Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  The paper was from the book of Exodus. “On the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not suffer the Destroyer… to come unto your houses to smite you.”

  Rain and wind pounded the McClellan house. Inside, Jacob climbed the steep, narrow stairwell. Boot treads had worn the step edges round. The boards squeaked. He clung to the wobbly banister, then shifted to lightly touching the wall for balance every few steps.

  His eyes adjusted to the faint upstairs light. The noise of pebbles on glass waxed. Reaching to the wall, his hand shook. Down the hall at the last room—the Widow’s room—a yellow light projected a shadow that could only have come from a demon raging near the dead woman’s corpse. Jacob clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He blinked, woozy. He passed the first door on the left, glanced inside, continued. The light at the end of the hall wavered and his ears buzzed with each step. He stood near the doorway and choked on the stench of the rotting widow.

  The bogeyman hissed. Jacob inched around the corner.

  The corpse crawled with metallic, blackberry-sized flies. A congested armada swarmed back and forth, casting a shadow. They crashed against the window, and as one, turned, and rushed him on glistening wings. He batted them. Flailed. They bounced from his head and arms. Alighted in his hair and dove into his gaping mouth. He spat and screamed and stumbled; caught himself and ran down the steps.

  Spitting, chewing.

  Jacob turned; the flies clouded the landing above and followed him downstairs. He stopped at the whiskey bottle. The broken neck had no loop. Scaly, hairy fly parts coated his tongue. He hoisted the jug, pressed his lips to the sharp glass.

  He spat on the floor and gulped again. Ruffled his hair and more of the hairy beasts zoomed around his head.

  Fire.

  Beyond the dining room, in the sitting room with the floating rectangle of light, a roll top desk abutted the wall. He rushed to it, pulled a lamp chain, rubbed his eyes, tugged a humidity-swollen center drawer, withdrew contents stacked in the center, unfolded a sheet of lined paper. A pencil script titled the page ‘Walnut Whiskey.’ The tiny writing below resembled one of Lucy Mae’s recipe cards, with short bursts of text followed by numbers.

  A black book contained names like Spanky Jones and Puss Wilson, followed by two lines of numbers, and a final column with a consistent entry, “pd.”

  He drank from the jug again. Below the black book lay a photo. A middle-aged man, made of leather and sawdust posed with a rifle; his narrow eyes leered beneath a fedora brim; the crumpled hat as weathered as the face. His hair draped his shoulders like the painting of Jesus that Pap took down after Lucy Mae… though this man didn’t host kindness in his eyes. He had angular cheeks and a wide jaw. Jacob studied his narrow shoulders and hips, muscled and veiny forearms. He could have been Pap’s older brother.

  It was the presence at the walnut tree.

  Jacob drank, slicing his lip from the broken jug.

  Fire.

  He spat a dollop of blood to the desk. Stuffed the photo, the book, and the recipe inside a tall waxy envelope from a vertical slot, then ransacked each drawer. Coins… a bank-book… a pocketknife… he pocketed them.

  Fire.

  Jacob glanced over chairs and a radio. Curtains darkened two windows but a third had none. Rain trickled down.

  Fire…

  Jacob turned a semi-circle. His thoughts wandered and he couldn’t keep anything top of mind for more than a moment before something displaced it. Fire. But more than anything Jacob wanted to see a fire.

  The desire came from somewhere new to him, a thought that floated in on walnut whiskey. Fire. Fire. Fire.

  At the hearth lay an upended box of kitchen matches. He struck one against the box side. He cupped his hand and held the flame below a burgundy curtain. Yellow licked the cloth. Smoke rose. He sat cross-legged. The match burned his skin and he flicked it away. Flames on the curtain leapfrogged higher. Heat warmed his face. The blaze widened and soon licked the ceiling, fell back, and reached overhead with a wide, orange arm. It roared. It whipped. Smoke thickened above his head. Embers curled below the ceiling and floated across the room. Patches of carpet ignited.

  He closed his eyes and the orange light danced.

