As Simple as Snow

by Gregory Galloway

  Claire and I stood over Denise’s grave. There wasn’t a headstone, but a plaque at ground level with her name and the dates of her birth and death. “That’s my sister,” I said. What else was there to say, what else did I know about her? There weren’t photographs or stories. There was no time for that. I wondered what it meant for my mother and father, who had held her and brought her home from the hospital, only to return her to the hospital a week later, and then return her to nothingness.

  “I didn’t know,” Claire said.

  “We never come here.” There were empty spaces on either side of the plaque, plots for the rest of us, so we could all be in the ground together. It seemed like a bad joke; it seemed like a waste. I turned and looked at the length of the cemetery, the headstones sticking up stiffly in their rigid rows. I wondered how long the Caynes would wait until they decided to mark Anna’s life with a stone.

  I imagined a big funeral for her, with the whole town there, everyone dressed in black. I had only one suit, which my parents had bought, for times like this (“weddings and other appropriate occasions,” I think, were their exact words), but I’d never worn it. I could see everyone standing in deep snow, solemnly listening to the preacher as he said some trivial words over her grave and her black coffin, smelling of wax and rosewood, was lowered into the open grave. I had imagined a similar funeral for myself hundreds of times, the whole town wailing and weeping, almost unable to go on without me. I imagined it because I knew it would never happen, but this was nearly real, this was sadness. I could see Mr. and Mrs. Cayne standing in the cemetery snow, quietly crying beside the casket. They probably had buried her hundreds of times in their minds already, trying to prepare themselves for the day when they really would bury her. Or bury something. What would they do if they never found her? Bury an empty box, or just put up a marker? These weren’t questions you could ask out loud.

  “Where do you think they’ll put her?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about if she doesn’t come back, wondering where they might put her grave.”

  Claire looked at me like I was crazy. “Would it matter?”

  “I’m sure it matters to Mr. and Mrs. Cayne. And it matters to me. I mean, let’s say they never find her. What do they do, just put a marker here somewhere? I don’t want that, but the Caynes may want one spot where they can go and be reminded of her.”

  “Like your sister?”

  “That’s the idea, but we never come to see her. Never. It might be different for the Caynes, though.”

  We walked slowly through the headstones. “What do you know about them, anyway?” I asked Claire.

  “The Caynes? Less than you do, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know anything. We never talked about it. Anna never said anything about where they came from. I don’t think I heard her talk about one thing that happened before they got here.”

  “She never talked about it with me either. They’re from down south, I think. That’s about all I know.”

  “They seem to know everybody in town, but nobody seems to know them,” I said.

  “My mother thinks something happened to them that they’re trying to forget. That’s why they don’t say anything.”

  “Why does she think that?”

  “I don’t know, people talking, I guess. Wondering what their story is, just like us.”

  “What could have happened worse than this?”

  Claire pulled up in front of my house, as she had a number of times, and I suddenly remembered something. “I completely forgot your birthday,” I said. “I can’t believe that you’ve been driving me around and it didn’t hit me until right now.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “It’s not that important.”

  “Thanks for taking me down there. I hope it wasn’t too morbid.”

  “We’re the ones who are supposed to be morbid,” she said.

  “You’re not, though.”

  “Keep it a secret—I’ve got a reputation.”

  “Thanks again,” I said, and leaned over and kissed her. It wasn’t a conscious thing. I hadn’t thought of kissing her before I did so; I don’t recall ever thinking about it beforehand. But there we were.

  “That was nice,” she said. “But I don’t think it was meant for me.”

  She had me at a disadvantage. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was embarrassed. “I don’t know,” I told her.

  “You don’t have to say anything.” She leaned over and kissed me and then returned to her place behind the wheel. I sat and waited for what would happen next, but nothing did, so I got out of the car and went inside.

  salamanders

  Winter broke off, finally, a long ash crumbling at the end of a cigarette, burned out, weak and emptied. In late March the thermometer jumped almost thirty degrees, launching itself above sixty during the day. I started walking to school along the river. It was out of my way; I had to walk over from our house, then wind north along the banks, then cut along Town Street about half a mile to school. It took me almost an hour, forty minutes if I walked fast and didn’t stop, but I didn’t mind. I liked the walk.

  The river sighed and snapped, the ice finally melting. I watched the water splash up from beneath the cracked surface, pushing its way around, trying to wrench itself from its deep sleep. Or maybe the ice was just tired, tired of hanging on all winter long, tired of gripping the same stone, the same spot in the bank, and was just giving up. Across the river I could see large chunks breaking free and disappearing under a shelf of ice, dragged into the water and taken off somewhere before disappearing. If it stayed warm, all the ice would be gone by the end of the week, and the river would move again, the fish could return to the surface, and fishermen would follow and try their best to outsmart them. It would all happen as it always had, as though nothing had changed, or had changed so naturally that you barely noticed.

