Originally published in Verbicide issue #18

“So much for the city,” and with that I moved with my wife, Neenah, and two-year-old son, Brian, up to Marshfield, Vermont, to settle down and to take over my father’s company. We bought a house on the outskirts of the outskirts, and though things weren’t going well with the business, we were happy. We bought a dog for Brian and fed him scraps from the table rather than proper dog food. He got so fat that his little neck would sway back and forth when he would run, and we’d joke that he was our little cow. He also ate grass. I really liked that dog, Charlie. I’d nip out sometimes from the work of minding a little kid to take long walks across the fields and through the woods; my mind only filled with the sounds, sights, and smells of the country. It was heaven. Looking at the countryside, I found myself stirred spiritually in ways I haven’t been in years. I even picked up the Bible again.

It was summer and I was hung over, just sitting on our porch looking at the sunrise, and if I remember correctly, enjoying a cup of coffee and the feeling of being the only person in the whole county to be awake and drinking coffee, and I said to myself, “Jesus, I’m a sinner and I know it and I’ve done some stuff I’m not too proud of, but I really am starting to think that everything happens for a reason and that, well, I love you and want to be the best person I can be, and if you would help me to be as at peace as I am right now for the rest of my life, well then, I’ll always be your servant.” I think some religions have a word for that moment when the Holy Spirit enters you, but I don’t know that word. It was as if suddenly my whole body was among the trees and streams, but more, something else, something above them, like a sunbeam filled with warmth and sensation. The only thing I can even compare it to was a sexual orgasm, except not of the body with filth and fluids; it was an orgasm in spirit and soul. I didn’t tell anyone about my morning miracle, not because I was embarrassed, but because it wasn’t for anyone else. It was for God and me, and well, there was just something humbler in that I figured. Then one night I crashed the car and killed both Neenah and Brian and found myself alone.

To the one at peace the country is in constant song and dance, with the lilies and the daisies no more than players on the stage proclaiming the joys of just being. But to the soul soaked in tragedy and speckled with guilt, the once peaceful is now not at all, and the country is a wilted, quiet expanse with nowhere to turn but inward to your own wrack and ruin. Though I can’t say for sure, I think if I had lived near the comforts of streetlights and subways, I could have managed better than I did. Because nights in the country are much different and darker than those in the city.

For the first few months after I lost Neenah and Brian, I found solace in my faith, and though it was comfort, it wasn’t enough comfort to subdue my suffering. I couldn’t fall asleep at night and if eventually, by chance, I did, my dreams would be of Neenah and Brian, alive and with me, and what relief that would be. But my subconscious mind would reject this as impossible; I was alone now, and it wouldn’t be long that my mind would say to me, “You’re dreaming, son. They’re dead.” And if you know you’re dreaming, it’s no easy thing to sleep. My insomnia through this period of my life got to be so bad that I would pray to Jesus to put me asleep, repeating prayers over and over like a child would count sheep, but to no avail. I was a portrait in loneliness. Something had to change. It was around this time that I started to have a glass of wine at night, only to find myself upgrading to a bottle of wine, and then finally to the hopelessness of cheap vodka.

It was during this year of local bars and booze that I first began to notice things around the house. First, I would hear strange sounds from out of this one bush in my front lawn. It could just have been the leaves blowing against and alongside one another in the wind, and actually this was how I rationalized it to myself many nights in my drunken haze. Even in my most pitiable condition though, something in the sounds permeated my mind’s most base fears; there was something menacing, something pained, and yet something not human in the sound of the leaves and breeze. And, frankly, though I was convinced it was nothing unnatural, I wouldn’t dare turn my eyes away from the underbrush.

Oftentimes, when I would find myself unable to manage alone among the sounds, I would call for Charlie and the comfort of his doggy way. A good dog at hunting and killing animal things, I would bark “rats” and Charlie’s tail would shoot out like those cartoon canines and he’d be off, nose to the ground, in search of lesser creatures to destroy. One night, a night as black as a blind man’s life, I stood smoking and standing outside my car when I heard the sounds of something in the street. From just beyond my property there was the sound of something scurrying like “something” would, not walking back and forth, like “someone” does.

Mostly, I was concerned with my own inner demons, demons that were fizzling, crackling, and threatening to boil over into the world of work and acquaintances. So I did what most cursed men do: I continued to drink. There was an evil in me and every night I appeased it with an abundance of whiskey and wine. I frequented all the bars in Marshfield, but I had a preference, The Red Rose Café. Somewhere between a dive bar and a Parisian café, The Red Rose was financially a disaster, but its lack of cliental endeared it to me. I’d go in there and spend a few hours after work, passing time, not yet ready to go home to my bottle of vodka.

