I didn’t reply right away. I had to decide my own mind before sharing the news with Ben. One thing to know about Ben is that he loves two things: staying home and monotonous travel. He doesn’t care where home is—just that it’s his and his family is there. His only complaint about Sac is that its airport’s only a half-hour’s drive from our place. Even with traffic it never takes an hour, and that’s hard to say about anywhere in Sacramento. I would say we’re lucky, but he loves being alone in a car or a bland hotel. He usually works at home, parked in front of his PC ten hours a day, then they’ll send him on long tedious trips to field offices to sit in front of someone else’s computer for ten hours a day. I went with him once about a decade ago and it was the worst week of my life. But I love my boring husband. I wouldn’t change him. I need someone plain and unimaginative. I suppose, a hundred years ago, a well-meaning doctor would have called me “nervous.” I used to call it “rich” in college. Being twenty and an art student with more ideas than time to paint is rich, isn’t it? These days I’ve settled into a defined subject matter, a “morbid hybrid of the insane unearthly and every sort of Christian iconography” as the East Bay Express described my recent Oakland show. I don’t sell much of my work, but that’s because I keep the prices high. I make enough to afford a small studio space to work and show in. What more could I need?
That was the question raised by the letter. With the lower cost of living in Boktussa, I could easily travel to Oklahoma City, a happening burg from what I’ve heard, or anywhere in Texas for that matter. And Granmammy’s property has sufficient outbuildings for me to have any sort of studio I pleased, with some remodeling.
As for Ben, he wouldn’t care either way about the house, but he would love his new drive out of the middle of nowhere. In fact, that alone might have been enough for him to say yes right off. So the real question was the kids. What would Taggart say? What would Andee say? And would they be guessing right?
I suppose the six-week debate with first myself then my family doesn’t matter anymore. We decided to leave behind a lifetime in California and move to a place I barely remembered. Carpe diem.
With Granmammy’s house furnished and our kids past the age at which they destroyed furniture, we sold or donated nearly all our furnishings and books and linens and clothing. We kept our newest kitchenware and my painting supplies. The kids filled six boxes apiece. Some odds and ends. We packed one smallish moving truck and said goodbye. As we crossed over into Nevada, I surprised myself by bursting into tears: heavy, cracking sobs. Everyone asked, but I couldn’t answer. I had always hated Sacramento, or at least said I had. Maybe it was just feeling my childhood and my parents fall away? I don’t know. Anyway. Our California era was over.
The drive was a blur of hotels and fast food and roadside attractions. I barely noticed. As we left the mountains and came down to the plains, I started to recover what it felt to be a child. The long horizons and featureless distance filled me with nostalgic dread. The sense that you can walk forever and never get anywhere, never be found. Before I moved to California, such exotic places as the ocean and mountains and Disneyland seemed like Stoppard’s conspiracy of cartographers.
We passed through oil fields, the mindless bird-heads of the pumps going up and down, sucking energy from deep in the earth. We saw cattle aligning themselves with the compass. Once, we upset a massive flock of small birds that fled in undulating waves of blackness and sky, a living stain until they slipped away too far to see, dissolved into the emptiness. I began to pinch my eyes closed with one hand, my other gripping Ben’s thigh. I kept telling myself that these days we can have everything we want shipped to us. Or Ben can drive for food—he loves driving. I never even have to look out a window. I can pretend the landscape still has landmarks. I can pretend space is still finite.
We drove into Boktussa late at night. Our truck had had a flat which had left us on the side of a small two-lane county road for half a day, so we missed the lawyer’s office hours. We passed one ratty motel when we first entered town, but kept driving, hoping to find something better. The buildings ended much sooner than we expected, and as Ben turned the truck around we saw the moon rising over a landmark I had forgotten, the one landmark in the county: Boktussa Butte—a decapitated hill, really. Half the moon lay atop it like some luminescent organ atop a platter, or like God’s egg in its nest. It was… painterly, and this, more than the horizon or the benighted buildings, provided me specific remembrances. From here, the butte looked true, plateau-like. But I knew it was hollow and filled with sulphuric water, the smell growing stronger on hot days. We children would tromp up the hill and swim. When we returned, our parents would hose off the white layering our skin, and the smell, before we went inside to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and the city news out of Oklahoma City and getting hustled off to bed. I wondered if the water was still there. Or had the adults finally found a way to exploit it? Fracking is a thing in Oklahoma, right?
I was stirred from my thoughts of the murky waters of childhood by the sound of the emergency brake. Ben walked into the motel lobby. He dinged a desk bell and an older man came into the room. He was strikingly asymmetrical. One eye pinched shut—perhaps gone?—his mouth twisted to one side, even his wrinkles were uneven. He and Ben spoke, then Ben was given a key; he came out and handed it to me, then reached in the back to lift one of our sleeping children. I rushed ahead, opened the door, pulled back the sheets on one bed, and went for our bags.
After Ben had tucked both of them in, we sat out on the curb and watched our shadows cast by the moon. Finally, Ben broke the silence. “I never realized how small a town of six hundred people actually is.”
