Her house wasn’t the biggest out of the neighborhood. When the Fishers sold up all the farmland back in the forties, it was one of the first to spring out of the ground – right at the top of the only hill for miles.

It made the old home feel enormous.

She lived alone, though in her past she’d kept a husband and children under the aging oak beams. She kept the house like those people still lived there – she discovered early on that making a home completely yours is a quick way to loneliness.

Looking over the milky fog she saw where the road to town turned just before disappearing. She saw the darker outline of the woods behind the Sheriff’s metal roofed farmhouse.

He’d proposed to Ellen on her 58^th birthday, five years after Sam passed.

“You always have a thing for me, or do you just feel bad that I’m up on this hill?”

“Well, Ellen, it just ain’t right for a woman to be alone in this big house,” he said in the farmer’s drawl she found to be as comfortable as old boots.

She refused kindly enough, though the refusal wasn’t enough to stop him from checking in on her, which Ellen appreciated.

The truth of it was Ellen didn’t mind the lonesomeness so much. Nobody to cook for, nobody’s bed to make or long-winded thoughts to listen to. If Ellen had the opportunity to live a second life immediately following her current one, she’d make it a point to only shack up with men when she felt the need for comfort but make sure she had a quiet, lonesome place to go to that was only hers to have.

Finishing her coffee, Ellen stood up from the porch and walked, barefoot, into the kitchen. Before she was even able to put the coffee cup into the sink she heard a car door click shut.

“Ellie? You awake?

“Come on in, sheriff,” Ellen called.

She heard him take off his shoes before walking through the front hallway. Even in his socks, the sheriff sounded like a bear lumbering towards her.

“I never asked you to take off your shoes before, David. Do you do that when raiding a house, too?”

“No I do not – you just always have your shoes off. Figured it was a standing rule.”

“Well, that’s kind of you. Not needed, but kind. What can I do for you?” Ellen asked, motioning for the sheriff to take a seat.

“Oh, nothing, just driving back from Elizabethtown. Some idiot threatened his wife with a pool cue.”

“You have to go to Elizabethtown for that?”

“I do if they call about it.”

“Our tax dollars hard at work.”

“Always.”

“Oh, it’s not your fault people can’t look after themselves. Everything turn out ok?”

“Usually does. Didn’t have to arrest anyone – that’s always a good thing.”

“Well, good,” Ellen said, handing David a cup of coffee without his asking.

“Sure is. Nice way to finish off the shift, really.”

The sheriff looked out the window at the dissipating fog. He had the build of a bull and carried himself as jauntily as a high school football player. He wasn’t handsome – at least not in the Hollywood sense – but he attracted Ellen for the humility expressed over his power. If she had to pin an animal on him, it would be a Great Dane – though she couldn’t ever see herself telling someone that.

“There is a reason I came here today, Ellie,” the sheriff said, still looking out the window.

“Go ahead.”

“Vince got out of prison last Monday,” he said.

“I know that,” Ellen said evenly, crossing her arms and immediately feeling foolish for doing so.

“Well. He’s got to meet with his probation officer and I don’t figure he’ll make that.”

“When?”

“He’s supposed to meet her tomorrow.”

“They have female probation officers?”

“They have female everythings, Ellie.”

“I did not know that.”

“Well, I just thought I’d let you know,” the sheriff said, standing up and walking towards the sink.

“Why is that?”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew, is all.”

Ellen sat down where the sheriff had been and wrapped a hand around the opposite elbow. She tried to pin down the feeling she was having just at that moment, but when it came down to two – fear or regret – she decided to stop figuring it out.

“So where does that leave me?” Ellen asked.

“You just keep in mind that I’m only a few minutes away if need be,” he said, giving Ellen a quick smile and standing in front of her, “I’m gonna go get some sleep before the wife gets home from her shift.”

“You do that,” Ellen said, standing and walking the sheriff to the door.

As they walked onto the porch, Ellen saw the sun rising to burn away the fog. Farms nearby began to appear, and the forest just past Mr. Donovan’s went from a dark mass to individual branches and trees.

“Sheriff,” Ellen said before he closed his cruiser’s door, “I’m not scared of my son.”

“Neither am I.”

She waited until his cruiser reached the curve in the road before cursing at him. Then she made it a point to curse at the lifting fog and the sun, too.

Ellen closed her front door and locked it. She put on socks and shoes and made sure a coat was nearby. She checked her phone messages and walked through every room in her house. She thought about getting his room ready but also thought about tearing out the bed and throwing his left-over clothing into the trash.

He wasn’t invited. She stood in her front hallway and said it again and again to herself. She had told him, through a pane of scratched plastic and over a telephone line that he wasn’t to come back. She’d watched as his mind slowly worked over the words – as his boyhood understanding of what a mother was changed in a brief visit.

She didn’t feel guilty. Not when she decided to tell him, not when walking back to her car at the prison and not since. Ellen expected that she would be treated the same way in his position, and just because she was his mother didn’t mean she wasn’t a logical person.

She decided to stay home for the whole day, cleaning up the living room and re-arranging the clothing in her closet. By the time night came the air was cool enough to justify shutting the windows tight without thinking of anything other than seeing her own breath.

Before going up to bed, Ellen locked her front door. She couldn’t look out the window to her front porch as she did it and felt the need to climb the stairs two at a time. Feeling foolish, she forced herself to go back down and walk calmly up – though she could only stare at her feet.

***

Sleep came quickly but lightly. She woke with every dog bark or creak of the house.

