Wild Things

by Clay Carmichael

  When I was satisfied, Henry wheeled our creation to the end of the yard next to the drive, where people would see it as they drove up. He called Fred and Bessie, and then the Padre, asking if he might come baptize it with holy water. The three of them arrived in high spirits with Harlan in tow and the Padre in his baptizing vestments. We all gathered around it as the Padre flung holy water and oil from two flasks, saying, “Out with the old and in with the new!” and everyone hooted and clapped.

  And it was beautiful, more beautiful than anything that had ever come from Mama.

  Harlan tipped his head from side to side, like he was trying to figure it out. “So what would you call this exactly?” he asked Henry.

  “You’ll have to ask the artist,” Henry said, looking at me. Everybody was looking at me.

  I thought for a long minute. “This is a one-of-a-kind, one-hundred-percent-guaranteed combination universal craziness deflector luck magnet and wild thing.”

  Henry smiled. “Otherwise known as a work of art.”

  17

  Soon after Ray took off and Henry and I made our wild thing, the boy came back.

  That afternoon Fred put up a Christmas tree in the front room, hung three stockings Bessie had quilted for Henry, me, and Mr. C’mere from the mantel, and fixed a fragrant cedar wreath to the front door. The effect was nice. I liked the piney scent of the tree and the way the little white lights encircling it twinkled in the dark at the end of the day.

  Henry was working late, finishing up the last of the pieces for Lillian’s New Year’s show. He told me to go ahead and eat supper without him, that he’d look in on me when he came in. I saw to Mr. C on the porch, fixed myself a meat-loaf sandwich, read for a while in front of the fire, and then went upstairs to bed.

  When I opened my eyes, the boy was sitting cross-legged on the rug beside my bed. He looked right at home, whittling away on a little piece of wood, letting the shavings drop to the floor. Henry’s welder was still going strong out back. I wasn’t afraid at all, not even startled really. I was glad to see him and realized that I’d expected him to come.

  His canvas sack lay on the floor beside him. The letters WIL were scrawled in capitals on the bottom, facing me.

  “Is that you?” I asked, pointing at the letters, and he nodded slightly. He reached in the sack and grasped something inside, then held his closed fist out to me, smiling. I reached out and he dropped an object into my open hand. It was another carving of Sister, running full out, her legs extended front and back, lifelike and graceful in every detail.

  “Sister wants you to have that,” Wil said. He smiled again. That he was pleased to see me showed in his face, relaxed and even handsome under all that dirt.

  “I thank her. It’s beautiful,” I told him. “Where is she?”

  He tilted his head toward the window.

  “Have you had any more trouble?” I asked.

  Wil snickered. “Sister’s always trouble.”

  “I mean real trouble.”

  He didn’t answer. “Finish the story,” was all he said.

  I’d forgotten I hadn’t told the end of the Japanese boy’s story that day at the cabin before Harlan interrupted. I wondered if Wil had come to see me or just to hear how the story came out.

  “There’s something you’ve got to know first,” I said, and told him what I’d forgotten to last time, about the mayor and the reward.

  He shrugged. “Think he’d let me collect it on myself?” he said in a teasing voice, though for a moment he looked uneasy.

  I couldn’t think of anything more to say that didn’t sound old-womanish, as Bessie said. I took the little book from my bedside table drawer where I’d left it. “There are pictures,” I told him, and his eyes widened.

  He slid eagerly forward but stayed on the floor. It had rained that morning, and he was damp and streaked all over with muck and red clay and leaf litter. His smell was strong, but I liked it: fresh-turned earth and wet leaves and pine sap all rolled into one.

  I read the story from the beginning by the light of the full moon. I didn’t want to switch on the lamp for fear Henry might see Wil through the windows when he quit and walked up the back drive. Wil leaned in close and drank up every word. He lingered a long time over each of the color illustrations, running his fingers over the parts he especially liked.

