Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Read online

  His mouth tightened, his eyes suddenly withdrawn. “Now really, Eunis, that’s no way to talk to me. I’m trying to be your friend.” He put his hand back on my knee.

  I pushed his hand away. “Then tell me.”

  “Tell you what, Eunis?” He was breathing harder. He rubbed his hands.

  “What is beauty?”

  “It’s not that important.”

  “It is to me.” I slipped out of the pew.

  He stood up. “Where’re you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Don’t be rude. Sit down. I’m talking to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, I want to talk to someone who knows beauty.”

  “Well then, sit down.” He patted the back of the pew. “You can’t go alone and we can talk about it.” His face moved in different directions all at once.

  “You don’t know, I can tell.”

  “Sit down!” He slapped the pew hard. Echoes rang all the way to the cross.

  “I’ll wait on the steps. Momma’ll be back. She doesn’t want me showing myself off.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Now you’re not even telling the truth.”

  “Why you devil—!”

  I turned my back on him and walked out.

  “How’d it go?” Momma asked when she picked me up.

  “Fine,” I said and watched the wetlands dissolve into thickets of forgotten places.

  ***

  At home, my sister Carly wasn’t interested in playing with me or hearing about my investigations. I overheard her telling her friends, “She’s not my real sister.”

  “Half,” Momma would say. “She’s your half-sister.”

  My half-brother, Lyle, was too young.

  Full of each day with no one to listen, I held on to the day’s discoveries until they evaporated, although no one spoke of beauty. After a while, however, the information piled up, became too much to hold. I think of it now as physics but back then it felt like a balloon that would explode. Filled with matter, I had to let it out.

  I began to speak it, just to myself. Whispers at first, but since I was alone most of the time sometimes I forgot, and soon I talked to myself in a slightly louder voice, to an audience eager to hear what I learned that day: “The new word: ‘Or-der-ly.’ Means well behaved. Also means neat. Then mistakes don’t happen.”

  ***

  But mistakes did happen. There was an incident. I was seven, maybe eight. Lyle four, Carly five. Except for school, Momma never took me away from the house. You’d think I’d be excited. Yet I was mysteriously resistant. The man with Momma had a face like brick, pockmarked and baked dark red. Not Papa Karl.

  Momma said, “Take the kids for a walk.” She pointed: the path into the tall summer grass was fragrant, honeyed and toasted. It disappeared quickly from the shore. “And don’t come back for at least an hour.” She rested her small hand on Brick’s broad thigh and stroked the stitching of his jeans. His head dipped almost imperceptibly in ascent, eyes torpid, like Momma had drugged him.

  “How will I know?” I asked.

  “Look at the sun. When it goes over there behind that tree. Now go on.”

  I secured the broad-brimmed hat the doctor told me to wear and reached out my hands. The kids backed away. I wasn’t thrilled to babysit them and I was already worn thin by people’s revulsion, but once out there I was thankful to be in new territory. Back along the shore, where Moose River met Thief Lake, Momma’s laughter drifted above the crickets. Brick’s little boy —Hully, I think— gripped Carly, terrified of me, his pale, squashed face marbled in yellow mustard and dried snot. She pushed him away.

  I herded the kids forward, Brick’s boy the most resistant, challenging me every thirty yards as the sun shot lasers through my dark glasses, blinding me as I struggled with him. Carly pulled Lyle to the side. In the distance Brick called out and Momma moaned, and Brick’s boy started back toward them. I grabbed him.

  “You’re ugly,” he said. “I don’t have to listen to you.” And when he kicked me, I spun him around. He kicked me again and I shoved him down the small slope. I don’t remember anyone warning me there was quicksand in the bog.

  At first it was quite funny watching him struggle, mud caking around his hands and in his hair. Even Lyle and Carly laughed. The lime muck climbed to his waist. He bawled.

  “Now will you stick with me?” I said.

  He shrieked. Out of nowhere a turkey vulture took flight, his outline rippling across us, the beat of his wings heavy, settling like a cloak.

  “Shall I leave you here?”

  “Good idea,” said Carly. “Let’s go.” She started up the grade with Lyle.

