Unto Dust

A submission of mine that had to be cut from the school's literary magazine due to limited spacing.

Unto Dust

When I was younger, I used to lie about what I remembered. Joey Fossick would gather seven or eight of our classmates at recess and we’d all sit under the faded red slide, everyone scooting close to me, their little faces curious and expectant. I’d start off with the smoke, the thick black cloud that had seeped everywhere--my eyes, my ears, my teeth. I could hardly breathe, I’d say. And when I managed to suck in a few gasps, the air tasted like nothing I’d ever known.

What did it smell like? two or three would ask.

Like five thousand chickens burning all at once. Like a Fourth of July barbeque, only one hundred times stronger. And the heat was unimaginable--more than twice as hot as when you open the oven to grab whatever’s finished.

I’d talk about my mom, too, how I could hear her screaming through it all. I tried crying for her, but the fumes raced down my throat, clogging my lungs. I lay among the flames and smoke and falling plywood until I couldn’t hear or feel anything, until I was sure I was going to die. That was when I was rescued.

The tale would vary every time I told it. I spent hours refining it, combing over all the little details, embellishing where necessary. Sometimes I’d really pile it on and there’d be a few contradictions, but the kids still ate it right up. Nothing was too impossible.

The truth, though, was that I remembered nothing. All I knew was my grandpa, who still had an old newspaper with the cover story somewhere in the linen closet upstairs. I knew that if I told stories, I would have friends to sit with at lunch and a partner for science projects. And I also knew that whenever the teachers looked at me, they saw the survivor of some freak accident, the kind they only heard about on the news--the kind that were supposed to leave behind ashes, not people. I was just Herb Sanders’s girl, the daughter of the crazy b***h who had burned her own house down. No adults ever addressed it, but we’d pass by one another at the grocery store or someone would stop and talk to me in the hallway and a certain light would shift in their eyes, and we’d both know.

***

Nothing--no story, no experience, no combination of senses that I conjured up--nothing could have ever prepared me for the smell of a real dead body. No one could have explained the stale scent, the musk, the hint of something expired. And no sickening perfume of a funeral home could have chased away the sour odor that still hung around my nostrils, haunting, cloying.

He’d been in the bungalow for a few days when I found him. Something had gone wrong with his heart, as it always seemed to. Chordae tendineae, the doctor had said. Heart strings. They held the valves open, pushed the valves closed. After a certain amount of psychological trauma, they’d just snap.

The nurses tried telling me all about those fibers, showing me pictures and drawings of their purpose. But all I could think about was how incredibly thin they were, how strong my grandpa must have been to keep them together for so long.

Only four people went to the funeral: me, one of my grandpa’s old colleagues from the university, the gravedigger, and someone who claimed to be my half-uncle. We were all pallbearers. None of them stuck around long. After they dispersed and the morning sun began to settle into noon, a new figure emerged from a silver sedan down the street. Young, tall, and clothed in black, he made his way up to the iron gate at the front of the cemetery. As he approached, fiddling with his rolled-up sleeves and thin white tie, I began to recognize the tan face, the slightly hunched shoulders.

He stopped about ten feet away from me. “Hey,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his dress pants.

“Hi, Joey.” I squinted against the brightness of the day.

“It’s, ah--it’s Joe, now,” he said. “Just Joe.”

“Well, Joe. Glad you could make it.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He took a few steps forward. “When I heard about everything, I took the first flight out. Couldn’t stomach the idea of the wake, though--seeing him like that. It’s not right.”

“Who told you about it?”

“My mom read it in the paper.” He shifted slightly on the dried-out grass, nodding at the gravestone. “Great guy, though. Really great.”

“I know,” I said.

We stood like that for a while in the late-August sun, staring at the dirt and the pots of flowers and those stupid little pinwheels, neither of us attempting to speak.

