Night after night I slept in Julia's bed, wrapping myself tightly in the blankets, her teddy bear clenched to my chest, the radio quietly playing old folk songs that weaved their sad, hoarse tones into my dreams.
* * * *
A knock on the door one night.
I was just about to go upstairs to sleep. I stood at the door and listened to my breathing. Another knock. Another. I did not look out the peephole. I knew who was there.
Another knock.
I opened the door.
One of the children, the brother of Lily, stood on the front step. Behind him, arrayed in the flickering glow of the single orange streetlight at the end of our driveway, stood other brothers and sisters, and behind them, in the darkness, their parents.
—Will you come with us to the lake? the boy said.
I could not remember his name.
—No, I said. Please, I said. Please go away.
—The water is getting colder. The faces are fading. Soon the lake will freeze and snow will cover it.
—No, I said.
—This could be the last chance.
He took my hand in his. It was small and warm. He led me out into the cold night. The other children gathered around us, and then the other parents. We walked together down the dark street and to the lake.
—What is your name? I asked him as we approached the shore, but he did not reply.
Looking out at the dark water, I hesitated.
The brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers pushed me gently forward. I felt their hands against me, their shoulders and arms, hips, thighs. As we moved closer to the edge of the shore, I pushed against them.
—No, I said.
I staggered and nearly fell. I lunged out of the crowd and back toward the street. They stopped, but did not turn. I scampered up the embankment to the pavement, the hard surface somehow comforting.
I watched a little girl bend down and touch the skin of ice at the edge of the lake.
* * * *
Tonight, as I lie here in Julia's bed, silver flakes of snow fall through moonbeams and tap lightly against the window. The whispers on the radio had not predicted snow, but it is falling nonetheless, falling on the houses and the town, the church, the forests to the west, falling softly on the lake, where parents kneel over the water. I imagine the water unfrozen, and I imagine the snow falling on the faces in the water, and I imagine the faces open their mouths in joy and laughter so that, for a moment at least, the parents see the children catch the snow in their mouths as it softly falls. But I know the water is ice, and the snow has covered the ice, and the faces are not there, I'm sure of it. In the morning, the snow will lie in thick drifts in the yards and on the roofs of houses, on the sides of the roads and the banks of the lake. It will cover the gravestones in the cemetery where Julia and so many others were buried last year, it will hang like cotton in the trees around the cemetery and on the iron posts of the gate.
Whispers in my ears, I listen to the snow falling gently through the night air, gently falling over all the living and the dead.
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On a Dark and Featureless Plain by Stephanie Brady Tharpe
It was an early summer evening and I was on the road again. I've always loved twilight, when time cannot neatly be labeled night or day, and it feels as if you could start a new life without fuss or fanfare. The windows were down and the air was warm and rich with the scent of fertilized fields. That smell always makes me feel like I'm remembering a past that's not my own. The cicadas had crawled out of the earth again that year, their alien music a white noise you noticed only in the back of your mind, punctuated occasionally by weird and eerie silences, an absence which then drew the monotonous drone back into your thoughts. Stars began to appear, an array of tumbled gods, and fireflies flickered in and out of shadow. I passed a hitchhiker by the side of the road, faceless in the gloaming, and wondered where he was going, who he was.
Farther down the road a neon sign announced Grubbs On in the deepening darkness, and the extraneous b rippled and buzzed as I rolled into the parking lot. It is not always easy to recognize the apices in our lives; at that moment my plans did not extend beyond a long stretch and a black cup of coffee, but things are rarely as we expect them to be.
Grubbs On was any diner—every diner—in America. Silver, bullet-shaped, and a little worn down—has there ever been a diner that looked brand sparkly new? One of those places we recognize without thought as a place of light against a darkening sky, where a body can call a time out and shrug off the weariness of the road for a while.
