She exclaimed, “Oh!”
I saw that I had rotated it. Fred crumpled to the ground and writhed in pain. I backed away from him and continued hurrying to the house. I could have fixed him a sling, having learned some things about the body from Father. But I ran.
“Goddamn bitch,” he yelled, “I’ll get you. I’ll get you both. You’ll see. You bitches can’t get away from me.” He lifted himself, but the hand was hanging.
I ran to the house, gently dropped the little girl inside and locked all the doors and windows. “You’re home now, Kat.”
“I know,” she answered softly. “I can tell.” She groped her way to a kitchen chair and sat. She cried little girl tears. “I can’t help you fight Fred because I’m blind.”
“Don’t worry, Kat. I can take care of Fred.” But I didn’t want to. I was made of dead people, but I didn’t want to kill anyone.
I sat down at the kitchen table and waited. I closed my eyes.
I was a blind man in a rowboat out in the middle of a lake. The boat was going in circles. I could feel the boat spinning around, the current beneath me, the wood of the boat, the hard seat, the oars, my sunhat with a brim. I sniffed the murky, oily water, the blooming trees, even sensing when fish rose to the surface to inhale a bit of sky. A sandwich sat next to me, a thermos with coffee. I was fishing, but I hadn’t thrown my line out. It was a distracted season, full of heat. I was thinking in circles about my family’s debts. It didn’t matter that I was blind. We needed to pay our bills. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to sing a happy tune to make myself and the fish happy.
“What were you thinking about?” Kat asked. She shivered although it wasn’t cold. “It was like you went somewhere else.”
“I kind of did. Maybe it’s more like being somebody else.” It was quiet. No Fred banging at the doors, demanding to come in.
The little girl came over to me. She gently held my hand. I was afraid to move it or hold hers back.
“Thank you,” she uttered softly.
“Befuddled,” I gave her. I laughed my deep, mechanical laugh, dropping her hand.
“That’s a funny word.” The girl seemed surprised and then she laughed too. She had a light, tinkling, insubstantial little girl laugh.
Theresa unlocked the front door and entered. “Why are you girls laughing? And why is everything shut and locked?” She began opening the curtains and windows, allowing the inside air to argue with the outside air. An immense oak tree rose into view outside, but there was no man waiting there.
I was perplexed. Where was Fred? I stared outside and a clump of blonde hair was suspended in the architecture of one of the trees. When I looked again, it wasn’t there. Fred had black hair. The colors in the kitchen became jumbled, yellow, brown, white. Chairs seemed to grow wings, tables hooves. The house was safe but suddenly strange.
Theresa snapped me out of my reverie. She turned and looked at us. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” the little girl and I replied at the same time, not wanting to worry her.
The next day I told Miss Elaina what had happened with Fred. I read to her about it from my notebook, which had once belonged to Sandy Shane. “. . . a compilation of events beyond my understanding of them. . . .”
Miss Elaina was disturbed. “That Fred is awful. Do you need my help, the sheriff’s, or anyone else’s?”
“No.” I continued my reading.
Miss Elaina interrupted my reading, “Are you sure, Mara? Because you know we wouldn’t mind helping Theresa and her family?”
“No, she is proud.” I knew I could crush Fred if I had to. “We can take care of Fred if he bothers us again.” I remembered Greg’s body on Father’s table.
“You saw blonde hair in the forest?”
“Yes. I think I did.”
Her forehead became corrugated, as though she wasn’t stitched together properly. Her white hair loosened from her bun, her eyeglasses slipped onto her nose. “You know there are so many stories about the forest.” She smiled, “Most of them fabricated ages ago, and they don’t mean anything.” She frowned again. “But I do wonder what became of Peter, Theresa’s son. No one knows where he is.”
“Kat believes he’s in the woods.”
“That might explain some odd occurrences like food stolen out of gardens and kitchens when no one’s home. Sheds found rummaged, with tools missing. I couldn’t find my purse one morning and when I found it underneath my couch, my money had disappeared.” She pressed her lips together. “My window was open too. I thought I was just being forgetful.”
