He chewed slowly, ate every crumb, slurped from the cup. Plate clean, he leaned back in his chair, put his hands on his knees, said, “When they comes for me, I won’t fight it.”
“When who comes?”
“You knows.”
“No, Dad, I don’t.” As she added more warm tea to his cup, she thought she saw suspicion in his eyes, as though he thought she might be mocking him.
“I’s no fighter.”
“Dad, you got no reason to fight.”
“I’s no fighter. Just wanted you to know is all.”
“That’s okay, Dad.” She returned to the stove, lifted the lid, sampled the stew with the tip of a wooden spoon. Then, opening a cupboard, she said to herself, “Cloves. A whole clove. One little thing changes the entire flavour.”
“One little thing,” her father repeated.
Stella remembered looking at him and smiling, nodding when he said, “Makes everything different.”
“Can you imagine? One clove.” She had even held it up to him, pinched between thumb and forefinger. “Did I ever tell you that, Dad? ’Tis the secret in my stew.”
Stella pushed her plate of overcooked fish away. If only she could shut off her mind and exist inside nothingness for a few hours. Their last real conversation re-played over and over again, even when she wasn’t conscious of it. Just now, as she was having a supper with Leander, her face scrunched, and she realized she had come around to her comment about the cloves. Why hadn’t she heeded her father? Surely he hadn’t been talking about a spice, but making a clear attempt to share some crucial moment of his life. With her. His gift offered, and she had made no attempt to accept it. Instead, she had hidden away, tucked herself behind an aromatic bud.
She looked at Leander, a few feet away from her, as he slid a chunk of boiled potato around his plate, zigzagging through a puddle of brilliant beet juice. He was all that was left of her family, one man, a single set of arms. Her face scrunched again as she thought about it.
“Not hungry?” Leander asked.
“No.”
He pushed his plate away too, said, “Me neither.”
“That happens sometimes when you eats everything in sight.”
Boyish smile. “I didn’t eat that much, Stell. Watch. I won’t have a single slice of that raisin pie this night. Not one bite of it.”
She frowned. “And here I was hoping you’d eat the whole works.”
Leander took their plates, carried them to the counter, then slid into the rocker by the stove. “Come,” he said. “Sit with me.”
She pinched herself between his legs, sat on his lap.
He put his hand into her hair, rubbed her scalp with the pads on his fingers. “It’s okay to miss him, you know. You don’t have to be strong for me.”
Deep breaths.
“I misses him too. He was a good man, your father.”
She sat up. “’Tis more than that, Leander.”
“I knows.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, then, tell me, maid. Explain to me and I’ll listen to you as best I can.”
“’Tis. ’Tis. Oh hell, I don’t even know.” She stood up, paced the floor in front of him.
“Now, Stell.”
“It’s just, this is all there is.” She put her arms out, palms up, fingers spread. “I’m not building nothing.”
“You is, then. Building every day. Building. You can build whatever you wants. Just build.”
“That’s not true, Leander. I’s just getting by, moving through.”
“I knows you’re sad, my love, but time–”
“Time? Don’t even talk to me about time. Time is water. You can’t hold it. Eventually, it all leaks out.”
“All right.”
“Everything is seeping away, Leander. My mother. Amos. Now Dad. And as far as I sees, nothing is clamouring to get in. Plain nothing.”
Leander scratched his forehead, tugged on his right ear. “I’m listening as best I can, maid, but I got nar clue what you’re trying to say.”
“Me neither. I feels right mad in the head.”
“Give it ti–. Go easy on yourself.”
She clutched the back of a kitchen chair, squeezed. “Got so much going on inside me, I’s betting I could haul a tree right up out of the earth. Hands and teeth.”
Leander slapped his lap, chuckled. “Now that’s something I don’t want to see you trying.”
“I won’t,” she said, and flopped back down into his lap. He rocked the chair slowly.
“Promise?”
She sighed. “Can’t get his face out of my mind, Lee. Can’t remember any of the other stuff, the nice times. His face gets in the way.”
