SUBMISSION by Emily Pease
We were the family you wanted to avoid, dumb pilgrims stumbling along the Fiery Gizzard Trail on a mission. A mom and dad, a remnant of kids, and a baby riding in a flimsy stroller, its bald head flopping from side to side. The Coopers, that was us, we were that family. Our father stared straight ahead as he walked, flint-eyed, feeling with his left hand his sheathed bowie knife as if wild animals would attack us. Our mother, her skirt spattered with mud, her hair so long she could sit on it, said without looking back: stay together. The trail was slippery after days of rain. Jagged, pointy rocks, puddles, mud, fallen trees blocking our way. James, the baby’s father, lifted the stroller over tree trunks, over the biggest stones, while Dundee just lay there, floppy and silent. Lacking normal muscle tone, so the doctor said.
And it was a doctor, any doctor, we Coopers were determined to avoid. Just as we avoided schools, churches, fluoride, the I.R.S., computers, and neighborhoods. The only reason Dundee had even seen a doctor was because of his size at birth: tiny. Very, very tiny. Pencil-width arms, head no bigger than a peach. Screechy cry, a weak suck. Carlotta, age sixteen, the baby’s terrified mother, my oldest sister, paced before the NICU window with her head down, not willing to look upon her red, scrawny newborn on the other side of the glass with a needle in his arm and squares of gauze hiding his eyes. All that baby needs is to be at home, our mother said. Home, surrounded by love. Her blind faith.
The doctor diagnosed hypotonia. Don’t ask me how I remember this – I pretty much remember everything I hear. Hypotonia: lack of muscle tone. Probable cause: Rh incompatibility, Carlotta and James being the incompatible ones, their opposite blood types a problem even prayer couldn’t fix. Yet there she was in front of me on the trail, pregnant again, on a mission to heal Dundee. As well as the baby to come. And did this new baby also belong to James, and did they still have the same incompatible blood types? Well, yes. And did they go to a doctor this time to take the necessary shots or precautions or whatever? They said they had. Even our father, who decided long ago that the medical profession is nothing but a scam, doctors being liable to give you the wrong medicines or even, as happened to his brother, operate on the wrong leg, said James and Carlotta ought to go see about the Rh factor and do whatever the doctor said. That this new baby might be strong. That this new baby might not cry with a screech in his voice and go limp in your arms when you picked him up.
Dundee. Named for the most hard-muscled man Carlotta and James could picture at the time. But a name alone won’t alter a person. Or cure a person. What could cure, our family believed, was ritual: dance, smoke, prayer. Carlotta trudged ahead of me, undaunted by the trickiness of the trail. She was convinced that by hiking as a family, soft shafts of sunlight falling on our shoulders, we were already summoning spirits. She turned to me and smiled as if to say, isn’t this great, Calvin? She lifted her eyes to the filtered light, the heavy hemlocks hovering over the trail, and tried to feel their energy. In sympathy I tried to feel the energy too. I tuned my ears to birdsong, to the rustle of wind in bare branches, but then she began to hum, and the spell was lost; she sounded like she was blowing through paper on a comb. Meanwhile, James had begun to curse. On the rocky slope he struggled like a fat man, a seventeen-year-old fat father of one/two. Damned stroller, fucking stroller, piece of shit! I looked to the front of our little procession to check on Chrissie, age six, her fisted hand gripping our mother’s skirt. She stumbled, and one of her pink sneakers wedged between two rocks. But good brave girl, she didn’t cry.
To be a Cooper you had to be a certain kind of brave. Brave enough to be shunned and to shun in return. Brave enough to be in this world but not of this world. To be a believer in the one pure and real Christ while watching for a whole host of anti-Christs at the same time. And to accept that they could arrive at any minute. Kind of the way Dundee arrived, a surprise to us all, Carlotta stepping through the back door to say she didn’t know what was happening, but it looked like it might be now. Eight weeks too soon. She leaned against the doorframe, teeth chattering. Chrissie ran over and hugged her leg. And then a miracle happened – our father, our big, silent father, denier of all forms of medical intervention, went and got the keys to his truck. We have to go get help, he said, his voice wavering. He took Carlotta by the arm and led her out, one of those moments you never forget.
