Red Clocks(18)

In 1984 the remains of Whydah were found off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. That same year Temple Percival bought a foreclosed tackle shop in Newville, Oregon, and arranged on the shelves some spooky trinkets and called it Goody Hallett’s.

Now Temple’s fingernails live in a jar on the cabin shelf. Lashes in a glassine packet. Head hair and pubic hair in separate paper cartons—both almost gone. The rest of her body in the chest freezer behind the feed trough in the goat shed.

Scratching on the doorstep. Malky slinks in without greeting or apology. She tries to sound stern: “Don’t ever stay out that long again, fuckermo.” He purrs tetchily, demanding supper. She gets a plate of salmon from the mini fridge. It is happiness to see his pink tongue lapping. Merry, merry king of the woods is he.

Two short knocks. Stop. Two more. Stop. One. Malky, who knows this knock, goes on eating.

“Is it you?”

“It’s me.”

She opens the door but stays on the threshold. Cotter is her only human friend, the kindest person she knows; doesn’t mean she wants him in the cabin.

“New client,” he says, holding up a white envelope. His poor pimpled cheeks are worse than usual. Toxins trying to exit. They should be leaving through the liver but are leaving through the skin.

The mender pockets the envelope. “You talk to this one?”

“Works at the pulp mill in Wenport. Ten weeks along.”

“Okay, thanks.” She needs to replenish coltsfoot and fleabane. Check her supply of pennyroyal. “Good night.”

Cotter rubs his black wool cap. “You all right? You need anything?”

“I’m fine. Good night!”

“One more thing, Ginny—” He pulls off the cap, palms his forehead. “People are saying you brought the dead man’s fingers back.”

The mender nods.

“I’m just telling you,” says Cotter.

She wants to sit by the stove with Malky in her lap and nothing in her head. No vigilance, no fear. “I’m tired.”

Cotter sighs. “Get to bed early, then.” He turns, is taken by the woods.

Cotter works at the P.O. Whatever people are talking about, he hears. But she knew before he told her. She’s been getting notes in her post box. From fishermen, or fishermen’s wives, frightened by the seaweed plague.

A lace of dried dead man’s fingers does hang in a window of her cabin. Did Clementine report this to her fishermen brothers? Fishermen hate dead man’s fingers for fouling hulls in the harbor, fastening to oysters and carrying them away.

U think its funny? Its our LIVING.

She adds pine branches to the stove. Where is Malky? “Come here, little mo.” He can’t be persuaded onto her lap, even though he knows how much she’s missed him.

Cunt, quit hexing the water.

Her own cat does not obey her; why should seaweed?





Why could I stand to see the whales killed, but not the lambs?





THE DAUGHTER


She thought it would go a different way. She thought the way it would go would not include taking the east stairwell to lunch and seeing Ephraim’s hand in the shirt of Nouri Withers, whose eyes were shut and fluttering.

The daughter makes no sound. She creeps back up the stairs.

But she can’t breathe.

Breathe, dumblerina.

She sits on the landing, spreading her rib cage to make room for air.

Breathe, ignorant white girl.

Still has to finish the day. Get through Latin and math. Go pick up her new retainer.

Nouri Withers? Maybe if you like tangled hair and black eye shadow and nail polish made from otter dung.

She has never missed Yasmine more than exactly right now.

Yasmine, lover of strawberries, queen of whipped cream.

Singer of hymns and smoker of weed.

Who’d say: Forget that Transylvanian slut.

Who’d say: Are you even going to remember his ass in five years?

Yasmine, who was smarter than the daughter but who got worse grades because of her “attitude.”

Yasmine came out of the bathroom and held up the pee stick.

A month earlier the federal abortion ban had gone into effect.

The daughter was thinking: we need to get you to Canada. They hadn’t closed the border to abortion seekers yet. The Pink Wall was still just an idea.

A year and a half later the Canadian border patrol arrests American seekers and returns them to the States for prosecution. “Let’s spend the taxpayers’ money to criminalize vulnerable women, shall we?” said Ro/Miss in class, and somebody said, “But if they’re breaking the law, they are criminals,” and Ro/Miss said, “Laws aren’t natural phenomena. They have particular and often horrific histories. Ever heard of the Nuremberg Laws? Ever heard of Jim Crow?”

Yasmine would have liked Ro/Miss, who talks about history in a way that makes it memorable and who wears the clothes of a kid: brown cords, green hoodies, sneakers.

A tuft of cells inside her, multiplying. Half Ephraim, half her.

You can’t be sure.

She carries the test around unopened in her satchel.

If she is—

She might not be. Her body feels pretty much like it always does.

But if she is, what the hell is she going to do?

Don’t borrow worry.—Mom