Hap and Hazard and the End of the World

by Diane DeSanders

  I follow Jeff around the farm sometimes, and he’s pretty nice to me and tells me stories. He’s almost a grown-up now.

  One time when I was here, they were bringing big machines up to the barn, and Uncle Edward called me to come climb up high in the loft to watch when the grain from the fields was poured in.

  A whole day’s heat was stored up where I sat. Golden light slanted onto the pouring, hissing mounds forming into hills of golden grain below me, filling the barn, the men shifting it, shoveling it, walking and sinking in it barefoot, bare-legged, with rolled-up pants, and bare-armed, bare-chested, shafts of sunlight shooting through swirls of gold dust rising, gleaming on grain, studding sweaty golden shoulders and arms. I had never seen men like this, working hard, breathing hard, muscles flexing, handkerchiefs on faces. They were the Men.

  The heat and dust were overpowering, everything golden. I got dizzy watching, sneezing, dazzled by beauty. Uncle Edward kept saying to them, “Gently, gently,” and later they said explosions in grain had been known to happen.

  I want to look more at the Men and at Jeff in that barn full of grain and golden light. I hear him taking a shower with the door closed late in the day. I sit outside the bathroom door and listen, just wanting to look at him some more, not thinking of anything but just getting closer and looking. I hear the water turn off in there. I knock on the door and then open it, saying, “Jeff?”

  “Get out of here!” he shouts in a mad voice. Why is he SO mad? Then he comes out, wrapped in a towel, hair wet, and stomps past me, and refusing to look at me. What is so bad?

  OLD MEN SIT AROUND SMOKING AND TALKING on whitewashed boardwalks in front of stores downtown in Brady. Aunt Lee speaks to them, then in the car she says she hopes she never gets that old. But I hope Aunt Lee lives forever, she is so nice to me.

  They are all nice. They’re the nicest people I’ve ever seen, nicer even than the Breards, nicer than the Sunday school ladies, nicer than I could ever pretend to be for such a long time. They seem to be nice all the way down to their bones! They never show even a small crack of not being nice, day after day after day, until I’m looking for that crack. I’m searching for that crack, getting ready for it, wishing for it.

  Aunt Lee takes me to church every Sunday, never to Sunday school, but to church, where she knows everyone and everyone knows her. I sit next to her, and we sing songs, which I like the most, especially the one that goes like this:

  I come to the garden alone

  while the dew is still on the roses,

  and the voice I hear falling on my ear,

  the Son of God discloses.

  Aunt Lee sings in such a loud, deep voice that I scrunch down in my seat, afraid everyone is looking at us. I bury my face in the hymnal and try to sing as deeply as Aunt Lee sings, but I can’t do it, and my high child voice seems puny next to hers.

  And he walks with me, and he talks with me,

  and he tells me I am his own;

  and the joy we share as we tarry there,

  none other has ever known.

  Finally we close our hymnals, sit down in the pews, and the preacher starts to talk. Usually it’s boring, but today we’re right in the front row, and the preacher seems to be upset, waiting until everyone’s looking at him.

  He starts out talking about how Adam was tempted by the snake, who was really the Devil, of course. Then he talks about Cain and Abel. Then I guess I wasn’t listening for a minute, because all of a sudden he’s talking about Jesus in the desert being tempted by the Devil, and how the Devil is just waiting to tempt each and every one of us every day. Now he’s talking louder and louder, until he’s yelling in a mean voice that we are all sinners and that sinners are going to burn in Hell!

  Now I can’t take my eyes off him, because he starts looking at me. He says even a man who is rude to his wife just because he’s had a bad day is in the claws of the Devil. He says that even children stealing cookies are full of the Devil. He says that there is not a one of us here who has not or who will not have a chance to shake hands with the Devil. He looks right at me and says, “And what will you do, when your turn comes?”

  Why is he looking at me like that? He keeps on. I can’t stop looking back, and he keeps on as if he’s trying to make me cry! I try not to cry! Does he know something about me? Did Aunt Lee tell him something about me, about us? I’m afraid he might know how I am bad inside, mean to my sisters, and how sometimes I steal things.

  Later, when we take naps, I lie on the dormer-window bed, looking down onto the big tree, looking into nests, listening to the buzzing, the dove calling, a dog barking, a cicada, the noises of the farm, and I think about home.

  Daddy seems to be bad. He won’t go to church with Mama. He scares us and makes Mama cry. He won’t act nice. He ruins everything. His own mother doesn’t like him. He even said he’s one of the goats. Does this mean Daddy is going to Hell? I wonder.

  Maybe Daddy will die in the hospital and never come home. Maybe he’s already died and they won’t tell me, will never tell me, and I’ll be wondering about all this for the rest of my life. I fall asleep. I have dreams.

