She knew him. She knew his name.
"Sad Noah -- into my arms again. The Rose child is yours, I suppose. You never told me, no, no.” She continued speaking to my father all the while, touching him here and there as she worked, muttering, "There’s never been another, Noah. No, no, no, never another, you’ve known that. I’ve waited for you these years, so now you’re staying put. I'm keeping you -- you won’t be leaving me anymore. I'm protecting you, right? And the Rose child, she’s family now, see? She’ll be fine, darling one. But she’ll stay here with you, because this is where you belong. And I’m so close, right? I’rn just across the tracks. And this way, of course, you won’t be going anywhere. Not somewhere else, or in the ground. Strangers won’t take you away. You’ll stay put for a long while. No more running away.” Then she kissed him on the lips. She kissed my father, saying, "I love you so much, dear sweet man -- so much-”
And how intimate she was while making an incision along the middle of his belly, cutting up to the center of his breast bone. How handy she was with that razor-sharp scalpel -- slicing each of his palms, continuing a little ways along the back of the wrists -- then piercing his soles; the scalpel traveling onward, steadily, over the ankles.
"Sinister apples,” she uttered when an incision was completed. "Sinister sinister apples.”
But those weren’t the words Dickens repeated; mumbling as he went outside, gripping the bucket of my father’s blood: "I’m tired tired tired-"
And so was I, perhaps. Or possibly shock -- not sleep -- overtook me during that long night, bowing my head, bringin my body to the floor, drawing my knees in toward my ribs. And if Classique had been there, she could’ve told me what transpired while I lay unconscious.
Or perhaps I was awake and observed it all -- how the tools were used, how the skin was peeled, how the intestines were held. The gristle and tissue cleaned from the nose. The brain spoon made by hammering and shaping a wire tip. The eyeballs snipped from the sockets. The removal of tendons. My father’s meat scraped and sheared, dumped into buckets. The fat trimmed from the underside of his skin. The bones sprinkled with powdered borax -- and the heavy wire fashioned into strips, bunched into balls. Each bucket now filled and hurried outside. Dickens in the yard-surrounded by buckets, digging the earth with a spade -- as sunlight began filtering through the Johnsongrass.
Imagination or memory?
"Sinister apples.”
Dell the butcher, rolling my father this way and that on the tarp, sewing him together. Then the smell of varnish, like nail polish, obliterating his stink.
And did I dream? W.as it the mystery train rattling at dawn, shaking me where I slept?
"Rise, Rose-”
Dell was nudging me with a wader.
"Rise and behold Noah."
Rise and behold my father, arms at his side, legs straight; glistening, coated with varnish, mended and stitched -- except for a rabbit-hole where his navel once budded, strands of wire lurking within. A hole bigger than my fist, cavernous, waiting to be searned.
"Is he better?" I asked.
"Of course,” Dell replied, "of course.”
But he didn’t look anything like my father. She’d given him a haircut, cropping his hair close to his scalp. His eyelids were sewn shut, bits of twine appearing as overgrown eyelashes. And his skin was lumpy in places, deformed. Still, he didn’t seem miserable. The varnish gave him life. He glowed.
"You’ll offer him a gift, yes?”
Dell pointed at the hole.
"Something that’s dear to you, Rose. Something he can keep by his heart.”
"Like what?” ·
"No, no, you decide. You pick the treasure for the chest.”
But what could I offer?
"Wait, I know."
Two heads, the traitors -- Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans, both screaming and weeping as I lowered them into the hole.
"Not me! Not me!”
"Please, please, please-”
"Goodbye,” I said, letting them drop. "Have a safe trip."
And they wouldn’t stop blubbering, even after Dell had sewed up the hole and applied the final coat of varnish. I could hear them, echoing inside my father.
"Help us! Help us!”
"There’s no light and we can’t breathe!”
Then a funny thing happened, I started crying. Tears surged, splashing from my lashes, streaming along my cheeks. Sobs caught in my throat.
"It’s the fumes, of course,” Dell said.
She reached out, resting a gloved hand on my shoulder. And when I moved to embrace her, she stepped back, withdrawing her arm.
"It’s unhealthy for your lungs, these fumes. Go to the porch and draw in. Go, I say -- draw in."
So I trudged outside -- brushing dry the tears, stifling the sobs -- and breathed on the porch. Only a hint of Lysol and varnish persisted, sneaking through the open door and raised windows. Otherwise, the morning air smelled fresh and cool, like spring water. And at last the sun was ending the dark hours; a reddish hue burned beyond the sorghum, bleeding under the starry sky.
In the yard, Dickens scooped dirt with the spade, wearily replenishing the pit he’d created. The buckets littered the ground, empty and upturned among the weeds. During the night he’d acted as Dell’s helper, fetching what tools she asked for, taking what was already used -- or wasn't needed -- and placing them into one of the four duffel bags on the porch. But now he was spent, pausing between scoops, adjusting his goggles and wiping his brow.
"When he’s done, we’ll be going.”
Dell brought me jerky, three pieces.
"Tonight I'll return,” she said. "But l’m tired as sin and my work is accomplished."
I began devouring the jerky while she slipped off the gloves, gnawing and smacking as she tossed the gloves on top of a duffel bag. Then she lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. And I caught a glimpse of her pirate-eye, the milk-white pupil and iris. A dead peeper-that’s what my father called a baked trout’s eyeball; that’s why I didn’t eat his trout. I hated those eyes.
Dell lowered the glasses and found me with her good peeper. She jiggled a thumb at the duffel bags.
"They’ll remain for the time being. Don’t mess with the contents, please.”
I nodded, chewing.
"Tonight we’ll put your house in order. An untidy home means an untidy person. This is where you belong, this is your place. So you get rest. And leave Noah be -- he must dry, understand?"
I imagined my father withered like a chunk of jerky, his skin tightening and growing brown.
"He’s a bog man,” I said.
"Nonsense, such dribble," Dell replied, and her ferociousness simmered below the surface; her good eye glared and her lips tapered. "Rose, that man is no bogeyman! What a terrible thing to say, horrible!”
She turned -- her housedress swishing against my knees - and marched away, shielding her face, protecting herself from a bee attack. I watched as she pounded down the front steps in her waders. And just then I heard the squirrel overhead, scampering on the steel awning. Dell heard him too. She twisted around in the yard, peering between fingers, glowering at the roof. Her hands parted briefly and she spit.
"Nasty-!" she cursed the squirrel.
And the squirrel chattered and ran. He tore over the awning, no doubt heading for his knothole.
Then Dell ambled toward Dickens, who had finished scooping dirt and was stomping on the pit with his flip-flops. And I tried not to think about what had slid from the buckets, what was now buried there in the yard. I wanted to eat and not think about anything.