Joe eventually interrupted the silence to chuckle softly. “God. I remember this one time,” he began, “when you ran your bike over the Gore campaign sign propped up in Ms. Lacina’s yard. And when your grandpa found out, he wasn’t even mad. He gave you ten dollars.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You ran up to me, all excited, actually believing that you were rewarded for vandalism--until he sent us both to the store to buy a new sign. I can still see it, though,” he added. “The look on your face. The insanity, the concentration. Right before you plowed straight through the ‘G’. Man.” He forced out another laugh. “You were one crazy b***h.”

I turned my head suddenly to stare at him, and he made eye contact once before promptly looking away again.

“Sorry.”

“No,” I said. “I remember.” The town and my grandpa’s death were weird that way, unearthing long-forgotten memories from beneath the rubble of time, igniting them with a nostalgic switch, a sudden flash of light. In my mind I could still see my grandpa’s porch swing (before Joey and I broke it), rocking back and forth in the summer breeze; I could still hear the laughs of a little boy whose sandy blond curls sprang out from under the edges of his baseball cap.

“Hey, listen,” Joe said. “Do you maybe wanna grab something to eat?”

I ran the handle of my purse between my fingers. “I have sandwiches back at the ranch house,” I offered, slowly. “If you’re interested.”

His lips turned upwards in a sort of half-smile. “Great.”

We both stared at the grave for a few seconds longer; then he turned and I followed suit. “I walked here, so you’ll have to drive,” I said.

He whipped his head around to gape at me. “You walked? Jesus, that’s more than ten miles.”

I shrugged. The past few months in Montana had been full of walking. It had been a four-mile trek from our camp at Chouteau down to the dig site in Clambank Hollow--a journey that we’d had to make two or three times a day. None of us had minded it, really. The early-morning air was always cool, courtesy of the mist that settled around the banks of the Judith River. There was something about a sunrise in the West, in the way the most subtle kind of light creeped over the ragged cliffs and spilled down the canyon walls, that could have kept us hiking for days.

Joe and I exited the cemetery, headed down the street to his rental car, and climbed in. 

“Directions?” I asked.

He shook his head and gunned the engine. “I still know the way.”

***

One afternoon in December, my second grade teacher rolled a gigantic TV-on-wheels into our classroom, closed the blinds, and dimmed the lights. As she popped a movie into the VCR and fast-forwarded through all the previews, my classmates and I squirmed anxiously in our seats. Videos were special treats reserved for moments like these, the two long hours before Christmas Break would begin.

The movie was Pinocchio. At first I enjoyed it, but as I looked across the sea of little faces next to me, illuminated in the blue light of the television, all of them wide-eyed with their mouths hanging open, my stomach started to churn.

I had nightmares for weeks afterward. All of them had to do with my nose. Sometimes it would grow so large that I wouldn’t be able to leave my room. Other times, it would just fall off completely. I woke in the night countless times, shaking, screaming, sobbing, running to the bathroom to make sure my face was still intact, only laying back down once my grandpa had soothed me. When everyone returned from Break two weeks later, I immediately sought out Joey.

He was sitting in the farthest corner of the classroom, the Listening Center, where too-big headphones connected to a tape player fed him the words of a book about trolls. His face bent toward the illustrated pages; his mop of hair curtained his eyes.

I nudged him. “Joey.” He didn’t move. I poked him a few more times. “Joey. Joey.”

He sighed absentmindedly and flipped the page. Without thinking, I grabbed his headset and yanked it off him. It clattered onto the table. “Joey!” I hissed.

He looked up suddenly and dropped his book, his hazel eyes forming into slits. “What?”

“I… Um,” I said, tugging on the hem of my shirt. “I-I lied about the fire. Those stories aren’t true. I don’t remember any of it.”

Joey’s face immediately softened. “It’s okay,” he said. “I still like you.”

I grinned. “Really?”

“Yeah, of course.” He beamed too. “I’ll always like you, no matter what. But you know.” He leaned closer to me to whisper in my ear. “If no one else finds out, we should sell the story.”

“Sell it?”

