Blasted (50 page)

“The coal man?”

“Yes, the man from here, who'd disappeared. Mom didn't remember anything else, she said she couldn't have been gone for weeks, she just came to herself miles from the house, by the river. She followed the river, she said, followed it back to the house. It wasn't until Dad grabbed her and shook her, telling her what day it was, where had she been? – then she finally seemed to understand that she'd been gone a long time. She went up to bed, and she stayed there about a week. And… after than she was never really the same. She would lose track of time, you'd find her standing there, staring into space. She'd go off on walks, disappear for days.” Queenie lit another smoke. “Dad had to drag her away from that house, in the end. She fought him. He practically had to drag her to the car, she was snarling and weeping and tearing at his sleeves. It was like someone had put a spell on her.”

“Did you ever see the coal man?” I asked.

She stared at me. “No, I never saw him again. No one did.”

Silence stretched between us. I could hear the wind rising outside, moaning under the immense concrete bridge that spanned the house. “Queenie,” I said at last, “could it have been… you know… maybe she went off with someone? A person, I mean.”

“A man?”

“Well…”

“I have thought of that. Of course I have. Other people thought it, I can tell you. People looked at those things differently back then. If you were married, that was it. Affairs were – it was like we believed there had to be something really wrong with a person, something terrible, something we couldn't understand about their lives, to do something like that. And then Mom became known as one of those. It was an awful shame in the family. It was a hard time at school, and it was very hard on John. People would ask how your mother was, how is she these days? – give you these knowing looks. Children can be cruel. And teachers, I had a teacher that would ask me in front of the class how my mother was, and snigger. An awfully good friend to the poor, she'd say. I hated that woman.”

“Well, I hate her too,” I said.

“Mom was never the same after,” Queenie said, “never.” She looked out the window. “Sometimes, Ruby, it was like having a stranger in the house. Having her around, like that. Nowadays she would have ended up in the mental.”

It was too familiar, too much like my father. I remembered the winters, how my father changed, over and over. The way he died, the cataclysm of the accident I always knew was no accident at all. But I couldn't tell anyone that. As if reading my mind, Queenie said, “She died at home, late in the fall, sick and wasting. I was about twenty at the time. I wasn't married yet, I still lived here with John. Dad had died, the heart attack, two years before. I'd sit with Mom through the nights, those last weeks.” Queenie leaned across the table toward me, her black eyes boring into mine. “She talked about things then, at last. She told me, ‘I remember that night, you know. I remember.' She said that she was out there at the laundry line, and the stranger came up to her, all dressed, she said, in beautiful clothes. ‘Look at you,' she said to him, ‘why, look at you!' He greeted her very fine, asked her if she'd like to see his new house. She said yes, and followed him to a grove of trees. She could see everything even though it was night; she never thought anything of it, she said. They came to the trees and the leaves and trunk were all shimmering gold, they gave off the most beautiful light. And he told her to push her way into this thicket, and she did. And there before her was a little narrow staircase leading down into the earth. Down she went, with the man after her, and she said that beneath the ground was the most beautiful palace, with fine ladies and gentlemen and dancing, but the funny thing was there was no music, they danced in silence. And she told me she danced with the gentleman. She said she had the most wonderful time. And that it was only one night.”

Queenie leaned back in her chair so forcefully that it rocked on its legs. “I think that's what happened. She told me. It was the truth.”

My bandaged eye throbbed; something stirred inside me, a memory perceived through smoke. The shadow paths, the shimmering trees and promise of sweetness. A palace. “Bad blood,” I said.

“What?” Queenie spoke sharply.

“Bad blood.” My head began to sink, my voice choked. “That's what Grandpa says. Our family.” I would travel the shadow paths again, all my life, like my father, like my great-grandmother before me.

“Ruby!” I sat up at the tone in her voice. “No. It isn't… it's not a doom!”

“But my father…” Something reached up from my gut, choking me. “You know! Aunt Queenie, you're the only one who knows. What happened to him. And I can't… I'll go again, I'm so afraid…”

“We can't, we can't be talking of this.” The wind was rising outside and she shivered, rocked back and forth in her chair. “It brings bad luck to speak of it.”

“Is it a game for Them?” Rage rose within me. “Is that why They do this?”

“It's dangerous to talk of it.”

“And not knowing, what has that brought me?” I pushed her. “You and Grandpa, you tried something with Dad, didn't you?”

“I tell you, it wasn't him.” Her voice shook. “That thing she had sitting by the stove there,” she pointed to the corner where the coal stove had been, “that thing wasn't him.”

Cold water, angry voices, the woman's sobbing.

“What happened?”

Queenie wiped tears from her face. “A beautiful baby he was,” she murmured to herself. “Your grandfather and Maddie were thinking they were past having a child, and then Maddie got pregnant and gave birth to this perfect, beautiful baby boy. Dark hair like yours. The most beautiful baby you ever saw. Maddie was so happy. But he – something changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“One day he was fine. The next, he changed. That's what I mean. Sat up in his crib looking like a little old man. Wrinkled face, all caved in, a monkey. Staring and staring at you. And then he'd laugh, like a grown adult.” She shuddered. “He bit, too. Not like a baby. Hard, he took a piece out of Maddie's arm once the size of a dollar. And at night he'd howl. Not cry, mind, howl like an animal. It wasn't Neil.”

“He could just have been sick. Ear infection or something, don't babies get those?”

