Cote Smith - Hurt People

“I can’t sleep now,” she said. “But you can show me where you sleep. Maybe I’ll lie next to you for a bit.”

I took her downstairs, into the basement. I turned on the lamp and gestured toward my bed. A big daddy longlegs ran across the bedspread and disappeared under my pillow.

“You sleep here?” my mother said.

I found the spider and let it crawl on my hand. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s not that good, either,” my mother said. She sat next to me on the bed. “You’re so quiet.” She brushed my bowl-shaped hair. “Don’t you ever get scared?”

I lay down and thought about the question. I thought about what I felt when my brother and I were with Chris. I tried to remember how scared I was, but I couldn’t. I thought of my brother out in the woods, alone or worse. I pictured Chris catching my brother, the two of them taking shelter in the silo. I imagined the tornado coming and taking Chris away. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t picture my brother coming back. I couldn’t imagine what he would be like.

“I don’t know,” I said.

My mother put her head on the pillow next to me. She put one arm behind her head and wrapped me in the other.

MY MOTHER WOKE ME. It was morning, though it looked the same in the basement. We went upstairs and there was no one there. My dad’s police cruiser was not out front.

My mother made me an egg-and-cheese sandwich for breakfast. While I ate, I tried to remember pieces of the things I dreamed. But there was nothing I could hold on to. That world had fled, faded away. Now there was just the world in front of me, in which my mother sat watching me eat. Marveling at every bite like it was a small miracle. I tried not to stare back, not for too long. I stole glances at her makeup-less face, her dry, small eyes. When I was finished she put my plate in the sink and ran water over the yolk that had broken free of the egg and hardened. Something clogged the drain and I could hear the water slowly rise, forming a small pool.

“Go get your shoes,” my mother said. “We need to move the van.”

* * *

When I returned from grabbing my shoes in the basement, my mother wasn’t waiting by the door. She was in the kitchen, looking in the fridge. I asked her what she was looking for. “Nothing,” she said, and quickly slammed the door shut. She looked at me, then out the kitchen window, at me again. “Let’s go. I have to get out of here.”

Outside it was cold enough for a small jacket. The temperature had stayed down after the tornado. Dew wet the grass, and a thin fog descended on my dad’s street. Summer was ending early. Once in the van I didn’t know where my mother was taking me, but I didn’t ask. It felt wrong to say more words than I had to. She drove with the radio off and I did my best to keep my mind blank, to not think about the empty basement back at my dad’s place.

After we got onto Main Street, it became easier to think about things besides my brother. Because my mother was right: the tornado’s damage was different in the light. The streets that had been without power the night before, the ones hidden in the dark, were the streets hit the hardest. Entire houses were crumbled, their frames warped and broken. Trees lay atop smashed cars, and random yards burned. Strangers walked up and down their once familiar neighborhoods, like zombies that had arisen from the dead after decades underground, who clawed their way out of their graves only to find everything they knew beyond recognition.

More than once we were forced to detour. On our way to wherever it was we were going. My mother sped from one street to another as though we were being chased, and as soon as we thought we had escaped, a mountain of debris blocked our way. My mother punched the steering wheel each time we were cut off, made a U-turn, and peeled out in the opposite direction. This happened several times, until eventually we pulled into an unharmed gas station, with a liquor store attached. I couldn’t remember being here before. My mother put the van in park.

“It’s not open,” she said. “After all that.”

I looked where she was looking, at the Open sign, cursive and unlit. The insides of both stores were dark and unmoving. My mother slumped in her seat and closed her eyes. She started to cry. Loudly and without shame. Then, suddenly, she stopped, and although I thought she would feel better, she didn’t.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she said. “You should have said something.”

I turned from the window and faced my mother, her blue eyes reddened with sadness and disbelief. “This man, this Chris — all this time! You could have stopped him! Why didn’t you tell anyone what was going on?”

“I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you didn’t know? Of course you knew.”

I shook my head, the only thing my body would do.

“Oh, well, that’s great,” she said. “That helps a lot. You didn’t know and look what happened.”

She started crying again and I felt my mouth open. My cheeks tightened, but nothing fell. I stared at my mother, knowing I could offer nothing.

A car horn gave a quick honk from behind. I turned and saw it was a police cruiser. My dad’s. He got out and walked the few steps to the driver’s side, like we’d violated some rule of the road and he was finally ready to take us in.

“We’re still looking,” he said. “But we’re stretched thin because of the storm.” I could hear the tired in his voice. From being in the woods all night. Calling out my brother’s name, again and again with no reply.

“So what are you doing here?” my mother said.

“I saw you driving around. This street’s closed, you know.”

“No, I mean what are you doing here ? Why aren’t you out there? What the hell are you waiting for?”

“C’mon,” my dad said, touching my mom’s shoulder, “let’s get you home.”

She jerked away from him. “No! That’s not what I need. I need you to be out there. I need you to find him.”

“We will. Just—”

“Then do it! For God’s sake, do something right for once in your life.”

My dad’s hand dropped. He backed away. For a moment, he looked like he’d been shot. The color left his face and his breathing stopped.

“Aggie,” he said.

My mother sighed. She looked down at her hands, shaking the wheel. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

She started the van and we drove away.

* * *

I didn’t know my mother snored until the first night we shared a bed. Not until I woke up, kicking her legs and calling my brother’s name. Stop, I said. Would you stop.

I thought she would leave after that first night, after I made her remind me that my brother wasn’t the one snoring. That my brother, her son, was gone. I thought she would go upstairs and sleep on the couch, not stay down in the dark with the spiders. Though maybe that was the point. In the basement, it was always dark. There was no window well like at our old house, no light to leak in. My mother could pretend night lasted forever and stay in bed entire days, which she did.

My dad, he had no idea what to do. Those first few days he tried to coax my mother out, like she was some wild animal, scared but dangerous. But instead of biting or snapping her teeth, my mother did nothing. She said nothing. Only, I’m fine. Only, Please leave me alone.

My dad was the one who handled all the disappearance stuff. While my mother slept or didn’t sleep, he did all the things I could never imagine doing. He talked to the KBI and the bordering counties’ sheriff departments. Put up posters in the appropriate places. He went out into the woods every day and every night and came back with nothing. He found the silo and we talked about its tree, but that was it. There were no footprints showing him where to go. No broken limbs bent by a fleeing body. The storm, he said, washed everything away.