The trail was clogged with hikers, this being the first clear day in a week, close to Easter. Some schools were already out. Behind us we could hear voices, and there were shouts through the trees. Chrissie sat fiddling with her shoe. I wanted her to hurry up. I hated groups of people, especially boys, my presumed tribe. Our father pulled out his knife. He looked like he was about to skin something. On his forearm: a bleeding heart; on his wrist: a blue crown of thorns. He bent down maybe to cut her shoelaces, and there came this funny sound. Dundee gurgling in his stroller. Gurgling like something was coming up. Carlotta began to coo at him, ignoring his throaty noises. It was as if she’d just noticed we brought him along. She kissed his cheek, and our mother ran a hand over his head the way a cat licks her young.
The hikers grew nearer. Loud, loogie-hocking, and stupid. I didn’t have to see them to know what they were. My keen ears could detect the fuzzy, bottled‑up sound of guitar licks leaking from somebody’s earbuds. Chrissie kept wiggling her wedged shoe until it finally came loose, then she stood up. Here they came, five of them, carrying tools. They were the type of guys who see a forest as something to cut down. With hatchets and a machete and a bush axe. One of the guys saluted me. I looked at our father, and I knew what he was thinking. Fools. Once again I was glad I’d never been sent to school. We stepped off the trail, James holding the stroller against his chest to let the little gang pass. The one with the earbuds came first, and his friends followed him. They stared at us, stinking, silent.
We sat for a while to let them get some distance. Why were they carrying weapons, Chrissie wanted to know, and our father told her that’s what boys do. Some boys do, I almost said, but didn’t. Swine, I also wanted to say – swine do, swine carry machetes and hatchets on a trail. Swine was a word I liked. We are not, Jesus said, to throw our pearls to swine. I could buy that. Then Chrissie said, so why don’t you carry a weapon, daddy? And he said, laying a hand on his knife, I don’t need one. In my head I thought of course not, you don’t need a weapon because you could tear those boys apart with your bare hands. I saw the rabbit hutch tucked under our back fence, our family’s food supply. How many rabbits had I seen him strangle?
I was starting to get hungry. We’d driven hours to get here, all of us packed in the van with the front window open so our father could smoke. In the front seat our mother kept turning on the heat and turning it off. Dundee would whimper, and Chrissie would pull a bottle out of her enormous bag, and I’d have to watch his yellow formula going down, Dundee slowly sucking. On the radio there was Limbaugh. Limbaugh and then the Bible network and then more Limbaugh. Dundee had his bottle, burped, then slept. James and Carlotta leaned on each other looking into her phone. Amazing, they let her have a phone. We were a non-technology family all the way. But somehow, Carlotta got a phone. James, I guess. Not entirely a Cooper.
It was through the miracle of her phone that Carlotta got the idea to take Dundee to a waterfall, two miles in. A miracle, too, that our father agreed. Carlotta and James did their research: closest waterfall on a public trail = Fiery Gizzard. Swimming hole = Fiery Gizzard. And wouldn’t we all swim, if only it weren’t the vernal equinox, average temperature = 55 degrees. They chose the vernal equinox because it’s when the center of the sun shines exactly over the equator, and day and night become equal. A turning in the seasons, a turning toward rebirth. Even I could get excited about that idea. I pictured a black shadow passing over the sun. In Carlotta’s mind, everything had to have meaning. The waterfall, the time of year, the things in her bag. She talked about positive ions, how waterfalls change the air and make it purer, while our father talked about rocks. He loved rocks, started collecting them when he was a boy. Earth’s core. Geodes in our front room, a hunk of quartz by the door, little stones on the windowsills in the bedroom we shared.
Our mother said, Peter was the rock! She’d been thumbing through scriptures. And Peter was a fisherman, he was on the water. He walked on water! Look, she said, water’s everywhere in the Bible, beginning with Noah. And that flood healed the whole world.
Like Jonah, I said. I was my own personal Worldwide Web. I said, Jonah was thrown overboard to keep the boat from sinking in a storm. By Jonah, the sailors were healed.
And Moses in the bulrushes – there was a story. You could set Dundee in a basket and float him down the river in search of a better mother. This, I did not say. But then what do you know, Carlotta brought it up herself. What if we float him on the water, she said, just like Moses? Not far, just a little ways. It could be a sign of faith.
