In the Floating Days |
Issue 7
|
No mist that morning, none rising from the grass nor any on the low, green water of the valley pond, so the light which came through the window came purely and set itself upon Mary May's face in a hard streak. Arthur awoke to the thick, sweet smell of hot skin, a smell like rotting fruit. He kissed Mary May gently twice and, soon thereafter, pressed himself up, upon and against her, and touched her ear with his fingertip. Mary May lay still, considering the weight of Arthur's interest. "Get off," she whispered. "Get off, please." Arthur rolled away and sucked air deep into his abdomen, becoming momentarily round. He sighed.
"It's just that you have morning breath," said Mary May, chewing on her own thick spit. Arthur apologized and began fumbling casually with himself, not necessarily for pleasure but rather as a means of distraction. He'd been refused and his pride hurt. "I do, too," said Mary May, affecting sympathy. "I do, too. I need to drink some water." She stood, clothed herself in lovely clothes, and left without saying whether she'd be coming back to bed. Nine AM in the yellow valley and it was already 91 degrees outside. All the tomatoes in Arthur's small, fenced garden bore long, straight splits in the skin, and the leaves of squash were limp. Arthur, having already read from a book of local trivia and chipped away dirt from the paws of a white cat, carved a melon with a knife and ate it in its entirety. Mary May sat cross-legged on a bedsheet in the shade of an old sycamore, singing to herself a quiet hymn. Arthur went to Mary May across the lawn and praised her for having found such perfect shade. No spots of light. "It's hot," he said, pulling off his glasses and hooking them over the collar of his shirt. "That's why I'm outside. Sit with me. Make something." Mary May had remembered her embroidery supplies but forgotten other essentials at her apartment out west. A comfortable pillow, for one. A pair of durable jeans. Driving east across the plains, she’d draped yards of crisp beige toweling over the cat crate to keep the cats quiet. This was several months ago, springtime. Arthur had sent pictures of bluebells in bloom, an irresistible duvet of color. Mary May hadn’t meant to stay so long. Now she stretched for Arthur a piece of cloth over a wooden hoop and stabbed at it once or twice to show the way it's done, her needle quick and precise, then she returned to her own project without speaking. A buzzard hopped back and forth across the tin roof of a nearby corn crib, tapping, scraping, its feet hot. A wasp dragged a fat spider up the side of a tall tree then dropped it and began again from the ground. "This will be a stone," said Mary May, her finger beside a pretty knot. "And this will be a lily pad with a frog on top, like you'd see in an old illustration." Bright jewels of sweat clung to Mary May's chin then dropped and blotched the cloth she pricked. Arthur watched them fall. So attractive, he thought, how they glittered and strobed pink and bright, brilliant white, even in such perfect shade. Some time later, Mary May folded her knees under herself, packed up her things and stood straight. |
CORY CROUSER
is a writer and professional photographer based in Virginia's Blue Ridge. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. His work frequently explores questions relating to social responsibility, problematic complacency, and unintentional harm. Cory shares a small cabin on a modest number of forested acres with his partner, Emily, and their two cats, Kisa and Toaster. He was born and raised in Troutdale, Oregon. |
A glider a mile high passed in front of the sun and the whole world blinked. Arthur stood in a doorway and watched the plane disappear behind a dark ridge. There was a small tin house barely visible on the ridgeline, a rusty shadow inside a tangle of laurel and brushy oak. He said, "Byrd's probably dead up there. Cooked all the way through."
"No," said Mary May. "He's fine. I saw him last week, walking. His clothes were bad from moths. Maybe you'll cut some cedar and leave it when you leave the rent."
Although Arthur had some time ago offered, Mary May's name was not yet on the lease. She would live with a husband, she'd reminded Arthur, and no one else.
Ten AM, a fan spun noisily in the house, grating with each rotation. Mary May stood atop a dining chair and poked at the thing with her finger, and Arthur stood nearby. "Its weight's uneven. That's why it's wobbling," she said. "It'll break. It'll tear itself apart. Turn it off, Art. Or turn it down."
Outside, two hummingbirds jabbed at one another, both pretty. They climbed to great heights and came back down to quickly circle a bottle of nectar like motorcyclists in a globe. "If I catch one I'll pluck a feather from its back," said Arthur, switching off the fan, looking out the window. "I'll carve the tip fine and then I'll have the world's finest pen. The world's finest pen..."
