Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

I stayed in Maine with her that winter, long after I’d finished working on the spires of the factory. I found other work to do in town.

Then, at the end of January, while standing in only a pair of wool socks, she wrapped her hair around her waist. The ends would not tie in a knot.

“It has begun,” she whispered.

That night I heard the chop of an ax. As the weeks went on, soon the ends of her hair would make it only to her side. Chop, chop, chop.

“Have you been cutting your hair?” I asked her.

“My belly is getting bigger. It’s making my hair shorter.”

Of course I knew that. I just didn’t want to say it. Neither of us ever said it. She just started buying bigger clothes, and I suddenly made a cradle for the back bedroom. There wasn’t a plan to make the cradle. I just one day picked up a handsaw and a piece of wood, and next thing I knew, I had a bed for my child in front of me.

The closest we ever got to discussing the baby was the night she asked me what I thought.

“Fielding? I asked what you think?”

I’ll say it now because all the years in the world have passed, and I am old enough to know I wanted the child.

I knew I would be no good for it. I would build it cradles, yes, but wouldn’t actually cradle it myself. How could I with my sleeves drenched in blood? The snake has had its victories over me. And in its victories I am no longer sweet nor gentle. The very things a good father must be. It’s impossible to make a family when your mind spins mad with the old monsters. Isn’t it?

The fear of being the horrible father was a noose tightening around my neck. It was why when she asked what I thought, my answer was, “I don’t like how your hair doesn’t wrap around anymore.”

That long rope that in its length meant I could have a shot at a good life. Its length meant I hadn’t done anything bad yet to chop it off. But wasn’t her growing belly my bad inside her? Wasn’t that growth an ax, making the rope shorter, making her weaker? And weaker she’d gotten.

Pregnancy did not give her that glow. It gave her a redness to the cheeks like punches. It drooped her eyes from all the sleeping she did not do. And mornings sounded like sickness being flushed down the toilet. Maybe she was like Samson, the long hair her strength, and I was Delilah, cutting it shorter and shorter with the wielding ax I put inside her.

I suppose I said the wrong thing to her, for shortly after, she began buying castor oil. It was said the oil would help with hair growth, so every night she’d slather it on, staining pillowcase after pillowcase. Even if her hair had grown, it wouldn’t have shown, because her growing belly was always outpacing her hair.

Castor oil was everywhere. On the doorknobs, on her clothes, on her forehead from where the oil dripped from her scalp. She was sent home from work because the oil kept dripping onto all the paperwork.

Then came the day she drank the oil. I didn’t know, I tell you. I was off at work, trying to wipe the castor oil off my hands. Later in the hospital, she would say she drank it because she thought it would make her hair grow from the inside out, like a big oily vitamin.

“Oh, Fielding, I had no idea it could affect the baby. I wouldn’t have drank it. Doctor?” She wanted to make sure he heard too. All the nurses as well. She didn’t want them to think she had tried an at-home abortion. “I didn’t know it could induce labor. And as soon as the blood and the cramps came, well, I called straightaway for an ambulance. It felt like a kick to my stomach. Oh, Fielding, stop looking at me like that. Please. I didn’t do this on purpose. Fielding, I said I didn’t do this on purpose.”

Later, when she was out of the hospital, she stood in front of the windows, the moonlight upon her flat stomach. She pulled her hair all the way around her waist, just as she always had before.

“Now you can love me again. Fielding? I said, look, the hair goes all the way around, just as before. Now you can love me again. We can start over.”

That night, while she slept in her castor oil crown, I went to the back bedroom, picked up the cradle, and threw it into the lake, watching it sink like a ship beneath the dark water.

I never went back to Maine. I did buy a rope. I did make a necklace on a porch one night. I did think of Sal as the stool wobbled. I did make the rope too long, as my toes landed on the porch floor and became the son who saved me, if only for that one, brief moment.

THE FLYERS ABOUT him first came as inserts in the vegetarianism pamphlets. By July, Elohim started writing so much about Sal that those inserts became pamphlets all their own. These pamphlets led to meetings held every afternoon in the woods.

When I overheard the sheriff telling Dad he was going to stop by Elohim’s to have a chat, I ran through the neighbors’ backyards as the sheriff drove down the lane to Elohim’s. I snuck up through the side of Elohim’s yard, hunkering below his windows, should he be near them. Then I crouched by the lattice, waiting for him to answer the sheriff’s knock.

They sat down on the porch in the padded wicker chairs while the sheriff reminded Elohim of how he said he wouldn’t speak ill of Sal anymore.

“Now, Sheriff”—Elohim’s smile was careful—“I never said that. What I said was I would talk to folks and help ’em understand the possibility of Dovey fallin’ on her own. I said I would tell ’em that that car hittin’ that boy was perhaps an accident after all. I never said I wouldn’t go further. I never said I wouldn’t speak ill of him on other issues. Folks have got a right to know about the devil in their midst, and I am merely describin’ his flames for them. Now, I ain’t sayin’ I’m tellin’ folks to run ’im outta town. That wouldn’t do me no good.”

“Do you no good?” The sheriff spit between the columns of the porch.

Elohim quickly controlled his disgust as he turned from the spit that had landed on the leaves of the hostas, which were drying and yellowing in the drought, though still relevant and lining the front of his porch.

“It would do none of us any good, runnin’ an evil off like we’re too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can’t forget, we are the lords of our own ’round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent.”

“Now, Elohim, I’m warnin’ ya right now to leave that boy alone. I trusted you to do no harm. You waited till the Blisses got custody, and now you’re startin’ up again. You best get used to that boy. Their custody might not be temporary after all. We’re talkin’ ’bout a boy that could be part of their family permanently. Every family is part of this town. Don’t hurt the town, now, Elohim. You hurt us all, and there ain’t gonna be enough bandages to heal every wound.”

“Sheriff, I am merely keepin’ information and knowledge alive and healthy.”

“Shit, Elohim.” The sheriff crossed his snakeskin boots at the ankles. “You got more followers than the church now.”

“That’s ’cause the preacher finds it hard to point the snake out. That preacher has always been on the cautious side of things. Him and his khakis. He’s from Canada, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is he doin’ down here? We ain’t his people. He ain’t one of us. He ain’t got Ohio soil shakin’ off his roots, he ain’t got hands for squeezin’ river mud through fingers, and he sure the hell ain’t got the holster that the hills and the hollers put at our hips.”

“I ain’t got Ohio soil on my roots either. You forget that?”