Where Bluebirds Fly

Chapter 3



The undersides of my legs prickle and sting as if the wasps from my sick mind have migrated, feasting on a new area of my body.

The heels of my ankles are rubbed raw from the stocks. I wrench around trying to find someone, anyone.

A sharp burning makes me cry out; my skin rips open and a tiny trickle of blood cuts through the grime on my leg.

I taste the salt as my tears pass my lips, en route to my filthy neck.

I am nothing, an empty shell.

As if my real self abandoned this body and hides somewhere, awaiting the return of better days.

The hornets rise in my head. My depression is a dark blanket, attached and hovering at a million different points, to their invisible buzzing voices. They drop it, and it covers me.

The streets are clearing as people return to their homes to sup. Ingersoll’s ordinary is within my sight and the sounds of eating and drinking fill the evening air.

My sentence was one hour, but I’ve been in the stocks since sun-up. Angry tears well again and itch as they cut down my cheeks. My hands writhe, useless in the stocks, as I struggle to wipe them away.

I hear footsteps approaching. I force my eyes up and my stomach roils. Goody Churchill approaches on the winding path in front of the stockade. I close my eyes on her delighted expression.

I think of John and pray fervently for his safety.

He depends on me to translate his thoughts, to decipher people’s facial expressions, which often hold no meaning for him. He needs me. I must get back.

The footsteps crunch to a halt before me.

My eyes squint a blurry slit, but a burning crack across my cheek opens them wide.

Goody Churchill’s bulk casts her shadow over me, hands on hips. Her fat face is a rumpled sneer and her laugh is rife with the unholy mixture of jealousy and condescension.

“Well, well, well. The tempest of your mouth finally landed you where you belong.”

She steps closer, leaning down to whisper in my ear. Her breath is hot, laden with whiskey.

I wrinkle my nose, lurching away, but the stocks hold me prisoner.

Each word is velvety, smoothly-breathed. “I think you are a witch, just like that Tituba. I will see you and that fool brother of yours, hanged.” Her lips peel back in a triumphant grin to reveal a line of rotted teeth.

She drags her finger beneath her chin as if an imaginary knife slits her throat.

I know Goody Churchill had been in the stocks only last fortnight for falling asleep in church…while drunk.

Something wet strikes the side of my head, snapping it backwards as the pain clangs inside my skull.

My bottom slides off the bench, wrenching my legs in a painful twist as the stocks grind into my ankle’s open wound.

The insects have control now. My mind hums, numb with their multitude. Swarming away with my sanity.

My stream of tears feels distant, as if belonging to someone else.

Silently, in my mind, I wail for my mother. This time, the pain won’t be contained.

“M-mother, please, help me.” Sobbing drowns my words.

Goody Churchill leers with pleasure; her cackle adds to the noise in my head.

A bright light fires in my dark mind-pushing back the swarm. It feels foreign; like a finger in my thoughts.

His green eyes. The man from the corn. Something inside me startles and wakes—long cold and dead.

I hear his voice, pleading with me to stop. His voice pushes back the dark.

“Ah, you’re daft.” She waves a dismissive hand and turns.

Realizing the fight has gone out of me, Goody Churchill retreats.

The footsteps recede with an occasional drunken hiccup. The image of him is fading. I want to reach out to him, to beg him stay.

Fear lets the cold trickle back into my heart. Surely, the corn is enchanted. And if I return to him—I shall hang. For wanting him.

I dare to open my eyes. A rotted corncob rolls on the ground beside me. My eyes flick across the fields.

The corn. The draw.

I laugh, and I hear the madness in it.

I shift my weight back and forth, trying to ease the searing pain on my legs.

The impossibility of my life presses on my chest, choking out my breath.

It is a vast void of repetition with no escape. Ever.

Rise. Chores. Eat. Chores. Teach John. Bed. Again.

With an occasional taunt or lashing thrown in, for good measure.

My vague memories of childhood are leaving me. My parents had not been wealthy, but they had been in love. And their love had sheltered us from hopelessness. They found joy in every task they undertook. I need those memories to stay. They are all I have.

“Please don’t forget me and leave me till morn,” I whisper. The thought of bears roaming in the nearby woods makes me sob harder.

More steps come into earshot. Squinting, I discern John’s lanky figure, steadily loping his way toward me. I hastily take deep breaths, trying to compose myself. I must be brave.

The footsteps halt in front of me and I open my eyes, knowing they’re bloodshot. My brother bestows a feeble smile, and I manage one in return.

My mother’s final words echo in my head, the ones I’d blocked out before. “Take care of one another. The two of you are all that remains of us.”

* * *

A screeching sound, which could only be one thing, met Truman’s ears. He bolted toward the hallway.

“The bus is here five minutes early! Run!” he screamed up the steps— simultaneously flinging open the front door and giving the bus driver a singular index finger of ‘wait’.

“Ram, we’re going to miss it! I’ll be late for patients and you for class!”

Ram skidded into the vestibule by the front door, brandishing five brown bag lunches and five coats. A stampede of footsteps thundered down the stairs.

Truman wrangled two blond boys into their coats. He bent, looking in their eyes. “Cade, you’ll do fine on your test, stop fretting. Connor, you’ll do fine with the music audition. Just take your time.”

