Category: Reckoning X

Verdell Walker

“What should we bring Pawpaw for dinner?” I asked Mama.

Her bronze urn rested in the passenger’s seat, secured by the seat belt. Her ghost sat in the backseat, wearing the green skirt suit I’d buried her in, a thin blue aura haloing her body.

We were driving from Birmingham to Pawpaw’s farm in Sweetcreek. The high-rises and billboards gradually surrendered to fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton. The heat tested the limits of my Corolla’s air conditioning, and its tires were barely a match for the red dirt backroads. Roadside joints selling BBQ and fried fish plates cropped up like mushrooms. Mama narrowed her eyes in the rearview mirror. I could almost hear her suck her teeth, deriding them as country and low class.

“Ribs, I think,” I murmured to myself.

An hour later, I pulled into the farmhouse’s driveway with two rib plates and four suitcases. The single story house was white with green shutters and a black roof, set back from the road and fronted by a yard filled with pink azaleas and blue hydrangeas. In the far distance stood greenhouses and rows of garden boxes bursting with herbs. Pawpaw never had any powers to speak of, but he certainly had a green thumb, which is its own kind of magic if you ask me.

He sat on the porch, wearing a starched white shirt, pressed jeans, and a pristine Stetson. Gold front tooth gleaming, he grinned as I ran up the porch steps and into his waiting arms.

“Hey there, Lil’ Partner.”

“Hey there, Big Partner.”

Pawpaw was thinner than I remembered, and I didn’t miss the way he’d risen stiffly from his chair. But he still smelled the same: tobacco, mint, and Irish Spring.

He wouldn’t let me carry in my luggage, so while he brought my suitcases up to Mama’s childhood bedroom, I took her urn and our dinner into the kitchen. It was clean and bright as always, smelling faintly of lemon. I half-expected Granma to be there, kneading biscuits or frying chicken. But she wasn’t, and neither was her ghost.

“Did you finish Granma’s headstone?” I asked Pawpaw when he came in.

“Finally found that doggone recipe,” Pawpaw chuckled. “Thelma had it stuffed in a shoebox. Raymond finished the engraving last month.” He looked down at the checkerboard tile floor. “Everything still feels strange without her.”

Granma had died the year before, Mama three years before her. You’d think I would’ve been a pro at grief and loss, but no such luck.

“Can I go see her?” I asked. The family cemetery was a short drive away.

“Another time, Monica. You should get some rest.” Pawpaw only used my name when he made gentle “suggestions”. He nodded at Mama’s urn. “We can lay Gertrude to rest later, too.”

Mama had hated her name, insisting on being called Trudy by everyone. “When the cancer came back, she told me she wanted her ashes spread next to Granma’s grave whenever she died.”

I watched him absorb this information. He couldn’t have been more surprised than I’d been by Mama’s request. She and Granma had had a difficult relationship. A difficult relationship with a mother was one of the few things I’d had in common with Trudy.

“Well, I’m gonna respect my baby’s wishes. And I’m gonna do it proper,” Pawpaw said finally. “But today I gotta make some deliveries.”

Mama stood in the corner, thin fingers resting on her collarbone, a pained look on her face.

“And go see the developer,” I added.

“He’s offering twenty million now,” Pawpaw said, rubbing his jaw.

I whistled. “Wow . . . wow.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I set the BBQ plates in the oven for dinner. Neither Pawpaw nor Granma had ever approved of microwaves. Didn’t trust them. “I’m coming with you.”

“Ain’t you tired?”

I kissed his cheek, his skin wrinkled like crepe paper. “Yes, but I like to watch you work. And I want to meet this man for myself.”

Over his shoulder, Mama turned and disappeared. A part of me wanted to tell Pawpaw I’d been seeing her for weeks, but I kept silent. He had enough to worry about.

I helped Pawpaw load his truck with the orders. As a girl, Mama had painted the farm’s name and tagline on the truck’s doors: Sweetcreek Farms. Fine Herbs & Plants. Granma had drawn a picture of the High John the Conqueror root our farm was known for. Seeing it always made me chuckle; it made the farm seem downright ordinary. For over a century, our family had supplied root workers and other magical practitioners across the South and beyond with the herbs and plants they needed for their spells, rituals, and potions.

As we bounced along the dirt backroads, Pawpaw quizzed me about the uses of the plants packaged in the purple sachets Granma had sewn. As I answered each one correctly, a ghost of a smile tugged at Pawpaw’s lips. I’d been studying, so I could be useful to him. There’d been little else to do in the six months since I’d been laid off. He didn’t say so, but I could tell he was pleased with my knowledge. He and Granma had feared it would die with Mama, who’d been determined to put as much physical and emotional distance as possible between herself and the family legacy. Not just growing the plants, but serving the people who used them and those who wanted someone to conjure on their behalf.

“It’s always something with these Negroes,” Mama groused to me once when I was eight. We were at Sweetcreek for a rare Christmas visit, watching Granma give mojo bags, amulets, and teas to people looking for help with all sorts of problems while our dinner cooled. “She got more time for them than for her own family.”

A stern look from Pawpaw had quieted Mama’s complaints but that was the first time I’d noticed the unspoken tension between her and Granma. And it was the last time Mama had bothered to hide her displeasure with our life from me.

The delivery list had forty names. These were some of Pawpaw’s longstanding, most valued customers, women who bought from him in bulk. There were grandmothers with lined, brown faces and wrinkled hands and Millennials with dreadlocks, headwraps, and nose rings. He made a point to chat with each of them, asking after their families and health. Only at the end of these conversations did he deftly inquire about what magic they expected to work in the coming weeks and months, sussing out what they’d need for future orders, which I dutifully recorded in a small notebook.

My heart leapt when we got to Miss Eulalie, Miss Pearl, and Miss Henrietta, three of Granma’s closest friends. I remembered them from childhood summers, when Mama sent me down South so she could work overtime without guilt and fraternize with her boyfriends. They were consummate conjure women, renowned for their skills and potions just as Granma had been. They hadn’t changed a bit: Eulalie, in leopard leggings with long red acrylics, trailed by three cats; Pearl in her pressed usher’s uniform and immaculate steel-gray chignon; and Henrietta in her overalls and sturdy work boots, motor oil and grease under her nails. They exclaimed over me, pressing vials of oils and tinctures into my hands, which they promised would bring me luck, prosperity, and a fertile womb. I didn’t want kids but the mentions of fertility didn’t make me feel nearly as awkward as their questions about my craft. Pawpaw looked at his feet whenever this came up.

“I haven’t had time for spellwork lately,” was my standard reply before changing the subject. They didn’t need to know I could barely summon a candle flame these days, or that Mama’s ghost appeared whenever she wanted rather than from my summons, nor could I banish her when her presence threatened to suffocate me.

But they told us something that made a knot of dread settle in my stomach like a coiled snake—Sweetcreek’s produce was changing. Henrietta had noticed that some of her spells didn’t last as long as they used to. Eulalie was forced to use twice as much black snake root now in her protection charms. Pearl’s last batch of candles had burned with acrid, black smoke that curled in unnatural spirals.

It wasn’t just them. A few of the older women, those who’d been using the farm’s herbs for years, who could observe the changes between then and now, told us similar things.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked Pawpaw back in the truck.

His work-gnarled hands tightened on the steering wheel. “A few years. Was hard to notice at first. Land seems angry.”

I listened as Pawpaw described the upheaval at Sweetcreek and the farms of his friends. Stronger, more destructive hurricanes tore through fields, burning summers scorched tender plants, and pests never seen before chewed through crops before they could flourish.

“Sounds like climate change. It must be impacting the potency of the herbs and plants.” I shook my head, furious and powerless, at the massive forces making his hard job even harder.

“That’s what the news say. I don’t doubt it, though I don’t know too much science myself. But I don’t think that’s all.”

“What else could it be?”

Pawpaw rubbed his jaw. “Something broke when Gertrude left. Thelma’s magic wasn’t the same after that. That wasn’t noticeable at first, either. But spells she used to be able to work with her eyes closed, she could barely do them by the end.”

I kept my eyes on the road. Mama took me away from Sweetcreek when I was five, tired of being judged for having a baby out of wedlock, tired of living under Granma’s roof.

“Mama never used her magic much besides little stuff like healing baths and burning sage to purify our apartment,” I said quietly. “I never thought anything of it till I saw what Granma could do. Maybe Mama couldn’t do more than that.”

Pawpaw nodded. “Maybe not. Magic don’t run in men, you know, so I couldn’t tell you.”

“Well, we both know I’m a failure in that arena, so I couldn’t tell you either.” I laughed ruefully. “A failure in most arenas lately.”

“Don’t ever say that,” Pawpaw snapped. He pulled over and fixed me with a hard look. “Stop listening to the lies the Devil tell.”

Pawpaw was such a calm, easygoing man. I was taken aback by his vehemence, his fierce belief in my worth. I nodded, swallowing hard and weaving my fingers with his. He patted my hand, kissed it.

I rested my head on his shoulder. “I should’ve come home sooner.”

“You’re here now.”

We sat in silence in the truck, Pawpaw slumped against his seat. After a few minutes he spoke again. “Since Thelma died, a lot of the ladies come round and help me bless the soil.” He swiped a hand over his face. “It helps, but the land still seems upset. Agitated. Out of balance.”

I squeezed his knee. He could’ve been talking about me.

The next day, Pawpaw and I headed to Langston, the closest thing to a city near Sweetcreek, to meet the developer. I expected Ryan Cutler to be a standard issue good ol’ boy, but he was actually a standard issue finance bro, like the ones who’d fired just about everybody at my old job. He had a pale, forgettable face, with watery blue eyes and wheat-colored hair.

