Monster Lore

by Kendall Pope

In a sandbox, the world is a desert. Scoop up a handful of the top layer, so warm and so smooth, and push it to one side and the horizon becomes a dune. Dig deeper and the sand is cooler, even damp. It clumps together in misshapen forms in the palms of my hands. Legs disappear beneath the hills and the hills stretch out beyond the creek that runs behind my grandmother's house. The white and brown grains lodge under the nails. And the sun squints through the tall pines in our backyard. There is a breeze and clothes on a line wave like flags of surrender. I sink beneath the sand.

"What are you doing?"

Trista stands over me, her hands resting on her hips. Her shadow falls across my face and I look down where my arms should be. They are buried like treasure. I smile and shrug.

"Just playing around," I say. My hands burrow out of the sand, dragging a gritty action figure out with my right hand. His joints creak against the dirt.

"Aren't you too old to play in the sandbox?" she asks. Trista twists the end of her sun-bleached hair with her index finger. I smile at the thought of her spinning her hair into gold.

"Like Rumpelstiltskin."

"What?" she asks.

"Nothing."

"You can be so weird."

I wriggle my toes in the sand and the hills come tumbling down. I fight back the urge to add sound effects.

"Anyway," Trista says, "Come over to Grandma's house later, after supper. I have to tell you something."

"What is it?"

"A surprise."

She tosses the words over her shoulder and I watch her hair bounce behind her as she skips back home. A black ant crawls across the surface of the sand, headed straight for me. I bring a balled fist down on it, thrusting it back underground.

 

"I've seen her," my older cousin Trista whispers to me while we stand in the slanted shadows of our Grandmother's carport, the horizon bursting into blazing pinks and purples over the pastureland surrounding us, "But you can't tell anyone."

"What did she look like?" I ask while rocking back and forth against the carport's iron supports.

"She was old, like in the movies. And she was hunched over," Trista pantomimes the action.

I imagine her dragging one leg in the dirt, so it makes a scraping sound, like a shovel in the ground. I tap my foot along with the rhythm of the story in my head.

"I saw her in the trailer park the night before last. I swear," she adds as though I were a skeptic. Trista raises herself out of her stooped acting, crosses her heart, and kisses the end of her thumb.

I imagine the old hag shuffling along, dragging dead bodies behind her, pulled from their graves by their Sunday shoes. My Granny wore a lavender dress that twinkled in the lights shining down on her coffin, but I couldn't tell if she was wearing shoes. Maybe everyone goes barefoot to meet Jesus. I was afraid to ask.

"I bet you don't have to wear shoes in heaven."

"Huh?"

"Cause you don't have to worry about stepping on rusty nails in the clouds."

"What are you talking about?" Trista asks.

"Nothing," I answer, "Do you think she saw you?"

"I don't think so. I hid in the bushes by your house."

I live close to the trailer park and now I wish I didn't.

"What do you think she was doing in the trailer park?"

"Probably looking for kids to eat, all Hansel and Gretel style. She was carrying a burlap sack and dragging it behind her like it had something heavy in it."

I could see missing kids stacked up like cords of wood on the back porch of the witch's old house, their limbs laid stiffly by their sides. In my mind, the kids were my classmates in kindergarten: Blonde Jimmy, who sat in the desk next to mine and couldn't read; Redheaded Jimmy, who wore sunshine patches on his jeans and had two thousand freckles -his sister was in third grade and she counted them; Bobby D., who picked his nose and wiped it under the desktop when no one was looking; Julie, who wore a red and white polka dotted dress and folded her napkin neatly at lunch; Zach, who was small for his age and was my best friend; and even that bully Chris, who I once punched in the stomach for picking on Zach.

"He went down like a sack of potatoes."

"Who did?"

"Nobody," I answer, "Do you think she left a trail in the dirt?"

"Nah, witches are good at covering up their tracks."

"Oh."

"Do you want to go hide by your house and see if she comes back tonight?" Trista asks.

