The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  The bathwater runs, and Fran, I know you won’t mind if I take what I need, we always shared, always thought of each other as the sister we never had, and how I loved your sass and envied your daring. I fill my hands, yoga pants, underwear, jeans, a thermal top and a hoodie, thick socks and boots. The sun slants through the window, then the smells of moisturizer and hair spray, and I hear your voice and mine, Fran, all those nights we stayed up, whispering, complaining, dreaming, and even though that life once-lived is no longer my own, I thank you for being there. Thank you for seeing beyond the daydreaming, number-freak cage the world was so keen to shove me in.

  I close the bathroom door and shut off the water and set the clothes and boots on the floor. The fan left off, the need to hear an opened door. I slip off my sweatpants, its bloodstains, the material frozen from the thighs down, and on the floor, flecks of ice and frozen dirt, but I pause after taking off my top, the maroon material bunched and brought to my nose. Goodbye, Chris and Linda. Goodbye, Betty. Goodbye, Heather. I wipe my towel-wrapped hand over the mirror, my image naked and blurred, this battered, crew-cutted girl a different animal than the lost echoes who’d gazed into this glass before. I rub a palm over my belly, a gentle trace of my forehead’s lump. This steamy moment is all I can claim. I have no bed, no roof, no food, my past cut off, the possibilities of quantum futures a lie for a girl who’s done the things I have. Only the moment counts. Only the moment is real. Only in the moment can I scratch and claw and fight and bleed, and I need to see this for the gift it is.

  I set the gun beside the tub, and with a hand clutching the towel rack, I dip a toe into the water. I grit my teeth against the fire that rides up my calf. One foot then the other, and I push back the fear of blacking out with chuffing breaths to counter the throb. In degrees and millimeters, I lower myself until I sit.

  In my feet, a mix of numbness and pain, and I cup handfuls of water, splashes for my chest and face. The soggy paper towels slip from my hand, and rosy wisps curl in the water, the room’s fog thickened by my body’s heat, dew on the toilet and walls. I take a sip of whiskey, my eyes closed and a deep exhale, a reunion with my lost tribe, connections knitted by hardship and circumstance, and no good was to come of our time together, was it, my sisters? Each of us carrying the mark we were too blind to see. Each of us fated to be scattered and consumed by the new order.

  In time, the pain eases—or I grow used to it—and I struggle to imagine the hours ahead of me, but all I see are postcards and shadows. I lift the stopper, and the tub drains, the water’s pull in my blood, the drain’s whirlpool hypnotizing. A ring on the porcelain, the fog all around, and the glisten of condensation on the gun’s barrel. I take another swig and savor the barbed warmth, and how tired I am, I could sleep for days, this house of pillows and hot water and soft beds that may as well belong to the clouds. I stand, a rush of wooziness and the cool fire in my feet. The towel plush, another luxury, the white marred by blood. I raid the cabinets—tape, gauze—and dress my cut. I bundle my old clothes in the bloodied towel and shove them in the back of Fran’s closet. Her clothes like a new skin after these past months of baggy sweats and scrubs. Another swig then downstairs, a raid of the front closet, a scarf, the black skull cap Fran wore on our winter walks, her father’s gloves the only ones big enough to fit over my bandaged hand. The kitchen next, a plastic shopping bag filled, a long knife, a bottle of Gatorade, peanut butter smeared thick on hamburger rolls, the whiskey bottle. I wipe up the crumbs and blood, not wanting to arouse suspicion, my vague plan to return later, the cloud-house still and everyone asleep. The car keys waiting on the foyer hooks and an escape into the dark.

  I return to the basement, its warmth, the furnace’s hum. I step into the outside stairwell. The cold’s flush on my skin, a foxhole’s perspective, the looming trees and wind-sculpted snow, a gathering of self before my backward walk to the garage, my shoe bushing away my footprints, my only witnesses the finches tucked in the naked rhododendrons.

  The garage, and with its shut door, the relief of return, the knowing this is where I belong, that I’m no longer suited for the luxuries of a cloud-house. I patrol the narrow spaces, gathering rags, a five-gallon gas can, dented metal and nearly full, a hinged lid and the groan of a rusted hatch. The gas’s scent, clean and biting, cuts into the cold.