Inside the light was harsh and artificial and the air seasoned with cigarette smoke and old grease; not the best smells in the world, but comfortable and familiar. On the jukebox Elvis beseeched a little less conversation, a little more action. A young couple held the booth in the far corner. Closer to the center there was a loner, face obscured by a newspaper, hand hooked absently through the handle of a coffee mug. An old cowboy sat at the counter and I took a place for myself two or three seats to his right.
The tag on the server's blouse read Hi. I'm Dory Cone Grubbs. She would have been the prettiest thing I'd seen in an age, if her left eye hadn't been drawn tight by an evil-looking burn scar. There was no life left in that eye peering out from behind that squinched skin. I made her age to be about thirty-five, and she looked tired, but her smile was warm. She asked me, “Mister, do I know you? Haven't you been through here before?"
"It may be that I have, m'am.” I allowed as to how I'd spent some time on these roads.
The cowboy studied me carefully, and said, “I believe I know you. You're that preacher, come through here some years back. Atwood."
"I'm not carrying the word of the Lord, sir, just passing through picking up work as I go. Name's Forrest.” I didn't offer my last name, or confess that my father was once a Baptist preacher on this circuit. I didn't live in the past anymore. Hell, it kicked me out a long time ago and God and I were no longer on speaking terms.
I'd ordered a second coffee and a slice of pie when the door opened and the night offered up another traveler. He was a heavy man, and tall, wearing overalls and work boots well dusted by the road, a dark, heavy jacket and a hat low over his eyes. Unable to see his face clearly, I realized this was the hitchhiker I'd passed earlier. He picked a cicada off his collar, crunched it between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it absently on the floor.
The lights flickered once, twice, and went out. The juke popped loud as a gunshot before winding down in a slow moan to silence. The man at the table squealed and the young woman from the corner booth snorted a muffled laugh. “One of those damn bugs crawled across my hand,” said the loner. The hair on my arms rose and I felt a hot exhalation of breath on the back of my neck. I spun around, hands raised against the darkness. A bell tinkled lightly as the door opened, and for a moment a perfect silence held suspended like a drop of rain on the tip of a leaf. Then the lights came back up. There were gasps of surprise and a little chagrined laughter. There was no one behind me.
The cowboy grinned and stuck a cigarette between his lips. I watched the wheel of his lighter spin and spark, spin and spark. Spin. Spark. Dragging my attention away, I felt, I don't know, transfixed, by minute details around me: the tinkling of the loner's spoon against the rim of his coffee mug; the tiniest hint of a hole in Dory's blouse where her name tag had been pinned another night; the sweet smell of my thick and deeply clotted cherry pie; the chatter of the couple in the corner as they regained their bearings. The moment seemed heavy, and I felt a weight of anticipation I couldn't explain.
Dory topped off my coffee. I looked up at her, maybe hoping to see my unease mirrored by her own. Instead I got the jolt of my life. As Dory met my stare, her left eye gazed steadily into my own. Her right eye floated lifelessly behind taut ridges of ruined skin. My mouth worked desperately to form words.
"Forrest? You alright?"
I can imagine no response that m
ight have served me well. I suppose I could have pointed out that something in the darkness had rearranged her face, but I suspected that she wouldn't take a shine to such talk. Perhaps she might have believed I was suffering from temporary insanity, or that I'd gotten confused, spooked myself like a small child after lights out. What I should or should not have said to Dory, however, became irrelevant when the glass on the right side of the diner cracked loudly.
"What the friggin hell!” shouted the cowboy, nearly startling me out of my seat.
There was a small shower of glass chips, and again everything seemed to both sharpen and slow; it was as if I could hear each sliver of glass land individually in its bright spray. Most of the glass remained in the window in a symmetrical webbing of cracks expanding out from the point of impact.
The young man in the booth said, “Enough of this, we're out of here.” He threw some bills on the table and headed for the door with his girlfriend in tow. The single customer also announced he would be leaving. He asked Dory to put his coffee on his tab, and wished her a good evening.
