Where She Stands

Giantdog, raggedy old mule, breathes in the yellow afternoon tied to a fence in front of a two-story house outside of Ganderville. It is September and Freddy is hunting sparrows with an old wood gun. Dressed strictly in black—beret, turtleneck and slacks—Freddy looks, from far away, like a skinny, oversized crow in the field. He walks slowly over the grass and aims his rifle at the sky. His wife Jeppa takes a picture.

Freddy is just posing for Jeppa, actually. It's a broken gun, empty of bullets. The trigger is loose and Freddy’s shirt fills up with wind. Jeppa’s red-checked hair scarf becomes a kite and she runs after it, bumbly like a kitten. “Freddy, stay right where you are.”

He watches the kite tease her on the wind, staying just out of reach as she jumps with her nose and mouth scrunched together. She is determined—always has been. The kite escapes to a tree limb and hangs on a bough too high for her to reach.

“Freddy, untie Giantdog and send him over,” Jeppa calls, brushing the loose hairs from her mouth and eyes.

With his hands in his pockets, Freddy walks toward the house. He goes to the fence, loosens the mangled rope, and gently taps the mule into motion. An old mule, hips swaying with every step and head hung low to watch its moving shadow on the grass.

Freddy follows Giantdog’s slow travel and notices the sun suspended just above the treeline. “It could go either up or down,” he thinks. He sees Jeppa waiting by the tree for Giantdog. Her hair scarf still fluttering on a limb ten feet off the ground.

“Come on old mule, you move so slow.”

Freddy is kicking dirt into the air. The bottom step leading to the porch is broken. He wonders if he has enough wood and nails to fix it. Probably not. He’s not really in the mood to fix anything anyway. The house, crab color red, ready to scuttle, was left to him thirty-two years ago in a letter from his mother.

“…there are diamonds in Africa, dear Freddy. Our feet are burning to travel. Please come home and save the house from the rodents. Judge Witteker and his wife will be joining our expedition and you might consider justice a calling. This town needs it! All arrangements will be made and we would be very proud of our son, the Judge. Your father and I worry how you will feed yourself with only your cello…”

The sound of the sparrows rustling and the weight of Sunday afternoon fills him with dread. Things to do and things to be, his head is hot and he is tired of posing for pictures. Oh, Jeppa. There is work tomorrow, the step is rotted out, and he, begin the judge, knows somewhere, in the middle of his mind, he is missing something. He sits down on the broken step, looks out, and sees Jeppa trying to climb the mule—one foot in a rope stirrup, her hands grabbing Giantdog’s ratty mane.

She, with one leg up, reminds him of a long time ago when they were young. Fierce and ready to leave Ganderville for good, Jeppa stopped to fix her sock on a park bench. Freddy had just returned from music school in answer to his mother’s letter. He was sitting on a street curb watching people go in and out of the Main Street shops and Jeppa, stomping out of the bank, had one sock up to her knee and the other gathered around her ankle. Her camera was slung from shoulder to hip and Freddy was in love.

They soon made the crab color house and the field and the stream their home. In the daytime, Freddy pounded a judge’s gavel and Jeppa wore a pharmacy smock and they were mostly happy. They bought chickens and made a wind chime out of spoons.

Freddy looks up at the spoons, now caked in rust, and feels for a pulse on his wrist. “I sputter like an old car,” he thinks. A breeze sweeps the spoons in a dull clatter.

The mule brays and wobbles as Jeppa tries to stand up. “If you don’t hush and stay still, I’ll stick you in a sack full of fire ants and all you’ll want is river.” Giantdog stays. The bees sing with the old electricity line brushing the top of the tree. Jeppa stands two feet on the back of the mule and calls to Freddy: “Get the camera. We’ll send this one to all the family this Christmas.” She raises one hand into a soldier’s solute and models an intense stare.

Watching her pose, Freddy wonders what fires her wild mind. She works at a pharmacy and plays with a camera. Does she think of me? Skinny old judge. Model for her greeting card business. Freddy has been on many of Jeppa’s greeting card covers—a carpenter, a fisherman, a dancer. Today, a hunter.

“I think I’ll be able to sell a lot of this one at the pharmacy,” she calls. her soldier stare has become more intense. A shadow covers the top half of her densely wrinkled face. “Hurry, Freddy, Giantdog’s back is sinking. Darn mule.” Freddy notices the hair scarf fluttering above Jeppa’s head. He is sure she’s forgotten all about it.

With a faraway mind, Freddy goes for the camera she’s holding out to him and begins to whistle. A field mouse listens in the grass and Giantdog leans into the tree. It’s an old coal mining song his father used to sing and some parts he forgets, but it makes him feel good and he whistles a little louder. He’s taking his time and the mule’s knees begin to bend. Close to breaking, the mule decides suddenly to kick—kick this thing off his back! He jerks away from the tree, jumping, and Jeppa tumbles to the ground. A dust cloud rises around her body. Something in the grass scurries away and Giantdog is alive! He throws his back legs into the air and shows his big teeth to the wind. Jeppa is yelping and Freddy begins to laugh. It’s like a party all full of surprise!

