Shiner

by Amy Jo Burns

  My mother took my elbow, and we stumbled out of the water. My father called after her.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby,” he said, but she didn’t turn. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  The crowd wasted no time thinning out. My father and Caleb stood chest-deep in the creek, both rigid and dazed. I couldn’t look at either one of them.

  “Let’s go home, Wren.” My mother put her mouth next to my ear. “Don’t you fuss about your clothes.”

  I looked down at the blood that had stained my favorite dress.

  “We’ll set it right,” she whispered, her eyes frantic as they searched for the horizon. “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  Ivy followed us back to the cabin, even though she lacked the strength to climb the final hill. She looked like a wraith as dusk set in through the mountain. My mother wrapped one arm around her waist and one arm around mine, and the three of us hobbled homeward. Ivy, blue-lipped and gauzy-eyed, sat with me on my mother’s quilt in the middle of the kitchen floor and warmed my feet in her hands. Her breath rattled. My mother combed my hair and braided it into a crown, just the way I used to like it as a girl. My father didn’t show himself.

  Ivy hummed an old folk song I couldn’t recall the words to. I tried to sip from a bowl of bone broth that my mother had warmed in the kettle over the fire. My head pounded. I thought of my father’s confused apology—I don’t know what came over me—one he’d offered to his wife, not to me. I couldn’t tell what she thought of as she threaded her fingers through my hair. We were trapped. She’d always known it, but she’d never wanted me to. No one had said anything for a long time when Ivy abruptly stopped her rasped hum.

  “Speak,” Ivy said, looking at her friend. A round of thunder rolled in the distance.

  Speak. This was the word they offered each other.

  “There’s one thing troubling me more than any other.” My mother took a breath. “I can’t figure out if this is a man I don’t know or if this is the man I’ve known all along.”

  Her hands quivered at her sides, and I saw that my blood had stained her white dress, too. Her arms bore the scars from the day of the fire. Ivy still had no burns, and still no one could explain it. She started to hum again, then cut herself off in mid-verse.

  “Maybe Briar Bird is finally becoming everything you dreamed he would be when you were seventeen,” Ivy said.

  The brush my mother held in her hand clattered against the floor.

  “Do you remember the girl you used to be, so fearless and bold?” Ruby snapped. “Where is she? She’d never let Briar Bird tell her what to do.”

  Ivy looked out the window and started to hum again. My mother rose to her feet and opened the kitchen door. Lightning split the far skies.

  “Where did you go, Ivy?” my mother asked. “The day before you caught fire?”

  Ivy kept her eyes on the iron sky. My mother asked her again, but Ivy would not speak.

  “You should leave,” my mother said, words she’d never dreamed of uttering to Ivy before the burning.

  Ivy was unfazed, even in the coming storm. She gathered her skirt and left the house without looking back. My mother shut the door behind her.

  * * *

  I slept that night with the window open, taunting my father to come to me. I had no idea where he’d gone, or if he had the courage to return and face my mother’s wrath. As I lay awake, I thought of Abraham and Isaac on the day that God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son. It was an Old Testament story that bothered me every time I recited it to my father. The tale celebrated Abraham and his faith, but in the late hours of night I thought only of Isaac. What had he thought when his father raised a knife to his throat? The faithful believed he was willing to die for his father’s devotion to the Lord. But I wondered if he’d said to a God so willing to let him go, What about me, Lord? What about me?

  Then a sheep appeared, so the story goes, and—like my mother, always my mother—it saved the day. Abraham found his worthy sacrifice, and he and his son went on to do great things and rule many places. Still, I wondered what Abraham’s wife, Sarah, had said when he returned home with a frightened son. Whatever she’d done, my mother’s ferocity could surpass it.

  My father didn’t breach my open window that night, but Caleb did. His fingers, charcoaled and callused, clung to the window ledge. He’d been a stranger on the day we met, just two months ago, and now he was the only true witness to the life I’d led.

  Caleb was worried. His eyes searched my cheeks, my neck, and the bruises left by my father’s grip. He sighed, and his breath came through the window with the night’s cool breeze. His face was tender, the calm before the storm. The storm itself.

  My nightgown rustled in the wind as I came to the window ledge, and my legs tremored.

  I didn’t ask Caleb to come inside. We stared at each other from either side of the window, and I couldn’t find the words to speak.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You are?” He looked again at my wrists and neck, the spots where my body pulsed with life. His hand reached out, and I could smell him—fresh like soap and cinnamon.

  “Yes.”

  “You know this isn’t how fathers treat their daughters.” He took my hand and pressed it into his chest. “Right?”

  His heartbeat thrummed against my fingertips.

  “You’re smart, and you’re kind, and you’re good, Wren,” he said, and his lip trembled. “You don’t belong here.”

  Wren. The way he said my name felt like the wind of a city-bound train rushing past me just fast enough for me to jump on board and let it take me away. I never thought I could belong anywhere else but the lonely cabin I’d been born in.

  “You’d like the city,” he said, as if reading my mind. “There are programs and housing for women just like you and your mother.”

