Infant Sight

“A man drowned during his baptism yesterday,” Calpurnia said, staring up at her brother.

Colt looked down at her, his legs swinging off the bed of their father’s truck. “Who told you that?”

Calpurnia was in the grass, her legs spread apart like a rag doll. “Momma was saying it on the phone.”

Colt leaned backward, resting his head on his hands. He looked into the clouds and imagined drowning.

“What’s it mean?” Calpurnia asked.

“It means he’s dead,” Colt answered.

“But the man? And what about God?” 

Colt sat up again. “Can’t be good.” He thought of being suspended underwater, the priest’s hand between his shoulder blades, fingers splayed. “Let’s go see where it happened.”

  They wandered down the game paths through the oaks and magnolia trees to the creek. It wasn’t too wide, but it cut deep and housed hidden currents that swept away anything that dove too close. Six children had drowned there over the summers, but never a man. 

Colt removed his boots and waded out. The rounded stones pressed into the arches of his feet. He turned toward Calpurnia. She was trapped, staring at her broken reflection. He frowned at her.

“Look,” he called, holding his hands up to the sky. “Just like Jesus,” he fell backward into the water. 

He kept his eyes closed, feeling the water against his flesh saturating the button down his mother laid out for him the night before. She always told him he loved the water more than any kid should. 

“You never wanted to leave me,” she had said, explaining again his late arrival into the world, two weeks past his due date. “It’s why you love the water so much. I had to put you in a bath every night until you were four just to get you to sleep. A warm bath’s just like being back in the womb.”

One day Delmont Lewis lured some of the boys from Ms. Keaton’s fifth-grade class into the bathroom and removed his father’s book of anatomy from his backpack. He pointed to the black and white illustrations. Colt recoiled with understanding. As Delmont explained the womb and the kinds of things that went on there, Colt began to hate his mother for ever claiming he desired to return to hers. 

Colt felt his chest pulsing, fighting for breath. He pressed himself deeper, letting the current grab at his limbs before shooting upward from the icy waters, unable to fight his urge to breathe. 

“You idiot,” Calpurnia cried. She was up to her knees in water, hands clutched at her chest. “Don’t do that again.” She turned, stomping up to the shore. “Look what you made me do. My shoes are soaked.”

He waded out of the waters. “You’ll have to walk back barefoot.”

Calpurnia cried all the way home. He watched her limp ahead of him, and he saw the whites of her tight knuckles. Every so often she would sniffle, just loud enough for him to hear. He knew she wanted him to know the pain he had caused her. 

“Will they fire Father Hollon?” she asked, her feet stuck with thorns.

“I think only God can do that,” Colt answered, looking at the spot where her hair fell between her shoulder blades. They kept walking and he thought of her womb, knowing that it wasn’t right to.

To Know the Flesh

He had the nicest shoes in the county. Cap-toed, Italian leather oxfords, each with its own perfectly symmetrical bow. Every Sunday, as he stepped up to the pulpit for the sermon, she liked to listen to the noise his steps made against the wood floors. It was the only time she could hear the sound without a hundred other feet drowning it out as the parish left after mass. 

Now his laces were untied, and she could see scuffs from where his feet caught on each other as he walked. She edged closer to him, on her knees, and took one foot in her hand. His expression went unchanged as she pulled the shoe from him and set it aside. She moved on to the next, and let her hand linger behind his tendon for a moment too long. He didn’t seem to notice, but she frowned at how hard it was for her to withdraw. 

There was never a time when she’d seen him as anything but pristine. His suits were always perfectly tailored: not in an average way, but in the way she saw in magazines and on celebrities. Even on the days farthest from Sunday mass, he was well-groomed, buying apples from the grocery store and working in the herb garden behind the church. 

But when she found him on his screen porch thirty minutes after midnight, he was something new. A strand of hair had fallen over his forehead; his clerical collar was torn from his throat and thrown onto the table, and the first few buttons of his untucked shirt were open, exposing the depression between his collar bones. He had been crying. She didn’t bring it up. Instead, she poured him his tea and knelt down to remove his shoes. 

“Have some,” she urged, touching his knee, feeling the warmth of his skin through his pant leg. She remembered her children at home, asleep in their beds. She wondered if they could have woken to find the house void of her. She imagined them scared and alone. She liked to believe they needed her. But this night could be her only chance, a chance to feel what it might have been like if her ache for what never was had never existed. 

