CZ Studio and Radio Verte presents The Wild Wind by Corey Zimmerman.
Chapter 19.
A manual bookbinder.
A hard worker. He worked much harder than the other grave diggers. Alone he could dig six,
seven, eight graves a day. And when the others took a break, Book kept on digging. To Book,
a break was nothing more than an opportunity for his nerves to return.
Hey Book, come take lunch. We ain't never gonna see the end of these holes anyhow,
said Hank. Book kept digging. Come on Book, come have a sandwich, said Charlie.
And with a sigh, Book finally dropped his shovel.
The diggers always ate lunch under a large twisted tree on the edge of the ravine by
a small stone bluff covered in carvings. The primitive art of grave diggers of the
recent past. Hank, a round man, pointed up at the tree with a full mouth of ham sandwich.
This tree right here? This is the hanging tree. I know three of the Dunhung themselves right here.
Charlie, tall and slender, mid-twenties, his red hair swooped out from under his sweat-stained
cap. Said to Hank, that ain't true. Where do you hear that?
Book arched his long neck back to look at the tree. Just last summer, old Johnny Dickens'
wife left him for another man, his own brother. And Dunh broke all the chairs in the house,
his own brother raising his boy and all. Well, then he got word that he was hitched.
Then he wound up here with us. Imagine that. Everyone listened attentively, except Rich.
Rich was annoyed. He was always annoyed. And he sat off at a distance,
consumed in a cigarette and a cup of coffee he had just poured from his thermos.
Rich was the self-imposed boss of the crew, and some actually wondered if he was a patient or
an employee of the Hilltop. No one really knew, but they did know he was the grumpy son of a bitch.
Hank continued, Well, one day he took a rope, tied it to this here branch, and that morning
we found him dead as a dough now. Yep, eyes popped out and everything. Next thing we knew,
he was digging his hole. That poor old bastard was in the ground by sundown.
Hank looked over at Rich. Cup of coffee?
Bring your own damn coffee. Rich barked.
You grumpy bastard, said Hank. Then a week later, well, Timmy Rogers went
to school with him, lost a leg on the track or something. Well, he spent some time at the
poor house. Now he showed up just in time to take Dickens advice. We dug his hole too.
Right over yonder, Hank nodded to the right. Charlie then said,
You said three, Hank, and Rich threw his cigarette down and said,
Alright y'all, story time is over. Staring at the sun, staring at nothing,
talking to the sun, talking to no one, walking in circles, marching in place,
spinning around, skipping, hopping, tiptoeing, hollering, whispering, knocking, rocking,
sitting in silence, shaking the head, shaking the hands, slapping the face,
pulling the hair, sticking the tongue, shaking the finger, clapping the hands,
hugging the self, singing to the self, crying, lying, laughing, and lying in the grass.
All things I learned growing up on the hilltop. As I sit here before my typewriter, my hands shake,
my heart speeding disturbingly rapid. I feel weak, lightheaded, and I panic. I slide against
the wall and down the stairs and out the house, fighting vertigo every step of the way. Outside,
I collapse to the ground where I gasp for air, my chest heaving as I cling onto the grass with
my fists. I lie on my back and let the sun calm me, and as it slowly warms my nerves and joints,
long frayed and knotted with time, I worry my heart might seize up like an old ford sent out
to pasture to rot and rust back into the earth. But the rich soil below provides me peace,
a trick Dr. Zola once taught me long ago, and I grow calm. After some time, I return to my desk
with steady knees. I stretch out my clawed and aching hands and press a dreadful key,
one of the 26 which have come to haunt me. The Rose Garden was where I first met Book
and Fanny in the eighth year of the Century of the Devil. Book was an odd fellow, but gentle
and kind. I liked him an awful lot. But it was Fanny I fell in love with. Her dreamy eyes,
she was as beautiful as the breeze. She was breathtaking, cunning like a fox. I begged
her to teach me all her tricks. We would lie in the grass and bat her eyes like butterfly wings,
and once I fell to the ground laughing in pain as I threw out my hip, trying to swing it in that
way that makes the boys go wild as she would say. We'd laugh the days away, oh how I loved her so.