“Don’t worry, Stell. It’ll fade.”
“He was so lost. Lying there on that bed. So lost.”
Leander moved the rocker with his good foot, kept his arm snug around Stella’s waist. “He weren’t lost, Stell. I believes that, I do.”
“But his eyes. Like he weren’t even there.”
“He might not’ve been with us. That I don’t doubt. But wherever he was, he weren’t lost.”
She placed her head against Leander’s shoulder.
He spoke softly now. “You knows how my foot aches when something is gone astray?”
“Yes.”
“My foot, now, got some sense from beyond.”
“I knows. ’Tis uncanny.”
“Well, my foot never ached an ounce.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain it no better, maid. All that time when he was lying there, he weren’t lost, my love. Wherever his mind was off to, he was right where he was supposed to be.”
“You thinks?”
“Right down to my bones, maid. I won’t ever claim to know much, but that I knows.”
Lifting her head, she stretched up to kiss him, lightly, lightly. When she nestled back down, he exclaimed, “My Lard. Anything else I can say to get another one of those? Whatever you wants to hear, my dear, I’ll utter it.”
She nudged him in the ribs now, and as she did, she heard a small sound, like fingernails tapping on glass. Looking up, she noticed the bird was still at the window, wiry feet clutching the weathered wood. She got up, went to the cupboard.
“Don’t take much to drive you away,” he said with a gentle laugh.
She smiled, replied, “No. I just want to do something is all.”
In the bottom cupboard, she retrieved the cardboard container of salt, then went to the window and pulled it up. The bird fluttered backwards, lit on the painted handrail that surrounded the stoop. Leaning over the countertop, Stella tugged up the cover of the container and tipped a small pile of salt crystals into the corner of the windowsill. Wind would not touch it there, and the fat-beaked bird, a salt lover, might just be tempted to stay.
“Dear, dear Percy.”
“You got to sleep.”
“She’s right, you know, you got to sleep.”
He could hear the voices saying the same phrases over and over again. But he only frowned in response, kept his continually watery eyes open in a constant state of looking. He did not want to sleep. There was too much to tell this woman who stayed in the chair beside him. Too much he wanted to say.
He lay on a daybed in a kitchen, the grooves of the mattress familiar, the coolness coming off the nearby wall a comfort. The woman leaned in closer, and he tried to begin again. Untangling the snarl of threads clumped together inside his head. Pulling here and there, drawing out fragments of his life.
The words would not form on his lips and he used his free hand to convey everything. While one hand was tucked away under the blanket, the other rested on his chest and it moved accordingly as the stories came into his head. Back and forth, that five-legged pale spider, lifting and falling sometimes, occasionally picking away bits of wool from the blanket or conducting the air with swirls at the wrist. When he asked a silent question, his palm turned upwards, held there for a
moment, then flopped back down.
Pillow behind his head, he stared at his hand, then stared up at the woman, into her sad eyes, close eyebrows. Every now and again, she would grab his gesticulating fingers, pinch them gently together, say, “Boy, seems parts of you got a whole lot to say.” And his throat would tighten, old jaw quivering, and confusion would subdue the one-sided conversation. He could not understand why the woman didn’t hear every word that rose up from his wrist on down.
Frustration turned that hand into a weak fist, and he could feel his thick fingernails, longer than they should be, pressing into the fleshy part of his palm. His mind was teeming with blurry ideas, like handfuls of flies in a laden web, buzzing, buzzing for freedom. But nothing came to him. Nothing pure.
There was a woman inside, somewhere, thin and struggling. Something about her face, lopsided smile, braid like a tarnished crown. Her mouth was open slightly, a tiny space between her two front teeth. Sprigs of pink and green flowers on her dress, belt encircling a waist of nothing, lily smell behind her ears. He strained, but no name arrived. No name to corral these parts, turn them into someone whole.
