We kneaded and kneaded Mr Kault and then we hummed and sang. When we opened him fully and lifted out the cerebellum it made a harsh, coughing sound. His mouth had leaked its moisture into the sitting room couch, bringing the old pink cushion up in a soft, mauve bruise.
–If we were to try and fix the deep-down sickness, what might we do?
Father shrugged.
–Bleed him. And keep him hidden from the moon. But when a sickness like that leaves the body there’s no telling where it will go.
He was quiet a moment, looking at this large man that couldn’t be saved.
–If we were risk-takers we might put him to ground – The Ground. But there’s no way to know for sure what it would do.
–It might cure him?
–Not quite. The Ground flips things around. Either way, he wouldn’t be a Cure anymore.
–He’d be more like us?
–He couldn’t heal, but he’d be different. On the inside.
We put Mr Kault in The Ground, to the left and farthest corner from the house. We knew he would kick and kick he did. His thighs were broad. A horse’s hind leg. Back in the house I listened for the sound of his grave breaking, but it didn’t come.
I went to bed, thinking hard on Samson and hoping to sew the seeds of a dream: his stomach coming undone, a wide mouth tasting the air, a sliver spreading up the centre of his almond-shell chest.
I wanted to dream of his heart, its beat sullen and low.
His heart that was a crimson heart, not the pastel shades of other Cures.
Snug in my hand, his quadrant muscle.
Feeling it beat against my palm.
But when I closed my eyes, all I could think of was the lambs.
The look of the lambs and their mouths.
The smell of the barn. Lorraine Languid, leaning in the doorway. Putting something in her mouth: a cigarette. Though I didn’t know what it was at the time. I thought the smoke was coming from her. I thought her mouth was on fire.
The next morning I went to meet Samson. When I got there he was tanning in the back of his truck, his shirt off and his jeans hanging unevenly around his hips from where he’d pulled the hot buckle away from his skin. I whistled to wake him and climbed into the truck. He scrunched his eyes at me and said
–Must really be summer if you’re starting to freckle.
We got into the front, started driving toward the river. He coughed. Looked at my thighs.
–You know I’ve been hearing ’bout you since I was a boy.
A small insect was scaling the window as we drove. On my side of the glass I followed its trail with my finger, clucking at the thinness of its legs.
–There was a lot of fuss at the time, over Tabatha Sharpe.
Why the Sharpes ever told anyone about how Tabatha came into the world I could never fathom.
–That girl hasn’t had the easiest time of it. She was stripped down once, kids looking for teeth marks from Sister Eel.
He waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he said
–Anyway. She was never quite right.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this kind of talk about Tabatha. Could be I found her too late. Could be too much of the lake was already inside her.
The insect, stripped of its grip as Samson took a corner too sharply, was gone from the window. He kept talking.
–You ever see her?
–Tabatha Sharpe?
–No, Sister Eel.
–No.
Running my hand up the back of my neck, sliding it into my hair. Then, remembering myself,
–Have you?
–No.
Adjusting himself in the seat, trying to lessen contact with the sweating leather,
–But Olivia and I, we used to play a game, if we were ever near the lake.
Which was when their parents were in the fields, before their parents died. Before they went to live with their aunt and slept together in the small creaking bed.
We’d come to the river. Samson turned the keys to make the engine hush and then hunched toward the steering wheel. His vest had left a glistening copy of itself behind so that his skin was shining where the droplets sat on his body, thick as tears.
–We’d pretend that we were Brother and Sister Eel and Olivia would chase me, trying to eat me.
His eyes closed. I looked at the cloth of my dress, sticking to me. I lifted it and watched it fall, landing again with a twirl.
–One day we ended up on opposite sides of the lake. Olivia was jumping up and down and saying I’m gonna catch you and I’m gonna eat you!
He swallowed and it made a loud, clicking sound. He closed his eyes tighter and the skin of his brow bunched toward his eyes.
–I was ducked down in the rushes, and I heard a splash and thought Olivia had fallen in. I saw the spray of water from the ground.
He laughed to himself, said
–Some of it landed in my mouth. I thought I’d die.
Opening his eyes, moving again in his seat.
–So you went looking for Olivia?
–Yes.
He was tense now, like he was bracing against a chill.
–I found her, and she was standing with her hands in her pockets, rubbing her feet in the dirt. Said she’d seen one of the humps, breaking up the water, and then the tail. The tail looked mad, she said. It was the tail that had made the splash.
His eyes were on my knees. Already I felt the scratch of the gorse and grass we’d walk through.
–And Olivia wasn’t afraid?
He laughed, moving quickly now, opening the door and swinging his legs outside.
–Olivia doesn’t get afraid.
–Not even as a child? Not even of Sister Eel?
–Olivia was never really a child.
Turning back to wink at me.
–Kind of the opposite to you.
And then we were wading in the waist-high grass.
Tabatha Sharpe
Only time I met her was when I was born.
Nothing wrong with me my whole life, ’less you count my red-dust-haze. I see red when it rains. When I look at any kind of water – a river or a lake or a stream:
Red
Red
Red
And when people go swimming or stand out in the rain, afterward they’re all dripping red.
I didn’t realise water wasn’t red for everyone else ’til I was ten and Mother was reading to me from a picture book. I asked her why the rain in the book wasn’t red and she was frightened but she kept her fear on the inside like Father can never do.
Just asked me what else was red, and I pointed at her red mouth and her red shoes, and that seemed to calm her.
We never go swimming in the summer, though. And I’m only allowed quick showers, never a bath, and Mother pulls the curtains every time it rains.
Like I said, I was young when Father started feeding me stories and warnings about The Ground.
–The Ground is cruel, but with tilling and culling we can make it useful.
Sitting at the kitchen table, flicking my tongue against the back of my teeth.
–Why only such a small part for burial?
–My father and I worked a long time on taming it just so, so that the ground would cushion a body and yield it again. Only a small patch can be handled at a time. It takes huge strength. When you are older, we will try rein in some more. And then, when you have a child, you’ll try for more again.
–We don’t live here to fix Martha Jacobs?