The Remnants
Page 14
Had Luddy Upland been someone with a light in him he’d have dug a hole and given his friend his proper due. But all his life he felt the lack of something essential inside of himself, a specialness, a spark, an impulse that would lift him up from merely living to feeling himself alive. And whatever it was that was missing in him, he was convinced others could see.
He felt himself to be the woods at dusk, illuminated from beyond his edges by the pale glow that spilled off others and lit his underbranches in bits of afterglow. The flame he saw others burn with he could not for himself in himself spark with flint, and he so wished he had it in him to do. If I only had a light in me, he thought, nothing blinding, nothing that would give the sun a run for its money or make the full moon feel inferior, a modest light would do, he reasoned, a pale star behind a star behind a star, a faraway dot that could light my own tiny orbit like a half-lit firefly, the tiniest sparkle that years from now might remind you, or you, or you, of me—that’s all he wanted in himself, but finding nothing in himself, he settled for the borrowed light of others by becoming the match that fused their way. He had urged Brisket to repeat a name while handy-Andying his urgent business and Brisket’s not-so-silky recitation of that repetition forever became that lad’s legacy. He’d stood steady-Luddy for Mawz to confide in, and carried his friend’s secrets for him and took on his friend’s sadnesses as deeply as any of his own he might have sunk under himself had he thought enough of himself to do so first, but in the end it did not make of him the lasting memory his labor and patience and steadfastness made of them. Tell Mawz’s story without Luddy and the story has strength all its own; put Luddy in and he adds to it by not detracting from it. Brisket, though he will fade from memory like all the rest, a ghost’s ghost in a ghost’s story, doesn’t need Luddy to hit the mark any more than Knotsy needed Brisket to wet her dreams. You don’t remember the match that lights the fuse; you remember the bang.
Who chose the acres of land where the end lasts forever? Luddy always wondered this about Nedewen Field. Was it a founding father who first toed a spade in the ground beneath the grasses to assess the ease of digging holes here? Or was it, perhaps, in an earlier time, from the time before the discovery of the already discovered, was it a tribal elder out seeking his own peace one day who came upon this place where the wind speaks in hushed tones and thought the spirits would find eternal ascendance here? Or was it a soul less advanced in a time more primitive who one day no more remarkable than any other in his still-forming world on this very spot stumbled onto his own loneliness under the wide open skies above here? Luddy liked to think it was this latter man, an earlier incarnation of his own unlit self. In Luddy’s imagination he was a muted, though thoughtful spear-wielder, cousin perhaps to dweller or nephew or great-great-grandson, out exploring this very patch of land for whatever might be found here, when he came upon the carcass of a fellow spear-wielder so like himself, fallen and rotting in the afternoon sun, his spear still gripped in his maggoty hand. There was no other spear-wielder around, no beasts, the landscape had bubbled up only knee-high here so no ground nearby could provide any hiding; all there was was the unblinking sun in the sky above to know what felled this carcass and the sun wasn’t saying.
This curious soul sniffed and poked and kicked that naked form so like himself for any signs of life in its limbs or any glint of light in its black-socket eyes, but found only lifelessness there in that form so like a rock now. Spear-wielder hadn’t traveled to this spot with any companion, nor did he miss the company a companion might have provided. But coming upon this fallen form he felt for the first time a longing to not be alone. Warm as the sun was on his fur and skin he started to tremble at what he could not fully picture to be the state of his own next form; that the next form of himself might be that form on the ground, lifeless and rock-like and rotting. With this odd new dread of his own future state settled on his skin and fur as snug as any odor, he felt as never before his own nakedness to the unblinking eye of that afternoon sun, and for the first time ever in his tramp life reasoned that perhaps that eye knew something he did not. In his evolving understanding, he looked around his still-bubbling, still-hissing world, and it dawned on him that there might be in the vastness over his head a presence in that eye that he could not sniff nor poke nor kick, and to that presence spear-wielder attributed all that he did not understand. That presence would stare down upon him no matter what and see him for what he was, and it was that presence that would give him back license to be who he might have it in him to be. Spear-wielder looked at the fallen form and at his own not-so-fresh flesh, scanned the landscape for answers he knew he wouldn’t find anywhere out there, then raised his eyes as much as he could to the sky, and then lowered them lower than the ground beneath his feet where a strange new sensitivity greeted them.
The rotting body was cold to the touch, but the ground was as warm as the sky. And only by covering that lifeless form with the earth below him would spear-wielder cover his own nakedness to that eye in the sky above.
So unnamed spear-wielder, this faceless early man, this Luddy of the dawn, not really understanding what he was doing, he dug a hole by hand and he rolled the carcass into it, and the carcass landed with the spear still it its hand and most of its face face up, and the afternoon sun illuminated the black-socket eyes with a final twink of borrowed light and in those eyes unnamed spear-wielder, faceless early man, Luddy of the dawn, saw himself. Spear-wielder stood above the hole staring down at the carcass with unfinished thoughts about his own next form, and as he did, the sun began to settle behind his back, and the twink of borrowed light in the sockets of the carcass’s eyes went back to their lender forever. And spear-wielder, he stood there a little longer feeling empty and not knowing why, then he knelt to the ground and scooped back into the hole the earth he had hollowed it of. The light had gone out of the form he found, and only by covering it from the light of day could he see his own way to this next form of himself.
