by Jordan, Drew
“Sure, thanks so much.”
He reached his hand out and got close to me. “Take care of yourself.”
What was in that expression? A warning? An offer of help? I couldn’t tell. “Don’t you want some coffee?” I asked, not backing away, or even looking away.
He broke our locked gazes first. “Nah. I should get back. The day is still young and we’ve got a drunk and disorderly sitting in lock up. Time to send him home.”
Neither the stranger nor I said anything and the moment drew out, the silence awkward. Harry seemed to want to say something else, but he just nodded and turned, pulling his hat back on his head. “Have a nice day, folks.”
“Thanks, you too,” I said, and I hated my voice, my fake friendly tone. I sounded like a liar. The intonation was too hearty, the pitch too high.
The door to the cabin slammed shut. I stood, watching the stranger. His face changed immediately, the muscles tensing, the brow furrowing, the mouth tightening. The eyes narrowing. He didn’t speak, but went to the gun rack. He took a different rifle down, and sat in the chair and started cleaning it. Methodically. It wasn’t calmly. But it was controlled.
I went for coffee, knowing that he was waiting for the cop to be fully gone, off the property, before he spoke. After pouring a cup, I went to the window, sipping the hot liquid carefully, trying to spot Harry. He was still on the porch.
Something was in his hand but I couldn’t see what it was. He was bent over, studying the porch, one ear cocked, like he was listening to something while looking. Was he hoping to hear us speaking? Was he pretending to look at something in case he was caught by us? A shiver ran through me.
“He’s still here,” I murmured, gripping my mug tighter. I spoke as low as possible, not sure how much sound carried through the log walls.
“I know,” the stranger said. “I can hear him.”
I couldn’t, but then I wasn’t a survivalist. My ears were untrained.
I took another sip, counting slowly in my head, body tense, wanting to see how long the cop would linger. I knew he knew more than he was letting on but I had no idea what he was hiding. We were hiding many things.
But the only thing that mattered was one. The body.
When I got to forty-seven Harry straightened and slowly made his way down the steps, using the railing for support. He walked stiffly, rocking back and forth, like his knees hurt. I imagined he would joke about it, like so many men his age. Getting old is for the birds. Harry would say that.
I didn’t want to hate Harry. I didn’t want to be thinking even now that he was walking down the same steps I had reached up and swung my ax over, killing Michael with one whack. When would Harry die? The question popped, unbidden into my head, and made me uneasy. I was getting preoccupied with death.
My hands started to shake and I put the mug down on the counter. I didn’t want any death for anyone, but it was starting to crowd out other thoughts, how easily life was extinguished. Here one minute, gone the next. It was an unpleasant nagging thought, to realize I had almost died four times and yet had lived. So many people didn’t survive their first brush with death and it made me feel guilty. In an attempt to ignore this discomfit, I focused instead on my body. My greedy little body and all its needs. My stomach growled. My teeth needed brushing. My nipples were hard, my inner thighs rubbing together in my sweat pants. I bit my lip, hard, and I dug my nails into opposite forearms, turning skin white.
There were too many years of restraint. Too many days of sleepwalking through my life. Muted me. I’d unleashed twenty-four years worth of screams and I felt the echo of all of them reverberating around me.
I watched Harry pick his way carefully across the yard, going towards the river, where he must have a snow machine parked by the banks. When he disappeared, I stopped staring, trying to shove the fear that I could go to prison out of my mind. The stranger was still cleaning his gun, in control. My jittery hands and legs envied his steady, sure movements. About to speak, I was cut off by a keening howl from the dogs in the yard. Frantic yipping that said something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked. That urgent cry snapped my taut nerves and I moved back, away from the window, watching them jump around yanking on their restraints.
“I don’t know.” He was already up, gun in hand, going for the door. He was still wearing his boots and he didn’t bother with his coat.
