, and aimed the barrel at each of them.

The masked men and women held up their hands slowly, not quite surrendering, but showing they had no weapons of their own. Anubis flicked his barrel left to right. He was jittery. Agitated.

One of the masked men approached us.

“We’re not here to harm you,” he said, his voice muffled by his headgear. “There’s no need for that, son. Put it down.”

“I’ve gah-gah-got you now,” Anubis said. “All in a row. Seven little ducks.”

The masked man took his time to respond.

“We’re here for the owner of the island,” he said, extending his empty hand. His voice was relaxed. His movements were slow and restrained. “You know who we’re talking about. So you can hand over the weapon now, son.”

“Fuck you, I’m not your son,” Anubis replied. “I’m not your son. Stay right where you are. I’m not k
-kuh
-k-kidding. I’m all outta’ kidding.” The gun shook in his hand. “You people. The nerve. The
nerve
! Coming here. You really do want everything. All of it. You wanna buh-buh-brand me too? Control us, make us do what you want and act the way you want us to act … wuh
-wuh-
with your rules and your lies … well, you
won’t.
We won’t let you own it. We’ll never stop fighting. We’ll never g-g-give it up. How’s that! So you can turn around, turn around and go back to wherever you came from, back to sleeping on a b-b-bed of your own bullshit … but this is
my
place. This is where
I
was born. My home. My feet are deeper than the trees. And I’ll throw you off the roof of your own bah-bah-bloody
tower
before I let you take this away from me. Oh man. Oh man, oh man. I was right. I was right all along.” He swung his gun nervously. “Right all along!”

The entire scene slowed down before me. The raft had passed through a storm, crossed some indeterminable stretch of ocean, and now here I was, between a man with two faces and a group of people with no faces at all—all of them desperate to be understood, to lay claim to a piece of this island of
yesterday’s must-haves.

I raised my gun and pointed it at Anubis. As I pumped the action, he turned to me. His face contorted with the shock of my betrayal.

“It’s over,” I said, my weapon raised to his chest. “It’s over now.”

I watched as his faith in me drained away. He stood there despondent, incredulous.

“You?” he said. “Why?”

“This isn’t right. You know that.”

“Right?” He shook his head. “
Right
? How c-c-can you … how can yah-yah-you say that? Look at them. Look! They want it all. They want to take it away from us. Look at everything they’ve done to the world. They’ve ruh-ruh-ruined it. They’ve ruined it! That’s what you always said. That’s why we came here in the first bloody place!”

“Put your gun down.”

“You’re so blind. So blind. What did they promise you? They pah-pah … they pah-promised you something, am I right? Bought your soul.” I felt my heavy gun sagging in my arms and I pulled it back up to take aim. Anubis went on: “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean what I said. But … I’m confused. I duh-duh-duh … “He looked at me with wide and rage-filled eyes. “We were supposed to save it! We were supposed to take it back. To make the world ours again. Isn’t that what you always wanted? No … no, no,
no.
We’ve come too far. We can’t let them win!”

“You’re right,” I said. “We shouldn’t. We won’t. But it isn’t them. And this isn’t the way. Put the gun down.”

“You left me here!” he shouted, thrusting his finger at me. “You left me in this place to take care of myself. All those nights of sitting in my room listening to you t-t-talk about fighting, fighting,
fighting …
you two wanted to save the world, but what about me?”

He tipped up his head and let out a long and furious scream. If there had been birds in the trees they would have flown from their perches. But there were no birds in that jungle. There were no creatures at all in that undesirable place. No foolish creatures but ourselves.

“Your brother,” I said. “Your eyes in the dark, remember? He knows. And you know. You’ve always known. We can do better.”

“I was your son!” he cried, and then said again, overcome with anguish, “I was your
son.
And you left me here. You for-gah-gah … you
forgot
me. Why?”

I juddered, lowering my gun slowly. My son. Alone. Lost in the world. The words came out before I allowed myself to even consider them: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Anubis closed his eyes and lowered his head. He was breathing hard. He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand and sniffed. “And now? Wuh-what now? What! We throw it all in?” he said. “We let them win?”

“No. I don’t know what we do. I really don’t, Anubis. But maybe the world isn’t a place to be
won.
”

Anubis eyed me one last time, his face red with rage and wet with tears. He appeared ready to surrender his gun, but instead swung the barrel up swiftly. One of the masked visitors launched himself forward to grab the weapon, but he was too late. Anubis pulled the trigger and released the thunder and lightning he had always hoped for.

Except that something had gone wrong. At the instant he fired, there was an incredible roar and flash of light, and Anubis fell backwards to the dirt. The group screamed and spun away. I stumbled against a tree. When I looked again, I saw no bullet had been fired. No one had been shot. The gun, the one Anubis had commandeered from the jungle, had been faulty. That doomed machine had come apart like the shell of a detonated bomb. It had torn through his torso, bursting a large red patch of blood and bone from his chest.

He was on the ground, on his knees. The expression on his face was tragic and confused. He looked at me as I edged towards him and knelt next to him. I reached for his hands and gently pried his fingers free of the decimated weapon. The game was over. Anubis looked at me again, expectant, waiting for me to do something. I was supposed to have his back, as any “brother” should.

At that point I remembered: the brother of the dark had asked me to apologise for him. I’d been asked to say sorry for something and I hadn’t understood what he’d meant. Now, standing before him—he who had asked me to apologise in the first place—I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Anubis had said his brother had seen how this would end. He’d told me with a big confident smile on his face. Now here he was, on his knees on the ground, dying.