She was sitting up on a stool in the Red Rose alone one day waiting for some friends, and, well now, I can’t remember if they ever did show up. What I first noticed about Patricia was the way her jet black hair hung down amongst her features and contrasted with her light white face; neither her face nor her hair went together, but they seemed to have themselves some sort of mutual peace in which they wouldn’t infringe upon one another and, in fact, somehow they even managed to complement each other. Sick of playing darts by myself, I asked her to play with me and she smiled and said she would play, though I could see she wasn’t too keen on it.

When I asked her if she was seeing someone she said, “Yes, but I won’t be seeing him for long,” but then she caught herself and looked embarrassed to have shared this with someone she had just met. She was lousy with darts, but lobbed them so confidently and with such grace that watching her you would have to say she must be playing a different, far superior game. I drowned her in drinks like all old men must when around the young. She said I was very cynical and then asked me, “Why do you laugh at your own jokes?” And laughing I told her, “Because they are funny.”

Suddenly the bar was filled with people; they had sprung up around us when our guard was down, and though loud and everywhere, they were as unremarkable to us as we were to them — they were both nowhere and no one. I should have asked her for her phone number, but I didn’t, but, thankfully, I did run into her again at a gas station a week later. We made plans to see each other, because she had broken up with the guy she had been seeing. She said she was eager to talk to me some more, as she looked at me intently. And I thought I could feel her eyes straining down into the pit my life was in, saying, “Give me your hand. I’ll pull you out.”

On our first date together I was thinking that we’d go to the cinema, but Patricia had other ideas.

“We can’t go to the movies, because we are just getting to know each other, and, well, after two hours of staring at a screen side-by-side and not even looking at each other, I don’t think we’ll know each other any better than strangers on a train. No, we’ll go dancing instead.” Granted, I don’t care much for dancing myself, but I was quite enamored with Patricia’s decisiveness. When I was first courting my Neenah, we’d go back and forth, neither one of us wanting to decide for the other how to spend our Saturday night together. She’d ask me, “What do you want to do tonight?” and then being a gentleman I’d say, “No baby, what do you want to do tonight?” And, well, you can see how this would get us nowhere and, before we’d even know it, it would be half past nine and the two of us hadn’t even budged from out of the comfort of our sofa. Patricia said she knew a great place where we could dance ourselves sick over on the other side of the river, so I said “sounds good” and “let’s go.”

On the way out, and passing by the old run-down granary, I saw a woman, the spitting image of Neenah, out by herself and not doing much but standing by the side of the road, her face obscured by the darkness and haze that had descended on Marshfield. And I’m not really sure how to describe it, if it were a presence, or an aura, or a…I don’t know what. Though her features were vague, the colors that hung around her indistinct image awoke something in me. Gazing at the watercolors that rained down on her and then mingled with the paint-like pastels, I felt a single sharp impression of a moment that had passed. This woman by the side of the road seemed so…there was something to her that I couldn’t quite put to words. Not unlike how I felt when Neenah came to me in dreams — the way Neenah used to make my insides feel was here with me now and was very overt. My flesh, blood, and guts knew it. So much so that they were at war with the rest of me to pull the car over and to cover Neenah with hugs and kisses.

Unsure of what to do and not quite ready to explain my late wife Neenah to Patricia, all I could muster to ask was, “I wonder what she is doing?” Neenah looked back behind her and, laughing, said, “not much.” Through my rear window, I saw a vision of Neenah disappear little by little into fog and nothingness and when it was finally gone I felt just awful for driving on. If I wasn’t with Patricia, I would have turned the car around immediately and driven up to the woman, probably to find that my mind had played a trick on me and that it wasn’t Neenah at all. But driving on like I did that night, I can’t say for sure it wasn’t Neenah standing there, and I will always wonder; sometimes I even think that the apparition might have been trying to tell me that I should turn the car around, go back, call it a day, and forget about “dancing ourselves sick.”

A natural dancer, Patricia’s torso twisted navigating between lights and smoke, while her arms were up and down in a passionate rhythm. I only dared to step on the dance floor with Patricia after I had warmed my body with whiskey and courage. Looking only into her eyes I found impossible. Viewing her whole body, not just in glances but in eyefuls, this I just couldn’t help, because everywhere was alive — everywhere was brimming over with the stuff of life. I would put my arms out to the physical celebration that was her body, but she couldn’t help but dance just beyond them, and then she would smile.

“You voted for him?” Patricia struggled to get her head around this.

“Well, yeah, I didn’t care much for that other man. And anyways, I think he had a clear vision of the way things are.”

“Jesus, you think so?”

“I don’t know. Besides we are at war, you know?”

