Chapter 69: last night's feathers exchanged for new ones
What's next is food.
Carol has some. Leftover lasagna, and it's very dense, and as far as he can tell it's between seventy-five and eighty percent cheese, and it's amazing. It could just be that it's real actual food and he almost forgot what that tasted like, but he also doesn't care, and by the time his body figures out that it's not hungry anymore he's eaten a potentially dangerous amount of it, and he doesn't care about that either.
And it feels good not to.
They eat in the kitchen, sitting across from each other with the dregs of the whiskey between them, not talking much. Which is fine; he feels better but he also doesn't feel like conversing. He doesn't have a whole lot to say. Carol doesn't appear to either, nor does she seem burdened by a need to fill silences.
He likes that.
She doesn't ask him about the girl who reads poetry to him. He likes that too. He thinks he might be able to talk about Beth at some point, maybe, very possibly - especially if Beth is ever going to come here, because if Carol spots her that's going to raise some interesting questions - but not now. Maybe not for a while.
That's okay.
Eventually, though, it does come out that he moved in with a couple of changes of clothes and not much else, and before he says goodnight to her Carol forces him to take up at least a spare toothbrush, a towel, a couple of pillows and a blanket, and a few other things.
Including ibuprofen. He wouldn't embrace her gratefully even if he was feeling fine, but he looks at her as he takes it and imagines doing so and hopes she can tell that in another world where a lot of things were different he probably would.
He goes back upstairs - the main staircase. He figures it's all right and Carol doesn't try to stop him. Inside, the light is still on and it still hurts his eyes. He stands there with his arms full of stuff, door open, and looks at it. The whole place. This space, which is his, which he's decided to be in.
Yes, it's empty. It's big and bright and white and clean, and it's terrifying. But he's going to make it not empty, at least not completely, and he's going to fucking live in it until he's not terrified anymore.
He kicks the door shut and considers the bedrooms for a moment. Then he sighs, goes back to where he left his pack and drops everything right there. It doesn't matter where the fuck he sleeps. He could sleep in the goddamn tub if he wanted to. He doesn't, but it's nice to know that he has a lot of options. Then again, that's part of what was and continues to be so terrifying.
Anyway. Tonight he'll do what he's done many, many times before and make camp.
Tomorrow he has to go shopping.
He wakes up in pain, but less pain. It's actually not a whole lot worse than the couch and he's used to sleeping on less than ideal surfaces, and anyway the pillows spared his neck much more in the way of agony. But he's aching, his head is throbbing - right, the whiskey - and he fumbles beside him for the bottle of ibuprofen and dry swallows two, then another one. Lies on his back, tangled in the blanket, and blinks in the sun streaming in through the windows and pouring itself across the floor.
There's so much sun, Jesus fucking Christ. He's not in any way used to it. It's sort of disturbing.
It's also very quiet. He can't decide if that's disturbing or not.
The next thing he fumbles for is his phone, which he squints at until he can focus on the numbers. It's a little before nine. That's good; he has plenty of time to do things. He has a lot of things to do, and his list is longer and more specific than it was last night. He realizes - sitting up and pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and waiting for his head to stop throbbing quite so much - that he was working through it while he slept. He does that sometimes. It's useful. Weird, but.
He is, as Beth has observed on more than one occasion, kind of weird. So.
He also feels... Not good. But good isn't hopelessly distant on the horizon anymore. He can see how he might get to good, eventually. Things fucking suck, they suck a lot, and he's still pretty much at a loss regarding most of it, but he's certain now that there are ways past it. There have to be. He was well on the way to drunk last night, sure - but he also doesn't think he was wrong when he said what he said.
He looks over at the book. The little wolf he put on top of it, sun entering it and making it glow with its own unreal light.
He's going to figure it out.
His mouth tastes like a dead ashtray and he feels grimy everywhere. He drags himself to his feet, groaning, and goes to shower.
Hot in the old place was barely worthy of the term. Warm is about the best it ever really did, at least on its worst days, because for some reason it seemed to vary. Hot in this place is just short of scalding, and he's not ready for it; he forgets to test the water and as soon as he steps under the spray he yelps, jumps out again, slips and almost falls, catches himself on the wall, hits it with his back and slides down to sit on the shockingly cold tile.
And he drops his head back and laughs. Deep, rolling laughter - laughter Carol can probably hear - and he wonders vaguely what the fuck she'll think is going on up here. It's ridiculous, every part of this is so fucking ridiculous... But he's here. He's wet and cold and his hand is hurting again, and he misses his brother and Beth so much that part of him wants to stay down here and cry for a few hours.
