The Pines

spending my life in bed? Fighting the stupor, she rubbed at gritty eyes. Is that the next phase, girl?

She pulled on a robe and padded down the hall, then smoothed the sleep from her face with a washcloth at a sink stained blue and orange. Putrid noises emanated from the plumbing. The towel smelled of mildew, and the odor mingled strongly with that of soap. While the faucet pattered, and the runneled pane of the window rattled in a breeze, vines over the back of the house rustled like the wings of startled pigeons.

Leaning on the sink, she looked at her arms—browned from sun and wind—and remembered a time when they’d been pale and soft. Well, maybe never pale, exactly. She gazed at her dark eyes in the mirror, at the curve of her cheek. Stray curls hung about her face, catching the light, glowing softly. She grabbed an elastic band from the pile on the washstand.

The mirror held shadows. The bathroom walls curled, peeling like lizard skin, and in the corners lay hair and dust and flakes of plaster. The drain choked and growled.

Returning to her room, she began the exercises intended to strengthen her leg. Afterward, she rummaged through her clothes, looking for things lately worn only once.

In the hallway, a new spot leaked from a dark ring on the ceiling, and drops plunked rhythmically on the linoleum, slid off around the edges. She threw a towel on the puddle. Was Matthew awake yet? From the top of the stairs, the living room still looked mostly dark with streamers of watery light flowing through chinks in the boarded windows, giving the room an air of drowsy desolation. Dust floated. Muffled silence told her she was alone in the house. Only rain on the walls and her uneven tread on the stairs broke the quiet.

A glow soaked through the parlor curtains, brightness mottling the floorboards. She pulled a curtain aside, and the drizzle twisted the soft light, sent it spinning in slow torrents along the glass. Outside, a single strand of vine had found its way across the pane, leafy course erratic as that of any caterpillar.

She rummaged around the kitchen. Coffee wasn’t made, and as usual there was nothing much to eat. Where the hell was Pam? Where was Matthew? The mug held concentric black rings, and congealing bacon grease filled the iron skillet. The previous night’s dishes covered the table, and the floor needed to be swept. She glanced out the back door at a fine mist blowing. Coffee, she remembered groggily, then searched for matches to light the burner.

Door banging, the shed slouched in gusts of damp wind. Within, boy and dog played in determined silence.

The interior was thick with the woody smell of wet leaves. While the dog frisked about the dirt floor, the boy clambered over stacks of soggy cardboard boxes. Gray spiders dropped off the boxes, their fat bodies making audible plops as they fell on newspapers in the loamy shadows.

Waiting for the coffee to brew, she stood in the doorway and stared at gray-veined trees. “Oh hell.” Laundry sagged heavily from the clothesline, making her recall her grandmother’s house, festooned with washing. It’s just a sort of rural ghetto, after all. Even the setting for my life doesn’t seem to change much…just the same situations over and over. Again, she struggled with the sense of being held here, frozen in place, waiting for something to happen. As though I’ll never be free to move on until…

Winds that wetly snapped the sheets carried to her the smells of the rotting pine forest. Beneath the ashen sky, Dooley barked at the flapping linen, and Matthew ran around the shed. About to call out, she hesitated and sadly watched him play. He hasn’t even got sense enough to come in out of…

While they scampered around each other and wrestled for sticks, the boy talked to the dog, constant and low, his voice a hum, sometimes a chatter, part of the wind that brought it to her. And a name reached her from across the yard, clearly, twice.

“Chabwok.”

A name—she felt certain now. He was playing with Chabwok. Listening, she marveled at how much more verbal he was when alone. The rest of what he said eluded her, vague as the words of a song being played in a passing car. Again, Pamela had been right. I’m his mother, and I know nothing. Despite herself, she listened as the louder parts drifted to her with the rain that had become little more than haze, so fine she scarcely felt it.

If I went back to the city, it might be the best thing all around. She could leave him with Pam. She’d take good care of him, even if she’s not exactly the most reliable person in the world. She shut her eyes against a dizzying sorrow that surprised her, and for a second, she tried to imagine Matthew in some apartment with her, walled in by cement. He’d die. He’d die if she took him away from here.

“Muther-fucken…muther-fucken…”

What?

“Fucken loony…shit-fuck, man.”

They played harder now, the dog beginning to bark with excitement, the boy yelling and running. He hadn’t seen her yet. Where could he have learned those words? Pamela would never use them around him. Frowning slightly, she stared at the boy’s back…as he began a clever mockery of her limp.

The dog barked steadily now, a new sharpness to the sound, and from the shadowed kitchen, she watched them, stricken. They ran in and out of the shed, the dog snapping at air, teeth meeting in a click audible even at this distance. The boy twisted with strange movements, lifting his feet exaggeratedly high, as though something blocked the doorway. Bewildered, she moved onto the fading, whitewashed porch and watched him repeat the pantomime, over and over, in and out. A steady spattering noise drowned his rapid words. The leaky spout from the roof had gouged a pool along the wall, and water still dribbled to the deep puddle. Basement will be flooded again. She looked away.

There came a yell. Suddenly the boy seemed to have been jerked back, away from the shed. Tearing through the yard, he began to race in narrowing circles, panicked confusion on his face as he made breathless clawing motions at the air.

“Matthew!”

Dooley barked furiously, then slunk away, back hunched. Ugly animal sound in his throat, the boy gyrated wildly. Words mingled.

“Matthew? Matthew, stop it!”

Head thrown back, the boy ran and shouted, drunk with his own wildness. “Bite ’em an Chabwokchabwok get Ah! Ah! ’em an chab chab…!” His eyes reeled at the watery gray of the sky, all confusion in his face replaced by madness. Rain-laden wind soughed through the trees.

“Matthew.” She stepped down the rotted boards of the porch stairs, and a long, pointed splinter broke off. He’s calling…calling to…his playmate. She strode toward the boy, her eyes raking the pines as she tried to fight down the growing conviction that someone or something was present, lurking just out of sight. Behind her, somebody coughed.

“Did I scare ya?” She whipped around, and the man grinned at her. “Sure is spooky, ain’t he?”

She faced a living death’s head, a macabre caricature of her handsome husband. Unable to speak, she stared at the man in the dark gray work clothes. They age so quickly, these people. The thought ran inanely through her mind, almost provoking a giggle. Lonny’s face was a Technicolor marvel—red nose, bloodshot eyes, hollowed cheeks mottled with purple where small veins had broken under the sallow skin. Yet the resemblance to Wallace lay in every taunting feature.

“What are you doing here?”

“Wa’ da ya mean? I come to see my sister-in-law an’ nephew. Ain’t a man allowed ta come see family when he wants ta?” Dirt had tangled in the dark hair that swayed as he nodded. “My only nephew. My only brother’s son. Sometimes I feel like that boy’s my own.”

She turned away, watched Matthew run silently around the shed. The drizzle had trickled to nothing, and sunlight began to bleed through the overcast.

“I used ta play in this yard. Me an’ Wallace.”

A tremor deep inside, she kept her back to him. Wisps of remembered conversations drifted, memories of how close he’d been to Wallace—a closeness inexplicable to her. Wallace had been such a good man, while Lonny…