Mud

It was a summer like the summer before: hot and long. Benjamin Jennet sat on the front porch with a slowly sweating bottle of Coke in one hand, a cigarette burning and forgotten in the other. Cripple lay at the foot of Benjamin’s chair, his wet, red tongue lolling in and out of his mouth as he panted futilely against the summer heat. Every three or four minutes, Cripple’s tail would weakly thump a few times against the old wood of the porch, and he would lift his head and look anxiously to Ben, as if somehow petting or perhaps even food might shortly be in the future. And then, when neither made itself apparent, Cripple would settle down for a few minutes more.

It was a ritual Mud knew by heart, and it didn’t hold his interest. There was very little else for Mud to do, though, but watch them, or the birds. In the thick heat of a mid-summer Saturday afternoon, movement wasn’t wise, and he did little of it. And even if movement had been possible, Mud knew there was no where he could go, and nothing he could do. There never really had been, not that he remembered. So, mostly, he just watched. But not the lame dog or its master. No, he watched the other one. He watched Lila.

Across from the house, about thirty yards out, stood an old shade tree, a towering, ancient thing that was slowly dying from nothing but age. The worn rubber tire and the rope that suspended it from one of the thick lower branches were both now more than a decade old, but bad rot had yet to settle into either of them, and they held. It was this tire that Lila occupied now, legs slipped through the center, thin white hands holding tightly to the rope as she rocked herself slowly in the shade. She hummed to herself as she rocked, a soft, eerie melody that made Mud feel sleepy, and she glanced at him, occasionally, with a small, knowing smile on her face—or perhaps just in her eyes. Long black hair hanging down her back, soft white skin cool and blue in the shade of the old tree, thin hands clutching at the old rope as she hummed her soft, sleepy tune—it made Mud want to get up, to go over, to touch her. To take her. To make her his.

But Mud couldn’t do that. Mud couldn’t leave the pit.

◊◊◊

It was evening, and Benjamin Jennet sat out on his porch; Cripple was asleep and snoring by his chair. Lila sat on the steps, her white terrycloth dress gathered up around her knees. She was playing jacks. She was too old to be playing jacks, as she was too old to be swinging from trees in tires—she was well into her sixteenth year, Mud knew, and that was too old for jacks.

How he knew that, he couldn’t say. Mud knew a great deal about a great many things, but they were just facts, pieces of knowledge without history or context—trees without roots. He knew, but he didn’t know how he knew—and he was never very sure what the things he knew meant. But he knew Lila was too old to be playing jacks. Still, the fact that she was, and the way the warm evening winds moved her hair and rustled her white summer dress, the movement of arm and torso, of head and neck, as she grabbed up another jack and threw down the ball again, fascinated Mud in a way he couldn’t explain. She sang to herself as she played. Mud strained, but he could not hear the words.

The sun rose, and then evening came again. Mud saw Benjamin with his clipped, white beard, his white summer shirt and pants, his fat evening cigar jutting from his mouth at an angle as he drew forth and let loose great billows of smoke, colored orange by the burning ember at the cigar’s tip. His Coke exchanged for brandy, he smoked and he drank as he watched the sunset and kept an eye out for the occasional visitor or salesman, or simple passerby. No one came this evening. It was rare that anyone came. Still, Benjamin sat and watched. But he never looked at Mud—he never even looked in Mud’s direction. Something had gone wrong in Benjamin Jennet’s mind, and Mud knew he was the one who had done it to him. But what precisely he had done, or how he had done it, he could not say. Trees without roots.

◊◊◊

It was Monday, and the sun was high. The old truck was gone from the gravel drive—Benjamin had gone to the city. Lila was inside the house, playing the old piano. The instrument wasn’t very good in the first place and was out of tune besides, but Lila had a gift for it, a gift that even Mud could sense. She played it with a grace and softness that made the sour chords and off-notes of the piano eerie and strangely haunting. He couldn’t see her, but he could hear the music, and he could imagine her thin, white fingers caressing the keys. Though Mud had, in fact, never actually seen a piano, he could imagine it, and the thought, and the sounds he heard, filled him with a burning sense of desire, and futility. To Mud, they were twins—desire and futility. There was never one without the other.

Mud wanted her to play something for him.

