1.
Somehow He got the gun. No one knows exactly how or when. Most agree it came from the dead pilot’s cockpit. He found it while inspecting the wreckage. Jaimes laid dying.
Lay, He tells me. (He is in my head now that his gun is in my hand.)
He never menaced us with it—never a real menacing guy in the first place—but He swore He’d use it if some Lord-of-the-Flies-like violence broke out. Other than that—not a rule so much as a promise of consequence—He washed his hands of any authority.
We’d best be patient, He said, because we might be here a long time.
That was ten years ago. He never used it. Even though we would have by now. And if He had, if someone had, it never would have come to this.
He won’t ever use it, goes the argument. Which is why I’m coming down the hill now. Which is why it is in my hand now.
I’ll tell them: my fellow freshmen, mission accomplished. We’ll all sing some corrupted version of a song we pretend to remember.
I won’t tell them about what He said. They never listened to him anyway.
2.
Before I start the climb up to his (and Bri’s) hut, I take a walk into the forest, to the wreckage, a husk. Giant metal shell, egg of our nation. That’s the story of our, like, beginning. It’s the, uh, like . . . foundation myth (He is in my head now that his gun is in my hand):
Twenty-three freshmen and their English teacher survive a plane crash on a tiny, deserted, tropical paradise of an island. Ten years later, they still kindle hope, but have to a certain extent settled into a compromised sort of civilization. Um . . . no. Try again: we were a class of twenty-seven, but one got killed, and one went crazy and ran away, and as for the other two ghosts . . .
Shrapnel impaled both Shawna Mullvaney and Jaimes Harrison during the crash. Chrystal died instantly, Jaimes suffered for three hours. The whole class watched him die. We listening to him go why? and where? in his sob voice. Then he gasped and died, and three hours had passed. Then we went mad with grief and terror.
In the morning, Mr. Hebert stood on the wreck, pointing a gun into the air. He asked for our attention for pretty much the last time. He was a lot different to us then, so we listened to him.
3.
“Where was He when Jaimes died?”
“Getting the gun out of the pilot’s compartment.”
“Pretty much bullshit.”
“Well, He was probably hurt, too. Remember that, like, crazy purple bruise all around his neck? Or He might have been unconscious.”
“ . . . ”
“I guess I feel you.”
“It’s like He missed this whole . . . thing that happened. None of us missed it. He was the only one.”
“And then all the stuff with Brandon? Some leader He was . . . just sort of laid there while we figured it all out.”
“Actually, it’s—well, never mind.”
“Dude, what?”
“It’s just . . . it’s lay. He just lay there.”
“Oh, I see. Hey, you know what else? Fuck you, Ryan.”
4.
He says we have bad grammar. Some of us agree. Poor vocab. We experience, like, uh . . . arrested development. (He is in my head.) We haven’t read a book in ten years. I suspect some of us don’t really even remember how to read at all anymore.
And we’re pretty much done with writing. People still teach their kids how to write and recognize their name in the sand, but it’s a ghost of a lesson, void of any, like . . . context. (He is in my head now that.)
The irony must have been too much for old He . . . English teacher and all. He peeled off, away from us, almost as fast as his subject. He’s lived up on the hill for the past few years. With Bri, or whatever. Until tonight.
For a while He pretended to try to keep up with lessons. For anyone who wanted it. Lessons in the sand, like Jesus.
Everyone gets tired, He said, even though, like, no one came.
Between you and me, He said, I would have been done with teaching by now. It gets so . . .
He talks about it in the present tense, like it’s still happening. Like He’s still teaching us.
Look, He left us. I had to go all the way up there just to talk to him, just to get this from him. So enough with the, like, uh . . . Et tu, Brute? (His gun is in my hand.)
5.
What he said from the top of the wreckage—He said it was our Mayflower Compact, whatever that means.
He said: This is by far the most fucked-up situation anyone could ever imagine. I still think I might be dreaming, or dead. The radios seem busted, the pilots are dead.
He said: I have no skills to speak of in the vein of survival, but I want very much to survive, and I want all of you to survive.
We said: Two of us are dead already. Where were you when Jaimes died? Getting that gun?
