I placed another bucket on the floor, and picked up the first, which was filled to the brim with water. The rain had stopped, leaving a panorama of yellow, open sky. I emptied the bucket on the side of the house, and came back in.
It was not much warmer within than without. The fire burned low in the grate, crackling and sputtering smoke with its slow demise.
I wasn’t sure how Jeremiah managed to leave the cabin without waking me. The air whipped through the wounds of the old house, sighing.
This place is its own spirit. It is desolate. It moans and weeps, like a child that no one would claim. I feel the displeasure of this land. It does not want us here.
One night, laying awake beneath covers and a patchwork quilt, I told Jeremiah what I thought about the house, about the land here. He sighed. But he did not laugh, the thing that I expected him to do.
“You ever regret us coming West?” he asked instead.
I said nothing. To answer that question was to admit things that should not be spoken.
Those voices were whistling in the wind, and I heard them tell me to keep my tongue. I’d believed the stories men told of gold and riches as much, if not more than Jeremiah did. But we got to California too late. Either the gold was gone, pulled up from the Earth’s belly by greedy hands, or worse yet, never existed at all.
I couldn’t tell him that despite the natural beauty of this place, there was a cruelty here. There were men that died in accidents, prospectors that went mad looking for gold. And worse.
I would say I wanted to go back home, but there was nothing waiting for us there anymore. No home, and precious little family to help us.
“I thought so, Penelope.” Jeremiah said quietly.
***
What work would he find on a wet morning such as this?
So Jeremiah had left without benefit of a decent meal or morning coffee.
I put the stove on, warming the place as much as I could, and started a pot of coffee.
Jeremiah’s mud covered boots stuck out from under the bed. His only pair of shoes.
I screamed, and the wind seemed to reply, causing a shudder of cold air to ripple through the house.
I ran outside.
The rain had left the ground muddy, and my footsteps were slowed. There were no other houses for nearly a mile. I looked towards the trees. The horizon was gray and rippled with the swell of mountains in the distance.
I heard it before I saw it.
The sound of something flapping in the wind.
I looked up.
In the trees above me, a black form moved like a flag. Extended between two branches, hanging with the sides outstretched. I covered my mouth with my hand.
Having chosen and sewn that fabric, I knew it well. I remember pricking my thumb on a needle one night while I mended it, and a drop of my blood being absorbed into the black cloth, licked away like the wax on a candle. I remember washing it and taking it down from the clothesline, and later, resting my head against it.
My husband’s shirt.
He was gone, like the other men that disappeared.
I hear the wind speaking to me still, and I wonder if I have started to go mad, but I know the truth.
In this desolate place, the land begs for new souls to replace what was taken from it.
__________________________
©2011 Lori Titus
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Tags: Lori Titus
May 1st, 2011 at 6:38 pm
Haunting!