The Oppressive Weight of Implicit Things

The Oppressive Weight of Unspoken Things

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 Woman, 40, Seriously Injures Child in Accident

By Vickie Mills, Ace Media Group Local Content Desk

April 22, 2024

 A Highland Heights woman will not face charges following a crash that left a four-year-old seriously injured. The accident happened on April 15 at the intersection of 4^th Street and Plesser Avenue around 7:00 pm.

 According to an affidavit obtained by Ace Media Group, witnesses told police that the four-year-old girl ran into the middle of the street and was hit by Deirdre Moss of Highland Heights. After an investigation, the authorities declined to charge Moss, stating it would have been impossible for her to avoid hitting the child.

The child remains in the hospital with critical injuries.

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Having done something unforgivable, Deirdre Moss is preparing to live with her guilt in her dead grandmother’s house. She spends days inside the dilapidated farmhouse, pulling down masses of spider webs and sweeping insect husks into dustpans. Blue wallpaper streaked with mysterious orange stains reeks of smoke and cooking grease. Doors hang by a single hinge; most windows are broken or missing. Upstairs, areas of the floor threaten to cave in. The cellar is littered with brittle snake skins and half-eaten rodents. She sweeps the mess into garbage bags and intends to call an exterminator.

Deirdre finds cleaning the house strangely cathartic and redemptive. The brute, mindless work of scrubbing floors and chipped porcelain sinks exhausts her. She is surprised by the ferocity of her hands gripping mop handles and clenching rags, attacking surfaces almost violently. For the past 20 years, Deirdre used her hands to maneuver paintbrushes over blank canvases. Now, she has no desire to unpack her canvases, paints, or paintbrushes. Her old clients continue to text her with requests for artwork, but she keeps blocking the texts until her phone is permanently silent.

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Driving in heavy rain, parking crookedly in an empty parking lot behind the convenience store, running into the store to buy cigarettes, a sandwich, and a bottle of red wine. Taking a drink of wine from the bottle before driving home. Just one drink, one swallow, not nearly enough to fail a breathalyzer. The rain intensifying on the drive back home. She can barely see the street through the rivulets of water streaming down the windshield. Driving slowly, listening to rain drumming on the roof of the car, the rhythmic clack-clack of the windshield wipers, feeling pleasantly drowsy, almost sedated...

The dream always ends the same. Fat raindrops shimmer like white sequins reflecting bright light. Her hands are luminous and white against the blackness of the steering wheel. She tries to turn right, but the steering wheel suddenly falls on her lap. Sirens blaring, people yelling, someone pounding on the window, a face contorted with rage screaming at her, being pulled roughly out of her car, her eyes falling on something lying in the street, some kind of animal, a dog?

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August in southern Arkansas is heat and sun and desiccation. Each day detonates with the energy of a nuclear explosion. Cicadas scream in the steamy afternoon silence as the sun burns them alive. The sky rebels and turns black when the earth can’t endure more torture. Sharp blades of lightning stab the sky. Rain pummels the windows like tiny fists as thunder cracks like a thousand whips snapping at once. Deirdre listens to these late afternoon thunderstorms in the cool darkness of the cellar, drinking wine and smoking. She has no deadlines for commissioned paintings, no rent to pay, no obligations to consider. Time will have to fill itself while she waits in the wings. Participating is no longer an option.

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Since moving to Arkansas, Deirdre keeps mistaking strangers for dead people. One day, she sees her father across the parking lot of Casey’s Groceryland, a man with a heavy black beard and a ponytail. Deirdre lifts her hand in a hesitant wave, leaving her hand suspended until the man stares dumbly at her, gets into his car, and drives away. Her heart pounds crazily in her chest as she lowers her arm and clenches her fist. She has not seen or heard from her father since she was seven. A few snapshots exist of her five-year-old self standing next to him in various locations— a carnival, a park, fishing off a bridge. She has no memories of the pictures being taken, but she knows the man is her father.

At Webb’s Home & Garden Discount, she sees her mother standing in the paint aisle—a gray-haired, gaunt woman wearing house slippers instead of shoes. But, of course, it isn’t her. Deirdre’s mother, Marlene, died when she was nineteen. Or was it twenty? Marlene died thinking Deirdre was an extraterrestrial who had “kidnapped” the real Deirdre and was pretending to be her daughter. Marlene took three different kinds of pills to calm the voices babbling incessantly in her mind. She suddenly stopped taking them when her muscles stiffened so severely she could barely move. “Being sane feels worse than being insane,” Marlene told Deidre as she flushed the pills down the toilet.

Several years after Marlene died from an aneurysm, Deirdre received an official-looking letter in the mail informing her that the cemetery where her mother was buried had been deemed “abandoned.” The graves were being relocated to make way for condominiums. She decided to visit the abandoned cemetery before they exhumed the bodies. She wandered among the crumbling stones half-hidden by the dark embroidery of tall weeds and leafless trees, searching for an etching of her mother’s name—Marlene Moss. She painted the gravestones on the canvas in her artist’s mind as broken teeth buried in the graveyard’s dirt mouth. When Deirdre returned home, she started painting that image but only completed the sky and a few trees before abandoning it.

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Deirdre spends long afternoons in the Beechwood Diner, eavesdropping on people’s conversations. She sips coffee while staring out a window smeared with children’s fingerprints. It’s air-conditioned, and people gossip about things happening in Beechwood. One day, she hears the women in the booth behind her talking about a recent event—dismembered pieces of human bodies—fingers, hands, feet, scalps, and eyeballs—lying in dried-up creeks and in ditches alongside country roads. Rumors about Satanists performing rituals under Nightmare Bridge spread quickly. It is standing-room only in churches on Sunday mornings. Everybody is on edge, praying that Satanists do not kidnap and sacrifice them or their loved ones to the Devil. They pray that Jesus overpowers the Satanists and destroys them.

The county sheriff comes in for lunch later and tells diners that, contrary to rumors, there is no evidence that Satan worshippers are sacrificing people to the Devil. “It ain’t got nothing to do with devil worshippers,” the sheriff says, shaking his head. “Detectives think it’s just a psycho serial killer. There’s even somebody from the FBI coming here tomorrow. They’ll find that sick puppy”.

The waitress stops at Deirdre’s booth. She smiles but does not make eye contact with Deirdre as she fills the empty coffee cup. Instead, the waitress fixates her smile on the napkin holder at the far end of the booth table. Deirdre pulls her coffee cup closer and watches the waitress move to another table. The waitress smiles broadly at the man and woman, laughing at whatever the man says. The woman keeps glancing from the man to the waitress. Then, the woman says something to the waitress while twirling her empty glass, and the waitress leaves.

Deirdre moves her gaze from one diner to another. It occurs to her that any one of the diners could be a homicidal psychopath. She counts how many diners there are—16—and notices that some of the men have guns attached to their hips. After the sheriff leaves, a dense odor of fear silences the conversation briefly. A murmuring emerges from the quietness like bees droning outside a hive. The hum of voices is punctuated occasionally by laughter, a child screaming, a plate crashing on the floor in the kitchen. Deirdre rests her chin on her palm, trying not to think about anything. She concentrates on several flies moving aimlessly across the dirty window, searching for bits of food or grease. Soon, the waitress announces it's closing time. Deirdre leaves the emptying diner and starts walking home, her way illuminated by the spastic flashing of heat lightning. She's not in any hurry. She has nothing to do.