Gob's Grief

by Chris Adrian

  Gob was lonely for the first time in his life, and hoped being near Tomo’s body would rid him of this new feeling. He sat on a wooden chair near the flat rock in the orchard where they had sometimes laid out their dinner, and that now was Tomo’s headstone. Gob felt no less lonely for sitting there, but though it made him sad to sit and consider how his brother’s body lay beneath the ground suffering the abuse of worms, there was no place else he felt comfortable. He held in his fist the letter Tomo had written but not mailed out of Secessia, which he’d read and reread, torn up and reassembled with paste and thread, buried and retrieved.

  The family was kind to him, each in their own way, after Tomo’s body came back from the war, escorted by a pair of soldiers who told that a generous Rebel general had arranged for the body to return to Homer. Anna fussed over Gob’s wound; it was she who saved him from death. Children died from such terrible bone breaks. She set the leg and bound it up with all sorts of sweet-smelling herbs. Gob, drunk on her medicines, had a sudden fear she was making him delicious for cooking. “Mama,” he cried out, “is she going to eat me up?”

  Tennie came out to the grave, bearing a sunflower, which she laid against the stone. She told him Tomo was not in the Summerland. None of her spirit friends there knew him. But that did not mean he wouldn’t go there eventually, and pass from there to the living earth with great ease. “My dear child,” she said, “there is no death.” Gob said nothing. He did not believe her.

  “What are you doing here?” Utica wanted to know when she came out to visit him. It was night. Gob had been all day in the orchard. “Do you think he’ll come out of the grave if you sit here and stare? Do you think he’ll come down from Heaven? Well, he won’t.” Utica was a doubter when she was sober. Drunk, she was susceptible to rage against such opinions as were held by most of her family. “A body don’t return from where he’s gone, my little friend.” She’d had a beau, a cooper in Brandon, where Claflins were less infamous, but cholera had killed him, and he had not returned to her when she pleaded, alone or with her sisters. “You are a dreary, moping thing,” she said. “They die. What do you want to do? Spend all the rest of your days here? Do you want to crawl into the grave with him? You make me nervous. Do you realize how you make me nervous?” Utica nudged Gob from his chair and said, “A gentleman always makes room for a lady.” Without complaint Gob sat on a nearby stump. Utica passed him her glass of whiskey.

  The glass was chipped, so Gob cut his lip as he drank, but found the taste of blood and whiskey pleasant. Utica pulled a bottle out of her dress and drank with him. “How your mama would shriek if she saw you with whiskey!” she said, and then tittered. She got up and walked away, but soon returned with a veil. She stood on the chair with the veil over her head, waving her bottle and reciting all the female lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She stepped down and twirled around the grave, looking ghostly and magical. Gob watched his aunt spin and shout, but said nothing, and when she finished and bowed, he did not applaud. Her swirling white veil reminded him of Alanis Bell, who never came to visit him at Tomo’s grave.

  “Dreary boy,” Utica said, but not without some affection, and she refilled his glass before she walked off into the trees, idly waving the veil behind her. Gob drank his whiskey and then cupped his hand before his mouth to smell it on his breath, thinking of his father.

  The whiskey put into his head the seemingly excellent idea of kneeling on his brother’s grave and digging in the dirt. He was not sure if he was digging to rescue Tomo from the grave or to make a home in it for himself. He grabbed fistfuls of dirt with his left hand and threw them over his shoulder. With his right he dug with the glass. He had only made a shallow Gob-shaped depression when he grew tired, but he lay down in that and pressed his eyes against the fresh earth. It smelled of old apples. Something that might have been a piece of turkey bone pressed against his cheek. Something else brushed against his neck, crawled along his skin for a few inches, and then turned away. All he saw was darkness. When he sat by the grave and closed his eyes, he sometimes got the feeling that Tomo was standing behind him, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder, but every time Gob turned around there was only empty space. Now as he nestled atop the grave there was not even that feeling, but he pleaded anyway for Tomo to step out of the darkness before his eyes. Darkness could hide anything. Why wouldn’t it hide his brother? Doors could conceal anything. He had opened and closed his bedroom door at the house, hoping each time to find Tomo on the other side. Once it had revealed his mama, who had creeped upstairs to try and reconcile with him. He shut the door in her face.