When morning arrived and the fog could still be seen across the fields, Ellen unlocked her front door and walked onto her porch, the heels of her boots tapping out the lightness of her frame. She didn’t notice him at first as she began to walk towards the newspaper.

“When did you start locking the door?”

Ellen only stopped for a second before taking a few more steps and picking up the paper. She tried not to look at him, but could still see his slim tall frame pick itself off of the porch and stretch.

“Why are you here?”

“Can’t I say hello to my mother?”

“I told–”

“I know, I know,” he began, putting up his left hand and waving away her sentence, “I just wanted to see you. It’s not like I forced my way in or anything.”

“You wouldn’t ever need to force your way into this house, honey,” Ellen said, feeling the betrayal of her own words cut into themselves.

“Thanks, ma. I appreciate that. I really do,” he said, stepping into her path back to the house and forcing her to look at him.

Her son had lost weight in prison – he looked like someone who had been given lots of work to do without much food to make up for it. The muscles that hid under the winter jacket he wore barely made his shoulders fill the sleeves, but she saw power in the way he carried himself.

His face was another matter: pale and hollow cheeked, his week old beard gave the sense of untidiness that she couldn’t imagine away. His smile exposed a line of overly white teeth that made the rest of his face seem dirtier. The last time they spoke his hair was short and even. His cheeks were full. Now he seemed like something very difficult was just completed but not in any way that value could be drawn from it.

“Did you walk here?”

“Ah, no. No I got a ride out here.”

“I didn’t hear a car last night.”

“You must have been asleep.”

He took a few steps closer to hug Ellen, and she smelled his sweat and past cigarettes. She felt the ropes of nervous muscle knot themselves over her back through his coat.

“When did you start smoking?”

“I don’t.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s go inside, I’m cold from sleeping out here.”

Leaving her son in the living room with the TV, Ellen walked into the kitchen to make him breakfast. She looked at the heating pan on the stovetop and tried to remember how he liked his eggs. She ran through all the memories of feeding him for years and years – all the mornings full of complaints before school or peaceful weekend ones. Each time the memory came to looking at the pan it was blank – it was empty.

She decided the safest bet was scrambled.

When she finished putting breakfast together she brought it to him. Under the blanket and with his body tucked into itself, he looked more familiar. He looked smaller and tired.

“I made you breakfast, sweetheart.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said, sitting up and taking the plate from her.

“ I couldn’t help myself,” she smiled, rubbing his back as he hunched to eat, “I’ll put out some towels for you whenever you want to take a shower. I have a lot of your clothes here.”

“A shower would be great,” he said without looking up from the plate.

“Good.”

“Do you remember how much I could eat when I was a kid? God, it must have been four plates worth.”

“Four if I was lucky,” Ellen said, sitting down next to her husband.

“That’s a funny thing. I don’t know if  I could eat that much anymore. I can barely eat a full plate these days.”

“That happens when you get older. You aren’t bouncing off the walls and using so much energy.”

“You remember the first time I got arrested? How far the cops had to chase me through that field? I was like a fucking football player,” he laughed, clutching his left hand to his body and throwing out his right in a stiff arm.

“I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“I mean, I really coulda gotten away if I’d seen the ditch there. Man, I could move.”

“Vince.”

“I thought about it a lot. I thought about it. I sat in the back of that squad car and played out the whole thing that first time. I didn’t any other time, but that first time I did. I ran the whole thing again in my head and knew that if I just jumped right before that ditch I woulda made it into the woods and then they’d have to get dogs out or something. I’d be halfway to Hershey before anyone even got back to the house with the dogs. Man that woulda been something. I would make it all the way to Philly then out to Jersey and then nobody would be looking for me. That woulda been it.”

“Why are you talking about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to talk about it, honey. It’s making me upset,” Ellen said.

“Don’t get angry about it.”

“I didn’t say I was angry. It’s making me upset, not angry.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking about it.”

“Finish up and take your shower, honey. You’ll feel a lot better.”

“Ok. I’m sorry. I was just thinking about how I coulda made it.”

“It’s fine.”

Ellen walked upstairs and laid out towels and a change of clothing for her son. She walked into her bedroom and shut the door.

Standing with her ear against the door, she listened as Vince went up the stairs and started the shower. It made her feel comfortable – he was in the shower and would be there for a while. Though she felt guilty for it, Ellen felt like she did whenever he’d fall asleep as a baby – like she had time for a break from watching him, from slapping his hand away from a burner or picking him up when he got too close to pulling something off of a table.

She thought about how long he might want to stay, how she’d probably give him money just to get him out of the house and not feel like a horrible mother. She stopped herself from thinking about how he’d feel when it was only two hundred dollars  or so – if he’d actually ask for more or just look angry.

The water turned off and Ellen quietly escaped down the steps. A few minutes later her son appeared, looking a bit cleaner but just as hallow in the face.

“I had to use your deodorant.”

“You’re going to smell like baby powder and old woman,” Ellen smiled.

“I’ve smelled like worse.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Thanks, mom,” Vince said, sitting in the chair across from the couch.

“So what are your plans?”

“I don’t have anything set, really.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“Sort of. I’ve been staying with a friend of mine. His place is kind of shitty, though. I’d like to get my own place sooner than later.”

“The same friend who drove you here?”

“No, a different one.”

“Who drove you here, then?”

“You wouldn’t know him. He’s from Middletown.”

“What’s his name – maybe I do.”

