by Ilie Ruby
When Victor first moved away, he had wanted to be alone, too afraid that people would question him about his past. He found a small house in a wooded area near abandoned farmland. He has lived there quietly, hardly alive. The sky around Victor’s small house is always, somehow, a deep dark yellow. It is a swampy sky, thick, with feathery plants that tangle in the branches of the tallest blue spruce. When Victor’s house is dark, when the air is full with quiet, Victor sometimes hears a roar in the trees that makes him want to slip deep inside it just to lose himself in a chaos greater than his own. With the air rushing through his lungs, he wants to push out everything inside him.
There are beaten sugar maples by the highway and a pile of felled branches at the entrance of the driveway and a broken blue mailbox, with the name “Ellis” printed in block letters. No one comes to see him. He has no friends, for anyone he let in would want to know his secrets. Sometimes his house is so silent, Victor wonders if he exists only in his own imagination. Sometimes he whistles just to create a disturbance in the air, proof that he exists. Other times it is as though he lives inside a tornado whose center is always chaos. The inside of a tornado is the loudest place on earth, Victor has thought. He can feel the ruins of his old life inside him, the cadence of his ex-wife’s cries after the boy died are still embedded in his memory, the faces of his two girls, the scent of everything wounded, the images of the ring-necked pheasants. Each time Victor shoots his gun, a calm lingers in the air. Each time he shoots, he crawls inside a place so swollen with absence, it’s the most peace he has ever known.
He checks his guns several times each day when the silence is painful, when he is out of work and at home all day and night. When he is lost and without purpose, he touches the metal barrel and fills himself up with a sense of free will. He doesn’t need to kill the pheasant like his own father did, a hunter who killed for sport. To shoot is an act of free will, Victor once told Luke, a way to harness creation.
Sometimes Victor would take Luke and Old Sally with him for a day of hunting, despite Leila’s protests.
After Victor would shoot a bird, the dog would chase the scent and find the bloodstained pheasant. Luke would trail behind Victor carrying the bloody bird in his arms, and Victor would pretend he didn’t know what Luke was up to. They would both pretend. Victor did the wounding so that his son could do the other thing. They had become two symbiotic figures, each of which could not exist without the other. Both engaged, consumed in this act of decimation and re-creation. It was a silent agreement and Victor never asked what had become of the bird, even though he would let the boy ride home with it in his lap, Luke’s clothing bloody, stuck with errant feathers.
Luke would hold the bird in his arms, sometimes crying, and then take it out back behind the house. Sometimes Victor heard Luke sneaking out at night to find the other birds that Victor had shot.
But usually Victor went hunting alone. After he had returned, he’d see Luke glance at the gun closet, and Victor knew the boy could smell it. The scent followed Victor back from the fields, clinging to his skin and his clothing for days. On this night in May, he is remembering how Luke would try to hide his own bloodied shirts after he had rescued the downed birds, and the bits of feathers that trailed behind him as he’d run upstairs to take a bath. The scent of blood would elicit Luke’s sympathy. But it only made Victor’s jaw tighten and his fingers ache.
Once Victor had become so obsessed with Luke’s strange ability that he followed the boy in the middle of the night. Luke had slipped on boots under the pajamas, put on Victor’s hunting jacket and sneaked out the back door. Victor knew Luke couldn’t see the blood but could smell it clinging to the leaves. Victor had watched the boy locate a pheasant under a small apple tree. Its body was dark, stiff, its wings frozen. Hiding behind a bush, Victor watched as Luke picked it up, wet in his arms. He thought he saw little blue lights flickering around Luke. Luke stood there, flooded in the moonlight, a flurry of blackbirds circling above him. For a few moments, Luke held the pheasant there in his arms.
Then, he opened his arms and the pheasant flew away.
Luke didn’t move, not even with the rain and wind kicking up, soaking his face. Victor knew Luke sensed he was being watched. But there was something there that Victor didn’t want to mess with. And as Victor snuck away, he feared the child even more.
