Stillwater

by Nicole Helget

  On a winter day like this one, they had entered this world together, one after the other, through the skinny legs of a nymph-girl mother who abandoned them both. Angel had once loved him more than any other in the world. But she grew up. She married. She had her girls to think of. There was no love that trumped her girls. There was no person.

  She could let him die. She didn’t have to go. She wouldn’t have to worry about him exposing her as a mutt, threatening her marriage, undermining her daughters’ future.

  But he was her brother, her own blood and sinew and bone. And if he could speak to her now, what would keep him from haunting her when he was dead?

  Angel rode out and decided that this day would be the last. She’d save his life and then let him go back to prison. If he said things there, if he told of her birth, what did it matter? Who would believe him? He was an orphan. He was a criminal. No one would listen to him. No one would believe a single word he said.

  49

  The Virgin and the Convict

  A THIN AND SICKLY MAN, malnourished after seven years of prison potatoes and moldy bread, Clement Piety stood, dripping wet and heaving for breath, in what was left of the great northern wilderness. From scalp to ankles, goose pimples covered his skin. He flipped his long hair away from his eyes.

  Behind him the St. Croix River rushed on, breaking away ice in great masses and carrying them down the current. On the other bank, a half mile or so away, loomed Stillwater Prison, home to Clement Piety no longer. And though he was finally free of it, Clement felt a strange obligation, a familiar tug to return. “I’m not going back,” he said to no one. The roar of the river soaked up his words. He bit his lip to control his quaking jaw. He drew blood. The taste of blood iron verved him a little. He felt warmer and turned toward the woods.

  Though a small man and prone to contracting every kind of disease, at that moment Clement felt like a tall tale, strong and giant. He felt cocksure and hallowed, surely saved for some very important purpose.

  He dodged into the giant firs and hustled for a long while. The forest floor was frozen yet, but much of the snow had melted. Clement easily picked his path through the trees. They were familiar to him. He’d played here as a boy, remembered when this tree was yet a sapling and that one hosted a owl family, when this one’s trunk leaked sap, and that one held a dead deer over a low-hanging branch, dragged up by a cougar. He felt light-footed and swift. He’d leave no tracks and wasn’t worried. Running felt warm and freeing for a while, but after a mile or so his chest grew taut, and Clement thought he’d better rest. He stopped alongside a big pine and bent over. His thoughts wandered, darted from his life as a poor orphaned boy raised by Big Waters, to his reunion with his sister, to his trials in the war, to his row with Angel, to the death of the old man, to his imprisonment, to the fact that Angel never once visited him or brought him any worldly comforts while he suffered on her behalf. He wondered what she would say when she found him, which he knew she would do. Surely she’d come now, when his situation was so dire. She’d not abandon him.

  “Jesus,” Clement said to himself. His heavy, soaked clothes clung to his body. He wondered whether Angel actually would come. Whatever power had infused him before seemed to dissipate, and a serious weight and fatigue settled upon his shoulders, as if someone had put a timber across his back and told him to climb a mountain.

  He thought of the Lord and his cross. “Jesus Christ almighty,” he said to himself. Talking to himself was something he’d picked up in prison. It didn’t feel strange to him now. “I’ve got to get ahold of my wits. I’m goddamn alive and free.” Tears came to his eyes. They were sensitive to the daylight and raw from the water. He rubbed them and squinted past the trees.

  “Holy Christ.” The raging river worked up some anger in him over his lost years, his lost sister, his lost mother, his lost life. He talked at the prison. He swore at it. He’d learned some fierce language in prison and liked using it, but now wondered if taking the Lord’s name in vain would keep him from entering heaven. Clement put his hands on his hips and toiled for air. He breathed so deep it made him dizzy. He swayed. He rested along one tree, then another. He pulled himself along by this branch, then that one. He grew cold again. The winter winds, though carrying warmer air across the state, hit him frigidly. He became aware that he could be freezing. He clenched his fists and curled his toes the best he could. He coughed and shivered and thought of poor Jesus’ trek to Golgotha. He thought that at least the Good Lord had a warm climate to suffer in and a mother to encourage Him along. Clement’s body fought him hard then. He tried to control his thinking, for it seemed the more he thought about being cold, the more he shivered. Soon violent tremors overwhelmed him. His legs would not walk one step more. Clement knelt in the dirty snow beside an animal path and a mound of deer droppings.