  I was about two-thirds through when Henry’s studio floodlights suddenly went dark. Wil and I turned to the sound of the sliding metal doors rolling closed and Henry’s footsteps on the gravel drive. When Henry paused for a few seconds, I thought maybe he’d seen us from below. But he started toward the house again and stopped to speak softly to Mr. C’mere on the porch before he came inside.

  “It’s just Henry,” I whispered casually, hoping Wil wouldn’t mind and might show himself. For the first time, the prospect of holding out on Henry didn’t feel right or good. Not right or good at all.

  Wil tried hard to hide it, but alarm shuddered through him. As Henry climbed the stairs, Wil looked anxiously from one side of the room to the other like a trapped animal looking for a place to dive. I pointed to the closet across from the bed, and Wil shouldered his bag and slipped silently inside. Not two seconds later, Henry stood in my door.

  “I heard your voice,” he said.

  “I was reading out loud,” I told him, holding up the book.

  “In the dark?” he asked.

  “Bright moon tonight.”

  He glanced out the window and nodded. I saw him notice the shavings on the rug, but if they struck him as odd he didn’t say. There were advantages to living with a grimy man. He smiled at the book, and before I could speak he took it from my hands. He was still in his work clothes and covered with greasy dirt, he and Wil alike in their way. He switched on the lamp and sat on the floor exactly where Wil had been. I wondered if the rug was still warm. Part of me hoped Wil could keep still and quiet while Henry read, though another part wished he might give himself away.

  “A long, long time ago,” Henry began in his deep voice, a good one for storytelling, “in a small country-village in Japan, there lived a poor farmer and his wife, who were very good people. They had a number of children. But the youngest child, a little boy, did not seem to be fit for hard work. He was very clever,—cleverer than all his brothers and sisters; but he was quite weak and small, and people said he could never grow very big. So his parents thought it would be better for him to become a priest than to become a farmer. They took him with them to the village-temple one day, and asked the good old priest who lived there, if he would have their little boy for his acolyte, and teach him all that a priest ought to know.

  “The boy learned quickly what the old priest taught him, and was very obedient in most things. But he had one fault. He liked to draw cats during study-hours, and to draw cats even where cats ought not to have been drawn at all.

  “Whenever he found himself alone, he drew cats. He drew them on the margins of the priest’s books, and on all the screens of the temple, and on the walls, and on the pillars. Several times the priest told him this was not right; but he did not stop drawing cats. He drew them because he could not really help it. He had what is called ‘the genius of an artist,’ and just for that reason he was not quite fit to be an acolyte.

  “One day after he had drawn some very clever pictures of cats upon a paper screen, the old priest said to him severely—‘My boy, you must go away from this temple at once. You will never make a good priest, but perhaps you will become a great artist. Now let me give you a last piece of advice, and be sure you never forget it. Avoid large places at night;—keep to small!’”

  I saw a flash of movement behind the closet keyhole and heard stirring that made my stomach lurch. The space under the closet door darkened. Wil was pressing himself up against the door. It seemed odd to me how a boy who could keep himself so silent in the woods had so little talent for it indoors.

  I held my breath, waiting to see if Henry had heard, but he was focused
on the story and kept right on reading, telling how the Japanese boy traveled to a second temple, one possessed by an evil goblin rat. He read how the boy went inside to find the priest and, finding none, found ink and empty screens and began to paint cats, a great many cats, cat after cat after cat for hours and hours, until, feeling sleepy, the boy remembered the old priest’s words and crawled inside a small cabinet to sleep.

  I heard Wil grasp the handle of the closet door and saw it turn a little as Henry told how the boy woke to a screaming commotion in the night, heard the sounds of a desperate fight to the death just outside the little cabinet door; how the terrified boy stayed in his cabinet until morning, when he crawled out and saw an enormous goblin rat, “bigger than a cow,” lying dead and bloody on the temple floor.

  “But who or what could have killed it?” Henry read, his baritone rising and full of deep feeling. “There was no man or other creature to be seen. Suddenly the boy observed that the mouths of all the cats he had drawn the night before, were red and wet with blood. Then he knew that the goblin had been killed by the cats which he had drawn. And then also, for the first time, he understood why the wise old priest had said to him:—‘Avoid large places at night;—keep to small!’

