by Nick Arvin
I anticipated Beetle’s call for weeks beforehand, but the stories I told him were spontaneous, as if I were the speaker for phrases telegraphed directly into my brain from an alien source. Reflecting on the lies and their complex relationship to reality, I began to see that, to find any truth in the world, I had to grasp all the subtle signs that floated around me like confetti.
When Beetle spoke of himself, he told me about vacations in Florida or on the Texas coast. “Exotic enough by far for me,” he’d say. He made references to an old house that he seemed to be rebuilding perpetually, plank by plank. He’d also undertaken a project to trace his family roots through various libraries and city courthouses. “And so far all I’ve found are deserters in various wars and pioneers in the bootlegging trade.”
I wondered why he called every year. Did he take something away from this that I did not understand? Perhaps, childless himself, he gained some vicarious pleasure in the stories I told about my children growing up. But maybe he had more secret reasons. Possibly his stories held no more truth than my own. Sometimes Beetle seemed to be entirely a figment of my imagination, like an escaped dream. Or, rather, a dream captured and chained to me. Yet this was ridiculous, because if Beetle was a dream, where did all those packages full of cartoon marines come from?
I didn’t realize how much I looked forward to our ritual until the fourteenth delivery failed to arrive. I fretted for several days, then I dug out the mechanical pencil Beetle had given me when we first met. I dialed the phone number on it, and a woman answered. “I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson passed on after a heart attack almost eight months ago. Mr. Calhoun has taken on Mr. Johnson’s accounts. Would you like to speak with him?”
I hung up. I moved dully to a chair and sat gazing out a window. It had been gray all day and an intermittent rain was now regathering force. I had lost my only witness to history and his smile as well. Gusts whipped the rainfall against the window with a crackling noise, and the water then moved in slow trickles down the glass and around, in the lower right corner, a suction cup–mounted commemorative outdoor thermometer. It stood unmoved by rain or wind and its steady presence helped calm me.
After a minute I called back and asked to speak to Mr. Calhoun. I ordered a set of commemorative wine goblets, several pairs of sunglasses, and, after Calhoun reassured me that they would be of the highest quality, a case of sweatbands. Each to be marked with the distinctive charging marine cartoon and the customary phrase.
This is the fifteenth anniversary of the invasion, and today I told an imaginary Beetle a few things—one of the twins excels as a student but the other struggles; Lita grew gravely ill with a mysterious fever in the autumn, but now it has passed; and we’ve gotten a little puppy with ears longer than her legs and named her Snow. These facts are somehow connected to the reality of paint peeling in the bathroom, the fist-shaped stain on the carpet in the kitchen, the cold air. I look around, and Lita’s cartoon marine is charging from the walls, from inside the cupboards, from the floor mat in the hallway. They’ve overrun me and surrounded me, these square-jawed fighting men. I study the lines of each, noting slight differences between the soldier on the eighth anniversary duffel bag and the one on the eleventh anniversary handkerchief, a thicker neck on this one, a meatier fist on that one, both charging toward sands they will never reach.
Electric Fence
When Elizabeth sat far away afterward, in her office or in a meeting, and her attention slid from the ceaseless managerial tasks before her to her memories of childhood and of the woods, this was the view that first came to mind: from the driveway, beside the car, luggage at her feet, looking back across the open lawn toward the line of treetops serrated by branches reaching to all directions of the sky and horizon. The view of the woods at that moment beside the car was a view separated by years from the woods of her youth, yet no different really. The relative heights, breadths, and positions of the trees created a distinct pattern that she would always know, the way some know a particular ridge of mountaintops or a city skyline.
A wind pressed a wave of disturbance through the branches, causing them to lash. The leaves lifted, displaying their silvery undersides. A bird provoked from its perch flew up, darted down. Then the wind was gone and the branches returned to where they had begun. Elizabeth lifted her suitcase and together she and Allison carried the bags into the house. The sisters had returned home.