His hand clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed, as he thought about her. He wanted to reach inside his head, grab onto her image, polish it up, and see her clearly. But he was helpless to do so, breathed heavily as he willed the web to buckle in the breeze, obliterate her shadow and the anguish that walked beside it
Behind her was a boy. And the boy was leaving him, would not return. His fingers wanting to extend, touch the hair. Soft like a child’s. Too soft to be going away, wherever he was going. Left, an emptiness that was full of heat. Melted him. The soft clicking of a latch. A door closing a million times. Echoing like a drip of water falling from a great height, destroying his wits that lay below. Click. Click. Goodbye. Click. Why hadn’t he been able to say goodbye? He wanted so badly to do that now. Say goodbye. His hand waved ever so slightly. Goodbye. To whomever it was. That boy.
The woman in the chair took his hand and held it. But he wiggled away, not wanting to be silenced. Palm up, who was that boy? Dying didn’t make him a hero, the child with the soft hair, it only made him dead.
“I knows, Dad,” she said. “I knows. Why won’t you rest for a spell?”
He turned his face to the window over the table. The ocean was just beyond, he knew, but he couldn’t see it. Brightness from the setting sun made the glass sparkle, and he squinted, was tempted to blink. Then, behind his eyes he sensed something flapping upwards, barely, barely, and yes, surfacing. Bridgette Connor. Bridgey. How odd that she was coming to him now, so compact, her memory, and even though he knew it would hurt him, he craved the realness of it, the solidity, and he stood up, walked towards her. Deep breaths, young muscles, a full head of hair on his thirteen-year-old head.
“What’re you doing here?”
Bridgey giggled. A girlish giggle. “I got something to give you. Something you’s going to love.”
He gazed at her blond hair, her pudgy shoulders. Her feet were bare, even though the ground where they stood was still cool. She had just turned fourteen, and was full of bumps and curves that other girls her age still didn’t have.
“Percy.”
He glanced over his shoulder, no one else around, and he nodded.
“I got something to show you, I said. You wants it or not?”
They would tease him, he knew. About her offer, and his newfound desire to accept it. Once, they held him down, arms and legs pinned, jabs to the ribs, wet thumbs jammed in his ears until he admitted her name. The girl that he loved. And though he loved no one, he had to choose somebody, anybody, in order to be released. The name “Bridgette Connor” burst from his mouth, and she was the most unlikely of loves with her hefty body and her snug clothes, constantly running nose. She was a shy and uncertain girl, and whenever anyone asked her name, she always responded with a question. “I’s Bridgette Connor?”
But as they teased relentlessly, “you wants to kiss her, you wants to rub her over good,” they would not allow her to leave his mind. And in time, with that steady stream of reminders, his indifference bloomed into a tender crush.
“Well?”
“All right,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he should hold out his hand.
“Follow me?”
Standing at the edge of the forest, spruce trees rose tall before them, offering up their shade and private places. He wiped his sweaty palms in his trousers and walked after her. The tattered pink ribbon securing her hair bounced as she moved, and the breeze made her ill-fitting sky blue dress flicker. He thought that dress might once have belonged to one of her older, more slender, sisters.
Running now, she dodged through the brush, zigzagging, looping. He followed closely as they danced through the woods, a couple, enchanted hunter chasing clever doe. Ahead of him, he watched her as her pale arms reached out and touched branches, slapped trunks. Chasing her now, panicking if she disappeared, his feet jumping on the spongy earth, pinecones collapsing beneath his shoes. All right, all right, he would admit it. He wanted to know if she might kiss him. Wanted to kiss her too. That was why he followed her into the forest as deeply as he did.
She stopped at a swollen river up behind the mill, spring thaw and downpours having pushed the water up over the banks. Sharp twig in hand, she stabbed pockets of turpentine from the bark of a tree, then crouched by the side of the river, dress sitting in the soft mud, and touched the tip of the twig to the water. The river grazed it, tugging away a trail of unbroken iridescence.
“Pretty. Don’t you think?”
He agreed, but didn’t say so. “What do you got to show me?” He didn’t like being in the clearing so close to the water. Too close to the water.