“You don’t,” Vince said, turning his face towards his mother. His mouth was apathetic but his eyes reminded Ellen of the forest in the fog. She looked away and immediately was ashamed of herself.

“Ok.”

“Anyway – I’m going to stay in Middletown until I can get a good job and then get my own place again. It’s going to take a while though, people generally don’t want to hire guys just out of prison.”

“Well, do you have to tell them?”

“I do. They’ll always find out otherwise.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“Does that ditch still exist out there?”

“What?”

The phone rang, which startled them both. Ellen walked into the kitchen to get it.

“Ellie, listen: your son didn’t make his meeting. I know he’s there.”

“You don’t know that, sheriff.”

“Ellie.”

“You don’t have to know that.”

“We’re coming over. You don’t have to tell him – in fact it’d be better if you didn’t.”

“He’s my son.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Ellie hung up the phone and turned to face the living room. She was startled to see her son standing in the doorway.

“I listened on the other phone.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the damned meeting, Vince.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know that,” he said.

“Why do you say things like that if you know they don’t make a damned bit of sense?”

Vince huffed out the air in his lungs as a response and looked at his feet. She held her breath – she tried to will out an answer.

“Why do you say it?”

“I don’t know, I just had to do this,” he said flatly.

Outside Ellen heard a car speed by her house heading towards Elizabethtown. She thought of how perfect a car ride could be. How unimportant and excusable to just drive.

“So what do we do now? Just wait?”

“You’re my son, Vince.”

“Mom?”

“Run upstairs and pack up some of your clothing. You’ll have to walk. I can’t not be here when the sheriff pulls up.”

“What then?”

Ellen gave her son a look that made him stop asking and walk towards the staircase. She stayed downstairs and rehearsed the sherriff’s arrival. She practiced her nonchalant answers and deep, concerned sighs. Above her, the racing feet of Vince crossed along the ceiling.

The sheriff may have said ten, but he made it to the curve in five. Ellen spotted his squad car just as it cleared the woods and began the parallel drive towards her front door.

“Shit,” she said aloud. Turning to call up to her son, Ellen wondered just how much trouble the sheriff would put her through if Vince was caught packing a bag.

“Come on, he’s here.”

He ran down the steps, jumping over the last five and making the house shiver with his landing. He had packed an old duffle bag with more clothing than she’d expected, but didn’t have time to admonish him for wasting time.

“I’ll wait beside the house until he comes up on the porch, then I’ll bolt through the field,” he said, smiling. His teeth disgusted her.

“You’re making me commit a crime – don’t smile about it.”

“I’m just glad I have a mom like you is all,” he said, refusing to close his lips.

“Please – please just don’t come back here.”

“Of course not, they’ll be looking for me for a while,” he said, catching a glimpse of the cruiser and walking quickly through the hall to the back door, “thanks ma.”

“Oh God,” she said to herself. Behind her, the tires of the police cruiser crunched the gravel down. She felt the pressure in her ears build. She felt her legs telling her to run.

“Ellie?”

“Coming.”

The air was warmer than it was in the morning. She walked through the door and started for the front steps when she caught her son’s head duck back behind the side of the house.

“Is he here, Ellie?”

She felt her left foot fall on the first step.

The deputy closed the car door and scanned the windows on the second floor. She wondered if that was because he was nervous or it was just second nature.

She felt the hallow thump of the wood and the grit built up on the surface.

“Please have him come out here, Ellen.”

The sheriff was in front of the cruiser. He had his hands in his pockets and looked at Ellen like he just asked her for a glass of water. It made her angry – his relaxed voice, his even stance.

She lifted her right foot to go ahead to the second step, but it held in the air. It lingered and she let it go limp before connecting with the next step.

The fall came naturally, which was all she hoped for. There was a pop in her ankle – loud enough to cause her yelp to seem more genuine. The sheriff was by her side and straightening her legs so quickly that it seemed natural for her to grasp his shirt around his shoulders.

Anyone would do that to another person with the first burst of a broken limb. Anyone would pull another person down and hold on to them like a root or a chain.

“Jesus Ellie are you ok?”

“I lost my footing there – I think – I think I may’ve broke something.”

“Ok – ok you just let me get you into the car. The deputy will do a quick check.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ellie. Ellie we have to check the house.”

“Good God this hurts, David.”

“I know it. But we have to check Ellie.”

“Fine.”

As the deputy disappeared into the house Ellen gave a quick thought to how well her son covered his tracks upstairs. Did he close his drawers? Did he leave anything at all out of place? She winced at her ankle and let her eyes wonder to the corner of her house while the sheriff lifted her off the ground.

Vince’s eyes were wild – a deer full of the want to run. She gave a quick wave of her and he bolted straight across the lawn and over the road. It was amazing to her – how fast he moved.

“God damn him,” the sheriff growled when he saw Vince bound across the road.

The sheriff yelled for the deputy, who came sprinting out of the house and didn’t stop running.

“I’m sorry, Ellie.”

“Just doing your job, I guess,” she said from the sheriff’s chest, taking hold of the driver’s headrest to help him load her into the car.

As they drove off – the sheriff calling into the station for a second cruiser to assist and explaining the situation – Ellen watched as her son reached the end of the field and leaped over the ditch.

She didn’t see if the deputy managed the ditch before the sheriff drove her down the road, but she imagined her son laughing through the forest. She imagined him breathing in the fog.