I nodded.
“It’s so quiet.” He let out a contented sigh. “That fellow said we took three minutes two seconds from first passing him back to parking in his lot.”
“He timed us?”
“Said he knew we’d be back.”
“And we took three minutes.”
“And two seconds. Dum Dum?” He handed me a sucker, compliments of the house. I tried to take off the wrapper but the candy had melted into the paper.
“He must have had these when I moved away.”
Ben laughed and pulled me under his shoulder. “We made it,” he said, and kissed the top of my head.
In the morning, after getting everyone showered and checking out, we drove carefully down the main street, watching numbers. The office of Barrett and Holmes, Attorneys-at-Law, was marked only by aged gilt letters on the privacy-glass window of a weathered wooden door which stuck when we tried to open it. Ben was about to shove with his shoulder when a voice cried, Wait! Wait! The door closed fully again then opened with a moan. A prune-like man with frightened eyebrows and more hair poking from his nostrils than the sides of his head gestured us inside.
“The trick is lifting while turning. Simple, really, once you know how. The Reever family, I presume?”
“Yes,” I said as I moved the children to a couple of plastic chairs beside a table with some celebrity magazines from the late ’80s. “I’m Tabatha and this is Benjamin.”
“Ben,” said Ben as he shook the man’s hand. “Mr. Barrett or—?”
“The very man. Old John Holmes has been dead these twenty years now, but I can’t bear to scrape his name from the door. They will have to scrape our names off together. Please, sit! Sit!”
We sat on the proffered chairs, their old, cheap leather catching on my skirt. Mr. Barrett clattered on about the pleasure of welcoming his good friend’s granddaughter back to town after so many years. I smiled and nodded and waited for his effusives to run their course. Then it was paperwork and paperwork and more paperwork. We understood that the entire inheritance was wrapped up in the property but the property did not become ours legally until we’d lived in it for two years. We understood that we could move in today. That he had anticipated contacting the utilities on our behalf, so nothing to concern ourselves with there. That he would be happ
y to drive us out. That the keys were right here in his desk.
And so on, swinging back and forth between legal matters, practical matters, and nostalgia. I learned more about my grandmother than my mother had ever told me. She had run the local women’s organization until quite recently. After receiving the insurance money from her husband’s death, she’d let the farm lie fallow as she became a librarian at the elementary school. As other old folks moved or passed on, she’d grown her property until she owned everything southeast of town including the butte.
“The butte is ours?”
“You possess it, and in two years you own it outright.”
“It still has water in it?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll have kids up there all summer.”
Mr. Barrett did not lock his office door as we left. He drove an old LeSabre and we followed him south of town a mile, then east to a low-lying brick home. To my surprise, it wasn’t familiar at all. As Mr. Barrett unlocked the door, I asked if the house hadn’t used to be much larger and ornate, perhaps even turrets and towers—a Victorian castle?
He laughed. “No, no. It did burn down about ten years ago and she rebuilt smaller and closer to the butte, but her previous home wasn’t that spectacular. Visions of childhood, I’m afraid.”
We walked inside. I remembered more furniture, but perhaps Granmammy hadn’t felt a need to replace it all. What did exist—a sofa and two recliners and an old TV perched on a too-small table—were covered in plastic jackets. The room felt remarkably clean, considering how long it must have been sitting empty. No dust to speak of. No musty aroma.
“It’s nice,” said Ben, which the kids seem to interpret as permission to run around opening doors. Further surprises awaited. Granmammy’s mattress was the same as our $4,000 Stearns & Foster I’d tearfully watched Ben give up for $400 on craigslist. The basement had two rooms, each with an unused mattress. When I asked, Mr. Barrett could only imagine that my granmammy had planned for our coming long before her passing. How she knew the details of my family—down to the butterfly bedside lamp for Andee and a bucket of baseballs for Taggart—
The pantry had relatively recent Dinty Moore, blue boxes of Kraft mac and cheese, and a few large Hershey bars, a bag of marshmallows, and a box of graham crackers. I shot a glance at Mr. Barrett who just smiled and shrugged.
That night the kids were satisfied with the macaroni, and we microwaved some smores before readying for bed. Later, Ben and I sat on the front steps watching black clouds covering and revealing distant stars. So many more stars than I remembered seeing. Ben leaned over to kiss me, blotting out the sky. “I can’t believe you were a child here.” His hand crept up my thigh and his mouth moved up my cheekbone. I pushed my hands through his hair and raked his scalp. I felt my knees spreading of their own accord.
“Meet me inside.”
I mumbled an affirmative.
As he slipped back inside, I stood and walked a few steps away from the house and looked about. The clouds seemed to have fled. The sky was just brilliant with stars. I turned slowly and saw stars spreading from the horizon to the apex of heaven. Then the butte: a sudden, melted rectangle looming over our house, making a large, square, bite-like wound in the sky.
I realized I wasn’t breathing. Suddenly cold, I rushed inside to Ben, desperate for him to rewarm me.