“It’s still your favorite, right?” she asked. She was never sure if it was actually his favorite, or if he only said so out of kindness. The first time he had it was at the annual church fundraiser. 

“There’s no topping Loretta Lee’s sweet tea,” he said. She liked the way his eyes narrowed and the corner of his lip turned up as her name passed over his tongue. It was like he knew some secret about her that she didn’t know herself. 

Ever since, she would make him a pitcher just often enough to make sure he remembered her. She left it at his doorstep when she knew he was out: a test to see if he would mention it the next time they ran into each other outside of church. He always did. 

Loretta was certain that these games she played were only with herself, but her hope was indestructible. She knew in the long run that it would eventually break her, but no matter how hard she beat at it, it endured. A method of self-preservation because the alternative would have killed her. So she analyzed their every interaction, mutilating each one until it was bare. More feed for her hope—a word that soured in her mouth, but still found its way there.

After Sadie Lewis called to tell her that someone had died, Loretta imagined what it must have been like for him—to hold someone, to feel their flesh in his hand as it grew cold. She was sure that wasn’t how it happened, but it’s what she knew of death from the television. She didn’t want to ask him about it; she could see all she needed to know on his face. 

He didn’t want his tea. 

“Is there anything I can get for you?” Loretta asked him, leaning in closer, still on her knees. “What can I do?”

She looked up at him, hands on his thigh, and he started to cry. Just as she began to recoil, frightened by the closeness of their bodies and of what rejection might come, he reached for her. He placed his hand on top of hers and pressed her closer. 

As she watched him, she told herself to remember what his hand felt like on her skin and to remember what it was like to have her skirt fall over his foot, the flesh of her knee touching his toes. He needed her. Maybe only for the night, but he needed her.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked. She peered in through the porch door. At the end of the hall was his bedroom. The foot of his bed poked out from behind the door frame. She imagined him in the morning, rising and meticulously dressing himself. Where did he keep his shoes? How had he organized his closet?

“How about some music?” she asked him. “You have a radio?”

He twitched, his shoulder pushing back toward the house. She pushed herself up, sliding her hands from his and hoping it would not be the last time. Once she was inside, she wanted to wander, to discover new things about him, and to be surprised with what she found. It was simpler than she thought it would be. She turned on his radio, twisting the dial until the signal picked up an oldies station playing something slow. She didn’t even know what kind of music he liked.

She returned to the porch, where the music played, muffled, through the small doorway. “You won’t forget for forever, but you can for right now,” she said. “Will you dance with me?” 

How would the town react once they all knew? As much as she’d dreamed of him, and imagined him with her in every possible situation, she couldn’t lie to herself and believe that she knew what he would do. The version she knew of him was one she had created on her own. Sometimes it felt so real, but he was still so far. As she looked at him, the music playing from the other room, she saw a stranger—one that she found comfort in, but a stranger nonetheless. 

“Come dance. Let’s forget, just for a moment.”

Finally, he turned and looked her in the eye like it was the first time he was seeing anything at all. She tried to look back but he made her feel young again, and when she was young, she was afraid, so she hid.

“Come,” she said, taking his hand, keeping her eyes on the ground, “let’s forget.”

They were strangers. She was still afraid. It was starting to hurt.

He stood and took her in his arms.

Last Thought of Thine

I go to the river often. When we were young it was never much of anything. We dropped rocks off Sheep’s Bridge into the waters. Sometimes the shepherd came with his herd. Floyd and I would climb halfway up the railing and lean backward over the water as the sheep hurried past us. I liked feeling the empty air behind me and the weight of my body pulling me down. Sometimes we would stick our hands out and feel the wool as they went by. They came down one side of the valley, crossed the river, and then disappeared into the hills to the east. 

Occasionally, as we wandered the shores, we would see the baptisms. We hid in the bushes and watched with hypnotic misunderstanding, wondering about their white robes and full surrender. 

“It’s a cult,” Floyd whispered. 

“Not exactly,” my mother said when I’d repeated Floyd’s words to her like they were my own.

“Why don’t we go to church?” I asked.

“Do you want to go to church?” 

“Everyone else does.”

“And that’s why you want to go?”

“I don’t want to go,” I told her. We never spoke about it again.

