Veyo, Forgotten by the Mormons

We were in the tall grasses creeping on finches when we seen Mama run down the slope in her Sunday finest and throw herself in the creek trying to get to the other side. Papa stood there scratching at his hair like he was fixing a nest for a warbler. We thought she might have eaten some loco weed, or gone swimming near the pond where the government tested them bombs that made the llamas spit blood and the babies grow thirteen fingers. We were not surprised. Mama never cared much for Veyo.

Papa stood at the fence a good while watching her float downstream, then told us boys to wait inside the house and like good boys we said yes, father. Sometime later we seen the two of them walking up the path and Papa all smiles with an arm around her shoulder and Mama teetering one foot to the other, her eyes far off.

Later we lay in bed.

Mama’s leaving, Brother said.

She left before.

Not like this.

Then he was quiet. That’s what he did when his thoughts hurt him: shrug and get quiet and then head down to the creek.

We were always at the creek. Sometimes we fished, other times we just lay there in the mud, staring at that milky rib of moon.

I liked to come down in the grasses after we fried a mess of Sanpete trout and feel them mucking my insides, feeling heavy as they tried to put themselves back together. We listened for what the breeze said, but there was nothing, which is the sound of forgetting.

We been fishing since we been boys. Only creek in Veyo with splake the size of your leg. Freaks of nature. Papa told us the story. It was Mormons come south and use the waters for baptism. Never been the same since. The wrong end of a miracle. Once we reeled us a monster and after we cut her open and eaten a handful of eggs like Papa showed us we seen a little pocket watch tangled in her innards. It still counted the right seconds. After a miracle something is left behind, I suppose.

It took both me and Brother to carry her. It was beautiful.

We collected other heaps of fish in a hollowed out tree on the other side of the ridge. Spear em and watch em rot with their little mouths chewing on the air. You know, looking for other miracles. We didn’t tell nobody about the heap. We had near a thousand fish and all of them rotted except the fish with the pocket watch inside her. We couldn’t figure that one out. Why in god was she not rotted? Then Brother said she was so big and heavy she could not be carried up to god.

That was the most beautiful thought he ever had.

What’s beautiful? Brother said, and then I realize I been talking out loud the whole time when I thought I was alone in my head.

Shut up, Brother.

Are you worried, Brother? Don’t be, he said. Mama has nowhere to run.

He said he seen the maps and there is no way out of Veyo except on water. He used a piece of chalk to draw the maps on the floor. Then he showed me how the old Veyo creek went into Lake Panguitch and pretty soon you were floating in the Mfolozi outside of Mtubatuba.

One river is all rivers, Brother, he said.

So we can swim out of Veyo, I said. I had always wanted to leave Veyo. It is a big world I think. It would be pretty to see it all.

No, Brother, he said. You don’t know how to swim.

At first we believed it would all go back to how it was. Just Mama and Papa and us boys. Then Papa fell down and broke his leg. When we came to see he was groaning like a sorry sack of bones and Mama at the top of the stairs like a mouse just escaped a trap, a kind of shame in her eyes but at the same time that look of agony we seen from her when she broke dishes when Papa was out in the fields and she thought nobody was looking.

There’s been an accident, she said.

Papa wouldn’t stand for no penny-grubbing doctor, so he waited at the bottom of them stairs to be raised by the lord. He said this family needed a miracle. He called on the lord for healing. Papa had once preached for the Mormons before us brothers were brothers, but then they ran out on the lord and Veyo. Not Papa. Stand ye in holy places. And so we have.

By supper we had all grown tired of his weeping and wailing prayers that didn’t make it past the ceiling, so when he told me the lord did not descend for nobodies and perhaps needed some encouragement I went to the shed for the beadle mallet.

Thank gawd, Brother said, trying to hold back a laugh.

Papa told him not to blasphemy. Then he pressed my finger against the thigh of his good leg. The other one was busted up.

You aim it true, son, he said. God will see to the rest.

Yes, Papa, I said.

