Excavation

Chapter 5

That morning the woman with the bright face and hair had come to Hector Pierce’s window, awakening him from his frequent nightmare of suffocation. He had been trying to claw his way up out of layer after layer of earth, each succeeding layer covering the one he had just broken through so that it seemed he’d never reach the top. But finally the sun had penetrated, and it had been her face shining at the window.

Hector had been thrilled; he had not seen a woman so close in years, none except his sister Inez, and particularly none who had looked at him so kindly. The woman’s hair glowed, as if her head were on fire.

He’d pulled himself out of bed and was again amazed at how difficult it had become, harder every morning. His body was slow to do what he wanted, stubborn and disobedient. He wanted to smack it sometimes like a bad child, whip it into shape.

Finally he was able to get himself dressed. Inez would be out shopping, he knew, and most of the boarders at work. There wouldn’t be anyone around to stop him. He stood in front of the ornate hallway mirror—it used to belong to their mother and it made him a little sad to think about that—touched his face with stiff fingers, and, deciding that it would more than do, felt like bounding down the stairs, dancing his way out onto the front porch in order to impress the woman. But the body was too tired, and he had to make do with ambling slowly, his right hand clutching the railing with a desperation that did not seem to belong to him.

When he stepped out on the porch, he could not see her anywhere. He turned around, struggling with his body, finally letting his head lead his body into the turnings, but she seemed to be nowhere near the porch. He walked down the steps cautiously, then turned around to look back at the boardinghouse.

It was then he remembered that his room was on the third floor. The bright-faced woman must have been standing on the roof of the porch to look in on him. He grinned broadly, then laughed aloud.

She wasn’t on the roof now, and Hector looked in vain for a ladder. Probably flew, he thought, then chuckled again. He started walking toward the field in the back of the house. He didn’t know why he was going there, but knew that was where he had to go.

He had to climb over the low fence one of Inez’s boarders put up some years ago. Or had that been his father? He couldn’t remember. Actually, he might have put it up himself. It was a difficult obstacle for him, and he almost fell on the other side. He was always terrified of falling, afraid he wouldn’t get up again.

The field had been a garden at one time, their mother’s garden; he did remember that. Inez hadn’t kept it up, said she was too busy tending the house. He might have planted the garden himself if he were able. It seemed a shame to have it go to waste.

Off in the distance, on the far edge of the field where the willows covered the creek bank, he could see something glowing. A face turning to smile at him. He began to walk faster.

He was surprised somebody hadn’t come after him already. They usually did by now. Inez didn’t trust him out by himself, said he’d kill himself outside. Hector didn’t understand how that could happen, even though Inez seemed to be right about a lot of things and he usually bowed to her judgment. But he really didn’t know what she was talking about—”his accidents,” she always said. And anyhow, Hector didn’t care this time. He had to find that woman.

He thought he saw her moving under the willows, but he couldn’t trust his eyes so much anymore. Not since he was buried. Didn’t seem right they’d dig him up like that. Once a body was buried it should stay buried. It seemed like his body had forgotten things from being buried like that. From being like it was dead. He knew people thought him feebleminded, but that didn’t bother him much.

From the distance she looked like his mother. But that couldn’t be; his mother was dead. She’d died… he wasn’t sure when. He thought maybe it had been when he was buried like that—the shock of it killed her. But maybe she had died before the mine swallowed him up, and all that dirt had just made him forget. He remembered dreaming about her while he was down there in the dark: her soft face rising up out of the strips of rock and dirt that covered him like he was an old root lying down there in the ground. Singing to him, trying to make him feel better like she had when his father had died. Only it was him dying this time, and there didn’t seem much comfort for that.

Since he’d been buried, since he’d spent all that time lying down in that wet darkness with the taste of earth in his mouth, it seemed that a lot of his dreams came to him in the daytime. There didn’t seem to be much difference between waking and sleeping anymore. He’d dream about his daddy and see him in his rocker the next day, just waiting for Hector to get up and help the old man downstairs for breakfast. He’d dream about Ellen, his girl in grade school, and the next afternoon she’d be throwing pebbles up to his window at the boardinghouse, wanting him to come out and play. He’d open the window and she’d be standing there underneath the maple in the southeast corner of the front yard—the one that used to have a tire swing. And the tire would still be swinging there, and Ellen holding on to the rope in her pale yellow dress with the wide pink ribbon for a belt, and all the way to his window he could smell the lilacs she was holding.

But this woman with the bright face wasn’t like that. As he got closer to the line of willows he could see her moving down to the branch of the Simpson that meandered its way through this part of their land, and it felt different from those other times. It scared him a little, but he had to follow her, have her look at him.

Maybe his mother had died in the flood? Had she drowned? He knew the flood had happened several years after he had been buried, but he couldn’t remember if he had seen his mother alive before that. There’d been a lot of excitement that night. The boardinghouse had just missed the flood—the water had risen to the first step on one side of the porch—but there were people running around, and he remembered they’d taken in a few families. It seemed like his mother had been taking care of everyone, but that might have been Inez. But it didn’t sound like Inez; he couldn’t imagine her acting just that way.

He stepped softly under the willows, hoping not to disturb the bright-haired woman. He wanted time to think about what he was going to say to her.

She turned and her face loomed large before him. This wasn’t his mother; it wasn’t his mother at all. Her hair was on fire.

Hector felt himself falling toward the woman with flaming hair, and suddenly he was under water, sputtering and flapping like a fish. Houses tumbled by along the bottom. A child’s doll made out of cloth, its one button eye staring. Chickens and pigs and dogs and cats all screaming watery screams in hideous slow motion. Then a dead girl child, her face seeming to melt in the distorting turbulence of the stream. The Taylor man who lived up the hollow: his face big and bloated, black and ugly like some huge beast.

And the woman with flaming hair, bending over to tuck him into bed, slip him down into a deep, blue sleep.

The bear stopped at the opening of the old house. Something… felt wrong. Something irritating in the back of his mind. He could not find the irritation, and he growled in anger. Something he knew about this place. He pawed at the broken boards and dug at the mound of silt outside the boards, uncovering more and more of the old house as he dug.

Then he stopped digging. No humans lived here. He knew. But something was here. He was here… and something like him was here.

He shook his head and growled. Something brown flashed in the woods to his left, and he broke away to stalk the animal. He was hungry, and for a time would be able to ignore the irritant at the back of his mind.