by Peter Wright
I reach the spot where the deer crossed. I turn toward the river, the undulations in the thick growth, and around me, the deer’s musk and fading warmth, and in the next moment, you’re with me, mom, and my heart fills. You’re right by my side although I don’t need to see you, and your words fill me even though all is silent—sight and sound mean nothing for I can feel you just as surely as if I’d jumped in the pool’s deep end, feel you on my skin and deeper, hear you in the squeeze of my lungs and pulse. You ask what I’m doing, and as I walk, my lips move, a confession to the trees and river and you, a telling of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and I thank you for not hating me. The dead, you smile, don’t judge, yet you worry, the ties of love stronger than this life, the embrace we once shared before my eyes opened. Don’t worry, mom, don’t worry, and my gloved hand cups my throat as your voice fades.
I push forward, sometimes wondering if I’m moving at all or if the Earth is simply moving beneath me, this unchanging tunnel view, the narrowing tracks, the framing of snow and trees, a perspective of treadmills and the illusion of motion. My feet dead within my cheap sneakers. Each step a stumble averted, each step bringing me closer, and dad, remember that song you taught me on a long hike, the one mom hated and I think you secretly hated too but which you liked to tease her with, and a smile flickers on my snot-frozen lips and I will walk five hundred miles and I will walk five hundred more . . .
I stop, realizing I’ve reached the old mill. Dad, you always laughed at my absentmindedness, my deep-focus daydreams, and here I am again, startled into the moment, the spur’s coupling missed, the tangled saplings replaced by a fenced-in expanse.
There are ghosts here, my grandfather and great uncles and their fathers before them, the toil of generations, and I apologize to my ancestors that all their sacrifices, their dreams for their families’ future, have brought them to the sight of an abandoned mill and a half-frozen girl, their blood and kin on the run. The fence sags in spots, a topping of barbwire, and beyond, snow-covered acres, small mountains of wooden skids and casings ten, twenty feet high. The smooth bumps of fifty-gallon drums buried in the snow, scrap metal heaps and a toppled crane. A hundred yards back, the mill’s smokestacks like soldiers at attention, brick shops, some low and long, others five stories tall. The structures loom, abandoned and hollow, and I am their shadow. Their echo.
Here is my fear: I will miss the dirt spur we drove, dad, the put-in where you found your special bloom. Dazed, I will trudge past, not noticing the break in the trees, lost in the narcotic mist of the half-frozen, lost in the endless loop of my sneakers’ shuffling over ties and snow. Come dawn, having realized my blunder, I’ll sit to rest, and in time, fall into the sleep from which I’ll never wake. I slap myself, one cheek then the other, a scolding to focus.
A smaller building sits halfway between the mill and the fence, its windows gone, and I imagine little boys and their BB guns, the thrill of breaking glass. A drift wedges the building’s northern doors open, and from the breach springs a dog pack. The dogs’ shadows against the snow, swift, bounding. The big dogs in the lead, a dodging path between the drifts. Behind them, the smaller dogs, their struggles in the snow, their yelps as, one by one, they’re left behind, lost among the drifts, and I flash back to the day we picked up Chestnut, mom, and I’m thinking not of him but all the dogs we left behind, their cries and their snouts pressed to their cages’ wire, and I hear that cry again, only this time it’s evilled by bloodlust and hunger. I twitch, spastic on the cusp of momentum and paralysis. A Rottweiler and shepherd reach the fence, the others large enough to bound through the snow close behind, and against the chain link, a tide of fur and snapping jaws and white teeth, their barks joined by the rattle of wire. I look about for a weapon, a length of pipe or rebar, a concrete slab, but I’m left nothing, and my fingers so stiff I can’t even make a fist. The dogs’ wail deafening, and the cry rises up, culled from all that is wicked and waiting in the night, some of the beasts so thin their ribs poke beneath their matted fur. I move, purposeful yet trying not to show my fear, and the pack moves along with me, a rolling wave, whinnying and jockeying, some turning on the others, the biting of ears and flanks. I step quickly, my gaze fixed ahead, a survey of the fence, wary of the work of looters and their wire cutters, but in time, the baying calms, and I turn to find the dogs still and silent, watching, seeing me perhaps in a way they hadn’t before. Another lost creature. A fellow survivor.