He said: More of us will die if we don’t get our asses in gear. We should build shelters, search for food, fresh water. Work in teams.
He said: I have no interest in dictating the chain of events. I am effectively stepping down from a position of authority because we are now totally beyond my expertise. Oh, I can lecture on The Lord of the Flies (this would soon become a sort of recurring black joke), but on the topic of carpentry, hunting, agriculture . . . I gladly yield to the expertise of the group, or to the person who has the most experience.
In short, no more Mr. He. Just He.
But, He said (and this is where He fired the gun to prove it worked): if any one of you tries to, like, kill someone else . . . and if I’m there in time . . . and if I can stop it . . . I will use this gun. I am from this point on not an authority figure; I’m just the guy with the gun.
6.
“It’s just some Golden Rule shit,” Jack says. “The One Commandment.”
“Under penalty of gun,” Mariah amends.
“Man, how is that, like, different than authority?”
“Yeah, He’s all, I’m a non-authoritarian, but He threatens to shoot us?”
“It’s like even more of a power-trip …”
Early on, we used to argue about ideas. That was way back.
7.
It was a field trip. That much was established as, like, uh . . . Canon. Doctrine of origin. (His gun is in my head.) But what were we studying?
“Pretty rich school, huh? Fly some regular-level freshmen class somewhere to study . . . something. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t remember my family having that kind of money . . . belonging to that kind of, like . . . the type of people that could pay for—”
“I don’t remember how much money we had. I don’t, like, even really remember money. Like, using it.”
“I do. I think it sucked . . .”
“Oh, you would . . . You hate money, but you like it when it’s in your pocket, right?”
“Oh, snap—where’d you get that little zinger, smartass? From your father? From He?”
“No, He’s just like Jess. He don’t like money, neither. That’s why He had us reading all them Commie books back in school.”
“He says we were on a field trip to study Lord of the Flies.”
“Yeah, Donnie, that’s a fucking joke. You know, ’cause the kids in that book—”
“I know, dickhead.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, but guys—how did those kids get onto their island?”
Eventually I murmur: “There was, like, a war. One of the world wars, I think.”
“What, and they were being, like, airlifted out? Of Germany or some shit?”
“England, I think.”
“Yeah, well, there was a war going on when we crashed, too. It might still be going on. Fucked up, huh?”
“Yeah, but that’s not how we got here. That war didn’t have any refugees or nothin’.”
“Um, no American refugees, you mean?”
“Whatever. Hey, Commie, don’t you have a dutch oven to build?” Silas lifts his leg and farts at Jess.
All discussions with “sides” eventually turn to the issue of the dutch oven (versus the spit-and-fire) method of cooking. All differences are boiled down to that one. It was the first thing that truly divided us, and has since become the essential politics of the island.
8.
The way I understand it, we hadn’t read Lord of the Flies yet. It was coming up, but we crashed before we got to it. Most of us get the basic idea, now. Boys kill other boys on an island. Boys shove sticks up pigs’ arses. (He is in my head.) It didn’t mean anything, though. The fight between Brendan and Brandon is what really gave it context.
He wasn’t there that time, either. He was never there. Just like always, no one knows where He was. Others—Becka for instance—were also missing. Some people say that’s when the whole thing between He and Becka started, but I don’t know.
The fight was probably about Selma, although we tend to think of it as a political fight over fishing methods and preparation. Brendan kept making all these smartass remarks all day out on the rocks—these nets are poorly made, this is a shitty tactic, why does Brandon get to be in charge, just ’cause he’s big and scared of nothing? Brandon warned him to shut the fuck up, and then Brendan put on this fake jock-voice and said, “I’m in charge, bitch. Shut your mouth. Yep, that’s how I treat my women . . .” Brandon ignored him, and for a second there was hope. Then Brendan went on: “I’m in charge, bitch. Know why? ’Cause I’m big and dumb and scared of nothing, especially not a little pussy like—” but before he could finish, Brandon had him choked up.
