These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  The police officer shrugged. “This clears it up pretty good.”

  We all stood at the same time. I was amazed at how easy it had been, not only the process but also the telling of the lie. A shiver ran through me, as if I’d swallowed something raw, something not meant to be consumed.

  “Why’d that little swine wait to come forward until now?” my father asked as we all shuffled toward the office door.

  Principal Stevens shrugged. “No one knows for sure,” he said. “Maybe because she’s pregnant.”

  The officer shook his head. “It’s a real shame,” he said, and the other two men grunted their assent.

  I couldn’t tell what it was he referred to as being “a real shame”—the fact that she had come forward, the baby, the rape, or the lie we had all agreed on.

  IT WAS A quiet morning, and I knew they were probably waiting for me at the stone patio, waiting for me to come down so that all of us could decide what was next. What would we do in the face of so many unexpected things?

  But the new memory gave me so much more to think about, and I needed to sit with it a bit. I wondered how I could do that, how I could lie for my brother, but then I remembered the look on my father’s face while we drove. The images swirled in my mind—the wind in the window, the anger of my father, the baking pavement as we got out and walked toward the school. The sense that I had to fix what my brother had broken. Anxiety at the impending lie.

  I stalled. I woke slowly and rose even slower, weighed down by what I remembered. The day was already there, and it was bright. The grass was still and the air had warmed, now that the storm was two days gone. The horizon formed a line where the deep blue of the sky rested on the rich green of the grass, barely moving. I stood in the doorway, shading my eyes with one hand, staring out into the emptiness.

  There was something about the light of a warm day that scattered the fear from the night before. Po’s theory, that those who had held us captive were returning for us, had felt so true in the flickering shadows beside the fire, but here? In the daylight? It seemed ludicrous. The valley was too peaceful to imagine some kind of impending invasion.

  I heard rustling from my bedroom, a sound that caused nervousness and other feelings to flutter in my gut. The woman. I walked to the door and stood there listening before raising my hand and knocking lightly with two knuckles. “Hello?” I said in a hushed voice no one could possibly hear from the other side of a door.

  But she must have heard my tender knock, because her voice called out to me. “Come in.”

  I pushed the door open. She sat in bed, her back against the headboard. She had combed her long black hair and it was straight and shining. Her dark eyes searched mine. She pulled the covers up around her and sighed.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice rich and purring.

  “For what?”

  “For taking me in. For helping me. For letting me stay here without telling anyone else. I needed this rest. I’m still not ready to be interrogated.”

  She was a vision sitting there. Stunning.

  “Have you found my key?” she asked in a distracted voice, as if it was the last thing on her mind.

  “No,” I managed to get out, even though the key was right there in my pocket where it always was.

  “Have you decided?” she asked me, her eyes wide with curiosity.

  “Decided what?”

  “Decided what you’re going to do.”

  “About what?”

  She smiled, and it was the closest she had come to condescending. It was a smile that said, You silly boy. What would you do without me?

  “Your brother,” she said, and the blanket lowered so that I could see her bare shoulders. “What are you going to do about your brother? You can’t leave him there.”

  “I should probably go find him,” I said, looking away from her. My voice was noncommittal, not convincing in the least. In fact, the words surprised me—I could never go back into the mountain and look for him. Where had that come from? Still, it was embarrassing that I hadn’t gone for him as soon as she told me where he was.

  “To be honest, I don’t know if I can do it,” I muttered.

  “Of course you can! But you can’t go alone,” she replied, and there was an urgency not quite hidden in her voice. “You need to take them with you. You will need help.”

  “Them?”

  “Your friends. All of your friends who live here with you. They should all go with you.”

  I nodded, but my words went in a different direction. “I can’t ask them to do that. It’s too terrible. I can’t.”

  She looked at me as if I had said something very noble, and she nodded at the truth of it—the deep, aching truth. “But you can’t go alone,” she repeated.

  “I know.” I wanted to tell her I didn’t think I could go back there at all, on my own or with an entire crowd of people, because what was over there was simply too awful.

  “It wasn’t as bad as you remember it,” she said in a soothing voice, looking down and to the side as if she was afraid to make eye contact.

  “What?” I asked, confusion all over my face. “Are you kidding?”

  There was a sincerity in her face that I couldn’t argue with. “I know you have terrible memories of it, but you’ve made it much worse than it really was.”

  “You just crawled out of the canyon a couple days ago,” I said. My voice sounded like someone else’s, someone far away, someone rather silly. “You were bleeding. You could barely stand.” Why did I sound silly to myself? I made a resolution not to say anything else.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “I’m completely fine. Look at me. You found me in the plains and brought me here. Don’t you remember?”

  She was right. Her skin was like white soap, clear and soft. Her face was untainted by anything. Her eyes were sharp and black, and her hair glowed. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, trying to loosen this grip of confusion. I was getting mixed up between finding her and seeing the girl out by the third tree. How long had this woman been in my house? Where exactly had I found her?

  “Dan,” she whispered. “It’s okay. Look at me.” She paused. “Dan, look at me.”