And he's here.
Trying.
He makes sure the water won't blister his skin off and gets back in.
It's a cold day. First truly cold day they've had yet. Unseasonable for late October. He didn't leave the old place in the clearest state of mind - if he had it to do over again he might actually pack with some forethought but as far as money goes he's square with Elmer and he's damned if he's going to go back there now for anything at all - but he did at least think clearly enough to pack some stuff that will keep him from freezing. Even with layers and long sleeves it's still a shock stepping out the door, and as he watches his breath steam in the air he makes a mental note to also buy gloves.
Less urgent. But he should.
Winter is coming.
It's cold but it's also bright, hard beams of sun plunging toward the ground and spilling all over everywhere. The sky is cleanly and aggressively blue, and the remaining color on the trees looks like spatters of fresh paint flung from the brush of an enthusiastic kindergartner.
It's beautiful. It's a goddamn beautiful day.
As Daryl climbs into the truck and groan-shudders it to life, he thinks it kind of figures.
He drives to the center of town. No, he's not going back to that shithole and doesn't even really want to see the building, sure as fuck doesn't want to give Elmer a chance to rail about the pile of crap they left in the place - regardless of the fact that a lot of it was in there already - but pretty much everything he needs is there. There's a Walmart about half an hour away, and for a lot of reasons that would be more convenient and would make a lot more sense, but he doesn't want to do this like that.
Among other things, it feels a bit too easy. And clearly he's not into doing things the easy way right now. Not when he can make them fabulously difficult.
This won't be fabulously difficult. But it'll take longer. Which might carry with it some benefits.
He needs time to think. A lot of time. Some people can't think while they're doing something, but with his deeply-learned ability to compartmentalize his brain, he's never been one of those people. He can think while he does just about anything.
Sometimes it's very hard to stop.
He doesn't really want to go into the coffee shop. Which is a significant part of why he does. His Perceptive Barista isn't there today, but it doesn't much matter; he's in and out as quickly as possible, black coffee strong enough to knock over a deer and a donut that isn't completely marinated in sugar and frosting. The morning crowd has come and gone and the place is quiet except for the almost inaudible country-folk music they've got playing, and although it's not raining he does think of that first day. Passing by the table they sat at, the table by the window. Her chair. Sitting across from him, her hot chocolate in her hands.
Whipped cream. Little chocolate shavings on the cream.
The sharp twist in his chest hurts, but it's not completely unpleasant.
Sitting in the truck, finishing up the donut, he screws up whatever courage he can spare and calls the farm. Annette answers, and he has no idea how to ever express to anyone how grateful he is for that. And the conversation itself isn't actually that difficult: Yes, he's still having a rough time. It's a very persistent bug; he's pretty sure he picked it up from his landlord. He's very sorry for not letting them know earlier. He had an accident with his phone, only just managed to replace it. Yeah, it was lucky the way he ran into Beth in the pharmacy when he was picking up some stuff to make him want to die a little less. By the way, this is a new number. Here it is. Tell Hershel sorry, again.
He'll be in touch.
He sits for a minute after he hangs up, and it comes to him that he just called out of work. Just literally pretended to be sick and called out of work. Like a normal person.
Like a normal person living in the world.
He needs an additional minute to process that.
Then he screws up what remains of his courage and texts Beth his new address. A short message with it. Very short.
He can't manage much more than that right now.
doing ok. talk soon.
love you
Most of the rest of the day is a blur of retail.
He has no planned order for any of this. He just tackles things as they occur to him. There's so much, and it quickly becomes apparent to him that there's no way whatsoever that he's going to get to all of it today. He'll just have to focus on the most immediately important stuff - of which there's still a lot, or it seems like it. He doesn't like the overhead light; he goes to the maybe-real-maybe-not antique store on Main Street and leaves with a cheap - but not hideous, to the extent that he can even judge - table lamp. Doesn't actually need to be cheap, but old habits die hard and old ways of thinking die harder, and anyway he forgets about it ten seconds after he shoves it into the truck and moves on to the next thing.
He needs towels. He needs soap, food, dishes to eat it off of. Some kind of pot or pan, and what the fuck is the difference between those two things? He's never been sure. As he goes through this process it's becoming more and more evident just how little he really knows about any of this. He's technically bought some of this shit before, of course, but generally he's taken things as they come and never given it much thought, like running down a flight of stairs without watching your feet. He's never planned a home. Never had to. Now he's watching his feet and he's stumbling.
Jesus.