She shook her head. “It wasn't him.” She looked straight at me. “I tried to tell your grandmother. They'd swapped her baby for one of theirs. But she wouldn't listen, and who could blame her? That thing,” she spat the word, “wasn't her son. He was savage. He'd eat, eat and eat, and drink. I just kept my mouth shut. And one night Maddie left me with him to babysit. She and John hadn't slept in weeks, what with that thing howling. So out they went, for a break. And I waited until she and John were out of the house, and then I went into the bedroom and looked at that thing, and it looked at me, and it bared its teeth at me and hissed. I was frightened, I'll say that. But I didn't waver. I said, ‘It's just you and me, now, and I wants the real Neil back. I wants my nephew.' And came down here to the kitchen and I hotted up a coal shovel in the stove, the coal stove in the corner there, remember?” I nodded mutely. “I got the shovel in the stove until it burned red hot, then I wrapped my hands in rags and took the red-hot shovel out of the coals, and up to the bedroom I went.”

“Aunt Queenie, you didn't…” A horrible image flashed through my mind.

“No! I'd never, not even to that thing. But you have to frighten the creatures, you have to show them you're serious. I got to the doorway of the bedroom and that thing was sitting there bolt upright, bold as you please. And I raised the coal shovel over my head, and I said, ‘It's out with you.' And at that, the thing flew right up into the air. It flew out the door, over my head. I ran after it, but it went out an open window and disappeared into the night. And I ran back into the bedroom, and there, lying in the crib, was the baby. Neil. Lying there and sweet as before.”

“That was it?”

She shook her head. “He was himself for a while. Then They swapped him again. And again. I waited, I had to bide my time; Maddie'd ask me to babysit, and I didn't need to do anything but demand, and they'd bring the real one back every time. Maddie couldn't understand it, the child'd be good after I babysat him, for weeks or months even, and then he'd change. She got suspicious of me. I'd had my kids by then, they were grown and looking after themselves, and I'd just say, ‘Oh, I've had three, it gets easier, you know,' I'd try to pass it off like that. But it bothered her.

No mother likes someone else to manage her baby better than she can.”

“Maybe… maybe he just had a mental illness. Or something.”

“What?”

“I don't know. Epilepsy. Something.”

“I thought that too. We all did. Maddie and John brought him to the doctor over and over, don't think they didn't.”

I stared down at the table. “Queenie…”

“Look. If I hadn't been at the house for a while the creature'd come back. Sit there eating all day. Not like a baby. Raw meat and such. As he got older the thing came less often, but it would come back with more power each time. I started wondering if I could keep sending it back, how long this would go on. I tried to talk to John about it, but he just got angry, and after the time I told you about, the woodpile – the last time you were here – remember?”

I nodded.

“Well, after that, John just clammed up altogether. But then, for a few years, everything seemed all right. And then when Neil was sixteen, they went hunting. And Neil got blasted.”

“I remember that. Your telling me, I mean.”

“Shortly after that, he changed again. This time I was really frightened he'd do harm. Vicious he was, wild, refused to leave the house, stayed in bed and ate and drank them out of house and home. But he'd only eat when nobody else was in the room.”

“But…”

“He killed their cat, tore its head clean off.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus indeed. It was like a piece of hell had come to stay. Maddie wouldn't listen; no matter what that thing did he was her darling boy, her only one, her own. It went on all winter. Then I couldn't stay quiet any more. I told John what we had to do. We never did it with Mother, and we lost her. I didn't want that to happen to Neil. So one night, early April it was and almost dawn, the sky was getting light – we went up to the bedroom and we wrapped that thing up in the very blankets it was lying under, with stones. It just hissed at us, and laughed, and hissed again. Didn't even struggle. He was heavy, he was sixteen by now, but we hauled it out of the house and across the road, to the bridge, to the river, it was laughing all the while. Maddie behind us screaming at us that we'd gone mad, what were we doing, were we trying to kill her son? And we hove that thing into the cold water. It sank away. John had to hold Maddie, she would have thrown herself into the river after it. She was wild, she was. John had to wrap his arms around her, he was rocking her back and forth, tears running down his face. We took her back to the house, somehow we got her back to the house. And there was Neil. He was sitting by the stove. It was him. ‘I thought I'd never get back,' he said. ‘I've been out there all winter. Surrounded, hundreds of them. And you feeding him all that time. I couldn't get home,' he said, ‘until that other one came back. I dreamt that you and Dad threw me off the bridge, hove me into the water. And then I jumped up out of the woods,' he said. ‘And I came home.'”

We sat in silence, listening to the wind. Finally Queenie spoke again, and her voice was hoarse. “I expect you think I'm mad, crazy. But that's what happened. That's what we did. But it didn't work. I'm sorry. He kept going, didn't he, every year? I wasn't around to help, Maddie'd barred me from the house by then. You had to live with it. I'm sorry.” She paused. “I think they both came back at the end, though, Mother and Neil. When they died and you looked upon them, oh, they both looked young. I believe they came back at the last, came to themselves, and died peaceful.”

The night was full of presences: the dead of our family, feelings left too long unspoken, other things. I looked at the dark glass of the window, at the obdurate little cakes of hard bread on the sill. Could such tokens keep it all at bay?

“I won't go again,” I said, and only as I spoke did I know that I wanted it to be true. Fear rose up and choked me. “I won't.” Queenie took my hands in hers, a strong, warm grip.

“You found your own way back. Not like Mother, or Neil.”

That was true, I had. Queenie shook my hands within hers as if she could keep me there by loving force, and I tried to joke, “And if I can do anything to avoid being tossed off a bridge by you and Grandpa, I'll do it.”

“Well, keep your wits about you, girl. And it doesn't hurt to carry the coins, the bread – and in a pinch, you know, swearing sends them off.”

“It does?”

“Yes, you know. Bad language.”

“I always knew my filthy mouth had to be good for something.”

“Call them motherfucking fairies. That's usually a good one,”

Queenie said.

CHAPTER 37