Writing Exercise # 2 - Jenni Moody

Marie stepped out of her husband's truck and looked around the place that had once been her mother's house. T-shirts hung from the few remaining trees like tacky Halloween decorations. She opened the heavy side door of the truck so that her son could clamber out. Be careful, David.

I know.

The carport was still standing, but the van was across the field and lay on its back. The house was a pile of planks of wood. Fragments of color peeped between the boards, asking if it was safe to come out of hiding. Marie pulled on the work gloves and leaned over the jumble of mortar and memories. She hadn't gardened in a long time, but the feeling in her calves was the same and the memories of looking among a sea of green for weeds and other intrusions came to her easily. Only this time, the weeds were heavy and more plentiful than the flowers.

Marie lifted the planks and made a new pile - one that would be burned later. Into trash bags she placed family albums, stray photographs, and stuffed animals. The sky was gray and shy, almost apologetic. Its temper tantrum the night before had done so much damage. Mrs. Teal, the old woman in the big house on the corner, had died. No one shared the details of her death. Marie thought of her cousin in the hospital with broken ribs and a punctured lung, and angrily threw a branch into the burn pile.

Her mother walked in a circle around the cement block foundation of her once-house. Marie kept an eye on her; she had seemed ok, but then again…her house! Everything pillaged, then piled like a child in the center of the room for someone else to clean up. Marie set a trash bag of clothing into the back of the truck, and then walked over to her mother.

I've been thinking. About Tammy's dogs. They didn't find that last one. It might be in that brush pile, down by the creek.

I'll go. Marie looked at her son. He was explaining to two men from the National Weather Service how you could tell the direction and force of the winds from the way the lumber lay. They listened to him patiently, with a slight smile on their faces as they made their own notes.

Stay here with David, Mom. I'll go look for the dog.

The small creek that had separated her mother's house from her cousin's was littered with strange debris. A Barbie had gone feral and hid with her grassy coverings behind a rock. Her hair reverberated the stream's rhythms. Marie wanted to destroy something, but everything was already broken. She picked up a stone from beneath the shallow water and flung it further downstream, but it didn't make it very far. She laughed. A girl's arm.

She heard the cars pull-in, but did not go to greet her sisters and their daughters and sons. Marie kept walking towards the trees that had toppled together, forming a derelict forest. She called the lost dog's named and made clicking noises with her tongue.

Here rascal. Here boy. Lck Lck Lck.

There was no reply from the fallen trees.

Her arms were already tired. Years of writing on chalkboards and hanging up crayon drawings with bent paper-clips to the ceiling tiles had not made her strong. But she let her sadness and anger take over her body, as she seldom did at home. Placing her leg against the hundred year old trunk, she snapped off branches that hid her view of the underside. The inside of her gloves became hot and sticky with her sweat. More than once she pulled, lost her grip, and fell swiftly onto the soft ground. After a few minutes, she could see the ginger fur beneath the tree trunk. She tried calling one last time, softly.

Here rascal. Here boy? Lck Lck Lck.

Rascal?

She cleared more branches away until she could see his paw. Marie stroked it and bent her forehead to the soft, cold pads of his feet. For a moment she crouched beside him - a dog she had never known under a tree that had lived for hundreds of years. Then she took a black trash bag from her pocket and tied the yellow handles to the branches above him. To mark the place where he lay.

Marie crossed the creek and walked up to the small gathering her family made around the debris of the past. She hugged her sisters and stood with them, looking for anything that might be worth keeping. The sky wouldn't let her stay still. She walked again around the yard, following the trail of broken and obscured items until they reached the road.

The police had opened the roads again. A parade of cars creeped through the level fields. A car stopped, and an aged hand motioned to her from a rolled-down window. In the backseat, sandwiched between two young girls, was a white-haired woman.

Excuse me honey, can you tell me where abouts that old lady died?

Marie looked at their faces, but could not see sorrow in them. She wondered why relatives of Mrs. Teal would need to ask where the house was. And then she realized why they were there.

Are ya'll sight-seeing?

We was just wonderin.

You're sick. Get out of here.

When they stared at her expectantly she kicked the car's tire and yelled.

Get. Out. Of Here. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

The car drove away slowly. Behind them, a man leaned out of another car with his video camera. His wife almost drove off the road as she craned her neck to watch the indiscriminate piles of life pass by.