Soil

  She gathered up some books and notepads on the coffee table and returned them to her father’s study. There was a small book by a famous Buddhist and another on the Mississippi River flood of 1927. As professor emeritus at the university, he partook in casual reading these days. His office still contained heavy arcane medical texts, diplomas, a few token jars of strange objects in formaldehyde. He’d been a reputed surgeon at the university hospital in Jackson but resigned under foggy circumstances. After her mother’s stroke, he started prescribing to himself and got reckless. Someone noticed, and the hospital invited him to leave. That’s when, presumably, he met Miss Sue. Theirs was a whirlwind romance, six months and then married, house packed up, gone to Madrid, where her father began teaching biology at the university and became one of the campus’s most beloved professors.

  The doorbell sounded at the front of the house. Sandy’s first inclination was to hide, but she felt protective of the house and went to investigate. An older lady wearing a velvety tracksuit and sunglasses stood at the door holding a foil-covered pan. Her hair was dyed jet-black and burst in a fashionable shock. She introduced herself as Mrs. Bender. They’d recently moved in next door and had already made friends with her father. She seemed to know all about Sandy and Jacob too and expressed sympathy for her situation without alluding directly to the separation.

  “I saw you taking the trash and wanted to bring something over, just some dinner for you and the little one,” she said, passing the meal to Sandy. Mrs. Bender patted her hand. “So sorry to hear about your father, we just think he’s a splendid man.”

  “Thank you,” Sandy replied with exaggerated kindness.

  “And you are such a lovely woman.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bender. You are so sweet.”

  “What are the doctors saying?”

  “Well,” said Sandy, bracing herself. “They’re just watching him. Not a lot they can do, apparently. Just monitoring his fever, making sure his body is well equipped to fight the infection.”

  “Is it true that it’s West Nile?” asked Mrs. Bender.

  “Yes, they’re fairly certain.”

  The neighbor clasped her hand to her mouth. “My husband Bill and I, we try not to go outside too much. The mosquitoes are terrible this year. We screened in our back porch. He thinks I’m crazy, but honey, you just never know. You hear these things on the news and you wonder if they’re real. Imagine that, in our own neighborhood!”

  “Well, don’t get too worried, Mrs. Bender. He was just down in south Louisiana visiting friends.”

  “Oh my word.”

  “It’s quite possible he was bitten there. It could’ve happened anywhere. And they tell me it’s actually quite rare. This is only their first case.”

  “They say eating bananas will keep them away,” Mrs. Bender advised, though Sandy wasn’t sure if she meant doctors or mosquitoes. “I heard that on the television, and I eat four a day now.”

  The kindly neighbor didn’t want to take up too much of Sandy’s time. “I know this is so difficult for you, and I think you are just a brave and impressive young woman,” she said, clutching Sandy’s hand. “Don’t feel like you can’t call on us if the load gets too great to bear.” They hugged briefly, and Sandy thanked her for everything, and then Mrs. Bender rushed back to the safety of indoors.

  The stranger’s kindness took Sandy by surprise, and she teared up, thankful for the unsought encouragement. She set the casserole pan on the kitchen island and removed the cover. It was a rigatoni dish, generous with cheese and Italian sausage, not even frozen. Had she thrown it together that quick or was there a batch waiting in the fridge for a random gesture of sympathy? Sandy grabbed a fork and sampled it cold. Not bad.

  Sitting there at her father’s dinner table—fretting over the past, something the Buddhist in her father would have discouraged—she couldn’t help but recall the last time they’d all eaten together at this table. It must have been May? June? If the end of her marriage could be ascribed to a moment, then it took place right here.

  In the adjacent living room, Jay had been relating to her father terrible news of the universe, new findings collected by satellites of how the entire galaxy was passing into an interstellar energy cloud, some patch of astral turbulence, and had begun to absorb dramatic amounts of energy. The earth was due for a prolonged holocaust of environmental cataclysms, all created by this excess energy and increased solar flares. The planet, Jay insisted, would be ripped slowly asunder for a thousand years.

