Michael Kabel

Elizabeth In The Traces

Elizabeth walks me closer to the edge of the pond. I can feel the knobby ends of bone in the arm she puts around my shoulders, her muscles pressed against my neck. She has told me that girls are partly made of china, so I am careful not to squeeze her fingers too hard when I reach for her hand. I don't want to break them.

You're too big for this now, she says stepping past me. The water wears leaves across its surface like jewelry, and mud piles clump into pyramids in the grass. Look, she says. Her bare legs are filthy with rusty stains from the clay trails we half-walked, half-skidded down to get here.

David was teasing you, she says. I wish he wouldn't, but he does what he wants. Her knees slip beneath the surface into the black water.

My brother David says robots lie at the bottom of the pond, sunken by farmers almost a hundred years ago. The men were afraid of losing their jobs and tried to make the robots go away, but the robots fought back with their sharp claws and teeth. The men tricked them into jumping off a cliff, into the water. Elizabeth promises me there is only junk like the washer and dryer we saw yesterday at the bottom of the ravine, farther down towards the highway.

I can't go out much further than this, she says. Look, if David were right I'd be in trouble by now, wouldn't I?

You're in too far, I tell her. David has also warned us about snakes that stretch in the sunlight and love to bite children and women because our flesh is softer. Elizabeth starts back towards the bank. She isn't smiling. Are you satisfied yet? she asks.

I shake my head, and when she comes back up her legs are rinsed off, glistening and clean. Let's go home, she says. He'll be waiting. You know he hates to wait.

When she gets to the dogleg in the path back up I start after her, gaining ground by half-climbing up the slope. I take her hand when I catch up.

The bluff is hard for me to climb. The trail is broken by oak roots and tree branches that curl at my feet. There's been no rain in two weeks, only a white sky above the treetops with a weak breeze. Pollen coats everything, yellow powder like cornstarch lying thick in the road and even over the leaves.

You need to learn when David is playing with you, Elizabeth says. She watches the path for snakes. I know he's your brother but… he tells you something, and right away you think it's true.

I climb the rise by taking giant steps, walking in the way David calls “crabbing it." Elizabeth walks a little behind me. If I get close to the edge she curls a hand around my arm.

No, I don't, I say back. It's just hard to tell when he's playing, sometimes.

Coming around the last curve of the trail we see our cabin at the top of the ravine. When I look at it from far away, through the clouds of ash and maple leaves, I think it might float away through the branches, out of the forest and into open sky. David comes outside as we reach the picket fence at the edge of the yard. He spins a radio antenna in his hands.

You should tell me when you're going to leave, he says to Elizabeth. The snakes, remember? You both know they're out this time of year. On a sunny day like this.

Elizabeth moves her foot through the dusty grass. Her wet tennis shoes are lashed everywhere with grass stains.

It's too dry for them to come out, she says. It's dry everywhere. Even the soil.

That's foolish, David says. He holds the antennae over my head, where I can't reach for it. Just yesterday, I saw one on the trail. A fat cottonmouth the size of my wrist.

If it were up to you, Elizabeth says, we wouldn't go anywhere. She kicks aside some of the broken transistors and capacitors that David has thrown into the yard. Then looking at me, she says, I'm sure I can take care of both of us.

She goes inside, leaving the door open behind her. David gives me the antennae. Where did she take you, he asks.

To the pond, I say. There wasn't anything at the bottom.

What made you think there was?

You did, I tell him. You said there were robots.

Jackie, he says, You're not a little kid anymore. Think for yourself.

Going inside, we find Elizabeth in the bedroom, and David goes in but closes the door on me. So I walk back to the fence and toss rocks and transistors out over the ridge, listening to the whishing noise they make as they drop through the branches.

Last week David took us into St. Francisville for groceries. On our way there we stopped at the town's church, a little building that sat atop its highest bluff. The white walls reminded me of an empty movie screen, and inside the carpet was frayed thin. The air felt like cloth stuffed into the mouth.

Elizabeth walked down the center aisle with her hands clasped together. Imagine having to pray in a run-down place like this, she told David. Isn't that sad?

I found a staircase to the choir loft and crouched over its rail, listening to their voices echo across the high ceiling. David stood near the back, watching her. I've seen worse, he said. There's an old colored church down on Highway 61 that's abandoned. Nothing left but the walls and beams.

