Mitch Cullin

by Tideland (epub)

  I rubbed my eyes and yawned. Then I sat up, squinting around the kitchen.

  The jug was on the counter without its cap. Cracker crumbs dotted the floor. The gown remained damp in spots from my reckless guzzling. But my throat was dry, and while licking at the sore lip, I tasted peanut butter instead of blood.

  "A miracle,” I whispered, sensing the creamy substance coursing in my veins. And if I hadn’t felt so suddenly alone, I would’ve laughed at the thought of being a Peanut Butter Girl, just flesh and bone and crushed edible seeds.

  Climbing from the floor, I called out, "Daddy-? I’m in the kitchen!”

  The gown hem lagged under my feet, so I pretended it was the soles of satin slippers and shuffled to the stove. Then taking the radio in hand, I shuffled out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room.

  "Daddy-? I was in the kitchen. Daddy-?”

  As if roused by a rooster’s crow, I was hoping my father would be awakened by my voice. The vacuousness of his face, head, and posture would vanish. He would quickly rise from the chair. But standing before him with the radio, I noticed only a small difference in his appearance. In the dreary light of the living room, his lips had grown purple, his breathing had ceased. Lifting the big sunglasses, I was met with an icy stare- two pupils reduced to almost nothing -- so I lowered the sunglasses back over his eyes.

  "I brought you this," I told him, putting the radio in his lap. Then I crouched before his boots, bending my legs inside the gown, and gazed up the expanse of his stiff body.

  "Three are dead in a college motor coach crash,” the DJ reported. "The motor coach, packed with college cheerleaders from the University of Texas in Austin, flipped over near Georgetown yesterday, killing the coach and two cheerleaders. Seven others were injured, four critically. The accident is under investigation."

  Just then I recalled my father on the Greyhound, holding the radio against an ear, listening to similar news broadcasts. "They’ll be searching for me,” he told me. "I need to monitor the information as it develops." But during our trip, there was no mention made of him or my mother’s corpse, a fact which somehow disappointed him. "Seems I don’t matter much anymore, Jeliza-Rose,” he later said. "Not worth a lousy headline.”

  And squatting there by his boots, I wanted to tell him how much he mattered to me-how it was good being at What Rocks with just him, even if it wasn’t really Denmark. Then tears welled uncontrollably under my tired, heavy eyelids.

  "It’s not your fault she’s dead,” I said. "She wasn’t very nice anyways.”

  "Now don’t get all weepy,” I pictured him saying. "Everything’s fine."

  But it wasn’t fine, and I told him that.

  "It’s awful!”

  I crumpled across his boots, my chest heaving.

  "It’s all right," he’d tell me. "You’re safe as houses."

  I imagined his hands stroking my neckline, soothing. Exhausted again, I began to drift off. And before sleep overtook me, I conjured the Bog Man in his bed of peat. His bones gnashing as he dug himself from the earth. But on my first night in the back country, the idea of him was no longer so frightening.

  "He survived thousands of years," my father once said. "He just lay there waiting to come back to life."

  "Please, come back to life,” I pled, dimly aware of the radio wavering on my father’s lap, the batteries loosing power as my eyes closed. "Please-"

  The wind was now blowing around What Rocks, sweeping along the porch, clanking the hoist rope against the metal flagpole. The old place shuddered. In the pasture, the school bus rocked gently, the high Johnsongrass wavered. Thunder rumbled in the distance. But inside I slept once more, the wind droning in my dream like a horn -- and somewhere the mystery train whistled for no one as it chugged through barren and forbidding terrain, weaving further and further away from us.

  6

  I yawned with the feeling that dawn was just beginning, but the sunbeams descending through the windows, slanting crosswise on the floorboards, told me otherwise. The living room was warm, full of radiance and shadow. Rays had already fallen across the lower half of my gown, where my toes fidgeted in the dusty light. "Morning, morning," I muttered to myself, lifting my head from the boot tips, an uncomfortable pillow.