Changing the subject away from politics quickly to something more pleasant, I asked Patricia if she wanted to come home with me. She said “alright” and that she would come by for a little bit, but not stay too late because of work in the morning. When we pulled up to my house, Patricia remarked that “it looks too massive — too lonely for just one person.”

Like a dirty dream I once had, Patricia and I couldn’t settle on a room or a discussion, we jumped and jerked from kitchen to Christmas, only to find ourselves led by our libidos into my bedroom. No more than a fragment of a thought passing through the corner of our minds, but we were helpless against it. I suppose we must have just wanted and then willed it, and we were both there, upstairs, kissing and touching. Our bodies cried out, “No. Not tonight. I don’t want to be alone.” So we clung to one another and desperately tried to make our flesh into one lump, because as lonely as our bodies were, it was the rest of us that was in all kinds of hell for company. And wouldn’t it be nice to have some other voice in our heads other than our own, saying all sorts of stuff like, “I love you,” and, “How was your day?”

“Yes,” Patricia moaned. “Yes,” it would be nice.

I thought that having Patricia there with me would put me at ease, that with a bed-buddy I wouldn’t be as anxious and I’d finally get some sleep. My crotch still aching from our embrace, I got to thinking about what we’d just done together and how quick we’d done it. The tingling of residual semen down there on my tip prolonged both my guilt and the now-finished sex act. The muck in my underpants nagged at me so that I even got up to wash it off. When I got back in the bed Patricia was fast asleep, so I continued to brood on what I just did. Was I in love with her? With Neenah only six months dead, I wasn’t looking so much like a grief-stricken, whiskey-drinking bereaved husband anymore. I was starting to resemble something else. And could it be that in some way I was kind of glad that… No, I couldn’t be. I would have given anything to have Neenah back in my arms again.

In the midst of these thoughts, there was the distinct sound of a scream where there should have been none. The screech seemed from out of an abyss and with a voice so young that I don’t know where or who the fuck it could have come from. Jesus, I was scared. There was this primitive urgency to it like the shriek of a baby, which was a sound I knew too well. And like a nightmare I’ve woken up from or up to, the scream made me feel something I wouldn’t remember. Forgetting that Patricia was there, and that I wasn’t a child, I switched on the lights and jumped out of bed to stand by the door. If the demon came for me, I was going to be closer to the front door to make a run for it. At a moment when I should have been embodied with masculinity, this is how messed up I was. Howling babies in the night, lights in her face, and a grown man in the doorway, yet Patricia didn’t stir. So I kicked the bed and woke her up.

I was sure that it was the voice of Brian, a scream that had awoken both Neenah and me on many nights with the urgent tone of pain and the loudness of necessity. I had heard it before.

“You’re shaking. What time is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you alright? Bob? You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

When I did fall asleep that night I was greeted by the confusing and unreal. I was at the Red Rose and Patricia…Patricia was there. I looked at her and she looked back at me; it was quiet. For what seemed like both forever and no time at all, we were just looking at one another. Finally, she asked me why I didn’t love her and, of course, I said, “Patricia, I love you very much.” Patricia wasn’t there though, so I must have made some sort of mistake, because it was Neenah who was there. It wasn’t Patricia at all.

I offered my hand to Neenah and tried to reassure her as best I could, “No, I love you very much.” And she coyly smiled at me in a way I’d seen before and then said, “Oh, you do?” Then, as slow as can be, time started playing funny tricks again and Neenah’s smile just hung there in this unpleasant way. Like a painting left in the rain, her colors lost their luster. The blacks and whites became gray and Neenah’s face, once a rainbow, melted into a single shade. Then the skin dripped down off of her in big blotches. Her nose, her ears, and her eyes were the first to fall in a pile before the rest melted down to a corpse. Her smile though just hung there in the air mockingly. And even though Neenah, finally, was no more than a pile of clothes on the floor, she was still there in the air. Even though I couldn’t see it, I felt another presence in the bar; I could smell the stink of that fetal abomination from before. It smelled of death and disease with a whiff of sour sweetness that made me think of skunk cabbage or sweltering crotch. Patricia began to stir in bed beside me, her body rubbing slyly against mine to awaken me.

After breakfast, I drove Patricia home, told her I had a good time, and I thanked her for spending the night. Then I said I wasn’t ready for a relationship, and she was taken aback. But what could she say? I went home to my bottle of whiskey, filling myself with its warmth. And just like that, just like an old friend at the grocery store who I hadn’t seen for a while, my dream returned to me. With pain upon pain it rained down from the heavens like tears upon my waking mind; and through the stench of cabbage and crotch came the sobering knowledge: it was I who smelled.

—

Kevin Munley is a writer and teacher who lives in Boston, MA.