Fierce Little Thing

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  “Well?” Sarah lifted her head. “Marta glad to see you?”

  The penis hung in my mind’s eye, slick and bobbing. I laughed. I covered my mouth. “You might have brought the basket back.” But Sarah didn’t mind so much once I loaned her my extra set of hands. I kept my eyes on the door. Abraham would come soon. He would look at me and we would both know what we had seen. I couldn’t imagine what he would say. I couldn’t imagine what I would do. Then I wished I had stayed at Marta’s; to have stayed would be to understand what had happened and what was going to happen because of it. My hands and mind did their folding folding folding. I couldn’t forget Abraham’s face, the high pitch of his pain when he called to her. I couldn’t forget how he had reacted like he owned whatever she did.

  I shivered. Sarah switched places with me so I could be closer to the oven.

  The door opened later, much later, when that late afternoon blue that comes just before a winter’s night had settled over the windowpanes. There was a blast of cold. Butterfly plunged toward us, face plastered with tears.

  “He left us! He left us!”

  Sarah folded up her dish towel, corners matching, before she went Butterfly’s way. It was difficult to get off the Home land in February—the driveway was not plowed, and it was dangerous to go at night when the temperature plunged. But Abraham had gone down the darkening lane in his snowshoes, toward roads that led him elsewhere—“and I tried to stop him, I begged him, Sarah, he didn’t even have a hat but he had his bag, the one he takes when he’s going, oh he’s leaving us, he wouldn’t even talk to me, he looked so upset, it is different this time, I swear it is, something happened, he wouldn’t even talk to me, someone should go after him,” on and on. I was thankful for Butterfly’s spectacle, because no one noticed me.

  The next morning, my lost mittens were balanced on the doorknob of the cabin. I brought them in, pretending I didn’t know Marta had found them on her floor. The muffin basket was waiting on the table in the Main Lodge. Sarah stirred the porridge. “That Marta’s an odd duck.”

  I lived in rapturous fear of what would transpire when Marta showed up at my door. But she didn’t come around, and neither, for that matter, did Sal. Were they in love? Was it just some weird sex thing? Did old people have weird sex things? It hadn’t even occurred to me that old people had sex—and yet, the penis. The penis! Maybe Sal would arrest Abraham for trespassing on Marta’s property. Would they make me be a witness? I’d feel that giggle burning whenever I circled back to Sal’s penis wagging in the open room.

  “What is wrong with you?” Issy said. Nora got off her lap and squatted before me and squinted hard, as if she could read my mind. There were whispers by then, that Marta and Abraham had gotten into a fight. But no one knew what I had seen. Nora stuck out her tongue. We were in the kitchen. We were in the kitchen as much as possible because it was the warmest place. It was evening again, and the room clattered with spoons and slurps and sighs. Snow dovetailed and swirled and sang over icicles the length of oboes hanging from the outside eaves. I kept my secrets.

  115

  “Abraham.” It’s Issy who breaks the spell.

  He moves from the window.

  “Go on now,” says Tomas from behind us.

  “Put the gun away.” Cornelia’s voice is motherly. “The five of us came, just like you wanted. No need for a gun.”

  Tomas complies. Kudos to Cornelia. Once he’s stashed the weapon, he’s relentless as a border collie, herding us to the front porch. We climb Marta’s steps—Xavier first, then Cornelia, Issy, me, and Ben. The porch is covered in moss, rotten in spots, but it’s sturdy enough to bear us to the front door.

  What stands in that open doorway, waiting, isn’t so much Abraham as a slice of him. He holds on to the door, not for power but support. His pajama pants hang off his torso, hiding his legs. What were once his cheeks are now hollow cavities.

  Xavier stands aside, then Cornelia, then Issy, until we form a reluctant amphitheater, with Abraham the stage.

  “I see you got my letters.”

  “What the hell do you want?” says Ben.

  Abraham’s grin grows. The cabin glows behind him. He turns away, leaving the door open. Tomas urges us forward.