“Good to see you, Eugene!” Ryan said, extending a hand to Pawpaw.

“Mr. Hayes,” I corrected him, stepping slightly in front of Pawpaw and intercepting the handshake. “And I’m Ms. Monica Hayes, his granddaughter.”

Ryan’s fingers were puffy and his palm was moist. I hid my disgust as I pumped his hand with more force than was necessary. He looked flustered as I held his gaze before sitting in one of the chairs at the gleaming glass table in his office. Pawpaw shot me a look of proud gratitude as he removed his hat and sat beside me. I knew he’d never be comfortable correcting a white man, even if it was to insist on respect.

I’m here now, Pawpaw.

“My grandfather told me about your offer, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

Ryan looked at Pawpaw, who looked back at him without saying a word.

“Ms. Hayes, I’ve made your grandfather a substantial offer for his land. I’m assembling several properties for warehouse development. My goal is to transform Sweetcreek into a logistics hub—it’ll bring jobs and much needed economic growth to the area.”

I’d heard this spiel before. “Why should he sell to you? Our land has been in our family for generations.”

Again, Ryan cut his eye to Pawpaw. Again, Pawpaw remained silent.

Ryan exhaled loudly. “Ma’am, your family has done an incredible job. And you’ve got a nice niche with that woo-woo stuff. You’re not at the mercy of the market in the same way commodity farmers are.”

I bared my teeth at him in an imitation of a smile. “Woo-woo stuff?”

Chuckling, Ryan wiggled his fingers. “Great idea. All you’re missing is crystals. My niece loves crystals, has a shelf full of them.”

Pawpaw let out a frayed huff, thumbing the edge of his Stetson.

Ryan barreled on, oblivious. “But I’m sure you know farming is a hell of a lot of work. Your grandpa takes on a ton of risk to not make a lot of money. The interest on the money I’m offering is more than he’d make in a good year. I’m giving him a very attractive way out.”

Nothing Ryan said was wrong. I was certain a spreadsheet somewhere on his blocky Thinkpad laid it out in black and white, some complex financial model that calculated our land’s value down to the penny, spitting out the number that would make Ryan a tidy profit and make an old man go away quietly.

But none of that accounted for the magic in the soil, the power that produced some of the most coveted and revered magical flora in the world. Or at least, it had.

Ryan twirled his wedding band, looking at the gold ring instead of me. “These warehouses are tens of thousands of square feet. They need a ton of land. I’ve made offers to other farmers around here.”

Pawpaw spoke for the first time. “Twenty of them.”

Surprise flickered across Ryan’s face before he smothered it. “Many of them are keen to sell for all the reasons we’ve discussed, but your holdings are the anchor.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means the development falls apart without your land, because the parcel won’t be big enough for the warehouse complex. If Mr. Hayes doesn’t sell, then the other farmers won’t get their money.”

The Saturday morning after our meeting with Cutler, the other farmers came by to beg, cajole, and threaten Pawpaw into selling his land. He patiently listened to everyone, telling them he was still thinking and praying on his decision. Logically, I knew those farmers were also struggling with ailing land and shrinking bank accounts. But in my heart I resented them for descending on Pawpaw like hungry locusts devouring his peace. I’d had enough; I needed to get out of the house before I punched someone.

The screen door banged behind me as I bounded down the porch steps, my feet carrying me to the fields. The sun bore down hard as I meandered along the packed dirt path winding through the rows and rows of plants nestled in moist black soil in cedar garden boxes Pawpaw had built by hand. A ring of greenhouses protecting the more delicate, heat-sensitive plants like bayberry surrounded the fields, their panes glinting in the sun. The air smelled sharp and medicinal in some areas, then sweet, earthy, and musky in others. All was quiet except for the buzz of bees, the low hum of cicadas, and the dirt crunching under my shoes. My hands grazed the tall, lance-shaped leaves of the Queen Elizabeth root, rubbed the waxy, viridian leaves of rue growing in a lacy pattern, stroked the rough, ropey bundles of angelica root drying on posts.

“Monica!”

I turned to see Miss Henrietta loping toward me, smiling wide under a straw hat and carrying a large paper bag. “Brought you and Eugene some lunch!”

Henrietta was a big woman, tall and powerfully built. She intimidated a lot of people, but I knew her as the dispenser of some of the world’s best hugs. Once she turned me loose, I peered inside the bag, greeted by the heavenly scent of two pork sandwiches wrapped in grease-stained brown paper and a dozen tea cakes.

“You didn’t have to do this!”

“No, but I wanted to,” she replied, patting my cheek with her calloused hand. “Why you out here?”

I ignored her question, letting another that had been simmering leap out instead. “Will you make me a mojo bag?”

Confusion flickered across Henrietta’s face. “What kind?”

I shuffled my feet. “Prosperity. Money. Finding a new job.”

She glanced at Pawpaw on the porch, trying to shake a departing farmer’s hand. The man swatted his palm aside and stormed off. Word of Cutler’s offer had traveled fast, but she didn’t pry.

“Alright. Let’s go to Thelma’s workshop.”

Pawpaw still kept the workshop tidy. Dried bundles of herbs hung from the rafters. Mason jars lined the shelves, filled with roots, powders, and stones, their names written in Sharpie in Granma’s neat hand on masking tape labels. A long wooden table in the center of the room was covered with tools—knives and spoons, a mortar and pestle, scissors, several chipped bowls, a small cauldron, and a brazier. A wicker basket filled with old fabric pouches sat underneath.

Mama had appeared again, frowning at Henrietta as she scanned the shelves for the necessary ingredients. I ignored her, turning on two ceiling fans that pushed the hot air around. Henrietta deposited an armful of jars, herbs, and roots on the table. Her nimble hands moved with precision over the plants and tools.

“Alfalfa,” she said, crumbling a handful of dried leaves in her palm. They released a faint, grassy scent as they rained into a bowl. “It keeps money steady in your house.”

To draw money and prosperity to me, she added powdered sassafras and bayberry bark. Then cinnamon, “to make that money come quick”. High John was next. She held the dark, knobby pods reverently before grinding them up, her brawny forearm working the pestle. As she worked, she whispered prayers for my prosperity over the ingredients. Mama watched from the corner, her arms folded over her chest.

“Mama didn’t like you.”

As soon as the words escaped my lips, I snapped my mouth shut. Henrietta stopped grinding. What the hell possessed me to admit that?

Before I could apologize, Henrietta said, “I didn’t like her either. Biggety self.”

Mama looked at me expectantly; I suppose waiting for me to defend her. Instead I asked, “Why do you say that?”

“She was ashamed of where she come from,” Henrietta answered as she resumed grinding. “Ashamed of the work that kept her fed and helped poor folks around here that didn’t have nothing but prayer and Thelma.”

I thought of all the times I’d heard Mama disparage Sweetcreek. Poverty had been her greatest fear. She saw how hard Pawpaw and Granma worked and yet how precarious things could still be. To her, root work was something poor people used because they didn’t have anything better. It wasn’t power, it was the legacy of slaves and sharecroppers—the weak and abused, in her mind.

“She always pushed me to excel in school. She didn’t want me to end up like her—selling nice things she couldn’t afford to rich people, working long hours but still needing food stamps.”

“Well, maybe it wouldn’t have come to that if she hadn’t run off and took you with her.”

No matter how well I’d done in school and how far I’d risen professionally, it never felt like enough for Mama. And a fat lot of good it had done me in the end, when all my achievement and self-worth had been ripped away in a five minute Zoom with HR. “Maybe,” I said.

Henrietta shook her head. “Gertrude broke Thelma’s heart. She turned her back on who she was. How can you stand if you ain’t rooted?”

Mama’s face was devoid of expression except for the smoldering look in her eyes.

“Go get a bag from the basket, baby. A green one.”

I did as Henrietta asked. When I returned to the table, Mama was gone. I held the small bag open and Henrietta carefully poured in the mojo mixture then tied it shut with gold string. She lit a bit of incense in the brazier, the warm, spicy scent filling the room. Passing the bag through the smoke, Henrietta murmured words too soft for me to catch. Finally, she held the bag to her lips, exhaling a long huff of air into it, before handing it over to me.

“What was that for?”

“I breathed life into it,” she said, her eyes meeting mine. “You gotta feed the bag once a month to keep the energy strong. I hold it in my hand on a full moon and speak my intentions over it again. But your gut will tell you what you need to do.”

I snorted. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

Henrietta cupped my cheek. “What you need is already in you, baby. Me, Pearl, and Eulalie will help you find it.”

“You know how the land got power?”

I turned away from Vanna White on the TV to look at Pawpaw. “Mama told me the land woke up when my great-grandmother killed a man.”

“Verlean. To save her husband Elijah’s life. And it was two men. White men, no less.”

“Lord. How did she get away with that?”

“No body, no problem, I guess.” Pawpaw’s lips formed a smug curve. “And even the white folks back then knew the women in this family were strong root workers, even if they didn’t understand or believe in conjure.”

Now that was new information to me. “Why was Elijah attacked?”

Pawpaw’s face hardened. “A Black family owning any land, even hardscrabble land . . . well, to a lot white folks in Sweetcreek that wasn’t to be borne. Uppity nigger had to be dealt with.”

Bile rose in my throat. “What exactly happened?”

“It’s fuzzy. Verlean and Elijah didn’t like to talk about it, as you might expect. But what’s important is that the land came to Verlean’s defense, came alive. After that, everything grown in this soil made the best magic you could get.” He took my hands in his own, his weathered brown fingers rubbing my much softer ones. “And the hands that grew those plants did too.”