It was dumb that did it. It wasn’t the first time Brandon had gotten violent. He’d punched Jake, he’d boxed my ears once. People always said he hit Selma, but she never said either way. This was different. The Brandon we’d been afraid would surface. No one could pull him off Brendan. He killed him in like four minutes, right there on the beach, holding him under the water.
Mr. He came too late. I ran to get him at his old hut (this was before He went up to the hill, with Bri), but I passed him along the way. He had the gun in his hand. Becka came after him, red and crazy, then Eric, Steph, and Sophie, from the forest.
Brandon knelt in the shallows by the body, crying like no one had ever seen. It reminded us of our dogs back home, and we all howled along. This was only, like, the second year.
Then He whispered something: … Oh, I am fortune’s fool … But no one got it. Some of us thought it was tasteless. He had this weird smile like He knew all along this would happen. Still we looked to him for judgment.
Because we were split. For once, comparisons to dutch ovens did not apply. Some of us yelled, “Mr. He, you have to kill him.” Some of us swore that Brandon didn’t mean to do it, that he was a leader and maybe a father, that he had an emotional difference, whatever that was.
He said He wasn’t here to administer punishment . . . that the gun was supposed to be a deterrent. He said He felt like He’d failed us. In the end, He quoted Shakespeare . . . or at least approximated. He said He thought Brandon should be banished, but that He couldn’t force that decision on everyone else.
He said the Brandon He knew died with Brendan, in the shallows there. Henceforth He would not acknowledge Brandon. He wouldn’t work with him on any project, wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t even look in his direction . . . He said: everyone else can make up his or her own mind.
There was outrage. Brandon rose in a fit and cried, “Shoot me! Shoot me you fucking pussy!”
He turned and raised the gun and said, “Bang,” and walked away. Becka followed him.
Brandon went mad with grief. He went into the jungle while we all argued about what to do with him, this original criminal. We heard him for nights, yelling out there, screaming cuss words and stuff. And then there was silence. The discussion never ended, but Brandon was effectively banished.
For a long time he was a sore memory. Then he was a bad dream. Now he’s a ghost story we tell the children. If only he’d died out there instead of hanging around. And I guess you could say the same thing about Mr. He, whose gun is now in my hand, in my hand, in my—
9.
Hebert is his name. Mr. Hebert, English 9. We used to call him Heeb, but He got on us about that word being a derogatory word for Jew and illustrated his disapproval by teaching a five-week Holocaust unit. After that we shortened it to He. Now we use He somewhat derogatorily these days, which is, like, um . . . ironic. Whatever that means.
(He is in my head. He tells me I should know how to define irony by now. I tell him to shut the fuck up, and I wave his gun around. I am almost at the bottom of the hill. I am almost home.)
10.
We treat all the huts’ entrances as doors. We call them doors. Some have flaps or braided chords or whatever, but none of them have, like, legit doors; no one has slammed a door in ten years.
But we still say, “Don’t you knock?” when someone fails to shout their name before walking in on us when we’re—they’re—having sex.
Up at the top of the hill, He made a big hut out of rocks and mud. We used to be awed, but up close now . . . even in the dark, I can make out mistakes. Poorly selected stone, lazy masonry. We have outreached him.
He and Bri live here. They might be fucking right now, while I stand outside, winding my big toe into the dirt. They’re probably not, I assure myself.
Don’t you ever fucking knock! I can hear Bri in my ears. Maybe I’ve even heard it before . . . walked in on her and someone else in one of the huts. It happens to me all the time. I don’t even remember who and when and what anymore.
I shout my name again. I swear I hear Bri huff, rolling her eyes inside the hut.
Where does He keeps the gun? And does Bri know where He keeps the gun? And has Bri held the gun? And does Bri have any feelings for him? And does Bri have any feelings?
I shout my name again, and somewhere over the thatching there’s a quick dash of light, like someone on the other side is kindling embers. Lighting a torch. Coming through the big hut toward the door.
When she sees me—that I am no threat—she waves out her torch.
“What do you want?” Bri stands in the stone archway, arms crossed.
“We want the gun.” I didn’t select this mission. Like Bri, I was selected . . . though not by Him. By the rest.