  We fill the little place with our adult bodies—limbs and hair and faces and knees, the smell of our armpits, our swallows, our sniffs. It’s much smaller than I remembered. Nothing is missing; there’s the couch, and the little table, the four mugs, the kettle, set onto the small ivory stove. Even Marta’s books are still here. Two kerosene lamps—one set on the kitchen table, the other by her favorite chair—do plenty of work to stave off the darkness outside.

  Tomas skitters past us to maneuver Abraham into the armchair. Abraham moans as he eases down. We look away, all but Ben, who observes the old man’s obvious pain with a small but satisfied smile. “So, where’ve you been? Canada? Mexico? And who the fuck did you kill to make it look like you were dead?”

  “Sit, please,” Abraham says from his chair. Tomas backs up and offers a strange butler bow. Abraham catches me smile. To Tomas he says, “Might you pick up where you left off?”

  Tomas scurries to the kitchen and returns with a full basin of water, a jar of Epsom salts, and a folded towel. He kneels before Abraham. He folds the other man’s pajama bottoms up from ankle to knee, revealing legs so skinny it hurts to look. He unrolls the raglan socks, from Abraham’s ankles down to his yellowed, marled toenails. Tomas measures out a cap of the Epsom salts and dumps them into the water, stirring them with his bare hand.

  “I’m sorry but the water cooled,” he says, as he lifts Abraham’s feet into the the basin.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ben mutters.

  “Ah, Benjamin. Are you a Christian now?”

  “Just tell us what you want,” Ben says. “If you’re not going to tell us where you were or take any responsibility for what you did to us, then at least tell us what you want.”

  “What I did to you?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Xavier places a hand on Ben’s shoulder. Tomas dips his hands into the water and rubs at Abraham’s ankles. Abraham’s eyes close involuntarily, like a baby at the breast.

  “I’m a Christian,” volunteers Cornelia. She touches the bare base of her neck.

  “Well, that,” says Abraham, “does not surprise me.”

  “I do my best,” Cornelia says, lifting her chin, “to live by the principles of Christ. I’m prepared to help you in whatever way I can.”

  “Always the gentle heart. Do you still sing?”

  “In the church choir.”

  He nods, closes his eyes. “A gift like yours.”

  Ben fiddles in his waistband, eyes narrowing. He’s managed to move whatever he got from the car from his pocket into the tuck of his pants. We can’t have violence, not when we’ve just arrived.

  “You want money?” I say.

  “Money?” Incredulity tinges Abraham’s voice. He gestures around the small space, and sweeps his hands to include us, to include the young man fervently bathing his feet. “I’ve got all I need.”

  “Why did you send us those letters, then?” Xavier is doing his best to hide his fear. I don’t know why he bothers; Abraham sees through each of us. “Are you lonely? Did you really need to blackmail us for … company?”

  That makes Abraham laugh again. But it’s a dim performance. He’s out of practice.

  I sink down to the couch. Dust puffs around me. “We’re here now,” I say. “We won’t leave you.” Ben glares at me. “I want to help you. Please. Let me help you.”

  Abraham’s hands form a tent before him, his pointer fingers lifting to his lips. The others watch us watch each other. Tomas works the arches of his feet, limp and pale. “I believed it would be so. I wanted for it to be so.” Abraham waves Tomas off and leans back against the chair. His eyes close. “Only I didn’t think you’d come in the middle of the night.” He yawns.

  “You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me,” Ben says.

  “I am not, in fact, kidding anyone.” Abraham’s voice grows wan. “Tomas will see you to your cabin. Teresa will give you breakfast in the morning. Then you’ll come back and we’ll discuss. There is much to discuss.” His eyelids shut again. That quickly, yes. Tomas lifts his legs but they are floppy. Tomas struggles with the basin. Water sloshes onto the floor. Tomas enfolds Abraham’s feet in the towel. Abraham begins to snore.

  “He fucking passed out,” Ben says.

  “We don’t really have to sleep here, do we?” Cornelia asks.

  “Shut up,” says Tomas.

  “Don’t tell her to shut up,” Issy says.

  “Everyone calm down,” says Xavier.