  As her husband spoke with alarm and authority, she’d noticed the growing sense of fear on Jacob’s face. He was listening while pretending to watch TV. She took Jay aside and asked him to tone it down. Of course he dismissed her and continued to rave. At dinner Jacob mentioned wanting some new video game for his birthday, which sent Jay into a tirade about electronic technology and how all of it would soon be rendered useless. He described the earth’s magnetic field, which was generated from the active iron core and wrapped around the planet like a sheet. According to Jay, scientists believed the poles were shifting, tearing holes in the sheet, and allowing the sun’s radiation to stream in unfiltered.

  “Delightful dinner conversation,” Sandy said. “I’m shocked I haven’t heard any of this on the news.”

  “Sure, put it on the news and watch the world go insane. Looting, raping, pillaging. If the planet doesn’t get us first, we’ll do it to ourselves. Environmental extremes always lead to social breakdown.”

  He went off on a long discourse about how mass extinctions occur every 60 to 65 million years, and we were due for another just any time now.

  “Okay, so if fleeing underground is the only hope we have for survival, then why on earth did you insist on buying the farm?” she demanded. “Isn’t it pointless to grow our own food if the sun is going to burn it all up?”

  Her father was smiling now. Perhaps he had mistaken this doomsday banter for spirited, tongue-in-cheek debate. Of course he quietly rooted for his daughter, but didn’t he sense Jay’s mania?

  Jay shook his head. “Well, all that could take years to unfold. In the immediate future we’re much more likely to see corrupt governments and crashing markets, leading to poverty, hunger, and civil unrest in the cities. Let’s say a rebellion forms. Someone gets hold of a dirty bomb or unleashes a genetically modified virus that decimates the population. At least we could stay and farm and protect our land. That’s the best-case scenario really. I mean, what if someone sets loose a fleet of self-replicating nanorobots?”

  Sandy was astonished. In that moment she saw a new disturbance in Jay’s eyes. He was someone else, someone not her husband. Someone to whom she would have never made the promises she did. At that moment her instinct was not to nurture him back but to attack the stranger.

  “An army of nanorobots, really? Have you been watching cartoons with Jacob? You sound insane, do you know that?”

  Her dad laughed and shook his head.

  “The technology is real!” Jay insisted. “Do you deny that there are dictators and terrorists crazy enough to use it? What about our own government?”

  “And a tree could fall on the house and kill us before dessert! A flock of chemically enraged flamingos could descend and peck us all to death.”

  Her father was laughing, for Jacob’s sake, and the boy watched with excited eyes. But this squabble had lost all humor for Sandy.

  “Jay, I cannot believe that I’m arguing with you about the end of the world. I cannot live this way, thinking like this. Every day that you harp on this gloom and doom is another day you miss the blessed life you have here, right now, this instant.”

  “Sandy, I agree with you completely. It sounds preposterous. But these are hypothetical examples. The point is—trouble is coming. I’m just reading the signs and trying to prepare so we can go on living.”

  She was near tears and made her poin
t with violent jabs at the tabletop. “Who wants to go on living like this? Don’t drag us down this road, Jay. Tragedy is self-fulfilling. I don’t believe that you’re thinking of us. I think that you believe your life will only have purpose if the world is falling down around you, so you’re writing our life toward that end. If you want conflict so desperately, why don’t you sign up for military service and go overseas? Let us have our peace and quiet.”

  Looking back, she realized that was the moment she decided to leave. She remembered the bitter rationalization—I cannot wait for things to go back to normal, I cannot accept the direction my life has taken, I cannot stay with you even though I swore before my family and my friends and my God that I would. And no matter how she justified it—she must protect the boy from poverty, from his father’s emotional abandonment—in the end it was purely selfish. Because people can endure almost anything. But why do it when you don’t have to? If a better life could be made, why not make it?

  Now she despaired that she hadn’t made a better life, that even the days of compost and paranoia were healthier for Jacob than this. She wondered if it was harder to leave someone you loved or to watch someone you love die.