A mile and a half. I say the words out loud, or at least I try to, my face numb, the boundary between thought and action blurred, my chattering teeth, and my attention becomes a liquid thing, flowing from near to far and back again, everywhere and nowhere at once. The stillness and rails and naked trees turn ominous, all notes in a siren’s lulling that could lure me past my turnoff and into a never-ending dark.
You’re near, dad, in the constellations above, in the fish beneath the ice, your love alive in my understandings of these wonders. You’re near, mom, in the grit and the drive that allows me to keep pressing, and I gaze to the branch-fractured sky and ask for a sign with the power to deliver me from being nobody, to have me claimed by the world, to have someone who knows my name. I scoop a handful of snow but spit it out, its metallic soot, the cough that follows a rib-spasm ambush. I bend forward, hands on my knees, a string of spit from my lips and my tears frozen on my cheeks. I straighten and blink, and manage a weak smile, for here is my sign, the recognition I’ve reached my destination.
Dad, the memory of our time here burns brighter than the cold. My truck-driving adventures, my shifting struggles, the heat and the haze of stirred dirt, the flight of finches and mayflies and the discovery of a single, red bloom, and here is my sign, a set of snowshoe tracks across the unplowed spur, and although I can’t imagine summer’s warmth through this numbness, I know those days exist, a past as real as the moment encased in my bones, my body a house brimming with memories. I lift my feet high yet I still stumble, a puppet’s march through the drifts, and around me, a tunnel of knotted branches, and I fall, once and again, but I get up, pushing back the lure to simply rest—for a minute or an hour or forever. A cinder-crusted mound separates the spur from the river road, and only as I claw to its top and stumble onto the macadam do I realize I’ve lost my other glove. I touch my nose, my cheeks, feeling only vague pressure. I walk, the macadam iced and slick, the shoulder buried. A car approaches, a sweep of headlights. I cinch my hood, my jaw clenched, the pain and grind of teeth. The light grows, and after my night of darkness, I’m not sure I’ve seen a brighter illumination, a shine that births me from the darkness, a creature risen from the river and brush only to fade once the car rushes by.
No other cars pass before I reach the road to town. A turn, a final abandonment of the river, a slow, mile-long incline. The houses sparse, unlit windows at the end of long driveways, and you’re with me here, mom, with me here, dad, our bike rides, this long coast to the river, the longer pedal back. Those years you’d loop back to ride with me, your smiles and encouragement, your offers to stop if I needed to catch my breath. Then the last years before the Shut-In, my legs strong from our hikes, from practices and tournaments, the rides where I forged ahead then glanced back, proud of the distances I’d put between us. I pause at the hill’s crest and catch my breath. The road behind me empty and dark, and perhaps only looking back can one appreciate happiness squandered in the living, breathing moment, a moment crowded with action and reaction, thoughts slipping between what had been and what would be, and if I could, I’d go back and wait for you both here, wait and tell you how happy I was, wait to thank you and say I love you one more time.
Ahead, the first streetlights, the houses’ tighter array, and soon, places I know by name, streets named for flowers and trees and girls. Houses I’ve been inside, birthday parties and sleepovers, ghosts all around. I take the alleys, my body stone one step, mist the next.
The alley behind Fran’s house, the snow packed and slick, the first gr
ay in the east, and even a forever-night can’t resist the dawn. A journey of a thousand li may well start with a single step, but the final steps, no matter your unit of measure, are the ones that bleed you, their exhaustion and threadbare hope. I shamble to a stop, and my fatigue yields to confusion, Fran’s garage missing. I look around, a twisting of terrain. A deliverance a clearer mind would have expected.
Helen’s house to my right, the sticker-bush hedge and coal-black windows. The backyard’s pristine snow. I rest a hand on the gate, and how far away you seem, Helen. How far away you feel, Heather and Linda and Chris and Betty, my past a lightless pit, my journey upon this bridge of ash that fades beneath my every step. Only you’re strong enough to shine in the darkness now, mom. Only you, dad.
I shiver beneath my yard’s oak, and my breath rises through the branches I once climbed. I can’t claim the girl who monkeyed from perch to perch, she is as pale as steam, but in the pulses of her existence, I see her looking down upon me, each of us unrecognizable to the other. I trudge through the snow until I stumble onto the shoveled walk. Your garden buried on either side of me, dad, even the pots’ rounded humps claimed. Our house’s smashed windows replaced, and a faint light flicks on in the upstairs bathroom, and in me, a bleeding of identity, a confusion of time.
