Chapter 47-
“I bet that door handle is cold. Too cold for me to want to touch.”
A few rays of light painted the specks of dust floating through the infirmary. His bed was surprisingly soft; had it not been for the smell of cleaning chemicals, he would have enjoyed it there. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and felt his lungs shrink and expand.
“It’s been a while since I thought about my breathing… That’s a big thing in some parts of the world, isn’t it?”
The icy-looking handle turned with a clicking sound. The hinges creaked as someone came over the threshold. It was President Cartwright, dressed in his hallmark polka-dot suit.
“Captain Jepta! Good to see you up!” he shook his hands in the air in front of him excitedly. “How’re ya’ doing? This place is pretty cold, isn’t it?”
Gideon didn’t perk up quite as much as the President had hoped, but he’d at least gotten his attention.
“It’s getting closer to fall,” he stated without much expression. “The mornings are colder.”
Cartwright gazed at him, trying to get a handle on what he was feeling, until he gave up on his powers of observation.
“How are you holding up?”
Gideon let out a sharp breath, like a laugh, and lifted his arm, pulling back the sleeve. His flesh was discolored and scarred.
“Which one would be a better picture for the paper, the laceration or burn scars?”
Cartwright stepped backwards and tensed himself. He looked queasy.
“Oh my…”
“Figures…” Gideon thought. “A commander-in-chief doesn’t see much action.”
Gideon pulled the sleeve back up, and Cartwright was able to compose himself once again.
“You’re planning on taking it to the paper?”
“No…” Gideon said emptily.
“Oh…?”
Gideon let out a sigh.
“I don’t know why I’m talking, I’m just moving my mouth.”
Cartwright sat himself in a plush guest chair.
“We’re still waiting on the evaluation,” he told Gideon.
“Evaluation?”
“Well, it’s just a concern of ours-- whether or not you’re in any shape to remain on the guard, I mean.”
Gideon shot him a severe look.
“I’ll be on my feet in no time.”
Cartwright was taken aback by his intensity.
“Are you sure? You could have some serious damage to your arms, and the burns--”
“Not a problem.”
“Well, not to be rude, but you have an awfully ill air around you.”
Gideon’s pupils dilated. He hadn’t been quite awake enough to do much more than contemplate his surroundings. What Advent had told him at the warehouse… it was too much to confront now. The very thought was like an undertow, and so he made sure not to step too far into the waters for fear of being swept into turmoil. No, that would be saved for later. Gideon was not opposed to self-reflection, but exhaustion had settled into his bones, and there was no need to allow it into his mind right now.
“I’ve been worse and felt happier,” he replied.
“Hm?” Cartwright tilted his head in curiosity.
“What I mean is, I guess it isn’t the injuries that are weighing on me right now,” Gideon looked away, into the window, but not through it.
Cartwright watched Gideon’s expression remain stalwart.
“Gideon…” he began. “Is there something bothering you?”
“No.” Still, he did not look back.
Cartwright leaned in, finally prompting Gideon’s gaze to swing back his way.
“We’re alone in here,” he assured him. “I told my security to wait outside.”
Gideon blinked as if processing the words.
“A bad idea, Mr President, if I wanted to, I could kill you in a few seconds.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, for a solid moment, before Cartwright burst into a kind of wheeling chuckle that sounded not unlike a police siren. Gideon raised his eyebrows, not quite smiling, because it hadn’t been a joke.
“Good one, Captain,” Cartwright praised him through a toothy grin, rubbing his own chin. Gideon thought his face looked like a mask when he laughed, showing his deep-set wrinkles, and that his laugh itself sounded false.
Suddenly, Gideon’s voice cut through the air like a stoney sword.
“Mr President, do you remember the Andeidra-Demeena War?” His eyes were set on his hands, folded across his lap as he sat up.
“The war? Of course,” the President answered, not quite knowing why this was pertinent.
“You were First Secretary when it ended, weren’t you?”
“I was,” he stated, leaning back in the chair. “And just a few months later I announced my campaign, why do you ask?”
“I just… I don’t know…” Gideon laughed at himself. “Do you remember when Perren died? It was announced right as we entered the heart of the city-- my team, I mean. They said he killed himself, and a few hours later we recovered his body and gave him a proper Demeenan funeral.”
“Yes, I remember all of this,” Cartwright said, trying to follow where Gideon was going.