"That's dumb," said Mary May with a quick, unplanned smile.
"It's punny. It's a pun!" A fraction of a smile lingered on Arthur's own face. "The world's finest pen." It lingered awhile.
"Help me down," said Mary May, offering her hand. "I don't think that's a pun."
Windchimes dangled still and lifeless, like a picture of windchimes. Both the cats slept. Arthur, at the table, oiled an old gun and held it straight out like a French soldier, and Mary May watched. He put it back behind a book of poems on a shelf. The sky was deep blue and far away. Water charged up underneath a nearby hill and poured out from between the roots of an ancient sycamore, thereafter flowing several miles down a dusty crease into the James River, and finally mixing with the waters of the Chesapeake. Arthur liked to think about that.
At eleven AM, Mary May left to walk in a far field, returning in less than an hour with fistfuls of green thistle and sprigs of dry goldenrod. She prepared the more robust cuttings for a small vase, tousling the greenery and setting the vase on a sill. Ants, everywhere. Arthur called Mary May childish and naïve and Mary May walked off like she'd done earlier, lips pursed.
His head against the headboard of a bed in a room shaped like a casket, a coffer of a room with walls of unfinished chestnut and a low triptych ceiling, Arthur read alone: Deer synthesize hydrochloric acid from salt. This chemical assists in their digestion of fibrous plant material. Whitetails, in the last part of fall when the grasses are tough and the leaves are largely gone, oftentimes forsake the cover and relative safety of the woods in a frenzied search for the nutrient. They gather together in farmers' fields to comingle and lick blocks of it. Although baiting deer in this way is unlawful (VA DGIF v. Byrd), the practice of depositing saltlicks in open areas and harvesting animals in pairs (one doe, one buck, ostensibly to maintain balance in the greater population) is considered by some a very efficient means of securing food for the winter. It dates back generations in Virginia's Blue Ridge. Some hunters claim to have harvested both doe and buck with a single round by taking them together in the act of coupling.
Mary May sat on the porch painting a painting of a dog named George, whom she'd invented for a children's story. She dipped her brush in and in and in again to a cup of murky water, although the colors she put down were still pure. George, for instance, was Gamboge Yellow. He was in the air, held at arm's length by a girl named Alice who looked a good deal like Mary May, with evergreen eyes and thin limbs. George's expression was enigmatic and Mary May reworked the dog's face a number of times before allowing this painting could be, if it failed to be right, something of a rough draft.
"I'm sorry," said Arthur.
"For what?" said Mary May, in the kitchen washing plates with a long bamboo brush.
"I heard steps yesterday when you were gone at work," said Mary May later, admitting something that made her feel silly. "They came in through the front door and went down the hall. I thought it was you, home early. They sounded like your steps although I know they weren't. I looked and you weren't there. There wasn't anyone."
"Well," said Arthur.
"It made me question myself."
"I thought I saw a woman standing at the shed door once," said Arthur. "I'd been working in the yard, though, and it was really hot."
"It wasn't anyone?"
"It's been so hot," said Arthur. "We need to make sure we're drinking lots of water. People see and hear things when they're hot." He added, "No ghosts."
"I never said ghost," said Mary May, feeling silly.
Twelve, noon. A large mantis clung to a tall sunflower beside a bird feeder and pulled apart a housefly. A vole cut a dandelion and ate it without hurry. Purple clouds appeared in the east, tall and quiet, just like they'd done for days and days and days.
At 1 PM, Mary May's hair clung to her forehead and her cheek. She was slung between a persimmon and a fragrant sassafras tree beside the low green pond in a woven hammock, singing quietly to herself:
"No," said Mary May. "He's fine. I saw him last week, walking. His clothes were bad from moths. Maybe you'll cut some cedar and leave it when you leave the rent."
Although Arthur had some time ago offered, Mary May's name was not yet on the lease. She would live with a husband, she'd reminded Arthur, and no one else.
