The Fog

The first people to descend into the valley claimed it was verdant green. Said there were red and yellow flowers sown into the hillside over Mayberry Marsh, and you could stand in the bushes in the sunshine and hear cuckoo bees flitting to and fro, or watch ibises fly in V-shaped skeins against the clouds. When the sky was still blue instead of bone white. Before the drizzle began and never ceased, maddeningly light and insubstantial, an eternal spritz that soaked the ground gray and turned the roads into soup. Before the cold fog rolled in, less the metaphorical cat described by poetry than it is a haunted shawl we have little hope of ever lifting.

My mother’s house is in a state of perpetual collapse. A house of cards falling over in slow motion. I've spent the bulk of my adult life trying to fix it. First, the wood-rotted support beams had to be ripped out one by one and built anew; then a crack in the foundation led to flooding of the subfloor, requiring my whole crew to drain and repair; as of late, we're replacing the siding on the north- and west-facing exterior walls. I'm sure the roof will come next, as leaks have sprung everywhere on the second floor. Last night at bedtime I served Ma some lemon balm tea, and when she went to take her first sip, a stream of water jettisoned into her cup and splashed her on the chin.

"You're wasting your time, Son. Wasting your life away on this godforsaken hovel, another Sisyphus with an albatross 'round his neck."

She says this once a day, every day, without fail. Mixing metaphors consistently as the rain. Her face is at once stern and delicate, like the early settlers, her great-grandfather's generation. Not sure I believe her stories about this place ever being a paradise, though. As usual, I tell her not to worry, it's fine, I enjoy any opportunity to work with my tools. But she’s extra surly this morning. "Don't placate me. I mean it. The fog takes everything in the end. You're only prolonging the inevitable. Just leave it be."

"Ma, of all the work we've done here, siding is by far the easiest—"

"You're not listening. I said leave it. Let it rot away until I tumble out into that cold, wet mouth." Her eyes are pale enough to appear sightless, though she sees just fine. They peer out the window at the unrelenting gray. Her lip trembles.

"Nonsense. You're just getting lonesome. I understand..."

"You don't."

It's a bitter strand that stretches between us. She knows how deeply I've ached for a partner, how frustrated I've been to discover all the women of the valley my age already spoken for or otherwise not interested. "You think Pop would ever let me live it down if I just let you tip over into the ether like a petrified statue, Ma? He'd haunt me for the rest of my days. Not going to happen."

"Hmmphf." She scratches at the windowsill, a sound that sets my nerves on edge. Gasps at a dark smear scurrying down the lane. "Father Ezra...? Where's he off to?"

I crane my neck to get a better look. The figure's black cassock is an inkblot bleeding through wet paper. Hunched over, skimming along the remnants of Main Street in a mad dash. Headed straight for the marsh.

"Father? Everything alright?" I call out from the front stoop. But of course it isn't. Nothing's alright. My words are muffled as though shouted through a pillow. Other townsfolk appear on their porches and in the lane watching the man plunge into the white belly of the advection—red splotches at his fingertips that don't belong there, droplets running behind into the boggy mire.

"No!" A choked cry. I can't see who it is or discern from whence it came. He does turn and look back, a fleeting appraisal. Shock white hair, splotchy-pink skin. He's always reminded me of a painting I saw once of a court jester, nose and chin and cheekbones exaggerated by chiaroscuro. The space between him and the town—radiating across a million tiny crystals—grows heavy with acrimony. You stopped attending my sermons. You could not abide my condemnation of sun-worshippers, nor the weekly reminder to bathe in His light, the true Sun. You stayed home. You drank.

Then the old priest is gone, consumed by the abyssal fog.

"Look at you lot!" Ma's voice rings out from her window. "All your days spent tinkering in these shanties! Beating back decay! But one of your own drifts off and what do you do? Sit on your hands like the rest of us!"

I find my legs and launch off the porch. It's an ungainly pursuit because I don't know where I'm headed. Not after him, surely? Into that emptiness, that awful void? No one who ventures into the marsh is ever seen again. Some believe this means that brave souls can break free of the upslope and escape. But most of us heed the warning of the settlers: never venture there, lest ye be scrubbed out of existence by the fog's unmerciful hand, turned 'round and 'round again, internal compass gone haywire, doomed to an eternity of wandering in the wrong direction. Some believe there are siren songs accompanied by echoing harps inside. Others think the fog can mimic the voices of the dead. But ultimately everyone knows the marsh is a cemetery we can never visit.