  I smiled. “And no Briar Bird.”

  It felt impossible.

  “Do you know why I like drawing with charcoal?” Caleb asked.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s raw. Just black and white, pencil on paper. It helps me be honest about what I see. I watched your father’s face when you met him in the water. You know what I saw?”

  I waited.

  “Misery. He’s stuck here, Wren. Same as you.”

  It was so simple a truth that I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it. Even Briar Bird couldn’t escape the mountain that worshipped him.

  He leaned inward. “You should have seen his face when he held you under.”

  I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “What did he look like?”

  “Slain.” The whites of Caleb’s eyes shot through the dark.

  I’d beheld that face plenty of times before. It was my father’s omniscience, his caprice, his pride. Anywhere I went, he would find me.

  “He knows, Caleb,” I said. “He knows I took you into his shed.”

  Caleb shook his head. “He couldn’t. It was pitch-dark out. Even if he does, Wren, we did nothing wrong.”

  I thought about inviting Caleb into my bedroom, what we could do beneath the covers or with my back against the dresser. I wanted to feel his lips on my neck, his heart an inch from mine, his words in my ear. I wanted him to touch me. His palms pressed into the wood of my family’s house. I reached out a hand, then drew it back. Somewhere beyond us in the dark, my father lurked.

  “You’re not safe here,” Caleb said.

  My hands slipped from the ledge. This was what he’d come to say.

  “I’ve got my mama,” I said. “She needs me.”

  “She’s not safe, either.”

  “We’ve been safe this long.”

  He let out a short laugh. I’d lied, and Caleb knew it. We hadn’t been safe. We’d been poorly, and we’d burrowed de
eper into our devastated world in order to survive it. I saw then what power Caleb had. He could end my father’s reign and our crooked life just by stating the truth: My father couldn’t be trusted. If folks in Trap ever heard what the famed snake handler had done to his daughter, he’d be reduced to the mortal status he deserved. As much as I’d dreamed of it, I didn’t know if my mother and I would survive his fall.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” I said. “Please.”

  “He’ll hurt you.” His voice was soft. “Or someone else.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered.

  My hand found his. He pulled me toward him until his mouth rested against the smooth part of my shoulder. I felt the high-voltage shock I’d been hunting for all summer as lightning skipped over the hills. Caleb opened his mouth, and I waited for him to kiss me.

  “Take me to Violet’s Run,” he said instead.

  I looked past his shoulder. The wind had picked up, and it pestered the trees.

  “It’s going to rain. We won’t make it all the way to the top in a storm.”

  “Take me to the bottom, then,” he said. “To the spot where Violet fished her suitors out of the rapids.”

  “Let’s go somewhere real,” I said. “Let’s hike to the razorbacks.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous in a storm?”

  An electric current ran between us like a live wire. “Lethal.”

  He smiled and pulled me toward the window. I didn’t bother to change out of my nightgown. He took my hand, and I stepped out of the window and into the dark.

  * * *

  I didn’t realize until we’d reached the razorbacks, until we had to yell to be heard, until the wind and rain snatched our breath away, that there were places on my mountain my father would not follow me. As Caleb and I crossed the footbridge, the wooden slats shook so violently they brought us to our knees. Below us and above us, there was only black, nothing but our two pairs of eyes like pearls in the night. Together we reached our hands into the abyss, and his copper eyes held mine. They reminded me of my mother’s—full of warmth, full of warning. Caleb and I were both outsiders—I in his world and he in mine.

  Anytime it would storm in years to come, I’d bring myself back to the memory of the two of us running like crazy through the woods on our way to the bridge, hand in hand, tripping over rocks and falling into each other. I’d bring myself back to the time when I believed that falling in love was the best and the worst thing that could happen to me. We screamed into the pounding rain.

  When I returned home, I was surprised to find my mother seated at the kitchen table, one candle lit. Her hair had fallen from its braid, and her eyes settled on my collarbones when I crept through the door. She looked at me, but she didn’t see.

  “Mama,” I said. “What is it?”

  “It’s Ivy,” she said, like she’d always known someday she’d have to say the words she dreaded most. “She’s dead.”

  MADE MANIFEST

  Henry had found Ivy lying prostrate in her bed—eyes wide open, her mouth sagging to the side. Ricky was passed out in his recliner with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. When Henry couldn’t wake him, he scaled our hill in the rain to tell my mother her best friend had died. After that he ran home in the dark, chilled and sickly himself. There was no other way for him to reach us. We had no phone, no computer, no address. We had nothing here. The house swayed with such might in the storm that it threatened to collapse around us.

  My mother’s hand held steady as she walked toward the dish closet and opened the King James Bible she kept hidden beneath the teacups she’d gotten on her wedding day. From the book’s middle, she lifted a scrap of paper with a string of numbers scribbled on it. Then my mother picked up Ricky’s cell phone from the kitchen table. Henry had left it behind so we could call someone.

  She had to dial the number three times before the phone got enough reception. Finally someone answered.