She went on like that for a while – the new stone pushing down on her gut and making the lungs feel bigger. Clementine thought she’d start getting dizzy, too, but that didn’t happen for a while.

After the first week she decided to walk around. The hunger went with her and changed. It made itself into a sharp rock – obsidian or quartz – and threw itself against her insides. She had to stop walking and squeeze herself just to get the hunger to stop moving around. She sucked her cheeks together and swallowed her spit to make it stop. She tried to fool her stomach.

She swallowed all the time.Her tongue went dry. Her teeth stuck to her lips. Her throat started going raw and she hoped for it to bleed enough to swallow. Clementine was afraid her legs were going to quit so she sat wherever looked like it was possible. She swallowed the rain when it came and winter’s first snow: mushy and cold like frozen custard.

She swallowed the air and her spit and pity that people gave to her. She swallowed leaves that blew their way towards her face and guilt and anything else. The hunger grew so big on what she swallowed that it pushed out from her.

It pushed and pushed until there was nothing there to push against.

Everywhere he went – no matter if it was to the power grid just behind the living quarters or to the bathroom (when he didn’t feel like doing it in his own suit) – there it was, somewhere between a small engine and a woman clearing her throat.

The company was concerned at first about how much the humming would bother them. They ran some tests (pointless, considering that they were already on site) but found that the hum became familiar and wanted. Now the company was concerned about what it would be like when they came back to earth. Three years of humming and then nothing. Nevin imagined it’d be the same agitation as when he had to give up cigarettes. Maybe a little worse, as he’d have to listen to a recording of the hum to go to sleep, probably.

The mission itself was very simple: travel to the moon, run a series of simple, repeatable tests for a few universities, come home. Nevin got the job because of who he knew in the company. Paid well, and it wasn’t like he could spend anything until the end – which worked out wonderfully for him.

The tests involved two things: how simple physics work on alternate environments when the material is modified, and the long-term exposure to alternate environments on people. They said “humans” but Nevin preferred saying people. It made the tests seem friendlier. The first tests on material generally took only four or five hours a day, and the human tests only occurred once every two weeks. The majority of Nevin’s days remained open.

They did make it a point to test Nevin’s ability to entertain himself. For six months before the trip scientists from the company locked him in with the other two employees to go up. The room was in a warehouse that they could also venture into, but doing so required them to put on a spacesuit.

They had to share two spacesuits between the three of them, and someone in the group had a habit of spitting in the helmet, which was irritating. Nevin tried to talk to the other two about it, but neither wanted to admit the habit and it led to no-one wanting to go out for imaginary space walks unless the company scientists called on the telecom and told them they had to.

Four months into the test, one of the three lost it. Nevin actually watched him throw open the hatch door to the room and scream about killing everyone “on board.”

They had to replace that person with a younger man from Kentucky. The company scientists did a few month’s study on weather his draw would frustrate Nevin and the other employee. Turns out, it actually decreased blood pressure – like the humming.

After it was all said and done, the launch and trip to the moon seemed terrifically boring. Nevin guessed it was supposed to be boring, that was the whole point of training. He and the other two employees were treated like stock: put in place, latched in, and checked on during the trip up. While Nevin didn’t see it, one of the other two employees said the astronauts controlling the ship were assholes.

Immediately after they landed and were unloaded, the astronauts left and the tests began. The three spent the first 24 hours on the moon talking, which made the company, the universities, and the employees very excited to see what would come of three years.

Nevin watched as the other two employees began developing cabin fever (the scientists called it “space fatigue”, but he didn’t like the way that sounded). For the most part the tics they had were harmless: Jonathan saw things when he went out for tests, Alexander spent hours staring at the surface hatch. Nevin’s tic had to be told to him by the universities – he had begun, 250 days into the experiment, talking in his sleep. Full conversations – complete thoughts and monologues.

It was enough to bring another department from another university in on the experiment. That meant more take home money for the three employees. That made Nevin very popular with Jonathan and Alexander for a few weeks.

He wanted to know what he was saying, but the university students didn’t want to tell him – knowing might change what he said. They asked the other two employees to not tell Nevin either, but they did anyway. It was mostly about earth things. About the way leaves felt crunching under car tires and fresh milk.

One night he talked for thirty minutes about the right way of mowing a lawn.

The other two employees admitted that they listened when he slept. It was almost like TV (which wasn’t allowed). They’d then tell Nevin what he said, and then it was more like radio (also not allowed). It made Nevin feel good about what he was providing to the group.

730 days into the experiments, they started noticing how used up everything looked. Every floor panel was scuffed and every glass had fingerprints. Their clothing smelled oily. It was immediate between the three of them – they needed something new.

It didn’t matter what. It could be a new shirt or a new pair of space boots – a new flavor for the three years’ worth of dinner. It was the first time they felt like something might be wrong.

Alexander was the first to tell the company about it, and the company told the psychologists. They talked to each of the employees individually and then as a group. The talking made them want something new even more, which frustrated Nevin and excited the psychologists.

The psychologists explained that a marketing firm wanted to utilize their findings on human desire for new things, and that meant the three would be getting a little more on their paychecks at the end of the experiment. But the thought of money made them think of buying, and that made them angry. The psychologists wrote it all down.

Eventually the three employees started searching the small building for something new – something they hadn’t touched. Alexander looked under each floor panel, Jonathan opened every container. Nevin went through the supply room.

They found a pack of tourniquets. Alexander decided to put it in the middle of the dining room table. It was beautiful, and they felt perfectly fine after that.

