"Yeah. It's like a white worm, but in a week it will turn into an orange
bug and chew its way out."
He was about three then, which made Alan seven. "What if I chopped down
the plant?" he said. "Would the bug still hatch next week?"
"You won't," Billy said.
"I could, though."
"Nope," Brad said.
Alan reached for the plant. Took it in his hand. The warm skin of the
plant and the woody bole of the pod would be so easy to uproot.
He didn't do it.
That night, as he lay himself down to sleep, he couldn't remember why he
hadn't. He couldn't sleep. He got up and looked out the front of the
cave, at the countryside unrolling in the moonlight and the far lights
of the town.
He went back inside and looked in on Benji. He was sleeping, his face
smooth and his lips pouted. He rolled over and opened his eyes,
regarding Alan without surprise.
"Told you so," he said.
#
Alan had an awkward relationship with the people in town. Unaccompanied
little boys in the grocery store, at the Gap, in the library and in toy
section of the Canadian Tire were suspect. Alan never "horsed around" --
whatever that meant -- but nevertheless, he got more than his share of
the hairy eyeball from the shopkeepers, even though he had money in his
pocket and had been known to spend it on occasion.
A lone boy of five or six or seven was suspicious, but let him show up
with the tiny hand of his dark little brother clasped in his, quietly
explaining each item on the shelf to the solemn child, and everyone got
an immediate attitude adjustment. Shopkeepers smiled and nodded,
shoppers mouthed, "So cute," to each other. Moms with babies in snuglis
bent to chuckle them under their chins. Store owners spontaneously gave
them candy, and laughed aloud at Bryan's cries of "Chocolate!"
When Brian started school, he foresaw and avoided all trouble, and
delighted his teachers with his precociousness. Alan ate lunch with him
once he reached the first grade and started eating in the cafeteria with
the rest of the non-kindergartners.
Brad loved to play with Craig after he was born, patiently mounding soil
and pebbles on his shore, watering him and patting him smooth, planting
wild grasses on his slopes as he crept toward the mouth of the
cave. Those days -- before Darcy's arrival -- were a long idyll of good
food and play in the hot sun or the white snow and brotherhood.
Danny couldn't sneak up on Brad and kick him in the back of the head. He
couldn't hide a rat in his pillow or piss on his toothbrush. Billy was
never one to stand pat and eat shit just because Davey was handing it
out. Sometimes he'd just wind up and take a swing at Davey, seemingly
out of the blue, knocking him down, then prying open his mouth to reveal
the chocolate bar he'd nicked from under Brad's pillow, or a comic book
from under his shirt. He was only two years younger than Brad, but by
the time they were both walking, Brad hulked over him and could lay him
out with one wild haymaker of a punch.
#
Billy came down from his high perch when Alan returned from burying
Marci, holding out his hands wordlessly. He hugged Alan hard, crushing
the breath out of him.
The arms felt good around his neck, so he stopped letting himself feel
them. He pulled back stiffly and looked at Brian.
"You could have told me," he said.
Bram's face went expressionless and hard and cold. Telling people wasn't
what he did, not for years. It hurt others -- and it hurt him. It was
the reason for his long, long silences. Alan knew that sometimes he
couldn't tell what it was that he knew that others didn't. But he didn't
care, then.
"You should have told me," he said.
Bob took a step back and squared up his shoulders and his feet, leaning
forward a little as into a wind.
"You *knew* and you didn't *tell me* and you didn't *do anything* and as
far as I'm concerned, you killed her and cut her up and buried her along
with Darryl, you coward." Adam knew he was crossing a line, and he
didn't care. Brian leaned forward and jutted his chin out.
Avram's hands were clawed with cold and caked with mud and still echoing
the feeling of frozen skin and frozen dirt, and balled up into fists,
they felt like stones.
He didn't hit Barry. Instead, he retreated to his niche and retrieved
the triangular piece of flint that he'd been cherting into an arrowhead
for school and a hammer stone and set to work on it in the light of a
flashlight.
#
He sharpened a knife for Davey, there in his room in the cave, as the
boys ran feral in the woods, as the mountain made its slow and ponderous
protests.
He sharpened a knife, a hunting knife with a rusty blade and a cracked
handle that he'd found on one of the woodland trails, beside a hunter's
snare, not lost but pitched away in disgust one winter and not
discovered until the following spring.
But the nicked blade took an edge as he whetted it with the round stone,
and the handle regained its grippiness as he wound a cord tight around
it, making tiny, precise knots with each turn, until the handle no
longer pinched his hand, until the blade caught the available light from
the cave mouth and glinted dully.
