“What if we don’t want to do anything? Can we stay here?” Bahadur avoids eye contact with Beck and continues picking at the cottage’s siding. The particleboard is rotten and mouldy.
“Yes. You can stay here. But the supplies will only last so long. And there aren’t many allies around. I can’t trust that my parents will not betray you. And I can’t trust I will return after the uprising.”
“Why won’t you return?” I ask.
“Knowing there are rebels like you won’t be a major surprise to the Boots,” Beck says while dusting off the top of his brush cut. “But finding out that we allies have used this last year to double-cross them will be a huge betrayal. I might not get out alive. You might not get out alive. That’s always a possibility when it comes to war.”
By the afternoon, Beck is digging a trench while his father watches. Bahadur and I sit on the porch of the cottage, still considering our options. Peter stands at attention, wishing and willing his body from old age to the bottom of that trench.
“Dad. Go ahead and sit down. I can handle this. No problem.”
“I never asked you to do this. We don’t need this.”
“Yes, you do. Those carcasses are festering. You might not be able to smell it, but we could down the road.” Peter’s chest wilts at the weight of his emasculation. “It’s not your fault, Dad. I just wish you had asked someone close by for help.”
“I couldn’t ask for help.”
“Why?”
“No one . . . no one wants to speak to us because of . . . well. They know what you are. That I know is not my fault.”
“Yes, Dad. I know. It’s mine.” Beck and his father look at their feet in silence. This is my opportunity to speak.
“Can I help?” I offer, hoping I have the strength to actually do so.
“I suggest you find something to cover your mouth and nose,” Beck says while resting his arm on the handle of his shovel.
Beck makes his way to the silo beside the cottage. Peter follows, his usual grimace growing more sour with every step. Despite all of us having covered our faces with old shirts, the smell of death sits unmoving along our path. While Beck inches his way up the ladder, Peter calls out to him, part apology but mostly an accusation.
“I didn’t know where to put them all!” Peter says as Beck peers into the silo. Hundreds of dead, festering chicken carcasses. I can see Beck stifling his vomit. I feel like purging too just at the sight of his reaction. Peter is ashamed. He can’t even look at me as he says, “First they couldn’t drink the water, then there was no water to give them. We weren’t even allowed to burn them because of the wildfires. We weren’t allowed to eat them because of the contamination. I couldn’t bury them because . . . because I’m too . . . because I was alone. This was the only place we could put them.”
We realize that we need the holes to be located farther away from the cottage. Beck and I dig four trenches in total. When I ask Beck if putting the dead chickens into the trenches may be an environmental hazard, he tells me the entire town is an environmental hazard. We create a system where Beck descends into the depths of the silo on the internal ladder, scoops putrid, soft chicken corpses onto an old shower curtain, gathers the corners together, then hands me the makeshift sack. I then descend the silo’s external ladder, open the sack and allow its contents to plop into our ditches to be buried. We do this one shower-curtain surface at a time. We do this as I gag, as Beck gags and reassures his father he is not a failure. We do this. We finish the work. We cover the shame of the carcasses with neutral-smelling sandy soil. We don’t have water with which to wash out the silo, but Beck pours three industrial-sized bottles of bleach into its depths, hoping to kill the stench. But we know it will do nothing. Once we are done, I use my face covering to wipe the mess off my arms and pants. Just as I am about to pinch the last feather off my forearms, I wretch into a bush. I wish we had water for a shower. I long for Liv’s bathtub. I decide to use sand instead, like those pigeons I watched at Moss Park with my mother near my old apartment. They would clean themselves using dirt. I find a reserve of dry sand and begin using fistfuls to cover my body. The sand dries my sweat, dries the muck of the chickens, and I brush it off. I continue to do this until my body is dusty but somewhat clean. I stop only when I realize the sand reserve is from anthills. Some ants remain angry on my scalp and arms. I shoo away their bites. But I am clean.
I rubbed the coconut oil until it softened and melted into the surface of my skin, highlighting the sinew of my shoulders. I admired my reflection in Nolan’s mirror, willing myself to leave the house.
It was Scorpio season. Nolan and I had planned to head to a joint birthday bash at some lesbian bar. There was a small cover fee to raise funds for someone’s top surgery happening later in November.
“Who’s getting the surgery?” I asked Nolan, while he flat-ironed his hair into perfectly silky sections. Smoke from his hair product filled the air and made me cough.
“Cole. Ex-lover. Long story.”
Nolan gave this suffix to many people in the LGBTQ2S community: “Ex-lover. Long story.” This description meant many things, ranging from having to change directions at the Trans march to holding Nolan’s hand while he laughed loudly to give the impression that he had moved on with his life. When Nolan asked me “Is that what you’re wearing?” I knew my job was to attend the party and appear to be his next lover and long story.
“Yes. I’m already wearing it.”
He finished pulling his straightened hair into a high ponytail, then attended to my fashion choices.
“Listen, handsome. I know you wanted to wear that mesh top to show off your six-pack, but I want Cole to understand how my tastes have matured. That’s why I need you to wear this Victorian puff-sleeve blouse with this top hat.”
I cocked my hip and pursed my lips. Nolan pleaded. “It’s like upscale fag meets high-paid banker!” He went through his Rolodex of comparisons. “You’ll look like Queen Victoria . . . on the day of her coronation.” I raised my arms and permitted him to continue fussing over me. In truth, I wouldn’t have done anything. I would have stayed home alone. It was my birthday, after all, and I hated my birthday.
“Bitch, what?!”
“Yeah.”
“It’s your birthday? Like, today?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Girl, I would have never thought you were a Scorpio.”
I didn’t know what being a Scorpio meant, so I nodded in befuddlement. I knew little about astrology on the whole and often wondered if I should return my Queer membership card until I at least knew my sun, moon and rising signs, which Fanny once said were essential.
“Well . . . we will just have to celebrate tonight, won’t we?” Nolan said while pinning a brooch to my lapel. “There! What do you think?” I looked into Nolan’s long mirror. A tiny top hat sat sassily off one side of my head. The sleeves of the blouse were extraordinarily voluminous.
“I look like Queen Victoria after she discovered the open bar at a wedding.”
Instead of Nolan’s usual music playlist, our low-rent television broadcast a low-volume soundtrack to our club preparation time. He began his contouring regimen as he watched a news program in which the American president, Colin Pryce, addressed a news reporter’s questions about mass deportation.