“Yeah. Yeah. See, if we charge everyone a dime to hear it, and ten people listen each time, that’s one dollar. And if you tell it every day, that’s five bucks a week. We’ll make millions by June!”

I leaned forward and threw my arms around him, laughing at the way his hair tickled my neck. “You’re a genius, Joey Fossick.”

***

I glanced at the side of Joe’s face, observing where tan skin met short, dark hairs. His crew cut must have brought out the roots.

He cleared his throat. “So, uh…” His fingers curled around the wheel, as if bracing him for impact. “How’d it happen? With your grandpa, I mean.”

“Heart failure,” I said. I didn’t mention the chordae tendineae, how I had been the one to finally break them. “But no one knew for a while.”

He looked at me curiously.

“I volunteer at the natural history museum up in Decatur,” I explained. “We do these digs in Montana during the summer. Got back and found him lying on the floor.” Immediately the smell swarmed back to me--the sharpness, the thickness of it. I grabbed onto the handlebar above the passenger-side window and squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to get dizzy.

“Hey.” Joe’s voice lowered a bit. “You okay?” A hesitant hand found its way to my shoulder. “I’ve heard some things,” he added quietly.

I shook off his hand. “Of course you have.” There were no secrets in a town of twelve hundred people. I considered telling him about Clambank Hollow--how individual possibilities seemed to stretch beyond the reaches of the sky, unwinding before us like dusty trails through the ravine. Everyone could be anyone. And it was so easy to fall in love.

But, as Joe drove deeper and deeper into miles of farmland, neither of us spoke up again.

***

My grandpa always had a little routine ready for the times when I would ask about our family. My dad, according to him, was a rotten, filthy, despicable piece of human flesh--and if he ever tried to set foot in my parents’ house again, my grandpa would drive right over and personally see to it that he wouldn’t have feet anymore.

“Yeah, but what was he like?” I would press.

“Nothing you’d ever want to know about,” he’d answer. And then right away, he’d launch into a description of my mother and how I was just like her. When I got old enough, he’d explain, he would show me the newspaper clipping he saved. But I had to believe, no matter what anyone else told me, that my mom was a good person--and sometimes, accidents happened to the most beautiful people.

Few words were spoken about my grandma. He still loved her, I knew. He never said it, of course, but there were times when I’d see him open the wardrobe of his bedroom in the ranch house and reach in, running his fingers through her old clothes. He’d grab the fabric and hold it up to his face and breathe in, eyes closed, brow furrowed. There was her piano downstairs, too, which neither of us knew how to play. If Joey and I felt dangerous, we’d walk over to it and push as many keys as possible, even though they tended to stick.

As the years passed, I developed a routine of my own for my grandpa--for the times he jolted awake in the middle of the night, whimpering and pleading with his imagination; for the times he’d be reading and suddenly drop the book and fall onto the floor, convulsing wildly, his eyes large and unfeeling. I would lower myself to wherever he happened to be, hold him as gently as I could, and sing Lemon Tree (as much as I could remember, at least). It had been my mom’s favorite song, he always said. During my singing, he’d continue to mumble incoherent words and sentences until a few more minutes had passed and whatever it was that’d had a grip on him had left.

***

Her name was Aria. She had a family and a fiancé back in Macon, but none of that mattered at Clambank Hollow. Day after day of digging under the Montana sun, brushing pieces of dirt off of shell and bone, chiseling away at the rock made us all anonymous. Surrounded by nothing but canyons, we envisioned how the Earth must have looked millions of years ago. In a way we almost were the fossils, laboring together and becoming one with the soil that coated our knees.

If I thought hard enough, I could still see her thick black hair in a simple braid down her back, her olive green eyes peeking out through her bangs, her slender legs in the knee-long khakis that we all wore. I could still hear her teeth clenching in concentration and feel her sweat against my forehead. I could remember how I had once been a somebody from Wennville, Illinois--Herb Sanders’s girl, the daughter of the crazy b***h who had burned her own house down--but to her and to the rest of the crew I was only a nobody, and that was all that mattered.

