【by Birdie Stark】

Turning yellow now, the bruise lay in that crook where the meat of the calf abutted the pillar of the thigh. My very own bruise, acquired in the dust where the old Gregors’ cat lay bloated, dead.  

  I twisted round some more, belly flat on the brown grasses, as Paul rubbed down the earth beside us. The wind had whipped us down the hill, Paulie and I. Up at the top we’d gone jumping out through the itching sagebrush that scored and tore at one’s thin skin. Peeled back, the brush framed an image of what Mama called the distant universe. Beyond the hill was the graying sky where the starlings flocked, vast, to form great shapes in the air like helices which dipped and grew. From the crest of the hill one could see the old Gregors’ place, and most wonderfully, Crazy House; a photograph of which had made the front page of Deer Falls Chronicle long ago.  

  Along the way, and down the hill, little Paulie’s whiskey bottle had flown off into the dead, drying grasses.  

—Gone for good, said Paulie, shaking his head backforth, kicking up trails of dust with the toes of his little brown boots. He was thin looking, with a screwed-up crooked neck that squirmed side to side as he patted down the dirt. He wore square glasses with thin metal frames, held fast by a chain round the back of his head to keep them in place.  

—Walk me home, I said. There was only water in there anyhow. 

  The house of ours was nice, by dint of our fine wooden floors and barred up windows that let in cubic slats of light. There were neighbors nearby, and grasses, and shrubbery. There was a crackling television in the living room and an ice cream maker in the kitchen. Mama collected soaps, and there were lots of those, too.  

  Little Paulie did not live with us. The place he lived in was just across the great highway, which meant I could be his own bride one day if I ever wanted to.  

  I twisted back round to stand upright, losing sight of my very own bruise in doing so. Along the road was dust, then home. When we came inside Mama was sitting squat down in the living room, slouched small in the old armchair. She rammed her eyebrows together, clenching lips airtight and tearing off shreds of her toenails, tossing them bit by bit into an old paper burger bag. Her eyes softened at the sight of Paulie. She rose, taking him gently by the jaw, holding tight for some moments.  

—I think, she said, you ought to get the interview over with. 

—Alright, said Paul. 

  I was meant to pour the milk into the dusted cups, pulling a chair back for large Mama as she  took a seat at the kitchen table. Paul began to read aloud from a typewritten scrap of paper. 

—A History of My Neighbor, he read. Hello, mister/missus blank. Ah. Missus Abel! I am here to conduct a most formal and inquisitive interview of a neighbor whom I would like to get to know. I’ve selected you, Missus Abel, as my subject. I will summarize my findings in a three page report from which an excerpt will be presented to my very own class. Today I will use my insight, be polite and have fun. Are you ready to get started? 

—Yes, Paulie. 

  He flipped the paper over, trembling some at the shake of his own thumb.  

—When did you move to Deer Falls? 

—I’ve lived here my whole life. 

—Oh! Very good. Have you any cats or dogs? 

—No, Paul. 

—And have you ever left the state of Montana? 

—When I was a girl, we went to Wyoming and then the Dakotas. 

—And which Dakotas would those be? 

—The North, and the South. 

—And why did you like to go there, please? 

—I liked the leaving. 

—Very good! Paul pinched the rim of his glasses between his fingers, sliding them up the bridge with his thumb. And do you love God? 

—Yes, dear. 

—And why, please? 

—He saved me. 

—Very good, said Paul, scribbling furiously. And your favorite color? 

—White. 

—Right. Well, yes, alright. And my congratulations, Missus Abel.  

—Thank you, dear. 

  Large Mama was due for a baby any minute. The one in her stomach she knew to be a girl like me: the most wonderful sort of baby to have. When Mama walked, our floor creaked and bowed. She’d adopted a manner by which to turn her feet outward so as to avoid tripping on littered glass bottles—those might shatter into shards and blind her, disfiguring her own uterus and killing the little girl in there. 

  Mister Abel emerged from the shadowed bedroom, leaning down to slap Paulie hard across the back. 

—Did you get your elk yet? 

  Paul pinched his glasses. 

—No, sir. 

—D’your papa? 

—I’m not sure. 

—Heh-heh. Bet he won’t. 

—Maybe not. 

—Don’t talk back. D’your pa ever teach you that? 

—Yes, sir, he taught me. 

—And don’t interrupt. 

  Mister Abel’s hands were on Mama’s shoulders, turning white as he massaged the weak sleeves of her taffeta blouse. Large Mama was a small woman. Weak, with brittle collarbones and thin little lips. It took only a small application of force to knock her over. A little hammer to the back of the knees. A strong foot inside a sandal, to the small of her back. Mister Abel was large, with large hands. 

