Beside the red circle, lay the deeds to the house Jacques had bought. Mathis put his finger on the town Callisto. So this is how she’d return? He’d leave after he had rested. He’d follow his son. Track the bear.
31.
Callisto, Illinois
It was early morning when Mathis arrived. He’d walked all night along the river. His skin was sodden and his feet were wet wrinkled inside his boots. His son had not been difficult to track.
On the train he tried to think of something to say. Something that would bring the months back, but that which must be defended slips into insecurity, and Mathis was a stubborn man who wanted to believe in himself. There was nothing to photograph, so he whittled instead. And while he was carving a few words came to him, like a fleet of ships, they came and bashed against his sand in the shape of a poem.
He looked up at Jacques’s house. The lights were out. He looked towards the garden. The sculptures lay before him like a mirage. They took his breath away. He walked through them. I’m inside a half-human game of chess, he thought, weaving in and out of the pieces, watching dew roll down their faces, their bodies, like tears. He helped one that had fallen to her feet. There was nothing skilled or smooth about Jacques’s carvings. They looked painful and frenzied, like animal claws with human intention.
They looked like Nora. What had happened to Nora? Mathis knew that Jacques was trying to make peace with himself.
Mathis understood that monster. How it can rip out of you. He touched the sculptures, mournfully, as though they were victims, then left them and walked around to the front of the house.
The door was open and he stepped inside. There were two coffee cups on the table. He picked up a geode from a windowsill and walked upstairs. The only bedroom that wasn’t empty had crumpled sheets. He touched the mattress and it was cold. From the window he watched the river. It was pewter colored and moved like a long jerking machine.
He walked down the stairs. His hand ran along the banister. There were little maple leaves carved into it as though it were a tunnel of wind. Jacques had chiseled maple leaves everywhere, on door frames, window frames and baseboards as though he needed wind. Impermanence, thought Mathis, and touched a chord on the piano. The room pulsated the sound.
He took the carved figure he’d made of Callisto and twisted off her head. He took the poem from his breast pocket, rolled it up as small as a cigarette, pushed it into her hollow torso and popped her head back in place. She was the size of an arm and he stood her between the coffee cups.
He’ll come back home when he’s ready, he though, or perhaps he won’t, perhaps he can’t forgive me, but then, he thought of the encyclopedia laid out on the table. The map to Callisto, Illinois seemed to be proof that he hadn’t given up. Mathis felt hopeful as he left, the air invigorated him and his steps were light as he walked to the road. He’d walk to town and inquire about renting a room. He didn’t want Jacques to feel obliged to let him stay, as he knew their relationship was tenuous and would take time to heal.
A truck bumped down the path and kicked up dust. It stopped a few feet in front of him and he could see it was full of heavy men. Harold squeezed out from behind the wheel. His hat shaded his eyes and a rod of fear shot down Mathis’s spine.
“Mr. Beaumont?” said.
“Yes.”
“I see you’ve had a shave.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” the man chuckled. “Now ain’t that appropriate.”
32.
Harold walked back to the car. The window was rolled down, he leaned forward and placed his elbows on the door frame and spoke to the men.
“That’s him,” he said. “Let’s get it done and dusted.”
The men looked at one another, jumped out of the car and ran around to the trunk. Harold walked back to Mathis and grabbed him by his backpack.
“Get off! What the hell is this?!” Mathis struggled to break free.
“Only take a minute. Now hush,” said Harold.
The men returned carrying tools and before Mathis could say or do anything a shovel smacked his temple. He saw a slit of weak blue, then his eyes, round as two worlds, closed.
“Take him down the road, boys. Not next to the car,” said Harold and he followed as they dragged Mathis by the legs. “Here’ll do,” he said and they stopped and circled around Mathis.
Arlo parked his car a hundred feet down the road and walked towards the tools rising and falling. Small splats of blood flicked through the air like ladybirds. It was as though they were mining the body. As though they were searching for some wealth to keep. Some did. Some kept mementos. It’s what the old timers used to do too. That wasn’t so long ago. Arlo remembers clearing his granddaddy’s attic and unwrapping a foot, bone sawed at the ankle. His father walked up behind him.
