“What are you going to do with her?” she said.
I was still kind of numb from the whole thing. I looked up.
“Why don’t you hop in the shower,” she said gravely, “and I’ll wrap her up.” So I did. And when I was in there, I started thinking. It’s kind of my thinking place, you know, standing there under the hot water, watching the steam rise and stick to the tiles. I started thinking about my mistake. I started thinking about Jamie out there wrapping Beth up in the plastic sheets. And I wondered if I’d ever be able to forget now, if I’d ever be able to forget last night with Jamie, or this morning with Beth. And then something hit me that was even more important. Would Jamie? Would Jamie be able to forget?
(click)
Beth wasn’t very big. So after we wrapped her in the plastic we shoved her into a huge bag with lots of other trash and garbage. Then she went out onto the street. The garbage guys come around pretty often, and I’ve watched them heave those trash bags up into the truck. They don’t know what’s in there, and I’m willing to bet they don’t want to. I wonder how many other people are out there in the landfills, rotting away.
Anyway, it was a nervous day. I even had a couple of appointments, which I kept because I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. See? (click) This is Jilah, a girl from Thailand. Pretty. And this (click) is Meredith. Skin’s not so good. Not so pretty. And this — well, this next one didn’t have an appointment or anything, but since I’d never really gotten a decent shot before — this is Jamie. Her eyes were always like that, looking away. I couldn’t get her to look at the camera. She just wouldn’t do it. “Why don’t you sit up there on the stool?” I had asked her.
“Me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just for one shot.”
“But I don’t have any makeup or anything.”
“It’s not a glamour shot,” I said. “Come on.”
She made that clicking sound girls make with their tongues, then slid up onto the seat and looked at her hands.
I adjusted the camera. I futzed with the lights. “You know,” I told her, “I’ve got a problem.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.
“Oh, I know that,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you have to understand, Jamie, that I can’t go around remembering all this. I have to forget. I have to forget all this, or I’ll go crazy.”
“Oh.”
And that’s when I took this photo.
“Do you know what I mean?” I asked her.
“I think so,” she said. Then she cried, very softly, for quite a while. Then she told me in a voice all trembly and sorrowful that she’d been thinking about it for a long time, anyway, and that she had a whole bottle of blue Valiums in her backpack. And we calmly talked about how it would all happen. We’d wait until it was really late. Then we’d lay out the sheets of plastic. She’d write a note — I’d help her — about how she didn’t have anything or anyone, and that nothing made any difference. I could drop it in the mailbox in the morning. And I’d pour her a big glass of water, and she’d take those little blue pills, two at a time, until they were all gone. She’d lie down, then, and go to sleep. It would be beautiful, I thought. I said so, too. I told her that.
And that’s just how it was. Beautiful.
Here’s a blowup of Nicole’s eyes. (click) Here’s one of her mouth. (click) Her hand. (click) I floated there in the water, watching, my eyes and nose just above the surface, my mouth and ears beneath the water. You know that sound? That underwater sound? And the next thing I remember is coughing. I couldn’t get the water out of my lungs. And then my grandmother was there, and she leaned down and waded in. Nicole must’ve still been in the water then. Why did she jump in the water? I was out, though, coughing. Why was I coughing? And she was still in the water, in the pool, in the blue. A blue just like this. (click) Now the projector’s stuck again. Shit. (click) (click) (click) That’s what it looked like, though, flashes of white. I saw the whole thing through flashes of white, empty slides. The sun flashing off the water. (click) (click) Like this. (click) (click) (click) Oh Jesus, I watched her. I watched the whole thing happen through the blue and the gold and the white flashes. The white flashes. I saw Nicole. I saw her pointing, running. I saw her jumping. Did she think I was drowning? Was she trying to save me? I watched. I knew what was happening but like with Jamie I was far, far away. I was watching through the light. And then my grandmother came out and yelled at me. “Kevin!” And I was startled. I inhaled some water, that’s why I was coughing. Nicole was floating facedown, among the flashes (click) (click) when my grandmother came out and yelled. She pulled Nicole out, and then I got out, coughing. And my parents came out and I was still coughing and someone said Kevin tried to save her, he tried to pull Nicole out, my grandmother, I think, saying, but he couldn’t, oh the poor dear. But I knew what happened. I knew Nicole wasn’t supposed to be in the water, and I watched it. I was looking through the light, into the heart of the light. I knew my sister was drowning and I watched it. I let it happen, because it was beautiful to see.
(click)
Under the water, she called my name.
(click)
What I saw was a flash of light, like these empty slides. (click) (click) (click). And what I heard? What did I hear?
Put your hands over your ears.
Press down.
Brad Watson
Water Dog God
From Oxford American
Back in late May a tornado dropped screaming into the canyon, snapped limbs and whole treetops off, flung squirrels and birds into the black sky. And in the wet and quiet shambles after, several new stray dogs crept into the yard, and upon their heels little Maeve. You’ve seen pictures of those children starving on TV, living in filthy huts and wearing rags and their legs and arms just knobby sticks, huge brown eyes looking up at you. That’s what she looked like.
These strays, I sometimes think there is something their bones are tuned to that draws them here, like the whistle only they can hear, or words of some language ordinary humans have never known — the language that came from Moses’ burning bush, which only Moses could hear. I think sometimes I’ve heard it at dawn, something in the green, smoky air. Who knows what Maeve heard, maybe nothing but a big rip-roaring on the roof: the black sky opens up, she walks out. She follows an old coon dog along the path of forest wreckage through the hollow and into my yard, her belly huge beneath a sleeveless bit of cloth you might call a nightslip.
I knew her as my Uncle Sebastian’s youngest child, who wouldn’t ever go out of her room, and here she was wandering in the woods. They lived up beyond the first dam, some three miles up the creek. She says to me, standing there holding a little stick she’s picked up along the way, “I don’t know where I’m at.” She gives it an absent whack at the hound. He’s a bluetick with teats so saggy I thought him a bitch till I saw his old jalapeño.
I said, “Lift up that skirt and let me see you.” I looked at her white stomach, big as a camel’s hump and bald as my head, stretched veins like a map of the pale blue rivers of the world, rivers to nowhere. I saw her little patch of frazzly hair and sex like a busied lip wanting nothing but to drop the one she carried. Probably no one could bear to see it but God, after what all must have climbed onto her, old Uncle Sebastian and those younger boys of his, the ones still willing to haul pulpwood so he hadn’t kicked them out on their own, akin to these stray dogs lying about the yard, no speech, no intelligent look in their eyes.