  A mandolin ringtone sounded from inside her purse and broke her concentration. Sandy thought it might be the hospital or the church. An emergency was always a strum away these days. She consulted the caller ID. It was Jay’s mother, who had called the night before as they were preparing to leave the hospital. Sandy had put off returning her call. They hadn’t spoken in months, since after the funeral, when Mrs. Mize called in a weepy daze to tell her how awfully Jay had behaved toward the lawyer and funeral director. Sandy had no idea if mother and son had been in communication but doubted it, since Jay’s cell-phone account had been suspended, and so it would be left to her to dispense all the sad news. Either that or continue to reinforce the polite lies behind which the family maintained its constant façade.

  “Hello,” she answered before the final ring.

  “Oh, Sandy!” Mrs. Mize greeted her with a familiar high-pitched, trumped-up excitement. “I was afraid I’d missed you again!”

  They made small talk before Sandy asked, in a tone that expressed the unpleasantness that could be neither spoken nor ignored, “How are you doing?”

  “It’s been a trial since the accident, honey, I won’t deny it. But Samson is helping me through. We had Miss Emma stay with us a couple of days. We tried to replicate Dotty Purifoy’s pudding cake recipe, you know. Herbie’s been here to fix the washer and get my medicine. We’re staying busy.”

  Sandy had no idea who these people were, but Mrs. Mize went on this way for a while, reciting a litany of minutiae that made no sense out of context. “I’m sorry,” Sandy interjected, “do I know Miss Emma?”

  “Emma Paschall from Jackson, Tennessee. We were old friends separated over the years, but she heard about Murray passing and we’ve reconnected. She lost her husband, James, last year. I’m so thankful to have found my old friend again.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful to hear. And who’s Herbie?”

  “Herbie!” Mrs. Mize cried, as if everyone knew Herbie. “He’s my youngest nephew. He’s been away in the wars overseas and got hurt. He’s a little slow now, but he’s been such a dear help to me. It’s funny who comes out of nowhere to help you in times of trouble.”

  Mrs. Mize was riding a medicated wave of enthusiasm, or maybe it was genuine gratitude. Whatever the case, it was reassuring to hear her so upbeat again.

  “I couldn’t reach Jay on his phone,” said Mrs. Mize. “I hope everything is all right.”

  “He’s fine,” Sandy lied. “He just let his phone contract lapse.”

  “Is he available to speak?”

  Sandy wanted to admit the truth but couldn’t bring herself to disappoint his grief-stricken mother. “He and Jacob are at church.”

  “Oh, good!”

  “I was just straightening up around the house.”

  “Well, I figured I’d hear from him after Herbie dropped off the bike,” said Mrs. Mize. “Did he like it?”

  “The bike?”

  “The motor scooter or four-wheeler, whatever they call it. Murray left it to him in the will. He only bought it a few months before he passed.”

  “Oh yes, yes, of course,” Sandy played along. She hadn’t a clue what Mrs. Mize was talking about.

  “Herbie said y’all weren’t at home, so he left it in the driveway,” she went on. “I hope he liked it, I really do.”

  “He did, yes, thank you.”

  “It’s Murray, God rest his soul. You can thank Murray someday, dear. Someday we’ll all be reunited.”

  Sandy assumed she meant they’d all be together in heaven. She thought of the old Sunday school lesson, how suicides don’t make it to heaven, floating interminably in hell or limbo along with the Buddhists and gays and other non-Christians. It made her think of Jacob in a room full of strangers, where dubious answers were applied to life’s most difficult questions.

  She felt a catch in her chest. “Oh, my, I’ve let the time get away. Jay’s truck is out of gas and I was supposed to pick them up from church.”

  “Okay, hon, please tell them I called. And how’s your father?”

  Sandy said he’d been a little under the weather and left it at that. The widow had heard enough about lost fathers and husbands. Any more bad news might break the poor woman’s spirit.