Now Victor stands in his living room, picturing Luke playing with Old Sally, remembering the sheer elegance of it, the fluidity of play and purpose in perfect combination and how he had envied it. How Luke had seemed to float across the grass, always laughing, while Maya and Melanie stumbled and fought over their jealousies. Luke did not care whether he was judged, whether he was ugly or beautiful or stupid. Victor wondered how a child like Luke could possibly be of his own flesh and blood.
THE SCENT OF LILACS has grown stronger. Victor begins to fear the outside. He begins to fear his own dog. He watches Agnes, his pit bull, whose chain no longer seems strong enough. Victor does not leave the house for days on end. From the window, he watches the dog pacing nervously. He remembers how the dog crouched behind the tree one night last week, waiting for him to pass by, snarling. Instinct is a thing to be feared, Victor told himself. It causes unpredictable behavior. Remember why the dog is tied to the tree.
Each day the anger inside him grows. Victor still smells of everything wounded, and he cannot clean it from his skin or his clothing. He hates Leila for what she has done to him. And he tried to make her pay, even more, for the fact that he loved her. They once had a bond. Victor’s skin was always cool to the touch. But Leila’s was always warm. He’d put his icy cheek on her chest and give her all the cold chaos inside him. This is the only time Victor ever felt strong. There was someone for everyone, a perfect fit, he would think, in those early days of their relationship, as her hands and feet became cool and his face flushed. She’d become drunk with the cold, and he with her heat, and it made them both laugh and feel as though they were good. And then the girls came, first Melanie, then Maya. And though they were beautiful like Leila, they had inherited Victor’s chaos. And in some small way he found this comforting.
He could see it in the way they cried and the way they fought. But then this third child came. This pale slip of a child who possessed no chaos, only peace. Luke’s huge green eyes sparked with something Victor could not recognize.
Now, on this night in May, not even whiskey will block out the scent of lilacs. He is thinking of Luke constantly. Stacks of dimes are appearing everywhere: on the kitchen counter, on top of his alarm clock, on the dashboard of the car. It is too much. Wherever he goes he sees Luke. When he finds a yellow paper airplane floating in his bathtub, he wants to scream at the top of his lungs. He cannot stand it. He buries his face into the pillow and howls there, as loud a noise as he can make. For a moment, he is nothing more than air pulsing through the walls and the doors, through the glass windows. For a moment, Victor, gratefully, disappears.
He imagines that one day a flurry of one-winged pheasants will come for him, just as he sometimes imagines that Luke is living with him. He even makes sure the bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups is well hidden, where Luke won’t find it. When Victor tries to leave the house now, he rarely gets farther than the porch steps on the first try. He often goes back inside to peel an apple for Luke. He peels it in a perfect spiral, just as Luke liked. Then he grabs the peels, annoyed at himself, slams the door shut and throws the peels across the backyard.
He believes he has been living in purgatory. He believes Judgment Day is coming. He knows that on Judgment Day, whoever has blood on their hands must crawl around in the dirt until their eyes are burning and their lips are cracked. The sun will burn the whispers from their lips; the sun will bear down on their backs and their fingers will ache with sadness. They must toil until desperate and think about what they have done. In purgatory, they cannot feel anything; they have no emotion. They will not feel anything until their skin is parched, and until they have w
andered everywhere looking for water, and maybe even then they will never feel anything again. They have wounded too many times. On Judgment Day the sky will become glassy and red and no one will be able to see through it, not even the birds. Not even God. Everywhere, the scent of lilacs will smother the trees and blackbirds will drop from the sky.
