The Seary Line (22 page)

Splash. And he stood, a human stone on the side of the river, peeking through the faintest slit formed by his eyelids. She was in the water, the tree trying to hold her, trying to save her, hooked into the neck of her dress, suspending her. Face beneath the surface, eyes open. Water continued to rush over her, hair and dress flattened against her, body like a writhing fish. Undulating. The current yanked and jerked, wanting her, until the branch snapped with the pressure, and she jetted away, coursing down the river. Another pretty iridescent trail of blue and blonde and pink. There one instant, and stolen the next.

He sunk down into the muck, much of the grass still creased and dirty yellow. Scanning the length of the river, he saw no sign of the girl he had followed. No sign. His eyes traced that muddy trail out to the middle of the log, and he waited for her to reappear, to glide up the river, unflip, and reposition herself. He waited. And waited. Rocked on his heels, sucked the back of his wrist, and waited some
more. A bird swooped and dove over the spot, and he whimpered when he saw it. “I wants to fly, God,” he whispered. “Please, God. Let me just fly away.”

But he remained fixed by the river, stayed there until darkness turned the water black. Until a starless night made the world around him evaporate. Until men crunched through the woods behind him. Calling for Percy.

Someone lifted him, and he felt like air moving inside air. Scrawny body deflated with shame. A strong hand gripping the back of his head, pressing his crying face into a warm shirt that smelled like supper. And he was lulled by the cadence of a forest walk, stepping over roots and brave ferns, a rocking motion in the bed of someone's arms.

Truth drifting down onto him. “‘Tis okay, boy. You're all right. They got her. Downstream. Caught up in the old dam. What's left of it anyways.” Soft grass now beneath the man's feet, climbing up onto the lane. Closer to home, fog began to curl inwards, driving the scent of boiled vegetables from open windows closer to the ground. “You did the right thing, boy. Staying to the side.”

“I don't swim,” he whispered up into that bristly neck, bobbing adam's apple. “I didn't fight.”

“Don't matter. Water was crazed. You could swim to beyond and back, wouldn't make one speck of difference.” A few silent steps. “Besides, everyone idn't meant to be a fighter.”

“I should've–”

“Should've nothing, boy.” Deep breaths. “Don't go thinking too much about all this. Put it out of your mind.”

“All right.”

“Good boy. Some things got the power to change you. And your ways is too young to be set.”

That summer, when the river had tempered, men came
to clear away the fallen tree, chopping up and burning the marker, the place where that poor girl had drowned. Once again, during late afternoons when chores were finished, boys and girls played around the stream. While the girls dallied on the banks, water up to their ankles, wetting the bottoms of their dresses, boys dove in, crab-crawled along the bottom, held each other under, bobbed up sputtering and choking.

Sometimes he walked to the edge of the forest, sat down on a mossy rock, and watched the children. But he never went near the water. No one ever asked him to come closer and no one taunted him anymore about the girl he had claimed to love. The girl he maybe thought he did love.

Mid-July and while he looked on, a boy with fiery hair and skin doused with burnt orange freckles, disappeared beneath the rippling surface, then rose up, shot a stream of water from his lips, and held up his hand. Pinched between thumb and forefinger was a perfect glass ball. “Look! A peppermint swirlie,” the boy cried out. “Found it on the bottom. I's charmed today, fellers.” Then the boy waded through the water, found his trousers amongst the several slung over a branch near the shore, and tucked the treasure into his pocket, buttoned the flap.

As he watched the boy, he remembered: Bridgette, on the tree trunk, patting her pocket. Not a kiss she was offering at all. Not a kiss for him. But a marble, carefully made with twirls of red and blue, moving together but never touching. Escaped during the fall, leaving her pockets empty, pressed against her body as she traveled beyond.

That was his marble, he knew. His peppermint swirlie now possessed by someone else. He never said a word, didn't want to own it, even though he knew it was a gem among boys. But, if she had of given it to him, if that had of
happened, he would have held it in his palm, closed his fingers around it, cherished it. Her gift. He would have traded it for nothing.

“Dad?”

He heard her calling.

“Dad?”

And the river narrowed into a teardrop, trees that surrounded him shrank back into seeds. Scattered to the wind.

“Dad?”

Palm flipped upwards.

“I'm going to give you a little shave. Make you feel good.” Placing a towel across his chest, the woman massaged his cheeks and neck, scraped a warm blade across him. He lifted his chin, stretched his top lip, puffed out each cheek at the appropriate moments. While everything inside him was made of fog, he understood the motions for shaving, the correct way to lean, angle himself so that he escaped without a nick. Even though a nick was inconsequential, there was ridiculous pride in avoidance.

“All done.” She swiped his skin with a towel, then held up a round mirror, dull metal frame. “Still as handsome as ever, Dad.”

Was this his reflection? This man with yellowed skin and eyes nearly lost inside layers of wrinkles. Lips hidden, pulled in over gums. A strand of silver hair draped across his forehead. Each ear now so large, a bird might nest comfortably there. Who was this man? So disturbingly familiar. What's all this about?

He reached up to knock the mirror away, and she lay it on the shelf over his head.

The woman drew the blanket out from beneath his arm, then covered him up. Under the blanket, his hand continued to move, but she patted it, said, “Please, Dad, get some rest.”