  Then I stood quickly, pivoting on bare heels to my father.

  "Good-morning.”

  Skin that had grown pale was now completely pallid. But his earlobes, chin, forearms, and fingertips were discolored with a reddish-purple stain. It seemed that overnight the stiffness had left his body. The rigor around his lips and nose had vanished, giving him a sagging, almost benign expression. In the daylight, he was limp, his muscles no longer controlled anything. For a moment I held his hand, cautiously peering at his sunglasses. He wasn't cold. In fact, his temperature was equal to the warmth of the room. And a stubble had begun growing on his cheeks.

  But I wasn’t too worried. He’d done this before: back at the apartment, he’d sometimes sit in front of the TV for days, statuelike, or he’d curl up on the couch and sleep and sleep and sleep. Then he’d suddenly stir. He’d climb from the couch, make himself coffee and something to eat, and be all smiles again. So once I asked, "Were you dead?”

  And he replied, "Sugar, nothing can kill me. Daddy was only on vacation. That’s what I do, your momma too. We’re playin’ possum, you know?"

  Playing possum for days, while I waited with my toys and watched TV and wondered when they’d return. And they always did. Except now Mom was really dead; I knew that for certain. But not my father -- he was playing possum again, vacationing in Denmark or somewhere else. Anyway, people didn’t just sit down and die. They rolled around sweating and screaming and dying. Like on TV, they gasped a lot while bleeding, or they fell to the ground in pain. They held their sides and kept their eyes open until, at last, they were gone. On TV, I’d seen people die a million times, and they never just sat down and stopped. They didn’t play possum or go on vacation. They died -- like Mom.

  "Are you on vacation?"

  Instead of waiting for an answer, I grabbed the silent radio from his lap, bringing it to my ear. I turned the volume dial back and forth, moved the station meter from one end to the other and back. Nothing worked. So I returned it to him with a sigh.

  "Because if you’re not,” I said, "then it’s not funny then."

  I wanted to rage around the living room, pounding the floorboards in frustration. But the urge to pee was so bad that my insides hurt.

  "Won’t talk to you too,” I told him. "It’s not nice, you know. You won’t like it too.”

  Then I left indignantly, pausing only to struggle from the gown, and hurried naked out the front door.

  Beyond the porch, a clear sky stretched above the Johnsongrass. And while maneuvering past corroded nail caps that jutted from the planks, I squinted in the sunlight, which landed hot on my legs and stomach. Going down into the yard, I squatted beside the bottom porch step, and began urinating in the weeds. The piss came in a gush, spattering my ankles. Eventually, a small puddle formed underneath me, and I had to move my feet further out so they wouldn’t get wet.

  When the pee dwindled, I glanced up with intense relief - and to my astonishment, a doe stood no more than twenty feet from where I hunched. She had wandered from the Johnsongrass with her long neck crooked, grazing at the nettles on the ground. At first I was so startled by the sight of her that I couldn’t think what to do. But finally I took a deep breath, pushed upright, and said, "Hi, are you hungry?"

  Her head shot up, ears twitching, and her big eyes fixed on me. Keeping my gaze locked on her, I stooped and yanked at the stems of several weeds, all having been wetted by my urine. Then I went forward, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, offering the uprooted weeds in an open palm. But as I approached, she bolted. That’s when I spotted her left hind leg dangling at the joint, as if the bone had somehow been snapped at the femur.

  "Don’t go!” I yelled, watching as sh
e sprang into the Johnsongrass, the bad leg straggling, and disappeared on the cattle trail. "Come back! " I shut my palm, crushing the weeds, then threw them at the ground. "Stupid, I got you food!”

  I considered bounding after her. If she knew how fast I can run, I thought, she’d be my friend. Then I could feed her and pet her and bring her into the farmhouse so she could sleep. I imagined hugging her in the kitchen, where she’d heal with the gown tied on her leg like a silky bandage. But when I heard the scampering, jabbering racket coming from behind, the idea of pursuit faded.