I followed, scared, stepping into my own shoes, scrambling to follow after him. That sound they were making was a distress cry. Anguish. A plea for help. Like the cry that had lived inside me for my entire childhood. He was jogging down the steps and I followed him, knowing I should stay behind, but compelled to follow by the need to know.
One of the dogs was lying on his side, not moving. The stranger went right to him, and he unhooked him, pulled his flank, rolled him. The way his body fell, heavy, I knew immediately he was dead. I came to a skidding stop, bile rising up into my throat. Grief was strong, immediate. I didn’t even know which dog that was, but I felt the loss. I felt the stranger’s pain as he made a sound of frustration in the back of his throat. His hands ran gently over the coat of the dead dog, massaging him, head bowed.
“What happened?” I asked, forcing my feet to take me forward.
“I don’t know.” He was clearly investigating him for wounds, illness, but he was shaking his head. “I’m not sure.” Finally he looked up at me, and I saw the pain.
For the first time since I’d met him, there was sorrow in his pale eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping to my knees beside him. I reached out, planning to touch his shoulder, comfort him. His affection for the dogs was genuine and deep.
But he jerked away so I couldn’t touch it. “It happens,” he said, tone cold. “It’s just the way it is.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.” Like his refusal to accept my comfort. That hurt. But I didn’t press it. I let him turn his back to me. Everyone processed grief differently.
He ignored me. Instead, he lifted the dog into his arms and walked to the edge of the woods. Then he set him down there and went to his shed, returning with a shovel and a pickax. He started with the shovel and I retreated to the porch to watch as he stomped hard on the shovel with his boot, sending snow flying up in all directions. The ground was frozen, or at least hardened. It didn’t really give way much and I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing. He couldn’t bury the dog in weather like this.
There was no give to the shovel and he tossed it aside heavily, in sheer frustration. He grabbed the pickax and went at the ground, swing after reckless swing, the impact jarring, loud. Each hit produced a spray of snow and dirt but it didn’t look like a hole was being created. He just went at it in a fury, attacking the ground, angry, grieving, violent. He was grunting from the strain and the manic pace and I waited for him to stop, my heart sick for him.
His hurt was hard to watch because he never displayed that kind of emotion or depth of feeling. He was always calm, almost cold, his face an expressionless mask, his eyes intelligent but reserved. He prided himself on control. On teaching me control. This was wild abandon. This was reckless pent up energy flying out, attacking the earth.
It was terrifying.
If he ever chose to turn that anger, that intensity, that physical strength on me, he would destroy me easily. I couldn’t defend myself. The thought made me shiver. Partly from fear. Mostly from arousal. He was so damn sexy, even like this. I wanted to comfort him, but how did you comfort a tornado?
So I just stood there and watched until he spent his strength and hurled the ax into the woods with a loud angry howl. It smacked into a tree with a loud clank and fell to the ground. He was covered in slush and mud and when he pushed his hair out of his eyes he smeared dirt across his forehead. Hand on hips, he stood there, breathing hard, doing nothing.
I went to him, expecting a rebuff. Or anger. I anticipated him turning away, insular, cutting me off fr
om him. Or grabbing my wrists, taking me to the ground, using my body to pound out his frustration. But he didn’t turn away from me. He watched me, eyes agonized, head shaking slightly.
“The ground is too hard,” he said.
“Let’s just wrap him and put him in the shed, baby. You can bury him in the spring.” I reached out and with a cold and trembling finger wiped mud off of his cheekbone, above his beard. “I’ll help you.”
“She’s a girl,” he said. “It’s Sadie.” His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he looked down at the dog. “She always was reliable. Steady, in control. Obedient. Yet she would look at me with such intelligence and pleasure. Like she wanted to please me. I can’t-” His voice cracked. “I don’t want her to be dead,” he said simply.
