Last Updated May 17, 2010
Second Draft
To Straighten a Tree
By James Hart
Lincoln Elementary school had recently spent some grant money on landscaping and had redone the front lawns of the school. Piles of dirt and been dumped and covered in grass seed to create miniature artificial hills, and young trees had been purchased from a nursery across town. By the time Arbor day came around the grass had fully grown in and the children were allowed to cross it again on their way home from school.
Ashley was carrying the small pine sapling in her hands for which she had great expectations. She walked out of her classroom, her light purple backpack empty and sagging on her back. Each of the children had been given a four inch tall tree in a small black plastic tray to celebrate the holiday. Ashley stopped by one of the young trees that the school had purchased during the renovation and stared at it for
a while.
Mrs. Harrison was standing on top of one of the nearby mounds, watching the children walk home and looking out for anything suspicious. Ashley startled the teacher when she grabbed her wrist and called, “Mrs. Juliet Harrison.” Ashley had gotten the idea somewhere that saying a person's full name was respectful.
“Yes, Ashley?”
“What are those sticks for?” Ashley didn't point at anything or look around, she just looked up at her teacher for an answer.
“What sticks.”
“The ones in the trees.”
“What are the sticks in the trees for?” Mrs. Harrison repeated. Ashley's eyes opened a little more and waited. Mrs. Harrison looked at the trees around her for something out of the ordinary but she didn't see whatever the little girl saw. “I'm sorry honey, I don't know what you mean.”
“All the trees have sticks tied to them.”
“Oh,” the young trees on the lawn were all being supported by tall sticks a few inches away, “Those help the trees grow straight. I think.” Mrs. Harrison questioned herself for a moment and then realized that an accurate answer wasn't necessary. “So the wind doesn't blow it down.”
Ashley looked down at her small tree and then around at the ground.
“Maybe when your tree gets bigger you can tie a stick to it so that it grows straight too.”
Mrs. Harrison patted Ashley on the head and went back to watching the other children escape. Ashley walked over to a stick laying on the lawn and picked it up, then she dropped it and went over to one of the young trees. She sat her pine on the ground and leaned it against the trunk of the tree. There was a lower branch on the tree that was not very big yet and Ashley grabbed it with both hands and tried to break it off. The branch was juicy and soft, and as she wrenched it up and down until she became frustrated. Ashley twisted the branch and pulled it again. She glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. Harrison who was watching the other direction and Ashley felt free to continue. She yanked on the branch again and it pinched off and as she pulled it away a piece of bark, still attached to the tree, pulled a ribbon of skin off its trunk. Ashley picked up her pine again and walked away from the tree, the leafy branch drooped over her shoulder. The smell on her hands reminded her of the smell when she would sit in her backyard and pull up the grass around her.
On the way home the branch became heavy and she realized that it wasn't straight at all. Surely her father had something that would work better, so she left it by the sidewalk.
Ashley got home and went straight into the back yard, dropping her backpack by the door. She rummaged through her father's box of yard tools and found a small shovel and a tool for planting bulbs. She went into the garden and found a patch where some kind of ground-cover was growing. Directly in the center of the patch she used the bulb planter to cut a hole through the vine's roots and stir the dirt which she then shoveled out. She popped the pine from its small black tray and set it into the ground. Her hole was not quite deep enough so she pressed down on the roots of the small tree. The clump of dirt separated and the roots spread out. She thought this would help the tree catch more water. Finally, Ashley shoveled the dirt back in around the roots of the tree, bits of vine and leaves still mixed into the soil.
The tools went back into their box and the little black tray into a garbage can filled with drying grass from the lawnmower which smelled nothing like the green blood of tree at school that still lingered on her hands.
The garage was full of scrap wood from things her father had build. Ashley found a long board that was split at one end and she tried to pull the split apart but it broke halfway down the board and she decided it wouldn't be long enough. She needed something tall, very tall, taller than her, so that the pine would grow straight up into perfect tree, like a Christmas tree. They would never cut it down and use it for Christmas because that would kill it, but maybe they could decorate it at Christmas time.
Ashley found a long dowel rod. It wasn't very wide and when she shook it the rod bent back and forth. If determined, the tree could easily grow out of shape and take the stick with it. But the rod reminded her of a broomstick and so she went to the closet and pulled out the broom. It's wooden handle was long, though not as long as the dowel rod, and it was plenty strong enough to hold the tree. When she twisted it in her fingers she couldn't bend it at all.
Ashley's father was sitting on the front porch reading a book when she came out with both the broom and the rod in her hands and said, “Daddy, can I use the broom?”
“For what, Muffin? Are you sweeping something?” Her father looked up from his book.
“I need it to hold up my tree.”
“What tree.”
“The tree I planted. They gave it to me in school.”
“You planted a tree?”
“Yup.” Ashley said, proud of herself.
“Where did you plant it.”
“In the garden, Daddy. Where else would you plant a tree.”
Her father's face scrunched and he said, “You can plant a tree anywhere, you don't just plant them in the garden. You didn't plant it in my strawberries did you?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” he started to go back to his book and then remembered, “and what do you
need the broom for?”
“I need a good stick to hold up the tree so it grows straight.”
“Well we need the broom for sweeping, honey, so you can't use that. But you can use that dowel rod. Though I think I have some shorter ones.”
“No this is good.” And Ashley ran back into the house.
“You have fun, Muffin.” She heard her father's comforting voice in the background as she rushed away.
*****
The short pine that never grew taller than a foot an a half. Next to the tree was the tall stick, about five and a half feet long. It always made the tree look shorter than it was, if a person noticed it at all. There were three pieces of string tied between the bottom of the stick and the tree, only about an inch apart each. After a few years the stick rotted and fell over and the strings disappeared.
Some years after the house had been sold, the tree removed by new owners, and the stick had disappeared, Ashley met a man named Stephen Pirrip. He was handsome and kind, and he made Ashley laugh. But next to him she planted a stick.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Supplantation
Third Draft
Last Updated Dec. 8, 2009
Supplantation
by James Hart
My wife loves Halloween, the costumes and the horror movies. Her favorite part of the holiday, for the past twelve years, is dressing our children in terribly inappropriate ways. When Samantha, our youngest, was only a few months old, we took the kids with us to a party and my wife dressed Samantha in a cute tomato costume she'd bought somewhere, and then spread fake blood around our infant's mouth. Her friends thought this was hysterical, but it is one of my wife's few vices and I find less than charming. I believe Jessie was dressed up like a serial killer, in an apron streaked with blood and a plastic knife. His costume didn't subscribe to any cliche other than that he was someone who wanted to kill you.
“Why is she wearing the tutu under her robe?” I ask. My wife comes in through the front door. In her hand is one of the bulbs from the porch light. It is shaped like a teardrop.
Samantha is sliding back and forth across the linoleum floor of our kitchen, the slick bottoms of her cheap, costume ballet slippers threatening to topple her over. I grab her by the shoulders near the kitchen door. “Be careful, Samantha, you're going to hurt yourself.”
“She won't take the thing off,” my wife explains. Samantha is just over six years old and she has recently taken to wearing the costume tutu around the house as a way of telling us she wants to take ballet. I'm sure we will eventually give in, telling ourselves she might have some untapped potential, that it might be what she's destined to do, but I expect she will give it as much devotion as she did playing harmonica. “So I guess this year she is the death of dance,” my wife says. She doesn't smile. The edges of her thin lips just stretch, drawing out creases in her tight cheeks. It is a precious expression of contentment, I've noticed, and it means more to me now than her laugh does.
“Isn't that what the kids from Footloose dressed up as for Halloween?” I joke. My wife and I share a long simple kiss. It is a carefully calculated act that makes both our hearts race without appearing excessive to any onlookers. We've perfected this public display over the years and trained ourselves to understand its subtlety. The unexpected times, the variations in pressure, whether or not we hold hands during the act and if we do, where do we hold them. These complexities define our love.
Samantha is standing at the edge of the kitchen looking up at us, smiling. She has a beautiful and indifferent smile. It is sometimes hard to tell whether it is a smile or a sly grin, like she is being deceptive.
“What are you looking at girl?” I kneel down to invite a hug. Her black robe is made from thin costume fabric that feels like plastic under my fingers. It is unzipped in the front revealing the tutu underneath. She is caked with white makeup and bright red lipstick and her hair is pulled back so that it is hidden when her hood is up. Samantha is short for her age but she can almost reach her arms around me.
“You ready to take me trick-r-treating, little girl?”
“Yeah!” She leaps back from me, then her eyes widen. “No, I need my pillowcase.” Samantha runs upstairs.
“Not your pillowcase, Sam, get one out of the closet,” my wife instructs her. She is digging through an overstuffed drawer in the outskirts of the kitchen cabinetry for a fresh lightbulb.
“Is she wearing lipstick?” I ask.
“I told her she could.”
“I didn't know you had lipstick that color.”
“It's really old.” She finally pulls from the drawer one of the teardrop shaped bulbs. I don't understood why these bulbs are shaped differently. I imagine they are meant to look prettier than other bulbs, but this is entirely superficial since they cannot be seen through the enclosure and they are just as easily replaceable as the regular bulbs, which are cheaper.
“It's nice.” I give her a brow raising grin as if I think it would be sexy on her.
She playfully slaps my shoulder. “I like to think of myself as a subtle woman. Though if I ever feel like hunting down a shiny new husband maybe I'll dig it out again.”
Samantha comes back downstairs. “Got it.”
“Hold it up,” my wife says, examining the pillowcase. “Yeah, that's a good one.”
“Can I have a glow stick now?” I give her one of the individually wrapped glow-sticks we bought and put the rest in my pocket.
Samantha tears open the package from one end, the way she opens cheese sticks. I watch her pull the stick from its package and immediately break it with her thumb.
“This one is already broken.” She forces out her bottom lip the way she does when she wants something.
“Well, when it runs out you can break another one.”
“But I didn't get to see it.”
“You'll see the next one Samantha. Let's get going.”
“Here, one of the porch lights is out.” My wife hands me the replacement bulb.
Samantha walks over to her mother who zips up the robe. It is a layer on top of her tutu, which bulges her out at the hips. Her tummy has gotten noticeably smaller. Six months ago I was beginning to worry about her weight because she looked almost bloated, like the children in the 'pennies a day' commercials. My wife told me it was simply a product of her height and that she would grow out of it. It appears she was right. Before Jessie was born I read all the 'what to expect' books but my wife was the only one who continued to read them after the kids were born. I guess I thought infancy would be the only phase with surprises.
I pick up Samantha's bright red coat from a hook by the front door and I hang it over my arm. I pick up the fake scythe from the corner where it's leaning and head out the front door, the spare bulb still between two of my fingers.
I screw the new bulb into the glass enclosure near the garage door, signaling that my house is open for business to all costumed scavengers, and wait for Samantha to come out and meet me. She is putting on her shoes.
I hope that I can work things out.
Samantha hops down the final step, startling me. She has slipped on her pink and white boots. They are a bit too big for her. They come halfway up her shins and they clunk as she walks. I carry the scythe in my left hand and take my daughter's hand in the other.
