by Brad Land
All done, she said.
He looked down at them, bronze plastic.
I like them, he said.
The stewardess went back down the aisle and pulled a curtain behind her at the end. He got one of the old dead man’s pills from a pocket and swallowed it with the Coke and bourbon. He chewed ice. It was seven-thirty in the morning. He rubbed his eyes, and finished the drink, and then he put his face against the streaked glass at his right shoulder, and the propeller hummed a fast wheeze, and the wing was lit by the sun, and sky behind it, and the patched skin of the ground beneath, each one nuclear, a fission, burning and neon.
THE SNOW knotted in lit patches on both sides of a road from the airport, and the sun burned the edges. Engines whined overhead and tires wheezed on the runway. Terry quit walking, and put on the blue snow hat. He took the dope in a film can and the metal pipe from his right sock. The wind was stiff and it was hard to light. He pulled fast. The metal burned his lips. He held his breath for as long as he could, made sure it got at his blood. He stood by the side of the road and held one hand up.
HE GOT a ride with a slick man full of aftershave a few miles past I the Denver airport. He traded some of the old man’s pills for some coffee. The man kept a red thermos in the glove. He drove and poured a cup full to the plastic top and he handed it to him. They drank it steam hot, and chewed up the pills. He let him out a few miles from the dirt road, and Terry watched the car pull away, and the light slipped. He jumped around to get warm. He shook, and ground his teeth.
HE LOOKED at the back of the picture and checked the state road I and the box number. He saw it matched, and then started on the road. The snow piled between the trees. In a few spots the light came through and burnt holes to the bare ground. Terry thumped the orange spike at the head of his cigarette down into the snow and put the filter in his knapsack. The light rose and fell with the slope of the road. He walked fast, got colder.
The green house was at the back of a hook in the road, through a stand of trees. There was smoke from a small chimney. He saw other houses back from the green one, red, white, green, yellow, blue.
There were small flags, the same colors as the houses, strung long in smiles across the windows. The wind put them atwitch. He jammed his eyes tight, and tried to get Alice’s face in his head. He squinted to make the words written black on the flags.
He put a hand flat against the door. It was hot. The windows had pale yellow sheets draped over them. He stood there a moment, and then he knocked again, and for a long time there was nothing. He lit a cigarette and sat down next to the door.
There was a young kid with long, brown matted hair looking down at him from the doorway. He wore a beard. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times, and breathed out hard, didn’t look him in the face. He stood back and pulled the door wide. Terry shut it behind. The latch wobbled.
The kid moved close to a shallow stone fireplace at the back of the room. There were coals in the bottom of the fire breathing orange and a split log on top. The boy sat down in a small wooden chair, poked a clothes hanger. He looked up, opened his hand a wave to the seat beside him.
Terry took off the knapsack and sat down. He did not take off the blue knit hat. He crossed his arms over his chest. He was cold. The kid poked the fire some more and it caught and wrapped the dry log. It popped, the coals jumped. The kid got up and went behind him, over to a mattress in one corner, and he sat down on the edge and jammed a glass pipe. The floor was pine, splinted and peeled, and water stained some places. There was a single mattress in all the corners, and plain wool blankets on each of them.
The kid came back over to the chair and sat down. He handed Terry the pipe. It was big as his hand, made of many colors. The kid gave him a match and motioned to the brick on the fireplace. Terry drug the match over the brick.
The smoke tasted like the red bulb on the match. It filled his chest, and he held it, and he gave the pipe back, and coughed, and couldn’t stop. The kid stared at the fire and took in the smoke softly He breathed out, and it gathered in his hair and stayed about his head and face. Terry did not stop at the cough. He lit another match and pulled, and then he coughed again, leaned over his thighs, and put forearms at his knees. He turned his head to the kid. The room was cocked toward the sun. Terry held out his hand.
The kid asked how long he needed to stay. He couldn’t think straight.
I’m looking for someone, he said.
Yeah, the kid said.
He stared at the fire, struck a match and lit the bowl again. His cheeks caved and then bulged.