  He imagined Tomo staring up at him now with his one good dead eye. It was dried and rheumy when Gob peeped under the coffin lid at the funeral, shriveled like a very old grape. Gob stared back, conjuring Tomo’s supine dead image, coloring him with an additional two weeks of decay. If he kept digging, he would eventually be able to reach out his hand to touch the dead flesh. It was just the few feet of earth and a few inches of wood separating them. Or it was just a few feet of earth and whatever walls God might throw up between the living and the dead. But if the earth would yield to a human hand, why not those other walls? “I will bring you back,” Gob swore to his brother, speaking into the dirt so he soiled his tongue and his teeth. And not just as a spirit like their lying mama said she saw. He would somehow bring his brother back into living flesh. He would find a way to do that, because his brother would do the same for him, and because he was to blame for Tomo’s death—he felt sure Tomo would not have been killed if he’d gone with him. This was Gob’s conviction: that he had killed his brother with his fear as surely as the Rebel had with his bullet. The prospect of living a life without Tomo was no less impossible than the prospect of somehow turning him from a rotten horror to a warm living boy, and if fate had determined that he must do one or the other, he would much prefer to do the latter. “I will bring you back,” he said again, and the words were a great comfort to him, because he could only reconcile himself to his brother’s death by thinking it temporary. Feeling at peace, Gob snuggled deeper into the dirt, and listened as a gust of wind came into the orchard, shaking the trees and knocking fruit to the ground. There was another noise—he could hear it if he listened very, very hard, a noise like a giant softly breathing, or like the ocean, which he remembered from his distant childhood in San Francisco. The noise rose and fell, lulling him to sleep.

  Gob’s ignorance necessitated a teacher, but who could teach him how to defeat death? He thought of Miss Maggs, simply because she was a teacher, but he was sure she could only teach him how to be bitter and ugly and how to be a bad shot with a book. His mama might have been a candidate if she hadn’t been such a shameless liar. He did not trust her any longer, and if she could not even bring Tomo’s spirit to talk to him how could she put life back in his flesh? For the same reason, Aunt Tennie was not suitable. Utica had no knowledge he needed. Grandpa Buck was not stupid, but Gob needed no instruction on how to cheat people. Uncle Malden was as dumb as he was smelly. Grandma Anna had only small power, and anything he might learn from her he could learn from her teacher. So Gob turned on his heel, away from Homer town, and he walked through the orchard and up the high hill, then into the woods beyond that, up into the highest hills where the Urfeist lived. It was a simple decision; there was only one person in his whole world from whom he had any hope of even beginning to learn what he must. But, though it seemed simple and right to take the trip into the highest hills, he felt dizzy and weak and cowardly as he shuffled along under the dark trees. He knew very well what the Urfeist took from the children he captured. Weighed against his brother’s life, it seemed a small thing. And it made great sense to him that he should have to do something fearful to undo the consequences of his fear.

  Alanis Bell found him as he was passing over the high hill.

  “Gob Woodhull,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  “Get away from me,” Gob said. She danced around him, skipping
and throwing her hands out. Her prancing seemed an offense against his sadness.

  “It is a beautiful night,” she said. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “To see the Urfeist,” he said. That put an end to her prancing. She grabbed his arm.

  “Hush! You know better than to say that name. You’ll call him down on us!” He pulled his arm away.

  “Leave me alone,” he said, but she kept clutching at him.

  “He’ll bite your finger! He’ll eat you up! He’ll break your bones!”

  “I’ll break yours!” he said, pushing her away from him. “I’ll lift you up and break you in half, you girl!” He had pushed her down and now he was standing over her, ready to step on her or kick her. “Go away,” he said quietly. He turned away and walked on.

  “Go on!” Alanis Bell called out behind him. “I don’t care!” But the warbling noise came drifting after him as he walked. He stopped up his ears with his fingers.