She showed me how to keep my ankles slim as we held her feet in the air, and she said,
you must lay upon the floor and rest your feet on the foot of your bed every morning as you dream
of love. Fanny also taught me to wash my face with buttermilk and I almost gagged watching her gutted
chicken. But we devoured the heart together for the sake of beauty. We were friends. At night we
would sneak out to moonbathe, and I'd listen to her wild adventures hoping to live half the life
she had. She once told me she'd stolen a cow and rode it all the way from the Ozarks to Iowa,
but in all honesty I never knew what to believe, but I chose to believe it all. However, looking
back I suppose, Fanny could have gotten anyone or anything to think or do just about anything
she desired, and that made me all the more vulnerable. She was the first to tell me I was
lovely, insisting I eat plenty of your sweet potatoes Sam. They're good for the rosy cheeks,
she would say, those the boys adore. Or you can always slap yourself across the face,
whichever you prefer, and again we would laugh. I began not only to walk like her,
but dress like her, showing a little leg, talking like her, a little attitude stirred
with flattery. I pushed out my backside, arching my back as far as I could, a bit painful,
yet I did not mind. For beauty was pain, she would say. You always gotta be on the make,
especially while smelling the roses, and never forget to peek ever so slightly, ever so sexful
over the shoulder, and bat your lashes like I showed you, not once, but twice, not three
times. As you do not want to come off too loosey, and right when you catch his eye,
look away, and when you walk away, remember that sway. Keep him yearning for more, you gotta get
them hooked, hooked like a fish, that's how you get him to kill for you. On Saturdays,
as the patients stirred about freely in a beautiful dance, to music born of the most
absurd note, the three of us would go on a quest, Fanny once suggesting we shall rotate one apple
from every dining hall upon the hilltop to the next. And Book was so intense on blending in,
he would appear as though he were invading Poland as we seized the first apple, and then placing it
in the fruit bowl of the next dining hall at the expense of another identical red apple,
I could hardly keep from laughing, as Book's stiff spine protruded his head upward to a degree he
had no less than a half dozen double chins. And Fanny believed floating about like a butterfly
might make her presence more inconspicuous. It was, after all, an asylum, I suppose.
After a fool-hearted yet successful odyssey, Fanny decided to up the ante, and we made our
way for the General Hospital. Her goal was to mix up all the patients' files, which hung from a hook
at the end of each bed. Although I worried a man might wrongly have his appendix removed,
I felt so bright and alive until Book's demeanor shook me to the core.
As he grasped onto the footboard of an old sickly man's bed, they had caught eyes,
but neither said a word, as neither could. Yet the old man's eyes glistened in a silent,
almost vacant fear. The sight was deep, painful, and exotic, until Fanny pulled Book away by the
arm, somehow whitewashing his mind with affection, an old dirty trick though lovely indeed. And I
never knew what had become of the potential Frankenstein Fanny may have created. We carried
on, between here and there, wherever we happened to be or might have gone, and we began tossing
the apple back and forth, higher and higher each time, until Book fumbled it about, and it fell to
the ground, splitting in two. Fanny picked up a half, exposing an inchworm, tiny, green,
and curious. It reminded me of a little old man, hard of sight, as it squinted its invisible eyes,
as it felt blindly confused. Fanny held it to her eye and stared at it close up,
then plucking it out of the space where seeds grow. She leaned back her head and dropped it
into her mouth, and Book practically had a seizure, until Fanny itched her ear and pulled
him out of its canal, whispering, Hey there, buddy. And I laughed until I might vomit. It
was the climax of the day after all, and I cannot remember much more.
I adored a boy, or rather a man. I did all I could that I might be seen. I once swallowed
a four-leaf clover with him on my mind. Love times four. The next day, he called me over and
handed me an ace of hearts, and my heart dropped. I batted my eyelashes, looking back but once,
and swung my hips as I walked away, those eyes staring at me from behind those windswept bangs,
through the rosebushes, sheers in hand, wiping the sweat from his brow, for he was indeed a man.
I lied to myself. I was a woman, I said. My heart beat, yet in the chest of a child. Nonetheless,
my lips were itching for a kiss.
Mama had finished my new yellow dress on the new moon, yet having grown a few inches since she had
begun, the hem was rather short upon my thigh. It was no matter, though. I wanted to be wanted.
I wanted to be seen. I wanted so badly to be kissed, as Pa's dusty mouth had forgotten me
long ago. Now here was this beautiful man, with all eyes upon me, as I lingered about the garden,
in my fresh yellow dress.
I put the ace of hearts under my pillow that night, and the next afternoon he handed me a red rose,
one he had trimmed just for me, or so he said, and again as I walked away for the graveyard elm.
My handkerchief upon my right shoulder, I turned back but once. Our eyes met, and I thought I might
faint. I giggled, I pretended to hide behind the elm, but out of nowhere his fingers snuck up on me,
and were running down the back of my neck, goose pimples down my arm. I gasped as he curled around
the tree. With a finger on my lip, my belly became afloat with butterflies, suddenly so overcome
with the most thrilling sickness. His hand clenched onto mine, his warm body pressed into mine,
the rough bark dug into my back. But it had not bothered me so, as he slowly placed his mouth upon
my quivering lips. I worried they may be chapped, as I had no time to moisten them with my tongue.
Yet he did not seem to mind. I was stunned, in ecstasy, ecstatic. Yet nerves abound as his
fingers walked up my thigh. A blinding white light came over me, and a sensation in the sweetest spot.
He pushed me harder and harder into the bark of the tree, and as it edged further into the bones
of my back, his other hand tightly around my neck, and I could hardly breathe. My pleasure had
quickly turned to fear, and I pulled away but just an inch. Just enough to see his blue eyes had
turned as black as coal. Old Scratch! He squished my twisted lips into his own, as he slivered his
split tongue down my throat, and rammed his cold crooked finger inside me. I gasped, I froze,
solid as ice, eyes widened, thighs clenched. My stomach turned in revolt, and I vomited at his feet
on his yellow boots. As he jumped back, I slipped from his grip, I wailed in terror, in humiliation.
