The Shadows Behind

by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

  Still, it’s at night I really worry about what goes on by the single burning lamp behind the milk house’s shoddy window. If I have to ensure my husband stored my grandmother’s oak-frame bed or Spode china out of harm’s way, I go down in daylight. I wouldn’t want to be around the boys at dusk, because that’s when the booze comes out. You see, gargantuan Jigger, hat-headed Hap and hairy Lair, since they don’t have dental insurance or go to the doctor much, attribute their rock-solid teeth and robust health to the unique blend of ingredients brewing in the homemade still.

  Despite what I do, little Nate is always down there at that hour. He is fascinated that Jigger doesn’t use the message pad to summon the cows: he calls them in to pen by just cupping his hands on either side of his smeary mouth and making a noise through the neat hole above his upper lip—a hole, he claims, put there by his daddy’s stubbing out a cigarette when he was my son’s age. At least, that’s what he told Nate, who believed it with all his heart and came running to tell me. Nate’s very bright, but he’s impressionable, and after that he’d asked Jayce, “Could you make a cigarette hole in my upper lip?” Of course, that was out of the question, so the only unsavory habit he’s been allowed to pick up from Jigger is taking things apart.

  Little Nate is obsessed with the workings of the farm—not how things are done, but how things are undone. How the milk gets drained from the cow’s udder; how the big hay rolls get cubed down into bales; how the thin layers of skin over the cow frames are shorn free and become steaks next to his father’s six-egg breakfast in the morning; how Hap dissects a distributor cap. He’ll watch the boys clean their stunners, and then come inside and seize something—my mixer, my blender, or the kerosene lantern, for example—and take it apart. He doesn’t hang around to watch anything go back together, which is why I spend my afternoons, when I’m not choring, reassembling. But Sunday morning, he took apart his bedroom lamp and shrieked while I scrambled like a short-circuited cockroach and barely pulled it together before the dark fell. Now that he’s torn apart that lamp four mornings in a row, I’ll have to curtail his time with the Barn Boys.

  Saturday was Sporting Day, and Jigger, Hap and Lair went hunting. Jayce had created a couple of eighteen-point bucks, as I recall, and that’s what they were after, but they’ve got an endless amount of time to hunt since there doesn’t need to be a deer season anymore—people like my husband just keep filling the woods. I think, honestly, Jayce spends too much time breeding herds just so he can keep his good Barn Boys around and sharp. That day, though, they didn’t get that eighteen-pointer. They brought home a dozen bucks, all between four and twelve points. We’re supposed to refurbish the deer frames, heads and all, to use them for next year’s herd. So when they carted them all in on the back of the flatbed truck, singing like young men who had just experienced sex for the first time, little Nate ran out to see.

  The boys spread the carcasses out on the lawn and dragged them down to the butchering slab to disassemble them: shear off the skin and meat, tear out the wires, and chop off the heads. I looked out the kitchen window and saw Nate standing there, far enough away so he wouldn’t be showered with guts, watching. And it was the way he was watching, unmoving, the early summer breeze twitching small pieces of his blond hair, that made me stop peeling the onions.

  The boys hurled the heads into a pile on the side, and from a distance, it looked like caramel raisin pudding. I shuddered. There was something sad in those eyes—even if they were just diamonds underneath the coal-colored LiquiGel Jayce uses. I wondered what the last image their eyes registered could’ve been. A field of sunflowers? A white moth? Did it hurt when the bullet ripped through their flesh coverings?

  Jayce swears it doesn’t, but I know better because he makes them with nerves. They feel something, I’m sure.

  Jigger crouched down, pointed to the pile and spread his hands wide, shaking his head, and I wondered if little Nate asked him if he was gonna take the heads apart. I expected the boys would soak them in solvent. That’s what you do to clean the skulls before refurbishment: you just let them soak until the brains, eyes and sinews turn to mush and only the metal frames are left. But they didn’t. They piled the heads onto a large tarp and dragged them over to the cold cellar, a stone structure built into the hill next to the house. Hap climbed up and Lair gripped the heads in his stubby-fingered hands as Jigger lit up a corn silk cigarette. They lined up the heads in a row on the roof. They were going to let those heads rot and fester and smell in the sun for three weeks and let nature and the maggots take care of most of it.