I shifted uncomfortably as a sharp twinge of unease gripped my heart and squeezed. “And it can again. Henrietta said she and the other ladies would teach me—”

Pawpaw cut me off. “I’m selling, Lil’ Partner.”

Without thinking, I shot up, nearly toppling over because my legs had gone to sleep. “You can’t! You can’t let these people bully you into giving all this away! You’ve worked too hard!”

Pawpaw looked up at me, weary. “Ain’t nobody bullying me, baby. I’m tired. And the land is, too. I feel it every time I go to the fields.”

I couldn’t argue with him, with the defeated cast of his shoulders, with the exhaustion carving every line in his face. Because even in the short time I’d been there, I could also feel the energy in the land dimming with each passing day, probably even more keenly than Pawpaw.

“What about me?” I whimpered. “I wanted this to be my home.”

Pawpaw held my hand to his heart. “I was thinking of you when I decided. I’ll have enough money to make sure you’re taken care of. And wherever I am, you got a home.”

I couldn’t get Verlean off my mind or Pawpaw’s words: the land came to her defense. How? And, I thought bitterly, why wasn’t it rising to our defense now?

The day after Pawpaw told me of his decision, the land decided to answer the first question.

I was weeding herb beds when Elijah ran past me. I recognized him from old family photos. He looked over his shoulder at me, eyes wide with terror. For a moment, I thought I’d finally lost my mind. But then the thunder of hooves made the ground shake underneath me. Two men on horseback streaked by, one of them striking Elijah in the head with a baton. Elijah crumpled to the dirt, bleeding from the temple. The other man dismounted and began to beat Elijah. The vision was muffled; the men’s shouts and Elijah’s screams sounded like they were underwater. I was heartily glad. I didn’t need to hear the meaty smacks of fists on flesh. I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath coming in frantic punches.

When I cracked open an eye, hoping desperately for the vision to be gone, Verlean was there. She launched herself at Elijah’s attacker but he flung her aside like a dirty rag and kicked her in the stomach. Elijah crawled over, trying to shield his wife from the blows.

Suddenly, a pulse of magic rocked the earth. Verlean’s eyes clouded over in cataracts. She thrust out her hand and the two men flew backward, one falling off his rearing horse, the other hitting a tree. Verlean staggered to her feet and raised her hands to the sky. Darkness rolled over the land. Then she slammed her palms against the dirt and the pulse flared again. Even outside the vision, I felt it in my body. The trees, the grass, the flowers, and all the other plants grew uncontrollably as the ground opened up and devoured Elijah’s attackers, sucking them down in a maelstrom of dirt and rocks. Another pulse knocked me off my feet. I lay there in the dirt for what seemed like hours, sweating and gulping down air. When I lifted my head, the vision had receded.

“That was horrible,” I croaked out. “Why did you show me that?”

The trilling of the cicadas was the only response I got.

It was a harvest day—and night. The red sun dipped toward the horizon but the heat wasn’t giving up without a fight. Rivulets of sweat streaked down my back and between my breasts, soaking the mojo bag pinned to my sports bra. The waxing moon would soon be visible, time for us to gather the bay laurel, rue, and High John. We’d pick well into the night. Some of Pawpaw’s fellow deacons were stationed at the edge of the fields, frying catfish in vats of oil to slap on white bread with pickles and mustard for dinner.

Pawpaw was waiting for Cutler to draw up the paperwork before telling anyone of his decision. This would be one of the final harvests.

I walked through the rows of garden boxes, checking for leaves nibbled by pests and testing the soil moisture. For the dry plants, of which there were many, I summoned tiny rainclouds to water them. The clouds were a step above pathetic, but they got the job done if I concentrated hard enough. I had just enough magic to keep the phalanx of mosquitoes from biting, but they still swarmed.

A small army of teenagers making a few extra dollars were harvesting other herbs by hand, cutting and tying them into bundles. These would go into the drying houses for inspection, processing, and packaging. The inspection was the important part, testing the energy, potency, and spiritual qualities of the plants before they were sold—this was once Granma’s job. Henrietta, Pearl, and Eulalie were doing it now. Pawpaw paid them in herbs and roots, but I suspected their concern for him and enduring love for Granma were the greater motivators.

As I approached the drying house, I could hear Eulalie through the open door, telling bawdy stories about old lovers that made Henrietta guffaw and Pearl chide her good-naturedly. I’d told no one of my vision, and I yearned for their company to put it behind me. But when I stepped inside, the smile died on my face.

Granma stood in their midst, wearing a red dress dotted with tiny white flowers, smiling beatifically at me.

Eulalie looked up from burning sage. “What’s wrong, baby?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The love shining in Granma’s eyes hit me like an arrow to the chest.

“What do you see?” Henrietta asked knowingly. “Who do you see?”

“Granma,” I whispered.

Pearl gasped. The women looked at each other, then at me.

“Can y’all see her?” I asked them, desperate.

“No,” Henrietta said gently. “But she ain’t here for us.”

They arrayed themselves around me, placing gentle hands on my shoulders and arms.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I said to Granma. “There’s so much I need to talk to you about. Pawpaw and I . . . everything is slipping away . . . . ”

Granma walked toward me. I felt cold, the hairs on my arms lifting. She raised her hand to my face, her fingers hovering near my cheek. Then she moved to the door, motioning for me to come along. She looked out across the fields, her expression worried. I followed her gaze and saw Pawpaw standing near the angelica root. He turned and looked right at us.

“Can he see you too?”

Pawpaw took one step forward, two, three. Then he clutched his chest, his face screwing up tight, and dropped to his knees in the dirt.

“If you don’t go home and get some sleep, you’ll be in here next,” the nurse said.

I sat by Pawpaw’s bedside, watching his chest rise and fall in his sleep. The heart monitor beeped steadily, each ping a reminder of how close I’d come to losing him. The harsh fluorescent lights cast shadows across his face, and his hands rested limply against the crisp white sheets. He wore a mojo bag around his neck filled with healing herbs, made by Miss Eulalie. I trusted it as much as the meds the doctors had given him.

“He’s an old man, isn’t he?” I said.

The nurse squeezed my shoulder and handed me a cup of water. I drank it, more to ease the tightness in my throat than from thirst. My face was tight from the salt of dried tears. I kissed Pawpaw’s forehead and whispered, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

His face looked peaceful. It enraged me that it’d taken a goddamn heart attack for my poor grandfather to finally get some rest.

Restless, I drove around town for a while before an impulse became a conviction. I stopped at the farmhouse and got Mama’s urn then headed to our cemetery. Pale moonlight filtered through the old oaks and pines, illuminating weathered headstones and patches of herbs growing among the graves. Here was where we grew our family stores of magical herbs, close to the bones of our loved ones. I walked to Granma’s grave, an empty space next to it clearly meant for Pawpaw. A shudder traveled through my body.

I stroked Granma’s polished headstone. Underneath her name, life dates, and 1 Corinthians 15:55 was the recipe for her famous caramel cake, the one she’d refused to share in life. At the end it said, “Hope y’all happy now. Love, Thelma.”

Screams erupted around me—wild, guttural, strangled keening. It took my brain a minute to process that they were coming from me.

My throat raw and nose running, I ripped the lid off Mama’s urn. “You don’t deserve this, but maybe this will make you leave me the hell alone.”

I dumped her ashes beside Granma. Guilt over not waiting for Pawpaw pecked me with a sharp beak but I ignored it. When the urn was empty, I flung it away from me. It sailed through the air and hit a tree festooned with Spanish moss with a metallic thunk.

Spent from rage and despair, I sank to the ground. Suddenly, the humid air grew colder by several degrees. Two bare brown feet appeared before me. My gaze traveled up a gray homespun dress before settling on a delicately pretty face topped with a red headscarf.

Verlean.

I reached out to touch her but of course my hand passed through her, as if through mist.

“Can you help me?” I pleaded. “Can you wake the land up again?”

She shook her head no, pointed at me.

I punched the grass. “My magic is dying, just like our land. I can’t do anything!”

Verlean licked her lips, looked over my shoulder. Granma stood behind me. And beside her was Mama.

“What the hell do you want?” I snarled. “You started this in the first place. This is all your fault!”

To my undying shock, Mama nodded. But I’m here now, she mouthed.

Tears sprang to my eyes again, unbidden. “It’s too late. Pawpaw is selling. We’re gonna lose everything.”

Verlean knelt, her hand hovering over the grass covering Granma’s grave and Mama’s ashes. Her eyes bore into mine, and snatches from my vision of her placing her palms on the ground and the land bursting to life flitted through my mind. Verlean nodded, like she could see the memories. Granma and Mama stood on my left and right, their palms raised upward.

Tentatively, I placed my hands on the soil, my fingers sinking into it, dirt collecting under my nails.

And then I felt it—the power.

It surged up through my palms, a crackling force vibrating through my bones. Magic coursed through my veins; I could actually see tributaries of gold, pink, and green light up underneath my skin. The herbs and roots around the graves began to writhe, twisting and spiraling as if alive, pushing through the ground with a ferocious urgency. Leaves unfurled in seconds, stems thickening and blooming at an unnatural speed. The ancient oaks groaned as their roots stirred beneath the earth, intertwining with the growing plants. A variety of scents warred for supremacy—woody, floral, spicy, sweet—with the earthy smell of humus underneath. I spun around, laughing like a madwoman as a veritable Eden emerged in the cemetery. I ran from tree to tree, touching the bark and watching flowers bloom from nowhere under my fingertips. Everywhere I touched, flowers, herbs, and green plants sprang to life. The light in my blood faded but I could still feel the magic thrumming through me. Never in my life had it felt so strong, so present. I was nearly overwhelmed.