Ten AM, a fan spun noisily in the house, grating with each rotation. Mary May stood atop a dining chair and poked at the thing with her finger, and Arthur stood nearby. "Its weight's uneven. That's why it's wobbling," she said. "It'll break. It'll tear itself apart. Turn it off, Art. Or turn it down."
Outside, two hummingbirds jabbed at one another, both pretty. They climbed to great heights and came back down to quickly circle a bottle of nectar like motorcyclists in a globe. "If I catch one I'll pluck a feather from its back," said Arthur, switching off the fan, looking out the window. "I'll carve the tip fine and then I'll have the world's finest pen. The world's finest pen..."
"That's dumb," said Mary May with a quick, unplanned smile.
"It's punny. It's a pun!" A fraction of a smile lingered on Arthur's own face. "The world's finest pen." It lingered awhile.
"Help me down," said Mary May, offering her hand. "I don't think that's a pun."
Windchimes dangled still and lifeless, like a picture of windchimes. Both the cats slept. Arthur, at the table, oiled an old gun and held it straight out like a French soldier, and Mary May watched. He put it back behind a book of poems on a shelf. The sky was deep blue and far away. Water charged up underneath a nearby hill and poured out from between the roots of an ancient sycamore, thereafter flowing several miles down a dusty crease into the James River, and finally mixing with the waters of the Chesapeake. Arthur liked to think about that.
At eleven AM, Mary May left to walk in a far field, returning in less than an hour with fistfuls of green thistle and sprigs of dry goldenrod. She prepared the more robust cuttings for a small vase, tousling the greenery and setting the vase on a sill. Ants, everywhere. Arthur called Mary May childish and naïve and Mary May walked off like she'd done earlier, lips pursed.
His head against the headboard of a bed in a room shaped like a casket, a coffer of a room with walls of unfinished chestnut and a low triptych ceiling, Arthur read alone: Deer synthesize hydrochloric acid from salt. This chemical assists in their digestion of fibrous plant material. Whitetails, in the last part of fall when the grasses are tough and the leaves are largely gone, oftentimes forsake the cover and relative safety of the woods in a frenzied search for the nutrient. They gather together in farmers' fields to comingle and lick blocks of it. Although baiting deer in this way is unlawful (VA DGIF v. Byrd), the practice of depositing saltlicks in open areas and harvesting animals in pairs (one doe, one buck, ostensibly to maintain balance in the greater population) is considered by some a very efficient means of securing food for the winter. It dates back generations in Virginia's Blue Ridge. Some hunters claim to have harvested both doe and buck with a single round by taking them together in the act of coupling.
Mary May sat on the porch painting a painting of a dog named George, whom she'd invented for a children's story. She dipped her brush in and in and in again to a cup of murky water, although the colors she put down were still pure. George, for instance, was Gamboge Yellow. He was in the air, held at arm's length by a girl named Alice who looked a good deal like Mary May, with evergreen eyes and thin limbs. George's expression was enigmatic and Mary May reworked the dog's face a number of times before allowing this painting could be, if it failed to be right, something of a rough draft.
"I'm sorry," said Arthur.
"For what?" said Mary May, in the kitchen washing plates with a long bamboo brush.
"I heard steps yesterday when you were gone at work," said Mary May later, admitting something that made her feel silly. "They came in through the front door and went down the hall. I thought it was you, home early. They sounded like your steps although I know they weren't. I looked and you weren't there. There wasn't anyone."
"Well," said Arthur.
"It made me question myself."
"I thought I saw a woman standing at the shed door once," said Arthur. "I'd been working in the yard, though, and it was really hot."
"It wasn't anyone?"
"It's been so hot," said Arthur. "We need to make sure we're drinking lots of water. People see and hear things when they're hot." He added, "No ghosts."
"I never said ghost," said Mary May, feeling silly.
Twelve, noon. A large mantis clung to a tall sunflower beside a bird feeder and pulled apart a housefly. A vole cut a dandelion and ate it without hurry. Purple clouds appeared in the east, tall and quiet, just like they'd done for days and days and days.
At 1 PM, Mary May's hair clung to her forehead and her cheek. She was slung between a persimmon and a fragrant sassafras tree beside the low green pond in a woven hammock, singing quietly to herself:
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art Thou my best Thought, by day or by night Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light Be Thou my Wis-- |
"Do you want to go floating?" Arthur yelled, although Mary May thought he'd just been a raven on the hill, crying. "On the James in a while?
