by Lisa Hannett
Behind her, the kids is flapping round a small melamine table, rowdier’n a bag of squirrels. Three boys under six. The baby in a hand-me-down highchair. Another’s growing under Perch’s floral apron, or so says the pinch in her waistband. The sinking in her belly. The whole lot of them wears Mose’s features--waxy green eyes a smidge too far apart, sharp noses even more’n a smidge too big for such narrow skulls, hair flat as cornsilk and blue-black as the sky between midnight and moon-dark. None gots her own bright hazel irises, none her loose blonde curls. In summer, they all toast up like marshmallows while she keeps herself out the sun. Her mother-of-pearl flesh too pale, too translucent for its harsh glare.
If she hadn’t squeezed them bubs out herself, she’d easily believe they belonged to a stranger.
Perch taps another egg against the metal basin, slides her nails under the shell. Hard bits cling to her fingers. She gives them a good flick while the boys complain, spitty beaks wide, squawking for breakfast. Bird-brains, she thinks, catching reflections of their sleep-feathered heads in the window. Y’all is just a flock of rusty blackbirds.
Weren’t none of her water-magic passed on to any of them--Mose seen to that hisself, didn’t he just. Stealing her swim like he done. Trapping her much the same way he did game. Skinning her. Filling her with stone after stone after cold stone.
Ain’t a one of them kids could float worth a damn.
As Rud goes round to unhook the pickup, he spies Perch through a gap in the frilled curtains. Standing there, sleeves rolled to the elbow, smashing a whole brood of brown eggs. She returns his nod. Not his smile.
* * *
It’s a twenty minute drive to the county jail. Straight down the interstate, no sharp turns, only a steady curve ’til they hit the parking lot out front of the cement building. Perch knows the route that good, half the time she don’t even see the road no more. The view’s a regular blur. A long stretch of asphalt pointing nowheres. Stands of pine and blue spruce whipping past on both sides. Fields swaying thick with corn. The same weatherboard farmhouse, over and over. The same faded red barn.
Beyond the crossroads, she vagues out. Fiddles with the radio. Starts counting the number of songs it takes to reach town.
Jinx, her oldest, is cross-legged on the front seat, thumbing a dog-eared deck of cards. Nostrils chapped, sniffling. The two middle’uns, Toph and Gibbs, is hunched over a comic book in the back. Snickering at the gaudy pictures, grunting and slapping if one or the other tries turning a page too soon. Slung across her chest, the baby’s wriggling for another feed. “Hang on a sec,” she says, then shakes her head at the expression. As if the bub ain’t done nothing but hang on these past few months--as if any of them ain’t latched onto her like a clutch of zebra mussels. Suckling her all out of shape, sagging and stretch-marking what’s left of her original skin, so’s it don’t look nothing like her own no more.
About a third of the way to Main Street, the Saccattaw rushes up alongside them. Only the road’s gravel shoulder, a steel rail, and a bush-covered slope is between them and the water. It’s a two or three mile splash to the far shore. A scattering of fall leaves spins with the waves, quick as the honkytonk man’s guitar-picking fingers on the radio. With that cloud-high warble of his, Mose sung this tune all the time: Red Clay Halo, one of his favourites what Perch don’t despise. It’s got that fast bluegrass tempo, them uplifting lyrics. All that talk of mucking through life’s waters, passing through them Pearly Gates even if a soul’s good and muddy--well, it gave a gal hope, didn’t it just. Not much wrong she could do in this world, she reckons, that won’t be forgiven in the next.
Easing up on the gas, Perch jostles the bub so’s it’ll hush.
Hang on.
“Make her stop,” Jinx complains, drawling the ‘o’ long. Face screwed up worse than the baby’s. “Can’t hear meself think through all that naggin.”
Perch flicks the blinker and swerves off the road. Boy don’t know what he’s saying. She brakes more sudden than she intended. Just playing at mockingbird, echoing his daddy’s song. Cards fly as Jinx topples into the dash. Small bodies thud into the back of her seat. Surprised shouts become giggles. Accusations. You was scared! No you was! The pickup’s front fender kisses the roadside railing.
“Don’t move a muscle,” she says, scrabbling for the handle, slamming the door behind her. Outside, she turns and glares in at her green-eyed boys. “I mean it. Y’all stay put.”
