Monsters

by Peter Cawdron

Bruce padded a blanket, making it into a pillow for her, gently resting her head upon it. She looked up into his eyes. He'd seen this look before—a life fading in the twilight. On Bracken Ridge, he'd seen this same glazed look in his brother's eyes.

  “Please. Don't leave me alone. I don't know what to do.”

  “James,” she whispered. “His name is James.”

  Bruce sobbed, holding her hand to his forehead. Jane's eyes flickered as her hand fell limp. He knelt beside her, his chest heaving in grief. With his fingers pushed up gently against her jugular vein he felt her pulse weaken, grow erratic, and finally stop.

  “No,” he cried, clenching his fist into a ball.

  “No,” he yelled, staggering to his feet.

  Bruce paced around the cabin screaming, “No. No. No!”

  He was distraught. He pulled at the hair on his head, feeling the pain from his pulsating skull. The world around him seemed to narrow, as though he were standing in a tunnel. The cabin was small, too small. He wanted to pace, to walk at length, to run. Bruce rubbed his temples, mumbling to himself as he strode back and forth.

  “Oh, please, no. This cannot be happening. Please tell me this is a dream. Let me wake from this nightmare.”

  The more he paced, the more he felt the muscles in his body building in tension. He picked up a log of wood and began pounding the bench top, trying with all his might to either break the wood or to break the bench. With thundering blows, he slammed the wood down, each time screaming, “No.” But neither the bench nor the wood had any give. He could rage all he wanted, but nothing made a difference.

  The baby was crying, but Bruce couldn't hear its cries until he paused, his hands throbbing from the reverberation of each blow through the wood.

  Bruce stood over the crying baby, looking at James so small and helpless. Tears streamed from the baby's eyes as his tiny hands shook with anguish.

  “There, there,” Bruce said, reaching in and picking him up. “It's OK. No one's going to hurt you. Everything is going to be fine.”

  The baby continued to cry, so he bent his index finger in toward his palm, giving baby James the opportunity to suck on his knuckle. It wouldn't suffice for long, but it soothed the poor boy, allowing him to calm.

  Bruce sat there, rocking back and forth on the edge of a chair, rocking the newborn baby back to sleep as his mother lay dead just a few feet away.

  He put baby James back in the crib and tried to compose himself.

  “Please wake up,” he said, knelling down by Jane. “Please, just like in the woodpile.”

  But the touch of her cold, pale, lifeless skin told him there would be no miracle this time. He had to do something, anything. To do something would distract him from the haunting reality of his loss.

  Bruce was manic.

  He arranged a blanket over against the wall and moved her body there, getting her out of the bloody mess in front of the fireplace. With considerable care, he lay Jane's limp body near the door, placing a pillow under her head.

  Bruce wasn't thinking straight, he wrapped her with a blanket, wanting to keep her warm. He turned her face toward the wall so it seemed as though she were sleeping. Then he returned to the fireplace and began cleaning.

  Using soap made from animal fat and several buckets of water, he worked fastidiously, with close attention being paid to each subtle detail. Bruce soaked up the blood, cleaned in between the cracks in the floorboards, wiped the bloodied handles of the chairs. It was all he could do. For Bruce, it was either work hard or lie down and die. Through it all, he sobbed, his chest heaving with grief.

  The baby stirred.

  The water Bruce had boiled earlier was lukewarm. He took a small cup and crushed up a little bread, mixing it with a few drops of goat's milk. Bruce stuck his finger in the milky mixture and tasted. To him, it tasted like nothing more than dishwater, but he hoped it would give baby James something to sustain him.

  Bruce changed his son and fed him, dipping his finger in the mixture and letting James suck on his finger. The baby wanted to suck constantly, and sought for his father's finger whenever he pulled it away to get more fluid. It took a while, but the mixture seemed to satisfy the child.

  Between feeds, Bruce sat there rocking James, talking with him softly, telling him how wonderful his mother had been and how he would care for him.

