And so we were sitting in the darkness, gathering our strength and catching our breath, Bolo with his scared face and me with the padlock in my hand. And then came a knocking. A very quiet, soft knocking coming from somewhere beneath us.
Now when I try to remember what happened that day, I think I might have heard some strange noises, the terrifying moan of a weird creature, something between a child and an animal. Maybe I just imagined it.
The imagination can sometimes go crazy. But what I’m definitely sure of is that Bolo escaped, not waiting for me. Unseen like some kind of ghost, he ran upstairs. Once there he jumped from the window and, after crashing to the ground, he ran.
At the police station he cried like a baby.
Seven
I sat there, still crouched down above the trap door. I decided to knock back. Then a stronger knocking came from the other side. The person—or whatever it was—seemed to know it wasn’t Mr. Scar knocking, and knew that there was someone else in his prison now.
Knock, knock on steel.
He must have been very weak, the knocking was so soft—more like tapping. All the leaflets I’d seen in town suddenly came back to me. How strong could a seven-year-old child be? Instantly I wanted to save him, but I didn’t have the key.
I started thinking. The layout of the house was such that it was possible to get from the prison to the other room and then to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bedroom and back here.
I prayed to God and tapped the trap door with a stool. The sound lingered in the air longer then I’d hoped.
Mr. Scar was awake, shouting. I ran to the other door, then into the kitchen, and I crawled under the table. I saw his shadow approaching, but I’m sure I got to the bedroom with one jump and remained unseen. Mr. Scar was already there, standing above the trap door, still in his underpants and a tank top. He held the stool and rattled the padlock. Hidden under the bed, I managed to crawl to the bedside table, took the eye out of the glass, and ran down the stairs, then burst outside where a rain like shards of glass fell on me.
I hurried through the fields, but the time it took really scared the shit out of me. Once I made the forest I hid and felt as if I could stay there forever. The ground was damp and cold, like a dungeon. The shadows of the trees resembled sharp knives and fangs, and every rustle sounded like the massive figure of Mr. Scar just about to catch me and take back his eye. It was only when the sun began to set that I heard the drone of passing cars and built up my courage to go back home.
Eight
The police felt sorry for me. I told them the truth, every word. Well, the part with the stool and the stolen eye, I kept to myself. In fact, I refused to admit that I’d stolen the eye. I don’t think they believed me, but it doesn’t matter now. Bolo was at the police station a couple of hours before me.
Mr. Scar was arrested the same night, while I was still in the forest. They caught him in his yard in the middle of burying the body, sweaty and panting from exhaustion, dirty from the blood and mud. The cop who had put him in handcuffs later told everyone who’d listen that Mr. Scar was very calm and even offered his help in digging up the body. His only eye, the real one, was as empty as the dark hole in the ground next to where he stood. The kid’s body was returned to the parents.
And I know now what it means to feel remorse.
• • • •
My parents did the best they could for me. They didn’t want to let me out of the house, so I waited two days before visiting Zośka. The whole Mr. Scar story had spread like wildfire. Everone in Rykusmyk knew. Zośka was home alone, in her tight jeans and a low cut blouse. She let me in this time. We stood in the corridor next to the open bedroom doorway. I had a speech prepared in my head but found myself tongue-tied. I just handed her the eye. And I only managed to stammer that I needed to go back home. I only wanted to sleep.
She looked at me like no other before nor after, pulled me closer and pleaded: “Don’t go.”
© 2014 by Łukasz Orbitowski.
To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.
Author’s Note: This story is set in the 1990s in Rykusmyk, a small town in Poland. The name of the town is a play on words. In Polish, “ryk” means “scream,” and “smyk” means “small child”: the town where little boys scream.
Łukasz Orbitowski is the author of twelve books, such as the critically acclaimed I’m Losing Warmth (pol. Tracę ciepło); Saint Wrocław (pol. Święty Wrocław); a collection of short stories, Here It Comes (pol. Nadchodzi); and the widely acclaimed novel Spectres (pol. Widma). In 2012, Orbitowski was granted a Young Poland scholarship funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In December 2013, he was nominated for the literary branch of the Paszporty Polityki, an award created for distinguished young artists in Poland. He regularly publishes articles on the subject of popular culture for Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s main daily broadsheet. Orbitowski lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Despite being a particularly glum fellow, he is known to have sharp sense of humor. His favorite leisure activities are travelling, drinking, and weightlifting.
