The Seary Line (13 page)

While he watched, the occasional animal roamed past him. That was the way it was during spring and summer months. All animals in Bended Knee roamed freely, grazing wherever they chose. Small fences were constructed around vegetable gardens and work areas to keep animals out. And
in the early fall, they were collected, sorted by the symbol branded on their rumps, and housed for the winter.

Percy sighed as he watched her, drove his hands deep in his pockets. From behind, one fat mother goat came up, bit on to the seat of his trousers, tugged. “Get,” he murmured. “Get.” As he turned, intending to knock the goat on its head, he lost sight of the girl, she had moved behind a layer of sheets. Percy pointed towards a set of tanned ankles, dusty slippers, then looked the goat in its gunk-encrusted eyes, said, “Now see what you've done.”

With that, the goat released its hold on Percy, darted over near the girl, and started butting against the little fence that blocked its passage. Percy saw its full udder shaking each time it struck, as though it was filled with milk for a missing kid. Hole quickly accomplished, it scampered in, headed straight towards a piece of laundry, nipped it with its teeth, yanked, and bolted away. Zigzagging haphazardly towards Percy.

The girl screamed, “You little beast,” and came bounding after.

At Percy's feet, the goat deposited a pair of damp cotton undergarments. He saw the strings that might tighten the bloomers around a delicate waist, the strips of ruffled lace that would encompass each slender calf. Percy wanted to run, but he was pinned to the tree, the goat ramming him with its steely head. Only when he bent to retrieve the garment did the goat relent, and by that time, the girl was beside him, slapping the animal on its backside.

“You little devil,” she screeched, and the goat kicked up its back heels, missing her by a hair, and scampered up the lane.

Percy held it out to the flustered woman, the white ball of fabric, green grass stains from the goat's gnarled teeth, streaks of dirt where it had been dragged.

“Sorry,” Percy managed.

“Is she yours?”

“Who?”

“That nanny goat.”

“No, miss.”

“Well, she deserves a good trouncing. Ruining my few bits of clothes.”

“Yes, miss.”

Then, as Percy held her underwear in his hands, he dared to think,
Seems she's trying to tell you something
.

The woman blushed immediately, grabbed it.
Yes. Brazen old goat
.

Her voice arrived inside his head, a flurry of tinkling bells; he had recognized it at once. And by the way she eyed him warily, he knew she had heard him as well. Then she turned on her heel, flounced home (he recorded every shift in weight), annoyance in her stride. Her head never wavered; she stole not a single peep back. But, for once in his life, Percy felt undaunted. Her coy voice, still flitting about in his mind, divulged that she was enticed. She wanted to know his name.

As Percy lay on the moss, the clouds cracked open, drifted off in different directions, and he reflected on those voices. Over the years, he and Delia, communicating effortlessly without words. Their secrets, so intimate, it was a blessing not to have to actually say them. But recently, those voices were hushed, and Percy could not think of when they stopped or why? It was not abrupt, so that either would notice, more of a subtle deterioration. Their connection slowly breaking down. Percy was reminded of an innocent leak that once gurgled at the bottom of his skiff, and before he knew it, the water was up over his boots.

In the early years of their marriage, he had worked to understand her, listening to every breath, working to see life
from a woman's perspective. But her experience escaped him, she never appeared pleased, and as she got sicker and sicker, his efforts to relate to her grew trivial. Endurance was all that mattered. Her survival.

What Percy thought next nearly crushed him, as though a soaked log fell from the heavens, landed right on his chest. Rolling over onto his side, he spooned his torso around the cold tin bucket, began to shiver. How had he missed something so simple? Something that would have enriched his wife's life untold times over. And as this new consciousness flooded through him, he longed for his biblical brothers to appear on the rocks, deadly stones tucked inside their palms. Mete out justice for blatant neglect. While working so hard to take care of her, to keep his wife healthy, somewhere along the way, he'd forgotten to continue loving her. And with no love to keep her alive, how was that different than already being dead?

When the harvest moon clung to the sky, Percy arose, set about the task of picking a cupful of berries for his daughter. Squinting, he saw the berries glisten, and he crept sideways on hands and knees, plucking every one. Whether hard, overripe, white underbellies, or perfect, he tugged them from their healthy stems, listened as they clanked against the bottom of his bucket.

Almost full now, and he crouched for a moment, crammed a handful in his mouth, filled his cheeks. Chomping, he accepted the shudder that moved through him. How sugar could transform those tart little globes. But there was no sugar available, and he leaned to the side, spit them all out.

Percy was tired now, as he was often, as though his body suddenly realized just how old it was. But before starting the ramble home, he stood, leaned his head back, stared up at the night sky. He wasn't seeking anything in particular, was not so delirious as to believe Delia might make her presence known with a twinkling star or a dancing constellation. Nothing even close to that. From his height on the cliff, the view of heaven was stunning, and he simply wanted to witness every inch of it. He gazed out over the vast ocean, then scanned the high skies, but as he was viewing the horizon, he noticed a single wild cherry tree with its extensive network of fingerlike branches, growing out of solid rock. Percy could not see through it, and when he tried to shift his perspective, he forgot himself for a moment, took a single deep step backwards.