  At some point in the early hours of the morning, after settling the baby and returning him to his crib, Bruce fell asleep, only to wake with baby James crying as dawn broke.

  Hours seemed like seconds. Had it not been for the light slipping between the cracks in the shutters, Bruce would have thought not more than a minute had passed.

  Bruce changed James and fed him again, marveling that life could start from such humble beginnings. As a newborn, James was unusually content, such a stark contrast to the turmoil and hurt Bruce felt inside. As he sat there cradling James, he felt the urge to talk, to express his feelings and try to work through the pain he felt tearing at his heart.

  “Why has the sun risen?” he began, his rough fingers gently stroking the baby's forehead. “How can a new day dawn while my nightmare continues? Why does light break forth when darkness still surrounds me? Is there no mercy in this world? Is there no compassion?

  “The night should not have ended. The day should be dark, black with clouds, not vibrant and bright, ignoring my heartache and tragedy. Am I mocked? Is my heartache ignored? The day dawns, ignoring my pleas to stop and mourn.”

  Tears fell from his cheeks.

  “I should have died on Bracken Ridge ... Jonathan was stronger, faster and braver than me. I guess I was the little brother, always a few years behind. When we marched through the leafless winter trees, neither of us knew how that muddy ridge would change our lives.

  “The woods looked so peaceful. Buds broke forth from the twigs. Blossoms awoke, defying the winter.

  “We thought we were invincible. We thought the world would bow before us, that our days of laughter and fun would never end.

  “Just a foot to the left, and that arrow would have struck me. If they had fired a split second later it would have been my life that ended in a pool of blood and mud that day. And what would Jonathan have made of this world in my stead? Would he have had a desire to read? Would he have courted your mother?”

  Bruce sobbed quietly for a few seconds.

  “Oh, our lives are as frail as a butterfly in spring. Our days are full of promise and hope, brimming with dreams and joy, and yet there is only ever one end in sight, that of the bitter, cold, dark night.

  “I want to return to yesterday. Only yesterday, it seemed as though the sun would never set. Yesterday, I laughed, looking forward to this day, to the day you would first feel the warmth of life. Now, I would give anything to have not seen this sunrise.”

  Bruce played with his son's hair, gently stroking it one way then pulling it back another as he talked softly to him.

  “We pretend things are important, but things never are. It is people that are important. So little really matters in the long run. We live, we work, and we die, but for what? For the chance to allow some light to shine through into this dark world, to brighten the path for those we love.

  “Nothing else really matters. Nothing else counts for much. My horse cares not for anything other than its feed. These buildings care not who lives within them. 'Tis you, baby James, it is you that counts for the future.

  “Time is cruel. One day blends into another. Days become weeks, months become years. We waste time. Oh, we don't mean to, but we don't realize its true worth. 'Tis no fine painting that is priceless, no marble statue of some lost former glory, no, not even the writings of Shakespeare can be counted as beyond reckoning.

  “Time is all there is in this world, but time cannot be bought with the instruments of man. There is no treasure-house crafted from gold or chest full of diamonds that could buy back just one day with my beloved.

  “And yet those days, when we frolicked in the
leaves, when we huddled to read by a flickering light, shivering in the cold, when we danced and laughed, talked and cried, those days seemed like they would never end. When they were common, they passed with barely a thought, but now, just a fleeting moment is worth more than kings could command. In a moment, those days are gone, while my agony lives on.”

  Looking into the baby's eyes, he spoke softly. “If it were not for you, I could not go on. For your sake, I will be strong.”

  Tears streamed down his cheeks. Bruce kissed baby James and settled him back in his crib.

  With the winter drifts upon him and the snow piled deep outside, Bruce knew it would be a couple of months before he could cremate Jane's remains. He couldn't stand to see her like this, ravaged by death, an empty shell before him, so he built a wooden coffin, lining it with blankets.

  As much as it pained him to do so, he kept the coffin in the barn, up against the north-facing wall where it was coldest. Each day he would check on the coffin, making sure it had not been disturbed, but he could not bring himself to open the lid.