  “Flynn,” my mother said. “It’s Ruby.” Her face twitched. “Ivy is dead.”

  She waited, wrapped in the murmurs on the other end of the line. Then she closed the phone.

  “Who’s Flynn?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. Her chair stuttered against the floor planks as she stood. “I have to go sit with the body.”

  A body. Already that was what Ivy had become.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said, breaking the distance between us. Rainwater spilled from the edge of my nightgown. “I’ll take care of the boys.”

  My mother’s arm blocked me with such force that her pearl-handled switchblade slipped from her belt and fell to the floor.

  “Stay here,” she said as she bent to retrieve it.

  “No.”

  “I won’t have you catching whatever still lives in that house.”

  “What if you catch it?”

  Her face told me she ached to catch Ivy’s illness. I found comfort in the deep rose tones of my mother’s skin. She was flushed and alive.

  “Daddy will come home,” I said. “He’ll be looking for you.”

  Her face glowered. “Then inform him of the results of his so-called miracle.” She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and tucked the phone into her pocket.

  “You can’t leave me here with him,” I said.

  “Don’t fuss, Wren,” she said, slapping shut her King James on the tabletop. “He don’t have the nerve to come back here.”

  My mother wasn’t mourning yet. She was angry. She stomped toward the door and yanked it, leaving it open and wagging behind her in the dark.

  * * *

  After my mother disappeared beyond the Empresses, I noticed a piece of paper on the kitchen table. Before the news she’d been writing a letter. She’d left it at the head of the table, and it had fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and found my name at the top. She’d been writing a letter to me.

  Dear Wren, it read. I have to tell you—

  All my life I’d waited for a letter like this from her, if she had only finished it. Whatever she’d wanted to say, it seemed, no longer mattered.

  I kept vigil over the empty house until morning broke. My mother’s words proved true—my father didn’t show himself. I also kept watch at the shed. The snakes lay inside, slithering on themselves. I once feared they’d find their way into the cabin, but I’d wasted my worry. They were as trapped as I was.

  By the time my mother returned, I’d fallen asleep at the table with her letter in my hand. She’d set to rocking in the chair by the front window, and I roused at the chair’s creaking. My mother was wide-eyed in the morning light.

  “Mama?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I tried again. “Tell me how Ivy died.”

  “In her sleep.” My mother knocked her fist against the crook in the armrest. “I told her that water was too cold.”

  “It was peaceful, then.”

  The fist-rattling stopped. “You saw her yesterday, Wren. Did she look peaceful to you?”

  My mother never spoke to me with spite.

  “How’s the boys?” I tried.

  “Already headed to their relatives’ in Elkins, and Ricky, too. The whole lot of them needs to be nursed back to health.” She touched the knife at her waist before her hand fell to her lap. “They are so sick they can’t sit up straight. Vomiting, rashes, bloodshot eyes. I ain’t never seen any pneumonia behave like that. Their trailer is cursed, and I’ll raze it myself.”

  “They’ll need a place to stay when they come back,” I said. I wanted to remain naive, even for a minute more.

  “They ain’t coming back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ricky isn’t fit to care for them by himself.” She finally looked at me. “You know that.”

  I strode toward her and stopped her rocking with my hand. “You
know Ivy wouldn’t want that. She’d want them with us.”

  “We aren’t fit to care for them, either.”

  She stood and paced into the kitchen. I followed her.

  “We’re more fit than Ricky’s family,” I said to her back.

  She turned and stuck her hands on her hips. “Kin care for their own kin. That’s the law.”

  “Ivy is our kin.” My voice bit. “Closer than.”

  “Not anymore.”

  She reached for her apron on the hook by the stove, and I snatched it out of her grasp.

  “You told them to leave, didn’t you?”

  My mother’s face had a thousand cracks in it. “Ricky would have done it sooner or later,” she said.

  “You don’t know that. We could have cared for them. I could have.”

  “You can’t care for those children, Wren. You’re a child yourself.”

  I sank into a chair at the table and let her apron puddle on the floor. I knew they didn’t need me. I needed them.

  “This letter,” I said, taking it from the table. “What did you want to tell me?”

  My mother looked too weary and too thin. “It don’t matter anymore.”

  “Tell me.”

  She gripped her neck, as if some ghost of the truth were trying to claw out of her throat. Then she hovered over the kitchen sink, soaking her hands in dirty dishwater.

  “Ivy is dead, Mama. But I’m not.” I stood behind her and spoke into the back of her neck. “I ain’t got to be trapped here just because you are.”

  I knew the words would hurt her. She spun around and slapped me. Dishwater flew into the air. We stared at each other, mirror images with dark hair and burning skin. Then I left my mother there, my deepest love, to sit alone on the kitchen floor.

  * * *

  My mother planned to bury Ivy later that morning, to keep her sickness from spreading. I’d never felt emptier. Ivy and her boys were my family, my friends, my fortress. They’d brought life into our sickly cabin, even when Ivy had gotten ill. Our mountain was colder now, and strange.