The World Without Flags

I go through the whole soup making process again, using the last of the deer meat and bread. Tomorrow, I will have to find something else to feed him. Fish soup, I guess. I can boil the fish heads and bones to make a nice base, I think as I cut up the deer and bread. Finally I have a nice soup and go to the barn.

When I open his stall, I see that Eric is standing in the corner, tangled up in his rope. His face is pressed into the wall of the barn. I put down the mug of soup carefully.

“Why do you do this?” I ask him as I carefully try to free him from the rope. “I don’t understand why you press your face into things. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Unh,” Eric says as he turns around. He moves to step forward, but I block him.

“Stay still,” I say. “This’ll be easier.” I untie the rope from him and then unwind it. When I see that it’s even around his neck, I shiver thinking that he could have hanged himself if he tripped. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” I scold him.

“Unh,” he says.

“Yeah, well,” I respond. “I wish you’d just lie down, okay? Just rest.”

Then I tug him down into a sitting position, which isn’t as difficult as it was the day before. Eric just sits there while I wipe his mouth. I try not to notice the wriggling white worms in the blackness of his mouth. Or the smell of death that surrounds him. As I feed him the best I can, I have to steady him with one hand. The only time he’s really animated is when there’s water around, and I have to be careful he doesn’t scratch me or bite me accidentally. By the time I’m finished, I’m exhausted. Eric sits there with his legs spread out in front of him, covered in slobbered soup.

“Unh,” he says.

“You just, just be quiet,” I say, a little out of breath. And more than a little grossed out, to be honest. My dinner is rumbling inside me, and I breathe in deeply to keep it down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to Eric’s smell.

After a second of rest, I get the newly-cleaned drooly towel filthy again immediately, wiping Eric’s face clean. I look at the blindfold around his eyes, which is now so dark that I can hardly remember it was originally red. I think about taking it off and washing it, but I can’t bear to think about looking at his eyes. They were blue once. Now I imagine dark holes writhing with worms. I can’t deal with that.

When I’m done cleaning him, I shut the stall carefully and use the rope to lock it up tight. After what I saw, I’m too afraid to tie him down in the stall. I don’t know what I’d do if Eric hung himself because of some stupid mistake I made. Then I decide to go back to the fire, but I can’t move. I mean, I can, but I don’t. I just stand there, looking over the stall door at the shadow that is Eric. It breaks my heart to leave him. I don’t know how long I stand there, watching him.

I remember when we first lived on the island. It was so cold that first winter. We didn’t have anything to eat except canned beans, which Eric had found in a nearby house, like four whole cardboard boxes full of canned beans. It was too cold to leave the little shack that Lucia and Eric built. We just huddled together all day and all night. It was such a long winter. At night, Eric would light a candle. We had those for a few years after the end, bright, wax candles, not like the bees wax candles we make now. He sat and read to us every night. I loved those stories. Back then, I didn’t think much of it. I was just excited about the stories, who would live, who would die, who would fall in love, and who would be left alone. But now, when I think of it, I know that Eric did it so that we would survive. He made life bearable. He gave us something to think about other than the gnawing cold, the biting hunger, the numbing boredom of another can of beans. He gave us the prospect of living and enjoying it. We suffered, but we suffered much less than we might have. It makes me tear up a little, thinking of it like this. I’ve never thought of those nights, not like this.

I open up the stall and go back in. He doesn’t look much like Eric, he doesn’t smell like him, or sound like him. But it’s Eric. My Eric.

“Come on,” I tell him and tug him to his feet.

“Unh,” he says as he rises.

I take him by the hand and lead him back to the fire. It’s almost completely dark out now. Eric is walking strangely, bringing his knees too far up. He looks like he’s marching. It’s kind of funny, so I laugh a little.

“Calm down there, soldier,” I tell him as I stop him by the fire. Then I stand behind him and push the back of his knees with my own knees. It’s something us kids used to do to each other as a joke, especially the boys. I don’t know why I just thought of it. It makes Eric slump down and then I guide him as gently as I can into a sitting position. I have to drag him back a little when his boots almost end up in the fire.

“Unh,” Eric says. His jaw yawns open and he lifts one shoulder like he’s going to shrug but the shoulder just stays up in the air. “Unh,” he says again.