The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  I stand, wobbly, this border of real and not. Bare feet on hard wood, and the violence rides into me. The pulse frantic, dark. Chestnut turns from the door to me and back again. My legs like smoke, and I fumble into my flip-flops. I’m halfway down the steps when the front door bursts from its hinges.

  Three men flood into the foyer. Their boots crunch over wood and glass, the men all bluster and menace. One topples a lamp, a spill of light, the illumination of shoes. The first man grips a shotgun. Another with a sledgehammer. All with sweaty faces and heat in their eyes. The mob outside and a drum’s pulsing beat.

  Slater’s the last to enter, a pistol in hand. Chestnut lurches past me and scuttles whiplash circles, barking and growling and fearless, a dance around the men who’ve grabbed my father’s arms. I’m in my panties, braless and a white T-shirt, my hand tight on the railing, Slater’s stare cut short by my father’s cries. A bullish man delivers a blow that snaps my father’s glasses. My mouth opens, but I can’t scream, my voice consumed by my father’s gasp, his pained breath. He struggles to gather himself. “Slater, tell them . . . tell them.” Words that bring a different pain. The exposure of my father’s trusting heart. His child’s belief in good. His faith that his neighbor is his savior.

  A stomach punch and my father crumples. My body thick and distant. I picture my hockey stick, the duffle’s give, the physics of weight and force. The men holding my father let go, then the stomps and kicks, the smack of leather, and the grunts of my father and his attackers join with Chestnut’s barks. The din crowds my brain. I try to scream, but my throat is choked—the silt of dreams, the dust of fear. The bear who broke my father’s glasses drags his limp body to the foyer.

  My mother charges. Empty handed, screaming. A punch for the bear before another man hurls her against the wall. The smack of her skull, and she slides down, a melting of will and muscle before she collapses into a heap. A mirror falls beside her, and the glass sprays across the wood, an explosion in the river of skewed light. Slater straddles my mother and slams his pistol against her head.

  He points to my father. “Get him to the street!” His breath short. The glow of exertion on his round cheeks. Sweat stains mark the armpits of his dark blue uniform. The men holding my father’s arms step over my mother. Chestnut leaps across the debris and latches onto Slater’s cuff. Slater curses, and with a twist of his round middle, he kicks the dog across the hardwood.

  I leap from the stairs. A reflex and a thudding collision with Slater’s broad back. My arm locks around his throat. His policeman’s cap tumbles. I breathe in his stink of sweat and cigars and whiskey, his hair gel slick against my cheek. I wrap my legs around his thick gut and pull until his curses whittle to gasps, until I feel the lurch of his Adam’s apple against my forearm and his throat’s shallow gasps. Our pulses join, and the rhythm fuels me, a sensation as if his strength is becoming mine. A single grid fills my mind—the intersection of my forearm and a windpipe struggling to draw air. I grind my teeth, my body twisted, a cruel leverage. Slater reels a spastic dance that kicks over another lamp. Chestnut circles us, barking, barking.

  Slater turns and rams his back into the wall, once, then again. Shock rides my spine, my nose flattened against the back of his skull, and in my head, a flash of black light. With a squeeze and a twist, he pulls my arm from his throat. He sucks a greedy breath and casts me to the floor. The black light fades, and I scramble to my feet, but before I can straighten myself, he punches me in the mouth. In seventh grade, I caught a stick to the chin, and I drifted through a chain of unclaimed moments before surfacing back onto the field, but this shock runs deeper, a rumble in my bones. I stagger back then trip. My hair over my eyes. The metallic taste of blood on my tongue.

  I lie on the floor, my legs twisted beneath me, my body slowly rising through hazy states of understanding. I push back my hair to see my father being dragged outside. The lamp’s skewed shine like a stream of light, and in the stream, overturned chairs, books knocked from their shelves, the glitter of a broken mirror. My mother draws her knees beneath her, a balancing hand on the wall. Half her face masked in blood. She pulls me to my feet. I see her moving lips, register her volume, but I can’t understand her, my ears flooded. Chestnut’s barks. The mob’s cries. The drum’s ratcheting beat.