I can sure believe in an abandoned church up here, Elizabeth said. It feels like the edge of the world, like we've gone as far away from everything as we could. We're by ourselves too much, David. I can feel it in both of us.

I never feel lonely, David said. I like feeling it's just the three of us in the world. Who else would matter? Most places are big enough for three people, at least.

Elizabeth moved back down the aisle, stopping in each stripe of light filtering through the stained glass windows. She would walk into the rays, wait a moment, then duck out with a quick stretch of her legs.

A church probably doesn't even have any meaning for you, she said. Nothing here at all that you'd respect.

David reached for her, but Elizabeth ducked into one of the pews. Behave yourself, she said. I yelled her name, and she looked up at me. David grabbed her around the arms and chest.

You knew I'd catch you, he told her. I can always catch you.

I helped you get her, I told David, and he nodded.

Elizabeth twisted loose of him. You helped him cheat, she told me. Let's go outside. This stuffy church air is killing me.

There was a meadow at the bottom of the church's bluff with an old staircase, ribs of wooden steps that faded away down its slope.

Race you down there, David said, shoving Elizabeth's shoulder. Come on, woman.

She leapt forward, moving through the monkey grass along the side of the steps, her arms flying from her sides as she raced down.

David bounded down the stairway, taking them two at a time, making his boots rumble on the boards. Come on, Jackie, he called. Get the lead out.

I crashed onto the second step. My head and chest kept moving but I clutched at the rails, stopping myself from falling headfirst. Elizabeth reached the meadow and ran full out, David chasing close behind.

Jackie, he yelled over his shoulder. Get down here.

I took the rest of the steps one at a time. The feel of flat bottomless earth, when I finally reached it, left me spinning dizzy and grateful. The grass blades against my arms stung like the antennae when Elizabeth and I used them as swords, playing Civil War on the trails.

I could see them moving, David reaching out for Elizabeth over the grass tops. His arms coiled around her legs and they fell down. I ran to catch up and tripped twice, and the dirt stuck to my clothes and seeds got caught in my hair. I stopped when I heard their laughter, the giggling all mixed in with the grass' rustling. After some time Elizabeth stood up, pulling her dress straight as she walked back towards the stairs. I lay down and wiped my face on my shirttail. Under the grass and lying flat on the ground, I felt invisible to both of them. They started calling for me, but I didn't jump up right away, lying down with the edges of the grass blades just touching my mouth, like fingers hushing me quiet.

When David and the other chase team members ride out from Angola I can feel the horses running before I hear them. Their hooves rumbling in the earth sound like blood rushing through the ears.

The team's captain comes over the rise first. I've seen David look at the ground when the man speaks. Then the rest of the team riding in a shape like a V behind him, hunched over their horses, their arms loose and fast. David rides at the back end, holding the reins with one hand and his gun belt with the other. When he sees me standing by the fence he jerks away, making the line of horses shorter, lopsided. His horse steps high moving down the slope. I can't look away from the black sad pools of its eyes.

What the hell are you doing this far out? David asks. He looks gigantic above the horse, imposing like a Union officer in his blue uniform.

Exploring, I say. He gets off the horse and comes towards me. I don't look at his face but at his nametag, at our name Bentham looking straight and solid carved on the brass little plate.

Where's Elizabeth? he asks. Does she know you're out here?

At home, I say. I had waited until she fell asleep, careful not to step on any of the transistors lying in the yard. That sound, like bug shells smashed underfoot, has woken her before from a dead sleep.

The rest of the team waits along the crest. You can't be out here, David says, gripping me by the shoulders and turning me around. She shouldn't let you wander off. You can't be out here alone. You'll get hurt.

I nod, and feel a choke, the kind that jumps up into my throat before I start to cry. I close my eyes. Over my shoulder I hear the creak of leather and when I turn back to look at him he is sitting in his saddle, the other team members shadowy behind him.

Tell Elizabeth she'd better be home when I get there, he says. Go straight back.

He rides back and joins the team. They move out together in a tight group, becoming a low cloud over the top of the bluff.