The cowboy said he'd go outside and see what had hit into the window. Dory, who was still staring at the cracked glass, turned and said, “Thanks, Shep. I'd be grateful.” I dropped some cash on the counter and offered to join him. Dory gave us both a troubled smile, and stepped from behind her counter with a broom.
Shep and I walked out of the diner in time to see two pairs of headlights pull out of the parking lot and head up the road, leaving us behind in the darkened lot. It was only then that I realized I'd not seen the hitchhiker since the lights went out. I remembered that hot breath on the back of my neck and shuddered. The night was silent.
As we trudged somewhat reluctantly around the side of the building to inspect the damage the cawing began. There was a wooded lot next door to Grubbs On, and a large tree at its forefront held one of the biggest roosts of crows I've ever seen. Our presence seemed to madden them; the black sky filled up with a riot of raucous cries and a rustling of leaves as they shook the branches. Beneath the cracked window lay the bloody body of an owl. A few crows still pecked it methodically, as if it might yet prove a threat to the roost.
"Well if this ain't some happy crappy,” Shep declared. “I hate to admit it, but all that racket is creeping me out a little bit.” I felt that the perfect silence of a moment before was creepier; it was as if the birds had not existed until we rounded the corner. But I said nothing, just nodded at the old man. He tugged his earlobe thoughtfully, pulled his nose a couple of times. Stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded back. “Guess I'd best tell Dory what happened, and get a garbage bag for this mess. I hope she has some gloves; I won't be touching it otherwise.” The old man looked at me a moment longer, nodded again, and went back around the building.
I turned to head for my car, and the cawing stopped abruptly. There was no sound. I mean none. Even the cicadas had stopped. There is something ominous in complete silence, something that slows time to a crawl. I could feel my pulse, steady, but pounding a little harder than usual, as if trying to fill the sudden void. A twig cracked loudly in the woods, and the sound loomed large after such a silence. Something walked among the trees.
My movements became sluggish and heavy as I turned back, as if I moved through some thick and viscous fluid. The crows sat in a perfect harmony of stillness. They stared at me and I stared back at them.
One single bird flew down and landed three or four yards in front of me. It looked at me for a moment, a long moment, and then uttered a hoarse, sharp cry before taking flight into the trees. The invitation to follow was unmistakable. The other crows remained utterly still and staring.
Now it may be that I should have returned to my car and gotten the hell out of there. Surely I should have been frightened. But I wasn't. My uneasiness was washed away by a dark and strange sense of purpose. I did not know if I would emerge again, but nonetheless I strode into the woods without hesitation. I walked for some time, accompanied only by the sound of my footsteps. I could easily have convinced myself that I had always walked here, that the life that preceded this night was a dream I'd dreamed while suspended in this eternal moment of time. I drew in deep breaths of the cool night air, that good and slightly damp forest smell, and listened to my feet strike the earth. A warm breath brushed the nape of my neck again, but I did not turn around. Instead I looked up and watched the moon dancing among the branches and leaves as I laid down my steps, one by one by one, enchanted with the night.
After some time, I stepped into a clearing, and it was cold. Cold. A frigid torrent of fright rushed through me, washing away my sense of enchantment in its icy currents. Then that breath, hot and insistent as an insatiable lover, fell yet again on my neck and I whipped around. He lunged at me, hands clutching my throat, and I in turn clutched his. We strained and grappled against each other, two behemoths locked in mortal combat. We wrestled for what seemed an eternity, each striving for purchase, for some advantage against the other. I clawed at his face, trying to jam my thumbs into his eyes. But there were no eyes. He had no face. It was a dark and featureless plain.