***

I dug my key out of my purse, inserted it into the lock, and turned the knob. The front door of the ranch house opened willingly, almost eagerly. I stepped through the doorway and into the living room with Joe right at my heels.

“Sandwiches are in the kitchen,” I told him, turning over to the bay window and pulling the curtains open. Dust particles flew everywhere. The sun beamed in, lighting up the hardwood floors with a gentle midday glow.

I looked behind me to see that Joe hadn’t made any moves toward the kitchen and clearly didn’t intend to. He stepped forward gingerly, taking in everything: the three identical armchairs around the fireplace; both of the window seats; the yellowed books on the shelf in the corner, still perfectly stacked; the old wooden globe on its cherry-finish floor stand; my grandpa’s guitar lying behind the navy blue sofa. Finally, he approached my grandma’s piano.

He extended a finger to play middle C, smiling a little at the out-of-tune result and how the key took forever to pop back up. Something in the way his eyes flicked down to observe the thin gray fuzz lining his fingertips almost reminded me of his eight-year-old self.

“Well,” he said suddenly, straightening to stand at his full height. One of his arms extended toward the opposite doorway, in the direction of the dining room and kitchen. “Shall we?”

Forty seconds later, we both leaned against the kitchen counter and stared down at a platter of mini sandwiches.

“You know, I’m not actually that hungry,” Joe remarked.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Me neither.” I grabbed the tray and opened the fridge to slide the snacks back in. An assortment of beverages caught my eye. “Drink?” I offered, looking back at him.

He nodded.

I pulled out two cherry-lime wine coolers and handed them to him. “Bottle opener’s in the drawer to your left. You can do the honors.” To my surprise, he held each drink up to his mouth and popped off the caps with his teeth, then gave a bottle back to me. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Brooklyn.”

He leaned back against his side of the counter and I leaned against mine, both of us taking a long swig. I stared out the window behind him at the abandoned stables and overgrown prairie grass. Somehow, it was all too easy to remember running through that field, to feel the wind in my hair and the thigh-high cattails brushing against my legs, threatening to swallow me up whole.

“Oh my God,” Joe said. I stared back at him, only to see his right index finger pointing toward a spot on the counter where the ivory laminate had chipped. “You never fixed that?”

“I guess not.”

“I remember running into that.” His face split into a grin, the first genuine smile I’d seen from him that day. “At least, my forehead remembers.”

I looked at his crinkled eyes and open mouth and ran my hand across the missing piece of counter. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by more memories of the boy I’d once known, and I was laughing, and in-between my chuckles I could hear him laughing too. It almost felt right to forget about everything and guffaw with him right there, in the kitchen of my mother’s childhood home, so soon after a funeral--as if my grandpa himself had even wanted it.

After a while, our shoulders stopped shaking. Joe took a sip of his drink and pushed a hand through his hair, still smiling but now slightly unsure. “Hey, look,” he said, setting the wine cooler back on the counter. “You know how much I loved your grandpa. He might as well have been my dad.”

I nodded slowly.

“But I came here for a lot more than that.” He reached up to loosen his tie. “I want to make things right, Kristy.”

This was the Joseph Fossick I knew--the one who believed in owning up to mistakes, in forgiveness, in happy endings. Not the one who would leave me in a heartbeat to face rumors and slander alone. I sighed softly and observed him pulling at his collar.

I didn’t know if it was because we were finally out of the sun, or if I had just refused to see it before, but at that moment, a tan line between the first and second knuckles of his left ring finger became especially clear to me. He tugged at the knot of his tie, adjusting and

readjusting. My stomach clenched.

“You left me,” I said. It came out in an odd croak. “When everyone started talking. You promised to stick with me no matter what, but you just joined the rest of them.”

“Kristy,” Joe started.

“The whole damn school,” I continued. “Because nobody wanted to be friends with someone like me, not even you. How could I possibly forget that?”

“I’m not asking you to forget,” he replied. “I know I’m not perfect. God.” He breathed in deeply. “I feel like such an a*****e. You have no idea what it’s like--screwing up that badly. Ruining someone else’s life.”