"Oh!" said Mary May, finally sitting up, her abs shaking against gravity. "When?"
"There's a storm coming through. You should come inside. We can eat early. Please—" Arthur scrubbed sweat from his forehead with his shirt, "Will you bring some corn when you come in, please? If you pick the last on any given stalk, stomp on it. The stalk, not the corn."
Mary May agreed and reveled in the thought of flowing water, cooler than the water of the pond, and so much clearer. August was humid, its air like hot breath.
"When would we go?" said Mary May.
"When will we go," Arthur insisted. "After dinner."
The pair ate tortilla chips with salsa made from garden things, sweet silvery corn and fat round red onions and red peppers so hot they both wheezed. Mary May drank water and Arthur had a glass of chilled Merlot, a choice Mary May considered irreverent. "Profane," she said. The refrigerator cycled on and off again, humming for a moment then quieting down. "You shouldn't drink it cold."
Mary May watched one episode of her show and then another, and the storm rolled through with its loud drumming thunder. Rains veiled the hills and the fields and muddied up the forest paths; veins of pale red water cascading everywhere were shaped like lightning. Arthur flicked on a lamp and the lamp went out. "Power's out," he announced. The filament inside the lightbulb ticked like a clock. Soot colored the interior surface of the glass.
And the rain beat loudly on the old tin roof of the porch, and outside the windchimes chimed wildly, as if played by a child. The white cat squeezed itself into Mary May's box of art supplies and pissed inside it. The gray cat trembled on the rug where it lay.
Arthur walked up behind Mary May sitting at the table and covered her ears with his hands, and he tipped back her head, supporting its weight. Mary May looked up but she did not mirror Arthur’s comfortable expression and she did not seem to know he meant to kiss her mouth. Instead, she gazed past him at the ceiling and busied herself counting water stains in its mismatched boards, several of which looked like faces, one a bit like Arthur's, another somewhat like hers. In a taut voice she said, "Byrd really should come paint."
Arthur kissed Mary May's forehead instead of her lips, savoring the flavor of her salt and her oil, and then he let her face go and went off to find the white cat, and Mary May smiled to know she would kiss him back so ferociously someday, like a thirsty animal; that she would take his head into her hands like a precious cup and drink finally without sin. She grinned, ecstatic.
The white cat was in Mary May's box of George art. Arthur cleaned the piss as best he could and chastised the cat impatiently, using words like euthanize, walking loudly up and down the hall with hard, angry steps. He slammed a cupboard door. Then he found his bleach-stained swim shorts in the laundry and put them on, as the storm had passed over and the sun was out again, and bright, and there wasn't much sense staying inside without electricity—not without a fan or lights to read by.
Arthur inflated Mary May's tube with a cheap electric pump that overheated toward the end of the process and began to smoke, and then he inflated his own, too, sucking air deep into his lungs and blowing until he was faint. Mary May watched from the lawn, the fine hairs atop her ears bleaching in the sun. Arthur blew, and when he was finally done he slurped foam from the lip of a dark bottle and packed several more bottles in a small, Styrofoam box which he carried under one arm past Mary May to the car, clicking his tongue as he walked, his bare feet squeaking on the grass.
"Do you want to leave your car or mine at the bottom?" said Mary May.
"Yours," said Arthur. "Your upholstery is darker and the mud won't show up. It'll be easier to clean."
Mary May said Arthur’s reasoning seemed selfish. Arthur shrugged and agreed.
Five PM. The river was swollen and brown and pregnant with debris, with long and small sticks which Arthur claimed he could use to catch trout, if only he had a reel, a hook and some line. A green heron shot by, low over the swift brown water, and set itself down on an enormous mat of floating trash. A turtle tipped itself off a stone and bubbled away. Mary May walked into the water beside the muddy bank and, when the water reached her hips and navel, gasped sharply for the quick chill, so invigorating, so different from the valley air which seemed to hang even more oppressively now, after the rain.
"It's hard to breathe," said Arthur, commiserating.
"Did you remember sunscreen?" said Mary May.
"No, but I'm keeping on my shirt."
