Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here

by Nancy Wayson Dinan

  She glanced up at the sky, rocking back on her heels. She could not carry him. She would have a hard time finding this place again and could only note it in reference to the river, a river that did and did not resemble the one she’d known for much of her life. How, then, to remember him, to let anybody know? One of his hands was wedged beside him but the other dangled free, fingers pudgy and waterlogged. No wedding ring, she thought, but the man was someone, was defined in part by his relationship to other people: brother, father, son, ex-husband, friend. Whatever he had been was now gone, but there was still this shell, this body.

  She took her phone from her bag, noted the 17 percent battery, and photographed the man, his face first, then his whole body, caught ignominiously in the tree, then his tattoo and the scar on his back. Her phone beeped at her, telling her to plug it in, that it was now below 15 percent. The sound caused a brief second of panic, and she decided to call somebody, to let someone know where she was and what she was doing, but she saw immediately that there was no signal. She examined the photos she had taken—clinical, the light almost fluorescent in the photo but yellow-gray in real life—then she rested her hand on the man’s scar for a minute.

  He might have identification, and she lifted her hand to his waist, hesitating before she slipped it inside his front pocket, looking at his face as if he might object. The fabric was wet, and she could feel his body through the thin layer, and she imagined that he was still warm. She pressed her lips together, not wanting to inhale, and when she couldn’t pull the wallet cleanly out, she pressed his shoulder with her other hand, lifting him. A deep breath slid from him, the last of this world’s air leaving.

  But the wallet was in her hands, and she flipped it open. The leather was disintegrating, saturated, rotting in the floodwater. Behind the plastic, the man’s driver’s license. The water had turned it sepia toned, made it look like a daguerreotype. She couldn’t see it through the plastic window, and she slid it out, wanting to note the man’s name so that later she could tell the authorities that a body was in the woods, a loved one’s questions answered.

  But the driver’s license was different from her own, and she held it up to the light. Laminated, the plastic thicker at the middle, it had a thin ring of clear plastic on the edges. The photograph was raised—she could feel it with her thumb—and she realized that an actual photo was under the lamination. The typeface was weird as well; an actual typewriter had made this license.

  Roy Spires. Marble Falls, TX. Expiration Date: September 2, 1989. The man’s driver’s license had expired almost ten years before she was born. She looked further in the wallet, and now she saw that the money was older, too, two fives and a one in the old-fashioned baroque style, the kind she occasionally saw as a child. An outdated American Express card, green with a white border, and a Shell credit card.

  A breath while she decided what to do. She couldn’t take the wallet with her; she would feel as if she were robbing the dead. She didn’t want that old wallet with her, anyway. How long had that man carried an expired driver’s license? Or else, she thought, wiping her palm on her pants, how long ago had he died? She grasped the man’s hand as she slid the wallet back into his pocket, then she moved on.

  She had not known when she started how long it would take to find Isaac, but she’d estimated five miles as the crow flies, and she’d thought that she could surely accomplish that in an afternoon. But she had not counted on the small child Caleb, nor on the circuitous nature of her route, nor on the clapboard house on no visible road where a woman tried to keep the vines at bay and in the afternoons read novels to a woman-child who was neither there nor gone.

  She could not guess how much farther she had to go because she was so at sea in the terrain. She’d been walking for hours and she could not even say that she’d made it halfway. She no longer felt Isaac as a compass point, but she remembered him in the river, caught in a tree, as the other man had been, and that was her navigation: Go this way, far enough, and she would find him.

  In the day’s last light, she came upon the flood’s version of a tidal pool, a bit of river separated when the water withdrew. A bowl at the bottom of a grove of pin oak, a rocky chunk of the earth removed. In the bowl, brown water was settling clear, particulates sinking; they were now part of this piece of earth and would be even after the water evaporated. The movement of water was a mechanism, the earth rearranging herself.