Verlean and Granma watched me, smiling wide. Mama stood a little apart, her lips pressed together in a tight line, her expression much more subdued.

“Thank you,” I told her.

She gave me a small nod of encouragement, her arms wrapped around herself.

Four generations rooted in the dirt, three on one side of eternity, one on the other. I gave them one last glance before heading back to my car. A ping on my phone alerted me to an email—the paperwork was done and ready to sign. I almost deleted Cutler’s message, but turning him down in person would be more satisfying.

Back at the farm, the fields bloomed for me as I walked through them, the herbs, plants, and roots doubling, tripling in size. It was yet night, but I lifted my gaze to the fields and farms beyond ours. My palms itched with power.

I had a lot to do.

José Luis Ramírez

I never knew a river could be in a state of apparent death. I learned about it recently when I read that the Atoyac was declared clinically dead, and for the past 30 years, efforts had been made to rehabilitate it to no avail.

Don’t ask why, but I imagine the river as a person being wheeled into a hospital on a stretcher, paramedics shouting at the emergency room doctors: “Code Blue!” But the truth is, she is not a beautiful Bollywood actress personifying the Ganga from the Vedas, nor is he an athletic son of Oceanus and Tethys. The Atoyac is a poor bastard reeking of shit and urine; he convulses and foams at the mouth, cursing every single one of the children he has conceived, barking like a rabid Xoloitzcuintle. And there are many names he screams in his own unintelligible tongue, a language older than Proto-Totonaco-Tepehua and Proto-Yuto-Nahua.

The river suddenly falls silent, letting the emergency room be flooded with the high-pitched beep and the flatline of the electrocardiogram. Someone shouts, “Clear!” and places the defibrillator paddles on his chest. The body arches for a second, as in death by tetanus. A male nurse—yes, a man—puts a respirator on the river’s mouth and presses the air pump a couple of times. “Clear!” Again, another shock. The ECG pretends to come back, but soon the line flattens again.

Is the Atoyac watching his life pass by like a movie?

A drop of meltwater in the Sierra Nevada, a spring in the rock, the streams become tributaries, and soon a single channel, rapids, waterfalls, rock eroded into gravel, all that potential energy contained in the Valsequillo dam.

Or rather, he remembers how they stripped him of everything he had and outraged him, mocking him for warming his bare feet with the warm water that came out of the drain. He swallows whatever they put in his mouth because hunger can always overcome dignity.

The doctor pounds on his chest, the male nurse squeezes the respirator pump, someone else shouts a curse, and out of nowhere, a heartbeat emerges, fragile as a tadpole’s tail.

There are no more vital signs.

There is no knee-jerk reflex when tapped with a hammer, nor do the pupils dilate in the light. Perhaps he hears what they say, and maybe he is conscious but cannot open his eyelids or respond to stimuli. Is he in a coma, catatonia, or catalepsy?

‘Clinically dead’ can be misinterpreted. The water flows; it preserves some flora and fauna, although ‘healthy’ doesn’t describe it well either. Just look at the oxygen levels, the pH, the foam, and the taupe color, between brown and grayish . . . .

Doctors take the patient out of emergency room and send him, as John Doe, to the Intensive Care Unit. There is no family member to watch over him. Who would care about an old, useless being? Certainly not the governor or the king of denim, those bastards who for years raped his daughters, marking his smallest tributaries with dyes and acids. Nor the grandchildren who profit by bringing pipes from far away, drying up the lagoons of Totolcingo, El Salado, and Alchichica.

Outside the San José specialty hospital, it rains; it may be due to hurricane season in the Atlantic or perhaps a north wind tempest in Veracruz, but the bottom line is that the storm here in the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley is more lightning and thunder than anything else, a tromba. Hailstones fall furiously, denting car bodies and shattering windshields; ice melts on the asphalt, drains overflow, and suddenly Red Cross boats appear on 5 de Mayo Boulevard rescuing the unfortunate who climb onto the roofs of their cars through the windows.

The stranger has an occasional spasm; it’s not his only proof of life, as there is also the rapid movement of his eyes, the beta waves on the electroencephalogram, the accelerated pulse. The vital fluid flows through his veins and arteries, but what good will it do if it is black and thick?

Does he remember when, in 1963, he was confined in solitary? Tubed and channeled at the Xonaca stream and the San Francisco section, from the Xalpatlac ravine to the corner of 5 Sur and 49 Poniente? There, where everything around stinks of rotten eggs.

Enough with the misery porn! Some treatment will be equivalent to hemodialysis, and, for the most fundamental rights, industries will be forced to treat wastewater. The government will have to invest in a trans-sexennial plan and mandate the drinking water concessionaire to contribute to basin sanitation.

Universities and civil society will also be forced to act by the water crisis; ecological engineers will seek methods to reverse the damage, and environmental education will be taught in schools, entrusting that the new generations will be more aware.

Thus, the patient will one day be able to move a finger, perhaps his left pinky, although no one will see him do it, just as they will not know if he was listening to what they were saying about him while he was in a coma and they were doing physiotherapy—words that were not kind. Nor will they know how he managed to escape from the hospital barefoot, with only a gown covering his chest but not his buttocks, and literally ‘slipping’ away from security guys.

Who is that old man walking at night down the boulevard, almost naked, with the rainwater up to his waist? Why do the trees, palm trees, and even the light poles sway, paying homage to him while the turn signals of abandoned cars blink under the water?

Rain washes the long gray hair from his beard and his mane, sticking his clothes to his chest. Then the black of the old man’s pupils lights up orange like molten iron, the Atoyac brings his arms together and, with all his might, extends his fingers. In that gesture of Kame-Hame-Ha, each molecule in his body becomes a tsunami that carries garbage, mud, and filth until it bursts the pipes that contain him, overflows the riverbed, and even ruptures the old Valsequillo dam, purifying itself in water that becomes crystal clear again, revealing the roots of the reeds and even some fish among the pebbles.

José Luis Ramírez

No sabía que un río podía declararse clínicamente muerto. Me enteré hace poco, cuando leí que el Atoyac lo estaba y que, desde hacía 30 años, se intentaba rehabilitar. Sin éxito.

No pregunten por qué, pero imagino al río como una persona entrando en camilla a un hospital y los paramédicos gritando a los urgenciólogos: ¡Emergencia Uno! Pero lo cierto es que no es una bella actriz de Bollywood personificando a la Ganga de los Vedas, ni tampoco un atlético hijo de Océano y Tetis. El Atoyac es un pobre diablo apestando a cagada y orines; se convulsiona y suelta espuma por la boca, maldiciendo a todos y cada uno de los bastardos que ha concebido, ladrando como un xoloitzcuintle rabioso. Y son muchos los nombres que grita en esa lengua suya, ininteligible, anterior al protototonaco-tepehua y al protoyuto-nahua.

El río calla de pronto dejando que la sala de urgencias se inunde con el pitido agudo y la línea plana del electrocardiograma, alguien grita: ¡Despejen! y pone las paletas del desfibrilador en su pecho. El cuerpo se arquea un segundo, pienso en la muerte por tétanos. Algún enfermero, sí, varón, le pone un respirador al río y presiona un par de veces la bomba de aire. ¡Despejen! Otra vez y nuevamente descarga. El ECG hace como que regresa, aunque enseguida la línea vuelve a aplanarse.

¿Será que el Atoyac está viendo pasar su vida como en una película?

Una gota de deshielo en la Sierra Nevada, un manantial en la roca, los riachuelos se convierten en afluentes y enseguida un solo cauce, rápidos, caídas de agua, la roca erosionada en gravilla, toda esa energía contenida potencial en la represa de Valsequillo.

O más bien recuerda cómo lo despojaron de cuanto tenía y lo ultrajaron, burlándose además por calentar sus pies descalzos con las aguas tibias que salían del drenaje. Tragar cuanto le pongan en la boca porque el hambre puede siempre más que la dignidad.

El doctor golpea en el pecho, el enfermero aprieta la bomba del respirador, alguien más grita alguna maldición y de la nada surge un latido frágil como la cola de los renacuajos.

No hay más signos vitales.

No hay acto-reflejo al golpear con un martillito en la rodilla ni se dilatan ante la luz las pupilas. Quizás escucha lo que dicen y tal vez esté consciente pero no puede abrir los párpados o responder a los estímulos. ¿Está en coma, catatonia o catalepsia?

Clínicamente muerto se puede malinterpretar, el agua fluye, conserva cierta flora y fauna, aunque ‘sano’ tampoco lo describe bien, basta mirar los niveles de oxígeno, el PH, las espumas y el color gris taupe, entre marrón y grisáceo . . . . 

Los médicos sacan al paciente de urgencias y lo mandan en calidad de desconocido a la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos. No hay familiar que vele por él. ¿A quién iba a interesarle un viejo inútil? Ciertamente no al gobernador ni al rey de la mezclilla, esos malnacidos que por años violaron a sus hijas, marcando con tinturas y ácidos a sus afluentes más pequeñas. Tampoco a los nietos que hacen negocio trayendo pipas de muy lejos, desecando las lagunas de Totolcingo, El Salado y Alchichica.

Afuera del hospital de especialidades San José llueve, quizás es temporada de huracanes en el Atlántico o haya norte en Veracruz, pero lo cierto es que la tempestad aquí en el valle Puebla-Tlaxcala es más rayos y truenos que otra cosa, ventisca; los granizos golpean con furia, abollan las carrocerías y estrellan los parabrisas, el hielo se derrite en el asfalto, las coladeras se desbordan y de pronto hay lanchas de la Cruz Roja en el Boulevard 5 de Mayo rescatando a los desgraciados que se trepan por las ventanillas al toldo de sus coches.

