Diane Cook - Man V. Nature - Stories

He frowned. Be nice. I’m not the enemy here. He wiped a tear from her cheek.

But she too believed the man would take Lewis. And that he’d take their third child. And their fourth. It would happen to her. Something in the way he was there as she pulled in from the hospital. As if he had a nose for her, for her joy. Maybe it was conceited to think she was different somehow, whether because she felt the need to protect Lewis, or because she felt targeted. She didn’t know if it was bad to suspect that the world had its sights trained on her in particular, and that the world could go either way — it could spare her or take a shot. She felt shot at every day of her life since she’d begun having children.

Linda placed an ad for guards. Must be able to walk and be on feet all day, it read, must be able to work nights. She hired two men recently laid off from a manufacturing plant. They were machinists, wore their machinist jumpsuits and so looked official, uniformed in dark blue with patchy grease stains. They worked the night shift. She hired two more men from the neighborhood, downsized from their city office jobs. Their wives disapproved, but the men insisted it was good work. They worked the day shift. Their wives looked away when they had to drive by. They found it vulgar, their husbands pacing Linda’s lawn, guarding just one baby, and not even their own.

But Linda had more time to look at Lewis now that she wasn’t always looking at the man in the yard. She memorized Lewis’s face. She saw tiny red bumps on his cheeks that she hadn’t noticed before. They were like the friendliest sandpaper. She watched him preen as he slept, his small hands fluttering over his face like a shy person’s would. On mornings, he smelled of decaying leaves. She bonded with him as she’d read she would in parenting books.

One night, while Linda bathed Lewis in the kitchen sink, his pale skin masked by the bubbles of baby soap, someone tapped on the window. The figure glowed white under a floodlight, and Linda was startled until she saw it was Gail. The woman stood in a juniper bush under the window, black soil crumbling into her clogs.

I wanted to bring you this Bundt cake, but the wonder twins wouldn’t let me in, Gail yelled through the closed window. She held up a cake wrapped in foil.

Linda sighed as she unlocked the door. I know. I had hoped it could feel a bit friendlier. They throw rocks. People have complained.

Sour grapes. They’re just mad they didn’t think of it first. Gail squeezed one of Lewis’s soapy wet feet. He splashed his hands in the water. Besides, it’s working, isn’t it? He’s still here.

True. But you snuck past, didn’t you?

And of course you’ll talk to them about that.

Of course, Linda murmured, and bit her lip. Sometimes it just feels extreme.

You just keep doing what it takes to keep this little one safe. I wouldn’t worry about what people are saying.

Linda hadn’t considered that people were saying much of anything.

When Gail left, Linda opened the front door and called the guards over. One faced her, while the other remained turned away to watch the man in the yard. The man in the yard strained forward to hear.

Linda whispered, In general, you’re doing great.

The men nodded gravely.

But a friend snuck into the backyard tonight.

Impossible, said the guard facing her. We would never let anyone through.

And we patrol the backyard, said the guard with his back to her. Impossible that we wouldn’t see your friend.

Not possible, said the guard facing her.

The point is, said Linda, one, I want to be able to see my neighbors. You can let them through. This is a neighborhood. And two, people can’t be sneaking around, or you’re not doing the job I hired you for. And I have no problem hiring someone else. She said this in a way that was mean on purpose.

The men were quiet for a moment, sniffed the night air to help them process her threat. Streetlights glowed up and down the block. Leaves wrestled their branches. Sprinklers chugged over far-off lawns. They promised it would not happen again.

It was the men from the block, the neighbor guards, who ultimately let the man inside. One man’s child had broken his leg, was in the hospital, and the father skipped his shift to stay by his son’s side. The other man from the neighborhood worked alone. The day progressed uneventfully. The guard watched the man in the yard and the man in the yard watched the guard. There was no need to patrol the house in the usual way; the man in the yard wasn’t moving. As long as the man never moved, the guards didn’t need to either. There’s no other danger, the guard thought, as the sun spotlighted the man in the yard. He’d never heard of an accomplice. He was sure he would know if the man had one. Though what if the man decided to bring an accomplice one day, and the guards weren’t patrolling? The odds were low. But still. He’d hate to be the one on patrol and not really patrolling on the one day that the man brought an accomplice.

The guard worked this thought over as he turned to urinate into the bushes that lined the house. He watched the man in the window’s reflection. The man still hovered behind the maple. The guard glanced down to aim, and briefly closed his eyes in relief. When he looked again, he no longer saw the man behind the maple. He didn’t see the man anywhere. For a moment, he thought the man might have moved fully behind the tree to give him privacy. But that was only the briefest wishful thought, because he knew better. He’d been through this. He’d comforted his own hysterical wife twice, and the story was always that she’d looked away for only a second. Just one second! And here he had done just that, even though he had promised himself, and Linda, that he wouldn’t.

Inside, Linda and Lewis had relaxed into a nap while he nursed. When the guard burst into the room, Linda startled awake to find a cold spot in the crook of her arm.

Linda felt a warm, damp thing on her cheek. Gail held a compress to her. The ocher of sunset filtered through the blinds. She had slept most of every day since Lewis was taken. She could not leave her bed. She could not rise to lock any doors. Old soiled diapers stewed in the garbage can, and she could not take them to the curb.

Gail pursed her lips. You need to get up, get on with it, she said, a rind of admonishment around the words.

I don’t need to do that, Linda replied.

And how do you tell that to your husband?

I don’t. Linda made a half attempt to sit up. We don’t talk.

Gail shook her head. And how do you intend to make another if you’re not talking? She was trying to tease a smile from Linda.

I don’t think we will. I think we’re done.

She could see that Gail did not understand.

I can’t lose another. I’m not sure I’m going to survive losing Lewis.

This feeling will pass. It always does, Gail tried to reassure her.

How long before you felt normal? Linda asked shyly.

How do you mean?

When were you able to move on?

Why don’t you rest some more, Gail suggested, and grabbed her purse as if she was about to run.

Wait, Linda said, grabbing a fistful of bedsheet. How many children did you lose? She realized she had never asked.

Well, Gail said curtly. None.

How? He didn’t come to your yard! she accused.

Well, of course he did. He comes to everyone’s yard.

Well, then?

Gail looked uncomfortable. He waited, but then just lost interest. He doesn’t want them once they are too old. Then she said, both delicately and proudly, Honestly, I just never made a mistake.

Linda had never heard of a woman not losing any of her children. No one ever talked of such a thing. She had come to believe it was inevitable, like a law of nature, and not a failure on her part. Or she felt like it was a failure on her part — of course it was a failure —but because every other woman had the same failure, failure seemed normal, which made her feel normal, which canceled out the feeling of failure.