I flipped through the pages. A sketch of our house when the trees in the yard were still small, a drawing of a fawn, even one image that looked like me as a boy. She’d written one word at the bottom of that page. Love. There were sketches of another child. An infant that I could only believe was my sister June. A tear rolled from my eye. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I said.
The next page was blank, as were a few more after that. Then there were more drawings, but these were darker. She’d drawn the skull of a dog, maybe a wolf. Something she’d seen in the woods, perhaps. Then there was a wooded landscape. Moss covered a rocky outcropping just beyond a stream. A fallen tree lay across it, serving as a walking bridge. Layers of shelf fungus grew out of the side of that bridge. The detail was breathtaking.
The next page was dark, shaded nearly all the way in. Only two bright spots peered out from its center like eyes burning in the black. The last image was sharp teeth gleaming in a wide snarl. There were too many for a normal mouth, yet they were inside a human mouth, not a snout. I closed the sketchbook and opened the journal.
The first pages were about my sister. Words like love and beauty. Then, raging entries on pages about loss and depression, hatred and withdrawal. As I flipped through, the entries became sparse, once every few months until the year I was born. Those pages were filled with words like fulfilled, joy, wonder, and morning sickness. I chuckled to myself as I read them. More pages talked about diapers, toddling and first words, eating with a spoon. Then three words caught my attention. They stood out on their very own page, three lines high and each letter written over itself several times.
THAT CHEATING BASTARD
The page before was dated November, 1974. I would’ve been two years old. I regretted reading those words.
The page after was two weeks later. Raindrops smudged the letters of that single paragraph, or more likely, tear drops.
Bastard. He came back drunk again, pawing at me but smelling like her. Her lipstick was on his ear. I hope he liked what she said to him. I hope she’ll have him. I told him to leave and if he ever came back, I would kill him.
I took a moment, then closed the book and tucked it under my arm. I thought it might take some coffee and breakfast to read any further. Maybe a drop of whiskey.
Leaving the rosary and the journal on the kitchen table, I hurried out to the car and hopped in, cranking the engine. The sun shone through the treetops of those woods as I backed up to turn out of the drive. I hit the brake and stared, seeing her walk out from between those trees.
That afternoon all over again.
I remembered the sun was behind me that day, casting an eerie light on her, illuminating the expression on her too-pale face, the dirt on her hands and clothes. I remember running to greet her and the smile she’d been faking.
Then she was gone, and only the woods were there. I lit up a smoke and cracked the window of my car as I drove off to the Goodwill where I left the bags full of my mother’s things without a care. I thought of the journal and the anger I could hear in her words. That cheating bastard. Those were not words I had ever heard her use to describe my father. Gone was the usual word. Out of our lives were others. She never seemed happy or sad about raising me alone. She never showed anger or sadness for my father around me.
I ordered coffee and a sausage and egg biscuit for my breakfast and ate it while I drove back to the house. The journal sat on the counter where I’d left it. The rosary was next to it on the table. I eyed the phone, thinking I should call the attorney first, but curiosity had me by the throat and I wasn’t sure I could breathe until I knew the rest.
The next entry was calm, days later. It simply said: He’s gone.
The one after that was joyous again, talking about one of my birthday parties and how cute everything was, how much fun we all had with a few of the neighborhood children. There were descriptions of Christmas celebrations, Halloween costumes, and my marks in school. As I came to the end of the book, I was equally relieved and disappointed that I found no more talk of cheating or sadness, then my thumb found a pair of pages that had stuck together. I tugged gently to separate them and they came apart with a faint popping sound and just a slight tear.
A dark smudge of a fingerprint had glued them together. It looked like mud, but something told me it wasn’t. The words written there confirmed my feeling.
I prayed to God he wouldn’t come back. I gave him chances, Lord. More than anyone deserves. He betrayed me. Then he beat me when I tried to kick him out. The police took him. I went to him once while he was in jail. I warned him never to come back I said I hoped he would rot in there, but he’s back. I ask your forgiveness, Lord, for what I am about to do. I know he will find the liquor. I know that when he does, he’ll look for me. He’ll want to see my son. My boy doesn’t belong to him. It takes more than blood to be a father. He’ll beat me when I tell him no. I will bury him when he does. I will kill him and bury him in those woods.
That last page was dated August, 1983, and there were no more entries. I was eleven years old then. My hand lost its grip on the book and it dropped to the floor. I reached blindly for it, but two and two was not adding up. My mother, Ruth Anderson Wake was no killer. She was just a tired old woman whose cheese fell off her cracker. That’s what I’d convinced myself twenty some years ago. She had just given up on life. It wasn’t possible.
***
I took to the woods with a flashlight and the only shovel I could find, a trowel stashed among some flowerpots on the screened porch. Jogging toward those woods, I could think of nothing else. I went in between the two maple trees where I’d seen her that day, walking towards me. I walked on pure instinct, passing over large roots and moss-covered stones.
Leaves crunched and twigs cracked as my feet pressed them into the damp earth. The sun heated the humid air, but it was still chilly under the shade of the dense foliage. Tree after tree I passed, taking note of landmarks so I might more easily find my way back to the house. Those woods weren’t the terrible, dark place I’d pictured in my head as a child.