My mother suffered before I ever could. She looked to every man in search of understanding. I know in the end she found it, but she was already broken by then. She had too many dreams, and dreams are a dangerous thing to have. Knowing what it felt like to have what she wanted most made her heartbreak all the more violent when she understood she would never have it. She gave everything to anyone. I wouldn’t have survived it either. 

I try my best not to blame her for my every unhappiness, the way she did with her father. I know the guilt she would feel because I feel it myself. Sometimes when I look at my Lucas, I see proof of the channels of sadness that flow from parent to child in our family. I have learned it is easier for me to blame her than it is for me to blame myself.

I often think of baptisms. I imagine one for each person I love, Lucas especially. There are many different kinds. I would like for him to choose his own, something to help him break free of the things that came from others’ mouths that he stitched onto himself. Lydia thought he was broken.

“We need to do something about him, Nathan,” she said to me. “Something is wrong.”

“He’s shy,” I tried to explain.

“Why don’t you understand? He doesn’t know how to be a person. Can’t you see that?”

“He’s nine. He’s learning.”

“Loretta’s girl is eight and she’s far beyond where Luke is. He’s broken, Nathan.”

I saw him standing at the end of the hallway, watching us. Lydia saw him too, but not the same way I did.

That evening, as I tucked him into bed, he took my wrist in his hand. “She doesn’t like me.”

He suddenly seemed smaller than I had ever seen him. 

“She loves you very much; she’s just concerned for you,” I explained. “That’s what love does. It makes us worry.”

For a moment he looked at me, an accusatory stare as if I had just done something to hurt him. He dropped my wrist and rolled over, hiding his face. I frowned, touching his shoulder.

“Lucas?” I asked.

“I’m tired,” he said, pulling the blanket tighter across himself.

I’ve never taken him to the river. I wonder if he blames me for what Lydia thinks of him, the way I would if I were him. I think of this conversation often and I wonder if what I did was the right thing to do. What I gave him wasn’t what he expected, maybe not what he wanted. He was disappointed. I should have known what he wanted. I should have taken him to the river.

Once Floyd and I found a sheep’s carcass among the grasses in the hills. Its legs were twisted and stiff, sticking straight out into the air. Floyd poked at them with a stick and it bobbed in the dirt, a foul stench coming from its bloated belly. We returned to it, watching the flesh rot, catching scavengers tearing at its limbs. Then one day it was gone, a cankered piece of earth left where it once lay. 

Sometimes I feel like that patch of earth. Time continues circling around and around again but nothing new grows. I notice repetitions, return to unknowing, return to the hiding place where I keep myself from the people who love me, something I’m sure I passed on to Lucas. If I knew how to stop it, I would have. I want Lucas to live the way I did along the riverbank. I want to show him Sheep’s Bridge and see him skipping rocks with his own Floyd. I want to take away the things he’s seen so he can start again. I want those untouched sights too. 

Lydia had Lucas the day I decided I wanted to be baptized. I returned to the river, to the spots where Floyd and I made the memories we told like tales to our friends. It was noon and they were all still there. They stood on the shore, each dressed in white. Father Hollon had taken over then. He was the only thing that had changed—a young man in exchange for the weathered. Father Hollon looked like he enjoyed what he was doing. He always watched his parishioners long after they’d emerged from the waters. I think he wanted to be sure they were happy with the service he provided. There were old and young, but the old were the ones that interested me most. They came after years of living, years of memories. They came for a new start. I want a new start. 

The river is the perfect place for rebirth. It’s noon and Father Hollon awaits me with open arms. I go to him like a child taking its first steps. What I remember most from watching the baptisms with Floyd was the look on their faces once they were brought back to the surface. Maybe it was that look I was after. I just wanted to understand, to know what it was. I think I saw it once when Lucas was born. Those fresh eyes quickly fade. I wanted to see the world for the first time again, the way I had when I didn’t know any better. 

Father Hollon begins the confession and I repeat his words. Sometimes we need more than our own minds to tell us when to start over. It’s awfully hard to do on your own. Father Hollon starts the blessing. His hand presses up between my shoulder blades, fingers splayed. I start to feel the enormity in my chest, and it almost hurts. 

He dips me backward, and the water rushes around. I open my eyes, waiting to be pulled up, and the blurred gleaming light ahead of me reaches further.

I see it all again, over and over, moments that are buried far beneath my fingernails. It all returns. Everything.

I go to the river often.