“You can’t have that,” said Carlene. “It hasn’t been a year yet.”
He turned on her and snapped, “And who’s going to eat it when that day comes, huh?”
Her lip quivered as she waited for what he’d say next. What he’d do. But when he said nothing, when he did nothing but slam the ice box door shut, she stood from the table and ran out, leaving the dry corn flakes behind. The last of his cereal sat uneaten in her bowl, sugar dusted across the top like the layer of dust upon his mantle. The mantle that Carla had taken to cleaning since moving in, on Saturday mornings just like this one.
He sat at the table and picked a single cornflake from the bowl, shaking off what sugar he could. Then he put it into his mouth and let it soften on his tongue, thinking of how little time there had been to change things, and of how much had changed in spite of all that.
* * *
The fever had come on fast, taking hold of Carla’s body just as the summer loosened its grip on their small town. She must’ve picked it up at the diner, she told him as she slipped into a nightgown at midday and took to bed. Couple of regulars’d had the sniffles, and that must’ve been it.
But then the coughing began. It shook her body and echoed through the house. Blood and phlegm filled the steel bowl he ferried back and forth from her side to the toilet. And yet, as scary as those days were, the silence that followed was more frightening than anything that had come before.
One morning, after having dozed off in the armchair he’d dragged from the parlor to the foot of the bed, he woke to find Carlene sitting at her mother’s side, dabbing at Carla’s forehead with a damp cloth.
“What are you doing?” he asked the girl as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.
“Making her comfortable,” said Carlene.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “You might catch whatever’s caught your mother.”
“You’re in here,” said Carlene. “What if it catches you first?”
“I have a strong constitution,” said Andre.
Carlene scoffed. “That’s what my father said before he died.”
“I was a prisoner,” he told her then. “And the things those Krauts did to me — if I could survive those, then a little fever isn’t going to hurt me.”
“It’s not little,” said Carlene, dipping her cloth into a bowl of water that looked too much like a bowl of filth for Andre’s taste.
Carlene looked back over her shoulder at him. “How’d you escape?” she asked.
“We didn’t,” he said. “They were about to get rid of us when another army, friendly to ours, came rolling in.”
“You were rescued,” said Carlene.
“Yes,” said Andre.
“The way you rescued my mother and me,” she said, wiping again at her mother’s forehead.
“I suppose,” he said. “I suppose that’s true.”
She stared at her mother then as she said, “You’re better at being rescued.”
* * *
In the night, Andre woke at the sound of Carlene’s feet padding down the hall. He turned to wake Carla, to ask her to check on her daughter, but all that was there to nudge was a pillow that had already lost the shape of the woman’s head.
Andre hoisted himself up then, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He sat for a second and closed his eyes again, listening to the sound of his lungs expanding and contracting, a trick he’d learned in the hole he’d been kept in during the war. He’d learned it to keep the sound of his empty stomach from infecting his every waking moment, but it did the trick now, too. There was something in the corner of his eye that wasn’t sleep, and he didn’t want more of it to come spilling forth when he wiped it away.
Up he got, once the moment passed, shuffling down the hallway himself, breathing deeply again as his knees locked themselves up and voiced their crackling concerns.
Then, suddenly, a light flashed on in the kitchen, a bright slice of yellow cutting through the dark for but a moment before it was gone again.
Andre quickened his pace.
When he rounded the corner, realizing all he’d brought with him to defend himself and Carlene were his fists, he put up his dukes anyway. Just in case. But he needn’t have. There was no intruder, no abductor nor villain of any sort. There was only Carlene, seated at the kitchen table, the slice of cake plated before her.
“I’m hungry,” she said, not looking at him. “There’s nothing else left.”
Andre pulled a chair out from under the table and took a seat, staying silent as he did. He remembered a moment with Carla, one of their few spats, where she’d told him over a burnt roast that the whole thing could have been avoided if only he’d shut up and listened.
“It’s not my fault,” said Carlene, her gaze still fixed on the frozen piece of cake. “You won’t go to the grocer’s. You won’t buy us food.”
It was the word us that brought forth the sniffle from his nose, an involuntary sound. He wondered if that would count against him.
“Are you crying?”
In his mind, he told her that he was coming down with something, but in the real world he held those words behind the prison of his teeth.
“I can’t eat your tears,” she said, sounding like she’d like to try.
Deciding that action was not the same as speech, Andre reached across the table and pulled the plate toward himself.
“You have to share,” said Carlene, a quaver in her voice. “I’m starving.”
Andre looked away from her for the first time since sitting down, focusing on the cellophane. Carla never did anything halfway, did she? It was wrapped up good and tight. His eyes squinted in the dim light creeping in from the street lamp outside, squinted as he searched for some corner to pull on. He spun the plate around once, then again, then once more before he found what he was looking for.
When the slice of cake was finally free, he slid it back across the table to Carlene. In his hand then, he balled up the cellophane, relishing in its crinkles and its crackles as he did.
“You’ll need to let it thaw for a bit,” he said as he stood. “I’ll get a fork.”
And now it was Carlene who said nothing, who sat silent in a room permeated by this unexpected kindness, as unexpected for him as it was for her. She said nothing until the drawer of silverware squeaked open. It was only then that she told him to grab two. Two forks instead of one.
Receding
The soldiers smoke their last cigarette on the last boat out, passing the shriveling thing amongst themselves. One of them, the one in the sunglasses, he hangs onto it for too long, sucks too much of the life out of it and leaves too much of himself behind when he finally passes it on.
“You might as well have laid one on me,” his buddy tells him, rubbing the drool off with his thumb and forefinger, then flicking it at Sunglasses.
All of them look forward, these men, paying attention to the pal upfront with the camera who is there to make sure they go down in history. All of them look forward but one. He casts his glance backward at the fjord they’re leaving behind, wondering if it would be wrong to say the fjord is retreating, wondering if that’s what they’re doing too. And, if that’s what they’re doing, why is everyone else smiling? The sea sprays up and back, white as the snow capping the now distant cliffs.
Receding. That’s the word, he realizes. The fjord is receding.
As he is. As all of them are.
All of us, too.
About the Author
E. Christopher Clark writes fiction about fractured families, lust gone wrong, and memories as time machines. His writing has been published in Live Free or Ride: Tales of the Concord Coach, River Muse: Tales of Lowell & The Merrimack Valley, and Literary Matters, the newsletter of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. He is also the author of three collections of short fiction published independently: Those Little Bastards (2002), All He Left Behind (2010), and Out of the Woods (2017). Learn more about Chris and his
work at clarkwoods.com.
Follow Chris:
Join the Mailing List
For news on future publications and occasional missives by Chris, please join the Clarkwoods mailing list. We won’t spam you, inundate you with pictures of our imaginary cats, or use your information for any nefarious purposes.
E. in Your Ears
Horribly Off-Topic is a comedy podcast with new episodes every Monday. It is hosted by author E. Christopher Clark and comedian Steve Woodbury. Subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, Google, Overcast, or via RSS.
Out of the Woods Page 5