My feet develop their own opinion and steer me into the church. The pews are swelling again. The pulpit is missing, reduced to the splintered teeth of the base like it was chopped down. Evidence of a small fire burned to ashes beneath the stained glass window of the south transept. Nothing else out of the ordinary, certainly nothing that might draw blood.

"Not right, letting a place like this go to seed." As though in response, a strong gust of wind picks up, seething through the baseboards. I shout in fright, so long has it been since I felt the air move. The breeze causes the clapper to hit the inside of the bell in the tower, its tenor reverberating through the church and sending shockwaves through my skull.

I climb the bell tower. I climb through Ma's voice redressing me for not tending to the church sooner, her fog-takes-everything defeatism that's built a chevron of wrinkles at her lip's edge. There's nothing to forgive. The fog is our judgment. I climb even though my hands are aching, my grip weakened by a vengeful syndrome of the wrist. And at the top...

There is no bell. The miniature roof of the tower has rotted through, letting in the misty open air to feed a basket of astonishing buttercup yellow flowers hanging from the yoke. Marsh Marigold. So what did I hear, then? I sit at the top of the ladder and blink into the spray of dappled twilight at the heart-shaped petals. The miniature puddles they collect.

"Aren’t you a sight…?" I praise them. Their decumbent stems. Their rosettes and petioles. For a moment I can imagine—almost touch and feel—a pure sunbeam radiating down over their golden-green seed buds. A prayer at long last answered, a glimmer of mercy, the parting breath of Father Ezra who sought only to bolster hope in the utterly hopeless.

But it goes on raining.

**

In the days that follow, my crew and I set to work rebuilding the church. No one seeks to replace Father Ezra on Sunday, but the longer we spend in the nave installing new pews, and in the bell tower patching up the hole in the roof, the more members of the community come to our aid. Lumber, nails, sandpaper. Anything they can scrounge together to cover the gaps in our supplies. Even Ma leaves the house long enough to bring us some sweetened goat milk and sourdough cookies to share. “Well. Won’t it all just fall apart again?” she asks pointedly, hands on her bony hips.

“Yes, Ma. I’m sure it will.”

“So why bother?”

To that, I have no good answer. I prefer to let my crowbar do the talking. Its task today is removing what remains of the pulpit. I wedge the iron teeth into the crack at the base and heave, but find it gives easy. It was never affixed to the floor to begin with. Underneath, there is a small trap door with a handle. A root cellar?

“Wait, you’re not going down there?”

“I am.”

“But you oughtn’t! Some things can't be undone.” She places a rubbed-raw hand on my shoulder. “You know what they say about the curious cat and Pandora’s box!” Her dissenting opinion spreads through the congregation, and soon everyone is talking over one another, clamoring to be heard in the gloom. Not worth the risk. Don’t open it. What if you unleash another entity like the fog, but even worse? What then? Let sleeping dogs lie by the water under the bridge…

I take an oil lamp from the rectory. “Maybe that’s why he left. Because the rest of us are too afraid to look.” I pull up the trap door and enter the cellar. It’s little more than a dug-out hole lined with river stones, about half the size of my tool shed. But there are mason jars, dozens of them. They’re packed to the brim with marigolds soaked in flaxseed oil. For the production of calendula salve. A healing ointment.

Seems the priest left us with a parting gift.

**

At Ma’s house that evening, a fire crackles in the fireplace and glimmers against the golden jars of salve that I line around it. Must’ve taken months to cure them, especially without the aid of full sun. I rub some of the ointment into Ma’s hands, work it into her fingertips. A warm smile finds her lips. “Your father was the only person I ever knew who hated the smell of flowers. Said they were too pungent, too showy. He was an odd sort.” Her eyes find purchase on my face and I can tell she’s seeing him there, my father, and maybe the scrutiny makes me twinge. She lifts her gaze to the window, to the past. “Do you remember him much?”

“A little. He told me once how they used to go after the people who left. How they used a system of ropes and pitch pine torches to form a dragnet in the marsh."

“Yes.”

“And it never worked.”

“Not once. No sign of anyone has ever turned up after leaving, not so much as a handkerchief.” Both of us seem to share a similar thought and peer at the flame-illumined jars of salve, sunbursts trapped in glass. The hours Ezra must’ve spent pruning, alone and unseen by all but the eternal fog, its wispy fingers trailing over the lip of the bell tower and taunting him, daring him to pray for growth and sustainability in the Devil’s cloud. The beeswax, lavender, and compost he collected every month from the Garretts’ farm—I should’ve put two and two together.

“Why’d you stop going to church, Ma?”