787 days into the experiment, Jonathan lost his Tennessee accent. When he said goodnight to the other two employees it was there, thick and comforting. In the morning it was gone.

The company checked to make sure it wasn’t something wrong in his brain, which it wasn’t. After two days of refusing to talk and one week of trying to fake the accent, he eventually decided to live with it. Nevin and Alexander were just as upset as he was – now all they had was the humming to calm them down.

The employees became so quick at doing the physics experiments that they had almost 20 hours each day to themselves. They knew what tools to grab, what measurements to pronounce through the walkie-talkie sounding microphones.

Somebody said that the company might make them do more experiments to fill up the day, but that never happened. The employees tried to fill the extra time by playing cards, but they all knew when the others were bluffing, or when they wanted to fold. They knew when the others needed a card or what cards they already had.

Space makes your bones go funny. The company and the universities already knew that, but when you live on the moon your bones go even funnier. Nevin – while take a spectrometer out of its case and handing it to Jonathan – broke his wrist. He heard the small pop echo through his suit, travelling from his wrist up his arms into his ears. It was such a foreign sound that he was scared his suit tore, because he didn’t feel anything.

He told Jonathan he’d broken his wrist, maybe, and that they should go into the base to check it out. Jonathan asked if it hurt, but before he could answer Alexander called them both up: he thought his wrist was broken.

When the company’s doctors did a remote examination, they determined that yes, Nevin’s bones were losing mass, as they suspected all of the employees where. They asked if anyone else had experienced weakness or pain in their joints, but the other two said nothing. Jonathan wrapped Nevin’s wrist and gave him some medicine to dull the pain he didn’t have. Fifteen minutes later Alexander said his wrist felt better but that he was tired. Nevin thought that was fine.

1004 days into the experiment, the employees were checking on a test concerning the oxidation of moving parts in the moon’s environment. Alexander turned away from the other two and started hopping away from the base. They thought about calling out to him, but he told them it was alright, so they finished the test and went back to base. For four or five hours they could hear him though his suit breathing heavily and grunting as he climbed or dropped or pulled himself over the surface. It was comforting to them, it was like the humming but better.

On day 1005 the company’s psychologists and the universities called the employees for the tests on exposure of long-term environments on people. The employees took their places for the beginning test: overall feelings, concerns, and observations.

When the camera clicked on and the employees saw the miniature image that the company psychologists and universities were seeing, they realized something was wrong.

“Where is Alexander?”

“We went for a walk,” they said.

“What?”

“We went for a walk, but we came back.”

“Who came back?”

“We did.”

“You left Alexander out there? When? How long ago?”

“Yesterday before we went to bed.”

A company psychologist covered their camera and the university’s camera turned off completely. When the company’s camera was uncovered the employee’s managers and manager’s manager were there. The manager’s manager asked for Nevin to explain what happened.

So Nevin explained what happened, and after another pause the employees were told the experiments were over, and that they were going to be picked up and brought back to earth within a week.

The employees were excited about this, and Nevin stood up to begin organizing his things. Jonathan asked if he should let Alexander know, but the company didn’t answer him. Instead they said they’d be in touch in a few days to let them know final arrangements.

Jonathan and Nevin sat in the dining room looking at the outside hatch. Jonathan said something about getting a cheeseburger as soon as he landed on earth, and when he said it, Nevin heard the long draw of a man from Nashville. It made them both very happy.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit much? Getting rid of it I mean?” Dale asked.

Jason, next to Dale, looked at the wide mouth of the swimming pond.

Jason’s father made the pond as a gift to Jason’s mother some thirty years back. When he finished it, the pond was larger and deeper than either had expected.  It became something of a landmark for parties while Jason grew up–his father stringing lights across it and buying a small boat Jason used whenever he wanted to convince girls to make out. Kissing in the middle of a pond seemed more romantic.

So far it resisted Jason’s attempts to fill it with dirt, drain it with an industrial pump and, in his last attempt, dig a drainage ditch. Dale helped by providing stubborn encouragement and beer, but the only thing they succeeded in doing was making the pond look horrible.

The pond was a fixture of the place and knew it. Something about the way it was dug into the ground or the clay earth around it made the work nearly impossible. Jason thought it might be the ghost of his father making it difficult–not out of anger or dislike, but just to make his son work hard for something he wanted.

Jason understood, looking at the muddy and marred pond, why Dale was tired of trying. Jason was tired of trying, too. He’d spent nearly four months clawing and dredging and cursing at the pond. It needed to happen before the freeze, but he was beginning to suspect it simply wasn’t possible to do.

“Well, the last thing she said to me was she wanted it gone. I figure she probably won’t talk to me again until I’ve managed it,” Jason explained.

“Hell. You think you’ll get this damned pond out before winter freezes it up?”

“No I do not.”

“Hell.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, whenever you figure out a good way of getting this damned stubborn water out save for divine intervention or dynamite, gimme a call. I’ll be more than happy to help you with step two.”

“You wouldn’t want to be part of the dynamite?”

“Just like your old man, aren’t you?  Don’t go getting any ideas.”

“You said it first.”

“Would be nice to get done,” Dale said, smiling.

By the time he reached the front porch, Dale’s truck was dusting up the drive. He turned to return Dale’s final wave before taking off his boots and walking into the kitchen.

She was at the table, which startled him.

She’d opened up every drawer in the kitchen and pulled out its contents. Pans, silverware, and cereal boxes covered the floor. She’d opened up and done the same to the refrigerator. Cracked eggs made a long, slowly moving parade towards the sink.