"Okay," I say, letting go of the railing.

Trista is fearless. Her hair, the color of golden wheat, falls down her back in waves and tosses back and forth when she runs. Although I am scared of witches and hate the Hansel and Gretel story, I can't say no to her.

 

As night spreads out around us and the grasshoppers sound off like a million wristwatches ticking in the tall grass, we hide in the blackberry brambles that make a border between my house and the trailer park. The moon rises bright in the sky, and I listen to our breathing. Momma says never go into the trailer park at night without an adult, so we watch from the bushes. Trista watches for the witch. I watch Trista's long eyelashes move up and down as she peers into the darkness. She turns and smiles at me, her blue eyes sparkling in the moonlight. "Hee, Hee," she laughs like a cartoon witch.

I crinkle my nose at her. We wait. Two cars come and go. A stray dog yelps in pain as someone kicks it in anger. We see its dark, streaking figure disappear under the barbed wire fence across the quiet road. And we wait some more. I try to count the stars, losing count somewhere between forty and forty-three.

"Do you think God counts the stars?"

"What?" Trista whispers.

"I mean, when he's bored."

"I don't know. I don't think God gets bored. Why?"

"Just wondering. Maybe she isn't coming back."

"Who?"

"The witch."

"Oh. Don't you mean the WITCH? Hee Hee Hee." Trista makes her fingers dance up and down as she does her witch laugh.

"Don't say it like that."

"Why?" she asks.

"I don't know. I don't like it." I pull grass us by the handful, clutching at the coolness. The grasshoppers chirp through our silence.

"I think it's too early," Trista finally whispers thoughtfully, "Maybe she isn't coming."

I raise myself from my knees; dust them off with my clammy palms, and turn to go. Trista snatches my right hand out of the air and squeezes it in her own. My heart pounds in my chest.

"Let's meet here again tomorrow night," she says breathlessly.

My eyes watch her lips form the words and I nod my head as if in a trance.

 

The next morning Trista appears on our front porch, a gleam in her eye. Her hands are behind her back and she crosses her legs as she leans back against the step railing.

"Guess what?" she asks.

She tries to hold back the smile that dances on the tips of her lips.

"What?" I ask.

I kneel to tie the laces on my floppy, blue sneakers, concentrating on the bowknot while appearing disinterested.

"I figured it out," she says to the top of my head.

"What?"

"I figured out what she was after the other night." Trista taps one foot with excitement. When I look up, her hands are cupped above my head. I rise slowly.

She holds out a large box turtle, its closed, shiny black and yellow shell lain across the palms of her outstretched hands.

"Where did you find it?" I ask.

"Over in the ditch," Trista says, nodding in the direction of the deep drainage ditch beside the road, "There are tons of them in there."

I stroke the turtle shell with my index finger while she explains her theory, "That must be what she was doing over here. She was collecting turtles in the sack, probably scooping them up by the handfuls."

"You think she's cooking them?" I ask. I imagine the lumpy, old woman over a crusted-black cauldron, dropping the turtles in one by one, laughing as she stirs the bubbling, clumpy green brew with a rotten tree branch.

"That's gross."

"What?" I ask.

"I know what you were thinking. I can tell," Trista says, sticking out her tongue as if she tasted my imaginary brew.

"Maybe it doesn't taste that bad."

"Maybe," Trista says, "but I bet she's using her magic spells on most of them."

"What for?"

"She's probably turning them into giant snakes that will slither into kid's bedrooms at night and swallow them whole."

Trista undulates, her hips drawing my eyes in.

"Then the snakes bring the kids back to her house and spit them out on the floor. Then she has all the kids she wants and she doesn't even have to go out to find them."

"Now that's gross," I said, "I think you're just making that up to scare me."

"It's true. I read it in a book. Witches use all kinds of animals to catch little kids."                       I didn't want to believe her, but I was terrified. What if there was a magical turtle army that turned into slithering snakes that hid underneath my bed, waiting?