  The grass was almost free of snow, and looked brown and spent and ugly. The snow retreated to its final holdouts, piles on the edges of parking lots, the shadow of the woods. The days were bright and warm, but I found myself following the snow into the woods after school. It was calm and cool and quiet. Once spring came, the place would be filled with people smoking and making out and who knows what else. I wandered through the woods by the school and then walked along the river and into the woods where I had last seen Anna’s face, stuck on a stick in the snow. I wanted to find the spot again, but without using the map, so I ended up wandering through the thick evergreens, wasting time until I had to head home for dinner. One afternoon, just before April, I heard two voices arguing.

  “Do you want me to call her?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  It was Carl and his father. Carl was not happy. I didn’t move. I stood there in the snow, afraid they might hear my clumsy boots if I moved. I couldn’t see them, but from their voices I assumed they were behind me. I was afraid they might see me and recognize me. If they said something to me, I’d run, but if they couldn’t see me, I would wait until they left, and they would never know that I’d been there. Their voices were raised loud enough to hear clearly.

  “You get your nose in enough of my business,” Carl was saying.

  “Well, stay out of this.”

  “If you do the right thing, I won’t have to get involved.”

  Mr. Hathorne didn’t answer.

  “Where are you going now?” Carl asked.

  “I’m not going over there, don’t worry about it.”

  “Just go home.”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  “What?”

  Again there was no answer.

  “Do you have any money?” Carl said.

  “No.”

  “Good, then you can’t buy anything to drink.”

  I could hear someone coming closer, and before I could do anything, he was behind me. Carl didn’t look surprised to see me. “Did you hear?”


  “A little. Just the end. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s all right. He was wandering around in the woods. I don’t know what he was doing.”

  “My mother’s name didn’t come up, did it?”

  “No,” Carl said. “We were talking about something else. Do you want me to ask about that?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d rather not know.”

  “Me too.” He flashed a smile. “What are you doing now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, then.”

  We walked over to his house. Mrs. Hathorne had the kitchen smelling good; a huge pot of stew simmered on the stove, and biscuits were baking in the oven.

  “That’s a winter meal, Mom. Winter’s over.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. You may need this stew after all. The both of you. Do you want to stay for dinner?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We went to Carl’s room. I sat at his computer while he unlocked his file cabinet and updated his books. He had just finished locking the cabinet when the doorbell rang. His mother called for him and he left the room. When he came back, Claire was with him. I thought she might have been looking for me. Her black hair was pulled up through a white scrunchie, so it fanned up in the back. From the front, the rising tuft looked ceremonial, like a tribal headdress. She might have been a beautiful Indian woman, a princess from some dark and secret land. I didn’t want to stop looking at her.

  “Did you drive over?” I asked.

  “I had to walk—my mom’s got the car. I’m thinking about getting my own.”

  “Get a BMW,” Carl said.

  “If you pay for it.”

  “Who’s the first person you’d hit with it?” I said. Claire didn’t say anything. “Put me at the top of the list, would you?”

  Carl’s mom drove us home. We were going down McKinley Road, near Glass Pond (Anna always called it “See More Pond,” I guess because there wasn’t much of one, it was more like a swamp or a marsh, except when there was a lot of rain or snowmelt, like now), when we saw some rubbery things glistening on the road in the headlights. They were four or five inches long and their bodies looked wet and silvery, like curious little snakes with their heads raised into the air.

  “It’s the salamanders,” Carl yelled. “Be careful, Mom.” Mrs. Hathorne slowed the car to a near-stop and tried to avoid the animals as they worked their way across the warm pavement. Every year, near the end of winter, the salamanders migrated from their winter home in the woods to the swamps and ponds and pools where they could breed. There were hundreds of them on the road, and Mrs. Hathorne was swerving wildly to avoid them. Finally she sped up. “Someone else is going to run over them, anyway,” she said.

  “Stop,” Carl shouted. She stopped. He jumped out of the car, and we could see him bent over, pushing the gray salamanders toward the side of the road. He moved forward a few feet, continuing his rescue effort. Claire and I got out and helped him. The salamanders froze when we approached them, so we had to pick them up and carry them, placing them gently on the dirt in hopes they would continue toward the pond, not venture back onto the pavement.

  It was a good night for salamanders. The air was thick, with a flavor of damp earth that filled our noses and mouths. When we finished moving the damp salamanders, Claire playfully wiped their slickness off on the front of Carl’s blue jeans. He pushed his palms toward her face, but stopped just short of touching her. I thought about going over and wiping my hands on her dress, but didn’t. I watched them laughing in the headlights of the car, while Mrs. Hathorne waited impatiently inside.