Where do you come from? he said.
The east, he said.
The floor cracked. Terry turned to the door. At the bottom of the window to its left, the sheet was pulled back, and left a slit. Snow fell.
The kid was named Wilson. He was from Ohio. Columbus. Other places. Athens for a little while. He had vast drawing skills. He plucked the blue hat from Terry’s head and pulled it down over his squabbled hair.
The green one came first, he said. Then the red one. Then the yellow. Then the white and then the blue.
He said he was there eight months. He said he was there eleven.
She died, Terry said. Not the person I’m looking for, I mean. Her sister was my friend. Her sister is the one that’s dead.
He looked back at the fire.
Everybody’s got a dead sister, the kid said.
They were both quiet, and they stared at the fire a long while, and it rose, and then died, and then it flared again.
I’ll take you after a little while, the kid said.
They sat quiet an hour, and then two, and Wilson stood up and went back over to the mattress in the corner. He kept the blue hat. He found another one and threw it to Terry, plain dark gray. Terry pulled the knapsack over his shoulders. Wilson put on an army jacket, sat down, and started to lace his boots.
Wilson rolled two cigarettes from a tobacco pouch before they left. The package was blue, read BUGLER on front. He pressed more pot into the bowl and lit it with a match and pulled until it smoked thick. He held the head in his right hand and opened the door.
The snow fell light, soft, and wafer thin, and the air was still. Wilson’s curled fist smoked at the pipe. He pulled it again and gave it over.
Is it a long walk? Terry said.
Wilson looked confused.
No, he said.
Terry gave him the bowl. For a moment he felt like an explorer. He dreamt of maps. He stood stoned and frozen.
Wilson knocked the glass at a heel. The ash fell black and rested on top of the snow. He dropped the bowl into a pocket on the army jacket, and he put both rolled cigarettes in his mouth. He patted his chest, tapped the pockets at his hips.
Dammit, he said.
He started back toward the house.
I have a lighter, Terry said.
He kept walking, the snow dropping faster, and held up a hand.
Five minutes passed and Wilson came back with a box of matches, stood beside him and lit both cigarettes.
Lighters have bad fumes, man, he said. Toxic, I think.
Wilson passed a cigarette. Terry followed him into the woods.
You first, he said.
They went down a hill at their backs, followed a path between fat stands of trees crowded with snow. Wilson was in front. There were footprints on the path. Terry saw one side of the green house through the trees. The yellow house was ahead. It looked the same as the green one. The trees shook, and snow fell from the branches, and then Wilson pushed the door with one hand and stood back.
Terry took off his hat and put one foot onto the pine. The fire smoldered, and the air inside drifted soot.
Her back was fixed on the bend in the wall, and she sat crosslegged, on a single mattress, a wool blanket at her knees. In the other corners there were mattresses and blankets like in the green house. He went over and faced her. She knitted, he couldn’t tell what, a scarf, a hat. He thought the kid meant him to
talk to her.
The door shut behind him. He looked up, and then quick back to the girl. He fumbled with the hat.
Are you making a hat? he said.
She turned up, dropped her eyebrows, and pinched her mouth a smile, and then she dropped back to the cloud of red yarn and needles in her lap. He stood beside her a moment, thought about what he should say.
She stopped knitting, turned her face up, smiled. He did the same thing. He couldn’t stop himself. He felt embarrassed about his bad front tooth.
Wilson coughed behind. Terry turned around. Wilson stood in the middle of the room. He pointed to a woman sat on a mattress beside the window.
She’s who you want, he said.
Wilson went over to the fire and poked it with his boot. The coals caught in flame.
The woman at the window crossed her legs on the mattress, put hands flat inside of her thighs. She wore a long brown skirt draped at her knees. Her feet stuck from underneath. She wore thick gray socks.
The one with the yarn got up from the mattress and pushed past him, and then she stood next to Wilson and the fire. They both crossed their arms on their chests and the fire lit their faces orange. They leaned into each other at the hips.
