by Daniel Kraus
The dimmest moonlight reigned at the far end. The knotted end of the second light’s pull cord batted Ry’s lips. It tasted sour. He caught it and hoped that, when he yanked it, he did not see Sarah right away propped among the boxes—it would be like seeing a corpse. Let it be gradual, he prayed. He counted out a deep breath.
“Sarah,” he croaked. “Come out, now.”
He pulled the cord.
Sarah was right next to him and she was headless.
Ry would never understand how he held in the scream. He stumbled back, landed his heel wrong, and tripped. And in that weightless instant he experienced the true horror of regret, because he should have listened to her about Jeremiah, about the top of his head being gone, because here she was, victim to the same decapitation. By accident he caught himself against the box their TV had come in a million years ago, and through the updraft of dust he made out Sarah’s lack of arms, the pole that stood in place of her legs, the zippered body bag that already encased her torso.
It was the dressmaker’s dummy, standing in its regular place next to the window. Ry could almost hear Marvin’s pitiless laugh. Ry flung his head left, right, to the rafters, to the floor, at cardboard, wood, wicker, plastic, glass, the whole illogical puzzle constructed from their lives’ castoffs.
“She’s,” Ry panted, “not here.”
Marvin shoved his chest into a wall of boxes like he wanted to fight it. It did not respond and he turned the threat upon his son. “She’s here. You said.”
Ry tasted panic. “I thought she was.”
Marvin kicked lightly at a lower crate. The stacks above wobbled.
“She hm hm.”
“She is here,” Jo Beth interpreted.
“She hm.”
“She is.”
“Hmmmm.”
“She—”
“Hmmmm-mmmm-mmmm.”
“She … she …” Jo Beth shook her head, lost. “Ry, isn’t she …?”
The room was torn apart; it happened in what seemed like seconds. Marvin brought down boxes on both sides of him with powerful drives of his arms, and before the packages split against the floor he was flailing at the next layer. The landslide ejected payloads of newspapers, tax forms, long-forgotten correspondence that took off on white wings. His feet hammered at a wooden crate until it buckled and bled the spangled shards of holiday decorations. Ry slipped on a busted garbage bag and fell into the dummy’s armless hug.
By now Marvin was chest-deep in the innermost layers. His neck swelled with the effort of extracting the staple-and-tape spines from obstinate containers. Pewter figures, old tableware, and outdated purses slopped to the floor like slaughterhouse entrails. No central thoroughfare remained; the room was postearthquake.
Marvin’s eyes, speedy and black as bees, found Ry and stung.
“That.” He pointed. “That.”
Ry looked at the mess in his lap. It was the contents of one of his mother’s sewing baskets scattered in a roadkill smear, complete with spool skull, pincushion heart, button blood, and scrap-cloth skin. Marvin kicked through the rubbish and pointed again, this time with the shotgun and at the dressmaker’s dummy. Ry ducked the invisible bullet and snatched the hem of the dustcover, eager to prove to his father that the dummy was not Sarah.
He stood, lifted off the cover, and dropped it to the floor. It took a while for him to notice his mother’s strangled whine. Marvin closed in on Ry, his feet grinding through the clutter with the same bored crunch of Sniggety chewing through a bone. The shotgun muzzle touched Ry’s shoulder and moved him aside.
There was no question about it: White Special Dress outshone the shard of meteorite, had just as many facets, was just as hypnotic. Marvin held his breath and reached out to touch it, but his fingers hesitated inches away as if weighing the possibility of electrocution. Finally they pounced, pinching the ivory taffeta. Ry could almost feel how the texture melted like lotion into his father’s coarse skin.
Marvin’s voice was muffled. “What is this?”
“It’s nothing,” Jo Beth said. “A hobby. Junk.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“That’s why it’s up here. It’s just an old—”
“It’s not nothing!”
Marvin snatched a handful of the dress, right at the neckline. Jo Beth shuddered at the crude molestation. He pulled, trying to tear the delicate fabric from the model, but whatever laces or clasps Jo Beth had invented were impressive. He snorted in frustration, then moved toward Jo Beth, pulling the dummy by its clothes in the manner of a caveman. The headless thing came obediently, its circular metal base clucking across the garbage-strewn floor.
