In the Tall Grass

Immediately, the pain returned, worse than before. She had a sensation of things shearing inside, as if her intestines were a bedsheet, stretched tight, beginning to rip down the middle.

“BIG BUNCHES OF GRASS,” the girl yodeled, “SPROUTED OUT OF HIS ASS!”

Becky sobbed again, took a third staggering step, almost to second base now, the tall grass not far away, and then another bolt of pain ran her through and she dropped to her knees.

“AND HIS BALLS GREW ALL SHAGGY WITH WEEDS!” the girl yelled, voice quivering with laughter.

Becky gripped the sagging, empty waterskin of her stomach and shut her eyes and lowered her head, and waited for relief, and when she felt the tiniest bit better, she opened her eyes. .

And Cal was there, in the ashy light of dawn, looking down at her. His own eyes were sharp and avid.

“Don’t try to move,” he said. “Not for a while. Just rest. I’m here.”

He was naked from the waist up, kneeling beside her. His scrawny chest was very pale in the dove-colored half-light. His face was sunburned-badly, a blister right on the end of his nose-but aside from that he looked rested and well. No, more than that: He looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“The baby,” she tried to say, but nothing would come out, just a scraping click, the sound of someone trying to pick a rusty lock with rusty tools.

“Are you thirsty? Bet you are. Here. Take this. Put it in your mouth.” He pushed a soaked, cold twist of his T-shirt into her mouth. He had saturated it with water and rolled it up into a rope.

She sucked at it avidly, an infant hungrily nursing.

“No,” he said, “no more. You’ll make yourself sick.” Taking the wet cotton rope away from her, leaving her gasping like a fish in a pail.

“Baby,” she whispered.

Cal grinned at her-his best, zaniest grin. “Isn’t she great? I’ve got her. She’s perfect. Out of the oven and baked just right!”

He reached to the side and lifted up a bundle wrapped in someone else’s T-shirt. She saw a little snub of bluish nose protruding from the shroud. No; not a shroud. Shrouds were for dead bodies. It was swaddling. She had delivered a child here, out in the high grass, and hadn’t even needed the shelter of a manger.

Cal, as always, spoke as if he had a direct line to her private thoughts. “Aren’t you the little Mother Mary? Wonder when the Wise Men will show up! Wonder what gifts they’ll have for us!”

A freckled, sunburnt boy appeared behind Cal. He was bare-chested too. It was probably his shirt wound around the baby. He bent over, hands on his knees, to look at her swaddled infant.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Cal asked, showing the boy.

“Scrumptious, Captain Cal,” the boy said.

Becky closed her eyes.

She drove in the dusk, the window down, the breeze fanning her hair back from her face. The tall grass bordered both sides of the road, stretching ahead of her as far as she could see. She would be driving through it the rest of her life.

“A girl once hid in tall grass,” she sang to herself. “And ambushed any boy who walked past.”

The grass rustled and scratched at the sky.

She opened her eyes for a few moments, later in the morning.

Her brother was holding a doll’s leg in one hand, filthy from the mud. He stared at her with a bright, stupid fascination, while he chewed on it. It was a lifelike thing, chubby and plump looking, but a little small, and also a funny pale-blue color, like almost frozen milk. Cal, you can’t eat plastic, she thought of saying, but it was just too much work.

The little boy sat behind him, turned in profile, licking something off his palms. Strawberry jelly, it looked like.

There was a sharp smell in the air, an odor like a fresh-opened tin of fish. It made her stomach rumble. But she was too weak to sit up, too weak to say anything, and when she lowered her head against the ground and shut her eyes, she sank straight back into sleep.

This time there were no dreams.

Somewhere a dog barked: roop-roop. A hammer began to fall, one ringing whack after another, calling Becky back to consciousness.

Her lips were dry and cracked and she was thirsty once more. Thirsty and hungry. She felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach a few dozen times.

“Cal,” she whispered. “Cal.”

“You need to eat,” he said, and put a string of something cold and salty in her mouth. His fingers had blood on them.

If she had been anywhere near in her right mind she might’ve gagged. But it tasted good, actually, a salty- sweet strand of something, with the fatty texture of a sardine. It even smelled a little like a sardine. She sucked at it much as she had sucked at the wet rope of Cal’s shirt.

Cal hiccuped as she sucked the strand of whatever it was into her mouth, sucked it in like spaghetti and swallowed. It had a bad aftertaste, bitter-sour, but even that was sort of nice. Like the food equivalent of the taste you got after drinking a margarita and licking some of the salt off the rim of your glass. Cal’s hiccup sounded almost like a sob of laughter.

“Give her another piece,” said the little boy, leaning over Cal’s shoulder.

Cal gave her another piece. “Yum yum. Snark that li’l baby right down.”

She swallowed and shut her eyes again.

When she next found herself awake, she was over Cal’s shoulder, and she was moving. Her head bobbed and her stomach heaved with each step.

She whispered: “Did we eat?”

“Yes.”

“What did we eat?”

“Something scrumptious. Scrump-tiddly-umptious.”

“Cal, what did we eat?”

He didn’t answer, just pushed aside grass spattered with maroon droplets and walked into a clearing. In the center was a huge black rock. Standing beside it was the little kid.

There you are, she thought. I chased you all over the neighborhood.

Only that hadn’t been a rock. You couldn’t chase a rock. It had been a girl.

A girl. My girl. My responsi-

“WHAT DID WE EAT?” She began to pound him, but her fists were weak, weak. “OH GOD! OH MY JESUS!”

He set her down and looked at her first with surprise and then amusement. “What do you think we ate?” He looked at the boy, who was grinning and shaking his head, the way you do when someone’s just pulled a really hilarious boner. “Beck. . honey. . we just ate some of the grass. Grass and seeds and so on. Cows do it all the time.”

“There was an old farmer from Leeds,” the boy sang, and put his hands to his mouth to stifle his giggles. His fingers were red. “He was hungry and had special needs.”

“I don’t believe you,” Becky said, but her voice sounded faint. She was looking at the rock. It was incised all over with little dancing figures. And yes, in this early light they did seem to dance. To be moving around in rising spirals, like the stripes on a barber pole.

“Really, Beck. The baby is-is great. Safe. I’m already doing the uncle thing. Touch the rock, and you’ll see. You’ll understand. Touch the rock, and you’ll be-”