Wait to See June

Out of the window, Winter appeared to the eye as it should. A layer of snow was thrown over the road like how you might cast your duvet to the air when you make your bed as a morning chore. Nothing worth taking a second glance at. My laundry was hanging up on the rack beside the open window. The cold air will only curse it to a damp, unpleasant smell. But what else could I do? My fate was this stench. At least, no matter what, things would always look the same, even if it changed with the seasons. I’d always look out of my window at the village and see everything for what it was.

June was waiting for me perhaps twenty minutes down the road from my house. That clinging to Summer that her name begs is insulting to her. She never let me address her fully, only in abstract pronouns: you, yours. Here you are, I say, and you smile. To dedicate just a warm month to you is too little, in my opinion. You’re not warm like the sun, but like a prenatal flame. Precious and delicate, but capable given the room to flourish. Here in Winter, your name is only a memory.

My boots sank into the snow. There’s that crunch. The brief second where the ground gives way, and I sink closer to permanence. You asked me to meet you at that coffeehouse closer to you than me. Always are we travelling to June, when warmth comes naturally and not by what we don on our backs. June comes by steadfast. You better not miss it, because it won’t miss you.

Outside the windows were fogged up with water. I couldn’t see you. The inside was hazy, unclear. Only once you bear your neck to what you don’t know, can you see it for yourself. I saw you by the corner, your hair drifting around your chest. In the water gravity has less say, so things have their own jurisdiction on where they want to rest. That’s what you looked like, like a petal drifting down a river.

You were drinking from a mug, but you hid its contents, tilted toward you like you were keeping a hand of cards from view. “Hurry up and order,” you said.

I asked for a coffee and sat opposite you. Your cheeks were pinched pink but your eyes were set back like you were wary of a feral creature. Me, I suppose. You kept twitching, only in your eyes and the muscles around them. The rest of you was frozen, all Winter. Were you tired? The sun is was nowhere to be found in this kind of weather.

A few years ago you told me that speaking is all nonsense. What use is it? You always panicked and said what you didn’t mean. It’s better to communicate through what you can see on paper. It’s far more reliable, you said. You have to see it to believe it, to be certain. At times like these you gave me a letter to read in front of you. Everything you wanted me to know held in my hands. Your handwriting was scratchier than the letters you’d written to me before, but still the words seemed to float in front of my eyes, as if you’d given life to a world that existed only in thought.

To the apple of my eye

Three nights ago, I was on a walk by my cottage, on the path that crosses through the woods briefly. As you know, this wasn’t unusual for my routine. The one you and I have often taken together, you’d be familiar. That night, I felt like being on my own, owning up to the world what I owed it, what it owed. Plenty of things had been taken from me, like my father, just a few years ago, dying blind as a bat, unable to look his own daughter in the eye. Yet I’d take the life out of other things, such as you, for example. In some ways I must be even with whatever force of nature is keeping tabs. I digress. Halfway through our usual route, I heard a disturbing noise. Something like an animal in distress. A deer, perhaps. I kept walking and came across a car. A Toyota Celica was stationary behind its own tracks. Obviously it had done a full U-turn to look at what trail it had left. But the curious thing was that the car was completely empty. When I looked inside, I only saw a rifle curled up in the back seat like it was ashamed of itself. All its ammunition stacked up under the seat beside it. It’s funny that cars are named after women, always in service, getting you where you need to be. The headlights were still on, casting an odd shadow over the trees surrounding it. Not one I can quite describe in words like this. But that’s not important.

There was no driver in the car. He was laying on the ground, sunk into the snow, surrounded in his own blood. Around him there were the marks of hooves in the ground. So this man had met his demise where he intended to incite another. A hunter. No more, no less. A useless death for a useless hobby. He had a thick beard that clawed at his throat, and an ugly face I couldn’t bear to look at. I searched for the deer, but it had disappeared.

Perhaps some time passed, I’m unsure. But once I’d made sense of the situation at hand, I seemed to have found the rifle in my hands, and the smell of gunpowder tickled my nose. Out there in the cold, I looked back at the body. A hole in his head bore into his eye socket, destroying whatever was left of his eye. I couldn’t for the life of me remember if that was there when I discovered it. Had the animal mauled it? Then again, why was I holding this gun? A man was dead, and I wielded the weapon. Thus, I’m guilty.

