Anchors without Water

A snow flurry rides the crest of a silent brown sea, perpetuating the feeling of loneliness that sprouts from the weeds, grass, and dirt that cut through the white sky, the part of the canvas without a bird or brushstroke that could have lifted the dead feeling of winter as a gust of wind exposes the bone structure of the land: a surface that will lose its innocence regardless of whether it is touched.

In a dream, there might have been a fence or power line beyond the hills, as if we had a hand in shaping what is seldom seen. From the porch of a white house, beside a stark, leafless tree, a pond draws everyone’s attention, creating the illusion of two houses instead of the one mirrored across the pond’s placid, dark surface. This is where Vernon Clarke lives and listens to the winter corn stocks from his dining room while setting silverware beside a spotless white plate and cup for tomorrow’s breakfast, having finished today’s. He sips from a mug of brandy that turns his bloodshot eyes white and loosens the seriousness in his complexion. His fisherman’s beard hides his pockmarks, and his blue eyes hide his beard. He seldom starts a fire or lights the stove, preferring to wear his coat and gloves, layers upon layers inside.

He puts on his red hunting hat and brown, steel-toe work boots and grabs his Winchester rifle. This has always been his home, and the thirsty deer drink from his black pond. He aims from the porch and fires. The deer gasps for breath until he shoots again, and while he hangs the poor creature on a hook beside a tire swing that collects dust, he notices how the white stucco over fieldstone accentuates the blood as he cuts the animal open and tosses its guts. He uses the meat for venison soup, and he sells the fur and antlers to his neighbor, Henry Teel. Another man who dines alone, but Henry is older and pays a good price.

Vernon looks for the crows and burns the guts before any appear. They make a popping sound that could be mistaken for the three rusting meat hooks in Teel’s cellar, swaying back and forth like a swing in a forgotten park.

Vernon waits in the shadows and half-open doors of the Teel house, waiting for Henry to finish bundling carrots, celery, and green beans for his soup, upon hearing of his lack of vegetables. Vernon hates the Teel house, but travels the ten miles because he thinks he knows how lonely Henry is, and he pays a good price.

The old man ages a year every time Vernon sees him, but he loses none of the assurance that is produced from his body, filling rooms he walks through with an air of confidence he has never mentioned. Henry is a thin man with a slight belly. He says he has “The body of a frog,” but he is no frog. He is Henry Teel, a man who shaves his chiseled face every morning and, on summer nights, wears a white long-sleeved button-up and suspenders that hook into his trousers. Whether forgotten or done intentionally, the top buttons of his shirt are open, exposing white chest hair against his red skin, which the sun somehow manages to keep despite his wide-brimmed hat that’s as old as he is. Perhaps he was red for different reasons, but that was as far as Vernon prodded into his neighbor’s year-round sunburn.

Driving back, through the sycamore and white oak that separates their property, he remembers the night Henry became a widower. It was the hottest night of the year, and Vernon drove what he drove now, a 1949 International KB2 pickup that barely made it down the dirt road between them.

Henry’s daughter, Mary, screamed until Vernon got to their home, and she was able to bury herself in someone’s arms, ignored by her father, who leaned against their fence without a drop of sweat on him. He stared right into his windows until the doctors came outside, looking more like butchers than professionals.

They spoke to him and nodded when he asked if he could see her alone. It was a long walk for Henry Teel, but it is one that he wishes he could take over and over again. The love of his life lay where they had been eating, and he approached her without a hat or a smile, but with tears that you thought his skin would boil. He looked into her eyes; she was already looking into his, and then he held her, and they ran their hands through each other’s hair. He asked what he could do, and she replied, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Do you still love me?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “Always and forever.”

Henry kissed her gently on the lips. When he rose, her temperature had changed, and she no longer spoke. A gust of wind rattled the branches over their home, and the changing leaves fell onto a pile. A weight fell on Henry, dropped by the malevolent part of nature, or life, he isn’t sure. It is something he can’t explain, and then he wept more, thinking of the sinister forces deep in his subconscious that convince him he is partially responsible. Without him, she could not have been pregnant, but she was.

He digs two graves, a small price to pay when you’d do anything to take your mind off the facts. Her sister came to the funeral and left with Mary without speaking to him about it, but then again, he wasn’t speaking to anyone. His silence created a wedge between him and the mourners, and then between him and the world.

Vernon parks beside the undisturbed pond and the stark, leafless tree. For a year, this is where he’d find Henry Teel, looking at nothing but himself on the black, placid surface of the water, until one day Vernon appeared beside him, looking at the same face and the flat, white sky that hides the dark hand that drags Henry by the strings, like an anchor without water, across the dirt and dead grass.

“This is my world,” says Vernon. He points. “Look at this brown landscape, peppered with snow and lingering bitterness over trivialities my drinking only makes worse. Go home. This is the only time I will give you no liquor.”

Henry nods, unsure of what, and goes home, where the dense tree line that separates them creates moisture that Vernon’s side lacks. His sycamores are green, and so are the graves underneath them, ushering in an early spring that fills his heart with flowers and hope. Henry, let’s go. He gives up the drink. He feels he will see them again. Where? He does not know, but he hears his sister-in-law’s car driving up to the house, and smiles. He can feel Mary’s arms around him and he sees her new nails. His daughter, who was once a little girl, is happy to see him.