These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  “You know the difference,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She arched her back in a stretch, staring at me.

  “You know.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “It means you know whether you had a dream or are remembering things. And if you’re pretending not to know, it’s probably because you know it’s a memory you don’t want to be true.” By the end of my little speech, I wasn’t smiling anymore.

  She stared at me for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to laugh me off or accept my wisdom. The flat line of her mouth wrenched to the side in reluctant agreement. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  I nodded. Now I really wanted to hear about it. I decided asking wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I stooped down beside her and kept working. Kept trying to find those invisible beans.

  The garden was one of my favorite things about the village. We called it a garden, but that didn’t do it justice. It stretched the entire width of the town and at least fifty yards into the plains. By that point, we didn’t use nearly the entire space anymore, not all at once. When the village had been full, there were fifteen or twenty people out there working every day, tilling up the ground and planting and weeding and harvesting. But as the village dwindled down to the nine of us, we no longer needed the entire space. Pretty much everyone helped from time to time, even Miss B, although she found it slower going.

  I loved the garden because it reminded me of us, of how we were making our way on our own, how we didn’t need anyone else. It was a picture of this new life we had created outside of the mountain. I didn’t know why anyone would ever want to leave the garden, the food, the space that was so entirely ours.

  I stuck another bean in my mouth, then coughed and spit it out. “That one doesn’t taste right.” It had a bitterness to it, an underlying wrongness to the flavor.

  Miho was troubled, and at first I thought she was still dwelling on her memory, but there was something else. “Something’s strange about the plants,” she said, clearly puzzled.

  “Strange? What do you mean?”

  “Look around. The newest batch of pepper plants hasn’t been growing properly, and the tomatoes aren’t ripening.” She pointed at a line of plants where the tomatoes had emerged from the blossoms, but they were tiny and pale green. She pointed at the bean plants. “Same with these. And the corn is a total loss.”

  “A total loss?” I asked.

  She nodded and wiped sweat from her forehead, leaving a streak of brown dirt. “The plants grew okay, but there are no ears on the stalks.”

  I walked over and held out my hand so the stalks tickled my palms. A wind rushed through and set them whispering. She was right. There were no ears growing, at least none that I could see.

  The sense of premonition that had been low-grade bothering me ever since I welcomed that woman into my home simmered into questions. And there was the welling up of fear again, like indigestion. I pushed it down, walking back over to Miho. I reached up and wiped the dirt from her forehead. She stood patiently while I did it, even closing her eyes slightly.

  “I need to go talk to Abe,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” I paused. “I had a strange dream too.”

  She gave a wry smile. “A dream or a memory?”

  I chuckled and admitted, “A memory.”

  “About your brother?”

  I nodded. She took in a deep breath. Sighed. But she didn’t say anything.

  “I’m going.” I spun around on my heel in the dirt, looking over my shoulder to see if she had changed her mind, if we could swap tales of what life was like for each of us before the mountain.

  But she only replied, “Okay,” picking more beans and dropping them in the basket, then dragging the basket farther along the row.

  I picked my way carefully out of the garden and back to the houses.

  I had to talk to Abe, but there were so many things to discuss I didn’t know where I would start.

  6 More Secrets

  I WENT BACK up onto the greenway, walked along it for a short distance before cutting between the houses toward Abe’s. The previous night’s rain had left everything feeling very green and fresh and new, and anything in the shadows was still wet. I could almost make myself believe that Mary wasn’t actually leaving, that nothing was changing, that today was like any other day since I had come from the mountain. It was a short walk to Abe’s house, tucked away as it was among a thick cluster of now-empty houses, but even in that short distance I made a lot of progress in self-deception.

  Mary will change her mind.

  She’s not going to leave.

  Nothing is going to change.

  In front of me was a house that looked more like a small compound, as if three or four cottages had somehow been pushed together into one. Each section was made of a different material—stucco and brick and wood and stone—while the roof was one long stretch of thatch, the color of slate and brittle as brush ready to be burned.

  Even though the after-storm weather was cool, all of Abe’s windows were open. I smelled coffee brewing, and I knew there would be a whisper of a breeze moving around inside the house. If the breeze made the house too cool, he’d start the fire rather than close the windows. I glanced up at the chimney but didn’t see any smoke. I wondered if he was home, and a kind of relief filled me at the thought of walking away without talking about any of these new developments.

  But voices murmured through the open windows. Should I knock on the door and interrupt the conversation? Should I go away and come back later? I stood there for a moment, feeling the breeze, taking in the blue sky and the shadows cast by all the little houses around me. Carefully, quietly, I walked over to the side of Abe’s house, sat down under one of the windows, and listened.

  “It will be sad not having you around,” Abe said, his voice deep and comforting.

  Silence settled in the house. Had they heard me? My face flushed with embarrassment at even the thought of being caught eavesdropping. No one did this. No one. There was no reason to. If you wanted to know something, to hear something, to talk about something, you simply asked. But I thought about the memories we were recovering, how we were holding things back. Something was different in our town. Something was changing.

