The social worker had told him this would all be permanent, that the Suttons had gone ahead and adopted him and that was that. But Russell knew better. Adults did pretty much what they wanted to; the rules were really just for kids. His birth mom had told him she loved him, then she’d left. After she’d made him feel so bad for lying. Well, she’d lied, too, hadn’t she?
He guessed he expected all this to happen; the first signs were very familiar to him. He just wasn’t sure why it was happening, and that bothered him a little.
There seemed to be something funny about the back lot. Usually it was so dusty, even in late spring, that you could see the little clouds of it lifting off in a brown haze with even the slightest breeze. That seemed to happen all day; the air always had a gritty feel, like you were swallowing some dirt.
But today the ground seemed still, almost fake. Russell wanted to walk over and look at it, feel it. He wouldn’t be surprised to find it was some kind of plastic, or painted concrete. But maybe the lot seemed that way because it was so cool today, cooler than he thought an early spring day should ever be.
Of course, he knew why the Suttons didn’t like him anymore, he reminded himself. He did a lot of bad things. Marge Sutton had always told him people didn’t like you when you acted bad like that. And he’d always believed her.
But sometimes it was really hard not to be bad. He would just do something, whatever it was he wanted to do, and for some reason most times it would turn out he had done something bad again. If he wanted something, or needed something, sometimes it was hard for him to remember it belonged to someone else.
His hands were getting cold. He held them up in front of his face and was surprised to see how white they were, and how stiff the fingers felt. He didn’t think he could bend his fingers at all.
He looked around anxiously. It didn’t look that cold. He didn’t understand. The mimosa and oak trees bordering the yard and back lot were a brilliant green, glowing, except Russell couldn’t understand how since there really wasn’t that much sun out. The trees looked like it was a bright summer day.
Except that they were so still. Just like a photograph. Even the individual leaves on the trees were still, not moving the slightest. Everything so quiet. Like it could be this way forever.
He was suddenly afraid he’d lost all his hearing, it had been so quiet. “Hello!” he shouted. Now he was embarrassed, and a little scared about having broken the silence.
He could not smell the flowers, or the trees. He could not smell or hear anything. He wondered if he were to go get one of the oranges from the kitchen counter and start to eat it out in the back yard, if it would have any taste, any taste at all.
Sam, Marge’s husband and Russell’s father for now, thought he was a thief, and a liar. “And no one likes liars and thieves,” Sam had told him.
The day before Russell had used one of Sam’s shirts without asking. Sam seemed to hate that worse than the time Russell had taken some money from Marge’s purse. He’d yelled at him a long time.
Russell knew he shouldn’t have taken the money but he had bet a friend that he was brave enough to ride his bike through Mr. Watson’s front yard. But he just couldn’t; Mr. Watson had been sitting on the porch and would have called the police or something. So he just had to have that money to pay back the bet; the boy would’ve stopped being friends with him if he hadn’t. And he needed friends; he didn’t have many friends.
Then there was the time he had taken one of his friend’s toys, a small model car. He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t have one like that and he suddenly felt he just had to have it. It had scared him real bad—what if his friend had caught him? Then he wouldn’t be his friend anymore.
When Sam accused him of taking the money, saying that no one else could have taken it, Russell had lied about it for hours. He had to! There was no telling what Sam would have done. But he found out that Sam knew for sure he had done it anyway—Sam had said it so many times it just had to be true—although Russell couldn’t understand at all how Sam had figured it out.
So Russell had finally admitted it, crying, and Sam had put his arm around him telling him he knew how hard it was for Russell to tell the truth sometimes and that he knew Russell was real scared sometimes, and that had been nice. And Russell had to do some work to pay Marge back the money.
But they didn’t trust him. They were going to give him back to the social workers; he knew it. No matter how much Sam and Marge said how much they still cared about him, that they loved him no matter what he did.
Russell could see in their faces that they were lying. He could see it in their faces more and more every day. Something had gone away from their faces when they looked at him.
There were more ice crystals in the air. Russell stared up into the sky in wonder. He didn’t know it ever snowed this time of year. He suddenly felt very excited; he could almost jump up and down. He couldn’t control himself! He always felt this way when unexpected things happened.
The sky seemed closer to the ground now, and he had noticed this before about the sky just before it snowed. But not like this. It seemed closer to the ground now than Russell could remember it.
But he soon felt very afraid, and he didn’t know why. It wasn’t going to snow, he somehow knew. The sky seemed closer and closer to him, but it wasn’t going to snow.
Sometimes he felt nervous because the sky seemed like fog, so close to the ground. It didn’t break up and get all misty like fog, but for some reason the trees and Mr. Walton’s house seemed a little harder to see, even though there was nothing in the way that should have made these things hard to see. It was like the sky was so cottony it made you look at it, like it wanted you to come into it, so that you didn’t notice other things like the trees and Mr. Watson’s house as much. It was funny. Russell had felt something like this before, but he couldn’t remember when.
He was scared. He ran back into the house, slamming the door behind him. He had to see Marge and Sam, be sure they were there. He was suddenly afraid they had gone off past where the sky had lowered itself towards the ground, their bodies absorbed. Maybe he was the only one left.