  As the snows began to melt, Bruce dug out the corral fence and used the wood as fuel for Jane's funeral pyre. By early spring, the days were warm, but the nights were still below freezing, with the snow still knee-deep on the ground.

  The warmth of the fire he lit for Jane did nothing to ward off the chill he felt inside. In the still air, the flames reached up over forty feet, lashing out against the dark, gray sky. Wood crackled as it burned. Sparks drifted on to heaven, yet the cold remained within his soul.

  Bruce was numb.

  As spring bloomed, Bruce took young James to the village. There was no easy way to deliver the heartbreaking news of Jane's death to her father.

  The old man Bruce said should stay with him and work on the forge. The money was good, but Bruce felt committed to the farm. Somehow, deep inside, he felt he owed that to Jane and Hugo.

  The next few years were a blur.

  Bruce went about his routines with his usual vigor and determination, but at night he felt hollow and empty.

  Raising a young child alone seemed to double the workload, and Bruce took James with him everywhere, out into the fields, mucking out the barn, tending to the animals.

  The farm hands and insect gatherers living on the fringe of his property were kind, bringing him meals and checking up on him. Bruce wasn't cynical. He appreciated their kindness, knowing they didn't have to drop by, but nothing could fill the emptiness inside.

  One day, to his surprise, Jane's father appeared at his door. He'd brought a young couple with him, saying they'd agreed to work on the farm if they could build their own cabin and take a share of the land.

  At first, Bruce was taken aback by his father in law's brashness, protesting that the farm had been in his family for generations, but the old man had a point. Bruce had gone from farming thirty fields to raising crops in just seven. Even with the seasonal help in the spring and extra hands during the harvest, Bruce hadn't been able to farm like he once had.

  Jane's father said it was important for him to have someone living there with him at the heart of the farm, someone to help repair the barn and break up the fallowed ground in the back acres, or he'd risk losing the farm to the wild. Reluctantly, Bruce agreed.

  Simon and Martha initially moved in with Bruce and James, staying with them over the first winter. By this time, James had turned four and was growing more independent and in need of better supervision. Having a woman around the house helped.

  In the spring, Bruce and Simon built a second cabin by the stream. Bruce found solace in a sense of purpose and enjoyed the extra work required to build another log cabin.

  Simon and Martha were good folk. They had none of the superstitions of the villagers.

  Simon would gladly talk with Bruce about the library, and Bruce often found himself lost in his recollections of Jane and Hugo, and the wild and fanciful idea to build a steam engine, and the flight of an arrow, but he was careful not to give too much away about the location of the library.

  For Bruce, their friendship was a shallow consolation for his loss as neither Simon nor Martha had the inclination or aptitude to read. They seemed in awe of what little knowledge he had. It was only then, in the fifth year since Jane's death, that Bruce realized he hadn't read anything since the day she died.

  There were a couple of books in the house, but they were Jane's books. Bruce had a book on physics that he'd been reading to Hugo, but nothing of his own.

  Bruce determined the following year to return to the city library, but somehow he never had time. He'd forget, and then a vague longing would eat away at his mind and he'd find himself daydreaming of the times he spent with Jane and Hugo.

  Bruce had to make time to read, he knew that, and yet the journey seemed daunting without Jane. Perhaps there was a little fear there, he thought. He knew the crumbling highway would be haunted by the ghosts of painful memories stirred up from within.

  By working hard on the farm, he could crowd out the ghosts and lose himself, lose sight of his anguish and despair. And so Bruce stalled, finding excuses to plan the trip for some other time.

  James was nine years old before Bruce realized he'd not kept his promise to Jane. Was it selfishness that had kept him from taking the boy to the library? Was it because he couldn't stand the thought of facing up to his own personal loss? He wasn't sure, but he wanted James to learn to read so he knew he had to push through his lethargy. Jane was right, he thought. Once you read, once you really read and understand, there is no turning back, there is no forgetting. No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn't let go of the light. Reason was always there, shining in the darkness, even when he didn't want to acknowledge it.