Freddy’s heart, like the mule, is kicking. He has caught something wild wanting air. He wants to scrape and gnaw the tree with his teeth. He has a camera! To squeeze pictures out, stealing snapshots of Jeppa on her back, skirt flipped up and her legs crossed. She is quiet against the hungry click, advance. And again. Jeppa, unaware, the bees lulling her. He is raging, erasing all the years, breaking the sound of Jeppa’s voice that whips him: “Freddy!” The crab color house crumbles in his mind.

The roll of film is all finished. Jeppa is crying now. Her cheek to the ground, the tears slide through the folds in her skin and into the dirt. She looks stunned, her eyes fixed on the roots of the tree. Strings of mild sunlight move through the branches above while she lies in a shadow that signals it’s late in the day. It is dusk time and the field grows cool and wet.

Freddy sees her body jerk with whimpers. He is exhausted and numb. Feels like he’s done something bad. But he can’t yet move toward her. Comfort her with warm hands. Something holds him back. He is distracted by the mule’s rough singing. Freddy turns and stares at the animal’s dusk lit silhouette—a sunken back curved like a fingernail moon. “Like a dream,” Freddy thinks. And he is calm. Very calm. The harsh Sunday sun washed away. Jeppa’s tears mix with the dirt.

“Freddy, will you?” Her words are drawn out and weak sounding, softened by crying. Freddy doesn’t understand what she means, but he kneels to the ground and moves the wet hair off her face. “She is withered and little,” he thinks, “a string of bones.” Jeppa closes her eyes and opens them slowly like some animal just born or just dying.

He wants now to warm her and lies down next to her, lays his arm over her waist. She turns her hips toward him and whimpers softly as he says “shhh” “shhh” like a lullaby. Freddy holds her. The ground is hard and full of chill, but they soon fall asleep. A jumble of bone sticks on the ground, tree roots passing underneath and the night is close.

As the air grows colder, their bodies move closer. But there is not enough flesh to keep warm. A small wind flies near to the ground and enters through holes in their clothes. At the neck, the arms—the cuffs around the ankles. There is something even colder, though, about the idea of getting up and moving into the house. So after brief turns of restlessness, Freddy and Jeppa sleep again, dreaming to the rhythm of the crickets.

chirp. chirp. chirp.

“We’ve always had music,” Freddy whispers. And there is something sweet in this uncomfortable sleep. A challenge and transcendence. Being one with the shape of the night.

Freddy kisses Jeppa’s fragile hands. Resting in a hard cradle of tree roots and dirt, his thought swim around in the blue night frame and the autumn leaves begin to fall. “How quickly things turn,” he thinks.

The house is dark. Not a light on. Only the half-moon to show its outline—the corners cold and crisp. “We will have melon in the morning. And her jasmine tea.” Freddy imagines a perfect peace, eating melon with Jeppa, the sun rising over the hill. With clean, fresh eyes they’ll watch the sun float up and up like a fat balloon. Sit on the porch step made of hard new wood. He will fix it! Build it all over again. And he will refresh Giantdog, wash the mule. He can hardly sleep for the thoughts that jump. This awakening in his blood. And Jeppa will be so happy. She will think him loving and strong.

Freddy has given up on sleep, letting his thoughts travel that strange distance of time in the night that at once seems long, but is always too short when the sun comes up.

A pale yellow stripe of light lines the hilltops across the road. Freddy lifts his head to watch the sun rise, bald and new, to share the sky with the moon for a moment. “It is the most fragile hour,” he thinks, “between dreams and waking—before anyone else is awake.” He wants to wake Jeppa. And the moon slips away. He doesn’t even see it go.

“Jeppa, look. The sun. It’s beautiful. Wake up.” But she sleeps still. And Freddy, propped on his elbows, is staring at the sun-striped hill. His fingers stirring in the dirt. Something crawls over his hand and he looks down. It’s an ant. And then another. He has interrupted an ant trail with his fidgeting fingers. But the ants keep marching in order. He follows the line they’ve made over and around the roots of the tree. A path on dirt and knotted wood and then to Jeppa’s leg.

The ants are crawling up Jeppa’s leg. Around the curve of her kneecap and up underneath the hem of her dress. The ants keep going. Where are they going? “Jeppa!” He begins furiously brushing them from her leg, but they keep moving, trying to fill in the gaps he makes. Freddy is panicking. He flips up her skirt and the ants continue, two by two, over her belly, cold now. Her thighs and belly are cold. The ants go up and up —they march up her neck in terrifying order. And into her ear.