He's vaguely aware that he'll need a table or something, some chairs, a couch that isn't terrible, it would be nice to have a TV, and fuck, probably a whole bunch of other things, and so much of it doesn't even seem like stuff he really needs but instead ought to procure because this is what people have. This is what people do.
But there is one thing he does most definitely need. He was thinking about it more than anything else, before everything exploded and burned down and fell apart.
He knows a place. He goes to it. He's not sure exactly what his options are or which specifically is the best, but there's someone there who shoves something at him and it seems okay. Not everything he should have to go with it is here, but he can take care of all of that elsewhere.
Suddenly he's calmer.
He makes arrangements to have it delivered, gives them the address, leaves.
Another stop and it's past noon, and that's when Beth texts him back. Short as his message was, and he didn't expect anything else. Like when he sent it, he sits in the truck and looks at it for a minute or two, and though he'll save it and he'll probably look at it again later, probably more than once, he feels like he's trying to memorize it. Trying to hold onto something ephemeral, something that might slip away at any second.
miss you. love you.
I'll be here
He knew. He never would have doubted it. But he reads it and it's like the cold - barely held at bay by the truck's ancient heater - melts away into summer. And it hurts, because everything to do with her hurts right now, but it's not the cold, dense, wrenching pain of the last few days. It's an ache, but it's like a worked muscle. Strained, tired, maybe shaky, but it could come back.
It could come back stronger.
He's given himself no deadline. He can't. He has no fucking idea how long this is going to take, and he has no way of knowing what it's going to take, and he still can't even begin to guess how he'll know when he's where he needs to be. But he has faith. He does. It won't kill him. This won't kill him.
He leans his head back and closes his eyes, phone cradled in his hand. A cool, smooth little weight, and it's not like her but he still thinks of her hand in his under the table, holding onto him. Curled into his palm. Anchoring him to the world in which she's made him want to learn how to live.
He's going to keep moving.
He's going to make it work.
In the end, in a concession to practicality, he does go to Walmart.
He hates Walmart. He hates everything about Walmart. If there's a place in the world which serves as the absolute antithesis of the woods - the dappled light and echoing birdcalls and smells of green, growing, gently decaying things - it's not a desert; it's motherfucking Walmart. The lights and the dirty looking off-white floors - designed to be easy to mop - and the flat, hard quality of everything make him think of a morgue. Or what he imagines a morgue might be like; thank Christ he's never actually had a reason to be in one, though once Merle told him a story about breaking into one with some buddies and posing with a couple of the bodies. Nothing really awful except for the thing in and of itself; just stupid and drunk and pretty fucking pathetic. Merle didn't come right out and say that last, but Daryl thought it immediately, and how Merle related all the details...
Yeah, Merle thought it was too.
Daryl has to stop in the middle of the frozen food section and breathe deeply until his gut un-knots itself.
But it's okay. It does.
It's the middle of a weekday and at least the place isn't crowded. It doesn't take that long. He doesn't waffle back and forth between choices. He doesn't get irritated and impatient about how ridiculously many there are. The fact is that he's thought so long about some very particular parts of this, gotten so ambiently immersed in half-formed and half-conscious fantasies of it, that he already has some pre-existing ideas of how he wants it to be. And he can move according to those.
He gets what he wants from the various sections with all the direct smoothness of a military operation. He takes it all to the seemingly endless line of registers at the front and pays for it, and walks back out into the cold, clean, real brightness with his hands full of bags.
At the truck he checks the time. It's closing in on three. He still needs to get some actual food. He should be home for five.
Home.
It's still powerfully weird. But it's not as weird as it was.
He doesn't care about the specifics of food. All he cares about is that he has some.
So he takes care of that, tries to make it as fast as he can - despite the fact that he doesn't feel nearly the same loathing for Kroger that he does for Walmart - and he's back at the house a little before four-thirty. The house, his place, his goddamn front door, and walking through it, he has to stop again and just look.
Not even just look.
Tell me what you see.
White walls. Clean. Dark wood, glossy, polished by decades of foot traffic. Gathered pools of late sunlight in its little pits and divots; windows and outside dying autumnal fires. Blank space. Fields of possibility. Pile of stuff. Not much. Enough for one night, apparently. A start.
Close your eyes. What d'you hear?
Quiet. Plastic rustle, boots shifting: echo. The shape of that sound is flat and blocky. Rectangular. Eyes closed, you can pick up the actual shape of the room. Now and then the house creaks. It's an old house. It never completely stops moving.
What about what you smell?
Old paint, old wood, old dust. Age. Nothing dead, though. Store-made barbecue ribs in one of the bags. Sunlight has a smell. Or it raises it in other things. No one notices it until they do, but it's always there. The light gets into everything. Changes it. Isn't light a wave? Isn't that right? It comes in and out like tides. It washes clean.