“He’s not going to give it to you.” Her lips are thin, hard. She’s up here getting old with him, hiding in this mansion way up in the jungle. Hiding from us. Having their little private birthday party, little secret sex, like anyone cares.
I try to say something, but since it’s Bri, Bri and me, here like this, the words get all fucked up between my tongue and lips. She rolls her eyes back into her head the way she always has at me, at He, probably at her parents.
“Jesus, Ryan. Go home.” And then I swear she slams the door.
11.
“Look, it’s ultimately absurd that we would be on an island for ten years in this modern world. Or, postmodern. I never learned it right.”
“Maybe He never taught you. I certainly never heard that word before . . .”
“Yeah, He lost his interest in teaching a long time ago . . . around the time He lost his ethics with female students . . .”
I joke with Jimmy.
Jimmy says, “How many of the girls you think really did old He?”
I can’t say and I won’t guess. Everyone knows about Becka. Everyone claims to know about Bri. “This thing with Bri . . . it’s like she’s his, like …” wife (He is in my head) “. . . life-partner or something. In some weird non-sexual way. Maybe He lost his mojo. Maybe that’s why Bri always looks so pissed off . . . whenever anyone, like, even sees her . . .”
“You’re jealous. Otherwise you’d admit: He did her.”
I think about the one time I held her, alone in the circle hut, drunk on the juice, the sun coming up through the sash over the door. A flash . . . gone, ere one can say ‘it lightens’. (He is in my head, illustrating with dry-erase markers on the board the jagged line of lightning and then erasing it, over and over, until we, or at least I, understand the comparison.)
Bri dropped me like she was handling fish guts—something she should never have been touching in the first place. A chore she could never take seriously.
He took me aside: walks in the jungle, rap-sessions on rocks overlooking the sea. We pretended to scan for rescue boats, jet planes. He talked about manhood. He said I was ahead of my age. Intellectually. He said great intelligence brought great suffering.
“I don’t know,” I tell Jimmy. “I don’t think they are. Fucking.”
Jimmy huffed or laughed. “That’s what I thought about Caren. Till she told me.” He gets a look, sort of sad, like, um . . . George B. Wilson at the gas pump (His gun is in my.)
12.
The nightmare scenario—and we’ve all discussed it, the men-folk, whenever He’s not around (which is pretty much all the time)—is that all the children on the island are his; that He has impregnated every fertile woman on the island, despite our—rather, their—relative assurance of their own paternity.
Ironically, Steve and Becka seem to be the happiest, most trusting couple on the island. Probably because Becka had such a, like, public fallout with He so early in our, like, um . . . sojourn (His gun) . . . this, like, devastating rejection . . . so now Steve and her . . . Steve and she (His gun) . . . feel extra secure in their mutual loyalty. No one wants to go through that again. Except Bri, apparently.
Steve and Becka’s daughter, Nautica, is obviously theirs. Becka had her almost a whole year after the thing with He ended. She’s got Steve’s red hair. The rest are all questionable. Micky, Wayne, Kristal . . . even Joshua, God forbid . . . in each one I see, or fear that I see, some trace of the old Mr. Hebert. It’s like He’s coming back—back from his own self-imposed banishment. Back from death. In the form of our children.
It’s some bullshit lesson from beyond the hill, beyond the grave: the generations forge on. The threat of a gun, the mad rapist in the jungle at night. The hunter becomes the hunted, the student kills the teacher, the child is the father of the man. Whatever all that means.
Just like everything He taught us it’s all wrong, perverted . . . like the sort of weird wet dreams I’d have about Selma or Bri back in years one and two. A poison lesson. Maybe Silas is right. Maybe He was a Commie, whatever that means whatever that means whatever that—
13.
Jimmy tells me I need to get laid.
Everyone tells me I think too much. These days there’s this whole sense of, like, uh . . . anti-intellectualism. (He is in my.)
I don’t have a position on the dutch oven method or the spit-and-fire. I’ve been unaffiliated for ten years.
Add it up: I’m practically a, like . . . eunuch. (He is in my.) I’m thoughtful and, like, receptive and, like, you know . . . bipartisan. (His gun is in.) And I’ve got no woman or kid or, like . . . actual worth to the socio-economic fabric of this society? (In my head.)
