Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Suttis’s eye that gazed upon so much without recognition, still less interest, for instance all printed materials, seized at once upon the human-being footprints on the embankment which Suttis knew to be, without taking time to think, not the footprints of his brothers or any other trapper or hunter but female footprints.

  Suttis knew, just knew: female. Not even the boot-prints of a young boy. Just female boot-prints.

  There were other prints, too—mixed with the female. Possibly a child. Suttis knew without calculating, with just-seeing.

  Not that these tracks were clear—they were not clear. But Suttis understood that they were fresh for no other tracks covered them.

  What was this! Suttis whistled through the gap in his front teeth.

  A piece of cloth—a scarf—of some crinkly purple material, Suttis snatched up and quickly shoved into his pocket.

  SSS’ttisss! Here!

  Atop a skeletal larch the King of the Crows spread his wings. The King of the Crows did not like it that Suttis had paused to pick up the crinkly-purple scarf. For the King of the Crows had flown ahead of Suttis, to bade him to hurry to that point, to see.

  And now Suttis saw—about twelve feet from the base of the embankment, amid a tangle of rushes—a doll?

  A child’s rubber doll, badly battered, hairless, unclothed and its coloring mostly flaked off—too light to sink in the mud and so it was floating on the surface in a way to cause Suttis’s heart to trip even as he told himself Damn thing’s only a doll.

  Was he being mocked? Had the King of the Crows led him so far, to rescue a mere doll?

  Suttis drew nearer and now—he saw the second figure, a few yards from the first. And this, too, had to be a doll—though larger than an ordinary doll—discarded in this desolate place like garbage or trash.

  Pulses beat in his head like spoons against some wooden vessel. A doll! A doll! This had to be a doll, like the other.

  As so much was tossed away into the Black Snake mudflats that were an inland sea of cast-off human things of all kinds. Here you could find articles of clothing, boots and shoes, broken crockery, plastic toys, even shower curtains opaque and stained as polyurethane shrouds. Once, Suttis had found a pair of jaws in the mud—plastic teeth—he’d thought were dentures but had had to have been Hallowe’en teeth and another time the wheel-less chassis of a baby buggy filled with mud like a gaping mouth. Mostly these cast-off things accumulated at the edge of the mudflat where borne by flooding water they caught in exposed roots amid the debris of winter storms, the skeletons of small drowned creatures and the mummified fur-remnants with blind pecked-out eyes like gargoyles fallen from unknown and unnameable cathedrals while farther out in the mudflats such objects were likely to sink and be submerged in mud.

  Lurid tales were told in Beechum County of all that was “lost”—discarded and buried and forgotten—in the mudflats.

  Bodies of the hated and reviled. Bodies of “enemies.”

  Humped outlines of dead logs in the mudflat like drowsing crocodiles.

  Cries of smaller birds silenced by the furious shrieking of crows.

  Was this a doll, so large? It looked to be the size of a small child—Suttis had no clear idea how old—two years? Three?

  Weak-kneed Suttis approached the very edge of the bank.

  The King of the Crows shook his wings, jeering, impatient.

  SSS’ttisss! Here!

  The King of the Crows was very near to speaking, now. Human speech the great bird could utter, that Suttis could not stop his ears from hearing.

  As the wide black-feathered wings of the King of the Crows fluttered wind and shadows across Suttis’s slow-blinking eyes.

  “Jesus!”

  A little girl, Suttis thought, but—dead?

  Her head was bare as if shaved—so small! So sad!

  Nothing so sad as a child’s bare head when the head has been shaved for lice or the poor thin hair has fallen out from sickness and it seemed to Suttis, this had happened to him, too. Many years ago when he’d been a small child.

  Lice, they’d said. Shaved his head and cut his scalp with the razor cursing him as if the lice were Suttis’s fault and then they swabbed the cuts with kerosene, like flames too excruciating to be registered or gauged or even recalled except now obliquely, dimly.

  Poor little girl! Suttis had no doubt, she was dead.

  Maybe it was lice, they’d punished her for. Suttis could understand that. The small face was bruised, the mouth and eyes swollen and darkened. Blood-splotches on the face like tears and what was black on them, a buzzing blackness, was flies.