  As I spun around, the noise stopped abruptly. Putting my hands above my brow, I scanned the porch. But nothing unusual presented itself. So I tilted my chin back, looked at the awning of roof that hung over the porch, and found myself eye-to-eye with a gray squirrel; he was frozen in place with a bushy tail curling near his head, studying this naked child in the yard below: "I see you," I said, grinning. "I know you’re there. You can’t hide.”

  With his tail darting, the squirrel chattered at me briefly, an incomprehensible and irritated sound. On the edge of the awning, he made skirting movements left and right, freezing each time to give me an askance stare, then ran nimbly across the roof, scurrying to the east end of What Rocks. I followed in the yard, scratching my thighs on the overgrown buckthorn that had sprouted from under the porch.

  "What were you saying?” I asked.

  Reminding me of Spiderman, the squirrel sprinted along the exterior wall, traversing the wooden siding with tentative stops and starts. He halted beside the upstairs window of my father’s room, where a wide knothole existed. And even though the hole appeared too narrow, the squirrel squeezed halfway in, chattered some more with his rear section and tail sticking out, then slipped through with no effort.

  "You better wait," I said, hoping he might hear me and return. "I didn’t understand you.”

  Because the knothole was by the window, I pictured the squirrel exploring my father’s room, rummaging in the backpack on the mattress, sniffing at the empty Schnapps bottle. And I recalled a documentary my father and I once saw on PBS, which showed how clever squirrels could be -- hanging upside down from branches and stealing bird-feeder seeds, sailing between trees in order to avoid elaborate lawn traps set by angry homeowners.

  "Pigeons without wings,” was what my father called them.

  Sometimes the two of us took long walks alongside the L.A. River. When we reached Webster Park, he delighted in chasing pigeons from our path, kicking at them with his boots. But if my father hated pigeons, he hated squirrels even more.

  "They’re like rats," he explained. "They’ll chew on any- thing, practically eat metal. Not worth shit. At least you know where you stand with a rat."

  "I don’t think I like rats," I told him.

  "Well, I don’t like squirrels,” he said.

  As a boy, a squirrel he’d captured in a milk crate bit him.

  "Broke the skin on my thumb so bad I could’ve bled to death. Me and my cousin beat it dead with a bat, but not before it tried climbing my pants leg, all crazy and mad. I swear that sucker meant to do me harm. Then for months afterwards I kept getting these really horrible dreams -- squirrels all over my bedroom, in my bed, gone totally nuts, tangling themselves in my hair, sinking those big yellow teeth deep in my scalp, tearing at everything. It was awful."

  And on those afternoon walks, my father often picked a nice-sized rock from the ground. Then we’d leave the path and go behind a bush, huddling in anticipation. Soon as a squirrel wandered into view, he’d leap forward, pitching the rock like a baseball player. Usually he missed, but on at least three occasions a squirrel was struck, sending it rolling over in the grass.

  "Gotcha," he said, almost laughing as the stunned rodent struggled to its feet. "Look at the poor dumb thing!"

  Standing directly beneath the upstairs window, I knew my father would hate the idea of a squirrel lurking somewhere in the farmhouse.

  "You’ll get in trouble,” I shouted at the knothole, "so you shouldn’t be in there!” It became apparent that the squirrel wasn’t listening, so I rushed onto the porch, once again minding the nail caps, and went inside.

  While passing the living room, I said to my father, "I’m not telling you a secret because you won’t like it. "

  Then I skipped to the stairs, thinking that if the squirrel was hiding in What Rocks, I’d need some serious help. In my bedroom, I wondered which Barbie head would join me. Contemplating each piece on the mattress, the decision was easy. Magic Curl Barbie head, with her thick blond hair, lacked guts. Both Fashion Jeans Barbie head and Cut ’N Style Barbie head were damaged -- someone had stabbed a hole in Fashion Jeans’ right eye, Cut ’N Style’s forehead and eyes had been colored black with a pen. My choice was Classique Benefit Ball Barbie head, my favorite, and the only one to have real rooted eyelashes.

