Keep in a Cold, Dark Place

by Michael Stewart

  He gripped a handful of the soil. “Weather may be good for touristing, but can’t say it’s been good for the crop. Must be the curse.” Soil streamed through his fingers and off in the light breeze.

  “Curse?” the man asked, polishing his loafers on the back of his knee.

  “Don’t be talking about any curses.” Mr. Sotheby waved his arms, but the damage was done.

  “What curse?” the man demanded.

  “Same curse that gone and burned down those stables.” Her father pointed. “The curse that blights my taters and loses me what little I have.”

  Dylan’s lips smacked as he chewed, stopping when he caught his pop’s glare.

  The man crouched low to scritch the chin of the passing Jupiter.

  “Fleas,” her father said. “You know what they say about lots o’ cats.” He glanced at the man, saying it as if everyone knew the proverb Limpy was pretty sure he’d made up. “Lots o’ cats. Lots o’ rats.”

  From his pocket the man drew a small bottle of what appeared to be hand sanitizer. Without another word he strode back to his car, rubbing his hands with the dripping fluid, and drove away.

  Mr. Sotheby squinted at them, and then shook his head at Limpy as if she should know better. When he was gone her father slapped his knee and whooped.

  “That there was almost as funny as Limpy wanting to be artsy fartsy.”

  They left her alone in the drifting dust.

  Chapter 8

  Fwit fwoo rumbled the tractor as Limpy finished the lunch dishes. Before she rejoined her family to sort potatoes, she checked again on Chup. Its lungs pumped tiny breaths, quick as a baby’s. Somehow, the tiny, frail creature lent her confidence. As if she was growing into the need to protect and shield it.

  She pursed her lips at the unfinished tapestry. On her desk, smaller farm scenes played out on embroidered potato sacks. Depictions of the chickens pecking at their feed. The barn with its doors wide. The beams of the stables protruding from the earth like snapped femurs. Limpy was never happy with her art, but each marked a steady progression from her first attempts. How could true art be made from potato sacks? It was all she had to work with. Sacks and twine. The big tapestry, that was grander than anything she’d attempted. Even working every night this week, she’d be hard-pressed to finish it before Thursday’s deadline. But Lady Luck doesn’t reward quitters. And she dug into her newfound confidence from Chup.

  Think of all the chores you could be doing instead of playing with the twine like ol’ Spud a ball of yarn, her mother admonished.

  Chup unfurled from a ball to blink at Limpy with brimming black eyes. Its mouth opened—a round hole deep in the fuzz—and it chupped. The potato lay untouched beside it.

  “Oh,” she fussed. “You must be hungry. What do you eat, little buddy? Veggies?”

  She scooted back to the kitchen and retrieved a limp leaf of lettuce from the bottom of the crisper. When she returned, Chup was on the dresser poking at a teddy bear with a long stitched scar on its cheek. Chup ignored the lettuce and kept prodding the teddies as if determining if they were real. The bears were hand-me-downs from her brothers and had the look of boxers who’d stayed too long in the ring. Only Limpy’s clever stitches had saved them from the garbage bin.

  Her pops hollered for her.

  Worried that Chup might wander off if she left it alone, she picked it up and placed the creature in the pocket of her apron. It burrowed in and gave a little hoot as she hustled outside.

  Walking to the grader, Limpy again couldn’t shake the sense that she was being watched from the barn. Had another egg hatched? Jupiter slunk along the rubble foundation. Limpy worried the cats would reach the helpless creature before she could.

  As she picked out rotten potatoes, her mind wandered. She nearly cried aloud when she reached to snatch a particularly fuzzy tater before realizing that it was no potato. Chup rumbled and rolled with the spuds as the grader shook the smaller ones through the mesh. It must have toppled out from the pocket of her apron as she reached for blighted potatoes. Beneath the fur Chup was skinny. One leg slipped through the mesh. If it fell, her father would find it. Chup’s huge eyes seemed to rattle with all the juddering.