  In the bowl, silver to the brown, were a handful of river perch, maybe four or five, undulating and silky. She thought they sensed their new limitations, knew that they had been left behind by some greater machinery, trapped in a foreign place that to them might as well be the moon. This was the last place they would ever be, and Boyd thought they knew that.

  She was hungry, and river perch were delicious fish, even though they were so bony that each bite was a great deal of work. She thought for a second of eating them, knowing that it was well past dinnertime and that her backpack held few provisions. But she was reluctant in some odd way, feeling that this was too easy, that these captive fish were not a gift but would somehow be an exploitation. Besides, she realized, looking around, if she did eat them, she’d have to eat them raw: every bit of kindling around her was too wet to burn. She’d never get anything going in this sodden world.

  She couldn’t stomach the idea of raw perch and realized that for all of her outdoor ambitions, all of her feelings of being somehow aligned with this geography, she had not even packed a pocketknife. She could not even clean the fish, and this realization stopped her. She had a couple of Kind bars in her backpack, and the sandwiches the woman had given her, and a plastic bottle of water that had been in their kitchen even though her mother thought the world had no need for more throwaway plastic. Boyd knew now with little question that she’d spend the night in these woods, sparse as they were, but surely she’d find civilization early the next morning. And if she didn’t? She had not imagined that she could disappear in this part of the world, but clearly what she’d known about her home was only a small part, the reality of it being prismatic and insanely complicated, and certain things she had thought of as natural law seemed to be broken. The past, for one. Things from the past had wandered into the present—that boy Caleb, that strange and timeless quality of the clapboard house, that man from thirty years ago—bleeding through some temporal barrier that she had taken for granted. She’d known that the earth was in some sense alive; all of this held life: plants and animals and even the wind and rain that still fell. But she now believed, in some sense, that the earth was sentient. That the earth was aware and was even trying to communicate in some fashion. She thought about the river’s fingers on her ankle, and how the earth had tried to take her.

  She stopped herself there, still standing beside the little pool of doomed fish. This was a new thought to her, not necessarily unwelcome but certainly surprising. She could not pinpoint what made her feel this way, but she remembered the bean tendrils on her wrist so long ago now, and the way the bees had stung her when she had tried to break free. She remembered the footprints of the scarecrow, and how she had believed that it had come to life, believed this so much that she had imagined that she was following in these prints.

  The light had winked out on the fish bodies, and darkness was settling with an audible murmur over the pin oaks. Underneath the trees, the fallen leaves, ridged at their edges like a coin, yes, but not the stiff, nearly evergreen of the live oak, formed a dense carpet. She pulled one of the Kind bars from her pack, then nestled the pack against a tree and leaned against it, slumping down until she was almost supine. She ate the bar, body nearly horizontal, but her head upright, as if the only thing she was missing were a cowboy hat. Next to her, the fish swam in their temporary bowl, knowing, she thought again, that their time was finite, was even now running down.

  Dark came on, but the blackness was brief. In this time of year, the moon rose quickly after the sun fell, and as it rose, it was huge. Now the moon was trul
y full, and through the silvered and slivered mesquite leaves, she could see its pocked and pitted surface.

  This was a different thing from camping on the lake. For one, there was no Isaac, nor the backup plan of going home should she decide to sleep in a bed for the evening. There was no proximity to refrigerator and kitchen, and despite her recent snack bar, her stomach felt hollowed. She’d learned in elementary school that hunger pangs were the sides of her stomach touching, and she felt now that her stomach had collapsed in upon itself.

  She also remembered a quote from Charlotte’s Web, and maybe she didn’t get it exactly right, but the gist of it was that it was hard to sleep with a full head and an empty stomach, and it was true for her, for a little while at least. That morning, she had left Aunt Lou, crossed the bridge with Sam the soldier, discovered her garden had vivified or incarnated, been almost taken by the river, saw footprints that may have belonged to a scarecrow she had raised not six weeks ago to guard that garden, participated in some serpent-waking ritual with Carla—here Boyd raised her hand to her forehead—been led around the dam by the ghost of a child buried in a pioneer cemetery, and discovered Texas’s own version of sleeping beauty in a house Boyd was not sure she could ever find again. Now she lay here at the base of a tree, famished, wondering if she would see Isaac, or anyone, again.

