The spear

Tory grabbed the newspaper and crushed it, threw it in the fire.

Her father’s murder had not even been mentioned.

The reporter had asked lots of questions and scribbled in his notebook. The photographer had taken lots of pics lit by the brilliant flash that strobed the rough walls of the cellar.

She counted the flashes. Counting things helped keep the bad thoughts at bay.

The tenth flash was much stronger than the others. It seemed to light up the night, almost as if the house was not there above them, that the sky stared down into the dank underground room. The line of faces at the top of the cellar walls laughed where they lay in the grass and stared. Then the flash faded and there was just the joists of the cellar ceiling, the dull yellow light through the door above the stairs, and the distant moon peeking through the open storm doors.

Laughter echoed through the trees in one direction, and through the corn field in the other, out where the weevils ate their livelihood.

His body was twisted, as if he had struggled to remove the pain of the spear that went right through him. The police said the pathologist would sort it. It was best not to pull it out.

Fat cop, thin cop. Bored, too used to death in its multitude of forms and fashions. Just another farmer speared in his storm cellar. Just another Kansas evening. Still time to get home for a beer and the game.

That laughter again. The cops didn’t seem to notice. The forensics people came in their big vans with the headlights swooping through the night. The forensics team looked serious, pulled on white coveralls and sent them away. Then the ambulance came like a replay of the forensics van, disturbing the compressed night air, its headlights like wind in the corn before a storm.

They took his body away and forensics put tape across the cellar doors. The two vehicles’ headlights ghosted the night.

The cops said ‘Will you be OK?’ and she said, ‘Sure, as long as the guy with the spear don’t come back.’ ‘Well he hasn’t got a spear any more’ the fat one said, and the thin one laughed a kind of hissing ‘I’m not really laughing at a murder scene’ kind of laugh.

After they left she sat on the porch and wished, as she had so often, that it faced the trees and not the fields. If only that was different then everything would be alright.

She knew there was no madman with a spear.

She went inside the house, to her small room with the window that rattled, the dolls without eyes. His smell was everywhere. That sour sweaty smell.

She reached up on tiptoe and took the notebook and the pen down from the top of the dresser.

The reporter said they listened to the police radio. That was why they got there first. The police had to come from two towns away. Glamor was too small for police. ‘It’s lucky it’s even on the map’ the fat cop had said. She wondered if he meant that as a joke or serious. The thin one nodded, as if what he thought was somehow important.

The phone rang. Aunt Polly from Stockton. How did she know, if it wasn’t in the newspaper?

Blah blah horrible, worried for you, blah blah. Maybe she's wondering if she’ll get any money? There isn’t any money. Mortgaged right up to the chimney cap. There’s a ‘55 Chevy in the barn but she isn’t getting that.

Tory wondered why there was a fire in the cast iron grate. She didn’t remember lighting a fire and it wasn’t cold. She wore jeans with a man’s belt and a white cotton shirt, heavy work boots without socks. Her straw-coloured hair, uncombed, brushed her narrow shoulders. Her hands were callused, freckled from work, the unforgiving sun.

Who taught me to write? she wondered. Her father taught her nothing except hard work. The police came over from Grainfield and weren’t aware that the 20 or so people living in Glamor didn’t know she existed. If someone drove the dusty road up their isolated dip in the Kansas sea of grass and corn she had to disappear into the cornfield or into her room. The locals thought her father was a sour loner with poor judgement about crops and planting times.

She had seen her father use his cellphone and she knew to dial 911. She couldn’t remember how she knew that though. They had no radio or TV, no internet. She wasn’t allowed books. He read the newspaper every morning, then burnt it.

'Hello. No it's not an emergency. No, no, please stay on the line. Yes I have something to report. Someone has speared my father through the guts and he's dead on our cellar floor. Maybe a couple of days ago. He's all cold and the blood has dried. No I never go anywhere. No he often just goes away and leaves me alone. When did he go away this time? Three days ago. Yes I've been here all the time. I never thought he'd be speared dead in the cellar so I didn't look there. I needed some beans, then I found him. No ma'am it isn't our spear.'

He taught her to drive a tractor, but she had never driven a car. The Chevy was her dream catcher. She sat in the passenger seat and imagined the wind in her hair, the passing of miles and people. She was sure those were memories hidden somewhere in her mind - if she could just find them.

Aunt Polly had visited once, years back, and had talked for hours to her father in bitter and angry tones. Tory had left the house to escape the anxiety their voices built in her mind. When she went to bed that night she found the notebook and pen hidden under her pillow.

Maybe Aunt Polly taught her to wrote and read? Back then before everything changed, when that other woman was still in their lives. The one she could never recreate in her thoughts no matter how hard she tried though she knew she was there.

The car drove slowly up the road. Tory saw it in the distance and ran upstairs and back down again. Aunt Polly got out. Her skinny husband, as always, stayed behind the wheel.

‘Helly Tory my darling, how are you?’

‘Fine thanks Aunt Polly.’

‘Your Dad’s in the field?’

‘He’ll be here soon.’ Tory pulled her notebook from under her shirt, looked furtively around, handed it over.

Aunt Polly popped the notebook into her handbag and handed Tory a brand new one and a fresh pen. The girl ran upstairs and put them back on top of the cupboard.