Every Halloween in Colorado seems to be disturbingly similar. It always snows the week before, and while the warm daytime melts much of the frost, we are always left with a thin layer of snow covered in dead leaves, and the occasional collection of mud along the sidewalks. Tonight is no different. It's cold, on the edge of freezing. There are patches of ice beginning to form from the day's runoff and the wind is bringing in the next storm. Trick-r-treating is an annual endurance sport in Colorado.
“Samantha, are you sure you don't want your coat?” The image of my little girl in a tutu under death's robe beneath a bright red coat is half my motivation for wanting her to wear it.
“No, then people wont know what I am,” she informs me.
What is she, exactly? I am unsure if she is actually supposed to be the grim reaper, and if so, how the white makeup fits in. To be honest, this is possibly my wife's weakest attempt. While I'm glad I'm not parading around a pair of junior monstrosities, as I have in past years, it's a disappointment that my wife was not as successfully startling as she has been.
“Keep holding on to my hand, Samantha.”
Walking down our driveway my mind turns to the Hutchinson-Brown proposal. There is so little between me and the next common man that losing it may be the last thing I do at the firm. I graduated in a line of over one-hundred and fifty different business majors, a fact which has loomed over my career. I was never the top of my class, or of any class. I never broke the curve. More often I relied upon it. When I got my job I attributed it to skillful use of charisma, a trait I seem to have lost, and a glowing letter of recommendation from the supervisor of my internship, a man who was my source for marijuana during the four months I knew him.
When the firm finds out I lost the account they will finally have more reasons to terminate me than to keep me on. Finding another job in this economy will be practically impossible, considering I will have been let go from one of the most prominent firms in Denver. With my wife's inconsistent income, we will likely find ourselves in a tight squeeze. The financial woes might put unnecessary strain on our marriage.
Samantha slips on a patch of ice. I quickly jerk my hand upward, bracing myself with the decorated broomstick, and keep her from hitting the ground. She laughs a little and gets back up to her feet.
The first house is Rita Bellamy's, a wonderful woman in her early seventies and as active as anyone I've met. She spends half her time away from home, either visiting family or on some adventure. Last year she sojourned in Africa. She told me she wanted to see a herd of wild giraffes. They were her favorite animal when she was little. When she's gone we watch after her dog, a black Newfoundland named Earhart, and I mow her lawn. At the end of the summer she said she would like to have Jessie start mowing her lawn, since she'd seem him mowing ours, because she thought it'd be nice for him to have a good neighborhood job. I agreed, of course.
As I walk up to the house with Samantha I hand her the scythe, which she stumbles along with until I take it back from her, recognizing that she cares nothing about the accessory. My wife didn't like the toy weapons at the store, so she bought one and asked me to make it better. I replaced the handle of the scythe with a broomstick, and painted the blade with an old can of spray-paint from the garage. The nozzle was clogged with metallic paint, but because all the cans are the same the nozzles are easily replaceable. I forgot to prime the plastic first so the. Had I known she was going to dip it in her fake blood concoction I might have primed the plastic first because now the chrome spray-paint is now stripping off and mixing together to form the color of Dorothy's shoes from The Wizard of Oz.
The door opens and the first thing I notice is Rita's breasts. After winning a battle with breast cancer fifteen years ago by way of a double mastectomy, Rita congratulated herself with a new synthetic pair. She showed them to my wife, who tells me that Rita went an entire cup size larger than her natural breasts and that as freakishly nipple-less as they are, they feel quite natural. This thought plagues my mind every time I see Rita. She is dressed like Sacajawea with a low cut top that I'm sure no other woman her age could pull off.
“Oh, look at you...” Earhart is inside the house pressing himself against a wooden gate, excited to see my daughter. Samantha rushes inside past Rita and her bowl of candy. “You look so wonderful,” Rita continues. Earhart is actually on the small size for a Newfoundland but her tongue is still wide enough to cover Samantha's face in a single pass. Samantha loves that dog.
Rita always hands out full size candy bars, except for last year when she was in Africa. She holds out the bowl for me to take one, “Here,” she says, “daddies get one too.”
“How are you doing, Rita?” I ask.
“Dandy peachy keen. How's Carla?”
“She's great. She's been volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club, teaching sign language.”
“Yeah, she told me she was thinking about that. I didn't even know she spoke sign language.”
“She didn't, sort of. I guess she took a class back in high school but never used it. She thought the best way to make herself learn it again was to try and teach it to people.”
“Good for her, that sounds like fun.”
“She's really enjoying it. Samantha says the kids all love it, don't they, honey?”
Samantha is dodging Earhart's excited kisses in an attempt to keep her makeup from being stolen away. “Yup,” she giggles.
“Come on Samantha, let's keep moving. It was nice seeing you Rita, you look good.”
“Yes, I do. Here, darling, pick whichever one you want.” Samantha reaches up to the woman's bowl and shyly takes the one she wants. She knows not to accept gifts so eagerly, lest they cease being gifts. “Oh, that's a good one.” Rita assures her.
Samantha doesn't rush to the next house. Last year the man who lives there, a man I've never met but who works construction, based on the pickup in his driveway, dressed up like a scarecrow. He wore a flannel shirt and heavy boots and stuffed hay up his pant-legs and the sleeves of his shirt. He pulled a pair of pantyhose over his face and drew a smile on them with a sharpy, and he topped it all off with a straw hat. He sat there with his bowl of candy next to him on the porch and when Samantha came close, suspicious at first of the inanimate creation but drawn ever closer by the promise of chocolate, he jumped and scared her. It was an innocent prank and while I don't blame him for it, I hope he learned his lesson and will not repeat the mistake again again this year.
Samantha hesitates at the end of the driveway and as she starts up to the house by herself I feel guilty that the first house where I don't follow her to the door, because I don't know the people who live there, is a house that she will always be afraid of. A few steps away from me she turns around and signals for her weapon. I hand it to her and she continues the journey to the front door, both hands on the broomstick, ready to strike. I suddenly hope that the man has foolishly decided to repeat last years performance.
A minute passes with Samantha waiting at the door before she turns back towards me. I shrug and she walks back to the curb, dragging the bottom of the weapon along the cement.
People don't seem to hand out candy as much anymore. We seem to be going two or three houses between each one with its porch lights on. Samantha is holding my hand at arm's length, as far ahead of me as she can be, rushing toward the next house with its porch light on. She's in a hurry, she wants to withdraw candy from as many houses as she can before we have to go home, and I don't want to slow her down. This is a night when people I've never met open their doors to give my daughter candy, and I like the idea that the more houses we visit the happier, more optimistic person she'll grow up to be. More like my wife and less like me.
When Carla and I met she was like a combination of Mary Tyler Moore and Annie Hall and she has spent the last twelve years of our marriage proving to me how superficial and easily surmountable those expectations were. We met at a gas station, which strikes me as particularly unusual. We were both driving the same car in the same color, a coincidence that we were able to turn into fate. She was a freshman without a major and I was a stalwart business student. She eventually dropped out and took up a life of random, short term jobs interspersed with volunteer work. As a man who spends his time counting money, I am amazed that she survived during that time of her life.
If I revised the Hutchinson-Brown proposal by Monday, I might be able set up a meeting and re-pitch the idea. Even if I can't redeem the account, the firm might see the extra work I put in as an acceptable payment. I might convince them that I am not as easily replaceable as I am.
Samantha places her other hand on my wrist and tugs, drawing my attention on the house ahead of us.
Joe White is a friend of Jessie's. They've known each other since they were in second grade. He and Jessie and a few others are gathered at the end of Joe's driveway. Two of the boys are slightly outside of the circle hitting each other with short sticks and the two girls in the group are standing close together, chatting quietly, keeping their thoughts secret from the boys.
Jessie and I haven't talked much lately. We're in a period of transition. Well, Jessie is but I'm staying the same. Back in the summer Carla sent us on a camping trip up into the hills for the weekend. She kept calling it as a weekend for 'the men', a term she used to keep it clear to Samantha that she wasn't allowed to go. I didn't like the idea of talking about sex with my son. I would have to reveal to him the details of what it means to be a man, a definition I've never been clear about, and I'd have to explain the biological inner-workings of humanity, a speech I'd never received myself. My father had simply left my schoolmates to reveal the fine details of reproduction to me. This lack of education left me open to a few embarrassing moments in my young life, moments that made it laborious for me to talk with women until well into high school. My father's only real contribution was a drastic increase in crude humor, as if joking about the subject would break down the barrier of ignorance between us. When Jessie was born it was one of my most prominent fears that someday I would have to have that talk with him.
“Jessie,” I call to the kids as Samantha and I get close. “How are you kid's doing? It's a great looking house Joe, tell your dad he did a good job. Is that supposed to be a body hanging in the tree? Yeah? Spooky. So what are you kids doing, planning to go make some mischief? Jessie, can I talk to you for a second?”
Jessie says something to the taller girl and then walks over to me near the White family mailbox. The tall girl is wearing a tight, black skirt that goes down to her knees, fishnets, and a red top without a back. She has drawn fake blood drops around her mouth with lip stick. I can see the strap of her training bra from where I'm standing. She has a name like Jennifer, or Allison, or Vanessa, something dangerous. She is the kind of woman that a man learns to be afraid of by the time he's fifteen, but my son is only twelve. This girl can smell a man's quixotic desperation and she likes her fabricated feeling of control. I worry for her, but not as much as I worry for Jessie.
“What are you guys doing tonight? Just hanging out?” I know he wont tell me everything, I only hope that whatever they have planned, Jessie has the will to turn back when it goes too far. Which it will. He's out in the open now.
“Nothing, Dad, we're just gonna walk around.”
“Who are those girls?” I ask.
“They're from school.” He's tense and uncomfortable. He shifts his eyes away from me and moves his hands into his pockets. He's transparent to a man like me. “Is she still wearing the tutu?” Jessie asks.
The front door of the White house opens, where Samantha is waiting. Joe's father is wearing a hockey mask and jabbing at my daughter with a fake chainsaw that makes an inorganic buzzing sound when its buttons are pushed. Samantha giggles loudly and the older kids all turn to watch her. I'm not sure if they're judging her, or Jessie, or Mr. White, but they laugh condescendingly among themselves.
“It makes her look obese doesn't it? If ever there was a chance to run away from death...” I joke.
Jessie smiles and let out a gust of air that resembles a laugh.
As Samantha runs back to me with her bag of candy, I tell Jessie, “Go on, go have fun,” pointing to the rest of his group. It's a non-physical gesture that assures him he isn't expected to hug me. “But don't be out too late, your mother will get worried.” I've never been the disciplinarian, so the only tool I have is guilt.
Jessie tugs his sister's hood down over her head and then presses his hands against her temples. “Hey,” Samantha complains, recognizing that the embrace resembles a hug. She is smart enough to brush off his teasing as love.