  Gob did not know where he was going. He simply wandered. It was common knowledge that the Urfeist could smell a child from miles away. Gob closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, because it was also said that the Urfeist drew sleeping children to him with a call that only they could hear and follow. More than one child slept with a leash that ran from ankle to bedpost, to prevent just that sort of wandering. Gob got quite lost.

  The wind had picked up, and a bit of slivered moon was in the sky. It peeped out occasionally from between racing blue clouds, and lit the spinning fall of oak leaves when the wind nudged them off the trees. Gob happened upon a hawthorn bush. Resting next to it, he saw that a shrike had left a tiny shrew impaled on a long thorn. If that is not an omen, he thought, then my name is Mary Lincoln and I own many fine gowns. It was just then, when cowardice very nearly overwhelmed him, that he caught sight of a cheery yellow light beckoning through the bush.

  He picked his way through with care. He hid his hands in his coat and hunched his face down against his chest, but still he got a scratch high on his forehead. He wondered if the odor of blood would draw the Urfeist from his cave. Gob stood watching the entrance for a long time. There was a space cleared before it, where roses were planted in orderly rows, and when he moved a little closer he saw that taller rosebushes flanked the cave mouth, which opened into what must surely be the highest hill in the woods. The entrance turned as soon as it opened. All he saw was yellow light flickering on gray rock.

  “I’m here,” Gob said, speaking so low he could hardly hear himself above the wind.

  “I know it,” said a voice beside him. The Urfeist looked just how people made him out to look. There was the scraggly iron-colored hair, the jaunty red cap. He wore a chemise of some animal’s skin, and the kilt of fingers was pulled up high on his hairy belly. His feet were wound with bark. “You are welcome here, child,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He was always waiting for a child to come to him. The Urfeist smiled, showing strong white teeth that would have been the envy of a horse.

  “I want something,” said Gob. “I’ll pay for it. I want my brother back. He’s dead but I want to bring him here again, into the world. It’s got to be so he’s a living boy.” He kept babbling because the Urfeist said nothing. He only moved one long finger slowly towards Gob’s face. Gob did not try to back away, but he did not think he could have, had he tried. The Urfeist put his finger gently against Gob’s lips.

  “Hush,” he said. He left his finger there for a long moment. Gob was dashed with horror, as if someone had filled a bucket with pure liquid horror and dumped it over his head. Now he found he could move, so he turned and ran, faster than he thought he’d be able to, with his bad leg. He burst through the hawthorn, hardly aware of the scratches he got, and went running through the woods towards home. He felt borne up by fear, lifted and pushed by a great, blowing terror. His mama chased him, sometimes, when she was drunk on her visions of personal glory. She always wanted Gob then, not Tomo. It was Gob she wanted to catch up in a crushing embrace, and it was into his ear she wanted to pour her rushing sibyl’s monologue—she’d go on and on about all the fantastic things that lay in store for her and her sons, how she would be the leader of her people and deliver all the world from misery, how a golden age would be born in her and through her. Gob came to fear these attacks of hers. He’d run from her when she had the particular look in her eyes, when he knew what was coming. Tomo would exhort him, saying, “Run, Gob, run!” He’d flee through the orchard with his mama close behind, her arms held out in front of her and her hands grasping for him like the jaws of some small, famished animal. She always caught him, always spoke her glory into his ear, telling him how her sons were part of her, how they were connected by mystic cords, so no matter how far away he or Tomo went they would all three still be one.

  Gob never looked back, but he thought he could feel the Urfeist pursuing him, drawing closer and closer. He was certain, then, that the monster would kill him. He was certain that it would tear off his head and kick it all the way back to Homer, or that it would sip blood from his wrists until he swooned away into death. He knew that he should stop running and face it, anyhow, that he must do this for Tomo’s sake, and yet he did not. He ran all the harder, but he couldn’t run fast enough to escape it. Gob knew when the Urfeist was just behind him, and closed his eyes just before the thing knocked into his back and sent him sprawling among dry leaves.