  All this time, we have been here, in this room, waiting for ourselves to come home.

  116

  Then, without warning, Abraham came home. It was dinner again, a full three hours earlier than we would have had it in the summer. Snow fell from his hunter’s cap as he stomped his boots. Butterfly rushed to him. We pretended not to see when he stepped past her.

  “Where you been?” Gabby lifted a brown puddle of lentils to her lips.

  Butterfly inched closer but he went to Gabby. “We need locks. Locks on every door.”

  Sarah dished up soup. “When was your last meal?”

  “The gun,” he said. “Get the gun. Knives. The pitchfork. Whatever we can use. We should have planned better.” Beside me, Cornelia trembled.

  “Sit and eat,” said Gabby. She reminded of me of Teresa when Tomas was driving her crazy but the only way to win was to pretend she didn’t care. Teresa would have known what to do. I missed her then, in a great swell.

  “You haven’t heard, have you?” His voice was quiet now, too quiet. “Waco? Texas? Anybody?” He slammed his fist on the table, right next to Gabby’s bowl. Her soup splashed. “I told you to listen to the fucking radio.”

  Gabby rose. “And I told you never to swear at me.”

  He wheeled away from her, arms spread wide. “The feds blew up a compound four days ago. A compound like ours, with people just like you and me. Filled with kids. They murdered six people.” He pointed at six of us, then—Issy, Xavier, Ben, Cornelia, himself, and me. “People like little Sammy Weaver. Now they’re setting up out there on the edge of those people’s land, waiting—the FBI, with guns, and bombs. Lying in wait for those poor little children. You know what’s going to happen? They’re going to slaughter them. The Thinged World wants to bring us down. Don’t forget it, don’t forget it for a second.”

  Butterfly started for him again. “Unthing yourself from me,” he said through gritted teeth. She hiccupped, then backed away. She began to cry. Ephraim offered a handkerchief, but when she tried to steady herself on his shoulder, he looked down at the floor with a grimace, and didn’t touch her heaving back.

  “What happened between you and Marta?” Gabby said in an even tone. “I went to her place and she wouldn’t let me in. Said you told her she’s not welcome here.”

  “I found Sal up there with his dick inside her. Saskia saw, too.”

  The Main Lodge went silent.

  There was such ugliness in that way of telling it, like they were animals. But it wasn’t a lie.

  He pointed to my silence as proof. “Needless to say, Marta is no longer one of us. You see her on our land, you have my permission”—he looked at Amos—“to do whatever you want.”

  “Oh, come on,” Gabby said.

  “She is fucking the goddamn enemy, Gabby. And I’ll admit, I was weak. I let that discovery send me away. I let my feelings control me. But then I was out there in the Thinged World and I heard what the Sals of that world are doing to good people, people like us, living on their land, minding their business. When Sal comes for us—and believe me, he’ll come for us, believe me, Marta’s helping him plan it as we speak—we will protect ourselves. We will protect our home.” He pointed to the hatchet at my waist. “Saskia knows. She’s ready.”

  117

  The wick of the kerosene lamp flickers our old cabin into cobwebs and rodent dung, dust and leaves, rickety furniture piled by the front room’s fireplace. Tomas and Teresa must have worked hard on Marta’s to make it seem like no time has passed.

  “Are there blankets?” Issy asks.

  “Latrine’s dug.” Tomas ignores her. “Well’s working, but you’ll haul your own water. Breakfast’s at seven.”

  “Let us go back to Ben’s for the night,” Cornelia says. “Please. We promise to return tomorrow.”

  Tomas holds out his broad hands. “Phones.”

  “I need my phone,” says Issy. “I need to keep in touch with—”

  “I need mine, too,” Cornelia says.

  Tomas shakes his head. “You’ll call the cops.” His long fingers wiggle in a “put it here” gesture. He taps the gun in his pocket. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Cornelia chokes back a frenzy of tears. Issy shakes her head. Ben says, “We’re not going to call the fucking cops.” Xavier relinquishes his phone. Then Issy. Then Ben. Eventually even Cornelia hands hers over. Tomas looks at me.