  Little Nate came bounding inside and dashed up to his room. It overlooks the cold cellar, which meant he was going to see those heads in the morning when he woke up and at night before he went to sleep. At bedtime, I tried to settle down with Jayce, but instead of seeing his wiry gray hairs bend in my breath, I saw those vacant, soulless eyes staring at little Nate, clutching his toy screwdriver as he slept.

  I decided I didn’t want those things eyeing him, so I crept into his room, carefully avoiding the litter of rusty farm tools and pieces of old cars Hap lets him have, and flicked on the lamp. I squinted my eyes to try to see the deer on top of the cellar, and thankfully, the room’s reflection on the glass had curtained them for the moment.

  On Sunday, the dawning of God’s day, the lamp incident happened. It has happened every morning since.

  I figure it’ll pass, but it doesn’t. Every morning Nate awakens, takes the lamp apart, and forgets about it until before dusk. Then he cries that the lamp must be back together before nightfall: “They’ll come in, Mommy! But they’ll stay!” While he screams, I scramble to get the lamp reassembled before Jayce returns and starts yelling about how things that cost him good credits are being treated around this house. Usually, I haven’t even put the lamp back together entirely correctly: the harp is bent, the shade’s akilter, the socket’s crooked on the base, and the wires are exposed so it might even spark in the night and set the peeling wallpaper ablaze. Then I tuck little Nate into bed, but he can’t fall asleep with the light on. However, I suspect if he wakes in the middle of the night to a dark room, he’ll start shrieking when he gets a look at those heads. So after he’s asleep, I creep back into the room and switch on the lamp.

  Supper is late tonight because I thwarted another lamp incident before finishing the venison. I set Jayce’s plate down in front of him and rummage in the drawer of the old metal cabinet—one that’s outlived its usefulness in the lab—for a knife and fork.

  “That was quite a lot of nice venison we got on Saturday,” I broach the subject.

  “Yeah.” Jayce lifts his utensils. “This looks good. New formula’s an improvement over last year.”

  I hate the way he speaks of the meals that include meat. It makes them sound about as appetizing as motor oil.

  “Might want to get used to lots of stew, loaf, and pie,” he says. Outside, I hear the Barn Boys yowling, and I wonder if they’ve started their dickens early tonight. “After what the boys brought in on Saturday, we’re going to be eating it into next summer.”

  He sets down his knife and considers me with a solid gray eye. “What’s the matter, babe? You having problems with them killing things again? I can tell them to do any more slicing and dicing down at the slab past the corn field, so you don’t have to see it.”

  I hate the way he brings that up all the time, too. While it’s true that since the miscarriage I haven’t exactly been keen on watching them slaughter animals, it has nothing to do with the fact that I understand this is what we do with our lives. We create or slaughter, we donate or eat.

  “No, I don’t have a problem with that,” I say. “What I have a problem with is the heads on the roof of the cold cellar and the stink. Why can’t they just soak the damn things in Postmort?” I sit in the rickety chair across from Jayce and pick up my fork. The handle is slowly twisting off it. I reach for the cloth napkin and unfold it across my lap.

  “That’s not the
way Jigger likes to do things, Ilse.” He shoves in a mouthful of creamed chipped venison. It’d looked delicious when I’d set it on the table, but the thought of the deer’s brains and the white film of maggots in them has repulsed me. “They like to do things natural.”

  I get up from the table and take my plate to the porcelain sink, which is due up for its monthly bleach and rebugging. “There’s very little that’s natural anymore.”