That is why I have to go, to see more clearly where I might be implicated in all this. I’ll see you again soon.

I put down the letter and looked up at you. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. Just yesterday the body had appeared animated in the paper with a lively smile. A eulogy of a professor written by a coworker. He had two daughters, a cottage on the moor, and an aptitude for hunting not for sport, but to live off the Earth, and an unfortunate fate at his own means for entertainment. Most speculation seemed to elude to a freak accident. And there you were, confessing.

“Are you saying you…” I drifted away, after those few petals further downstream. Around me the world kept on inching forward. Indeed, there were some things you couldn’t articulate, lest they be heard. “That you’re the reason for the news?”

You shrugged. “I’m not sure. I told you, that’s what I saw. Regardless, my… traces are left behind. So I have to leave town. To think about what I’ve done, and get my story straight. Maybe then, I’ll come back. I’m sorry. This is what I meant, that I take the life out of you. That’s why I have to go.”

I peered down at the letter. No matter how hard I blinked, even until my vision clouded, nothing in the words changed. What I was holding was distinctly there, written out like a calendar. This year, the solstice fell on a Tuesday. The months would keep going. Nothing we could do about that.

“The deer,” I began.

“I don’t know if it’s a deer,” you clarified.

“The animal,” I corrected. “Did it leave a trail?”

“Perhaps,” you considered.

“You didn’t follow it?” I asked. “What if it killed him?”

You seemed unsure that the words you wanted to say were the right ones. You gave me a look, a distinct something in your eye. Your hair fell prettily around your shoulders. When you left, insisting that you should, your coffee still smouldered out hot gasps of steam, only a few sips taken. The only trace of you was the letter I’d read and a pamphlet that contained the schedule of a coach service, and the core from an apple you ate when I wasn’t looking.

*

December, I decided, was ambivalent. I didn’t want to be anything. Had it met the devil, it would have rolled its eyes. In those few days before the new year, it was too late for anything, even invocation. Trudging on in the forest beside your house, with the torch insulting the snow, I considered the reluctance of the afternoon to bother. As the year grows on, noon becomes less admirable of its morning and gives up the dusk that makes the proceeding months bloom. Petals wilt away, languid.

Underneath the torch, the sky seemed half-lidded, lazy from a nap. A fresh layer of snow smoothed out over the soil, but I imagined your old winter boots making their very old impressions in the ground. A mile or so behind me, they’d made their patterns in a line into the town where the coach could take you away somewhere. I spent the morning fussing over the schedule, but I couldn’t make sense of the pamphlet you left me. So whenever you left was not distinct to some specific moment on the clock. Time was based on what was written, and you left no note.

Eventually, I came across it. What you’d told me about. Inevitably, the police tape lined the periphery. The Toyota had not yet been removed, but certainly the body had been escorted away. The door was closed, but surrounding the car a box of ammunition floated in the snow, half-sunk into the deep. I imagined you digging in the backseat, loading the big gun, and shooting it at the intellectual. It wasn’t a consistent vision I held. Your limbs moved quickly, in one big mangle, like you owned several of them. In my mind, this version of you moved like a marionette, by the accord of some master choreography. Not your own volition. Needless to say, I was convinced that the actions you described to me in your letter were a fabrication of your mind. How many times do you see a dead body? Who were you taking the blame for? Why were you running?

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted from being here, out in the woods, where you were long gone. It wasn’t as if I disbelieved what you’d said. There was always an undeniable wisdom in your tone, rich with a fondness for frank realism. What you see is what you get. For a moment I stared at this place. A man had died here. That much was certain. But how? And by whom? It certainly wasn’t my job. Yet, here I was. What I knew wasn’t verifiable. So what did I know?

A few years ago, you gave me a letter that I still recall. Not that it was particularly significant. In sum, there were probably hundreds of letters you’d written to me over time, all unique, some with sentimental value. But this one, unremarkable and serial, came to mind.

The week I saw things differently

I’m glad to be back in the village. I’ve missed you, if I’m even capable. I’ve been particularly excited to see you. As you well know, my mother took me away from the village to visit my father by the sea. He spends months fishing, just sitting at the open water blindly waiting for his hook to tug. No wonder he’s gone mad.