She walks along the highway ’til she can’t hear them no more. Their fussing, their whining, their laughter. Keeps on ’til the baby’s lulled into shallow sleep. After a good while, she stops at a break in the barrier. A black-tipped stake is driven into the dirt there, a wreath of fake flowers bleached thin at its feet. Swaying to settle her stomach, Perch stands in the gap between posts. Watches the brown river flow steadily away, so far, so fast, so deep.
* * *
“Have to start charging y’all rent soon,” says the uniformed C.O. behind a reinforced window, inside the jailhouse’s reception and waiting room. Hairy jowls wobble as the half-man chuckles, ugly snout curling to reveal coffee-stained teeth. Eyebrows extra shaggy, overcompensating for the way his noggin’s started balding up to them wolfish ears. Donut-gut giving them khaki shirt buttons a run for their money--only part on him what’s been running in ages, Perch reckons. He grabs a pen and clipboard, slides a piece of carbon paper under the topmost form. Mottled tongue jutting out the corner of his mouth, he leans over the page. Presses too hard while scratching Mose’s name on the release form.
“Surprised you ain’t taken that show on the road yet, Hink,” Perch says, deadpan. “Highlarious, that is.”
“You know the drill,” Hink says, flicking the sheets to make sure the copy’s coming through all right. “Show us what you got.”
Perch draws a dented coffee tin from her purse, upends it on the counter between them. A handful of coins rattle out first, then a feathering of faded green bills. While the clerk scowls, she thumps a hessian-wrapped bundle atop the miserable pile of cash. Unknotting the cord, she flips back a corner of the fabric. Reveals a stack of stiff hides--jackrabbit, groundhog, black-ringed raccoon--with them furs brushed sleek, shining pretty under the long fluorescent bulb overhead. She strums a finger down the ragged sides. “Take yer pick,” she says.
“You think some mangy old skin’s enough to get a soul outta this place?”
Perch shrugs, plucks a nice winter hare from the pack. “Reckon one oughta do it,” she says. “What do you say?”
* * *
A free man once more, Mose gets in a high mood that lasts all morning. Before hopping in the truck, he grabs a couple cans from a cooler roped in the back, cracks one, and drains it with full-throated gulps. He takes another, just to be on the wet side. Play-punching Jinx on the shoulder, he tells the boy to scoot over. Slides in next to him on the front seat. The whole way home Mose slurps and belches, crow-calling out the window--a shrill taunt to them wolfish Marshals what caught but couldn’t keep him--and trilling tune after tune with the kids.
“Truck stop’s coming up,” Perch interrupts after a few miles. “We could pull on in and give Ma a shout. Won’t take her but an hour or so to swim over, what with the autumn current ... ” Already she’s picturing it. The lacework of sunlight skimming Mama’s back as she darts underwater. Glimmers on flesh and fins. Taffy-ribbon hair streaming long behind her, weightless and strung with minnows. Those effortless strokes of hers, drawing her ever closer. Then, on shore, that easy transformation from mer-queen to plain old Ma. “Maybe she’ll whip up some of her brandied apricots when she gets here? Make this a proper welcome home. A real occasion.”
But Mose says there’s party enough with just them two and the young’uns. He don’t meet her eye the rest of the drive, only turns in his seat and pulls faces ’til the kids is crying with laughter.
What a Pa he is, Perch thinks, feeling that same flush in her cheeks, that same warmth in her belly, that same clench
in the nethers what got her flayed in the first place. Soon as they’s home, the trailer unlocked and the boys plunked in front of the tube, Mose steers her to their bunk. Pulls the bulb chain. Peels her again.
When he’s done, she’s tingling from lip to lips.
Naked as a jaybird, Mose gets up and cracks the bedroom door. Pokes his head out. Down the narrow hall, the kids is fighting over what channel to watch; he sneaks across with them none the wiser. Pulse slowing, Perch lies back on the thin mattress. Baby’s gonna want a feed, she thinks, pulling the skirt back down over her hips, adjusting her bra. She rolls on her side. Doesn’t go no further.
A hum through the wall says Mose is hopped in the shower. His warbling keeps time with the exhaust fan’s whirring. Some flaw in the design sucks steam from the bathroom, blows it out through the vent above their bed. Musty air turns humid, unbearable for more’n a minute or two. Finally sitting up, Perch itches everywhere Mose is been, new skin tender where he’s rubbed off the old.
