The Broken Strings

The Broken Strings

by Mike Fry

Stands a steep earthen ledge near a scrub oak woodlands, crumbling, looking down its nose on the summer-narrowed South Canadian River. It’s close to Overton Hill, where Schrock’s Ferry once crossed and old Camp Kickapoo near Mustang.

The cliffs rise sheer where post-Oklahoma-land-run dugouts were carved into the red dirt. That town’s not on any present-day map, nor can you google it up. It seems to never have existed.

  The cliffs show skeletal roots, reaching into space for life-giving water. The loose earth edges break off, tumbling down into the valley of the river known to the Kiowa as gúlvàu. 

A spot stands out where the mirage of what majesty the river used to contain. A scissortail flycatcher cuts across my thoughts and the old crow caws for things long lost.

I wander these far-flung places, looking for secrets, the essence of mysteries cast aside. Sometimes they reveal themselves. Other times they remain in hiding, waiting for the rightly trained eye and the proper timing.

I sit on a log overlooking this river of forgotten souls and feel a series of ghostly fingers running up and down my spine, slapping my sun-warmed cheeks and asking me to cast my eyes downward. I see lots of debris gathered on an overgrown sand bar in the middle of the river. Various throw-away items lie stricken on the bar: papers, shingles, play balls, all of which will be swept further downstream come the next huge rain. 

As I stared at this mass of ugly trash I saw it transform before my eyes. It took on a kind of decadent beauty and I thought I spotted something moving, imperceptibly at first, then with a little more vigor. It was a small round object and I couldn’t quite make out what it was, and then I heard a garbled yell for help, a grainy woman’s voice, coming from where I had spotted movement.

I climbed down the steep cliff as best and as fast as I could. I nicked my knee on a rock and tore my jeans. I didn’t notice right away but I was bleeding some from that injury.

I came to where I saw the object move and saw it was a female human head, and the whole of her body was buried in sand and she was caught in a natural prison binding. She was caked in sand but she was breathing, labored and intense.

I started digging her out, with my bare hands, wiping away the sand from her eyes and her mouth. She was weak and couldn’t help me much as I dragged her from her natural imprisonment.

She was wearing an old red gingham dress, which had faded over time and was almost a brown. Her dress was bunched around her waist and I tried to adjust it for her dignity. The dress and her underwear was torn and thread-bare and the lady was weak. At banks of the river and we sat for a second.

“Are you OK?” I asked as she sat there and stared at the water flowing by.

“Just tired, very, very tired,” she said and as she spoke grains of sand came out of her mouth. “So dry. So parched.”

I flicked away the sand from her mouth and tried to think of how I would get her back up the cliffside and get her some water to drink and get her cleaned up, maybe take her to a hospital for observation.

I pulled out my cellphone and was about to call 9-1-1 when she stopped me.

“I’m, I’m all right. I think I can climb up that cliff behind you,” she said, still more sand on her lips that she flicked away.

So I looked around a bit and found a fairly easy pathway up the cliff and I let her go first, followed along to make sure she didn’t slip. We got to the top and she collapsed.

I lifted her up and took her to my car. I drove to a filling station and got some bottled water and rubbed some on her face and tried to get her to drink. She did take a small drink, then spit out a little handful of sand.

“Quicksand,” she said. “Caught! Broken string. Broke!”

“There, there. Just relax. You’ll be OK. I think I better get you to a doctor so he can check you out,” I reassured her.

“No,” she said, now gulping at the water. “Just need a bath and a change of clothes and I’ll get out of your life. Take me to your house and let me clean up? Maybe some clothes for a while, just until I can get something of my own?”

I took her to my little one bedroom apartment and let her use my shower and get cleaned up. I had a new toothbrush I’d never used and let her have that. She was a mystery, as to her appearance, all mud-caked, bruised, hair disheveled. A snoopy neighbor of mine saw me taking her inside and she shook her head in disapproval, as if somehow I was to blame for the current state the woman was now in.

After she showered and fixed her hair as best she could she came out of my bathroom as if she had been reborn, shining, smiling, looking lovely with her soft auburn hair, eyes that almost twinkled, except for the bags under her eyes, and a glorious smile that held up under whatever she’d been through.

“I feel much better now. Still very thirsty and hungry - so hungry I could eat up a whole restaurant!” she said.

“I’m going to meet some friends at a restaurant. I’ll take you with me. By the way, what’s your name? Where are you from?”

“My name? Well that’s funny. I don’t recall. Where am I from? Huh. Where am I from? I don’t remember that either. Must have taken a nasty knock on my head,” she said and felt around on the top of her head, and yes, she touched one spot and flinched. “Ow,” she said rubbing the spot.

“I think a doctor ought to look at you,” I said.

“Oh I don't want to be a bother. I’m OK now, just a few bumps and bruises. Nothing a little time won’t heal,” she said.

“Well, what should I call you?” I asked her. “I’m Carl.”

“Hi Carl. Thanks for digging me out of the river bank. I guess you can call me Sandy,” and she giggling a little bit. “I still feel dirty from being in that sand for so long.”

“OK Sandy, what do you want to eat?”