  I burrow into the backseat’s blankets, a closed door, an animal’s nest. I refuel, peanut butter and Gatorade and whiskey. I stretch out, and with the closing of my eyes, I sense the forces trying to claim me, exhaustion and injury, the warmth of the tub and whiskey, the things I’ve seen and done. I rub my head, the hair just long enough to lose its bristle, the hardness of my skull, and I slide on Fran’s black cap, and, dad, I’m glad your heart survived, lovely and hopeful, to the end, glad you didn’t have to witness my hardening and descent. Glad you left knowing me as I once was and not what I’ve become . . .

  . . . I lie still. Dark, yet my eyes have adjusted, this faintest of lights, my breath’s lingering fog. I listen for the wind, but I don’t hear it. In my thoughts, emerging set pieces, the backdrops of the next few hours. The sensation of gliding through the stillness of abandoned rooms. I’m not afraid, at least not yet. Perhaps when I know my time has been whittled to a few breaths, and I think of you, Heather, squeezing out those tiny windows, think of you alone on the ledge, your bare feet in the snow and the hesitation before stepping into nothingness, and what I wouldn’t give to have been there with you, just to hold your hand, just to save you from being alone. Here is my only wish—that I won’t be forced to linger on the precipice. That I’m not tortured and raped, but even if it comes to that, I will bear it. I will focus on what waits, not the toll of crossing. Flesh and pain are the only currencies that matter now, and I will surrender both in time.

  I climb from the car, and in my body, a shifting tide, my pulse thick in my temples. I hold the gun, the awkwardness of my bandaged hand and Fran’s father’s gloves, my sense of touch removed. I stand by the door. The lights off in Fran’s house and the snow’s gray shimmer. I sift through my rag pile and twist a dish towel into a snug rope. I unfurl the cloth and fold it, once then again, a square over the can’s opening. A gurgle beneath the metal skin when I tip the can, the liquid’s cool evaporation on my fingers. I twist the cloth again, droplets on my boots, and force it down the can’s nozzle, the rag a dangling tail, the lid’s closing incomplete.

  Outside and the cold fills me. The stars’ distant pulse ripples in these small, hushed hours. I stick to the alleys, my lumbering pace, the can bouncing against my thighs, the liquid’s slosh. I high-step through the drifts in Dr. Klein’s backyard, and I hope your little boy grows up in a saner world, one where politics aren’t synonymous with murder and professors aren’t hung in the street. I tuck myself along the house’s side, the brick cold and the house silent, and I think of the view that once waited across the street, a girl with long hair on the open perch of a second floor. Slater’s old house across the way, its windows dark. Our house beside it. The white and red flag. The gold mailbox. And I think of the cuckoo and the magpie and the beauty and cruelty of nature.

  I leave the shadows and venture across the street. All is quiet, and hush, you sleeping children; hush, you innocents, and breathe in your fantasies and let me breathe in mine, and I skirt the streetlight’s glow, a shadow between light and dark, but I can’t help but glance up, a reflex and a moment’s blindness, and with it, thoughts of you, dad, and how right you were about so much—but not about justice for I’ve learned the hard lesson that justice is wielded by the powerful, the violence of mobs, the calculated indifference of governments. For the weak, justice, if it ever comes, is stolen, snatched a crumb at a time.

  Our porch steps, and here you are, mom, waiting, a smile for your daughter, and here I am, dad, returning for the last time to the house I thought I’d know forever. I wedge the can between the storm and front doors, and the lens of time veers again, and I drift back to the day I turned a cartwheel
over rutted grass while Chestnut barked and the tags atop the surveyor’s stakes fluttered. I flick the lighter, the shine on the door glass, on my hands. The Stoics gave us Ekpyrosis, the belief our cosmos is destined to be consumed by fire before it enters anew its cycle of rebirth and growth, and so let it be. I hold the flame to the rag’s tip, and when it catches, I hurry off the porch. The rag burns, a hiss, a glint on the mailbox’s gold. Knots of acrid smoke. I hobble into the backyard shadows.

  The explosion loud, but not like the rebels’ bombs. A flash that reaches around the house. A sound more like a weight dropped from a great height, a thud, a stealing of air and breath. I clear the snow from the picnic bench’s top and sit. A dog barks. Smoke drifts, and I imagine the fire’s spread, the doorway. The red and white flag. The foyer.

