I pull my hanky from out of my overalls and realize only then that I’m not wearing a coat. I hold the hanky before me. Blood drips from it, making great red spots that spread outward in the snow. A hawk cries overhead. I love hawks, especially the red-tailed ones. The way they spread their wings so wide in the sky, like nothing can hurt them.
“Why don’t you just leave here,” somebody yells. But I can’t tell if it’s my brother or another one of the voices. I suppose it no longer matters.
And then the buzzing stops. There is a rustling in the pines. The urine and burnt cedar smell of musk. The soft crunch of snow beneath dreamfooted hooves. The buck stands tall behind me. The one thing I know. Hot breath breaking the hoary air.
There’s another sound. A loud one, and at first I think he’s shot the buck, but I turn and it’s still standing. Maybe it was the hawk. I search the heavens for a glimpse. The play of sunlight on red feathers dazzles.
The thick smell of pine struggles upward through snow, a gift. I smile as my tomb falls about me. Taking a handful of snow, pressing it to my feverish face, I slip through my deerskin boots.
The glade is clear and calm. Columbines blooming in the grassy patches. The beaver damn rises before me in its futile attempt to block the river. The mountain crooks silent. Eli stands above me, his smell strong—like a horse.
He is crying as he kneels in the snow by my side. I wonder if he sees me or if, like me, he is trapped in this dream.
“What happened?” I ask.
He takes my hand in his and lowers his head, praying beside me. “Why’d you have to come here?” he asks. Behind my question lies another question.
He stays with me for what seems like forever, and then he looks to the sky. But I don’t think he sees the hawk because he gets up and runs away, west along the river.
The wet snow seeps through my britches. But it’s not cold. Not cold at all, as my white tomb grows red. The hawk flies to me. He takes off his coat of feathers and lays it upon me. I gaze into his sharp, brown eyes, and I know he will not fly anymore. I feel sad, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s his choice, and he makes it freely.
I don’t like the color of my grave. Too bright. Shiny. Not like the red of the hawk’s wings. But that’s okay, because I spread my wings, and the sky that falls on me is blue as I look down at the self that was me.
Circling above, like the hawk, I see my brother, Eli, running ever higher through the valley, and I want to laugh because the grave can’t hold me. Will it hold you? I want to ask him. Will it hold you?
HANDS
Nell | Colorado
He asked me if I was happy, and I didn’t know what to say.
He asked if I was proud of my work as a midwife. That I could answer.
“Then you are happy,” he said.
He brought daisies to place inside the coffins. I didn’t know where he could have found them. But somehow he did. He said he’d heard about the avalanche, about the deaths in the mining camp, and he’d come back to do what needed to be done.
I could swear his hand graced my forehead though he remained several feet away.
“I bring you a gift,” he said. I thought the daisies were the gift.
Being old friends, Henry welcomed him into our home.
“The past is forgotten,” Henry said.
“No,” he replied.
Henry stared back at him, waiting for something less mysterious. “You always were a strange one, Wallace,” he said.
The snow melted quickly, so that the tunnels were no longer safe to walk through. But it was not a matter of safety alone. After the avalanche, the people avoided the tunnels, and those few who traveled them said they heard voices whispering to them through the snow and ice. I had enough voices in my head, and so I stayed within my house.
Wallace suggested burying the entire camp in the center of town; he said the miners lived separately but they didn’t have to die that way.
They stored the dead in Pete Myers’ food locker, since most of the food was gone anyway. They said that they’d bury them where they lived up on the face of La Nana as soon as the snow melted and the ground thawed.
And the day after the last of the dead were found, carted to town, and stored in the food locker, the town went about its business, most of which consisted of sending the men to nearby towns for whatever food could be spared. Meanwhile, the women worked to prepare the church and the school for use once again.
I did not join them. My hold was slipping. Why work to bring life into the world when it is so easily lost? My life started with Alice and Jane, and now I felt it might end there.