“I have a strange hankering for oysters and seafood,” she said. “But anything will do.”

“Let me call up my friends and we’ll go to a seafood place. Sounds good to me. But I need to buy you some clothes. I’ll take you to the second hand store to pick something out.”

“That sounds great. Really, I don’t want to interfere, or get in the way of your life,” she said as I led her to my car.

“Hey, it’s nothing, in fact, I’m glad I found you. I don’t have a girlfriend or anything. I always mess things up,” I said as we walked to my car and got inside.

“You just haven’t met the right girl yet, Carl,” said Sandy, picking some more sand out of her ears. “Can’t seem to get rid of all this sand.”

“How long do you figure you were caught in that quicksand?” I asked.

“Beats me,” she said. “But I don’t even remember my own name, so I have no idea.”

In the thrift store Sandy looked over the selection of dresses carefully. Finally she found a pink and yellow sun dress and when she put it on, oh boy, it was like the sun just came out. She lit up that thrift store, and I swear some of the blind could now see, see how beautiful a woman this was that I had recently pulled out of the sand.

As I was paying for the dress the cashier commented, “That dress looks great on you, like it was made just for you. I swear, I never saw anyone wear a dress the way you are now, especially not one from here.”

“You’re too kind! Thank you,” said Sandy, who touched the woman’s arm. I was smiling at the cashier and where Sandy had touched her the cashier brushed off some sand that Sandy had accidentally placed there. Even though Sandy had showered, still, sand still clung to her.

I pulled up to the Fishy Fish Restaurant and we entered to find my friends. They already had a table in the back and my two friends Jack and Carol stood up, surprised I had brought a girl with me. Usually I was the third wheel at these dinners, but Carol looked extremely pleased. Jack’s mouth was hanging open and Carol finally elbowed him to snap out of it.

“My, my, where did you find this beautiful girl?” asked Carol and Jack nodded as he wanted to know the answer to this too, as soon as possible.

“Let’s order first. We’re both really hungry,” I said. “Then we’ll explain everything.”

So Jack summoned a waiter over and we ordered. Sandy drank down her glass of water and I gave her mine too and she drank that down just as fast.

“Sorry. I’m just terribly thirsty,” said Sandy.

“That’s OK,” said Jack. “So where did you meet Carl?”

“At the bank,” I said.

“The river bank,” Sandy clarified.

“Which river bank?” asked Jack.

“The South Canadian,” I said.

“I was buried in sand and Carl saved me,” Sandy explained.

“Buried in sand! My word,” said Carol. “What in the world were you doing stuck in the sand by the river?”

“I don’t know,” said Sandy. “Strangest thing. I can’t remember a thing about how I got there, why I was there, or anything.”

“I’m calling the police,” said Jack as he pulled out his phone and called the local police department. “Hello, Police Department? This is Jack O’Neill. Do you have any reports on a missing woman, about 24 or 25, light brown hair, attractive? Well, I’ll just take a picture and send it over. She was found along the South Canadian River just today by my friend Carl Baker. She says she doesn’t know how she got there. Doesn’t remember her name. I’m sending that picture right over. Yes, she’s here with us now.”

So Jack takes a picture of Sandy and sends it to the police department and our food comes.

Sandy plows into her shrimp and lobster like there is no tomorrow. She gobbles up her food, but what can you expect from someone who’s been buried in sand for any length of time?

“You got some…” I point and say to Sandy, who had some sand on her lips and cheek.

“What is all this? I can’t seem to get away from all this sand. It keeps clinging to me,” she said as she brushed the grains away from her face.

The waiter came and filled up our water glasses and Sandy downed her glass again and went for mine, awaiting my approval, which I gave her and she chugged that water glass too.

“You really ought to see a doctor,” said Carol. “Sometimes there’s internal injuries and such. I’d get checked out just to be on the safe side.”

“OK, maybe after dinner,” said Sandy, smiling so sweetly.

“You got lots of grit,” said Jack, and everyone groaned.

“What? Oh, no pun intended,” said Jack. “Just saying you’re putting up a brave face after all you’ve been through.”

“But what have I been through?” asked Sandy. “I don’t remember a thing. It’s like the chain of life was broken for me, all connections gone. Maybe it was all a bad dream,” she said as she placed her hand on the table and a pile of sand appeared where she left her hand print.

We watched in amazement as Sandy’s hand turned completely to sand, then her arms, then her legs, and her body and finally, from a pile in her chair, her smiling face turned completely to sand and all that was left of Sandy was a little sand pile and her clothes.

People in the restaurant who had witnessed it were screaming and gasping. Some may have thought it was something in the food. But Sandy was no more. That lady I pulled out of the river bank had gone away.

Someone was coming into the restaurant and as the door opened what was left of Sandy scattered everywhere, into peoples food, into their hair, on their clothes.

Sandy’s bright sundress sat in the chair she formerly occupied, that pink and yellow number that had just recently lit up the world, albeit briefly. 

The police sure wanted to ask me some questions. But they never discovered who she was nor where she came from. She was just a forgotten soul time and the world had misplaced, left stuck in the quicksand along the banks of the South Canadian.