Wild Things

by Clay Carmichael

  “I don’t get why I have to go to school at all,” I whined.

  “It’s the law, Zo’. Until you’re sixteen, you have to go and I have to send you—somewhere.”

  “You could teach me.”

  Henry went quiet when I said this. “Zo’,” he said finally. “That’s not possible right now. For a lot of reasons.”

  His jaw tightened. If I pushed harder, he might explode again, maybe yank something out of the dashboard or me out of my seat.

  I folded my arms over my chest and went stone quiet as we drove. I gave Henry credit for taking my side with the assistant superintendent, but when I got to thinking how I was the one who’d have to sit stupefied for seven hours a day, five days a week, I took my credit back.

  The upshot was that I was stuck in fifth grade. My teacher, Ms. Avery, was nice enough but as dull as petunias. Her saving grace was that she repeated every question at least once and prefaced the second or third asking with a specific kid’s name. This meant I could spend the day reading books from Henry’s library, coming back to reality only when my name was called.

  “Class, who remembers the capital of Montana? Anyone? Zoë, do you remember the capital of Montana?”

  “Helena, ma’am,” I answered.

  The lessons were dirt easy and I nearly always knew the answer, though I never offered it unless Ms. Avery called on me. Everybody hated kids who showboated. Ross Purcell raised his hand so often that I named him Mr. Liberty, which made the other kids laugh. When Ms. Avery called on him he had the ugly habit of making a know-it-all face at the Mexican girl who didn’t speak English on his right, then smirking at the slow kid on his left, before giving his windbag answer.

  Worse than Ross was Hargrove Peters, whose surly self sat more lying down than sitting in the last desk by the door. Though we’d never exchanged one word, he spent half of every school day staring at me in a burning way, like he already hated my guts. The last one out the door at the end of the day and late every morning, he barely answered if Ms. Avery called on him and never raised his hand in class. He just glared at me or wrote in some notebook he slammed shut if anybody walked by.

  Shelby, the girl who sat across from me, said that Hargrove’s daddy was Sugar Hill’s mayor, and that made Hargrove think he was better than other people.

  “He sure doesn’t like me,” I said.

  “He doesn’t like anybody,” she said. “Don’t pay him any mind. I don’t.”

  But by midweek his staring was bugging me no end. “Is he still staring?” I asked Shelby.

  She glanced back and nodded. “Like a cat at a mouse.”

  A few minutes later I got up to sharpen my pencils at the back of the room and check out Hargrove without him seeing. He’d have to turn all the way around in his desk to stare at me there. I got a tissue first, from a bookcase by the window, and stood there blowing my nose. It bothered him that I was out of view. When I started back across the rear of the room, he stiffened as I got close, slapped his notebook shut, and fidgeted mightily with his pencil. I stood right behind him sharpening one, two, three pencils, as slowly as I could.

  Hargrove was good-looking, but he knew it. His hair was cut short and clean above his collar and ears. His clothes were pricey and pressed. But that notebook he carried was old and dog-eared with bent corners and didn’t match the rest of him.

  I sauntered by him back to my seat. “He’s still staring?” I asked Shelby without turning around.

  She glanced back and nodded again. “Never seen him this weird before.”

  I whirled around in my seat and glared, catching him off-guard. He lowered his eyes, but just for a second.

  “Is there a problem, Zoë?” Ms. Avery asked.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, and scowled at Hargrove before I turned back around. “No problem at all.”

  But that didn’t stop him. He stared at me clear through spelling and silent reading. And the next day, and the day after that. I didn’t even have to ask Shelby anymore to know when he was doing it. I could feel his eyes boring into me, and by week’s end I’d had my fill.

  On Friday I packed up early and was the first one out of class. He was the last one out, as usual. I waited for him just beyond the turn to the main hall and stepped right in front of him as he came around the corner. “What?” I snapped, not three inches from his stunned face.

  He tried to go around me, but I blocked his path. His face flushed red, but it hardened, too. He tried to dodge me, but I was quick.

  “Quit staring at me,” I snapped.

