Page 204 of The End of the World As We Know It

No solicitors, baby doll. Not a ONE. We’re remodeling, see? Closed for business until the season starts.

You’re not her. It’s too early for that. They’re not ready.

This little habit of not falling to your knees is really starting to bore me.

You’re all wrong. You know you’re all wrong, don’t you?

Run along, little girl, you’ll never make it to grandmother’s house before dark.

You’re not supposed to be here. You’re new.

Fern tried to tell him her name. The way she tried to tell bad raccoons her name sometimes so they’d remember they were human, even though it only ever seemed to make them squeeze her harder. But he kept up asking who she was. Every time. Every night.

“Oh, Fern, Fern,” the handsome man hissed under the toothy sky, “I’m gonna make you BURN.”

But Fern’s voice worked just fine inhisplace. She’d back-talkedher share and then some to that tall glass of acid-washed stepdad swagger. Sometimes Fern got her ruff up and yelled, too.Well, fuck you, too, Mr. Rhyme Time! Are you stupid? What’syourfuckin’ name? I told you mine like athousandtimes.Sometimes she tried to bargain, stuck out one hip a little and dropped the other.Listen, big fella, you don’t gotta holler like that, I’m right here.Sometimes she cowered and begged him to protect her.I’m sorry, okay? Yes, sir, right-o, I’m bad. I’ve done bad stuff forsure, so whichever one made you mad at me, I’m so, so sorry and I’ll never the fuck do it again. Pinky-promise, okay?The handsome man seemed to like that onerealgood.

The night before she found a wet cardboard box in the McKivers’ garage, Fern Ramsey just didn’t have much of anything left in her when that denim dude started up his singsong rhymey-ass bullshit again. She didn’t even know youcouldbe tired in a dream.

“Jesus nun-fisting Christ,why? I didn’t do shit to you! Goddamn, man, I’m just a kid. Switch to decaf, Gramps.”

The dream that had played on repeat in her head for more than a year jumped a track. The handsome man didn’t throw back any of his previous hit catchphrases. His face did all the things a face could do at once. For a second, Fern thought he might laugh, then she thought he might kiss her, then she thought he might snap her neck and eat her face. Finally, she began to contemplate the possibility that this right here was a veryall of the abovekind of guy.

The dream man bent over and got his business right up into hers. She’d never smelled him before, but she sure as shit could now. And Fern hated it. She hated itso much.

That fucker smelledwonderful. Every cell in her just wanted to huff the tobacco-burnt-brick-laundry-on-the-sunshine-line-applejack collar of that stupid jean jacket for the rest of eternity. He smelled like home.

The handsome man’s voice came clipped and sharp and bare. No more wheedling, no more teasing, no more good-time guy.

“Get the FUCK off my wheel, you miserable littlecunt.”

Summer, 2002

An elephant lumbers unsteadily down the carpool lane, westbound I-80 across the grand wasteland between Terre Haute and St. Louis. Her calf burbles plaintively and jogs to catch up, wiggling his trunk around like a fresh noodle. They stopped a while to drink from the rain puddles ellipsing down median berm and nosh themselves silly on the wild corn and wheat rotting unharvested all around them. But now Mama wants to move. She feels like theyneedto move.

The elephant understands a lot more than anyone in the Otherwhile could imagine. She knows her small name was Layla. The small ones gave it to her. She knows existence comes in seasons, and no two seasons can know each other’s gait. Layla’s first season was somewhere hot and loud and short and greener than love. Her second season was in a place that looked like home, but was only pretending. The sign over her second season had so many pretty shapes on it. Even though Layla never knew what all that meant, she remembers how they stood and how they stood looked like this:

E L E P H A N T E N C L O S U R E

Layla’s third season is all around her, the biggest one she’s ever had. The third season stretches so far behind her. So far ahead. So far side to side. It is full of rotten corn that makes her feel good. It is full of openness and forgot how to stay closed.

Layla knows the small ones are not migrating or gathering somewhere good and warm to mate in sight of water. They are gone. Mostly. The ones that matter are all gone. Because only two ever mattered. The rest were nothing. Gazelles. Silly, fast, plentiful, quick to vanish. She misses the sounds their tininess made when they said, Layla.

The ones that mattered were called Amir and Zara. They liked so much to feed and pat her in the Otherwhile. When she sprayed water towardthem, they made sounds with their soft faces. Sounds like that meant a small one was unhungry and uncold and unlost, so Layla tried to make them do it all the time, because those were good things to be. Amir and Zara always smelled like an oasis. Like a thousand animals feasting on their foods and waters, and that was also good. Sometimes Amir brought other elephants to meet her, but Layla bit them until they went away. Zara taught her to make a yellow flower with a stick and colormud, which was the most fun Layla ever had. She could only ever make the flower the way Zara liked to, not her own way, but the littleness that was Zara clapped and jumped and made big squeaks every time all the same.

Amir and Zara together smelled like rain, which was the smell of how they loved each other. For an elephant, rain on the way means babies want to be made. It means the time has come to get much, much bigger than you were before. Layla used to watch Amir and Zara in the zebraworld across the longpath from her. Their trunks were always twined together, even though they didn’t have any.

They trumpeted a sound at each other very often. Not a name, but something Layla came to understand meant the tusking and ramming were all done and they had chosen each other. Sayang. She gave her calf the smallname of Sayang, even though smallnames were buried in the Otherwhile under leaves and grass forever.

Amir and Zara smelled like rain when they died, too. When they went world to world to world down the longpaths and opened them up so everyone could run from the hunter that made their insides leak out of their faces. When they put boards over the ringwater around Layla’s pen, even though she knew she wasn’t allowed to cross the water. They smelled like rain when they held on to each other and turned wet and red, and they still did when Layla rammed all the young trees she could find and laid their branches across the tininess of Amir and Zara so they could migrate with their trunks braided together forever.

Fern hadn’t always hoofed it alone. She knew where to get company if she wanted company. Everyone did. A few dozen settlements scattered around, a dozen towns, maybe three cities, if you were feeling generous about the definition ofcity.

It just wasn’t worth it, to her mind. You had to pull up short and get real careful once words liketownstarted flying around. Towns never lasted. One, or a handful of stragglers alone, sure. Cities, maybe, if they managed to lottery up justexactlythe right spread of brains and brawn at the starting gun.

But towns were just sofriable. They always tore themselves to shit, or threw themselves against another town until both shredded into confetti. That was most of what happened to every patch of dirt that aimed to boot up being unwild again after the big crash.

Or maybe just the ones Fern strolled through.