What Remains of Her

by Eric Rickstad

  The gurgle of the creek grew louder, closer.

  “Thiss waay.”

  They hiked through a frigid pocket of air as they crossed the creek. He stopped. Listened. There. Clouds parted and through the trees the moonlight shone in the truck windshield.

  He collapsed against the truck. He fished a rolled cigarette and box of matches from his jacket pocket.

  He could just see her pale face in the moonlight. He handed her the box of matches.

  “Liight them?” he said.

  She dumped the matches in the snow and opened his truck door, then went around and opened hers, got up and into the truck.

  She latched her seat belt.

  She fished the keys from his coat pocket and worked the key into the ignition.

  The truck started with a backfire.

  He turned on the overhead light and glanced down at his hand in his lap.

  Holy fuck.

  He shut off the light quick.

  “Bad spider,” she said.

  He didn’t know how he was going to drive. Slow, he reasoned. Easy.

  He backed up the truck, his neck stiff as he looked over his shoulder.

  He drove down among dark trees. The headlight beams swam in a black soup. Truck hit a rut and pitched and rocked.

  “Seat belt,” she said.

  He reached for the belt but could not bring it all the way across.

  She reached over and latched it.

  The truck lurched along road. Sweat bathed his hot skin, but he heard her teeth chatter. “Turn that dial for heat.” He’d forgotten how many responsibilities there were to keep in mind with a child; at the forefront the yielding of the self to another.

  Haunted House

  As he crept the truck down into the valley, he felt a pressure against his arm. She’d slumped against him, asleep. Snoring. His trousers were wet with her drool. He dared not move to wake her.

  He eased the truck over the railroad tracks and turned into the yard of the old house and killed the engine and the lights.

  He’d not fully looked at the house since he’d left that day. He looked now, the place ghostlike in shadows cast in the dim moonlight. Shutters crooked. Missing. The shed roof collapsed. Of the three trees he and Rebecca had planted Sally’s first spring, only two remained as mature trees, the other fallen over. Dead. His tree.

  She awoke. With his good hand he took a flashlight from the glove box.

  “Home?” she said.

  “Shhh,” he said.

  “Home?” she said.

  “Once,” he said.

  He opened the truck door and stumbled out.

  A truck clunked over the railroad tracks with a racket, drove past without slowing.

  “Go up to the porrch,” Jonah said. “I need to parrk out of siight.”

  “Don’ leave me.”

  “I’m not gonna leeave you.”

  She whimpered.

  “Hop back iin then,” he said.

  They got back in.

  “Seat belt,” she said. She already had her seat belt on.

  “We’re not going far,” he said.

  “Safe,” she demanded. Stubborn as ever.

  “Hellp me,” he said. She helped put the seat belt on and he parked the truck out of sight from the road.

  Puzzle

  He stood with her on the porch in the darkness and looked toward the town. He could just make out the glowing sign for the Gas-n-Go and the Grain & Feed and other businesses and shops far down Main Street. People inside going about their business. Their lives. People he used to know; people he thought knew him. He bit back his bitterness.

  The porch swing swayed gently in the breeze. How many evenings he’d passed here, rocking, dozing, waving to neighbors as he’d corrected papers.

  “Swing,” she said and looked at him, hopeful.

  “Too colld,” he said.

  “Spring.”

  “Okay,” he said, though they’d be long gone on the run by spring, or he’d be locked up and she’d be lost to him forever.

  The door was unlocked, and its hinges cried as he eased it open.

  The ammonia reek of animal piss gagged him. Dust eddied in the flashlight beam as another odor of spore and rot emerged from beneath the piss stink. A rush of cold dead air brushed past him. Sweat dripped in his eyes. Nausea roiled in his guts. She sneezed as the flashlight beam cut a pale swath along a pine floor lacquered with dust. His old chair with duct-taped arms revealed itself from the dark. Tattered by rodents. Foam innards home to nesting mice. A wooden leg chewed so badly it had broken and the chair leaned, the motion of falling over suspended in time.