  “I have one other thing I’d like to talk about,” Mary said, so quietly I had to turn my ear up toward the window to catch her words.

  “I thought you might,” Abe said, and I could imagine the kind smile on his face. He was so receptive that it felt like you could tell him just about anything, confess to any possible sin, any act committed or omitted.

  I heard something that sounded like Mary standing up from the couch and walking around the room. When she spoke, her voice had an airy quality to it. The breeze picked up, and all around me the grass bent low and made a gentle whooshing sound, nearly drowning out her voice. But not quite.

  “I remembered something a few days ago. And it . . .” She paused. “It helped me. That’s why I’m ready to leave. Because of what I remembered.”

  Abe didn’t say anything. He knew when to speak and when to wait.

  “It was my father,” she said. “I had a memory of my father. He was old in this memory, with white hair and deep wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. They were happy wrinkles, though, the kind that stick around after decades of smiling.” She laughed quietly, and I could tell it was laughter mixed with crying. “I haven’t had memories of him before. I don’t know what he was like when I was a child, but I like to make things up, you know? I like to pretend. But this memory wasn’t pretend. This was real. It happened.”

  I stared up into the sky. My heartbeat quickened. It felt like I was stealing something from Mary, taking something that wasn’t mine. But I couldn’t tear myself away.

  “There’s this flash of memory that happened a little before the main part. And in that quick flash I’m driving him to work. He’s starting a new job. He’s sittin
g in my passenger seat, and he rolls down the window and holds his hand out in the rushing wind outside the car, like he’s arm wrestling the day. The air coming through is warm and feels like summer, and his thin white hair blows around. I remember thinking that he should close the window because it’s going to mess up his hair, and he shouldn’t show up to his first day of work looking like that.”

  She laughed at herself. “That’s all I remember from the car ride. After that, we’re in this huge grocery store, and I realize he’s taken a job there stocking shelves. I was still there, but secretly. I didn’t tell him I was going to stay. I follow him through the grocery store, peeking around the aisles. I have this intense feeling of wanting to protect him, you know? It was like he was my kid starting his first job.” Her voice ended quickly, as if she had choked on the words.

  “Oh, Mary.” That was all Abe said, though he said it multiple times. “Oh, Mary.”

  The wind kicked up, and for a moment I couldn’t hear anything above its rushing. I felt a sense of panic rising. Now that I had heard the beginning, I needed to hear the rest. I sat up against the house in a kind of crouch, getting as close as I could to the window.

  “I was there for a long time. It’s kind of embarrassing, admitting that I spent so much time spying on him.”

  “It’s actually quite sweet, Mary,” Abe said.

  “I guess,” she admitted. “But I see him walk toward the front of the store and stand outside the manager’s office, and I get worried. Has someone given him a hard time? Did I miss something? Does he hate the job? Is he going to quit on the first day? I’m very worried. I nearly run out and ask him what’s wrong, but I don’t. It seemed like he had been enjoying himself stocking the shelves, even humming. Anyway, the manager opens the door and they talk for less than a minute. I can’t hear what they say, but neither of them seem upset. My dad walks away, and I see him pull something out of his pocket.”

  Again, the wind kicked up.

  “Cigarettes! I didn’t even know he smoked! He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a small book of matches and walks toward the front door. I was shocked. It was the strangest thing seeing this, realizing my dad had this entire life I knew nothing about. How had he hidden it from me? I hated the smell. I would have known. Right? And it wasn’t the cigarettes that bothered me, you know? It was this realization that he existed on his own, that he was his own person. An individual. Not ‘Mary’s father’ or my mother’s husband, but he was him. He was himself, and he contained many stories I would never know.”

  Abe chuckled. “That’s some wisdom right there. More coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Mary replied.

  They sat in a long silence, and I thought that might be the end of the story. I gathered myself, getting ready to run off so I wouldn’t be seen. But then she continued.

  “I watch my dad and decide I’m going to leave. I’ll sneak out the other side of the store. There were two large entrances, you know? He goes out one side to smoke and I go out the other, but when I get to the glass doors, I realize it’s pouring down rain, a harder rain than I’ve ever seen. People who had been caught in the rain come in from the parking lot, and they are soaked, like they jumped into a swimming pool. I stand outside the store, under the overhang, and I wait for the storm to clear. The clouds are boiling and dark and I wonder if there’s a tornado warning. I’m literally listening for the sirens. That’s when I hear it.”

  Quite a storm, I thought. I couldn’t get Miss B’s phrase out of my mind. I was listening so intently to Mary that I lost track of everything going on around me. But the wind came in hard and the rustling grass drowned out her voice.

  “It’s okay, Mary,” was the next thing I heard Abe say. “It’s okay.”

  I heard her crying. What had she said? What had happened to her father? Why did she now feel like she could leave the village?

  “I know it might not make sense, but remembering the whole story helps me feel free of it,” she said. “And even though I know it was Dan’s brother, I can forgive him, and I can leave.”

  My insides trembled. I couldn’t breathe.