And what if, I wanted to say but didn’t, I just lay down on a pyre and let our father pull out his bowie knife to cut my throat?
So many things I never say. In my head, so many things.
I did not say, for instance, while we sat around the kitchen table that day planning a hike, that a Tennessee waterfall wasn’t about to change anything in Dundee’s life, or the life of this new baby in the womb, or our mother’s arthritis or Chrissie’s nightmares or the overall strangeness of our family, which was a sickness in itself. Neither would prayer. What had prayer really done for us so far? What happened to Dundee had happened to Dundee, period. He was born too early, just like Carlotta’s very first baby, the one only I knew about, the one that never grew. The one before James came around. No prayer, no dance beside a waterfall could change that story.
Or this: what it was like for me, a ten-year-old kid who’d already seen his share of nature’s cruelty, to witness our mother giving birth. To Chrissie. I stood with Carlotta in the bedroom, with its many smells and mysteries, and tried to close my eyes and ears. Our mother lifted her knees. Such noise. And then the wet hairy globe – I could see no more, so I went to watch the pot on the stove. Somebody had to keep the house from burning down.
Funny how everybody has their own way of looking at the same thing. As if we can decide what’s really real. Carlotta, age eleven, saw the miracle of birth. The heavens came down, and she opened her arms. Filled with the spirit, she was bound to go looking for her own love. I saw our mother in a way I never expected and took off running. Facing oncoming traffic, meeting the patrolling eyes of drivers behind the wheel.
Yet who couldn’t love Dundee? Tiny little man. Of this world and not of this world. Potentially deaf (we weren’t sure, thirteen months and he hardly made a sound) and so to my way of thinking, hearing only the music of the spheres. The spheres – where he came from, in whatever corner of heaven people are concocted, all God’s created masses. Was it only I who imagined this heavenly factory? And now, let us make a new baby! And now, let us allow it to be born way too soon, and let us watch to see how it thrives, or doesn’t.
Was it an accident or was it on purpose that we even had Dundee?
Was it an accident or on purpose that I was born a Cooper?
At first it was kind of cute, those gurgling noises. Just listen to him, Carlotta said, isn’t it sweet, Dundee knows we’re going to a waterfall! She wanted so much to believe. Dundee’s head wobbled from side to side, and he blew bubbles. Isn’t he cute? She tried walking beside the stroller, but the trail was too narrow, so she walked ahead, slipping on muddy rocks. Which is why she didn’t see the change in Dundee’s face, didn’t notice when he went from gurgling to wheezing, the phlegm nesting in his lungs.
The trail grew more treacherous, it was one foot in front of the other, rock to rock to rock. Even a mountain goat would’ve had a hard time. Hikers passed us wearing hiking boots and fleece jackets. They looked like professionals, they knew what they were doing. But not us. I watched our mother lift her baggy blue skirt to keep from tripping on it, and the sight of her pale, cold legs and her slouchy socks and black shoes embarrassed me. Just as the stroller embarrassed me. James gripped its curved handles and fought it, and as I knew it would, the stroller began to break, its cheap aluminum frame bending before my eyes.
Forest to our right, Fiery Gizzard Creek to our left. Clear, cold water at the bottom of a steep ravine. If only this water had been steamy hot, like at Yellowstone. If only Carlotta and James had said, let’s go to Yellowstone, although it was a trip we would never take, not in a zillion years. (You can see the entire world from your own chair, our mother claimed, thumping her yard-sale homeschool text.) Yellowstone because what Dundee really needed was steam. To open his lungs, to let him breathe. But there is no steam in Tennessee. Yellowstone, yes. Baden-Baden, yes. Greenland, Iceland, Fiji, Bali, Nepal. Hot springs all over the world, beautiful steamy waterfalls. Even in Arkansas, even in Georgia and South Dakota and Hawaii. But not Tennessee.
What those yard-sale textbooks taught me.
Our father stabbed at rocks with a walking stick he’d found, and Chrissie hopped along behind him, balancing herself against our mother’s big hip. Carlotta resumed humming. “Blessed Assurance”: perfect submission, perfect delight. She picked her way along the trail in her own fantasy dream, one foot in front of the other, to God be the glory. But then the stroller fell apart. From behind I saw its wheels cave inward and its umbrella seat, with Dundee inside, fold over on itself. James cursed, damned stroller piece of shit, and Carlotta turned in time to see Dundee’s lips turn the color of a blue bruise.
