Blackbird

by Averil Dean

  “Did you know that the men who served as guards there during the Middle Ages were sometimes born on the wall? They lived their whole lives up there and were buried inside it when they died.”

  “No women?” Eric said.

  “You don’t get babies without them,” Rory pointed out.

  “The women went there to get married,” Celia said. “Then they were trapped there, too, raising their children on the wall. Imagine the view, trees and water as far as the eye could see, only you can never reach it. You’re on the wall forever.”

  A silence fell over them. Celia thought of the view, treetops like moss on the hills far below.

  “Why would any woman agree to that deal?” Kate said.

  “There was no agreeing,” Eric said. “Women did what they were told back in the day.”

  “Dragged kicking and screaming to the wall, married off to some disgusting unwashed Chinaman. Not a good time to be a woman.”

  “Some of them probably liked it. Even an ugly woman would be guaranteed to get laid.”

  “Not every woman wants to get laid,” Kate said.

  Eric clicked his tongue.

  “What?” Kate said.

  “You’re so fucking politically correct,” Eric said. “Of course women want to get laid.”

  “Not like men do.”

  “Bullshit. Women want sex just as much as men.”

  “Which is why men get raped so often.” Kate rolled her eyes and flipped open her phone.

  “Women get raped because society encourages them to pretend they don’t want to have sex.”

  “You’re an arrogant, misogynistic pig, Eric Dillon. Did your father teach you that?”

  Eric’s eyes glinted in the rearview mirror. Celia had thought he was messing around—he loved nothing better than to jerk Kate’s chain—but now she wasn’t sure. Nothing was guaranteed to set Eric off like a comparison to his father.

  “I’ve got another,” he said. “Did you know that half of all American women will get raped at least once during their lifetimes?” he said.

  “Not true,” Rory said. “Not even close.”

  “Fifty percent,” Eric said, ignoring him. His eyes flicked from Celia to Kate. “Who do you think is more likely? The chick who gives it up willingly or the one who walks around like an ice princess with a stick up her ass?”

  “Rape is not about sex, you idiot,” Kate said. “It’s about control and violence.”

  “And sex.”

  “The sex is beside the point.”

  “Oh, my God. No, baby. It is the entire point.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kate said. “And I’m done with this conversation.”

  A splintery smile from Eric. “What about you, Celia? You think I’m wrong?”

  “Dude, move on,” Rory said.

  The truck shifted gears, trundling up a long hill.

  “Come on, Cee,” Eric said. “The Mona Lisa act is strong, I’ll give you that, but you should be careful not to carry it too far. You send a guy away with blue balls every time he sees you, he’s gonna get frustrated. You might find yourself alone with a guy like that and find he’s gone from frustrated to pissed off—and then, who knows? I’m thinking it would behoove you to cultivate the art of the hand job. A virgin’s best friend. In fact, I believe you’ve got a couple of willing tutors right here. What’d you say? We can start your rape prevention training right now.”

  His voice had narrowed and gained speed like a river through a crevice. Beside him, Rory’s head rotated slightly left, but his gaze was locked on the road.

  “Fucking lunatic,” Kate said.

  “Oooh, did I scare you?” Eric made a spooky face as he turned back to look at them. The light from the dashboard skimmed his face, shadows pooling under his eyes. The engine revved and they accelerated down the hill.

  “Watch the road,” Kate snapped.

  Eric’s laugh sounded strange, a guitar string wound too tight. Behind his laugh was a song Celia realized was playing for the third time in a row: You arrive before daylight, hopeful and tired, bearing flowers, stay for hours, and you make us late for school, you make us late for school...

  “I never can figure out why you girls think you’re in control.” He waggled the steering wheel. “Who’s driving, anyway? Who’s driving the car, Celia?”

  They were flying now. Through the windshield Celia could see a yellow road sign indicating a sharp curve ahead. Her fingers clenched around the armrest.

  “Let’s keep it between the lines, brother,” Rory said.

  Eric cranked up the music, one hand on the wheel as the truck swung around the curve.

  “Come on, Cee,” Eric said. “Tell me. Who’s driving the motherfucking vee-hicle?”

  Celia stared into the mirror. You are, she wanted to say. But the words would not come. Her leg tensed as though stomping on a nonexistent brake.

  He jerked again at the wheel. The engine growled, throwing them back against the seats.

  “Stop!” Kate yelled.

  There was a sudden absence of vibration. The truck began to slide, fishtailing down the road. The landscape slipped sideways across the windshield—a clump of trees now in front of them, now beside. Rory’s hand shot out to catch the wheel. But it was too late. The tires hit the icy shoulder of the highway and the truck whipped around. They careened down the embankment with a series of stony thumps that slammed Celia’s head against the side window and her neck against the sharp edge of the seat belt. The truck dove to the bottom of the ditch and stuck there.

  Everything was still. Only the music carried on, a blur of vibrating bass and a woman’s slow voice chanting the chorus.

  You arrive in the nighttime, drunk and inspired, bringing tears, stay for years, and you make me late for school, oh, you make me late for school...