  “Angel, you better find me quick,” he said. “I better get dry.” He dropped his britches. “This ought to come off too.” He plucked at the buttons of his coat and shook it off his arms. He worked at the buttons of his shirt. He swore at his fingers, which, once clenched, didn’t want to open. He looked around at the trees, one of the last forests untouched by the loggers. A whip of mist floated just above his head, blurring the treetops. Wherever he looked, tree trunks stood like sentinels. He heard mice or gophers or squirrels scurrying beneath dead branches and needles, fooled into thinking spring was here. Stupid rodents. Better get back to sleep or you’ll be at the mercy of winter yet. He heard birds scratching in the tree above him. He suddenly warmed over, as though his blood had been peppered and now raced to his ears and fingertips. His hands and feet suddenly burned. A fire warmed the top of his head. And his eyes were heavy. He was exhausted, so he sat down in a cushion of needles. I’ll take just a short rest and catch my breath, he thought. He huffed and exhaled. He wasn’t feeling cold at all. He dug his hand into the earth beneath him and wondered if he could burrow down some and get comfortable, like a dog on a rug in front of a fireplace. He wondered where the deer that had left those droppings had gone to. Was it a buck or a doe? If it was a doe, did it have a fawn? Maybe he could cuddle alongside them if he could find them. But he was too tired to move. Perhaps they’d come back. Perhaps he could take a short nap and wake when the mother and fawn returned. He closed his eyes and the scent of roses mingled with the pine aroma. Haven’t smelled roses in a long while, thought he.

  The forest went silent at that moment, and he wondered if something had gone wrong in his ears or his head. He opened his eyes and couldn’t see but a bit in front of him. He waved his hand in front of his face to clear away the haze. He shouted, “Hey!” but made no sound that he could hear. “Where’d you animal noises go?” he thought he shouted, but he heard nothing. Clement used the tree trunk to pull himself up and stand. His britches were still pooled around his ankles, and he stepped his feet out of them. He had one boot on and one off, lost in the river probably, but he couldn’t be sure and couldn’t remember. He wondered why he didn’t remember running without a boot on. His shirt hung from his shoulders, a strange weight, like dead deer limbs. Why’s this shirt feel so heavy? Water must be heavier than I thought it to be. I feel like I’m shouldering the whole world, like Atlas. I best sit back down and rest a bit more.

  It was at that moment, Clement Piety later insisted, while he was slowly freezing and being enticed to succumb to his death, that an apparition of the Virgin Mary, the mother of mothers, saved him. Clement said that out of the silence, the cooing of what he thought was a winter bird enticed him into a clearing, where it was as warm as a summer kitchen. The cooing became a lullaby a mother would sing to a baby. The fog was transfigured into a woman, and Clement said she told him, “Behold. I am the Mother of God.”

  For the remainder of his days, Clement would offer as evidence a long red fox cloak, which he said the Virgin removed from her own body and put upon his, and which he toted along with him out of the forest that day and for the rest of his life, a cloak upon which believ
ers cried their tears, touched their arthritic hands, or rubbed their unhearing ears, a cloak upon which the barren prayed for fruitfulness, the decrepit pleaded for healing, and the poor begged for food. When the people would inevitably ask why Clement did not pray upon the miraculous cloak for the return of his own sight, Clement Piety would smile, roll his milky eyes, and remark that the lovely face of the Virgin was the last earthly vision he had desired and so she blinded him. Believers went away thinking that Piety’d been marked by the Virgin herself, in the way that Moses came away from the Lord with a head of white hair and a tablet of commandments.