What do you feel?
I don't know.
Yet.
He opens his eyes, moves into that space, and starts - in a hesitant kind of way - to find homes for things.
The delivery comes just after five, as dusk is starting to creep in around the edges. Daryl comes down to help but the two guys with the van wave him off and he shrugs, steps back and lets them do their thing. He has nothing to prove, and he's still tired. He's reasonably certain that he'll need more than a day to recover from the last few.
This will help. He thinks. He hopes. It should.
Where should they put it? He shrugs again; he's pretty much given up on the two bedrooms for now. Maybe at some point he'll decide to do something specific with one or both of them, but putting anything in there at the moment feels like an unmanageable combination of surreal and pointless.
Right here. Right here is fine.
Close to the windows.
They nod, leave, and he's alone with it. Looking at it. A couple of the larger bags beside it.
There's no frame. He knows there probably should be, at some point maybe, but something told him no. No, this is enough. This is right. Box spring and a mattress. That's all he needs.
He goes to the bags, crouches, and begins to pull out the sheets he bought. The pillows.
He said he would make a bed. Told himself over and over. Everything else was basically extraneous. He said he would make one, now that the world won't do it for them. He'll make one for himself and for her, for the both of them, and he'll make it well. He'll make it worthy of her.
The sheets are a deep, rich blue. Almost black. In his mind - a long time before now - he thought about that exact color and he thought about lying cradled in the night sky with her in his arms.
His girl who draws down the moon.
He releases a long, slow breath and begins to unfold them.
It doesn't take very long. There isn't much to it. But he's never done it before, not like this, and although it's not like he's stymied by any of it, he pays very close attention to the process. How it all fits together. The things his hands have to do, how they pull and tuck, lay everything in place. Smooth it all out. There's a quilt down in the truck and he'll get it in a bit, but right now he wants to crouch here, elbows on his knees and his clasped hands against his mouth as if he's praying, and let his gaze sink into all that night-blue - somehow warm in the light of the lamp he's set beside it.
He's not sure if it's worthy of her. But it might be the best he can do for right now.
He pulls off his boots and crawls onto it, lowers himself onto his side. The sheets are rough, crisp - they'll soften. They need time. Like he does. Nothing truly new is ready for anything right away.
He reaches for the book and opens it, props his head up on one hand, and reads for a while as the bed he's made and the sky outside slip into each other in a singular and perfect unity of color.
so I thought:
maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
It takes him another hour to know what he has to do.
It's an impulse. At any other time he might resist it, or at least examine it more closely. Interrogate it, demand to know where it came from and what it's doing here, what it wants. But this isn't only an impulse; it's a vision, and it hits him right in the center of the forehead like a bolt and unfolds itself in front of his eyes.
Unfolds like wings.
If he waits, he'll talk himself out of it. He'll be stupid and he'll fall into the trap of second-guessing everything rather than just trusting his instincts. His gut. He's an animal, sure, okay: might be a good time to embrace that. If he's lost - and he still is - he has ways of finding the path again.
He sits up, pulls on his boots, scoops up his keys and the overshirt he was wearing.
He needs a coat. Something. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, if he feels like moving around very much.
It's still early. He stops off at the shittier liquor store on his way out of town and picks up a bottle of Jack Daniels, and then another one. Back out into the night, out of town - he knows a place. It's not that far. He's well aware that it looks like a place no one in their right mind would want to walk into, but he sort of knows the girl who owns it and runs it – they're barely acquaintances but he's had a couple of drinks with her - and he's seen her work.
She'll do right by him.
And she does.
Finally, after what feels like over a day of buzzing pain melting into a lovely, warm endorphin high, he drives home in the deep night, and makes his way gingerly back up the staircase with the plastic-packed quilt under his arm and the sack with the bottles of whiskey swinging loosely from his hand. He left the light on, and when he walks in there's something so welcoming about it: bare floor, bags still everywhere, his pack and bow left near the corner, but the bed - God, it looks vast and infinitely soft, and he believes his eyes. He pauses only long enough to unpack the quilt and toss it on top before he's stripping off his clothes and sliding naked - and hissing with dull residual pain - beneath the covers.
He cuts out the light and lies on his stomach. The moon is thin and nearly new but it's still there, and it catches the wolf's elegant crystal back and turns it silver.
Her, all silver and bone. His fingertips tracing the flowing length of her spine.
He sleeps and dreams of spreading wings.
Note: poem snippet is "White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field" by Mary Oliver.