This wasn’t the way I had expected he would break my heart. I thought it would be from rejection, not because I loved him so much his pain felt like I was being flayed by that pickax. It hurt more than his hand on my ass, more than the rough wood of the cabin grinding into my back when he fucked me, more than the pins and needles of the cold air when I’d been locked out of the cabin or when I’d fallen into the river. This was pain that transcended the physical. There was nothing more powerful than grief and love, and as he grieved, I loved.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because what else was there to say? “Let me help you. You don’t have to do everything alone. Not anymore.”
For a few seconds the air came out of his mouth in little urgent clouds, then he nodded. Bending over, he scooped up Sadie in his arms and cradled her against his chest. I ran ahead and opened the door to the shed for him. He put her in the corner, on a bed of straw, and covered her with a blanket. I tucked it around the edges of her body, feeling her warmth evaporating. She hadn’t been dead long but she was already cold. Tears blurred my vision.
“To Sadie,” I said, voice trembling. “A good dog. The best. Rest in peace, pretty girl.”
His dirty hand came out and rested on the blanket, over her flank, but he didn’t speak. Finally he sighed and stood up. Normally he walked quickly, purposefully, but his movements were slow, probably both from physical strain and weariness.
“I like dogs better than people,” he said. “Except for you.”
That seemed like the highest compliment he’d ever given me. I reached for his hand. “That’s because I’m loyal too.” I squeezed his cold and muddy hand. “And I’ll defend you to the death.”
He looked down at me. “You may need to if Harry the cop comes crawling back around.”
“I’ll protect you and you’ll protect me.”
We walked together to the house. “They say death comes in threes,” he said, pausing on the porch to look out over the yard, rubbing his beard. “Who do you think is next?”
A shiver rolled up my spine. “Not you or me,” I said with conviction. I’d come too far to take a dirt nap now.
“Of course not.” He opened the door to the cabin and gave me a wink. “What would be the fun in that? None.”
The stranger had turned the tap that poured his grief out off, just like that. Would he do that when I died? The unexpected thought made me want to cling to him, adhere my body to his, sear my presence into his soul.
No one else was dying today.
“We’re all about fun here,” he said. Clearly he had fallen back into a flippancy that he used when I was irritating him or he wanted to avoid discussing anything that was real or actually mattered. Part of me wanted to let him do that, because I knew coping mechanisms. I had crawled in bed and fucked coping mechanisms. The other part wanted him to acknowledge that he was still upset about Sadie and that he appreciated my comfort. But then that seemed selfish-like it was about me.
The thought made me uncomfortable. I’d spent my entire life insisting it was never about me. That I had been given the shaft when it came to taking center stage and being the sun that all the familial planets revolved around. That had been my mother. I was never the sun. But I was selfish with the stranger. I wanted what he could give. I wanted to give to him now, but I was thinking about it in terms of how he could make me feel good for making him feel good.
Removing my shoes, I bit my lip and hated myself. There was a sour taste in my mouth. I remembered when I was four and my grandfather passed away and my mother was pissed off that she had to cancel a trip to Vegas for the funeral. I had been confused because I didn’t like my grandfather and neither did my mother. She yelled at him and he yelled back. With me, he was gruff and he smelled bad and liked to push my head down into his lap where I couldn’t breathe. I loved Grandma Jean though. She smiled and petted my hair and gave me cookies. She whispered in my ear that she loved me and I was special.
But Grandma Jean was fragile. She was thin, her clothes loose on her taut skin, pulled over sharp angular bones. She moved like a woman always anticipating a blow and later I figured out it was because she was. My grandfather was liberal with the back of his hand and whereas my mother fought back, my grandmother never did. She just took the abuse. So I couldn’t understand why she cried when he died. Was it relief? Was it genuine grief? It was my first real understanding that love was complicated and messy and illogical.
I didn’t want my love for the stranger to be complicated. I didn’t want to muddy it with my own personal baggage. I wanted to just be with him. Here. Alone. Being everything he needed.
“Tell me about Sadie,” I said, going to the stranger and wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, kissing his back.