Marge and Sam looked up when Russell ran into the living-room. Sam had a scowl on his face. “I thought I told you …”
“I thought you’d gone …” Russell said breathlessly. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, never mind,” Sam said. “We were going to call you anyway, Russell. Your babysitter can’t make it tonight and we’re supposed to go to a party. I think you’re old enough now, though, that we can trust you by yourself. We’ll be leaving in a half-hour.”
“You’re gonna leave me alone?” Russell said, his voice quivering.
“We couldn’t find anyone this late …” Marge began, nervously pulling at her black curls.
“You’re old enough to stay by yourself a little while, Russell. Why, you’ll be a teenager soon.” Sam smiled.
Russell looked out the window. The sky was so white! It seemed to have pressed itself against the glass. Somehow he knew that if he went over and touched the pane it would be ice cold.
A half-hour later Sam and Marge were back downstairs, all dressed up. “Here’s a number to call us, just in case,” Marge said, scribbling it on the pad by the telephone.
“You’re going now?”
“You’ll be fine.” Sam patted his shoulder.
Russell looked around in desperation. He knew he was old enough; he’d been left alone before. But for some reason he couldn’t bear the thought of being left here. “But … the weather, the sky! It’s all white and it’s come to the window!”
Sam looked down at him with a puzzled expression. “It’s dark out, Russell. That’s just a little snow.”
“No, no, it isn’t!”
Russell ran to the window and looked out. It was dark outside, pitch dark, and it looked like there were glistening patches in the dark. It seemed as if there were shiny places in different dark pockets in the air, then sudde
nly brilliant white ice crystals would explode out of those dark pockets. So white, they hurt his eyes.
“What if you can’t get back, because of the weather?” Russell asked. He turned to Marge.
Marge stooped and hugged him to her. “It’s not supposed to be that bad a night. We’ll leave if it storms. You’ll be okay.” She was looking at her husband with that nervous expression of hers. Out of the corner of his eye Russell could tell that Sam was nodding. “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Marge said.
Sam started towards the door.
Russell screamed and ran in front of him. “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door!”
“Why, Russell, what’s wrong?” Sam crouched and held Russell by the shoulders.
“You’ll let it in! You’ll let it in!”
“What, for heaven’s sake?”
“The sky … it’ll push in. Make us cold, all cold!”
Sam stood deliberately and pulled open the front door. A few stray ice crystals whirled in and landed on the carpet. They melted immediately, while Russell stared at them. As if they had never been there. As if he had merely dreamed them.
“There—just a little snow,” Sam said. Russell looked up at him and saw the same disappointment he had seen on the faces of the Reynolds, the Carters, and the Wades. They were going to give him back to the social workers soon, he just knew it.
“Maybe we should stay, Sam. He’s so upset.”
“No. Russell is a big boy now.” Sam looked down at Russell deliberately. “It’s not good for him for us to give into all his fears.”
And then they were gone. A pat on the shoulder, a quick kiss, then the door shut behind them. The little night air which had entered the house when they opened the door seemed to stay around Russell in a cloud, making him colder than he could ever remember. He began to shake violently.
He rushed to the window. He was just in time to see the twin headlights of the Sutton family car turn onto the main street. It was too dark to see the rest of the car.
Russell watched with mounting fear as the headlights pulled behind another pair of headlights, and then another, and another, until there were hundreds, thousands of headlights making one long snake of light drifting off into the darkness. Away from Russell.
They were all going away from Russell.
The sky was lowering. The glistening white fog whirled down, filling the depressions and irregularities in the lawn, covering the flat areas, covering everything with white. Russell thought about the cold, white sky that afternoon. It was as if streamers of that sky were falling to the ground, covering the ground and leaving the blackest of blacks where that white sky once had been.
The sky had come down to earth, and the whole world was smothered in it.
Russell watched as the last set of headlights disappeared into the darkness. Then he realized none of the houses on his block was lit up, and all the street lights had gone out too. They’d broken away and joined the headlights. The entire lit-up snake had disappeared into the dark.
He was crying again. He couldn’t see beyond the front yard now. He couldn’t see the other houses. There was black and whirling fog, falling cold where the front yard ended.
Russell watched as faces formed in the drifting fog. The sky drifting into hollows and rises, eye holes and long noses. The sky curled up around a stone in the lawn and suddenly a wide, thin-lipped mouth was there, grinning its cold smile at Russell.
An arm curled out of the cloud-filled street and drifted up over the front porch steps, fingers breaking off and blowing with the cold wind towards the window with Russell’s head in it.
He had stopped crying. The lights in the house had gone out. He felt very, very cold.
The tree limbs bent down, the black hair of the trees raking the fog arm, the cold sky body stretched out on the Sutton lawn.
Russell breathed the cold house air deeply into himself, drawing it down forcefully, feeling it enter his fingertips, the ends of his feet.
He watched as the white fog wiggled and jumped, hungry for him.
He didn’t care that they had gone. He no longer cared about any of them. He was glad they had all gone away.
