‘Be QUIET!’ he shouted. Emporio looked astonished.
‘I wasn’t talking.’
The other kids smirked. Earl tried to regain his composure.
‘ “Give me a Prussian Blue and I could make mud from the sewers of Paris look like a virgin’s pale flesh.” ’
The boy held up his sheet of paper.
‘Can you see this picture I drew?’
‘Get out! You’re not supposed to be in this rotation!’
Earl turned to his computer and pretended to search for something on the menu. When he turned back around the boy was gone. Thank God. Earl picked up his notes and noticed that both his hands were trembling.
Brrronggg! Brrronggg! Brrronggg! Eighth Rotation had come and gone. Earl had somehow made it through his final forty-five minutes, feeling the whole time as if he was talking in his sleep. Blue. Sewers. Sublime. Brrronggg! Brrronggg! Brrronggg! The end of the day. With a sigh of relief, Earl dismissed the kids and slowly began to pack up his things. Suddenly the speaker system crackled. The voice announced:
‘All scholars proceed to Ninth Rotation.’
NINTH Rotation! What? There was no Ninth Rotation! What was this? Another change that no one had told him about? Damn this place! This was the last straw. Tomorrow he would hand in his resignation and apply for a job at Starbucks. Earl turned shakily, ready to receive his ninth round of reprobates. As he did so, he realised that the school had become uncommonly silent. Only one boy sat on the semi-circle of seats in front of him.
‘Is this it?’ asked Earl. ‘Just you?’
The boy thrust forward his picture. Earl took it and stared at it. The two figures had now fully transformed; no longer scrappy Star Wars characters but realistic depictions of himself and the boy. Rather well drawn, he observed. Earl felt dizzy. His chest hurt. The picture rose up towards him. A burst of white light erupted inside his head.
And suddenly it was the night before. He was inside the picture, inside his car, in the school parking lot. He was leaving work an hour later than usual, thanks to an impromptu meeting he’d been asked to attend. It was dark. Groups of kids, the ones who stayed for after-school programs, were still lolling about. He felt exhausted. Frustrated. Angry. He needed to get out of here. Now. He honked his horn. Move out of the way! Earl backed out of his parking spot and lurched towards the gate. In his rear view mirror, he noticed one of the older girls give him the finger. Couldn’t be sure who it was in the dark. Damn it. He pressed down on his accelerator the second he was out of the gate and, turning right, shot down the road towards a residential area—a route he favoured over using major streets during rush hour. At the second junction, the street light was out. There was road construction work going on. A large ditch. A hastily constructed barricade. Momentarily confused, Earl had taken the corner a touch too early and run his car up onto the sidewalk. He’d felt a slight impact, heard a thunk somewhere on the rear passenger side, and assumed he’d bumped against a traffic cone. Should he stop and check? Just in case? No. Purging the thought from his mind, he’d swerved back onto the road and carried on driving.
Earl slowly opened his eyes. It was hard to see anything any more. He tried to speak, but found he couldn’t. The boy stood over him. Smiling down at him. Forgiving him.
Martin. That was his name.
WHEATFIELD WITH CROWS
Steve Rasnic Tem
Sometimes when he sketched out what he remembered of that place, new revelations appeared in the shading, or displayed between the layering of a series of lines, or implied in a shape suggested in some darker spot in the drawing. The back of her head, or some bit of her face, dead or merely sleeping he could never quite tell. He was no Van Gogh, but Dan’s art still told him things about how he felt and what he saw, and he’d always sensed that if he could just find her eyes among those lines or perhaps even in an accidental smear, he might better understand what happened to her.
In this eastern part of the state the air was still, clear and empty. An overabundance of sky spilled out in all directions with nothing to stop it, the wheat fields stirring impatiently below. Driving up from Denver, seeing these fields again, Dan thought the wheat nothing special. He made himself think of bread, and the golden energy that fed thousands of years of human evolution, but the actual presence of the grain was drab, if overwhelming. When he’d been here as a child, he’d thought these merely fields of weeds, but so tall—they had been pretty much all he could see, wild and uncontrolled. But when he was a child everything was like that—so limitless, so hard to understand.