  Jacob opened his eyes. The walls blazed and the chairs looked like devil’s thrones, with wavering blue bulbs spitting orange flares. He crawled below the smoke to the roll top, grabbed the waxy envelope and scrambled to the kitchen. The gallon jug sat on the floor. His ears roared and his throat and lungs burned. He pressed the serrated glass to his mouth and drank. An ember stung his neck; he swatted orange flies, circled the table, splashed whiskey into flames. His skin shrieked. He hurled the jug into the inferno and fled, sprinted across the lawn, looking back at the light and heat as he went.

  At the forest he collided into a man who clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  It was the sawdust and leather man in the photo.

  “Aghhh!”

  Jacob staggered and the man held his shoulder. Jacob twisted, saw a pinned-up shirtsleeve and quizzical grin.

  “Jake!”

  The sawdust and leather man became his father. “Guess I don’t got to ask what your doing.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s fairly evident. What’s in your hand?”

  Jacob offered the envelope. “I—thought I should take it.”

  “Let’s stand back a bit. Fuckin thing’s hot already.”

  Angus led Jacob a dozen yards into the woods. Under thick hemlocks the rain dripped in slow, heavy drops. Jacob leaned against Angus and closed his eyes.

  A mile ahead, black smoke climbed from the trees and swirled against dark rain clouds. Deet throttled up and ducked into the wind.

  “Something’s burning!” he called. The wind stole Emeline’s reply. He held his hand flat at his brow. “It’s our house or the McClellan’s!”

  Deet opened the throttle. “Come on, come on.” He took the curves wide and the straight stretches center-lane. “It’s the Widow McClellan’s! I can see it.” The trailer wobbled and wagged the Farmall. Minutes later he throttled down and halted shy of the widow’s lawn.

  The back roof had fallen in. Embers swirled skyward like insects from the back corner. The forward roof collapsed as Deet ran a few yards. He turned back from the heat.

  “Deet!” Emeline cried, “We’re too late!”

  “Mrs. McClellan!” Deet cried. “The Widow’s inside!” He ran to the side of the house. Flames roared against the windows. On the siding, wisps of smoke grew into sooty orange ghosts of flame. He circled the house. The fire howled like an old woman. She might be just inside, overtaken by smoke.

  “No!” Emeline cried, and crutched closer.

  Deet darted onto the porch, opened the door by throwing a chair through it. The kitchen seemed clear beyond the wall of flames at the door. If he could follow it quickly, he could find the old woman.

  Emeline stood beside a cement birdbath closer to the road. Deet raced toward her tearing away his shirt as he ran. He soaked it in the pool of rainwater.

  She seized his arm, screamed “No!”

  Flames cried like sirens.

  “I got to!” Deet clasped her hand. Removed it from his arm. He wrapped the dripping shirt over his head and pressed a sleeve over his nose and mouth.

  He charged into the fire.

  I trot through the woods and onto the lawn best I can on a half sober, leaving Jacob in the trees.

  “Deet’s gone inside!” Emeline shrieks. “I think he fell.” She runs on her cast taking strides like Jesse goddam Owens. I’ve seen women make eyes like that before—cheatin’ eyes that don’t care who knows.

  I reach the porch ahead of her. Orange-black flames billow against the eaves and scale up around. I fall to my knees and crawl, throwing my arm forward, still seeing Emeline’s eyes and the kiss she gave Deet this morning on the porch as he carried her to a bed of hay.

  “Too hot!” I yell. “It’s too ho
t. I can’t get near him!”

  Emeline rushed past Angus, dropped, and wriggled to the step. Yellow and orange and blue gasses rippled; smoke layered at the ceiling. Deet lay on the kitchen floor; the flames from the walls mingled with fiery tongues that incinerated his clothes. Emeline inhaled the furnace and choked. Deet’s hair was a swirl of singed brilliance; she clutched his ankles and jerked him to the door. Pain shot from her heel to the base of her skull. She wrenched Deet over the step.

  Deet lay clear of the flames on the porch and yet the searing pain continued on her skin and Angus tackled her to the grass and rolled on her, jarring loose a burst of breath she’d held since entering the house. She gasped cold rainy air and smelled walnut whiskey and found herself staring into her husband’s eye.

  She took in his ugliness. His blackened teeth.

  “Deet!”

  She struggled; Angus wobbled to his knees. She dragged Deet to the lawn and rolled him on the grass. His burned shirt fell away from his shoulders. His scalp was like a charred ham.