Instead of answering, she starts to scream. Her arms quake as she holds up her hands, the skin burning and blistering. Her fingers are worse now, angry and red with rash. A heavy stone falls into my stomach. My own hands are for the most part unaffected, as I’d wiped them clean on a towel immediately after applying the ointment. But there is a stinging sensation and a pinkness. “Hold on, Ma. I’ll get help.”

I run out of the house and down the lane to the Garretts’ farm. Rouse LeAnna to come take a look, telling her about the priest's salve along the way. “Marsh marigold is Caltha palustris, not Calendula officinalis,” she says, tightening her robe. “It’s not a true marigold. It’s toxic.”

Upon our return, she assesses the damage to Ma’s hands. “Okay, come with me. Can you stand?” We help Ma to her feet and bring her to the pump outside to run her ruptured skin under fresh water. Working the handle, LeAnna instructs me to go fetch honey from the farm and tell her husband to cook up some porridge. I do as she bids and make it back just as the moon is reaching its peak and glowing ghost-like behind the gray curtain, a few stars caught in its threads. I feel so dim I could die. I apologize up and down to Ma for not thinking to ask LeAnna first about the salve.

“You didn’t know, Son. Thought it was a gift from Heaven, as did I.” She’s doing her best to stay brave, but the pain must be fierce. Father Ezra’s hands were red like this, and yet still I—

LeAnna has Ma put her hands in the bowl of honey first, then wash them under the pump again, allowing the porridge to cool on the porch. Ma cries in gratitude to the younger woman, telling her how lucky her husband is to have such a natural caretaker at his side. I feel just awful. Then it’s into the cold porridge to soothe the blisters, and at last, the agony appears to lessen some and Ma’s breathing slows. “Worst of it is over now.” LeAnna pats me on the leg, offering some reassurance.

“Thank you, LeAnna. Truly.”

“What good are we if we can’t count on our neighbors, right?” I nod and smile, but inwardly I wonder if she'd asked the right questions, if she'd warned Father Ezra...In the stiff silence that spans between the three of us, our collective shame intensifies. “Put some witch hazel on it in the morning, she’ll be fine.”

Once LeAnna's gone and Ma is off to bed, I sit alone by the fire for a spell. Sleep seems impossible. Somewhere in town, a baby is wailing. Not until the pitchy darkness gives way to gray again do I lift my head.

I get an idea. I go to my tool shed and set to work making torches out of old table legs and strips of cloth. Then I dip the torches into the jars of salve. I set one alight to test it—the flame is low and yellow with a green candescence. Pitch pine may burn hotter and brighter, but per my father’s stories, the fog eventually curled around the torches one by one and doused them. The priest’s salve burns lower and slower; the flame could well stay alive longer in the marsh.

I gather everyone. Were the church bell not missing, I could summon them with that, but as it were, I’m forced to run from household to household and explain my plan from start to finish each time. By noon, over half the town is assembled at the end of Main Street and tied together by one long rope.

“It’s been a long time since anyone has done this,” LeAnna says as she’s passing out the torches. Her husband Ed has agreed to be the anchor at the tail end of the rope. “Communication is vital. We pass information down the line. If you become confused, disoriented, dizzy—tell someone. We’ll retreat and try again. Do not be too proud to admit you need help. We’re in this together.” With her sandy hair in a bun and her thick forearms glistening with dew, she could be Joan of Arc. If we return from this search party intact—when we return—I’ll recommend her for mayor.

Each of us acknowledges our understanding before we light our torches. I’m at the head of the pack. “Ready?” I ask Ma, who stands directly behind me.

“No, not at all.” Her torch wobbles in her grip. Her face has changed in this light, softened to that of a child. Her other hand holds on for dear life to the rope cinched at her waist.

I nod, my head swirling with more emotions than I can catalog. Before I lose my nerve, I take the first step towards the marsh. Then the next. Each step more challenging than the last. Ahead is only blankness. I think of my father, and his father before him. Chasing shadows. Learning nothing. Arriving nowhere.

Faintly, the peal of a church bell rings out in the damp cheesecloth air. From the opposite direction of town, drifting out of the heart of the marsh, stilted, off-key. A backwards glance over my shoulder shows the line of townsfolk lit by otherworldly torches, faces gone fuzzy in yellow-green halos, eyes heavy and sad and hungry for a taste of hope. I take a deep breath, pray it isn't my last, and take another plunging step. The vapor closes in around us. I pray again I’ve made the right decision. For the priest, for Ma, for all of us.

Together, we venture forth into the unknown.