“I just say all this because I remember something from his funeral,” Gideon looked down and away, as if he was being meek.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the death was a suicide by stabbing, right into his heart, correct?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Because I remember watching his body be lowered into the sea; he was naked, and I just-- I remember noticing that the wound was so oddly… angular.”
“Angular?”
“That’s not it… it was…” Gideon rolled his hand around on his wrist, thinking. “Square-ish; no, rectangular! It was so oddly shaped…”
“What are you trying to say?” President Cartwright’s face was neutral, but in such a way that if you looked close enough, just under the surface, under the skin, you’d see tension swimming in his veins.
“All I mean is… I’ve seen too many stab wounds to count…” Gideon elaborated. “I’ve killed hundreds of men by the blade, and a good number of those were stabs. I never thought about it much until now, though…”
Their eyes refused to meet, when Gideon broke the silence and continued.
“I just had a dream about it, is all. It was on my mind… I’m just moving my mouth…”
“Hm, yes,” Cartwright stood up. “Well, I can’t tell you anything about that, I wouldn’t know, if there really was anything. It was a long time ago, don’t you think your memories are a little fuzzy?”
“I suppose so,” Gideon watched him with a kind of sadness as he straightened his suit.
“I’ve got to get going, I’m really busy right now, what with the big day coming up, need to get the speech and ceremonies prepared, you know?” Cartwright headed for the door.
“I hope you feel better, Captain,” he tipped his nonexistent hat in a friendly gesture. “If you’re really good to go for Foundation Day, then rest up.”
“Will do, Mr President.” Gideon lifted a hand to wave him off. As he did, his sleeve drooped just enough for his scars to be visible once again. Cartwright closed the door behind him, and Gideon returned to watching the window and the dust that danced in front of it.
“I wonder if birds can dream? I don’t see why they’d need to; don’t you dream to fly? Then maybe… only caged birds dream...”
---
“Oooooh! Finally!”
Janna clasped her hands together in glee. The four of them stood at the crest of the last valley’s exit. From here on, it was a long, slow decline into the flat countryside once more.
Pettma was already in view; from afar, the towering buildings that grew up from its earth were only a faint image through the blue haze of the horizon. Yet, it was in view.
Gallow felt a string pluck in his heart, a single, ambiguous note struck him at the sight of his home city. He couldn’t be sure of why he felt it, nor what it meant, but it was like a dramatic, oddly foreboding chord; a sense of magnitude he couldn’t explain.
“Well, this is where we say goodbye, Disael,” he turned to their guide, who was breathing a sigh of relief. Disael’s elderly, wise impression had melted away after the fight in the Valley of Bones. When he looked back into Gallow’s eyes, there was an understanding that the shame of his history would be left buried in the snow.
“Goodbye,” Disael nodded cautiously at each of them. “It’s felt like a long journey, friends.”
Sonsee’s eyebrows raised at the last word.
“W-well,” he added. “I’ll make it back myself. Good luck!”
“Thank you!” Janna said emphatically. Gallow and Sonsee gave grace in much more sterile tones.
Without much more than those words, Disael turned around and returned to the Redmaines. It occurred to Gallow that this would be the last time he’d see him. This didn’t upset him, but the idea of it, seeing someone one last time, struck another melancholy chord in his heart.
---
Pettma was about half the size of Hilltop, which was still impressive, seeing as it was an entirely above-ground city.
“They’re so… tall…” Sonsee trailed off, admiring the height of the buildings.
“Jeez louise,” Janna agreed. “I thought it would only be a little bigger than Fenway…”
Gallow led them down 33rd Street, a side road through the quieter, residential area. The city was laid out in several sets of grids that formed one whole square-shaped metropolis. The residential downtown was dominated by a squat, simplistic style of architecture that made the buildings look like little more than forts with extra windows and embellishments to make them more welcoming.
Gallow had never realized how ugly his hometown was, and yet he found himself oddly nostalgic for its particular brand of rattiness. The streets were littered with trash, the sky was a glum, gray color, and everything seemed to be covered in a layer of dirt.
He kept his eyes on the addresses, darting from one to another as they strolled down the chilly cement sidewalk. At once, he stopped.
“Gallow?” Sonsee noticed a change in his expression to one of worry. “Is something wrong?”
They stood in front of an empty lot, open air between two adjacent buildings.
“It’s… supposed to be here…”
Sonsee inferred what he was talking about, and looked around, as if it would offer any kind of clue.
