Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  Daddy held out his left hand and extended his first two fingers slightly. His right hand he held near his chest with the palm held out, a policeman now, directing traffic. Then he quite calmly wagged the two fingers toward the fissure, at the same time blinking solemnly and nodding once to Casey. The eldest of the Surrey siblings dropped into the three point stance and without waiting for further direction charged at the small opening, head down, shoulders squared. He struck the rock surface and bounced off, immediately powering forward again and trying to force his arm, shoulder, and head through, as before. The head of steam made no difference. His ingress was no more successful than it had been. Behind him, Daddy motioned with the two fingers again, this time in the opposite direction, in a retracting motion. Casey retreated a few yards, walking backward without turning his face away from the crack. His eyes locked in on the dark place where his brother was lodged. Tad, inside, was only dimly aware of what was going on, but the new silence registered, and somehow it was far more sinister than Daddy’s threats. He waited there, held up by the solid rock, for he knew not what. He was holding his breath, though he was not aware of it.

  Daddy gave the signal again, and again Casey flew at the rock as though it were an opposing quarterback he had aspirations of taking out at the knees. He thudded off the hard surface as before, with a barely audible grunt. He reached out a bloody claw of a hand at the fissure, at the dark recess, at his brother. Then on the movement of Daddy’s hand, he retreated. And was induced to charge again. This time he was not given the opportunity to gain entry. Daddy jerked his fingers quickly like a whip cracking and Casey stumbled backward, fumbling a little. The expression on his face had changed slightly. The intensity had faltered and he looked a bit bewildered and unsure of himself. A bit more conscious of where he was and what was happening. He looked around, as if distracted by his surroundings, like one who awakens to find himself in an unfamiliar place. But he was not able to stop his actions, which were dictated now by the movement of Daddy’s fingers. They twitched, and Casey moved, skating easily along over the rock bed beneath his feet. He crashed into the cliff wall, and regardless of his stature, the rock was the harder of the two. Daddy signaled, and Casey without turning shot backward as though his feet were being jerked out from under him. He was bleeding from one nostril and a deep bruise on the right side of his forehead. He stood, swaying, and reached dazedly up to brush the flow from out of his eye. He felt the liquid between his fingers and looked at it with mild surprise, as if unsure what it was. Then, as if remembering dimly some task he was supposed to be performing, he made as if to get in the three point stance again.

  Then suddenly he was moving, but he was not doing so under his own power. His feet skidded along together, rather than himself walking or running, as of there was an invisible lasso around him that someone was yanking on. The only reaction he had time for was to try and lift his bloody hands to protect his face before he smacked the wall. He reeled like a drunk and would have fallen, but like his brother a few feet away, something besides himself was holding him up. But while Tad was held fast by the mineral stuffs that the passing of untold eons had helped to mold and shape, it was the empty air alone that held Casey aloft. For he was in fact hovering now, not completely off the ground but on his tiptoes, as if that lasso around his middle were now being held by a person or persons above him who was yanking on it. After the last impact his arms had fallen to his sides, and although he made a halfhearted attempt to raise them to his face and stop the blood which was now a steady stream, he was not able to. His head was sagging toward his chest, and the expression on his face was not pained but rather sad, and hurt not physically but emotionally. If Tad could have seen it, he would have recognized it instantly. Coach Smiley had betrayed him. What was promised had not been delivered. What had seemed like the best possible thing in this or any world, what felt so self affirming, so right, to go into this man’s service and do his bidding, had ended in the battering of both body and emotion. Through no fault of his own, the blunt instrument had failed in his task. Casey hadn’t made the team. And although he had failed to roust Tad from his hiding place, Daddy would still get what he wanted from him, even if it was only a consolation prize.

  For there was no doubt that he was enjoying himself again now, after the momentary frustration, this man who had outlived both his parents and his own sanity. The look of fiendish tranquility was back on his face, and with the subtle movements of his fingers he now proceeded to bash Casey Surrey repeatedly against the rock face. The woods were silent, but for the sound of flesh striking stone, whap, whap, whap. It was unclear, after a dozen blows or so, whether Casey was conscious or not. His body was listless. His arms and legs drooped. In his hiding place, Tad, himself still not entirely either aware or unaware of what was happening, opened one eye and turned his head to look at the almost unrecognizable pulp that had lately been his brother’s face, blocking out the light from outside, before, mercifully, darkness claimed him at last.