  “Damn fool,” Angus said.

  Steam rose from the lawn and the grass closest the house browned and smoldered. Deet lay on his stomach; his back lifted with each tiny inhalation.

  Beyond Angus, Jacob crouched at the forest edge behind tall grass. The firelight was queer on his eyes and teeth. He appeared to grin.

  “Roll him to his back,” she said. “He can’t breathe.” She heaved Deet’s shoulder; his body followed and he flopped over. His stomach was pink and his sides were red and black. His abdomen rose and fell in tight, quick movements.

  “Good as gone.” Angus squeezed his nostrils together and snapped his hand away, flinging a string of snot.

  “He’s too close to the fire. Help me!”

  Angus stood.

  “Now!” She grabbed Deet’s left foot and Angus clasped the other; they dragged him closer to the birdbath, where the grass didn’t steam.

  “He’s safe here,” she said to no one.

  The roof collapsed, sending a spire of sparks into the sky and a blast of heat across the yard.

  “He needs a doctor,” Emeline said.

  “He’s gone.”

  “This is your son!”

  Angus slapped her.

  Emeline studied his face and Angus stared back into hers. His brow was low and his jaw set, as if he wanted to communicate beyond words. “I’m heading to the house to call for help. You stay with him.”

  Emeline brought her fingers to Deet’s cheek, wavered shy of touching his raw, bleeding flesh. “I’m here,” she said. “Deet I know you can hear me and you have to say these words in your heart as you hear them. Lord, I turn from my old ways and repent. Save me Lord. Be my savior. Say it with me Deet. Lord I turn from all my sin and evil. Lord be my savior. Lord I can’t go on without you and I need you to save me. Lord please take me from this awful place. Lord? Deet? Say it with me. Lord, I—”

  Time slipped from her.

  A hand grasped Emeline’s shoulder. She lifted her chin from her chest and wiped stringy hair from her eyes. Doctor Fleming knelt beside Deet; another man looked at her with hound dog eyes set on a creased face; he wore a brown and tan uniform. A water-speckled badge gleamed in the waning firelight.

  Sheriff Heilbrun removed his hat and said, “Can he make it to the hospital, Doc?”

  “He’s going to be fine!” Emeline said.

  “Mrs. Hardgrave, can you stand? Here you go.” Heilbrun stooped and she took his arm. She gauged the depth and goodness of him and pressed her face to his shirt. He stood taller, not uncomfortable, but not relaxing into her either, which consoled her. She closed her eyes. Beside her Doctor Fleming spoke quietly as he studied Deet. Emeline drifted through smoky black images.

  Heilbrun rocked slightly. She felt him move his head and imagined his wordless conversation with Doctor Fleming as they stared at each other, at Deet, and back at each other.

  Heilbrun led her to his cruiser, helped with her leg and left her in the passenger seat. He returned to Doctor Fleming. They spoke. Raindrops fell like afterthoughts and ash lay soggy on the windshield. Heilbrun returned, stooped before her, hands on his knees.

  “Emeline?”

  He waved his arm toward the house and his eyes pointed away. He swallowed. “Deet’s in real bad shape. Best we can do is make him comfortable. It’s his lungs, see? He can’t get what air he needs—”

  Her mind drifted. She was in her father’s woodshop, rubbing wax into the metal to keep it from rusting. She stood before her ninth grade class, reciting Aeschylus. She walked on the sidewalk in the fall with her books pressed to her breast and the light scent of changing autumn leaves in her nose.

  “Deet’s dying, Emeline, and we can’t do anything.” Heilbrun’s eyes were cold. Angry. “Doc Fleming give him morphine, and it’ll make him a little more comfortable. I’m sorry.”

  Autumn… The clouds were so white, and the blue just beyond—what a delicious blue. Houses displayed carved pumpkins on their porches and a diesel truck rolled by and the exhaust was sweet enough to—

  “Emeline?”

  She blinked.

  “I’m going to put Deet on the trailer here, and drive him to your house so we can try to make him comfortable.”

  She looked up to him with puckered chin and squinting eyes, but behind them was horror that refused to cry.

  Deet had never acknowledged her prayer.