A snow shovel on the mudroom porch and beside it, a pair of small boots. The path around the house shoveled as well, and I crouch near the leafless branches, this last place I held your hand, mom, your face as you turned back, Go!, but I can’t, mom, I simply can’t. I can only return, again and again, these film-loop months, returns in spirit and memory, in hauntings and consciousness and dreams, and now, the return of my frozen, battered body, and I hurry, as near a jog as I can muster, wary of the street’s lit windows, the early risers. I glance back and our front porch pulls away, and my thoughts need a moment to align its new adornments. Its flag of red and white. Its golden mailbox.
I’m out of breath by the time I reach Fran’s garage, and in me, the new fear that I’ve come this far only to be discovered in the breaking light, to be betrayed by a busybody, by the people who didn’t balk when they heard what happened to you, dad, who whispered you had it coming. My feet as dead as clubs, I kick back the drift that blocks the garage’s side door, wild swings of my leg, the knob’s metal painful against my bare hands until I’m finally able to jerk back the door enough to slip inside.
Dark here, the path of memory, the smells of paint and grease, and here is my imperfect salvation, here is my port and manger, the final gasp of this endless night. I’m crying, a different kind of tears than the ones I shed outside, different than the kind I cried alone in my bunk. These are tears for you for having to see what’s become of me, mom; for what’s become of us, dad, the family you loved so dearly. We died, the three of us, months ago, and I held on, the girl who couldn’t believe in Santa buying into a fairy tale every other red and white saw through, and I can’t help but feel my singular survival has been a mistake, a glitch in the universe’s proper order.
A final act of daring—my balancing atop the car’s hood. A fight to find my center, the smooth metal, my damaged body, the uncertainty of wet sneakers and numb feet. A blind man’s grope, the overhang’s shadow, its dust and loose nails, and finally, the blanket. I wrap the blanket over my shoulders and cup Helen’s gun in my hands. A picture—my Communion dress, my hands held in front of me, and I am both that girl and her ghost.
The car’s backseat, and I shed my sneakers and socks and rub my toes, a schism of touch and sight, my flesh distant, and I swaddle my feet with the blanket then bury myself beneath the other blankets Fran’s father has draped over the ripped upholstery. My breath steams yet I’m saved the wind’s bite. The morning sun on the east window, and the grimy illumination reaches into the car. I close my eyes, the gun held over my heart, and fall away. My world turns to weight, the gun and blankets upon my chest, and then the surroundings pile on—the car, the garage, its wooden roof, the hammers and vices. My exhaustion rises to meet the press of these things and in a breath, I’m gone.
. . . I come to slowly, and I think of you, dad, the rainy October Saturday you taught me about the ocean zones, and I rise from the midnight zone’s oblivion of narcotic sleep and then the twilight’s mingling of light and dark, reality and dreams, and here, mom, you’re with me again, if only for a fleeting moment, because in this ocean, we can only sink or surface, and my time with you is short (it always was, wasn’t it? and how crushing to only understand that now). Yet I struggle to stay here, to fight the buoyancy, struggle to swim down and sit close to you, those Shut-In days that stretched so long, and although I chafed against the nightmare outside and the boredom within, I always found solace in you, mom, always found peace by your side, and I hope I told you that enough, I hope you knew . . .
. . . the sunlight I push into is frigid and gray, and I lie blinking, a goodbye to you, mom, and an acceptance of the day. The accumulated steam of my breath a haze beneath the car’s roof, and I take inventory. A touch of my forehead’s knot. The lag and mist of my thoughts. My chest’s bruised weight. My mouth parched and thoughts of water. The gun in my hand, and I click the safety on and off. I sit up slowly, the deep-sea bends twisting my gut, and unwrap the blanket covering my feet. The skin pale, last night’s numbness now a tingling. My socks too crusted and frozen to put on, and I’m only able to wedge my feet into my sneakers after I loosen the laces and pull out the tongues.