Jason put everything back without saying a word, cleaning up the cracked eggs and spilt iced tea. She didn’t get up from the table. She stayed there after Jason left the kitchen to get a glass of whiskey from the living room. She kept her eyes on the kitchen window – the window that showed the pond in its center. She stared at it like she was expecting something to happen.

Jason thought of kissing the top of her head when he went out again, but she was so still it seemed wrong.

Instead he made sure to shut the front door quietly and stood on the porch. For the first time in his life, he didn’t quite know what to do. She was hollow. The person that filled up his life was now just something he had to force to eat, to bathe, to get out of bed. He felt like there was nothing there anymore.

It was maddening work. Jason knew he couldn’t do it on his own but didn’t want anyone outside of himself and Dale involved. He knew how much people would talk, how much they’d want to help and draw conclusions. It was something to be done and with as little discussion or distraction as possible.

The pond’s bottom was a mystery. Jason wanted to figure out how his father did it: stones maybe? If his old man lined it with concrete, the whole process would be different.

A divot would remind her of the pond, and a mound would remind them both.

When it was finished, the land needed to be perfectly flat.

He needed to get to the bottom of the pond. He needed to swim down there and feel it.

he sun was behind the trees and the coolness of October surrounded him. Jason knew he’d catch a cold, more than likely. But it was something she wanted done, and he needed to give her something, even if it was to make a pond disappear.

Jason took off his shirt and put it on the bench carved with family initials. He could remember most–his mother’s and father’s in a crude heart, his own carved deeply from his teenage years, with two more appearing a bit lighter in the wood next to them. He wondered if he should get rid of the bench, too.

He kicked out of his boots and slowly walked out a few feet into the pond. The water was warm in the shallow area near the house, but Jason felt the coolness on his ankles that came from the drop off. He walked slowly, not disturbing the surface enough to splash. Even so, he eyed the windows nervously.

Jason needed to find the drop off with his toes, first. He’d avoid plunging into the open water that way. Taking small steps, he let his toes find the bottom before shifting his weight to the foot. The clayish mud below him grabbed at his heels and made the walking tricky.

***

She spoke and it made his whole head swim.

Quick, powerful words from such a small mouth. It was confusing.

When Jason first saw her, all long limbed and sweating, he tried to ignore her. He blinked hard and counted to twenty. He pulled in his breath and held it for a spell. But when he pushed out the overstayed air and opened his eyes, she was still there. She was so far removed from the fields and muscle-legged farmer’s daughters he’d grown up with. She didn’t even seem to belong in town, much less the bar. He wanted her to disappear and go somewhere she belonged, somewhere more perfect and clean.

Long limbed. Sweating.

God, he thought, why now?

But there wasn’t any doubt why. She sat at Jason’s table and spoke cleverly over the noise of the party.

She didn’t know it, but everything she said made him feel awkward. He felt like her voice was going through his body – that he could taste her voice

Instead of knowing, she filled up Jason’s mind with words. She filled him to the top with her damp brow. With her long, dancing fingers.

Jason didn’t know how to tell her to stop talking without seeming rude. He wanted to tell her nobody, not even someone like him, could bear to listen when it was a woman like her doing the talking. It was too much. It made him want to jump and kick over the table and laugh. Her talking made his head dizzy and drunk.

So he waited for the other table guests to be distracted by a toast and kissed her.

Jason kissed her and decided that was that.

The day after the wedding, Jason’s father and mother sat them down and explained the family house was their wedding present. She kissed Jason’s father on the lips and he turned red all over.

It became the honeymoon: re-arranging furniture, repainting walls, sitting next to the pond and holding each other despite the heat of summer.

Jason’s voice went coarse from all the talking. From the moment they swore themselves to each other he was able to speak to her – full, loving sentences that rolled over themselves and danced along her own. From the moment they woke to the time his eyes closed at night, they talked. Everything was amazing, everything needed to be discussed. Whenever there was a pause in conversation they slept or made love or ate – life became the vehicle for them to hear each other– it became only a tool for them to speak.

The first month went on like that until the responsibilities of life took over. Still, in the ten years of marriage they shared, Jason always heard the voice of his wife, making him feel dizzy and solid all at once.

She romanticized his life to him–she made the farmhouse and the rows of growing wheat sound like something so far away from what he could be part of–but he was part of it. She ran her long fingers over his worn palm and told him stories about the scars he didn’t even know. She made Jason see himself as she saw him, a part of the earth and God. She made Jason feel about himself the same way he thought of her.

***

 Even though he was expecting it, the quick cut into the pond’s drop off startled him. It was like the edge of a step, and fear shot from his foot to his scalp.

Jason remembered his father saying the pond was twelve feet deep at its center–maybe he said ten. Jason decided he’d just kick straight down with his arms out until he hit the bottom. The water was making him cold, and he wanted to be done with it.

As he edged himself past the drop, making sure to be as quiet as he could, Jason couldn’t avoid the fear of the thick, still water. Murky to start with, all of his attempts to drain it made the pond look like caramel.

Calling himself a coward, Jason swam to the middle, took a breath and sunk his head below the surface.

The only noise was the hum of his pulse and the quickening heartbeat that made it. The droning made him claustrophobic. Once he turned downward, he swam for the bottom: eyes closed, one hand out before him.