  Pyrrhic Victory

  He came awake again. The pain in his shoulder and knee was significant but not excruciating. He was stiff, having been unconscious, or asleep at the very least, in a highly uncomfortable position. When he remembered what had happened he glanced toward the outside in a fright, but could see nothing stirring. He also felt extremely claustrophobic all of a sudden, and without taking the time to weigh the decision he squeezed through the narrowest section of the crack, the part that Casey had been unable to get by, trying not to aggravate the shoulder, and emerged blinking into the sunlight. The heat was somewhat less brutal, the sun having abandoned the assault and changed its position in the time he’d been under. He judged it to be late afternoon. He might have been asleep for two hours, or possibly even three. He looked back at the little cave to utter a word of thanks, and stopped when he saw the dried blood. It was blotted on the rock to either side of the opening. Streaks where it had dripped down to pool below. Difficult to say how much might have been lost. Turning away was when Tad saw him. Casey lay a few yards to his left, face down on the floor of the canyon, around him the skeletons of ancient leaves that had lain there for so long that the elements had rendered them the same drab and uniform brown. Tad approached him gingerly. His head was swimming, the injuries, maybe, or the heat, or maybe just the sheer misery of it all. He no longer knew or cared. The voices in his head had gathered and were whispering again, asking the same question he himself was. He would know the answer soon enough. He reached out, with all the trepidation of an explorer encountering a new life form on an alien planet, and touched Casey’s arm. There was no reaction. He stepped closer, very gently taking Casey by the shoulder and rolling him over, then he gasped and turned away.

  His brother’s features were hardly visible beneath the swelling and the dried blood, resembling, perhaps, a rotten tomato that has been taken in the hand and crushed. The nose was flattened, not merely broken but pulverized, and he could see several deep abrasions in the forehead that had caused the swelling. The eyes were completely hidden, the skin around them drawn and tight. The entire front of his shirt was covered in blood that had already dried to that unmistakable muddy brown, and there was blood flecked on his pants and shoes. On the leaves. He looked for all the world like a highway fatality thrown clear of the vehicle. But he was alive. He was breathing. His chest rose and fell shallowly. As Tad turned back toward him his head lolled to the side and a fresh trickle of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. He muttered softly but did not stir any more.

  When Tad looked back at the period of time that came next, the following few minutes or even the next hour, he could actually remember very little. He must have climbed out of the dead end canyon via one of the less steep sides of the drop off as he had done before. Casey he left behind. Even if he’d wanted to carry his brother with him, he could not have done so. Casey would have been too heavy for him to drag, even had his shoulder and knee not been damaged. He’d followed his way back up the mo
stly dried streambed as it widened, until such time as he could clamber up one of the slopes. Then through the woods, with the sun now in front of him, beginning its reluctant descent toward the horizon. He did remember that the sun had been red, far redder than any blood he’d ever seen, or the petals of a rose, or a freshly painted barn. A red so bright that his eyes burned with it as he caught glimpses through the trees. He’d come out of it, perhaps more by accident than by design, near the Willow Road, and then he was speaking to someone. He didn’t know whether he’d approached that person or whether the person had approached him. He did not really recognize the face but knew it still, as everyone who lives in a town the size of Feral is not completely unknown to each other. The conversation between the two of them served the necessary purpose, which was somewhat miraculous, considering that Tad was more or less on autopilot at this point. “Good lord, son,” the man said. “What happened to you?”

  Tad could also remember wondering how the man knew anything was wrong, but that shouldn’t have been difficult to ascertain. The distance in his eyes was telling, even had his jeans not been torn and his shirt covered with grass stains. “There’s been an accident…” was what he thought he might have said.

  “An accident? Where at?”

  “In the woods…” and here he’d pointed toward the trees with his good arm. “It’s my brother. He fell.” With the state he was in, if the man had asked him to disclose some of the more private details of the matter, he probably would have done so without hesitation, but thankfully, the Good Samaritan was only interested in Casey’s whereabouts. Others became involved, appearing as if by magic with various forms of rescue gear. Tad found himself giving directions that he hoped would satisfy. He was wrapped in a blanket, and he found that odd, for he was not cold, but it was true that he was shivering none the less. He was in a vehicle, moving over a ghost landscape that matched eerily the one in his mind. The only difference was that in the mental one there were a pair of bulging eyes in the sky, and all he wanted to do was find a place that he could not be seen by them. Then he was in a room with blindingly white walls being seen to by faceless attendants whose murmurs sounded so much like the voices in his head that he could not differentiate between them.

  Eventually the activity subsided. He became aware of lying in a bed against a wall, and of his mother sitting in a chair by an open door, through which came a disembodied and distorted female voice summoning a doctor to the front desk whose name he was unable to make out. The light was out in his room and he was lying beneath a blanket with his hands folded together over his chest. His injured arm was in a sling. He could feel the bare skin on his back where the robe was open against the soft yet pliant material of the bed. Something wrapped around his knee. He was at a distance from everything, once removed from it all. There was a small television in the corner, mounted above his mother’s head, and he could make out his reflection in its black screen. He saw his mother’s face as she turned her profile away from him and in the light from the hallway outside he was shocked by how old she looked. He could see the fine lines, each one a groove like a furrow plowed in dry soil which has not felt the touch of rain in an eternity. Her lips were chapped and pressed together. And he could see the wisps of white hair dangling over her eye before she brushed them aside. She turned toward him, sensing his gaze, and the look of unadulterated joy at seeing him awake was like a knife piercing his chest. He closed his eyes, and he could feel rather than hear her rise and come stand over him. Then her hand resting on his arm. Her skin was cold. “What is happening?” he heard her say.