“It’s wrong to steal. But what if you need something to help you live? Then is it okay?” All the parts of others had their say.
Miss Elaina smiled her far away smile, the one she used when she was thinking about something else, something she wanted to share with me. My retrieving the laundry and delivering it to her house had become so much more.
“Let me show you a book.” She rose and went to her library, my favorite room in her house.
I remained in the living room on the sofa, watching sunlight refracted through a glass cat with its clear haunches resting on a doily. The surprising colors crept across her table and I suddenly saw the memory of a young soldier with black skin. He carried a large rifle. He was sweating and jumping through some underbrush. He was terrified and yet smiling as he played some kind of a game with the leaves and soil, sticking his rifle into mounds of earth and stirring the ground. Then he was staring at me, pointing his rifle.
Miss Elaina returned carrying a book, Greek Mythology. She flipped through the pages. “Ah ha,” she murmured. She handed the book to me. “Here’s a section about Dryads, tree nymphs. They’re very shy, except around Artemis, goddess of the hunt, animals, wilderness, virginity, and childbirth. Dryads live a long time and are connected to their trees. Maybe you saw a Dryad.” She stretched her arm out, holding the large book.
“I don’t know who or what I caught a glimpse of. But it doesn’t seem to be a harmful spirit.”
“Here, take this,” she offered the book. “You can bring it back when you’re done with it.”
I smiled. “This is my first borrowed book from your library. I’ll take good care of it.” I stroked the thick book, resting next to me on Miss Elaina’s sofa.
“Then you’ll return it in perfect condition when you’re done.” It was an order, not a request.
“I would never steal it.”
Miss Elaina turned her face so it was partially eclipsed by the room’s shadows. “I don’t know if I believe in wood nymphs, but stories about you are starting in this town. I wouldn’t think much of it, though, since there’s nothing here to do except gossip.”
“What would anyone have to say?”
“Oh, you know, the usual things. That you’re not a regular church-goer and therefore some kind of bad person.”
“I went to church.”
“But they didn’t think you liked it there.” Miss Elaina smiled and her eyeglasses slid further down her nose. Tendrils of white hair grappled at her neck. “I mentioned that I don’t attend church at all. ‘But,’ they said, ‘we’ve known you all your life.’”
“Mr. John Benjamin said that you changed his dog. Now he lets it run freely around his yard and it doesn’t snap anymore. You’re some kindred animal spirit, strong, too, for a girl.”
“That’s true. His dog, Calvin, was unhappy.”
“Some people think you’ve bewitched the little blind girl, Kat, and her mother, so that you can stay with them. Other people wonder if you’re a spy for a real estate company who wants to buy our land and build new houses here. Everyone has a theory.”
“All I do is the laundry.” I found her brown eyes lodged back behind her glasses. “You are apodictic.”
“Thank you for the word. I know, I tell the truth. They’re not used to outsiders h
ere and no one believes the story about being a friend of Peter’s. Did you really know Peter?”
“No. I wandered here and Theresa took me in.” I saw yellow and blue emanating from Miss Elaina’s skin as though she had dressed herself in colors this morning.
“Peter was a strange boy, almost a man at seventeen, when he disappeared. Everyone thought his father had something to do with it since they disappeared at around the same time. But then they found the father mauled by a bear. Peter never did return. Everyone figures he’s living somewhere between here and the city. He probably has his own family by now. He could be dead in the woods, where no one can find him. Most young people leave this town and none of them ever come back except to visit.” She peered intently at her beige carpet, shook her head, “I don’t know what will happen with Kat.”
“Theresa will protect her. She’s her mother.”
“Theresa can’t always be there. Look at Fred. It was a good thing that you were there.”
“He hasn’t come to find us again.”
“No one has seen him since church yesterday, which is strange, since he goes to the bar often.”
“Hibernation,” I offered.