  “Now this is the easy life, isn’t it?” Dylan said as he strode toward her. On weekends after lunch, Dylan took Limpy’s position at the grader so that she could stitch the bags. Dylan was shaking his head as if Limpy had done nothing all day but scratch her head.

  Chup’s second leg dropped and its eyes widened in a silent plea for help.

  “Anytime a customer complains about rot in a sack it’s due to your clumsy fingers missing it,” Limpy said, trying to distract her brother from Chup while making a blind grab for her pet. Her fingers only groped potatoes. Dylan’s fist slammed into her shoulder, sending her reeling toward the barn.

  “You’ve a face begging for a fist,” he shouted. The blow sent pain down to her fingertips. Normally she’d retreat to her stitching, but Chup needed her. She pushed her chest out and tilted her chin up as if in offering.

  “At least I’m not scared of walking into town.”

  Dylan’s face darkened. This was a sore spot for Dylan. It was true. He didn’t like going into town. He didn’t like ever leaving the farm. Their father told stories of Dylan, as a young child, never wanting to step into the forest, venture into the abandoned farm of their neighbor, or cross the narrow farm road on which they lived. He’d fret in his room whenever his father went for groceries. And dug in his heels when it was time for school.

  “Scaredy cat,” she called him.

  “Why, you—” he shouted and started for her. Limpy stumbled on a stone and fell back, catching herself on her palms.

  “Sort the blighted taters!” their father shouted. Dylan pulled up fast, dust billowing up around his ankles and filling Limpy’s nostrils.

  Chup gave a squeak as it tumbled into a sack. Limpy’s heart hammered as more potatoes piled after it. She clambered to her feet and slunk back to grab the bag.

  “It’s not full yet,” Dylan said as she grabbed the sack ears.

  “Full enough,” she said and hugged it to her chest before Chup could be buried.

  At the stitcher she searched through the taters until she felt fur and then pulled Chup out, keeping it hidden from her squinting brother. Chup stayed tucked into a ball, obviously traumatized. She brushed its fur against her cheek and hummed soothingly. When it began to unfurl, she kissed it and slipped it back into her pocket. “Now, stay,” she said and gave it a final stroke on its back.

  “I don’t hear no stitcher!” her father said.

  The stitcher was a Stitch-Fast 1000. It was sixteen years old and usually managed to seal three bags before jamming. Today it stitched four and a half before locking up and leaving Limpy to finish the job with a long, thick needle and heavy twine. After years of work, Limpy could push the dullest needle through several layers of heavy cardboard. Today the effort reminded Limpy of her mother stitching the bedroom ceiling. The way the room had engulfed Limpy like a giant potato sack. She fought a shudder with each stitch. Were dreams for something? Did they hold meaning in daylight? And, if so, what about nightmares?

  Once again, Limpy didn’t feel Chup drop from her apron. She only noticed it was gone when she glanced up from her needlework and saw it disappear into the cellar. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought Chup had given her a little wave as it jumped. Her first thought was, how naughty, but a second, less comfortable thought lay just beneath: how wicked. Just yesterday it had been a hatchling and already it behaved like a toddler, always searching for trouble.

  The extra bag the stitcher had sewn closed and the speed at which Limpy worked allowed her to finish before the tractor stopped and sent more bags her way. Judging by the fullness of the sacks beneath the grader, she had a few minutes to slip away and inspect the box and fetch Chup.

  “Gonna throw these into the cellar, Pops!” she hollered. Her father nodded at the potatoes
he swept onto the conveyor with the flat of his forearm.

  It’s a slippery slope to spoof your own father, Limpy, her mother said, but Limpy shrugged her off.

  She hugged a bag to her chest and wobbled to the hole in the floor. She set the sack down so that she could mount the ladder, shouldered the bag, and descended. After the day’s bright sunlight, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dull cellar. The chamber slowly materialized.

  A shadow danced near the windowsill. Her Chup. She placed the sack over the rectangular hole left from where she’d pulled the box and climbed the mound of potato sacks. When she reached the window niche, Chup whistled.

  Chup, chup. It hopped excitedly near the box.