When I came upon the stream, just beyond a rock outcropping and a large fallen tree that served as a walking bridge, my heart stopped. The tree had rotted, caving in the center. It had long since served its purpose, but it was the place from her sketch, I had no doubt.
I sloshed through the stream, water soaking my shoes and my pants legs but I didn’t care. Once on the other side, I pulled the shovel from my back pocket and sat on a solid piece of that fallen tree’s trunk. There was nothing but woods around me, and they seemed to go on forever in any direction I chose to look. I felt insane, bolting out of the house like that.
What did you really think you would find?
I stabbed the shovel into the rotting tree. Something darted. I looked to my right, seeing the white tail of a small deer as it bounced through the brush, disappearing into the distance. As my eyes trailed back, I saw something else. Something white sticking out of the ground, just peeking above the dead leaves that coated the forest floor. I walked over to it and brushed those leaves away with one sopping wet foot.
It was an animal’s skull, only the top part, no lower jaw. All of the teeth save one canine were missing. A dog or a wolf’s skull. Another of her drawings.
Without thinking, I tossed it aside and started to dig. I threw dirt and leaves this way and that. I stabbed through roots and if they were too thick for my trowel, I moved the trowel to the side and dug some more. When that was too slow, I threw the trowel away and used my hands, grabbing fistfuls of dirt and throwing them in a sweaty frenzy. Then my fingers found something solid, and when I pulled on it, it came out of the ground with a snap. I stared at the object.
A rib. I dropped it. Jesus, is this the rest of that wolf? Tell me it’s the wolf.
I dug further away from myself, uncovering more ribs, then what looked like an arm bone, then the lower jaw of a human being. Gripped in my task, I didn’t stop, but pulled on the jaw,
removing it from the ground and setting it aside. I dug out the cranium. It was crushed between the eyes. Another wound that was shaped like a slice of lemon lay right above where the victim’s ear would have been. When I moved it, there was something metal beneath. It was the lid to a mason jar.
I rubbed the mud off with my hands, looking to see what horrible thing was inside, but all I found was a folded piece of paper. The lid was rusted in place, but after smashing the jar on a nearby rock, I pulled out the note. Unfolding it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, that is, until I started reading.
It was my mother’s handwriting, just like the writing in her journal. The words were terrifying and sucked the air out of the world.
Now you know what I’ve done. He came back to the house and I drugged him. I killed him with the old axe and buried him here. It’s God’s work, Andy. I did this to protect you.
I’m sorry that you know this about me.
Then the date: September, 1983.
I leaned back, surveying the hole and the bones I had pulled from within. It was difficult to breathe, hard to comprehend what had happened. Impossible to imagine momma doing that terrible thing. Planning it, even burying a note for someone—for me—to find or for someone to find and tell me about. I sat back and stared at the note, reading the words a second, then third time. Then I folded the note along its long kept creases and shook my head. Had it been September? It was right before my birthday, that day so long ago. It might have been.
Feet away, I saw another skull, but it didn’t belong to the wolf and it wasn’t my father’s. That one looked like the skull of a cow.
Is that possible?
I dropped the note and dug into the ground again, pulling up chunks of rock and roots, tearing into the soft dirt with my hands. Again, I hit something solid, and again found bones. Another human skull, another mason jar. Another note.
I’m so sorry, Andy. I didn’t want you to know this about me. He came back, the bastard. I drugged him. He came back and I killed him, just like I said I would. I killed him with the old axe from the tool shed. I buried him just like I said I would. It’s God’s work, Andy. I just wanted to protect you.
March, 1986.
I put the notes side by side to compare them, making sure I hadn’t accidentally read the same one twice, or hadn’t had some sick sort of déjà vu. Same handwriting, same story, but different notes. I felt ill and looked around hoping the answer would come to me, or that I would wake up.
Instead, I saw another animal skull, then another, then a third. By the time I was done clearing all the leaves, moving all the skulls, opening all the graves, there were thirteen dead men. All skeletons. All with axe wounds. All buried with mason jars and notes saying some version of the same thing. Each was my father in her mind, murdered in retaliation for what he had done to my mother. The last one was dated June, 2011, less than one year ago. She would’ve been seventy-four years old.
I sat in the dirt, crushed by the gravity of what I had learned. I’d dropped the notes, but held the rosary she had carried. I rubbed it, twirling the worn beads between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t remember putting in my pocket before I’d gone into those woods, but there it was. My mind wandered, attitude changed, although it wasn’t near as big a change as it had been for my mother.
She’d spent her life trying to protect herself, to protect me. She’d prayed to God. She’d told God her plan. She’d killed thirteen men while looking for him. One of them may or may not have been my father, a cheating abusive bastard who had either died violently at her hand, or maybe of old age. Maybe he was still withering away someplace. In my mind, he was in that clearing, axe wound to the skull, my mother’s sanity spilled all over.
I gathered all the notes and smashed all the jars on the rock outcropping. Then I dug. I dug until my hands bled and I filled the hole with the bones. Man…animal, it didn’t matter. I filled the hole and brushed the leaves back to cover the fresh mound.