Mary May sat reclined in her round tube, a picture of a Roman lady, and Arthur pushed her out into the riffles before situating himself and following. She paddled toward the river channel over shallow boulders slick with algae and called for Arthur once the current finally took her, to tell him first that it really was a lovely day for floating despite the high water, and also that she loved him a great deal, a buoyant, spontaneous thing to say inspired by the romance of the river. Arthur heard but didn't say anything—he smiled, is all. Mary May decided he hadn't heard.
And then she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the valley, the birdsong and the daytime crickets, the rippling of the river against itself and the gravelly thuds of stones tumbling below, like thunder far away, like cannons. There were the lulling sounds of faraway cars, swooshing down the valley's roads. She slept, the sun warm on her face. She dreamed of dancing. A toad growled. A raven called. A train whistled in the far distance, and all the world seemed right.
Mary May thrashed upriver screaming Arthur’s name, crashing through dense vegetation up along the long, crumbling riverbank, her feet heavy with mud and wattled grass, seed ticks suctioning blood from her eyelids and her groin, blood made tart and rich with stress. "Art!" she screamed, and stayed the night beside his car, crisscross and hunched over her legs in a patch of gravel, colorless moonlight pressing on her neck, sharp stones lodging deep in the soft, wet skin of her face.
Soon, everyone flew in from out west. Mary May's parents came from California and Arthur's father only, from Oregon.
The second day of the search was bright and blue with a quality of light and a cool breeze that suggested fall wasn't far off, now. All the leaves in the crowns of the trees were dry and trembling in the newcome breeze. Mary May, her parents, and Arthur's father walked mile after mile with Land Crew 2, their legs becoming torn open and red. Mary May's voice was soon gone from hollering and people complained of thorns and poisonous plants. When it was dark she kept at it alone.
In the morning, everyone but Mary May had on jeans and leather gloves, and the chief of Land Crew 2 gave a short, encouraging speech, his voice echoing off the river’s ledges. "Today," he said, "Today's the day." And Arthur's father remained optimistic, too, thanking anyone able to look him square in the eye, explaining that Arthur had always been a capable swimmer and Oh, I’d say pretty damn industrious! when faced with difficulty.
"A night in the woods is nothing," he'd say. "Arty was a Boy Scout. Arty was a Boy Scout," he’d whisper to himself.
The James in the days following was calm and perfectly clear, with just a few yellow poplar leaves turning easy pirouettes on its surface. A drone pilot said to Mary May that the rocks below the water looked as if they were just on the other side of a pane of glass, and although he’d meant only to praise the good conditions, his words terrified Mary May, who had begun to suspect finding Arthur would be somehow worse than not. Still, at the end of the day, when all the divers stood together in small rings and shook their heads side to side, Mary May burst between them and pushed them around and called them idle, singling out and grabbing by the wrist a man who that morning had arrived early. "It's still light," she said with the hard intensity and conviction of a preacher, "Do your fucking job." Mary May's mother was embarrassed that she’d sworn, but much too tired to step in.
In the end, everyone simply offered to pray for Mary May, and for Arthur's father. Land Crew 4 eventually found Arthur's tube, and although it was still largely full of air, unpopped, nobody made a fuss. Arthur's shirt was miles farther downstream, discovered wrapped around a submerged sycamore root by a scout boy in a canoe, rippling like a white flag a few feet below the iridescent plane of the water. The boy had fished it up through a leafy slick of grease, and the grease had dried and turned the fabric brown. Mary May received it without ceremony. And she was given back the tube, too, still bulging with air.
Mary May took over the lease on the house in the yellow valley. The sun came flat through the windows and the windchimes outside every so often chimed.
Soon there were wildfires out west and weird red skies overhead, and Mary May's parents returned home, both of them tired and neither comfortable anymore so far away from their house. Over and over they said dry grass. Dry grass, they said, and left.
Arthur's father stayed to help Mary May arrange the last of Arthur's things in the shed, pushing around Rubbermaids filled with miscellanea and boxing up clothes and hanging trash bags stuffed with linens from sharp hooks originally meant for hanging meat. He swallowed his tears and tried sincerely at conversation when Mary May was nearby, but when she went away he cried without stopping, like a spring.