“I’m sure we can find where she moved to,” she offered. “Your mother, right?”
“Yeah, just…” he turned his head and stared down the street, down until he couldn’t see where it ended. “I just need to find something that brings it together…”
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Something to find my way to her, where she lives now.”
He threw a few coins on the counter.
“A phone book, please.”
The cashier of the general store, a young man, looked up at him like he was an idiot.
“You can use it here, if you’d like.”
“Oh.” Gallow quickly scooped up his change, dropping a coin. “Sorry, I--” he stooped down to pick it up. “Where can I find that?”
The cashier reached below the desk and pulled out a heavy tome, flopping it onto the counter.
“You just can’t leave with it.”
Gallow flipped through the book until he got to the white pages.
“What is that?” Janna whispered to Sonsee.
“I don’t know, I think it’s some kind of book of addresses?” she answered, never having seen a phone book either.
Gallow’s finger stopped on one specific name.
“How recent is this publication?”
The employee gave him another disdainful stare.
“I don’t know, we had it when I got here.”
Gallow sighed and took another look at where his finger had stopped.
“Alright,” he closed the book and pushed it back towards the cashier, turning back to his friends. “Let’s go, I know where to head.”
Without so much as a word, Janna and Sonsee picked up behind him; he walked with a determined stride, and they figured it was best not to ask him too much.
“Gallow,” Sonsee caught up to him. “It’s going to be fine, I don’t want you to have a heart attack over seeing her again.”
“That’s not it,” he replied curtly.
“Oh? Then why do you look like that?”
“The neighborhood we were just in?” he asked. “Yeah, it’s not great, but it isn’t bad, and that was a nice little place, too. The book says she moved to the East side.”
“Is that a problem?”
“You don’t want to live on the East side,” he warned her. Not much more had to be said.
As they walked further down towards the East end of town, Sonsee noticed a gradual decline in the quality of the city. The people, what few there were out, shot them looks so ambiguous they became threatening.
“Hey,” Gallow signalled Sonsee. “I don’t want to say this, but you need to look like I own you.”
Sonsee couldn’t breathe for a moment, she was so taken aback. Her blood boiled for a moment. Janna, who was following close behind, found her mouth agape.
“W-what are you--?!”
“If the wrong person sees you around here, you might be a victim.”
Her heart sank in her chest.
“We’ve been fine… up to now…” she replied, defiance running beneath her words.
“I know, but there’s a lot of bad characters here.” His voice was too serious to ignore. “Trust me, I don’t like it either, but if they think I own you, you should be relatively safe.”
Gritting her teeth, she cast her eyes downward.
“I understand, but that’s rotten.”
“This is a rotten place, I only like it because I know it.”
Sonsee looked at him strangely, making sure to hang closely to him.
“It’s a bad thing, that kind of sentimentality…” Not long after he said this did he let out a bright, “Oh.”
The three of them stopped in front of a small, one-story house.
“We’re here… already…” A touch of fear hung in his voice.
Gallow clenched his fist tightly before releasing it, and walking up the steps to the front door. Janna and Sonsee stayed behind at the foot of the stairs, watching him ascend. When he was at the top, he brought his fist to the bright green door, knocking three times.
An automobile roared past them while they waited in silence. Suddenly, he heard footsteps from behind the door. His heart began to race. Someone was looking at him through the little peephole in the door, he knew it, an eye was on him. The handle turned, and the door opened with a creak.
A middle-aged woman stood in front of him, wearing a white shawl and eggplant-purple skirt. Gallow felt the blood freeze in his legs.
“But… You’re not…”
“Hello?” she asked meekly. “Are you from the neighborhood?”
Gallow struggled to get even a word out.
“D-does Julia live here? Julia Clarke?”
The woman looked at him the same way that the young cashier had.
“No,” she answered tersely. “No one lives here named Clarke.”
“Oh…” he chuckled nervously. “Do you know where she might be living?”
“No.”
“Would you--” He stumbled over his words. “Do you know if she lived here before you?”
She thought for a moment.
“Well, there was someone who lived here before, I recall.”
“Oh,” he felt relief flow through his heart. “What about them?”
From their place at the foot of the stairs, Janna and Sonsee could only make out a few bits of the conversation. Abruptly, they saw Gallow stiffen up.
“--?” Sonsee noticed his change in posture. He took a step back, and from where they stood, they could see his shoulders heave.
