Death Rhythm

by Joel Arnold

  “That,” she said, pointing to the display in the window. Marching drums were lined up in a bright, metallic row, a perfect, uniform family. “I want that.”

  TWELVE

  "I can't apologize enough about my father."

  Andy and Natalie walked along the side of the two-lane highway that passed in front of Mae's house, heading away from town. The sky had become overcast, the air crisp and cool. Goldenrod lay wilted and brown in the ditches along the sides of the highway, along with thistle and dandelions, all shriveled in an orgy of chaffed stalk and leaf. Beyond the ditches, rows of lifeless golden cornstalks stretched endlessly for miles.

  "You don't have to apologize for him."

  "It's supposed to get colder the next couple of days. Maybe even snow," Natalie said. "By the way, how's your hand doing?"

  Andy looked down at it, surprised for a moment at the bandage still wrapped around the cut. He hadn't paid any attention to it, had almost forgotten it. "It stopped bleeding, I'm sure," he said, and unwrapped it, making sure this was true. The beginnings of a long, dull scab bordering the pink line of the gash was beginning to form. He stuffed the bandage in his jacket, and noticed a slight throb beneath the scab.

  "He's had two strokes." Natalie's breath came out in a chilled mist. “When he had his first one, I was at school, working on a nursing degree. Jesus, it must have been sixteen years ago. It scared me so much, I rushed back here to Ellingston to see him, to make sure he was doing okay. I only had a month of school left, but I couldn't go back. I couldn't leave him alone like that.

  "Well, that lasted for six years, then I was anxious to get out again. I wanted to go back to school. Get my nursing degree. I decided I'd have to pretty much start over, having been gone so long. So I did. I started from scratch. It wasn't as hard the second time around, but I still had to put in some long days and nights. I drank a lot of coffee.” She chuckled.

  "So anyway, four years ago, after I got my degree, I worked at the hospital in Faribault for awhile. I liked the people there, most of them, anyway, and it wasn't so far away that I couldn't see my father every now and then." Natalie slowed. A large flock of Canadian geese flew overhead. She stopped and turned to Andy.

  "He had a stroke about two months ago. The second one. Luckily, I was here visiting. It almost killed him - it would've if I hadn't been there. He'd be dead right now."

  Andy tried not to shiver, but it was hard. The air worked through his lungs, refreshing them, but did nothing to warm the rest of him. He kept his hands in his pockets, pressed close to his sides.

  Natalie turned in a semi-circle, surveying the fields. "I've decided to stay with Dad for awhile, for as long as he needs me. I just can't leave him alone any more. If I was away, on my own, I'd always be wondering how he was doing. And if anything happened to him while I was away, I'd feel guilty. I owe him so much.

  "He raised me by himself. Raised me while filled with so much grief over Mom. He fed me, clothed me. Gave me so much. All the while his wife dead, buried. So I feel like I owe him."

  They left the side of the highway for a gravel road that wound through the cornfields. They saw a cloud of dust rising in the distance, and a pick-up truck soon came around the bend in front of them. The driver honked and waved as it rumbled toward the highway. Andy and Natalie waved back, choking on the flying dust it kicked up.

  "That last stroke put him in his wheelchair," Natalie said. "Affected his mind, too. He'll talk about things that happened when he was a little kid, like they just happened yesterday. He remembers all of his schoolmates' names. His grammar school teachers. The room numbers. But if you ask him about something that happened last week, or last month, or even a few minutes ago, he won't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about. He doesn't know what day it is, what year it is. Sometimes he doesn't even know who I am. He'll ask me what I'm doing in his house. And I'll tell him, 'It's me, Dad - Nat, you're daughter', and after a while, something will click and he'll remember. But then it starts all over again." Natalie slowed her pace. "Jesus, it's frustrating."

  A raven flew by - big, black and noisy. Its squawking thundered in Andy's ears. He winced. Natalie glanced at the bird, then looked back at the gravel at their feet as they walked.