  Sunlight fought through the glass, illuminating the dust and cobwebs of the window frame and the narrow box made of the dark, almost black wood. Limpy scratched at the glass of the window. Her nail itched away the dirt and mold until she could see her father and brother bent over the grader. She didn’t have much time.

  Blowing on the lid of the box sent a cloud of dust into the air. She sneezed as she waved it away. The engraving had worn with age and grown confused by lines added by some worm or termite. Even so, she could make out that there was writing of a sort, but not in any language she understood.

  “Maybe we can figure this out, Chup. You and me? Figure out what you are and what you eat?” Chup blinked at her and nuzzled into the side of her hand.

  She would return later with a sheet of paper and pencil and make a rubbing of the writing and the strange design above it. Together with the rubbing and the internet, she’d set out to learn the language and perhaps discover a translation that would explain what she’d freed from the box.

  Checking to ensure her father was still at the grader, she eased open the lid of the box and sighed. All the eggs were accounted for.

  Thick dust coated the balls and she could see where Chup’s egg had fallen through. The folds of leather that had cradled it could be pushed back up. She swallowed when her fingers pushed up enough leather to form cups for two more missing, fifth and sixth eggs. She glanced around but saw no sign of broken eggshells. But these eggs could have been lost long ago. The leather of these cups was cracked and tough, unlike Chup’s, which was soft and pliable.

  Limpy picked up the blue ball and polished it on her smock as if it were an apple. Now when the light struck the shell, colors swirled upon it like oil on water. She stared, mesmerized. A rainbow of colors churned and swam across the surface and her mind spun with them, eddying and turning. An inner black fire swelled, pulsed, purpled and spread on into red, yellow, green and a brilliant electric blue. As the colors looped, Limpy fell into them, flew with them. Until they faded with the light outside.

  Her daydream was broken by the roar of her father. The sun from the window had dwindled. He clomped toward the barn. An hour must have passed. Chup had disappeared.

  Why did she do this? She didn’t mean to be a bad daughter, but here she was lazing about while work remained to be done. Potato sacks were left to stitch and then cellar, and dinner wasn’t started. She fumbled the ball back into the box and then rushed to the ladder. With her foot on the first rung, she glanced back. The lid of the box was open. She stepped off the ladder to close it, sensing it was somehow important to close it, but then her father roared yet again.

  And she clambered up to face him.

  Chapter 9

  “Go tell it to Mother.” Her father stood with his sausage fingers gripping a potato bag in each hand.

  “But—” Limpy started and he shook his head.

  “No, Limphetta, before your ma. You’re always talking how you want things, but you can’t even keep chores in your head. The rooster doesn’t crow for you alone.”

  After a desperate glance for Chup, who was nowhere to be found, Limpy turned from the barn and shambled toward the farmhouse.

  Inside, she paused before her brothers. Dylan dusted his pants off onto the floor. Connor’s brow furrowed in concentration at the book Limpy was supposed to be reading for English class. She tiptoed through the living room and stopped at the threshold to the music room.

  No one was allowed to enter the music room, but “talk to Mother” meant kneeling before the rocking chair with its stuffed potato-sack-mother and facing the thin smile that looked simultaneously smug and disapproving.

  This punishment was reserved for when her father was both upset and tired. Limpy knelt in the doorframe.

  “Sorry, Ma,” Limpy whispered. She was apologizing for so many things. Not only was she sorry for not doing her chores today. But also for not sharing her father’s dream of the farm. For desiring a chance to learn more. For her mother having died. Limpy was even sorry for her birth. She lowered her eyes from her mother’s stare, a gaze as frigid as the Irish Sea.

  At Limpy’s back, her brothers and father ate a dinner of sliced, cold ham and raw potatoes, eating in silence but for the crunching of molars and the sputter of the ketchup bottle. They finished the meal, left their dishes in the sink for Limpy to clean and then played games of Monopoly and charades. Over the years, Connor had grown quite good at charades. She watched him in the reflection of the music room windows. After the light blinked out, without a blanket and with only her arms to wrap around herself, she huddled and listened to the creak of the house in the wind.