Add it up: I make the perfect candidate to get the gun.
Not that He’s going to, like, kill me for asking for it. He hasn’t shot a single person these past ten years. Plus, He likes me. Thinks I’m intellectually ahead of my peers, whatever that means. Thinks I have great suffering, whatever that means.
And if He denies me? That’s where it gets tricky. Then I am to attempt to take it from him. How? I’m supposed to figure that out. I’m the clever one, right? You know, like what’s his name? The famous Greek guy who killed the Cyclops?
No Man. (He is in my hand.)
14.
The first pregnancy happened (was revealed) sometime around the third month; after that, it was a domino rally. There were three straight weeks of panic, nights in the rain, cold days when we thought we would die of protein deficiency . . . nevertheless my fellow freshmen found the energy and time do it.
Selma was first to announce she missed her period. Everyone joked that it was He’s kid (“Yuck it up,” I want to tell us, looking back).
Selma was absolutely the hottest girl I’d ever seen. Beauty sure does fade.
Brendan happily took credit. There were hugs and high-fives, all us guys acting like we remembered our fathers and uncles acting. Television shows about fathers and uncles.
That was probably the beginning of their breakup, right there.
First, she said Brendan was “too childish” . . . “not really man enough” to be her child’s father.
Then she told us all that Brandon—though he was pock-marked and prone to fits of jealous rage, though he had emotional differences back in the real world—was both better on the mat and “a better role model for baby Joshua than Brendan could ever be.” Even if he hit her. Even if he might hit Joshua. Not that she ever said that.
Then the murder.
Then the next six years: this whole fucked up idea that Brandon—the murderer who, along with his victim, had physically been inside her, and one of whom had fathered her child—was roaming the jungle like some deranged Tarzan, stealing our crops, raiding our garbage . . . raping the women and girls of the island . . .
I’m always the one who has to go get her when there’s a meeting. I’m that guy, messenger of the gods . . . Hermes. I’m the one who finds Selma crying quietly, alone, like a crazy woman. Still, she’ll never kiss me. She only kisses boys who kill, go crazy, and/or die.
15.
It would have been so easy if only the suspicions had been true: I would find the gun rusted. I would find it unloaded, missing parts, compromised by negligence. He would put his hand on my shoulder and explain: this whole time, the gun was just a symbol. Like a conch shell. Justice, harmony, civility . . . these were concepts that were inside us, always had been. He would give it to me as a prize or trophy, or idol or something, so that we could always remember what I, among all of his students, had been brave enough to learn and philanthropic enough to bring back down the mountain and share with the people of my village. Whatever all that means.
On the contrary, I find the gun in near-perfect condition. He has taken care of it, through methods I will never learn.
On the contrary, I find the gun loaded. He shows me, with the ease of one who is accustomed to taking a particular gun apart. He might have done it hundreds or thousands of times over the past ten years—maybe in front of Bri, maybe in distinct privacy. Maybe He was practicing for this moment: He would show me the clip, slam it home, hand it to me.
He would quote Shakespeare: Is this a dagger which I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee. Whatever that means.
When He places it in my palm I know what will happen. We owe it to one another. He says my name softly, like the name of his own son. He says: It’s each other. He says a lot of other things, too, but you wouldn’t understand. I don’t. I couldn’t if I tried.
He would quote Brandon: Kill me, you fucking pussy.
Bri goes into the other room. Whatever that means.
16.
His gun is warm in my hand.
I come out of the forest and walk along the grass toward beach, our village. Past the ravaged east-garden, where someone has torn up the unripe plants, left a hungry gouge in each fruit. Past the place at the treeline where Kristal says she was attacked by a monster, one that left nightmare bruises on her baby-fat thigh. Past the shallow bay, practically taboo, where Brandon drowned, was killed, was murdered, whatever.
Kill the beast! (He is in my head.)
I aim his gun at each location, at each shadow of history, and say, “Bang. Bang. Bang.”
Cut his throat! Spill his blood! (Now that his gun is in my hand.)
_________________________________
This story was first published by Slice, Fall 2011/Winter 2012