Henry lost himself in the business of reorganizing the town. Giving orders, rebuilding structures that had collapsed under the weight of the snow. Yet soon these patchwork measures were not good enough for him. He wanted to make Seven Falls bigger and better. And so he called together the townsfolk to begin work on a library and, even, an art gallery. Henry said that nothing could slow down progress. I told him his progress was nothing but another form of snow.
For a week or more Wallace stayed with us, sleeping in the guest room while I slept upstairs, neither speaking a word, neither acknowledging the intimacy of air we shared, our mouths falling to confusion.
Then he stood at the foot of my bed, so tall I didn’t know how he could fit in the room.
“I know only the odd things you grant me,” he said, breaking the silence.
I don’t know how long I lay there with him looking at me. I don’t even know if it was day or night, though I assume it was day for Henry was gone. I could not look away.
“Come with me,” he said. “Down the Blue, there’s a valley. Come with me there.”
“I cannot leave,” I told him. “I’m bound by my breath to this place.”
“Each time we breathe,” he said. “We exhale the world.”
“And what about the children?” I asked. “What about the others?”
“I’ve got lots of land,” he said. “I’m giving it away to the first people who settle there.”
“Henry,” I said. One word, almost an afterthought.
“He can come if he likes. He is welcome.”
“He will stay.”
“Yes.”
It was then he laid his hand upon my chest. My heart rushed, but not for want of him. His gesture was different.
“You are still a bird,” he said.
It was then I decided why not love him. His hands were so large, so capable. It would be easy to fall into those hands.
THE STAGES OF COAL
Henry | Colorado
Organic matter left in wet, acidic conditions does not rot completely but instead turns to soft, fibrous peat. Over eons, layer upon layer of sediments force out the moisture and squash the peat making smooth, brown coal. Yet still greater pressure turns that soft, brown rock into hard, black bituminous coal. But that is not enough. The final stage is anthracite, pressed so tightly together it nearly explodes in flame.
I have been buried for far too long.
Her visit struck my hard surface with the unwelcome news of what was essential. She asked me if I wanted to go with her. She told me we could all live together, that there was room for all of us. Time for all of us. She said she would be taking the children. Had I been porous, her words might have reached me.
Controlled blows can split a rock into a useful tool, fine-grained quartz into an implement for digging. What does it matter which way we face? What does it matter if we follow the rising blue?
What does it matter if we walk toward the sun or away from it to build our own? There is enough fire within my compressed body to heat the world. What does it matter if I’m split, if I shatter into a thousand pieces? Those pieces will still burn.
STORIES
Killian | Colorado
Saturday is baking day, Sunday church, Monday wash, Tuesday clean the house, Wednesday canning, Thursday picking raspberries, Friday chickens.
The day before
Catherine dies, Mother sees Jesus with his hands over her. The neighbor has to shake her back to her senses. Even then, Mother swears she saw what she saw. When Josephine dies, Mother cries for a month. She thinks nobody knows because the baby’s inside her, but I know. She looks right at me one morning after she’s done crying and asks, “Killian, how did you know?” But I don’t have an answer.
Catherine says, “Mother, I’m going to die tomorrow,” and then she does.
Chores: chop wood, clean chicken coop, spread manure, clean manure stalls. Hiding Places: chicken coop, hayloft, the dry spot under the porch, the well.
The cellar’s full from one end to the other with mother’s canned peaches.
Pebbles glittering in the rain. Every time I pick one up it stops glittering.
A cat stiff on the side of the road. Its eyes eaten out.
Sitting in the hayloft, eating green apples.
Catherine’s coffin in the house. People praying over the body.
No matter how bad the winter, the flowers always return.
Muskrats on the bank, diving in just as you catch sight of them. I worry they’ll eat my toes.
Lying under the elm or by the river, gazing up at the clouds and seeing the shapes. Sometimes you float away.
All the Christmas cookies are hidden in the guestroom. The entire room is full of cookies. You can smell them all through the house.
Mother says that the angels are always near, protecting us. We are never afraid.
When it snows, we make angels. Then we tunnel under the snow and spend all day there. Sometimes the angels get destroyed.