Allison tried to appear certain, although she was not. She never felt as certain about things as Elizabeth seemed to, and at the moment—sitting at the kitchen table, bearing her best expression of firm resolution, looking at the squat, silvered urn that held their father’s ashes—she envied her sister’s confidence. She watched the urn on the table and tried to make her own gaze as tough and cold as Elizabeth’s, but she began to doubt herself and to feel she should apologize—though she knew she had done nothing wrong—because surely just now it was important that they not be at odds. When she glanced up, however, she realized Elizabeth was gazing abstractedly out the window and paying her no attention. The window was open and a breeze caused the curtains to draw against the screen, then relax. Both sisters were in chairs which in the past would have been considered their parents’, and this heightened Allison’s feeling that she was involved in something like a tense game of pretend.
Suddenly Elizabeth rose. “I’m going out,” she said, moving toward the backdoor.
“Elizabeth?” But Elizabeth was already outside. Curious, concerned, Allison got up and followed. A queer rhythm entered her pulse.
The sun shone hot and bees nosed at the dandelions scattered over the lawn. Allison liked the flowers, even if they were weeds, but she wished the bees didn’t like them so much. Wearing only light sandals, she placed her feet carefully. She wrapped her arms around herself despite the heat. Elizabeth had already disappeared into the sumac bushes that marked the edge of the woods. Songbirds twittered among the trees. The sky was clear, the sun high, and it seemed to Allison that the day’s breeze did not cool but only blew the heat against her.
She remembered how as a child she had sometimes been sent to retrieve Elizabeth from the woods, how she had always moved slowly, hesitating in the lawn, as now. How she hated to go into the woods, that dismal place. She was an adult now, not so small and slight a creature as she had been then, and she felt a little less intimidated, but only a little. She pressed gingerly through the sumac. Poisonous stuff. It turned that bloody red color in autumn.
Elizabeth stood at the fence, birch and poplar trees on either side of her, hands on hips, still as a photograph of herself. “Elizabeth?” Allison said. Elizabeth did not acknowledge her. Allison wondered where Elizabeth was at times like this. What corner of the mind did she crowd herself into? Allison took a step forward, thinking to touch her on the arm, awaken her, but she stopped. Elizabeth’s hands were in fists, as if she were struggling with something: perhaps it would be best to leave her a minute.
Now, in the gloom under the trees, Allison felt cold.
Wood and foliage suddenly crashed and slapped behind her and Allison spun toward the noise expecting to meet some leaping predator, but there was only a single upper tree branch wagging wildly. It could not have been anything very large, so high in the trees, but something was there. “What was that?” she said. “Was that a squirrel?”
“Sounded like it,” Elizabeth said.
Allison continued to watch suspiciously. She couldn’t see any squirrel. The thrashing of the branch dampened quickly and soon she was no longer certain which one it had been. Everywhere the uppermost leaves twitched and flickered, agitated by a light wind.
Then there was a peculiar noise that didn’t at first alarm Allison so much as it mystified her. It was a sound of metal shifting, as if someone were thrusting their hand into a bucket of pennies, combined with a low buzz, a loud variation on the droning of the bees in the lawn. She turned toward her sister for an explanation, then could not understand what she saw. “Elizabeth!” s
he cried. Elizabeth was recoiling from the fence with her face to one side, her eyes opened wide, her hands lifted slightly as if she were preparing for flight. She collapsed to the ground like a long coat slipping off its hanger. Allison gasped and tasted, faintly, an acrid smoke. She screamed and scrambled through the brush toward Elizabeth and, though it was unlikely anyone could hear, screamed again, and again. When she paused to breathe the woods still made all the usual sounds and this angered her. “Damn it!” she yelled. She knelt and cradled her sister’s head in her lap. Elizabeth lay gasping, her legs bent under her, her eyes closed. Allison took her sister’s hand and massaged it with her own—it felt warm and limp, at once dead and warm. “You’re okay,” she said. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” Then she screamed, again, “Help!”
Suddenly Elizabeth’s eyes were open. “Hey, hi,” Allison said. “You’re okay. Lie still. Are you all right?” Elizabeth squinted. She raised her head and strained awkwardly to peer down at the limbs. She nodded.
