by J. D. Palmer
It’s tempting. There is this idea that if you say it, share it, then the healing begins.
It’s bullshit.
We are our own accountants. If I told Beryl this, Theo this… Anyone… And they only gave me sympathy… I know I’d be worse off.
I. Fucked. Up.
I know I have to live with it. I know I have to find a way to compartmentalize everything, to get rid of the trains, and bloody footprints, and sobs from the dark.
I know pawning them off is not the right way.
I veer off the path and head out into the pasture. Snow seeps into my boots and my pants are wet. It’s a harder trudge up the slight hill. But I deserve it. I need to labor, and sweat, and exhaust myself, as if that’ll give me some sort of absolution. Or let me sleep.
Both are doubtful.
I trip on an unseen object and slip sideways into the snow. My bare fingers plunge through the icy top layer and into the frigid powder. A sear of a different pain. Hot and cold mixed together. The ice cut my finger. I hold it up in front of me, watching the absolute red drip into the absolute white. As if these were the first two colors invented. Meant for each other.
I flop over onto my back and pull my hands up in front of me. I clench snow in them, watching as one suckles the red from my body. They feel raw, as if plunged into a fire, the one given more kindling than the other.
I don’t get up. I lie on my back in the snow, long hair splayed out around my head, legs akimbo. I lie there and stare at a sky dusty blue, too cold for clouds to move. Too cold for clouds to form.
I wanted stillness. Quiet. Placidity of place to somehow make its way into my soul. But it doesn’t. If anything the tranquility feels accusatory.
And it’s right.
I’m a petulant child. How many times must I learn the lesson that “life isn’t fair?” But…
To a child.
The lengths I would have gone to change that moment. Even if it put myself in more danger.
“I’m sorry.”
I say it to the empty sky and it sounds as feeble, and pitiful, as it feels.
I will need to apologize to the boy. And to everyone else. I won’t let this poison others as well. I won’t…
I sweep my arms out at my side, then my legs as well. One of my favorite things to do as a kid. To make a snow angel. My sister and I always tried to devise ways to make a path; a sled, a rock, then to the fence… Somehow we’d make it look like the angel touched down in the middle of the yard and then departed, no footsteps to give it away as a child’s creation.
Now I make one, holding onto the fond memory. Trying to use it as a reminder of what life can hold. What it should hold. A snow angel made by a devil.
I sit up. The boy is still there. Standing in the snow, watching me, the same confused look on his face. Red footprints dotting the snow behind him.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Perhaps it just gives you the capability to live with them.
I get up and walk back the way I came, the wind picking up and a newly formed cloud making its first appearance over the mountains.
The cold has caught up with me. I’m hunched over, feet awkwardly plunging into the wide strides I made earlier. I’m nervous about seeing the others. About saying sorry, something that I was never really good at. I mumble words to myself, trying to find the best, and shortest way to apologize.
A door bangs and figures pour out of the house towards me. Some trot, some lean over the railing, hands shielding their eyes as they scan my approach.
I think they’re angry with me and I halt. Only when they get closer do I realize the faces are twisted by concern, not anger.
“The boy with you?” Sam asks. “You see him?”
“What? No.”
“Shit.”
Wren comes out of the barn and, seeing us, makes her way over as quickly as possible.
“Brody?” She yells.
Sam shakes his head.
“Where did he go?”
Cristen shakes her head. “We don’t know.”
“He’s not inside?”
“No.” Sam is brusque, his voice slicing through my stupid question.
I spread my hands wide, inviting them to tell me what happened as fear seeps in to join the cold in my bones.
Wren and Cristen share looks, an imperceptible shake of Cristen’s head to an unanswered question.
“What is it?”
Wren takes in a heavy breath. “He was pretty shocked by what you said. He asked what was wrong with you. I told him… I told him you had lost a part of yourself.”
“I’m the best looker.” His words echo in my head as I look from one to the other. Behind me the sky darkens and the wind rushes in as if it, too, needs to vent its dismay.
HARLAN | 29
SAM TAKES CHARGE, shedding his soft-spoken side in favor of short, clipped commands that brook no argument. We are hustled inside and I’m told to get warm clothes for myself. When I say, “I’m fine,” he snaps at me, letting me know just how stupid, and selfish, and unhelpful to the boy I am being.
I meekly follow his commands as this new fear permeates my mind. Not another boy. Not another life changed, or ruined, or lost because of me. Find the child. Find the child. Find him.
We are gathered around the table. I feel eyes avoid me. The extra space I’m given. My blindness bluntly exposed. My cruelty on display.
Sam is fast and efficient. He parcels out sections of the area on a piece of paper and assigns them to groups of two. We carry blankets and thermoses of hot water. Guns.
“Why guns?” Asks Jane, who can’t stop crying.
“Wolves,” is all Sam says, looking everyone in the eye.
Jane and Momma Kay stay behind to keep hot water ready in case Brody needs to be warmed quickly. They’ll coordinate with searchers when they return.
Five minutes to plan and get ready before we trot out.