  But with another turn the sludge was to his chest. He reached his arms to me. Now the terror was pulling him down and I wasn’t looking so bad. I remembered from the encyclopedia. “Stop moving.” And to my surprise, he did. I surveyed the area. “Give me that limb,” I motioned Carly to a fallen branch. She complained. “Give it,” I hissed. And she brought it to me. Finally, I ruled!

  I began to extend the limb to him. But before he was able to grab hold, Momma and Brick came storming down the incline. Brick grabbed the limb, pushed me aside, and sucked his son out of the liquefied earth.

  ***

  By age ten, when Momma and Sarah Pooley and the old witch Solveig Trollkjerringa huddled in the kitchen sharing stories of vardøgers, spirit premonitions, I wanted to join them. I wanted to tell Momma what Miss Drakker, the science teacher, said about crickets; how their chirp rate could predict temperature. And if that was true, and if Momma’s back and shoulder pain really did forecast wet weather, and if birds flying low meant a storm was coming and giant oarfish could predict earthquakes, why couldn’t I feel special things and predict things too?

  Momma couldn’t have cared less, but I knew what I wanted and how to get it.

  “You little pest, I see you there,” Momma said, spying me peeping behind the grease-stained door. “Get your long-sleeved jacket, your Hollywood dark glasses . . .” She smirked at her friends. “And your hat and go play in the damn yard. Just get outta here.”

  Thirty yards from the back door, fortified by the odor of decomposing wood, I approached the old water trough. Momma and the women in the kitchen had pulled out a bottle of something. They cackled and snorted, their backs to the yard.

  Beyond the yard was mystery. I felt wicked and I liked it. Taking a final peek at the women, I went forward. I’m a de-tec-tive!

  I reached the buckling tool shed, surrounded by cockleburs and tall weeds, its single window boarded from the inside with weathered plywood. A remaining glass shard reflected my blotchy ugliness. I looked away.

  The shed wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t ‘orderly.’ Poorly built and deserted because of its flaws, Momma said to stay away from it; there were tussers in it, goblins —a mixture of bones, moss and twigs. They’ll promise to marry you, Momma said, and bring us all misery. But reject them and you’ll die an ugly maiden and your family will die in poverty, she said, so stay away. I didn’t want Momma and Carly and Lyle to die in poverty. But what did the shed look like inside?

  Stepping through the burrs that pricked and stuck to my legs, I entered the shed, full of errant nails, dust vapors, and abandoned darkness. I stood motionless just beyond the threshold.

  “Go on, you scaredy-cat. Detectives can’t be afraid.” But I was, a little.

  I moved farther in and found a patch of open dirt, just enough to scrunch myself on. As I lay in the cool blackness picking off the husks my senses expanded again. Currents moved in my chest.

  “Someone’s coming to be my friend,” I told Carly when she got off the school bus. “I’m just like a cricket or a low-flying bird.” But Carly had many friends and didn’t care about such things. No one wanted to be around me.

  The next day Nemo limped into the yard into the shed and into its shadows, and plunked himself down next to me as if he had always done so. A wiry mutt with only th
ree legs —“nasty looking,” said Momma when she finally saw him— he had a high comic yawn that others called maniacal but that made me laugh, every time. I found it lovely.

  For the first few months, even when it turned cold, we met secretly in the shed. I’d discovered the remains of a small pine dinghy in the corner and this gave us minor elevation from the damp floor. We settled next to each other for hours in the decaying boat and the broken darkness, Nemo forcing his icy wet nose to my ears, extracting muffled explosions of delight with his tongue, me pulling cockleburs off him and stroking his withered body till he sighed in great relief.

  I’d sing a song I’d learned in kindergarten, quietly, so Momma wouldn’t hear:

  “Row, row, row your boat

  gently down the stream;

  merrily, merrily, merrily;

  life is but a dream.”

  Then I’d tell him about all the things I’d learned that day, all the mysteries solved. “And you know what’s a great mystery?” I said. “Beauty. No one gives me an answer, so I’m going to figure it out.”

