The n-Body Problem

Candy is sitting on the settee. Her head is on a pillow and her eyes rock warily from side to side. Occasionally she growls at me. I like her company as long as I am safe. The little machines broke away from my bottom. I must have a stomach after all. You lied about that Dixon. I also have not had a return of Syndrome. And I sleep. In a bassinet beside my Tildy. I constipate easily and I upchuck two or three times a day. Candy gives out a short bark. She springs up on her tiny legs. Someone is here. I see Tildy in her yellow parka dragging heavy cloth bags. She found some things in the city. Candy barks and whines at the door. I try to tell her to stop but only manage sounding like her, only weaker.

The door opens and I feel the cold curl into the room. Snow or dust or ash drifts inside.

Tildy heaves the bags up on the table and slides her fur-lined hood back. She puffs her red cheeks then smiles. She pulls a sac of dog treats out and drops them for Candy while making dove sounds.

“Well, Moses.”

She still calls me that though it’s not meaningful anymore.

“I didn’t get to the city, little man, but I did manage to find a warehouse outside of Mansfield. Not a store proper. Some kind of warehouse and I borrowed some things!”

Tildy lines up the jars of baby food. A tall can of dry formula. Some bags of frozen milk. A stack of three or four TV dinners. She’ll make a fire in the woodstove and heat those. I smile and clap my imaginary hands.

“There’s nobody out there, Mosey. Not a soul. Seems like end of days more than ever. Oh, well. Never mind. We got each other and a warehouse down the road.”

Tildy laughs at her wickedness. I watch her scooping dry formula into a bottle and fill it with water. She repeats this several times then sets all but one just outside the door to freeze. The dead are frozen now. I wonder if they still move. Those seizures and tiny fits cracking the ice in their bones. Maybe shattering them over time. Shards of lung and crystallized eyes. Tildy shakes the bottle I am to drink. She won’t give it to me yet though. She wants to warm it. She sits on it.

The Bible. I listen, mostly to her voice. Her quiet amens. I don’t care what the words mean as much as I love Tildy’s calm, happy voice. She stops from time to time, closing the book on her speckled fingers and she looks out to the dead world as if it were a field of bright yellow wheat. As if her children were running through the grass up the hill. Or angels. She drifts off. We have all the time we need, Tildy and I.

I am genuinely grateful to be here. I have been a violent man. I have brought many people to sudden death. Now I am bundled and free of limbs and speech and pain. I squeeze a small turd through my buttonhole. I watch Tildy sleep. Candy. The black sky and the silver earth. These days can end or not end. I am home.

Tildy wakes when the room temperature falls. It is cold in here. I can see cloud puff from my mouth.

“That’s bitter in here, Mosey. I’ll check the furnace.”

Tildy returns after almost an hour. The house is now becoming dangerous. She doesn’t look at me or say anything as she pulls on her parka. She stomps a boot to keep Candy from the door and she leaves.

Candy walks in a military march toward me then stops and takes her post. She knows as much as I do. She is visibly shivering.

We sit like this, staring each other down for about a half hour, when the door opens. Nine or ten frozen logs fall in with a shroud of dry white particles. I only see Tildy’s arm as she pulls the door closed again. Candy barks and runs to the settee. The cold floor hurts her paws.

Tildy does this three more times until the entire front room is dominated by logs. I can see as she bends down to the stove and lights paper that this has cost her. She still hums but I’m pretty sure this is for me and Candy. It works. Candy understands that warmth is coming. I look up at where the pipe enters the ceiling. Black mould and stains and metal discoloured by decades of tightening and releasing. I wonder when was the last time the inside of this chimney was cleaned.

I have to stop imagining death at the end of every action. That’s Syndrome. I have to stay here. Like Tildy. In the moment. I wonder if I can hum? I try. Of course I can! I hum a tuneless sequence of notes. Tildy drops a log. She closes the stove door as she watches me. I hum louder. What song? What song can I hum for Tildy? I hum “Freebird.” It just comes to me. Tidly’s droopy white skin is drawn up into a smile. Her eyes are blue!

She listens on the couch and twirls Candy’s ears in her fingers. The room is warming. Loud delicious snaps form the stove.

“I know that song, Mosey!”