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

She picked up his hands, found his long fingernails curled into the fleshy pads of his palms, tearing clawed indents, tiny wounds. This was a body damaged by time, by time and by submersion in water—and how long had they been there in her lake, and where had they floated there from? The boy’s shape demanded something of her, some consolation, and she did not wish to deny what she felt, had determined to deny herself nothing. She lifted him onto her lap, into her arms, felt his weight upon her, and how he was filled with the lake then, and how when she squeezed him closer that water came out, through his mouth and nose, the other wounds decayed across his flesh.

The water that covered her, it was not all from her lake, and when it flooded her mouth she remembered not everything but something more than she had, or else she almost did. What she remembered was already present in her world: Here too there was already house and dirt and woods and lake, sun and moons , and yes, ghosts too, for what else could account for her dreams? Here there was always wife and always mother , for she might have been both even if she was neither now, and here there was always son , for she had made one of those once too, and before that was husband —and even if she could not remember his face she remembered his voice, how tone-deaf he was, how he spoke ceaselessly because like most men he could not sing, and because he could not say anything without too many words.

She was old, in the last of her ages, but she thought she was not stupid, only forgetful.

In the floating blackness she had forgotten all the faces she had known, but now here there were two more, dead in the shallows of the lake she had made for herself and for them, for someone like them—so that when they came for her it would be as if they were already home.

There were many songs inside her, even then.

There was a song for the making of the objects by which a household was furnished and run, the bowls and breadboards and spoons and knives and pots and pans.

There was a song for the waking of a child, and for putting him to bed. There was a song for his birthday, and also for each day in between, each day during which he became different from the day before.

There was a song for making milk, even inside the breast of a barren woman, so that a child might be nursed even though his mother was not his mother.

There was a song for sewing clothing, and another for mending holes in those clothes, because there was exactly one right song for every action, for every desired artifact or outcome, and always it was important to sing the right song at the right time.

There was a song for the making of moons, but it cost so much to sing that it might take years to recover from, because the hole it cut would pool with grief, until nothing else might grow inside that circle.

There was a song for the carving of the earth, but its every note required one piece of herself, something to put where that earth had been, so that the dirt might not collapse. There was no creation from nothing but only from cost, and it was mostly with herself that she might pay.

There was a song for marriage, and another for anniversaries, and another for divorce.

There was a song for sickness, for fever, but it had not saved her when she was sick and fevered.

There was a song for birth, and a song for funerals, and it was the funeral song she sang now as she stacked wood upon the sandy shore, as she stacked the man and the boy upon the wood.

When the pyre was ready, she sang it aflame, then stood watch over the burning bodies. The fire climbed, and as she watched the blaze she fevered and she flamed and she sang the funeral song. And afterward her world grew quiet, and she was quiet in it, sure there was no man or beast left that knew her name, no one that might guess where she had fled or what had happened to her.

She believed herself alone in her world for just that single moment, a moment exactly as long as it was, and then something else splashed from the lake behind.

She turned to look out across the surface of the lake, and then from the water came the loud sound of them, the many where once there was one, and she had forgotten that too, had thought she had left it behind, but then she remembered how it had felt, remembered it now, so many years after it first swam from within her. She listened to the strange speech, and then she put a finger to her lips.

She said, Hush now.

She said, Mother says be quiet, just a little longer.

And then the splashing stopped.

And then the singing began.

MATT BELL IS GRATEFUL TORyan Call, Roy Kesey, and Robert Kloss, for their generous feedback; to Aaron Burch, Elizabeth Ellen, Steven Gillis, and Dan Wickett, for their friendship and encouragement; to Bradford Morrow, Carmen Giménez Smith, David McLendon, Jason Diamond and Tobias Carroll, Catherine Chung and Meakin Armstrong, and Kate Bernheimer and Alissa Nutting, for publishing excerpts in Conjunctions, Puerto del Sol, Unsaid, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Guernica , and Fairy Tale Review ; to Bronwen Hruska, Paul Oliver, Meredith Barnes, Rudy Martinez, Simona Blat, and the rest of the team at Soho Press, for their championing of this novel; to Janine Agro, Kapo Amos Ng and Sam Chung for their beautiful design and artwork; to Kirby Kim, for his invaluable advice and advocacy; to Mark Doten, whose belief and ability improved every page; and finally, but first and always, to Jessica, for her love and support.

Copyright © 2013 by Matt Bell

All rights reserved.

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN: 978-1-61695-254-9

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