Untitled

Somewhere in the Midwest, Pre Civil War.

I

“Walk faster, Ben. Hurry up.”

Alex hurries towards the barn, putting more distance between herself and her brother who, at four, has considerably shorter legs.

Something akin to a whine escapes Benjamin’s flopping and oversized head as he jogs to keep up with her.

She sees him falling behind, with his eyes barely open, and wonders for a moment why he doesn’t simply open his eyes once he gets out from under the warm covers, just to get it all over with at once. Ben lets out another whine, or whinny of sorts. Probably appropriate for a child of four and a half torn from a warm bed at such an early hour. Alex allows Ben these early morning whines, as he usually ceases upon entry into the barn. Also, she feels like this little coddling indulgence she grants him brings them closer, their father does not tolerate this sort of thing well.

This particular September morning an unexpected whip of the hasty winter stings at her bare legs. Still, more so than the cold, a deep seated uneasiness expanding in her gut, hurries her along the worn path between the house and the barn. She woke up with the hollow deep in her belly, and it did not sublime, as remnants of dreams do. Instead, she finds herself looking over her shoulder as though something trails her. She scans the wall of the forest to her right. The wall is no longer a fortress protecting her, but just shadows providing convenient places to hide, and watch.

Alex opens the barn doors, and once inside the pocket of animal warmth relaxes her tense shoulders, and the familiarity of the barn calms her nerves. As she sets about with the morning chores, she too feels some of the not too far gone drowsiness return to her eyes, they hang down low.

Alex, now eleven, runs the barn during the morning chores. Ben, dutiful as a soldier complies, with half open eyes and rolling head, staggering from one task to the next at the herald of his sister. Alex, in her ambiguous role as sister/mother, displays abundant patience with Ben.

The feeling of calm dissipates, but the kneading in her gut remains. She glances towards the barn doors, and has the peculiar feeling that something waits for her on the other side of those doors. It occurs to her that these thoughts are childish. Shaking her head she pulls down four pails from the large nails from which they hang, and hands two to Ben, who stands at her side. He has some trouble handling the two large pails, but he manages.

“That side Ben, Cleopatra first. Remember?”

Cleopatra the cow would get upset if not milked first. After discovering this trait, their mother had named her Cleopatra. Alex remembered the day, six years ago, their father had come home with ten cows, and two bulls. Mother and father had both laughed as they named the cows. Cleopatra, Elizabeth, The Potter’s Wife, Athena, Batsheba...some of the names Alex had recognized, even at five, as characters from the stories her mother told her.

Sitting at Gwendolyn’s udders Alex remembers the large chest of books which once sat in the middle of the house, and was rarely shut; it now lies buried somewhere. She thinks for a moment about finding it, but that thought saddens her.

“Ben, wake up,” Without even looking at him she moves about her task.

“I’m awake.” Ben picks his head off Cleopatra’s milk sac and starts to milk again. Cleopatra has her head turned, to inspect the source of the added pressure. Ben turns towards Alex, she is walking fast and spilling the milk.

“Alex, you’re spilling.”

She looks.

“Maybe I wouldn’t spill if you didn’t fall asleep and leave me to do everything.”
Ben opens his eyes fully, much earlier than scheduled, and looks over. Something is wrong. Alex continues to haste about the barn while Ben watches silently.

“Ben, don’t just sit there staring,”

Ben turns to the udders, mad that Alex picks on him for no reason. He milks Cleopatra fast, probably faster than she would have liked because she starts to fuss around and kicks over the bucket.

“Ben!” Alex is standing over him, and before either one of them knows it she has pushed him off the stool and picked up the overturned bucket. All the milk has spilled.

Ben looks up at Alex, she has never pushed him, not like that. He runs to the barn door and yanks it open. Alex feels the cold air envelope her, as she sits on the stool staring at the mess. That feeling returns to her stomach, in waves. She puts her face in her hands, her elbows on her bare knees and cries.

***

Ben sits just beyond the shielding wall of the woods, and as soon as he steps through the wall he feels better. Invisible. He sits on the ground, covered by the dense brush, and looks out at the farm. Something is wrong with his sister. He pulls his arms inside his jacket and lies down with his head resting on an empty sleeve. He can hear the cracking and splintering as Father chops wood out by the side of the house. He focuses on the steady rythym of the axe. With his eyes he follows the path to the barn and notices he left the barn door open and thinks that he should have closed it because Alex did not have on long pants. Ben is fine, the wind does not touch him in the forest. He feels warm arms spread over him, and he can smell the dirt and the dew. His eyes begin to close, and he thinks of his mother. He still remembers her. Lying there he can feel her hand gently smoothing out his hair.

“Ben.”

“Ben.”

“Ben.”

The voice is no longer his mother’s, and she leaves him when he opens his eyes. He can still feel her hand on his head, so he does not move, even though he hears Alex and father calling for him. He waits, and emerges from his hiding spot and the calls out to them.

“You know better than that Ben?” That is all father says before returning to the side of the house where he has almost finished piling up the chopped wood.
Alex looks at him apologetically. He smiles back because she doesn’t look worried like she did this morning.

“Ben, you shouldn’t go into the forest, you know that.”

“I just fell asleep, I wasn’t far, but I won’t tell you either.”

“That is fine, I know where you go to hide.”

He looks to see if she is lying. She is.

“Where?”

She laughs at him.

The sun shines a little warmer and the morning chill has given in to a pleasant afternoon. Alex feeds the animals, while Ben cleans up after them. The events of the morning seem unreal and distant. She knows they occurred because her eyes still feel salty and cool. She cannot explain her feelings, let alone explain them to someone else, so she walks to the vegetables and pulls weeds. Ben follows her lead and pulls weeds. She pulls them down the line, but he pulls them at random, she cannot guess how he chooses which weed to pull next. Ben, no rhyme or rhythm.