  “You’re crazy,” he said, and then added something under his breath that I didn’t hear.

  “What was that?” I said.

  His eyes met mine. “Just like your mother who offed herself,” he said, this time loud and mean, and then pushed past me, bumping me sideways into the wall. He walked out the front door without looking back.

  That shook me. I leaned against the wall for a minute. I didn’t think anybody knew about Mama but me and Henry, and maybe Fred and Bessie, who sure wouldn’t say anything to Hargrove Peters. Mama hadn’t been my favorite person, but I didn’t like some uppity loser kid, who didn’t know us from dirt, talking about her like that. I didn’t like it one bit.

  The principal, Mr. Reardon, was coming down the hall. He stank of the cigarettes he sneaked in the janitor’s closet, and had a seen-it-all, heard-it-all, done-it-all attitude toward kid behavior. He ran the school with horse sense and humor dry as dust. I liked him, and I could tell he liked me back.

  “What’s shaking, kiddo?” he said, smiling. “How’s the world treating you?”

  “Fine,” I lied. “Fine as can be.” Which is what I said to Fred when he picked me up outside, and to Henry when he asked at dinner how school was going.

  After that, only one thing made school bearable: Ms. Avery wasn’t as dull as I’d thought. When I got to my desk on Monday, I found a book and a note: I think you might like this, if you haven’t already read it. If you like it, I have others. E. Avery. It was called They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell. I’d never read it. I started it right then and lapped it up—about eight-year-old Peter, called Bunny, his thirteen-year-old brother, Robert, their daddy, James, and their mama, who died of the influenza. I read the whole book in one day.

  I lived for Ms. Avery’s books and for the last bell, when Henry or Fred picked me up and drove me back to the house. Except for Hargrove, my classmates were nice enough but boring—they automatically did whatever the nearest grown-up expected. I was nice back, but that was all. When Henry or Fred asked about my day, I kept quiet. If fifth grade was crammed down my throat, I wasn’t going to waste time puking it back up.

  Henry took my attitude in stride. “It’s how I’d feel,” I overheard him tell Fred, after which he added that between paying alimony, Mama’s debts, and his lawyer, he was pretty strapped for cash and needed to get into the studio and stay there if we all wanted to eat. For a few hours I felt bad for shutting him out, but my heart rehardened against him when I saw Hargrove at school the next day. Henry had till Christmas. Then we’d see.

  When summer turned to autumn and trucks thundered night and day up and down the man’s drive, he changed his mind again about humans. The whole species was a restless, sleepless, earsplitting scourge upon the earth.

  What had come over the place? Dog or no, the man had once seemed to know about solitude, the space a creature needed. Now, morning till night, men swarmed the place like ants, hauling off the metal things the man made. They wrenched them apart, lifted and lowered the separate pieces with roaring machines, shouted and cursed as they lashed and bound the pieces with ropes. Then the trucks rumbled off, raising clouds of dust. The cat sneezed and shook his head, fled under the house to ease the buzzing in his ears, the pounding in his head.

  After that the boy came. The boy who used to mind his own business. Who’d gone and stayed gone for whole seasons, kept to his own turf. Even he traipsed right through the yard with his
dimwitted deer, carried the sleeping girl straight up the front steps, through the front door and inside the house. Had they all gone mad?

  The girl disappointed him most. Kindred at first, she’d lingered after she filled his bowls, sat for hours near the weeds and whispered to him, her voice soothing and sweet. He had liked having her near. She’d stretched on the grass, pretending to read, stare at the sky, watch clouds, all the while inching closer when she thought he didn’t see.

  Then she and the man had argued, and the girl must have lost. He’d watched her run off, the boy bring her back. Since then, she left early, returned late, tore off into the woods till dark, and seemed to have forgotten all about him.

  It was all too much. He shunned the food in his bowls, took to the woods beyond the stone garden, and made for the steepled house to hunt rats.

  He slept under the white wooden building, near the larger stone garden there. Sometimes bells rang in the steeple, or people strolled in the garden or gathered in the building overhead, but for several days the place had been quiet. He napped and hunted, hunted and napped.

