Unbury Carol(4)

Not just yet, she thought, looking out over the flowers and plants, searching for evidence of that ripple. She wanted to tell Farrah, but it was not easy.

She’d been spurned once before.

A change of subject was in order.

“How is Clyde?” Carol asked, the sadness in her voice apparent.

At not quite twenty years old, the girl had a love life that seemed so much more tangible than Carol’s own. In a peaceful yet longing way Carol guessed the majority of her own explosive life-moments had already happened. Arguments that lasted deep into the morning hours, love that shouldn’t have been, great emotions, terrible emotions, words plucked from snowy peaks, conversations without end, and decisions that were made without the knowledge of their influence. But Farrah spoke of her problems with the endearing air of one who believed her trouble to be the trouble of the world, her decisions planetary, her disappointments red with imaginary bloodshed. Carol enjoyed very much hearing that the world was still on fire, every wave in the water a killer, every moon the shape of hysterics.

John liked the very same things.

“Clyde is…Clyde.”

Carol gasped as a ripple seemed to pass over the dirt at their feet. For a moment it looked as if her boot tips were underwater.

“Maybe we should head back,” Farrah said, concerned.

But a second ripple came. Bigger than the first.

Carol stumbled and reached for Farrah’s shoulder.

“Okay,” Farrah said, the bits she’d heard of the conversation echoing in her head. “Time to take you inside.”

She took Carol’s hand and led her out of the garden.

“You know,” Carol said, trying to ease the moment, seeing her young friend’s worried profile as they walked back toward the house. “I had moments like you had with Clyde when I was your age.”

“Really?” Farrah asked, happy Carol was talking, though her lady was breathing hard. “Tell me?”

“Have you heard of…James Moxie?”

“The outlaw? Maybe, but…”

“Yes,” Carol said. “That’s him.”

Farrah stopped and turned to face her, her eyes and mouth perfect circles in her flushed face. Despite the funereal day, the news was flammable.

“You kissed an outlaw, Carol?”

“Well, he wasn’t an outlaw back when I knew him. His ‘glory’ came years after. Hattie met him.”

“What?”

“He came over one night.”

“What? James Moxie was at your house? Met your mom?”

Carol pivoted, turning her face from Farrah. By talking about James Moxie she’d inadvertently reminded herself of something that felt very meaningful to her then.

There was someone else who knew about her condition.

Someone other than Dwight. Someone who had run from her, twenty years ago, unable to shoulder the burden of caring for a woman who died so often.

“There is someone else who knows.” She said the words aloud to herself. But of course Farrah heard them.

“Who knows what, Carol?”

Carol shook her head, shooing the revelation away. Perhaps storing it.

“Well, it was something, I suppose. Our brief run. I believe he’s down in Mackatoon now. I can’t be sure.”

“Do you mean it was more than a kiss?”

“That’s not what I meant, digger, but yes, it was something.”

“How much of something?”

Carol shook her head, shooing Farrah away. They were on the lawn now, nearing the house.

“One day, Carol, one day when you’re not feeling so odd, you are going to tell me the whole story and I am going to listen. Oh, am I going to listen to that one!”

Carol smiled, and the heartbreak she felt for having lost John Bowie showed all the way through.

“Oh, Carol. I’m sorry.”

Carol pulled open the creaky wooden back door, and the two stepped inside. Before shutting it, Carol looked to the garden, to the stone steps and the many paths beyond.

“Farrah,” she said, “I would very much like to tell you something.”

Farrah turned and saw her lady in the doorframe, still looking away from her. “What is it?”

Without turning to face her, Carol said, “I have a condition, Farrah. A sickness, you might say. It doesn’t knock often, but when it does I’ve no power not to let it in.”

As she spoke the words, she saw it.

The rise and fall of the horizon, the woods beyond the gardens, the gardens themselves.

She took hold of the wooden doorframe and braced herself for the wave.

The pond appeared to rise with it.

“Carol?”

The plants in the garden trembled, the bees dropped to the grass. Even the garden statues and the stone steps were made to move, stomping violence into the earth.

“Carol?”

It arrived at her boots, distorted the leather, rattled the hem of her dress.

“Hell’s heaven, Farrah. It’s here.”

Then Carol collapsed. And Farrah’s scream followed Carol into Howltown.





Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

And the winds came at her. And the darkness was absolute.

Carol retained a vivid image of the back door’s threshold coming at her as she collapsed, felt the forever-sensation of falling. She knew it well. When she was a little girl the free fall was the scariest part. Now she’d try to heed her mother’s three-decade-old advice: Think of it as flying. More fun than falling.