“Ah.”

“Ben, be careful,” Alex throws him a piece of old cloth she uses to save her hands from the thorny fur on the weeds.

“Alex? Do you think the Indians will steal our cows?”

“Why?”

“I heard Mr. Wilton tell father that he should be careful.”

“Ben, remember when that Indian came to our house and gave father that fur that he used to make that hat for mother. That was because he helped them get things to grow their vegetables. Why would they steal our cows.”

“I don’t know, but Mr. Wilton said they killed a whole family, even the children.”

The thought of being killed worries Ben, and Alex knows he thinks about mother, and maybe he thinks the Indians had something to do with her disappearance.

“You know Ben, I bet if they took Cleopatra, they would bring her right back.” This has the effect she wants. Ben laughs and turns back to the weeds, tugging at them. He finds a rather big one, nearly up to his waist, and he pulls at it. The top of it snaps and he goes reeling. “use both of your hands, one on top of the other.”
Ben gets a hold of the weed, a little lower this time. He pulls with all his might, but
it holds. He struggles.

“Here, let m…”

“No. I’m going to get it.” He keeps pulling.

“You can dig it.”

“No.”

Alex watches him struggle, trying one grip, and then the next. He pulls at the weed with increasing vigor. He strains his entire body, leaning back, pulling hard. Alex turns her back to Ben and continues to pull the weeds.
When she turns around he is gone, she sees Ben running towards the house. She looks down at the gnarled weed, still rooted firmly in the ground. She will talk to Ben, he knows when something is wrong.

***

Alex dreams at night, and her dreams grow. They grow into her waking life like vines, and they harden like vines so she can no longer close the door on them. The bad feelings, the feeling in the pit of her stomach seeps through. She tries hard to close the door, slamming it hard when she gasps awake, drenched in sweat. She presses her back to the door, keeping him out, or in. She no longer knows which is better, in or out. Everything is mixed up.

The woods, once wondrous, have darkened. Behind the trees where once hid the magic, now lurks this dark figure. When she sits at the dinner table, by the light of the dancing fire, and popping candles, the darkness of night no longer carry magic and mystery, but shadows and eyes.

Alex no longer sits at the window before bed to watch the stars powder the sky, she fears every movement outside.

She sits with her back to the window, very conscious of its transparency. Ben sits on his bed across the room from her. He looks at her as she speaks, but his expression remains constant.

“I don’t really know what it is Ben, but it just scares me.”

“Is he an Indian?”

“I don’t even know if it is a person,”

“Is it an animal?”

“I don’t know Ben. They are just dreams, but they make me feel nervous, so you might think I am acting differently because of you, but I am not.”

Ben thinks of his nap, and how mother was there. How she sang to him and stroked his hair, and he could not tell if it was a dream. So he asks

“Why are you scared if they are just dreams?”

Alex looks at Ben, and how he really wants to know, and it makes her laugh.

“You’re a silly kid.” Mother used to always tell him that, and it made him sillier. He laughs too.

“I have dreams too.” He says, because he knows why Alex is scared, he understands.

***

Alex sits at the window taking in the cool draft, a welcome relief from the burning fireplace. The weather has not cooled off enough to enjoy the burning wood without break, but there is no shortage of wood. Father chops wood all of the time, so that the pile is stacked so high. She thinks about her mother. Alex thinks about what it must have been like for her mother. Alex will one day recreate her mother's life in one of her books. She will write the following:


She agreed to move away from the richness of that city, where she had grown up the little princess in a large stately home. She had fallen in love with the romantic son of a shipping tycoon, and agreed to move out west with him to live a simple and pure life. Still, for all her troubles, she insisted on a proper house. So even before they moved, a team of the best craftsman in Boston were sent out to build her a house. When they first saw it, emeriging from the forest, they laughed, wide-eyed, at the absurd house in the middle of this rugged land. It had ornate trim and engraved pillars, it was appropriately comical. Their endeavor, while based on old notions -- he had come across the notion of the “Gentleman Farmer while reading St. Augustine’s Confessions – was blessed with new love, and they made it a warm and happy home together.

The caretaker, had greeted them as they drove up to the house. Their laughter puzzled him, hadn’t they just spent a seeming eternity on the bumpy, rock infested road. He had traveled that same road, and was already dreading his long trip back to Boston. Through lands polluted with the basest of men, and, oh the Indians. He could not wait to be back in the safe arms of civilized white society, where he would no longer spend his night in fear of savage raids, but instead discussing the relevant politics, smoking his pipe in peace, and enjoying the delicious pies his wife baked-not to mention how much he missed climbing onto this plump woman and thoroughly exerting himself while she squealed with delight-no, he could not wait.
Arm in arm this new couple took in their new home. He could not help but smirk at the thought of them alone in this wilderness. These two rich kids, with everything always just handed to them, even out here in the wilderness, they would have parquetry on the floors, and stained glass in the kitchen. Just picturing their faces in the windows watching the miserable natives surround their fancy castle brought him great joy.

All the while he continued to spout his rehearsed monologue pointing out all the fine craftwork and details.

Alex wondered what it was really like for them. There was no one to ask, she had asked father once, but he had avoided her question, and she didn’t want to ask again. Mother had told her a lot of stories, and from them she made the best guesses she could to imagine the rest.

The older she got the more she could understand, and the more of the picture that filled in, so that her memories and those stories she did have provided more and more insight. The more she understood of her parents, and these stories, the more she understood herself, which in turn allowed her to understand even more of those things which had already happened. The more she understood, the more she wished her mother could be with her at that moment.