As Jessie takes off down the street with his friends I think back to the Hutchinson-Brown account. Re-pitching the proposal will look like an act of desperation, which will only undermine the legitimacy of its ideas and draw more attention to my failures. Even if it worked such an act would guarantee that my next failure would be my last. Better to take the loss and hope that the paperwork needed to fire me is simply too much extra work for the men above me. This is a foolish thought, however, since those men will simply decide to fire me and allocate the technical paperwork to my replacement. Those men probably don't even know my name.
“Daddy,” I'm holding Samantha's hand too tightly and she is pulling it from my fist. I loosen and she rushes up to a light blue ranch house with a large wooden deck occupied by a collection of white plastic chairs, each one dirtied by the melting snow.
When the door opens Samantha is greeted by a small dog and its owner. The dog is some kind of a beagle mutt. From here at the curb I can see it standing next to its owner, a short, round woman whose curly hair flares down from the top of her head like the frayed end of a wire. The dog is short and loving, and Samantha leans down to pet and adore the animal. The dog disappears into the wide skirt that the robe leaves, draped over her dancing outfit. I hear her giggle and watch her jump and turn as she grasps for the dog's tail, which is still sticking outside her robe.
Samantha recently brought home a bean plant from school. She was studying plants in her class, and as a horticultural study, the children were given a bean and a plastic bag, which they coupled with a moist towel and taped to the inside of the large window in their classroom. After a few weeks it sprouted roots and a light green growth that, as soon as it revealed its first leaf, was considered a success. Samantha was given a check-plus and sent home with her bean plant. When she showed it to me it was clear that she had high hopes for the scientific aberration. She spoke about planting it in the yard, about it growing beans for us to make into soup. She prided herself in having done something to save us money, like the time she had poured our unfinished drinking water into the ice trays after dinner to conserve water. Thirteen days later the plant was dead. It was still a bright green color, like a young spout should be, but it had just shriveled up in the night without any warning of illness.
The next day, taped to the inside of the kitchen window, there appeared a plastic bag. Inside was a handful of dried beans taken from a jar on the counter. The jar had been a Christmas gift from my wife's sister and apparently contained the necessary beans for the best bean soup. I am sure none of them still contain a spark of life. Samantha swaddled the beans in an excess of damp paper towel and water pooled in the bottom of the bag. She wanted so badly for the beans to grow. I left them there on the window. Weeks passed and Samantha said nothing about the beans. Last week, when I thought she'd forgotten them, when the paper towel had turned a brownish-green color from the water-logged seeds, I threw them out.
I look back at the door where Samantha is petting the dog. The dog looks heavy, taking each step slowly and swaying side to side as it walks back to its master.
“Carlin?” the woman says, “Carlin are you alright?”
Samantha squeals, holding the bottom of her robe in her hands and looking up from her shoes at me. Tears are beginning to well up in her eyes.
“Oh, sweet darling, I'm so sorry.” I hear the woman say as I come up behind my daughter.
There is a pile of chocolatey mush on the porch and on Samantha's cute pink and white boots. The dog has vomited across the tops of her feet. Samantha is starting to panic, squeezing her arms in tight to her body and wiggling and twisting her legs in a vain attempt to cast off her boots. She isn't making any sound but as I turn her around I see that tears are streaking down the thick white makeup on her face, revealing the freckles on her pudgy cheeks.
“Daddy,” she finally says, dropping her bag of candy and the rim of her robe and placing her arms out for me to hug her. She feels helpless and she wants me to fix everything.
“William, have you been feeding the dog chocolate?” shouts the woman at a man sitting inside on the couch.
I grab Samantha with my left arm and lift her up, just enough that I can grab each of her shoes with a firm grip, my palm in the moist chocolate, and yank off each loose boot, revealing the ballet slippers she refused to take off before putting the boots on. I place each boot in one of my large coat pockets and then hoist Samantha up into my arms. She is heavy, too heavy for me to carry for long. I bend down, probably damaging my lower back for the rest of the weekend, and grab up her pillowcase of candy, and then I take my daughter back to the sidewalk.
“Sorry.” As the woman closes her door behind me I hear her tell the man to hose off the porch.
“It's okay, honey.” I hold Samantha tightly and walk softly down the sidewalk to the next house.
There isn't much I can do. I just keep walking, holding Samantha in my arms, passing dark house after dark house. When I finally arrive at the next house with its porch light on I walk up to the door and ring the bell. A young man in his twenties opens the door, releasing the chatter of the crowd and the music from inside.
“Trick-r-Treat,” I say, holding Samantha's pillowcase in my right hand, pressed against Samantha's backside. “This is Samantha and she's having a bad night.”
“Aw, man, that sucks.” The young man takes a handful of miniature candy bars from the bag by the door and, grabbing the pillowcase from me, drops the loot into Samantha's bag before handing it back. Then he wishes us both a good night and shuts the door.
I proceed to the next house, and then the next house, introducing my daughter and then happily taking a sympathetically large serving of the resident's candy. Once Samantha's sniffling dies down I ask her if she's ready to walk. She nods and makes a snorting sound like she's trying to slow down her breathing. I sit my daughter down on her feet and crouch down, the cold, wet ground bleeding through the knees of my pants.
“Are your toes cold, honey?” She shakes her head. I run my thumbs down the streaks in her makeup and smile directly at her. “It's going to be okay.” I assure her. “But be careful in those slippers out here, it's slick.”
Samantha slides her arms under mine and squeezes me as tightly as she can. I reach into my pocket, below one of the soiled boots and pull out a glowstick for her. There is a little regurgitated chocolate on the wrapper, so I open it myself and then hand it, unbroken to Samantha. She looks closely at it, shakes it and examines it again for bubbles. She slowly bends it, watching the small, fragile piece inside until it snaps and the liquid begins to shine. Samantha smiles her indifferent smile and drops the stick into her pillowcase of goods.
We continue around the neighborhood until we find ourselves close to home again. A group of older kids, hardly dressed up at all, are walking away from my house. They're much older than Jessie, probably juniors or even seniors in high school, and they are simply stuffing the candy into their pockets.
Carla sees us coming up the driveway and she waits for us at the door.
“How'd you do, Sam?”
“Great,” Samantha says, holding up her heavy bag of candy.
“What happened to your shoes?” Samantha slips past my wife into the house.
“I've got them with me. There was a little accident.”
“What happened?”
“Dog got sick.”
“Ew. Well, leave them out here. We'll wash them off later.”
I take the boots out of my pockets and drop them by the front door, then I turn off the porch light as I come inside. The high schoolers can find other suckers.
Samantha has already dumped out her candy onto the kitchen table when I get into the house. She is sifting through it sorting out the stuff she likes.
“So what happened?” My wife persists.
“Oh, nothing bad. Some lady's dog got into the chocolate and got sick while she was getting her candy.”
Samantha stops sorting out the candy and sits down at the table, staring at the sweets. She isn't deciding what she wants to eat first, she's deciding if she wants to eat it at all.
I sit down at the table with her. My wife is pouring the left overs of our house's candy into a bowl behind me. “So, which one's first?” I ask.
Samantha shrugs.
I take Rita's full size candy bar from my pants pocket and open it up. With each bite I can see Samantha loosen, reassuring herself that the candy will not instantly compel her to vomit.
“How many can I have?” she finally asks.
“As many as you want tonight, but take it easy.”
Samantha places her finger on one of the candies and slides it slowly across the table, guiding it between the others until it reaches her. I chuckle.
“Daddy,” she says my name, the way she always will.
Last Updated Dec. 8, 2009
Supplantation
by James Hart
My wife loves Halloween, the costumes and the horror movies. Her favorite part of the holiday, for the past twelve years, is dressing our children in terribly inappropriate ways. When Samantha, our youngest, was only a few months old, we took the kids with us to a party and my wife dressed Samantha in a cute tomato costume she'd bought somewhere, and then spread fake blood around our infant's mouth. Her friends thought this was hysterical, but it is one of my wife's few vices and I find less than charming. I believe Jessie was dressed up like a serial killer, in an apron streaked with blood and a plastic knife. His costume didn't subscribe to any cliche other than that he was someone who wanted to kill you.
“Why is she wearing the tutu under her robe?” I ask. My wife comes in through the front door. In her hand is one of the bulbs from the porch light. It is shaped like a teardrop.
Samantha is sliding back and forth across the linoleum floor of our kitchen, the slick bottoms of her cheap, costume ballet slippers threatening to topple her over. I grab her by the shoulders near the kitchen door. “Be careful, Samantha, you're going to hurt yourself.”
“She won't take the thing off,” my wife explains. Samantha is just over six years old and she has recently taken to wearing the costume tutu around the house as a way of telling us she wants to take ballet. I'm sure we will eventually give in, telling ourselves she might have some untapped potential, that it might be what she's destined to do, but I expect she will give it as much devotion as she did playing harmonica. “So I guess this year she is the death of dance,” my wife says. She doesn't smile. The edges of her thin lips just stretch, drawing out creases in her tight cheeks. It is a precious expression of contentment, I've noticed, and it means more to me now than her laugh does.
“Isn't that what the kids from Footloose dressed up as for Halloween?” I joke. My wife and I share a long simple kiss. It is a carefully calculated act that makes both our hearts race without appearing excessive to any onlookers. We've perfected this public display over the years and trained ourselves to understand its subtlety. The unexpected times, the variations in pressure, whether or not we hold hands during the act and if we do, where do we hold them. These complexities define our love.
Samantha is standing at the edge of the kitchen looking up at us, smiling. She has a beautiful and indifferent smile. It is sometimes hard to tell whether it is a smile or a sly grin, like she is being deceptive.
“What are you looking at girl?” I kneel down to invite a hug. Her black robe is made from thin costume fabric that feels like plastic under my fingers. It is unzipped in the front revealing the tutu underneath. She is caked with white makeup and bright red lipstick and her hair is pulled back so that it is hidden when her hood is up. Samantha is short for her age but she can almost reach her arms around me.
“You ready to take me trick-r-treating, little girl?”
“Yeah!” She leaps back from me, then her eyes widen. “No, I need my pillowcase.” Samantha runs upstairs.
“Not your pillowcase, Sam, get one out of the closet,” my wife instructs her. She is digging through an overstuffed drawer in the outskirts of the kitchen cabinetry for a fresh lightbulb.
“Is she wearing lipstick?” I ask.
“I told her she could.”
“I didn't know you had lipstick that color.”
“It's really old.” She finally pulls from the drawer one of the teardrop shaped bulbs. I don't understood why these bulbs are shaped differently. I imagine they are meant to look prettier than other bulbs, but this is entirely superficial since they cannot be seen through the enclosure and they are just as easily replaceable as the regular bulbs, which are cheaper.
“It's nice.” I give her a brow raising grin as if I think it would be sexy on her.
She playfully slaps my shoulder. “I like to think of myself as a subtle woman. Though if I ever feel like hunting down a shiny new husband maybe I'll dig it out again.”
Samantha comes back downstairs. “Got it.”
“Hold it up,” my wife says, examining the pillowcase. “Yeah, that's a good one.”
“Can I have a glow stick now?” I give her one of the individually wrapped glow-sticks we bought and put the rest in my pocket.