  Our arms draped around each other, my mother and I stagger to the foyer. Another skewed view, the front door off its hinges and the circling wolves on our lawn. Around my feet, broken glass, wooden splinters. My mother pushes back my hair, and I finally hear her voice. “Oh, baby,” she says, her fingers tender on my numb lip, her touch mirrored by mine, a stroke of her cheek, her blood slick and warm.

  By the time we reach the lawn, we’re running, graceless, hand-in-hand. The mob fills the street, and above their heads, a waved flag of red and white. Possessed faces flock beneath the streetlight. The drummer at the light’s fringe, an unrelenting rat-a-tat-tat. The heat in his eyes too, his hands a blur. My father’s head hangs, his chin coated in blood. The men who burst down our door grasp his elbows. Slater commands the group’s center. The streetlight shimmers on the chrome of his raised gun. He yells along with the crowd.

  “Traitor!”

  “Elitist!”

  A bare-chested man steps into the light. His tattooed arm swings a series of giant circles before he tosses a rope over the streetlamp’s arm. The crowd erupts. “Traitor! Traitor!”

  My mother pulls me from the crowd’s fringe and into the shadows alongside the house. “Go to Uncle Bill’s. Wait for me there.”

  I don’t move. My eyes on the street.

  “Go! Now!” A hard push, and I stagger. She’s never used a rough hand, and for a moment, we stare at each other before falling into an embrace, her lips near my ear, a stroke of my long hair. Her tears and blood warm against my cheek. “I’m sorry, baby, but you have to go. For all of us.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not going to leave him.” She pushes herself back, still clutching my shoulders. “But I need you to be safe. Right now. Go to your uncle’s. Wait there until I come get you.”

  She starts across the yard, turning once. “Go!” she cries.

  She pushes through the crowd. A parting of bodies and the noose around my father’s neck. My father speaks. Brothers, he calls them. His words slurred, a gagging on his own blood. Friends. His appeal cut short by a kick to the gut.

  I crouch behind one of the azaleas I helped plant, bushes my father said would one day be taller than me. Chestnut barks at the crowd’s edge. I call him, imitating my father’s whistle, but the dog is lost in the frenzy. Bent double, I scuttle across the grass.

  Closer, and through the crowd, I see my parents. My mother stands in front of my father, her finger poking chests as she points out the men who’ve borrowed her husband’s tools, the ones whose wives she’s babysat for in a pinch. She chides Slater. A big man who hit a mother and daughter, the one who never picks up his dog’s shit. A preening bureaucrat who couldn’t be bothered by his neighbors on the Shut-In’s distribution days. I kneel in the cool grass and scoop up the dog. Chestnut squirms but I hold tight. My father lifts his head and turns my way. One eye swollen shut, the other clear. Go.

  I back up, cautious steps, fighting the pull to stay, to somehow help make it all right. Slater pushes my mother aside and addresses the others. They live in a new world now, he declares. My father sealed his own fate, his campus rallies and traitorous blog all the evidence they need. “One America!” he cries.

  The mob responds: “Holy America!”

  Slater lifts his arm, and the shirtless man yanks the rope. Another man rushes forward and grips the rope, then another. My father rises, an imitation of flight. His hands claw the noose, the spastic kick of his feet, the rope’s wild sway. My mother lunges at the men grasping the rope. The large man who broke my father’s glasses grabs her from behind and lifts, her legs kicking, the soles of her feet blackened by the macadam. Slater fires his pistol, a celebratory shot. The
drumbeat wild, feverish, ecstatic. I’m about to scream when a hand clamps over my mouth.

  “Come with me, girl.” A woman’s voice. Her other hand firm on my arm, and I’m pulled away from the crowd. I squirm, but the woman holds tight and wrestles me back into the shadows.

  II.

  You wake to a chickadee. A high-pitched feebee, feebee. One near, another far. A call and response your father taught you. You picture the chickadees’ tufted heads, their nervous glances. A bird you and your parents sought on winter trails. The three of you as still as the surrounding forest. A survey of naked limbs. The steam from your mouths. The birds so small. Melodies sung for you alone in the hush of brown and white. A new image rises in the trees. Your father lifted on a rope. His legs kicking, then not.

  Your hands lift to your throat, the panic of being underwater, and your blinking brings no focus, and from the trees comes your father’s voice, his advice if you were ever lost in the woods. Stop. Be calm. Take inventory.

