by Chamber Four
Billy led Miguel and Miguel’s wide-eyed little brother a half mile to the Versatile at the lower edge of the 320. They crawled under the tractor, built a tiny pit fire, and sat in a circle around it.
“How do you shear so fast?” Billy asked.
“Faster I shear, faster I finish,” Miguel said passing the whiskey. Miguel’s brother reached for the bottle but was passed over. “No.”
“He’s quiet. What’s his name?” Billy asked.
“He has no name.”
“I got a name. It is Carlos,” the boy said.
“It is not Carlos,” Miguel said.
“It is Claudio.”
“Stop lying. It is not Claudio either.”
“It is Pedro.”
“Why did you have to ask his name?”
“I know my name,” the boy said, getting agitated. “My name is Jesus. It is Justo. It is Ramiro. It is—”
“Si. I am sorry. It is Justo,” Miguel said.
“Ramiro.”
“I know. Ramiro.”
“It is Ramiro.”
“I heard you,” Miguel said.
“It is.”
Billy interrupted, “I’m Billy.”
“Yes!”
“Yes, what?” Billy asked.
“We both have names.”
“Oh.” Billy opened his mouth to ask how old the little boy was, but thought better of it. He guessed him to be about nine or ten. That was close enough.
The little boy stretched out on the ground and fell asleep. Miguel slumped against a tire, drunk. Billy drained the bottle, stood up too fast, and banged his head on the tractor.
“Fuck!”
The little boy stirred but didn’t wake. Miguel looked long at his brother. “The same voices,” he said. “Day and night. Same voices all the time. I am tired listening to sheep. To shears. My hands shake all the time. It is like I am shearing when I am not shearing. I am tired listening to him talking nonsense all the time. It would be worth dying if I never had to hear sheep or shears or him or Mexicans and Americans trying to understand the other.”
“Yeah,” Billy said.
“You will not be fired, I think,” Miguel said.
“Maybe.”
“You can learn my language by next year when we come. I did not speak English last year. My brother did not. Tell him that.”
“Why would he even need me to speak Spanish if you speak English? He doesn’t need me.”
“He will. I will not be back,” Miguel said. “I am hungry.”
“I am hungry, too,” Miguel’s brother said, waking to the suggestion.
“Too bad one of those stupid sheep hasn’t walked by and dropped dead. I bet I could cook mutton better than James Carl,” Billy said.
Miguel perked up. “Want to go kill one?” He pulled a cheap looking survival knife from his boot. “It is sharp. Feel,” Miguel said handing Billy the knife. It was sharp. He handed it back. Miguel crawled out from under the tractor. His brother sat looking hopeful. “There are too many here. He would never miss one. I say we get one of the woolly ones still in the wood corrals. Easier.” He crawled up on the Versatile to get a better look. “I think it is too far for him to hear.” Miguel jumped down from the tractor and slid under it to put out the fire.
Billy didn’t want to kill any sheep. He’d seen enough dead for one day, but he felt like doing something brave. He felt like taking up a greater space in the world, like James Carl. Billy helped fill in the pit, leaving no visible evidence there had been a fire. He remembered to bury the bottle.
Miguel led the way but hesitated at the timberline. “I get lost in trees,” he said. Billy took over and led the boys straight through to the other side where it opened up into another field not yet plowed. Across the field lay the wooden corrals. Miguel out front, they sneaked the last quarter-mile. At the corrals, Miguel’s brother put his hand through and let a lamb lick his fingers. He giggled.
“Stay on this side,” Miguel said to his brother. Grinning at Billy, Miguel took the knife from his boot and bit down on it.
Climbing over the corral fence, Billy missed a step and fell into the sheep, frightening them. Bleating, the sheep scattered and ran in futile circles around the boys. Miguel took the knife out of his mouth to laugh at Billy lying in the dirt, put it back, and began the chase. Miguel lunged at one, missed, chased another, and missed again. Billy faired about the same, each boy running in drunken circles, laughing and falling, until Billy gave out and crossed the fence. He sat panting in the grass with Miguel’s brother, who rocked patiently. Billy heard the gate jangle. Miguel approached carrying a tiny lamb. It looked dead, drooping in his arms. Miguel spit the knife onto the ground. The lamb raised its head, curled comfortably into his arms, and fell asleep.