  My brother?

  She can forgive him?

  “What do you think you would have done if he had come earlier, before you had this memory?” Abe asked in a soft voice.

  Mary paused. “I hated him, Abe.” She stopped, and when she spoke again, the words came out reluctantly, in tiny, sharp bursts. “I thought up many ways that I could kill him. Isn’t that awful? But not now. Seeing what happened, remembering everything . . . I can forgive him. I can leave. I’m at peace.”

  My brother’s fault? What had Mary remembered? I felt desperate now to know. If it involved my brother, I had to know. I scrambled out from under the window as quietly as I could, moving like a shadow over to the front walkway. I tried to approach the house as if I was just arriving. I tried to compose myself, tried to pretend I hadn’t heard what I had heard. But I needed to know more.

  All of that receded in my mind as the door to Abe’s house opened in front of me and Mary came out. Her eyes were red, and she rubbed tears away before she saw me standing there.

  “Oh, hi, Dan,” she said, clearing her throat, hastily wiping her eyes. I could tell in that instant she didn’t want me to know what she had been talking about, that it would be pointless to ask.

  “Hey, Mary,” I replied in a hushed voice.

  She looked into my eyes, and it was as if she was reading my mind, as if she could see everything I had been thinking, every worry I had been feeling. Had she needed to forgive me too, in whatever story it was she remembered? Had I been at fault? Would she hate me for what Adam had done? I waited for her anger or her contempt, or even for her to simply dismiss me and walk away.

  Instead, she tilted her head to the side, and I felt nothing coming from her except compassion. She genuinely cared for me. It caught me off guard.

  Mary took a half step toward me—we were already standing very close—and she gently placed her hand on my shoulder, like a quiet promise, and said, “Oh, Dan.”

  That was all, those two words. She said them the way you might if you found out that someone had gone through something difficult a long time ago, and you had no idea before why they were who they were or why they did what they did, but now you knew and you wished you would have always known, because it would have changed things.

  I couldn’t reply. I wanted to talk, wanted to tell her I had heard the story. Mostly, I wanted to ask her what had happened and how my brother had been involved, but I couldn’t. The words all stuck in my throat. I was afraid, afraid she might say no, afraid of what she might tell me, afraid of being discovered as an eavesdropper. So I said nothing.

  The two of us stood there for a long time looking at each other, and the kindness in her eyes somehow grew even larger. She removed her hand and moved past me, back toward the greenway.

  “Dan? Is that you?” Abe called from inside the house, and for a quick moment I considered not answering. But I couldn’t walk away from Abe. I had to tell him about the vision I had. Or dream. Or whatever it was.

  I walked through the door. Daylight streamed through the windows, and I realized the happy things made me sad. The gray days and the rain kept everything as it was, stopped things from changing, and the sun reminded me that there was nothing I could do to keep Mary from leaving, or anyone else for that matter. They would all leave, and the sunshine reminded me of this. The sunshine made it possible. It’s hard to take when the things that used to make you happy start to make you sad.

  I found Abe sitting at a small desk tucked up against the wall. “Did you know there’s something wrong with the garden?” I asked him.

  He nodded, not looking up from the papers he was examining. “So, you’ve been over there this morning? I don’t like it, Dan. We have plenty of food for now, but I’ve never seen a crop fail in that rich soil.”

  “Are we overusing it? Maybe we should pick a different site for the garden.�
��

  He shook his head, finally looking up at me. “I’ve tried. I planted crops all over these plains—up by the mountain, among the rocks, on the other side of your house, even out by the fourth tree. Nothing’s growing right.”

  “You were out at the fourth tree?” I asked, surprised. “I’ve never been out that far. Did you see anything?”

  He shrugged and waved his hand dismissively.

  “And—wait. How long have you been worried about this? Did you say you’ve been planting seeds all over the valley? Since when?”

  The look on his face told me he felt he had said too much.

  More secrets.

  “I’m sure it will be fine. All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.” He smiled when he said this, as if it was an inside joke he had with himself. “Do you need something?”

  I had to think for a moment to remember why I was there. All the things came rushing back, too many things to keep straight. I was becoming mired in the uncertainty of what I could and couldn’t talk about. A few days ago, my mind had been a blank slate. But now it felt too complex, filled with knotted threads. There was Mary leaving and Miss B’s memory and the woman in my room and the dreams I was having, and now the garden and Miho’s dream and the way Po had stared at me and the fact that I had heard Mary’s memory but shouldn’t have, so I couldn’t talk about that. I couldn’t remember what I was trying to keep secret and what was public knowledge.

  “I feel strange inside, Abe. I feel like I’m disappearing.”

  He stood from his desk and gave me a kind smile. But I wanted to weep—at my deception and my brother being the only one left on the other side and the bitterness of green things not growing.

  Abe put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong, Dan? What’s really wrong?”

  I stared into his dark eyes and realized we were the same height. I had always thought of Abe as much taller than me, a presence, a force that stretched far beyond me. But there we were, eye to eye. It was a revelation.