  That summer, Bruce set out with James for the village of Amersham. They stayed the night with Jane's father, in the room above the forge.

  Young James loved his grandfather. For his part, the old man looked exceptionally healthy for his age and spoiled his grandson.

  The journey from Amersham to the library was unusually quiet. Normally, birds filled the wilds with noise, while insects fluttered through the air, but a forest fire had moved through the area a few days beforehand. Smoke drifted lazily from smoldering tree stumps. The smell of death hung in the air. For once, Bruce was glad to reach the outskirts of the city.

  Walking through the run-down city with James at his side, Bruce felt none of the apprehension he had during previous visits.

  Giant bats hung inside the skyscrapers, rustling and fighting with each other, but that didn't bother him. A bear growled somewhere in the distance, but he felt no fear.

  James was excited by the journey, and Bruce became swept up in that excitement. A whole new world was opening up for James, and Bruce could see it in his eyes. For James, the city was the stuff of fantasy and legends.

  Although it had been the best part of a decade, the older dogs still remembered Bruce and the younger dogs followed their lead.

  Bruce brought some of Jane's clothes. The matriarch of the pack, a bitch Jane had called Cleo appeared to recognize the smell before he opened his backpack. With gray hair around the animal’s snout, the old dog sniffed at the bag, nudging it gently.

  Bruce pulled out an old dress and rubbed it on the dogs, they seemed to like the scent. Cleo, though, whined. Could it be that Cleo knew? Could it be that from Jane's absence or from the age of the scent she understood Jane was dead?

  Several of the other dogs stood off to one side, looking around as though they expected Jane to arrive from further down the road. For Bruce, it was heartrending to see these wild beasts pining for his lost wife.

  There were no children's books in the library. Bruce worked his way carefully through the boxes, but someone else must have borrowed them. He left a note, expressing his interest in them, saying he would be back the following month.

  James was content to play with a toy truck and a bunch of figurines with movable arms and legs. Any sense of identity had lo
ng since faded from the figures, leaving the small dolls devoid of any personality, but that didn’t seem to bother James.

  Bruce found he couldn't read. Reading held such an association with Jane in his mind that to sit there with a book open left him heartbroken. He tried flicking through the laminated pages from a couple of newspapers and reading about what had once been current affairs, but the names were unknown to him, the places meaningless. “Pope Augustus in Vatican City,” it was little more than a jumble of letters arranged in a row. Jane had taught him to become immersed when reading, but now he felt detached. Reading was laborious.

  Bruce felt awful. He felt as though he had betrayed Jane, but his eyes just wouldn't run along the page in a coherent manner. When he got to the end of a sentence, he found himself wondering what he'd just read.

  Bruce and James slept in the library. In the morning, Bruce determined to make a fresh start, to put the past behind him. He had to stop feeling sorry for himself, but that was easier said than done. He thought about Hugo and his fascination with physics and it gave him an idea.

  “Have I ever told you about slingshots?” he asked young James.

  “No.”

  “We're going to make a giant slingshot. You're going to love this. Your mother wouldn't approve. She'd say it was too dangerous. But I suspect even she'd think it was fun if she saw what I have in mind.”

  With wide eyes, James followed Bruce out of the library. They spent the morning foraging for parts in a rundown department store and a mechanic's garage. It was late in the afternoon before they finished piecing together the disjointed parts.

  The sun was low on the horizon.

  The dogs had been gone for most of the day, but with sunset approaching, they returned to their den in the collapsed ruins of the fast food restaurant next to the library.

  “Perfect timing,” Bruce said, cranking the ratchet of a manual engine hoist working a block and tackle. The slingshot he'd devised stretched out between a crumpled lamp post and traffic light. Being comprised of a series of car tires linked together with loops of steel chain, the slingshot groaned under the strain of the pulley.