At first the three of us slept in the same bed, under the windows that looked out over the ravine. David had put in plastic storm windows with clear panes, and from the living room and down the hall the room seemed to open into thin air. The bed sat under these glass walls, the covers a mountain range under the sky.

Elizabeth slept between us. We had moved in the winter, right in the middle of what she called “raw-boned" January, and after the sunset in what seemed the middle of the afternoon we huddled under extra quilts piled high and tucked in tight between the mattress and box spring. The bed was big enough that I could feel as if by myself, the two of them pressed closed together on the other side.

But our first night there I woke with Elizabeth's elbow pressed against my windpipe. My own choking sounds woke me, and I pulled her hand away and leaned over the bed, gasping. I climbed out, slowly so as not to wake David, and moved to the couch. I couldn't sleep out there, though, lying still and feeling conspicuous in the middle of the room. After a while I went to the back into the bedroom.

Elizabeth was sitting up, her legs and arms folded tight around her. Through the almost complete dark I could see her looking at me.

Get back in here, she said. Before you freeze yourself sick.

But the bed was hot and cramped, and I imagined her legs kicking me or her arm on my throat as soon as I fell asleep again. I got beneath the quilt and slept on my stomach. Over and above it all I could hear David's breathing, deep and peaceful. I learned to sleep on the couch starting the next night, getting used to the bumps and twists in the old cushions, and the feeling of waiting outside a room where something else was better.

I'm telling you he needs to get around by himself, Elizabeth says. It's good for him.

A radio with almost all its parts working sits on the table with its insides facing me. I only recognize some of the parts from David's supplies, and I pretend that the shouting in the other room is static roaring through its dead speaker.

He could've gotten hurt, David says. He could've been dead along the highway.

And he walked right to where you were riding by, Elizabeth says. Her voice is deeper and harder to understand than his. Jackie's smarter than you realize, she says. He could start high school in the fall, maybe, with kids his own age.

No, he shouldn't, David says. He's not quite shouting, not yet. And you shouldn't have been sleeping like that. You're supposed to be taking care of him.

He doesn't need me. He needs to be in a school, Elizabeth says. I can't watch him every minute.

David opens the door, but I keep my eyes on the radio. You were going to home school him here, he says. Like we talked about. You remember saying you'd do that, right? I remember.

We talked about it, yes. Elizabeth walks past me, stopping at the front door. You made the decision yourself. But you never bought any books.

She's leaning in the doorframe now, the light from outside passing around her. For a moment I think she'll stretch her hand out and tell me to come with her. But she leaves and heads down the path, vanishing into the weedy ferns growing along its edges. David stays in the back room, looking out the big windows with his palms pressed flat against the panes.

David's friends come over that night, in a truck that keeps the smell of burning gasoline all around it, even when its motor is turned off. They take crates of beer from its bed and drink while David talks.

This is a free country, my brother says. But we work in a prison, a hole that everyone else throws their criminals down. We should be seen as guardians, for what we do. It's important work. You can't have a free society without it.

I sit in the truck bed and listen. David acts differently, his words run together.

But we go out in the world, and people think we're morons, he says. That we're too dumb to be cops. Like cops could do what we do. The same faces every day, looking at the same hate. Is it any wonder so many of us won't go near a city?

The men throw their empty cans over the cabin's roof. I hope to see Elizabeth coming back, stepping into the light that the front porch lamp throws over most of the yard. Once they run out of beer, David and his friends move into the living room. I go out by the fence, transistors and radio parts crunching sometimes underfoot.

That woman, I hear David tell the others. She agreed to move out here with me. And now look. Now I suspect she's changed her mind.

The men offer him more to drink. At one point, he says something I can't hear, though I hear his friend say something back.

No, the friend tells him. It's hardly the kid's fault.

That's true, David says. I'm drunk.

I know what my brother looks like when he's drunk. His eyes are darker and his head's slumped forward, his teeth gray and slick with beer.

No, of course it's not his fault, I hear him say. His voice speeds up like a record turned on. But he doesn't make it any easier for either one of us. I'm alone out here.

I pick up a transistor coil out of the dirt, a spiky copper bulb, and throw it at the cabin as hard as I can. It hits the front wallboards with a sound like ice cracking, and through the open door I can see them all jump.

David speaks first. Very funny, he calls out to me. You're smarter than Elizabeth thinks you are. Bet you already knew that, don't you? At least one of us has her where they want her. So it's you. The little brother.