"What do we do?" I ask.

"We have to free them. If a turtle doesn't have a big shell, it can run faster and hide easier."

The turtle lays motionless in Trista's palms.

"What are you going to do?"

"We are gonna open its shell and let it out."

I trace the yellow lines in its shell with the tip of my finger.

"Will it hurt him?"

Trista shifts her weight to her left leg and holds the turtle in her right hand. She jams her left hand in her back pocket.

"No. It's like in the cartoons. He can find another shell after we take him to the creek."

I try to envision him picking through a pile of discarded shells that dam up a bend in the creek, the grey, muddy water gurgling beneath his tiny, naked feet.

"But what if I want to keep him?" I say, "I mean, if you don't want him?"

"Your momma won't let you keep him. Remember the sea monkeys?"

She cuts me deep and quick. Doomed sea monkeys float before my eyes in the rancid, brackish water container that sat on my bedroom windowsill. I see their teensy bodies, curled in the harsh light. Their shriveled bodies crust the sides of the plastic container, like the film of chocolate milk in a glass. No sea monkey circus tricks, no sea monkey castles, no little sea monkey family picnics. Only tiny shriveled bodies. At this rate, I was sure I was never going to own a dog.

"You're never gonna get a dog," she says.

"I know," I concede, "What do we do?"

 

It's the claws I see at night. I see them at night scratching in the dust. I see the sand sprinkled on the wrinkled skin, glittering as if its grains were stars, infinite and beautiful. But that version is the dream world. Reality bleeds.

"Hold him down," she pleads, the words choked through her tears. The words bounce around inside my head, repeating.

I think we are like butchers.

My hands tremble and I wipe my face with a grimy arm. I am covered in something slimy and the dirt sticks to me. She pries the shell open with a long handled screwdriver and there is a sickening crack, like wood splintering. The shell leaks green and red and it pools in the dust next to a set of greasy pliers. The turtle moans, its sound mournful. Its yellow nails grip the ground beneath our feet. But we are sideways.

Momma always slapped our hands when we tried to take too much cake.

"We have greedy fingers."

"What?" She stares into my eyes.

"Please. Stop," I whisper, the words breaking in my dry throat.

Her blue eyes empty. She drops the screwdriver and it thuds in a cloud of dust that plumes around her. Trista wipes her hands on the front of her rainbow t-shirt.

Suddenly she pushes my hands away.  Her hands tear at the shell; her lips mumbling curses. Her words are like knives. And then it snaps. Skin sags in ripped pockets and water gushes from the wound in its side. The moans become a sigh. The dust becomes mud.

While I watch, she digs a grave with her hands and mutters to herself.

"Hateful, hateful," she says over and over.

"What?" I ask.

She doesn't answer.

The grave is deep. It's deeper than the tan sand or the red clay, deeper than the grey mud; maybe deep enough to hide. Her nails are broken and black and she wipes them on her pale blue shorts.

"You can't tell. Not anyone," she says, finally. She doesn't look at me, but I nod anyway.

Then, she's gone again. I sit in the dirt, obsessively picking the grit from my knees, staring at the mounded earth. The mud dries in the heat of the day.

 

I spend the next two days hunting for turtles in the drainage ditch next to the road. When I find one, I secret it into the folds of an extra t-shirt and carry it to the creek behind my grandmother's house. I have to sneak by Trista's house to reach the pasture gate and the creek beyond it. Each time I pass her house, I wait for the door to open and for Trista to appear. I don't know what I expect her to do or say. But she doesn't leave her house for days, so I'm able to liberate the turtles in peace. In the afternoons, I watch cartoons alone.

 

Kendall Pope resides with his wife in a college town west of Atlanta, Georgia. His essay, "Chicky the Coward," won a finalist position in this years P53 nonfiction contest. As an undergraduate at the University of West Georgia, he published three essays in the AWP award-winning art and literary magazine, eclectic. "Monster Lore" is his first publication outside of the university.