  Angel discovered Clement beneath a canopy of fir trees, bare and shivering, babbling loudly, practically deaf, and nearly unconscious. He was wet but had known well enough to get his clothes off in order to live. Though she knew no one saw her, nor did she want anyone to see her, she arranged the long white feather boa over her shoulders, in a way becoming a baron’s wife. To wear it that day seemed especially appropriate. White feathers, so hard to come by, nearly impossible. White for her name. White for the snow. Feathers for the way she’d fly from him, finally.

  She stroked the boa and said to him, “You’re not coming with me. It’s not even a consideration.”

  She hopped down from her horse and unlaced the satchel she had tied to the saddle. She threw it down next to him. He reached for it. He looked up into her beautiful face, her ebony hair, her perfect skin.

  “And don’t start up about being abandoned and all that business,” she went on. “You had the same chances as I did to have the life you wanted. You think life’s been easy for me?” She looked around to be certain that no one was watching or listening. She leaned over him. “Well, it wasn’t.” She straightened up. “Isn’t,” she corrected herself.

  Clement’s ears felt full, as though water were swishing from one side to the other. He didn’t hear much of what his sister said. He smiled at her though, despite her ornery look. She reached beneath the boa and untied her cloak and swirled it off her shoulders, thin little things like those Clement supposed their mother had. He wondered if she was thanking him for taking the blame for the old man’s murder, for sitting in the cold prison all those seven years.

  “Here,” she said. “Take it.”

  He reached out and wrapped the heavy coat around him. The fur smelled of her, roses and something like a woodstove.

  “No one will believe an escaped criminal over me,” she said. “No one.” She helped him up and put her hands on both of his shoulders and stood face to face with him. He liked it that she was his exact same height and that he could look directly into her brown eyes. He often wondered why it was he who got the inept eye, but then he was happy his sister didn’t have to bear that burden. He’d told her that he was happy to bear the burden of disfigurement for them both. Now he tried to collapse into her and let her hold him up. She pushed him upright.

  His ears weren’t working right. He watched her mouth form words. She pointed to the satchel. Something about the Red Swan and Big Waters following him and then something that looked like “Don’t follow me.” She was crossing her hands, making a big imaginary X in front of herself. He pointed to his ears. He yelled, “I can’t hear you. My ears are funny acting.” She was shaking her head at him. Dread came over him. She was going to leave him.

  She helped him dress with the clothes she’d brought. A wool shirt. Pants. She was rough. His mouth wasn’t working either. He tried hard to think. He squinted so he could think his concentrated best. I love you best, he tried to tell her with his mind. He was sure she could hear him. I love you best, he thought again. Don’t you love me best too? And then he thought, Remember that we’re twins. No two people in the whole world were closer than twins. The most important thing was that they be together forever and ever and that no one ever could come between them again.

  She stroked her boa again as if it were a charmed thing. She saw in his face a recognition then. She saw him wonder about white feathers. Then she turned from Clement and mounted her horse. She kicked the animal and galloped away.

  Clement thought hard: Where are you going? Come back here. But she kept going, the strands of the boa fluttering behind her like wings. He felt the earth pulsating subtly beneath his feet, the horse hooves pounding and taking Angel away from him. Clement stood there for another minute. His ears were coming back to life. He sat down and pulled the boots and socks from the satchel. He thought about what a smart sister he had, one who remembered socks as well as boots. He smiled that she still knew him best, knew what he was thinking, knew to come and find him. They had a special connection. One of miraculous proportions. A gift from God.

  He wondered why she had left him this time and when he would see her again. He pulled the cloak around him and looked about.

  Clement Piety walked through the last woods. No movement had yet commenced from the prison. But in time, the warden would look for him, and with his anomalous eye, he would not be difficult to find.

  Clement Piety walked in the twilight and dark. The cloak was warm, but his feet were numb. His hearing came back to him, as well as the familiar routes through these woods. He walked into the infirmary, right into the waiting arms of Big Waters.