  Only the head and torso were clearly visible, the lower body had sunk into the mud, and the legs. One of the arms was near-visible. Suttis stared and stared and Suttis moved his lips in a numbed and affrighted prayer not knowing what he was saying but only as he’d been taught Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name bless us O Lord for these our gifts and help us all the days of our lives O Lord thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven! Amen.

  Suttis had seen many dead things and was not uncomfortable with a dead thing for then you know, it is dead and cannot hurt you. Only a fool would lay his bare hand upon a “dead” raccoon or possum and that fool would likely lose his hand in a frantic rake of sharp curved claws and a slash of razor-teeth.

  A dead thing is a safe thing and only bad if it has started to rot.

  The poor little girl in the mudflat had started to rot—had she? For something smelled so very bad, Suttis’s nostrils shut tight.

  It was a wild extravagant prayer of Suttis Coldham, he’d never have believed he could utter:

  God don’t let her be dead. God help her be alive.

  For cunning Suttis knew: a dead child could mean that Suttis would be in trouble. As an older boy he’d been beaten for staring at children in a wrong way, or a way deemed wrong by others, by the children’s mothers for instance who were likely to be his Coldham relatives—sisters, cousins, young aunts. Staring at his baby nieces and nephews when they were being bathed in the very presence of their young mothers and such a look in Suttis’s face, of tenderness mixed with brute yearning, Suttis had somehow done wrong in utter innocence and been slapped and kicked-at and run out of the house and in his wake the cry Nasty thing! Pre-vert! Get to hell out nasty pre-vert Sut-tis shame!

  And so now if this little girl is naked Suttis will turn and run—but it looks as if on what he can see of the little body is a nightgown—torn and grimy but a nightgown—isn’t it?—for which Suttis is damned grateful.

  The King of the Crows has been screaming for Suttis to bring the little girl to shore. In a crouch half-shutting his eyes groping for something—a long stick, a pole—a piece of lumber—with which to prod the body loose.

  Suttis has it!—a part-rotted plank, about five feet long. When he leans out to poke at the doll-figure in the mud he sees—thinks he sees—one of the swollen eyelids flutter—the little fish-mouth gasping for breath—and he’s stricken, paralyzed—The little girl is alive!

  A terrifying sight, a living child—part-sunken in mud, a glint of iridescent insects about her face—has to be flies—suddenly Suttis is panicked, scrabbling on hands and knees to escape this terrible vision, moaning, gibbering as the King of the Crows berates him from a perch overhead and like a frenzied calf Suttis blunders into a maze of vines, a noose of vines catches him around the neck and near-garrots him the shock of it bringing him to his senses so chastened like a calf swatted with a stiff hunk of rope he turns to crawl back to the edge of the embankment. There is no escaping the fact that Suttis will have to wade into the mudflat to rescue the girl as he has been bidden.

  At least, the sharp stink of the mud has abated, in Suttis’s nostrils. The most readily adapted of all senses, smell: almost, Suttis will find the mud-stink pleasurable, by the time he has dislodged and lifted the mud-
child in his arms to haul back to shore.

  Suttis slip-slides down the bank, into the mud. Makes his way to the mud-child lifting his booted feet as high as he can as the mud suck-suck-sucks at him as in a mockery of wet kisses. Above the mud-child is a cloud, a haze of insects—flies, mosquitoes. Suttis brushes them away with a curse. He’s shy about touching her—at first. He tugs at her arm. Her exposed shoulder, her left arm. She’s a very little girl—the age of his youngest niece Suttis thinks except the little nieces and nephews grow so quickly, he can’t keep them straight—can’t keep their names straight. Lifting this one from the mud requires strength.

  Crouched over her, grunting. He’s in mud nearly to his knees—steadily sinking. Rushes slap against his face, thinly scratching his cheeks. Mosquitoes buzz in his ears. A wild sensation as of elation sweeps over him—You are in the right place at the right time and no other place and no other time will ever be so right for you again in your life.

  “Hey! Gotcha now. Gonna be okay.”