Samantha tears open the package from one end, the way she opens cheese sticks. I watch her pull the stick from its package and immediately break it with her thumb.
“This one is already broken.” She forces out her bottom lip the way she does when she wants something.
“Well, when it runs out you can break another one.”
“But I didn't get to see it.”
“You'll see the next one Samantha. Let's get going.”
“Here, one of the porch lights is out.” My wife hands me the replacement bulb.
Samantha walks over to her mother who zips up the robe. It is a layer on top of her tutu, which bulges her out at the hips. Her tummy has gotten noticeably smaller. Six months ago I was beginning to worry about her weight because she looked almost bloated, like the children in the 'pennies a day' commercials. My wife told me it was simply a product of her height and that she would grow out of it. It appears she was right. Before Jessie was born I read all the 'what to expect' books but my wife was the only one who continued to read them after the kids were born. I guess I thought infancy would be the only phase with surprises.
I pick up Samantha's bright red coat from a hook by the front door and I hang it over my arm. I pick up the fake scythe from the corner where it's leaning and head out the front door, the spare bulb still between two of my fingers.
I screw the new bulb into the glass enclosure near the garage door, signaling that my house is open for business to all costumed scavengers, and wait for Samantha to come out and meet me. She is putting on her shoes.
I hope that I can work things out.
Samantha hops down the final step, startling me. She has slipped on her pink and white boots. They are a bit too big for her. They come halfway up her shins and they clunk as she walks. I carry the scythe in my left hand and take my daughter's hand in the other.
Every Halloween in Colorado seems to be disturbingly similar. It always snows the week before, and while the warm daytime melts much of the frost, we are always left with a thin layer of snow covered in dead leaves, and the occasional collection of mud along the sidewalks. Tonight is no different. It's cold, on the edge of freezing. There are patches of ice beginning to form from the day's runoff and the wind is bringing in the next storm. Trick-r-treating is an annual endurance sport in Colorado.
“Samantha, are you sure you don't want your coat?” The image of my little girl in a tutu under death's robe beneath a bright red coat is half my motivation for wanting her to wear it.
“No, then people wont know what I am,” she informs me.
What is she, exactly? I am unsure if she is actually supposed to be the grim reaper, and if so, how the white makeup fits in. To be honest, this is possibly my wife's weakest attempt. While I'm glad I'm not parading around a pair of junior monstrosities, as I have in past years, it's a disappointment that my wife was not as successfully startling as she has been.
“Keep holding on to my hand, Samantha.”
Walking down our driveway my mind turns to the Hutchinson-Brown proposal. There is so little between me and the next common man that losing it may be the last thing I do at the firm. I graduated in a line of over one-hundred and fifty different business majors, a fact which has loomed over my career. I was never the top of my class, or of any class. I never broke the curve. More often I relied upon it. When I got my job I attributed it to skillful use of charisma, a trait I seem to have lost, and a glowing letter of recommendation from the supervisor of my internship, a man who was my source for marijuana during the four months I knew him.
When the firm finds out I lost the account they will finally have more reasons to terminate me than to keep me on. Finding another job in this economy will be practically impossible, considering I will have been let go from one of the most prominent firms in Denver. With my wife's inconsistent income, we will likely find ourselves in a tight squeeze. The financial woes might put unnecessary strain on our marriage.
Samantha slips on a patch of ice. I quickly jerk my hand upward, bracing myself with the decorated broomstick, and keep her from hitting the ground. She laughs a little and gets back up to her feet.
The first house is Rita Bellamy's, a wonderful woman in her early seventies and as active as anyone I've met. She spends half her time away from home, either visiting family or on some adventure. Last year she sojourned in Africa. She told me she wanted to see a herd of wild giraffes. They were her favorite animal when she was little. When she's gone we watch after her dog, a black Newfoundland named Earhart, and I mow her lawn. At the end of the summer she said she would like to have Jessie start mowing her lawn, since she'd seem him mowing ours, because she thought it'd be nice for him to have a good neighborhood job. I agreed, of course.
As I walk up to the house with Samantha I hand her the scythe, which she stumbles along with until I take it back from her, recognizing that she cares nothing about the accessory. My wife didn't like the toy weapons at the store, so she bought one and asked me to make it better. I replaced the handle of the scythe with a broomstick, and painted the blade with an old can of spray-paint from the garage. The nozzle was clogged with metallic paint, but because all the cans are the same the nozzles are easily replaceable. I forgot to prime the plastic first so the. Had I known she was going to dip it in her fake blood concoction I might have primed the plastic first because now the chrome spray-paint is now stripping off and mixing together to form the color of Dorothy's shoes from The Wizard of Oz.
The door opens and the first thing I notice is Rita's breasts. After winning a battle with breast cancer fifteen years ago by way of a double mastectomy, Rita congratulated herself with a new synthetic pair. She showed them to my wife, who tells me that Rita went an entire cup size larger than her natural breasts and that as freakishly nipple-less as they are, they feel quite natural. This thought plagues my mind every time I see Rita. She is dressed like Sacajawea with a low cut top that I'm sure no other woman her age could pull off.
“Oh, look at you...” Earhart is inside the house pressing himself against a wooden gate, excited to see my daughter. Samantha rushes inside past Rita and her bowl of candy. “You look so wonderful,” Rita continues. Earhart is actually on the small size for a Newfoundland but her tongue is still wide enough to cover Samantha's face in a single pass. Samantha loves that dog.
Rita always hands out full size candy bars, except for last year when she was in Africa. She holds out the bowl for me to take one, “Here,” she says, “daddies get one too.”
“How are you doing, Rita?” I ask.
“Dandy peachy keen. How's Carla?”
“She's great. She's been volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club, teaching sign language.”
“Yeah, she told me she was thinking about that. I didn't even know she spoke sign language.”
“She didn't, sort of. I guess she took a class back in high school but never used it. She thought the best way to make herself learn it again was to try and teach it to people.”
“Good for her, that sounds like fun.”
“She's really enjoying it. Samantha says the kids all love it, don't they, honey?”
Samantha is dodging Earhart's excited kisses in an attempt to keep her makeup from being stolen away. “Yup,” she giggles.
“Come on Samantha, let's keep moving. It was nice seeing you Rita, you look good.”
“Yes, I do. Here, darling, pick whichever one you want.” Samantha reaches up to the woman's bowl and shyly takes the one she wants. She knows not to accept gifts so eagerly, lest they cease being gifts. “Oh, that's a good one.” Rita assures her.
Samantha doesn't rush to the next house. Last year the man who lives there, a man I've never met but who works construction, based on the pickup in his driveway, dressed up like a scarecrow. He wore a flannel shirt and heavy boots and stuffed hay up his pant-legs and the sleeves of his shirt. He pulled a pair of pantyhose over his face and drew a smile on them with a sharpy, and he topped it all off with a straw hat. He sat there with his bowl of candy next to him on the porch and when Samantha came close, suspicious at first of the inanimate creation but drawn ever closer by the promise of chocolate, he jumped and scared her. It was an innocent prank and while I don't blame him for it, I hope he learned his lesson and will not repeat the mistake again again this year.
Samantha hesitates at the end of the driveway and as she starts up to the house by herself I feel guilty that the first house where I don't follow her to the door, because I don't know the people who live there, is a house that she will always be afraid of. A few steps away from me she turns around and signals for her weapon. I hand it to her and she continues the journey to the front door, both hands on the broomstick, ready to strike. I suddenly hope that the man has foolishly decided to repeat last years performance.
A minute passes with Samantha waiting at the door before she turns back towards me. I shrug and she walks back to the curb, dragging the bottom of the weapon along the cement.
People don't seem to hand out candy as much anymore. We seem to be going two or three houses between each one with its porch lights on. Samantha is holding my hand at arm's length, as far ahead of me as she can be, rushing toward the next house with its porch light on. She's in a hurry, she wants to withdraw candy from as many houses as she can before we have to go home, and I don't want to slow her down. This is a night when people I've never met open their doors to give my daughter candy, and I like the idea that the more houses we visit the happier, more optimistic person she'll grow up to be. More like my wife and less like me.
When Carla and I met she was like a combination of Mary Tyler Moore and Annie Hall and she has spent the last twelve years of our marriage proving to me how superficial and easily surmountable those expectations were. We met at a gas station, which strikes me as particularly unusual. We were both driving the same car in the same color, a coincidence that we were able to turn into fate. She was a freshman without a major and I was a stalwart business student. She eventually dropped out and took up a life of random, short term jobs interspersed with volunteer work. As a man who spends his time counting money, I am amazed that she survived during that time of her life.
If I revised the Hutchinson-Brown proposal by Monday, I might be able set up a meeting and re-pitch the idea. Even if I can't redeem the account, the firm might see the extra work I put in as an acceptable payment. I might convince them that I am not as easily replaceable as I am.
Samantha places her other hand on my wrist and tugs, drawing my attention on the house ahead of us.
Joe White is a friend of Jessie's. They've known each other since they were in second grade. He and Jessie and a few others are gathered at the end of Joe's driveway. Two of the boys are slightly outside of the circle hitting each other with short sticks and the two girls in the group are standing close together, chatting quietly, keeping their thoughts secret from the boys.
Jessie and I haven't talked much lately. We're in a period of transition. Well, Jessie is but I'm staying the same. Back in the summer Carla sent us on a camping trip up into the hills for the weekend. She kept calling it as a weekend for 'the men', a term she used to keep it clear to Samantha that she wasn't allowed to go. I didn't like the idea of talking about sex with my son. I would have to reveal to him the details of what it means to be a man, a definition I've never been clear about, and I'd have to explain the biological inner-workings of humanity, a speech I'd never received myself. My father had simply left my schoolmates to reveal the fine details of reproduction to me. This lack of education left me open to a few embarrassing moments in my young life, moments that made it laborious for me to talk with women until well into high school. My father's only real contribution was a drastic increase in crude humor, as if joking about the subject would break down the barrier of ignorance between us. When Jessie was born it was one of my most prominent fears that someday I would have to have that talk with him.
“Jessie,” I call to the kids as Samantha and I get close. “How are you kid's doing? It's a great looking house Joe, tell your dad he did a good job. Is that supposed to be a body hanging in the tree? Yeah? Spooky. So what are you kids doing, planning to go make some mischief? Jessie, can I talk to you for a second?”
Jessie says something to the taller girl and then walks over to me near the White family mailbox. The tall girl is wearing a tight, black skirt that goes down to her knees, fishnets, and a red top without a back. She has drawn fake blood drops around her mouth with lip stick. I can see the strap of her training bra from where I'm standing. She has a name like Jennifer, or Allison, or Vanessa, something dangerous. She is the kind of woman that a man learns to be afraid of by the time he's fifteen, but my son is only twelve. This girl can smell a man's quixotic desperation and she likes her fabricated feeling of control. I worry for her, but not as much as I worry for Jessie.
“What are you guys doing tonight? Just hanging out?” I know he wont tell me everything, I only hope that whatever they have planned, Jessie has the will to turn back when it goes too far. Which it will. He's out in the open now.