  Hungry now, he stared out at the stones, watched and listened for dart or scurry. He’d stopped thinking the human habit of stone-planting peculiar. He saw the uses in it now. The flat stones were good for sleeping on, cool in summer and toasty in winter when the sun warmed them. The upright ones broke the wind and kept off the rain and snow if he stayed to the lee side. Best of all, the stone garden earth teemed with fat brown rats, his favorite meal.

  The strange objects planted in front of the stones puzzled him, though. They had no use that he could find. They looked like flowers, but weren’t flowers. He sniffed them, but they had no smell. He bit them, but they had no taste. They weren’t cold or warm. They didn’t rot or die. They stood mute, stiff, the same in every season, without growth or new blossom. Even the rats, who ate garbage, shunned them.

  One afternoon an old woman had caught him peeing on the largest bunch. She chased him into the crawlspace, screeching at him and waving her arms. From his hiding place he saw her pluck the dripping objects out of the ground with her thumb and forefinger, wash off his scent under a nearby spigot, and then replant them, grumbling all the while. After that, he supposed the objects marked territories, something he understood, and he peed on them whenever possible, the old woman’s bunch doubly, though he waited in vain for her to do the same.

  Suddenly he heard doors slamming outside, footsteps on the front walk, the whoosh of the entry door, then hushed human voices overhead. The footsteps and voices upstairs grew closer and echoed in the large space. He heard women’s and men’s voices both, one he recognized: the voice of the woman who’d screamed at him, as usual screeching about something.

  He’s under there, all right, she said. I saw him go through the vent. He does his business on Harold’s grave and I won’t have it. I say put down poison and be done with him.

  Whose cat is he? said a man. Does he belong to someone? The cat knew this voice, too. It belonged to the hobbling, white-haired old man with the cane who stood before the townspeople when they gathered upstairs, speaking to them in earnest tones.

  Don’t know, Father, said a second man. He don’t act domesticated, but he’s one heck of a ratter. He’s doing you a favor.

  Favor! cried the woman.

  It’s the God’s truth, Constance, said the old man. The rats are bad this year. Answer to a prayer, I’d say.

  Father, you’re not suggesting that God sent that cat to urinate on my Harold’s grave? asked the woman, incredulous.

  The Lord’s ways are mysterious, said the old man. We’re simply saying that the up side might be more important than the down side.

  Unless Harold’s fond of rats, said the second man.

  I can’t see poisoning God’s creature for the sake of plastic flowers, the old man said. What if he belongs to someone? Dr. Royster’s isn’t far.

  Tomcats run in that family, said the woman.

  What if Mr. Pendergrass hoses off your flowers once a week, Constance? said the old man, exasperated. Would that do?

  For a few moments there was silence.

  I suppose, said the woman tightly. For now. But if it doesn’t …

  Faith, Constance, and enjoy your organ practice, the old man said.

  The men left then. But the woman stayed and stomp-stomp-stomped up the back stairs and across the upper floor, grumbling and sniping. All at once a horrid noise boomed and blared overhead, shaking the walls and thundering through the ductwork as the woman caterwauled along. The cat shot out of the crawlspace into the woods, his head pounding, and wished they would all shut up.

  6

  The minute I got home from school every day, I headed for the woods, listening and searching for any sign of the white deer and her friend. In two weeks’ time I’d explored the woods to the east, south, and west, finding nothing but trees. North was what remained.

  I headed that way on a cool, bright Friday afternoon, figuring if I didn’t find anything by sundown I’d have the weekend to widen my search. It was barely October, but this year’s Indian summer had ended early, and a chill had settled in the air. Winter was coming soon.

  I looked for the cat as I went. I hadn’t seen much of him since school started, and the trucks had kept coming and going, delivering Henry’s supplies and taking finished sculptures away. The food in his bowls was nibbled some days, untouched others. I hoped he was okay.