Without warning, he whipped around and raced down the steps.
“Gallow-?” Janna had no time to even finish her question before he looked both ways down the street with a wild blaze in his eyes. He took off running down the sidewalk, leaving them in the dust.
“Gallow!”
They followed his pace through the streets, taking every twist and corner he made down the dingy streets and soot-ridden alleyways.
“Where is he going?!” Janna huffed rhetorically.
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”
He made a break through an alley back to a main street, and it became painfully apparent where he was heading to.
---
Julia Clarke
1827-1887
Loving Mother and Military Wife
Her grave was simple, factual, like most of the other tombstones in the Vincent Marsh Cemetery.
Gallow’s fist pounded into the grass. Sonsee and Janna watched from a few feet away.
“No…” Janna’s voice fell off. She didn’t want it to be true for him.
His teeth ground against each other, his head was swirling. Sonsee took a few steps closer to him.
“Gallow, I’m sorry…”
He didn’t sit up or look at her.
“This is a rotten place,” he said. “I hate it.”
The sky was overcast; if one were born in a world like this, they would have no proof that the sun existed at all.
“She died, Sonsee, of tuberculosis. That was five years ago. Do you know what I was doing five years ago?” He paused, as if expecting her to answer, breathing deeply and exhaling in staggered, struggling steps.
“NOTHING!! I wasn’t doing ANYTHING of ANY VALUE!!” he shrieked, punching the dirt again.
Gallow slumped, losing the strength in his arms.
“She fought so hard for me to live…” he droned. “And I didn’t do anything with it, I just f!#$%$ off in the military and left.”
Sonsee just stood still.
“ERGH!!” Gallow let out a guttural grunt of frustration, dragging his hands through the grass as he sat up.
“I was in a good mood yesterday…” His eyes just hung in the space over the grave, unable to read its inscription.
They stayed like that for a while, in the gray afternoon light. His stomach felt like a pot of sewage that flowed up through his veins and into his heart.
Suddenly, from behind him, he heard a sniffling noise. He turned around to find its source, and saw Janna. Her face was red, one hand covering her eyes, turned away from them. It was a peculiar sight, but he couldn’t understand why. The sewage in his heart seemed to disappear instinctively, and there was a clear, puddle of rain in its place. Why did her few tears seem to conjure this feeling in him?
“Janna?”
She turned just enough that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Her cheeks were flushed red and her hair stuck to her cheek.
“Why are you… crying?”
She looked down at the ground, because looking at him would break the chains on her tears.
“I’m just sad because you’re sad,” she sniffled, her lips twitching as she finished.
Gallow watched her for a moment and got to his feet. Janna heard his footsteps through the grass, which came up to her and stopped.
All of a sudden, she felt his arms around her back and she was pulled close to him. Her blonde hair seemed to tumble out of his chest, but she felt a solidarity with him.
“You shouldn’t worry about me,” he said in a cold voice.
“I can’t not worry about you if you’re hurt!” her voice quivered and rose.
He was quiet for a moment.
“I know that,” he conceded. “It’s stressful to care about someone. Sometimes, I wish nobody cared about me at all, so I could get hanged without anyone crying.”
Janna raised her head and pressed her ear to his chest, breathing more steadily.
“Your mom cared about you, and that’s why you’re alive.”
“But I didn’t care about her,” his voice cracked.
“It’s-- it’s better that you’re here now, because you care about her right now!”
He clutched her shoulder and heaved.
“I was stupid…”
“Gallow… You can say that all you want…” she trailed off.
“But?” he asked with a touch of defiance. “I can say that-- but what?”
“I don’t know… That’s it, you can say that as much as you want.”
Again, they found themselves silent. It was only a question gnawing at her mind that finally broke it.
“How does your heart feel?”
“It’s hollow.”
“It’s beating.”
He pulled away from him and looked into his face. He didn’t have the strength to look back into hers. Janna took a step back and wiped her face. Sonsee stepped next to her and spoke in a hushed, inoffensive voice.
“Just give him some space, he needs some time.”
Janna walked a few feet away and looked out into the sky. She closed her eyes, and breathed steadily. From her mind’s eye, she watched Gallow’s spirit body, wavering and flickering, as if it didn’t even want to be there. From its chest, the typical cold blue was stained dark, like ink was thrown on it.
In what felt like the depths of the cemetery, Janna said a small prayer; it was all that could be done.