  He grinned up at me. His three-quarter grin. The right ear flopped over. His coarse spikey hair, brown and charcoal, white down the center between those eyes, those expectant eyes.

  “And someday, when I do, I’ll be useful, won’t I? I’ll be a doctor or something and make everybody beautiful. Maybe even you.” I couldn’t have known back then that I was stepping into my own quicksand.

  He tilted his head.

  “Otherwise, why am I here?”

  Nemo stood, shook himself out, and with his wet mattress breath, licked my face. He was my first and only friend.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Momma spluttered and coughed over the sound of the TV. “Where’s my tea?” she called.

  “Here, Momma.” I set the cup next to the Kleenex on the scarred cabin trunk, our coffee table.

  “Bout time.” She grabbed a tissue and blustered into it. “You missed the last part of ‘Guiding Light’.”

  I didn’t recognize momma’s soaps one from the other but I knew “Guiding Light” and “General Hospital” were important to her.

  “Phillip really loves Beth, always has,” Momma said, sipping her tea. “Shit, this is goddamn hot.”

  “Sorry, Momma.” I couldn’t seem to get things right.

  “Should be, I’m the only momma you got. They look so good together. They’d have beautiful children.”

  “Who?”

  “Phillip and Beth. All of them on this show, they all look pretty good. But Alan . . . he’s a nasty sonuvabitch.” She blew on her tea. “You don’t mind missin’ school to take care a me, do you?”

  “Of course not, Momma.” I was disappointed. Miss Drakker had promised to bring in frogs. How did frogs breathe in and out of water? “What makes them beautiful?”

  “Who?” Momma picked up her pack of Luckies and put them down. The walls were already oily with her tobacco.

  “Them, on Guiding Light.”

  “Just look at them.”

  “They all look different.”

  “They just are, okay. Now be quiet.”

  “Momma, can I ask you something?”

  “What?” Her eyes still on the screen.

  “Who was my real father?”

  Momma turned to me, her face pinched, then quickly returned to the screen. “Not sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know who it was,” she said, her face cool and hard as stone, a map of wrong turns. “Don’t matter.” She pressed stiffly on the remote. “He ain’t comin’ back.”

  “Was he like me?”

  “No. Heavens, no.” She turned to me, disappointment in her eye. “I’m sorry.”

  I’d never seen that before, or maybe I’d never noticed it. I reached for her arm and patted it. “It’s okay.”

  Momma quickly regrouped. “You’d never let me be sick by my lonesome. You’d always come take care of your momma, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, Momma.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise, Momma.”

  “Good. Now sit down and no fussin’. ‘General Hospital’s’ comin’ up.”

  ***

  After Momma fell asleep, with Carly and Lyle soon due home from school, I dragged a volume of Papa Karl’s incomplete set of encyclopedias from under the stairwell and met Nemo in the shed. Even in the rising spring temperatures he nuzzled into me as I read:

  “Freyja is the goddess of beauty and the patroness of women who attain wisdom, status and power. She protects the human race.”

  He seemed to enjoy that.

  “Not sure what a patroness is. Another mystery. We’ll look it up later.”

  He also enjoyed the smell of my pocket, sniffing and nudging me until I pulled out the small piece of exotic cheese I’d found abandoned on the kitchen table, next to the bottles of schnapps and rum. I unwrapped it and took a bite. He stared at me, hopeful.

  “Yes, you’re an explorer too.” I gave him the rest, his small tail a fast-moving metronome thumping against the sides of the marooned dinghy. The rough odors persisted on my fingertips and within a short time Nemo created unbearable clouds for which he showed no effect or ownership.

  I held my breath. “Maybe we should adventure today.” I could be diplomatic. With the sweetest tilt of his muzzle, he grinned up at me.

  We ventured out of the shed and into the fresh May afternoon. We cut through the tangle of dappled woods behind Nemo’s owner’s house. On his three spindly legs, Nemo kept up with me as tenaciously as any four-legged dog. Farther and farther away from the farmhouse we bush-wacked, two other homes and the Johansson’s peeking through the forest knot, stepping on wintergreen releasing its clean smell, over the poison baneberry and through wild sarsaparilla vines until we reached a creek and the small lake pooling from it, winter’s ice a memory.