  You shut your eyes and breathe.

  The water and trees evaporate and you emerge into a small room. White walls. A single bed. The sun snared in flimsy curtains. A crucifix above the door. Your father at the periphery of your vision no matter where you look—there, and with a blink, gone. A guest room, although you have a feeling you’re the room’s first visitor. Empty shelves and unadorned walls. A sterility flavored with the scents of another life. Soaps and lotions. Kitchen spices. You stand on the back of a ship, all connections severed and the only shore you’ve ever known fading.

  A wince when you touch your swollen jaw, and here’s a connection you haven’t lost, the presence and memory of pain. Close your eyes, and in the dark, your mother joins your father, both hoisted from the earth. Your father above, his heels’ fading twitch, his blue cheeks. Your mother in a brute’s lassoing embrace. Your mother curses her attacker, curses them all. Her elbows swing. Her blackened soles and the drum’s remorseless beat. Slater and the others push closer, their eyes alight. The pictures leave and return, a short-circuiting horror movie. Your breathing suddenly difficult. You’re drowning again, your boat capsized, the sea cold and dark. A series of gasps, but the act’s simple mechanics lie beyond your grasp. The movie projector operates on its own power, and you rock in time with the film’s shudder through sprockets and cogs. You open your mouth, trying to force air into your throat—if not that, then to scream—but you’re capable of neither. The movie shifts to the azaleas’ shadows. The slow-motion movement of your mother’s mouth. A silent pantomime. Go!

  Open your eyes and the movie stops. Chestnut stretches and yawns. He lurches over the blanket’s folds and licks your cheek. He alone remains unchanged—the short hair between his ears, the droop of dewy eyes. You should be crying, but that place waits far from your heart. You could close your eyes and return to your movie, but with your eyes open, you can only think in facts. In simple, declarative sentences. You’re in a strange room. Your mother isn’t waiting downstairs. You have your dog. Your father’s noose was knotted by people who are now waking up all around you. Men going to work and kissing their children goodbye. Your rocking slows, and in its place, an icy coating. If only you could remain here, this bed, this claimed sliver of certainty. Your hand on Chestnut’s side, the breathing of life in him. If only you could keep this balance and remain still forever. Nothing to gain or lose and no one else to die.

  The sound of feet on the stairs. Chestnut barks. The ice thickens, and you hug your knees to your chest, a drawing inward, and if you could swallow yourself and disappear, you would. The door eases open.

  A woman enters. You know her—in a way—but again, connection fails you. She carries a glass of milk, a plate with toast and sausage and a sandwich. Chestnut’s teeth bared, a low growl. The woman arranges the offerings on the nightstand and pulls a chair to the bedside.

  You shrug off the ice and the distance closes between you. Here is the witch. The poisoner who’s sheltered herself behind locked doors and a sticker-bush hedge. She’s round in her face and hips, a frame stout and strong enough to have wrestled you across the yard and alley. You bit the fleshy palm clamped over your mouth, the taste of sweat and dirt, and this morning, your teeth marks lay wrapped in gauze. You’ve only glimpsed her in passing or from high in the oak. Up close, the witch loses her menace. Middle aged, gray strands in her coarse, black hair. Pale, weary eyes.

  The woman cuts a tip from a sausage link. Chestnut’s barking replaced by a twitching snout. “Can he have some? I don’t have dog food.” Her soft words not what you’d imagined.

  Chestnut snatches her offering, inhaling more than chewing. A half smile lifts the witch’s round face. She cuts another piece. “He’s a nice dog. I never had a dog.” She considers you, and you understand the expression you first took for weariness is really concern. “I’m Helen. And I know you’re Kayla.”

  You pick up a piece of toast then set it back down. The thought of eating too complicated, the act of chewing and swallowing belonging to the likes of acrobats. Helen leans forward and Chestnut licks her fingers. She looks at you again. “No one’s going to hurt you while you’re here.” She stands. “Got you a sandwich for later. The bathroom’s across the hall. I have to go to work.” She scratches Chestnut’s head. “And I’ll get some dog food.” She picks him up. “Let’s see if I can let him do his business in the backyard and then bring him back. He’s not the running-away type, is he?”

