Steve Tem - Excavation

And still he didn’t open his eyes, or make any move to pick up the receiver. He thought about it, thought about lifting the sheet from his face—he realized suddenly he had slept with his face covered over, like a shroud—but for some reason he could not move. He recognized that he was fully awake now. He thought about the phone, tried to concentrate on it, but he could not move.

Late night phone calls had always terrified him. He knew it was a common fear. His mother would not answer the phone after nine o’clock at night. It was either a wrong number, a crank call, or bad news. And she didn’t want to hear about any of them. As if the bad occurrence wouldn’t exist anymore if she didn’t hear about it. As if when everyone woke up in the morning things would be fine. It occurred to Reed that she never listened to bad news from any source, even from her own heart.

When his father used to go out drinking, a late-night phone call always informed Reed that his father was in jail. His mother wouldn’t answer; he was always the one. A late-night phone call from his Uncle Ben had let Reed know that his parents were dead. I’m sorry, Reed…

The phone was ringing on its stand across the room. Each electronic gargle cutting through Reed’s thoughts, draining his consciousness of dream. And resistance. He somehow knew it had stopped ringing for a time, while he’d been thinking, and only just commenced ringing again. Pulling his arm out of the covers was like pulling it out of multiple layers of water, soil, and mud.

His fingers touched hard plastic, then he jerked the receiver to his ear.

“Reed?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“Yes.”

“When you comin’ home, boy?” Reed’s stomach went cold, and his head throbbed sickeningly. He sat upright in his bed. He’d always dreamed they’d finally call him, ask him to come back. Call him home even after the disaster.

“It’s time you were gettin’ home, boy. Long past time. We need you here. Your sister needs her big brother.” It was his father’s voice, but without the characteristic harshness. Although as a child he’d longed to hear it that way, he never had.

“I…” Reed didn’t know what to say. He could hear his mother, his mother whom he hadn’t heard in ten years, talking in the background.

“Tell him to come home soon.”

“Papa…” He began to cry. It surprised him, but he couldn’t help it.

And then in the background he heard the rising screams: himself at ten, his father beating him. If all went as usual, Reed knew he’d be battered almost into unconsciousness.

The screams drew out into a moan, then inarticulate garble sounding more animal than human. Then a sound like claws scratching the receiver.

Reed slammed down the phone, and was immediately sorry he had severed this one thin line running back to Simpson Creeks, Kentucky, into his past. That he had hung up on his dead mother and father. Who had been dead almost ten years now.

As a child, Reed had sometimes believed that magical things happened when he was around. His whole family seemed special that way. His Uncle Ben had magical knowledge about the woods. His mother could be magically sensual when she would, using her body to stop his father’s magical anger, magical rage.

It came from living on the Big Andy Mountain; it was as if the Big Andy had given them that.

But something was trembling in his room. Again and again. He tried to ignore the rings that would disturb his sleep for hours to come.

Charlie Simpson woke early on Monday morning. For some reason he hadn’t been able to sleep very well of late. Seemed to be having lots of dreams that were waking him up in the middle of the night, yet he couldn’t remember any of them. Not even one little detail. It wasn’t like him; he usually remembered his dreams.

So there wasn’t much sense in knockin’ around the house all morning. In any case there was work he might do in the lot behind the store. Old Buck, his hound dog, loved it when he worked there. There wouldn’t be much reaction when he got the yard tools out of the shed—just a raised ear or an opened, slack mouth—but for Buck that was the equivalent of hysteria.

He had a special treat for Buck today—a box of those yellow marshmallow birds they called Peeps—left over from Easter. They were quite stale now, six months later, but Buck liked them best that way. He’d wedge each one between his two front paws until they were sort of standing up, then he’d stare at them a minute, bark softly as if they were supposed to answer him, then eat them, one at a time in the same way. He never seemed to get tired of the game. Every Easter Charlie always laid in a supply of the things about four times too large for his needs so that Buck could have a box each month of the year. It was Charlie’s only extravagance.

Funny how Buck was scared to death of real birds. One time Ben Taylor’s little daughter Lannie brought over a chick he’d given her, and Buck took one look at the little yellow ball of fuzz, cheeping and hopping, and dashed around behind the storage shed. Charlie’d never seen him move so fast. The chick had followed in its awkward way, and Buck kept retreating, until pretty soon the chick had him cornered under the lilac bush, just his nose and two enormous, shock-filled eyes showing. The chick was having a grand old time, cheeping away to its heart’s content.

Buck wasn’t the bravest of animals, not the most practical for a country storekeeper, Charlie knew, but he was all he had since Mattie died five years ago. It wasn’t like Charlie to be so unrealistic about an animal, to give it almost human characteristics—animals were animals, after all, and their thoughts a mystery. But the dog had filled a big hole in his life.

Charlie stood for a moment in his living room, finding it difficult to leave just yet. Normally he dusted here every morning before going to work; it was the best kept up room in the house. Not that it required much dusting and straightening up, because it was a room he never used. It really wasn’t a room for the living anymore. Mattie and he had spent most of their time here during their years of marriage—reading, playing cards, singing along with Mattie on the piano, and listening to the old Philco back when there were things on the radio worth listening to, dramas and such. Practically every morning he’d dust a little, move a knickknack or a book a fraction of an inch one way, look at it, then usually move it back to where it was. Then he’d stand for a long time on the braided green rug at the center of the room and look around, and remember. The whole process usually took an hour, yet almost every morning he managed to get up early enough to do it. It didn’t seem right to skip it this morning, but lately he’d been feeling it was time for a change. It was time to engage himself in something else—it was a feeling in the air.

Charlie’d slipped on his white shirt and overalls, his old hunting jacket, jumped into the old Chevy pickup, and headed down to his store in the Creeks. The road had been unusually foggy for the season, nothing but cloud about ten feet ahead of him. Breaking into torn fingers that separated occasionally just to show him a bit of limestone outcrop or fencepost. His usually brittle gray hair felt wet, clammy, and water seemed to line the many cracks in his weathered skin. With the fog he could hardly see the old walnut trees that grew along the roadside. He was thinking of stopping and picking up a few of the nuts when the shadow stepped out in front of him.

He slammed on his brakes and cried out. The dark shadow passed into the woods. Bigger than a man, he thought, swollen and dark. But walking upright like a man. He thought about a bear, but there hadn’t been bear in those woods in years. Not since before the flood.