“Well I’ll be goddammed, you know what that is? That’s a hanging memento. They all did it. That ol’ coot, keeping his handiwork after all these years. You go put that in the trash. It ain’t a thing to have at your picnic,” he let out a snort of laughter. “Now I shouldn’t say that. Not these days. These days are different,” he winked and ruffled Arlo’s hair.
Arlo remembered light coming through the old slat boards and his father’s smile. Sure, some said he was crazy as bull in heat, but Arlo had always found him loving.
“Get me one of them fingers,” Arlo shouted as soon as he was in earshot, his hands still resting in his pockets. He’s a sentimental man. He looked towards the river at the distant tree copse were he had left Elora. Now why didn’t he think to keep a bit of her before she got all bloated? Even though it chagrined his heart knowing she was with that nigger, even though, he knew he’d miss her little ways. Her eyes had been calf like. They’d been together years, not donkeys’ years, but, hell, years all the same.
“Let’s wrap it up now,” Harold said and walked over to inspect. “Nice mince you got there,” he said and threw them the burlap sack he’d taken from the trunk. “Fill her up,” he said and walked over to join Arlo. “You gonna tell me what this is all about?”
“It’s ’bout Elora,” he spat chewing tobacco on the ground and didn’t meet Harold’s eyes. “Black bastard hurt her and it ain’t a thing a man wants the courts to deal with,” he said.
“Nope, not these days,” Harold said.
“You got that right.”
“And you got your justice,” said Harold.
“I ’preciate it. And you know I owe you one, so.”
“Yep, will do.”
A few of the miners stuck bits of chipped bones like diamonds into their pockets. They took the shovel and scooped steaming piles of gravel and body into the sack. They strung up the sack and hung it from a tree. They wiped their hands on their wet jeans. They wiped their tools in the grass and kicked bits of gristle from the road where the animals could easily find them. They stood, catching their breath, under the hanging sack.
“Meant to have a heavy rain tonight,” said Arlo. “It’s good to get old-fashioned every once in a while,” he patted the finger in his pocket. “Gives folks a sense of place. Now I don’t need to tell you that this never happened. I may be the law, but I’m also just one man, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. My Elora thanks you too. God rest her soul.”
They all bowed their heads at the mention of her name. Above them clouds of red began to bloom across the sack. Arlo watched it with the serenity of one watching the sunrise.
33.
Elora woke. Mud and wet reeds against her face, green, brown, black, she breathed the violent, lung scraping breath of one cutting through the surface alive. But I am dead, she thought, for there was no feeling in her body, as though she’d been hammered out and cauterized by her own skin. Her body blackened without its rush of life and jetsam of fluids and dialogue. A dearth remained in a way that a canyon is still a living thing, but carved by forces now absence and from her canyoned mouth sounds lifted and fell, not like birds, but the idea of them collapsing midai
r and in pain. Her new form rose, disguised by the familiarity of her previous crust, but inside, she whistled with a clean emptiness and the only heat in her was the brilliance of memory. Hands.
It was the opposite of feeling. The opposite of being infested, but the swarming, the thronging inside the marrow was the same. A cut so deep it was numbing and her job was to realize the pain.
The river dried on her hair and skin. With each step, the ground crumpled, then rebuilt around her, as though she were walking on feathers, billows of white burst through the black, alive as any animal. Using her body was like being in a blizzard, for she had an idea of where things should be; houses, memory, people, thoughts, but her vision could only see white. She managed to stand, bones and muscles stacked into place. She walked through the white out. Beyond the whirling boundary, she can hear the mob of sculptures waiting for her to enter their domain. They know she is blind and they scythe her with their stammers, hisses and wooden hands. She got what they wanted. She runs past their groping towards Birdies and falls on the grass. The night is quiet in the way that prowling is quiet. She has to tell her body how to lift and move. The blood rushes to her ears, each beat of her heart is a collapse into her new skin.
