Like fireworks, the wheat woman screams. Outside, the man leans from his tractor and yells to his wife, and to his daughter, of promises and possession. “Take pity,” the wheat woman sobs. “In your denial, I will die.” But mother and daughter turn their backs, they have no pity. They must be small and mean and sly and hunted. They know the wheat wants to consume. And so they dig.
Above their heads, the tractor roars.
Harold
SELENA GAMBRELL ANDERSON
Margo Childress had only one father, a tragedy, but he’d built a library with comfortable, modern furniture and double doors that locked, absolutely, from the inside. Opposite the doors stood a high wall of crumbling ginger brick, but one of the bricks was missing and in the cave lived a tiny man. A lover of tweed and wool and tasseled loafers that shimmied with each step, the man walked to the edge of the cave, a Yorkie clinging on to him like a comma. He was one inch tall and middle-aged with black eyes, Margo saw, that when looking at hers showed a gleam of mischievous recognition. To borrow an expression that she would grow to despise only after using it time and time again when recalling that first spark of illogical affection, Margo felt as though she had known him all her life. And struck with the need to do something about him, to do anything, she named him Harold.
They’d met by happenstance on another unremarkable afternoon in August when the sun was shining but the rain fell in slashes. Margo’s stepmother, Wanda, had hijacked the living room with her bizarre movies and white zinfandel. Always the last to stroll into a room, Wanda had been told that she had a presence. She had tried to become an actress known all over the world, but she never got any farther than the Texas-Louisiana border because life sometimes can be that way. Now she lay on the sofa, naked as a skating rink, belting out her failed monologues:
“I had to sit next to him, praying and drinking alone with him, listening to his dirty jokes. I had to drag him into bed with my bare hands. But after that last indiscretion—I said, That’s enough of this! So I won control over this house—control over him and everything. He didn’t dare fight back, and look what it’s cost me! Nobody in this world can possibly know what winning has cost me.”
“Must be terrible,” said Harold. He bounced the Yorkie in his arms, looking past Margo. “Parents, you say? What a bunch of manure!”
“Not really,” Margo said. She’d actually seen a bunch of manure the time Wanda had had it delivered in a truck that dumped it right onto her father’s convertible.
“Why is it that parents are so boring?” Harold said. “Because they’re groan-ups.” He laughed at himself. Margo joined in but too late. The Yorkie, startled by the noise, tried to make eyes with anybody.
Each night Margo listened with her eyes half closed as Harold told her stories. Softly, he read about an ancient wedding, the girl marooned from some desert, the king punch-drunk in love, the castle dually filled with golden light and the mercy of God. “I am black, but comely,” he read. “Look not on me, because the sun has looked on me. Tell me, O you whom my soul loves, where you feed. Put me like a seal over your heart. Like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death.”
“Don’t read about them,” Margo said quickly. “They’re dead.”
Next door a band was playing. A muffled horn-and-flute arrangement drifted dreamily through the air like jellyfish. Through the library windows Margo saw her father and his wife dancing brain-to-brain.
“They’re dead,” Margo said again.
Each time she considered this, her mind swirled and crashed. It was through Harold that she first understood that love had had its own life before her, and would after her. For a few minutes she could not forgive him.
Harold closed the book, leaned forward, elbows on his knees. To soften the blow, he told her that she would be his forever, that he would never let her go, that she better not even think about trying to leave. And wanting to hear him make more promises, because the more promises, the better, Margo said that she was determined to run away.
“If you run,” said Harold, “I’ll find you.”
“Then I’ll disappear.”
“But if you disappear you’ll still be you,” he said. “And I’ll still be the one who finds you.” Sighing, Margo ran a hand over coarse bangs that smoothed out but came back in a wave. “Come close,” Harold said. He spread his arms to grasp both nostrils and licked the tip of her nose.
Wanda appeared from the bedroom, her hair curled and quaking in irritation. She was carrying a bucket of ammonia that she splashed on Margo’s father, Gary, who was reclining on the sofa. Gary scrambled around, all squirming legs and arms, stood up, rushed after her, and shut the door with a precise slam. Margo heard the crash of picture frames and penny jars and a giant bottle of perfume through the bedroom and into the den.
But she was hardly concerned, because she was thinking about Harold. She loved to think about Harold. She loved to remember the way he waddled to the edge of the cave and into her life. She loved that he wore tweed and wool exclusively and that before taking a seat, he pinched the fabric covering his knees. She loved who she became when she was with him—which was almost nothing, small, in its place, acknowledged. She wanted mostly to outlove him.
Margo went into the library and waited. She waited and waited, and the suspense was delicious before it became painful. Then here came Harold and the Yorkie, who barked once at the sight of her.