  The flashlight beam lit up the couch, the couch ransacked by night creatures who’d feasted on the fabric and burrowed in the guts of it to expose the wood frame and wire springs beneath.

  Jonah shut the door behind them, the room so quiet he could hear the dust settling.

  He swung the flashlight on the television, its green screen dusted and cracked. Rabbit ears cobwebbed, yet otherwise as they’d been, waiting these years to again perform their common magic of converting invisible signals into moving images.

  He stepped among a strewn tea set and the remnants of decomposed stuffed animals and stopped. Dizzy.

  The watercolor painting of Gore Mountain hung askew on the wall.

  The train had stopped traveling through town more than a decade ago. It could no longer upset the painting.

  Jonah handed her the flashlight. “Poiint. Riight heere,” he said.

  She did, illuminating the painting in a circle of light.

  He pressed a fingertip to the lowered left corner of the painting and nudged it. He eyeballed it. Tapped the top right edge.

  He took the flashlight from her. Magazines lay strewn on the floor and coffee table. Harper’s, The Smithsonian, Poetry, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Ranger Rick.

  The owl clock on the wall showed one minute to twelve. The second hand dead.

  He moved into the kitchen, welcomed by the blooming stench of ripe feces.

  Raccoon shit coated the counters.

  On the table sat three place settings. The inside of the glasses clotted with spider webs. A dead spider lay in the center of a plate. His plate.

  Jonah sat at the table.

  Something was missing. Something left him hollow.

  The scent of them, Rebecca and Sally; it was gone. Every trace. Nothing lingered but the tang of shit and piss and death.

  Haunted house. His house.

  “Home?” she said.

  “No.”

  He walked down the dark hall, the creak of floorboards beneath him. The wallpaper had peeled in sheets from the horsehair plaster, as if shedding dead skin. Curled sheaves lay on the floor, brittle as dead leaves.

  He came to her bedroom door, shut by him that last day. Still shut.

  sally’s room. Her handwriting faded.

  He turned the knob and opened the door.

  “Stayy herre.”

  “Don’ leave.”

  “Staay in the doorr.”

  The flashlight shone on the twin bed, forever unmade. The books on the shelf above the headboard encased in dust.

  He sat on the bed edge. Her first big-girl bed. Her only big-girl bed. His bones hurt. A deep, marrow ache. His bitten hand twitched. He dangled the flashlight so it lit up the floor at his old boots, the laces frayed. Steel toes peeked out from leather. Canvas trousers worn smooth at the knees.

  I disappeared with them.

  He shone the flashlight along book spines. There. Blueberries for Sal.

  He brushed cobwebs from the book and slipped it from the shelf. The jacket was still torn from his outburst of anger. He flipped through the pages, as dried and browned as ancient scrolls. He took the book and stepped to her tiny desk. Over the back of the chair were slung his old chinos, left here one of the nights he’d slept on the floor, hoping for her return.

  He dug around in the pocket.

  The pie
ces of paper were dried and faded, yet decipherable. The pieces large enough to put back together.

  He lay the pieces on the desk, and started to arrange them into an approximation of the original drawings.

  “Puzzle,” she whispered, startling him. He’d not heard her enter.

  “Yess,” he said. His vision swam.

  “Mine,” she said. “Like mine.”

  “Yess.” Like hers. Not exact, though. Not what he could recall from memory anyway. He’d burned her drawing in the cabin too hastily.

  He tucked the pieces in his jacket pocket, shone the flashlight toward the corner. Glimmering eyes shone. Stuffed animals piled on the chair in the corner, where he’d stacked them after kicking them so cruelly.

  His abdomen clenched with shame.

  The pile moved. An animal jerked to life, teeth chattering. Bared. No. A rat. It slunk from the pile, long naked fleshy tail trailing behind its bloated body as it scurried past him.

  Jonah knelt at the stuffed animals, several reduced to mealy piles of stuffing. Their glass eyes stared at him across the years. What had they seen? What did they know? No less than him. Maybe more. He stroked the cheek of a fuzzy elephant, the velvet fur sloughing off at his touch.

