HALLOWEEN WEEK 2024 CONTEST
First-place Winner
BY JULIA McCOY
Copyright is held by the author.
THE CLOUDS move in layers, the upper layer still, the lower in charging heavenly bodies. Virginia watches them through the window, her face angled and pressed into the glass. Occasionally, a vulture floats into view, drawing lazy circles in the currents above.
She reaches out for Mason’s shoulder and he flinches. Her hand returns to her lap, fingers clenched.
They’re moving again. The trunk of the Studebaker is laden with their meager possessions, just ten boxes worth. Last time, eleven. This time, she couldn’t bear the thought of repacking the dishes, so she left them at the apartment for the new renter to find.
Mason is eyes ahead, hands at ten and two. The radio doesn’t work anymore, so they listen to the sounds of the miles passing beneath their tread.
Virginia presses her palm into her leg. “It’s not that I don’t want to go with you. I’ll always go with you. I just . . . liked it there.
She’d made friends. A ladies quilting club. None of them had children, either. It was the nicest thing she’d had in years. One of her boxes held scraps of fabric, half-finished quilts and unconnected patches.
“We go where the money is.”
The money never stayed in one place for long. They’d find it in a new town, tucked in the middle of nowhere, but just for a little while. Six months, a year. Then Mason felt disrespected, under appreciated, bored. He quit, he was fired. The money moved. Somehow, Mason divined its whereabouts, and they were off again.
This time he’d been fired. He’d been making bouillon cubes, shoveling desiccated chicken broth into a grinder before it was pressed into tinfoil. She knew he’d been drinking before work, knew it was out of control, but didn’t try to stop him. What was the point?
“Where are we going then?”
“West.” He reaches out a hand and brushes her cheek. She feels it, but she also doesn’t. “I got a good feeling about west. You’ll see I’m right.”
She had talked to her twin sister Carol on the phone the night before.
“Your problem is, Ginny.” Carol always smoked on the phone. Each phrase was punctuated by a drag. “That you just don’t have the stones to end things. You need to face it head on. You’re acting just like dad.”
Carol had been married and divorced twice. The first was abusive, the second loveless. She’d lived with men on and off. Her son stopped speaking to her. And now she is forty and lives alone. Last Christmas, she’d walked out into the snow with no jacket or shoes and sat down on a park bench to smoke a cigarette and die. It was only a passing neighbour who’d managed to take her to the hospital before she froze. Virginia would never be like that.
“Worry about your own life, Carol.”
She hadn’t even mentioned the move before hanging up.
There’s a pop and the car tilts into a skid. Virginia grips the dash. Mason guides them into a stop, the car sideways, half on the road, half off.
The tire is blown. Virginia watches from the passenger seat as Mason paces the vehicle, stopping every few feet to inspect things from all angles.
“There’s no fixing it.” Virginia hides her words behind a hand so he can’t see her say it out loud. She has to say it out loud, but she can’t say it to him. “There’s no fixing anything.”
Mason makes two laps before opening the driver’s side door. “Tire’s busted. We don’t have a spare. I’ll have to walk back to the gas station. See if I can call a tow.”
“I’ll stay here. Maybe someone will pass by and I can flag them down.” She doesn’t want to walk with him the two miles to the station. She thinks he knows, but it’s a sound plan anyway so he agrees to it. She doesn’t watch him go, and by the time she turns to look, he’s just a speck on the road behind them.
Carol told her not to marry Mason on their wedding day. “Ginny, he’s no good for you.” She was buttoning the back of Virginia’s wedding dress. “I think you’re one of those women who needs to be alone.”
Cars pass, and Virginia lets them. She doesn’t want them to stop. Better they imagine it’s an empty car and move on. She stretches out in the back seat of the Studebaker, head tilted towards the window, and watches the vultures in the distance. The sun bakes her and she imagines that she might never move again, just let herself dry up into powder.
“Two percent of the water,” Mason had said, that first day he’d come home from work, holding a handful of bouillon. “Can you believe that? That’s all that’s left by the time they package it in those little squares of tinfoil.” His eyes were wide and grin broad. He lived for moments like these. New. Hopeful.
He unwrapped a cube and pressed it to her lips. Kissed her as it hung between them. The salt and spices dissolved in her mouth and clogged her taste buds. It still lingered after Mason had gone to sleep, and she was awake in their bed thinking about how long it would take Mason to lose that spark in his eye again. New never lasted.
In their years together they’d lived in by-the-week motels, rented basements, worker’s trailers. Each time, she adjusted. She swallowed her words and made things happen. She found work sweeping hair or checking meters. Then, they’d do it again. Virginia hated herself a little more each time she’d come home from work and see him packing boxes.