In the morning, we unpacked the truck of our meager belongings. Each trip back to the house placed the butte in my sight. By daylight, that moment alone seemed absurd and I laughed at myself. Really, I was happy to have it breaking up the horizon. Finally: something to look at, to provide bearing—the butte would keep the plains from overtaking me. For lunch we went into town and I regaled the children with mostly invented stories of swimming in its bowl as we had hot dogs and frozen french fries at the town’s lone diner. Instead of driving directly back home, we walked up the street and looked in storefronts. Many were closed, abandoned, but those remaining appeared healthy enough. A few seemed even familiar. The pharmacy with the jokey caps for sale. The alleged bakery that displayed fishing equipment in its window. All the while I listened to my mouth tell greater and greater yarns about swimming atop the butte until it was no surprise when Ben gave the kids the rest of the day off when we brought in the box with their swimming things. He told me to walk up with them and he would finish unloading on his own.
The butte was much closer than it seemed. The amorphous horizon had made it too seem far away, but in fact it was not more than a few hundred yards and, though steep, an easy enough walk to the top. We stepped over the ridge and into mud. The center was still filled with water, though I was taken aback by its blackness. Even in the brightness of early afternoon, it did not seem to accept light. Or, rather, perhaps, it invited light in only to swallow it whole into its deep and inescapable maw. But these morbid thoughts were my own and before I could fully articulate them even to myself, Taggart and Andee had run screaming joyfully to the water, touching it with their toes then jumping in and splashing each other. My unwelcome imagination now saw my children frolicking in the pupil of some great beast’s eye. I turned away from them and looked down at our house. A ball large enough not to get trapped in divots or shrubs could easily reach our yard. I found a dryish spot and sat down to force myself to read the book I had brought with me. I read long enough to lose track of the sun, but I couldn’t tell you a word of its matter. I was aware of nothing until I heard my children approaching me, laughing and screaming in the way they do, screeching for me to look at them. I turned and looked and dropped my book. I forced myself to laugh, trying to match my expression to theirs. Their toothy smiles shined bright within their chalky faces. Their hair too was matted and white. Taggart’s trunks and Andee’s skirted suit were caked with white. Their arms and legs were drying, cracks forming in the whitewash covering their bodies.
“I—I had forgotten,” I said. “I had forgotten.”
“We’re so white!” said Andee.
My eyes traveled through the mud along their footprints back to the black water. “We should go home,” I said. “You should bathe.”
As I dried Taggart’s hair, Ben asked, “And you’re sure it’s safe?”
“I suppose. Everyone swam there. No adults, but that’s hardly surprising.”
“It’s unpleasant stuff.”
“Ergo, no adults. We care more about such things.”
“I certainly can’t see myself enjoying its pleasures.”
I snorted. “Andee! Are you done in there?”
“I just wish we knew what it was.”
I shrugged. “Some alkali or something. Nothing that won’t just wash off.”
“Weird.”
“You wait,” I said. “It’s summer. We’ll see plenty more kids.”
And perhaps I would, but Ben was called away two days later, first to work in the Madison, Wisconsin office, then to help install new infrared cameras at the Madison airport. Since no airport was “closest” to us anymore, Ben decided to fly out of Topeka. He kissed us, all three, then was gone. I stayed home to arrange our old belongings in our new home while the children went to swim. And so it went the next three days. I stayed home on some pretense while they climbed the butte to swim.
The third day they returned without swimming. Taggart carrying a small dog in his arms, its neck bleeding. In a rush, they told me of it being roped to a stake, straining and trying to pull away from the lake. I helped remove the rope and we treated its neck as well as we could. At first it was jumpy and anxious but by bedtime it seemed to have reached an equanimity and I allowed it to sleep with Andee.
The fourth day my children again returned in the early evening, white save for their irises. The dog—now christened Teddy—had stayed with me and cowered until they were out of sight, then he followed me to finish setting up the barn I was making into my studio. When they returned, I asked if other kids were showing up and they shrugged. I asked what the other kids were like and they said fine. I asked what they did with
the other kids and they attempted a joke about baptism. So I pointed the hose at their heads and rolled my eyes and we went in to dinner.
I don’t always sleep well when Ben is gone, and that was one of those nights. I arose and went to my almost-studio. I took a stretched canvas and painted the top third as black as the sky I’d walked under. I absently began to add stars as I imagined they might look reflected off the butte’s water. I painted an old woman in a dark brown hood and cloak, her face gazing out of the painting, as if judging what she saw. Granmammy.
I awoke in one of the front-room recliners with early morning sun in my eyes. I showered slowly, letting the heat push into my muscles to loosen me up. I shaved my legs with the idea that I might swim with the kids today, and if not, tomorrow we should go see what the local churches were like so why not get the legs done now. First, though, we needed more food. The kids debated a while but decided to stay home while I drove into town to Dell’s, the six-aisle grocery store. At checkout I got to talking with the older fellow running the register. “Oh yes,” he said. “And you have the little boy and girl, don’t you? My grandkids mentioned them to me. They enjoying themselves?”
Redneck Eldritch Page 16