  I had almost forgotten Carl’s affection for animals. When we were little we had made a pact to become forest rangers, or Greenpeace activists: we would live and work in Alaska or Africa or at the Bay of Fundy, helping preserve the wilderness and protecting the animals living there. Carl had it all figured out. He had become a vegan and had read a lot of relevant books. He knew what needed to be done. But as he researched more and we got older, he determined he could do more good by making money and supporting organizations than by working for one of those organizations. Then it seemed that he forgot about what he was going to use the money for; the point, it seemed, was to make money. But seeing him there in the dark, pushing and prodding and carrying the salamanders to safety on the side of the road, I thought that he might still be operating according to his plan. Maybe he still had it figured out, but he just didn’t talk about it anymore. It also made me think that I was no longer part of his plan. Carl had left me behind.

  hay in a stack of needles

  My father took me to the first Saturday home baseball game. He hadn’t even told me that he had bought tickets, or maybe they’d been given to him. Either way, he told me at dinner Friday night. We had never been to a game together, and I couldn’t remember him ever going. But there we were, driving to the game. I had wanted to take the train, but he insisted on driving.

  My father refused to get an SUV. My mother was always telling him that we needed one, that she needed one for all her errands—which she never ran. We might have been the only family in town who didn’t have a huge vehicle, an SUV or a truck; my parents both drove Volvos, my father a little brown two-door coupe and my mother a brown four-door. They looked like cardboard boxes on wheels. But really safe cardboard boxes. My father wanted the smallest, safest car built, and I’m sure he would have driven a single-passenger model if they had made one. The only cargo he cared about was his golf clubs. As long as they could fit into the trunk, the vehicle was big enough. Anything more was a waste of space.

  I stared out the window and listened to Anna’s CDs on my headphones. She had ended the first CD with a song by Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” It was almost ten minutes long. It started with a tapping sound, drumsticks against the metal rim of the drum, and then that sound became distorted, echoing and repeating over itself. A slow bass came in, droning along until the guitar snarled around the rhythm; it was almost two minutes before there was any singing. The chorus was basically the title repeated again and again, and another phrase along with it. I had always thought the phrase was “I’m dead,” but when I listened to it on headphones it sounded like “undead,” which made a lot more sense, I guess.

  Anna had always laughed when she played that song. “Are they serious?” she’d said. “It’s so campy—high drama and tragedy.” She thought it was hilarious. “Do you think they thought it was funny?” she’d asked.

  “Does anybody else?” I’d said.

  “People take it very seriously. My father said it was like the Goth anthem.”

  “It’s a little creepy.”

  “But fake creepy, like vomiting-pea-soup creepy. You have to laugh.”

  I listened to it over and over. It was funny, but I wasn’t laughing.

  My father looked over at me and lifted his chin. I took my headphones off.

  “When you went to that TV show,” he said, “did you sign anything?”

  “A release form, I think.”

  He nodded and looked back toward the road. “I think I know what they wanted with the photograph.” When he was sure that he had my complete attention, he said, “They wanted to do a show about you, using the taped stuff they didn’t use before, and then the picture.”

  “And?”

  “When they found out the release form wasn’t binding, that you lied about your age, it ruined their plans.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Your old man isn’t a complete idiot,” he said.

  “You ruined my chance to be on TV.” He knew I was joking.

  “You’re young, you’ll have plenty of better chances.”

  It took us about three hours to get to the stadium. We had to wait on line at the will-call window for tickets. I had brought along a pair of binoculars, even though my father had kept insisting that I leave them at home. “We have good seats,” he’d said. “You’re not going to nee
d them.” When he finally got the tickets, he noticed that they were in the upper deck. He didn’t say anything about it until we got all the way there.

  We were in the first row of the upper deck, about halfway between third base and the left-field wall. “These aren’t bad,” he said as we sat down. It was a cool, gray day, threatening to rain any minute. Every now and again a strong wind would gust into the stadium and hit me in the back. I felt that if I stood up the wind would blow me over the railing and down into the seats below. I had never really thought of myself as afraid of heights, but I couldn’t look straight down from our seats. Yet there was something inviting about the height; it made me want to jump. It was a physical urge, an impulse or temptation that had to be resisted. There was no way I would jump, but I had a feeling in my gut, in my muscles, that made me think that I might jump despite my own will. I wanted to move away from the railing, but then what would I tell my father? That I was afraid? I kept the binoculars to my face and concentrated on the players on the field or scanned the crowd.

  My father was eating oyster crackers out of a bag he’d brought inside his coat, and drinking a beer. He was trying to keep score, but he kept getting distracted, or else he was just making conversation. Or maybe he was trying to make me focus on the game. He kept asking, “What happened?” I had to pay attention to the game and help him out with the plays. “Was that three-six-three?” he’d ask. “No, the pitcher covered first,” I’d answer. We almost had a conversation.

  Around the fourth or fifth inning I noticed a group of Goth kids sitting across the diamond, near the top, in right field. I hadn’t noticed them before. There were eight or nine of them, and I thought of how there might be a group of them at every sporting event, huddled together in their black uniforms. Then I saw her. It was Anna, in the middle of the group, calmly watching the game. With her blond hair she was like a piece of hay in a stack of needles.