  Kate was the first to recover.

  “Eric, I swear to God.” She flung open her door and scrambled out.

  Celia unsnapped her seat belt and tried her door. But it was wedged against something and wouldn’t open. She climbed out the passenger side and hunched at the side of the car, hands on her knees. The blood rang like an electric current through her body.

  “Everybody okay?” Rory said as he got out. He laid a hand on Celia’s back.

  “No,” Kate said. “Not okay. Fucking Eric...”

  Eric. He was still in the car.

  Celia picked her way over the icy rocks and scrub, around the back of the truck to the driver’s side door. Rory was right behind her.

  Through the windshield, she could see Eric staring straight ahead, his face washed in the green light of the dashboard. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, his hands locked tight around the steering wheel.

  Celia tugged at the door, her heart in her throat.

  “Eric. Eric, are you all right?” She slapped at the window.

  He blinked. He released his seat belt, unlocked the door and clambered out of the car, scrambling back a few steps to survey the damage.

  The truck was headfirst at the bottom of the embankment, one front wheel perched six inches off the ground. There would be no driving it out.

  “It’s not that bad,” Celia said.

  “Not as bad as it looks,” Rory said as he flipped open his phone. “Not at all. I’ll call us a tow. I’ve got four bars.”

  Eric stretched out his fingers to touch Celia’s forehead. They came away wet with blood.

  “It’s only a scratch,” Celia said.

  But Eric’s body started to shake, long jarring spasms that locked his jaw and brought a sheen of tears to his eyes.

  “S-sorry,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Shh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Eric, it was just an accid
ent.”

  He shook his head, staggered away and began to vomit.

  * * *

  Three hours later, the tow truck pulled up to the house. Kate got into her car, which she’d left at Eric’s that morning, and took off for home, still muttering and cursing under her breath, flipping him off in the rearview mirror. Celia stood with Eric on the driveway while Rory helped the driver unload the battered truck.

  The driver, whose name, Manuel, was stitched on the pocket of his cotton shirt, had wanted to take Celia to the hospital. She refused, so he dug a plastic first aid kit from the tow truck’s glove box, and Rory cleaned up the cut and put a bandage on it. They rode back to Jawbone Ridge with Manuel shaking his head and scolding them gently in Spanish.

  “Si eras mis hijos,” he kept saying, If you were my kids, and Celia imagined him at home, calm and confident with his wife and a passel of black-haired boys. Laying down the law. Manuel wouldn’t have let them drive all the way from Crested Butte in the dark—he said it didn’t make no sense.

  “I seen a lot of wrecks,” he said. “You got off easy.”

  After the truck was unloaded and Rory had paid him, he shook Rory’s hand and gave him one final admonishment before turning the truck around and trundling away. He thought Rory had been driving.

  A crack of light showed through the blinds at the front of the house. A few seconds later, Mr. Dillon surged through the big double doors, screaming at Eric from the door and all the way down the sidewalk.

  “I knew you’d wreck this truck. I knew it, right from the start. Told your mother this was a mistake, but oh no, she said it would be good for you. Good for you! You couldn’t even make it last one day. One fucking day! What in God’s good name is wrong with you?”

  Celia glanced at Eric. He’d lowered his head and wouldn’t look up. But at his side, his fists were clenched, both arms stiff and quivering. He was breathing strangely, in short, quick little gasps as though preparing for a long underwater dive.

  Mr. Dillon skidded onto the driveway and stopped a foot in front of Eric. He half rose on tiptoe, expanding sideways as well as up, his arms stuck out from his body like a boxer’s. He should have looked comical in his sweats and cowboy boots, his gray hair standing straight up on his head. But there was nothing funny about the way he was coming at Eric.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. No questions about whether Eric was okay or what had happened. He was yelling as if they were already in the middle of a fight, picking up where they’d left off.

  Eric didn’t say a word.

  Look at him, Celia wanted to say. Don’t just stand there—look up.

  “What in fucking hell happened to this truck?”

  Eric, look up, look up.

  His father raised his hand and smacked Eric hard across the face with his open hand. The crack rang out in the darkness like a branch snapping in two.

  Eric didn’t move. His head jerked around with the force of the blow, then came squarely back with his gaze resting as before on the icy concrete. His feet remained locked in place. He reminded Celia of a documentary she’d seen about the young marines in training camp, the soldiers standing for hours under a torrent of abuse, nonreactive. This must be a well-rehearsed behavior for Eric—for both of them. They fell into it so easily that it was as if Celia and Rory weren’t there at all, that it was just the two of them and a long-established routine.

  A wet sickness rose in her throat.

  Please, Eric, oh, God, look up.

  Eric’s father was thumping the side of Eric’s head with his knuckles as though banging on a door, punctuating each sentence.

  “I want you. To tell me. What happened. To this truck.”

  She started forward. Rory’s hand shot out and he held her in place, not looking down at her but straight at Eric’s father, a weird, flamey light in his eyes.

  “Eric,” she said.

  Eric’s gaze slid along the snow toward her.