In the decade and a half since his sister’s disappearance, Dan had been back to this tiny no-place by the highway only once, when at fifteen he’d stolen a car to get here. He’d never done anything like that before, and he wasn’t sure the trip had accomplished much. He’d just felt the need to be here, to try to understand why he no longer had a sister. And although the wheat had moved, and shuddered, and acted as if it might lift off the ground to reveal its secrets, it did not, and Dan had returned home.
Certainly this trip—driving the hour from Denver (legally this time), with his mother in the passenger seat staring catatonically out the window—was unlikely to change anything in their lives. She’d barely said two words since he picked her up at her apartment. He had to give her some credit, though—she had a job now, and no terrible boyfriends in her life as far as he knew. But it was hard to be generous.
Roggen, Colorado, near Interstate 76 and Colorado Road 73, lay at the heart of the state’s grain crop. ‘Main Street’ was a dirt road that ran alongside a railroad track. A few empty store fronts leaned attentively but appeared to have nothing to say. The same abandoned house he remembered puffed out its grey-streaked cheeks as it continued its slow-motion collapse. The derelict Prairie Lodge Motel sat near the middle of the town, its doors wide open, various pieces of worn, overstuffed furniture dragged out for absent observers to sit on and watch.
Every few months when Dan did an internet search, it came up as a ‘ghost town’. He wondered how the people who still lived here—and there were a few of them, tucked away on distant farms or hiding in houses behind closed blinds—felt about that.
‘There, there’s where it happened,’ his mother whispered, tapping the glass gently as if hesitant to disturb him. ‘There’s where my baby disappeared.’
Dan pulled the car over slowly at this ragged edge of town, easing carefully off the dirt road as he watched for ditches, holes, anything that might trap them here longer than necessary. They’d started much later than he’d planned. First his mother had been unsure what to wear, trying on various outfits, worrying over what might be too casual, what might be ‘too much’. Dan wanted to say it wasn’t as if they were going to Caroline’s funeral, but did not. His mother had put on too much makeup, but when she’d asked how she looked he was reluctant to tell her. The encroaching grief of the day only made her face look worse.
Then she’d decided to make sandwiches in case they got hungry, in case there was no place to stop, and of course out here there wouldn’t be. Dan had struggled for patience, knowing that if they started to argue it would never end. It had been mid afternoon by the time they left Denver, meaning this visit would have to be a short one, but it just couldn’t be helped.
As soon as he stopped the car his mother was out and pacing in front of the rows of wheat that lapped the edge of the road. He got out quickly, not wanting her to get too far ahead of him. The clouds were lower, heavier, leaking darkness toward the ground in long narrow plumes. He could see the wind coming from a distance, the fields farther off beginning to move like water rolling on the ocean, all so restless, aimless, and, by the time the disturbance arrived at the field where they stood, the wind brought the sound with it, a constant and persistent crackle and fuzz, shifting randomly in volume and tone.
It occurred to him there was no one in charge here to watch this field, to witness its presence in the world, to wonder at its peace or fury. No doubt th
e owners and the field hands lived some distance away. This was the way of things with modern farming, vast acreages irrigated and cultivated by machinery, and nobody watched what might be going on in the fields. It had been much the same when Caroline vanished. It had seemed almost as if the fields had no owners, but were powers unto themselves, somehow managing on their own, like some ancient place.
Dan took continuous visual notes. He itched to rough these into his typical awkward sketches, but although he always kept sketching supplies in the glove compartment he couldn’t bring himself to do so in front of his mother. He never showed his stuff to anyone, but his untrained expressions were all he had to quell his sometimes runaway anxiety.