My heart shattered.
Buck always worked late, long after everyone else called it quits for the day. He was knee-deep
along the ravine's edge, in a half-dug grave as the sun had begun to set.
And then he heard what sounded like a tiny giggle coming from behind the graveyard elm a ways off.
The wild one backhanded me and called me a silly, stupid bitch. He became clear to me.
He loved his boots more than me, and as I shouted and wailed, a loud clank, the likes of sheet steel,
crushing skulls, and the sound of his
breath, I opened my eyes, I touched my face, and saw blood on my fingers, and saw Buck with a shovel.
The word rung rang in my ears like the toll of a bell, as if it had been shouted a dozen times,
yet all at once. Run, Sarah, run! But I froze as I saw the wild one lying, squirming, bleeding,
and moaning at my feet. His whimper, that of a boy, a lost little boy, lost in a grown man's body,
brought to a whimper, the defeat of such a tiny girl. Run, Sarah, get out of here! And I slipped
from the grip of my own mind, fanny shaking me awake to this nightmare I ran and ran, too afraid
to look back, for I saw only a dark tunnel before me. I was scared and confused, though certainly not
as confused as he must have been, dying at Foxy's feet. You see, what that rat failed to see beyond
his windswept bangs was that Fanny was no fox at all, for she was a wild one.
My feet carrying me across the hilltop, down Paul's Row all the way home, where I kicked over every
chair to prevent the marriage of which I regretted praying for. I shattered my mirror, and Jojo dove
under the bed, and Sammy rushed in to see what might be the matter. And when you saw my tears,
you opened your arms. I wanted nothing more than to collapse into them, yet I knew you would ask,
so I pushed you away, and I ran to the barn. I hid in the loft and turned my dress inside out,
and fell to the hay in tears. Midnight became distressed and meowed about, slithering his silky
black fur upon my thigh, of which I could not stand. I kicked him off the loft and he scurried away.
As Rowan Beauty dug into the earth with rage, I cried.
Sam, you came out with a bowl of your sweet potatoes sprinkled with brown sugar.
Your worrisome gaze upon me as you stood upon the ladder. I refused to look up. After some time,
you let me be, and the sweet potatoes went uneaten. I threw the dish from the loft and it
shattered, startling Rowan Beauty once more. He stomped the shards and I then noticed my
handkerchief was gone. I must have dropped it at the roots of the elm.
I stayed in the loft until dark. Lying awake through the night, Mama Nor-Paw never came
looking for me. But I sensed you, Sam, sitting on the porch well past any reasonable hour.
And when I dozed off, I awoke to my own scream as my hair was tangled with rats.
Convinced I'd give birth to the spawn of old Scratch himself, I snuck into the kitchen through
the back door, a hex I knew. But I was desperate for a half pint of vinegar and six tablespoons
of salt. I returned to the barn and gathered nine rusty nails. I could see a tear in Rowan
Beauty's eye as he continued to dig at the ground. And as he blew, I picked up a shard
and slid open my thigh, for I was a wretched thing. As the blood oozed down my leg,
in midnight returned to the scent, a stream of words pillaged my mind. And I questioned God,
do you need the devil desperately? And before these keys as I searched for words,
what type of potent God would allow such a rat to crawl up my leg? But a rat God,
a God with a twin soul, a second mind. And again I asked, what type of God must this be?
If not one we know, one who sits by a window on the hilltop, muttering profanities with his
hand down his pants. And praising the virgin nurse as she delivers your round of morning pills,
red ones round, which realign your thoughtful mind. Can good and evil exist in one? I ask you,
God, mustn't one only spend a long afternoon in the day room to reveal that truth? Now I need you,
God, just as Satan needs you, for you are nothing but God to the horned one. Silence.
Silence. Only silence.
Fine then, you shall have this day, this day to crawl up a young virgin's leg,
for I bring darkness to your night. And you shine the brightness on his day. You can have this hour
when you both agree, without you there is no me.
And as I picked up a shard and slit open my thigh, I wrote a sweet poem in blood.
The words dug in my flesh.
This hilltop rising from the banks of the currents of time, I bow to one knee only
and surrender to the wild wind. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick in knee and
my eye, blind me to the light of day. Stallion of the wind, I need you and you need me.
Thus there is one thing we can agree, without you there is no me.
Silence.
For nine days I slept in the loft, and mom and norpaw ever noticed. It's Sam you kept watch over
me. And when finally baby birds seemed none too frightened, I came out with my fingers crossed
for nine long months. And I never saw that rat again. The rose bushes were not trimmed that
following day, after he had taken that second step in the grave. Over the following weeks,
Book watched the mound of dirt gradually settle, in tiny blades at brilliant green grass in search
of sun and the light of day, leaving dark secrets amongst the roots, until he could be sure the wild
one was another of the long lost and forgotten, eaten by the worms, nameless. And only then
did Book turn and walk away.