Follow Me to Ground(6)

We’d opened him just enough to spy the withered, partial organ.

–There’s not that much to be done. This hard grind of muscle, we can bring that down. But the problem is deeper. Something we can’t fix.

–Why can’t we fix it?

–Because sick is sick, and it has to go somewhere, and some sicknesses are dangerous when taken out of a body.

By which he meant madness and perversion. Seeing as he let Mr Kault in the house I assumed it was madness. Maybe the glitching memory or the many-voices kind.

–And sometimes, even though it’s harmful, if a sickness has been deep-set too long a body doesn’t think to expel it.

–How d’you mean?

–It takes a toll on the flesh it’s leaving.

I looked at him blank though it irked him when I didn’t catch his meaning right away. He looked from me back to Mr Kault’s sore neck and said –I mean if it’s left untended too long the body can’t live without it.

Sitting back on my ankles I imagined a small lamb come into the room and trying to suckle on me, moving its rough tongue from left to right. At first I didn’t know why, but then I remembered: Mr Kault’s cousin, Lorraine Languid. Some fifteen or so years before. It was the only time Father and I had together left the house, to the farm where Mr Languid lived with his wife and sons. Lorraine Languid was a young woman still and I was slowly finishing being a child. Father had made the rare exception to tend to a Cure in his own home and to distract herself Lorraine took me to the barn. The lambs were there, and the hay was all slick with their pursing mouths. I remember Lorraine tried to hold my hand, and I’d made it into a fist and tried to shake the feel of her holding it away. That curing had been a strong one. It gave Mr Languid another five years (at which point his heart would again make that smacking sound but he’d be far away, and not found until the bonnet of his truck had cooled). Father was at his strongest, then. Even his mildest touch did a lot of good.

We kneaded and kneaded Mr Kault and then we hummed and sang. When we opened him fully and lifted out the cerebellum it made a harsh, coughing sound. His mouth had leaked its moisture into the sitting room couch, bringing the old pink cushion up in a soft, mauve bruise.

–If we were to try and fix the deep-down sickness, what might we do?

Father shrugged.

–Bleed him. And keep him hidden from the moon. But when a sickness like that leaves the body there’s no telling where it will go.

He was quiet a moment, looking at this large man that couldn’t be saved.

–If we were risk-takers we might put him to ground – The Ground. But there’s no way to know for sure what it would do.

–It might cure him?

–Not quite. The Ground flips things around. Either way, he wouldn’t be a Cure anymore.

–He’d be more like us?

–He couldn’t heal, but he’d be different. On the inside.

We put Mr Kault in The Ground, to the left and farthest corner from the house. We knew he would kick and kick he did. His thighs were broad. A horse’s hind leg. Back in the house I listened for the sound of his grave breaking, but it didn’t come.

I went to bed, thinking hard on Samson and hoping to sew the seeds of a dream: his stomach coming undone, a wide mouth tasting the air, a sliver spreading up the centre of his almond-shell chest.

I wanted to dream of his heart, its beat sullen and low.

His heart that was a crimson heart, not the pastel shades of other Cures.

Snug in my hand, his quadrant muscle.

Feeling it beat against my palm.

But when I closed my eyes, all I could think of was the lambs.

The look of the lambs and their mouths.

The smell of the barn. Lorraine Languid, leaning in the doorway. Putting something in her mouth: a cigarette. Though I didn’t know what it was at the time. I thought the smoke was coming from her. I thought her mouth was on fire.

The next morning I went to meet Samson. When I got there he was tanning in the back of his truck, his shirt off and his jeans hanging unevenly around his hips from where he’d pulled the hot buckle away from his skin. I whistled to wake him and climbed into the truck. He scrunched his eyes at me and said –Must really be summer if you’re starting to freckle.

We got into the front, started driving toward the river. He coughed. Looked at my thighs.

–You know I’ve been hearing ’bout you since I was a boy.

A small insect was scaling the window as we drove. On my side of the glass I followed its trail with my finger, clucking at the thinness of its legs.

–There was a lot of fuss at the time, over Tabatha Sharpe.

Why the Sharpes ever told anyone about how Tabatha came into the world I could never fathom.

–That girl hasn’t had the easiest time of it. She was stripped down once, kids looking for teeth marks from Sister Eel.

He waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he said

–Anyway. She was never quite right.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this kind of talk about Tabatha. Could be I found her too late. Could be too much of the lake was already inside her.

The insect, stripped of its grip as Samson took a corner too sharply, was gone from the window. He kept talking.

–You ever see her?

–Tabatha Sharpe?

–No, Sister Eel.

–No.