THE SORROW PLACE

Three times he went to the grassy edge of the wood.  Each time he was afraid of what he saw there and ran back to the house. He sat on the bottom step of the stairs that went up to the kitchen.  He knew his mother was there, or nearby, and was calmed. 

Behind the house was a small garden.  His mother came down the steps and went there to pull weeds, and he watched her bend over in the fierce sunlight, hands moving rapidly over the scurfy things she pulled from the dry sandy soil, then straighten up tired-like and wipe her forehead with the back of her hand.  He liked to walk in the garden after his mother left and feel the plants and touch the little yellow flowers at the tips of the spreading branches and run his finger along the green globes that grew in clusters from the bottom of the plant upward.  He liked to touch the cucumbers, too, as they grew fat and bumpy and to lift the dark green, shiny squash as they lengthened and curled.  Sometimes, looking over his shoulder to see if his mother was watching, he picked greenbeans and sat on the step and munched them. 

     Three times he ran back to the yard and sat on the step.  Each time his curiosity moved him, and he walked cautiously to the edge of the wood to look again.  He sat with his hands on his knees, looking at his mother in the garden, bound by fear to go there and forget what he saw at the edge of the wood.  But he couldn’t forget.  Something in him was walking him there again.  His heart was thumping, and he was opening and closing his fists as he crossed the unmowed field, the tall grass brown from the heat and dryness, and passed into the shadow of the peach tree, then out again into the glare, ever so slowly.  As he neared the scrub oak at the forest’s edge, he could begin to smell it.  Peering through the branches into the cool dimness, between the trunks of the first trees, he could see it: a raccoon, softly illuminated by the forest’s green light.  A cloud of flies buzzed around it, making a low hum he could hear from where he stood.  It didn’t move.

     And then he noticed something new.  Ants.  Not like the ants he saw around the house and in the garden, the kind his mother called sugar ants, tiny red things that wandered this way and that and seemed to have no plan but aimlessness in their lives.  These ants were much larger and were black and scurried in a file, some going towards the animal and some coming back from it.  They moved very rapidly and all of them seemed to know what they were doing.  The ants were the biggest wonder and filled him with the most dread.  They, and the smell, the hum of the flies, and the raccoon, lying on its side—he could see its face—the upward eye open.  He turned and fled back to the house.

     At the edge of the lake the water was clear.  If he stood very still, he could see fish darting about, but if he moved, they would disappear. He tried to stay still so he could see them.  He was afraid of the water.  He didn’t know why.  Touching it made him feel hollow and dreadful.  But he was fascinated by the fish.  Once, talking more to herself than to him, he heard his mother say they were minnows.  He didn’t know anything about minnows and wasn’t sure these he was looking at were the same as his mother named.  He squatted and leaned over the edge and looked down.  He carried a pebble in his hand when he came.  He had only the one.  As he looked down at the fish darting about, he saw how they did.  First they would gather close together and then dart away from each other and then bunch up again.  He watched them do that over and over.  If he moved, they would scatter so fast he could hardly tell in what direction they had gone.  He wanted to drop the pebble in their midst when they were bunched, but he couldn’t do it.  So he put the pebble in his mouth and sucked on it.

     The lake was far from home.  His mother walked him there when they went, sometimes holding his hand, sometimes letting him run ahead of her.  She came down the steps that day and took his hand, and they left.  The lane was made of gravel and was so narrow it was shaded from the sun all day by trees on either side.  It was called Wood Lane.  There were several old ramshackle cottages on the lane.  One of these, the one with the red shingles, had horses and dogs.  As they neared it, the long-haired mutts with floppy ears and pointy noses came running out, barking and making a row, and he ran to his mother, who took his hand and told him not to be afraid.  She let the dogs smell him and spoke to them and they listened to her.  He could see the horses from the lane and smell them.  As they passed, he stayed very close to his mother.  The horses paid no attention to them at all, never even looking their way.  He wished they would so he could see their faces better.  But they never did.  Sometimes he touched the dogs as they came sniffing, their ears hanging with swollen ticks and their fur stuck all over with bits of straw.  Their black noses were wet and cold. 

Ahead, as they neared the lake, he could see people standing about or sitting in the grass.  Some were in boats, floating on the water.  A man with a long stick tended a fire.  It was always cooler there.  It began to be cooler as soon as they entered the lane.  His mother was behind him, standing alone.  He knew she was there, watching him.  That took away the fear so he could squat at the edge, lean over and look at the fish, and suck the pebble.  When they walked home, after they passed the red cottage, he listened for the cooing of the mourning doves.  These lived in the trees at the beginning of the lane.  After hearing the doves, they would come out into the sunshine again, and it would be hot.  They walked along the sidewalk until they came to the gravel road down which they lived.