Once, there in the shed, Arthur's father bit the plastic nipple of Arthur's tube and hugged it in his arms, his boy’s stale breath hissing out into his own mouth. Mary May appeared from nowhere, barefooted, and snatched the tube away like an angry animal; she stood somewhat bent over, trembling, her eyes up and sharp as pins and, clumsily replacing the tube’s rubber stop, she lifted a bare foot up off a sharp metal prong in the floor and inhaled with a stutter through her nose. The prong vibrated and rang like a bell. Arthur's father said nothing of the painful chip in his tooth and eventually went home, hugging Mary May at the airport as quickly and loosely as he could, his hands fists against her back. Goodbye, Goodbye.
On the plane, squinting, looking east over the ridges and the hills and the gray-shifted valleys, and noticing the James set down like bent wire, reflecting sun all along its length, all the way to the Chesapeake, he tongued his jagged tooth and tucked his chin into the collar of his shirt, and then he went to sleep.
The tube remained in the shed, half empty, now.
Nights went by quickly and without event, the odd screech owl screeching. Mary May was more tired than she'd ever been before. The house was cool because the nights were cool and the gray cat slept beside her on the big bed, purring.
Days, though, seemed to stretch into eternity, pulled at either end by grief. Mary May’s neck clicked. She took long detours from place to place in the house without knowing why, ate from jars at the back of the refrigerator, sat on the cold wood floor with her knees pulled in. Once or twice she kicked the white cat without apology. And she stood countless hours by the shed door like a loyal guard, holding her breath deep inside her chest, lungs spasming, lips gray as old beef, her gaze tunneling into empty space. Dim evenings, she read from Arthur's favorite book of poems:
"Oh!" said Mary May, finally sitting up, her abs shaking against gravity. "When?"
"There's a storm coming through. You should come inside. We can eat early. Please—" Arthur scrubbed sweat from his forehead with his shirt, "Will you bring some corn when you come in, please? If you pick the last on any given stalk, stomp on it. The stalk, not the corn."
Mary May agreed and reveled in the thought of flowing water, cooler than the water of the pond, and so much clearer. August was humid, its air like hot breath.
"When would we go?" said Mary May.
"When will we go," Arthur insisted. "After dinner."
The pair ate tortilla chips with salsa made from garden things, sweet silvery corn and fat round red onions and red peppers so hot they both wheezed. Mary May drank water and Arthur had a glass of chilled Merlot, a choice Mary May considered irreverent. "Profane," she said. The refrigerator cycled on and off again, humming for a moment then quieting down. "You shouldn't drink it cold."
Mary May watched one episode of her show and then another, and the storm rolled through with its loud drumming thunder. Rains veiled the hills and the fields and muddied up the forest paths; veins of pale red water cascading everywhere were shaped like lightning. Arthur flicked on a lamp and the lamp went out. "Power's out," he announced. The filament inside the lightbulb ticked like a clock. Soot colored the interior surface of the glass.
And the rain beat loudly on the old tin roof of the porch, and outside the windchimes chimed wildly, as if played by a child. The white cat squeezed itself into Mary May's box of art supplies and pissed inside it. The gray cat trembled on the rug where it lay.
Arthur walked up behind Mary May sitting at the table and covered her ears with his hands, and he tipped back her head, supporting its weight. Mary May looked up but she did not mirror Arthur’s comfortable expression and she did not seem to know he meant to kiss her mouth. Instead, she gazed past him at the ceiling and busied herself counting water stains in its mismatched boards, several of which looked like faces, one a bit like Arthur's, another somewhat like hers. In a taut voice she said, "Byrd really should come paint."
Arthur kissed Mary May's forehead instead of her lips, savoring the flavor of her salt and her oil, and then he let her face go and went off to find the white cat, and Mary May smiled to know she would kiss him back so ferociously someday, like a thirsty animal; that she would take his head into her hands like a precious cup and drink finally without sin. She grinned, ecstatic.
The white cat was in Mary May's box of George art. Arthur cleaned the piss as best he could and chastised the cat impatiently, using words like euthanize, walking loudly up and down the hall with hard, angry steps. He slammed a cupboard door. Then he found his bleach-stained swim shorts in the laundry and put them on, as the storm had passed over and the sun was out again, and bright, and there wasn't much sense staying inside without electricity—not without a fan or lights to read by.