  “Afterward that boy became a very famous artist. Some of the cats which he drew are still shown to travellers in Japan.”

  Henry closed the book and gazed fondly at its cover, then handed it back to me. He stood and kissed me on the forehead, and as he did, I had the hopeful and anxious notion that Wil might spring out from behind the closet door and ask for another story. But Wil kept silent and the door stayed closed. Henry said good night and headed for the stairs.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, turning back. “I saw the white deer, just now, when I was coming in from the studio. She was standing at the edge of the wood, like she was waiting for someone. She ran off when she saw me.”

  “Did she seem all right?” I asked, suddenly wondering if he’d known Wil was here all along, if this had been some kind of test, a test I’d failed miserably.

  “Fine,” he said, no hint of any motive in his voice. “Magical.”

  “Thanks for the story, Uncle Henry.”

  “Good night, Zo’,” he said, and went downstairs.

  I heard him slide his supper out of the oven, switch off the kitchen lights, and come back up the stairs. Wil stayed put. I turned over like I was sleeping as Henry padded by my room and headed up to his own. I waited till I heard his work clothes hit the floor and water running in his tub. When I felt sure he wouldn’t hear, I crept out of bed, put my ear to the door, and whispered Wil’s name, but he didn’t answer. “Wil,” I whispered again, but no answer came.

  I opened the door slowly. Wil lay sound asleep in his own small place, curled up on his side between my red boots and my sneakers, his head resting on his sack. He looked like a kid of five or six. I set the little book on the floor beside him and took the extra blanket off my bed to cover him. He didn’t stir. I left the door open, but just a crack. I hoped he’d stay for the night where it was safe, and wake me—and Henry too—before he left again.

  I only wish he had.

  The cat couldn’t sleep. After the boy stole into the house and up the stairs, he worried. And when the boy crept out again and he and the deer raced off together into the woods, the cat kept thinking he heard strange noises coming from the trees.

  It was bitterly cold, even on the porch. The water was frozen in his bowl and the stars glistened overhead like bits of ice. He stared through the window in the small door the man’s helper had made beside the big one. He looked up the hillside of steps the girl was always climbing or coming down. He knew she was up there. It was beyond him what could be worth such effort, but something was, something that took her away from him every night. He wished she would come down to him now.

  Lately she spent more and more time with her ever-multiplying kind. Traitor girl. Didn’t she see the boy for the trouble he was? Smell it? The cat’s anxiety grew. He tapped the little door with his paw. Nothing. He tapped it again. It swung open a little. He gave it a good swat. It swung in, then out, then closed. He pushed it open with his nose and sniffed the warm, girl-scented air, then drew back, afraid. Stupid door. He curled up in front of it, tried to sleep.

  Not long after, as if she’d heard him, the girl crept down the stairs. The big door opened and she slipped outside, bundled in clothes and wrapped in a thick blanket. He looked up at her, meowed.

  She spoke to him sweetly, bent down, put out her hand. He lost all caution. He sniffed it, licked her fingers, let her softly scratch his head, under his chin, down his back.

  She caressed him, rubbed his belly and ears, whispered to him softly, then curled up warm against him. They lay awake together for a long time, watching the wood’s edge, listening.

  At dawn she got up and walked to the trees, seemed to search for something, then returned to him, shivering and shaking her head. She went inside, propped open the little door, and lay down on the floor at the foot of the stairs. From there she called to him over and over in her high, soft voice, and after a while he couldn’t bear it and went in to her. She laughed as he hugged the walls, kept one wary eye on the little open door, and bolted through it like a shot when the man came sleepily down the stairs.

  He let me touch him, Uncle Henry! she cried. I just had to be patient, is all. Till he saw he could trust me.

  The man smiled a little, as though she had said something important, and gently rubbed the top of her head.

