by Mitch Cullin
But what was in the buckets?
Eight large containers, placed around the body. The one nearest his head, full and murky; my father’s rotten blood, thick as molasses and sanguine, almost reaching the rim - some on the tarp, drops spattered here and there.
And why the bail of wire? The tacks? The brushes? The saw and claw-hammer? The scissors? The scalpel? The paring knife? And all that cotton batting? And the assorted needles? The ball of twine? The box of borx and the paper towels and the cans of Lysol and the rubber gloves -- and the dozen or so odd-shaped canisters and bottles?
Was anything forgotten?
"Wrong, child, who welcomed you down here?"
"Not me, Dell, l didn’t-”
The living room wasn’t the living room; it’d become an operating theater. And Dell was surgeon. And Dickens the nurse.
And my father-
"So much damage already. But I’ll save what’s left, right? He’ll never be the same, poor man.”
There I stood beside the wood-burning stove, uncomprehending, a rag doll unable to speak.
"Yes, Rose, wigs and blush won’t cut it, child. You’re a baby, yes, yes. And now you’ve stumbled upon my calling, of course. So stay put and watch if you must -- but know this -- be quiet or else. I can only do so much, right? Audiences and peeping toms make me a nervous nelly. This isn’t fun, sad man -- sad sad man." .
Her calling required dishwashing gloves and the scalpel, but not the hood and helmet. She’d gathered her hair into a bun, had donned fishing waders that were mostly concealed underneath her housedress. And how familiar she was with my father, straddling him, shaking her head, saying, "To meet once more -- and like this -- what an unfortunate shame. I won’t let you go this time, I won’t.”
She knew him. She knew his name.
"Sad Noah -- into my arms again. The Rose child is yours, I suppose. You never told me, no, no.” She continued speaking to my father all the while, touching him here and there as she worked, muttering, "There’s never been another, Noah. No, no, no, never another, you’ve known that. I’ve waited for you these years, so now you’re staying put. I'm keeping you -- you won’t be leaving me anymore. I'm protecting you, right? And the Rose child, she’s family now, see? She’ll be fine, darling one. But she’ll stay here with you, because this is where you belong. And I’m so close, right? I’rn just across the tracks. And this way, of course, you won’t be going anywhere. Not somewhere else, or in the ground. Strangers won’t take you away. You’ll stay put for a long while. No more running away.” Then she kissed him on the lips. She kissed my father, saying, "I love you so much, dear sweet man -- so much-”
And how intimate she was while making an incision along the middle of his belly, cutting up to the center of his breast bone. How handy she was with that razor-sharp scalpel -- slicing each of his palms, continuing a little ways along the back of the wrists -- then piercing his soles; the scalpel traveling onward, steadily, over the ankles.
"Sinister apples,” she uttered when an incision was completed. "Sinister sinister apples.”
But those weren’t the words Dickens repeated; mumbling as he went outside, gripping the bucket of my father’s blood: "I’m tired tired tired-"
And so was I, perhaps. Or possibly shock -- not sleep -- overtook me during that long night, bowing my head, bringin my body to the floor, drawing my knees in toward my ribs. And if Classique had been there, she could’ve told me what transpired while I lay unconscious.
Or perhaps I was awake and observed it all -- how the tools were used, how the skin was peeled, how the intestines were held. The gristle and tissue cleaned from the nose. The brain spoon made by hammering and shaping a wire tip. The eyeballs snipped from the sockets. The removal of tendons. My father’s meat scraped and sheared, dumped into buckets. The fat trimmed from the underside of his skin. The bones sprinkled with powdered borax -- and the heavy wire fashioned into strips, bunched into balls. Each bucket now filled and hurried outside. Dickens in the yard-surrounded by buckets, digging the earth with a spade -- as sunlight began filtering through the Johnsongrass.
Imagination or memory?
"Sinister apples.”
Dell the butcher, rolling my father this way and that on the tarp, sewing him together. Then the smell of varnish, like nail polish, obliterating his stink.
And did I dream? W.as it the mystery train rattling at dawn, shaking me where I slept?
"Rise, Rose-”
Dell was nudging me with a wader.
"Rise and behold Noah."