  Upstairs lights flick on, my old bedroom, the hallway. I unscrew the whiskey and pull a sip long and slow, savoring the bite that no longer makes me shudder. The warmth in my throat a balm and a balance. Another brand of light in the downstairs windows, a pulse of orange and yellow, and memories, mom, of the jack-o-lanterns we carved, the candles burning behind their eyes and mouths. The stillness broached by the crackle of wood, by the split of sheetrock, the melting sighs of ductwork and siding, and beneath all of it, the release of voices. My uncles and my own. You, mom. You, dad.

  Can I say the sight is beautiful? It is, truly so. The rise and lick of flames, the curtains catching and twittering like ghosts in their own consumption. The fire hungry, blind, and in time, it roars with a voice all its own, and with each exhale, the light and heat grow, a building rumble that reaches a crescendo when the mudroom door swings open and Slater stumbles onto the stoop.

  Smoke roils, acrid and black, a massing beneath the overhang before lifting to the stars. Slater in his bathrobe and slippers, his yapping pug tucked beneath an arm, his other hand alternating between swatting away the smoke and holding a phone to his ear. He coughs and I cover my mouth, too. He sets down the pug, and with it, the exposure of his opened robe, his hairy chest and bulging stomach and shriveled penis. Between coughs, he implores the fire company to hurry.

  Mom, do you remember how I cried the night before sixth grade started, afraid of my cross-campus trek to the high school? You told me to keep my eyes forward and walk in like I owned the place, and tonight, you’d be proud, my pace upright and brisk, a flow as natural as the river’s. Slater’s back to me as he yells into the phone, the dog barking, and when the fire’s warmth flushes my brow, when my eyes tear from the smoke and I’m close enough to hear Slater’s wheeze, I raise my hand and crack the pistol’s butt against his skull. We’re connected in the moment, our skeletons sharing this vibration, this violence, before he sinks to his knees. But my attack is imperfect, and the gun dislodges from my grip and clatters to the sidewalk beside him.

  He snatches the gun and stands on jellied legs, his free hand cupping his ear, blood between his fingers. A voice calls from the phone that’s fallen into the snow. The barrel jerks as he struggles again and again to squeeze the trigger. His back to the fire and his robe open, the shadows not deep enough to hide his confusion and limp sex. The firelight falls upon me, my shadow on the snow. The kitchen window bursts and Slater flinches when the shards rain over him. Licks of flame shoot into the night, the distraction enough for me to kick him in the crotch and wrestle back the gun.

  I release the safety. “Look at me.” He’s bent double but painfully rights himself. I level the barrel to his chest. “Do you know who I am?”

  Steam escapes his twitching lips. I rip off my cap. A siren in the distance. “This is my house, and I want you to say my name.”

  “The girl.” He straightens. His dark eyes narrow.

  “Kayla,” I say.

  His lips twitch. “Kayla.”

  “You murdered my father.”

  I pull the trigger. A flash and a kick against my palm. The ejected casing catches the light, the fleeting shine of summer fireflies. He reels back and slumps against the stairs. Blood soaks the robe’s shoulder. The flames spill into the mudroom. I aim the gun at his face. His bloodied hand reaches forward. “No, no—”

  “And you murdered my mother.”

  I fire again, and his skull unzips, a splattering of bone and blood and steamy gray. He falls forward, his shoulder striking my leg, a weight I escape with a stagger into the snow. I right myself, his blood on my pants, the space that had once held his voice replaced by the barking pug, the fire’s crackle and rumble.

  “Kayla?”

  “Kayla?”

  I hear you, mom. I hear you, dad. The way you’d roust me from a daydream, tenderly, the way one would wake a baby or sleepwalker. I hear you. I understand, and my paralysis dissolves and I’m birthed back into the night. I pick up the phone, the operator assuring help is on the way, and I toss it, the screen glowing until it disappears in the snow. I head toward the street but draw back when I see a bundled form crossing beneath the light. “Hey!” he calls. “Hey you!” The sirens closer, and I stagger-run down the back path, turning back when I reach the oak. Slater slumped against the back stairs and fire in the windows and its flicker across the snow-covered garden, and in the air, the char of our history, the smoke of subtraction and reduction. The Slaters of the world have erased us, mom and dad, and it’s only right that I’ve balanced the equation and erased what remained.