“Nothing, Dad, we're just gonna walk around.”
“Who are those girls?” I ask.
“They're from school.” He's tense and uncomfortable. He shifts his eyes away from me and moves his hands into his pockets. He's transparent to a man like me. “Is she still wearing the tutu?” Jessie asks.
The front door of the White house opens, where Samantha is waiting. Joe's father is wearing a hockey mask and jabbing at my daughter with a fake chainsaw that makes an inorganic buzzing sound when its buttons are pushed. Samantha giggles loudly and the older kids all turn to watch her. I'm not sure if they're judging her, or Jessie, or Mr. White, but they laugh condescendingly among themselves.
“It makes her look obese doesn't it? If ever there was a chance to run away from death...” I joke.
Jessie smiles and let out a gust of air that resembles a laugh.
As Samantha runs back to me with her bag of candy, I tell Jessie, “Go on, go have fun,” pointing to the rest of his group. It's a non-physical gesture that assures him he isn't expected to hug me. “But don't be out too late, your mother will get worried.” I've never been the disciplinarian, so the only tool I have is guilt.
Jessie tugs his sister's hood down over her head and then presses his hands against her temples. “Hey,” Samantha complains, recognizing that the embrace resembles a hug. She is smart enough to brush off his teasing as love.
As Jessie takes off down the street with his friends I think back to the Hutchinson-Brown account. Re-pitching the proposal will look like an act of desperation, which will only undermine the legitimacy of its ideas and draw more attention to my failures. Even if it worked such an act would guarantee that my next failure would be my last. Better to take the loss and hope that the paperwork needed to fire me is simply too much extra work for the men above me. This is a foolish thought, however, since those men will simply decide to fire me and allocate the technical paperwork to my replacement. Those men probably don't even know my name.
“Daddy,” I'm holding Samantha's hand too tightly and she is pulling it from my fist. I loosen and she rushes up to a light blue ranch house with a large wooden deck occupied by a collection of white plastic chairs, each one dirtied by the melting snow.
When the door opens Samantha is greeted by a small dog and its owner. The dog is some kind of a beagle mutt. From here at the curb I can see it standing next to its owner, a short, round woman whose curly hair flares down from the top of her head like the frayed end of a wire. The dog is short and loving, and Samantha leans down to pet and adore the animal. The dog disappears into the wide skirt that the robe leaves, draped over her dancing outfit. I hear her giggle and watch her jump and turn as she grasps for the dog's tail, which is still sticking outside her robe.
Samantha recently brought home a bean plant from school. She was studying plants in her class, and as a horticultural study, the children were given a bean and a plastic bag, which they coupled with a moist towel and taped to the inside of the large window in their classroom. After a few weeks it sprouted roots and a light green growth that, as soon as it revealed its first leaf, was considered a success. Samantha was given a check-plus and sent home with her bean plant. When she showed it to me it was clear that she had high hopes for the scientific aberration. She spoke about planting it in the yard, about it growing beans for us to make into soup. She prided herself in having done something to save us money, like the time she had poured our unfinished drinking water into the ice trays after dinner to conserve water. Thirteen days later the plant was dead. It was still a bright green color, like a young spout should be, but it had just shriveled up in the night without any warning of illness.
The next day, taped to the inside of the kitchen window, there appeared a plastic bag. Inside was a handful of dried beans taken from a jar on the counter. The jar had been a Christmas gift from my wife's sister and apparently contained the necessary beans for the best bean soup. I am sure none of them still contain a spark of life. Samantha swaddled the beans in an excess of damp paper towel and water pooled in the bottom of the bag. She wanted so badly for the beans to grow. I left them there on the window. Weeks passed and Samantha said nothing about the beans. Last week, when I thought she'd forgotten them, when the paper towel had turned a brownish-green color from the water-logged seeds, I threw them out.
I look back at the door where Samantha is petting the dog. The dog looks heavy, taking each step slowly and swaying side to side as it walks back to its master.
“Carlin?” the woman says, “Carlin are you alright?”
Samantha squeals, holding the bottom of her robe in her hands and looking up from her shoes at me. Tears are beginning to well up in her eyes.
“Oh, sweet darling, I'm so sorry.” I hear the woman say as I come up behind my daughter.
There is a pile of chocolatey mush on the porch and on Samantha's cute pink and white boots. The dog has vomited across the tops of her feet. Samantha is starting to panic, squeezing her arms in tight to her body and wiggling and twisting her legs in a vain attempt to cast off her boots. She isn't making any sound but as I turn her around I see that tears are streaking down the thick white makeup on her face, revealing the freckles on her pudgy cheeks.
“Daddy,” she finally says, dropping her bag of candy and the rim of her robe and placing her arms out for me to hug her. She feels helpless and she wants me to fix everything.
“William, have you been feeding the dog chocolate?” shouts the woman at a man sitting inside on the couch.
I grab Samantha with my left arm and lift her up, just enough that I can grab each of her shoes with a firm grip, my palm in the moist chocolate, and yank off each loose boot, revealing the ballet slippers she refused to take off before putting the boots on. I place each boot in one of my large coat pockets and then hoist Samantha up into my arms. She is heavy, too heavy for me to carry for long. I bend down, probably damaging my lower back for the rest of the weekend, and grab up her pillowcase of candy, and then I take my daughter back to the sidewalk.
“Sorry.” As the woman closes her door behind me I hear her tell the man to hose off the porch.
“It's okay, honey.” I hold Samantha tightly and walk softly down the sidewalk to the next house.
There isn't much I can do. I just keep walking, holding Samantha in my arms, passing dark house after dark house. When I finally arrive at the next house with its porch light on I walk up to the door and ring the bell. A young man in his twenties opens the door, releasing the chatter of the crowd and the music from inside.
“Trick-r-Treat,” I say, holding Samantha's pillowcase in my right hand, pressed against Samantha's backside. “This is Samantha and she's having a bad night.”
“Aw, man, that sucks.” The young man takes a handful of miniature candy bars from the bag by the door and, grabbing the pillowcase from me, drops the loot into Samantha's bag before handing it back. Then he wishes us both a good night and shuts the door.
I proceed to the next house, and then the next house, introducing my daughter and then happily taking a sympathetically large serving of the resident's candy. Once Samantha's sniffling dies down I ask her if she's ready to walk. She nods and makes a snorting sound like she's trying to slow down her breathing. I sit my daughter down on her feet and crouch down, the cold, wet ground bleeding through the knees of my pants.
“Are your toes cold, honey?” She shakes her head. I run my thumbs down the streaks in her makeup and smile directly at her. “It's going to be okay.” I assure her. “But be careful in those slippers out here, it's slick.”
Samantha slides her arms under mine and squeezes me as tightly as she can. I reach into my pocket, below one of the soiled boots and pull out a glowstick for her. There is a little regurgitated chocolate on the wrapper, so I open it myself and then hand it, unbroken to Samantha. She looks closely at it, shakes it and examines it again for bubbles. She slowly bends it, watching the small, fragile piece inside until it snaps and the liquid begins to shine. Samantha smiles her indifferent smile and drops the stick into her pillowcase of goods.
We continue around the neighborhood until we find ourselves close to home again. A group of older kids, hardly dressed up at all, are walking away from my house. They're much older than Jessie, probably juniors or even seniors in high school, and they are simply stuffing the candy into their pockets.
Carla sees us coming up the driveway and she waits for us at the door.
“How'd you do, Sam?”
“Great,” Samantha says, holding up her heavy bag of candy.
“What happened to your shoes?” Samantha slips past my wife into the house.
“I've got them with me. There was a little accident.”
“What happened?”
“Dog got sick.”
“Ew. Well, leave them out here. We'll wash them off later.”
I take the boots out of my pockets and drop them by the front door, then I turn off the porch light as I come inside. The high schoolers can find other suckers.
Samantha has already dumped out her candy onto the kitchen table when I get into the house. She is sifting through it sorting out the stuff she likes.
“So what happened?” My wife persists.
“Oh, nothing bad. Some lady's dog got into the chocolate and got sick while she was getting her candy.”
Samantha stops sorting out the candy and sits down at the table, staring at the sweets. She isn't deciding what she wants to eat first, she's deciding if she wants to eat it at all.
I sit down at the table with her. My wife is pouring the left overs of our house's candy into a bowl behind me. “So, which one's first?” I ask.
Samantha shrugs.
I take Rita's full size candy bar from my pants pocket and open it up. With each bite I can see Samantha loosen, reassuring herself that the candy will not instantly compel her to vomit.
“How many can I have?” she finally asks.
“As many as you want tonight, but take it easy.”
Samantha places her finger on one of the candies and slides it slowly across the table, guiding it between the others until it reaches her. I chuckle.
“Daddy,” she says my name, the way she always will.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Milemarkers
Final Draft
Last Updated March 30, 2010
Milemarkers
By James Hart
Last Updated March 30, 2010
Milemarkers
By James Hart
Monday, September 21, 2009
They Eat the Roots
They Eat the Roots
Second Draft - Last updated Fall 2009 CURRENTLY UNDERGOING SERIOUS REVISIONS
When Alan came home her dog had defecated in his shoe, so he took the dog out back, buried two shells in its chest and threw the carcass over the fence. He spit in his hands to loosen the blood and wiped it all off on his shirt. He squeezed the thick corduroy cuffs between each of his fingers and then removed the shirt, balled it, and tossed it over the fence after the dog. Alan had taken the shirt from his mother's closet the night before. His father had loved corduroy, so his mother had always encouraged Alan to wear it. He rarely did, but today it felt appropriate. It was the least he would do for her.
Alan opened the shotgun, pulled out the empty casings and threw them over the fence as well. The other side of the fence was a dense forest that ran up to the edge of the lake. Since Alan was a boy he had always thrown things over that fence, broken toys and ruined church clothes were the most common, to hide them in the heavy brush. Once he had broken one of his mother's figurines, a little dutch boy with a flute, and tried to glue it back together, but the cracks weren't flush and his gluing skills were lacking, so the scar across the little dutch boy's face remained. Alan had rolled the sculpture up in a paper bag, smashed it with a rock and tossed it over the fence. The thought of the little broken dutch boy made Alan smile. His mother had screamed at him, sure that he was involved in its disappearance, but if he hadn't broken it then she would have been left to him in the will now. The figurine was probably still there now, perhaps somewhere underneath the dead dog.
Alan stopped at the back door and looked at the pale kitchen linoleum just inside the door and the slab of cement outside where he had been punished for not taking off his shoes before he entered the house. Alan stepped into the house.
There was a knock at the door.
“Hello?” There was a tired old voice behind the front screen door.
Alan stood up from untying his shoes again and saw the unmistakable forehead and wig of Mrs. Harrison. She had had a son, Peter, whose need for companionship led him to allow Alan to torment him endlessly as a boy. Alan had once tied Peter to a tree in the park and left him there. Still that was not enough to end their grotesque friendship. Alan hadn't seen either of the Harrisons since he left town.
“Misses Harrison, how are you doing this morning?” Alan carefully pulled his feet from his shoes and left them glued to the pale linoleum. He walked to the front door and let Mrs. Harrison in.