Terry looked back at the woman beside the window. She was bent to her slim and white hands. She wore her hair long, like Alice, and had the same high bones at her face. He moved over and stood beside the mattress; he saw her face then, the way it moved in the light, the way it touched the light and the way the light touched it back, same as Alice, same as the picture.
He saw her sister in the field, the light hard and bright as flint.
He took off his knapsack, brought out the folded picture. He held it to her. She looked down at it, and then she turned back up to him.
It’s okay, she said. Don’t worry Okay? Don’t do that.
She took his right hand in her left. They looked at the picture some more.
I’ve hurt people, he said.
A sob caught at his face and jerked him. He didn’t feel it coming. He put a hand over his eyes.
Whatever you did doesn’t matter, she said.
He looked back at the fire. Wilson and the girl sat and faced it, shared a blue wool blanket over their thighs. His head leaned at her shoulder.
She let go of his hand, and then she stood up and came back with a lit joint. She held it to his lips and he pulled the smoke in. The jerk rose on him again. The room was warm. The wood in the fire whined lit ash, and it moved slow in the room, around the heads of the kid and the girl, around her sister, in the space between them. The edges burned. He felt the floor tilt. He started to fall asleep. Her sister held the joint in a fist, let it rest one knee, and she looked at him like she tried to know his name without him ever saying it out loud. She put a hand on the back of his neck and held it there.
You should sleep here, she said. You should sleep.
He nodded, and the sob caught him again. He brought his legs onto the mattress and nudged his head at her lap and shook against her.
His eyes split. He heard a flute and people moved over the floor. He was laid down, turned to the wall below the window. He coughed, put a hand at his mouth and coughed again. He wore a strange sweater. It was thick wool yarn, blue and gray and heavy over his shoulders. The wool blanket was pulled up around his stomach. He kept under the blanket, and turned over to the shadows in the room. Her sister was in the middle of the room stuck in the firelight. A man with large and wild brown hair stood beside at the fireplace. His green army pants were ripped, and his bare knees were scabbed. He arched one eyebrow to the flute in his hands. He looked possessed, or drugged, or both. Her sister came to him like a fist of smoke. She reached down and pulled him up. She pointed at the mad flute player.
He’s Hungarian, she said.
She held a deep clay cup, dark and steaming, filled to the lip. She pressed it at his mouth. It burnt his tongue and throat. He drank again after she did and again after that. The flute filled the room, bodies twisted in the blue notes.
That’s good, he said. Did you just make it? It tastes like squished grapes.
She shook her head, and smiled, turned back to the fire and took another sip, and they stayed like that, put their lips to the mug and moved it slow between them, and the steam wet his eyes and cheeks, and after they finished she got another cup full, and they drank that.
Terry went outside and it was cold and clear. The trees bent down and touched his head. He looked up and spoke to them.
Tap, tap, he said.
The lighter didn’t work. He knocked the bottom against his palm and moved the fluid. He realized it was lit when the cigarette was half gone. He stared down at his hand, the glowing torch between his index and middle fingers, bright as a planet, lighting a pink half moon on the snow in front of him. He moved the cigarette over the snow and watched it light more of the ground pink. He laughed, leaned against the front wall of the yellow house. He heard the flute on his back. The drums began.
His eyes rolled back. He didn’t know how long. The dark had a purple hue. At the rear of the house there was a stand of trees, and beneath them, toward the center, a body crouched low on a small fire.
He stood toes pointing at the yellow house and looked up into the window. He felt different, but he wasn’t sure how. Her sister in the orange and black light, the other bodies, the Hungarian flute player, they all soaked to one another, and he couldn’t tell the difference between any of them, he couldn’t tell if they wanted to lay him down or cut off his head.
He wiped his mouth and his fingers stained purple. He thought of antifreeze. He screamed to the window, and the ones inside.
He put his hands up around his ears and hooked his fingers at the knuckles like claws.