  I opened my eyes. Her gaze was a deep pool. Her hand moved up my arm until it stopped behind my shoulder. She pulled me down toward her and kissed my cheek, my forehead, and then my mouth. Softly. So softly. I closed my eyes and fell into visions of other times, other places.

  But always, at the heart of everything I saw, was my brother, alone.

  MY HEART POUNDED when I locked the house and walked down the greenway toward the cluster of houses. I felt all emptied out, turned around, and disheveled. It was like someone had taken my mind, with everything it knew and believed and felt, and shaken it, so that all the papers mixed up, all the files opened, all the pieces jumbled.

  The day couldn’t have been more beautiful. The air was the perfect temperature, cool on my skin. The sky was blue and clear, and the grass on the plains rippled in gentle waves. I wanted to go lie in it, stare up into the blue, feel the blades of grass against my arms and ears and fingers. I took in a deep breath and let it out, another deep breath, another letting out. Yes, this was it. No matter what else was happening, this was the village I loved.

  I walked through the houses. No one was there, and this went beyond the normal quiet of our near-empty town. Even the places where people usually moved around were empty. No one peeked out to say hello, no one invited me in for a chat, no one offered me a drink. The doors were closed and the alleys were empty and the blinds were all drawn. Even Miss B’s. Even the women’s.

  By the time I approached Miho’s house, I could hear them. I looked up the small hill to the stone patio, and they all were sitting in a circle, talking in murmurs and whispers, their voices mingling with the breeze that moved through town, stirring the long grass, sounding Circe’s wind chime. I felt like a kid late to class.

  I walked toward the patio and ev
eryone stopped talking. Now I felt like a defendant entering the courtroom. Their eyes were on me. When I returned John’s gaze, he looked down at the ground nervously. Po didn’t look away, though. Neither did Circe. Misha swallowed hard. I kept walking toward them and took in each person in the circle. Finally, Miho pulled her mouth up at one side in a kind of apology and started crying softly. Then she pulled her knees to her chest, her feet coming up onto the seat.

  “Hey,” I said, the one word a question. I stopped walking and stood at the edge of the small circle. The charred remains of the previous night’s fire sat black and lifeless.

  “Dan,” Abe said, standing and motioning to an empty spot right beside him, “where have you been all morning?”

  I shook my head slowly, not answering.

  I noticed that the girl sat on the other side of Abe. Someone—Miho, I guessed—had brushed her hair and braided it. Her skin was clean. Her eyes seemed cooler in the daylight. She was biting her fingernails, and her eyes kept flitting up, looking at my face, and then looking elsewhere quickly. She didn’t say anything.

  I walked across the patio, and I had never felt so self-conscious of each step. I was sure I’d catch an edge and trip. But I made it to my seat and sat down.

  Abe walked to the other side of the small circle so he could face everyone. But he spoke mostly to me. “Dan, we’ve all had memories in the last two days that need to be shared.”

  “I thought we were going to talk about her,” I said, motioning toward the girl. “And try to figure out what’s going on around here.”

  “I think it’s important that we take some time today and share our memories because, well, as it turns out, they all pertain to you.” He paused. “Or your brother.”

  I couldn’t have been more confused. But I thought about Miss B’s memory and how I’d had a feeling it was connected to me somehow. And I thought of overhearing Mary’s memory. Miho’s drawing of my brother. I looked at the rest of them: Circe, John, Po, Misha.

  Now what?

  “Dan, if you don’t mind, we’re going to have everyone take turns sharing their new memories.”

  I was relieved and terrified. Relieved because I would finally know what everyone was thinking about, what everyone else had remembered. Terrified because . . . well, I wasn’t sure. What was it about these memories that had anything to do with me?

  I had a sense that their stories might change me, make me into something entirely other than what I was. Could stories do that?

  12 The Daughter

  I LOOKED ACROSS the circle at Circe. She couldn’t hold the connection, and her eyes dropped to the stone patio. The whole time she told her story, she stared at the ground, then at Abe, then back at the ground again. But never at me.

  “My daughter used to call me Susie,” Circe began, her voice almost apologetic, as if she’d rather not share all of this. “It was just her two-year-old way of squeezing out ‘Circe,’ and it always made me smile. I don’t know why I’m telling you that. I guess it all comes together, doesn’t it? It always does.

  “The memory that came back to me doesn’t have a sharp starting point. It’s like trying to remember a dream. There are all these dull edges, things I can’t quite see, but up out of those came this memory. It’s been right there on the edge of my mind all week. You know how sometimes you can’t quite remember a word? That’s what it felt like. Then, last night, I was pacing through the house, thinking about all of this, and, pop! There it was.”

  She paused and took a deep breath. She sounded nervous. I leaned forward. I wanted to know now. I was hungry to know.

  “I’ve known for a long time that I was waiting for Dan’s brother, that I couldn’t go east until I saw him again, confronted him, whatever. But I didn’t know why until this memory came. I still don’t know exactly why, but I know it’s connected to this somehow.