All confused and sick with Jeppa not waking, he shakes her frantically. Her whole body stays in the shape she was sleeping in. Her body stiff and still, something pulls from his the grossest cry—savage and boundless. A beast sound followed by a cough and a choke. The mule responds by waking, snorting. “Stupid mule! Dumb mangy bastard!” His words stretch the distance of the field. How could he not feel her so cold in the night? How could he not tell?

“not true not true not true”

Freddy’s face is all wet and red, eyes open wide. “JEPPA!” he squeezes her arm and it is cold. He pulls her hair, but it does not change the expression on her face. Her eyes are only half-closed. And her mouth smiles a little. “Oh she must be so cold,” he thinks. Freddy lifts the turtleneck, flat with static, over his arms and head and lays it on Jeppa’s chest, tucking the sleeves under her shoulders and into the dirt. Bare-chested, he lowers himself onto his wife’s body. It feels like a small bone statue and he sobs. His body pushes hers into the ground and she gets dusty.

Freddy is so tired now. He falls asleep on top of his wife, dreaming wildly. Jeppa stares at him from across a long wooden table in the middle of a cornfield. She is very young with brown hair in braids and she holds up pictures of Freddy from a long time ago like flash cards. Like a test. But just as he begins to understand the photograph, to see it clearly, she holds up another. And another. It overwhelms him and he crawls across the table with his hand outstretched, wanting to grab the pictures away from Jeppa. To hold them longer. She smiles and winks at him and then turns into a white bird and sails into Freddy’s mouth. he is on his knees on a wooden table, swallowing a bird.

The mule is making noise. The harshness of it wakes Freddy. Body part by body part, he feels himself on top of Jeppa. His pelvis sealed to her thigh. His chest pressed into her ribs. He is lying on a dead woman. He jumps up. Dusts his pants off. Shakes himself. To get rid of this dream. His mouth is dry, stuffed with feathers. Something to drink. Quickly. He has to find water. Wash everything down and clean himself.

The birds up in the tree distract Freddy from his thirsty thoughts. Their calls and persistent stirring bother him. He looks up, but all he sees are branches and leaves. He wants the noise to stop, but can’t find the birds. He jumps to shake the tree. Four birds fly out. Freddy jumps again and hangs from a limb until it snaps in two. he lands on his feet, teetering. More birds scatter into the sky and the tree is silent for a moment. Freddy gathers his balance, holding the broken branch and looks down to see Jeppa. She is covered in dust. Her hair is all messy like a rag doll and he doesn’t know what to do.

Frantic agony. The birds return to the tree and his thirst chokes him. But Freddy doesn’t want to go into the house for water. Full of her things, the house is her. The photographs on the walls. The creaking staircase leading to their bedroom. The breakfast tray messy with toast corners and grapefruit skin. The bathtub and the kitchen sink faucets dripping like two metronomes. The kitchen cupboards stacked, meticulously, alphabetically, with cans of soup and fruit.

Freddy lays the branch he is holding over Jeppa’s feet. He jumps up and snaps another one down. Places it across her legs. Jumps again and again and gets more wood. A branch over her belly, her breasts. He lays the sticks perpendicular to her length. Finishes with a branch covering her small face. But pieces of her show through the leaves. A pathetic burial that the wind will blow off. He gathers stones from the field and tries to weigh the limbs down. A pile of branches, leaves and stone. A scatter of gray hair sticking out at one end. Freddy squats and turns Jeppa’s hair around his fingers and pulls. Tears overwhelm him. They mix with the dirt and dampen her hair. He can’t stand this. Can’t stand it! And pulls back the branches from her face. The tears distorting the line of her nose and blurring the square of her jaw. And now he remembers the pictures he took of her when she was hurting.

Sick man. Bad man.

Freddy grabs the camera off the ground and throws it with all his muscle to the tree. The camera chips some trunk wood and falls. He picks it up and throws it again. Getting mad. So angry. Again and again, he aims it at the tree. The lens breaks. Freddy takes a piece of glass and pulls it over his arm, teasing the blood. He presses down to cut open the skin. Maybe a bird will fly out. Bring something to life in trade for his. “It should be me on the ground.”

“It should be me.”

He thinks he hears Jeppa’s voice in the wind. “Jeppa?” Her body on the ground. Not buried, but under a leaf pile. She will grow into a tree. And birds will perch. Oh, Jeppa.

Freddy is numb now, his arm divided with a drying line of blood. He walks away. Away from the tree, away from Jeppa. His mouth is open, lazy jawbone, heavy with guilt. Guilt. It rattles in his hard skull. He is a lifeless rattle, walking toward Giantdog. “Pathetic animal.”