None of it made sense, what he just did, the girl by the fire, the light in the yellow room, and the bodies twisted up. He lost some part of his head. It fell from his ears right then. He covered them with his hands. He turned around to the woods and put his back against the wall. The trees cried, the green voices of the dead coming from the needles. He slid his shoulders down the wall. He felt the splinters going in.
THE TREES were still, and the sun out. There were footprints at the snow. Water ran from the roof onto his face. The yellow house was quiet. He sat and watched the sun move.
Her sister came out and stood beside him. She wore the same clothes. Her hair shined damp. She coughed. She looked down at him sitting there.
You’re wet, she said.
I could have frozen, he said.
He wasn’t sure of this.
It’s too warm, she said. We knew you were okay. You were tired.
I think I could have.
He looked at his arms and legs. They felt fine. He shook them out a bit.
Look, he said. There’s snow.
He swept an arm over the woods in front.
It’s everywhere, he said.
The house kept you warm, she said.
He felt the back of his head, and then his shoulders, and they were warm, a little wet from dripped water.
We knew you were out here, she said. We knew.
He felt angry at the sureness of the morning, its direct whiteness, and her sister stood up in it. His head throbbed.
You’re just like all of them, he said. You don’t know where anyone is.
What? she said.
She looked confused.
He dropped his face to the wet snow between his legs. She blew in her hands, and they were quiet. He stood up and knocked the snow from his legs. He paced a small circle.
There’s supposed to be something here, he said.
He sat down against the house once more.
There is, she said.
There’s not goddammit. It’s just fucking strange is all it is.
He pointed at her.
There’s not anything, he said.
He shook his head.
She’s supposed to be here.
She is.
> Where? Tell me where.
In the trees, the snow, the mountains.
I don’t believe that. I don’t feel any of that.
You’re not trying. You don’t see.
I see plenty I see all of it. And it’s bullshit.
You are so sad.
You don’t know anything.
Why can’t you believe that? That she’s here?
Because it doesn’t mean anything.
He clenched again, and pushed at it, mashed his teeth together and cinched his eyes and he fought until it took him, and he sat in the snow and wept at his knees.
She shook her head again, breathed out hard through her nose. She went back inside the house.
Clouds beat the treeline in front, low, gray and pregnant. He stood up, stepped away from the yellow house, and pressed his shoulders to a small pine.
He found the green house. He found the road. There was the ache of snow coming on. The wind came through the trees. The prayer flags shuddered. He grew taller.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you people.
S. Maclntee, Terry and Brooke W, Kerry B, Barry L, Gelblums, Grace, Ian, Lisa M, D Wingo, Karey W, Ben B, Pat DG, Patrick C, J Scruggs, Katherine M, Eli, Kimi F, Christine V, Katie R, Jocelyn H, Wes P, Eric and Cindy B, C Lightsey, Wendi L, McLeods (M, C, M, J, A), M Baroody, M St. Louis, K Martin, Sara V, J McQueen, Danielle B, Erin T, Jordan L, G Singleton, Sebastian M, Scott G, Scott H, Chloe S, Munchos JC, J Marks, Joy, Megg Sully, Janelle, Kat R, Haven, Marianna S, J Ellerby, Mike W, Mark C, Phil F, Philip G, M Sanders, Gary H, J Skipper, C Howard, Hilarie B, Jeremy G, Isaac, Lauren F, Sampson, Lauren C, Jenn and JB Crane, Joanie B, Pip, Cormac, Jeff R, Rebecca A, Lee K, Amy B, Jill C, Robin H, Robyn M, Gabe H, Gabe and Mary in Maine, Susan O, Kathy P, Denis J, J Arthur, M Northridge, Julie O, Jacob, Nick M, Sabrina M, Eileen J, Maria, J Apatow, A Wise, L Misco, Clyde E, D Gessner, Nina DG, Stuart D, Nick F, Don A, Mark D, J McNally, D Bering, D Nikitas, B DeVido, A Oliver, Noah V, Benji B, Mark L, Rob B, Gary, Will, Thisbe, Kent F, J Keaney, Don R, Becky B.