I should have said something was wrong with him; I was right there, two steps behind. But the creek was opening up a little, and I could detect the sound of rushing water. Falling water. We were drawing closer – to what, I wasn’t sure. A joining of hands, maybe, and devout, muttering prayer. Then some sandwiches. Then, because it’s something our mother always wanted to do, but not our father, not ever our father, we might try a little hymn-sing. But only if we were blessed to be alone, because who wants to be seen standing by a waterfall singing a hymn like a crazy person?
James lifted Dundee from the stroller, and Dundee started crying and sucking in each breath like a baby who’s been crying a long, long time. Shhh, Dunny, said Carlotta. She circled her arms around James, her chubby teenage husband, the boy she’d submitted to at fourteen, like a rabbit, and hugged him and Dundee at the same time. Dunny, Dunny, she said. She wiped his eyes with the back of her hand, rubbed his snotty nose with the hem of her sweater. Dunny, she said, what made you get sick? She turned to our mother. Mama, why’d he have to go and catch a bad cold? Sickness was our mother’s specialty, she was pretty much the only doctor we ever had. She took Dundee up and rocked him from side to side, her hair swaying like a horsetail. Soothing him, whispering to him, picking his nose with her pinkie.
Our father grabbed the broken stroller with one hand and sailed it into the woods. Then he set his palm on Dundee’s cold head and closed his eyes as if praying. He took a deep, dramatic breath. Let’s keep moving, he said, we’ve gone too far to turn around now.
Frank Cooper. The reason we were what we were. The reason we lived at the end of a dusty road that was ours alone. That no one bother us. The reason we didn’t go to school. That our minds not be poisoned. The reason we obeyed him. That we not be spoiled.
When I was little I thought of him as Abraham. In our church in the hills he’d sit uncomfortably in the pew, the folds of his neck squeezed into his shirt collar and his sleeves riding halfway up his arms. He had a tan face and a pink neck. An outdoors man, not an indoors man, something I was proud of. At least I was proud then. But in church he always had a wary look, as if the preacher might call on him. And then one time he did. The preacher said, Frank Cooper, are you saved? We felt a sudden shock. Who would dare call on our father? I could feel our mother tremble, sympathy mixed with shame. He cleared his throat and said, that’s between me and the Lord.
We got in the truck, and he started the motor. We can have church at home, our mother said, but he didn’t reply. Wherever two or more are gathered, she said.
This was before Chrissie – I had that to look forward to – but I was old enough to know what he was feeling. All those church people, he couldn’t stand them, they were so happy and so blessed. They stood when it was time to stand and sat when it was time to sit, and they took out their hymnals, flipped the pages to the right song, and started singing. Even then I knew he hated them because he couldn’t read the words.
You can travel the whole world in a book, our mother said, you don’t even have to leave your chair! And he said, what I see with my own eyes is all the world I need, Christine. Twice a week he rode a mower over grave markers at the perpetual care cemetery, his job, and memorized names he couldn’t read, which ones had crosses beside them, which ones had angels. Our mother said, and then there’s the world of the spirit, Frank, what none of us can see with our eyes. And he said, no need to remind me.
He had James carry Dundee the rest of the way. The baby lay still, his cheek pressed against the cold zipper of James’s jacket. Through the woods a veil of sunlight poured over us – vernal light, the equinox. Night and day the same, like magic. Little buds on trees, green shoots poking through dry leaves. Now and then Dundee coughed and whimpered. We took turns stopping to look at him. You could see his chest cave in. Chrissie thought he might need a bottle, but our mother feared he might choke. Carlotta kept digging into her bag. She’d looped the strap across her chest to keep it from falling off her shoulder. She dug around without pulling anything out. Prayer beads, or the angel she’d carved.
