THE JANGLING BOY by Joseph O’Malley
“There was a boy,” Sheila said. “I’m not making it up.” Mother, arms akimbo, elbows sharp, held the aluminum-frame door open with the tip of one hard black shoe, tapped the floor with the other. Sheila stood dappled in afternoon light reflected off the glass shards that lay all around her feet on the porch. Triangles, rough circles, and hairline fractures of light flitted across her overalls and face. “It looked like California outside the window,” she continued. “I opened the front door and there he was.”
They lived in what Mother called the plainest of the Plains states, where the dust rose every morning with the sun and spent the rest of the day settling around the house, into the carved crevices of the ceramic lamps, on the dried tops of blown-out candles and the flat ledges of sills, even, sometimes, on the spoons. When Sheila woke in the mornings, she could see the dust float down around the curtains, lit up in the slits of sun that shone through the blinds. Unless the irrigation hoses were left on, one never heard a rill of water or saw sunlight refracted in the air by evaporating droplets of a salt sea. Sheila was thirteen years old and had never been to California.
Mother said, “Sure, Sheila, you don’t expect me to believe that boy broke the window, do you?” Mother folded her arms across her chest. Sheila saw Patty-Anne’s fist clutched above her own head at the hem of Mother’s housedress, her eyes wondering wide at the shiny slips of glass on the porch. Soon Devon and Kevin and Molly and Suze were there too, pushing between the open door and Mother’s legs to see why their Sheila was getting it.
It was spring.
“He didn’t mean to,” Sheila said. “He was jangling. His skin shook, his feet moved so fast.” She pulled on her thin black braid, brushed the tail of it back and forth across her palm. Her bangs, which needed trimming, caught in her eyelashes as she spoke. “He was jangling, and then it broke. The window, I mean.”
“Jangling, Sheila? Jangling? Little girl, sweep up those shards, and let’s have no more of it.”
Mother turned her attention to the children around her. “Ah, what a little pack of rats you all are.” With both hands she shook the folds of her dress back and forth across her knees as if she were about to dance. “Get back into the house, the lot of you, or I’ll boil you up in a pot and serve you for supper.” As they scurried back into the house, the glissando of Mother’s girlish giggle followed them, and she went in to see the children weren’t headed toward harm. She came back out with the baby, little Joseph, propped on one hip, handed Sheila a dust bin and a small broom with her free hand. “Mind you, don’t cut yourself,” she said.
“Blame me if you want,” Sheila said under her breath. “I’ll take the blame. I saw him.” Mother returned to the kitchen, packed scissors, snips of thread, and lace into the wooden sewing box with the picture of a girl at a lake carved on the top. One or another of Sheila’s brothers or sisters began to whine, “Maaaaaaaaa.” Sheila scooped the pieces of glass from the wooden porch with a skkk, slid them onto the plastic dust bin with a shhhh. Mother said to no one in particular, “Sun, sky, and earth know I have enough to worry about without a jangling boy breaking all the windows in the house.” Then she called out, “After you’re done out there, Sheila, come into the house to finish dusting.”
The rag was one of Father’s old T-shirts, ripped up the middle, yellowy-black at the armpits. When Sheila moved the fine white porcelain teacups (which Mother never used) from the shelves onto the dark oak table near the brown corduroy armchair, she tucked the rag into the front pocket of her green overalls and let the rag’s end dangle below her knee. And she thought about the boy.
He had black hair, wide full lips, a long nose creased on the end so that the flesh there looked like a small, freckled heart. His right ear stuck out like a wing, but his left lay flat against his head. He looked like the kind of boy whose parents could have both been killed in a plane crash off the coast of an exotic foreign land she’d only seen on a map: Newfoundland, possibly, or maybe Maine. And when he was gone, something stayed with her – a shiver that made her stop dusting, turn to look, only to find herself alone again with her large, noisy family.