◊◊◊

It was evening and Benjamin was back. Mud didn’t sleep, but sometimes time went by very fast. Sometimes he would just sit and think and not know what he was thinking, and the hours, sometimes days—and, on occasion, even weeks—would disappear within a blink of an eye. Mud didn’t mind so much. He had plenty of time. He had nothing but time. Mud watched as the old truck moved haltingly past the gate and down the gravel drive. One headlight was out—had been for over five years—and the remaining one burned yellow in the night. The house was dark and Lila sat out on the porch with a lantern, humming to herself as she hugged her knees against the slight chill creeping into the evening air.

“Hello, Pa,” she said as Benjamin climbed up the steps and kissed his daughter. “How was sellin’?”

“All right,” Benjamin replied. “We’re gonna make it through the month.” He wiped his brow with a shirt sleeve. “Get me my cigarettes and brandy for me, will you? That’s a sweet thing.”

“Yes, Pa,” Lila said, and stood to go into the house.

“And my evening cigar. I think I might smoke it a little later.”

“Yes, Pa,” Lila said again, and she turned easily on her heel, and disappeared through the dark doorway.

Mud lay back in the pit, thinking about Lila’s hands tight around the neck of Benjamin’s bottle of brandy. He thought about her pouring a glass for him. He thought about kissing her, the brandy lingering on her breath, the taste clinging to her lips.

He thought of her humming, of her playing the piano.

◊◊◊

“Hello there, Mudboy.”

It was noon. He looked up at Lila as she leaned against the fence post. The angle of her hips as she settled her weight on one foot, the thin white ankles beneath the flutter of white cotton, the strands of glossy black that stretched themselves across her face in the hot summer wind—Mud looked at her, and she smiled, almost sadly, her thin lips dark and wonderful. Her narrow chin, high cheekbones—the soft shadow at the hollow of her neck. Mud felt the burning, the futility. The twins, again.

“Do you come to court me, Mudboy?”

Mud felt a response was appropriate, so he tried to nod. He had never done so before—and, in fact, had never really seen it done. Still, he knew what it meant and tried to do it. But all he did was slosh around a little. At night, articulation was difficult—in the noon day sun, impossible. The mud became too hot, and it made him tired.

“Do you bring me flowers? Do you bring me candy? What do you bring me?”

Mud just watched her, not even making the attempt at a reply. What could he bring her? Why did she ask him the things that she did? He knew many things, but these—these things he did not know.

“Mudboy,” she said, and shook her head sadly. “Mudboy, didn’t you bring me anything at all? Don’t you know the first thing about courting a girl proper? Haven’t you ever been in love?”

Mud just looked at Lila silently, because Mud did not know. The question was not a new one, but the answer still wouldn’t come. Mud did not know if he had ever been in love. Mud didn’t even know what love was—or what, at any rate, it was supposed to be. In fact, the only thing Mud knew of love was the one thing Lila had taught him: that it was made from flowers and candy.

“A bouquet of roses—fifty red roses, smelling like a rich woman’s soap, and with all the thorns cut off—that’s what a boy gives a girl when he loves her.”

Mud tried to nod again, for as many times as she had told him this, he knew it must be true—but again, he just mainly sloshed around. His part in these conversations was never very large, and, on Lila’s part, the content was usually the same. But he followed the conversation with the same rapt attention that he always did. Her voice was soft and hypnotic, and the words always seemed so perfect. And she knew so much, so much that Mud did not. And her—the curve of her back as she leaned against the fence post, the way her body changed when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. How far away was she? She was close enough that he could smell her. She smelled like sweat and dirt and cheap perfume. Mud knew the smell and knew what all these things were, but again there was no context. They were trees without roots, and Mud simply knew that he liked her smell. Did she smell like roses?

Mud wondered.

“He sends her flowers every day—if he loves her. Flowers and notes and cards, and sometimes money even. If he truly loves her, he does. And big boxes of chocolates—all sorts of chocolates, chocolates from Paris and New York and maybe even Denmark. I’ve heard they make wonderfully big boxes of chocolate in Denmark.”

Mud stared quietly at Lila as she leaned across the fence. He had never heard of Denmark.

“Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates—chocolates with brandy in them, and fancy liquors—from Europe and Denmark. And sometimes they share chocolates. She takes one, and holds it in her mouth, and then he takes a bite from it, and their lips meet. And then they kiss. They kiss for a wonderfully long time—one of those kisses that is so long you start hearing music somewhere. You really do. And he whispers in her ear—whispers things that don’t sound right any way but whispered. And then, that way, they sound beautiful. And then they make love—make love in a bed of rose petals.” She looked down seriously at Mud. “A bed of rose petals, Mudboy, every one smelling like a rich woman’s perfumed bath.”

Mud sloshed.

◊◊◊

It was evening, and Cripple was making a crooked run across the yard, his old, lopsided body making a pitiful attempt at chasing a bird. Benjamin Jennet surveyed his world, looking in every direction but the one where Mud lay. Cripple made an unbalanced leap at a fat sparrow and landed off to the side, on his face. He immediately got up again and loped merrily about the lawn in crooked circles, searching for more birds. Lila was back inside, fixing her father’s brandy and getting his cigarettes and evening cigar. Mud was moving, just a little. In the night, it was cooler, and he could always move a little more.

A little more. But it was never enough.

It was coming up on midnight, and Mud could hear the soft breathing coming from Lila’s room. Benjamin had long since retired and the moon was high. Her room was dark and the night was still, and Mud could hear her begin humming softly to herself with the creaking springs of her bed. It was at these times, more than at any other, that Mud wanted to go to her. To climb out of the pit, and go to her, to touch her—to satisfy some strange and inexorable need, though if the need was hers or his, he wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t go to her. Even if he had had the strength to climb out of his pit, he’d dry, he’d crack, he’d fall apart—he could barely last five minutes before he crumbled in the dust that he had come from.

Mud could never leave the pit.

◊◊◊

“Cakes and candies and pies,” Lila was telling him. “Dinner with wine and candles. I’d be in a beautiful black dress with sequins and a string of real pearls around my neck, and diamonds. Three diamond rings—one gold, one silver, and one circled with emeralds. Emeralds are such beautiful stones, don’t you think?”

It was a little after ten in the morning, and Mud had no answers. He didn’t know what emeralds were.

“Dinner with wine and candles,” she said dreamily, twisting around and stretching, hands clasped and held out to the sky, and Mud felt something ache inside. “Filet mignon and a man with a violin beside the table, playing his music slow and soft. Baked potatoes with sour cream and butter, a diamond choker around my neck. And that night, alone on the porch, we could share chocolates. Wouldn’t that be beautiful?”

Mud stared intently at Lila. Her skin—the soft sheen of sweat that glistened across her collar bone, the soft lilt of her voice that seemed to make her dreams into songs. She brushed long black hair out of her eyes, and smiled at him.

“Do you want to court me, Mudboy? Will you be my lover?”

◊◊◊

It was evening. Lila swung from the tire she was much too old for, humming to herself a soft, sleepy tune she would sometimes play on the old piano. Benjamin Jennet patted Cripple on the head and sucked on a Coke—it was late for a Coke, but Benjamin had been late getting back from town. Mud watched Lila swing, and wondered again what it would be like to be touched by her thin hands. He wondered, too, what it would be like to swing from that tire, what it might be like to play jacks. He wondered what it would be like to pet Cripple, or to drink a Coke, or to smoke a cigar, or to play the piano. He knew many things, somehow. But there were, he knew, many more things—too many things—he knew not at all.

The taste of chocolates. He wondered about this too.

◊◊◊

It was morning—early. Lila was showering in the stall behind the house. Benjamin Jennet walked his fields as Cripple hobbled along behind him. For a moment, at the top of the stall, Mud saw Lila’s glistening hands raise into the air and then lower again. He wondered, as he often had, how it would be to bathe, or to walk along the fields as Benjamin Jennet now did—but mostly, he wondered of Lila. Where could he get her roses and chocolates? How could he get them to her? Why did he want to so badly?

Questions, but no answers—feelings, but no reasons. Trees without roots. And there was nothing Mud could do. About anything.

That was, until it started to rain.