The boys brought him roots and fruits they'd gathered, sweets and bread
they'd stolen, small animals they'd caught. Ed-Fred-George were an
unbeatable team when it came to catching and killing an animal, though
they were only small, barely out of the second grade. They were fast,
and they could coordinate their actions without speaking, so that the
bunny or the squirrel could never duck or feint in any direction without
encountering the thick, neck-wringing outstretched hands of the pudgy
boys. Once, they brought him a cat. It went in the night's stew.
Billy sat at his side and talked. The silence he'd folded himself in
unwrapped and flapped in the wind of his beating gums. He talked about
the lessons he'd had in school and the lessons he'd had from his big
brother, when it was just the two of them on the hillside and Alan would
teach him every thing he knew, the names of and salient facts regarding
every thing in their father's domain. He talked about the truths he'd
gleaned from reading chocolate-bar wrappers. He talked about the things
that he'd see Davey doing when no one else could see it.
One day, George came to him, the lima-bean baby grown to toddling about
on two sturdy legs, fat and crispy red from his unaccustomed time
out-of-doors and in the sun. "You know, he *worships* you," Glenn said,
gesturing at the spot in his straw bedding where Brad habitually sat and
gazed at him and chattered.
Alan stared at his shoelaces. "It doesn't matter," he said. He'd dreamt
that night of Davey stealing into the cave and squatting beside him,
watching him the way that he had before, and of Alan knowing, *knowing*
that Davey was there, ready to rend and tear, knowing that his knife
with its coiled handle was just under his pillow, but not being able to
move his arms or legs. Paralyzed, he'd watched Davey grin and reach
behind him with agonizing slowness for a rock that he'd lifted high
above his head and Andrew had seen that the rock had been cherted to a
razor edge that hovered a few feet over his breastbone, Davey's arms
trembling with the effort of holding it aloft. A single drop of sweat
had fallen off of Davey's chin and landed on Alan's nose, and then
another, and finally he'd been able to open his eyes and wake himself,
angry and scared. The spring rains had begun, and the condensation was
thick on the cave walls, dripping onto his face and arms and legs as he
slept, leaving behind chalky lime residue as it evaporated.
"He didn't kill her," Greg said.
Albert hadn't told the younger brothers about the body buried in Craig,
which meant that Brad had been talking to them, had told them what he'd
seen. Alan felt an irrational streak of anger at Brad -- he'd been
blabbing Alan's secrets. He'd been exposing the young ones to things
they didn't need to know. To the nightmares.
"He didn't stop her from being killed," Alan said. He had the knife in
his hand and hunted through his pile of belongings for the whetstone to
hone its edge.
Greg looked at the knife, and Andy followed his gaze to his own white
knuckles on the hilt. Greg took a frightened step back, and Alan, who
had often worried that the smallest brother was too delicate for the
real world, felt ashamed of himself.
He set the knife down and stood, stretching his limbs and leaving the
cave for the first time in weeks.
#
Brad found him standing on the slopes of the gentle, soggy hump of
Charlie's slope, a few feet closer to the seaway than it had been that
winter when Alan had dug up and reburied Marci's body there.
"You forgot this," Brad said, handing him the knife.
Alan took it from him. It was sharp and dirty and the handle was grimed
with sweat and lime.
"Thanks, kid," he said. He reached down and took Billy's hand, the way
he'd done when it was just the two of them. The three eldest sons of the
mountain stood there touching and watched the outside world rush and
grind away in the distance, its humming engines and puffing chimneys.
Brendan tugged his hand free and kicked at the dirt with a toe,
smoothing over the divot he'd made with the sole of his shoe. Andy
noticed that the sneaker was worn out and had a hole in the toe, and
that it was only laced up halfway.
"Got to get you new shoes," he said, bending down to relace them. He had
to stick the knife in the ground to free his hands while he worked. The
handle vibrated.
"Davey's coming," Benny said. "Coming now."
Alan reached out as in his dream and felt for the knife, but it wasn't
there, as in his dream. He looked around as the skin on his face
tightened and his heart began to pound in his ears, and he saw that it
had merely fallen over in the dirt. He picked it up and saw that where
it had fallen, it had knocked away the soil that had barely covered up a
small, freckled hand, now gone black and curled into a fist like a
monkey's paw. Marci's hand.
"He's coming." Benny took a step off the hill. "You won't lose," he
said. "You've got the knife."
The hand was small and fisted, there in the dirt. It had been just below
the surface of where he'd been standing. It had been there, in
Clarence's soil, for months, decomposing, the last of Marci
going. Somewhere just below that soil was her head, her face sloughing
off and wormed. Her red hair fallen from her loosened scalp. He gagged
and a gush of bile sprayed the hillside.