  "And what hurts more," Natalie continued, "is that sometimes he'll think I'm his wife. His wife! Can you believe it? Mom's been dead for thirty-seven years. The hardest thing isn't that he can't remember me - it's that he's so lonely, that he aches so much for Mom. I feel terrible. I hear him cry himself to sleep at night. It's one of the most desperate, hollow sounds you can imagine. Sometimes, when I hear it, I check on him to make sure he's not choking on his saliva. That's what it sounds like, you know? Like he’s dying."

  The raven shrunk to a small dot in the sky, and its cries, also sounding like death, soon faded.

  The sun set somewhere beyond the overcast sky. Andy's hands remained buried deep in his pockets. He tried to ignore the throbbing of his wound.

  Earlier, they sat beneath the shade of a pine tree and made small talk until their butts felt frozen to the cold ground. They stood, shook out the pins and needles, the pine needles, and resumed their walk.

  They walked for miles, through fields, through small patches of forest, along dry creek beds. Now, even the soft light of dusk abandoned them.

  “It's nice to have someone listen," Natalie said.

  "I don't mind.” Andy found her voice pleasant. Soothing. It reminded him of the gentle vibrations inside a moving car. Hypnotic.

  "We should head back," Natalie said. "We'll cut through the fields. It'll be faster."

  They turned right, stepping off of the road and down an embankment. Moisture soaked through Andy's tennis shoes. They stepped up onto the hard black dirt of a cornfield. Crystals of newly formed frost sparkled under the moonlight. Brittle cornstalks crushed beneath their shoes.

  "How did your mother die?" Andy asked.

  Natalie didn't answer for a while, and Andy wondered if she had heard his question. But soon, she spoke.

  "She died shortly after giving birth to me. A heart attack."

  Andy studied his breath rising into the air. "I'm sorry," he said.

  Natalie kept walking; eyes trained forward, arms swinging mechanically, feet picking up the pace. She headed for a nearby patch of darkness. As they got closer, Andy saw the concrete and metal gateway to the cemetery. A gravel road wound out from the gate and ran along the forest, back to the main road.

  "You know - I never knew my mom. Never had the chance to meet her," Natalie said quietly. "I regret it, but what I regret more is that I often think my father blames me for her death. He's never said that, but somewhere deep inside of him, I think he feels that I'm the one who killed her. I'm the one who caused all his suffering and loneliness." Natalie's voice grew thick, its resonance clouding over.

  They walked among the headstones. Natalie seemed to know just where they lay in the darkness, so Andy grabbed her hand, waiting for her to steer him around them, wanting her to squeeze his hand in response.

  Natalie looked back at Andy, a tear running down her cheek. "I know I didn't kill my mother. I know it. But I have to keep telling myself that. I have to tell myself that in order to survive, to live with myself. It's hard to handle when your father, your own father, looks at you, glares at you with accusing eyes. I know he doesn't mean it, but - “ She squeezed Andy's hand and stopped walking. They were almost through the graveyard.

  “We both know who killed my mother,” she said.

  Andy started to say something, but Natalie stepped closer and put her arms around him, pulling her body to his. Her face moved to his neck, and he felt tears fall against his throat. She gave a gentle squeeze, hugging him close. She gently raised her head, so carefully, so slowly, up to Andy's ear.

  “Andy,” she said.

  He hardly made out what she whispered to him, but his ears caught the words, snatched them from the gentle night breeze.

  "Make love
to me."

  THIRTEEN

  Mae tore open a packet of onion soup mix and poured the dry, salty mixture onto a lean, raw slab of roast beef. She poured water over this, threw in some peeled potatoes, peeled carrots, then placed the lid on top. She opened the oven. A wave of preheated air rushed to her face as she slid the roast pan inside. She closed the door.

  Yes, Natalie's arrival would explain things, Mae thought. Particularly with Hector. When was the last time she heard him yelling at her? Heard him yell clear across the grassy field between their houses? That poor bastard. When was the last time he yelled? A few months ago, she thought. Yelled bloody murder at her for days, sitting out on his front lawn in his green, rusting lawn chair. Mae watched him through the binoculars. He looked right back at her.

