Stephanie Halldorson

Their feet slammed into the underbrush, dirty shoelaces catching burrs and pine needles. Joel led the way. The network of twigs and tendrils grabbed at his face; sharp edged and violent they left bloody scratches. He bent to run under a low hanging branch only to trip over the log lying beneath it. His feet scrambled wildly and slipped on the wet leaves and rolled over the stones and roots. Clumsily, he regained his footing and slapped the wet bark of an oak tree as he ran on. The sound of the highway grew fainter and fainter. The voices of his friends—where were they? Was that you, David? Chris, are you there? Joel’s running shoes squeaked. The leaves were soft after the recent rain.

You think you know when you reach the bottom. You think you should know. You come to expect that something magnificent will then happen. Nothing magnificent happens. You become accustomed to where you are. To looking up.

Joel tripped again. His feet slipped on the rotting compost of the forest floor. His knees buckled from the shock and the exhaustion. The wet leaves: red, yellow, brown, stuck to his face, covered his eyes. The ground was cold, the dampness ran through the seams of his jacket. Slowly rolling onto his back, he wiped the dirt out of his eyes and felt his clammy face. He was bleeding. The patchwork umbrella of the treetops started to swing from the wind. When he sneezed his body stiffened and contracted, his head snapped forward. He sneezed again and again until the tears dripped out of his eyes and into his ears. Leaves were falling off the uppermost branches: the livid ash, the creamy yellow of the poplar—light-colored leaves denying the advance of winter and the quiet brown of huge oak leaves gliding like boats around and around. Silently, beaten by the cold rain, they dropped all about him. Joel tucked his burning fingers under his arms: he so desperately wanted to fall asleep.

I’m looking through old photos that I could never organize into albums. Should the first picture of Joel—two months old in a Woolworth’s photo booth—go first, or a picture of my first day of university when Joel was seven? Should the photos be placed chronologically, alphabetically or just recognizably?

“I’m a pumpkin. My face is black because that is the stem.” The faded photo of me as a pumpkin. I had stuffed an orange shirt full of towels and painted my face with black poster paint. I forget the incidents and forget the names until I look at the back of the photo. My mother’s spidery handwriting says I am six years old. It says I am happy and sure of who I am. I had forgotten.

David appeared first, his eyes red and wide. His younger brother, Chris, was behind him wheezing, pained, and embarrassed. “We’re lucky to find you. You run so fast,” David said as he walked over to where Joel was lying.

“Are you okay?” Chris panted, “You’re bleeding.”

“I tripped.” Joel said, “If I hadn’t fallen, I would have run forever.”

They all smiled and looked at one another uncomfortably.

“It just kind of overtook me. I don’t know why I was running, but I just kept running.”

David sat down pulling the back of his long coat underneath him.

“We should go to the cabin,” Joel started, “we should call someone.”

“By the time we walk back to our cabin, it’ll be getting late,” David said.

 “Then we’ll have to find the spot again. In the dark,” Chris took slow, deep breaths.

“Then we should walk back to the highway and flag down a car,” Joel pushed himself up and wrapped his arms around his knees.

David looked at the ground. Chris coughed.

Everywhere Greg’s car went was the place to go. It seemed to be the right choice. In Greg’s car I became him or at least like him. I had his life and all the choices he made were mine also.

This picture is of Greg in his red sweater, standing beside his red car. The wind had blown long black bangs across his eyes and he is smiling, maybe laughing.

The body was badly decomposed. There was a blanket of thick-stemmed weeds bent over the flesh; there were tiny mushrooms blooming sporadically around the knees and ankles. They had walked back to make sure of what they had seen and make sure they knew where it was. Chris started to take off his layers of shirts. First the beige jacket and the down vest, then his blue sweater and turtleneck, until he had only his white thermal undershirt. He struggled to pull the shirt over his head. Joel and David silently watched him lay the shirt over the face of the dead girl. He stared at her for a moment. The white skin of his belly hung over his belt buckle, he jammed the tips of his fingers into the pockets of his jeans.

Joel looked at the girl’s face as Chris covered it: the nose was broken, pushed across onto her cheek, there was an open tear on that cheek; a thin layer of moss lay like dust over her lips and teeth. Then Joel pulled at the buttons of his wet coat, the flannel shirt, tugging for his blue t-shirt. He saw David was fingering the buttons on his own jacket. It wasn’t the ugliness of the rotting body they wanted to cover, it was her nakedness. It was her upraised arms and her open mouth, and the twisted, clenched fingers.

The three boys stood shirtless, staring at each other. Blue, green and white undershirts lay like patches over the body. The freezing rain bit into their skin as they dressed in their damp layers of flannel shirts and down vests, finally pulling on their outer coats as they walked toward the highway.

When Greg had said “Marry me” I, of course, said yes. I had a fourteen-year-old boy, I had finally finished university. I was ready. When Greg never again mentioned marriage, I thought he was right. For him to have thought it at all was enough.