Noon fights through orange curtains, suffusing the room with dim light. Perch blinks, sure the gloom’s fucking with her eyes. There’s a burning around her navel what her fingernails can’t seem to scratch out. White welts appear where she’s been digging, even paler than the flesh around them. The unmarked, un-inked flesh. Stumbling into the hall, she pulls at her belly to get a better look. There’s still that awful bulge above the waistband--sure, Perch ain’t lucky enough to get that suddenly disappeared--but where has her pretty fishes gone? Might be there’s the faintest trace of their scales, just above the belly-button ... Might be a hint of mirrored dorsal fins ... But what’s left ain’t the vibrant Pisces she’s wore there since she were fourteen, tattooed in river colours Ma picked out just for her.
“Mose,” she shouts, barging into the tiny bathroom. For all its churning, its wrong-way blowing, the fan ain’t managed to clear too much steam. “You ain’t never gonna believe this--”
“What’s that, darlin,” he asks, shower curtain rattling across the steel rod. Half-turned, he looks out at her. Water streams over his bareness, glistens on the dark pelt curling from chest to pelvis. Haze billows around them both, then escapes out behind her. As the view clears Perch closes her mouth, scrutinising. Not the tight curve of her husband’s arse nor the muscular ‘v’ leading down to his manliness. But that, there, nestled under the swirls on his belly--were that a smudge of green down there? A swoop of blue? Were them black lines drawn from ink, or hair?
“Well?” Lathering them maybe-shades out of sight, Mose turns to face her full on. “What?”
Outside in the yard, a horn honk-honks. A car door slams. Boots clomp up the stoop’s metal stairs.
“Wonders never cease,” Perch whispers as Mose starts rinsing off. Definitely some yellow streaks there. Some scalloped orange. Taking a step back, she lifts her gaze to meet his. Forces a laugh.
“Ain’t nothing,” she says weakly. “Only, Rud’s early.”
* * *
After a hefty soak in Ruddy’s cask of rye that afternoon, he and Mose slapped on wool hats, zipped bright orange vests over tartan flannel, and set off. Smoothbore .45s slung over their shoulders. Plenty of powder and shot on hand for them both. A pair of tin flasks to ward off the four o’clock chill.
“Ain’t nothing better after being locked up,” Rud said, stuffing a loading rod into an oversize canvas pack, “than hoofin it into the wild.”
Sure, Perch thinks. Ain’t nothing better.
Now alone at the kitchen table, she twists ice cubes free of their tray, refills her glass. Downs the shot in one go, the fumes off Rud’s mash making her eyes water. Knuckling puffed lids, she tells herself it’s only the fumes what’s made such a mess of her mascara. She snivels into her sleeve, quiet as a gopher, so’s not to wake the kids. Between shudders, she refills. Swallows. Refills.
Keep yer skin to yerself, Ma use to say, again and again. Keep yer skin, girl, coz once it’s gone ...
When did she stop saying it?
Before Jinx come along? Before that? When Mose slipped that gold band on her flipper? Before even that? When she and him come running here to Plantain? With Perch straddling that wretched mule like some latter-day Mary, Mose jogging alongside? Together they went and run here, all the way from Tapekwa County.
Run. Perch shakes her heavy head. Not swum.
Even then it had started. Even then. Mose’s sneaky-slow theft.
The cask blurps as she turns its copper tap, refills.
Swallows.
Refills.
Nope, she ain’t sure when Mama stopped warning her, only that she had.
Now Mama don’t hardly bother with her gal no more. She don’t flap them strong fins upriver--short trip for one such as her--she don’t come round to visit. And why would she? Swallows, refills. Perch went and gave it up, didn’t she just. Willingly, happily. And now ...
Ain’t no easy way of getting that skin back.