Danny hit him at the knees, knocking him into the dirt. He felt the
little rotting fist digging into his ribs. His body bucked of its own
accord, and he knocked Danny loose of his legs. His arm was hot and
slippery, and when he looked at it he saw that it was coursing with
blood. The knife in his other hand was bloodied and he saw that he'd
drawn a long ragged cut along his bicep. A fountain of blood bubbled
there with every beat of his heart, blub, blub, blub, and on the third
blub, he felt the cut, like a long pin stuck in the nerve.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet and confronted Danny. Danny was naked
and the color of the red golem clay. His ribs showed and his hair was
matted and greasy.
"I'm coming home," Danny said, baring his teeth. His breath reeked of
corruption and uncooked meat, and his mouth was ringed with a crust of
dried vomit. "And you're not going to stop me."
"You don't have a home," Alan said, pressing the hilt of the knife over
the wound in his bicep, the feeling like biting down on a cracked
tooth. "You're not welcome."
Davey was monkeyed over low, arms swinging like a chimp, teeth bared,
knees splayed and ready to uncoil and pounce. "You think you'll stab me
with that?" he said, jerking his chin at the knife. "Or are you just
going to bleed yourself out with it?"
Alan steadied his knife hand before him, unmindful of the sticky
blood. He knew that the pounce was coming, but that didn't help when it
came. Davey leapt for him and he slashed once with the knife, Davey
ducking beneath the arc, and then Davey had his forearm in his hands,
his teeth fastened onto the meat of his knife thumb.
Andre rolled to one side and gripped down hard on the knife, tugging his
arm ineffectually against the grip of the cruel teeth and the grasping
bony fingers. Davey had lost his boyish charm, gone simian with filth
and rage, and the sore and weak blows Alan was able to muster with his
hurt arm didn't seem to register with Danny at all as he bit down
harder.
Arnold dragged his arm up higher, dragging the glinting knifetip toward
Davey's face. Drew kicked at his shins, planted a knee alongside his
groin. Alan whipped his head back, then brought it forward as fast and
hard as he could, hammering his forehead into the crown of Davey's head
so hard that his head rang like a bell.
He stunned Davey free of his hand and stunned himself onto his back. He
felt small hands beneath each armpit, dragging him clear of the
hill. Brian. And George. They helped him to his feet and Breton handed
him the knife again. Darren got onto his knees, and then to his feet,
holding the back of his head.
They both swayed slightly, standing to either side of Chris's
rise. Alan's knife-hand was red with blood streaming from the bite
wounds and his other arm felt unaccountably heavy now.
Davey was staggering back and forth a little, eyes dropping to the
earth. Suddenly, he dropped to one knee and scrabbled in the dirt, then
scrambled back with something in his hand.
Marci's fist.
He waggled it at Andrew mockingly, then charged, crossing the distance
between them with long, loping strides, the fist held out before him
like a lance. Alan forgot the knife in his hand and shrank back, and
then Davey was on him again, dropping the fist to the mud and taking
hold of Alan's knife-wrist, digging his ragged nails into the bleeding
bites there.
Now Alan released the knife, so that it, too, fell to the mud, and the
sound it made woke him from his reverie. He pulled his hand free of
Davey's grip and punched him in the ear as hard as he could,
simultaneously kneeing him in the groin. Davey hissed and punched him in
the eye, a feeling like his eyeball was going to break open, a feeling
like he'd been stabbed in the back of his eye socket.
He planted a foot in the mud for leverage, then flipped Danny over so
that Alan was on top, knees on his skinny chest. The knife was there
beside Davey's head, and Alan snatched it up, holding it ready for
stabbing.
Danny's eyes narrowed.
Alan could do it. Kill him altogether dead finished yeah. Stab him in
the face or the heart or the lung, somewhere fatal. He could kill Davey
and make him go away forever.
Davey caught his eye and held it. And Alan knew he couldn't do it, and
an instant later, Davey knew it, too. He smiled a crusty smile and went
limp.
"Oh, don't hurt me, *please*," he said mockingly. "Please, big brother,
don't stab me with your big bad knife!"
Alan hurt all over, but especially on his bicep and his thumb. His head
sang with pain and blood loss.
"Don't hurt me, please!" Davey said.
Billy was standing before him, suddenly.
"That's what Marci said when he took her, 'Don't hurt me, please,'" he
said. "She said it over and over again. While he dragged her here. While
he choked her to death."
Alan held the knife tighter.
"He said it over and over again as he cut her up and buried her. He
*laughed.*"
Danny suddenly bucked hard, almost throwing him, and before he had time
to think, Alan had slashed down with the knife, aiming for the face, the
throat, the lung. The tip landed in the middle of his bony chest and
skated over each rib, going *tink, tink, tink* through the handle, like
a xylophone. It scored along the emaciated and distended belly, then
sank in just to one side of the smooth patch where a real person --
where Marci -- would have a navel.
