Follow Me to Ground(32)

It was unlikely, but still I hoped for it. And like I said, I’d years and years.

From the porch: watching Father heave Lorraine’s car down the drive, the buffered skin of his back gleaming. Long, long strides, moving the little tin car into whatever ditch was closest and deepest.

And that was all we had to do.

Nobody ever came looking for her.

It was not a kind place for a woman to live alone.

A few days went by and we’d no Cures. Father was highly strung and couldn’t sit still for long. The weather had turned dry so I’d sit out in the garden and sun my legs, lying on my belly and singing to Samson through The Ground. I was certain he could hear me and that he was forgiving me, that he was already feeling better for his time there. I thought If this is how it’s to be, the waiting, maybe I can manage. Maybe it’s not so bad.

Clucking and stretching, rubbing by back in the grass. Telling him what everything looked like, the trees and the sun in the sky.

–Are you hot down there, Samson? Can you feel the midday heat?

A few times I caught Father looking at me from the kitchen window, and knew he thought me obscene.

And then one morning Father came in from the garden and ran the kitchen tap. He was smeared up to his elbows in dirt.

–All right, we’ve a storm due.

Splashing his forearms and wetting his rolled sleeves. He said

–If it lasts as long as it’s supposed to, I can manage.

I kept my eyes ahead, spied the angled limbs of a cricket on the lawn.

–You don’t know how to do it.

–Of course I do.

–Father—

–He’s coming up Ada. He’s a danger to us, down there. The Ground does what it pleases and nothing else besides.

–Isn’t that a good thing? The longer we leave him the more he’ll be like us—

–There’s no such thing as ‘like us’.

–You said I couldn’t keep him because he was sick. You said about Mr Kault—

–If we’d have tried to cure Mr Kault we’d have done all manner of things. You think you’re fixing him. You’re just leaving him to stew in what’s wrong with him.

–I don’t want him fixed, I only want him a little changed. Just enough so he’s not tortured by the sick Olivia put inside him.

Because if he was all the way fixed he mightn’t want me. Might take fright at me, choke at the thought of our being together.

Father was drying his hands now. His whole body waving me away, dismissing me.

–Next heavy rain he comes up.

A cold, slick tail flicking in my stomach. The sunshine bleaching everything. My whole world, faded.

–Can’t we just wait and see?

He squinted at the cloth he was holding.

–You keep on refusing and I’ll do it alone.

I was sitting at the table but felt like standing.

–Father—

–It’s not just about what you want Ada. A man like that could poison the earth for years.

A man like that.

A man.

–We’ll bring him up and start fixing the mess you’ve made.

–How can it be a mess when it’s exactly as I planned?

–Besides me finding out.

Biting into my cheek.

–Yes. Besides that.

–Storm tonight, and then we take him up tomorrow.

–No.

–Ada.

–You think you’ll let him loose and he’ll run for the hills and that’ll be the end of it? You think he won’t still want to be with me?

–…I think you overestimate your pull.

Cluck cluck cluck on my tongue.

–Besides, Ada, won’t be up to him where he goes.

–What do you mean?

–What you think I mean.

–I don’t know what you mean, ’s why I’m asking you to say it.

–You’ve become a lot of things, but I know you’ve not become a fool.

–No. I won’t do it.

Put him down like a dog too old, too blind. Take the life out of his fruit heart.

–You really think he’d ever look at you the same, Ada? What do you think is happening to him down there?

I put my hands flat on my lap. Pretended interest with the creases in my dress.

–It’ll have been torture for him, Ada. You can’t imagine. Torture.

We looked at each other and I thought about the changes I’d seen in him since I was a child: the thin, thin lines certain light showed up around his eyes. Otherwise he was the same.

When I was a child I’d sit on Father’s shoulders and he’d walk me ’round the lawn, pointing out the plants I was made of. I played with the hair on top of his head and he put me in trees, up in the branches so that I couldn’t get down. If I got frightened he’d say –There’s no use in fear, Ada.

And watch as I squirmed my way to the grass.

There’s no use in lots of things, turns out.

Turns out once you find the thing you need everything else falls away sharp and fast.

I put a hand on his chest, and he looked at me.

Looked down at me, our shared breath growing thick between us.

His big hands like bells at his side.

It was a new kind of knowing in me, that I could hurt him. That my body was capable of damaging his. It was a new limb I’d grown for myself; to do him harm, to keep Samson safe.