  She fell asleep under the pin oak, despite the full mind and empty stomach, her hands falling to her side, palms up, her mouth slightly ajar. The forest, such as it was, went on around her. Raccoons inspected her pack and turned away disappointed. A fat opossum with a bald tail watched her chest rise and fall, and field mice ran over her shins, so that she moved in her sleep and cradled herself into a fetal position.

  A short-nosed bear trundled by, taller than she would have believed, had she been awake to see it. Not long after, a saber-toothed cat stalked through the underbrush on heavy paws, its hour come round at last. It regarded her, considering, but turned away. Later, when the moon was higher in the sky, smaller, and the night darker but still not dark: a glyptodont, armored, tail articulated, huge and lumbering, the ground trembling under the sloth-like toes. Its short face extended and retracted, like a turtle’s, and it, too, saw the girl under the tree and recognized her for what she was.

  Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here

  The World Has Changed Everywhere

  The pace of warming in the Arctic is almost twice the global average. Glaciers are disappearing, melting into the seas. In the tropics, the seas are rising, and the nations that have contributed the least to global warming will pay the highest and earliest price. Europe, too, has experienced record heat in winter, archaeological sites being revealed across the continent, from a lost German village to an Irish prehistoric henge.

  Now, in the Czech Republic, the rivers have fallen so much that boulders are revealed, especially in the Elbe River. These rocks hold dates, going as far back as 1616, warning people of what happens when the water falls, when drought takes the countryside. The locals call them hunger stones, noting that such droughts signal a harvest so meager that people will die. On one of the rocks, the inscription WHEN YOU SEE ME, WEEP.

  5:45 P.M.

  Lucy Maud had still not been able to reach Carla and was quickly nearing the end of her rope. Two hours had passed since she had spoken to Ruben, and nothing had happened other than time ticking away. No word on Isaac, who had now been missing since the rehearsal dinner. No word on Boyd.

  Lucy Maud was not a person who did nothing; stillness was an impossibility for her. Now stillness was even less of an option. Who could be still when her daughter was unaccounted for? Especially in this weather.

  And Kevin and Lou—Lucy Maud did not think that they were particularly helpful. They said a lot of stuff about how Boyd was fine—Boyd was resourceful, Boyd could take care of herself—but then their tone of voice and body language revealed that they, too, were worried. They bantered as they always had, as if there were nothing to be worried about, but Lucy Maud could see through them.

  They were all sitting at Aunt Fern’s table, Lou drinking a Dr Pepper as if it weren’t six o’clock in the afternoon and Kevin playing a game of solitaire. Lucy Maud watched him cheat a couple of times—when he couldn’t play, he just turned a card over—and she thought she should have noticed this detail about him long ago.

  At last, she picked up her phone and called Ruben again. Despite his silliness about buried treasure, he was Isaac’s last known destination, and thus the only real lead for finding Boyd. But the phone simply rang—no answer from anybody on Nameless Road. She hung up, closing her eyes, irritation curling her insides like paper burnt at the edges.

  “Y’all,” she said because she had to say something, “I think I’m going to head out to Ruben King’s.”

  They both looked up, surprised at the exasperation in her voice but not at the news. For two hours, they had all been waiting for Lucy Maud to do something, and here it was finally, the last resort that Lucy Maud had at the moment. Where Isaac was, Boyd would not be far behind, and Isaac had been heading to find Ruben King out on Nameless Road. It was a long shot, but Lucy Maud was determined to do something.

  “Okay,” Lou said, and Lucy Maud saw Lou exchange a look with Kevin, some private judgment about Lucy Maud’s behavior. But part of Lucy Maud—most of her—did not care. She remembered how it had felt in that Holiday Inn Express bed when Kevin had been on the phone in the bathroom. She got up from the table.