In time, more holes followed more carcasses, and more pairs of hands than his own made ritual work of scooping and hollowing and rolling, of drying and wrapping, of dressing and boxing. From one observer grew small clusters standing shoulder to shoulder around the lifeless holes. In time the odd new sense of dread that made spear-wielder feel so alone that lone day swelled communal, and the small growing clusters who stood shoulder to shoulder around the lifeless holes felt their dread bind them heart to heart, united by a sense of something they could not sniff nor poke nor kick. They were naked as fur and skin to the vastness over their heads, and, in time, under their bonnets and boots, too, just as naked to that unblinking eye in the sky above. But united in their nakedness to that eye, they felt inexplicably warmed, or so they told themselves to keep the cold from returning.
Brush away the moss on any of the broken teeth markers in Nedewen Field and lay over the pocked stone surface a sheet of clean paper, then take a charcoal stick and rub it across the paper to reveal the faint etchings of names and dates underneath, and you’ll find emerging from the pits and pocks many an Upland who came and went and left nothing of themselves more lasting than a weathered old stone in an overgrown field, naked and alone under that vast sky above, and Luddy is just one more among them. Hunko Minton found Luddy on the path side of the Upton side of Nedewen Field only a day or two after he must have fallen and failed, and Hunko thought it the right thing to do to drag Luddy’s corpse inside the walls of Nedewen Field and dig a hole for his friend. There’d be no box; there was no point. It was a hot spring day and the sun was rushing the world to start anew, and he could already see on the lump in the grasses a picnic squirming. That sun in the sky wasn’t doing his decomposing friend any favors.
21. True
True lay in her bed in a vapor of smells, all hers. Coming from every opening, riding fluids of every consistency, insistent on getting out. There were odors from her bowels and from her bladder, odors from her mouth, her nose, her skin, even odors she hadn’t happened
upon since her rag days, all of them in a rush. Her body was letting go of the past.
She was a wet tangle of clothes on a larger frenzy of wet clothes that served as a mattress on her broken, sunken bed, the very bed in the very room in which her mother had labored her to odors and fluids of a different promise. The seepage must have started soon after she fell into slumber for she distinctly remembered squatting over her slop pot to do her nightly business before getting into bed and feeling so good that she’d emptied herself of so much. She’d long ago given up racing to her privy when the urge to empty rushed through her system. Too often on her way out of the house her body got ahead of her intentions and what she hoped to aim into the black hole out back trickled, seeped, spurted or gushed down the stairs, on the parlor’s braided rug, in the kitchen, sometimes she left a trail running through the entire house, sometimes without her even realizing it. To remedy: she placed a bowl in every room, two in her bedroom (one of those was her washbasin), and when her body’s immediacy came to call she had the answer for it handy. These bowls had saved her butt more than once, although she had to admit that in the past week or two, the immediacy had stepped up its insistence, and more than once she’d had to let go before she could even reach the nearest one. She felt the dampness all around her, some of it wriggled through her fingers like custard. Had she actually used the bowl last night, she wondered, or did she only dream it? Her thoughts, these days, like her insides, were loosening themselves and escaping her body. If she had only dreamt it, dear God that meant her body was going its own way in defiance of her also departing mind, and if that was the case, what was the point of making it to the day after today?
The odors and the fluids were mystery enough, but there was also a noise that she couldn’t put her finger on. She’d only first been aware of it when she woke to her body’s pre-dawn surprise, but as soon as she was awake and disgusted by herself, she was awake and disturbed by the indistinguishable sound, the slow over and over of it, a tap, syncopated as water dripping, only echoless.
Was it coming from close by or far away? She couldn’t see anything in the dark and the sun wouldn’t be up for hours. Outside on the roof? Inside of her head? The front door? A pot on the stove? A loose shutter? A stray thought? It was something coming from someplace, that tap, and if she didn’t get up to find it she would surely go mad. If only it was a knock and not a tap. A knock wears its good shoes and its Sabbath face. A knock is a braggart who yells out, I’m here! You can confront a knock right away; make it state its business and go. But a tap is more of a child’s game: it giggles, Come find me! A tap was something Threesie Lope would bedevil her with. That Threesie, she said to the vapor-filled darkness, always needing to unsettle me just to make the wind blow! The sound of her own voice was almost as unsettling as the tap. She hadn’t uttered a word in days, not even to herself, not so much as git! to the raccoons that’d made a home in her pantry. Hearing her voice now it sounded so unimpressive—the smells were stronger; the tap was stronger.
Listening all morning and half the afternoon and finally she’d had enough. She gripped the headrail of her bed and pulled her wet self to her side; it was more of a struggle to force her legs over the edge and pull her wet self from there to sitting. She caught her breath, her feet didn’t feel the grit on the floorboards yet, she inhaled her own musk deep and pushed herself off the bed to feel the floor at last, she felt a squish under her left foot (had she missed both bowl and bed?) and from stooping, slowly stretched herself out like a crumpled piece of paper unfolding to straightening out her creases as much as she could. In the time it took her to unfold out of bed and stand, apes had walked erect faster.