The town he lives in has a market that runs on weekdays to trade fish and other game. It wasn’t like I begged to be there, but often I ended up there when my mother had some other errand to run. My father’s fish sold well, so it was rare that I had much to do with the handling of them at all. Besides, no one wants to see a young woman like me handing over some fish carcass. I was made for quiet service. So I went wandering around the market. I often got free samples by the way of cheeses or cured meats given my dresses were clean enough. But that’s the case back here, too, so it’s no surprise by you. Anyway, I shouldn’t waste any more ink. The reason I’m telling you a frivolous tale is because there was a particular stall that took my eye. Not literally, but by what I’m about to describe, you might assume so. A lady in sophisticated clothing enticed me to her stall. I can’t explain this eloquently, so I’ll say it flat out. She sold eyes. Animal eyeballs, to be exact. As a delicacy. Some were picked in jars, but others lay bare on the trays she presented. Apparently, the larger the mammal, the richer the flavour. Undoubtedly, I was curious. I tasted the eye of a sheep, provided free of charge by the woman. In my mouth, it crunched wetly like a ripe apple. I wish I had more to say, but there’s no way of describing this sensation without a physical referent. Take my word for it, it was delicious.

I might say now that I have a new appreciation for eyes. When I look in the eyes of a living being, I know we all possess the greatest, most divine restraint. For such a delicacy gives us the gift of experiencing the Earth, of looking at beautiful things. We mustn’t indulge. But, after I thought about it more, I became sick and ended up vomiting the eye in my father’s bathroom. So what was the point of all this?

I can’t quite remember when exactly you gave me this letter, but it wasn’t like it was relevant. Just seeing this flattened plain of snow, the remnants of something so ghastly, I thought of what you wrote to me. The eye of the dead professor had been extracted somehow. How did it taste?

I kept on walking. In no way was there a reason for me to come this way. If the police had returned to gather more evidence, surely they would be curious to discover some nondescript civilian gawking at the flattened scene. But even if I knew it was true, I couldn’t believe what you’d written in the letter. I had to see it with my own eyes. After all, that was all I had to rely on. Now that I’d seen it, or what it was in the aftermath, I was as convinced of what treacherous glories your hand was capable of as we are to blusher in a game of poker. A man had died here. Was murdered. As someone who wrote so delicately with a pen, in no way could those same fingers yield an unearthly weapon. I was sure of it.

As I trudged on, the snow melting a dampness into my boot, I sighed out a breath that settled in the air, almost tangible. The forest wasn’t exactly repetitive but each tree shared a similarity, like twins that distinguished themselves via a peculiar haircut.

Eventually my torch was drawn to a bundle in the snow, not sketched out in harsh lines but more or less a combination of certain shapes in the horizon. I approached the lump. What I saw was a dead deer in a heap in the Earth. But it was fresh - it still had life residing in it, like its soul was taking its time to gently drift away. Too early to be discovered by police. Too indelible for the killer to be nearby. Who had done this so close to the crime scene? Wasn’t this a new crime scene itself, or just a hunters discarded triumph? What was the difference between hunting animal and man, besides semantics and glory? No matter how hard I tried, not a single cohesive thought came to mind. In that moment, it was almost as if I was inseparable from the deer. Had I blinked for longer than necessary, I was convinced I would open my eyes to find them gone.

I stood staring at the corpse. The deer lay on its side in the watery snow, one of its legs mangled and its belly uncovered. Even then, the eyes were the worst part. It was if the cartilage had melted back into the socket, slurped up and half discarded like how you always left your coffee. I thought about your letters. The deer tracks by the dead man, the crunch of an eyeball in your mouth. I felt sick. The thought of it not seeing its own death, not facing its fate head-on, I couldn’t stand it. For a moment, it was just it and I, sharing the breath of the forest. Then, there was no separability from dead or alive, just being. A blind acceptance of the unknown.

That crunch of the snow, like biting down on an apple. It’s something we can’t deny, the whimper of footsteps. I heard it beyond the tree far behind me. But I wasn’t scared. By then, I knew what was in store for me. A reluctant silence followed, and nothing moved. Immediately, a sharp crack rattled through the air, and then I saw nothing. No, I didn’t see nothing. I simply didn’t see. The warmth of my own blood tore down my face, like the Summer sun often bore down on your cheeks and left a few freckles over your nose. There I was, seeing you when I had nothing else to see, no life left to live. Nothing to see, nothing to believe. This was unlike December, numb and boring. June was on the way, hot and fast.