  You know that you do sleep because of the dreams you have—pushing off and flying high like swimming and then not being able to get back down to the tiny faraway people pointing and waving their arms. Then you’re being chased by raging many-footed, long-toothed things that you cannot quite see or remember, through fields of tall somethings that are thick like water, tripping up your legs, your legs not working right. Your legs are stuck on backward. Something is wrong. Everything is wrong. A voice is yelling from far away and over to one side. Another voice is whispering next to your ear from behind. Small rocks are flying through the air. Smaller rocks like gravel pass right through your body. When you notice this, you stop to look around. The monster is gone, but the fields are inside out. The trees are upside down and waving like seaweed. The light is dark. You’re falling away from the world. You’re falling away from yourself. Something is tumbling away, lost.

  I wake with a jolt, half-dreaming, half-screaming, shadows slipping along the floor like smoke, sliding under my bed. Something else floats on the ceiling in the corner with red Devil eyes, knowing that I’m bad, that I’m going to be punished, waiting to snatch my brain if I let myself lock eyes with it, if it sees fear.

  I wake up. The attic is dark. Looking out the window, I see stars, and I make a wish, but there’s no moon. I want to go home.

  But when we come to the last week and I realize I’ll go home soon, I decide I’d like to stay with Aunt Lee and live here. I tell them I could come back when I’m grown and build a little house out near the reservoir. Soon I’m begging them to let me come out and live here with them instead of at home with Mama and Daddy, and they seem to think this is a big joke. But this is not a joke.

  One day, I talk back to Aunt Lee in a not-nice voice. She looks at me surprised, and she says, “Who are you? You’re not my girl! You go away and bring me back my sweet girl!”

  I slam out of the house and walk way out behind the chicken coops, where there’s a toolshed. You’re not my girl! What does that mean? Are there different people in me? I sit in there for a long time looking through stacks of old Sears catalogs and copies of Reader’s Digest. Field mice come in and look at me. We sit very still, looking at each other.

  I wonder what’s happening at home. I wonder what Mama’s doing now. I wonder if Daddy’s come home yet.

  The next day, Jeff is friendly again, and I ask him why don’t they have goats on the farm.

  “Goats are too much trouble. You can’t control them.”

  Later, I’m sitting on the porch with Uncle Edward, and I ask him if I could somehow get a baby skunk to take home for a pet, because I heard somewhere that you could take the smelly parts out of them.

  “Skunks carry rabies,” he says, rocking back.

  “But you could find one that didn’t have rabies.”

  “No,” he says, “Skunks carry
rabies.”

  “But I’ve heard that some people have pet skunks.”

  “It’s not a good idea. Skunks carry rabies.”

  “But they’re not born with rabies!”

  “But they carry rabies.”

  He says this every time, the very same thing, without any change, over and over again, as if that’s the end of it. He won’t argue or explain. And he doesn’t look friendly at all. I never noticed Uncle Edward acting like this before. I just look at him. Finally I get up and walk away. And I keep walking.

  On one side of the house are fields all grassy green and gold. You can see cows and calves out there and sometimes the bull. Rabbits or kittens or quail scoot in and out of the grass.

  I walk to the other side of the house, kind of behind the house, over a fence, some distance away, toward the reservoir, where the ground becomes dry, cracked, and hard, with rocks, stickers, dried cow patties, thorny things, big red ants. I walk carefully, my feet burning, watching for scorpions and snakes, wishing I had worn shoes, but then thinking, Oh well.

  I’ve been out here before. There’re no trees, the sun high and hot. Tough grasses, cactus in scruffy clumps, larger ones growing out of dead, decaying ones. Some prickly pears spread out, live and dead parts, over areas the size of a car. One of these is home to hundreds of wobbly daddy longlegs, which all lean together in my direction as I pick my way past.

  I stop to look at a nest of red ants. Some ants are almost a half an inch long, but I know these are slow to sting. There’s a hole in the middle of the perfect circle they’ve raked out, and hundreds go in and out, carrying things. It’s a big nest. I wish I could look down inside the nest to see what it’s really like to be an ant. Careful not to stand on their circle or their path, I watch until I’m shooing away too many flies that have found me.

  I walk again, trying to lose the flies. I see a jackrabbit watching me from a distance. He scoots away. A hornet buzzes around me a few times, then zooms off, speeding out of a wide turn like a tough little fighter plane.

  I think about playing the Girl, but she’s not that interesting right now. I think she’s high up in her Wonder Woman airplane, watching me from the sky. I’m thirsty and hot. The sun beats down like it’s personal.

  When I get to the reservoir, I climb up to the mounded bare lip of it and sit down to look at the water, thinking it’ll be cooler there, but it’s not. The water’s too low for me to reach, the reflected sun is blinding, and here come the flies.