A group of hikers came toward us, headed back to the trailhead. Two girls and two guys and a big dog with a leash circling its nose. We stepped aside to let them pass, and the dog promptly lunged. It was going after Dundee, trying to catch a whiff of him, but the guy holding the leash yanked the dog back. One of the girls gave out a little yelp. It all happened so fast. Chrissie started to cry, and the guy with the dog said sorry, so sorry, and the girls said sorry too, and then one of them stepped over to get a peek at Dundee, just to be friendly. I expected her to say how cute he was, but she didn’t say anything. Because Dundee didn’t look cute, he looked sick.
Once they were out of earshot, James said he would’ve killed the dog if he’d had to, and our father said he was thinking the same thing. A good reason to carry a knife, he said. You never know. Chrissie couldn’t stop crying. At first it was all about what might’ve happened to Dundee if the dog had bit him, but then it was about the dog – what if James had killed it? – and then it was about being tired and having to pee. Our mother led her into the forest, straight up a slope and behind underbrush to hide her from sight, but the woods were so thin we could see everything.
All the things we’d seen, the suffocating closeness. Together we shared a palace: three entire rooms. Sofa and recliner in the front room, bed in the middle room, cook stove and kitchen table in the back. Outside, a privy and a cold trickling spring. We learned to creep in the dark, to feel our way with the soles of our feet. We learned how to sleep four in a bed. How to curl in a recliner like a dog. How to gather water in a plastic tub, take a drink from the tub and then wash dishes in the same tub. How to judge time by the color of the sky.
This was us – could anyone tell?
Some afternoons when no one was watching, our mother tucked away in the bedroom nursing Chrissie and our father out at his job, I’d leave Carlotta and walk up our drive just to see how far I could go, what I could get away with. After some time I built the nerve to walk as far as the state road, and I followed it for about two miles. I was maybe thirteen then. A few houses, some mobile homes in a field. Propane tanks, cars on blocks, dogs chained to trees. The curves in the road suggested an old cow path. I’d walk until I got tired, then head home prepared to say I’d been out hunting squirrels. I kept wanting to meet somebody. One day I got up the nerve to cross the road and face oncoming cars, the few that came. I feebly waved my thumb. The first man who stopped for me was a salesman driving a black van. He asked me where I was headed, and I didn’t know what to say. Then I got in.
By the time we reached the waterfall, it began to look like Dundee might not make it. His eyes had turned glassy and his skin was hot with fever, and no matter how much James hugged him, holding him close, he wouldn’t stop wheezing. We stood around him in the light-filled opening the waterfall provided. Before us, the creek spilled over a table of black rocks in pure, clear ribbons. It was the first waterfall I’d ever seen, probably the first and only one our father and mother had ever seen. But we were fools to be there. Dundee had begun fighting for air, and it felt like we were doomed. Carlotta shivered as if she was standing in snow. Pregnant, although she barely showed, and grieving already. This was not what was supposed to happen. She had made such hopeful, happy plans.
Our mother began to pray. She said, oh Lord, come heal this baby.
We weren’t alone. Girls with phones stepped precariously over rocks, trying not to get their feet wet. They looked Chinese. I wondered how they got here. Like us, they weren’t dressed for a hike; one of them even wore sandals. They tiptoed, then stopped, tiptoed, then stopped. Each time they stopped, they took pictures with their phones. And then there were the boys. They waded above us along the crest of the waterfall, pants wet to their knees. Somewhere along the way they’d dropped their hatchets and machetes and their stupid bush axe. When Carlotta started to cry loud enough for them to hear, they stopped and looked at us as if in awe. We made a sad tableau. Carlotta fell onto James’s chest, clutched at Dundee, and sobbed.
Had she already begun thinking it was her fault? In the back of her mind, had she already begun blaming our parents, and James, and me? Because later this would come, the blame.
We formed a huddle. Our mother began speaking in tongues; it was like she was mixing French and Portuguese and Urdu, and James and Carlotta began chanting a prayer. I took Chrissie’s hand and led her aside. I didn’t want her to see this. Also I didn’t want to meet the eyes of our father, our pillar of salt.
He said, Carlotta, take out your phone and call 9‑1‑1.
She fumbled in her bag and took out her phone. She stabbed the screen, then held the phone to her ear. Stabbed again, stabbed and stabbed.
He snatched the phone out of her hand and stared at it.
There’s no service here, James said.
A look of disbelief came across his face.