  “Well, let’s go.” Kevin gathered the playing cards into a stack.

  Lucy Maud nodded.

  “I’m coming, too,” Lou said, and though Lucy Maud wasn’t entirely sure about this, she said nothing.

  They followed her outside and she got in Kevin’s car, Kevin in his own passenger seat, and Lou stood for a moment in the yard. “Well, come on, I guess,” Lucy Maud told her sister, and was surprised when Lou turned around and went back in the house, raising her index finger as if to say, One second. Lucy Maud was surprised again by the realities of Lou’s life, because Lucy Maud had completely forgotten about Aunt Fern, but Lou had not. They couldn’t leave Aunt Fern behind. She would wander off. But she was going to be more hindrance than help in whatever adventure they were about to have. For a second, Lucy Maud hesitated—she didn’t think it was a good idea to bring Aunt Fern. But then she remembered that Lou would be with them, watching Aunt Fern as she always did. They would all be fine, if they could only find Boyd.

  8:00 P.M.

  Carla, still walking, even more unprepared for a night in the elements than Boyd, saw lights ahead of her, electric lights that drew her forward. She didn’t hesitate; it was much better to look for a person than to sleep on the ground. She had no plan, just an idea that the person might offer a ride home or a telephone, though she wasn’t sure she wanted either.

  Her heel had stopped bleeding, but two twin spots remained, so red that they were black. She knew from the elapsed time that the snake had not been a rattlesnake, or if it had been, the bite had been dry, venom-less. Otherwise, her leg and foot would have swollen within minutes, and it had now been more than an hour, and nothing had happened other than the blood clotting thickly, her body staunching the wound.

  She knew, too, that it had not been a coral snake, another of the poisonous snakes in the area, because the pain had been manageable, then quickly forgettable. A coral snake’s bite was said to be one of the most painful experiences a body could experience. She also knew that the bite was wrong for a coral snake—fast—whereas a coral snake chewed to deliver its venom. She was glad for this; she had read an article in the Statesman that said coral snake antivenom was no longer made, being too expensive to make and to store.

  That left copperhead and cottonmouth, or water moccasin, as the other possible poisonous snakes in the region, and she didn’t think it was a water moccasin. She’d never heard of somebody being bitten so far from the water. And if it was a copperhead, she wasn’t too worried. That bite wouldn’
t kill her, though it would hurt for weeks. But this bite didn’t hurt, and the fear that had gripped her when she had looked down at those two twin dots was slowly fading and being replaced by something else.

  This something else—what was it? For a while, she walked toward the lights and asked herself this question. Power, she thought for the first few hundred yards, but that was not it, or at least it wasn’t nuanced enough. Power made her think of the radioactive spider that had bitten Spider-Man, and this was not that. It was more a steady drumbeat of boldness, a sense that her relentless self-questioning was abating. She remembered reading Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands in college and recalled that the serpent was the symbol of the feminine body, and of la facultad, the ability to see the deep core of things. She hoped, fervently, that this was true. She would, she thought, be able to handle whatever came her way.

  Soon she reached a fence, the outer perimeter that enclosed the lights she’d been following. The fence was barbed wire, with cedar posts with a purple blaze every twenty yards or so. She skirted it, seeing what she could see in the near dark. Three large pole barns were triangulated on the outer edges of the property. Nestled in the middle were several houses of varying sizes, one painted white, one brown and turquoise to look like adobe, and one shingled cottage that looked as if it would be more at home on the seashore. Another house, a larger one, two stories and wide, was centered in the middle of the compound. On each front porch, a light, and several sodium lamps on tall poles scattered at regular intervals. She saw an open area beyond the houses that was too dark to check out, but she imagined field or paddock, then a dip in the land, and beyond this she saw the canopies of pecan trees, even in the dark. Those trees were unmistakable in this country, towering over everything else as they did, looking like the trees of some greener and more hospitable place, transplanted to central Texas.