     After they got home, a truck came and stopped in front of the house where the two big pine trees were.  The man honked the horn and his mother stopped what she was doing and went out to meet him.  He was in the back yard sitting on the step and ran out front.  He saw them standing in the road beside the truck, the man showing his mother what he had.  Melons, corn, tomatoes, onions, potatoes.  His mother bought the things she didn’t have in the garden.  The man had other things, too.  Fish, clams, oysters.  His mother bought a fish, a big blue and silver one.  He watched the man weigh it and wrap it in newspaper, and then he followed his mother inside, and when she put it on the counter next to the sink, he pushed the chair over and climbed up to see it.  She unwrapped it and let him look at it, but she slapped his hand when he tried to touch it.  Then she scraped the scales off and cut off the head and tail and rinsed it under the faucet, and when that was done, she wrapped it again and put it in the refrigerator.  They had different eyes, the fish and the raccoon.  His mother didn’t know.

     After supper they went to church.  His mother washed him and dressed him.  Then they walked up the road and crossed the boulevard at the traffic light.  On the corner was the church.  Mother held his hand tightly when they went in and made him sit beside her.  No one sat near them.  His mother sang the hymns.  She had a beautiful voice.  When the service was over, they left, his mother taking his hand firmly and walking him out.  She said nothing to him all the way home.  She took his clothes off and put them away and let him wear shorts again.  When it got dark, he collected lightening bugs.  But in the morning he would let them out of the jar.     

* * *

He was wakened by a noise.  It sounded like a hard slap, and he heard his mother cry out in pain.  The door was open and light from the kitchen came in.  His mother was crying.  A man said angrily, “The package was broken open and it was scattered all over.  I could save hardly any of it.”

     “It must have been animals,” his mother said.

     “No.  It was your boy,” the man said.

     “He never went near it,” she said.

     “It couldn’t have been animals.  What kind of animal would do that?  Make sense woman.”

     “It wasn’t him.  I watched him all day.”

     “What difference does it make?  It’s mostly lost.  Who’s gonna pay?  We’re in trouble.  What the hell are we gonna do?”

     “I don’t know.  I don’t care.  It was an accident.  Can’t they understand that?”

     “They won’t.  There’ll be hell to pay, I can tell you.”

     “What will they do?”

     “What won’t they do?”

     “Can we run?”

     “That’s the worst thing we can do.”

     “It had to be animals.  They come from the woods and get into the garbage all the time.  It wasn’t my boy.”

     “A lot they’ll care.”

     Then there was silence.  He heard the kitchen door squeak open and bang shut and his mother came to look in on him.  She stopped in the doorway, darkening the room.  She saw he was awake and put her finger to her lips and said quietly, “Hush, go back to sleep.”  Then she left.  He was afraid of the man.  His voice was angry, and he made his mother cry.  He was afraid to go to sleep.  He kept himself awake by listening.  He heard his mother blow her nose in the kitchen.  Then the man came back.

     “Nah,” he said, “I could save only a fraction.”

     “Next time don’t put it there.  Don’t get me involved at all.  This is all your doing,” she said.

     “You like the money.  You’re involved as much as I am.”

     “I wish I never did it.  I wish I never had anything to do with it.  People around here are so clannish.  No one comes near us.  If we died in this house, no one would know because no one ever comes here.”

     “Don’t talk about dying,” the man said.  His voice had changed.  There was silence for a long while and he listened but could not hear them.  Then the man said, “George looks in on you, doesn’t he?”

     “He brings me fish and garden stuff.  He came today.”

He could tell his mother had been crying by the sound of her voice, but she wasn’t anymore.

“George is nice.  I like him.  But I only see him once a week.  I need more than that.”

     “If we get by this, there’ll be more.  Plenty!”

The sound of the man’s voice gave him a thrill.

“Just you wait.  We gotta get by this.  We will, we will!”

     “What’re you going to do?”

     “What can I do?  I’ll tell them the truth.  They won’t like it.  They’ll make us pay, someway.  If it’s only money, we’ll be all right.  We’ll get by it.  That’s what I’m banking on.  We’ll make up for the loss out of future earnings.  Then we’ll be all right.  I think it’ll work out.”

     “I hope to God you’re right,” his mother said, and then there was silence again for a long while.  He couldn’t tell if the man was in the kitchen.  He was too afraid to get out of bed.  He didn’t know if his mother was still there.  The silence lasted a long time.  