  Suttis’s voice is raw as a voice unused for years. As it is rare for Suttis to be addressed with anything other than impatience, contempt, or anger so it is rare for Suttis to speak, and yet more rare for Suttis to speak so excitedly.

  The part-conscious child tries to open her eyes. The right eye is swollen shut but the left eye opens—just barely—there’s a flutter of eyelashes—and the little fish-mouth is pursed to breathe, to breathe and to whimper as if wakening to life as Suttis carries her to shore stumbling and grunting and at the embankment lays her carefully down and climbs up out of the mud and removes his khaki jacket to wrap her in, clumsily; seeing that she is near-naked, in what appears to be the remnants of a torn paper nightgown all matted with mud, slick and glistening with mud and there is mud caked on the child’s shaved head amid sores, scabs, bruises and so little evidence of hair, no one could have said what color the child’s hair is.

  “Hey! You’re gonna be okay. S’ttis’s got you now.”

  Such pity mixed with hope Suttis feels, he has rarely felt in his life. Carrying the whimpering mud-child wrapped in his jacket, in his arms back along the embankment and to the road and along the road three miles to the small riverside town called Rapids murmuring to the shivering mud-child in the tone of one of his young-mother sisters or cousins—not actual words which Suttis can’t recall but the tone of the words—soothing, comforting—for in his heart it will seem a certainty that the King of the Crows had chosen Suttis Coldham to rescue the mud-child not because Suttis Coldham happened to be close by but because of all men, Suttis Coldham was singled out for the task.

  He was the chosen one. Suttis Coldham, that nobody gave a God damn for, before. Without him, the child would not be rescued.

  Somewhere between the mudflats and the small town called Rapids, the King of the Crows has vanished.

  The sign is RAPIDS POP. 370. Suttis sees this, every time Suttis thinks there’s too many people here he couldn’t count by name. Nor any of the Coldhams could. Not by a long shot.

  First he’s seen here is by a farmer in a pickup truck braking to a stop and in the truck-bed a loud-barking dog. And out of the Gulf gas station several men—he thinks he maybe knows, or should know their faces, or their names—come running astonished and appalled.

  Suttis Coldham, Amos Coldham’s son. Never grew up right in his mind, poor bastard.

  Now more of them come running to Suttis in the road. Suttis carrying the little mudgirl wrapped in a muddied jacket in his arms, in the road.

  A little girl utterly unknown to them, the child of strangers—so young!—covered in mud?

  Amid the excitement Suttis backs off dazed, confused. Trying to explain—stammering—the King of the Crows that called to him when he was checking his traps on the river . . . First he’d seen a doll, old rubber doll in the mudflat—then he’d looked up and seen . . .

  Quickly the barely breathing mud-child is removed from Suttis’s arms. There are women now—women’s voices shrill and indignant. The child is borne to the nearest house to be undressed, examined, gently bathed and dressed in clean clothing and in the roadway Suttis feels the loss—the mud-child was his. And now—the mud-child has been taken from him.

  Harshly Suttis is being asked where did he find the child? Who is the child? Where are her parents? Her mother? What has happened to her?

  So hard Suttis is trying to speak, the words come out choked and stammering.

  Soon, a Beechum County sheriff’s vehicle arrives braking to a stop.

  In the roadway Suttis Coldham stands shivering in shirtsleeves, trousers muddied to the thighs and mud-splotches on his arms, face. Suttis has a narrow weasel-face like something pinched in a vise and a melted-away chin exposing front teeth and the gap between teeth near-wide enough to be a missing tooth and Suttis is dazed and excited and trembling and talking—never in his life has Suttis been so important—never drawn so much attention—like someone on TV. So many people surrounding him, so suddenly!—and so many questions . . .

  Rare for Suttis to speak more than a few words and these quick-mumbled words to a family member and so Suttis has no way of measuring speech—a cascade of words spills from his lips—but Suttis knows very few words and so must repeat his words nor does Suttis know how to stop talking, once he has begun—like running-sliding down a steep incline, once you start you can’t stop. Lucky for Suttis one of the onlookers is a Coldham cousin who identifies him—insists that if Suttis says he found the child in the mudflat, that is where Suttis found the child—for Suttis isn’t one who would take a child—Suttis is simple and honest as a child himself and would never do harm, not ever to anyone—Suttis always tells the truth.