I saw satellites. High above, they circled the earth, hundreds of them, thousands. They had beeping little lights and antennas, searching, listening. But not listening to us.
The Chinese girls stopped taking pictures. In the presence of what might be tragedy, they looked terrified. The boys, though, seemed to think Carlotta was crying for help. They splashed back across the high table of rocks, heading, it looked like, to the path in the woods that had led them to the top in the first place. They were heading back down. To us.
I held Chrissie’s hand. She wanted to know what was wrong with Dundee – was he going to die? No, I told her, he just has a very bad cold. Which was true, it was just a very bad cold, but Dundee wasn’t a normal baby, his lungs were weak. An emergency, 9‑1‑1, if only we had the means to call. This, I didn’t say. Instead I said, he’ll be okay. But he wouldn’t be. In minutes, he would be gone.
The boys emerged from the woods to see if they could be of assistance. That’s how they put it: can we be of assistance? Carlotta and James shielded Dundee from view, and Chrissie moved behind me, clinging to my leg. At home there were few strangers we ever saw. One of the boys said, is that a baby? And our father said, that’s right. And we don’t need none of your help, thank you.
Out of nowhere, there came the weirdest sound, a kind of chirp. Carlotta looked down at Dundee, limp and enfolded in James’s arms. One of the boys said, it sounds like croup there. I used to get it when I was a kid.
Another said, could be he needs a hot shower, that’s what you do for croup. Or maybe he’s got a case of pneumonia.
Our father gave them a hard, cold look. This baby don’t need no shower.
But the boy wouldn’t stop talking. Now it was about steam. Steam, hot steam. So the baby can breathe, he said. That’s what we always did. Sometimes my grandma would take me in the bathroom and turn on the faucet and. . . .
One of the other boys interrupted him. Or you could breathe on him! Breath is the same as steam, ain’t it?
The boys pushed in closer so they could see Dundee’s face. I could sense Carlotta’s panic. I pictured one of them putting his mouth on Dundee’s mouth, the sour breath.
Our father lifted out his knife. Not one step closer, he said.
Whoa, one of the boys said, easy. He held up his hands. We were just trying to help. Seeing the knife, the others turned to go, and then they all rushed away.
We watched them go. In about ten seconds, they were out of sight. I looked around at the waterfall and the bright, sparkling pool. The girls, too, seemed to have disappeared. Hiding in the trees, maybe, looking at us. The waterfall gushed soothingly. Until the apocalypse, it would gush on.
Our father walked over to James, pried open his arms, and lowered his mouth to Dundee’s blue lips. Too late.
* * *
The last time I took to the state highway, age fourteen or so, I wasn’t paying attention, and I held out my thumb before I knew what was coming. So I didn’t recognize the truck before it was too late. The battered, rusted front bumper and the cracked windshield. The truck slowed, and I quickly turned and kept walking. Behind my back I could hear the motor wind down, then the sound of crunching gravel as the truck pulled to a stop.
Came the dreaded voice: hitchhiking?
I kept walking.
Don’t walk away from me. I can get you.
I turned to face my father. I felt my legs wobble.
Well, get in, he said, but not in the front. You’ll go in the truck bed, where you belong. You want to act like trash, then you’ll ride like trash.
I climbed in and scrambled to the front of the bed so I could crouch out of his sight while he drove.
The road whizzed by, sunlight blinding my eyes. The smell of dirty exhaust, the sound of the old chassis squeaking through the curves. The pot-holed driveway into the cemetery.
For hours, he made me sit there in the truck while he worked. If I see you try to get out, he said, I’ll beat your ass.
I watched him wind his tractor over the grounds. He dodged the tombstones, rolled straight over all those flat brass plates. All the elderly and the terminally sick and the fatally injured. All the little angels and doves. When he was done, he rolled the tractor back into its shed and walked slowly to the truck. He laid his elbows over the rear gate and glared at me with his clear gray eyes. He spat into the truck bed, leaving a white glob. Then he said: You better not be looking for what I think you are, because if so, you might as well be dead.
I didn’t go looking anymore. Not until after we lost Dundee.
But after that, I couldn’t stop looking. In disbelief I walked out the door and headed toward the highway, taking my chances.
Emily Pease’s stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, Shenandoah, Witness, The Georgia Review, and Crazyhorse.