Tonight, Victor is aching for connection. As he puts the gun in its holster and slips on a large flannel shirt, he notices two stacks of dimes on the counter. In one sweeping gesture, he swipes them off the counter. They fall, tapping across the floor like rain. He takes out his gun, walks outside in his new black boots, and makes sure his dog’s chain is strong enough where he has patched it. As Victor approaches, the dog backs away, barking like crazy. Stunned, Victor tries to soothe her, for he has had this dog for five years. Only recently has the dog turned on him. Victor reaches his hand out. Ferociously, the dog tries to attack him but the chain holds. Victor falls backward, just out of reach. The dog is still pulling on its chain, baring its teeth and growling as Victor crawls away.
He is going out for a drink. Before he leaves, Victor slaps on aftershave. He needs the comfort of a woman. As Victor drives to the bar, he can’t seem to get a certain memory out of his mind. That fateful day of fishing with Luke. Victor and Luke had been far enough out on a small pier, shaded by trees, he thought, in a part of the lake where they would not disturb anyone. They were engaged in battle: Victor had been trying to show Luke how to bait the hook. He wanted Luke to follow his instructions, wanted to force him to feel it. And Luke wanted no part of it. So Victor tore the worm in half and threaded it on the hook. Luke hid his face and tried to stop him but Victor pushed him off and cast the fishing line out into the lake. Suddenly, the line jerked between Victor’s fingers, a tiny pressure. He could see the flash of yellow gills in the water, a sunfish, almost two pounds, Victor gauged. At that moment, Luke began to scream, to tear at his hair, to hoot like some hyena gone mad. Victor grew angry and he yelled and cursed at Luke, but the boy just ignored him.
Victor drew his hand back, and he smacked the boy as hard as he could across the face. He felt the force of his own power.
But Luke didn’t even flinch.
Eerily, the child stood more solid than ever, as though made of stone.
And Victor hated Luke in that moment, for he knew then that his son would never understand his chaos as his daughters did. And that Luke would never forgive Victor his mistakes as he believed his daughters had. He realized in that moment that he had been punishing Leila for his own estrangement from the boy, and at the same time hoping that if the boy accepted him, it would make everything that was wrong with his family all right. But that day, he knew he had ruined any chance.
Suddenly, Luke took off running toward the forest. For a second, Victor watched the boy fading into the distance as though he were dissolving into the air. Victor, stunned, let himself exist without emotion, imagining he was not Luke’s father. He just stood there, watching Luke disappear into the trees. He wondered whether he had any real feeling at all for the boy, and in that empty space he felt a fleeting sense of freedom. He could let the boy run off and perhaps they would never find him. All the burden, rejection and resentment he felt would be gone. And everything would be the way it was meant to be, almost perfect, as it had been before the boy was born. Somehow, Leila would come back to him. She would give Victor the love that she once did.
A minute later, Victor’s conscience took over. He chased the boy, following his trail of downed grass into the woods. When he couldn’t find him an hour later, Victor returned to the dock and drank a bottle of whiskey and thought about what to do. When the rains started, the lake became a mirror of raindrops and trees. It was hard to see. The air was filled with a kind of quiet that made it hard to speak, which is why Victor could hardly open his mouth when, three hours later, Melanie walked out from behind the trees, her long white T-shirt soaked to her thighs. Maya and Luke lagged behind her, holding hands. How had the girls found Luke? How did they know the boy was even lost? Had they been spying on them the whole day? Had they seen what Victor had done? As they walked toward him, they looked ethereal: small pale ghosts in the hazy light. Although he couldn’t make out their expressions, he sensed their anger with him, just as he’d get up and open the front door because he knew Old Sally was standing on the other side of it waiting to come in.
As they approached, Melanie, taller and rosy-skinned with two blond braids that hung over her shoulders to her waist, held his entire fate in her vaporous stare. Maya looked distraught, covered in mud, her hair in tangles, unrecognizable but for the red mouth parted slightly and the knowing gaze that didn’t lift. Victor worried that they had seen him hit the boy. He waved at them. They didn’t wave back, and Victor knew Leila would surely go crazy if she knew. When they finally reached him, Victor noticed that all three children were covered in mud, that Melanie was without socks, that her gray sneakers were wet, the laces untied, and her legs were as full and as white as two soft clouds, the skin appearing spongy and swollen. Maya and Luke stood behind her. Victor wasn’t sure he wanted to know how they found Luke. They had some connection that he would never be a part of.