  Heilbrun and Doctor Fleming had carried Deet to the sofa. Emeline sat beside him on a kitchen chair that Heilbrun brought out for her. She watched Deet’s chest rise and fall; each tiny exhalation caused a quiet whistle. Sheriff Heilbrun and Doc Fleming drank coffee in the kitchen. Their low voices carried talk of the storm, the fire, Deet. She was surprised they lingered. Each had Deet’s blood on their arms and chest.

  Angus crept behind her but she refused to turn and acknowledge him.

  “You don’t need to see this,” he said.

  “Someone has to sit with him.”

  “Go upstairs and freshen up. You don’t look too good.”

  She touched the inside of Deet’s hand. He’d apparently had his fingers curled into fists; the skin was unburned. Deet moaned, but whatever slight awareness she’d stirred settled back below the scorched masque of his face.

  Angus breathed hard through his nose. “We ought to roll him on his belly.”

  “He can hardly breathe, now.”

  “His belly ain’t burned like his back,” Angus said. “Needless suffering lying on them burns.”

  “It’s better to hurt and live.”

  “You need to go upstairs. Seeing things like this don’t leave you right, after.”

  She held her hand to Deet’s cheek, close enough to feel heat rising from his flesh, but afraid of the pain she would cause by touching him. She stared at the wall, the window. Propped her head, clutched her hair and pulled until the pain grounded her. She stood and hobbled to the kitchen.

  “Do something!”

  Somber stares lifted from coffee mugs.

  “Emeline…” Doctor Fleming said. Slowly, he shook his head sideways.

  She limped back to Deet, touched her fingertips to his palm. His hand shook. He opened his mouth.

  She leaned. “Deet?”

  Air escaped from his lips; she whispered his name again. His brow clenched and his hand tightened on her fingertips.

  She said, “I’m here.”

  His breath came out raspy and weak like fireplace bellows closing on their own accord. “I … prayed…”

  Doctor Fleming dozed in a heavily upholstered armchair. Sheriff Heilbrun had departed long ago, stating something about the fire didn’t feel right. He promised Angus a full investigation. Angus said to keep him abreast, then retired upstairs.

  It was two a.m.; Jacob and Angus slept upstairs. The storm stopped an hour ago. The air smelled of Deet—smelled of things that ought not burn.

  Fleming coughed, resumed snoring.

  Emeline crutched
to the front door, then to the porch. The sky was clear and frozen stars blinked. From inside came a gasp and she stumbled back to Deet. His arms stretched stiff. His back tightened and his chin lifted. The veins in his neck pressed against his seeping skin. His eyes were open but unseeing.

  She knelt, rested her head on his chest. Her fingertips at his neck. His pulse thumped lighter, weaker; each beat fainter and farther apart. His lungs released. A heartbeat arrived late, and another, but no more.

  Thirty Four

  The mortician arrived in the morning. He drove Deet away.

  Emeline rested in bed all day; Angus didn’t seem to mind handling the arrangements. They’d bury him Thursday morning.

  Doctor Fleming had treated Emeline’s burns; they were mild compared to Deet’s, but Fleming slathered balm on her hands and neck and bandaged her, and instructed her to take the Tylenol that he’d given for her leg, which he also took occasion to clean.

  Now and again Angus’s croaking-timber voice drifted through the house as he talked on the telephone, and she pressed her hands to her ears. The pain from her burns kept her awake, and a new throbbing in her leg—Fleming said she’d stressed the fracture—siphoned clarity from her thoughts.

  It was mid-afternoon. Boots clonked on the stairs and a moment later, Angus peered through the open door. A dark circle hung under his eye like a bag of gypsy worms suspended in a silken tree crotch. A splash of color on the flesh at his thumb and forefinger drew her eye—like the brownish green husk of a walnut pod beginning to decay. The skin was turning the color of his teeth.

  “Company be here at five. Get off your ass and fix something.”

  “Company?”

  “Kid renting the house in town.”

  “Why is he coming here?”

  “Supper. Get to cooking.”

  “You cook.”

  Angus charged. She shrank against the pillow. He towered over her.

  “Ain’t been a week since I lost my arm, and you ain’t doted or said a damn thing. Deet runs into a burning house and the whole world screeches to a fuckin stop. That make sense to you?”