  He shrugs. “Natural won’t work. Cloning the whole animal takes too long.” He sips his tea. “These were older models anyway. I’m not even going to refurbish them this time around. I’m coming up with a faster, sleeker design. Just let them have their fun.”

  “It’s sick and unnecessary.”

  “Ilse, I told Jigger the boys could keep these as trophies.”

  The bugs in the sink stretch their elasticized arms and grip pieces of venison from my plate. It’s always bothered me that although they’re metal, they never seem to lose their appetite; when they hear the clank of the plates against the porcelain, they emerge like feisty snakes and snatch their meals. But that’s why Jayce traded for them: they’re expedient models that leave no trace, and the fines for wasting food these days are pretty high.

  I’m sick of the metal beasts. “And where are they going to put those ghastly things?”

  “Probably on top of the milk house,” he says.

  I shiver. “When people come in the driveway, that’s the first thing they’re gonna see.”

  “I know. But they’re proud of ’em. These are trophies, honey. And good trophies means they’ll stay around longer.”

  “I don’t like little Nate staring at those things. Do they have to be across from his room? Could they set them elsewhere?”

  “It’s really the best place. The sun shines intense and hot there. There’s no shade.” He lifts his glass of orange juice; for the first time, I notice he’s got a gut. A small one, but it’s there. I should cut the sugar out of his diet, but it probably wouldn’t do any good since I know he has a few nips of bourbon in the lab. I don’t care that he drinks, as long as he keeps the production up and doesn’t take the habit out on us.

  “Well, Sunday while you were in town doing the goat thing, he took apart his lamp and couldn’t get it back together. Which was fine, until the sun started to pull down and he was screaming and crying,” I say.

  Jayce sets down the glass and burps. “His light’s been on every night. He’s afraid of the dark, that’s why he’s throwin’ a fit.”

  “No.” I turn on the water to rinse off the now picked-clean dish. “I’ve been putting his light on. If it’s on, he can’t see the deer heads. He can only see his own reflection.”

  “Well, stop doing that. You’re probably freaking him out. He’s thinking there’s ghosts in here, or God knows what.” Jayce is gentle; although I imagine in his mind he’s muttering, Foolish woman, your silly ideas, he won’t say it. He just frowns, squeezes a piece of overdone toast in his fingers, slaloms it through the gravy, and pops it in his mouth. A dollop of juice dribbles over the gold band on his fourth finger. “Kid might not cut it as a byrotechnic. Not the way he’s going.” He takes another mouthful of his venison. A chunk drops from his chin to the plate. “Maybe I should start having him spend time with me in the lab.”

  That thought doesn’t appeal to me, either. So he’ll grow up like Jayce, putting things together with no sensitivity? I cast my eyes to the sink. The bugs have retreated to the drain now, but their pointed appendages have left gray scratches in the porcelain that’ll have to be buffed away before next inspection. “I never should’ve let him watch them disassemble those deer.”

  “I told you, it’s a good thing for him to get used to seeing. If he doesn’t make byrotechnics, he’ll be a great Barn Boy. He’ll always have work.”

  I look out the window. The boys aren’t in the milk house yet: Lair’s sitting on a log, brushing his long hair with what looks like a couple of tines of old pitchfork, shortened and re-formed; Hap’s knelt down on the old well cover, blocking his hat with a brick; Jigger spits. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  He pushes his plate away and stands up, comes over to me, sets his hands on my hips and kisses the back of my neck. He smells like ammonia, burning hair and a faint something else, his characteristic musk that makes me think of the seven ferrets, his first projects, that we kept in the upstairs room before little Nate was born. I feel him sigh against my back. “Do you have plans tomorrow?”

  I think. Just the usual chores, maybe some shopping. “Not really.”

  “Why don’t you take him to the zoo for the day?”

  The zoo, where Jayce gets the DNA. The zoo is the last bastion of live animals. Well, live totally organic animals. The ones that aren’t extinct. Each state has one zoo—there aren’t enough natural creatures to fill more than that—well, except for Wyoming. Not as many things died there, I guess.