So, like Van Gogh’s ‘Wheatfield With Crows’, Dan saw long angular shadows carved into the wheat beginning to lift out of their places, turning over then flapping, rising into the turbulent air where they became knife rips in the fabric of the sky.
‘She was right here, right here.’ His mother’s voice was like old screen shredding to rust. She was standing near the edge of the field, her head down, eyes intent on the plants as if waiting for something to come out of the rows. ‘My baby was right here.’
The wheat was less than three feet tall, even shorter when whipped back and forth like this, a tortured texture of shiny and dull golds. At six, his sister had been much taller. Had she crouched so that her head didn’t show? Had she been brave enough to crawl into the field? Or had she been taken like his mother always thought, and dragged, her abductor’s back hunched as he’d pulled her into the rows of vibrating wheat?
Out in the field the wheat opened and closed, swirling, now and then revealing pockets of shade, moments of dark opportunity. The long flexible stalks twisted themselves into sheaves and limbs, humanoid forms and moving rivers of grainy muscle, backs and heads made and unmade in the changing shadows teased open by the wind. Overhead the crows screeched their unpleasant proclamations. Dan could not see them but they sounded tormented, ripped apart.
His mother knelt, wept eerily like a child. He had to convince himself it wasn’t Caroline. He stepped up behind his mother and laid his hand on her shoulder, confirming that she was shaking, crying. She reached up and laid her hand over his, mistaking his reality check for concern.
A red glow had crept beneath the dark clouds along the horizon, and that along with the increasingly frayed black plumes clawing the ground made him think of forest fires, but there were no forests in that direction to burn—just sky, and wheat, and wind blowing away anything too insubstantial to hold on.
Suddenly a brilliant blaze silvered the front surface of wheat and his mother sprang up, her hands raised in alarm. Dan looked around and, seeing that the pole lamp behind them had come on automatically at dusk, he turned her face gently in that direction and pointed. It seemed a strange place for a street lamp, but he supposed even the smallest towns had at least one for safety.
That light might have been on at the time of his sister’s disappearance. He’d been only five, but in his memory there had been a light that had washed all their faces in silver, or had it been more of a bluish cast? There had been Caroline, himself, their mother, and Mom’s boyfriend at the time. Ted had been his name, and he’d been the reason they were all out there. Ted said he used to work in the wheat fields, and Dan’s mother said it had been a long time since she’d seen a wheat field. They’d both been drinking, and impulsively they took Caroline and Dan on that frightening ride out into the middle of nowhere.
Ted had interacted very little with Dan, so all Dan remembered about him was that he had this big black moustache and that he was quite muscular—he walked around without his shirt on most of the time. Little Danny had thought Ted was a cartoon character, and how it was kind of nice that they had a cartoon character living with them, but like most cartoon characters Ted was a little too loud and a little too scary.
‘I never should have dated that Ted. We were all pretty happy until Ted came along,’ his mother muttered beside him now. She hadn’t had a drink in several years as far as he knew, but like many long time drinkers she still sounded slightly drunk much of the time—drink appeared to have altered how she moved her mouth.
This was all old stuff, and Dan tuned it out. His mother had always blamed ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends for her mistakes, as if she’d been helpless to choose, to do what needed to be done. Just once Dan wished she would do what needed to be done.
When Dan had come here at age fifteen it had been the middle of the day, so this oh-so-brilliant light had not been on. He hadn’t wanted to be here in the dark. He didn’t want to be here in the dark now.
But the night his sister Caroline disappeared had also been bathed in this selective brilliance. That high light had been on that night as well. No doubt a different type of bulb back in those days. Sodium perhaps, or an arc light. Dan just remembered being five years old and sitting in the back of that smelly old car with his sister. The adults stank of liquor, and they’d gotten out of the car and gone off somewhere to do something, and they’d told Danny and Caroline to stay there. ‘Don’t get off that seat, kids,’ his mother had ordered. ‘Do you hear me? No matter what. It’s not safe. Who knows what might be out there in that field?’