Mother came from a hard place in an angry country that lay between forests and an ocean, where it rained almost every day. Here, in the plains, she drank licorice tea, looked out the window, and told her children about the rain. She told about how as a young girl she had walked under darkening purple skies over black moss, among wood chips left by a busy lumberjack, how she reached between the branches of the blackthorn for the sloe, how she listened to the bittern’s thumping cry and waited for the sussuration of the first drops of rain brushing the top leaves of the trees, for the plangent noise of rain pelting tar roofs. Mother’s voice sounded like a song when she spoke. The dull flat vowels pronounced by the stern, dreary people in this dry state fell flat on Sheila’s ears. A jangling boy should not have been hard for Mother to believe. Maybe she was afraid. Sheila was not afraid. She caressed each piece of porcelain with the rag, dusted the shelf, and tried to remember exactly how it was with the boy.
Sheila had been singing Froggy went a-courtin’ as she knelt at the window sill, one end of the rag wrapped around her finger, drawing curlicues in the dust. The boy had stood on the porch. His clothes (white shirt, worn pants that were once black, old black boots) were loose, had no tears or rips, or even any loose threads. Still, he looked as if he could have unravelled at any moment.
“Hello,” she had said when she walked out the door.
No answer.
“Do you want something?”
The boy had stood still. He did not, even for a moment, look to Sheila as if he were crazy. He did not stare, only blinked those sad eyes of his. What made them seem so sad? They were not wet. They were not red. Was it the lids that were so large, and rested just above the large wide pupil? Was it because of their color, a lustrous pewter-gray, on such a pale face? She had wanted to ask him in, but did not.
“I am alone,” he said. “I heard you.”
She reached her hand out to shake. “Oh,” he’d said, and moved one step back, to the very edge of the porch. She thought he might fall, or jump. She returned her hand to her side.
“I’m Sheila,” she said.
The boy relaxed his hands behind his back, tapped one foot lightly against the wooden floor boards of the porch. He tapped the foot, heel-toe, heel-toe against the wood slowly, then fast, faster, then faster still. When his other foot joined in, his whole body – hands dangling, head back, face opened to the enormous sky – lifted, so slightly that Sheila couldn’t be sure if he was floating or no. The tapping gave way to another kind of sound, a ringing, like a tiny bell out of tune. The killdeer that lived in the desert willow near the barn sang kill-deeah dee dee dee, then settled into a low trill; the chickens, which had clucked in concert around the yard, suddenly stopped and stared their nervous bird stare at the porch; the wind whistled high through the slats of wood in the barn. Then Sheila smelled the sea, she was sure, although she had never been to the sea. In a clattering blast, the window shattered. She turned to look, Mother rushed out, and when Sheila turned around again, the jangling boy was gone.
That night, after Sheila and Mother attended to the other children, got them into bed, read and talked and resolved fights over space and blankets, Mother lifted Sheila’s bangs with her broad hand. She said, “Goodnight, Sheila,” and kissed her. Sheila lay awake in bed with the dew of Mother’s kiss drying on her forehead. All around her brothers and sisters whimpered and cooed themselves to sleep, and the room was close with the sweet pungent fretting and sweating of young skin growing out of itself. The sounds in the house hushed, and when all was quiet save a rasping breath here, or a whistling nose there, she wrapped her thoughts in the jingle of her mother’s voice and the jangle of the boy’s way, then settled into sleep.
Mrs. Nevers thought she was too young to own mourning clothes, she had told Mother. When Tom Nevers died in an unexpected blast at the salt mine (cigarette, dynamite), Mrs. Nevers had to wear the wedding dress Mother had fashioned for her four months earlier (knee-length, white, lace at the neckline) to the funeral. She had eleven months left to mourn, and no proper clothes for it.
“When Mrs. Nevers comes, Sheila,” Mother said, “you’ll help me measure her. You run the soap along the seams, just like I showed you, and I’ll pin it up.” Mother wrestled a few yards of black cloth from the bolt propped up in the corner of the room, but stopped for a moment to look at Sheila. “Stop picking at that scab.”
Sheila let her elbow drop back to her side and examined her fingernail.
“Next thing, there’ll be blood everywhere,” said Mother. “And right before company.”
“But it itches,” Sheila said. She removed a maroon chip of scab from under the nail and flicked it on the floor.
“Go tell it to the river,” Mother said, and laughed. This was one of Mother’s favorite expressions. Usually, it belonged with: if you have a secret you don’t want anyone to know. . . .
“If you’re good, Girleen,” Mother said, “maybe you can help me stitch soon.” She raised an eyebrow at Sheila, tilted her head back slightly and kicked up her left heel. “Whoooh!” she said. When she saw Sheila was not amused, she puckered her face into a fat, sour ball, slumped her shoulders, and drew her face to within an inch of Sheila’s nose.