  He moved a rag doll out of the way, picked up the elephant, white foam pellets leaking from split seams. He pressed the elephant to his cheek. Smelled it. The odor of mold, the world breaking down. Dust to dust. He buried his face in the elephant and breathed in, a moan rising up from within him.

  “Ed,” he said. “Ed.”

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  She stood there, her eyes level with his, lit up in the flashlight glow. She held her arms open and he leaned into her, wrapped his own arms around her, and pulled her close.

  She patted his shoulder as he convulsed.

  When finally he pulled away, he handed her Ed and the book.

  She hugged them to her chest.

  Ed’s pellets spilled onto the floor where they jittered in a frantic motion, drawn toward and pushed away from each other with static electricity that spat momentary blue sparks before the beads stilled.

  “You liike Ed?” he said. He took a deep breath to fight off vomiting; his engorged hand felt as if it were being boiled in grease.

  She took his hand and they walked out of the room together.

  He shut the door quietly and leaned his forehead against it, closed his eyes. He pressed his palm on the sign: sally’s room.

  “Thirrty-twoo,” he whispered.

  “Thirty-two?” she whispered.

  “Years. Old. That’s how old she’d be.”

  “Who?”

  “You know.”

  He walked down the hall and stood outside his and Rebecca’s bedroom.

  He put his hand on the knob as he stood in the dark, drowned in the quiet dread of the house. Laughter rose from down the hall. Sally and Rebecca’s laughter. A warm rush of longing flooded him.

  Then, the laughter was gone, alive only in him.

  He let go of the doorknob, unable to bring himself to open the door, to bear the emptiness behind it.

  Outside, the wind was up. The cold worked fast and deep on him.

  He started the truck, cranked the heat as she put on her seat belt and his. He looked at his bitten hand, looked away, repulsed and terrified.

  He pulled the blanket up around her.

  “Lock yourr doorr,” he said. “Coverr uup.”

  She pushed the lock down and hunkered under the blanket, pulling it to her chin.

  “Safe,” she said and smiled.

  “Saafe,” he said. He hoped.

  Shopping

  The parking lot’s lamps for Ivers Grocery scalded Jonah’s eyes.

  “Staay dowwn,” he whispered. “I’ll bring a treeat.”

  He parked in the spot farthest from the door and kept the engine running.

  Her hand appeared from under the blanket and worked the button on his seat belt latch to free him.

  He got out and stood with the truck door open and looked around the quiet lot.

  “Staayy,” he said and shut the door.

  A boy sauntered past toward the store, eyeing Jonah.

  Inside the store, Jonah squinted against the harsh fluorescent lighting, objects pulsating. His stomach rolled. He’d never been in this big grocery store, but she needed real food, nutritious food, fruits and vegetables. Protein. Except to gas up the truck, he would not dare to stop once they were on the road. He slipped a hand basket over his swollen arm to keep his good arm free.

  In the produce section, he inspected an apple. Found a soft brown spot. Set it back, choosing two before he moved off to get vegetables. Broccoli. Green beans. He drifted toward the bananas, seeming weightless, as if gravity was weakening its pull on him.

  “Excuse me?” A woman in a ski parka gaped at him.

  “Hmmm?”

  “You need help?” She nodded at his hand, wincing.

  “Spiiderr,” he said with a mouth full of wet sand.

  “I’ve never seen a hand look so—”

  “Spiiderr.” He slunk away, swamped in sweat.

  Cereal. Fluorescent lights ticked and spat. His head floated.

  The cartoon colors of sugar cereal boxes turned his stomach, yet he chose a box. Her treat. Pop-Tarts too. Brown sugar and cinnamon. Her favorite.

  At the back butcher counter, he gawked at packaged, luminous red meat that pulsed beneath its plastic wrap, drowned in fake, dyed blood.

  A boy in a white apron slathered with blood edged over to him.

  “Got reeal meeat?” Jonah asked. The pain in his arm awakened, livid, as if he’d been excoriated. He was going to pass out. The kid at the counter said something.