“I can not do it,” Miguel said. “He jumped in my arms like I was to save him. They all ran. He jumped.”
Billy, feeling big, picked up the knife. “You can’t baby sheep.” He tested the knife’s edge, wiped it off on his pant leg, and raised the lamb’s sleepy head, exposing its neck. He gripped the knife hard, felt for the best spot to cut, and looked up at Miguel. Miguel took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and turned away. Billy lowered the lamb’s head. He could see there was more to it than Miguel not wanting to be the one holding the knife. He could see the boy didn’t want it killed at all.
“Let’s put him back,” Billy said, tossing the knife in the grass.
Miguel relaxed his shoulders and stared up at the sky, his hands slipping to loosely hold the lamb. Seeing the look on Miguel’s face, Billy, too, felt a sense of relief. In his periphery, Billy saw Miguel’s little brother pick up the knife, but he was too slow to prevent the boy from slitting the lamb’s throat. Miguel dropped to the ground with the lamb and tried to stop the flow, but it was a good cut. The lamb was mostly dead.
“Why did you do that?” Miguel pleaded.
“Huh?”
“I said why did you do that? We were going to put it back. I have it all over me. What are we going to do with it? Shit. Shit.” Miguel turned to Billy. “Do something.”
The little boy put his hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “We eat? I am hungry. We eat now?”
Miguel cried, leaning over the lamb.
“We could throw it in the creek,” Billy said. Wewoka Creek was only a couple hundred yards away.
“Throw it in a creek? There is blood all over.” Miguel stood and walked away from them into the dark. Billy, hearing Miguel’s crying intensify, ducked his head and stared at the ground like he always did when he was nervous. He noticed blood had splashed his boot. It beaded up in red half-moons that with a shake rolled to the ground.
Miguel reappeared, calm. He pointed a finger at his brother. “His name is Cordaro.” The boy started to correct, but Miguel leapt onto him, pinned him to the ground, and knocked the knife from his hand. “Cállate el hocico! I want to hear nothing from you. Hear? Nada!” Miguel’s brother looked vacant, as if focusing on some curious point far beyond his brother. Miguel crawled off of him and went to Billy. He started to cry again but stifled it. He picked the lamb up from the ground and held it like a dead baby. “Which way?”
Billy led him to the creek. It was full of spring rain. Miguel waded chest deep and released the lamb. Watching it float downstream, he washed away the blood, then washed his brother. Billy, sitting on the bank sobering up, caught movement downstream. In the moonlight, he saw Dog slip through the cattails on the opposite side of the creek. He was after the lamb. Billy stood.
“Get,” Billy yelled. Dog looked up and saw him but appeared unconcerned.
“Que?” Miguel asked, pulling his brother close.
Dog stretched his neck out into the water, nipped at and missed the lamb. He hunkered his haunches. Billy knew he was going to leap. He ran down the bank toward Dog, throwing anything he could grab as he closed the gap between them. Dog was brave, but he wasn’t stupid. He abandoned the creek and disappeared into the cattails. Billy slo
wed when he saw him leave. He waded in and pulled the lamb from the water. Dripping at the river’s edge, he saw Miguel staring at him.
“A dog was going to get him,” Billy said.
“It is dead.”
“Yeah.”
Billy heard the familiar diesel cams of the Versatile hammer to a start. Though it was a half mile away, it was clearly the big tractor. When lights washed the tops of the creek willows, he knew James Carl was coming. He saw that Miguel knew it, too.
“Put it back in the water,” Miguel said.
Billy laid the lamb in soft grass and walked the incline up and out of the creek to get a better look. The tractor was almost to the corrals. They hadn’t bothered to kick dirt over the blood. Miguel and his brother joined Billy.