  Planting Classique’s head on my index finger, I said, "Are you ready?”

  "Of course," she replied, "I was born ready."

  "Good, because this could get pretty dangerous.”

  "How wonderful.”

  Creeping into the bathroom, we hesitated by the door to my father’s room. "I’m scared,” I whispered. "What if he tries to bite me?”

  "Nonsense. You’re a big girl. A squirrel is only a squirrel."

  "I know,” I said, turning the knob. "But you go first."

  The hinges squealed as I pushed the door open. And before going in, I made certain the squirrel wasn’t hanging above the doorway, ready to drop on my head. Then I extended my arm, entering with Classique leading the way.

  "See there," she said. "Safe as houses."

  Everything was as before -- the dirty clothes and Schnapps bottle, the backpack, the lamp on the night table, the throw rug on the floor.

  "But I’m sure he’s here," I said, walking forward.

  I had expected to find the squirrel waiting on the mattress, upright on his hind legs, teeth flared, paws punching in my direction.

  "Don’t be so sure, dear."

  We leaned, peeking under the box spring, spotting dust balls, a folded section of newspaper, the exoskeletons of several June bugs. Then we crawled across the mattress, where I examined the windowsill, searching for the other side of the knothole.

  "Where does it come out?"

  "Beats me," Classique said. "Maybe he’s magic. Maybe he isn’ t really a squirrel at all but a fairy.”

  I pressed my nose against the wood paneling, sniffing like a bloodhound for any sign of the squirrel. A strong butternut smell filled my nostrils, almost producing a sneeze.

  So I turned my head, easing an ear against the paneling, and listened.

  "Not even as good as a pigeon," I said.

  "Unless he’s magical. That’s what he was telling you, I think.”

  "Maybe,” I said, catching a bustling patter within the inner wall. "Do you hear that?”

  "I think so."

  "He’s in the wall," I said, tapping an area left of the windowsill. "Classique, he’s right in here." And as I tapped harder, the stirring quit.

  Then I heard chattering.

  Then silence.

  "What do we do now?”

  "If you want my opinion,” Classique said, "I think you should get dressed. If you put clothes on, you won’t frighten the animals away.”

  "You’re right,” I said, suddenly self-conscious.

  "I know," she replied.

  Returning to my bedroom, I put Classique with the other Barbie heads, then scooped my dress from the floor, saying, "I don’t believe in fairies. Only lightning bugs are like fairies anyway, not squirrels. Squirrel butts don’t glow, just lightning bug and fairy butts.”

  Once the dress was on, I sat at the edge of the mattress, cradling the socks and sneakers in my lap. The socks stank, so did my feet.

  "Frito feet,” I called them, inspecting the brown undersurface of my right foot. Then, before pulling on the sneakers, I whiffed the frayed insoles, recoiling from the sharp aroma.


  "Gross,” I said, snorting a laugh. "Spaghetti cheese.”

  And suddenly my stomach rumbled. The Peanut Butter Girl needs breakfast, I thought. Then I remembered my lip. I searched for the slit with my tongue, but couldn’t locate it. So dragging my shoelaces across the floor, I headed into the bathroom for a better look.

  In the mirror above the sink, I turned my lip down.

  "Stop pouting,” I told myself, trying to sound like my mother.

  The cut had all but healed, so I crossed my eyes for a second, growling at my reflection: "You’re hopeless, Jeliza-Rose. What are you good for? You can’t even keep bleeding?"

  Then I knelt to tie my sneakers. And while knotting the laces, I noticed a small hatch below the sink, fashioned from the same wood as the wall panels. It was kept shut by a night latch which had become speckled with rust.