Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

Dust held in the air. There were no sounds from outside, only the fire cracking the walls. Bird wet himself and began to cry. He cursed himself and demanded that he get out from under the bed. He told himself again and again, get out from under the bed , but he did not move.

The gunshots that echoed throughout the valley sounded almost patient. Inexplicably, the birds in the trees lining the graveyard were still singing. Or chattering. Gossiping. There were no more horses. No more yelling. Just gunshot, gunshot, gunshot. Then nothing but birds. Mary was pacing between the headstones and pulling up dandelions not aligned to a particular plot. She’d pieced together a bouquet. She was not fully ignorant to what was happening, and there was a flood of emotion for each imagined possibility. There was joy and pride at the thought of John rescuing Martha and Bird and the farm, and of them obtaining several new horses to break and befriend. There was sadness and fear for a handful of other, darker, reasons. She kept herself busy and did not allow herself to settle on any particular thought for very long. The birds flitted from tree to tree as if to spread the news of her bravery, her stoicism. She was like a historical person, going up against the difficulties of the world and working to change things through her survival. She had not known this grandmother. She was not a blood relation. Mary set the dandelions on the grave and asked her grandmother what she thought about the whole thing. Her grandmother said nothing, or she blew through the grass and chirped in the trees — Mary hadn’t decided how she felt about it. Mostly when she talked to her grandmother, she imagined she was speaking into a well.

Martha grabbed Bird by the wrist and pulled. He yelled stop and reached for the edge of the bed to counter her yanking. No arm rose to meet the impulse and he slid out from under the bed. When he would not stand, Martha dragged him through the doorway, into the living room, and out the front door. She paid no mind to the fire and Bird somehow made it out without a wound. She dragged him through the dirt and over a rock and out to the barn where she finally loosed her grip and released him into the dirt. She had traced an enormous S in the dirt with his back, avoiding the fallen bodies.

“Get up,” she said.

Bird turned his belly to the ground. He was crying and could not stop.

“Stand up,” said Martha.

He was in the long johns that had once belonged to Mary. He was without footwear.

“Go to the barn,” she said. “You’ll find John’s boots there and a pistol.”

The house was burning, nearly half-consumed by flame, and she had no plan or desire to stop it, it seemed.

“They won’t fit,” he said.

“They’ll cover your soles. Now get up.”

She scanned the perimeter for anything — another man, Mary. She saw nothing but bodies and a little Bird crying in the dirt.

“Up,” she said, “we’re moving.”

She headed to the barn and got the boots from beside the door. She found the pistol with the rest of the various tools near the back of the barn. She also found a rifle.

When she stepped back out from the barn, she found Bird had hoisted himself into a sitting position.

“I said up,” she said.

She gripped him by his armpits. It felt loose and awkward where the stump was, like she was hurting him.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

“We’re going to find Mary,” she said.

“Where is she?” he said.

“We’re going to look for her,” she said.

He was up finally. She brushed him off and handed him the boots. They were indeed far too large. They were comically large on him. She nearly grinned when he took his first few steps. He started crying again and she fired a shot into the air with John’s pistol.

“No,” she said. “Cry all you want once we’ve got Mary and we’ve set rangers on those marauders.”

“Were they marauders?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they take anything? What did they want?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Why?”

He was crying again.

“Because we are always in the wilderness. Beneath everything is the wilderness and there is no end to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, and that is why you’re scared.”

“Are they going to come back?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because we won’t be here.”

They searched for Mary near the well and did not find her. They searched for her in the fields and found only the plow. They followed tracks that led away from the house and into the woods. There were two trails. One led to the cemetery and the other led deeper into the woods and on into town.

“She’s in the cemetery,” said Martha, “or she’s gone.”

Bird was kicking stones and dragging his feet behind her. He was no longer really crying but only because he was exhausted and spent. He was dripping pathetically and running at the nose. He knew he had failed in every way you could fail in such a situation. He had been afraid and miserable and had acted as such, which only made him feel more afraid and more miserable.

Mary was kneeling on a grave and arranging dandelions into a cone shape.

Martha lifted her and held her up and examined her. Then she held the girl against her chest and shut her own eyes.

Mary asked what had happened.

Martha did not speak.

Mary asked Bird what had happened.

He was crying, and said nothing.

“We’ve got to go,” said Martha.

“Where is John?” said Mary, because it felt like the right thing to ask.

Sugar’s delivery had to be overseen by several of the town’s deputies, partially because the doctor had spoken out so strongly against it.

The doctor was a committed drinker. He had steady hands until around 3 o’clock and then he was more than worthless.

Since Sugar’s arrival, the doctor had committed himself to enfeeblement. He would sit in the bar and drink, then he would drink in front of the bar, and then he would drink in the alley off to the side of the bar, and all the while he was calling Sugar an abomination and a creature and the devil. He said Sugar was pregnant with his own cock and if he, the doctor, were to squat before him while he was birthing that cock, it would be more or less the same thing as inviting the animal, Sugar, to fuck him.

“I will not be fucked by an animal,” insisted the doctor, on a nightly basis. He was a man of medicine. A church-going man. He had survived two wives and had two sons working to keep the peace. He deserved better.

The morning Sugar went into labor, the doctor opened up the bar. The bartender, who lived upstairs in the inn above the bar itself, and who could be blamed to some degree for answering the doctor’s insistent pounding at the door, would not take it so far as to serve the doctor at six in the morning. Instead, he suggested that the doctor take lodging upstairs and try to sleep off what was clearly still clinging to him from the night before. The doctor had simply stepped past the bartender, who was in his night cap and pajamas, and had gone around the bar to open the shutters and get the drink himself. The bartender protested but did not make a move to pry loose the doctor’s hand. In theory, the doctor was a respected man. He was educated and on the richer side of things and, above all, he was necessary to their way of life. He was not a bad doctor, though he was unreliable. He’d once cured the bartender’s ringworm without much fuss, and saved the lives of several men and women who’d come down with some kind of horrible fever just the year before. In theory, he was one of the town’s more important men. In practice, he was universally ignored whenever possible.