Mudwoman. Joyce Carol Oates

part-conscious child tries to open her eyes. The right eye is swollen shut but the left eye opens—just barely—there’s a flutter of eyelashes—and the little fish-mouth is pursed to breathe, to breathe and to whimper as if wakening to life as Suttis carries her to shore stumbling and grunting and at the embankment lays her carefully down and climbs up out of the mud and removes his khaki jacket to wrap her in, clumsily; seeing that she is near-naked, in what appears to be the remnants of a torn paper nightgown all matted with mud, slick and glistening with mud and there is mud caked on the child’s shaved head amid sores, scabs, bruises and so little evidence of hair, no one could have said what color the child’s hair is.

      “Hey! You’re gonna be okay. S’ttis’s got you now.”

      Such pity mixed with hope Suttis feels, he has rarely felt in his life. Carrying the whimpering mud-child wrapped in his jacket, in his arms back along the embankment and to the road and along the road three miles to the small riverside town called Rapids murmuring to the shivering mud-child in the tone of one of his young-mother sisters or cousins—not actual words which Suttis can’t recall but the tone of the words—soothing, comforting—for in his heart it will seem a certainty that the King of the Crows had chosen Suttis Coldham to rescue the mud-child not because Suttis Coldham happened to be close by but because of all men, Suttis Coldham was singled out for the task.

      He was the chosen one. Suttis Coldham, that nobody gave a God damn for, before. Without him, the child would not be rescued.

      Somewhere between the mudflats and the small town called Rapids, the King of the Crows has vanished.

      The sign is RAPIDS POP. 370. Suttis sees this, every time Suttis thinks there’s too many people here he couldn’t count by name. Nor any of the Coldhams could. Not by a long shot.

      First he’s seen here is by a farmer in a pickup truck braking to a stop and in the truck-bed a loud-barking dog. And out of the Gulf gas station several men—he thinks he maybe knows, or should know their faces, or their names—come running astonished and appalled.

      Suttis Coldham, Amos Coldham’s son. Never grew up right in his mind, poor bastard.

      Now more of them come running to Suttis in the road. Suttis carrying the little mudgirl wrapped in a muddied jacket in his arms, in the road.

      A little girl utterly unknown to them, the child of strangers—so young!—covered in mud?

      Amid the excitement Suttis backs off dazed, confused. Trying to explain—stammering—the King of the Crows that called to him when he was checking his traps on the river … First he’d seen a doll, old rubber doll in the mudflat—then he’d looked up and seen …

      Quickly the barely breathing mud-child is removed from Suttis’s arms. There are women now—women’s voices shrill and indignant. The child is borne to the nearest house to be undressed, examined, gently bathed and dressed in clean clothing and in the roadway Suttis feels the loss—the mud-child was his. And now—the mud-child has been taken from him.

      Harshly Suttis is being asked where did he find the child? Who is the child? Where are her parents? Her mother? What has happened to her?

      So hard Suttis is trying to speak, the words come out choked and stammering.

      Soon, a Beechum County sheriff’s vehicle arrives braking to a stop.

      In the roadway Suttis Coldham stands shivering in shirtsleeves, trousers muddied to the thighs and mud-splotches on his arms, face. Suttis has a narrow weasel-face like something pinched in a vise and a melted-away chin exposing front teeth and the gap between teeth near-wide enough to be a missing tooth and Suttis is dazed and excited and trembling and talking—never in his life has Suttis been so important—never drawn so much attention—like someone on TV. So many people surrounding him, so suddenly!—and so many questions …

      Rare for Suttis to speak more than a few words and these quick-mumbled words to a family member and so Suttis has no way of measuring speech—a cascade of words spills from his lips—but Suttis knows very few words and so must repeat his words nor does Suttis know how to stop talking, once he has begun—like running-sliding down a steep incline, once you start you can’t stop. Lucky for Suttis one of the onlookers is a Coldham cousin who identifies him—insists that if Suttis says he found the child in the mudflat, that is where Suttis found the child—for Suttis isn’t one who would take a child—Suttis is simple and honest as a child himself and would never do harm, not ever to anyone—Suttis always tells the truth.

      In a Beechum County sheriff’s vehicle the nameless little girl is taken to the hospital sixty miles away in Carthage where it is determined that she is suffering from pneumonia, malnutrition, lacerations and bruising, shock. For some weeks it isn’t certain that the little girl will survive and during these weeks, and for some time to follow, the little girl is mute as if her vocal cords have been severed to render her speechless.

      Beaver, muskrat, mink, fox and lynx and raccoons he trapped in all seasons. How many beautiful furred creatures wounded, mangled and killed in the Coldham traps, and their pelts sold by Suttis’s father. And it is the child in the mudflat Suttis Coldham will recall and cherish through his life.

      In bed in his twitchy sleep cherishing the crinkly-purple scarf he’d found on the embankment, still bearing a residue of dirt though he’d washed it with care and smoothed it with the edge of his hand to place beneath the flat sweat-soaked pillow, in secret.

      Mudwoman Confronts an Enemy.

       Mudwoman’s Triumph.

      March 2003

      Must ready yourself. Hurry!

      But there was no way she could ready herself for this.

      “I don’t wish to accuse anyone.”

      His name was Alexander Stirk. He was twenty years old. Formally and bravely he spoke. For his small prim child’s mouth had been kicked, torn and bloodied. His remaining good eye—the other was swollen shut, grotesquely bruised like a rotted fruit—was fixed on M.R. with hypnotic intensity as if daring her to look away.

      “Though I have, as you know, President Neukirchen—numerous enemies here on campus.”

      President Neukirchen. With such exaggerated respect this name was uttered, M.R. felt a tinge of unease—Is he mocking me?

      M.R. decided no, that wasn’t possible. Alexander Stirk could not mistake M.R.’s attentiveness to him for anything other than sympathy.

      His head was partly bandaged, with the look of a turban gone askew. His wire-rimmed glasses were crooked on his nose because of the bandage and the left lens had a hairline crack. In the thin reproachful voice of one accusing an elder of an obscure hurt he spoke calmly, deliberately. For he had a genuine grievance, he’d been martyred for his beliefs. He’d hobbled into the president’s office using a single aluminum crutch that was leaning now against the front corner of the president’s desk in a pose of nonchalance.

      M.R.’s heart went out to Stirk—he was so small.

      “That is—President Neukirchen—there are many individuals among both the undergraduate and the graduate student body—and faculty members as well—who have defined themselves as ‘enemies’ specifically of Alexander Stirk as well as ‘enemies’ of the conservative movement on campus. You know their names by now, or should—Professor Kroll has seen to that, I think.”

      Kroll. M.R. smiled just a little harder, feeling blood rush into her face.

      “Of these self-defined ‘enemies’ I’m not able to judge how many would actually wish ‘Alexander Stirk’ harm, apart from the usual verbal abuse. And how many, among these, would be actively involved in actually harming me.”

      Stirk smiled with disarming candor. Or seeming candor. M.R. smiled more painfully.

      She’d invited Stirk to her office, to speak with her in private. She wanted the young man to know how concerned she was for him, and