  “It was her birthday. I remember that now. She was turning three, and she loved giraffes. Everything was giraffes. Her curtains, her pillowcases, her blankets. She had a dozen giraffes, anything from stuffed animals to small plastic toys. How strange to remember all of this now. It seems impossible that I ever could have forgotten. I feel guilty for forgetting. I feel guilty that something as selfish as the pain I experienced in the mountain could take her from my mind, could eliminate her from my thinking.”

  She stopped, and I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to continue, but Abe spoke up. “Pain isn’t selfish, Circe.”

  She sniffled, wiped a tear from the end of her nose, and nodded. “What happened to us in the mountain that could have made us forget all of these things?” she asked, and for once she scanned the group, but no one offered any answers.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “the two of us were at the grocery store picking up a few things. She was only three, but she understood it was her birthday. She was a big fan of birthdays, actually. I guess most kids are. And she was never one to sit in the grocery cart. At this store, they had miniature carts for children, so she would push it along behind me, clipping my heels or knocking things off the shelves. I tried not to get upset, but it always hurt when she caught my heel with her cart, and I think I was a little stern with her about the mess she was making. I wish I wouldn’t have been so harsh. I wish it wouldn’t have bothered me.”

  She was crying, but she kept going. “I saw her too, got a really good glimpse of her in this memory. She was so beautiful!” Circe held both hands over her face, and Misha moved to go to her, but Abe held up his hand and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Circe said. “I’m trying not to get emotional. It’s hard and good, seeing her in my mind again. She had wispy blonde hair pulled up in a precious little ponytail. Her eyes were a kind of icy blue, a sharp, piercing blue, and she was sassy! My, she was sassy. She’d fill her cart up, and I had to make a pile at the register of all the things we weren’t going to buy.” Circe smiled, then laughed. “She’d pull it all from the shelves, anything she could get her hands on, and at the checkout I had to figure out how to get rid of it all.”

  A few people in the circle chuckled. I felt a slight sense of relief at the idea of her not finishing. I didn’t know if I really wanted to know any more, and her silence took away some of the apprehension I was feeling.

  “The strangest, most maddening part of the whole thing is that I still can’t remember her name. I can’t remember my own daughter’s name. Not knowing what I named that beautiful little girl is almost the worst part. Almost.

  “It was a Tuesday. That much I remember. The exact date, I’m not sure, but it was a Tuesday. The woman at the checkout was so kind to both of us, not making a big deal of all the groceries in my daughter’s cart that would have to be put back on the shelves. The woman smiled down at her, asked questions about the things she had chosen, and complimented her on her choice of shirts—it had a cartoon giraffe on it—and the perfection of her ponytail. She looked at me when she said this, and we smiled at each other. I felt a kindred connection with that woman, the two of us going about our daily lives, neither of us having any idea what that morning was about to hand us. And we both laughed when my daughter explained her need for nearly every item. I laughed and laughed, and it felt so good.”

  She was smiling. I felt strangely happy that something about this memory, which had to do with me, brought that smile to her face. I wished it would be happy all the way to the end, but I knew that wasn’t where Circe was going. She wasn’t going toward happiness.

  “I needed that laugh,” she said. “I can’t remember why, but there was something about the other parts of my life, something missing or sad, that made that laugh important somehow. That woman helped me to laugh, and it felt like a big glass of ice water on a summer day. What a gift laughter is. I’ve never thought of it like that before.

  “My little girl and I walked outside, and it took me a little while to convince her to leave her cart inside the store. She always wanted to take those things home with us. I think I found some treat o
r other from the groceries we had actually bought and managed to bribe her with that. When we got outside, I realized the wind was gusting. There was a storm coming, but not a normal storm—the horizon had these swirling green clouds, like boiling water, and the gusts of wind would stop for a moment, then come back harder than before. We had parked far out in the parking lot, so I scooped my daughter up and put her in the cart, preparing to run through that charged air to our car and quickly load up the groceries before the rain came. But we were too late.”

  She paused.

  “We were too late.”

  Even the mountain seemed to be listening in on her story. It seemed like it might be nearing the middle of the day, maybe even later, and I wondered if I had really stayed in my house for that long. Where was the day going to?

  “Lightning struck and the thunder came right after it. Before we even left the shelter of that overhang, the rain came down in buckets, and we stopped where we were. Anyone walking toward the store was drenched in seconds. The sound of it was a roar overhead, and all around us the smell of the steaming pavement rose up as the water pounded down. It was raining so hard that the raindrops were exploding where they landed, creating this misty coating everywhere. I didn’t want to take my daughter out in that rain—she’d get soaked in seconds. Why would I do that? Right? And the groceries too. Everything would get soaked. So I thought maybe I could run out quickly to the car and leave her there with the cart. It would just take a moment. Only a minute.

  “I looked around for someone who would stay with her while I went for the car. A woman and her elderly mother had come walking in from the parking lot after being caught in the storm, both of them wet through. But they were laughing, pointing at each other’s soaked-flat hair. Their eyes were shining.

  “‘Excuse me?’ I said to the woman. ‘My name is Circe. This is my daughter. Would you mind watching her and my groceries while I run out to get the car?’ Or something like that. I don’t know. Was I a terrible parent? Would any of you have done this?”