This is me. I am this thing. Alive.
Nothing pronounceable will ever have meaning again.
*
It was as though Birdie had awoken to a blanket of snow. That quiet covering with a few scratches inside it magnified by silence. A knocking. A raccoon, she thought; no. Footsteps. Her mind, an unspooled cloth, quickly gathered itself to attention and waited. She could hear the snap of embers from the fire in the grate downstairs. She could hear a hand grab the bannister of her porch and climb the steps. She could hear the gentle knock on the door. It woke Franklin and the birds fluttered around the aviary.
“Who’s there?” Franklin said.
Was it Arlo?
She rose and put on her dressing gown. In its pocket she placed the switch blade she kept in her bedside cabinet. The throat, she thought, if it’s Arlo, I’ll go for the throat. She knew she could not ordinarily outrun him, but was betting on the fact that he was blind drunk, so put on her shoes and grabbed her car keys. She opened the door and looked out into the darkness.
“Hello?”
She squinted, but could see nothing beyond a sky the color of old iron, ditches.
“Anyone there?” Birdie asked, but she knew the answer.
She felt could feel the presence of another stuck to her eyes like a cornea. Elora. The night was brimming with her, tidal with her. The darkness rearranged in greenish blue globules as though it were constructed of gelatin. Streamers of dull light and shadows rolled inside it.
“Elora?” She’s out of my hands now, she thought, she’s gone, just the spirit going to its house.
There was a puddle of river water on the porch. No, she thought, she’s dead. She had seen her with her own two eyes. Hadn’t she? There are many reasons for a porch to be wet, she thought to herself, closed the door and bolted the lock. Franklin flew to her shoulder.
You’ve had a fright, she rationalized to herself, everything is difficult and confusing right now. You’ve been injured and that’s why you need to keep yourself together, you just keep yourself strong, Birdie lectured herself as she walked with Franklin up the stairs. He perched on the headboard and put his head under his wing for sleep.
“That’s exactly what we need,” she said to him, climbed under the covers and turned off her bedside light.
She lay there, eyes open in the darkness, something outside felt insoluble and not in a human, logical way. It encircled around the house like a memory. Nothing matters that isn’t also invisible, Birdie thought and looked at the window. Love, belief, passion, death, dreams, hate: our lives are totems marked by invisible labors.
The curtains were pulled shut. She felt certain that someone stood behind them. Elora’s blue watery face flashed before her. It took all of her courage to rise and walk to the window. Let’s be done with it, she thought and quickly opened the curtains. Nothing, no face in the glass, just a small circle of condensation where one had been. She watched the breath vanish, but no one came.
*
Sleep came in fits. Birdie dreamed she had entered Jacques’s garden. It was not dark enough. The firs serrated the sky. The stars were cold and lay across the river’s long, broken sways. The back door was open and the kitchen light shone through in a long rectangle that lit up Jacques’s statues. Birdie saw an axe stuck in one. She was too afraid to call out. There was the silence that falls after struggle.
She followed the flattened grass to the river and before she registered Elora’s body, she stood confused at the water tapping against a still hand. In her dream, Birdie put her hand into the water and touched the fingertips of Elora, they moved. She grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her from the river. Elora vomited up water from her blue lips. She grunted like a heifer and the ground went warm and sticky.
The scene acquired her, dispelled her retina of its screams, and insulated her enough to be capable of action. She fell at Elora’s side, her lips were still warm and a weak breath bubbled out of her mouth. Birdie caressed her forehead. There was blood everywhere, but mostly, Birdie noticed, on her legs.
A child, Birdie thought. “Forgive me,” she whispered and opened Elora’s legs. The baby’s head was crowning. “Dear God,” Birdie said. Elora drew a single, horrible breath and then her whole body contorted and pushed the baby into the river’s mud and Birdie’s waiting hands. It was not like any other infant Birdie had ever seen. Skin like the purse of a mermaid. Heart like the sharks shadow swimming within. Above her the stars rotated in a quick circuit.
