Cloven Hooves. Megan Lindholm

there is the head.

      The door thuds behind my father and I am alone in the dark. I dare not even go in to fetch Rinky for company, for he would be too interested in the head and guts. He’d only make the task harder. I snatch up the black polyethylene sheeting and start off toward the garden.

      A head is not as big as a hindquarter, but it is an awkward shape, and heavier than you might think. The best way to lift one is to grip it by the bases of both ears, keeping the hacked-off neck turned away. The nose is pressed to my chest, the empty jaws gape tonguelessly. Even in the frigid air, the smell of moose and blood is strong. I turn quickly, letting go of the ears so that the momentum of my turn flings the head neatly onto the polyethylene sheet. I diaper the head up in the sheet, leaving myself one corner to use as a handle.

      The night is clear and cold. I turn my back to the house with its warm yellow windows, and I pull. The head rides along at my heels as I leave the yard and the tire-packed snow of the driveway and enter the woods. I have already decided where I am going.

      I follow one of my favorite trails. The trees are cottonwood and birch, alder and diamond willow. My path winds among them. Smaller bushes claw briefly at my burden, but don’t manage to rip the plastic. I drag it on, leaving a peculiar wrinkled trail, like the path of a giant worm. The head pulls easily, the polyethylene gliding over the snow. I am able to walk at a normal pace, and fifteen minutes later I am where I wish to be.

      Here there are spruce trees, sudden groves of them in the deciduous forest. For some reason, they grow in irregular huddles, in groups of ten and fourteen and nine. But almost always in the center of each huddle is a tiny clear space where no trees grow. I get down on my knees and crawl beneath the outer swoop of branches, past a trunk, and here the snow is shallower, for the upper branches have caught most of it. Then out again, through deeper snow, and I am suddenly inside the grove. A moat of snow and a wall of needled branches surround me. Looking straight up, I can see the black sky and the Dipper hung on it. Unceremoniously, I dump the head here and leave it. I wad the black plastic up under my arm and crawl out again. The walk home seems longer than the walk here. The woods seem lonelier and darker, and I am shivering before the lights of the house crack through the trees to beckon me on.

      My father is in the bathtub, my mother is reading in bed when I come in. No one calls out or questions me. No one save Rinky greets me, and he greets me with a wriggle of delight, his hackles rising excitedly at my blood smell. I shed my outer clothing by the door, and do not turn on the light as I go down the stairs. Everyone down here is asleep, vague blanketed shapes like furniture in storage. I am still shivering when I strip in the darkened basement and climb into bed. Rinky is snorting and rooting through my bloodied clothing as I fall asleep, my head cradled on arms and hands that still smell of sweet, sticky blood. I dream of bright white sunlight on the snow, and a faun gouging the frosted brown eyes from a moose skull and slipping them into his mouth. It is a good dream, and I smile in my sleep.

       FIVE

      Tacoma

      The Farm

      June 1976

      Ten or fifteen years ago, the farm was a dairy farm. And the room that I stand in now was genteelly referred to as the milking parlor. Now it is a living room, and is part of what Mother Maurie calls “the little house” as opposed to her own “big house.” When she speaks of it to company, she calls it “the guest cottage,” but to her own family she calls it “the little house.” I find this an interesting dichotomy. Lately I find interesting dichotomies in many things Mother Maurie says.

      It is like a cancer, growing in me, a constant hidden nastiness I can no longer control. A little secret anger, like red eyes in the dark. When I first came down to visit, and was shown the many ways in which the Potter women were vastly superior to me, I was willing to concede to them. It was the easiest path. It was also hard to argue. I cannot shop, I do not color coordinate, I have never ordered from the Avon Lady or hostessed a Tupperware party. I was willing to be unschooled and unsophisticated, the country mouse come down from her little Alaskan cabin to be overawed by the style and gaiety of the life in the Lower Forty-Eight. A week, a month, or even two, I could sustain the proper humility. But now it is all wearing thin. I am becoming defensive about my inferiority, protective of it. I will be as I am. I am also beginning to suspect their veneer may be only contac paper. The Avon fragrances are beginning to smell suspiciously like air freshener. My anger is a simmering acid thing, eating me from the inside out, whetting my tongue, putting cruel edges on my every thought.

      But that is my problem, not Mother Maurie’s. And this living room is also my problem. We have been guests here since March. It is a bright and cheerful little place, cuter than the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs. There are big windows with wispy white curtains that let the bright sun spill in onto the white tiled floors. The furniture is white wicker and yellow cushions. There is a little glass-topped table, too unbearably cute to be useful, homey little rugs scattered everywhere, and two kerosene lamps with colored water in them instead of kerosene.

      The kitchen is even better. There is a tiny white range, with a little red ceramic kettle sitting on it. The kettle is a masterpiece of Woolworth’s engineering, flawlessly useless, with a spout that dribbles and a body that holds less than three cups of water. Next to it, centered on the range, is a spoon holder shaped like a yellow ducky. The tiny kitchen table has a red-checkered oilcloth on it. There are plaques on the wall that say things about the Number One Cook, and For This I Went to College, and No Matter Where I Serve My Guests, They Seem to Like My Kitchen Best. There is a cookie jar shaped like a fat pink piggy. The dishes in the cupboards are sturdy plastic with jolly red roosters on every plate.

      The bedroom is okay. The patchwork quilt came from Sears, and the patches are only a pattern, but I can forgive that. I can even forgive the lampshades with the covered bridges painted on them, and the bases of the lamps that are shaped like old-fashioned pumps.

      What I cannot forgive is the bathroom. The theme seems to be that defecating children are cute. On a plaque over the toilet, a curly-haired cherub squats on a potty. There is also an adorable little statuette of a small boy with his bib coveralls around his ankles and a look of concentration on his pink-cheeked face as he sits on his little ceramic toilet. Even the toilet has theme clothing. The tank sweater and lid hat match, both depicting a little boy, his innocent bare butt toward us as he “waters mother’s flowers.” There is even an ashtray shaped like a toilet, with the motto “put your dead butts here” on it. The final touch is a tall book that hangs on a chain by the toilet. The cover proclaims it as Poems for the John. Few things are more excruciating than to be trying to make breakfast in a cutesy kitchen, and to have one’s spouse holler from the john, “Hey, honey, listen to this one.” Lately, Tom has begun to subject me to this.

      It is a trap I have fallen into, all unawares. Even as we carried our suitcases in, Mother Maurie painstakingly pointed out to me that the furniture was “practically new, not a scratch on it.” She walked me through the guest house, showing me all its marvels, and requiring me to chuckle appreciatively as she giggled over the “naughty but cute” bathroom things. Steffie did the decorating, she told me. Steffie may someday take some classes in interior decorating, she seems to have such a flair for it. Some of the ideas, she confided, Steffie got from magazines, but most of it came right out of her own head. And isn’t that amazing?

      And of course Mother Maurie knows she can trust me to keep it neat as a pin, and to make sure “that terrible Tom” takes his boots off before he comes in, and don’t let “that rascal Teddy” roughhouse all over the furniture, it would just break Steffie’s heart if anything happened to this place, all the work she put into it to make it just as cute as a doll’s house … And I nodded and blithely agreed, for such an agreement seems easy when you are only planning to stay a month and may not even unpack your suitcase all the way.

      But that was March and it is June. Useless to whimper for my sturdy little house in the woods near Ace Lake on the Old Nenana Road. Foolish to think of a place with painted plywood floors, and a boot-scraper driven into the ground outside the door. I miss