  Snow begins to fall—or it has been and I’m only just noticing. Fran’s house—the foyer keys, the chance to make a run—but the sirens push me back, the cruisers and fire engines, the stabs of red and blue between the houses. I keep to the alleys but in short time, I become confused. All of it familiar yet also fragmented, and I press on, desiring only to distance myself from the commotion and return to the silence. One alley becomes another and another, unlit veins of garages and tire-rutted snow. The smoke fades on the breeze.

  I reach a cross street and crouch behind a pickup. Dogs bark, but I can’t tell if they’re near or far. I check for cars and cross, a glance of an intersection’s sign and the realization I’m heading back to the river. My bubble reforms around me. Inside, the clarity of single-mindedness. Outside, the haze of my concussion, a fire’s thinning smoke. Inside again, and I’m alone with my breathing, my boot’s snowy tromp, and beneath my skin, other echoes. The smack of falling bodies. A gas can’s exploding rumble. A gun’s kick. The spaces between the houses grow, the snow piling upon the bare branches. I hurry, a jerky stride, the wrestling of heavy feet.

  The bubble bursts, and the outside rushes in, and I’m a puppet torn at the seams, and behind me, a sawdust trail. Part of me lost beneath a summer streetlight . . . more in a white pod turned red with blood . . . more in a snowy yard that was once mine. All I can claim is this damaged shell and a clutch of memories and the mechanics of heart and lungs. My skin fades and the little that remains of me melts into the dark.

  I’m not afraid, and the certainty of my ending brings peace. Seeing another dawn will be a miracle, yet perhaps I’m wrong, dad, because you always told me miracles were all around, and I believed you and still do. But you never mentioned that statement’s inverse, that for every miracle there is a darkness, a cold malevolence, and just as you said with miracles, perhaps so it is with evil—all one has to do is open their eyes to see it all around.

  I reach the river road. The bank’s scrub and the silent tracks, the expanse of ice beyond. A car approaches, its headlights behind me, and my shadow stretches, my head down and my hand on the gun, the rush of air as the car passes. The taillights recede then flash, and the car stops, and as it begins to turn, its light bar flashes blue and red and white. I scramble over the guardrail’s snowbank and slide into the brambles below.

  I struggle forward, the branches and thistles like a thousand pulling hands, my steps faltering through the drifts. Scrims of dislodged snow follow me as I flounder among the saplings. The cruiser stops atop the shoulder and is joined by another, and when I squat in a deep thicket, I hear their radios
, the slam of doors. Spotlights knife between the branches, a play of wavering shadows. I hunker into myself, my jacket pulled to my mouth, the fear of being betrayed by exhaled breath. Then the tremors, the tracks not twenty yards, and in the distance, a pinprick of white.

  A searchlight passes over me, a moment’s reprieve before it swings back. My back’s turned, and my shadow snares in the brush. The other light finds me, and I turn, blinded, squinting. A man’s voice: “Don’t move!”

  I spring up, not running so much as hurling myself forward, graceless and stumbling. Branches whip my face and chest, the snare of vines. I turn to witness the descent of flailing beams as my pursuers scramble down the embankment. The train closer, my huffing and the snap of twigs swallowed by the metal rattle, the violence of tons that would take a mile to stop. I clamber up the rail bed, the vibration thick in the wood and stone and steel. The train bears down, its distance impossible to determine, the darkness, the engine’s speed, my brain’s dense clouds. I step over the first rail, the headlamp upon me, the light of angels and burning magnesium, and I dare not look another second for fear of freezing. The second rail and then a stumble on the bed’s other side. The train thunders by, the gust upon me, the rush of compressed air. My eyes stinging with grit.

  I try to calm myself, but my lungs heave ragged and wild. The wheels flicker, and beyond them, the wavering scrub, the flashlights’ wild angles. I hurry to the river. The trees taller here, the oaks and sycamores that shade summer fishermen, the leaves that burn orange and yellow with the frost, their branches now bare, and in one, a snared plastic bag, a pale ghost. I step over the debris washed ashore during last year’s flood. Branches and snapped trees, vinyl siding wrapped around a trunk, a rusted barrel. I reach the clearing and collapse on the riverside’s stones.