He slams the door, and a moment later the yard light shuts off. The air around me feels suddenly very hot and soft, without the light above me burning, and I crouch against the fence slats, glad I don't have to be near David or any of his friends.

Hours later I wake up to a pulling on my arm. I feel my head slip forward, and my legs are numb underneath me. Elizabeth takes my face in her hands. Behind her in the front yard the truck is gone and all the lights in the house are off.

Jackie, she says. Wake up. You fell asleep out here.

I didn't want to sleep in there, I say. David's drinking. You can have the couch, I say. It doesn't matter. I can sleep on the floor.

I can't breathe here, let alone sleep, Elizabeth says. It's too quiet all the time. Don't you feel it? Like the quiet wants to touch me. She rubs her hand across her face, and I shake my head.

We go inside, and Elizabeth tries the bedroom door. It's locked.

We live at the end of the world, she says. I can't sleep here.

The next morning I wake up at the foot of the couch. Elizabeth lies along the other end, her forehead and arms shiny with sweat. The front door is open, the heat already growing in waves beneath the tree cover. David has left for work.

He shouts at us the following night, when he comes home from work.

I won't live where two people are set against me, he says. We watched him stalk up the trail with his gun belt on and his black shoes spreading pollen clouds. Wide ovals of sweat stain his shirt.

There's no conspiracy, Elizabeth says. You've got to start being realistic.

You're manipulating me, David says. And you're using Jackie.

But that's not true. I have thought of what to tell David all day, even when Elizabeth walked down to the highway and I was left alone. Now, because of his uniform and the heat all over him, I can't speak.

Using him to do what? Elizabeth asks. Keep me company? It's me and him, all day long. I don't have any choice.

She's not using me, I say. She's not.

David turns towards me. You wouldn't know it if she was, he says. Keep your mouth shut.

Elizabeth points at me. That's what I mean, she shouts. He knows me better than you do.

She goes into the kitchen, and there is the sound of water running and pots clanging as they're pulled out of cabinets. David and I listen in silence.

Elizabeth isn't using me, I say. I promise she's not.

The hell with every piece of this, David tells me. Oh, Christ, Jackie. Look at you. Put something better than that on and we'll go have a beer.

***

The bar is down Highway 61, near the state line. We have been here before, and it is always has a dark atmosphere that feels cool and fresh. The people tell my brother hello when we walk in.

Beer for me, Coke for him, David tells the man behind the bar. The man moves away from us, towards a silver steel cooler.

I was an idiot to move us up here by ourselves, David tells me. She's going crazy with just you to keep her company.

I don't say anything.

That's not what I mean, he explains. Look don't be stupider than you have to be, Jackie. It's not your fault. But she's going nuts.

She's lonely, I say. It's not her fault.

Of course she's lonely, David says. But she knew what she was getting into, and I can't help it if she's unsatisfied. That's not my fault, right?

The man comes back with the drinks and David stretches two dollars out on the bar.

The Coke is thick and cold moving down my throat. I think there's something really wrong with her, I say. Something else.

She wants to be unhappy, David says. He waves his beer bottle, like a magic wand, at the room around us. I found her in a place just like this one, he tells me. And she's still unhappy.

I try to think why she would want to be sad. I heard what you told the other guys about Elizabeth not wanting to be here, I say. Is that true?

Music comes up from the jukebox, the volume down but rising quickly to fill the room. It's country, metal strings and twangy voices. David taps his foot against the bar rail.

I need to get on those radios, get them ready to sell, he says. The money will be beautiful. Money in exchange for something. I give you this, now give me that. Everything you can touch. Nothing left to question or second-guess later. Can you see that Jackie? In that mind of yours?

He tips his beer back, helping himself to a long swallow. The way he looks satisfied I wish I could hit him hard enough to make him hurt.

When we get back Elizabeth walks out the front door with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. I stop at the edge of the path, but David goes straight to her, running up the trail.

You're leaving now? he asks her. You want to leave now?

I come up behind him, watching Elizabeth's face over his shoulder.

Listen, David, she says. Really listen to me. Her hair is tied up behind her head, so I can see all of her face, the lines along the mouth and her eyes. I just want to do this quietly.