Jo Beth had both hands palm up as if eager to take back her baby.
“Look at it,” Marvin said. “What is it? What is it really? It’s a few goddamn buttons. Goddamn thread. Little goddamn bits of hm. It shouldn’t mean anything. Should it? But this crap is what ruined us, Jo. Ruined our hmmmm.”
“That’s true,” she pleaded. “That’s absolutely true.”
“And still you flaunt it.”
“I don’t.” To cover her bases she tried again. “I do.”
Marvin planted the dummy with enough emphasis to make a point, and Jo Beth’s knees jarred as if it had happened to her. The base snapped from the pole, wobbled a few feet, and came to rest against Ry’s shoe. With nothing to stand on the dummy dove but did not hit the floor—it was caught in the sling of the dress, which was still snared in Marvin’s fist. Ry heard individual threads give way: Ping! Ping!
“They told me you were trouble,” Marvin said. “Everyone said hmmmm some other girl.”
“I am trouble,” Jo Beth said.
“She sews, is what they said. They said it like it mattered.”
“It shouldn’t have. It’s my fault that it did.”
He shook the dummy by the bodice, and through some fluke of angle and motion the dress, rippling as gorgeously as a tiered wedding cake, slipped free of the breasts and shoulders with a satin sigh. The naked wooden torso clunked to the ground. Marvin teetered with the sudden loss of counterweight, then lifted the dress in a surprised fist. It puddled over his forearm like a dollop of frosting. They all felt it: Marvin had taken away the dress’s feminine shape, robbing it of much of its power. Emboldened, he kneeled and dug past the needle threader, tape measure, and tracing wheel, sifted through the scatterings of pins and needles, until he plucked from the mess a pair of pinking shears. He held the blunt little instrument in the same large paw as the dress and stood.
Marvin offered both items to his terrified wife.
“Please cut this up.”
Jo Beth’s eyelids fluttered as if pelted by a funnel of gnats. Her lips worked in silent syllables, struggling to come up with an alternate way to interpret this command. She ventured a little laugh, just soft enough, perhaps, to whisk the idea away.
He shook the dress and stared at the floor.
“Makes me uncomfortable to repeat it.”
“But I told you.… ”
“Don’t do that. Don’t cajole, don’t hm hm hmmmm.”
“And … and …” Her smile was busted and wild. “And why would I do this?”
“To change. For things to change. You want things to change, don’t you?”
Ry saw doubt touch his mother’s expression. Because she did want things to change. That was the whole point of leaving the farm.
“Then this is a symbol,” Marvin said.
Jo Beth’s lines of doubt deepened and Ry could not help but be awed. It was a symbol. How did his father know?
Marvin nodded. “You know what you have to hm.”
He extended the dress and shears. They hovered at a level where all Jo Beth needed to do was lift her arms and the dress would be in her possession once more. She considered it, blinking drowsily. For so many years this object had soothed the rage and depression in her blood just through contact with her skin. Maybe it would do the same now, calm these stormy waters, make ev
erything all right.
Ry realized he hadn’t breathed in forever. He sucked down a mouthful of dust.
At last Jo Beth spoke.
“No.”
Marvin angled his head. “No?”
“Shoot me if you want,” she said.
Marvin steadied himself. “You forget. I killed a man.”
“So? Think you can kill a woman?”
He readjusted his stance unhappily. “I can do other things, Jo.”
“What? Stick needles in me? Try it—you’ll have to kill me. Or you’re going to threaten to shoot one of my children? Do it. Do it and you’ll either end up dead or I will. Either way is fine. You’ve got that gun you keep waving around. It has to go off at some point, doesn’t it?”
Marvin’s shoulders began to tighten.
“You speak out of turn,” he said. “Hmmmm.”
“No, you do. You do. This is not your farm, Marvin. It’s mine. It’s been mine for nine years. And what I did to it was I killed it. You say you killed a man? Big deal.”
“I’ve got a plan, Jo Beth. I’m not going to let you ruin it.”
“Your plan is shit. Come here and kill us? That hasn’t worked. Take our money? Best of luck. Take that rock with you? You can’t even get it out of the hole. And then what? You’re going to waltz into some museum with it in a wheelbarrow? Or what, a Polaroid picture? It’s laughable. It’s the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard. Prison ruined you, Marvin. I’m afraid you’ve lost your touch.”