  I asked Paulie if he would please take me for a walk and he said it would be his very own pleasure. 

—Well, said Paul, kicking up a great cloud of dust along the road. Who will you interview? 

—Hum? 

—For History of My Neighbor. 

—Oh. I shrugged. Mister Gregor? 

—Uh-uh, Paulie coughed. He won’t talk good. Not professional, like for an interview. Your mother is a professional. If we’d birdshit for brains, Old Gregor’d have a clean cage.  

—Oh, I said. Oh, yes.  

  I gazed up the far hill, where the man with the bending back scattered birdseed out across the valley at dusk. If you came too close, the winds were liable to propel gusts of birdseed into the sockets of your eyes, sticking hard in the pupils till a hungry swallow plucked the seed out.  

  The name Crazy House was given on account of the manner in which the old man had gone about constructing it. The house sat perched high on the hill on a grand set of fine wooden pillars, extending up and toward the yellowed sky. It had three or five stories, with great gabled roofs on the west and northern corners that bowed down under the weight of balconies, shutters, buttresses, towers. The Chronicle called it rickety; highly collapsible, constructed of timber and hollow birds’ bones. Some afternoons I saw the old man there, squatting low on a buttress, nailing new planks of wood, swinging a hammer, chopping old rot. No faces in the windows.  

  The shade of the dogwood fell over us now, and the pond just beyond. Paul slipped off his little brown boots, wading into the warm mud, waving me down.  

—Seems you’ll go to Crazy House, Paul called out. 

—Hum? How’s that? 

—The way you’re looking. You’ll go.  

—Not there, I said. Don’t think so. 

—Liar, Joan. You will, for the interview. And you ought to, anyhow.  

  I knelt, barekneed, into the mud, scooping up a great wad of frog eggs and tossing them squarely at Paulie’s head. He coughed, peeling them off the side of his cheek and giving a smile like he might want to kiss me. I said I had better get going, on account of an appointment I’d forgotten to keep. He waved bye without looking, instead eyeing the mud through the square spectacles tied round his head. Wading his toes just so into the minnow water.  

  A school of minnows were liable to gather enough bite strength to sever your little toe.  

  The way to Crazy House was a dirtied trail off the main highway, winding up through the dirt-gold grasses and scattered stones all pointing south. There was Banebury and Indian paintbrush along the trail, and sagebrush besides.  

  I climbed in my sneakers, maintaining a bowed head, eyes squinting and meek to protect from flying bird seed.  

  The old man opened the door after only three knocks with a shotgun at his side. He was balding like a skinned bear, with great wrinkles lining his hanging forehead and small tufts of hair all along the crest of his scalp. The skin over his nose stretched to the utmost, causing his nostrils to flare out into two dark disks.  

—Good afternoon, I said. I’m here on account of the History of My Neighbor project. Do you know it? 

  His neck shook backforth no. 

—That’s alright. I only would like to conduct a most inquisitive interview of a neighbor whom I would like to get to know. I will summarize my findings in a small report and present an excerpt to the class. I will use my insight and be polite. What’s your name, please? 

—Hank. 

  I wrote this down. 

—Very good. May I come in? 

  He stepped aside, limping on with spatted boots into a great wooden room, dim, whose floor coiled outward into grand coaxial spirals. Hanging, framed, was a photograph of a family standing round a swimming pool with toweled waists, arms crossed, frowning. There were palm trees in the picture, and a pink wall reaching all round the pool. The family stared straight ahead, over and past the cameraman’s head. 

—Family, said Hank. Sons and daughters. 

  He set the shotgun angularly against a wooden pillar. The lashes of his eyes were long, blinking forward, drying his eyes. In the reflection of the glass, a frown. 

—My wife, he said, is named Marianne. She and the kids will come home soon.  

—Are they on vacation? I asked. To the Dakotas, perhaps? 

—Not on vacation. He coughed. I’ll show you around. 

  We limped, both of us, into his kitchen—a room stinking of old egg salad and bright, fresh terrycloth. Hank cranked open a window, leaning out to call hello into the canyon below, sighing hard in his chest, up and down.  

—I wonder, I said. Have you any cats or dogs? 

—No. A dog once, yes. Old Miss Muffins. I found her, would you like to know, in the desert. Inside of a cactus. She died last decade.  

  Foot by foot he stepped out of the kitchen, nodding his head over his great wide shoulders to indicate I could follow him along.  

—And how long have you lived here, please? 