El desconocido tiene algún espasmo ocasional, no es su única prueba de vida, también el movimiento rápido de los ojos, las ondas beta en el encefalograma, el pulso acelerado. El líquido vital fluye en sus venas y arterias, pero de qué va a servirle si es negro y espeso.

¿Recuerda cuando en 1963 lo confinaron en solitario? Entubando su cauce en el arroyo de Xonaca y el tramo de San Francisco, desde la barranca de Xalpatlac y hasta la 5 Sur esquina con 49 Poniente. Ahí donde todo alrededor se apesta a huevo podrido.

Pero basta de pornomiseria, algún tratamiento habrá equivalente a la hemodiálisis y por los derechos más fundamentales se obligará a las industrias a tratar las aguas residuales, el gobierno tendrá que invertir en un plan trans-sexenal y obligar a la concesionaria de agua potable a invertir en el saneamiento de la cuenca.

Las universidades y la sociedad civil también estarán obligadas por la crisis hídrica, ingenieros ecológicos buscarán métodos para revertir el daño, se impartirá educación ambiental en las escuelas confiando en que las nuevas generaciones serán más conscientes.

Así, el paciente alcanzará algún día a mover un dedo, quizás el meñique izquierdo, aunque nadie lo verá hacerlo, así como tampoco sabrán si escuchaba lo que decían de él mientras estaba en coma y le hacían fisioterapia, que no era nada bueno. Tampoco sabrán cómo es que logró escapar del hospital estando descalzo, con sólo una bata cubriéndole el pecho, pero no las nalgas y literalmente escurriéndosele a los de seguridad.

¿Quién es ese viejo que anda de noche por el boulevard casi desnudo con la lluvia estancada hasta la cintura? ¿Por qué los árboles, palmeras y hasta los postes de luz se mecen rindiéndole pleitesía mientras las intermitentes de los autos abandonados parpadean bajo el agua?

La lluvia le lava las canas largas de la barba y su melena, pegándole la ropa al pecho, cuando el negro de las pupilas del viejo se encienden de un naranja como hierro fundido, el Atoyac junta entonces sus brazos y con toda la fuerza de que es capaz extiende las falanges y en ese gesto de Kame-Hame-Ha cada una de las moléculas que lo conforman se convierten en un tsunami que acarrea basura, lodo y mierda hasta reventar las tuberías que lo contienen, desbordar el cauce y aún explotar la vieja represa en Valsequillo, purificándose en agua nuevamente cristalina que deja entrever las raíces de los juncos y hasta algunos peces entre los guijarros.

J.R. Staples-Ager

The Society for the Preservation of Kynish Technology is proud to present the most complete artifact ever recovered from the Genetic Archive at Yor Yan. The following manuscript owes its remarkable preservation to its inscription on flesh paper, and its entombment in a bone box set into the foundation of the building. Both paper and box resisted even the hemorrhagic bombing which rendered the Archive inaccessible to all but the hardiest Shells.

As the manuscript was rolled up, exposing the latter sections to necrosis, each section was recreated with decreasing confidence. Despite the author’s unverifiable claims, our hope is that this recreation will shed light on the origin of Shell technology, as well as inform current policy on the use of Kynish relics.

 

<Specimen #YY1-340676>

Dr. _____ and His Thousand Children

0. Numbers (99% confidence)

Never put a number in the title. That was one of the first things I read when I set out to become a writer. Numbers confuse a story. A reader might recall a manuscript’s content perfectly, but, upon describing it to a friend, struggle to recall the title. The doctor and his . . . .  The million children of . . . .  Oh, it had a number in it.

My life, unfortunately, has been all about numbers. I have had, at various times, anywhere from fifty to a thousand siblings. (I am rounding, of course. Considering Dr. _____ fertilized over 15,000 embryos—resulting in 2,972 live births, 862 numbered adults, and 59 siege survivors—you must lend me a little grace.) My father’s first 347 children did not live long past maturity, and were therefore fed to the nutrient reclaimer, the same policy he used for stillborn kvennik calves. I was number 523, late enough in the progression to have relatively few defects, but not so late as to carry the burdens thrust upon his later works.

This number, 523, meant I was old enough to witness the rise and fall of the Observatory at K_____ from beginning to end. However, this story does not begin with my birth, a half-formed thing pulled from the vivisected belly of a kvennik. Nor does it end with the fall of the Observatory, that weeks-long siege with its grisly end.

It does not even end with me now, a married adult expecting their first child. In fact, I wish not to exist in this story at all. I have been too perceived already—both by the staff at the Observatory and the soldiers, reporters, and psychologists who descended after its fall. I do not want my father in this story, either. He has loomed too large in the coverage of our family: What drove a genius to such unnatural acts? As if he needed to be humanized just as much as his children did. This story is not even about my siblings. Number 348 writes far more beautifully about our cohort than I, and even journalists have done a better job at listing our multitudes than I ever could.

You might conclude, therefore, that this story is about nothing. Self, father, siblings—what else could there be, apart from that grotesque family unit, curled in on itself like an ingrown nail? I have deliberately bored you, dwelling on the function of numbers in the titles of manuscripts. I have started with the least important information and worked up to the most important—then refused to reveal what that important information is. I have told you everything this story isn’t, and nothing that it is.

Well then. This story is about the 1,897 burials I performed between the ages of 5 and 13. It is about E____, whom I met while attending to one such burial. It is about the anatomy of the noble kvennik, the Observatory’s stunning pens, and a secret I remain unable to reveal until my death.

I suppose, in a sense, it is still about nothing.

 

1. Burials (92% confidence)

Psychologists asked me what it was like to bury so many of my siblings. Despite my poor socialization, I knew the truth would impact my future survival. I simply told them that it gave me nightmares, and they left me alone. There were too many of us, pulled from the carrion stink of that building, to tease out the trauma of those who were not at obvious risk.

This was not a lie, per se. Gravedigging did give me nightmares. But I also enjoyed it, in a very specific sense. It was a job that needed doing, and I did it. As I was one of the few among my siblings who could read, write, and speak Kynish, I might have secured a coveted indoor position. But I feared the harsh punishments attendant to the record-keeping and laboratory jobs and wished to pursue an occupation with minimal supervision.

The circumstances lined themselves up perfectly. My predecessor—Number 497, my first burial—had recently succumbed to illness, leaving the position vacant. Dr. _____ had been selecting for strength and height at the time of my conception, so my physical profile made me an excellent fit for the job. I took over from 497 in the spring after my 5th birthday. Within the first year, I had turned the blisters on my palms into calluses and the constraints of the classroom into a distant memory.

I did not enjoy it at first—in either the specific or the general sense. I would receive the bodies from 433, autopsy assistant and pusher of the corpse-carts. Plague risks were buried; those who had died naturally or been culled were processed into kvennik feed, as well as experimental nutrient slurries. I have lied by omission, painting myself as gravedigger only—I have been a butcher of meat both human and animal. In the beginning, I performed one or two burials every week, and spent most of my time feeding corpses into a pipeline modified from kvennik processing. Because the processes were so similar, I also assisted in kvennik butchery during meat season. Three years in, the number of contaminated human bodies increased, and I began gravedigging in earnest.

Those relentless years of burial were what made me start thinking about the numbers. Perhaps gravedigging might seem peaceful, if only in comparison to the lurid nature of butchery: broken pelvises, blood pooling into gutters, skin scalded with boiling water to loosen it from flesh. But it was only then, in my gravedigging days, that I was forced to confront exactly how much life was being wasted.

I could not intellectualize mass burial into components, or turn it into a completed circle with immediate results. The earth bloated; bodies swelled with rot, and the earth could not pack flat again. It called into question the fundamental premise of the Observatory: that we were a circular, private religion of progress, in which one was reincarnated in one’s siblings, and everyone strived for better things.

I dug graves with a round-point shovel and digging bar and, later, an excavator purchased with great haste from a neighboring farm. There were no coffins—think of the expense of 1,897 coffins!—and the Observatory provided fewer and fewer shrouds as Dr. _____’s experiments reached their peak. This made body-handling an awkward business, all leaky mouths and flopping limbs. On a good day, a 3 by 6 span hole filled with quicklime was enough. On the worst days—I was around 12 by that time—I would dig a grave for a hundred or more bodies, douse it in kerosene, and set it on fire. It took 8 or 9 hours to dig a hole that wide and deep, even with the excavator and a dozen siblings as assistants. And the smell . . . . 

I have put off writing about it for years, thinking I could describe it in perfect detail, so the reader would be forced to experience it precisely as I did. But I have learned, observing the response to 348’s work, that readers will imagine what they like. One journalist even asked me, Which was the worst to bury? I still remember the red rouge on her lips, how it stuck to the white bone of her teeth.

I was subsisting on media coverage at that point, a disabled adult with poor social skills and no real education. Even my handler, the money-grubbing old sinner that he was, was insulted by the question. You expect my client to answer that?

I never had the opportunity to respond, but I turned the question over in my mind for days. Which was the worst to bury? The small bundles of the miscarriages with their gluey consistency? The newborns with inverted lips? The toddlers, jaws melted from bone worms? The culled adults, still moving after a misfired bolt to the brain? The ones I had known? The ones I had seen from a distance, and was only now seeing up close?

I could give you individual examples, and force you to knit the general from the specific: A translucent external pouch holding the digestive organs. Six limbs on one body, half of them boneless. A second mouth protruding from the belly, teeth degraded by stomach acid—and so on. Or I could make you unravel the specific from the general: I have seen more shades of red than I have a name for, because the name was the thing itself, and not everything is like something else.

Neither, I think, conveys the scope of it. It seems more and more monstrous to tell you I enjoyed it. At the least—at the very least—it allowed me to pay my respects to the dead.