  “Reeeaal meeeaat that woont give daaughter caancerr.” His jaw ached. Seized.

  “Cancer?” the boy said.

  “Juust. Give me steeeak.”

  The boy grabbed a steak, weighed and wrapped it. As he handed it to Jonah, he said, “Holy crow, mister. What’d you do to your hand?”

  Jonah staggered off in search of aspirin. He needed to sit down. Lie down. Sleeeep. He tried to focus in the medicine aisle. He’d never seen so much medicine. More of everything. More of the same. More of nothing.

  He reached for the generic aspirin, knocked the bottle to the floor. He grasped another bottle, dropped it into the basket. He needed . . . What was it? For her head? He stumbled along. Dropped a box of RID in the basket.

  He found coloring books and slouched his way toward the checkout line.

  The checkout girl gawped. “You all right, sir?”

  The world turned liquid. “Rrring meee.”

  “You need help, I—”

  “Rrring. Meee.”

  She rang him up. “Twenty-eight, forty-eight.”

  From his pocket, he tossed down three rolls of quarters and reeled toward the exit.

  “Sir,” she called after him.

  Outside, he gasped in the fresh, cold air.

  He stared across the parking lot. Could not locate the truck. Had he left the door unlocked? The engine running? He had. Anyone could snatch the truck. Her.

  Sick. Needed rest. Sleep.

  He spotted the truck, away from everything. So far away. The exhaust pipe chugged smoke. He leaned against the store wall and dropped the bag of groceries as he closed his eyes.

  “Jonah?”

  He opened his eyes, as if awakening from a coma.

  A woman came at him.

  “What on earth—”

  Lucinda.

  “What happened to your hand, Jonah?”

  He tried to gather himself to speak clearly. “Spiderr. I wass in the trunk getting—”

  “Trunk? Getting what?” She touched his hand to better get a look. He tore it away from her and shrank against the wall. God, he wished for an axe to lop off his entire diseased arm.

  “I was going to come see you,” Lucinda said.

  He needed to escape.

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “That business with your credit. I was wrong. I sent you out of the store like a stranger. That’s—”

  He stared past her, at the truck, not hearing. Not caring, only wanting to flee. To get to Sally.

  The truck. He saw movement inside it. Sally was up and was staring over at them through the back cab window.

  “—you have to do something about that hand. Jonah?”

  “Why I’m heere. Aspirin.”

  “You need more than aspirin. You look terrible. You sound . . . wrong. You need antibiotics at least. There’s something really wrong. How long ago were you bit?”

  Nausea ate his belly, his gut one monstrous bubble of gas about to burst.

  Leave, the voice said.

  “We’re getting you to the doctor,” Lucinda said.

  “Noo.” He pretended to look her in the face but looked past her, at the truck. At Sally at the window.

  A car pulled in and slung its headlight beams across the truck, illuminating Sally’s ghostly face.

  “Let me help you. I told you. I’m sorry,” Lucinda said. “After what happened with that girl, it’s put things in perspective.”

  Jonah bridled. “Giirrl?”

  “The lost girl. Terrible things like that, they put things in their proper light—”

  He stared at Sally. Get down. Get down.

  “That hand can’t go unattended,” Lucinda said. “If you won’t let me help, promise you’ll get it looked at.” She stared at him. The look of a woman determined, unshakable as a snapping turtle latched to your leg. “Tonight. Go see Dr. Vern. I can call ahead. Or go with you. Let me help you to your truck.”

  She reached for his grocery bag on the ground.

  He snatched up the bag in his good hand, cried in pain.

  “Jonah,” Lucinda said.

  “I’ll go, alone,” he said.

  “To Vern. Tonight. Promise me if I leave it in your hands.”

  “Nothiings ever been in my handss.” He stared at her, understanding now what before he had not. “Aany of our handss.”

  “Go see the doctor—”

  He adjusted his grocery bag, and with his back to her shoved the coloring book down inside. “I’ll live.”