by Jim Grimsley
You answer, “I don’t know,” and your shoulder throbs where he gripped it, fingerprints of pain.
He frowns and turns away. He says, “Go back to sleep like you’re supposed to,” and you do lie down in case he stops to peep at you from beyond the door.
The sounds of his voice and footsteps cause Duck and Amy to stir restlessly in their sleep and Grove wakes at the sound, sitting up, watching you.
Papa’s heavy footsteps round the circular house.
Grove whispers, “I wish he would stay away from us,” and you nod, but now you can hear Papa’s voice again and it is hard for you to breathe. He is saying something about Queenie. The dog’s name is the only word you understand, but when you hear it a sudden restlessness consumes you.
You get out of bed quickly so the cold air will not disturb Allen, asleep again with his mouth open and one arm shading his eyes. The glass dresser-drawer knobs are cold to the touch. The folded clothes inside have your Mama’s smell. You are careful not to disturb the ordered piles but you dress as quickly as you ever have, considering you can hardly move your shoulder at all. Your coat is hanging ready in the closet. When you pull it over your sweater Grove says, “You ain’t supposed to go outside this early. It’s snow on the ground.”
“I don’t care.” You button the plastic buttons with some difficulty, the pain in your shoulder makes your fingers move slowly.
Grove says, “I’ll tell Mama.”
“No you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“You ain’t going anywhere near Mama while Papa’s in there, you can’t fool me.”
Grove considers this and lies down in bed again. “I’ll tell her when she comes to check on me.”
You stand over his bed. His swollen elbow rests on a thick feather pillow and his eyes are dark from troubled sleep. You say, “Lie down and be still. I ain’t going anywhere but to the river.”
“What do you go to that old river so much for?”
“I ain’t ever seen it in the snow.”
The back door is beyond his bed. Cold pours through the window glass, through your corduroy sleeves; cold from the doorknob pierces the bones of your arm. Grove says, “I was awake last night. I heard what Papa did.”
Winter light is pouring around his shoulders, throwing shadows across his face. You say, “I don’t want to talk about that,” and you remember, for an instant, your mother’s face, the tangled sheets, and you shut the image away, opening the door.
Grove waves good-bye solemnly as if you are taking a long journey.
On the porch you move as if Mama is already hunting for you. The back of her head is visible above the tin of black pepper resting in the windowsill. You crouch low beside the table that holds the ice plants. Through the walls Mama’s voice travels to you clearly, though she is speaking to Papa. “I reckon if you can drive around blind drunk in a snowstorm half the day yesterday you can drag yourself to work this morning.” When she moves away from the window, gesturing to Papa with a bottle of syrup, you slide through the screen door and round the corner of the house like a wraith.
Here you can pause and rest. Out beyond is the white world you watched from your window, only full and broad, smelling of pine from beyond the fields and another smell, acrid smoke rising from a pillar in the trash can. Mama has already burned the trash this morning.
Beside the cinderblock underpinnings are your footprints from last night. Here is the place where you peed in the snow. You walk beyond that to the side yard and the fields.
Now you can see the tracks from last night, where Papa chased Mama across the field and where you children followed, but in the morning light there are not as many footprints as you would have thought. The wind gathers at your back. You can almost picture the moonlight on Papa’s shoulders as he stood shouting into the forest.
You shiver and walk in another direction, toward the river road to the clearing where your brothers were shooting birds yesterday. You walk with your head held high as if you are a grand prince with your ermine-lined cloak thrown over your shoulders, your expression serene as if you are dreaming. Only once, when you happen to look down, you note that you are crossing a trail of crisp dog footprints, a single sere line headed toward a particular point in the middle of the field.
You walk more quickly toward the river, but you cannot escape the image that follows: first the dog spinning in the air and then your Mama again, twisted in the sheets, watching you as Papa holds you above her, and watching the knife in the same hand that holds you, Mama frightened but saying, “Be careful not to cut him, Bobjay,” and Papa making an odd sound, like a sigh, when he strips down-the sheets and sets you on her belly. Mama not seeing you at all then, Mama watching the knife and then closing her eyes, turning away and pressing her hands flat against you to keep you from touching her breasts.
You take a deep breath and shake your head clear. The ground is icy. You calculate each step, certain you will not fall. No one needs to tell you to be careful. No one needs to tell you anything. When Mama’s image tries to reappear you shake your head again. It passes. Only the icy ground remains, and nothing there can harm you.
Inside the pine forest there are heights where you would like to soar, rooms you can see far above, formed of icy branches, curved arms of crystal that would embrace you; but you are far too heavy to float in the air.
Soon you reach the river. The moss is crystalline, treacherous to the foot, so you get down on your hands and knees and crawl till your knuckles are blue. You reach the train trestle, the bed of honeysuckle vine, and you sit there with your legs crossed like an Indian, hands folded in your lap. The trestle is silent. You picture a dark train plunging toward you down the icy tracks, guided by a fierce light, driving your crushed body deep into the earth; or you imagine River Man rising out of the black water, ice dripping from his muscular chest and arms; he kneels, finds you wounded in the honeysuckle and carries you down to the bottom of the river. You are certain he is in the black water somewhere, as certain as if you could see him.
Maybe you will walk down to the bottom of the river to find him. But for now you are content with the cold and you wrap the brown coat tight, stretching the sleeves of your sweater over your fists. Still the cold rises from your blue jeans into your thighs, your marrow. You sing quietly, Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, beautiful river? and you know, and you do not know, which gathering the song means.