She stood a moment later, and Allison walked her back to the house with a hand on her shoulder. Red welts crosshatched her arms and her cheek was marked by a faint upside-down L, but her clothing seemed to have protected most of her. Allison wanted to take her to a hospital, but Elizabeth said no. Please, Allison pleaded, gesturing at the marks on her arms, but Elizabeth shook her head. She spent a couple of hours resting, then, coughing lightly, came downstairs again. Allison watched her closely as she wandered into the kitchen. “I caught my foot and fell against the fence,” she said. “That’s all. I feel fine now.”
Allison stared. “Elizabeth. How can you be fine? You were electrocuted.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “All right, yes. But I’m okay. I swear.”
Allison sensed that Elizabeth was lying: she hadn’t tripped on anything. But at the moment it seemed best not to argue. Allison aimed a disapproving glance at her sister and let the matter go.
However, a silence then fell between them that lasted the rest of the evening, broken only when Elizabeth said, “Good night,” and Allison said, “Night, Elizabeth.” It seemed to Allison that her sister accepted the quiet with greater ease than she herself ever could. She lay awake a long time, curled on her side in a state of melancholy, mulling how Elizabeth’s impenetrable, self-collected reserve—which Allison often admired—could be bitterly frustrating at a time like this.
Poached eggs, oranges, and coffee just as Elizabeth liked it—Allison had everything arranged by the time Elizabeth emerged from her room. The slanted morning sunlight landed directly on the table, making the colors of the food vivid. Elizabeth thanked Allison. Still, they ate in silence. Elizabeth peeled her orange carefully and ate the wedges one by one, while Allison, stricken with worry, glanced from time to time over the table at her. Elizabeth smiled when she caught her. “Really, I wish you would stop it now with the funny looks, Allison.”
“What did it feel like, Liz?” Allison asked, softly. “When you touched the fence? Do you remember?”
“Like nothing,” Elizabeth said. “It didn’t feel like anything.” Allison frowned. Elizabeth added, “I mean like nothing, it felt like an emptiness, a hollowness of feeling.”
“You were unconscious.”
“I guess I was.”
Allison thought about this for a moment. “But you’re all right now?”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened with impatience. “Yes, of course.” She made a short, curt gesture with her hand, as if closing a door. “Please, quit worrying.”
“All right,” Allison said. Sometimes she felt the possibility of understanding spanning between them, but then, quick as that, it would be gone.
Ten years later, a hand shook Elizabeth by the shoulder. “Elizabeth, get up!” Allison was saying while another voice, deeper and male, was speaking at a distance in the background. When Elizabeth opened her eyes, Allison took her by the arm and dragged her out of bed. They stumbled down the hall and into the living room, where Elizabeth, still moving under Allison’s guidance, sat on the couch.
The male voice, Elizabeth realized, came from the television. The volume was up quite high. Unimpressed by Allison’s panic, she stared at the rectangle of colored light. She was here visiting the old house, Allison’s house now, and she had been deeply asleep in her old room—now the study. Allison’s husband was away, which had been a relief to Elizabeth. Allison had been married for eight years now, or mostly married—there was an intermission when she caught her husband sleeping around and divorced him, only to marry him again several months later. Elizabeth had been angry with Allison then, had argued with her, told her that this was a mistake, that one could go too far with forgiveness. Allison replied that it wasn’t a matter of forgiveness but a matter of love. Elizabeth thought this utterly unconvincing. She couldn’t budge Allison, however, and she couldn’t argue forever about it, so she had to give up, disappointed but not surprised. Whenever she had doubts about being unmarried herself, at thirty-eight, an examination of her sister’s situation reassured her, and made her a little angry as well. Allison’s husband was currently missing on a week-long fishing trip, the ulterior motives of which Elizabeth had little doubt. Sometimes it was hard for Elizabeth to say to what extent the differences between herself and Allison, who was the older sibling, simply revealed themselves as a matter of course or came about because she actively pursued such differences and defined herself by them. Elizabeth dated men but ended things if they got too serious. She had friends who thought this the symptom of a strange pathology. Allison, of all people, did sometimes seem to understand.
