Кристиан Новак - Dark Mother Earth

I followed her, happy because I knew I’d see those two clowns again. That night I stayed at Granny’s and could hardly wait till morning. When I got up, I gobbled a slice of bread with butter, salt, and an egg sunny-side up, and raced out of the house into the foggy farmyard. I went over to the fenced-in part and whispered, “Bacawk, Chickichee,” but nothing happened. “Bacawk! Chickichee!” I said a little louder. I stepped into the farmyard through the gate in the chicken-wire fence, stood among the chickens, and crouched down to see where the two of them had jumped out from. From the gloom peered two squinty hog eyes and two horsefly eyes.

“Don’t be frightened now, out you come!”

And the two of them stepped slowly and timidly out into the light. Chickichee wiggled his huge foot and stared down into the mud, and Bacawk tried without success to keep his balance and straighten the sleeves of his oversize coat.

“Why so shy now? Last night you two were madder than wet hens,” I said, and Chickichee clapped and hopped onto Bacawk’s back, and Bacawk set off running furiously in a circle. The chickens clucked in alarm and flapped into a frenzy with a cloud of feathers. Bacawk ran two or three rounds and then fell into the mud, and Chickichee tumbled after him. I laughed and clapped. Glancing around, Chickichee said: “Nobody but your granny calls us out, and she only does it while she’s cooping up the chickens.”

“Glad to be of help to her,” added Bacawk, “but mostly we keep to the gloom.” The way they talked was different from the way the people talked in the village, drawling out the short words and cutting off the longer ones. They rolled their r ’s with tongue and throat, and yawned lazily through their a ’s and o ’s. They pronounced nose like naoose , and home like haooom . But I could follow them fine because they made the effort to be understandable. I could already see us putting together a whole fleet of boats and me teaching them to read.

“Much obliged,” said Chickichee a little sadly. “Thanks for summoning us, we can’t come out of the gloom unless somebody calls us.”

Boy oh boy, did those words come back to haunt me.

At first I thought everybody could see them, but they were just pretending not to, like when Mom told me I shouldn’t stare at people with disabilities. Once she slammed the door right in Chickichee’s face, so I went back to open it for him. Then he forgot to shut the door behind him, so she yelled at me for leaving it open. I started to explain why I’d opened the door. She crouched down and took me by the shoulder like she always did when she had a mind to tell me something that mattered. She said she’d seen I was in a world of my own. She asked if I was missing Dad, and whether I had left the door open so he could come in. I fibbed and said I just happened to forget. I was afraid she’d think I was strange and threaten me again with the folks who’d come and take me away.

So Mom didn’t see them, and soon I realized my sister didn’t see or hear them, either, because my two fiendish friends were constantly quibbling over who’d get to read and write with me. I warned them to keep it down and showed them where they were making mistakes with their reading, and then my sister would ask, a bit worried, who was I talking to. Maybe Granny was the only one who saw them, but she was so old she hardly ever watched Numbers and Letters anymore, so I could never tell exactly what she could see. When she did, she’d come up with such a cockeyed answer that she’d laugh at herself. It didn’t bother me that only I could see them. I doubted their existence less than I doubted the existence of some of the people the grown-ups talked about. I could feel them, smell them. Theirs was the musty scent of rotting wood and wet leaves. In my world it was entirely possible that everybody had fiendish friends they never talked about that nobody else could see. They, too, would summon their friends from the gloom and converse with them in secret. (This is something I believe to this day, at least a little.)

We went everywhere together. Soon they learned how to behave in public, but often they squabbled. They knew they had to hide when guests came over, and in the evening, when I went to bed, they helped Granny bring the chickens in for the night. They’d be there again in the morning, waving to me while I ate breakfast. I’d wave back when Mom was turned away. They followed me to kindergarten and entertained me along the way. They’d run out into the road when they heard a car coming, and then at the last minute they’d leap into the muddy ditch. When an old codger walked by, Chickichee followed him and mimicked his walk. I hid my grin, and Bacawk picked up a rock and tossed it at the old man. The old coot turned and saw me standing there, laughing. He reckoned I’d thrown the rock. That made me mad, and I told them not to do that anymore.

“Sor-rry, don’t be mad,” they cawed like jackdaws, crestfallen.

They didn’t come into church, or school, but sometimes when I was in class I’d see them from my desk as they stood on tiptoe, peering in through the window, elbowing each other. One time Bacawk pressed Chickichee’s face so hard up against the pane that I could hear the glass cracking. I wagged a finger at them to stop, the way grown-ups do to mischievous children, and they responded with long faces and bowed heads. At first they obeyed me without a peep, and most of the time they were fun to be with.

They could never agree on anything. Chickichee said his favorite color was motley, so Bacawk rolled his eyes and said Chickichee was a buffle-brain and there was no such color. Bacawk was always throwing rocks, and Chickichee would tattle on him to me. Chickichee told me Bacawk once threw a rock at our neighbor Tonči’s house—some people called our neighbor Laddie because he had a little dog named that—and almost broke a window. I told Bacawk he wouldn’t be my friend anymore if he did that again. They said nasty things about people who weren’t there and about each other. What’s odd is that both of them seemed to be right. They often had fierce fights, which would end, as a rule, with Bacawk kicking Chickichee wildly and spitting on him while Chickichee lay howling on the ground. The first time I saw this was when I left a pail of water on the steps for them, because Bacawk told me they were thirsty. I went into the house and watched as the two of them, each on one side of the bucket, plunged their heads in. It was too small, so they collided, and neither of them could reach the water. Bacawk lost his patience and pushed his friend away from the bucket. Chickichee fell a few feet away, and meanwhile Bacawk gulped down two or three mouthfuls and dumped out the rest. Chickichee sat in the grass, legs crossed, head bowed. He reached up and pulled his hood down over his face. Bacawk stood firmly on both feet, planted a hand on the overturned bucket, and forced a laugh. He glanced toward the window and pointed to show me how pitiful Chickichee was. I went out and hollered: “What are you, crazy? Into the corner with you!”

Bacawk went all solemn, limped on his two legs and his fist over to the fence, and plopped down onto the ground.

I poured Chickichee a full bucket of water. He plunged his head so deep that only the tip of his hood poked above the rim. He asked if I was an angel, and I told him I wasn’t. I was somehow pleased with myself, so I went over to Bacawk and explained that he mustn’t treat Chickichee badly just because Chickichee was weaker. They made up and hugged and went off together toward Granny’s house, as it was starting to get dark.

When I went back into the house, Mom wanted to know who I’d been talking to, and I said, “Nobody, just playing with friends,” which was usually enough of an excuse for most silly things. And it was enough that evening, but I had the feeling that was going to be the last time. Mom knew I had no friends.