Something Rising

“You smell like. Not a morgue, not a cemetery, not a funeral home. None of those places smell. A slaughterhouse, no, I don’t know. A war crime. That’s what you smell like.” Belle picked at a scab on the back of her hand, under which there was an imaginary blackberry thorn that she had been trying to remove for a couple of years. She was wearing Laura’s shoes; every time she took a step, her feet slid out.

Cassie remembered the poem in the pocket of her jeans, removed it, and put the jeans in the washing machine. “I could use some clean clothes here, Belle.”

“Did you, have you, did you roll in something?”

“And a towel. I’ll shower in the basement.”

“Please don’t go down there, Cassie, those stairs don’t have any backs on them, and I don’t like the way that bare bulb is, the way that bulb is. And I remember that shower, it’s just a nozzle sticking out of the wall, and you just stand there in the middle of the room, no stall or anything, there could be all sorts of, I think you should come on in.”

“In my room, Belle, clean clothes and underwear, a towel.”

“What is that, what’s on your arm? What happened to your arm?”

“I had a run-in with a buzzard.”

“Oh God. You’re going to get septus, septu-something, I can’t remember the rest, like a cat scratch, how did it happen, a buzzard? Did you say a buzzard, like a vulture, you mean?” For a long time Belle’s hair had been blond, but lately it had turned toward brown and was dry, she tucked it compulsively behind her ears. She was thin, thinner than Laura, her grocery lists always said: yogurt, celery, ice. Laura added: cigarettes, butane fluid, corn flakes. One of the scabs on Belle’s upper arm was bleeding, and a piece of toilet paper was stuck to it.

“It was squatting in the road like a three-year-old boy.”

Belle swallowed, picked now at her left arm. “A three-year-old boy?”

“Or a midget dressed all in black.”

Belle said nothing, looked away.

“It was picking at the strings of a rabbit.”

“A rabbit?”

“I passed it too close with my windows down, I thought it would fly away before I reached it.”

“So you were in a bit of a contest. With the vulture.”

“Sort of.”

“And you lost.”

“It would appear.” Cassie stood in the mudroom in her boxer shorts and sports bra, her arm throbbing. She remembered the grocery list, retrieved it from the jeans. Put them back in the washer.

“Should I get Laura?”

“No, you should get the things I asked for, along with some iodine and a bandage. I need to get this washed out and medicine on it.

“Should I call Poppy or Edwin Meyer?”

“No. You should think about the iodine, it’s in the upstairs bathroom, and a bandage, and some clothes and a towel for me.”

Belle nodded, then looked down and studied one of the imaginary thorns under her skin. “A little boy, you say? Or a dwarf?” She would write these phrases, Belle would, on slips of paper and save them.

“That’s right. I’ll shower, then go to the grocery store, then I’m going to Emmy’s. And bring me my cowboy boots, they’re next to my bedroom door. The ones with the two holes over the left ankle.”

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