Agata Napiórska is editor-in-chief of the lifestyle magazine Zwykłe Życie (Ordinary Life), and regularly writes for the children’s magazine Kikimora. She lives in Warsaw, Poland.
DIRTMAN
H.L. Nelson
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
—Exodus 20:4
When I see the scorpion curled under a caliche rock I picked up, my first want is to smash it like Daddy would. Daddy’s always killing things—hairy tarantulas in the hall, fat diamondbacks in the field, and my hound pups when they get parvo. Our few patches of grass have the sick, but Daddy won’t treat it. He says it costs too much, that “those old dogs don’t deserve much thought.” Since the summer I turned seven, most of my pups have caught it. Two years dealing with litter after litter of all-rib dying dogs, because of Daddy.
The scorpion shifts around in the sandy hole, its stinger held up, pincers pointed at me, ready for a fight. I feel a liking for the fiery bug. It’s just the two of us out here in the dirt while Mama and Daddy yell. I can hear them through the messed up screen door. I replace the rock, give the scorpion back his cool, dark home. But then I look to the shed, where I know dirtman lies in the dark. I grab the mason jar I’d brought outside, lift the rock, and coax the scorpion in with a mesquite stick. He fights, but I win. I tighten the jar top, but the holes in it will keep him alive until I need him.
Even if you don’t like something here in this desert, you have no choice but to get used to it. When I was younger, I couldn’t stand the dirt. It’d get in my diaper, and I’d cry ’til Mama cleaned me up. Dirt gets in through the screen door, through the torn mesh, and blows in the gap at the bottom. No matter how many times Mama and I dust in a day, within the hour, a thin coating of the stuff is on every surface. Even on the sleeping dogs.
Daddy told me once after a six-pack of Coors, “Our people were born of the dirt, Lucy Ann. And to the dirt, we’ll be released. ’Til then, we scrounge around with the lowest of the low.” When he said it, an image flashed in my head of floods and lightning hitting our land, how we struggled up from the earth, flopping around like fishes trying to breathe. How we formed arms and legs and learned to crawl, learned how to protect ourselves from the heat, then grew used to the drought, able to take the pain, tough and hard. Daddy didn’t mention anything about us being tough and hard. He must have forgot that part.
I try not to listen to Mama screaming about Daddy’s drinking. I focus on the six-inch patch of dirt right in front of me until everything else fades away. Sometimes I think the dirt is my only true friend. I use the stick to turn over small rocks, to make little lines, write messages. Mostly to dirtman, since he can’t talk. At times, I swear he answers me, takes over power of the stick, scratches messages into the dirt. I can’t understand the squiggles, thoug
h. Not yet.
Bringing my face down real close to the sandy square, I squint through the magnifying glass I got out of a box of Sugar O’s. If I have a friend, I want to know them the best I can, so I try to know this dirt by looking real close. It’s made of tiny crystals, sand lions, bits of rock, shell, bone. Some of the crystals are like glass. In school, my teacher says this desert was once all water. I’m not sure I believe it, even when I see the shells. Everything is dry and crumbly as old flour. Maybe my grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa upset God and he dried the land out. It’s not even good to grow in. Our garden never does well—the corn, beans, melon pinch up like Grandpa Lee’s face in the heat, no matter how much Mama has me water them. This dirt’s only good to house horned toads, mean-as-sin yellow jackets, hairy wolf spiders, fast lizards. And to make dirtmen.
Dirtman is dried up, but not like most folks around here are dried up. They’re like Mama’s jerky after I leave it out for a few days. Drier than dry. Daddy goes to Stafford Farm and picks out a cow to be killed, then comes back with a whole side that Mama cuts up and jerkies. She always freezes the rest. I’ve had nightmares about half a cow chasing me through the tumbleweeds and mesquite, thorny branches clawing at my clothes and skin. I’ve woken up drenched, then remembered Mama cut up that half a cow and it was cooling in the deep freeze, frosting over with a fine ice. I’d still look at the meat sidelong when Mama pulled it out. Didn’t trust it until it was in my belly.