◊◊◊

Things changed with the rain. The summer rains were sparse, but they came, and they were sometimes heavy ones. But not like this. They had never been like this, not that Mud remembered. For a week it rained, drizzling at the very least and often coming down like a waterfall from the sky. The ground softened and soon was little more than a sponge filled to overflowing. Lila never came to talk with him. The sky had become so constant that Mud no longer had a way to tell when the gaps came, and so he had no way to judge time—but he knew it had been a long time since she had come out, and he missed her. He could never hear her over the rain—not her, not the piano, not anything. And though he often saw Benjamin Jennet and his lame dog out on the porch, Lila no longer accompanied them.

Ben smoked his cigar again, drank his brandy, and disappeared back into the house, leaving Cripple outside to whine at the door. Twice Mud caught a glimpse of Lila—but just a glimpse, and then she was gone again. He thought of her telling him about roses and rainy nights. About wind and candlelight and secret words said to the sound of summer rain.

And with these thoughts, Mud came upon the most important thought of all—he could move.

The ground was soaked, the air was soaked, and rain kept coming down. The sun was hidden and the world was wet. The pit had suddenly expanded its dimensions. The rain had turned Benjamin Jennet’s land into something wet and soft and muddy, and the downpour wasn’t stopping. It didn’t look like it was ever going to stop. It was a world made for Mud.

He could leave his pit now and not crack and not dry. He had the strength to pull himself out, and he would stay wet and moist outside his constant home. His prison. The sun was gone and everything was cool and wet, and each movement he made now seemed easy and fluid. And so Mud made the one move that made all the difference.

Mud pulled himself free of the pit.

He turned as he slid over the fence that Lila had leaned against so many times, looking to the old, white house and the dark window he knew he would go to. He looked—and then moved for it. Mud was careful as he slowly ambled towards the house. Quiet. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that he should be. His movement became more articulate once he was free of the pit and in the rain, sloshing across the ground. The water washed the excess free, leaving his compact core moist but still very solidly together, and his movements grew more articulate still—he had a freedom of movement unlike any he could remember.

Mud could walk.

The house was barely ten feet away by the time Cripple awoke. The dog stumbled clumsily down the stairs of the porch and came at Mud doing his lopsided lope, his barking the most savage the old beast could muster. Though pathetic, he was loud, and Mud knew suddenly and intuitively—the way Mud knew almost everything—that he could not have the occupants of the house aware of his freedom. Not yet. Mud had often seen Benjamin Jennet swat the dog when he barked too loudly, and tell him to hush up. So, when the dog leapt at him—falling clumsily off to the side as he did so—Mud swatted the dog and gurgled at it.

Cripple never even yelped—there wasn’t time. In a split second, Mud had driven him three feet into the watery earth, and had left what had once been an old, lame dog looking not very much like a dog at all. Mud looked at the thing at his side—his arm, as far as he could call it that—with the closest thing to dumb amazement that he could feel. He looked at the smashed remains of Cripple driven into the ground. He had done that. He was strong. Stronger than he could have imagined. But then, moving through the air was so much easier than moving through mud—perhaps it made sense. Then again, perhaps it didn’t. How could he know?

Putting the question out of his mind, Mud went on.

Scaling the wall was easy, even in the dark and the wetness of the rain. He found her window, pushed it open, and entered the room.

She sat bolt upright in her bed as the wind pushed the window shut with a slam behind him and one muddy foot-thing landed on the hardwood floor.

“Mudboy,” she said, her voice so tight it made the word a whisper. She pulled at her covers, drawing them up around her, up to her chin. “Mudboy,” she said.

Mud gurgled, advancing a step.

“Mudboy, Mudboy,” she said, her words rushed and breathless. “You must go away. Please—you must! Mudboy, why’d you leave your mud?”

Mud shrugged and gurgled, advancing another step. Her pale, frightened face shining blue in the brief, occasional strike of lightning, the shape of her shivering body beneath the covers. It was like magic.

“Mudboy, now just you go away, you hear?” she said. “This isn’t at all proper. What if my poppa were to find out? No, no—this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be at all. Mudboy, Mudboy, just go away.”

He reached forward. She was so close—he could touch her, he could actually touch her. Mud felt dizzy.

She shrieked as his hand brushed her cheek, leaving a long, muddy streak down the side of her face. “Mudboy!” she cried, thrusting herself off the bed and against the furthest wall. “Don’t you dare touch me like that again—this—it’s not supposed to be like this, it just isn’t, I know—its—”

Mud gurgled, and moved forward.