In the extremity of my fear I began to scream. A black veil descended upon me, the depths of my own darkness a backdrop where memories seared my inner-eye—
dust motes in the sunlight of a hot Sunday afternoon, pews packed with lady parishioners waving those cheap plastic fans that depict the face of Jesus, birds twittering in the rafters, and later, the face of my father floating above me, distorted by the surface of the river as his strong hands held me under in the name of God, the voice of my mother singing: we shall gather at the river, the beautiful, beautiful river
A sunrise many years gone. The smell of blood still in my nostrils and under my fingernails as I threw a bag into the trunk of my car. “I didn't mean to kill him, Daddy. It was an accident."
"Look in your heart,” he told me. “Find the deeper truth. You have drawn the gaze of demons."
But it wasn't true. I didn't enjoy the killing. It had been him or me. I had to do it. There was no bloodlust in my heart, and even if there were, I could outrun it. I would run and run and never look back.
There were other memories, moments of light, of swimming in the cold creek with my brothers and sisters; of helping my uncle with the livestock; and of my mother's sweet voice in the kitchen. The first time I found love in the back seat of a car on a moonlit night.
All these things and more were mine.
My opponent and I again locked hands around each other's throats. That was the first thing I knew when I returned to myself. The second was that the darkness had faded to a deep gray, and the sun would soon rise. There were now the most rudimentary elements of a human face on my demon. I knew somehow that by dawn it would wear a completely human face that would allow it to walk freely among us. It dropped its hands from my neck and spoke.
A draw, it hissed. Your soul is still up for grabs. It turned and walked away into the forest.
I felt no relief, for I knew I would see it again.
I walked back to the parking lot. I did not see the sunrise that morning after all, for it had begun to rain. When I left the woods, there were many crows, sleek and shiny black, strolling companionably in the rain, looking for treasures in the damp earth. They paid me no mind. As I came around the corner of the diner, I saw Dory closing the front door of my car. I pulled my collar tight around my bruised throat and approached her.
She appraised me steadily with her left eye. At last, she asked me, “Do you think madness is a sin, Forrest?"
Her question stunned me. I reached beneath my jacket and gingerly stroked my swollen neck. “I don't know,” I said.
"Last night I couldn't shake how familiar you looked,” she said. “I kept thinking about it when I was cleaning up that glass from the floor, and I remembered Shep saying he thought you were that preacher, Atwood, that came through here a long time ago. But I realized that couldn't be who you are. That was twenty years ago. He'd be an ol
d man by now.” I continued to watch her but said nothing.
After a while, she said, “There was this man around here, when I was a teenager. He was married, had a lot of money. He used to get after me some. Followed me home from school in a flashy car, showed up places where I was likely to be, that sort of thing. I ignored him as best I could, but he'd come to the diner a lot so that I'd have to wait on him.
"My mamma was never quite right. She was crazy for God, was how my father always put it. She thought that women were full of sin, and that any trouble a girl got was asked for. There was a day when I was home from school not feeling well, and I'd put water on the stove to boil for tea. He showed up at my house. He came in and there was trouble. He tried to force himself on me, and I hurt him, just the way a girl knows how to if she isn't given any other choice."
She smiled ruefully. “I have to say, it was a pretty satisfying moment. Anyway, he left, but when I turned around from locking the door my mamma was there. She yelled at me and called me a whore, and lots of other names, as well. She said that I'd best keep my eyes turned away from temptation. Then she got this funny look on her face. It was like her whole face just went blank, like there was no one in there anymore. Then real softly, she says, ‘if thy right eye offend thee, oh Lord...’ and she grabbed that boiling water and threw it right in my face, right at my eye.
"I don't remember much else about that day. When my daddy got home, I was on the floor screaming and my mother was stabbing me. He killed her. Put her down with his own gun. Had to, or I would have died. But he had a real hard time accepting it. Things were about as bad as could be for a while.
"Then one year, this preacher come through here, Preacher Atwood, and he helped my daddy a lot. Made him understand that there was no malice in what he'd done, only a father making the only choice he could. Daddy was never quite the same, and neither was I, but things got better after that."
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 21 Page 5