When I reached the old house, I placed the trowel in the shed, retrieved the journal and sketchbook from her bedroom, intent on burning them, and I locked the front door. I called the attorney and told him I couldn’t make it to our meeting. Something had come up. He understood and said he would handle things as I instructed. I told him to send Georgia and I the papers and I would sign and have them notarized locally.
I went back to my wife, to my son, who were glad to see me. I told Georgia she was right, that I had indeed found closure. I had forgiven Ruth Wake, and though I could never tell her the truth, Georgia hugged me and said, “I love you.”
ANNIVERSARY
Aggie Shelton brushed her hair and pulled it into a neat little bun. It was the same bun into which that old gray hair had been pulled for decades. She worked her arthritic fingers and never once showed a single grimace from the pain. When it was smooth and as proper as a ballerina's, she moved from hair to makeup. Simple. Elegant. She put on her string of pearls. Not cultured, natural. A gift from her younger days, when she was married.
It was Sunday, February 8th, 2015. Like every February 8th for the last forty-five years, she dressed and made herself pretty. Special occasion pretty. She smiled at the woman in the mirror and gave a wink. The wink said, “I know what you're up to,” but she left it at that and silently pulled her light blue suit jacket over the white silk blouse and stood to straighten her matching light blue skirt.
To finish herself, Aggie tugged on her heels. They weren't comfortable on her old feet, but damn it, some things were to be done right or not at all. Her father taught her that back when Truman was still in the White House. Good years, good memories.
She tucked a small clutch into the crook of her elbow and walked downstairs, taking care not to stumble in those blasted heels. In the front hallway, there was a console table, long and thin, with a mirror mounted just above it on the wall. Aggie lay the clutch there while she pulled down a hatbox from the coat closet shelf. She retrieved the hat from inside—light blue just like her suit—and placed it on her head before clipping it in place with bobby pins found at the bottom of its dusty old container. It was a practiced art, performed quickly, and she was out the door.
“Morning, Aggie!” one neighbor shouted with a wave. Aggie waved back. He was Aggie’s age and she didn’t know what he might have been thinking, but she saw him lean over to his wife and whisper something from behind the safety of his hand. Aggie imagined the conversation going something like this:
“Poor old bird,” he might’ve said.
“I know,” his wife most likely replied. “Every year she goes back there.”
“So sad,” the man would’ve replied with a slight shake of his head.
“I know,” the wife might respond. “If I ever get that crazy, lock me away.”
Aggie walked past with a grin and without another thought. She continued on through neighborhood streets full of familiar faces, waving and assuming similar conversations. She made them all up in her head not caring what the truth was. Their truth was not as interesting as the real truth. No, their truth could never match the real McCoy.
She passed an old friend as she entered the gates of the cemetery. Miss Marcia Clayburn who wore her Sunday best and always stopped at the cemetery to visit with the long past after church. She was younger than Aggie, but not by much. Marcia put a hand to her chest and smiled. “Miss Aggie, is it that day already?”
“Yes it is, Marcia,” Aggie said. “Oddly, it comes the same time each year.”
Aggie grinned at her old friend in that sinister way that let her know it was a joke. Marcia shot back a playful frown and watched as Aggie walked through the gates and up the little pathway to the first hill. Once she was over that hill and down into the shallow valley beneath, no one could see her from the road. Aggie had counted on that fact so many years ago and it still gave her comfort.
She passed by the graves of long dead friends and neighbors, a few family members, and even a man s
he had dated back when they were in high school. She walked past an older section of the graveyard where her own grandmother was buried, and her grandfather.
She walked all the way to the edge of the cemetery and out the back gate, ignoring the pain in her feet. Then, she crossed the narrow street and stepped carefully onto the soft earth of the shoulder on its other side. Once she was sure no cars were coming or going, she wandered into the woods. There was a special grove of trees she was looking for, and when she found it she sat down on a thick chunk of tree, felled long ago. There, she took one shoe off, then the other, and rubbed her sore feet. “Well, Roger, another year has passed,” she said.
She opened the clutch and took out a small silver flask. The cap unscrewed with a faint scraping sound and she drank half of its contents in a gulp. “I told you I would haunt you for what you did to me you ungrateful bastard. So here I am. I haven’t forgotten you.”
She finished the flask and stuck it back in her purse. Then she stood up from the stump and shoved it aside with her foot. It toppled to reveal a square of plywood, reinforced with one-by-fours and overgrown with ground cover. Aggie pulled the weeds away from the edges of the makeshift trapdoor and lifted it up by its single iron ring.
Inside, there were dusty bones. A skull sat atop the pile and grinned up at her. It had an oblong hole in its calavarium from which fractures spidered out. She hissed, “I’ll never forget you.”
Aggie spit in that hole. She considered her bladder, but to her disappointment, it wasn’t in need of emptying. She looked into the eyes of the grinning skull and grinned herself. “Maybe next year, Roger,” she said and let the trapdoor slam shut.
With considerable effort, Aggie Shelton rolled the chunk of tree back in place. She dusted herself off and began to walk home.
BLACK ROCK