Frowning at the tabletop, she watches silver flecks whirl in the melamine. It were the only explanation: Mose must of took her swimming-skin. Sometime before Jinx were borned. Before Perch were gold-ringed. Before she run away from home, from the crick, from Mama. He’d gone and trapped her the way so many other mer-ladies been trapped. That magic smile of his cutting her deep, them magic hands stripping her bare. Then he’d gone and hid her finned self somewheres else, hadn’t he just. Her firm, strong self. Why else wouldn’t she of took off when he got hisself locked up--if not that first time, then the fifth? The fifteenth? Why else wouldn’t she of swum away when he were sauced and raging? When he were laying into her, while promising it weren’t never going to happen again? Why else wouldn’t she of up and left his lying self yet?
Why else.
Refill.
Swallow.
The glass clunks down hard as Perch sways to her feet. Sun’s only just lipping the treetops; the kids is been abed for no more’n an hour. Time enough for her own bit of hunting, she reckons, before Mose gets back from his.
She starts in their bedroom. First she lifts the double mattress, strips the quilt, guts every pillow. One after another the tall-boy’s drawers gets pulled open, dumped. She empties the small built-in closet. Tosses the laundry hamper. Pries back the wood veneer where it gapes round the window. Stretching out an arm, she sweeps the mirrored shelf. Trinkets, perfume bottles, photo frames, and Mose’s one angling trophy crash to the floor. Perch don’t expect to find her true skin sitting there, in plain sight all these years, wedged between her makeup bag and stack of CDs. She ain’t that blind. She ain’t stupid.
Still, right about now there’s a spirit caught hold of her, as it does every so often, a fury what leads to shit getting broke.
She smashes kitchen cupboards. Digs into the fridge. Yanks out that useless tray under the oven. Next she tears off the couch cushions, rummages through storage blocks underneath ’til she’s good and sure her skin ain’t packed up with the extra smokes, boxed away with the puzzles. Chest heaving, she shoulders open the kids’ door. Crouches to feel under the plastic piss-sheet on Jinx’s metal-framed cot, cranes to peep under the canvas’ low sag. A check of the bunk beds turns up nothing--Toph and Gibbs is heavy as logs, torn funny-papers crunching round their skinny legs--and though the crib’s a lump of sodden blankets, it ain’t been padded with no supple fishskin.
Panic clogs Perch’s windpipe. Her mind reels so’s she can’t catch her breath. Something ain’t right. Something’s missing ... Dull light slices through gaps in the blinds, throwing shadows on the sleepers. And whose fault is that, a little voice whispers to no one in particular. No one at all.
* * *
“Just making space in the icebox for y’all,” Perch yells across the yard, slamming the garage’s side door too hard behind her. Fumbling the padlock. Let him believe she were simply clearing a path through the junk inside. Washing dust off the freezer’s white lid. Shifting cartons of ice cream, bulk bags of mixed veg, stiff northern geese sheathed in tan stoc
kings. Rearranging all the small carcasses Mose trapped over the summer, making a nice flat surface for the bigger sides of meat to lie on. That’s all she were doing these past forty minutes or so. Ain’t no other reason for her to be in there, right?
None Mose needs knowing about.
No, she weren’t dumping out boxes of wires, sparkplugs, and other metal doodads--finding no sign of her shining scales. She weren’t taking every rubber tub off the pine shelves, unlidding them, tossing them aside--smelling no whiff of the Saccattaw among the Christmas ornaments, the macaroni angels and crumbling gingerbread houses. She weren’t climbing up to the rafters, flashlight beaming across paddles and skis and a haunted house’s worth of cobwebs--spying no tarps, no rainsheets, no folded up mer-lady skins. She weren’t crawling beneath the rickety mule-cart to see what might be hid in the undercarriage. Coming up empty-handed once more, she ain’t kicked the hell out of the thing, maybe busting a toe and one of its wheels in the process. No, sir.
“How’d the shootin go, love?” Pitching her voice high, Perch aims for cheerful. Disappointment pulls her shy of the mark. If Mose ain’t stashed it in the garage, then where is it? Walking casual, she makes for the fire-pit nearby. The logs and kindling’s already set, bolstered by slabs of foam and strips of stained carpet fossicked from Ruddy’s car yard. Crouching, she strikes a match. Gets the bonfire blazing.
Mucked and bloodied, Mose and Rud come grunting down the drive in single file, a good-size deer swinging between them. Must of dressed the thing out in the field, Perch reckons, then bagged the innards. Slung across the towman’s body, a canvas pack is full bulging, hanging low and heavy with offal. Mose never were one to risk spoiling a keeper.