Miss Elaina laughed. “He’s not a bear. He’s probably lying low right now. I can get the sheriff next week to look for him if I need to.”
“I don’t like him.”
“No one does. As a town we try and take care of our own.” Miss Elaina leaned over and tapped the mythology book. “You might find yourself in there. It seems like everyone is represented by some kind of archetype, beneficial or ominous or both.”
“Who would you be in Greek mythology?”
“I would like to be Thalia, one of the Muses who inspire writers and artists.” The calibrated sunlight through her window was beginning to fail, misplacing her collection of small objects.
I wanted to take her hand, but I was fearful of crushing it. “You are a good human being, Miss Elaina. I have enjoyed talking to you.”
“You sound as if you are leaving. How is it living with Theresa?”
“Fine. I’m learning a lot,” I explained to her.
“About laundry?” We both laughed.
Miss Elaina appeared startled. “That’s quite a laugh you have.”
I was carrying laundry back to the house through the usual forest path. Several of my fingernails fell off, perhaps from rubbing and handling the laundry bags. I didn’t care anymore. It didn’t hurt much and there was hardly any blood. I abandoned the nails. I had a gravitational longing for leaves and logs. I wanted to sit, allow images unearthed from other people to arise in me, tell me stories while I delighted in the fields, rocks, and river alongside of me. There were so many different ways that I could learn about the world, my own experiences, the memories of others, stories, myths, books, Miss Elaina, Theresa, the study of one insect that was born over unnamed dark water, lived flagrantly, unbridled, for one day and then expired. The Culicid, which passed through all stages in their life cycle, egg, larva, pupa, and adult or imago so quickly. The insect would need to remember every detail, heartbreak, stars, rain, water and its waterness, existing flamboyantly before dying.
Instead of being contemplative I pushed myself on toward the house. As I neared the house I saw the little girl running in circles around the yard, squeaking out yelps. When I grew closer I noticed blood on the front of her shirt. I dropped the laundry and ran. Theresa reached her from the house about the same time I did.
Later I would write: the odd girl was dazed, her feet continuously moving as if she was surrounding something so it couldn’t escape. I was big and clumsy. If I touched her I could hurt her in her strange state. She was still a Childcloud and therefore fragile. Silver sparks galloped around my eyes.
“What happened to you? What’s the matter, Kat?” Theresa searched inside the girl’s shirt for wounds, pulled her clean hand out. She removed Kat’s shirt. Underneath there was a thin graying undershirt. “Where did this blood come from?” Theresa took a handkerchief and wiped a spattering of blood from the girl’s hands.
The little girl was sputtering and upset. “Fred,” was all she managed to say.
Theresa was furious. “What did he do to you?” She began to tug at the girl’s pants and underpants.
“No, come Mama,” the little girl found her mother’s hand, led her toward the deeper forest.
“I’ll kill him if he hurt you,” Theresa said. “Come back in the house. Where are we going, Kat?”
“Come,” the girl said. “I hear you, Mara. You come too.” She gestured at me.
I followed. The little girl sniffed the air and made several sharp turns and brought us to a place with deep underbrush. She dropped onto her hands and knees. Suddenly I could detect it too, although my sense of smell had faded. It was the odor of blood, fresh and drying, skin torn loose, waste from the body that was expelled.
We grew closer. Then I saw it, Fred’s mangled body. Theresa and I walked closer, pushed branches out of the way. The head and body had been damaged so that the inner organs and brain would have been useless to Father. It was a waste of his body. I briefly considered trying to use Fred’s ear or disgusting teeth or fingers to replace my own. But I didn’t know what to do and they had probably deteriorated too rapidly already.
“Repugnant,” I said and turned away. “Abhorrent.”
“I don’t know what those words mean but this is awful. I don’t know what to do,” Theresa exclaimed. She sat down on some grass. “Did you hear anything, Kat?”
“No,” the girl shook her head repeatedly. “I found him.”