“Time to go, Virginia,” he’d say, not looking at her. “Gotta move on.”
She’d nod, take the box from him, and start packing things right.
***
Mason doesn’t return. It’s after four, the summer sun beginning its descent. Her mouth is dry, her lips tight. She rummages around in her purse for a mint, but only finds a lone cube of bouillon. After a moment’s thought, she sucks on it anyway. The salt reminds her of his skin, of running her tongue along him and tasting sweat and bouillon.
When she can no longer stomach her own thoughts, she gets out of the car. At first, she paces between the shoulder and the dirt, kicking rocks back into the dust with her kitten heel. She’ll have to call Carol when they get where they’re going. Not for the address. Carol doesn’t ask for that anymore. Still, she’ll want to know they’ve moved again. Carol likes to be proven right.
She gazes out down the highway, into the unknown west. At least forty vultures circle up ahead off to the right of the road. She can almost see where they land and wonders what creature lies dead beneath them. The brush dots the hilly landscape, leaving the view relatively unobscured. It’s not so far to walk and she should be able to find her way back. She abandons the car and walks into the brush, towards the vultures, stepping over yellow flowers and the holes of creatures living beneath the surface. When her heels start to sink into the dirt, she takes them off and holds them in her right hand, ignoring the sticky grasses clinging to her stockings. With her free hand, she hikes up her dress. A wind picks up and hides her light footprints and she smiles at the thought that no one can follow her.
It doesn’t bother her when she glances back and can no longer see the car. It’s just right there, hidden in the haze that forms from the rising heat. And besides, she doesn’t want to go back yet, anyway. She is focused on the vultures up ahead, now so close she can see the red leather heads, the curved beaks. There are not just vultures in the distance, but three wooden buildings, all about the same height, all abandoned. The faintest tracing of words can be seen above each: Bath House, Saloon, Bank. Vultures perch on the rotting wood, their heads stretching and shrinking back. In her curiosity, She almost doesn’t notice the man crouched in the dirt under the shade of the old Saloon.
His skin is the colour of unbleached bone, his clothing the same as the dirt beneath him. His hair is long and white and loose. The breeze blows in her direction and she can smell him, like rot and sweet mold. Her hair stands up on end, but still she walks closer.
There are vultures at his feet. She sees now that he holds a rag in his hand, spots of white still showing beneath rust red stains. He cleans the vulture’s beak with his rag, top and bottom beak and in between the two, then wipes the viscera from its face and neck.
“There you go, girl.” He pulls away, and the vulture lifts off, rising to join the cloud of vultures circling above them.
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
The man stands. He reminds her of her father. The way he never loved her. The way she wanted him to.
She finds that she’s said this out loud. The words have escaped her without her will, and she lays a hand on her throat.
“Of course, you never really had a father,” says the man. His voice is grass blowing in a dry wind.
“He left us. When he found out we were twins.” The words are hers but she can’t stop them. “I saw him once. On his deathbed. Told him who I was. He had never even bothered to find out my name.”
“I suppose you could say then, Virginia, that in my presence here, I am the opposite of your father in his absence. After all, I know you.”
“How did you know it’s a girl?” She repeats it just to know that she can still speak her own words if she chooses.
“Do you want something from me?”
Her voice catches. She swallows away the lump in her throat and rasps out a question. “Have you seen a man? My husband. He walked back to the gas station after our tire popped.
The man laughs, mouth wide open. The wind picks up and the smell of rot overwhelms her. The carcass, she thinks, the one all the vultures are eating. Surely the smell is coming from that. “That’s not the right question. You already know the answer to that.”
She does. She can’t stop. Though the man comes no closer, she feels his cold hands grasp at her chin and pull her mouth open and shut, shaping her lips to form the words. “Mason wouldn’t come this way. He wouldn’t even notice the vultures.”
The man smirks. “There’s a lot Mason doesn’t notice.”
Carol had said that to her once, after Virginia complained he didn’t notice how lonely she was. Virginia had knocked a vase to the floor and stormed out. Carol didn’t speak to her for a month after that, and only gave up her silence when Virginia had called her crying to tell her they were moving again.
“Do you want something from me?”
What does she want? Virginia isn’t sure. Does she want to be like Carol? Does she want Mason to stay put? Does she want someone else? Her mouth is open, but only dry huffs of air come out as she struggles to find the words.
The man leans down again. “Think about it.”
Another vulture lands at his side. It rubs its leathery head against the man’s chest and some of the blood wipes on the man’s clothing. He speaks to it in a low whisper as he cleans off its beak. When he’s done, he kisses the bird’s forehead.