In this picture Greg is holding up two maps. He wants to go to the place in the right map and I am partial to the place in the map on the left. He is making big fish lips, kissing the map on the right. Everywhere Greg’s car went that was the place I would go.

“You been in an accident?” the old man said as he leaned out the truck window, “You look like you’ve been in an accident, son.”

David looked at Joel who was covered in dirt and thin red scratches. “No…uh, but we need to call the police, I think,” David stammered.

The old man took out his dentures and looked at them with distain. He picked at something on them before slipping them back into his mouth. “What kind of trouble are you boys in?” he squinted at David.

Joel explained about finding the girl’s body: it was just lying in the open. “Right over there and back a bit.” Joel motioned with his elbow.

The man rubbed his eyes again. Chris, who’d been peeing in the trees, ran toward them. When the old man saw Chris running, he leaned toward Joel and David and said in a low voice, “Did he kill her?”

I feel in my heart the first days of a long winter. I opened all the windows to let the cold, clean air sink into the pillows and chairs one more time. I pulled on my old blue coat and wrapped a scarf around my head.

It must have been building up for a long time. I didn’t notice. I was almost as surprised as Greg must have been. It had rained all night and Greg was at the door at nine with an umbrella. He was smiling with his hair falling down his face. He walked past me and into the apartment. Without a thought, he sat on the couch and told me of the new job. He was moving to Brazil in two weeks. I would love it. Beautiful. “Don’t you want some tea?” he suggested. And I walked into the kitchen. Maybe he’d even drive down? Could he do that? He was sure he could. He wanted me to go shopping for luggage.

I should be shopping for luggage.

Two cruisers had driven up the ditch to shine their headlights on the body as best they could. They grey day had grown dark quickly. An older policeman with a black moustache was asking Joel questions. The spinning rooftop lights slashed the trees orange and red.

“A small town like this doesn’t usually have missing persons,” the policeman told Joel, “except for that old man last year. Wandered away,” he concluded.

Another, younger, policeman walked up to them and opened his notebook. The girl’s name was Betty: “She was that girl who dropped out of school a few months back, you remember?” he nodded at the moustached policeman, “The parents said she must have run away, probably got herself into some trouble. You know.”

The policeman handed a laminated student card around as he rummaged through a muddy string purse. Betty’s angry face, long nose, thick curly hair looked harsh and wiry on the pale blue background of high school.

“Saw a lot of the boys,” the policeman mumbled as he pulled a plastic comb out of the purse and examined it.

“So they say,” the moustached policeman suggested.

A short man dressed in a long raincoat came over to the boys to ask if they had moved anything. He touched his nose with the back of his index finger then quickly crossed out rows of boxes on his form. He turned away from the boys and explained to the policemen that the scrapes along one side, the crushed hand and face were from falling out of something moving fast like a car or truck. Maybe a motorcycle. “She most likely dragged herself away from the road to where those boys found her,” he pointed over his shoulder.

“She must have been trying to hide,” Joel said.

The men turned to the boys who they’d forgotten were there. “Got in the wrong car, maybe, found herself in a bit of trouble, got scared,” the policeman scratched his pen on the notebook trying to get the ink to run. “Might have worked out different.”

I waited for Greg to get in. I didn’t bother with the seat belt and the dashboard buzzed. “Seatbelt,” he said. I got out of the car, slamming the door behind me. “I don’t want to go to Brazil,” I said through the closed window.

And I don’t want to go to Brazil. I don’t want to ride with you anymore, I thought. Because I realised that Greg hadn’t taken me anywhere, anywhere at all.

David and Chris, their parents, and Joel said nothing about the day’s happening as they drank hot chocolate in the safety of the cabin. They played a short game of cards and made their way to bed. Joel waited about an hour before quietly inching his way downstairs and out the door where he stood in the damp cold and called his mother.

“Mom?” he said.

I answered the phone right away. I thought it might be Greg. “What’s the matter. Why are you whispering?”

“It’s really beautiful up here in the fall. The cabin is really nice,” Joel said, “I was hoping maybe Greg and you could come pick me up. I’d like to spend Thanksgiving with you after all.”

Joel’s voice sounded so high, so young. I didn’t know what to say about Greg.

The inside of Joel’s head let out a rushing roar that spread like a blanket over his face and neck. He started to cry and held his breath for a moment to regain his voice, “I found this dead body today.”

“Greg and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” I wondered what Joel would think of this since he had never felt close to Greg. “Don’t worry about me, though,” I said. There was a long pause, “Are you alright?” the phone crackled. “What kind of animal did you find? That’s awful. Was it by the side of the road?”

“Yes,” Joel paused. “I guess I’ll see you Monday then.”

“Okay.”

Joel hung up. I never hang up first, I always wait for the click.