It's too late for that, David says, his voice climbing. He grabs her arm and twists her around. I think she might fall, but she catches herself.

Now, he tells her. Get back in the house.

Let go, she yells. I take a step forward, closer to her back.

Get in the house, Elizabeth, David says. His voice is cool again, like metal in shade. Elizabeth pulls her hand free, but he reaches to take it again. I grab her wrist, yanking her back, out of his reach.

Let go of her, Jackie, David says. I don't move but keep my hand on her elbow.

Fine, David says. He picks an antenna out of the dirt, pointing it at me. Drop her arm, damn it. I'm telling you.

I step back, keeping my hand up. David drops the antennae and goes inside. In ten minutes I'm locking the doors, he calls over his shoulder. Elizabeth doesn't turn to face me but keeps watching the house.

I can't stand him anymore, she tells me. I can't stand this place.

She bends down, looking me in the eyes. David's not bad, Jackie, she says. He just sees what he wants and makes stuff up to prove himself right later on. Does that make sense?

Then I realize what she's doing. My throat jumps up, but she strokes my hair.

Don't listen to him, she tells me. Don't believe what he tells you.

You're leaving, I say. It makes me sound stupid, and I want to cry again.

She nods. I thought this – the move up here – would change something in him, she says. I thought this would make things better for us both.

It will get better, I say. You always say it will. It will get better.

No, it won't, she says. Nothing ever changes.

I close my eyes and can feel only the sunlight and her hand on my face. I keep still even after her hand falls away and the sweat from her palm dries on my cheek.

I started school in Zachary, in a brick and tar building that sits flat in an empty field. I ride the bus, waiting for it before dawn by the highway. When I get home David is already there, sitting on the front porch among his spare parts. He restored all the radios after Elizabeth left us, staying up well into the night and crouched over them spread out on the kitchen table. After a while he began setting them up around on every surface in the living room. Their transistors pop when they pick up signals from Baton Rouge and Jackson.

This will mean a lot of money for us, he tells me one morning. We'll have enough to pull this place together.

I don't care, I say.

Maybe you should try, he says. Maybe you should care about trying.

His friends return one night with more beer, and this time whiskey. David drinks from a bottle and stares at me. I stare back.

Jackie misses her more than I do, he tells his friends. Because apparently he knew her better than I did.

They drink into the night, ignoring me though I sit in the bedroom listening. Later, David falls to the floor, and I find him staring at the ceiling. He laughs, a muddy sound. When his friends pile into their truck and drive away, he stands waving at the edge of the ravine. His knees buckle, and his head lists forward. I watch him through the picture window, a step away from thin air.

The radios are on a single power strip, left unplugged. I turn the radios on, all of them, twisting the volume knobs as far as they will go. Then I bend down and plug the strip in. The noise, like the phony, make-believe wave sound you hear inside a shell, fills the air, swallowing the ravine. David's body jolts in surprise, and his legs bolt pedal back from the edge as if he's on a bicycle. He stops himself, though, and turns to face me, on the other side of the glass. I scream at him every hateful word I know.

Several weeks later David lost his job at the prison and we moved to Baton Rouge, to an apartment complex with vinyl walls and withered, hungry-looking shrubs that hugged to the building. David works at the parish jail, overnight, and there are bags under his eyes that make him look like he's wearing a mask. The radios sit unsold.

My teachers sent me to another school here, near the river, where the teachers talk slower and don't yell if I tell them I don't understand what they're saying. They repeat themselves, and sometimes I find myself waiting for them to stop talking.

I had hoped for a while to find Elizabeth here in the city, so that in our own way moving here could be a way of finding her. Sometimes, I think of how she must have looked when she walked away from me, while I held my eyes shut by the trail. I try to picture her running away down the path along the ravine, away from our house up there, moving so fast that she shakes loose everything about her life that the wind could not carry. But I am only fooling myself. She is gone, and nothing will change that.

Previously published in Cairn issue # 38, by St. Andrew's College, 2004.

Michael Kabel grew up all over Louisiana but now lives in Memphis, TN where he teaches high school and college. His previous publication credits include Cairn, The Baltimore Review (where he now works as an editor), JMWW, and Rogue Scholars. He also publishes film commentary at www.bluemoviereviews.com