  “I don’t have one,” I say. The truth would set him straight—I’m more like you, Tomas, than any of these people; I don’t even know how one of those works. But instead I put my arms in the air like a hostage and let him pat me down, front and back. Up close, he smells familiar—his body a ripened version of his childhood grubbiness. The memory of his small body, so much like yours, tugs at me. I almost put my hand to his cheek. But they are watching.

  “What’s wrong with Abraham?” Ben asks. “What kind of sick is he?”

  Tomas says, “I’m real sorry about Nora.”

  Ben sucks in surprise. “Yeah, man. I’m sorry, too. I know you guys were…”

  “Like a sister,” Tomas says. His voice has grown meek. He hangs there, at the door, pockets bulging with technology.

  “You think she’d want this?” Ben says. He means us, here, the gun.

  “She wants you to pay for what you done.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Tomas grins. “You know exactly what you done. So does she.” He points out to the woods. “I hear her out there. Wandering around. Crying.”

  The others think he’s mad. But the longing for you swells: the discovery of the bird wing, the promise that you have been waiting, are waiting, right out there. “You sure it’s her?”

  “Of course it’s not her,” Ben mutters.

  Tomas’s eyes push over mine.

  But then Ben shuts him out. Tomas’s face flushes as the outside slices shut. We have done this many times before; make him leave so we can be alone. Tomas’s footsteps were much smaller and quicker the last time they crossed the porch away from us.

  “Well, he turned out fucked up,” Ben says.

  “No more than the rest of us,” Issy says.

  “Childhood trauma leaves invisible scars,” Cornelia says. “It’s not something to trifle with. Therapy has been immensely helpful for—”

  “I’ll be sure not to ‘trifle’ with it, then.”

  Issy shoots me a look which means fix Ben’s mood.

  “It’s nice what he said about Nora,” I say. It’s hard to imagine her getting older than the sprite who blasted through the forest, fists and swears, but she did grow up, there’s that at least. She tasted enough of life to decide that she didn’t want to live it. Ben leans his palms against the door. The kerosene lamp flickers.

  “I don’t think Teresa and Tomas know what we did,” Xavier says, after a minute. Cast in the yellow lamplight, he looks a decade younger. “The way Tomas said, ‘You know exactly what you done.’ Plus that whole thing about taking our phones.”

  “What does taking our phones prove?” Issy says.

  “He knows we did something. He knows it was bad enough to bring us back here. But he doesn’t know that what we did was bad enough that we’d never get the police involved. Remember, they weren’t here at the end.
They don’t know what it was like.”

  “Abraham could have told them.”

  Xavier shakes his head. “I just don’t think so. I think it feels … intimate to him. Like something he shares with us. Special.”

  Ben makes a disgusted face.

  “What does it matter whether they know though, in the end? Abraham knows,” says Cornelia. She yawns. “What do you think he wants from us?”

  But it’s too late in the night to go down that road. Cornelia and I take the bunk room. Issy and Xavier claim Philip’s bed. Ben takes up a station at the door. If we have any guesses about what tomorrow holds, we keep them to ourselves.

  118

  Gabby got the Ford working in the subzero temperatures, no small feat. I watched her out the Main Lodge window, hunched over the carburetor. Then she snowshoed down to JimBob’s with a gas can strapped to her back. The chains went on next. There was swift steadiness in her movements, as if there was somewhere pressing to go, but the wind howled on and the snow blew sideways. A drift as tall as Nora blocked the drive. If the feds were watching us, they were pretty cold.

  Back in the cabin, Issy beat me at Spit, after trouncing Xavier and Cornelia, who’d promptly gone up to the Main Lodge in search of heat. My fingers could hardly move in the cold air, but at least Nora’s head was on my lap, keeping that part of me warm. I scratched behind her ears like I would with Dog. She didn’t mind.

  Gabby knocked on the cabin door. “Get your boots on. We’re going to town.”

  Nora sprang up. “Can I come?”

  “It’s not a trip for little kids.”

  “I’m not a little kid.”