You sit there a long time. At one point, from far off you hear the sound of a truck driving away from the house, down the long road. You know that means your Papa is going to work and so you smile. But it is only a little noise from here, and even now you are content to sit still on the snow-covered vine. You do exactly that long into morning, frozen in a trance, singing the same words over and over while now and then a branch falls from far overhead, a cracking like glass or like the cry of a bird struck by a copper BB pellet.
A long time passes. The river blackens. The gray sky threatens more snow. You contemplate the numbness in your legs. The snow is as white as the sheet that tangled your mother’s arms.
Suddenly a voice calls, “Danny,” and your ears tingle.
When you turn you will see the lion, golden mane tumbling down like flame.
The voice calls you again and you turn serenely, smiling.
Only it is not the lion. It is your Mama walking through the snow in the red dress, trudging through the snow in Papa’s old work boots with her white sweater clutched tight against her. The red dress glows. A bruise is purpling over one of her eyes. When you see that you find your voice. You call out, “I’m over here, Mama,” in a hoarse voice and she hears you and turns.
She simply watches you. Her arms relax a little. After a while she says, “What are you doing out here in the cold, son?”
“Looking at the river.”
She walks toward you slowly. “You been out here a long time?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Are you cold?�
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“Yes ma’am.”
She is standing closer now, beside a sapling that long ago curved over and grew into the ground. Her features soften. You know what she is remembering. She asks, “If I told you to come here, would you do it?”
You say softly, “Yes ma’am,” again, and slowly unbend your legs. They are numb from the cold and will not hold you up. Mama watches you struggle and hesitantly comes toward you over the bed of vine. Gently she massages your legs till blood and warmth return. “You been sitting on the cold ground too long,” she says, but there is no admonition in her voice, she is tentative instead, and handles you as if you are more fragile than ever. “How is your shoulder?”
“It hurts,” you answer, “but not that bad.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“Is Papa coming back?”
“No. Not till late I don’t expect.”
So you walk with her. There is no sense of hurry in either of you, and you shyly take her hand and lead her through the places that are familiar to you, that are your treasures in this house, so she will understand why you come to the river. You do not sing now, but soon she is humming a hymn you do not know, and she tells you it is from the Holiness Church she went to when she was a little girl.
When you are near the edge of the woods, though, you both hear a sound and it stops you cold. A truck is approaching from far down the highway. The sound of the truck is as familiar to you as your own breathing.
You and Mama step behind the bushes that fringe the woods. Papa’s truck does appear, but it passes the driveway to the house, passes the yard and field. By the edge of the woods the truck stops and the motor becomes silent. Papa steps out with the empty sleeve to his coat tucked into his pocket.
He watches the field for a moment. Then he pulls a shovel from the back of his truck, hefts it across his shoulder and jumps over the ditch. He walks slowly down the edge of the field, peering into the woods, and finally he pauses before a stand of bare dogwood, branches shaggy and white.
Mama motions for you to follow her and you do, without a sound, keeping behind the cover of the undergrowth.
It is easy enough to find him, in a clearing where two green fir trees stand in a circle of dogwood and cedar, all evenly laden with white. Papa is digging a hole. The ground is hard and he has trouble managing the shovel, but his face is grim and you know he will not be stopped by mere cold earth. You can hear that he is saying words.
Mama nods and watches, kneeling with the sweater stretched around her to hide the dress. You watch too, and after a while you understand what he is doing.
Beyond him is Queenie, lifeless, twisted curiously as if she had been leaping to catch one of your brothers’ fallen birds but fell back to earth herself, frozen in arc. From the distance you cannot even see her wounds.
When the grave is deep enough, Papa lifts Queenie tenderly, nearly stumbling on the slick snow but cradling the dog even then, lowering her stiff body into the grave, and Papa goes on mumbling words.
Mama’s eyes are closed, and her mouth moves silently. Papa covers Queenie with the pile of cold dark earth. Afterwards he stands for a while, studying the house across the field. Never once does he look toward where you and Mama are hiding.
Papa says audibly, “You better forgive me for this. You said you would.” He could be talking to the trees, or the clouds, or the empty air.
After a long time he returns to his truck and drives away. The sound dwindles, vanishes to nothing, and still Mama kneels in the snow without moving.
Finally she walks to the freshly turned ground where Queenie and her children lie. Mama stands there for a long time. She touches the heaped earth with the toe of one work boot. At last she says, “I don’t reckon he could help it,” and looks at you.
You realize this is all she will ever say. You remember again the motion of her eyes closing, her head turning away, denying, when Papa brought you naked to her bed; and suddenly you understand. In that moment against her dreamy lids floated the image of her own River Man, and while Papa held you against her she dreamed of a world in which you and Papa and all the others had never existed. You know this in your bones, not in words. So when she asks you, almost shyly, “Are you ready to go home?” you are able to say yes at once. You are able to follow her willingly across the snow-covered cornstalks, to say yes ma’am when she tells you to be careful. You are able to take one breath following another. What your eyes tell you is news. Mama is a frail woman in a red dress walking across a field toward a house where the doors open into a circle, room on room on room. You are a little boy following your Mama across the field. She has found you by the river and brought you home. You did not go down to the black water where River Man was waiting. But you will return to the river for as long as you live in this house, and now when you choose your path you will pass the clearing where your Papa has buried a dog. The grave will be like a channel marker, and when you are there you will know that facts are your only friends.