I hear her inside, saying, “I swear to God, Jessup, if you don’t quit drinking, I’m going to leave you. You’ve already lost the oil rig job, best job you ever had, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stick around and let you bury me, too.”
I ignore them. Our trailer walls are thin as ghosts, no matter how hard I press my hands to my ears. More than likely, I’ll be out here for hours, even after the sun’s down. I’m used to playing by myself in the yard, though. I have the bugs, the dirt. And I have dirtman. I look up, squint at the blazing sun, and I think it’s not so bad. Things could be worse. Then I see the storm clouds building at the end of the sky, remember Mama saying it’s supposed to flood tonight.
Then I look down and see fire ants swarm over a dung beetle. The beetle keeps going, but the more ants that load him down, the slower he moves. His entire shell is covered, and it’s like the ants are moving his body for him, one stiff step at a time. I expect he’ll be dead soon.
I’ve been bitten and stung up so many times by ants, bees, scorpions, that I don’t care too much anymore. I figure insects and reptiles are like people—they’re going to do what they do, no matter what. No sense in complaining. Complaining is for the weak, and we don’t have time for weakness. We only have time for hard work, for family, for God. Mama says that a lot. She’s never complained about Daddy to me. Or anything. Not once. Sometimes I think Mama is the strongest person I’ve ever known. Sometimes, too, I wonder why she married Daddy. But then I remember all the times she said how nice he smells, and she looked at him like he was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.
Daddy is handsome, it’s true. At least he was before he started drinking so much. Before, he’d bring Mama flowers from Henshaw’s, would sing to me and her while playing his guitar, his bangs falling in his eyes in a nice way. At night, he’d stroke my hair and cheek and hum to me until I’d sleep. I tell dirtman these things, not just the bad things. But, my memory gets foggy at times, it’s been so long since Daddy loved on me.
Watching the beetle as the ants topple him over, I remember times Daddy got mad. Like when I wouldn’t come to the dinner table, because I was trying to save a mama bug by picking her up with the flyswatter to set her outside. Her rear end, a long pointy thing that babies would come out, was stuck to the carpet, and no matter how gently I tried to lift her onto the swatter, she wouldn’t budge. Then Daddy yelled, “Lucy Ann, get your ass to the table!” and I was scared, so I rushed the mama bug onto the swatter. It tore her belly in two, spilled out a mess of wet white eggs. I crushed her with my shoe, to end it quick, then cried and cried at the table. Daddy didn’t care. He told me to shut up and eat my green beans. Mama told him to stop being a heathen, hugged my shoulders, then sat down, clasped her hands together, and prayed: “Lord, let Lucy Ann’s bug crawl up to you in Heaven. And please, Lord, help us release our anger, into the air, way up to you, so we can fly free.” She looked at Daddy when she prayed.
I think about these things, I hear them yelling inside, and the poor beetle waves its thin little legs as the ants tear him apart. Grandpa Lee’s big sledgehammer is within my reach, leaning against the shed. Grandpa Lee swings it so easy when he helps tear down old houses, but I can’t even pick it up. It’s too heavy. All I can do is push the handle over, bringing it down on the beetle. The crunch sounds like stepping on Daddy’s beer bottles. This time, I feel bad for the beetle, but I don’t cry. I do what I have to do.
Rubbing the bug guts off the hammer’s handle with my toe, I think about dirtman’s face, how to make it. I have two of Daddy’s empty beer bottles that I snuck outside with me, so I set to work. There are a lot of empties hidden in my closet, but right now I only need these two. Using a ball peen, I break the bottle glass, and it cracks in jagged lines. I chip off shards from the bottom, then I do the same with the other bottle. Holding up the circles of brown glass when I’m done, I gaze through them like they’re strange sunglasses. Everything looks like an alien planet, like I’m somewhere else. It’s all so much darker, creepier. The yard and trailer are blurry along the barely curved sides, but clear right in the middle is our shed. I shift the bottle bottoms away from my eyes, blink a few times, to bring the clear color back, to make sure I’m still here.