He thought about the water around him, how calm it must have looked on the surface despite all of his kicking below. He thought about how private it was, the water and the silence. He thought about his wife looking out from the kitchen and seeing nothing, not a ripple to show he was underneath. He thought about the water and his wife and the bottom of the pond.

It felt like he was heading the wrong way. As unlikely as it seemed to him, Jason felt like he was going sideways instead of straight down. He should have reached the bottom by now–he should have felt something against his hand.

Jason stopped swimming. He made himself lifeless in the water and tried to feel the way he was floating. When he wasn’t entirely sure, he opened his eyes.

Instead of catching the direction of the surface by seeing the lighter water, Jason saw only darkness. The sun couldn’t reach him in the pond. Only the water and his heartbeat were with him.

He didn’t panic.

The darkness was all over. He felt pressure build in his ears. Jason saw how it could all happen. How he could stay under the water forever.

He began swimming hard in what he thought to be the opposite direction. He felt the water become warmer and knew he was near the surface.

When he broke through he took a long breath and felt the air across his cheeks. He wiped his face and saw her.

She was on the bench, holding his shirt and staring at him. He got out of the water as fast as he could, but she was already shaking and turning away from him. He tried to take her hand, but the water dripping from him was cold and frightening to her. As he reached out she pulled away from him, walking back towards the house.

“Well damn it,” Jason said to the pond, “Damn it damn it damn it.”

***

In December the pond began to freeze. Scarred and defiant, it shone brightly in the moonlight as Jason put dinner in front of his wife.

She’d lost weight, which he expected but wasn’t prepared for. So small to begin with, Jason felt ashamed whenever he picked her up from the couch to put her in bed and thought of empty crates.

He wasn’t a good cook, but he made sure everything on her plate was heavy and worthwhile. If Jason managed to get half of a potato and a few bites of beef into her stomach he was happy. She didn’t fight with him, but she didn’t try to eat either. She’d have just enough to calm Jason down and then stare at nothing. Jason stopped expecting improvement long enough ago to accept anything as success.

“Do you remember the first night we went out alone?” Jason asked his wife, “do you remember how my car wouldn’t start after we stopped by Twin Kiss for ice cream?”

She stared at her plate, at the macaroni and cheese and the pork chop.

“Well, I need to be honest about something,” Jason said, pulling his chair closer to her and lowering his voice, “you remember how the car stalled out and wouldn’t start up again for a good hour – you remember how I had to fiddle with the engine?”

She didn’t smile but did look at him.

“It was all a set-up. Right from the start. See, Bill Sullivan was supposed to drive up with that Mustang he had. He was supposed to lend it to us for the night. He was gonna wait until we drove off and then get my car running and head back home.”

She nodded at Jason. He couldn’t tell if she smiled.

“But Sullivan forgot. He said he got tied up helping his dad with something or other, but I knew he forgot all about it,” he smiled at her and reached out to squeeze her hand, “You remember how you wanted to help look under the hood? God – I got so nervous you’d see what I did to make that engine stop running,” he admitted. “You remember that?”

His wife looked away from him – away from her plate and the table and the room. She looked past the walls of the house to the yard. Jason saw her face go slack.

“Baby, please, just say you remember that, just say you remember the grease all up my arms and your father getting angry that you had some on your face.”

She stood up.

“Margaret. Please say you remember something from when we met. Just say something about it.”

She walked past him and up the stairs. Jason stayed at the kitchen table and tried to remember her that day. He tried to replace the wire-thin body with the summer dress and long, full hair. He tried to remember what her eyes looked like before they looked like nothing was behind them.

***

Jason woke up sometime before the January sun. The fire was out and the bedroom air cold.

His wife wasn’t next to him. He listened for the bathroom door or a cracking floorboard. He listened for anything to contradict what he already knew.

Jason was outside before realizing he wasn’t wearing boots. It felt like it was four or five in the morning, but he wasn’t sure. The air had the expectation of light in it. He felt it all over his face.

He thought for only a moment before heading out towards the pond. With enough light from the moon to see, Jason walked across the frozen grass. He didn’t rush–he didn’t want to startle her.

The night-dress made the frozen pond seem black as a pupil. She stood in the middle of it, motionless and staring at a place a few feet in front of her. Jason tried to get to the edge of the ice silently but she heard the grass beneath his feet and turned. Jason couldn’t tell if she was actually blue or if his eyes and the moon were playing. Either way she’d been on the pond for long enough–she wasn’t shivering despite the cold.

“Why can’t I go?”

Her voice scared Jason. She hadn’t spoken in months and the noise seemed unfamiliar and unnatural. It wasn’t the voice of his wife–of the sweating, long limbed woman he was confused by years ago. It was something else. A measured scream from a pale, fragile thing.

The sound of wind through a dying tree.

“Honey, please, the ice isn’t safe–come on over to me.”

“Why can’t I go, too?”

“Sweetheart, please. I can’t come out there to get you. Please walk over to me.”

She looked down at the spot before her and said something Jason couldn’t understand.

He wished he’d been able to get rid of the pond.

He wished it never was made in the first place.

He wished it could get everything back.

“Margaret.”

“I can’t.”

“Margaret, come here.”

When she got to the edge of the pond, Jason picked her up like a newlywed and walked her back to the house. He started a fire and put her in front of it with all the blankets he could find.

After he made sure she was alright, he went to the kitchen and started up the kettle for tea. From the window, he saw the pond and the sun beginning to rise. He saw the way life was now, and the way it’d have to be for a while.

The monster in the woods. The ghost living in the fireplace.

