Follow Me to Ground(25)

Father will hear it.

It felt loud as a storm.

She stood up straight again, turned slow – too slow, and walked back toward me.

–Lorraine?

Coming back towards the house her face was blank, the skin ’round her jaws drooping. Lifting her knees high, one calf in front of the other, each the colour of clotted cream.

–Lorraine? Are you awake, Lorraine?

She brushed by me and I could only follow her easy gait into the sitting room where she lay back down on the couch and settled herself. Closed her eyes and started her deep-sleep-breath.

I could see her nipples toughening through the cloth of her dress.

When I woke her she’d looked at me and was herself.

When she left the house she was entirely herself.

I went to bed early so as not to speak with Father, who I was sure would hear the nervous rattle inside me. I only dared go outside the next day, once morning came with its spare and pale blue sky.

I went and stood on the grass. Looked down at where Lorraine had been squatting.

It was still so early the wooden parts of the house had yet to start groaning, resisting the heat after the cool of the night.

I could smell it. The yellow tang.

What had happened to her while she slept? What had taken seed? And what if Father noticed this patch of yellow in the middle of the lawn?

I pulled at the hem of my dress, felt on my shoulders the keen eyes of a magpie, strutting behind me on the roof.

Later that day, we were brought a young boy Cure.

Cormac Kent was the mildest kind of ill: when he ate, he felt a little fire inside.

Just as well, I thought, knowing I was too tired and fretful for anything more testing.

He was small, freckled and pale but he spoke pushing down on his throat, willing his voice to deepen. He was at that age of acting out the motions he’d learned in the company of men. Hence his insistence on shaking Father’s hand, and his hard squint at my chest.

–You go with Miss Ada, Cormac, his mother said. A small woman who wore a hat.

I took him to the porch and told him to rock in the chair we kept there until he began to feel cool. He kept his eyes on me while he leaned into his feet and set the chair to creaking, the yellowing boards beneath whining hard and yellow and long.

It was rare for us to take a Cure outside, but often the younger ones were too tightly wound upon arrival. I rested against the house and counted the creaks, thinking after thirty-five or so he might be ready to open, but I lost count – kept thinking about Lorraine and the yellowed grass.

– I’ve been hearing all about you—

–What’s that?

But when he spoke he’d a child’s phrasing again.

–We hear all sortsa things ’bout you.

I had my hands deep in my pockets.

–I’d say you do.

I’d keep my gaze on the driveway as long as the boards carried on creaking. I wondered if this was in fact a hotter summer, and if it was the weather that saw Cures getting evermore strange.

–I hear your girl parts are on the wrong way ’round.

–Yessir, and upside down. You feeling any cooler yet?

The creaking stopped.

–I’m just here because my mamma says you can fix me, but I’d never let you inside of me. No way. You kill us kids so you can eat us. You eat up our arms and then you leave our legs for Sister Eel.

–If you don’t want to be cured then you go tell your mother so because it doesn’t matter to me whether you can keep your dinner down.

It took me a moment to realise he wasn’t moving, that he was staying perfectly still. I’d put him to sleep without touching him – without meaning to at all.

His mouth was a little way open, his eyes out of focus. He looked like he’d drowned and was floating in the water that killed him.

I could smell the hormones splicing inside him. I could smell the sweat in his glands that had yet to disperse and stain his brown pressed pants and yellow shirt, stretched thin about the shoulders by his brothers who’d worn it before him.

Poised and helpless. Captive bird.

I unbuttoned his shirt and quickly, without my usual care, opened up his stomach and squatted low to look inside. There were indeed some sparks flaring along his gut, which had in fact worn dangerously fine; I plucked them like berries, one by one, and threw them like darts into the ground. They left little scorched marks on the wood. The tune was a strained one. It wanted to catch on a loop, to jolt and skip, even as I welded his skin back together in a thin line.

–Cormac, wake up.

He didn’t move, and his pupils were the smallest of pricks in the centre of a muddy haze.

I bent down to look him in the face and said again

–Wake up.

And this time he did. Looking pained and afraid.

–You had some fire in you, but it’s passed.

I leaned in the door and called to Father and then rested my back against the house again. Cormac Kent didn’t speak, only sat in the chair with his shirt undone. He looked down at himself and then his child’s hands began fumbling with the buttons of his shirt which was very worn, and much too large. He did them up unevenly, his collar sagging, and I knew then – by his harsh breath and flickering eyes – that he’d not slept while I was inside of him. He’d been stilled only, and very much awake.

When Father came to the door Mrs Kent was busy in her purse behind him. They carried on speaking and so missed the look, already waning, on her son’s face. Father was looking at me and I was telling him with a nod that the illness was gone.