  He paused in a doorway, frowning. 

—Twenty-three years. 

  Though Hank was large, he did not have the force of Mister Abel. He was a sleeping sort of bear. Dormant paws and a soft, clean snout. Hank was like Papa Bear, perhaps. He panted, too, like a bear who is safe.  

  At the top of the old staircase Hank paused, puffing out of his cheeks and slouching over his right knee. I thought perhaps I’d help him up the stairs, but he gathered himself and went on. All around this room were walls paneled with grand windows, letting in the yellowed sky. A flock of starlings swooped past, flush along the swirled, graying clouds.  

  He panted. 

—It will rain, perhaps.  

  Down, out, beyond the grand windows, lay the grasses. There was dirt, town beyond, and endless strips of barbed wire further still. A gust of wind swept the canyon, rustling shutters over Paulie’s house, the sleeves of large Mama’s taffeta, the strings of her hair. Elms swaying, light waning. All I’d ever known, perhaps.  

—Do you know that there was once a story written about you in the Chronicle? I asked. 

—Yes. 

—I’m sure they excluded much.  

—Hum. 

—They didn’t write how the valley looked from up here. 

—No. 

  Back downstairs we went. Down two flights, pausing long, soft, on a landing.  

—What room next? 

—The bathroom. Connecting onto the bedroom. Marianne’s and mine.  

  I looked back up the stairs, which ran crookedly down at acute angles. 

—Is it really built of birds’ bones? I asked. 

  Hank nodded. 

—And timber. The bathroom, now. The shower, do you know, does not run. You’ll see here I’ve installed a real shower head, and it’s half tiled, and if you step inside you’ll see yon hole there. Being as how we’re on the first floor now, this shower is just for Marianne and I. The hole looks on through to the grand bedroom, and it was meant for me and her, if it tickled her fancy, to take peeks at one another. She’s gotten older, of course, and I imagine that tight young skin has sagged, but I still love the look of her body. When Marianne and the boys come back that’s all I plan to do, in fact. Sit down on my sofa or stand near the hole and just look at her. The shower, you know, and her lathering her skin… 

—Hank? 

  He pinched the edge of the shower curtain between his index finger and thumb, rolling it back and forth.  

—Yes? 

—I don’t believe I’ll include this bit in the report, if that’s alright.  

—Well. You’ll tell them there was no hole.  

  He stood still for a long moment, running his great bear’s paw over the top of his head. I stood too on the tile, only watching him. Holding my thumbs tight to palms as fists, nodding up and down, slow.  

—My family, said Hank, has lived away for twenty years. Gone, now, to California. They left, I’m afraid, when I began the building. Marianne said it was a dangerous house. I wonder—if they might come back. Have you any other questions? 

  I shook my head backforth no. After a time of silence, he nodded and led me up the stairs and out the front door.  

—Mister Hank, I said. I’ve a friend Paulie. He’s young like me, only a boy. We run together, and go jumping on the hill just across the way. We could visit you one day. 

—Alright. 

—And my mama has a baby on the way. A little girl. One day I might bring her, too. It’s a wonderful house here.  

  I started down the path, through Banebury and sagebrush. When I turned back around he was there in the doorway, scratching a great paw against his grand old bear ears. He waved his big, fat paws at me in honest gladness. Hank was not too large.  

  A man, old and large enough, was liable to leave a substantial bruise in the crook of one’s knee. 

  At the bottom of the hill was Paul, kicking up dust, pinching at intervals the frame of his glasses. At his feet was a brown mass. Half the carcass of a housecat, lying still there on the dirt. Back half. Tail.  

—Coyote? I asked.  

  Paulie pinched his lips tight, shaking his small head side to side. 

—No, Joan. Clean split. Kicked down the road from your backyard. Just a stray, you know. He’s selective. 

—Sometimes. 

  Paul rubbed his boots in the dirt, holding tightly his thumbs. His eyebrows sagged, as if he might cry. 

—I’ll walk you home. 

  A scream far off—Eastern screech owl. Stars now up above, the blowing grasses still. 

—The old man up there’s got a family, I said. Sons and daughters, you know. In California. 

—Does he really? Asked Paul. 

—Sure does. Sons and daughters, Hank has.  

—Hank’s his name? 

—Yes, I said. And a beautiful house. You can see nearly all of Montana from up there. A great big room, with windows all around.  

—That’s nice, Joan. 

—Yes. You’d like it. Suppose you’d like to come and see it? Tomorrow? 

—Suppose I would. 

—I thought I’d visit tomorrow morning. Bring some of Mama’s soaps, maybe. Perhaps you might come. 