  You manage to shake your head. Or at least you think you do.

  Helen places her nose between the dog’s ears. Her voice softened by fur. “I didn’t think so.”

  The window beside the bed overlooks the backyard. You pull back the curtain. Helen stands, fists planted on her hips. Chestnut sniffs the perimeter of sticker-bushes. A neighbor appears on the hedge’s other side. Helen and the neighbor talk. The dog’s origins, you guess. Or perhaps the things they heard about last night. The college professor, the noose slung over a streetlamp, whispers of who was involved and who might be next.

  Helen returns, setting down both Chestnut and a bowl of water. Another smile. “He’s a good boy, isn’t he?”

  Words spin in your head, but you can’t coax them onto your tongue.

  “Stay inside today. Don’t answer the door, not for anyone. Tonight, we’ll get in touch with your people.” Helen pauses in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  The front door shuts. The lock’s click. Chestnut sits close, watching. He knows. His pack dwindling and his hopes with you. Yet his black eyes look through you because you’re smoke. You’re nothing. A stiff wind could scuttle you and you’d never be seen again. Lie back. The ceiling above, its white backdrop a screen, and the movie no longer waits for you to close your eyes. Your father smiling at the riverside, a plant in his hands, the roots and dirt. Your mother’s face in the shadows. Go!

  The sunlight creeps across the bed, the brightness in your eyes then slipping away. You don’t move. Can’t move. Perhaps you’ve fallen from the top of the oak, every bone broken. You struggle to determine if you’re filled with moonlight or lead. When the last patch of sun slips from the covers, you muster the strength to sit. You pick up a piece of toast. The bread crumbling and cold. A mouthful you force halfway down then hack back onto the plate.

  Swing your feet onto the floor. Chestnut lifts his head. You stand and reach across the thousand miles that separate you from the doorknob. This threshold you have no memory of crossing and a single, testing step into the hall. Vertigo bubbles as you look down the stairs. Everything after Helen grabbed you hazy, your memories reduced to flashes and gasps. The hallway tiny, and you cross it as you would a balance beam, heel-toe, your hands outstretched, the fear of falling. In the bathroom, a long piss and the lull of splashing water. You take inventory, but none of the variables add up. The bobby pins and tweezers on the windowsill. The sink’s toothpaste and creams. A tub in need of scrubbing. The ship sails on. The shore recedes and the captain nowhere in sight.

/>   Lift a slat in the window’s blind. The yard below, a three-row garden surrounded by a rabbit fence. The alley’s ribbon of cracked macadam. On the other side, your oak. Sun on the green, the leaves’ breezy sway. Hidden and not, the pots and paths of your father’s garden. His new plant from the riverside and a single red bloom. Your house, and in you, the amputee’s pull of what was and would never be again.

  In the bedroom you lie with your face away from the window. Pull the dog close and hug the pillow. You wonder when you will cry—and when you finally do, you wonder if you’ll be able to stop. All you have now is emptiness. You are the queen of emptiness, of stretching skies and howling winds, of a horizon that bleeds into a single, meshed hue. You are a little girl alone on a little boat surrounded by an endless sea. The projector sputters to life, and the movie plays.

  Chestnut barks. Hesitation at the bed’s edge, ears back and tail wagging, the distance judged then a leap. Your heart wild. Another rousting and these hours of drift, the dreamless sleep of unplugged machines. Now consciousness, sudden and jolting. Your mother at the foot of the bed. Go!

  The door opens and Helen peeks in. Your mother disappears. “I’d knock but my hands are full.”

  You mutter through twitching lips. “It’s OK.” Your voice of rust.

  Chestnut abandons his bark to sniff Helen’s shoe. Helen sits at the edge of the bed and lays down her offerings. A toothbrush and a bag of dog treats. A plate of takeout chicken, macaroni and cheese. A can of soda. A plastic bag, and inside, a pair of jeans, Helen apologizing, hoping she got the size right. Helen picks up Chestnut. “There’s chicken for you too.” You pick up a drumstick. Grease on your fingers then panic, the revulsion of flesh on your tongue. You set the drumstick back in its Styrofoam tray, and not seeing a napkin, you let Chestnut lick your fingers.