The car door strikes a shelf, the rattle of cans, and I stumble into the narrow aisle, my body wooden and robbed of grace. A weak sun and the shadows of late morning. Stillness, the brutal cold, the neighbors gone to work, others simply gone. I slide the gun into my pocket then nudge the side door. I squint, the snow’s blinding sheen, the sky of aching blue. A dog barks, and I crouch, and through the maple’s drooping branches, I spot the bundled man up the alley. I close the door and wait, assuring myself that a man walking his dog on a freezing morning will quickly pass, but the dog’s agitation rattles me, and I make my way to the alley-side door and tuck myself in the shadows just beyond the row of dirty windows. The man passes not six feet away. He’s wrapped in layers, a hat and scarf, and the dog is wild, the leash taut, and in my chest, a welling for here is my Chestnut in an unfamiliar coat, the dog straining, yelping even after he’s pulled away, and I’m not sad, Chestnut, because I know you’ve been saved, your new human caring enough to walk you on a cold morning, to wrap you in a coat heavier than the one I’m wearing, and I lay a hand on the window, a goodbye, a chance to feel you one more time, your barks’ vibrations in the glass, a final glimpse of your funny stride as your new master tugs your leash and you disappear from sight.
I return to the side door, counting a minute and listening to the quiet before stepping outside, and how strange, to be moving in the sunlight, moving among the living, this string of backyards, the snowed-under patios and sandboxes. How strange to have emerged from the night, my body a testament to my sufferings, and I limp the backyard path, and have a plan, you said, dad, our little joke but also a plea to think beyond the moment, and last night’s hazy plan was to come here and use Fran’s hidden key, the one kept in a fake brick at the flowerbed’s edge, but my concussion-addled logic hadn’t considered the snow or frozen earth, and I slip down the basement well, the steps unshoveled and a balancing hand on the stucco wall, and of course the door is locked, Fran’s father’s wariness, his mistrust, and in this cramped space, I hear you, mom, your talk of Occam’s razor and the beauty of simple solutions as I slide my hand into my hat and shrug off my jacket and cover the window pane nearest the doorknob. And I think of a man at a stoplight punching through a window as I do the same, two, three, four times until I grit my teeth and swing with all my might and the glass shatters.
I tap out the clinging shards, and from inside come the musical notes of glass striking concrete. I reach in, a contortion to twist the deadbolt, a further stretch to reach the knob. The door opens, and inside
, a part of me melts, the furnace’s warmth, the embracing dark, the ground-level windows buried by snow. A laundry basket rests atop the washing machine, and among the socks and shirts, Fran’s basketball jersey. Another season, another team, a trajectory I no longer understand.
I ball my coat to fill the frame’s missing glass, and at the stairs’ bottom, I slide my sneakers beneath the last step. My bare feet take the risers one at a time, or perhaps I’m watching a movie of my feet, this lost connection, my tally of subtractions now reaching my body. I open the door to the kitchen, a return to light and lingering scents, breads and cookies, and how I loved your kitchen, mom, and the smell takes me back to another home, and I see you, Betty, in all your raging glory, a crumb-spilling tray hurled through the cafeteria, a display of chaos and rebellion and beauty, and I understand my journey isn’t just about me, it’s about you, Betty, and all our lost sisters. 10:37 on the stove clock, and I try to sync the house’s rhythms, Fran with school and practice, her parents at work. I picture a half dozen clocks, calculations of return, the numbers I once juggled so easily now slippery and only the most general estimates glimmer in the fog.
I fill a glass at the tap and drink, but the first swallows only accentuate my thirst. I fill another, only this time, I choke, the water spit over the counter, my eyes tearing. I scarf down the first food I can reach, a hamburger roll, a granola bar, peanuts. The refrigerator next, cheese and milk and a chicken breast. Crumbs on the counter, my jacket, the chicken grease glistening on my fingers, a devouring, and I have to lean against the counter to catch my breath against the tides of exhaustion and euphoria. A red trickle snakes across my palm, and when I push back my sleeve, the rivulet branches around my wrist and a turn of my hand exposes the glass sliver stuck between my knuckles. I wrap my hand in paper towels, and I’m in the moment, yet also with you, mom, the night a brick smashed our window, your delicate touch and calm tone, two distant universes linked by blood and pain. I walk, and the rub of hardwood and carpet barely registers, this diorama’s stillness, the tide beneath the silence, voices, this family I thought loved me. The Christmas tree, Fran’s mother’s insistence it stay up through January, and as I pass, my warped reflection passes across a dozen colored globes. I open the liquor cabinet, the shiver of glass as I claim a half-filled whiskey bottle. I clutch the banister and climb. The cat watching, impassive, its tail twitching.