  Jayce toys with a curl of my hair, which has sprouted a few grays. In the mirror, when I see them, they remind me of spring dandelions in the field. “It’ll reinforce that the things we slaughter here aren’t real beasts, not really, and that’ll make him feel better. Maybe it’ll even inspire him to come and watch me assemble things.”

  I don’t see how this will make little Nate feel better, because he’ll just go and see the deer and then come home and see those empty, haunted, soulless eyes staring at him in the night. But I concede.

  ~~**~~

  We’re naturally up early around here, so I load little Nate in the truck, along with a couple of sandwiches, thirty credits and the Farmers’ Card and start the long drive across the state.

  The zoo is expansive, as open and wide as the photos I’ve seen of Africa. We stroll through the aviary. The rocks are spattered with bird waste, and I reach out to touch it. There are still germs, but I don’t let that stop me. I haven’t seen bird crap since I was a little girl, and looking at it makes my eyes hurt because it is good and real, the kind of good that oatmeal would be after not having tasted it in a dozen years. The Inca terns, their feet bright as poppy petals, move so differently. Warm, squirming, lighter than the ones Jayce makes, and their sounds are notes that make songs, not pre-programmed tunes with clicks at their conclusions.

  The bellies of the Siberian tigers sway when they pad across the grass and plunge into their man-made pond, swatting at fish with their paws. To watch them eat, the twist of their heads in one, smooth motion, makes me long for a cat. Not the cat Jayce made me—pretty and white and puffy and perfect Katrina—but a cat. One that still knows when it’s hungry because its stomach tells it, not because the timer in its brain has gone off.

  In the reptile house there are matamata turtles, their flattened heads maneuvering like leaves at the bottom of the spring where we draw the water, and little Nate laughs, because, he says, “The leaves have eyes!” He presses his hands flat against the glass.

  “Mommy, will their eye coverings come off? Do they have diamonds or cobalts or emeralds or rubies?”

  “Those,” I say, crouching down, “are real eyes. Like ours. When the animal dies, they will rot clean through and there’ll be nothing left.”

  A keeper in khaki goes to the right of the diorama all decked out with fake giant fronds and dirt. He opens the door, and there’s a musk-wet-mold smell like carpet in a flooded basement, and that, too, brings me back to that time when there were turtles. Real turtles you could keep in a terrarium. I had a little snapping turtle. Pappy. Pappy the snapping turtle. When The Shortage came, we had to eat him.

  I buy little Nate an ice cream at the stand disguised as a giant butterfly. Within a few minutes, vanilla ice cream and strawberry sauce coat his chin. He points to the camouflage-netted dome rising like a giant egg behind a tangled gateway of branches. Insect World, the sign announces. “Can we see the bugs?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen the real ones on the farm?” The outside insects are the only creatures not manufactured; there are special
farmers who just breed live bugs. Plant life has become so important, and there have been few successes in imitating pollination.

  There are also not many decent parts to eat on most insects.

  He shrugs and bites off the point of the cone, sets it on his mouth, and sucks. The ice cream drains like a lowering lake. “Yeah, but I can’t catch up with ’em to touch ’em.”

  So we wander through the magical door, and there’s a floral rush of scents, wild geraniums and blue flag irises, blueberries and black-eyed Susans, Mexican sunflowers and mint. Butterflies are in avid flutter, like small colorful confetti. “Welcome to the Butterfly Garden,” says the lady in the turquoise uniform. “Don’t pick the flowers and don’t touch the butterflies.”

  Which is, of course, exactly what Nate does. He crouches by a patch of daisies and waits for a harmless comma or red admiral to come by; when one settles on a nearby nettle, it doesn’t move when he pinches his fingers together and picks it up. I glance around to be certain no one’s looking and then grab his sweaty hand. “We don’t want to do that, Punkin. We can’t afford the fines. But over here there’s a pond. Would you like to see that?”