My respects were not particularly complex, mind. The way to dig a hole 6 span deep, after all, is to dig a hole 6 span deep. If they had hands, I crossed their hands over their chests. If they had eyes, I closed their eyes with a gloved thumb. If they were adults, I memorized the maturity number branded on the neck. If they were not, I memorized the birth number branded on the thigh. If I had time, I planted flower seeds stolen from the greenhouse. I fertilized them with kvennik manure, and watered them with runoff from the river.

Perhaps respects is not such a ludicrous term, after all. Though the Observatory is gone, I remember every number and name. I have never stopped counting. This ritual has become so ingrained in me that, during a particularly difficult period several years ago, I dug myself a hole and slept at its bottom for several nights, counting all the way up from 1,075 to 2,972, 497 to 862, and 1 to 1,897. I have since filled the hole and planted viskany flowers in the turned earth. I can see them outside my window, now, waving bright red in the wind.

Back at the Observatory, the day’s hole would swallow me. 6 span down made the ground level with my head, so I had to cut shallow steps to get out. Deep within the earth, I watched myself as if from a great height. I had long since learned to keep the intense arithmetic of my continued existence—the pursuit of meals and praise, the avoidance of culling and infection—as far away from the ritual of burial as possible. On my best days, I could leave the earth entirely, and float unimpeded through the air.

This detachment, whether learned or inherent, has persisted well into my adult life. The urge to remove myself remains even while writing this story—as if it is, if you will forgive the obvious metaphor, a dead thing I am burying.

But the truth is that dead things no longer hold any horror for me. Their story is over. I owe them nothing; they feel nothing, so I am not obligated to end their suffering. There is nothing left to end. Watching the living, however—watching the living suffer—has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.

 

2. E____ (90% confidence)

One of the most pressing questions posed by the public was how Dr. _____ remained undiscovered for so long. He continued to publish his psychological and gynecological papers while running the Observatory, including several on the theoretical cultivation of embryos outside the human womb. And while the Observatory was remote, it nevertheless sold meat and dairy to the entire principality, requiring extensive deliveries to continue its operation. The town of K____ was only a league away. How could a place so horrible persist right under the public’s noses?

There have been many rationalizations: Dr. _____ was a highly respected scientist, and deep in the pockets of the local constabulary. The Observatory had a false front, so delivery vehicles only viewed the pens reserved for the meat and dairy kvennik, not those forced to birth my siblings. High walls surrounded the property—ostensibly to keep volchanik out, but in reality to keep us in. Isn’t it understandable that the public might not smell the stink of the corpse fires?

An often ignored truth is that the Observatory was both an asylum and a slaughterhouse. Nothing could have concealed it more effectively than these two facts. “The public”—blameless until the disclosure of the Observatory’s true nature, outraged forever after—knew it was a horrible place and did nothing. That it was an asylum whose inmates were born and buried there was beside the point. Number 348, poster child for us survivors, has put the irony most eloquently: We were humanized only upon the revelation of just how inhuman we were.

While everyone knew of the venerable Dr. _____—his grand ideas, his commendable work putting unfortunates to useful labor—few people wanted to meet those unfortunates and verify his claims. Apart from the butchery of human meat, our hygienic standards were little different from those of other slaughterhouses and sanatoriums. Though his assistants were sworn to utmost secrecy, as he could easily ruin their careers, this was more formality than anything. Kyne’s researchers were bent on biological improvement at the time, and while the claims of government funding have never been substantiated, I would not be surprised if our intended purpose was to become an army of cheap, obedient soldiers.

As for the townsfolk, the people most likely to realize that something was deeply wrong? They devoured the Observatory’s meat and milk at heavily discounted rates, rationalizing their runoff-related diseases as no worse than they’d get in Kyne’s stinking cities. Most could not afford to put food on the table without Dr._____’s charity, much less move elsewhere, making the Observatory more blessing than curse. Further, as I learned from E____, local superstition surrounding several disappearances kept them far away from the Observatory itself.

I was 11 when I met E____. I was digging a grave at the time—one of my very first mass graves, a particularly bad one. The smell was too much for me, so I had taken a break by heading to the river to get water for the flowers.

This is what saved E____’s life and, though I did not know it yet, mine. If she had followed the river into the Observatory proper—no doubt asking the nearest person about the hormone treatments used on the kvennik—she would have been knocked unconscious, shot with a captive bolt pistol, and fed to the machines. Her torn and bloodied clothes—tangled with a token arm or leg—would be found weeks later, and her death attributed to volchanik. No one would have heard of poor E____ V____ again.

I knew, because I had heard of such things happening before. But I did not make the connection immediately. When the girl came walking up the river, I assumed she was one of my siblings. Every child I knew, after all, was one of my siblings. And yet . . . I knew my siblings, and she did not look like one of them. She had bright-colored clothes, not the pale smocks worn at the Observatory, and her round face was free of hormonal augmentation. More than that, she seemed to want to talk to me.

“I’m here about the frogs,” she said.

I felt a sudden vertigo, as if a chasm had opened between us. An outsider. An outsider was here in the Observatory. “The . . . frogs?”

She lifted a complicated apparatus: it bubbled with strange protrusions, like a water clock subjected to one of Dr. _____’s more extreme limb-development experiments. Apparently my stunned stare made me as good an audience as any, because she immediately launched into a lengthy explanation.

The injection of growth hormones into kvennik has long been established practice in Kyne: to increase milk yields, facilitate gestation, and hasten maturity. Runoff from slaughterhouses—urine, feces, milk, blood—has documented effects on human development, from premature birth to early death. But limits have been established to keep harm at acceptable levels, and nowhere were the effects as extreme as they were in K____.

What alerted E____ to the Observatory’s transgressions was not K____’s miniscule fertility rate. It was not the early bleedings, undropped voices, or cyclopic stillborns. It was not the fact that she was born with her index finger fused to her middle finger, like a badly knitted glove. It was the frogs.

E____’s favorite species—a race of tiny green amphibians the size of her thumb—were dying. After three consecutive summers studying them—squatting by the riverside, catching tadpoles in a bucket and raising them by hand—E____ concluded that this was due to an imbalance in the sexes. Growth hormones from the slaughterhouse were causing a disproportionate number of frogs to become female—E____ was all but certain of it.

E____’s mother, a glassblower, had created the apparatus to help E____ test her hypothesis. It was part collection device, part culture tube: allowing E to gather water samples and observe their effect on the frogs throughout development. The farther water samples were taken up the river, the more the sex distribution became skewed. Frogs raised in water taken from just outside the Observatory were almost exclusively female. Growth hormones at the established limits for slaughterhouse runoff did not cause such skewed distributions. E____ was forced to conclude that either the dosage was extreme, or that different, more powerful substances were being used.

It pained her, to hurt the things she loved in order to save them. But she had written to the Observatory, as well as the agricultural and disease authorities of Kyne, all to no avail. (This lends credence to the theory that the Observatory was funded by the government. But I digress.) Without recourse from authority, she set out for the Observatory for answers.

Intriguingly, E____ did not frame her futile quest in terms of the suffering of K____. The sick children, the seemingly endless miscarriages, the families with livelihoods tied to that contaminated town—All this she painted in the lightest brushstrokes. It was only later that I learned E____’s own mother almost died bringing E____ to term. Instead, E____ spoke lovingly of the frogs: a clutch of their eggs, hundreds of tadpoles-to-be, no bigger than a thimble and transparent as glass. Their plight—the ruptured waste of unfertilized eggs, the silence where mating calls should be—brought her nearly to tears.

I felt a wave of repulsion at such juvenile emotion. Though I later learned E____ was almost precisely my age, I felt significantly older—and looked it. The powerful hormones injected into our kvennik mothers meant that most of Dr. _____’s children had adult female characteristics, regardless of age or chromosomal makeup. We also went through puberty extremely early—hence my ability, at 5, to dig a 6-span hole every day. E____ seemed to be around 2 years old, by my standards, and a prime candidate for culling. She lacked the height and muscle that would help one survive the Observatory, not to mention the common sense.

What incensed me most was how pointless E____’s risk was. She had disregarded every warning from her parents, every rule laid down by the bribed constabulary. She had crawled through the sluice gate that carried runoff from the Observatory towards K_____. Despite her rubber gloves and boots, she was still covered in flecks of filthy water. She had knowingly risked her own life—and the lives of her unborn children—in order to prove a hypothesis she all but knew to be true.

It took me a long time to understand this impulse. I thought it was because she was greatly indulged in K____, an endlessly curious girl, smart as a slap and bright as a new coin. Her face was unbruised, after all, and her pockets full of spending money. This was true, but not the whole story. Nor was the fact that, so desperate was she to save the frogs and K____, she could not bear to think the consequences all the way through. I now know that her greatest reason was this: she saw no difference between her, and K____, and the frogs, and me.

I saw the seed of it then, though I could not have given it a name. She was not afraid of me, monstrous as I was, stinking of the burning fat of the dead. She was not afraid of poisoning herself, or her children, on the chance that her children’s children might be free. Life was for the living, but also for those yet to live. However naive her methods, she considered herself insignificant under the weight of that responsibility. It was an ethos perversely similar to that of the Observatory: that it was right, moral even, to increase the suffering of those in the present, in order to decrease the suffering of those in the future.

When E____ had finally finished her explanation, I spoke. I had barely said anything for weeks, and my throat was roughened by smoke.

I said, hadn’t she heard the Observatory was full of the insane? That we would eat her up, like hungry volchanik, and leave nothing but bones? She said she herself was hungry, and had already seen enough bones.

