A little short story I had to write for Poetics...
The aged-grey curtains hung lank on the little window of the door standing ajar, letting in the pungent algae smell of the receding tide now tepid in the mid-day sun. She moved about the cluttered space slow and deliberate while pulling plastic half-broken teeth through lank hair, also grey, and humming a tune with lyrics long forgotten. It almost sounded like a hymn. From the ceiling methodically hung by pieces of twine were shells, driftwood, dried lavender, beer bottle caps, the spines of small animals, torn bats wings and anything else that delighted her time addled mind. If you looked closely, their shadows could be seen from the road waving imperceptibly amidst dust and the wings of houseflies.
Behind the house sit rotten shambles of neglected wood and blocks, another project her son had never felt compelled to resume, beside which stood a barrel for rainwater. A relic and a ruin. That same son muttering through brown teeth about civility and the way things were done had laboriously and conscientiously (or so he assured her) installed a septic system for the shack but it made no difference to her. What was plumbing when next to the roar of the grey Atlantic, she wondered while he castigated, sat passive and silent with an eye out the window.
Stare through the same frame for too long and nothing remains where it was meant to be. Who put that pebble there? How does the grass presume its place between gravel tracks for tires? She knew one thing. She knew that Rupert was where he ought to be. Green eyes shining and fixed on the horizon. Tail pointing towards the sun, or moon, or ceiling- fixed and loyal- better than any child. Quieter too. At times it grew burdensome the way he refused to bend; she always stooped to him. At times she worried that their life together was growing dull.
Morning after morning on days when the weather was good, which she believed (and who shall refute her) were fewer with each passing year, the two went about their daily ritual. After dragging the comb through her own hair she would brush Rupert until they were dapper and ready to face the sea. She’d leave him for a moment and cross over the rubble to the barrel to fill the copper kettle. By the time it shrieked on the stovetop she would have assembled their spot in the sun, a wicker rocking chair draped with a frayed patchwork quilt, and a yellow paperback. The bowls of kibble and water were set out for Rupert. While the tea was steeping, she would gingerly lift Rupert from beside the single bed - always mindful of his delicate tail, and carry him by his wooden base into the sun. The rays of light refracted in his glass eyes animating them like the flash of a squirrel might have in days gone by.
And so they sat. Hour after hour. The children passed with dirty knees and brine in their hair, transfixed always by the incandescent copper coat of the frozen beast. They stole glances over shoulders and through tangled hair. Their parents had taught them it was rude to stare. The tide came in, the tide went out. The neighborhood kids grew up and moved away, into the city or to the trailer park, and still they wondered about the dog that never barked and the apparition of a woman by its side.
Maybe the wind was different that day. Maybe it hadn’t changed. She passed through the door and through the yard but no kettle accompanied her. Clutching an old metal measuring cup she plunged her parchment skin arm into the baptismally cool water. The water from last night’s storm spilled over the edges as she drank deep from the metal cup, her hair still wild from sleep. Not sleep. What goes on when all is dark behind those grey curtains... endless footsteps shuffling across the floor...ghoulish incantations or dehydrated snores...padding paws....
Stooping once more she gathered Rupert in her arms and carried him beyond the porch, setting him instead on the passenger seat of the Oldsmobile. The tide was high that morning and laughing against the rocks with breathless foam. They drove off down the gravel path and away from the little white house, the rapturous shore. They came to a field where the lupins grew in a wild congregation of purples and pinks, greeting card hues. She continued to drive over the shoulder and into the flowers. An onlooker might have gasped- had the driver fallen asleep? Who could be drunk so near to dawn?
Slowing to a standstill, lost in the blooms, the car door swung wide open. Wrapping those arms once more around Rupert she carried him to the peak of the hill. Copper and grey, they swam among the gaudy stalks. The sky grew dark with the beating wings of a swarm of sparrows, common little farm birds so numerous they cast a shadow like a storm cloud. Lost in the commotion, the flurry, the morning stood still. Out of the stillness came the soft slow notes of a hymn punctuated once, twice, again by the bark of a dog. Among the waving lupins a copper tail wagged too.