  It wasn’t enough to take me from them, Limphetta? her mother’s voice griped. Now you want to leave the farm as well? Ungrateful child.

  Tears tracked down Limpy’s cheeks. A minute later, something scratched at her mother’s burlap. Limpy peered into the darkness.

  Scritch, scratch.

  She froze, thinking it to be a mouse—or worse, the ghost of her mother, but then it emitted a tiny chup. Limpy nearly sobbed relief. Her tiny friend hopped from her mother’s sack to the floor and then scurried up Limpy’s thigh and onto her shoulder. The creature curled into the nook between her shoulder and neck. Suddenly Limpy didn’t care that she shivered on the floor. She leaned her head into the fuzz, and Chup vibrated like a cat purring.

  Only once her father snored was Limpy allowed to move, slowly standing, her knees aching, careful not to disturb her pet. For dinner she scrounged a couple of carrots, half a potato, and a rind of ham. These she gnawed quietly in the kitchen and offered bits and pieces to Chup, who refused. She crept off to bed. Warm and happy enough with Chup snug in her armpit, she drifted to sleep. Tomorrow was a new day. New days brought hope.

  She woke to her father silhouetted by the hall light, standing in the bedroom doorframe.

  “Limphetta,” he shouted. “You’ve two meals to clean if you’re to be ready for your interview.”

  The interview!

  Limpy blinked in the brightness. Suddenly conscious that her father could see Chup. She brought her hand up to shield it, but discovered Chup missing.

  Her father stomped back outside. She had one hour to prepare for the most important interview of her life. But even more exciting, Limpy’s father had been the one to remind her. He had helped her.

  Stiff and sore from kneeling, Limpy yearned for a hot shower, but first she needed to find Chup. She hauled herself out of bed. Her muscles slowly began to loosen. The top of the chest was wide open and Chup gone. The potato she’d given Chup to eat still rested untouched in one corner of the box. Poor Chup must be starving.

  She searched under the bed and in the drawers of her dresser. She frowned with her hands on her hips.

  “Chup, chup,” she said and cocked an ear. “Chup, chup, chup.” Nothing.

  Now she had even less time and still no Chup.

  She fetched milk and some mashed potato from the kitchen, thinking that perhaps Chup was like an infant and needed food easier to chew, and left it on her dresser. After her shower and brushing her teeth and hair, she had a few more minutes before the arrival of the interviewer. She set pen to paper and began drafting her artist’s statement, which was supposed to accompany her art and be about
what she felt her art meant to the world.

  Dear Scholarship Committee,

  My name is Limphetta O’Malley and I think my art is important because . . .

  Why?

  She studied the potato sacks on her dresser. Each was painstakingly rendered in twine, some dyed different colors, others left the shade she called twine-brown, a slightly lighter shade than the sack itself. Why would anyone like her potato sack art? Only Ms. Summerfield had said she liked it and lots of people had seen it. Limpy would be better off making potato stamps or finger painting.

  She gritted her teeth and scribbled, I want to become an artist so that I can show that art comes from everywhere. It . . . it can be found in the soil of the farm. It can be found in the calluses of my fingertips and a rough woven sack. But I want it to express more! My art is trapped in potato sacks. I want more than twine. I want silk and brilliant blues, the blues you see in glaciers, greens from the wings of emerald butterflies. I want to free my art and free myself to become who I hope I can be!!!

  She knew so many exclamation points were silly, but the scholarship committee would never ever see this draft. I want to be with other people who love art as much as I do. Art tells us about life. Artists are wizards, bringing life to the canvas or the clay or the wool with their fingertips. But . . . a potato needs soil, air, water and sun to grow. I need to be taught. I do.

  A weak knock came at the front door and she put her pen down, leaving the letter unfinished on her dresser.

  “Chup?” she made a final call and then ran to greet the interviewer. When she opened the door, the man gave her a feeble smile. Over his stiff shoulder, she caught her father’s uncertain glare.

  “Hello . . .” She’d forgotten his name.