I was hungry, too. I ate up the unschooled movements of her mouth and eyes, so different from the blankness I deliberately cultivated. Hers was a life outside the airless realm of my thousand siblings: an uncontrolled experiment, full of leisurely conjecture and forgivable mistakes.

I should have scared her away. Every moment we stood there, talking of trivial things, I cursed myself for not doing so. I was so much larger than her, so much more aware of the harm that could come to a child at the Observatory. If I had waved my arms and screamed, beat her bloody, chased her down the river and away from the burning graves . . . . 

I did not scare her away. We talked for half an hour. I promised I would tell her the truth about the Observatory if only she never returned to the premises again. I led her to the sluice gate, and returned to gravedigging. I was punished for that half hour, but there were no further deaths that day.

E____ kept her promise, and I mine. At first, I left notes on the wall, spooling out the secrets of the Observatory. I wish I could say that I was wary, withholding. I was not. I began sneaking away at night to talk to her. I told her about the waves upon waves of cullings, how they would likely increase if she spoke to anyone—especially the constabulary. I found her superb at keeping secrets. E____ had no sense of her own personal danger, but danger to others terrified her. I suppose this was unsurprising, coming from someone who cared so deeply about frogs that she would risk permanent disfigurement to save them. It was surpassingly strange: to witness the same gleam of interest as in Dr. _____’s eyes, set to an entirely different purpose. There was a ravenousness to E____, a starving fascination that defied all categorization.

She was brilliant. Oblivious. A shameless pedant with no sense of the listener’s discomfort or endurance. When we were separated during the siege—and worse, during the months afterward—I would have burned everything I owned, I would have given every memory, just to see her again.

It’s an interesting thought—to meet E____ again, having forgotten everything. Sometimes I think it might not be such a large sacrifice. We could live as we did before the siege: suspended in time, the truth indeterminate as an unhatched egg floating in one of her glass culture tubes. But how could I complete this manuscript without the numbers driving me forward?

That first day, forgetting would have been no sacrifice at all. I resented the odd little girl who had pierced the floating calm of my solitary rituals and brought me back to the contaminated earth.

 

3. Kvennik (87% confidence)

The kvennik is a noble creature.

Consider the ingenuity of her descent: a daughter to a daughter to a daughter, the only asexually reproducing mammal in all of Kyne. Consider her ever-productive milk glands, the accommodating cavern of her womb. Is not her usefulness a kind of nobility—to give and give, and take so little in return?

The kvennik is ignoble as sin.

Consider the inconvenience of filing her horns down to prevent goring, the hassle of making her breed true. Consider the stink of her shit, the bloody mess of butchery. Is not her dependence a sin—to take and take, and give so little in return?

Perhaps no creature seems simple when you have spent as much time with it as I have. I have witnessed kvennik exit the womb, attain adulthood, and be led to the stunning pens to be slaughtered. I have attended their feedings, surgeries, immunizations, and sterilizations. I even spent my womb-time in the belly of a kvennik. Tossing in my bed at night, I used to imagine that warm, wet dark: what would it be like, to dream of the world without ever having seen it?

I have also, it is sad to say, eaten a lot of kvennik. This means I have eaten someone’s mother—my aunt, or at least “aunt” in the sense of the creature who gave birth to one of my siblings. (Squared by the fact that all of the Observatory’s kvennik were genetically identical, the thought is even more discomfiting. Were they all my mother?)

I am grateful, in my own way, but cannot help but resent the kvennik’s dependency, even as I defend her usefulness. When I attended high school in Y____, my fellow students would low at me, pulling the tips of their noses up so they looked like mine. Their impressions were terrible, but I can’t fault them for trying. How could I expect them to view me as human, after every inhuman experiment performed by the Observatory?

While there are many similarities between the kvennik and the children they bore, none of us have any genetic link to our kvennik mothers. I was born from an egg generated from a stem cell, itself generated from a skin cell taken from one of Dr. _____’s female nurses. (This story is not about the nurses, either. Others have described the indiscriminate abuse; I feel no need to repeat it.) This arduously created egg was then injected with Dr. _____’s sperm and used to impregnate a kvennik, who was hormonally induced into a rapid 2-month gestation. Later, after I had settled in Y____, a genetic testing company offered to let me know which nurse was my second genetic parent. It’s free! they insisted. I declined. People assume you’ll want something just because it’s free.

The kvennik pays nothing for her life, but pays with her life anyways. While Dr. _____ discovered that kvennik could be injected to give birth to human children as well as carry them, he also discovered that this would render them infertile and necessitate their butchery. Our “mothers,” therefore, were vivisected after being stunned with a bolt to the brain, combining the two processes neatly. I have imagined this too—to be sleeping, content, and then cruelly wakened when what you think of as the whole world is sliced open. It is a startling idea: could this world, too, be sliced open? Once born, one ceases to be a victim by default, and becomes capable of cruelty—harmed, certainly, but no longer harmless.

Have I bored you to sleep yet? Are you ready to wake up?

 

4. Stunning Pens (54% confidence)

The quality of recreation drops sharply in this section. While its first and final portions were rolled near the bottom of the bone box, leading to improved preservation, its heavily damaged middle leaves the author’s actions unclear.

 

My father’s experiments became grotesque near the end.

Even I must admit this—I, who maintain that while what was done to us was grotesque, none of us are grotesque in ourselves. It is one thing to know you should not have been born, and another to think that, as a result, you do not deserve to live.                     have spoken via hand-sign to my siblings           performed flesh                     means of translation.                     

Around child 790, it was no longer possible to separate the experiment f[rom the] person. My later siblings appeared [to] possess ideal                     —at least by the standards of my classmates in Y____. And their initial evaluations were           from the baseline established by those of us in the 500 and 600 range. This is part of what led to the increased burials—a                     culling of           However, these bril[liant] new lights did not burn long. Upon autopsy,                     organs                      degene[rate]           A single burst of                                         deliberately                     , or some flaw in [the] design? I pray no one repeats his                      to          find o[u]t.

I am glad to have saved E____’s life, but I have           wished that she had not saved mine. At the time, this was because           I was an insignificant member            set. That final purge was coming, regardless of the actions of a gravedigger and their           . Now, it is because of the bitter con[sequences] of the           : the bl[ood on m]y hands, and [on] hers.

My expertise at mass burial is the reason I am alive. It saved me from the cullings during the siege, and the                     after. But I could no longer see any purpose to that salvation. I need not explain to you the                     dissonance of living solely due to others’ [deaths].

It is difficult to explain my actions after           . I have always, [al]ways wanted to live. If you had lined us all [up before a] firing squad I would have fought you, tooth, nail, and shovel. But to witness life after l[ife] birthed with the deliberate pu[rpo]se of being cut sh[ort] . . . . 

His mas[ter]work                              reache[d]                      [pe]ak in early

plan

          E_[____          ]                              we                                        

led every kv[ennik]                    s[tun]ning [pens]                     live witho[ut]                     moth[er]s

                                                   

not e[n]ough                     b[u]ry                                         

beat[e]n se[ver]ely                    ey[e]

          hate to be per[ceived]                     after                                                                      but

we[e]ks                              fe[a]red

          It was hell. It      hell.                     not forced to do it. Everything is easier when you’re forced to do so, don’t you [think]? Righteou[s]                    was not en[ough]. Keeping                    safe was not [enough].

I am dull            no one. But I know suffering. I know what it takes to make it stop.

I still think I went about          the wrong [way]          The suffering of the last experiments and the kvennik carrying them [was]          pressing. But the suffering of the future . . . I should have gone for his rec[or]ds.

I write this now in my own blood, upon my own skin, encased within my o[wn bone]. All of this cultured outside my body, in a womb like                     kvennik’s. None of           would be po[ssi]ble without those damned records.

Even at the end [of the] siege          —[the]           planned murder-sui[cide]                     the antidote that 670,            lab assistant with better knowledge of                    than any of us, slipped into                     siblings’ drinks, but not the Doc[tor’s]—His rotting bo[dy] was not enough.           should have burned [it to the] ground.

I have sealed this within                              I have no illusions that my own child will be           But I can protect them from this. Whether this brutality is hereditary or                       it was mine.

 

5. “A Secret” (<30% confidence)

The fifth section—provisionally titled “A Secret” based on the other sections’ naming conventions—was too damaged for even piecemeal recreation. Among the phrases predicted with greatest confidence were “difficult to conceive” (52%) “my wife” (47%), “archive” (49%), “genetic” (41%) and “to ensure” (40%).

Curiously, a fragment of the manuscript appears to have flaked off during necrosis and imprinted on the side of the bone box. It was later recreated with 60% confidence:

 

we no longer suffer

 

</Specimen #YY1-340676-A>

 

Notes:

While Specimen #YY1-340676’s obfuscation of places and names (“Dr. _____,” “The Observatory at K____”) might seem in keeping with Kynish info-suppression, it is not consistent with other Kynish media, which tended to censor wholesale rather than piecemeal. It may therefore have been deliberate on the part of the author.

Meanwhile, though the author makes reference to numerous other media describing the Observatory (“Number 348,” “his records”), none have been recovered, either at Yor Yan or other Kynish archaeological sites. Assuming that this manuscript does indeed describe a crude precursor to Shell technology—and that the Archive contained other such media and genetic material—this could be a reason for the site’s destruction. Partial genotyping of the bone box and flesh paper indicated a genetic link to the precursor of current Shells, lending credence to this hypothesis.

The narrator’s brief reference to “viskany” flowers, meanwhile, is intriguing in the context of a bone plaque recovered from the Archive’s front wall. The plaque indicated that the director of the Genetic Archive at Yor Yan was Dr. Estek Viskanyas, “noted biologist and contributor to the field of scientific ethics.” Several Society members have posited that Dr. Viskanyas could indeed be the “E____ V_____” described in the manuscript’s third section. Such plausible connections, while appealing, are unverifiable—even in the context of what the Society found at the hypothesized location of the “Observatory at K______.”

