Two Trains Running

Once the funerals were done, life over Yonder went back to normal. It was like nothing had happened. I tried to resist the impulse to embrace the sense of relief that caused us to want to put the attack behind us, but I didn’t try hard enough—a few days later I started going fishing with Euliss Brooks again, and me and Annie got back on track, and the tree where we all lived regained its customary lethargic atmosphere. My jungleberry consumption increased for a while, and Bobby Forstadt was, for about the same length of time, a bit more strident about his computer game theory, saying that the recurring menace of the fritters fit right in, and what we should be doing was attempting to influence the game. That was a fair sample of our reaction to sixty-three deaths. It wasn’t natural, but I suppose I’d become a full-on citizen of Yonder, and the unnatural responses of my fellows no longer struck me as being out of line. But I wasn’t happy. Annie and I were growing closer, but there was nowhere to go with it. If we had been back in the world, maybe we would have gotten off the rails and found regular work and built some sort of a life together; but what could you build living in a tree like kids on a backyard camp-out. We talked about catching out without any goal other than the filling up of time. We talked about returning to the world and giving it a go, but our talk was energyless and never got too serious.

Some people in Yonder kept calendars, recorded the passage of days, but I didn’t catch the habit—the days generally were so much alike, they seemed one long day striped with nights, and I saw no point in marking them. Thus I’m forced to estimate that it was about three weeks after the fritter attack when things turned for me. I was out fishing with Euliss, and at midmorning we decided that since we hadn’t had much success sitting together in the middle of the stone ledge, we’d try our luck at opposite ends of the ledge. It had rained overnight, and the sun was out, putting dazzles on the eddies, and the fishing should have been good, but neither one of us had gotten a nibble. The only odd thing I noticed was that the elders had reeled in their tentacles. When I mentioned this to Euliss, asked if he’d ever seen anything like it, he said maybe there was a day when it had happened before, but he wasn’t sure. Then he advised me to concentrate on my fishing and pushed the brim of his baseball cap down over his eyes, signaling that he wasn’t interested in talking. We were sitting about thirty feet apart, and I was watching the flow of the green water about my line when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a rippling out at the center of the gorge. I was about to call it to Euliss’s attention, but he beat me to the punch and shouted, “Got me somepin’!”

I clambered to my feet, dusted the seat of my trousers. “Is it a big ’un?” I asked, thinking I’d walk over and see what he’d hooked.

“I can’t feel it now,” he said. “It’s waitin’ on me. But yeah, it’s pretty big.”

I rubbed at a ground-in patch of limestone dust on my knee, and just as I glanced up, the water seemed to lift directly in front of Euliss, to bell upward, and something huge leaped half its body out from beneath the surface. A fish. It resembled a giant bass more than anything, but its scales were mud-brown, barely distinguishable from one another, and set in its mouth were double rows of triangular teeth the color of old ivory. It twisted in its leap, angling its massive ancient-looking head toward Euliss, and as it fell, its mouth—which was the size of a garage door—came down over Euliss and snapped, biting him with such force that it took the old man’s upper half and left the lower sitting there on the ledge, wobbling and spurting blood.

I’ve had to put together the detail I’ve related in retrospect, because at the moment it happened I was too stunned to do more than record the event. It just seemed that some vast darkness had sounded from the depths and severed Euliss’s body, then vanished with a splash that went forty feet high. The old man’s lower half sat for a second or two, rocking slightly. Despite the blood staining his britches and the rock beside him, the sight seemed unreal, a cartoon. Then it toppled into the churning water. I fell back against the wall of the gorge and pissed myself. I think I may have screamed. I pushed hard against the wall, wanting to disappear into the rock behind me, certain the thing was going to leap up again and have me for its second course. I couldn’t muster a thought, I was all fear and trembling, no more mindful than a bird hypnotized by a serpent, empty of life already, knowing I belonged to death now. What broke me from my freeze was a dry slithering sound from above. I looked up and saw the nearest elder was letting down its tentacle, ready for some fishing now the danger had gone. All the rest of the elders were doing the same. The water flowed green and unperturbed.