Rise and behold my father, arms at his side, legs straight; glistening, coated with varnish, mended and stitched -- except for a rabbit-hole where his navel once budded, strands of wire lurking within. A hole bigger than my fist, cavernous, waiting to be searned.
"Is he better?" I asked.
"Of course,” Dell replied, "of course.”
But he didn’t look anything like my father. She’d given him a haircut, cropping his hair close to his scalp. His eyelids were sewn shut, bits of twine appearing as overgrown eyelashes. And his skin was lumpy in places, deformed. Still, he didn’t seem miserable. The varnish gave him life. He glowed.
"You’ll offer him a gift, yes?”
Dell pointed at the hole.
"Something that’s dear to you, Rose. Something he can keep by his heart.”
"Like what?” ·
"No, no, you decide. You pick the treasure for the chest.”
But what could I offer?
"Wait, I know."
Two heads, the traitors -- Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans, both screaming and weeping as I lowered them into the hole.
"Not me! Not me!”
"Please, please, please-”
"Goodbye,” I said, letting them drop. "Have a safe trip."
And they wouldn’t stop blubbering, even after Dell had sewed up the hole and applied the final coat of varnish. I could hear them, echoing inside my father.
"Help us! Help us!”
"There’s no light and we can’t breathe!”
Then a funny thing happened, I started crying. Tears surged, splashing from my lashes, streaming along my cheeks. Sobs caught in my throat.
"It’s the fumes, of course,” Dell said.
She reached out, resting a gloved hand on my shoulder. And when I moved to embrace her, she stepped back, withdrawing her arm.
"It’s unhealthy for your lungs, these fumes. Go to the porch and draw in. Go, I say -- draw in."
So I trudged outside -- brushing dry the tears, stifling the sobs -- and breathed on the porch. Only a hint of Lysol and varnish persisted, sneaking through the open door and raised windows. Otherwise, the morning air smelled fresh and cool, like spring water. And at last the sun was ending the dark hours; a reddish hue burned beyond the sorghum, bleeding under the starry sky.
In the yard, Dickens scooped dirt with the spade, wearily replenishing the pit he’d created. The buckets littered the ground, empty and upturned among the weeds. During the night he’d acted as Dell’s helper, fetching what tools she asked for, taking what was already used -- or wasn't needed -- and placing them into one of the four duffel bags on the porch. But now he was spent, pausing between scoops, adjusting his goggles and wiping his brow.
"When he’s done, we’ll be going.”
Dell brought me jerky, three pieces.
"Tonight I'll return,” she said. "But l’m tired as sin and my work is accomplished."
I began devouring the jerky while she slipped off the gloves, gnawing and smacking as she tossed the gloves on top of a duffel bag. Then she lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. And I caught a glimpse of her pirate-eye, the milk-white pupil and iris. A dead peeper-that’s what my father called a baked trout’s eyeball; that’s why I didn’t eat his trout. I hated those eyes.
Dell lowered the glasses and found me with her good peeper. She jiggled a thumb at the duffel bags.
"They’ll remain for the time being. Don’t mess with th
e contents, please.”
I nodded, chewing.
"Tonight we’ll put your house in order. An untidy home means an untidy person. This is where you belong, this is your place. So you get rest. And leave Noah be -- he must dry, understand?"
I imagined my father withered like a chunk of jerky, his skin tightening and growing brown.
"He’s a bog man,” I said.
"Nonsense, such dribble," Dell replied, and her ferociousness simmered below the surface; her good eye glared and her lips tapered. "Rose, that man is no bogeyman! What a terrible thing to say, horrible!”
She turned -- her housedress swishing against my knees - and marched away, shielding her face, protecting herself from a bee attack. I watched as she pounded down the front steps in her waders. And just then I heard the squirrel overhead, scampering on the steel awning. Dell heard him too. She twisted around in the yard, peering between fingers, glowering at the roof. Her hands parted briefly and she spit.
"Nasty-!" she cursed the squirrel.
And the squirrel chattered and ran. He tore over the awning, no doubt heading for his knothole.