     He was almost asleep again. He heard his mother and opened his eyes.  Her voice was strange, it frightened him.  She cried, half in a whisper, “Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!”  He could see her shadow on the wall across from the door.  It was going back and forth.  He was afraid and started to cry.  His mother came in and pulled him out of bed and put his sneakers on over his bare feet.  She said, “Come,” pulling him by the hand.  She opened the front door and peeked out and told him to run up the road as fast as he could and go down the lane towards the lake.  When he came to the red cottage, he should go in with the dogs, where they sleep with the horses, and stay there until she comes for him.  He was too afraid, now.  His mother pushed him out and whispered harshly, “Run.”  He ran.

     He stopped under the pine trees in front of the house.  It was very dark there.  He saw three men beside the house.  One was kneeling.  The others were standing over him.  One of the men grabbed the kneeling man’s hair and pulled his head backward.  The other had something in his hand that glinted in the starlight.  He heard the kneeling man gurgling and making strange choking sounds.  The man with the thing in his hand then punched the face of the kneeling man over and over while the other held his head back by the hair.  He was supposed to run, but he couldn’t.  The kneeling man fell on his face and was still.  Then the others went walking round to the kitchen door.  That’s when his mother came out the front.

     He called to her and she came under the trees with him.  It was dark.  He started to cry.  She put her hand over his mouth.  Then the light by the door came on.  His mother held his mouth.  The door opened and the men came out on the front steps.  One said, “Are you sure they were here,” and the other said, “Pretty sure.”  His mother held his mouth very hard.  They listened.

     “Go back to the car.  I’ll wait.”

     “Maybe he was alone tonight.  Usually they’re here.” 

     “We’ll see.”

     “We shouldn’t hang around.  I’ll come back with the car.”

     “No.  Go and wait.  I’ll be along.”

     The one who stayed went back in the house and turned off the light.  His mother let go of his mouth and he breathed.  She whispered, “Don’t move and don’t cry.”  She pushed him close inside the one tree against the trunk.  They stayed quiet.  Then they saw the man who stayed walking around the house.  He stopped beside the other tree and stood for a long time.  Then he walked away.  They stayed under the tree in the dark until they heard a car starting and the sound of the tires on the gravel.  They stayed a while longer, and then they came out.  His mother told him to go in the house.

     When he looked behind him and saw she wasn’t coming, he ran down the front steps toward the side of the house.  He saw his mother kneeling in the dirt beside the man who had fallen there.  He ran to her and stopped beside the man’s head.  His mother was running her hand through the man’s hair and touching his cheek.  His eye was open and didn’t blink.  He stared at the man’s eye as his mother, crying and sorrowing on her knees beside the fallen figure, put her hands on his side and tried to lift him over.  She couldn’t lift him.  While she struggled, he was frozen where he stood.  His mother put her face to the man’s face and then sat back on her heels.  She reached out to him and pushed him away from the man and stood up, then she pulled him away by the hand. 

     In the dream, the eye was round and black.  He woke and cried for his mother.  But the woman who came spoke harshly to him and he stopped crying.  When she left she shut the door.  He was afraid to fall asleep again.  But sleep came anyway and the dream returned.  When he woke he didn’t cry.  Instead, he got from the bed and went to the window.  He looked out into the dark and thought about his mother.

The first time he was let out to play, he left and found his way to the big boulevard and walked across town to Wood Lane.  He went to the cottage with the red shingles and waited for his mother.  He waited in the lane, where the dogs came to sniff him, because he was afraid of the horses.  But when the dogs lost interest and went away, he sat in the dirt by the trees across from the cottage.  When someone came up or down the lane, on foot or in a car, he slipped behind a tree.  Then he left.  He went on to the lake and then returned to the new house where he lived.  He never got lost.  Often, on his way back, he stood at the beginning of the gravel road down which he lived with his mother and stared toward what he knew was there.  It was the place of sorrow, where his mother sobbed.  He opened and closed his fists, but his feet would not take him.  The woman scolded him when he returned and refused to feed him and he cried.  She wouldn’t feed him whenever he went to the red cottage, but he didn’t care.  He went as often as he could and became quiet and sullen when he was scolded.  His mother never came and after a time he stopped going.

He stood by the window and looked into the dark, thinking about his mother.  The leaves of the trees had fallen and the night looked empty and bare.  When he slept, he dreamed of the round, black eye, and when he woke he remembered the blue and silver fish on the counter beside the sink, and he remembered the eye of the raccoon and the unblinking eye of the man who fell in the dirt beside the house, over whom his mother bent.  Now he could see the dark sky through the branches of the trees, and its blackness frightened him.  He leaned his forehead on the glass.  It was cold.  When he pulled away, his shaking breath fogged the pane, and he could see the night no more.