  50

  Big Waters Cleaves Clement to Her

  BIG WATERS HID CLEMENT in the dark room. She prepared a strong-smelling concoction and coaxed him to lay his head upon her lap. He was as pliable as soft leather. She petted him in his sadness.

  “The water will call you, so long as you have its eye.”

  She pried his eyelids apart with her fingertips and dripped lye onto his pupils, one after the other. He cried out a little, but she put her hand over his lips and he stopped. The lye would burn away the top layer of his eyeballs and create a white coating over the irises. In a few days, he would be gauzy-eyed and sightless. He didn’t resist in the slightest and trusted her cruelty completely.

  The process gave Big Waters a measure of satisfaction. To hurt him a little felt good, for he had been a neglectful and ungrateful child who had grown into a neglectful and ungrateful man. But he was hers, in any case. And it felt good to her old hands to be the one to fix his problems again, to care for him a bit longer, to be needed as a mother.

  Still, he called out for Angel.

  Big Waters was too old to go and get the selfish one. Clement would finally have to be satisfied with Big Waters and remain with her. He would finally have to show gratitude to her for caring for him, to accept that she was the one who loved him most.

  It was while he lay recovering in Big Waters’ care that the memory of the Virgin came to Clement strongly. He talked incessantly about her, working out the details of the story. In the woods that day, Clement said, the Virgin Mary converted his heart from loneliness, sin, and sorrow to joy, devotion, and purpose. So forever after, he would forget many of the fortuitous events that led to his escape that day in February and ascribe it to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the one woman who never threw him out in the cold to the ravenous wolves.

  He’d go on about this for hours, talking day and night as a fool might.

  Big Waters listened. Clement sat prattling on and on. She wanted to tell him, I never abandoned you. I raised you when you were abandoned. I adopted you when you were left by a simpleton girl and when no other mother wanted you. I kept you warm with my own body. Here I am. I have spread poultice on your eyes and protected you from capture. And you are nothing but trouble to me and remain ungrateful. You do not see how I suffer, how my body fails me, how now my hand will not close or how my leg drags on the ground. You do not know about the sparks that bother my mind. How each one is brighter and renders me more useless.

  She finally brought Mother St. John to see him.

  Mother St. John had scolded Big Waters over Clement’s eyes, wondering, “Have your wits gone astray? You’ve made a useless mole of him.” But she as she listened to the wild tale pouring from Clement’s mouth, her heart danced. Perhaps f
inally, after all her hard work in the woods, God was rewarding her with a visit from the Virgin, a great miracle in the forest, a blessing unparalleled. With permission from Father Paul, who tore the wanted posters for Clement off the walls of every building in Stillwater, she thought to widely disseminate the tale, to draw more people to the true Church, to the true mother. Father Paul balked at drawing attention to an escaped convict, but he then imagined the droves of believers swarming his church, bringing offerings. He arranged a meeting with the mayor and the warden, a difficult thing to do, considering their heated relationship. He begged on Clement’s behalf, begged pardon for his own and Mother St. John’s participation in hiding him, explained that imprisoning a man who had experienced such a miracle would only hurt the interests of everyone in the town. The two men, eyeing each other suspiciously, hardly heard a word the priest said. They nodded and agreed, though. They waited patiently through the priest’s supplication, and as soon as he left, they tore into each other, breaking a vase, a cigar box, a jaw, and a hand while scrabbling over the virtue of each other’s wives.

  When Father Paul returned to Mother St. John, he only said, “Yes.”

  Mother St. John wrote down the story Clement spun:

  The Virgin Mary appeared to me alongside a fir tree in the forest alongside the St. Croix River. Moments before, I had escaped death by falling through the ice into the freezing waters and swimming to shore. I made for the trees and stripped out of my clothes. Standing there, I began to sob and fear death. The beautiful Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, appeared to me then and wrapped a red fox cloak around me. I was a sinner at that time, with many mortal sins on my heart, which would have surely bound my soul to hell if not for Her divine intercession at that moment.