“Mudboy!” she yelled. “You’re gonna dry up! You’re doing it already!”

Mud looked down and saw it was true—already, exterior pieces were balling up and falling onto the floor, drying and crumbling.

“Mudboy, Mudboy, please, you’ve got to get out of here—never was supposed to be like this—not supposed to be anything like this—”

Mud gurgled, shrugging, and picked up the desk across from her bed with one hand. He threw it at the window, and it exploded outwards in a spray of wood and glass. Wind and rain whipped through her room immediately, as if it were naturally part of the same motion, and the fresh spray of water covered Mud. Lila moved towards the door as paper and leaves blew through the room and a thin finger of lightning lit the night, but Mud was there in a movement, blocking her.

Her white night gown had grown wet in the storm of cold rain coming through her shattered window, and it clung to her body, outlining it, defining each rise, each dip, each swell, each hollow. He dark hair was shiny and matted to her skull. He could smell her wet skin; he could hear the rapidness of her breathing. Mud reached for her again.

“No no no no no—”

He embraced her, bringing her body against him in the wetness, in the wind.

“Mudboy—no—” she whispered. “Mud—”

He felt her body against his, cold and soft in the rain, he felt his arms around her back, pulling her closer and closer—the curve of her spine, her knee touching his—her lips, he thought. Her lips. He could feel her breasts pressed against him, he could feel the rapid hammering beat of her heart in her chest, he could hear her breath and feel it against his neck—rapid and cold. And he held her tighter—her lips. He had to kiss her—to hold her tighter. The desire, that burning feeling of need, was growing. He felt it, and it drove him. His hand behind her neck, he moved her face up to his, and drew her tighter still. Lila slipped against him with a sound like a whimper, her thigh sliding along the outside of his, her belly coming up against his hip as he leaned over and kissed bloody lips.

Mud slackened his grip, and Lila, her white gown and pale skin soiled with wet earth, fell limply to the floor. A fresh stream of scarlet flowed from her mouth and pooled with the mud and water on the hardwood floor. She coughed, spitting up more, and then stilled, breath stopping, eyes glazing over.

Mud shook his head, and walked out of the room, out into the hall. He hadn’t brought chocolates.

◊◊◊

Benjamin Jennet was out on the porch.

“Damn good dog, even if he was a bit lame,” Ben was saying. “Too bad. Too damned bad.” He took a drag off a cigarette and drank some from his brandy. “Killed her, I s’pose.” He looked at Mud and nodded. “Yep. I s’pected you would.”

Mud gurgled.

“Well?” he asked. “What are you waiting for? I ain’t gonna beg. And I ain’t got nothing to tell you. About anything.” He drank the rest of his brandy in a few, hard swallows. “I don’t even know what in the Hell you are.”

Mud just looked at Ben, swaying back a little on earthen legs that again felt wooden and unfamiliar.

“Nope, nope,” Ben kept on, pouring himself another generous glass of brandy as he drew on his cigar. “You just showed up and I couldn’t get rid of you. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He put down the brandy bottle, the red-orange ember of his evening cigar reflecting from the facets on its cut crystal surface. “Maybe you were here all along.”

Mud nodded, and gurgled. The dull light from Ben’s cigar, the steady wash of rain, the sky that was a blanket of gray and the rich black soil of the earth—these things made him sleepy now, and he wasn’t at all sure what he was waiting for himself.

“Killed her, yep,” Ben went on. “Knew you would. I always knew, somehow. After you got Julie—after you got her—I knew you’d get her daughter, too. And you did it.” Ben shook his head. “You did it. Just like I knew.”

Mud nodded—the movement was again growing difficult as his thoughts blurred and his body grew cold and heavy—and turned around and headed down the steps.

“Guess I’ll be next,” Ben said. “Always knew I’d be last. But I knew my day’d come. Knew it true.”

Mud simply kept heading towards the pit. He had had enough of this. No roses, no boxes of chocolates—no rose-covered beds, no brandy, no piano—and no answers.

For some reason no longer able to do anything more than think about how much he wanted to hear Lila playing the old piano again, about how badly he wanted to hear her humming softly to herself in the night, Mud went down to wallow in the pit.

◊◊◊