Then Dell ambled toward Dickens, who had finished scooping dirt and was stomping on the pit with his flip-flops. And I tried not to think about what had slid from the buckets, what was now buried there in the yard. I wanted to eat and not think about anything.
But my brain wouldrft quit.
World full of holes, I thought. Holes everywhere, full of people and things. Squirrels and doll heads and bog men. Things go inside holes and sometimes never come out again for a thousand years. Some houses are like holes too, like tombs.
I ripped at the jerky, picturing this mummy that was once on TV. He was in Egypt. He was a king. Several of the men who discovered him died mysteriously. One choked on his vomit, another was smashed by a slab of marble. The TV voice said murnrnies had strange powers.
Dell and Dickens wandered toward the cattle trail, disappearing among the high grass. And I swallowed, wondering if my father had any powers, if it would take all day for him to dry.
17
Like an airship descending -- the picnic basket landed beside the wood-burning stove, the silverware clanked, and Dell said, pulling back the top, removing a foil-covered plate from within, as if she were proffering a cargo of rare jewels, "For the Rose child of dear Noah-"
Beer-Braised Rabbit, she explained, with carrots and onions and potatoes. A thermos of apple juice. Pound cake for desert, one slice.
"A very special treat.”
She’d returned after nightfall, hoodless and without Dickens, in unusually cheerful spirits, bringing the basket and the plaid quilt.
"We’ve chores ahead," she told me, "so eat. Stuff yourself."
It was an indoor picnic, and I was the guest of honor- swigging from the thermos, alternating bites of rabbit with bites of cake -- watching as Dell wrapped my father in the tarp, bundling him like a mummy. Then she rolled him up in the quilt until only his head was exposed, and used safety pins to join the fabric and bind the untucked corners.
"Looks like a burrito,” I said.
"Ridiculous. Don’t speak with food in your mouth, you’ll choke.”
When I was done eating, we straightened the furniture in the living room, and folded my father’s clothes, stacking them neatly on the leather chair. Then Dell asked about the map dropping from the wall.
"It’s JutIand,” I said, "Or Denmark, I’m not sure.”
"And why does it exist here?”
I shrugged.
"We’re supposed to be in Jutland instead of Texas. It’s his favorite place to live. But I guess we got lost or something, I guess."
"Rose, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
She yanked the map from the wall, squinted her good eye, and studied Denmark closely.
"What a strange secret,” she finally said, looking at my father, addressing him. "I knew you so well and you never told me. No, this isn’t right, no."
A frown crossed her face as she crimped the map into a compact square, creasing the edges. Then Denmark vanished in a pocket of her housedress. She patted the pocket twice, glancing at me.
"Enough of that nonsense,” she said. "Your house must be ordered. There’s too much filth, of course. We must clean clean clean.”
And that’s what we did.
In a duffel bag on the porch, there was a feather duster and a no-wax cleaning spray and plastic trash sacks and a sponge. Grandmother had a broom and dustpan in the kitchen. So my job was sweeping. Dell dusted. We started downstairs, in the living room, and worked our way upstairs, sweeping and dusting, collecting grime, making gray and fuzzy piles as we went. She whistled, blowing her pretty song, dancing the feather duster across windowsills, across the dining room table and the oak sideboard. I listened to her song, humming it to myself, while gathering dead june bugs and dirt balls, while dustpanning cracker crumbs and army ant bodies. And soon the air became rich with particles. My nostrils tingled, and both Dell and I sneezed from time to time.
"Mold gets in your head, makes you sick.”
We were in the kitchen. Dell dropped the remaining slices of Wonder Bread into a trash sack.
"Crackers are stale, no good, probably sampled by mice."
Into the trash sack.
"But you won’t want for food,” she said. "Dickens will bring your supper.”
Then she wiped down the counter and sink. She cleaned peanut butter off the peanut butter jar, dumped water from the gallon water jugs.
"Bad water is poison."
"What can I drink then?”
She set the jugs on the floor.