“Who’s my best girl, then?” Mother said. Although Sheila tried with all her might not to, she laughed, then stomped off, slamming as many doors as she could find along the way.
Every night except Sunday, Father came home from the salt mine exhausted and shiny with sweat. Usually Sheila and her brothers and sisters had finished their chores by the time he came home, and waited for dinner by building a house of cards in the parlor, or telling stories about changelings and boogie men while Father kissed Mother’s neck.
“Don’t sit at that table ‘til you’ve doused yourself with a bucketful, Jimmy,” Mother said to him one night. Father picked up little Joseph and dandled him on the large, square bone of his knee. “Hi de deedle dee deedle de deedle de dee,” he sang, until little Joseph hiccuped with laughter.
“I just fed him,” Mother said. “I don’t want another mess to clean up. Be careful there.” She stirred the stew on the stove.
Up came little Joseph’s chuck, all over Father’s shoe.
“Now you’ll have a bath,” Mother said.
Father stood with his arms straight out in front of him, little Joseph’s legs dangling in the air, chin dribbling spit-up.
“What?” said Mother. “That’s your doing.” She spooned the stew into a large blue bowl and set it on a cork mat, pulled a chair out from the table, then sat down, crossing arms and legs both. “Devon. Sheila,” Mother called. “Come set the table.” Sheila’s sigh almost knocked the card house down.
Father said, “Take him, May. I’ll go wash.” Mother sat still. “I’ve been working all day,” he said.
Mother cocked her head in the direction of the stove and said, “Take a whiff, Jimmy. Do you think fairies brought that stew in here, tiptoeing around me while I stared at my own darling reflection in the mirror, running the fingers through my hair until it shined?” She cupped a bauble of curls in her palm, twittered her eyelashes. After a moment, she burped, a loud raucous eruption of sound, her lips caressing the noise as it filled the room.
Devon gave Sheila’s braid a flip as they walked into the kitchen. “Giddy-up,” Devon said.
Mother laughed, stood up waving her hand at Father, as if he were a large fly. “Oh, go on.” She kissed little Joseph’s head when she took him. “Ahhh,” she cooed sweetly to the gurgling baby, “you little puke.”
The second time the boy appeared to Sheila, she was helping Mother in the parlor with Mrs. Nevers. Mother’s mouth pinched tight around the pins, which stuck out in all directions while she tucked and tugged the fabric around the widow’s body, saying, “Turn. Mhhm. Turn.” Mrs. Nevers stood on a short stool in the middle of the room. Sheila sat on the floor clutching a bar of lemon soap.
“We’ll make you a Sunday dress, a day dress, and a long skirt with matching jacket to wear with a white blouse,” Mother said through the pins. “Trimmed with lace. Won’t that be pretty?”
“Is that wrong of me, May?” Mrs. Nevers asked. “That I want it to be pretty?” She said this from low in her throat, as if a stone sat on her voice. When Mrs. Nevers cried, her nose ran, and when she wiped her nose, the black cotton Mother chose for the dress rode up in misalignment.
“There now,” Mother said. She yanked on the fabric. Mrs. Nevers listed to one side, but Mother’s hand steadied her, kept her from falling off and breaking her noggin. “Soap,” said Mother. She took the pins out of her mouth, placing them one by one into the fabric down the sides and hips of Mrs. Nevers to fashion a makeshift seam after Sheila ran the soap along the fabric.
“What will people think?” Mrs. Nevers said.
“Pahhh,” said Mother. “It’s all sackcloth and ashes with that lot in town. Ugliness is no way to honor your poor dead Tom.”
Mrs. Nevers stood still and let the tears and snot roll down over her lip. When Sheila finished tracing the hem, she handed Mrs. Nevers a hanky, then sat back down on the floor.
“Just a stitch or two to secure it, and you can come down,” Mother said. She selected a spool wound with a few last inches of blue-black thread from her sewing box, pinched the free end of the thread between forefinger and thumb, and let the wooden spool skitter across the floor to the other side of the room near the window. Sheila fetched the spool and stood in the light, a sheet of heat nuzzling the back of her neck, the tops of her shoulders. She stepped out the front door onto the square flat land. “Shhh,” she heard. It could have been the whinge of the aluminum door closing, or Mother’s voice.