  In full sunlight as we explored the creek, I saw sores festering on his legs. “Sit with me.” I tapped the ground. He trusted me and that made me love him more. I washed his legs and patted them dry with large aster leaves.

  “I’ll bring mercurochrome the next time.” I tousled his head, a cute head, really. “You’re the bestus dog.” I kissed him between his ears and smelled his raw, earthy odor. Somehow connecting with his scent made our friendship special, and I think he felt the same.

  We wandered down to the lake. “Come on, let’s go in.” I checked the shoreline, then quickly folded my clothes in a pile and waded in. “Come on.” I waved to him.

  But Nemo refused to swim, watching me and whining from the shore as I first struggled against the chilled water, then against my own intuition, stopped resisting and stayed miraculously afloat, not exactly swimming, but paddling. “Look! You can do it too!”

  He was there as my witness when, on my back, ears in the water, I first heard myself really breathe. He barked his comic approval and after fifteen or so minutes I finally coasted to shore as if I’d been swimming all my life. As if I’d always been free and magical, like Freyja. It came so naturally. I’m still unsure how I did it.

  And then, even out of the water, I enjoyed my nakedness and the sun on my skin. It was bad of me, I know, but I didn’t want to dress. So we climbed the stubby hill above the lake and I lay there drying.

  We lolled quiet and flat on the hillside, thin webs of cloud drifting lazily above us with the occasional buzzing of the first bumblebees —until I heard rocks skitter. I quickly dressed and returned low to the ground in the sweet smelling grass. Nemo remained still beneath my outstretched arm.

  From the opposite direction along the lake, an Indian from the reservation wandered slowly out of the woods and found a spot below us. He sat motionless. Staying silent, I noticed my own breath and a tide gliding through my heart. Like the time under the stairwell and the time I forecast rain, and the time I anticipated Nemo. Reciprocal. Natural. Peaceful.

  Then the Indian pulled a small bottle from his back pocket. He drank and
smoked and talked in rhythmic bursts to the sky. I can talk to the sky!

  He went on this way for maybe an hour or so in some sort of celebration. It felt good to me, so I just lay there with Nemo until the Indian left as quietly as he’d come, my head bigger yet lighter, my body tingling. The crickets chirped. I was lucky to be in such a beautiful place.

  “We’d better get going,” I whispered to Nemo. I stood and stretched. He stood and stretched. We trekked homeward, the sound of rushing water filling my ears.

  On the lip of the forest the hair on Nemo’s neck stood up. He stopped and growled. I heard voices.

  “She’s here, I’m tellin’ you.” It was the younger Johansson boy, a year older than me.

  And then the voice of his older brother. “I gotta see this.”

  “She’s a hek, you’ll see.”

  They appeared in the clearing, their cropped blond hair reflecting the fading sunlight. Their large Rottweiler saw me and showed teeth. “Oh, god,” said the older Johansson when he saw me.

  “Told you,” said the younger.

  The Rottweiler took an aggressive step toward me and snarled. Nemo stepped between me and the Rottweiler and growled protectively. An obvious mismatch, the first sour tang gnawing my belly.

  Before I could call Nemo the Rottweiler was on him, tearing at him. Horrific yelps. “Stop him!” I shrieked.

  “He’s our right hand,” yelled the older boy. “He protects us from evil.”

  Nemo squealed in agony below the larger dog. Blood surged from his neck and shoulders, and his right eye torn from its socket. The Rottweiler’s teeth deeply embedded in his stomach, Nemo flopped from side to side, wounds tearing wider with each swing, the Rottweiler’s eyes in a hellish world. I grabbed a rock and hurled it at the Rottweiler, striking its head with a surprised squeak and stunning it.

  “What’dya doin’ to our dog!” screamed the older boy. “Erobreren, come!”

  The Rottweiler pulled away from Nemo and wandered to the boy’s side.

  “Oh my god.” My legs weak, I rushed to Nemo, who lay barely panting on the ground, blood pooling around him. “Oh my god!” I laid my hands on him and bore into the Johanssons. “Do something!”