She looked up and squinted at him, then stood, smiling nervously, tossed the twig aside. “Over there,” she said, and dug her toes into the mud, feet turned inwards as though they were clubbed.
“I’m not going there.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Sure you is.” She jumped now, spattering him with the mud. “If you wants what I got to give you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see soon enough.” She patted her pocket. “All right?”
A log had fallen across the river, offering a slippery bridge to the other side. She started across it, inching along, arms extended at the sides, dirty feet leaving a trail. A few steps across, and she turned to him. “See, ’tis easy as blueberry pie.”
“Blueberry pie.”
Water bullied the tree, frothed into the armpits of the branches, churned and spat up, slid over where it could. As she edged gingerly, he didn’t take his eyes off her. Nothing bad ever happened when a person was looking, right? She was halfway, and the sun crept through the trees, and he blinked with the brightness. He hadn’t meant to, but he blinked, yes, and she slipped, a leg twitching in the air, arms flailing, body folding backwards. Squeezing his eyes closed, then, heard her head striking, like the sound of the final thump of a frozen foot against a locked door.
Splash. And he stood, a human stone on the side of the river, peeking through the faintest slit formed by his eyelids. She was in the water, the tree trying to hold her, trying to save her, hooked into the neck of her dress, suspending her. Face beneath the surface, eyes open. Water continued to rush over her, hair and dress flattened against her, body like a writhing fish. Undulating. The current yanked and jerked, wanting her, until the branch snapped with the pressure, and she jetted away, coursing down the river. Another pretty iridescent trail of blue and blonde and pink. There one instant, and stolen the next.
He sunk down into the muck, much of the grass still creased and dirty yellow. Scanning the length of the river, he saw no sign of the girl he had followed. No sign. His eyes traced that muddy trail out to the middle of the log, and he waited for her to reappear, to glide up the river, unflip, and reposition herself. He waited. And waited. Rocked on his heels, sucked the back of his wrist, and wait
ed some more. A bird swooped and dove over the spot, and he whimpered when he saw it. “I wants to fly, God,” he whispered. “Please, God. Let me just fly away.”
But he remained fixed by the river, stayed there until darkness turned the water black. Until a starless night made the world around him evaporate. Until men crunched through the woods behind him. Calling for Percy.
Someone lifted him, and he felt like air moving inside air. Scrawny body deflated with shame. A strong hand gripping the back of his head, pressing his crying face into a warm shirt that smelled like supper. And he was lulled by the cadence of a forest walk, stepping over roots and brave ferns, a rocking motion in the bed of someone’s arms.
Truth drifting down onto him. “‘Tis okay, boy. You’re all right. They got her. Downstream. Caught up in the old dam. What’s left of it anyways.” Soft grass now beneath the man’s feet, climbing up onto the lane. Closer to home, fog began to curl inwards, driving the scent of boiled vegetables from open windows closer to the ground. “You did the right thing, boy. Staying to the side.”
“I don’t swim,” he whispered up into that bristly neck, bobbing adam’s apple. “I didn’t fight.”
“Don’t matter. Water was crazed. You could swim to beyond and back, wouldn’t make one speck of difference.” A few silent steps. “Besides, everyone idn’t meant to be a fighter.”
“I should’ve–”
“Should’ve nothing, boy.” Deep breaths. “Don’t go thinking too much about all this. Put it out of your mind.”
“All right.”
“Good boy. Some things got the power to change you. And your ways is too young to be set.”
That summer, when the river had tempered, men came to clear away the fallen tree, chopping up and burning the marker, the place where that poor girl had drowned. Once again, during late afternoons when chores were finished, boys and girls played around the stream. While the girls dallied on the banks, water up to their ankles, wetting the bottoms of their dresses, boys dove in, crab-crawled along the bottom, held each other under, bobbed up sputtering and choking.
Sometimes he walked to the edge of the forest, sat down on a mossy rock, and watched the children. But he never went near the water. No one ever asked him to come closer and no one taunted him anymore about the girl he had claimed to love. The girl he maybe thought he did love.
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