  It was hard to tell what he yelled, sometimes. Downright impossible for the most part. But the last time, Mae heard him plain as day.

  "YOU GODDAM KILLER! YOU GODDAM KILLER!"

  He stood there, his eyes slicing right through the lenses of the field glasses, making Mae wince. Later, when she went into town the next week, she heard at the bank that he'd had a stroke. Hector'd had a stroke. Six days earlier. "Oh my God," Mae said, taking her deposit receipt, walking out of the bank, her hand to her mouth.

  Maybe he'd had his stroke then. Right then. From yelling at her. Mae felt sick at the thought. If only she would've known, she could've done something.

  She found out later at the grocery store that he was confined to a wheelchair, probably for the rest of his life. Which won't be long, Mae thought, if he keeps up that yelling.

  But it hadn’t always been that way.

  When she was ten, he’d pay her and Edna to clean up his yard, clear away the fallen apples, rake the leaves, shovel the snow from the front steps and long gravel driveway. He’d sit on his back step, a much younger man, and smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, drink iced tea. Sometimes his wife Emma would poke her head out and see him sitting there, watching the girls do the work he was supposed to do. She’d disappear inside, then come out a short while later with iced tea for the girls, too. They’d take a break and listen to Hector’s stories about the war. Edna once told Mae he was just making them up, but Mae didn’t care. They were fascinating to listen to.

  Amazing how time changes people, Mae thought as she set the table in the dining room, her face blank with the memory. She set the table for Andy and herself, laying out two blue plates, silverware, and water glasses.

  It was the day Mae heard about Hector’s stroke that she heard the awful racket coming from the basement. God-awful racket, like a baby screaming. Screaming murder. Only it wasn't a baby, of course. It was Holden.

  She went down into the basement, saw an orange flash streak across the floor, heard the storm door slam shut (goddamn kids, she'd thought, goddamn awful sick kids) then was down on her hands and knees pulling off her sweatshirt, draping it over Holden. She retched from the smell of burning fur, heard the flesh sizzle as she smothered him, patted him with her sweatshirt. It took most of her strength to keep from vomiting. Goddamn sick kids.

  She quickly called the fire department in case anything else was on fire, but the target had been Holden. Just poor old Holden. Who would do such a thing? She turned the names of a dozen kids over in her mind, the hell-raisers of Ellingston, but she couldn't think of a reason any of these kids would want to hurt her cat. Just leave it to cruelty. Hell-raising. Mae had experienced enough of that when she was a kid. More than enough, she thought. Plenty.

  But now she wondered again when Natalie had come back.

  It would explain a lot, she thought. Natalie coming back would explain a lot.

  FOURTEEN

  I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do this, Andy thought. He had been so close to going home, so close to leaving, taking a bus, hitchhiking if he had to, but now here he was in a cemetery with someone he had only met the day before.

  His heart raced and the wind sounded like cries of pain, biting through his clothes. So many times in the last fifteen minutes he had been on the verge of saying no, saying he couldn’t do this, it wasn’t right, he had to go.

  I can’t do this, I can’t.

  He felt like he was balancing on one foot at the edge of a cliff. One foot and all he had to do was lean back and let himself fall to the safety of the solid rock behind him.

  I can’t do this.

  Just fall back, break away from the pull of the dark unknown before him.

  I can’t...

  But instead of falling back, he leapt forward into Natalie’s embrace. Her lips closed in hungry upon him. Her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and she pulled him down onto an old tombstone embedded in the earth, the surface cold and hard. Their breath escaped in a frantic mist, each molecule freezing at the moment of release.

  The moment of release.

  Off in the distance.

  His eyes blurred from the cold. His tear ducts worked frantically to keep his eyes moist and warm.

  The ground underneath his back.

  So cold and hard.

  Natalie's breath intermixed with Andy's, each frozen molecule of air intermingling, rising in the air, dancing in the air to the back-beat of their pulses.