"I’ll fill them at home and have Dickens bring them ‘round tomorrow. See, Rose, we’ll care for you, right? We share Noah now. He's ours and you’re his. You brought him back to me, I think. You understand, correct? You’re part of the family now -- and this is where you belong, right? So we can’t have strangers, of course. If they come, they’ll take your father from both of us. It’s very simple -- strangers always create messes, and messes mean problems. But I fix things, child. I stop Death from proceeding, and I keep troublesome strangers away -- that’s my calling. How do I say this so you’ll understand everything? When it comes to the things we treasure, child, nothing has to die or go into the ground. When you love something, everything can almost stay the same, correct? Then I don’t have to be alone, neither do you. Am I making sense? So this is what I do -- I keep strangers and Death away so nothing has to change -- not Mother, not dear Noah, not this house, or my house, or even you or me or Dickens. I tidy problems as I hold up a hand to Death and shoo him off like a filthy fly -- that’s what a caretaker for silent souls does. Am I making myself clear?"
"I think so," I said. "You don’t want him to be in Denmark.”
"Nonsense," she replied. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does Denmark have to do with anything. Don’t be silly, silly child. You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said. Pay attention next time.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there gripping the broom handle, looking at Dell’s black lens.
"Don’t gawk,” she said. "We’re burning moonlight. There’s more to do, there’s always more to do.”
Upstairs -- sweeping and dusting, swabbing the toilet and the bathtub, clearing spiderwebs from the ceiling. In my father’s bedroom, folding his dirty clothes and zipping them inside his backpack, dumping the Peach Schnapps’ bottle and plastic baggy in a trash sack.
"What’s happening?" Cut ’N Style wondered as I lifted her from the throw rug, placing her on the night table.
"We’re getting clean clean clean," I told her.
In my bedroom -- humming Dell’s song -- taking the doll arms and the legs and the torso from the mattress, putting them in my suitcase.
And my mother’s satin nightgown-
"Good lord, child, what’s this?”
Dell held the gown up by its arms.
"It’s my
pajamas,” I said.
"No, no,” she said, "it’s too large for you. I think so. I think you’ll have to wait until you’re a woman -- and a big one at that.”
Then, grinning as if she’d just found a great bargain, Dell took the gown downstairs -- where I spied it later in the picnic basket, packed beside the thermos and silverware and crumpled foil and greasy plate.
"Hard workers deserve gifts,” she said.
So she got the gown, I got another piece of pound cake - and at dawn, once our work was completed, once all the trash and cleaning material had been crammed into the duffel bags, we moved my father upstairs. Or Dell did. She dragged him across the floor, bumped him up the stairs, and then carried him to my bedroom -- not his -- resting him on my mattress.
"The sleep of the just," she said. And she kissed his varnished forehead. And I did too.
We sat on the edge of the mattress -- Dell by my father’s head, me by his wrapped feet -- saying nothing for a while. She sighed deeply, whistled for a moment, and then asked if I knew my grandmother.
"No. She died when I wasn’t even born yet."
"I see," she said. "Well, you missed a saint. She tended my sorry body after that bee nearly killed me dead. I owe her my life."
"Oh," I said.
That’s why you’re scared of bees, I thought. That’s why you have the hood.
"How come you don’t wear the hood anymore?"
And she explained that bees swarmed by day, slept at night.
"Busy beasts,” she said. "Buzzy beee-stssss!” she hissed.
She removed her glasses, showing me her pirate-eye. I leaned forward, spotting my reflection on the milky pupil.
"Stung in my own garden,” she said. "Blinded by a filthy bee. Revenge, I say, for destroying Father’s hives. Poured gas on them all, set them ablaze at midnight?
"Why’d you do that?"
"Ah, well, Father loved his bees, you know. And his bees loved him, I’m sure. Jealous creatures though. Hated Mother. Attacked her in the kitchen. Swarmed through the window. Made her a pin cushion, poor dear. Little stingers dotting her head. Did you know a bee tried crawling up her nose? Pure evil. So Mother’s heart stopped and she never finished the dishes. I found her there in the kitchen. Pumped her chest and got her going again. But she wasn’t the same, no, no. Couldn’t leave her bed. And Father went away -- guilt and misery, I tell myself -- forever disowning me and Dickens and Mother -- and his hives. So I set them ablaze, Rose, in the middle of the night. And now there isn’t a bee alive who wouldn’t want me murdered. And this-"