He watched the white clouds forming in front of his lips and nose. He laughed, but there was no sound.
He wasn’t allowed to go out after dark. But the Suttons were gone and would not be coming back.
Russell touched the door knob and it seemed to turn silver under his grasp. It seemed very cold.
He opened the door and felt the cold sky’s embrace. The indifferent sky swirled higher and higher; a wisp of fog drifted through the door.
Houses Creaking in the Wind
He can hear flies striking the window. He can hear flies whispering in the rain. He can hear flies buzzing in the spaces between his thoughts.
If he can only understand everything in the flies’ song, he thinks, then this house will be transformed, fill with noise and bright color, and maybe, perhaps, he can say that he is still alive.
Each day he rises earlier in this house on the floor of the desert valley. Soon he won’t need to sleep at all. Nights will become his mornings.
He has neighbors, but he hasn’t spoken to them in years. Their houses are just like his, so he feels there is no need for words between them. There is an understanding in the way the wind moves, and the houses creak.
When he heard about the first son, he was standing here in this same spot, gazing out these windows, reading the dark before sleep. The telephone was swift and urgent, and afterwards lay like a dead animal in his hand. He put it away and would not pick it up again.
When he heard about the second son he was on the back porch smoking. His wife came for him, shaking, and he walked out to meet the men at the door. Out on the side of the road past their cars he thought he saw the old skull of an animal he himself had shot as a teenager. The skull still had the light of fear in its eyes. He smiled as they told him the story of his son’s death, and he knew they would all talk about him later and wonder why. He smiled because of the joke that had been told on him, but he did not tell them this because he’d never been good at repeating jokes.
He was sleeping when they came to tell him about his wife. They let themselves inside and woke him up. “Another joke?” he asked, and saw them looking at each other, not knowing what to make of him. They were different men from the ones who had come the last time, but they held themselves the same. He was glad to be lying down, because he could no longer hold himself. He thought about sleeping, how the body feels when it sleeps in its own skin. Sometimes we try to sleep in the skins of others, he thought, and we stay awake all night.
There is an understanding in the way the winds move, and the houses creak. He spends all day sweeping the floor clean. Sometimes he pauses to listen for nothing. Then he sweeps the floor again, ridding it even of his footprints.
Each night he waits for the ones vanished to come home. They sit in his chairs, but do not speak. They leave no footprints on his clean floor. He goes out to the porch and his eyes hunt for the skull, but he has not seen it in years. He goes back into his house as if it is he who is just now arriving. Dinner is on the table, and his sons are singing the fly song. Wind blows past the creaking houses and his neighbors all come outside to join in the singing.
He is too happy for words. The house is bright with color again, and the air that moves from room to room is warm as the sun. Outside in the dark yard the neighbors all shout, but here in his warm bright house he opens his mouth to sing and shows each one of his family the song, the flies that have boiled out of his throat, that have gathered on his tongue.
Grim Monkeys
The fleshy mask of the monkey’s face was too bright, too dramatic, like the bad make-up jobs I’d seen on some of the women in Caracas. I held the bright twists of metal just the way Perez had told me to—away from my face, so the monkey couldn’t read my eyes.
I felt ridiculous, some pimply kid on a snipe hunt. There wasn’t
enough breeze over the slow-moving Baria to move these dangling bits of metal more than slightly, a subtle twisting, a slightly stronger untwisting, as they hung like Christmas tree icicles from the rough string. Twisting and untwisting. It can drive you crazy. Things just get too complicated. Most of their movement came from the slight rocking of the canoe, I thought, and from my shaking legs and arms, straining not to move. I desperately wanted to scratch at the gritty slime of insect parts and dirt that covered my arms. I’d been slapping and smashing the insects all day and now rivulets of sweat had deposited the remains along every wrinkle on my body. I imagined that some of the pieces still had life in them—I thought I could feel them jumping, scraping at my skin. I imagined ripping off my clothes in search of them. I imagined myself going head first into the stream at any moment, and whatever fed there poisoning me, taking me. There were piranha, I knew, here and there, although I’d never seen any. Supposedly you had to be bleeding before they went after you. I was more afraid of the snakes, or anything hidden, and slithering. Long twisted things had glowed in the scorching nights of my dreams ever since we’d begun this journey. But the slow twisting and untwisting appeared to be working. There did seem to be some kind of hypnotic effect on the monkey. Its too dark, too human eyes stared unblinking at the metal twists, just as Perez had said they would.
I was vaguely aware of Perez pushing his way through the dark green blades on either side of the water. It was too dark here to see him clearly; the branches joined so solidly overhead you couldn’t really tell where you were. You couldn’t see past the stream, the monkey’s bright face, and maybe fifty feet of steaming jungle.
But I could feel the solstice somewhere outside all that, the sun moving towards the earth, and my thoughts beginning to boil away one at a time from the outer layers of my brain.
As Perez made his way slowly towards the monkey, I had a sudden impulse to jangle the twisting metal just a little too hard, rock the canoe a little too vigorously with my feet, make a little noise to jar that too human monkey from its perch so it could make its escape.
Absent Company Page 8