Five minutes, and it already seems like a completely different landscape from the one it was before. Tree branches creak and clack as they crash and rub against each other in the wind. Nascent snow, only recently making the metamorphosis from rain to something more frozen, darts and slashes at our eyes as Beryl and I walk as fast as we can along the path I took a couple hours before.
My footprints are there, but already diminishing, changing from blobs to shallow indents. Would Brody’s feet even make an impression? Would I be able to tell the difference between his footsteps and the marbling of the land?
Pike zags in front of us, making new tracks of his own. I’d yell at him but he seems to sense the urgency of the situation, jowls flapping as he snuffles back and forth, worried face turning to look back at Beryl every few minutes.
“Brody!” I call. And I realize it’s the first time I’ve said his name out loud. “Brody!” The land is too long, the sky too vast, the name seems to be sucked into a vacuum. No echo. No answer. Just the rush of the wind.
We trudge along my tracks out into the field. I stop short of my snow angel, worried that it will look like I was out having some sort of childish fun after screaming at the boy.
But it simply looks like the form of a man who has fallen down.
How true that is.
We cast about, separating to trudge in a large circle around our section. Then crossing in angles, one scanning the ground, the other scanning the trees. For Brody. For wolves. For people. Always, always, aware.
Nothing.
We find nothing but my own footprints. A sick feeling floats high in my chest, and my movements feel frenetic even as my legs start to drag. I’m not being smart. I’m exhausting myself running in little circles.
Beryl touches my elbow, her signal for me to stop. I can’t look at her for a long moment, the shame too much for me to see mirrored in her eyes.
The snow is thicker, fluffy quarter-sized balls that make ghosts of the trees. The wind has stopped gusting, deciding instead to become something constant, consistent and as unchanging as the despair
that grows inside me.
I turn to Beryl. I’m the native here, but she looks like the one who belongs. Snowflakes dust her hat and hair and eyelashes, and the cold reddens her cheeks… But she stands tall and slender and pale, winter manifested. An ice queen. The coldness that calls for warmth. The harshness that paves the way for flowers in spring.
“I fucked up.”
She looks me in the eyes. “No. You… are simply you.”
I heave a sigh. I think I would have preferred her to just agree with me. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
She takes a step towards me, pulls her hand from her glove so that she can grab my face. “Don’t… Don’t make me hit you.”
I’m taken aback by her words, but I don’t pull away, I don’t break the desperate eye contact she holds me with.
“You are just a man. One man.”
The snow settles on noses and finds a way down my neck. The wind picks up and our hair whips into the small space between us.
“I killed Rita. I… killed others. I do not care. You… care… care too much. Which is worse?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Neither. Because that is life. Decisions. Choices… And consequences mean learning. Not… living in the past.”
She releases my face and takes a step back, chin raised in the defiant way that I have come to know so well. Her words sink in. They don’t erase the torrent of self-hatred that ebbs and flows with each frosty breath. But, for some reason, it makes me feel less alone. Less…
Of a monster?
“You taught me to… Be. To be… here. To fucking live!” She says the last part with such vehemence that I take a step back. I’m unused to her speaking, I’m even more unaccustomed to her using her words against me. “Stop… Listening.”
“Listening? To what?”
“To John.” She closes the distance again. Ruthless even as her voice drops to something more gentle. “To… Whatever it is that says that everything is… your fucking fault.” She stares at me and I don’t know what else to do but to look back into those fathomless eyes.
“My name… My name is Beryl.” A reminder of our first days. When she was gone, locked into the hideaway inside herself and I was simply trying to get through each day. She steps forward and taps my chest and then steps back to wait.
There are times to argue. Things to argue over. Emotions to try to explain. Our perceptions are different, and therefore not completely understood. But there are times in your life that a person who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, shakes you, and tells you that you’re being a little shit, and you listen. Because, well, from any other person it would be something to argue.
Not her.
I look at Beryl. A sword, brilliant and gleaming and oh so sharp… Permanently encased in her scabbard of silence. That her tongue has really never been unsheathed is not lost on me. Instead she has wielded it as a blunt instrument, a club when there are no other alternatives. But she’s closer to revealing the sharpness of her blade. And I… Well I guess I look forward to being cut.
She is fired up. Or angry. Or simply caught in the throes of a truth brought forth into the light after laying dormant for far, far too long. So she leads us out of our designated search area. A circle that encompasses the entire perimeter that a boy might walk on his own.
The cold deepens. The wind thickens. The falling snow becomes a companion that darts, and caresses, and finally settles in a loving layer upon our shoulders. Only to depart, as if scorned, a moment later.
We move. Constant movement. Anger and purpose and two stubborn souls united in either finding the boy or… I guess we’ll go until we collapse. I know we can’t die out here tonight. A rarity in nature, a time in which man’s will is bigger than the chaos incarnate. But we know it. Tonight we cannot freeze. Tonight, our minds are keen. We stray into new areas but are not lost. We scour long after the sun has set and the darkness has made a mockery of our search. We slog through drifts and wade across meadows and take small sips of hot water and push each other to move faster. I worry, and despair, but not selfishly.