We drink out of a ladle that hangs on a nail by the sink. Uncle Frank takes the ladle because he forgets, and then we have to search all over the house for it.
Eli draws a line in the sand and lays the chickens so that their eyes are looking down that line, then he chops their heads off, and the chickens go running headless, blood spurting everywhere.
Father and Uncle Robert play music and everyone dances. Those are my favorite times with Father.
Mother calls the cinnamon rolls “snails.” I try to imagine what snails taste like when I eat them, but it never works. The cinnamon fills my mouth.
Sleigh bells ringing outside on Christmas Eve.
Uncle Frank is Santa. I’m sure. He is.
Sometimes, when I wake, there are little gifts under my pillow, for no reason. One morning I’ll find chalk, another morning a pinecone, a shell, a rock polished to a shine, a pebble with my initials painted on it. Even a stick carved to look like an Indian arrow. And sometimes nothing at all, which also seems special, after days of finding something. I’m pretty sure it’s Uncle Frank that does this.
Every Saturday and Sunday, as soon as they wake, Webb and Molly check beneath their pillows. They are used to the game now. Sometimes I don’t put anything there. This morning they each find a piece of string. They spend all morning playing in the spot between the bed and the wall.
Webb’s string becomes a snake, then a king, and finally a great dragon raining fire on all he sees. Molly’s string is a girl named Alky, who is later transformed into a princess. I get dizzy if I stay and watch.
Sometimes they turn to me, stepping out of their world to ask me if I want to play. I kneel down beside them, but no matter how hard I try I can’t quite seem to enter the space they’ve created. Molly says that I’m still like a kid so I can do it. She says that if I can fly I can surely do this. And there are mornings when I feel the shining air about me and can almost see where I’m going. But so many times I can’t. I guess I’m mostly adult after all.
You’ve got to believe in something, Uncle Frank says. That’s what makes the world magic. And Catherine believes him. I believe him, too.
And I believe in Uncle Frank’s stories. I know they are magic.
So I tell my stories every night to Molly and Webb, even Henry Jr. when he’ll listen. I believe in the stories. I believe when I see Molly’s eyes go wide as soon as I tell how I grab onto that giant snake, and it pulls me down its hole. I believe when I see Webb jump up with excitement when I tell how I walk the bottom of the river, talking with the fish, gathering stones for my house. Stories are the promise of life I give to the children. And they in turn give it back to me.
A THAWING AND A MELTING
Narrator/Killian | Colorado
Float again on the currents of Killian’s imagination. Gaze with him as he spies the river from high above, sees it sharper than ever before. Watch the ripples appear and reappear through patches in the ice. Each time they are different. Just as this story would not be the same if you heard it again. It’s as if the water is made up of many rivers, each breaking from the other, then joining, breaking and joining, swirling one about the other, rising up from the darkness along the bottom, then going down again, each swirl making its own pattern, yet all moving toward the same end.
Fly west as we follow his brother’s tracks along the river between La Nana and her sister. Look closely as Eli digs a cave in the snow, a hole that will not last. Even now the ice drips from the roof. He backs himself in and curls up to wait. And we wonder if he can hear the voices following, angry voices with guns. They follow the tracks as we do. Eli is an expert woodsman and could cover the tracks if he wished. Even in the snow, there are ways. But he wants to be caught. He waits for them. Ready to fight from his hole. And he knows what any trapper knows: the cornered animal is the most dangerous because it has nothing to lose. He will shoot at them until they shoot back. And that, we think, is what he wants. Then the wind catches our wings, and we turn away.
Henry straddles a roof beam on the new town hall. We call down to him, but he does not hear. He is entirely focused on his work, hammering against the purple dusk. Stripped of his jacket and tie, we barely recognize him. He looks so different, so determined. Sweat pools under his arms even though it’s near freezing. And then we spot the silk handkerchief wrapped around the handle of the hammer as he lays it down to wipe his brow, and we understand why he remains.
