“Cut it? It looks like you split your whole leg in two.”
“Yeah,” he said with a bemused laugh. “I guess I did. It will be fine.”
He waded in and swam away, closing the subject.
I didn’t bring it up again until Mom had gone back south.
“Did you really split your leg open?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
“Who fixed it up for you?”
He glanced down, like the answer might come from his flesh.
“Nobody. I just pushed everything back into place and wrapped it up. The body knows what to do if you let it. If I had seen a doctor, they probably would have cut it off.”
“But what happened?”
“Fell off the ladder,” he said.
Uncle Walt was always comfortable on a ladder. After his knee started to give him trouble, he was almost too comfortable up there. On the top rung, he would shake and rattle the ladder to a new position instead of climbing down to move it over a few inches.
“My foot got hung up in the rungs when I tumbled and I split my calf.”
That was enough information for me. At the time, I figured that he had been too embarrassed to seek help. Whenever I hid an injury, that was always why. I never wanted to admit that I had done something stupid and needed help. But later, as I thought about Uncle Walt at his funeral, I realized that he enjoyed asking for help and he was never shy about admitting his own mistakes. There had to have been another reason why he had wrapped his leg himself and not told Mom about the injury. I wondered if maybe the whole thing had been a lie. There was no way to find out now.
People who live out in the country are expected to be self-sufficient. Some people take that idea way too far.
There’s a box of cereal up on the shelf across from me. My leg is asleep. I stretch it out and poke around with my toe until the box topples and lands in my lap. I suppose I would make a pretty good blind person. I’m adjusting fairly easily to a world without light.
When I pop the cardboard top and find the plastic liner, I know what’s going to happen when I tear it open.
“You want some of this?” I ask.
The tapping responds immediately. It’s coming from both doors now—the kitchen and shed. I shake my head and sigh in the darkness before shoving dry cereal in my mouth.
“Needs milk,” I say.
The tapping speeds up.
They’re nothing if not consistent.
I’m startled when tapping comes through the wall to my left. They can’t tap on the wall at my feet—on the other side of that is the old chimney.
“I believe you have me surrounded,” I say.
(I must have fallen asleep mid-chew.)
I must have fallen asleep mid-chew.
There is cereal stuck to my lip. I wipe off my face with the back of my hand and jump when a shape passes in front of my face.
I freeze.
Wiggling my fingers, I see that the shape is my own hand.
I look down and see the dawn light leaking from under the kitchen door.
“Hello?” I whisper.
I clear my throat and wish that I had something to drink. Even the pickle juice would taste good right now.
I cough and try again.
“Hello? Are you there?”
I bang and twist against the stepladder so I can press my face to the floor and look under the crack. I see nothing but unbroken light reflecting off the floor. There are no shadows moving around. My heart thuds in my chest as I contemplate doing the unthinkable—I’m going to open the door.
“Hold on,” I whisper. “Just hold on.”
It looks really bright out there. My eyes have been in the dark so long that it might still, technically, be before dawn. There’s no harm in waiting another minute or two to be sure.
I start counting, moving my lips so I can throw some Mississippis between the numbers to keep them spaced out. When I get to a hundred, I look again.
It seems brighter.
My heart starts thudding again.
“It’s breakfast time,” I say, raising my voice. “Who wants cereal?”
There’s nothing—no tapping and nothing moving around in the light.
Another idea occurs to me before I move the ladder out of the way. I dig in the bag and pull out a big handful of round cereal. Weighing them in my hand first, I chuck them at the gap under the door, sending them out into the kitchen. They’re my little ambassadors, checking to see if the natives are friendly out there.
“Want any more?” I ask.
Silence.
“Want to count them?”
I throw another handful.
When I’m certain that no unnaturally-long fingers are going to pick up the pieces of cereal, I allow myself to move the ladder. Before I even think about moving the broom, I gather myself and climb to my feet. I stretch my legs and wiggle my toes inside my shoes. Every muscle has to be ready for what might be waiting.
This is it.
I pop the broom free and grip it like a weapon. My shoulder pulses with a deep ache when I squeeze.
I open the door and pull it towards me slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the morning light.
Everything is perfectly still.
I take a step—unearthing myself from my coffin.
It seems too quiet.
I take another step and glance down. There are a few big chunks of glass on the floor—blasted in with the explosion, but the small shards have all been cleaned up. The side door is ajar. I can’t remember if I left it open when I fled.
I pull it open and regard the dooryard.
Uncle Walt’s truck is a blackened husk. The power and utility lines look like charred serpents. I step out, free myself from the house, and run. I’m in the middle of the road before I stop.
I turn back and regard everything from this distance. I try to see it all with fresh eyes.
It looks like someone drunkenly crashed the truck into the telephone pole, it fell, and the
