these are your own words

for mom

You are a bird-understander

better than I could ever be

who make so many noises

and call them song

These are your own words

your way of noticing

and saying plainly

of not turning away

from hurt

• Craig Arnold, “Bird-Understander”

elevator pitch [for author’s eyes only!]

A man wanders from one quiet ruin to the next, trying to mend what he can. But every road leads back to her, and every cure leaves her a little farther away.

Or: A man wanders the quiet ruins, mending what he can. Every road leads back to her—and every cure leaves her a little farther away.

Or: He drifts from town to town, fixing what shouldn’t be broken and leaving what should. Every road leads back to her, and every cure leaves her a little farther away.

ledger

J———

Ar.

(?)Mina

girl from the tracks

Jamie

case 3: seashell

The station is silent most nights. The man behind the register kills time playing online poker, trying to earn enough to fix the store’s flickering sign, a bright yellow seashell that twitches now and again.

A woman slowly makes her way up the highway. Her shirt is torn at the shoulder, her face covered by a layer of dirt and ash. Her eyes are sharp, fixed on the yellow sign. She walks with a slight limp in her left leg — she doesn’t know it yet, but her long walk in the night has only made the cuts deeper. Her tight curls dance in the wind.

She doesn’t want the man behind the counter to see her come in. He knows her too well, has her Marlboros on the counter before she has to ask. He’d call the police the second he saw her cuts, her black eye. She wouldn’t pull up in her car: immediate questioning.

She steps down from the curb and makes her way towards the bathroom out back next to the air pump. She would wash her face, call the police. What would she tell them? It didn’t matter, she figures — her husband is dead anyways. Someone just needs to collect his bones.

As she puts her hand on the bathroom door, a man in a forest green army surplus jacket steps out. He knows to keep quiet — nobody here wants to be recognized. He sees her only out of the corner of his eye, the blood stains and the way she holds her shoulder, her disheveled curls. She seems to him barren, a dried lake bed.

They nod in acknowledgment. He continues into the station, the only customer for the night.

Blue Spirits. The clerk barely looks up from the rerun of _Who Wants To Be The Millionaire_ and tosses a box onto the counter. The man in green puts a few bills down and starts to leave. He stops at the door.

Hey. Did you see the woman out back?

Who?

Curly hair, he raises his hand up just shy of his shoulder, Yay tall. Seemed pretty cut up, from the looks of it.

The clerk didn’t look up. Oh, her. See her in here sometimes, usually just fills up though, sometimes a pack. Husband picks up some Reds or a bottle of Beam, but they don’t say much.

The man pushed out the door and sat on the curb at the side of the building, away from the lights. He lit a cigarette, a small red speck in the blue night.

She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. Its surface is old and faded, hard for her to really make much out. The fluorescent vanity hurts her eyes. She presses her fingertips softly into her cheeks, feeling the light sting where bruises are forming. She rakes her fingers through her hair. The curls spring back.
The crushed hood twisted in the grass. Smoke rising. Her husband’s weight pinning her, how long since she had felt that weight. Can still feel her stomach floating as the car leapt over the ditch. Tears pooled in her eyes and fell, slowly, rivulets clearing the dirt from her cheeks, crooked lines.

She runs her forearm under the sink to wash out a gash. It stinks as healing things do. She looks up at herself in the mirror, lights a cigarette. Smoke clouds the room. Behind her, the light flickers. In the mirror: a small, accidental halo.

She meets her own eyes. She seemed to herself strange, alien, like a cousin from childhood, long forgotten. Her wrinkles seem deeper, darker because of the dirt. They wrap around her mouth, spring from eyes. She is smiling.

She puts her hands up to her face again. She can’t feel herself smiling, feels no happiness or joy in her chest where her heart should be. But she sees it, and she feels warm, protected by the bathroom walls.

The man sits quietly on the curb, looks up at the stars and tries to remember the constellations he learned as a kid. The Big Dipper, Orion, Ursa Major.

The wind shakes the tall grasses. He thinks it sounds like the ocean, the tide coming in.

The bathroom door opens, the woman steps out. She sits on the curb a short distance away, smokes a cigarette from her own carton. When she takes a drag, her lips curl around the end still smiling. He sees the lines where dirt once was.

Her thumb brushes her cheek as she holds the cigarette, checking to see if the smile still holds.

She finishes hers first, stamps it out, and rises slowly. Looks at him gently. A small nod. She thinks of asking him for some change for the payphone but decides against it.

Thanks for listening, she says.

He nods. The gravel crunches under her feet. After a few minutes, she crosses over the hill at the end of the drive. He looks up at the stars flickering overhead.

He thumbs a scrap of paper in his coat pocket. Its edges are frayed and soft. Another name for him to keep.

phone booth

A phone booth on the edge of the highway. One pane missing. The others cracked white with sun. Receiver dangling, a dead limb.

He doesn’t stop, doesn’t know what to say if someone picks up.

She wouldn’t know his voice anyways.

community

The sign on the main road reads COMMUNITY. Flyers for church services and babysitters and last year’s school dance. A boy gone missing, his photo worn away by the sun. Only a name left. MISSING.

The man pulls it off the nail and folds it into his coat pocket.

In town there wasn’t much to see. Liquor store, gas station, the church built just before the war. A dog barks but soon hushed. No one watches him come in, but he has been seen. He sees eyes. Everyone holds their breath.

He stops in the liquor store, Heard a boy went missing.

Lots of boys go missing, the clerk says. He didn’t look up from his newspaper. Suppose you mean Jamie.

Suppose so.

Haven’t seen him lately, not that he comes in here. But his momma gushes about him, says he’s getting strong like his daddy was. His house is back behind the church. The clerk doesn’t ask what the man wants with him, just looks back at his paper.

Dead grass covers the lawn, paint chipping. A baseball glove sits weathered on the front porch, dirt caked on the straps. A thin woman answers the door. Grey hair without a wrinkle.

Is Jamie home? he asks. She looks up at him, Oh not right now, but he’ll be back later. Mind if I wait here for him. Well, best have some tea then, she says.

The kitchen is tidy, the counter empty save the frosted glass pitcher and three matching cups. The husband is home, watching baseball on the TV. The fridge is covered with report cards stained yellow and old photos and a note saying Back later. In the living room the wife is folding laundry. In the baskey lay t-shirts preciously small. She keeps her eyes down.

On the TV, an outfielder throws towards home. Hamie’s got an arm like that, the husband tells me. Got a hell of an arm. Could be a great player if he just practices more. He takes a sip of his tea. Spends all day down by the creek these days looking for frogs, he smiles. Caught his first one not too long ago. We were down there and the water was running hard, white water all the way to the plant in Malory. And so we’re watching and watching and can’t see shit in the rapids. I tell him Boy this’ll be tough, maybe we should try another day, ‘course that boy don’t listen to me, keeps staring in the water, eyes dartin around. Before I know it he’s full in, don’t even see him jump, just those red sneakers in the foam. He stays under for a second and I just about go in after him til I see his fist pump up through the water with something squirmin between his fingers. He laughs again, That boy sure is somethin.

He swirls the glass in his hand, ice clinking the side of the glass. Waddya say we switch to bourbon?

That evening the man took his leave of them. The wife insisted Jamie’d be back within the hour like usual, but he had seen what he’d needed.

He went to the only building in town with the lights on, the old diner with faded leather seats and the waitress the only young girl for miles.