Davey howled and twisted free of the seeking edge, skipping back three
steps while holding in the loop of gut that was trailing free of the
incision.
"She said, 'Don't hurt me.' She said, 'Please.' Over and over. He said
it, too, and he laughed at her." Benny chanted it at him, standing just
behind him, and the sound of his voice filled Alan's ears.
Suddenly Davey reeled back as a stone rebounded off of his
shoulder. They both looked in the direction it had come from, and saw
George, with the tail of his shirt aproned before him, filled with
small, jagged stones from the edge of the hot spring in their father's
depths. They took turns throwing those stones, skimming them over the
water, and Ed and Fred and George had a vicious arm.
Davey turned and snarled and started upslope toward George, and a stone
took him in the back of the neck, thrown by Freddie, who had sought
cover behind a thick pine that couldn't disguise the red of his
windbreaker, red as the inside of his lip, which pouted out as he
considered his next toss.
He was downslope, and so Drew was able to bridge the distance between
them very quickly -- he was almost upon Felix when a third stone, bigger
and faster than the others, took him in the back of the head with
terrible speed, making a sound like a hammer missing the nail and
hitting solid wood instead.
It was Ernie, of course, standing on Craig's highest point, winding up
for another toss.
The threesome's second volley hit him all at once, from three sides,
high, low, and medium.
"Killed her, cut her up, buried her," Benny chanted. "Sliced her open
and cut her up," he called.
"SHUT UP!" Davey screamed. He was bleeding from the back of his head,
the blood trickling down the knobs of his spine, and he was crying,
sobbing.
"KILLED HER, CUT HER UP, SLICED HER OPEN," Ed-Fred-George chanted in
unison.
Alan tightened his grip on the cords wound around the handle of his
knife, and his knife hand bled from the puncture wounds left by Davey's
teeth.
Davey saw him coming and dropped to his knees, crying. Sobbing.
"Please," he said, holding his hands out before him, palms together,
begging.
"Please," he said, as the loop of intestine he'd been holding in trailed
free.
"Please," he said, as Alan seized him by the hair, jerked his head back,
and swiftly brought the knife across his throat.
Benny took his knife, and Ed-Fred-George coaxed Clarence into a slow,
deep fissuring. They dragged the body into the earthy crack and Clarence
swallowed up their brother.
Benny led Alan to the cave, where they'd changed his bedding and laid
out a half-eaten candy bar, a shopping bag filled with bramble-berries,
and a lock of Marci's hair, tied into a knot.
#
Alan dragged all of his suitcases up from the basement to the living
room, from the tiny tin valise plastered with genuine vintage deco
railway stickers to the steamer trunk that he'd always intended to
refurbish as a bathroom cabinet. He hadn't been home in fifteen
years. What should he bring?
Clothes were the easiest. It was coming up on the cusp of July and
August, and he remembered boyhood summers on the mountain's slopes abuzz
with blackflies and syrupy heat. White T-shirts, lightweight trousers,
high-tech hiking boots that breathed, a thin jacket for the mosquitoes
at dusk.
He decided to pack four changes of clothes, which made a very small pile
on the sofa. Small suitcase. The little rolling carry-on? The wheels
would be useless on the rough cave floor.
He paced and looked at the spines of his books, and paced more, into the
kitchen. It was a beautiful summer day and the tall grasses in the back
yard nodded in the soft breeze. He stepped through the screen door and
out into the garden and let the wild grasses scrape over his thighs. Ivy
and wild sunflowers climbed the fence that separated his yard from his
neighbors, and through the chinks in the green armor, he saw someone
moving.
Mimi.
Pacing her garden, neatly tended vegetable beds, some flowering
bulbs. Skirt and a cream linen blazer that rucked up over her shoulders,
moving restlessly. Powerfully.
Alan's breath caught in his throat. Her pale, round calves flashed in
the sun. He felt himself harden, painfully. He must have gasped, or
given some sign, or perhaps she heard his skin tighten over his body
into a great goosepimply mass. Her head turned.
Their eyes met and he jolted. He was frozen in his footsteps by her
gaze. One cheek was livid with a purple bruise, the eye above it slitted
and puffed. She took a step toward him, her jacket opening to reveal a
shapeless grey sweatshirt stained with food and -- blood?
"Mimi?" he breathed.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her face turning into a fright mask.
"Abel," she said. "Nice day."
"Are you all right?" he said. He'd had his girls, his employees, show up
for work in this state before. He knew the signs. "Is he in the house
now?"
She pulled up a corner of her lip into a sneer and he saw that it was
split, and a trickle of blood wet her teeth and stained them pink.
"Sleeping," she said.