I closed my eyes and remembered the afternoons when I would collapse in my grandpa’s arms after school, weeping, refusing to understand how people could be so mean. I still pictured the tears in his own eyes, the hush of his whisper in my ear. There is nothing wrong with you.

“Believe me,” I said, “I know.”

“Then if you understand--”

I rubbed my temples. “It’s just not that simple. You can’t waltz in after ten years of silence, pretending that everything’s suddenly gonna be okay.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. “I almost thought you were Joey, but I was wrong. You’re exactly like everyone else, only caring about me when I make the headlines.”

“This has nothing to do with news or fame,” Joe said, crossing his arms. “You just can’t move on. I mean, Christ, that was middle school. You can’t admit that life is too short and this town is too small for us to part on bad terms.”

I slammed my fist down on the counter. “All I’ve ever wanted was to move on!” I shot back, exasperated. “There’s so much potential outside of Wennville, so many possibilities. This town has nowhere near enough to give either of us happiness.”

“All you’re doing is running,” Joe replied. “I ran, too, for the same reasons. But everything will haunt you, and eventually it’ll all catch up.”

“Go home, Joe,” I breathed, gesturing in the direction of the front door. “Go back to New York, to your wife, to a happy ending.”

“Not without your forgiveness.” He stared at me, unmoving. “I’m sorry that I turned my back on you. But it was so long ago--we were both just kids, and I was stupid. You have to realize,” he added, “I thought I was in love with you. I didn’t know what to think, how to feel, or how to act. It’s been eating me up inside for so long. Just please, forgive me.”

I shook my head. “Maybe if you came to me sooner,” I said. “Maybe if it didn’t take my grandpa’s funeral to get you back in the Midwest. This town is too small for people like me. I’ve outgrown it now. I don’t need anyone here, and no one here needs me. Not anymore.”

Joe nodded to himself. “Who is she?” he said quietly.

“What?”

“The woman you’re in love with,” he said. “What’s her name?”

I threw him another quizzical look.

“I’ve loved you my whole life. I know infatuation when I see it.” He downed the rest of his wine cooler. “She’s married, right? Big house? Kids?”

“Engaged,” I said. “I don’t see how this--”

“You’d do anything for her?” His eyes, almost inhumanly stoic, seemed to look straight through me. “Even though you know you could never be together. It’s just some pipe dream, a fantasy you keep alive to make yourself happy. All those possibilities, they’re centered around her, right? And everything she couldn’t give you?”

“Go to hell,” I hissed. “You know nothing about my life.”

“But I do,” he said. “It’s my life too.”

“Get out.” I crossed my arms and met his calculating stare. Neither of us moved. “I said get out!” I snarled, lunging for him. He dodged my advance and escaped the kitchen.

He walked quickly through the dining room and across the living room, his dress shoes smacking against the floor. I followed him to the door, which he threw open.

“Ex-wife, by the way,” he said, turning to me one last time. “I ran away from Wennville and got married, but all New York taught me was not to believe in happy endings. It wasn’t a marriage worth fixing.” He stepped backward through the doorway. “And your grandpa’s death wasn’t your fault. Okay?”

Before I could make another grab for him, Joe turned on his heel and paced down the gravel driveway toward his sedan. Right behind it, he stopped, dug into his pants pockets, fished out a wedding ring, and stared at it in his outstretched palm for a couple seconds. Then he chucked it into the field across the street. Finally, he climbed into his rental car and flicked the ignition, careening backwards out of my driveway and speeding away--leaving me to stand in the front doorway of my grandparents’ house, once again choking in the dust.

Author's Note

Some of the formatting got messed up in the transfer from Google Docs, so I apologize for any inappropriate paragraph separation or lack thereof.

I know, some parts of this are a little rough, but it's the third story I've finished writing for the first time in well over a year, and I actually don't feel extremely terrible about it. Kind of cliche in every way, too. Heh.