  I examine my feet, tough from summer, but no more beat-up than usual. I brush them off. Chigger bites around the ankles are itchy and hot. A worrying splinter has finally gone. The stuck-back-together, stubbed-off top of my right big toe is healing up, the Band-Aid so dirty, I throw it away. Nothing hurts that much, but my already-sunburned arms are stinging. I wave more flies away and look out across the shimmering-hot landscape. I can see the clump of trees up where the house is, so I’m not lost. But I am completely alone. No one knows I’m out here. Something could happen to me out here and no one would miss me until suppertime. I enjoy this thought.

  Maybe I’m tired of being so nice all the time. Anyway, they’re probably tired of having me here by now. A black-and-blue horsefly insists on my big toe.

  A dust devil spins itself out next to a dead-looking crown of thorns bush. A breeze blows some tumbleweeds across, sending them skipping and bouncing until they run into something and pile up. Tall dark clouds on one side of the sky are rolling this way.

  Over there I see a snake, a long sidewinder whipping itself along in my direction, moving so fast, I can’t take my eyes away as it ripples and rolls itself across the cracked earth and past in a matter of seconds. I forget about the flies.

  I am in the desert. If I want to listen for God’s voice, I can see that this is the place. I’m like Moses crossing the desert, looking for a sign. I’m like Ishmael, hoping an angel will show me to the water. I’m Elijah, waiting for God to come and tell me I’m not alone. Even Jesus went to the desert looking for something, and things did come to Him. That’s what they say.

  I’m batting flies away, small flies, medium-size flies, and big glittery horseflies that insist on landing with a bite. A world of flies has found me and more are coming still. Shading my eyes, I look up and see almost a cloud of them, hovering above and around me, diving in, scattering out, then diving in again, as if I might be something good to eat.

  I sit still and let them land on me. They crawl and tickle my arms and legs. I lie back and cover my eyes. At first, I can’t stop twitching and shuddering when I feel those horseflies land, but finally I make myself lie perfectly still, letting them crawl all over me, letting them come.

  The Girl is flying high above me, having her own life, looking down at me.

  I try to think of God in Heaven looking down at me, with Jesus and all the angels, clouds, swirly things around the edges of the picture. Here I am, God! Look down and see me, Jesus! This is how much I want you to appear to me, speak to me, or send an angel, Send something! But nothing comes.

  I close my eyes and let the sun burn into me. I welcome the flies. I wait. The flies tickle and bite me all over, my arms and legs, my face, my ears. It’s like I’m dead. Is this what it feels like to be dead? I lie still, listening to their buzzings.

  The imagining of angels doesn’t seem real. I can’t make the picture bright and clear like it used to be at night in bed. I am just here, lying on dirt, letting bugs crawl on me for no reason, being dead but not rising up. There’s no rising up to be found out here at all.

  Probably because I don’t believe enough. A little voice in the back of my head keeps saying I’m only trying to pretend hard enough to make it real. But it’s not real. I simply cannot go all the way to believing it’s real. I’m faking, and something in me knows it. The Girl knows it.

  Maybe I could die, lying out here like this. The flies want me to die, I can feel the force of them wanting me to die. I’m nothing but food to these flies, and they are ready to eat me.

  I jump up! I dance up and down! I take handfuls of sandy dirt and rub it on my arms and legs and face. The flies scatter. I run down the side of the reservoir, look out at the bright sky, which is turning greenish, and I see dark clouds coming closer, stacked up and moving fast. I start walking back up to the house as fast as I can pick my way.

  Why don’t I believe? Other people do it. This must mean I am bad. But why do people act like something depends on it? What if you can’t help thinking what’s in your own mind to think?

  I reach the house and I hear thunder. The sky’s even more green and dark. I stand on the soft grass as fat, splashing drops hit my arms, hoping it will cool me down, wash me clean.

  Aunt Lee sticks her head out of the back door, shouting, “Where have you been? I was looking for you! Come in the house right now; it’s fixin’ to storm!”

  I hear the cattle guard’s broken pipe twanging as Uncle Edward’s truck barrels up the driveway, as she’s pushing me into the house. He jumps out of the truck out there, yelling, “Tornado!” and I hear the truck door slam, and then CRACK-POP-BAM, the loudest sound—more than sound, with white light, too—I ever heard shocks the house, shakes everything. The next instant, Aunt Lee’s in the backyard yelling, crying, and I hear Uncle Edward’s voice out there, too, and then both are coming in the back door, hugging each other, shaking, and Aunt Lee’s talking a mile a minute.

  There’s a funny smell. I look out back. Lightning struck the tree right next to where Uncle Edward was standing. The trunk is split. We never saw the tornado, but lightning struck the corner of the roof, too, right there touching the tree. Lightning almost struck Uncle Edward, might have killed Uncle Edward. They keep talking about it, saying, “It wasn’t your time” and “Well, we need the rain.”