  Henry’s property ended near what Fred called the “old growth,” and I thought these northernmost woods were what he meant. The trees were bigger and older here, some as big around as truck tires. That made walking easier, since not much grew in their deep shade. Fallen branches rotted in loose heaps in the leaf litter, but the piles had an order that I doubted nature had made by herself. These older woods seemed tended, even loved.

  I was about to head back near sunset when I heard rustling to my right and turned to see the white deer above me on the rise, her pink nose raised in greeting. She kept more distance this time, about twenty yards, though she didn’t look afraid. I stood perfectly still, not wanting to spook her. Her ears twitched and swiveled, scanning the woods for sounds. She kept looking over her shoulder, and I understood the presence of her companion, though I saw or heard no other sign of him.

  Once again an owl hooted insistently from the trees. The deer turned slightly in the call’s direction. When the owl hooted a second time, and louder and more urgently a third, the deer looked back at me as if to apologize, then reluctantly cantered off into the trees toward the mournful sound.

  I wasn’t fool enough to try to catch her this time, but I hurried on in that direction and kept her in sight as long as I could. A half-mile or so on, something silver glinted from behind a stand of trees. As I got closer, I saw an old trailer shaped like a big silver bullet. I knocked, but nobody answered, so I peered inside. It was filthy and full of old spider webs, pine needles, and dry leaves, but otherwise it was completely empty; not a dish on the dusty kitchen counters or shelves, no cushions in the seats in what passed for a living room, no curtains in the windows, and not so much as a pencil on the dinette to the right of the door. I saw no road or path outside, and thought the trailer must have been towed here, through a leaner forest years before. But nobody had lived in it for a long time.

  I squinted past the trailer. A break of slender pines formed a kind of screen, and beyond that was the roofline of a house. When I came around the trees to look, I found a log cabin. The walls were made of big notched logs, the roof of silver-gray shingles. At one end of the cabin was a stone chimney, and across the front was a porch just big enough for two broken chairs and a rusty motorcycle missing a back tire.

  The frame of the cabin looked old, but other parts seemed newer and built in unusual ways. The window frames were made of odd pieces of different kinds of wood, whittled and joined like a puzzle. The window dividers were all sizes and shapes, custom-carved to fit the frames, and broken pieces of
clear and colored glass made up the panes. These pieces had been glued or taped together, and set into the frames like a see-through mosaic.

  Out front was a covered stone well with a roped bucket for drawing water. To one side, a couple of pumpkins rotted in an old fenced-in garden, and to the other I saw a woodpile and an ax rusting in an old stump.

  It didn’t look like anyone lived there now. The front door stood ajar, and I invited myself inside.

  If people had lived here, they’d lived hard. The single, good-sized room was covered in dust, cobwebs, tracked-in dirt, and leaves. The seat cushions from the trailer made up the mattress of a corner pallet bed heaped with old blankets, brown-stained pillows without cases, and faded quilts that sent up a cloud of dust when I sat down. In the center of the room, a table made from an old door with two tree stumps for legs was covered with broken strands of fishing line, jaybird feathers for lures, and pebbles for sinkers. A pair of plain stools stood beside it, one tall and one kid-sized. Two dusty oil lamps sat on the wide mantel above the hearth, and in the fireplace an old oven rack spanned red bricks stacked four high on either side. The ashes were clumped and cold. On the back wall to the right were some open shelves holding a few dented pots and utensils, and below that was a stone sink with no tap. Whoever had lived here had hauled water from the well to drink and wash.

  Along the walls, crude shelves overflowed with natural treasures, things a kid might keep. Crow, bluebird, and cardinal feathers and a single peacock plume lay alongside other feathers I didn’t know on one shelf. Another was crowded with large and small birds’ nests and eggs that hadn’t hatched—blue, green, pink, and speckled—next to a much larger collection of broken shells. Other shelves held the gray-striped papery makings from a wasp’s nest, animal bones, and small skulls bleached white by the sun, like little versions of those in Ms. O’Keeffe’s pictures. Pinecones the size of pineapples sat next to a dozen tiny ones no bigger than thimbles. There were twigs overgrown with gray, blue, and green lichens, and dozens of rocks, stones, and pebbles polished smooth.