  Such a simple question. But how best to answer? Where to even begin? “Where is Casey?” he asked. He was a little surprised to find his voice in working order.

  “In recovery. Your father is with him.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I just assumed.” He heard her sigh, and then her hand withdrew. “Where is Daisy?”

  “At Mr. McKenton’s.”

  After a few beats he spoke again. “It’s always seemed to me,” he said to the ceiling, his eyes still closed, “that we’re only able to say the things that are nearest to our hearts, the things that we should have been able to say from the beginning, at the bleakest of times, when the people that we care about are in trouble. Or at least that’s the way it is with normal people. Have you ever noticed that? Why do you think that is?” When she did not answer he opened his eyes and turned toward her, but she had taken one step out into the hall. She turned her head back toward him.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. What did you say?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Is Casey going to live?” The split second before she answered was plenty of time to think over which response he would prefer. He decided that he would have been equally happy with either, and then wondered what sort of person that made him.

  “Yes. There’s been some significant soft tissue trauma…to his face…and damage to the cranium…his arms and legs. They don’t know how severe, it’s…too early to tell.” There was a tremor in her voice, and as he watched, a single tear escaped her eye, which she brushed hastily away. He half expected her to say something more, to ask him what in God’s name had happened, for he had been the only witness, the only one who could answer the question. But when she did not ask it, he was not really surprised, either, for it was her way. The way of silence, even when whatever was wrong sat heavily upon her shoulders, trying to bear her to the floor. It had always been like that. Even tragedy could not change her.

  “When can I leave?”

  “They want to keep you at least overnight for observation.”

  “What’s wrong with my arm?”

  “The shoulder was dislocated. You’ll have to have it in that sling for a while.”

  “And my knee?”

  “It’s badly bruised, but nothing more. Tad…”

  “Yes.” Here it comes.

  “I’m going to go check on your father and your brother.” And with that, she was gone, and he was alone with his thoughts, though he never felt really alone. Not any more.

  He was able to sleep again easily enough, and when he woke he wasn’t sure how long he’d been under; his room had no windows or other method by which to monitor the passage of time. A nurse came to check on him, a short, sturdily built woman in white, with a brusque manner. She asked him if he was in any pain, and when he told her a little, she gave him a pill to swallow. She told him that he would be discharged at five that evening, and when he asked her what time it was she told him shortly after noon. She turned the television on for him and left him with the remote. After flipping through the channels, he settled on a courtroom drama, one of those where the urban lower class settle petty disputes concerning theft of property and vandalism. After a time, his mother came in again, and they sat watching in silence together till the nurse came and told him he could go home. She offered to help him from his bed but he opted to do it himself, pulling back the covers with his undamaged hand and swinging his feet over the side. His mother had brought him a change of clothes from home, and they left him alone so he could dress. It was difficult, do to only having the one arm free, but he managed it. He had the same problems tying the laces of his shoes, but he accomplished it at last and stood testing out his bad knee. Having thus collected himself, he hobbled to the door and opened it, feeling a bit like himself again. His mind was not lost to him yet, nor was his life. It’s not over. Damn that bastard, it’s not over. He hasn’t beaten me yet.

  On the way out they ran into Walt, who was pacing outside Casey’s room. He stood surveying Tad soberly, sizing him up. Tad waited patiently. It was not the first time he’d been scrutinized by his father, nor would it be the last. In all honesty, he no longer cared what Walt thought about him anymore. They had never connected in a meaningful way, that was true, but with the experiences he’d had in the past few weeks, the gulf between them had stretched out so that while he stood on one side, the
other could not even be seen. And even though Walt might not know the specifics of what had been happening with his son, his brain, in its rudimentary functioning, was doubtless able to sense the changes that, while they were not immediately visible on the surface, were lurking beneath the thinnest of veneers. As for Tad, he’d never had that much respect for his father, but now, knowing that such people as Stitch and the guests at Decadence existed, Walt, with his small life, might as well have been a Neanderthal, eking out his modest living by digging in the earth with primitive tools. They stood, therefore, looking at each other, and much was said in the silence. Walt, though it was the last thing in the world he wanted to admit to himself, was actually a little intimidated by the middle child. His only method of discipline for all of Tad’s life had been to thrash him. In that sense, Tad was absolutely right about the limits of his father’s imagination. He wondered what, if anything, Casey had told Walt. He’d no doubt he would probably have to come up with a suitable explanation at some point, but the prospect no longer caused him the fear it would have before. And they would not discuss it here, at any rate, for without a word Walt turned and walked away, down the hall toward the coffee machine. All his hopes and dreams for the future were still laid up nearby in the form of his oldest son; Tad did not matter. He might as well have been afterbirth. Walt cared for his middle son as little as Tad cared for his older brother. That point, that decision, had just been made, here, finally. And there would be no going back on it. Like certain other moments in Tad’s life, it would continually reecho for as long as he lived, the moment his father turned away from him.