She followed a jackrabbit over a field of sand and jagged weeds. The purple sage was still brittle; it would bloom when the spring washes came. The wind picked up a skirt of dust, Sheila hunched over to protect her eyes, and when the wind died down, there he stood.
She did not want to waste time.
“Teach me what you do,” she said to the boy.
“I don’t do anything,” he said.
She squinched her eye at him. “You jangle.”
The boy sat down on a boulder. The sky stretched white and blue, with streaks of gray and yellow, in all directions above them. Across from him, a large red ant crawled halfway across the length of a long, flat rock. Sheila stepped on the ant with the ball of her foot and twisted her heel left and right. When she lifted her foot to look, nothing of the ant remained but a faded reddish-brown powder.
“I want to jangle too,” she said.
“You don’t know what you want.”
She spread the ant powder into an arc with her foot. “I want to.”
The jangling boy stood up and walked away. After about twenty feet, he turned around. “You don’t know anything,” he said. He walked behind an enormous boulder that looked like a waving woman, and disappeared.
Sheila kicked weeds the whole way home.
At the dinner table Mother said to Father, “Walked right out the door without saying a word, Jimmy. She was supposed to be helping me. And then there’s the window and the business with that boy.” Mother stopped talking to look at Sheila. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”
“Boy?” Father said. “She’s getting to that age, May.”
Sheila ran a fork through her smashed potatoes, making a field to sow with gravy.
“Shhht yourself,” said Mother sharply. “None of that.”
“All kinds of boys might be showing themselves around here,” said Father. “Like skunks they’ll be, sniffing and scratching at the door waiting for our own Sheila.”
Devon spilled his milk across the table, Kevin, mid-drink, laughed up milk through his nose. Molly and Suze said “pig” at the same time, and Patty-Anne, on whom the milk had splattered, began to cry.
Mother darted across the room and returned with a rag. “We’ll have no boys, jangling or otherwise, sniffing around here. Hear?” She handed the rag to Devon. “Pigs have hooves,” she said, “and can’t help themselves when they slop. Be a little more careful, bucko.”
Next to Father, little Joseph slapped his left hand on the metal tray of the high chair, and looked around at the family smiling in amazement, as if waiting for applause. Father pushed the spoon toward little Joseph’s wide open mouth.
“Some things are stronger than a mother’s love, May.”
Mother folded the washcloth she used as a napkin, placed it carefully on the table next to her plate. “Sheila,” Mother said. “We’ve all heard terrific stories of little girls stolen from their mothers by creatures born under a sick star. Don’t let that happen to you.” Mother slipped her thumbs under the table, her eight fingers stretched over the smooth pine as if she were examining the fingernails for dirt. “If that boy comes around again, Sheila, you’ll tell him to go away. He’s not welcome here.” Mother chewed vigorously on something; perhaps a flap of chicken skin lodged between back molars bent her mouth so out of shape. “I know his ilk,” she said, then packed a forkful of corn and potatoes into her mouth and quickly swallowed.
Little Joseph dribbled an orange stripe of mashed carrots down the front of himself, his tongue moving in and out like the red bird in the cuckoo clock.
Sheila pushed a hunk of chicken underneath a mound of potatoes and watched the yellow gravy ooze like a muddy river over her plate.
“Hear?” Mother said.
Sheila, without moving her lips, said, “I hear.”
The next time, she followed him through the dust and the ragweed to the side of the small white mountain beside the salt mine. It was the only mountain in a five-state region, according to Father. Near the short mountain stood a tall boulder beveled with sharp smooth planes.
Between the base of the mountain and the boulder, there was enough room for Sheila and the boy to crawl near the narrow opening of a cave.
“There’s a drop,” he said. “Once in, you’ll slide down, so keep your head off the ground. Stand here,” he instructed, pointing to a shiny patch on the ground. “Now sit. Put your bottom where your feet are.” But Sheila jumped away and leaned against the boulder.
“You first,” she said.