  “Hush,” the Urfeist said again. He undressed trembling Gob with great tenderness, which was horrible because it was not expected, and though he looked thin and weak as Anna, his grip on Gob’s neck was strong, and the weight of him on Gob’s back felt heavy as the world. He worked to a chanted, unintelligible cadence. When he was finished, he lifted Gob up, took his limp hand into his own and put Gob’s left littlest finger in his mouth. He bit it clean through. Gob could not watch it happen, but he imagined the Urfeist’s mouth opening wide and moonlight racing between the clouds to strike his white teeth. Gob thought then how the bite was a mercy because it distracted you from the other thing, and he made a noise, though he’d sworn to himself he would make none. It was a pitiful sound, a single plaintive, dwindling O like a girl might make if you stole away her dolly. He heard the sound as if somebody else was making it, and then he fell back on the ground, what remained of his finger pulling from the Urfeist’s sucking mouth with a wet pop.

  When he woke, Gob was inside the Urfeist’s cave, a distinguished dwelling. There were rugs laid three deep on the stone floor, and the furniture was elegant and expensive-looking. Dressed again, Gob was draped over a blue damask divan. Another cave opened up onto the one he lay in, and another opened up beyond that. Gob’s hand was bandaged neatly; there was just a little spot of pale pink fluid at the place his finger had been. The Urfeist was smoking in a matching blue chair directly across from him.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “Did your grandmama send you to me?”

  “No,” Gob said, and then he asked again, “Will you teach me?” It occurred to him how he had extracted no promises from this creature before he submitted to him.

  “What would you like to know?” said the thing. He still wore his bark shoes and red hat, his skin shirt and the horrific finger-kilt, over which Gob’s eyes darted in search of his own lost digit. But the Urfeist seemed the very picture of urbanity, and spoke with an air of refinement that reminded Gob of the way his mama talked when she was trying to make people think she wasn’t a Claflin.

  “Everything,” said Gob, figuring only that would be enough to sustain his oath. The Urfeist laughed. He was rolling something between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. When Gob saw that it was his finger he went over and tried to pluck it away from him, not afraid anymore, just full of anger at the thing and at himself for coming up here. “Give it back!” he said. The Urfeist stood on his chair and dangled the finger just out of Gob’s reach. Gob spit on him. This only cheered him further, so Gob bit him on his tough shin, thinking back to the tough lea
thery black skin of a turkey he and Tomo had once cooked whole over a fire in the orchard clearing. The Urfeist howled and with his great strength tore Gob away from his leg. The Urfeist raised Gob by his shirt until he looked directly into his eyes.

  The Claflin gaze was formidable. Gob and Tomo had played a game of staring over the hedge at Alanis Bell’s mama as she lay taking the sun with her Bible, until she’d get up and flee inside her house, saying, “Those eyes! Those eyes!” But the Urfeist did not flinch. He had one blue eye and one brown, the latter set crazy in his head as if he’d stuck it in there only just lately, a replacement, harvested from some brown-eyed child, for the lost original. Gob did not flinch either. He imagined himself a soldier and thought bullets and bayonet stabs at the thing. Slowly, the Urfeist put him down and then considered him at length. They stood there with their eyes locked together for many minutes before the Urfeist said, “I will teach you,” and then beat Gob savagely with a hickory paddle he had been keeping special against the day when he finally took an apprentice.

  Gob took to wearing an old black coat of Malden’s. The family thought he’d put it on in mourning, but in fact he was using the too-long sleeves to hide his hand and his bruises. He thought for sure that his mama or Tennie, with their ostensibly preternatural senses, would detect some change in him. But when he came down out of the hills at dawn, and put on Malden’s coat and waited at the kitchen table until the house began to stir around him, no one remarked that he seemed different. They were busy getting ready to go out on another humbugging junket, the last of the season, which ran in time with the war season. There were supplies to be loaded: a tent under which a person could tell fortunes al fresco; salt pork and hardtack diverted from the Army of the Cumberland; bottles and bottles of their own patent medicine—Miss Tennessee’s Magnetio Elixir. Gob watched the bustle but did nothing to help, and no one scolded him for it. Except for his mother, they were all still indulging him on account of Tomo’s death.