“Wasn't that a wonderful service this morning? Reverend Mills said some very nice things about your mother.” Mrs. Harrison was a fragile old women carrying a bunt cake she had made.
“Yes he did. Is that for me, Misses Harrison?” Alan reached out and took the cake from her, it was not as heavy as he had hoped.
“Oh, it's just a little something, I only found out yesterday so I didn't have much time to cook. Boy, where is your shirt?” Mrs. Harrison stopped in the doorway and looked him up and down, from the yellow stains on his socks to the thin sleeveless undershirt that covered his underdeveloped chest. It made Alan uncomfortable, the way she was looking at him, the way his mother had done years earlier. As if his indecency revealed his sinful nature.
“I'm very sorry ma'am. I was taking care of some work outside and wanted the sun on my shoulders.” Alan shut the screen door and pushed on it until it fully latched.
“Oh well that's understandable of course. You could probably do some good around here, Lauretta hardly did anything with the yard. You can see that, of course. But no reason to start that today of all days.” His mother's tree was sick, it was being drank dry by the cicada nymphs that were due to emerge later that year.
Alan walked into the kitchen to get the shirt he had left on one of the kitchen chairs that morning.
“It's a nice house though. I didn't realize she had so many of these nice things.” Mrs. Harrison sat down on the sofa and began rubbing one of the nearby figurines with the soft pad of her thumb.
Alan wasn't sure what to make of her sitting down. He stared at her from the kitchen and tried to think of what to do. “Would you like something to drink Mrs. Harrison. A whiskey?”
“Mister Dahl, please. Christ in heaven.”
Alan smirked awkwardly but he didn't know what to make of her reaction. “Oh of course, I was just making light ma'am I didn't mean nothing by–”
“I should certainly hope not.”
Buttoning up his shirt Alan thought of the extra shells in his pocket. “Would you like a water, or perhaps anything else?”
“No, I believe I will be just fine Mister Dahl. Thank you. It really is a nice house she had. So many nice things. Is this a real Piano? She must have been a woman of means to have such a thing. We just purchased a new one for the church, had it brought all the way from New York City. Real nice instrument, much better than the one they have down in Banesville.”
“Well this one's not from new York City.”
Alan walked back to the living room with a glass of gin he had taken from the cabinet and dropped ice in to disguise it as something more innocent. Mrs. Harrison was sitting where his mother had usually sat when he was a boy. The radio was to her right and the bookshelf where his mother kept all her religious books was behind her. His mother had bought more bible's in her life than he had books, and she had lined them all up on one shelf so that you could compare all the different spines.
“Were you in the war mister Dahl. I don't believe I remember seeing your name on the list back when the church was having its prayer meetings.”
Alan took a drink from his glass. “Yes ma'am, I was, though I was only drafted near the end so I wasn't there for a very long time.”
“That must have been just terrible for you. Agatha Stevenson, she lives down the street from my house,” Mrs. Harrison pointed out the front window of the house, “down there at the corner, she lost two of her sons. You remember Peter, all you boys were friends. Well Peter didn't have to go because of his eye, but he says he would've gone had they accepted him. The ladies at church say he's not the only man his age not to go so it's no shame on him at all. That's a beautiful painting she had there.” Mrs Harrison pointed to a painting of the lake that hung on the wall behind Alan. He wrenched his back to look at it and found it much less impressive than it had been when he was a boy. It was a few simple colors that were meant to look like the lake at sunset, but it was hardly even accurate. When Alan was a boy he and his friends would camp on the far side of the lake. He had walked around it countless times and couldn't think of a place where it turned back on itself like that. She had framed it with some cheap wood and glued shells to it, but many of them had fallen off or become discolored over the years. His mother had probably never noticed because when something is on the wall that long a person forgets it's there at all.
“Yes, that's a painting of the lake. Been there all my life.” Alan wondered when this woman would leave him alone so that he could get his work done.
“Now, if you don't mind me asking, the ladies said you and your mother hadn't seen each other in quite some time. That you didn't even come to town when she got sick. Why is that?” The church ladies had probably drawn straws to determine which of them would execute the investigation.
“Tell me Mrs. Harrison, would you know anything about this town if not for the ladies at church?” Alan stood up and walked straight for the door. “I do believe you wouldn't know Jesus had come back unless you learned it with needles in your hands. Much less believe it unless it was gossip.” Alan pulled open the door and stood there waiting.
“Excuse me? Why I never had anyone talk to me that way—” Mrs. Harrison lifted herself from the couch.
“Well I've never had anyone yell at me for offering her a whiskey, so we've both had a fun day haven't we. Now I'll ask you to leave Mrs. Harrison, this has been a mighty fine sit we've had. Do tell the ladies about it when you see them.” As Mrs. Harrison passed the endtable near the door she picked up the bunt cake she had brought with her. “Yes, here, take that with you.” Alan grabbed the cake from her arms and walked out onto the porch with it. The porch was enclosed in a fine net to keep the bugs out in the spring. He walked to the screen door that provided it with an exit and threw the cake from the porch. “I'd hate for you to have to carry that all the way to the edge of the yard.”
The plate hit the ground spinning, hurling dry baked bits into the grass. Mrs. Harrison looked up at Alan, her mouth was open and the scowl on her face was stretching out the loose skin on her oversized forehead. Without saying anything to her, Alan walked back into the house and closed the front door, leaving her there on the porch.
Once back in the house Alan marched into the kitchen and took a large knife from one of the drawers. He pulled the painting of the lake away from the wall a little and sliced through the piece of twine suspending it. The painting disappeared behind the couch and shells spread themselves out across the living room floor. Alan tossed the knife into the kitchen where it landed on the counter with a grating metallic scape.
Behind the painting the wallpaper was more colorful, so much so that he could tell the difference between the red and blue flowers. Alan walked around the room peeking behind the other pictures hanging on the wall. When he didn't find anything he went down into the basement through the door in the kitchen.
It was cool in the basement. The only light came from the small windows near the ceiling but the tall grass and the bushes blocked most of them. She had used this part of the house for storage, there were rugs in the corner wrapped up in tarps piled onto a couch with no cushions, and there was an old ice box near the stairs that he could remember someone trying to move it up the steps for his mother but they couldn't get it up the turn in the stairs. Inside the icebox was nothing that couldn't grow without fresh air for thirty years. Alan spent some time opening up the boxes wear his mother had stored old clothes and spare candles, and a roll of extra screen for repairing the porch enclosure. There was an aluminum desk in the corner. The drawers were rusted and hard to open, and when he finally broke the top drawer loose a frayed edge cut into the palm of his right hand. He clenched that fist tight, holding it near his shoulder as blood ran down to his elbow. The drawers were all empty, which added insult to his sliced hand.
Frustrated, Alan went upstairs to his mother's bedroom where he had slept the night before. He had taken the cushions from the couch in the basement and used them as a mattress. His mother's bed had been removed along with the body because of the mess that her decomposition had left behind her. Under the window was a dresser where she kept her jewelry. Sitting on the dresser were his things, his wallet, the keys, and his knife. Sweat began to burn in his right hand and Alan was dripping blood into the carpet. He went into the bath, washed the cut, and wrapped the wound with one of his mother's small hand towels.
Alan came downstairs and there was another knock on the door.
It was Reverend Mills. He had taken off his Sunday morning garb, which left him looking much like every other old simpleton in this town. Mills had owned the corner store on the way home from school when Alan was younger. He and his friends would often stop by there on the way home and practice their slight of hand. Alan had once had his mother sew an extra pocket into his favorite denim jacket. She didn't know what it was for but Alan could slip things in there without Mills noticing. Reverend Mills kept a pretty close eye on them, he knew they were stealing but could never catch them. Once they had sent Peter in alone on a mission to capture enough chew for all of them. Mills had caught him, as they rightfully expected him to, and Mills had beaten Peter pretty bad. Apparently that was all before he decided to find Jesus.
“Well good afternoon Reverend.” Alan stood at the door, his stance wide as if the Reverend was going to rush him and push his way into the house.
“Been a long time Alan. Last time I saw you was... well, a long time ago.” Was he being funny or trying to put Alan down.
“Yeah, well I've been all over since I left this town. Been real busy.”
“You mind if I come in?”
“Oh sure. Come on in.” As rebellious as Alan kept himself, something about the way this man's voice came from his chest instead of his mouth demanded Alan's obedience.
Reverend Mills walked in to the house and stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by couches. As gray as his hair was now and as noticeable as his gut had become, the man's broad shoulders were still enough to make him an imposing figure. “You left the service so quickly I didn't get a chance to tell you how very sorry I am about your dear mother.”
“Yes, I'm sorry about that. I had to get some business done and was sure I didn't have time to socialize with all the people who missed my mother.” Alan stayed near the door, uncomfortably still. “You could feel free to sit down Mister Mills.”
“No I think I'll stand. And it's Reverend Mills, Alan.”
“Oh, of course, I am sorry.”
Alan walked along the wall past the Reverend to a place near the edge of the kitchen. The Reverend's shoes caught Alan's attention, they were a polished dark brown leather that reminded him of his mother's dog, and of the shotgun around back, and of the taste of blood in his mouth. He took one step toward the Reverend, put his head at an angle, and looked the man straight in the eyes. “So you knew my mother fairly well, did you?”
“Well, she didn't come to church very often, but she did make a lovely three bean for last years community potluck.” This was the man who had led his mother into the ground.
“That's about what I thought. But that's okay, I don't hold it against you. She was a pretty quiet person, didn't like being out around people very much. It's not like it's your job to keep in touch with everybody in town. She really wasn't one of those church ladies.”
“That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I heard Misses Harrison had an eventful meeting here this morning.” The Reverend was standing with his back to Alan, gliding his fingers across the top of the bible's on the shelf. “She said you cussed at her.”
“I damn well did. She said some terrible things about my mother, about how she was whoring about when I was young and how none of the ladies in town liked her. So I asked her to leave and made her take her damn cake with her. And if you have a problem with that—”
When Alan was a boy an owl had made the tree in the backyard its home and the midnight screams would keep him awake. One night Alan had stayed out back till it got dark, hoping to strike the fowl with a rock. When it finally came back to their tree he watched it for a long time. It would move it's head the way the reverend did now, as if it had its eyes on some mouse or snake and was preparing to scream. When he showed Peter the body Peter had told him that the birds screech because it makes the mice freeze so that it's easier to catch them.
“Boy your mother would be ashamed of you, acting that way.”
“Yeah? Well she's the one who raised me so I guess that's really her fault.”
“How could any man speak that way to an old woman. And tell lies like that. I know everybody in that church and Misses Harrison would never say anything of the sort.”
Out the front window Alan could see Claudia walking down the street to the house. She was double checking herself with a sheet of paper he had written the address and phone number on, not that it mattered since the line was disconnected. She was walking with a swagger, fueled by rage and excitement. He had left her at the hotel in Banesville and told her to say there, that he would call, and surely when he didn't she came looking for him.
