Variations on House and Home #73 by Joel Kopplin
“branches and blossoms spread across our dirt like murder made of pink and white”
Fiction by Joel Kopplin
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“Hello? Hello…”
Today I took the toe two from the end of the foot.
Mary had shears for the shrubs and the crabapple trees beyond the stoop and she stood outside shearing from first light til some clouds came. The neighbors beat their dog with a shovel in the yard across the road. They thwapped the dog with the shovel til it was still in the grass, the only movement some wind on the blades and the movement Mary made because the dog whined where it lay. Mary moved like the grass moved—wavy bends with the wind while she watched the clouds come and cover the sky and make May cold. She bent with the wind while the dog whined, and when it was still and silent she sheared again. She sheared the one crabapple tree til it was bare, branches and blossoms spread across our dirt like murder made of pink and white. The clouds came and I closed all our windows.
I hear a bone saw against the one metal gutter that goes down from the roof to the grass beyond our stoop. Saw metal meets gutter metal and I imagine sparks; I imagine a boy she birthed who lived to be nine or ten, who met a man on an unpaved road not far from here and was made to undress before his throat got cut. She still calls him Baby Doll when she has cause to recall his name, which is most days these days. The bone saw saws the gutter and I think sparks.
Some days I know Dad beat me because he wanted to make me strong, and when I was about to be a man he asked me if I wanted in on the family business selling windows and I said no thanks so I could not kill him every day until I slept. I spent so many days killing him with kitchen knives and nail guns from the garage and ice picks for our sidewalks. I know he beat me to make me a man and he bruised my face and broke my hands so they would heal and I would be more than I’d been before he broke them. He wanted me ready for the world. I killed him so many nights until I slept.
Dad died from diabetes some years ago now, but I still kill him when I don’t sleep. Sometimes he stands in the door by the deck by the pansies and the tulips, or out by the circle of grass where the lilacs did not take because the deer. Dad stood above me while I slammed the pick-axe into the earth and sweat, and he smoked and sat in a wheelchair I wheeled over mounds of dirt and watched while I dug square holes to set these bushes well inside. He handed me the shovel to shovel the earth back over the wounds, and we wait for many minutes in the sun, wait as though we would watch them blossom with all our attention. The deer did eat them at night when we were not watching. Dad wanted the bushes but then he died from diabetes but I still killed him each day from then on until now, until this moment.
Outside Mary moved piles of earth from one heap to another heap and the clouds still came above her head, and the wind. The grass is going to get tall again, and she is making room for primrose by the ground ivy and the center of the yard is now saved for the autumn purple ash. She digs piles and moves the earth til the clouds cover us all in rain.
Mary came inside and set the shears and the gloves with the grip on my small wooden desk and she tells me I need to walk. She tells me I need to try some every day until I can get the blood back into my feet. “If only to the mailbox,” she says. “You can start by going out to the mailbox and back.” But I don’t go to the box and back because I saw them kill the dog across the way and I know they know we saw and are sitting at the window watching to see us and see something we might ourselves be ashamed of. Mary called her ex-husband in the back of the kitchen and she said, “Hello? Hello. Hell-ooooh…” He always knows it’s her and he’s never the first to speak their grief because she’s borne it for the both of them. But this is how it always starts and so she sits in the back of the kitchen and she sobs into a palm she’s scarred so it can be used. She sobs into her open palm and asks aloud if she should have taken him as far as the bridge because he could have walked the rest of the way. “It was just down the hill,” she said, she always says each and every time they talk. “Their house was just down the hill and the video store was only a block behind them,” she said, she continues to say. “If I’d at least taken him to the bridge and gone back I’d have seen if the car came too close. I’d have seen the side door go open and the driver. I’d have seen my son, Greg.” She calls Greg and cries most days, calls to keep Baby Doll alive as he leaves the stoop for the last time, in the moments before he encounters an El Camino that slows to a stop and asks that he come inside.
He was found in a clearing with his eyes open, a question asked skyward, watching for an answer from the August heat.
But the clouds come on now and make us all wet, make May way too cold for May, with the wind which bends the tall grass in a yard across the way, the final place for a dog to rest. Though the center of the yard is saved now for an autumn purple ash, and though the lilacs never took, I took the shears from off my desk and took my toe two from the end of my left foot because why wait for it to rot. I killed my father most days til I could finally fall asleep, but I know we turn the soil because we can keep nothing buried.
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Joel Kopplin's fiction has appeared in places like Sleepingfish, apt, Literary Orphans, and Metazen. His novella, Spaces, is available from Outpost 19.