Arthur inflated Mary May's tube with a cheap electric pump that overheated toward the end of the process and began to smoke, and then he inflated his own, too, sucking air deep into his lungs and blowing until he was faint. Mary May watched from the lawn, the fine hairs atop her ears bleaching in the sun. Arthur blew, and when he was finally done he slurped foam from the lip of a dark bottle and packed several more bottles in a small, Styrofoam box which he carried under one arm past Mary May to the car, clicking his tongue as he walked, his bare feet squeaking on the grass.
"Do you want to leave your car or mine at the bottom?" said Mary May.
"Yours," said Arthur. "Your upholstery is darker and the mud won't show up. It'll be easier to clean."
Mary May said Arthur’s reasoning seemed selfish. Arthur shrugged and agreed.
Five PM. The river was swollen and brown and pregnant with debris, with long and small sticks which Arthur claimed he could use to catch trout, if only he had a reel, a hook and some line. A green heron shot by, low over the swift brown water, and set itself down on an enormous mat of floating trash. A turtle tipped itself off a stone and bubbled away. Mary May walked into the water beside the muddy bank and, when the water reached her hips and navel, gasped sharply for the quick chill, so invigorating, so different from the valley air which seemed to hang even more oppressively now, after the rain.
"It's hard to breathe," said Arthur, commiserating.
"Did you remember sunscreen?" said Mary May.
"No, but I'm keeping on my shirt."
Mary May sat reclined in her round tube, a picture of a Roman lady, and Arthur pushed her out into the riffles before situating himself and following. She paddled toward the river channel over shallow boulders slick with algae and called for Arthur once the current finally took her, to tell him first that it really was a lovely day for floating despite the high water, and also that she loved him a great deal, a buoyant, spontaneous thing to say inspired by the romance of the river. Arthur heard but didn't say anything—he smiled, is all. Mary May decided he hadn't heard.
And then she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the valley, the birdsong and the daytime crickets, the rippling of the river against itself and the gravelly thuds of stones tumbling below, like thunder far away, like cannons. There were the lulling sounds of faraway cars, swooshing down the valley's roads. She slept, the sun warm on her face. She dreamed of dancing. A toad growled. A raven called. A train whistled in the far distance, and all the world seemed right.
Mary May thrashed upriver screaming Arthur’s name, crashing through dense vegetation up along the long, crumbling riverbank, her feet heavy with mud and wattled grass, seed ticks suctioning blood from her eyelids and her groin, blood made tart and rich with stress. "Art!" she screamed, and stayed the night beside his car, crisscross and hunched over her legs in a patch of gravel, colorless moonlight pressing on her neck, sharp stones lodging deep in the soft, wet skin of her face.
Soon, everyone flew in from out west. Mary May's parents came from California and Arthur's father only, from Oregon.
The second day of the search was bright and blue with a quality of light and a cool breeze that suggested fall wasn't far off, now. All the leaves in the crowns of the trees were dry and trembling in the newcome breeze. Mary May, her parents, and Arthur's father walked mile after mile with Land Crew 2, their legs becoming torn open and red. Mary May's voice was soon gone from hollering and people complained of thorns and poisonous plants. When it was dark she kept at it alone.
In the morning, everyone but Mary May had on jeans and leather gloves, and the chief of Land Crew 2 gave a short, encouraging speech, his voice echoing off the river’s ledges. "Today," he said, "Today's the day." And Arthur's father remained optimistic, too, thanking anyone able to look him square in the eye, explaining that Arthur had always been a capable swimmer and Oh, I’d say pretty damn industrious! when faced with difficulty.
"A night in the woods is nothing," he'd say. "Arty was a Boy Scout. Arty was a Boy Scout," he’d whisper to himself.
The James in the days following was calm and perfectly clear, with just a few yellow poplar leaves turning easy pirouettes on its surface. A drone pilot said to Mary May that the rocks below the water looked as if they were just on the other side of a pane of glass, and although he’d meant only to praise the good conditions, his words terrified Mary May, who had begun to suspect finding Arthur would be somehow worse than not. Still, at the end of the day, when all the divers stood together in small rings and shook their heads side to side, Mary May burst between them and pushed them around and called them idle, singling out and grabbing by the wrist a man who that morning had arrived early. "It's still light," she said with the hard intensity and conviction of a preacher, "Do your fucking job." Mary May's mother was embarrassed that she’d sworn, but much too tired to step in.