  After the man went to his workshop, the girl stayed in the hall. She left the little door propped open, understood that an exit should always be open to him. The cat went in, then out, all day. Outside, he missed her attentions and the house, warm and dry. Her sweet voice coaxed him back inside. Inside, he missed fresh air, the vault of sky, the leafy sponge of earth beneath his feet. In and out he went, back and forth, trying to decide.

  That evening, she spread a cloth on the floor of a farther front room and called again for him to come. At first he balked, sat stubbornly in the hall near his door, staring at her. She lay on the floor of the room and stared right back, more stubborn than he was, waiting. He went to her, finally, felt the heat of the fire. How the crackling warmth caressed him! He rolled before it, bathed himself in heat, and slept.

  Later, unsatisfied still, she climbed the stairs, left a morsel of meat on each step. She stood at the top, far above, calling him. He stared up at her. She called and called, but he did not budge.

  She gave up late, frowned and turned her back on him, went wherever she went up there. He ducked out his door. He slept fitfully on the porch, near the earth, the trees, the life he knew. He dreamed of shut doors and stairs, steps that went up and up as far as he could see, stairs he climbed until his short legs ached and his heart was close to bursting, until just after sunup when the shrill ringing woke him, woke the whole sleeping world.

  18

  The phone woke us before daybreak.

  Upstairs, Henry groaned and cursed and took his ex-wife’s name in vain. But the second he answered it his tone completely changed. It wasn’t Susan calling.

  “Fred,” I heard him say. “Calm down, Fred. Calm down and make sense.” Then: “What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where?” And finally, after a long, listening silence, he said, “Certainly a stroke could explain it. A lot of things could.”

  Half a minute later he took the steps two at the time down to my room. I was sitting up in bed when he came. “What’s happened to Bessie?” I said.

  Fred hadn’t been calm enough to make perfect sense. From what Henry could gather, Bessie had wandered off sometime in the night. She’d left the front door open and a meandering note about seeing the cabin and the white deer, saying she had to lay eyes on them, tell the wild boy something before she died.

  “Fred and the sheriff want our help,” he said. “You and Maud know those woods better than anyone.”

  “Course I’l
l help,” I said, jumping out of bed, pulling on my jeans, boots, and sweater faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. Henry went upstairs to finish dressing and I heard him on the phone with Harlan. The phone rang again and I heard him say, “Any news, Garland?” so I knew it was the sheriff. Then I heard him dial and say, “Maud, Henry Royster, sorry to wake you at this early hour.”

  But I knew right off who was best suited to find Bessie.

  I slid down the banister and threw on my coat, plus an extra in case I found her without one. I snatched the flashlight off the kitchen counter and sped out the door. I heard Henry hollering for me to wait, but I kept running. I raced through the woods to the cabin, thankful for the moonlight, calling Wil’s name as I went, yelling, “Wil, where are you? I need your help!” But I got all the way to the trailer without seeing anybody or hearing one human or animal sound.

  The night was still and cold, not a leaf stirring. Both the trailer and cabin were pitch-dark and empty, looking like lonely, abandoned places. The only thing I heard was my own sharp breathing.

  I started screaming Bessie’s name as loud as I could in every direction, my breath leaving me in clouds. I hollered till I was hoarse, half expecting Wil to appear any minute out of the darkness with Bessie in tow. But there was no one. Nothing. Even the wind was still.

  Maud arrived first, calling out ahead so I’d know. A second later Henry stormed up the path with his doctor bag, griping that I’d left without him and taken the only flashlight in the house, sending him to the studio to find another. The sheriff and his deputy came right after that, the sheriff grumbling how we all had serious acreage to cover between the cabin and Fred’s. “If she is between here and Fred’s,” he added, “and hasn’t gotten turned around or heading in a whole other direction.” He said the Padre and others were calling around for volunteers to help us look, but he wasn’t sure when they’d get here. Fred and Harlan were working their way here from Fred and Bessie’s place. The sheriff barked out directional assignments to those present.