He laughed. “All right. Like this,” he said, his bottom on the ground, his feet at the cave’s narrow hole. “And this. Are you watching?” He had moved his legs into the hole and now lay on his back, his hands in place to press against the large rock behind him. “When you’re ready, take a big breath, to the point where you think you’ll almost explode. Hold it. Then let it all out through your mouth. Push and blow at the same time, and slide in.”
“How will we get back out?” Sheila said.
“We’ll walk out,” he said. “That’s easier. There’s a large mouth to the cave about half a mile around the mountain.”
“Why can’t we walk in now?”
“It takes too long.” The boy rolled out from underneath the rock, dusted himself off as he stood. “And it’s not as much fun.”
She scratched the tip of her chin with her shoulder and said “fun” under her breath.
“Or you could just go back home now.”
“I know what’s down there,” she said.
“The blast opened up another room,” he said. “They cleared it out, but nobody uses it. That room is beautiful. It shouldn’t go to waste.”
“We’re not supposed to go down there.”
“Be a good girl, then,” the boy said. He crouched into position between the hole and the boulder and said again, “Be a good girl and piss off home.” He swelled himself up with a rush of air, his belly twice its normal size. With a big puff, and a little grunt, he was gone.
Mrs. Nevers slipped the cloth over her shoulders and stood on the stool in the center of the parlor while Mother adjusted the material to determine the appropriate shape of the new jacket, when a tiny ringing filled the room. If two people had been talking, or even if one person had been whispering a song to herself, the ringing would not have registered. But that day both women were quiet, Mother with pins in her mouth, Mrs. Nevers holding her breath to expand her ribcage so the jacket might not be too tight or revealing.
Mother heard it first. She turned her head slightly, as one does to dislodge a stuck pocket of water from the ear after swimming. The ringing became distinct. Mother patted Mrs. Nevers lightly on the rump as if to say “stay.” She removed the pins from her mouth and swung a swath of black cloth over her shoulder, strode briskly to the porch to see the boy facing Sheila, his feet moving fast as wasp wings. Mother lassoed him with her swath of cloth.
“You devil,” she said. The ringing grew to a higher pitch; her teacups rattled on the high shelf.
“You think I don’t know what you are?” She pinched her mouth tight when she spoke. “You’ve come to steal my girl. Don’t think you can.” The boy quivered violently. “Sheila, get in!” said Mother.
“No!” Sheila screamed. “Stop it. You’ll hurt him.”
Mother spat at Sheila’s feet as if she were going to argue, but never said a word. Mother’s eyes puckered round, her lips became pale, and Sheila, like the good little girl her mother always knew her to be, did as she was told.
Although she held him tight as a vice, the boy’s body writhed against the cloth, straining at each thread until they began to break, one by one. He jiggled himself around to look Mother full in the face with those sad eyes.
“You won’t get her, you little nit. You’ll not change my girl.”
Another thread broke, thwipp.
“Don’t you dare,” the mother said. “Don’t dare put those cow eyes on me.” Her fingers turned white on the knuckles side when she clutched the cloth tighter, red where the fabric dug into her skin. A great sob grew up in her throat, and she let him go.
“Aachh,” she said with a rush of breath. “Go on.” He ran away. Then she screamed it: “Go on! Don’t come back. I know the likes of you!”
Mrs. Nevers peered out the door.
“May?” she said. “May? What’s happening?”
Mother wiped her face, smoothed her dress, strung the frayed strap of cloth around the back of her neck. She touched Mrs. Nevers’ unwashed reddish-black hair as if to steady her own hand. “Such a pretty thing,” Mother said, dark eyes shining. “Don’t let’s hide it.”
The next day, mid-afternoon, Mother began the preliminary assembly of Mrs. Nevers’ mourning dress. She would sew the seams, then show Sheila how to stitch the lace onto the dress by hand. When the sewing machine’s chug ebbed away, the shouts of her children at play in the new spring winds wafted into the room. The wind had kicked up again, swirling the dead dry grass left over from winter into hay devils that moved across the open field. Devon chased the grass round and round, but Molly, Kevin, and Suze jumped up and down in place with delight. Patty-Anne stood in the center, her mouth in a wide-open smile, hands quivering, ready to clap. The wind collected, pushed the dry grass and dust in tufts around her, above her, lifting her fine brown hair as it whirled. Mother did not see Sheila. None of the children knew where she was. They thought she was with Mother, they said. She did not come home for lunch, and she had not done her chores. Molly had dressed Patty-Anne, and Suze had had to put the barrettes in her hair by herself.