  He tried to see Natalie's expression through the tears in his eyes, but he could only see the shape of her body, a dark silhouette behind a veil of her frozen breath. Her form moved slowly up and down, up and down, on top in a steady rhythm, a gentle, slow, steady rhythm that pressed his bare buttocks into the cold, hard stone.

  Andy felt the pulse inside of her against his groin, her blood shooting against the walls of her inner flesh, beating out a rhythm on him, taking him up, pumping, up, up, up inside of her.

  The moment of release, the molecules escaped and mingled and froze together.

  And he heard the buzzing. Deep inside his brain, deep inside Natalie, the buzzing of a hundred flies, his mother's coagulated whispers, just out of reach, droning like a jet engine, against the beat of their hearts and the pumping motion of Natalie on top. Her red hair backlit, forever backlit, by the moon, looking down and laughing.

  The moon laughed as Natalie took him up into her, took his soul to the drone of a thousand flies, buzzing around in Andy's head, in the shed, just out of reach, the moment of release.

  Somewhere it intermingled. It intermingled, like their bodies, their souls. Like Andy being sucked up into Natalie. It intermingled. His aunt, his mother, Cathy, everybody, everything blurred into one, as the moment of release rocked his bare buttocks against the cold stone, wracked his skull, ground it into the hard headstone.

  The moment of release, and everything calmed.

  Andy walked shivering through the doorway into Mae's house, into darkness. For a moment, he felt as if he was melting as the house's warmth enveloped his body. It felt good.

  Turning on the hall light, he let his eyes grow accustomed to the semi-brightness of the low wattage bulb. He hung up Mae's jacket, brushing off the dirt and dead grass. He brushed off the seat of his pants.

  Their parting had been awkward. After they stood up in the chill of the cemetery, Natalie was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Andy asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Andy tried to hug her, but she backed away. “No,” she said.

  “Come on, what’s the matter?”

  Natalie shrugged. She wiped the tears from her eyes. Shook her head. Turned and abruptly left, taking the trail that led to her house. Andy stood for a moment, wondering whether or not he should follow, but decided it was best to leave her alone. He fumbled his way back to Mae’s house, branches and twigs grabbing desperately at him.

  A plate had been left on the dining room table. On it was a slab of cold roast beef, cold potatoes, cold cooked carrots. A glass of warm milk accompanied it. Andy sat down.

  Mae's footsteps creaked upstairs. Andy listened as she crawled into bed, the bedsprings groaning under her weight. Then silence.

  His crotch ached. />
  He sat and stared at the food on his plate.

  He picked up a fork and poked at the meat, then sat back, soaking up the silence. The wind was still. No cars drove by, no birds chirped. There was only his quiet breathing.

  As Andy listened to himself inhale and exhale, a feeling of guilt crept over him. Slowly at first, as he was sorry that Mae had taken the time to fix dinner for him, and he had missed it. He didn't want Mae to think he was taking advantage of her hospitality, taking it for granted.

  Maybe he had been.

  Probably seemed that way. He promised himself that he'd apologize to her first thing in the morning. Apologize and thank her for trusting him, a stranger, to sleep in her house.

  Maybe there was something in what Mae said about being family after all. He hadn't known Mae at all before arriving here, but there was something about her - something about her that he warmed up to, that made him warm up to her. Maybe this thing about family ties went deeper than he thought. As he sat there at the dining room table and reflected on the few conversations he'd had with Mae, he realized it hadn't felt like a stranger had been talking to him. It felt like he was listening to someone he'd been listening to for years. Someone familiar. Maybe it was in her face, the bone structure, the way it resembled his mother's.

  No, it was more than that. It was deeper. She was family. And for the first time in his life he felt that undercurrent, that bonding of kinship, of blood, like an umbilical cord passing between them.

  FIFTEEN

  Dad, oh Dad, Natalie thought, her inner thighs sore all the way up inside her. It had been two years since she last had intercourse. Two years since a man had been inside of her.

  She helped Hector out of his wheelchair and onto the toilet. He was heavy, dead weight. As he sat still, Natalie began to undress him.

  "Where's Em?" Hector asked.

  "C'mon, Dad, you're gonna have to help."