Marvin slotted the wedge of meteorite into the Winchester’s grooves.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t have to sell it. I’ll have it. That’s worth something right there. By itself. Isn’t it? Just having it?”
Jo Beth’s face was wickedly drawn.
Marvin turned to Ry. The stew of rubbish around his feet rattled and clacked.
“Isn’t it? Son?”
Ry nodded. He had to.
Marvin’s silver grin dashed across his face like a knife. He lurched forward, the gap between his teeth like a great black curtain dropping over Ry’s world. Ry did not feel the fabric being bunched into his left hand; he did not see the stiff fingers of his right positioned around the child-friendly handles of the pinking shears. The black curtain lifted and there was Marvin, swooping backward to give his son space. Ry caressed the dress and fondled the shears. It was as if he held both of his parents in either hand.
“It’s what I was saying, son.” Marvin’s bare head was bouncing in approval. “Men do the real work. There’s nothing fair about it.”
“Don’t,” Jo Beth said. “You don’t have to.”
“He knows what he has to do,” Marvin said. “He’s my hm.”
Ry lifted the shears and practiced their operation. The soft noise sounded like a secret. He shook out the dress so that its full length touched the floor; its secret was even softer. He angled the tool toward the fabric, expecting the dress to scream. It did not, not even when he fit the blades over the first thick fold of material.
The act of cutting detonated something at the back of his head; he felt his brain thud against the plates of his skull. Magnetized dust from his father’s hands might have rubbed off on the shears—would that mean Ry was absolved from responsibility? His thumb and forefinger pumped and the stubby jaws of the shears squeaked, and the two sabers of silver began munching through the lace trim. The pivot of the shears jammed and Ry felt stupidly happy—two inches of damage, that was all he’d done. But then the skirt went taut and the shears tore across it as if it were paper. A huge swath was flayed. From somewhere to his right came unbearable moans. Like a natural immune response, the blare in his head amplified to block them out. Both noises were distracting and he found himself having to double back, make a serious effort at chewing lamé to gristle, ribbon to confetti. Work: It was the one thing he knew he was good at.
22 HRS., 6 MINS. AFTER IMPACT
By the time his hand cramped, daybreak was smoldering through the window shade. Ry yawned and let the pinking shears drop. He noticed that his feet were gone, buried in the dress’s remains. He kicked his right foot and white silk butterflies and golden lint mosquitoes briefly spotted the air. Two pearls rolled across the floor like sad white drops of blood. White Special Dress, the result of nine years of toil, was no more than a pile of cold guts, and he had acted as butcher.
He lifted his chin. There would be a proud smile waiting for him from his father, there had to be. But the man he found was a wracked ghoul, bent with the passage of hours. Over in the corner was Jo Beth, slouched and silent. There was a smell like bile. Had someone thrown up? As he sniffed, the stench became the embodiment of his parents’ disgust. Hate was everywhere, shared between and directed at everyone.
Marvin’s eyes crawled across the attic wreck, brave enough to dwell upon the shredded gown for only a few seconds. He dragged an unsteady palm over his shaved head, through his sweaty mustache. His glasses were left askew.
“My house,” he whispered, “is a mess.”
He turned with a slowness reminiscent of Jeremiah. His first step was uncharacteristic, a stumble upon some unseen piece of miscellany. Both arms went out to buffer his fall and the gun tumbled to the floor, briefly free. No one went for it. Marvin took it back in his hands and trudged forward, gesturing the barrel at his wife in a vague way but never getting close to meeting her eyes. Jo Beth took a breath that shook her whole body.
A spark of insight flared somewhere inside Ry. He remembered waking up after being attacked with the owl lamp and realizing how many hours had passed, how the next time he’d seen his mother she was wearing a set of new clothes. Marvin had not touched a woman in nine years and she had known that; there was no telling how far she’d gone to distract him from hurting her children. Now it was all wasted effort. She moved listlessly toward the door and began to lower herself onto the ladder. Her knees popped. Marvin’s did, too. Their feet made rat noises as they left behind their son.