What she held was not human.
34.
The following morning Birdie went to Jacques’s and found Elora sitting naked on the piano bench holding Mathis’s carving of a bear in her hands. Her body was a translucent blue like a newborn chick’s. The veins across her like cracks, bruises, like the inside of mussel shells and tight red strips that ticker-taped around her neck. She did not seem cold. Her eyes were filmy. Imagine seeds inside a watery pulp. She watched Birdie, and Birdie felt a rod of misery plunge into her and search her insides.
She’s alive, but how?
Birdie sat down beside her and struck a key. She let the sound reverberate and expand into nothing before she hit another. Birdie felt the emptied sounds gathering in the corner like small beings, like spiders. They sat there releasing notes into Elora’s vast anguish until Birdie spoke.
“How did you survive?”
Elora remained silent. She turned her head and looked out the window at the river. Birdie could not comprehend how Elora had lived. She had seen her float away. Hadn’t she? When something happens outside of the mind’s experience we pretend it doesn’t exist or we rationalize it into something normal. She must have come up for air, Birdie rationalized. She must have caught on a log or something and floated above the water. All the same, Jacques’s words haunted her.
I can bring her back. I have that power.
“You can’t stay here,” Birdie said. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she rose and walked up the stairs.
In Jacques’s bedroom she found a sheet. She carried it down and wrapped it around Elora. Either way, she has beaten the odds, Birdie thought, and she needs me. Birdie looked closely at the small round of her stomach. Her skin was still gray from the water.
“You’re with child,” she said and Elora nodded.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”
Birdie helped her to her feet.
“Help me through them,” Elora said and closed her eyes.
“Through who?”
“Them,” Elora pointed to the sculptures on the lawn. “They want me.”
“Okay,” said Birdie. “Okay, you’ve been traumatized, but we have that baby to think about now. That little one is our main concern. Come on, I got you,” then Birdie lead Elora towards th
e yard.
Elora hobbled through the grass as though her legs were disjointed and held her hands against her ears. The world past her eyelids was florescent. The afternoon den of insects in the river’s weeds. The suspicions of birds. The mind racked, like sheet metal music and the slow slew of sunlight against the sculptures as though each beam were a laser. She could hear them burning, that hot and disfiguring.
How could she live like this? How could she not?
Birdie led her up to the spare bedroom and tucked her into bed.
“He’s done this to me,” she said and Birdie removed a tendril of hair from her face and sat down beside her. Her mind was a dark station where memories of that night peeked around corners and through windows.
“I know, I know,” she wasn’t sure if she meant Arlo or Jacques. “But I’m here and you are staying with me. You’re safe with me. No one knows you’re here, so no one can hurt you. They, um, well, they all think you’re dead.”
“I’m not dead,” she said. Jacques peeked through her mind’s window, his white teeth, his hands. “Is he?”
Birdie took a deep breath. “The honest answer is that I don’t know. I took him to the railroad station, but when I got back, Jimmy told me that Arlo had found him dead, which probably means that Arlo killed him,” too, she stopped herself from saying, too, for the woman was here, right in front of her eyes, she was alive and talking.
“He knew. He must have. He knew they were coming for him and he carved this for me,” she placed the wooden bear in Birdie’s hands as though it were an infant. “Think of his garden,” she said and in her mind Birdie saw red and yellow leaves cascading through woodenheads, wheaten light braided in the river.
“He created people,” Elora said.
“Well, he certainly created one,” said Birdie and looked at Elora’s stomach.
“Tell me, when you took him to the station, did he mention me?”
“Yes,” Birdie said, it was the question she dreaded. “He said to tell you to create something phenomenal, then find him. He said that is how you would recover. He wanted me to make sure you found him. He gave me this,” she took his address from her shirt pocket.
The Carving Circle Page 12