Virginia’s throat is expanding with the effort to find the right words, the lump growing until she can’t fill her lungs. She has to say something, so she repeats her question. “How did you know it was a girl?” Her throat relaxes and she collapses, panting.
The vulture hasn’t flown away, but lets the man stroke its head with his index finger. His hand looks as though it’s been broken many times, and is now curled into a hook.
“Because I take care of them. I know them. I’d never forget them.”
“Like your children.”
“Not like that.” Vultures are joining them in the dirt now, surrounding them. “Shall we have a drink? You look like you need one. You can think more about my question.”
The man walks into the saloon behind him. The birds don’t follow, but land on the step leading up to the doors, leaving just enough gap for her to walk through. The smell is coming from here, from the porch of the saloon. She retches, but nothing comes up. The vultures nudge at her legs, leaving streaks of brown and red on her dress.
The man sits at the lone table. Otherwise, the room is empty. The floor is rotted through in many places, the roof filled with holes. Despite that, the light does not penetrate the darkness surrounding the table. The man kicks out a chair for her. An open bottle waits.
She sits on the damp chair and feels it soak through her dress into her skin. “Who are you?”
He leans back, hands resting on the table. “That wasn’t the topic of conversation, Virginia, now was it?”
She looks down, abashed. “No.”
“That’s right. We were talking about the vultures. You asked me if they were like my children. A curious comparison for you to make, considering your own circumstance.”
She remembers that moment. She and Mason in the doctor’s office, her wearing a hospital gown, him his coveralls. The doctor told them that she was incapable of having a child. She’ll never forget the way Mason’s face faded, the first time of many. And she, fighting to keep her face stoic.
“Happiest day of your life, wasn’t it?” The man grinned, his teeth still shards in his mouth. “You wanted to burst out laughing. Even with Mason devastated at your side. Then Mason said you could adopt. And you said no without explanation. The only no you’ve ever given. You never explained it to him. Just left him with that big, fat no for the rest of his life.”
She squeezes the bottle. “We weren’t ready.”
The man leans forward. “Liar. I give you back your voice, and you lie to me? That won’t do.”
Her throat squeezes again, except this time she can feel the knotted fingers wrapping around it, though his hands stay on the table. “I didn’t want children!”
“That’s right. You weren’t ready. Aren’t ready. Would never have been. Your child, adopted or born, you know how you would have felt about him. You would have known everything about him. Would have gone to every baseball game. Would have watched him walk down the aisle. Would have held his child in your arms. All the while knowing you couldn’t make yourself love him. That the poison your father had in his blood was yours, too. So unlike how you’d feel about your children, Virginia, I love my birds.”
“I’m afraid that’s why he never stops moving. I stay with him because I’m afraid I’m the reason he can never find a home.”
“And you’re right.”
Virginia drinks from the bottle, only registering as the last drops run out that it’s salt water.
“It’s time, Virginia.”
The man holds out a hand and she takes it, squeezing his fingers, letting him lead her out to the porch. The vultures have all landed and stand wing to wing, jostling. He walks her off the porch back into the sunlight, now starting to fade with late afternoon. There is no more smell of rot now, just sweet.
“Do you want something from me?” He reaches out and strokes her hair.
What does she want? Does she want Mason to find a home? Does she want to leave him? Does she want a new life?
“Virginia, what do you want from me?”
“I don’t want to face this.” The words are hers. She sobs, and he wraps his arms around her, pulling her in close.
“I can do that, Virginia. I can give you what you want.” She leans her face into his shoulder, feeling the sharpness of his bones through his clothing. He kisses her forehead, and her body slumps against him, feels herself slide down and hit the dirt, and all is darkness.
Then her eyes open again. New eyes, sharper, better. She tilts her leathery head to look up at the man and loves him. Looks at the ones around her. Her flock. She smells the sweet and rot intermingled, one and the same. The man strokes her head, then the flock takes off and she follows them into the circular currents above.
In the far off distance, she sees another man. Not the man she loves, but a man she knew once. A man she left behind. He is calling out for someone who no longer exists.
The one she loves is calling her to him. How she delights at his voice. He is calling her to a feast prepared just for her. There, below, a discarded creature is left to rot in the shadow of the saloon. A forgotten, pitiable woman loved by no one. Her first meal in this new body. She has never wanted so badly to eat.
***
Julia Mccoy is a middle school English teacher in Boise, Idaho. When not spending her time teaching eighth graders verbals, she enjoys writing, biking, and travelling. She has several stories published in a local anthology put out by The Cabin writing center.