NOW THIS

I’d already washed smoke from my hair for the day—now this. The one who usually roasted the pig was sick, so the rest of us had to guess how. We lit enough charcoal to cook four. The poor blackened body, eyeless, scorched in its fat until dark. We bore it to the woods on a busted raft. The crisp carbon skin flaked like mica. We were an hour digging, then an hour covering the hissing corpse with wet, heavy dirt. When we got back, sooty and sore, we ate cold rolls spread with catsup. When that wasn’t enough, we gulped relish from the jar. When that wasn’t enough, each of us turned to our own hands, taking pleasure in the unexpected flavor we found there—smoky, salty, not unlike things we’d tasted before.

DEAR MARY

By now you must think me infirm or dead. I was both for a time. But I want to tell you now that I am alive. I want you to know it, so that you’ll think better of me when you think of me, if you think of me.

In the beginning it was hard. My God. You can imagine. I’m not asking for sympathy. We all of us have our lot.

Things were lost. We pitched them over. Our salt jar, our heavy table. Our spoons, our lamps, our rugs and other comforts.

When I started digging in the dirt I found a hole, descending. And another. I found any number of omens, none of them good, but I kept at it.

There was a storm with no rain. It shook us and turned everything over. It made the night darker. I looked out to the tallest tree and it seemed to me a tall, slim woman with a head of hair. The abundance of her hair made a sound like waves crashing. All night. All night. The poor woman was tossed and disheveled so roughly.

The neighbor’s house burned. It started with a small flame in one corner, licking out like some little cat’s tongue. The men—I suppose it could be said they tried. They scrambled across the roof with their limp streams. You would’ve laughed, too. The flames were in an uproar. Walking past at night, I hold my breath. The sky, which is so big and hard here, it comes right through the top. It comes through the windows from the inside out.

My clothes all need mending, but I am mending them as we speak. My shabbiness—it could never reach you, far apart as we are now.

Dear Mary, I was ill. I had a fever. Of the brain. A general hollowing-out. A weakening and a withering. A failure to thrive. A most deadly consumption. I soaked the counterpane. Night after night. Night after night. It went on this way.

Don’t ask me how it ended. I couldn’t tell you. There was no elixir. No poultice. It was really very mysterious. I couldn’t say any more than that. It was simple. I would not call it miraculous.