Ry stood there wheezing. He swept his eyes over the entire attic but could not bear to land them anywhere for long. The devastation was a larger reflection of the unspeakable thing he had done to the dress, itself only the latest example of his lifelong cowardice. It would have been better for everyone if Black Glade had sunk in its root teeth, pulled him into its stone belly, and spent nine years over his digestion.
He’d fit nicely up here amid the debris. All he had to do was fall. His knees had begun their weakening when, like the lit end of a cigarette in a darkened theater, a small red container caught his eye from across the room. Barely peeking through the upheaval, the container was roughly the size of a shoebox, though the flaked paint of a long-lost commercial logo betrayed its age. Marvin’s tornado must have dislodged it; Ry was certain that he’d never seen it before. His knees siphoned strength from curiosity and he found himself climbing over the refuse, reaching for the container, bringing it into his arms.
Ry discovered that his palms were swampy and his wrists sore with the force of his racing pulse. The container weighed very little. The wood was flimsy, the lid fitted like a cigar box. And yet this small capsule was important. He could feel its undeniable energy in his fingertips, his eyeballs, the crack of his forehead. He walked over to the attic door, closed it, and sat on top of it—this gift unwrapping was private. He placed the box on the floor, took hold of the lid from both sides, and began to shake it free. Wood squeaked in protest. Finally the lid separated and the box itself fell to the floor, blowing out a rectangle of dust. Ry licked the air, recognized the taste. He set the lid aside.
There, not burned, not buried, lay the Unnamed Three.
22 HRS., 34 MINS. AFTER IMPACT
Jo Beth and Marvin came down the back steps connected so closely by the shotgun that the arrangement could have been mistaken as arm in arm. It was dawn, and a warm one, and yet both of them wore gloves. Marvin’s pockets jingled with car keys. The sequence of events was clearly outlined and the McCafferty Forty w
as the preordained destination. Jo Beth slanted toward it.
But Marvin caught her elbow with the shotgun and tapped her in a different direction. She wavered but soon enough caught the drift: the doghouse. Sniggety was part of this final chapter too, she had forgotten, and she recalled hearing Marvin slap the canine’s hind end while she had been inside trying to talk sense into her son. That effort had failed spectacularly. Marvin, however, had succeeded in rounding up his dog.
They stopped at the dirt patch just outside the small yellow house. Inside Jo Beth discerned the fussy rearranging of a crouched animal. It was fitting, she thought, that Sniggety had so readily turned his back on those who had taken care of him for the past nine years. Betrayal was all around.
“Snig,” Marvin muttered. “Hm.”
The animal shifted about but did not emerge.
Marvin knocked the heel of the gun against the roof.
“Snig. Hm hm.”
The breaths emitting from the darkness were thin and rapid. Jo Beth was surprised by her instinctive concern; perhaps the mutt’s master had punished him for his earlier delinquency and that friendly slap she’d heard was actually the breaking of old bones. Marvin reared back with a foot and kicked the wall sharply, once, twice, thrice. Jo Beth’s heart, weakened by hour after hour of fresh shock, fluttered with each crack.
“Sniggety,” she said. “Now.”
Marvin looked askance at her as if annoyed that she would think her contribution necessary. But, in fact, it worked. They both heard the throat whine of a pleased dog. Except it came from off to their right. They looked to the east and saw, over by the machine shed, wagging his tail, Old Snig.
Their reaction took an extra beat. The low sun obscured their vision and exhaustion had made them both sluggish. That was all the time it took for a small hand to dart from the doghouse, run the long-dormant dog chain around Marvin’s ankle, cinch it tight, and swiftly insert and clamp the antique padlock.
Deep in Jo Beth’s heavy chest, life stirred.
“Sarah!”
Marvin jerked back as if he had been bitten, and within two backpedaling steps the chain pulled tight and his arms pinwheeled as he lost his balance. Without warning Jo Beth was taken with the conviction that her entire life had led to this moment, this single instance of physical contact where she—not he—was the aggressor. Her arms shot out and pushed. It was more than his equilibrium could withstand, and he fell. His back hit the ground perfectly flat and his breath expelled in one loud burst. Jo Beth was already moving away when her eyes landed upon her daughter’s wide-eyed face poking out from inside the doghouse.