Freddy, black pants and bare chest, gets up on the mule and kicks it into motion. Bent with disgust, he rests his head between Giantdog’s ears on the dirty mane. The sun presses down on them as they move toward the road in front of the house. No shade. And the telephone lines are buzzing. It’s going to be a hot day and the mule heads south, away from town, toward the river.

Freddy feels his head bobbing. He realizes he has fallen asleep and tastes mule hair in his mouth. “Water. Water.” It is mid-afternoon now. They’ve probably gone six miles. The river is so close he can hear it. And the sound of someone whistling. Freddy raises his heavy head and sees a man on the opposite side of the road holding a fishing pole pointed in the air. The man is staring at Freddy and whistling “Oh Susanna” through a yellow waterfall mustache. He sets down his fish bucket and crosses the road toward Freddy and the mule and keeps up the song. Freddy puts his head down on Giantdog again.

“I’m Sam. And you look mighty peculiar sitting here on this mule. I’ve never seen a mule saddled up before. But then I haven’t traveled much around here. Got a special job driving this lady three hours from the airport to her cabin. It’s a nice cabin, but then she’s stuck there without a car. Without any way of getting anywhere, but then maybe she has a mule too. I should consider it. My taxi broke down a little ways back. Damn gasket. I bet a mule won’t break down. It’s a good thing I always bring my fishing pole with me though. You never catch me twiddling my thumbs. Hey now, what’s this? Sir, you got blood all up and down your arm. You look awful and so does your animal. Where’ve you been? Are you lost?”

Sam keeps talking. The words pile up in Freddy’s ears without meaning. He keeps his head down. Giantdog starts to move again. He is being led by Sam toward the river.

“We’re gonna wash you up. Now, I heard on the radio on the ride out here this preacher calling me some kind of sinner. And he was so ferocious about the whole thing. It started to make me feel really low for a while, but then it occurred to me that I don’t believe any of that fallen business. What does that mean? Fallen. It doesn’t make any sense because, if anything, I was raised up. You thirsty?”

Sam hands Freddy his thermos of water. Freddy leans his mouth on the rim. His head is so heavy, it’s hard to tilt it back to drink and the small wet that touches his tongue makes him sick. Reminds him that his insides are shriveling. He can taste the dust of his age. And what is this man saying? Will he stop talking? This endless dribble through a yellow mustache.

The thee move off the road into a patch of trees and bushes that lead to the river. It is dense and all shade. Relief from the raging sun. Freddy’s back is all burnt and so is the bald moon shape on his head. He tries to sit up straight, but it feels like his stiff-bone back will break and his skin will split. Sam has started whistling again, but this time it’s Suwanee River. He ties Giantdog to a tree.

The mule kicks. Freddy is almost bounced off, but Sam grabs him under the arms and helps him to the ground. “Now that’s a hard-minded mule,” Sam says. “Let’s go wash in the river.” Freddy makes no gesture or sound. His center is completely scattered like mindless ash. He drags his feet to the river and goes in. “Be careful now, sir,” says Sam. The cold water pushes slowly around the big rocks, around his black trousers. A small wind makes the leaves fall into the water. One leaf lands on Freddy’s head where he’s going bald. It stays there until a new breeze steals it away. Over by the tree, Sam is petting Giantdog, trying to calm him. “Seems like a storm might come. It’s getting a little dark. And this mule here knows something we don’t. He’s hard to keep still.”

Freddy hears none of this. He turns his body to face downstream and bows his head. He tries hard to picture Jeppa. But nothing. He sits in the shallow water and leans back, his head dividing the quickening current. His hands grab the rocks on either side so he’s not pushed along. He is almost floating, and this feels good.

Freddy opens his eyes wide. Tree boughs above him shake to and fro as if saying “no” with the wind. He thinks they’re saying no, but tries to look beyond them to the sky. Tries to see Jeppa again. Water smoothing over his head. Cool water. To be a fish right now. To swim away on the memory of water. Or to be without memory.

Something like a kite sails close over Freddy’s head and it wakes him from his fish dreams. He tries to follow it, lifting his neck out of the water. His eyes begin to focus on what is now hanging on a tree branch a few feet downstream. Suddenly, he recognizes what it is. It’s Jeppa’s hairscarf! Red-checked. “Jeppa!”

He switches his legs under his body and paddles frantically toward it, splashing like a dog. The water is too shallow so he stands, falls on the slippery rocks. Stands again and stumbles forward. His hands outstretched, reaching, he is breathless. The wind chills his wet back. Frantic. The wind! It lifts the hairscarf and teases him, carrying Jeppa just out of reach. He wants it so badly. He falls again. Gulps river water.

When Freddy pulls himself up, the hairscarf is gone. The wind has stopped now and everything is quiet. It feels as if the elevation has changed, the air thinner. And his head is dazed and light with the memory of love’s call.