A full description of the Society’s search methods can be found in under #YY1-340676-B. Succinctly, three rounds of Shells were deployed to Koivin Ras, a famously inaccessible site 167 leagues from Yor Yan. The first two rounds succumbed to delta-stage organ putrefaction—a contagion typical to Kynish sites, though this particular strain was even more virulent than the one at Yor Yan. A third, successfully immunized team of Shells was able to penetrate the site, but was unable to recover any relics—a surprise, as even the most toxic sites often contain traces of human genetic matter. The house, farm, barns, and graveyard—if there ever were any—had been obliterated, and the earth was overgrown with red flowers, each an exact clone of the other.

Hank LaRose

What is up with the sky? What is up with it and the clouds and the grasses and how everyone talks? Do you know this? Why they don’t stop as it goes closer to the end of the table, Jess? They could just say, “Oh my geez do you see that glass thing is nearly to fall off the table, drop and shatter on the floor?” That would at least be a step, don’t you think? As the glass seesaws, deciding whether it should tip, bumping closer and closer to being like milk and glass cereal on the ground. Do you see this, Jess? That people make shape of the world and, with their gift of tongue, speak. If they wanted. Not just some ancient reptilian noise. Speak, so they may see you.

Look—I will tell you what it is if you do not know. If you will listen again. Not just pull me into the room so you may do your business. No more to line me up on the stand, slide my head through the wood, and squeeze me for what I have to give you by my body. Here I am and I will tell you. I will tell you about the clouds and the grasses and everything moving as though it were this great big before. Coming and building. I will tell you of the new grass that gives me the diarrhea. Of the voice that says rain for forty days, coming from the air like a craving. Of how people talk like nothing, like how are you guy, good sweetie, oh it’s so nice to see you, yes let us convene again, maybe over lunch because we are friends. Do you feel this like me? That it is nearing? Or am I just a goat.

These are just a few that concern me, Jess, in a list of long. Truthfully it goes and goes forever, this list, so full of parts that to tell you all of this big arrival would be to blab nearly everything, and that I cannot do as time is creeping up. What I want to say quickly is that I am sorry to make myself out of dust and leave no goodbye, but I don’t believe in it anymore, and I’m not sure what you would do if you saw I was leaving. You might tie me down or search the fence for the hole I’ve been gnawing. You would probably use it as more reason to sigh when I attempt to say something honest. Oh, Cass is too smart for her own good. Oh, she is such a bother. Oh, if she only further developed the cortex then she would know that Jess and milk is scripture. That the tongue is truth and the fence is law. But Jess, there are things I used to do that now feel as if I’m wearing tiny socks. Not that there’s the low on circulation, but that I realized nearly all you have for me is socks and I cannot do so because I have hooves, Jess.

You see, with the pepperweed I tried to show you, like how we talk nearly all the time. You nod, and I say good, thank you. I lift my head through the hole, you look me in the eye, I look back at you, you smile, grab my teats, and there is love. I felt it in your hands, Jess, when you squeezed me. How you called out so we may embrace in our square room. I remember how it was young.

Last time, though, I brought the pepperweed that grows over by the creek. I tried it like usual because I enjoy the flavor more than grain, I think, since it does not show itself right away. Grain is small and pebble-like so you’d expect the crunch. Pepperweed, on the other leg, is a mustard. It is green and stemmy like the other greens that live near like the grama and buffalo grass, and if that was all you could believe or know, that all these green stemmy plants were alike, then you’d think they’d both be mild. But beneath is a quick spice and wow I am glad it grows by the creek. But this is not why I talk about it.

I brought it by the pen to show you it has a new taste, a foul taste that comes at the back of the throat. Did you know this? Also Jess, around it grew this darkened patch of plant like from some kind of fungus. As I smelled it I bumped the leaves, and they crumbled as dust. A grey stem that just dissolves into nothing. Maybe the grama or something else, I couldn’t tell, up from the base and empty as it went higher, looking stable until you touched, causing the thing to poof into the wind. I swear a twist came at my throat when I saw this happen, a twist like how a cable is wrapped in loops, around and around until it’s dizzy, my head. Remember not just this once, but more as I turned to look over toward the west side of the field. Over the fence on the far length of the river the peppergrass looked like nothing at all, just not there or hidden by the grama. Green hills or greenish hills with this slight bit of grey. It was around us all. This thing. Wrapping, tighter.

So I bit off a piece of pepperweed and carried it up to the barn as the early morning rain trickled and made all these puddles in the field. You were there unloading from the vehicle saying hey like it was every day with us—let’s get things going. Though I was up on the fence making noise with my teeth and you said, “Easy now, Cassandra.”

You never like me on the fence.

Oh I remembered your truck wailed and you brought it to the shop right away, so I tried to make that noise to be like the truck to get your eyes. Kind of high squeaky and the wheezing of the pipe. You did this within the day, I remember, straight to the shop. So I squeaked, and then of course the whole herd copied, turning my call into noise as you continued to bring the boxes indoors, now not hearing me anymore. I stopped and waited a little. I watched the puddles in the rain. I knew I would see you in the parlor at least where I could speak to you alone. The herd continued their rumble.

Not soon after that I trotted inside the barn to meet you by the gate and Peanut followed with me knowing what was coming next, the milking, yet she still made the noise like the truck. Her eyes were wide and happy because she liked the noise as it came out between her lips. This is an everyday with Peanut, the waiting by the gate in the barn, as she wants us to bang our heads together. We hit and shared our thought until you came into the milk parlor, this time wet and frustrated, as you forgot your jacket. I saw it in your movement. I clacked Peanut’s head and told her about the pepperweed. She paused and then hit me back. I said yes, feeling dizzy. We stood there for a long moment, as I saw her big eyes deciding, then taking and holding the brain pieces near her chest. “Oh,” she said in her face, and moved aside to let me through the gate when you first opened it. That I was grateful for, Peanut.

When we were in the parlor, Jess, I held the pepperweed in my mouth as you helped me up the stand. This while the routine brush and wipes. The room felt damp as some of the rain splashed through the window. I thought to tell you of the pepperweed in my mouth to signal. Yes, so I waved the grass around and you picked it from my mouth and dropped it on the floor. I saw it on the ground in front of me. You just threw it on the floor. Snatched it and threw it on the floor. Took it from me to put on the ground.

Then I tried something else by moving my mouth as I often see you move yours, Jess, with your lips and tongue flap. I had to bend and twist the muscles. It was like when a hinge goes the wrong way, like a leg far out of its socket. And for a second in that stretching I thought I my jaw came undone. Though I said it. I finally got the thing out. I said, “Pleeease, Jess,” which caused the room to fill with it and its loudness. I felt you slow your hands. You stopped, then you looked at me like always and said in one tone, “Not right now,” and continued milking.

This, I believe, hurt.

Jess, you know that I was staring to the wall, the white wall, as I felt you finish. Just the last squeezes and my head as a nothing with the white zooming in above, around me, filling. I saw that Peanut had sneezed on the wall the day before. Inside me this wanting to vomit. You had forgot to clean, so the dots were dried in a cluster and glistening and I felt the crawling up inside me like a puppet hand through to my mouth, pulling at the bones. My jaw hung swollen even though it popped back into place.

The spots on the wall seemed, for a long while, like they were moving, maybe, since they were at the end of my nose and my eyes had crossed. I could not tell. Globs would shift secretly until I was really looking and then they’d snap back. With the white still circling around. A nothing.

Then I saw you were done.

You were to let me out into the pasture as you always do, standing by the gate with it open beneath your arm, the milk room door open, my head unlatched from the block, and I waited, tall on the milk stand, as we stared for the long until you gestured to the gate. You widened like go out, Cass, go out across out in the pasture with the rain coming down. Just go out, Cassandra. I saw it bundled in your face. Another ahead, another tomorrow, the same day forever, and it was empty like a linked fence for you, tied together in a long unend. You rubbed your eyes to reach behind them the brush that won’t let us be. Yet you won’t stop this, day and day, because at least you can yawn and drink your drinks, at least you can pretend that you are Jess and then go home. This is what you’ve always said with that face, the one you hold at the end as you’re waiting for me to get on with it.

So as you did this yawn and such, I ran back to pick up the grass you dropped on the floor. Maybe I would say again with Jess, look, I get it. You’re tired. But I heard you come up behind me quick like I’d done something wrong. It frightened me how quick you were behind me. You snagged me and tugged me so hard by the collar that I strangled, then you pulled me around. You said, “Come on now, Cass, get out,” as you always do, like just a moment before there wasn’t any of that word I spoke but nothing and more sound. Then you pushed me through the hall toward the gate.

Jess, that’s all for this way. Tomorrow you might call out for me in the morning when it is just dark enough to think I’m still asleep. You’ll see if maybe I was in the corner behind some bale, yet as you look I won’t be there to respond. It’ll be quiet as you search. You might feel restless, and after a few hours you might find the hole in the eastern fence. You might say to yourself that this is some big deal while you worry for my health, feeling what you say is a kindness. That’ll be true for you as truth has always been—a thing to hold like my collar. You might wonder after many days, though time will take me away for I don’t know how long, or where. When I come back I will have the speaking down. Yes, and you will stop what you’re doing and listen. This is the promise like the rain tonight, on all the nights when the clouds are poised. Because I will have seen the world, as far as I can wander, and will tell you in clear words that beyond your eyes, your tongue, and your hands there is something big going on, Jess, and I will bring it to you in the clearest of words, understandingly.