  Mrs. Mize began to plead for them to visit. She wanted to see Jacob. And Jay, of course. Family must cleave together in times of trouble and all of that. Sandy heard something disingenuous there, or else she’d lost herself to frustration, and before she realized what she was saying, she interrupted. “Mrs. Mize”—for in all the years they’d known each other, Jay’s mother had never invited her to call her anything different—“can I ask you something?”

  “Why, of course, dear.”

  “How did you do it? How did you work around that terrible family history that we’ve both married into? It’s neither of our husbands’ fault, but they carry it like their own burden.”

  Mrs. Mize paused for a long moment as if parsing the questions, separating accusation from advice and memory from fantasy. She replied, in a voice tightly bitter or possibly sad, “We just never speak to that. We lived through it, and it’s nothing worth revisiting. It’s the little bit we can do to leave it be.”

  “But I wonder if that’s healthy. Why hide it and keep it for your own instead of getting it out in the open and accepting it?”

  “Honey, the Lord is directing us. What need is there to understand everything that happens along the way?”

  This was her usual stone-wall defense. Sandy felt the need to apologize. She didn’t mean to dredge up bad feelings. Mrs. Mize returned easily to her script, and Sandy echoed her heightened good-byes and hung up. Something about the widow’s sadness, her inability to share herself, and her insistence on projecting a simplistic and deluded understanding of the world broke Sandy’s heart. She had to stuff her face with pasta to keep from going to pieces.

  In a matter of bites she felt a crushing desire to see her son. She checked her watch: fifteen minutes until Sunday school let out. Maybe they’d skip chapel this morning, get donuts and chocolate milk instead.

  When she stood up from the table, she was horrified to discover that she’d eaten the entire tray of pasta. A meal for a family of four, gone in ten minutes. She replaced the tinfoil covering on the dish and pushed the evidence to the dark bottom of the garbage can. Then she probed the kitchen for a piece of nice stationery and a pen, something upon which to transcribe her gratitude. All she found was a yellow legal pad and a red ballpoint pen. She took them to the table and sat down and composed her thoughts. The letter began:

  Dear Jay . . .

  21

  Jay woke up Tuesday morning and walked out back, where he thought he s
aw a man bathing in the cistern. He wore a silver chain and a cavalry hat that resembled his father’s. The man’s back was turned, and he seemed to be slurping a cold bottle of soda until Jay recognized it was a shotgun barrel tilted up to his face. He ran into the yard and pushed the cistern over, and they tumbled together through the puddles. When he sat up at last, Jay saw the buzzard scampering off, flapping its wings dry.

  The vision scared him, and he began seeking answers in unlikely places. He reached out to the unknown Creator, whom he’d always held in frustrated, one-sided reproach. But now it was time to bow down, to beg for answers and even forgiveness. He didn’t trust himself alone anymore. It was one thing to reflect on his father’s suicide, another to witness it replayed in his backyard. Is this how it begins? he wondered. Does the mind trick the body into performing its bidding this way? Is this Your plan for me? It only made sense that God would send someone, whether a buzzard or a dead man, to solicit his repentance. Have I contributed to an act of evil by aiding its concealment? Can an otherwise decent man be damned unwittingly?

  In the face of these great inquiries, Jay was met with only silence.

  He couldn’t stand to hang around the house any longer, so he spent the rest of the morning walking the field, searching for the disembodied hand. The ground was still soft and glistening. Chipper dashed straight across, kicking up holes and slinging mud. Jay followed, slop-stepping right over to the spot where the corpse had lain. He found no sign of anything—no hand, no scraps of clothing, no indentations or footprints of any kind. The water had made its final authentication on this piece of damnable ground.

  Chipper flitted from scent to scent, unearthing no clues, and after he’d walked the field twice over, Jay went and shuffled the compost with his yard fork. There were no visible signs of the charcoal when he inspected a handful, but when he put it to his nose or touched it to his tongue, he imbibed the smoky essence. Still a nip of man in there. It hadn’t cured long enough. A good rain, another two weeks in the sun.