Within Rotten Wood

During the summer I turned ten, my family became homeless. There was no great catastrophe, no secret unveiled, no sudden loss of any sort. The landlady simply asked that we leave within three months time, and three months wasn’t enough for my family to put together a miracle.

We were pushed out of the upper level of a modest duplex and ended up over an hour from the city, in a quieter world than one I had ever known. They called it Heartland, though it was far from being the heart of anything. Corn and cows overtook every acre. What little human life there was nestled itself humbly between in small houses made of cheap materials. What was considered “downtown” Heartland was an ice cream parlor and the firehouse.

My grandfather lived there in the same worn down farmhouse where he had raised my father and all eleven of his siblings. My grandfather, for all of his shortcomings, did have generosity in his soul. My father seemed reluctant to believe it, but grateful nonetheless.

With no other choice, we packed up and went. Me, my parents, my brother, our dog, and two little gerbils put our lives into boxes, into storage, and settled into the second story of a farmhouse made of rotted wood and heated by a single stove.

At age ten, I didn’t grasp the misfortune of our situation. My grandfather’s land stretched out before me, full and promising. It was a summer full of cicadas. I have not experienced one like it since. They hummed all around, unseen, their presence known only through their song. The sun stayed high in the sky throughout our days there, reflecting off the tall grass that surrounded the farmhouse, waving in the wind, more like a lake than a field.

Mother told me on our first day not to go exploring. “Your grandpa pisses in the corn fields,” she said to deter me from going to the north, “and he’ll kill you if you scratch up his cars,” she said to deter me from going to the west, “you’ll get kidnapped if you go near the road,” she said to deter me from going to the south, “and the shed…” she shook her head. “I don’t want you anywhere near that shed.” That was all she could say of the east.

That shed was an ominous thing, and I wouldn’t go to it even if given the chance. It was small, a dot of rot in the field. A rusted padlock kept it bolted shut from the outside, the key lost to time. Whatever color the paint had once been was forgotten now, peeled away to expose the innards of the planks that made it up. A strong gust of wind could have surely knocked it down. There were two little windows on the back of it, too dust-crusted to peer through. Though when the light shone just right and streamed in through the layer of grime, one might just be able to make out a heaping pile of sheets and blankets inside, hiding something, or maybe just kept in there for storage during a hot, far back summer.

But the east had more than that little shed. The east of my grandfather’s land was where they used to keep the livestock, back before they all died off. When my father and uncles grew up and moved away, my grandfather chose to forget the animals that the children had once looked after. Luckily he had the decency then to haul the corpses away. Hay still littered the stable floors, decaying even in the shade.

It was the summer I turned ten and the drum of Heartland was intoxicating. This was a rich, new world, and I wanted to fill myself with it. I was drawn into the tall grass, stretching down the gentle slope into the place where horses and goats once grazed. I stood at the top of the small hill where the farmhouse rose, ugly and dark, against the bright sky. I felt the grass lapping at my ankles, pulling back and forth in the wind, trying to persuade me down from my place at the top.

Who was I to deny it? I dropped first to my knees, then onto my back, the grass enveloping me completely. And I pushed off, rolling down the slope, gripping my shoulders and pressing my knees together. The tumble was soft, as if falling onto pillows. The grass truly had me, the dirt moist and tender, not yet at the point of summer where it would dehydrate and scrape my skin.

At the bottom of the hill, I sprawled out, stared up at the bright, blue sky. Not a cloud in sight. It smelled faintly of old manure, roasting in the heat and never fresh to begin with. It didn’t bother me. The wind came through gently to coax the most intense of the odors away, off into the air to dissipate.

Amongst the cicada song, I heard the bees buzzing nearby, too occupied with their work to pay me any mind. My grandfather didn’t know how to harvest their honey, so they lived peacefully. Undisturbed. I closed my eyes for a moment, felt the hot sun on my eyelids. The wind pushed the grass up against my ears, seemed to make the blades whisper for a moment.

“Child.”

The heat left my body in an instant and was replaced with a chill. I stayed still but alert, waiting to see if it was just my imagination. If I had somehow dozed off and was hearing the fleeting remnants of a dream.

Again, “Child.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

It was unmistakable. A voice, quiet as the breeze.

“Child. Come.”

In the old, abandoned stables, a figure stood in the doorway, dark even in darkness, tall even against the high door frame. It stared at me with two white eyes. Plants hung off the old wood, seeds embedded in the veins, made soft from years of rot and rain. These hanging vines dangled before the figure as a curtain, swaying in the wind just enough for me to doubt what I was seeing. Between the songs of cicadas and bees, I heard the faint sound of chimes, though my grandfather had none.

“I cannot come to you. You must come to me.” The figure reached out a hand, long and translucent in the sun, and extended one single finger. It curled back on itself, beckoning to me. “Child. Come here, come and see.”

There is a story here that is untold. A story of a child more adventurous than I, who listened to that dark figure and ventured off into the abandoned stables - who wandered through the curtain of vines and through the layer of dust and half-eaten hay. There is a story somewhere, surely, of a child who followed this creature up the ladder to the loft, who found the key to the padlock on the flimsy door of the shed.

There is a story here about the inside of the shed. About the child who unlocked it and unearthed its secrets and found the body there, beneath the piles of sheets and blankets, hiding a horrible secret after all. A twelfth forgotten sibling from the old days on the farm, maybe an accident or maybe murdered, but forgotten all the same. As Heartland beats on, there is no space for children who cannot bear the load of farm work. There is such a thing as too many mouths to feed.

Indeed, that’s a story that could be told, but that is not mine. No, I ran. I was a wise and timid child. And I was content to be in the farmhouse with me, my parents, my brother, our dog, and two little gerbils. And I was happy to be with my grandfather, who had generosity in his soul, despite what my father seemed to believe. Despite how my father kept him at arm’s length, and put all of us in the second story and him in the first, and said “You stay there, we stay here,” as if he was afraid.

I ran from the dark figure that day. Back up the hill, the grass twisting around my ankles and trying to pull me back down to the bottom, back down to the stable where that poor thing wanted nothing more than to be found. Panting, heaving, I bolted for the farmhouse’s rusting screen door. Pressed my back against it and watched out the filthy window to make sure the thing wouldn’t follow.

There is another story within my own. But in six months, my parents found us a new home. And I never told them about the dark figure who called to me, who asked me to come. Because I was warned not to go anywhere near the shed to the east where my uncle lies, rotten as the wood in which he sleeps.