But he tried to resist, he had more to say. Why was she trying to quiet him? This woman, who reminded him of someone he once knew. An onion and a rabbit. A pair of pampooties. A lungful of cool night air. Wind rustling through the trees, carrying off the scent of pine. Through the canopy, a distant twinkling star. Yes, something there, and although he couldn't quite reach it, he felt it all around him.

Hand to his cheek.

“You're so cold, Dad. Leander, close the back door. Check the windows. More wood on the fire.”

“Plenty warm in here, maid,” Leander replied as he moved about, doing as she'd said.

“I don't want no drafts.”

As she spoke, his lungs tightened, and his breathing moved to the very tip of his chest. He felt her fingers moving over his face, stroking his hair, and resting on the top of his head in the very spot where his bones had fused together as a baby. Inside, a newborn awe rinsed through him, and at the same time, he sensed a circle closing.

I'm going to fly now
.

“I knows, Dad.”

I can feel the bumps beneath my skin. Feathers poking through.

“I knows.”

Can I fly?

Another quilt piled, and his hand was silenced by the weight. He gradually closed his eyes, began to doze, and felt warmth on his cheeks. An angel's voice whispered, “There you go. A long rest'll do you good.” And he fell asleep, breeze fluttery against him, palm twisted upwards. A perpetual question.

In the months after Percy's death, Leander noticed that Stella had begun to act unusually. Several days in a row, he found her seated on a stool near the woodpile, axe in her hand and a mound of splits covering her feet. But she was not working, instead her top half was folded over her bottom half, and she was fast asleep. When he gently woke her, her face was a mess of reddened wrinkles, and he knew she had been dozing for a while.

On another occasion, he came in through the porch and found Stella on her knees, the lid of the salt pork bucket lifted, her head hanging inside, sniffing up lungfuls.

“Is there something in there?” he'd asked. “Something wrong with the bit of meat?”

“No,” she replied, and her voice inside the near-empty barrel was oddly hollow. “'Tis fine.”

“Is you counting what's left?”

“Nope.”

“Then what's you doing, missus?”

She lifted her head, and her face was pale but pleasant. “'Tis the smell. The brine and the blood and the wet wood. I could stay here all day gulping down that air.”

“Well, if that's all it is,” he'd joked, nudging her in the backside, “then you best stick your head right back down into it, and carry on. Don't let me stop you.”

Another time he found her seated at the kitchen table, bowl, flour, and starter before her, but no sign of any bread dough. She stared up at him, and there was a curious expression in her eyes. Something akin to guilt, but not quite. When he bent to kiss her, she coughed, powder exploding from her mouth. Her cheeks had been full of raw flour, and she was slowly swallowing it down.

“Couldn't help myself,” she'd said, wiping the corners of her lips on her apron. She ran her fingers through the dust now coating the table. “'Twas all I could think about.”

Early fall, and she took to wandering. When he walked to the top of the garden, he would see her trailing the edge of the cliff, stopping sometimes to look out over the water. Wind would tug at her dress and play with the helpless grass around her feet. Then she would find a path, and it always alarmed him, to see her descending, as though she were sinking straight into the sea.

Whenever he asked her where she went, she didn't have an answer. Only this most recent time, did she say, “Over to Devil's Hole.”

“You mean that place where youngsters play?”

“Yes.”

“God's Mouth.”

“No one calls it that no more, Leander.”

“Oh. What was you doing there?”

“Thinking.”

“About me, I bet.” He smiled, grabbed her hand.

“No. I don't think about you all the time, you know.”

“Almost though, right?” His arms encircled her waist, and he twirled her around the kitchen.

“Yes, almost.”

“Something on your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Something bad?”

“No. Something good.”

“Then why idn't you happy, maid?”

She hesitated, and her eyes watered. “Because good don't seem to last for me, Leander. Good don't never seem to last.”

“That's not the least bit true, maid. You and me together have had years of good. Years of it.”

“And I've gotten used to it.”

“Like you should.”

The next time he saw her walking, he watched her more closely. Her walk had changed, and she swayed from side to side ever so slightly as she meandered along the winding path. Each step was careful, as though a fear of tumbling over the edge had taken root. When she reached the point where she usually disappeared, she stopped, faced the sun, and lifted her arms up over her head. And that's when the wind helped him notice something he hadn't before. Gusts pushed and pulled at her loose dress, and Leander was surprised to see his usually thin wife had grown plump.

When he came in from the workshop for a lunch, the porch was a mess, sweaters and winter jackets mounded on the floor. His wife was seated in the kitchen, a bucket of warm sudsy water beside her. In her lap, she balanced the miniature tub.

“Lot of old dust,” she said, all business.

“Oh,” he replied, when he saw her cleaning the tub as gently as she might clean a baby. A jig played in his heart, and he began to dance. Even his bad foot couldn't contain itself. “Yes. Yes, yes. Old dust. We don't want none of that.”

After the baby was born, Leander crafted a miniature cradle from pale birch wood, carved a delicate set of wings into the head-piece. Warm afternoons, Stella placed the cradle on the back stoop, wrapped her daughter and laid her in. Cool salty air held the child in a state of calm, and the naps went on for hours.