“He will know,” Miguel said. Billy nodded. “Tell him that dog did it. Tell him we chased but too late.” In the headlights, Billy saw James Carl standing at the corrals. “Tell him it was the dog,” Miguel said again. Billy descended the slope to where he’d laid the lamb. He gathered it in his arms and climbed the rise, stopping beside Miguel. “You will tell him it was the dog?” Miguel asked.
Billy stood looking into the lights now heading his direction. “Stay in the creek bottom. Walk up it until you get to a fence. It goes right across the creek. Follow the fence back to the barn.”
“You will say it was the dog?” Miguel asked.
Billy shook his head.
“It will be bad,” Miguel said.
Billy nodded that it would, and carried the lamb into the lights of the Versatile.
The Eskimo Keeps Her Promise
by Emily Ruskovich
from Inkwell
Jeremy says that one day I will wake up and there will be something different about my room. He says I will feel sick and not know why. My mother will be putting dishes away and the truck will be gone and the cat will be sleeping on the TV as usual, her flicking tail making a soft, static sound against the screen. But I will get out of bed and I will look and look, shaking out my clothes, holding my books upside down by their spines to see if something falls. I’ll tear the covers off my bed. I’ll dump the sand out of the little perfume bottles on my shelf and sift through it and find nothing. Then I will pick up the Eskimo doll on my desk, and I will feel something hard in her tiny pocket and it will be a silver tooth—his silver tooth—and when I find it there, I will know that he has killed himself.
He makes me a map of where to find his body. It is four pieces of paper taped together. He draws the two dogs in the yard and a football, the fence around the house with the moldy scarf on the weather vane, the trail past the horse’s grave, and then blue arrows pointing down a gulch. He folds up the corner of the map and writes “Lift here” and I do. A wolf stands in the water eating a boy. The wolf is looking up at me with a piece of blue cloth in his mouth like I’ve startled him with how fast I opened the flap. The boy’s eyes are red Xs but his mouth is smiling; the blood is a fountain and there are frogs. Jeremy paints a corn-haired girl crying in her hands. He draws cattails and crows.
But he is eleven and lies.
The first thing I do every morning is press my finger on the pocket. I turn over on my bed and reach out, sometimes with my eyes still closed. The pocket is big enough to fit a penny. The clasp is the tip of a sea urchin’s quill and it pricks me. I know that there is nothing to find but still I feel a terrifying thrill in checking. It is my first thought, and my last thought. Sometimes I believe I can make things happen by forgetting to wish for them not to happen. So I always make my intentions clear: I don’t want Jeremy to kill himself. I bargain. This time, with the doll. If there’s no tooth in your pocket tomorrow, I promise to build you a sled. I promise to make you a dog out of cotton and rocks.
She stands on my desk with two sharp wires coming together at her temples to hold up her wooden head, and her seal-skin boots hang an inch in mid-air. She is mouthless. Inside her muff, she is handless, just stubs of stuffed material. Inside her boots, the same stubs. She holds something over me that transcends the usual power struggle of girls and dolls. It gives me a purpose that no one else could know, a fear of death and chaos, the thrill of grave responsibility. I know it’s all false and in the day it’s a game to talk with Jeremy about his suicide. But at night...
The Eskimo gets lots of things she never uses—a fishing pole and a baby—but I do it because it’s the only thing keeping Jeremy alive. I am nine but understand the word is “sacrifice.” I whisper it in my dark room. The word falls from my mouth like a red silk scarf.
Jeremy finally twists his tooth out. He’s at his own house when it happens; I see only the gap it leaves behind.
He gives the silver tooth to his aunt to send in an envelope to his mother. He does not come into my house some night and open the urchin clasp. He does not look over at me sleeping in my bed. He does not kill himself and I am not the one to find him, to chase off the wolf and hold him in my lap, crying in his coarse, sweet hair, I love you.
He goes on living and eats scorched brownies from a pan on my porch. The rest of his life is out of my control. The world is reckless and angry. He teases the dog with an old sock; he finishes school, buries his father, goes away to college and marries a girl he finds there.
And I stop playing with dolls. I wash the river from my hair and move into the city where I am restless at bus-stops, searching men’s mouths. I reach out in the night to feel the sting of an urchin quill but the Eskimo is packed away. I have children. Girls. I marry too. Telephones ring and I answer.