It was the way I always approached him for an embrace, because from that angle he couldn’t reject me. He usually didn’t and this time he even pulled me around to the front to wrap me in his arms. I leaned into his chest, breathing in his scent, sweat and outdoor air.
“Laney, you’re the talker, not me.” He buried his lips in my hair. “Lay down with me and just talk to me and I’ll listen.”
He sounded exhausted, weary. My chest tightened. I didn’t know I could love someone this much, with such a squeezing intensity. It made me breathless. I would do whatever he wanted if it would make him feel better.
“Of course.” I led him to the bed, which was out of character. I never tugged him or took him where I wanted him to be. I felt the balance shifting between us. He was showing me his vulnerability and I was more his equal as a result. It was intimate, emotional, having him trust me with his true self.
The bedsprings creaked as we sank down onto the mattress, him pulling me down to tuck in against his chest. He sighed and turned. There were tears glistening in his eyes. Real, honest tears. It was endearing and adorable and I felt in awe of his trust in me.
“Talk, Laney.”
“I never had a dog,” I murmured, playing with the button on his flannel shirt. “My mother couldn’t be bothered. But I had a pet sock.”
He gave a startled laugh. “What? How is a fucking sock a pet?”
My cheeks flushed. I had been ashamed of that sock, then and now. But I couldn’t give it up because the stupid sock had been my comfort in the dark. “So my mother was really broke when I was little and she couldn’t afford to buy me a lot of toys and she hated animals.” Then I realized I wasn’t being truly honest. I was giving my standard line about my childhood, which was not the full truth. Not even close. “Actually, she probably could afford to buy me toys if she hadn’t been so into shopping for herself and for drugs. She was a party girl. But anyway, I didn’t have any stuffed animals or dolls. But I had a striped fuzzy sock in rainbow colors that got into our laundry by accident at the Laundromat. I crammed old grocery bags into it to make it full, so it crinkled a little when I hugged it. It was my rainbow pony. I loved that sock.”
I waited for the pity. It was pitiful. I felt pity for my childhood self. But there wasn’t the familiar shame I usually experienced when I talked about my early years. It was a relief not to have to hide that. My mother and Dean had always wanted me to pretend it had always been the way it was later-that I had been born into a
suburban expensive house, with clothes from the department store and later, trendy teen labels. They wanted me to pretend it never happened and I played the role they demanded. I never told about the closet or the rainbow sock or the needles or the men or the empty refrigerator. But I didn’t feel judged here, with him.
None of that was on me anyway.
“I didn’t care that it was just a sock,” I added. “I wanted something to cuddle with.” In that respect, I still hadn’t changed. I was perpetually in need of a hug, though rarely did I get one. Not a real one.
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” He squeezed me closer to him and I absorbed his heat, his comfort. In me comforting him, I managed to comfort myself.
“Your mom is a cunt,” he said.
The harshness of the statement took me aback. “Well…” Then I thought, why should I defend her? She was a cunt. She had done cunt-like things to me and Grandma Jean and to Dean. “She poisoned me,” I blurted, speaking of That Which We Never Spoke About. “She was jealous of me so she put poison in my pie.”
He didn’t respond immediately. There was no gasp of disbelief or a scoff or calling me a liar like Dean had. There was just a slow, careful working of his jaw. “So you could have died? And I would have never known you?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I don’t think so. Or at least I never wanted to believe she was actually trying to kill me. She did it to look like a suicide attempt. So I would go away, to the hospital. Be out of her house.” Away from my stepfather.
“Now that is fucked up,” he murmured. “But it is true that infanticide is an extreme manifestation of sexual conflict in mammals. She perceived you as competition to her own survival.”
Prickles ran up my back. Had she really been trying to kill me? “How do you know that, Mr. Wikipedia?”
“I did a report on animals killing their young in high school. It stuck with me. It was fascinating. But it’s cruelty at its most base, to humans. The very idea is horrifying. But whether she meant to kill you or not, poisoning you was messed up. Was she jealous of you? Because that’s how it reads to me.”