—Okay, Joan.  

  He smiled, waving me on home.  

  Inside the kitchen was large Mama, resting soft her belly on the counter. She stood, only looking out the window where Paulie had left. Her eyes followed him through the dirt and grasses, over the highway, back home. 

  Mister Abel stood tall at the kitchen sink, taking a sponge to a saucer. Out poured froths of milk, seeping into the drain, washing fast away. Flashlight on the kitchen counter; meat cleaver just beyond. I said goodnight, and perhaps Mama spoke back. Getting no goodnight was grounds for misfortune.  

  Sunrise; begin again. I crept out the door, past the spot where Mister Abel lay sprawled on the old brown sofa. His lips were fat and fluttering, and over his eyes lay a moist washcloth. Under his armpit, a tire iron.  

  Paul was waiting just off the dirt road, hip jutted out to the side. In one hand he held a leather flask. There was a bowie knife strapped to his belt and a baseball cap shielding both his eyes. He waved, and down the dirt road we went. 

—Now, I said—kicking up clouds of dust along the way—you must be sure to keep your head down low and your eyes squinted tight, on account of the swallows. Hank scatters birdseed all around, you know. Sometimes in the morning. 

—I suppose, said Paulie, a swallow mightn’t like to try and poke its beak into my spectacles! It’d be liable to choke down some glass shards then, don’t you think? 

—I suppose so. But then suppose the clearness of the glass messes them up some? They might still try for an eyeball. 

—Might. Hey, Jo, what do you know? There’s Hank! Do you see him? Working on the side of his house, maybe three stories up. Hanging there off the side, nailing something in maybe! See him, Joan? I wonder how he made it around like so. I didn’t know he was quite so agile, did you? He’s waving his leg at us, see? HEY, OLD MAN! If we come closer he’ll hear us now. 

  On we flew toward Hank’s house, letting the wind carry us on like the hollow bones of birds across the dirt, the rippling grasses. The yellow sky met a flock of starlings who dipped low along the plains, drawing pirouettes through the clouds and back down to the dust that carried us out above barbed wire. 

  Hank’s arms were wrapped around a great wooden column at the house’s southwestern corner, off the third story wooden buttress. In the wind his legs flapped side to side, but he held fast to a metal screw perhaps the length of three feet, under the crook of one armpit. He had not seen us yet, was still staring with great intensity at the sunlit side of his house, but I hollered and whooped and he wiggled his dangling feet back and forth to say yes, yes, in a minute. At the base of the hill where the road began, I waved my arms wildly, asking to come up, nearly crying with laughter.  

  My mouth fell open at the manner in which the big old bear was holding himself, gripping the side with only his big old hands, holding erect, dangling like so. We went on, slow. Paulie’s breath caught as we watched him, flapping side to side.  

  The great metal screw, I saw, was pierced through the old man’s heart. 

  I thought I oughtn’t look again. Then I glanced, bulging my eyes at him, trying to get a look at the color of his face. His feet dangled. 

—Oh, Joan.  

  Paul turned me around, holding fast my elbow with his index and thumb. Soft we walked back to where we came from, heads on right, straight on toward the wind and the hill. At the base of the elm tree I had a glance back at Hank, who was flapping side to side. Across the road was the Gregors’ place, and I turned to give Paulie a look that meant to say you ought. His eyes narrowed, and like the solemn soldier he gazed out across the dirt, loving me, nodding up and down.  

—I guess I’ll go and let Missus Gregor know.  

  His legs were stiff in his boots like he’d just gone pee there on the ground. 

—Go on, then. 

  With trepidation he went step by step up to the Gregors’ porch, slamming twice the palm of his hand onto their screen door and then fiercer onto the adjoining shutters. After a time Missus Gregor emerged, patting her hands up and down on a cotton apron and leaning down with her ear to Paulie’s lips. He was mumbling and she seemed to be asking him to speak up for God’s sake. Then she began to nod slowly, so as to calm them both down, kissing him softly on the forehead before going on inside.  

  He came back to me. He’d done it, he said, and we had better wait up on the hill to watch the cop cars come by.  

  I had a good look at Paul, who was standing upright like a young man. He frowned out at the valley, thumbs in his pockets, letting wind blow the stringy bits of his hair backward.    When they pulled Hank off the screw there was great gushing, like the Red Sea. Sorry, said Paul. Oh Jesus. He reached to cover my eyes, but I shook my head. There was nothing inside, I thought. Instead I walked on, down the hill. Head on straight, soft eyes. Mouth open, I remember.