Because that is what I wished.
There is no one to blame, nothing to blame on anyone. Still, I hold it against him. And I think of what is gone, of those moments when our lives hung in the same balance and the whole of his world depended on me. The secret bargains in the dark room. Insects thumped on my window. I saw his death in the stream, then undid it, as if the river and its secrets was an open zipper simply to be closed. The doll’s wooden head glared in the moon. The dog barked at the stars.
All of this is lost on him. A red scarf fallen in a black room.
Helping Hands
by David Peak
from PANK
Malmoud, the village leader, grabbed Betsy by the hand, the loose skin on his thin arm purple beneath the white glare of the sun. His head was covered in thick shocks of white hair, his obsidian eyes sunk deep within their sockets.
He’d been hovering around her ever since she’d climbed down from Brian’s mud-caked Jeep, tilting his head back and forth as he eyed her blonde ponytail, her neatly-pressed safari pants.
He jerked Betsy’s arm as he pulled her through the small, nameless village outside Wau in West Bahr al Ghazal.
These villages were popping up everywhere in South Sudan, everywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa for that matter, as quickly and haphazardly as dust settling after a storm.
The landscape of South Sudan is bleak—the land of biblical cataclysm, of annual droughts giving way to annual floods. The sky is always full of birds of prey—buzzards, eagles, kites.
Malmoud kept turning around, kept saying something in his language—Thuongjang, the Dinka language, the language of the Nile—but it was incomprehensible to Betsy’s ears, too rich in vowels, too formless, too breathy. Brian would know what he’s saying, she thought. Brian speaks six languages.
It’s nearly impossible for an American to visit South Sudan without a chaperone. Betsy found Brian online. At 27 he was already working on his doctorate in anthropology. He had a ruddy face and bright eyes. He worked for the International Rescue Committee. She e-mailed him and he responded. She only paid him $450.
Malmoud’s face looked like an eggplant, his teeth flashing yellow in his wide mouth, his tongue a vibrant pink, his gray eyes radiating anger. He wore nothing except a pair of faded camouflage cut-offs.
They passed by small huts made of grass, “thuckles” they called them. They passed by houses of rusted green and yellow sheet metal.
They passed by huts made of dried mud, sagging tin roofs stretched overhead, huts made of rotting, brown wood, chicken-wire fences strung up alongside the dirt path that wound through the center of the village.
There was no electricity, no running water, no telephones. Brian told Betsy that some of these people had satellite phones but so far she hadn’t seen any.
The sky was a blue dome over their heads, cloudless, stretching endlessly, as large as the world itself.
She was struck by the silence of this place, the emptiness. A bi-plane buzzed in the sky, somewhere in the distance. Betsy stopped, made a visor with her hand, looked into the sun.
Malmoud pulled at her once more, muttered something in his strange language, nodded his head toward the canvas IRC tent. He let go of her hand and Betsy felt his perspiration cooling in her palm. He side-stepped behind her, put a hand on the small of her back, and using the tips of his needle-thin fingers, gave her a light push.
Betsy looked down. The dirt in front of the tent had been kicked up, trampled, as if a hundred people had passed through the tent’s entrance that morning.
“You, go,” he said, his tongue struggling over the sharp angles of English consonants. “Look inside.”
The entrance of the tent was a dark slit that ran up between two hanging flaps of canvas, red crosses painted on either side. Betsy looked around for Brian, for any of the International Rescue Committee workers, and saw nothing but purple faces, peeking out from behind huts, from within the thuckles.
The bi-plane’s high-pitched buzzing was louder now. It was approaching the village.
“Go,” Malmoud said. “Now.”
Betsy felt the old man’s eyes boring into her, hotter than the sun. She’d only been here—in this nameless village—for five minutes. She’d only left Kenya that morning.
She swallowed her spit, took a step forward, and grabbed hold of one of the canvas flaps. She pulled it back and looked inside.
* * * *
“There was a pile of arms,” Betsy said. “Maybe twelve of them, stacked up like chicken bones on a plate, pools of black blood all over the place.