Ram finished with another pack of unruly boys and the quintet sprinted down the bricked lane to the waiting bus, which honked as it pulled away.

Truman smiled at the Honda Civic pulling up in front of the turnaround. Sunshine opened the back door and hoisted a bag of toys over her shoulders.

“What’s she bought now? This clinic is already crawling with toys. I’m constantly stepping on them,” Truman said.

Ram rolled his eyes. “I’m late. You have to call the Mensa people back.”

Truman turned to look at him, his mind searching for recollection.

“The call, in the wee-hours of the morning? Remember?” Ram’s face was impatient as he donned his black pea coat.

“In all the fuss, I totally forgot about it. We’re going to catch it for that. We haven’t responded within the time frame.” Ram gave him a what-do-you-expect-me-to-do shrug, and took a step out the door.

“Never mind, I’ll handle it.”

Ram stepped off the porch and jogged toward his SUV, hopping over a stray ball. “Of course you will! That’s why I chose you! Responsible.”

He sighed. Yes, if you only knew I’m trying to rearrange my afternoon so I can search the corn and stalk a figment of my cross-wired brain.

“Oh, yeah. Responsible all right.”

Sunshine crossed the yard and tripped. Her colossal bag banged off the sign, which read, Johnstone/Usman Occupational Therapy Clinic, Specializing in Feeding and Sensory Integration Disorders.

It rocked a little and she swayed, and accidentally smacked it again.

“Don’t worry ’bout the sign—I can just buy a new one,” Truman yelled as Sunshine trudged across the yard.

She lumbered up the steps, the heavy bag over her shoulders slumping her posture. Her red lips pursed.

“I don’t want to hear it. If I’m bored with the toys, the kids will be too.”

Truman ignored her. “We have precisely five minutes till the first one arrives.”

She dropped the heavy bag to the ground and began extracting toys.

Striding into the clinic, he picked up a pile of charts and deposited them into Sunshine’s already-full arms.

“Those are yours. See you at lunch.”

He entered the clinic and strode to the desk; his own tottering pile taunted him.

“Right.”

The redhead kept filling up his mind, distracting him.

He leaned on the stack of papers, closing his eyes. Her face appeared, perfectly clear, perfectly distraught, as he’d left her.

He licked his lips. He wanted to…smooth that expression away. And never see it mar her face again.

His watch beeped, his eyes snapped open. “Crap. I am completely mental.”

Cracking open the chart, his eyes had time to scan the first few words, a diagnosis, when the clinic door opened followed by a child’s wailing.

“Timmy! Come on, Timmy! You’ve been here a million times, when is this going to stop?” The mother’s eyes held a desperate pleading expression.

Her fingers around the boy’s wrist slipped as he hung there, a rag-doll suspended by one arm. She wrestled the four-year-old to stand.

“You are going to rip out your feeding tube. Please, I can’t take another trip to the E.R. this week.”

Truman plastered on a smile. “How’s it going? Any new foods this week?”

Timmy quit his struggle, settling for lying face down on the floor, where he now rotated his arms in a frenzied rotary pattern, as if he were attempting a snow angel, without the snow.

The boy growled under his breath, voicing his displeasure.

“Well, he did manage a cheese puff the whole way through, chewed it and swallowed it, like you suggested. But when I tried the cracker…”

A violent retching sound exploded, clearly audible even from his facedown position on the floor.

“Tim…unbelievable. I can’t even mention the foods or he gags.” His mother sighed; her small exhale communicating a world of desperate exhaustion.

Underneath that hard exterior, Truman felt the waves of sorrow threatening to drown this brave woman; they were burnt orange. From Tim, a continuous, erratic pulse of amber fear emanated like a terrible Morse code.

“That’s ok. You’re continuing the bolus feedings through the tube? And I got the results of the swallowing study—he’s clear to do the thin liquids from a cup, no aspiration.”

When she looked confused, he added, “You know, no leaking into his lungs.”

“Good luck with that,” she choked. Her eyes glistened, despite being at this for months. She angrily pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You know that.” He winked.

A shiver of his past hovered around his thoughts, trying to find a way in.

Her expression rattled around in his brain like Marley’s ghost, reminding him of his childhood.

When life is ghastly, everyday, anger may be all you have, the only way to stay alive.

Truman stooped, rolling the boy on his side. Lifting his shirt, his eyes traced the port for the gastro tube. The skin around it was healing.

“It’s all cleared up around the edges. You can wait outside, Judy. I’ll give you the status report when we’re done.” She gave a relieved nod, and shut the door.

Truman’s stared at the boy, who was unable to make eye contact. He would glance, look away.

Finally, he grasped the boy’s chin, holding it there, waiting him out.

“Tim. Tim? It’ll be fine, you know that.” Finally the boy met his gaze.

Taking out the lotion, he squirted some onto his hands, and firmly rubbed the ointment into the boy’s palms. Timmy gagged, and squirmed, pushing backwards. He signed the words, “All done.”

“No, sorry lad. Not done yet, if you can’t stand touching the food, you can’t expect to eat it. I won’t be there when you’re twenty to help you feed yourself. C’mon, you can do this. If we get one new food today, I have a prize for you, ok?”

The boy closed his eyes, a solitary tear trickling out the corner. He extended his other hand to Truman to rub and gagged again before Truman even touched him.

* * *