It’s like Daddy’s not really here when he drinks. And he’s meaner. I hate it. Once, he threw my porcelain ducks at the wall, and they shattered, pelting pieces all over the carpet. I’d found them buried in the yard when I was digging, had left them laying on the floor and he’d stepped on them. He almost hit me for it, but I ran to my room and locked the door before he could. He didn’t follow that time. Another afternoon, Mama called from the clothes factory where she works and asked if Daddy was home. I swallowed hard on the phone, told her no he wasn’t. Mama got quiet, said he was at the bar then, and that she wouldn’t be home that night. She told me not to tell him she’d called. Before she hung up, she said she was praying to God that Daddy wouldn’t dare touch me, or he’d have hell to pay. I don’t blame her anymore. I’m not sure I would have come home, either.
Daddy knew I was lying when I told him Mama hadn’t called. He hit me so hard, I fell to the floor. I screamed, “Daddy, don’t kill me!” He stopped then and said, “I could wring your neck like a chicken’s. You’d do best to remember. Now, get on to bed.” I was hungry and scared all that night, and the next morning no one was home to fix my breakfast.
In my room, with the door shut tight, is when I get back at Daddy. I rip out my dolls’ hair, drive nails through his empty beer cans with the ball peen, tear up his old t-shirts. When I do mad things, I feel bad after. I made dirtman so I can stop doing mad things, and I hope to God he can help me.
I get up, brush the dirt from my shorts and knees, pick up the two bottle bottoms and the mason jar with the scorpion, and go into the shed. At least in here I can’t hear Daddy and Mama anymore. I stop and watch the dust float around with lazy magic, circle-eighting in the air. Late-day sun slanting into chinks between the weathered wood gives the air a warmth. It feels like Mama’s blue robe, when she wears it after a bath. I sniff deep and smell the rain coming. It’ll come soon and some may get through the gaps and sprinkle the floor.
I curve around months of heaped, brittle magazines, the red rusted tiller, bags of stale dog feed with mice nested in them, half-used dented cans of oil. It all smells like Grandpa Lee’s storm cellar, old and moldy. I pass these tall stacks of Daddy’s things and, in the deepest back corner, I kneel down by dirtman.
When we’re so close I can smell his pressed
sandy skin, like the shore we visited one summer, I tell dirtman that Daddy makes me real mad. I can sense him listening, and I pretend the wind whistling around the shed door is him talking to me. I haven’t finished his face, so he can’t really say nothing. And he doesn’t have arms and legs. I’ve gathered up some things, though. I reach over and place the bottle bottoms and the mason jar in the pile of things to help me finish him.
I tell dirtman that Mama talked to me before bed last night. My black and tan hound, Lady, got off her chain and tried to run out the yard. I chased her down and whipped her good while Daddy watched. I took everything out on her while he watched. Daddy looked proud of me. After, I snuck Lady into my room. I cried, and hugged her. She looked so sad, as if she knew it would happen one day, and long ago had accepted it. I didn’t know Mama had seen everything from the kitchen window.
She sat on the edge of my bed, and all I could see of her was her outline by the weak closet light. She said, “Lucy Ann, sometimes you are just like your Daddy, and that scares me so. I don’t want you to end up angry and unhinged.”
I shook my head hard, back and forth.
“Please promise me right now you’ll let love flow into your heart like an ocean. Of forgiveness, joy, and hope. Let’s pray to God for this, okay baby?”
“Yes, Mama.” And at that moment, when we clasped hands and bowed our heads and prayed, I felt that ocean coming into my heart, flowing fast and flowing straight. Straight from Mama.
When I tell these things to dirtman, something loosens inside me. It’s like talking to God, telling Him my sins and asking for forgiveness. Somehow, I know dirtman forgives me.
I hear Mama screaming from the house. I lurch up, run past the piled things, out the shed, and bang in through the screen door.
Nightmare Magazine Issue 21 Page 4