Danny had cried a little—he couldn’t even see over the back of the seat and there were noises outside, buzzes and crackles and the sound of the wind over everything, like an angry giant’s breath. Caroline kept saying she needed to go to the bathroom, and she was going to open the car door just a little bit, run out and use the bathroom and come right back. Dan kept telling her no, don’t do that, but Caroline was a little bit older and never did anything he said.
The only good thing, really, had been the light. Danny told himself the bright light was there because an angel was watching over them, and as long as an angel was watching nothing too terrible could happen. He decided that no matter how confusing everything was, what he believed about the angel was true.
Caroline had climbed out of the car and gone toward the wheat field to use the bathroom. She’d left the car door part way open and that was scary for Danny, looking out the door and seeing the wheat field moving around like that, so he had used every bit of strength he had to pull the car door shut behind her. But what if she couldn’t open the door? What if she couldn’t get back in? That was the last time he saw his sister.
‘I left you two in the car, Dan. I told you two to stay. Why did she get out?’
Dan stared at his mother as she stood with one foot on the edge of the road, the other not quite touching, but almost, the first few stalks of wheat. Behind her the rows dissolved and reformed, shadows moving frenetically, the spaces inside the spaces in constant transformation. He’d answered her questions hundreds of times over the years, so although he wanted to say because she had to go to the bathroom, you idiot, he said nothing. He just watched her feet, waiting for something to happen. Overhead was the deafening sound of crows shredding.
There used to be a telephone mounted below the light pole, he remembered. He and his mother and Ted had waited there all those years ago until a highway patrolman came. Ted and his mother had searched the wheat field for over an hour before they made the call. At least that’s what his mother had always told him. Danny had stayed in the car with the doors shut, afraid to move.
He guessed they had looked hard for his sister, he guessed that part was true. But they obviously did a bad job because they never found her. They also told the officer they had been standing just a few feet away at the time, gazing up at the stars. What else had they lied about?
The brilliant high light carved a confusing array of shadows out of the wheat, Dan’s car, and his mother. His own shadow, too, was part of the mix, but he had some difficulty identifying it. As his mother paced back and forth in front of the field, her shadow self appeared to multiply, times two, times three, more. As the wind increased the wheat parted in strips like hair, the stalks writhing as if in religious fervour, bowing al
most horizontal at times, the wind threatening to tear out the plants completely and expose what lay beneath. Pockets of shadow were sent running, some isolated and left standing by themselves closer to the road. Dan could hear wings flapping over him, the sound descending as if the crows might be seeking shelter on the ground.
‘She might still be out there, you know,’ his mother said. ‘I was so confused that night, I just don’t think we covered enough of the field. We could have done a better job.’
‘The officers searched most of the night.’ Dan raised his voice to be heard above the wind. ‘They had spotlights, and dogs. And volunteers were out here the rest of the week looking, and for some time after. I’ve read all the newspaper articles, Mom, every single one. And even when they harvested the wheat that year, they did this section manually, remember? They didn’t want to damage—they wanted to be careful not to—’ He was trying to be careful, calm and logical, but he wasn’t sure he even believed what he was saying himself.
‘They didn’t want to damage her remains. That’s what you were trying to say, right? Well, I’ve always thought that was a terrible word. She was a sweet little girl.’
‘I’m just trying to say that after the wheat was gone there was nothing here. Caroline wasn’t here.’
‘You don’t know for sure.’
‘What? You think she got ploughed under? That she’s down under the furrows somewhere? Mom, it’s been years. Something would have turned up.’
‘Then she might be alive. We just have to go find her. I’ve read about this kind of thing. It happens all the time. They find the child years later. She’s too scared to tell all these years, and then she does. There’s a reunion. It’s awkward and it’s hard, but she becomes their daughter again. It happens like that sometimes, Danny.’
Dark World Page 17