“What do you have to say for yourself boy? Aren't you going to say anything at all?” The Reverend was stepping closer and closer to Alan, taking up more and more of his vision. The kitchen table was right up against the back of Alan's legs now and he felt himself back in that corner store with his wrist locked in this man's firm fist. Alan could see him the way he did then, from the shopkeeper's substantial waistline. His right hand grabbed the edge of the table and his left shot into his pocket and began to fidget with the shells.
“Baby?” Claudia was standing at the end of the porch, looking in through the thick screen, trying to make out the figures she saw. “Baby, you in there?” Both men turned their heads to see her.
Alan exhaled and moved his bottom jaw forward, revealing his deteriorating teeth. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his palm and shoved a hand into the Reverend's chest, pushing him back with surprising force as he went to the front door to let Claudia in. “Doll, what are you doing here now? I thought I told you to—”
“Now, Alan you ain't going to pull that one over on me. How long have you known me, you thought I was going to stay there, alone. If I had, you would've probably come back to find me in jail, it'd have made me so mad.” She didn't notice the Reverend as she walked in, she just pressed herself up against Alan and shoved her hand down the front of his pants. Alan didn't stop her, just lifted her off her feet and turned her around, closing the door behind her. As they kissed Alan kept his eyes on the Reverend who was standing, morally superior, in the kitchen. He looked the way he had just before he whipped Peter, but he was holding his tongue, probably because there was a lady, by whatever definition, in the room. Alan looked him straight in the eyes.
“Mm, Babe, I need to piss. Where's the broad's john?” Claudia released Alan and turned to walk into the back of the house. “Oh, I'm so sorry mister, I didn't see you there.” Claudia threw her weight to one hip held her arms to her chest as if she had been caught indecently. She was wearing a man's white shirt and pair of brown slacks that had once been proper. “That must have been a bit personal for you, I am sorry. My name's Claudia.” She leaned over the couch and extended her hand, the Reverend looked down at her open hand, then down her blouse. Her chest was striped like a prison jacket where sweat had dripped down through the dirt collected under her shirt. He simply stared at her, waiting for her to put that hand away.
“Dollface, you run off and let us talk. The Reverend and I have business.”
Claudia stood back up and pressed her shirt down against her skin, raising her brow and giving the Reverend a knowing smile. As she walked around the couch her shirt rode up revealing the pistol she had tucked into the front of her pants. “You're a Reverend, huh? Well then I'll take my time, You must have a whole lot of business with Alan, I'm sure.” Claudia walked down the hall attached to the kitchen. “Where is it?”
“On your right.” Alan chewed on the dry skin of his lower lip and smiled. He was positioned between the Reverend and the door with his feet set wide apart, as if concerned that the man might rush him in an attempt to escape.
“Should have known this was the kind of person you were. You never were any good and you never will be. It was probably for the best you left town. And I think it would be best if you stayed gone Alan. Man like you is a plague on a God fearing community like this one.”
“A God fearing community, Reverend? You people ain't been outside this shithole town and you never will be. God may be here, keeping you all in line, but money and fame is in the west.” Alan slowly walked toward the Reverend, his left hand in his pocket controlling the strut with which he approached, like a snake moving across warm soil. “Man like me take's what he wants out of life, that's how I've been my whole life. My momma knew it. And she was smart enough to leave me be, let me grow up the way I saw fit. That was the only good thing she ever did for me, which makes it so hard to believe any of those damned things you said this morning.” As he got closer to the target he started sidestepping towards the back door
“Boy I should whip you the way I did when you were a boy. The way your momma never did.”
“You know how easy it is to hide a thing around this town?” Alan stood in the back door of the house facing the Reverend.
“I would lay down that if I told Edman you were in town again and that I know it was you that robbed me all those years ago he would lock you up on the spot. You couldn't hide here then. No, you ran like a snake from a burning cane field and I'm going to make sure you run again.”
Alan pressed his back teeth together and smiled at the way the Reverend was standing up to him. Calmly, he pulled the two shells from his pocket and held them near his waist as if the brass casing could go unnoticed at all. The Reverend flared and pushed in the kitchen chair that Alan had left out with such force that it nearly bounced back and fell over. “I wasn't running from you Mister Mills. It's easy to hide things here, you just need to know where the spots are. I didn't even take you for the money, I took you because I wanted to leave town with a bang.” Alan picked up the shotgun from where he had left it resting against the house and swung the butt up into his pit. The towel had soaked through with blood when Alan clamped onto the barrel.
“Boy, don't you even try—”
“Call me boy again and I'll go through with it. Claudia and I can make it out of town in no time at all. You'll be just another name on the list.” Alan opened the rifle and let it hang as he slid the shells into place. “I really think it's time for you to get gone.”
“You look like you're about to piss yourself there Reverend. Is something wrong?” Claudia could be heard coming down the hall. With the Reverend surrounded, Alan gave him a wide smile that pushed the loose skin of his thin cheeks into his dark brown eyes.
“yeah, is something wrong Reverend?” Alan asked.
The Reverend took a few steps backward, then turned his back on Alan who brought the barrel of the gun up and as it came into place it made a soft click sound that he could tell sent chills up the Reverend's spine. Was he praying?
The Reverend took as few steps to the front door as he could manage and when he was out on the porch, enclosed in the screen, he shouted back inside, “Get the hell out of this town, Alan. You and your whore.” And then he disappeared into the yard.
Claudia shot out of the hallway and around the corner to the front door but Alan caught her by the neck and pulled her back. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You heard what he said!”
“Yeah, and I let him go. Which means you do, too.” Claudia slapped at Alan's hand but it didn't budge. He pulled her in and pressed his lips into hers and then released her.
She glanced out the window and then looked back at him. “Well I don't like it.” Alan leaned the shotgun against the couch and turned to walk back upstairs. “He'll probably go to the cops, Babe. Which means we ain't got much time to get out of here.”
“I haven't found it yet.”
“What? You said it would only take a day. You didn't go to the funeral this morning did you?”
“No, but they all think I did. It's amazing how many people showed up for a woman they didn't know.” Alan started walking upstairs.
“You said it would be easy.” Claudia walked to the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, well she didn't have a bank account. I've searched this house and haven't found a thing. It's like she ate it all and they buried it with her.” Alan stopped.
“Baby, we ain't got the time for this. You got to find where she kept that money.” Claudia rushed up behind him and cautiously put her hand on his back. “Babe?”
Alan quickly walked up the stairs and into the bedroom again. He looked down at the pile of blankets and sheets and cushions that he had used as a bed. The carpet there was unbeaten and darker from the filth that collected under his mother's bed. They would have taken the mattress to the dump. They wouldn't have burned it, or cut it open. Wherever it was it was intact. Someone would know where it was and Alan would find them. “I think I know where it is.”
“Great, where?”
“Come on, lets hit the road. We probably don't have much time.”
“Baby, where is it.”
Alan grabbed his things from the dresser, bunched up his mother's jewelry in a doily and handed it to Claudia. “Oh, these are nice.” she said, following Alan as he rushed out the front door.
Days later the neighbors would complain about the smell of death from over the fence, though none of them would dare cross over to investigate, they would just wait till it went away. The birds would take its eyes and the maggots and flies would plague the body. They would find the last remnants of sweaters and dress pants, and the fractured skull of a dutch boy figurine and none of it would mean anything to them. They would feast and multiply until there was nothing left that resembled a dog at all. And then they would move on.
Something Always Remembered
Something Always Remembered
Second Draft - Last updated Fall 2008
Jonas drew up the plan while in the shower. He turned the water up until it was nearly scalding and let it drift across his back, then he turned it off and wrapped himself in a towel. His Alyssa was standing by the sink in her underwear sticking earrings into her lobes. Jonas eyed the polished wooden jewelry box by the mirror, it was a nightingale's reliquary.
“Should I wear a ski mask today? Or maybe my steel-toed boots?” Jonas asked, grinning at her through the mirror.
Alyssa grabbed his hand as he left the bathroom and pulled him to her. She wrapped her arms around his lower back and held her stomach up against him. He could feel the moisture on his skin fusing their bodies together. “We have a key, Jonas, we're not breaking in through a window.”
“But we are still breaking in.” Jonas kissed her.
“Charlotte was my best friend, she'd be fine with this. Mrs. Wallace wouldn't, but she's dead now.”
“Don't be coarse.” Jonas lifted his chin to show her his square jaw.
Alyssa grinned slyly. “Don't be so stiff. It's going to be an adventure. How many people get to break into a dead lady's house?”
“How many people want to?” Jonas bent his neck down and kissed her forehead. “Are you okay? You look a little pallid.”
“What?” Alyssa looked thrown off by the word.
“Pale.”
“I hate when you use words I don't know.”
“Just smile and nod.” Jonas left the bathroom and went to his dresser, inside which all the contents of his pockets had been emptied the night before. He put on his jeans and picked up his cell phone. He held down the two button until the screen read home. The phone on the other side of the room began to ring.
“Jonas, can you get that.”
“You know it's for you. It's always for you.” Jonas slipped the phone into his pocket.
Alyssa walked out of the bathroom, only one earing in her left ear and no necklace yet. Once she picked up the phone Jonas walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He opened up her jewelry box and quietly pushed things around until he found it.
“Well I guess it wasn't for me after all, they hung up.” Alyssa walked back to the bathroom and jiggled the knob. “Oh come on, you really gotta lock the door when you poop.”
They took Jonas' car because it was the only one with gas. He drove, because he always drove. Jonas never enjoyed having someone else drive him around, it made him nervous that something would happen. He didn't like the feeling that he wasn't in control.
“This is so exciting.” Alyssa said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation, the way she always did when they would go out to dinner. “I can't believe we get to do this.”
“I don't know why you think this is going to be so much fun.”
“What do you mean? I loved this house when I was little, Charlotte and I hung out there more than we ever did at my house. I've got a lot of fond memories of that place.”
“I guess.”
“Wasn't it fun when we went to see your folks. We got to see where you grew up.”
“Yea, but my parents have changed that house a lot. They put in a pool. All you saw were pictures of the house I grew up in. There is no way that this old house is gonna be anything like you remember.”
“Of course it will. Don't be a grouch, it's gonna be really neat.”
“Whatever you say.”
Jackson brown began to sing Fountain of Sorrows on the radio and Alyssa turned it up. “I don't know how you drive without your sunglasses when the sun is low like this.” She was resting her arm against her window and shielding her eyes with her hand. “Do you want me to get you your sunglasses?” She reached down and opened the glove compartment.
“No, no. That's okay, I'm fine without them. No, really, I don't need them. I'm fine the highway's about to turn.”
“Fine, fine. Go on being miserable.” Alyssa put the case back in the compartment and closed it. “I don't know why you don't just-”
“You aren't wearing your necklace today.” Jonas changed lanes.
“Yea. Yea, I couldn't find it this morning, have you seen it?”
“Nope. Did you have it on yesterday?”
“Yes. I always remember days I can't find it. I must have just taken it off somewhere at home. I didn't really look for it before we left.”
