Matt Bell - In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods

Or else it was only old age that I felt. And here was the proof I would not live forever, as always I’d imagined I would.

The wall near our front door held mostly solid, but others were punched through by the bear, her blows driven by that powerful hump upon her shoulders, or else ripped off their studs by moon rock and quake debris, and also singed by fire, by unstuck lightning. Even the parts of the house that had suffered no direct damage were wind worn, weather sick, and I stepped carefully across the floors as I carried the foundling’s wet and filthy body into the house, lifting him through the wreckage of tables and chairs, of pots scattered and utensils flung against and sometimes through walls.

Around us the house sighed and swayed, wood groaning against grain, and above us the sky continued its sucking sound, slower now but still wheezing against the tear the moonfall had made. I carried the foundling across the wrong-angled floors and into our bedroom, where upon the bed were still the sheets where my wife and I had once lain in the hopes of making our own children, and now those lengths and widths of fabric became instead a shroud: I wrapped the foundling in that once-white cloth, given to us on the day of our wedding, and as I locked the fabric with careful folds I remembered all of those wedding guests—my parents, the parents of my wife, our uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters, our friends when we still had friends—and for the first time I thought how they were surely mostly dead, passed away without our notice, lost twice to us because we were too far away to see or hear enough to grieve, too isolated to have any community to share with us its news. We had come to a place where all we could see was ourselves and also each other, and I had almost forgotten that there were ever others, others besides my wife and me, our fingerling and our foundling, the bear and the squid and the smaller lives over which they ruled.

I had seen in the deep house my wife’s memories of her parents—of what one parent had done to the other—but also of what good people they had seemed before. I had no best memories of my own family, had always stood separate from those who were meant to stay close to me, whom I was meant to stay close to, and now maybe they were all dust, and only I was still alive. Everywhere I went I remained , and going with me was only the fingerling nested within, and also the dead foundling, this son to carry downward, inside, and through some fire-wrecked memory, that lost reminder of our lives as they were at the last moment of our shared past.

Only when the foundling was right-shrouded did I leave his side, and then merely to seek some pair of breeches, an old shirt my wife had sewn, plus my spare pair of boots, one-half of which I had to cut to fit my mangled foot. I gathered supplies for making light and fire, then an older knife, not my skinning blade lost in the lake but one meant for cooking, last used for the removal of fish tumors, and I packed my satchel with the two furs, the foundling’s first skin and the twitching memory of it, and also my watch, that gift which I had not worn since it stopped working long before, during my previous descent. These were all the possessions I thought I needed, all I still cared to have with me, and if other objects in that house had once held meaning then they no longer did, not for me.

The house I had built was at first small, just a few rooms, a small number of windows, a single hallway and a very finite and planned-for number of doors, and all of that was still there, if also dashed apart. After I finished my preparations I walked that first house once more, examined again its remains, peered through its broken walls and windows at the dirt beyond, and everywhere I looked I saw only some element I had been cured of wanting, and as I examined the future of this world I found I no longer craved its ownership. Now I would leave it behind to again journey beneath the earth, to again search out my wife—and whether I found her or not I thought perhaps I would never return to this dirt where we had lived, nor any of the lands beyond it.

Below the limits of the house, I knew my wife’s nested structure was far greater, extending even past what I had seen on my last descent. Surely the bear already roamed somewhere among those rooms, waiting between the surface and the great stairs, mad with what she had done, what I was sure she would claim I’d made her do. Soon I would be on my way to meet her, and when I did it would be with the shrouded death of her cub in my arms, with the skins of his first-meant childhood strapped to my back, and I did not yet know what I would say when next we met.

And how I would have to be ready.

And how when I lifted the foundling into my arms, the fingerling objected, saying, OR JUST THROW IT IN THE LAKE.

And how I never would be ready.

ABANDON IT IN THE WOODS OR IN THE GARDEN OR IN THE ROOMS OF THE HOUSE.

And how I had never known what right thing to say or do, to her or to anyone else.

I DO NOT CARE WHERE YOU LEAVE IT, he said. BUT DO ANYTHING BUT BRING IT ALONG.

And how when that meeting came I would speak and act anyway, as always I had done before.

EVERYWHERE THERE WAS THE CHARand charcoal of our ruined wedding presents, of the memory of them, and also pools of rainwater and clods of sod and fallen walls and piled rubble. I picked through those first unceilinged rooms, then the darker halls below, curious for what remained, but so little held any useful shape or other dimension that soon we moved on, downward and farther in, through room after room, and though I did not forget their contents I also did not linger long between their walls.

And in this room, a silence that had once been a song.

And in this room, a light that had once been lightning.

And in this room, a heat that had once been a fire.

And in this room, a lump of silver that had once been a ring, two rings.

And in this room, the taste of burned hair. And in this room, its smell.

And in this room, the carapaces of bees, long ago emptied.

And in this room, a wine bottle, full of the leavings of maggots but not maggots.

And in this room, a broken bowl of mirrors, reflecting nothing.

And in this room, a filthy red ribbon, for putting up a woman’s hair, for tying it back.

And in this room, unwashed seeds split by fire, revealing the expectant sprouts inside, now doomed and dried.

And in this room, a sensation like the slight give of a bruised thigh, when pushed in upon by a thumb.

And in this room, a sound that might have been my wife’s voice, just too far off to hear.

And in this room, a chunk of moon rock, still hot, and above it a shaft of light lifting five stories to a jagged hole in the surface, to the other moon’s light pouring down.

And in this room, the spokes of a bassinet, a blanket buried beneath a caved-in ceiling.

And in this room, a trowel stained dark, used once for digging twice.

And in this room, a rag, brown with blood, with layers of old blood.

And in this room, the sound of a star hitting the earth.

And in this room, the louder sound of a moon, of part of a moon.

And in this room, a staleness of spilt milk.

And in this room, the slime and the scales of rotted fish.

And in this room, the broken body of a deer, twisted upon itself, legs over head and around antlers, and some of the rest wrenched free for feed.

And in this room, a heavy line arced in the ash, acrid urine, another marker that the bear had raced ahead, and in the next room a runny shit, fresh from her body, and how I shivered to see it, to smell it stinking still.