Victor noticed Luke’s precise measurement of Melanie’s footsteps. The boy took the greatest care to place his feet directly in Melanie’s path as she trudged through the mud toward him, as though the rest of the ground was hot coal. It amazed Victor how Luke could stop time. Putting peas on a fork could be broken down into innumerable steps. Getting into the shower had to be approached from a few different angles before going in, as though Luke was first negotiating with the molecules dangling in the air, then the actual rays of light. Luke delighted in all these little victories, for they were contests he would always win, having figured out how best to succeed in his own universe.
Once at the shoreline, Luke would not make eye contact with Victor. Victor tried to smile as he reached down to pat the boy’s head. That is when the boy’s eyes closed, his head of curls fell to one side, and his small legs buckled underneath him before his body collapsed onto the sand. Luke had fainted, as though the force of Victor’s slap had finally hit him.
Victor carried Luke to the boardwalk, the first time he had touched him in years, with the girls following. Luke’s lashes were caked with mud, his face soiled. Victor tried to play the good father. He bought the children Buried Treasure popsicles at the ice-cream stand, after which Luke seemed miraculously revived. The girls licked the cylindrical pink ice cream slowly, humming softly between bites. Again, Victor tried to gauge whether or not the girls had seen him hit Luke. But he was certain their minds were elsewhere, focused on drawing their tongues around the cones to dig for the illusive white eagle, the prize inside. Victor didn’t know how many of the damn things he had bought the kids over the years. It hadn’t made them love him.
For the car ride home, Victor grabbed a blanket from the trunk and covered Luke’s legs with it, just for show. Luke had already fallen asleep. Victor adjusted the blanket and glanced quickly at Maya. She held his eyes there, knowing. She smiled softly at him, and he knew in that moment that she had seen him hit Luke. And that she would keep his secret. As he got into the car, a warm breeze settled like a soft pillow behind his neck, and he relaxed into it, leaning back into the seat. Then Maya pulled the blanket over her legs and turned her back to him. Melanie, next to him in the front seat, stared straight ahead and said, “I won’t tell because you’ll get arrested. But don’t ever hit him again. Or I’ll call 911.” But by that time, Victor had already decided that he owed nothing to either of his daughters for they kept secrets from him. Victor looked at his sleeping son in the rearview mirror. The child possessed so peaceful a presence that it made Victor hurt.
TONIGHT, ON THIS LAST night in April, Victor has had one too many drinks. He is stone cold drunk, and knows he shouldn’t drive home. Still, he wavers to his car, tries to get his key in the ignition and finally gets the car started. It is late and pour
ing rain. It is not officially hunting season but Victor has just decided that any time is hunting season when you are not in it for the kill. Someone in the bar wore lilac perfume and Victor recognized it immediately. Victor will have to scrub his skin raw to remove the scent.
Somehow he makes it home. Drunk, Victor knocks over the small desk chair and it crashes against the cabinet, almost tipping the lamp over. He sees himself in the mirror: He has the reddest skin of any man he knows. He showers more than anyone on earth, just to clean himself from the scent of everything wounded. But at least, for once, he hasn’t been thinking of Luke. Not entirely. Not at first. For most of the evening Victor thought of nothing but his latest pheasant. He sat across the bar from a woman he met at the gas station, sick from the strong perfume mixed with the smell of gasoline. His wife used to say he was a terrible listener, but all he could think about was walking in the wild field and making the noise only a pheasant would hear. And then shots ringing out, watching the flap flap of the wings, how they’d fall like paper tossed into the flickering air, the surge, the upswing, how the bird would tumble then, and the air would curve around the body and swell. For a moment the bluegrass would reach up, straight into the sky, as if to catch the fall and the clouds would smother over, and everything would be united, all blurred earth and sky.