Jonas parked on the street, fearful that the fractured driveway would damage his tires. While Alyssa walked to the front door, Jonas stayed in the car. He took his glasses case out of the glove compartment. Tucked inside with his sunglasses was a plastic bag containing a gold necklace. He put the bag in his pocket and the case in a cup holder between the seats, where he usually kept it.
When Jonas got out of the car Alyssa turned around and asked, “Are you coming?” She stood playfully with her hips at an angle and her arms spread open. Her thin green dress hung in the still air as it would off a wire hanger.
“Just blowing my nose. I should probably take the whole box in with me, this place is going to be so fetid.” He said.
“Fetid,” she said, shaking her head and smiling as she turned back to the door.
The house was two stories with four simple windows on the front, square and equidistance from each other like the ones children draw with crayon. The stucco walls had once been a light eggshell color but were now flaking away, revealing the gray underneath and creating a lattice for some green ivy to cling to. It was like a pimple from the earth surrounded by weeds so thick that from far away the lot appeared to be covered in a healthy grass. The front door was guarded by a square cement porch. The door was bright blue at the top and lighter near the bottom where the overhang no longer protected it in the evening sun.
Elsa Wallace had lived in this house up until two days prior when she had stopped to sit in a lawn chair at her local grocery store and passed away. She was there for three hours before an employee noticed she wasn't breathing.
Alyssa was strangely comfortable there on the porch; Jonas glanced back and forth between neighboring houses in search of spying eyes, but she was calm. Alyssa relished the chance to rendezvous with her memories of that house. Somehow it felt like the house was a part of her, like it was integral to her growth.
She had strung all of her parents spare keys onto one ring so she would have to go through nearly twenty keys in order to find the right one. Jonas waited patiently as Alyssa tested each key on the chain. He restrained himself from saying anything when she tried the ones that were obviously too small, or the wrong shape, because he knew that she liked to try them them anyway. He glanced back and forth between the neighboring houses, looking for faces peeking out from behind curtains but he never saw any.
When the pins finally lined up and the key turned all the way right, Alyssa looked over her shoulder at Jonas and smiled, something childishly sinister.
The inside smelled of a stale perfume, like pollen and dirt. There was a short hallway that became stairs, poorly illuminated by light shining though thin curtains at the top. On the right was a door into the living room, and on the left a dining room. Jonas watched as Alyssa absorbed the hallway and tested the air for memories.
Alyssa took a deep breathe. “I told you it would be the same.”
Jonas followed her into the dining room where she became fascinated with her surrounding, reaching out to touch the woodworkings on the dining table and dragging her foot across the wooden floor. She seemed encapsulated in a world that had existed before him.
“Look here,” Alyssa pointed to one of the larger frames on the wall, “This is Charlotte. She must have been maybe eight here. This is her mom and this is her dad and this is Thomas.”
Jonas looked closely at the picture, first at Charlotte, who looked unsettlingly like herself, and then at Thomas. Jonas had never met Thomas but he heard news of him from time to time through Charlotte. He was married now and his daughter looked exactly like the photo of eight year old Charlotte. Next to the family portrait was a picture from Thomas' wedding and Jonas could see Alysas staring at it.
Alyssa turned around and reached out to run her fingers along the fine woodworkings around the legs of the dining room table.. “This is the same table.” Alyssa got down on her knees and looked up underneath. “Charlotte and I drew picture all over the bottom of the table once. We got in so much trouble for it. You can still see it.” She ran her fingers along the wood, testing for the waxy feeling of the crayon.
Jonas stayed standing above her. He took her word for it that the bottom of the table was scarred.
Alyssa worked her way to the kitchen door. “Oh neat! There are still dirty dishes in the sink. Think about it, she was just here, alive, three days ago.” She said, disappearing into the next room.
The dining room table was covered with boxes of pictures and a stack of classic novels like the ones Jonas had read in middle school. Jonas flipped his fingers through one of the boxes of photos marked 1993. He found a section of pictures from a barbecue which he removed from the box and began to shuffle through. A man by a grill in a pair of grungy shorts and a wife-beater. Two women posing on a sun dried wooden bench swing. A group of children with a slip and slide. A picnic table covered in food, bowls of salad, hamburger buns, chopped fruit, something in a casserole dish. Then he found a picture with Alyssa and Thomas. It was of a young couple nested at the table, they were probably high school age, she was perhaps a year or two younger than he was. She was wearing a pink top with thin straps that showed off her tan lines. Like most girls her age she wore too much makeup, simply because she could. Her unassuming lips were brighter than the patchwork red tablecloth at which they sat and Jonas could not make out the freckles across her nose. She was pressing a bare shoulder up against the his and their arms followed the same path under the table.
Jonas stared at the girl in the photo until Alyssa came back into the room, then he shuffled the pictures back together and put the box back on the table in a distinctly different place.“Whole lot of pictures.” He said to her.
Alyssa placed herself behind him, up against his back, and slid her arms underneath his, so that she could squeeze him and rest the side of her head on his back. “I told you this would be fun,” she said.
Jonas wandered the first floor of the house, investigating knickknacks, furniture, and the colorfully dark wallpaper until Alyssa started up the stairs.
“There's a neat little crawlspace under these stairs.”
“Yeah?” Jonas grasped the trinket in his pocket, rubbing its smooth simplicity through the plastic bag. He wondered how many times he would have to lie to her.
“Yeah, I loved to hide in there when we were little girls.”
“Seems like a pretty obvious placed to hide.” Jonas smiled.
Alyssa laughed. “Yea, I wasn't really good at that game. But sometimes you just like to hide away someplace.”
The first room on the left was the girls room. The walls were faded pink except for a bright square by the door where Jonas assumed there had once been a desk. There was barely room for both the beds in this room. The heads of each were placed on either side of the window that opened to the front of the house. Above each bed a dried bouquet of flowers was hanging. On the right, dried lavender with baby's breath and some kind of once green stick hanging over a bed covered by a blanket with snow white on it and a few large fuzzy bears. It was the childhood of a little girl as preserved by a mother, something shed and collected, like dust on top shelves. Above the bed on the left were white field flowers along with one red rose that seemed out of place. That bed was made with white sheets and a white comforter with light pink flowers, whatever it had been was erased. There were frilly white curtains on both windows that would appear at home in the bedroom of both a little girl and an old woman.
“Ew, she's made this room so girly.” Alyssa leaned over the child's bed to peek out the side window at her old house. “It's all so empty now.” She gently squeezed the fabric draperies between her fingers. “I don't know why she would do this. This room was so much fun.”
Jonas could tell by the look of the room that there was nothing here for Alyssa to connect with. “This was Charlotte's room?” He asked.
“Yeah. There used to be Smashing Pumpkins posters all over that wall.” Alyssa waved her hand through the air trying to envision the room in her mind as it had once been. Then she moved on.
The next room was less empty than Charlotte's. The bed was made but not by an old woman, there was a dark blue sheet over the window to keep out the sun on late mornings. There was a poster for Rushmore on one wall and the shelves under the window were still stacked with books. By the bed there was a nightstand and in the nightstand there was a drawer.
“Whose room was this?” Jonas asked, trying to disguise his voice as sincere curiosity.
“Thomas'. He was a year or two older than us.” She said walking away from Jonas to the closed bedroom door across the hall. “You want to see her bedroom?”
Jonas stared into Thomas' room at the bedside table and played with the trinket in his pocket. “You think she'd mind if I used her toilet.”
“I'm sure it'd make her furious,” Alyssa said through a laugh, “but what's she going to do about it?”
Jonas went into the hallway bathroom and closed the door. He took the plastic bag from his pocket and removed the necklace. He reached over and flushed the toilet. He rinsed off his hands, collected up the necklace, and quietly crossed the hallway to Thomas' room.
Alyssa was still in the master bedroom when Jonas sat on the bed by the table. Jonas pulled open the drawer in the bedside table. Inside was a hardcover Bible like the ones the Gideons leave behind. Jonas put the necklace in the back of the drawer, then he pushed the Bible up against it to hold it in place. Someday someone would find it, someone who didn't remember it. They likely wouldn't notice that the pendant wasn't worth as much as the replacement gold chance on which it hung, all they would see was something cheap and forgotten.
Tucked into the seem where the side of the drawer met the bottom was a wallet sized photograph which Jonas pressed his thumb up against and pulled back into existence. It was a picture of a girl, like a high school photo. She wore a green blouse and around her neck was the gold necklace, bright and new, and hanging high around her neck so that it stood out. Her freckles were still missing but at least her lips were not as bright.
Jonas put the yellowed photograph into his shirt pocket, and closed the door behind him as he left the room.
“This is creepy.” Said Alyssa, standing at the foot of Mrs. Wallace's bed.
“What is?” The room was a tan color, the sheets were brown and all the furniture was made of one stained wood or another.
“She made the bed.”
“You make the bed every morning.”
“Yeah, but I'm not going to any more. It's like she was never here, or like she knew she was going to die.”
“Would it have been any less creepy if the bed were a mess?”
“Well, I suppose not. But its creepy none the less.”
“We're in a dead woman's house.”
“I guess so.”
While Jonas investigated a shelf of books, hoping to find one that was interesting, Alyssa snuck back across the hallway. When Jonas left the old woman's bedroom Alyssa was standing just inside the door to Thomas' room, resting the palm of her right hand on her neckline. Jonas walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, grasping her left hand with his right and squeezing her tightly. He could feel the diamond of her engagement ring digging into his palm. She curled in her shoulders and leaned back, trying to push herself into Jonas. If he could have opened his chest and enveloped her in a shell he would have.
After a stretched out moment at the door Jonas squeezed her tighter than before to bring her attention back to him. As he stepped away from the doorway he released her in such a way that she submitted and left with him. When she started down the stairs Jonas went back and shut all the bedroom doors.
Alyssa marched to the car, leaving Jonas to lock up the house. As he closed the front door he listened for his mind, for his clockwork doubts, something irritating. But there was silence.
Jonas sat in a lawn chair in the garage with the door open, listening to the rain while he read a book of short stories and rocked back and forth, creating a rhythmic creaking sound that gave a pace to his thoughts.
Alyssa pulled up into the driveway and opened her umbrella from inside the car. She quickly stepped around to the trunk and pulled out a few bags.
“Reading something good?” Alyssa asked as she shook off the umbrella inside the garage.
“It's brilliant.” Jonas pulled himself away from the pages and tugged on her arm until she bent down and kissed him. “Oh, my beautiful votaress.” He said. Pressing into her wrist was a rubber band, like a chain bracelet with too few links. She must have picked it up somewhere.
“Something inspirational?”
“Yeah, though I wish it could have been mine.”
“It is yours. You bought the book didn't you. Now it's yours.”
“I don't think that counts.”
“You still haven't seen my necklace have you?”
“No. I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere. No big deal, right?” Jonas dropped his book into one of her bags, got up, and hugged her tightly.
“Right, no big deal,” she said, “it'll turn up.”
Jonas took the bags from her and led her into their house. “Nice day at work?”
“Yeah.” Alyssa turned and smiled at him, a toothy, loving smile. Something empty.
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