Tap.
Her hands were aching more than usual but she drew her wet cardigan as tight as her four good fingers and the one remaining button would allow, even though the hole she married it to was three holes too low. At least she was out of bed. There was a reason for her to get out of bed today, if only she could recall it; the days when she had a reason grew fewer and fewer. She searched the room for the reason but it must have been off playing the same hiding game with the noise. She pushed a wild branch of her gray nest to the crown of her head and secured it with a laundry pin she’d fumbled for and found next to the pruning shears on the bedside table, and tired as she was she resolved to go downstairs and find the noise and give it breakfast and maybe then it would be on its way. She nudged aside the night’s unused soil bowl with a bare blue foot and followed an ancient path out the doorway that hadn’t had a door on it since Cozy’s drinking days, and as she descended the stairs in the dark she let the treads guide her squeak by squeak.
Tap.
The sound was all around her in the air. A right turn at the bottom of the S-curved run where the last tread was worn to a lopsided frown, through the narrow path in the clutter in the dining room with its dangling distraction in the center over the table, and into the kitchen, she followed the sound and the sound followed her like two clouds of dust in a foot race.
Maybe she was just hearing things because she hadn’t slept for years, not real deep sleep, not really. Real deep sleep for True was the only store in town worth shopping at, and it stopped doing business with her long ago. Every day now she felt tired and she looked tired and she moved tired and she ate tired and she saw tired and she certainly smelled tired and now she heard tired, too. There was no way to tell anymore if the fatigue that chewed through her walls and moved into her body like the raccoons did in her pantry was due to a lack of proper slumber or an excess of years. Her spine this morning couldn’t remember its purpose for the day any better than she could, and searching for an answer it curled her torso into a question mark, which asked her the most basic question of all: why are you still alive?
Tap.
The same stray branch of her nest she mashed before she mashed up from her face again and as she did she searched the room with pleading eyes: where was that damned noise coming from? She’d believe anything that might swat the noise from her head. But neither the icebox nor the eggbeater said boo.
A few things grab hold in the dark—the best is fire. For a moment, an ancient tug in True knew to kindle a few twigs in her cooktop, and when she struck the match and the dried sticks ignited, cavemen came alive. She stood among them entranced; staring into the blue-orange-yellow unknown like it was the first flame ever. The moment lasted as long as the stick fire licked, but the flashes shrank to little bubbles of flame then a glow spot then a puff of smoke and it was over, the fire letting go of itself, leaving a trace of woody after-smell, not as stenchy as True’s, and True’s transfixion puffed out itself and she remembered what brought her downstairs to begin with: the tap. Only now, it wasn’t a tap, it was a knock.
Knock.
She had preferred a knock to a tap only a while ago, but now that she had it she could kick herself. One good thing: she could at least tell where this noise came from. The new sound was issuing from the outer door of her front vestibule and as she held her breath and listened, oh Lord, the timbre of it became abstractly familiar. It reminded her of that most annoying howdy-do of a knock that’s the stock in trade of Kennesaw Belvedere. What’s he doing here? she asked a spot over there.
If Kennesaw Belvedere wasn’t her oldest friend AND her cousin AND maybe even her uncle AND possibly her half-brother (it wouldn’t surprise her), AND one of the only living souls left in town, she’d have nothing to do with the man.
Knock.
She listened once with her jaw thrust towards the sound, she squinted and listened twice with her shoulder leading the way, and when she was sure she was sure that this sound was Kennesaw’s damnably familiar howdy-do of a knock and she wasn’t imagining it any more than she wasn’t imagining the tap and was resigned to letting him in, she moved an empty pot onto the snuffed-out flame of her cooktop, and told the kettle to watch it, then made her way out of the kitchen and into the dining room and nudged aside a stack of berry hallocks on the buffet and answered
her breakfront.
She told her grandmother’s blue-and-white transferware dishes to come in, and when the dinner plates decorated with old sailing vessels and the quarter inch of dust on them didn’t budge, she said to the rubber boot on the broken chairback on the dining table that she had no use for fools who didn’t know their own mind, and old age was no excuse. C’mon in Kennesaw, she said to an apple basket, hang your hat there, and she chinned to a plant stand on which sat a pot of bent gray stalks. Then pointing a shaky elbow at a raccoon trap she had once mistaken for a slop bowl told her guest to follow her into the privy and bring the tray with the paint and mind the squirrels.
Don’t take all of my time, she said to the grandfather clock in the hallway as she led her mute guest first into the nook beneath the stairs where she paused for a confused moment before the heavy black telephone on the small clamshell shelf (it used to ring two-long for Bliss and three-short for Lope in days long forgotten), then past the front vestibule where no one would be coming to call for hours, then into her front parlor where dust and cobwebs and feed bags and egg crates and half-filled slop bowls warmed in the afternoon sun. Somewhere over her shoulder True said, Sit your ass down in the good chair, and nodded her nest in the direction of the firebox full of brambles.