Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

152
the grass. I imagined him still staring at loose stones and packed
dirt. John-Walter was gone into the earth that Roy said would
devour us all. That night, Joan stroked my arm while she put me
to bed. "Outside is too dangerous for us," she said, her voice quiet
in the dark. "John-Walter didn't know that, didn't know what he'd
find out there."
Roy shined the beam of his flashlight around the cellar. The
mothers looked at him, into the light, but the children hid their
heads. I tried to look at nothing as the light crossed my face.
Instead, I thought about Jenny's face, her sudden expression as she
turned and ran. I couldn't remember the way her eyes looked, her
eyes that never seemed to blink, that seemed to see right through
me—just the sight of her hair blown away from her face in
tangles by the wind, the grass swishing against her legs, the sleeves
of her shirt flapping, filled with air. In dreams I had seen this many
times, but then always the one running was me—the world
opening before my feet.
"Is she the only one?" Roy said. He pointed the flashlight at
the floor, and the glow pooled by his feet. "Just Jenny and the
chickens? The chickens flew away to one of the trees, but we don't
know where she flew off to."
No one answered. We knew not to speak when Roy's voice
sounded this way, as if it was talking to the clouds, asking them
would it rain. Lily bit her lip, sucking in her breath, and the rest
of us watched her, or else pretended not to see.
Roy reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and then we heard
the sound of the match. He inhaled, and in the glow of the flame
I saw the creases in his face, before he squeezed the match between
his fingers. No one knew how old Roy was, or how long he'd
been here. Some of the older mothers told us how Roy had saved
them from the world, taking them from another life into this one.
But if we asked them when he had co_me7"br where they had lived
before they came here, or how x5ld they were, they would shush
us, saying, "None of that mattejrs anymore. What matters is that
Roy came, that we are here."
I smelled the smoke from Roy's cigarette, the smell that hung
everywhere in our house, the smell that followed me when I
milked Brown and Black, the smell that I noticed just before I
heard the sound of his Teet on the floor. Jenny and I held our
breath, sniffing the air, when we stole food at night. We knew even
as we shoved the crackers and pieces of dried apple into our
mouths that he would somehow find us there, kneeling on the
counters in the pantry, where no one except the mother who
prepared the food was supposed to go.
"The chickens won't last in that wind," Roy said, his voice a
whisper. "If we're lucky, we'll find them lying somewhere in the
fields. Maybe all we'll find are the feathers the wind strips away."
He shut off the flashlight, then squatted on the floor. The light
coming through the casement windows was almost gone, and
everyone stared at the tip of Roy's cigarette, the one point of light.
In the dark near me I could hear breathing, and the wet sound of
the blue-eyed boy sucking his thumb.
"The chickens I'm not worried about," Roy said. "But Jenny,"
he said, and his voice faded away into the static coming from the
radio. He coughed.
"Please, Roy," I heard Lily whisper through her teeth, her
voice so low I wasn't even sure if Roy could hear it.
"We've got to find her, don't we," Roy said, and his words
were not a question at all.
Lily nodded her head—all I could see was her dark hair in her
face. The last time I had seen her like this was when Faith had said
that Lily was becoming too close to Roy again. Those words had
been in the house for days, something we all noticed, like Roy's
smoke, and something we remembered knowing before, like a
dream, like one of the songs Faith had taught us to sing when we
were young. Then one afternoon I had heard the smack of a pot
falling to the floor. In the kitchen, Faith pressed her hands around
Lily's throat while Joan and Maria pulled at Lily's arms, tugging
her to the ground. Some of the mothers came to watch, standing
against the walls with their arms folded against their chests. Lily
covered her face with her hands, her damp hair hiding her eyes,
though we all heard the sounds coming from deep in her throat.
On the floor, a pot of rice steamed. Wet clumps spilled onto the