Look there, walking along the Blue. It’s Wallace and Nell. And there, ducklings trailing behind: Henry Jr., Webb, and Molly. Oh, how we wish to scoop up Molly and follow. How we’d like to see Webb fly once more. They look happy, we’re almost sure they do, for they are heading to their new home.
And where is our home? How will we find it? Already the voices swirl about us. I think there’s even a little syrup left. We fight the voices, wanting our freedom. Let me dust the snow off you, let me warm you in my hands. But then we know it’s useless. I know Lucy will give me a drink. The voices have always been part of us. Do you hear the drunk preacher? And we part of them. I don’t know. It seems the more I clean the dirtier things get. So, like the sky, we listen. As soon as I find my tobacco, I’m getting the hell out of here. We feel the rhythm of the air about us. She knows I need it to do the Lord’s work. We soar higher, and the sun slips through us. Do you see the white horses, Alice? They’re beautiful. And we know it is always now. It has always been now.
The greatest mysteries have the simplest answers. The snow melts, and we melt with it. The ice thaws, and we join. There’s never been a whale as big as this one. The present is falling backward, voices crashing one into the other, and we cannot hold. Frank, you son-of-a-bitch, you were never a sailor! Time does not exist unless we will it, and it is only our habit that makes it so. Are you sleeping, Killian, like the deer? No, Catherine, sleep is different. Different how? We don’t know. It all started the day your Uncle Robert gave me permission to visit his sister . . . The harsh tang of sweat, hops, and woodsmoke . . . Thick tendrils of web hang about us, drifting back and forth in the light air above the rafters . . . He puts the pipe in his mouth and puffs, considering . . . Through the smoke, we can barely make out the shadowy figures on the bench below. Who is that man puffing on the pipe? . . . And the very next day your father was over at her house, sitting high atop his horse and talking with her through the window. I saw the whole t
hing and couldn’t believe it . . . Jake is that you? Who are the children sitting beside you? We can scarcely remember . . . Was that horse one of the crazy ones? . . . If we can’t remember, how are we supposed to finish the tale? How do we get the story right? . . . Your Uncle Robert had just got himself a young team after making a deal to buy this tavern. He was so proud he took Meg, I mean your mother, for a ride down Main Street on a Sunday afternoon . . . The tendrils float on the unseen currents, sometimes touching, forming new versions of webs . . .
Look, now. Here’s one more:
Meg emerges from behind the bar, three mugs of beer in each hand, making her way through the crowd, laughing as one by one the beers disappear, the last one going to a dark-haired man with gray eyes. He smiles at her, gestures to the dance floor where a lone man plays the accordion. She does a little jig for a moment, but then waves him away, as if she thinks he must be joking. Her attention turns toward another man sitting on the side bench beneath the corn sheller. She makes her way to him, asking if she can share the last bit of pie on his plate. He tamps his pipe and tucks it in his pocket. He assures her that their children are all asleep. The last remnant of the fudge scent wafts through the rafters. Then he scoops up a forkful of the pie and places it in her mouth, delicately wiping away the trace of raspberry that graces her lip.
It is then we understand. It doesn’t matter if our memories are real or if they are imagined. Our best hope is to dream, even if imperfectly, who and what we are. To dream and tell the tale.
This is the part I don’t like, Henry says, covering his ears.
Where does the story end?
In Nahoonkara.
Where does it begin?
Nahoonkara
About the Author
Peter Grandbois is the author of The Gravedigger (Chronicle Books, 2006), a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” and Borders “Original Voices” selection as well as the hybrid memoir, The Arsenic Lobster (Spuyten Duyvil 2009). His essays and short fiction have appeared in magazines such as: Boulevard, Narrative, Post Road, Gargoyle, Zone 3, Eleven Eleven, The Denver Quarterly, Word Riot, Pindeldyboz, and The Writer’s Chronicle, among others, and have been short listed for the Pushcart Prize. He serves as associate editor for Narrative magazine and is a professor of creative writing and contemporary literature at at Denison University in Ohio.
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