What Are You Afraid Of?

people’s choice

people’schoice S One week before the fair, the year the locusts came thick and heavy and drummed their anthem all around Sinking Springs, Enid woke during the night with a start and sat straight up in bed. She was startled by the full sound that came spreading through the open window. In the room where shadows bent into dark corners, she could not separate the real from the dreamed; her eyes still glazed with sleep. The sound came again, louder and less shaped, more splitting, persistent. Graham was gone from beside her, and his boots that usually sat beside the bed were gone, too. The sound again. Number Nine, she thought. Number Nine who had been bloated for weeks with pregnancy. Enid could hear the old cow bawling, the night shattered and turned topsy-turvy with the sound, followed by the sweet silence 15 that ran into the space left vacant. She drew the sheet up between her legs, thought of birth, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. Then she heard footsteps, in the kitchen below, the door shutting, the creaking of the stairs. Graham stood in the doorway to the bedroom —a solid figure against the moonlight that illuminated the hallway behind him. “It’s a miracle,” he said, calm and deep, not moving. Enid pulled on her robe and followed him downstairs. She questioned him only with glances, knowing that Graham, when serious, would decide when it was time for him to speak. “Seeing is believing ,” is all that he said. Enid pushed her feet into a pair of barn boots and hurried after him. He had already gone back outside. In the barn, the back stall beyond the salt lick was lit by a kerosene lamp hung from the rafters. The wet smell of night mixed with the miasma of damp straw and animal waste. Graham was leaning forward over the bottom half of the split door, his hands pushed down against the rotting boards. Enid pulled back the hair from her eyes to get a better look. She didn’t know what to say or what to believe. Any words that came to her were lost in the back of her throat, coming out as warm gasps of air. It was indeed a miracle, as Graham had said, the newly born calf that stood shakily before them on four legs. “It’s one of those Siamese,” Graham said. Enid had never heard of a Siamese calf before, but there were few words that could describe it better. It was as normal a calf as had ever been born— thin body, shaky legs—except instead of one head, there were two, living off the same frail body. The right head was darker in color and bigger but otherwise each seemed the mirror image of the other. When Graham reached out to pet it, both heads cried out in unison. The calf backed into the corner of the stall and blinked. A little girl, Enid thought, looking at the udders. “I can’t believe it myself,” Graham said. Enid moved closer, until she could feel him next to her, solid. Graham put his arm 16 what are you afraid of? around her, drew her flush against him. She could feel his dry breath against her ear. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said. For the first time in a very long time she felt comfortable in the bend of his arm. She imagined the land changing around her, the clock ticking backwards, the children growing younger until there were none, just her and Graham together. The calf cried out again. “Hungry,” Enid said. “Yeah, I guess so.” “Where’s the happy mother?” Squeezing Enid tighter, Graham nodded in the direction of the stall next to them. The stall was dark and very quiet. Enid moved to look. Graham shook his head, “It died mid-birth.” One of the farm dogs, the coonhound, crawled from under the fence stall, the white fur about its nose tinged with a deep red, dragging the afterbirth. Enid turned her face into Graham’s chest, as he pulled away from her, running the dog off with a pitchfork. When he returned, Graham walked her back to the house, stood by the bed as she lay down to sleep, telling her he’d be back just as soon as he fed the new calf. When he turned to go, she wondered—as...