“Alright,” Theresa said, looking at us both. “The whole town knows how much we disliked Fred. Go back home now, Kat, and take a bath. Mara and I will be there soon after we figure out what to do.”
“Okay.” The little girl solemnly began to return to the house. “But,” she said over her shoulder, stopping, “I think a bear did it.” Then she continued walking with her hands outspread along the path.
“Someone beat him from behind, his head and his legs, and then sliced selected parts of him open,” I stated.
“You seem to know a lot about dead bodies.”
“Someone dragged him here, near the house.” I pointed to indentations along the shrubs and the scraping on the ground. “I can’t tell from where. But there are footprints.”
“Shit,” Theresa uncharacteristically said.
“We are all deciduous,” I told her, “congealing and uncongealing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time, but you’re strong. Do you think you could lift him?”
“Yes. But he cannot be resuscitated.”
“I didn’t think he could be.” She stared at the body. “Carry him, Mara, and follow me.”
I did what she told me. “Malodorous,” I repeated as I smelled everything he had been and everything that had escaped him. Blood stained my clothes. I was tired of being so close to death, including the extinction of someone I disliked, although I truly didn’t mind Fred being dead and out of our lives.
“Throw him over there.” She pointed to a slight clearing behind some trees.
His body landed and an intestine flung itself from a hole in his body. A patch of hair and skull escaped.
“Find a very sharp stick,” she barked at me.
We both began searching for a good stick. Theresa found one. She approached the dead body and made deep gashes on his exposed flesh and on his shirt, one or two long ones on his legs.
“Perfect,” she said looking at her handiwork. “They might think it was an animal, at least for a while.”
“You have created a work of death,” I complimented her. Not a work of life as Father had.
We cleaned the stick with our clothes and tossed it far into the woods. We picked up any stray pieces of Fred that had fallen off in
his transfer and we brushed away any footprints and broken branches, rearranged crushed bushes. “Who did this and why did they leave Fred for us to find?”
“You didn’t do it then.” It was almost a question. “You could have.” She hurried toward the house. “We need to make sure Kat is fine and burn all these clothes and take baths.” She stopped, “No one must find out about Fred. This has to be our secret.”
“I don’t like secrets. And shouldn’t we tell someone?”
“Someone will find him.”
“At least now the girl will be safe.”
“Yes,” Theresa was smiling, “Kat will be fine. I don’t have to worry about Fred anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“If I were you I’d leave soon,” Theresa explained. “Once they find Fred’s body any outsider will be the first person they suspect. They saw you fighting with Fred at church.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” Theresa exclaimed gloomily, “but that’s just the way things are in this town.” Theresa took my hand, hers fitting neatly inside my large, disintegrating one. I was afraid to close it. “I’ll miss you, Mara. You’ve been good to Kat, you’re a hard worker, and you’ve helped me a lot. You’re good deep down inside your enormous body.” She glanced at the ground. “See, I’ve learned some new words from you.”
After all our thorough baths and after Theresa and I had burned our meager clothes I went outside to sit in the surly forest. I did find it interesting that the people I disliked had died, Fred, Greg. But it seemed merely coincidental.
“So much has happened out here,” I whispered to the ferns and moss as I sat on a fallen tree trunk. This time I noticed rot on the tree trunks, the parasitic mushrooms, vines, and moss, and the way small green plants died and came back to life. Nature renewed itself, but not always. A flower’s seeds could sprout several new ones before it curled up and blew away. Flower One was the source for Flowers Two, Three, and Four. Nature was not feeble, even when displaying delicate skeletal branches or arterial flower stalks. But the forest had seemed more beautiful to me before I discovered her inner workings. There were tricks of nature to achieving the ethereal loveliness of butterflies and insects and plants and a dark side to sustaining their survival. Decomposition and decay lay the foundation for growth and it was happening all the time, alongside birth, death, blooms, leafing, fertilization, churning, watering. But the forest was sullen, aggravated at the constant changes. It was growing tired. I was, too.
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