Your father strengthened the beliefs, the things he should have laughed away. Instead your father showed you scary movies and acted them out as a joke.

Knocking on the oil tank in the basement after The Haunting and scratching at your door. Now older you find it impossible to convince yourself an overused coat rack isn’t a broad-shouldered ghoul waiting to eat your legs.

You sleep with the lights on. You shoot awake at every creak or knock.

You never look through the windows at night.

It’s something you find hard to explain on the weekend trips to your father’s apartment. For one thing, it’s hard to say you’re afraid of the dark to anyone when you’re an adult. Add the awkwardness of telling your father it’s his fault, and it becomes impossibility. So you watch The Wolfman with him again and try to make it to the car afterwards without running.

He looks like he’s given up. Between the goofy jokes and repeated stories, you see the low slung lids of his eyes. The resignation of his lips. He’s started falling asleep while talking, waking up moments later without an excuse or concern. Somehow you aren’t worried. Somehow it seems to make sense.

The movie posters taped to the walls, the white Christmas lights around the inside of each door, the constant smell of tobacco and musky carpet. The falling asleep and waking up again – it doesn’t concern you as much as it should.

When he begins another movie from the collection you could recall scene by scene – Wolfman, Dracula, 13 Ghost – you are too terrified to say no. Terrified but comforted by the familiarity. The vampire like a childhood friend, the mummy a bumbling older brother.

Your father told you the secret of a good horror film was the monster’s death: it had to happen, and the audience had to feel bad, somehow, in its death. It didn’t take away from the horror, he explained, because the monster only died in the movie–the idea of the monster still lived. Still sneaked around the dark nights and lightless bedrooms.

When he falls asleep during Bride of Frankenstein you slip out of the apartment.

You tell yourself the car window can be rolled down, but you still sweat through the tee shirt waiting for the air conditioning to kick on.

You ignore the monster in the back seat. The glowing white eyes in your rear view. By the time you get home, you decide getting your hat from the back seat isn’t important enough–the monster can keep it.

The next weekend your father’s stopped combing his hair. It covers his ears and shoots randomly from his scalp. He smiles emptily and shambles to the television. The opening credits for Hell House are playing.

When you finally come up with something to say he’s stopped watching the TV and asks if you’re hungry. He never has much food in the apartment. You wonder if he eats at all during the week–if he has other caretakers who drive him to the store or bring carry-out.

You take him grocery shopping. Pushing a cart through Food Lion, he looks like a cut out. He looks like he was pulled from a script or a photograph. He doesn’t move like other people, the worn skin across his cheeks sucking in with each pronounced breath.

It’s a mix of embarrassment and guilt you’re feeling. The cashier can’t look at your father–she acts like you are alone.

Once the refrigerator is full you make dinner for two. He tells you it’s been a while since he had a good meal and you think of how odd it is to say that. After dinner you leave without saying goodbye.

You roll down the window and let the air play past your fingers. It takes only minutes for the hand to go rigid with cold. Pulling it back into the car, you press it against your face.

It feels lifeless. It feels dead.

The week is a comfort now. You look forward to speaking with people who can feed themselves and watch soap operas and sleep during the night.

Your co-workers ask if you are alright, if you are tired. You make excuses about pets and rowdy neighbors, but behind the excuses is the fear that he is creeping into your face.

On Thursday night the telephone rings sometimes after two in the morning. It’s dark in the apartment and after startling awake you expect to see something looming nearby.

You ask who it is, but nobody speaks. There is something there–you can hear the pull and push of breath–but it sounds distant and muffled. Behind the breathing, even more muffled, you hear a scene from The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

“Dad?”

You listen for another few minutes to the breathing, and then hear something new. A whisper–a voice the phone can just pick up. You pull the phone away from your ear and turn it off. You put it in a dresser drawer so you don’t have to see it.

The next time you go to his apartment, he’s sitting on the patio. The afternoon sun goes through his teeth and makes them yellow when he smiles. He tells you he accidentally locked himself out earlier that morning by losing the key. You give him the copy on your key chain without asking for details.

The apartment smells horrible. The air is a mix of rotting meat and the sweet soup of decomposing vegetables. He notices your face and tells you the fridge has been acting up.

Opening the door, you gag. It’s warmer in the fridge than the rest of the kitchen, and everything besides the mustard and Italian Dressing is destroyed. It takes three hours to empty, scrub, wipe, and sanitize the fridge. When you pull it out from the wall to investigate the pipes, you see the cord is unplugged.

Your father only shrugs and walks silently to the living room, disappearing into the darkness of the apartment. You look down the hallway and get scared of what might be at the end of it. You know it’s just your father, but it scares you to think of walking down the thirty feet of darkness. The TV clicks on and light flickers through the apartment. A hundred spirits bounding off of each other.

You see faces, hands.

Your father calls for you–a drawn out sigh like a house settling itself, a voice that goes further than what it should.

The next weekend you don’t go. Friday goes by, as does Saturday.

By Sunday afternoon, the phone starts ringing. You let it go to voicemail four times, finally picking up on the fifth attempt.

You don’t say anything. You listen. You listen to the forced breath in and shallow breath out. You listen to the crescendo of music as whatever foul ghoul is revealed on the movie playing in the background.

When he says your name, it’s hollow. It’s something you know can’t be real, but is. Instead of responding, you hand up and turn off the phone. You know you won’t see him again – that you can’t go back to his apartment.

You know he can’t get you, but leave the light on anyway.