For I am not alone.
The blizzard ebbs, a slow ending, a sore loser hell bent on getting in the last word. But when the clouds part and the sliver of moon beams forth, Beryl and I, and Pike, are still walking.
A wolf howls and is immediately joined by others. For that we stop.
When I was young my mom and dad would wake my sister and I for lightning storms. Even on school nights. For the same reason that people who could get water from their faucet would cluster around a waterfall to take pictures… Nature unleashed. An artwork that you can’t fabricate.
It’s the same with this song of the wolves. We freeze, and listen. Not because our legs are about to give out, but because it’s so elemental, so riveting, that we cannot do anything but stop and be serenaded. To ignore something such as this would be to become something lesser. Something that hides within itself. Like I have been, ignoring the laughter of people who have survived, people who have gathered around a fire.
The crystal night. The falling snow. The overwhelming burden of sorrow and worry that I feel. And the primal howling, all combine to throw open my soul. I feel something crack within me. And I do not have words for it, I do not know what it means.
Pike whimpers and paces back and forth in front of us. Then raises his head and lets loose with his own version of a howl, mostly yips and moans, perhaps too scared to fully join in. But, apparently satisfied with his contribution, he comes and sits on Beryl’s feet, content to be still.
“You’re an idiot.”
I think Beryl is still referring to my behavior from earlier today. But when I turn to her she’s looking behind us. Three flashlights and a lantern make their way toward us, Theo leading the way. They’ve been yelling, I guess. I didn’t hear them. Couldn’t. But it only takes a second to realize what their happy faces mean. Everything is fine. The boy is fine. The boy is safe.
I fall into the snow for the second time that day.
BERYL | 30
A SMALL THING, the disappearance of a child. As long as they show up safe and sound. Had he not disappeared, then perhaps it wouldn’t have opened the way for Harlan to finally listen. And maybe Har’s treatment of Brody would’ve created strife between him and the household. To scream and curse at a child is hardly forgivable. But if they were a jury examining his case, after we finally returned from our night of searching, I think the verdict would have been “time served.”
Brody was found in one of the guesthouses shortly after we set out to find him. He had been looking for Harlan’s missing part, he said. He had three things. A screw, a compass, and a pair of old glasses.
He presented them to Harlan at breakfast the next day. And Brody apologized, though for what no one had any idea. And then he gave Harlan a hug, and asked him if he wanted to play cars before Harlan had any chance to respond.
Har looked at him, and there was a long moment of silence. And then he said, “yeah,” and put the glasses on, and crawled around on the floor for over an hour. Something I knew was an ordeal for him. Only Felicia thinks that Harlan should apologize to the kid, as well as everyone else. Momma Kay said that apologies don’t always come in the form of words, and that Felicia should shut her goddamn mouth.
A happy day.
Glasses, a compass, and a screw. Harlan carries them with him now. Sheila thought, from a metaphorical point of view, that this was hilarious. I was relieved when, later, Harlan was able to also see the humor in it. The sadness is not gone. But I see the old Harlan. And the new. I see MY Harlan.
And the winter here is better for it.
The heart of it is over. Either the worst of it is done or we are hardened to it, prepared for whatever nature wants to throw at us. There is more time for stories, for playing. For finding new ways to occupy our time.
“You should put on something nice. I know it’s cold, but you could put on a dress. My wife used to say ‘this is shawly s
hawl weather.’” CD laughs, his eyes leaving me to focus on a point on the hill. As they always do when he mentions his wife. “You look so darn dreary dressed like that.”
“CD, that’s not how it works anymore,” Felicia says from the fireplace, frustration in her voice. “Women don’t have to try to impress men anymore.”
CD’s mouth turns down. “I didn’t say she had to impress anybody. I just want her to be happy.”
Felicia heaves a sigh. “And how would her wearing a dress make her happy? I think that would make you happy.”
He chuckles. “Yes, and who wouldn’t take joy out of making an old man happy?”
I pat his hand and walk away. I walk away expecting my body, or my mind, or both… To remember. The feeling of slowly spinning as the dress is stripped away. The clink of the chain and rustle of cloth and the jets of hot breath.
But I don’t. Or, I did… But only because I was afraid I would.
Is that it?
Instead of fearing a ghost, I’m now afraid of its memory?
Something to think about. It’s progress, or a setback, depending on its permanence.
I cast about the room, looking for Harlan. Still reticent, he’s probably found a job for himself to do. Or he’s playing with Brody. A therapy Harlan forces himself to take.
He should be here…
Smiles from everyone. A warmth and an energy that accompanies holidays. Not Christmas, Felicia is adamant that holiday be abolished. But the winter equinox quickly approaches, a half way point for all of us survivors clinging to the scraps of what we have so…
A holiday of a newer, older, kind.
No one has said anything of presents. The word carries a different meaning, now. Survival is the gift. These are trinkets. But the meaning behind them… Well, that is a reason to keep surviving, I guess. So no one says anything. But there is an open secrecy, whispers and shushing and rooms with closed doors. And shy smiles.
