Thursday, June 08, 2006
A Story: Part Two
When he was eleven, he went exploring. Their house was on a hill, with cleared but mainly unused fields around it, and a deep forest starting on the edges, and always creeping closer. The woods were never off-limits to him then; it was what boys did, they explored, they wandered out into the wilderness. Now, he thinks, Anna would never be allowed to do that, to go off on her own like that. But then, things were different.
It was several degrees cooler in the woods, the trees so dense that sunlight hardly hit the ground between them. There was a smell of rotting leaves and fresh dirt, and, occasionally, of a small animal with its skin falling away, its flesh carried off by shining black insects bit by bit.
That day, he went in farther than he ever had, far beyond the familiar paths. In his dreams now, he charts his progress again and again, following his boy self through the maze of trees until they come to the road again, the dirt track he had never seen before. It had to be long-unused; this far in it could only have been a way for moonshiners to reach their stills and those days were nearly gone. But the dirt was still fresh-looking, no fallen leaves covering the red clay, so that it was like a gash cut through the forest floor. In his dreams, he feels this feet in their worn-down sneakers gaining the new texture of this path, he turns east on it and walks o, in the thick quiet of a place far from other people.
It has always been hard for him to describe the rest of the day. Time compresses and expands for him in his memory, and he's not sure that it didn't in the present of the event, either. He knows that from twenty feet away he first saw it, what looked like a small stone house with most of the roof gone but the door and windows shut tight. When he got a little closer, he started to find the detritus on the ground; broken pots, a length of rusting chain, one corner of a mattress sticking up through the dirt that had been slowly covering it for years. Any number of small bones. He remembers standing in front of the door to the house and thinking that it couldn't be right. It was hardly the size of a child's playhouse, and no child would be out this far, no children could build something out of stones this heavy-looking. The broken things lying around it were full-sized, adult-sized objects; everything was out of proportion.
Miller knew even then not to open the door. Instead, he looked at the objects lying around the house with the interest of an archaeologist, with the idea half in his mind that this was a decent mystery, finally, worthy of his investigations. It was while he was digging something shiny out of the dirt with his shoe that he heard the door open behind him. Though he did not turn around, he knew that the woman's laughter that followed the door banging open came from inside the house. She's in there, he thought. She's been watching me all this time. That was the last thing he remembers thinking before he ran, not stopping until he fell into the light of his father's sod field, never looking behind him.
It was several degrees cooler in the woods, the trees so dense that sunlight hardly hit the ground between them. There was a smell of rotting leaves and fresh dirt, and, occasionally, of a small animal with its skin falling away, its flesh carried off by shining black insects bit by bit.
That day, he went in farther than he ever had, far beyond the familiar paths. In his dreams now, he charts his progress again and again, following his boy self through the maze of trees until they come to the road again, the dirt track he had never seen before. It had to be long-unused; this far in it could only have been a way for moonshiners to reach their stills and those days were nearly gone. But the dirt was still fresh-looking, no fallen leaves covering the red clay, so that it was like a gash cut through the forest floor. In his dreams, he feels this feet in their worn-down sneakers gaining the new texture of this path, he turns east on it and walks o, in the thick quiet of a place far from other people.
It has always been hard for him to describe the rest of the day. Time compresses and expands for him in his memory, and he's not sure that it didn't in the present of the event, either. He knows that from twenty feet away he first saw it, what looked like a small stone house with most of the roof gone but the door and windows shut tight. When he got a little closer, he started to find the detritus on the ground; broken pots, a length of rusting chain, one corner of a mattress sticking up through the dirt that had been slowly covering it for years. Any number of small bones. He remembers standing in front of the door to the house and thinking that it couldn't be right. It was hardly the size of a child's playhouse, and no child would be out this far, no children could build something out of stones this heavy-looking. The broken things lying around it were full-sized, adult-sized objects; everything was out of proportion.
Miller knew even then not to open the door. Instead, he looked at the objects lying around the house with the interest of an archaeologist, with the idea half in his mind that this was a decent mystery, finally, worthy of his investigations. It was while he was digging something shiny out of the dirt with his shoe that he heard the door open behind him. Though he did not turn around, he knew that the woman's laughter that followed the door banging open came from inside the house. She's in there, he thought. She's been watching me all this time. That was the last thing he remembers thinking before he ran, not stopping until he fell into the light of his father's sod field, never looking behind him.