The man on TV, she now understood, was talking about tornadoes. Allison leaned forward, eyes wide. Elizabeth ran her hand over her face and through her hair. She wore her hair short now that it was turning a steely gray.
She had spent the last few days reading books, pacing through the rooms she had grown up in, talking with Allison and watching her fuss about. The days had passed quietly. A couple of times, in the afternoon, she had driven alone to a grassy, open park several miles away and she walked there with other people who ran wearing headphones or strolled with their children or trailed after their leashed dogs—Elizabeth wished the place were more solitary, wished the people gone. Even more, she wished she could go back to the woods she knew, the woods behind the house she grew up in. But of course there was the fence. The marks that the fence had left on her face and arms were now long gone, and she tried not to let herself feel too upset when she thought of it.
The TV weatherman gestured at the maps shifting behind him and spoke with emphatic calm. The air outside was ominously still. From the direction of town could be heard the faraway howl of warning sirens.
Then, finally, the winds began to rise, and Allison insisted that they go down into the basement. An unfinished cellar with a cool, damp concrete floor and exposed beams overhead, it smelled of mildew, dust, and sweet, decaying wood. Neither of them had spent much time here as children, and to Elizabeth it seemed foreign and stifling. Various large, unknown objects under tarps loomed in the shadows. Paperback books, yellowed and warped with moisture, spilled from large, slowly collapsing cardboard boxes. Long rolls of carpeting leaned against one wall, and nearby lay a rough pile of wood, perhaps taken out of the walls in some renovation, saved for an unknown purpose and now rotting.
Gusts slammed into the walls upstairs and curled shrieking around the corners. Elizabeth had brought down a couple of kitchen chairs. They were sitting in these, gazing at the stairway they had just descended, when, silently, the lightbulb overhead went dark.
“Do you have candles?” Elizabeth asked.
“I forgot to bring them down.”
“I’ll go get a flashlight.”
Elizabeth stood, but Allison grabbed her arm. Her fingers felt moist and sticky against Elizabeth’s skin. “Stay here,” Allison said. “It’s dangerous upstairs.”
Elizabeth sat and relaxed. Still, Allison gripped her arm. The floor beams began to creak loudly in the bl
ack air, and beyond rose the sounds of a ripping, crashing destruction. Elizabeth wished that Allison had not forgotten the candles. Allison’s other hand felt in the dark for Elizabeth’s and Elizabeth repeated a few meaningless, reassuring syllables to her.
Then the house’s shuddering stopped and gradually the wind’s howling settled to a mewling, then was gone. They ventured upstairs and lit candles and everything appeared to be as they had left it, until Allison went to the window and gasped. The funnel of a tornado had touched down behind the house and cut into the woods, destroying trees in a wide, brutal swath like a lawn mower through grass.
They carried their candles outside, where they burned without wavering. Sunrise was flaring over the eastern horizon and the full sky was so fathomless and clear that one might not guess there had ever been a cloud in it. Allison began inspecting the damage to her lawn and some recently planted apple and pear saplings. Elizabeth blew out her candle and walked to the woods. Entire trees lay tumbled across each other. She began moving forward between the trunks and snapped limbs. Allison called, and Elizabeth turned and waved in a gesture of reassurance, then pressed ahead.
The fence had been torn in several places by falling trees. Fence posts were pulled from the earth or bent to the ground. The path of the tornado continued on the other side, and even the largest trees were down—their thick trunks broken off in splinters the size of swords or ripped entirely from the ground to expose tumorous masses of earth and twisting roots. Elizabeth looked about for several minutes, wondering if the man who lived here might be watching. But at such a moment, she decided, her presence would be of little concern to him. The fence could not possibly be carrying a current; nonetheless, she paused a second and spit on one of the posts before she started over the flattened metal.
She felt sick seeing all these trees dead, many still bearing their leaves, still green and vibrant. She walked without plan, moving as she could. The old paths were just visible, here and there, under the carnage, and certain trees she recognized, although now they lay horizontal. The sun lifted up and she began to think about going back. But then, reorienting, she realized the old climbing tree was nearby.