by Jeffrey Ford
Emmett went through his days in Threadwell an outcast, shunned by everyone, ignored by his parents. He felt like a ghost in his own home. They gave him his dinner separately and rarely asked him to do a chore. His mother still did his wash and swept out his room now and then, but conversations were never more than a sentence. He stopped going to school and instead roamed the countryside on his bike, which still stood next to the bench by the creek when he went to recover it weeks after the icehouse night. Mr. Peasi still let him borrow books from the barbershop, and so he read when he wasn’t out exploring. His only real joy was the nights he snuck out and met Gretel Lawler at the top of Chowdry Road. From there, they rode their bicycles everywhere while Threadwell slept.
On the night of the day in early July when Chief Benton ordered the exhumation of Jimmy Tooth’s body and matched the three teeth to their homes on the jaw, Emmett sat with Gretel in the moonlight on the bank of Wildcat Creek where it wound through the cemetery beyond the church. It was after midnight and a beautiful breeze blew across the fields. They leaned together and she kissed him. His hand, resting on the ground, gripped the grass, and when they pulled apart, he’d squeezed his fist so hard he pulled a clump of it up. “Do you love me?” she asked. He smelled the aroma of wild thyme and realized that’s what he clutched in his fingers. The sound of water passing over stones, the light on Gretel’s face, the scent of the herb, dark green and peppery, intoxicated him. “Yes,” he said, and then ripped a swatch of thyme off the clump and put it to his mouth. She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” she said. He never did again, and from then on, she was always with him.
Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey Ford
Art copyright © 2015 by John Jude Palencar