Mother sent Devon to fetch Father at the mine. When they came home Mother wiped the sweat off Father’s forehead and told him, “Sheila’s gone missing.”
Dusk was filled with the clatter of trucks, and men’s voices shouting “Sheila,” but as the search’s circle grew outward in all directions from the house, a terrific stillness swaddled the night.
Mother interrupted the dark quiet with the sewing machine’s rumble and chug. From Mrs. Nevers’ measurements, Mother sewed the black suit, the skirt, the white blouse.
Many, many hours later, Father came home with his head down.
Where was the girl?
There, on a shelf in the linen closet, lay the lemon soap wrapped in a rag. There, up from between the couch cushions, poked a string of red yarn that had bound her braid at the tail. On the stool in the parlor sat the sewing box with the picture of a girl at a lake. There were Mother’s teacups, safe on the shelf.
Where was her girl?
After a day bursting with wind and light, and a night dark and soundless except for the rustle of restless bodies turning and turning and turning in beds, Mother lifted her head to see a figure in the distance – unkempt, with tangled hair and smudges on her cheeks – walk toward the house under a red morning sun. The girl’s back was straight, and no blood gushed from her body.
“Sheila,” Mother said aloud, once.
“I discovered a cave,” she said. “I got lost.”
The lids of her eyes were only slightly more pink than usual.
Mother sat stunned, stared. Father cried, then yelled; he took off his belt and lifted it above his head, but he began to cry again and let it fall limp at his side. He draped the belt on the back of a kitchen chair, touched Sheila’s hair, and went to bed to get some rest.
Mother made toast, poured milk for Sheila.
“I’d like coffee, please,” Sheila said. She picked up the dress Mother had sewn, chose some lace that would look nice with it. “I’ll help you stitch today,” she said, “after I eat, and collect the eggs, and take a nap and a bath.”
Sheila’s hair, still wet, hung loose down her back. It was much darker wet. Mother stitched white lace to Mrs. Nevers’ new blouse. Sheila trimmed the sleeves of the dress in black lace.
“After you’re done there . . . ,” Mother said. Sheila looked out the window instead of at Mother, and this stopped Mother’s speech.
“Yes,” Sheila said. She finished her stitch before she finished her sentence, pulled the thread taut and bit it off clean, eyes finally resting on Mother through the shiny hair of her bangs. She removed a thread from between her teeth with her thumb and her forefinger pinched together. With a flip of her head, she swished her bangs, which were still a bit damp, out of her eyes. “Yes,” Sheila said again. “Dust.” She smiled and began work on the other sleeve.
Out the window Mother saw the clouds were the same clouds as always, barely wisps, the sky the same sky. All was plain as plain could be. It was spring. The washes were due any day; everyone knew it might rain soon.
Mother leaned over to look at Sheila’s work. “Make sure the thread doesn’t show too much on the outside. All you want to see is the lace, not the stitches that hold it there.”
A great silence, vast and parched as the prairie, lay open between them.
“Who’s my best girl, then?” said Mother, leaning forward.
“I will always be your girl,” she said without looking up from the lace. She hooked her finger and scooped a lock of hair behind one ear. In one graceful, alluring twist of her neck she arranged the hair on the other side over her shoulder like a scarf.
“Oh,” said Mother. She pressed the rough edges of her spine back against the wooden chair. “If only it would rain!”
The girl tightened her mouth into a brief smile.
Mother watched thread course between fingers and fabric. The lace, supple and intricate, lay bunched in her lap. Head bent back to her own work, she said, “He doesn’t really float, you know.”
“I know,” said Sheila.
“It’s a trick. He just makes it look that way.” Mother was careful not to poke herself with the needle. “I suppose he’s found something about you that’s very special.”
Sheila sewed lace onto the mourning dress, careful to keep the stitches straight.
“And I suppose you think you’re very special too,” said Mother.
“No,” said Sheila. “I’m just a girl.” She pushed the needle smoothly through the fabric. “He’s just a boy.”
Joseph O’Malley’s fiction appears in Phoebe: A Journal of Literary Arts, Greensboro Review, and American Literary Review.