  In a Beechum County sheriff’s vehicle the nameless little girl is taken to the hospital sixty miles away in Carthage where it is determined that she is suffering from pneumonia, malnutrition, lacerations and bruising, shock. For some weeks it isn’t certain that the little girl will survive and during these weeks, and for some time to follow, the little girl is mute as if her vocal cords have been severed to render her speechless.

  Beaver, muskrat, mink, fox and lynx and raccoons he trapped in all seasons. How many beautiful furred creatures wounded, mangled and killed in the Coldham traps, and their pelts sold by Suttis’s father. And it is the child in the mudflat Suttis Coldham will recall and cherish through his life.

  In bed in his twitchy sleep cherishing the crinkly-purple scarf he’d found on the embankment, still bearing a residue of dirt though he’d washed it with care and smoothed it with the edge of his hand to place beneath the flat sweat-soaked pillow, in secret.

  Mudwoman Confronts an Enemy.

  Mudwoman’s Triumph.

  March 2003

  Must ready yourself. Hurry!

  But there was no way she could ready herself for this.

  “I don’t wish to accuse anyone.”

  His name was Alexander Stirk. He was twenty years old. Formally and bravely he spoke. For his small prim child’s mouth had been kicked, torn and bloodied. His remaining good eye—the other was swollen shut, grotesquely bruised like a rotted fruit—was fixed on M.R. with hypnotic intensity as if daring her to look away.

  “Though I have, as you know, President Neukirchen—numerous enemies here on campus.”

  President Neukirchen. With such exaggerated respect this name was uttered, M.R. felt a tinge of unease—Is he mocking me?

  M.R. decided no, that wasn’t possible. Alexander Stirk could not mistake M.R.’s attentiveness to him for anything other than sympathy.

  His head was partly bandaged, with the look of a turban gone askew. His wire-rimmed glasses were crooked on his nose because of the bandage and the left lens had a hairline crack. In the thin reproachful voice of one accusing an elder of an obscure hurt he spoke calmly, deliberately. For he had a genuine grievance, he’d been martyred for his beliefs. He’d hobbled in
to the president’s office using a single aluminum crutch that was leaning now against the front corner of the president’s desk in a pose of nonchalance.

  M.R.’s heart went out to Stirk—he was so small.

  “That is—President Neukirchen—there are many individuals among both the undergraduate and the graduate student body—and faculty members as well—who have defined themselves as ‘enemies’ specifically of Alexander Stirk as well as ‘enemies’ of the conservative movement on campus. You know their names by now, or should—Professor Kroll has seen to that, I think.”

  Kroll. M.R. smiled just a little harder, feeling blood rush into her face.

  “Of these self-defined ‘enemies’ I’m not able to judge how many would actually wish ‘Alexander Stirk’ harm, apart from the usual verbal abuse. And how many, among these, would be actively involved in actually harming me.”

  Stirk smiled with disarming candor. Or seeming candor. M.R. smiled more painfully.

  She’d invited Stirk to her office, to speak with her in private. She wanted the young man to know how concerned she was for him, and how outraged on his behalf. She wanted the young man to know that, as the president of the University, she was on his side.

  The assault had taken place on the University campus just two nights before, at approximately 11:40 P.M. Returning—alone—for Alexander Stirk was frequently alone—to his Harrow Hall residence, Stirk had been accosted on a dimly lit walkway beside the chapel by several individuals—seemingly fellow undergraduates; in his confusion and terror he hadn’t seen their faces clearly—not clearly enough to identify—but he’d heard crude jeering voices—“fag”—“Fascist-fag”—as he was being clumsily shoved and slammed against the brick wall of the chapel—nose bloodied, right eye socket cracked, lacerations to his mouth, left ankle sprained when he was thrown to the ground. So forcibly was Stirk’s backpack wrenched from his shoulders, his left shoulder had been nearly dislocated, and was badly bruised; the backpack’s contents were dumped on the ground—leaflets bearing the heraldic fierce-eyed American eagle of the YAF—(Young Americans for Freedom)—to be scattered and blown about across the snow-stubbled chapel green.