In the end, everyone simply offered to pray for Mary May, and for Arthur's father. Land Crew 4 eventually found Arthur's tube, and although it was still largely full of air, unpopped, nobody made a fuss. Arthur's shirt was miles farther downstream, discovered wrapped around a submerged sycamore root by a scout boy in a canoe, rippling like a white flag a few feet below the iridescent plane of the water. The boy had fished it up through a leafy slick of grease, and the grease had dried and turned the fabric brown. Mary May received it without ceremony. And she was given back the tube, too, still bulging with air.
Mary May took over the lease on the house in the yellow valley. The sun came flat through the windows and the windchimes outside every so often chimed.
Soon there were wildfires out west and weird red skies overhead, and Mary May's parents returned home, both of them tired and neither comfortable anymore so far away from their house. Over and over they said dry grass. Dry grass, they said, and left.
Arthur's father stayed to help Mary May arrange the last of Arthur's things in the shed, pushing around Rubbermaids filled with miscellanea and boxing up clothes and hanging trash bags stuffed with linens from sharp hooks originally meant for hanging meat. He swallowed his tears and tried sincerely at conversation when Mary May was nearby, but when she went away he cried without stopping, like a spring.
Once, there in the shed, Arthur's father bit the plastic nipple of Arthur's tube and hugged it in his arms, his boy’s stale breath hissing out into his own mouth. Mary May appeared from nowhere, barefooted, and snatched the tube away like an angry animal; she stood somewhat bent over, trembling, her eyes up and sharp as pins and, clumsily replacing the tube’s rubber stop, she lifted a bare foot up off a sharp metal prong in the floor and inhaled with a stutter through her nose. The prong vibrated and rang like a bell. Arthur's father said nothing of the painful chip in his tooth and eventually went home, hugging Mary May at the airport as quickly and loosely as he could, his hands fists against her back. Goodbye, Goodbye.
On the plane, squinting, looking east over the ridges and the hills and the gray-shifted valleys, and noticing the James set down like bent wire, reflecting sun all along its length, all the way to the Chesapeake, he tongued his jagged tooth and tucked his chin into the collar of his shirt, and then he went to sleep.
The tube remained in the shed, half empty, now.
Nights went by quickly and without event, the odd screech owl screeching. Mary May was more tired than she'd ever been before. The house was cool because the nights were cool and the gray cat slept beside her on the big bed, purring.
Days, though, seemed to stretch into eternity, pulled at either end by grief. Mary May’s neck clicked. She took long detours from place to place in the house without knowing why, ate from jars at the back of the refrigerator, sat on the cold wood floor with her knees pulled in. Once or twice she kicked the white cat without apology. And she stood countless hours by the shed door like a loyal guard, holding her breath deep inside her chest, lungs spasming, lips gray as old beef, her gaze tunneling into empty space. Dim evenings, she read from Arthur's favorite book of poems:
The high tide which first heaved me ashore
is wetting these long-seasoned shoulder blades again remembering my salt-- reconciliation, reconciliation. Amen. |
And the pumpkins in Arthur's garden cured duly on the vine, bright orange in the frosty grass like small suns setting or rising up. Mary May forgot them so they turned soft and were eaten by vermin. There were snails on the porch chairs, shells brushed with rime. There were papery spiders in Mary May's shoes. Deer grazed in the far field and geese came for a while to the pond, rising up each morning at first light and flying in high formation over the valley, but soon the pond froze over entirely and the geese left, and Mary May felt lonelier than before. For several days thereafter she licked away her tears and savored the taste. Oftentimes she gagged. There were clouds in low gray bands across the sky, like pleated cloth. There were books tossed rudely on the rug. Mary May held the gun like Arthur did, and then she held it her own way.
...Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all. |
People within earshot thought Theodore Byrd, alone atop the ridge, finally did what he'd always said he'd someday do again—kill two deer at once. People felt strangely about Byrd so they kept quiet.