  They don’t know it, but I know that lightning wasn’t after them at all. It was after me.

  Bees

  You can run across fields and through woods and up creeks and down ro
ads, and you can run and run and run for miles and miles cross-country, and you could even run your whole life if you wanted to, but when you stopped for a minute to rest, or if you stopped for just a few seconds to catch your breath, no matter where your stopping might be, there the bees also would be, buzzing around your head, and buzzing around and around your ears, getting tangled in your hair, getting folded into your clothes, being trapped right next to you, buzzing and buzzing, and you can’t get them out, and you can’t get them away, and you can’t even see their bullet bodies whizzing through the air, chasing you, and dogging you, and tracking you, because their little missile bodies and their kamikaze wills cannot be stopped, and you can’t even knock them out of the air because they are so fast, and so knowing, and they will die to get you, they will hurl their whole angry, tough little bodies right into you, so the stinger impacts your skin like a slap. And then another slap, and another and another as each bee hits, and you are slapped and slapped, and you turn and turn, and you run and stumble, each slap socking into your skin, into your muscle, and into your stomach and into your brain, attacking and invading you with bee fury all through your insulted flesh.

  So I am eight years old and I am on a big dumb brown-and-white paint horse that I have been given to look cute for a picture, and even though I can ride, and even though I am a good rider, I have been given this big stupid and stubborn horse because I am a child. Then everyone goes out on the trail, and this stupid horse wants to run right through big thick bushes, and Mama told me to be sure to keep the horse away from the river because big dumb paint horses just love to roll in water, and then we do go near the river, and when we are there near the river, I am so busy thinking about keeping this stupid stubborn horse from rolling in water that I don’t see what’s really happening, with the horse going through the thick bushes, the horse pushing through the dense, heavy bushes, the bees buzzing up out of the bushes and around its head, buzzing around the big dumb brown-and-white head of the stupid horse, the bees getting really mad, and the bees rising up and rising up out of the thick bushes like the head of a bee cobra, and then the horse shies and then the horse rears, and then I see that the horse is running for the river, and then I see a thick, low branch coming fast at me—a heavy-as-a-tree-trunk and too-low-to-duck big branch coming right at me fast—so I throw my leg over and I jump off the horse at a run, the way I saw a man do at the rodeo, and then I fall on the rocks and on the grass, and then I roll on the rocks and on the grass, and then the horse jumps around me and the horse runs away and then I am on the ground with the bees, buzzing around me, slamming their stingers right into me like fists, buzzing and buzzing, the bees’ fury around me in a whirlwind of killing rage, so I run up the hill under the trees and I am slapping the air and I am screaming and I am turning and turning around and around and running and running, but it doesn’t help, because nothing helps, and then some people ride up on their horses, but the bees have me to sting, and the people are older and the people are high in the air on their horses and my dumb paint has run away. And the people are laughing because the people see me red and running and crying and screaming, but people can’t see the whirlwind and the stinging that is like fists, and the people just act as if they think that I am crazy, and that I am a funny puppet on a string out there far away from them, jumping and turning and made of wood and paper and of something else that they don’t know, and jumping and turning and running and falling down and running again, and the people don’t see the whirlwind and the people don’t see the stinging, and one of the people yells out, “What’s wrong?” but I can’t answer and so I think that the people don’t know why I am doing what I am doing and that the people think I am a crazy person and a funny person who does things for no reason, and then the bees start thinning out, and then one of people shouts out, “We’re going to get help!” and then the people ride away on their tall horses—a sorrel and a bay and a palomino—the people canter gracefully away on their shiny and perfectly groomed horses, canter easily away over the hill. And after the people go away and all the bees that wanted to sting me have stung me, and then the bees will all die now, having given everything that was in themselves to me, and I even see some little bee bodies lying around on the grass and falling out of my clothes, having given all their fury and all their rage to me, then I just cry and cry and cry and walk and walk back toward the barn. And soon one of the people who laughed at me before comes back over the hill, leading my stupid horse, which is now all wet and tired, and the person helps me to get back on that dumb paint horse and I ride back with that person leading me, and I can’t stop crying and imagining the bees and the rage of the bees and the people laughing and the people going for cocktails that evening and talking about amusing events of the day. And all the bee stings all over me sting and ache and throb, and the buzzing and the rage of the bees is in me now, and my whole body hurts now, and even my brain hurts now, and I know even now that something has changed inside me and will always be a certain way now that it didn’t used to be. Something in me that was me got pushed aside by something else in me that seemed to come from somewhere else, and I know that bees are in me now, and that that is where they are going to stay now, that that is where the bees are now and are always going to be.