  “You better listen when I’m talking to you,” Mr. Dillon said.

  A burst of heat sprang up in Celia’s nose and eyes. The scene began to swim and blur. She wanted to scream: Look up, Eric, look up! as if all their lives depended on it. Panic careened through her in quick shuddering waves.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Mr. Dillon’s hand spread out, the fingers stiff and locked together like a paddle. He raised his arm.

  “No!” Celia cried.

  As she tilted forward to stop him, she felt Rory rush past, setting her aside as he went. His left hand reached out, flat to Mr. Dillon’s chest, right arm already up and swinging. His fist arced through the snowy air and landed with a sickening crunch on Mr. Dillon’s mouth. The big man collapsed backward, his feet shooting up as his head thumped the frozen ground. Celia saw something fly up and land on the snow at Eric’s feet, where it lay glittering and important like the image on the cover of a book.

  A bloody tooth.

  For a moment, the night was absolutely still. Then Mr. Dillon climbed slowly to his feet, his hand pressed to his mouth. Blood poured through his fingers. He appeared to have shrunk on the way back up, so that Rory and Eric towered over him against the background of the huge pale house. When he turned, Celia could see the shocking glint of tears in his eyes, his shoulders crumpled as though succumbing after a long struggle to an overwhelming exhaustion.

  He didn’t say another word, didn’t look up from the bloody ground. His boots squeaked as he turned and shuffled up the walkway and went inside.

  When the door closed, Eric turned to Rory. There was no gratitude in his pallid face, none of the savage righteousness that blazed in Rory’s. His chest heaved and his voice was choked with anger.

  “Why did you do that?” he said. “Why do you always do that?”

  Rory stooped to pick up the tooth. He pressed it into Eric’s hand.

  “Because I love you, dumbass. Nobody fucks with that.”

  July 1998

  “NO, BUT WHAT did he say after that?”

  Celia cupped her chin in her hand. Kate had asked the same question a dozen different ways in the past hour, and she had given the same answer. Even the river at their feet seemed to sigh at another repetition of the story.

  “That’s all,” she said.

  “Oh, my God,” Kate said. “He’s definitely not asking Erica, then. But he didn’t say who...”

  “No, but you know how Rory is. Homecoming is two months away. He might not even go.”

  “But you’ll tell me if he says anything?”

  “Sure,” Celia said, but she didn’t mean it. There were only so many ways to get around the truth: Rory didn’t like Kate, not that way. If he went to the dance at all, it would be with Jenny Parker or Claire Richardson. Likelier still, he’d forget about homecoming altogether and hang out in the living room playing Realm Defenders with Eric.

  She leaned back against the rocks, holding up her hand to see the pattern Kate had painted on her fingernails. Red with black dots, like ladybugs. She had painted Kate’s, too, a shimmery pale pink that was all Mrs. Vaughn would allow her daughter to wear.

  One of the dots had gotten smeared. Celia took up the bottle of black polish and tried to repair it.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” Kate said, her eyes drifting closed as she tipped her face toward the sun. “Living with Rory McFarland. I’ll bet he walks around in his underwear, even.”

  “Sometimes,” Celia admitted.

  “I would never leave the house.”

  “He also leaves toothpaste in the sink and towels on the floor. Once I even found a jockstrap hanging over the shower curtain.”

  Kate laughed. “Okay, that is kind of gross.”

  “Totally.”

  “I’ll have to tame him.”

  �
�Good luck with that. The boy is clueless.”

  “And what about you? How come you never talk about the boys you like?”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “Nothing to say because you don’t like anyone, or because you don’t want to tell me?”

  Celia placed a dot of black polish on her nail and blew on it gently. “Telling is a jinx.”

  “No, it’s not. You should put things out there. That’s what makes them come true. If you don’t say anything, you’re sort of telling the universe, ‘I don’t care what happens.’ You’re supposed to make wishes. Everybody does.”

  “Hmm,” Celia said.

  After a second, Kate said, “Remember Leo? He broke up with you because you wouldn’t say anything, right? He never knew what you were thinking.”

  “And your point is...”

  “You should talk. That’s what girls do.”

  Kate got to her feet, collected the bottles of nail polish and pushed them gingerly into her pocket with the tips of her fingers.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to Dorrie’s with me?”

  “Dorrie hates me.”

  “Because you let her. Just show up, be nice.”

  “Next time,” Celia said.

  “’Kay, well, maybe I’ll stop by your place on my way home. Would Rory be there, do you think?”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  Kate grinned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  * * *

  After Kate left, Celia sat on the riverbank, her guitar on her knee and a book of children’s poetry spread open on the grass in front of her. The text was woven into a delicate pen-and-ink drawing of a wrinkled giant bent over a simmering pot, steam rising in wavy lines around the verses. She strummed out the melody she had composed, a slow waltz tempo in a minor key, and sang the old poem in a low voice.

  My age is three hundred and seventy-two,

  And I think, with the deepest regret,

  How I used to pick up and voraciously chew

  The dear little boys whom I met.

  I’ve eaten them raw, in their holiday suits;