In that split second of descent, there were no scrambling limbs, no flashes of cold fear, no bloodcurdling screams. Instead, he remained silent, kept his body ramrod straight, arms pinned neatly to his sides. A soothing sense of relief enveloped him. Striking the rocks beneath, a kneecap popped, thigh bone splintered, and the brilliant red berries spilled over his face, in around the collar of his shirt. When the weight of his body crumbled in on itself, a sigh was forced from his lungs. The constant dread that had embraced him since he was married, since the children arrived, was beginning to ease.

“He's fine, he's fine. Don't worry, you.”

A young man named Leander Edgecombe found Percy just after midnight. Whenever anyone or anything was
missing, Leander was invariably the locator. A gimpy leg hindered his pace, but he had the tracking ability of a hound dog. People would always say to his mother,
Leander was born with something extraordinary
, and her eyes would automatically travel to that shriveled foot, even though she knew that's not what they meant.

“He's going to be fine, they's saying,” Leander said to Stella. “Just beat up is all.”

Stella turned her back towards him, stared at the water. The sea was blackness, and though she couldn't see a single ripple, she sensed it was moving. It always moved, never calm. Sometimes, when she was younger, she imagined it was giggling, one enormous delirious shoreline, but as she grew, its action felt more menacing. Standing there now, she considered that its steady bottomless seething was like torture. Enough to drive a person crazy, if they thought about it. And how could someone not think about it? Everyone was attracted to the sea.

“Looks like an accident,” Leander continued. “That's what the men was saying. No one with either bit of sense would jump over with a bucket of berries in their hand. Though I reckons if you're going to jump, you got to be missing something upstairs anyways.”

Tugging her shawl tighter around her shoulders, she drove her fingers in through the crocheted holes. She didn't understand this covering.
Don't keep the cold out or the warm in
. It really served no purpose. Maybe a little purpose in a garment was too much to expect.

“'Tis a good thing that ledge was there, else he'd been lost for sure.” Shuffling sounds, then, “Sorry. Me running my mouth again. Guess you don't want to be thinking about that stuff.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Stella watched Leander
jump a little in his place. Then he leaned hard to one side, his weight appeared unbalanced, as though he didn't trust his bad foot to keep him upright.

“No need to be worrying yourself. We all knows Mr. Abbott's as strong as a horse.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she was surprised to detect shame among the tangle of emotions within her. So many times when she'd fought with Amos and lost, her father would take her aside, offer up his own definition of strength to her. Explaining that muscles were only a single element, true strength lived within a person, cradled inside his ribcage.
Amos is a good boy
, he'd say,
but 'tis only foolish to squabble like you does. You got to be strong for your mother, Stella, not be bickering with your brother
. And she would look up at him, see commitment in his sharp jaw line. How she strived to be like him. Even though his eyes reminded her of a stranded seal, she thought he was the strongest man in the world. But she was wrong.

It was late afternoon several weeks ago when Stella saw her father in his shed. She had been washing up the counter of bowls and cups and wooden spoons that always resulted from a visit with Mrs. Hickey. Above the sink there was a small window, and she stared out into the yard, counted the dandelions, heads bobbing as she rubbed the cloth round and round the inside of the pastry bowl. As the afternoon wore away, the backyard filled with shadows, cloaking the red shed where her father often built small pieces of furniture. But as the low sunlight crept along the wall of the shed, striking a window, at once the entire contents was illuminated. And there he was, leaning against the doorframe, his entire body clearly shaking, face distorted with pain. She could not stand to witness his anguish, focused instead on bits of dough still clinging to the hairs
on her wrists, the murky water of the washbasin, and how her hands disappeared when she pressed them only inches beneath the surface. Seeing her father weeping that way, so weak, she felt disgrace, and even though it was terrible, she knew she would never feel quite the same towards him.

One of the men came up to Stella, said, “Best get on home now, maid. We don't need no more mishaps this evening.”

Stella nodded. “Yes, Mr. Moore.”

“That a girl.” Then, to Leander he said, “Good job tonight, young man.”

Leander lingered, stood behind Stella. “I found him, you know. I found him there.”

“So,” she replied. “Good for you.” She recalled coming up behind the group, a handful of men clambering down over the rocks, shouts of
Lift fellers
, then,
Easy does it
. As soon as he was retrieved, the cluster of seekers headed home. Amos was among them, trotting alongside Clifford Arnold, a giant of a man who carried their father neatly folded in his arms. Stella noticed the awkward twisted knees and ankles, one arm looking much longer than it should. That was her father, broken beyond. When most everyone retreated, she stayed behind, sucking in the cool night air as fast as she could.

“I just thought you'd want to know, Stella.”

When Leander spoke her name, the sound of it made her take a step forward. Closer to the sightless mass that undulated before her.

“Like Mr. Moore said, you best get a move on. We don't want you falling over too.”

“I will when I wants.” She paused. “Get a move on, I means.”

“All right then,” he replied over his shoulder as he walked away. “Suit yourself.”

Stella stayed only a minute or two longer. She was too confused to linger, but too snarled to rush. Up until recently, she thought she understood everything that a ten-year old should understand. But in a matter of a month, everything she knew to be true had shifted. Even her own body. She had always considered it to be a solid structure, but now, when she lifted her arms above her head, she could hear the wind whistle right through her.