When I mashed the leg he twisted in his spittle with ears red as a turkey waddle and cursed the day of my birth.

It’s a fair punishment, Mama said.

Do you think the lord will raise Papa? Brother wanted to know.

Only god will be the judge of that, Mama said.

In the end Papa raised himself off the stairs because the good lord was out to lunch or squatting over the other end of the earth so it could have rain, or something. Papa limped around the house leaving behind him a leaky mess. There was blood and pus and all kinds of drippings. Mama got her bucket of water and mopped it up, muttering something awful.

Then the men came and took Papa away. He had been lying on the stairs for days, like some old bear who lost his fur from too much scratching and now pretended not to have an itch. His leg was the size of a pumpkin, only a bit purply.

We watched from the trees as the men dragged Papa out of the house and put him in the car. Papa called them the devil’s servants. He tried to run away. We threw some rocks at the men until Mama called us out of the trees. Then we watched them drive away to the sick house.

Has Papa been touched by the Holy Spirit? Is that why he can go away?

No, Mama said. He’s just sick.

It sure looked like a spirit had a grip on him. That’s the other miracle of Veyo. After the baptisms the Mormons called down the Holy Ghost out of heaven. It was supposed to just visit but the Mormons got greedy and took hold on that ghost and tore it up as many ways they could, some people even letting it get inside them, and other pieces just ignored like leftovers on a messy dinner plate.

Sometimes I been looking for a piece of that Holy Ghost. I hoped it would sweep me off my feet somewhere far far away. I creep out when Brother is asleep. Thought I saw it once or twice out in the alfalfa fields, but it wasn’t the ghost I was looking for. That’s the trouble with ghosts. It’s always somewhere ahead or behind but never in front, always there when you’re not looking and gone when you need it most. They are impolite things, ghosts are.

Mama got a bowl of vinegar and wiped the house clean. She cleaned doors and windows and stairs and ceilings and walls. All the places Papa left a stain. She wanted the house spotless. She wanted to erase what was.

She took us once to see him in the sick house. It was full of sick people. Who knew that with so much leftover Holy Ghost Veyo was such a sick place? The world is strange.

Papa said, I feel better.

Mama said, You are sick.

When we came back to the house she took out more vinegar and cleaned more furious than before until the house smelled like a brown headache.

That’s when Brother said once she had the house clean there would be nobody to keep her from running.

Who’s gonna save her from herself? Brother said. Papa’s not here anymore.

That’s when he decided it was up to us boys to watch over Mama. He told me what must be done. He said the family needed a miracle to stay together.

You’re gonna kill her.

Nobody’s killing anything, he said.

When I said we should just give her a hug, Brother said hugs are no good when you have a hole in your heart. All that squeezing just makes the hole bigger. Pretty soon you hug too much and you’re just holding on to empty air.

Is that what you want? Brother said. You want Mama to be some ghost?

So we tried to keep Mama with us. We picked a mess of flowers that gave her sneezes and stuffed them under her pillow. She tossed them out the window.

Then Brother had the idea to spend all afternoon loosening the second porch step. She was always going down those steps in a hurry and Brother said she would fall and break her hip. But Mama never used the second porch step.

She did not drink the milk where we poured the lye. She never opened the closet at the end of the hall where we put the hornet nest, even after I had climbed the tree to fetch it.

At night I cried softly thinking about Mama not being there in the morning. What would we do without Mama to wipe the mud from our feet and the snot from our noses? What would happen if Mama was not there to hold our hands in church or lick our scrapes clean? Mama always said we were miracles, which is why she kept us inside her belly eleven months because when she was so heavy she had never before felt so close to god.

I asked Brother what would happen if Mama left and we weren’t miracles. Without Mama, what were we?

Just boys, Brother. Just boys, he said.

Brother held down Mama’s legs. He told me how to make the knots to rope her arms to the bedposts. She didn’t fuss, like she knew it was coming.

Lie still, Mama, Brother said. It’s just us boys.

Her eyes were open now and she could see the heap of fish we carried from the other side of the ridge. The big one had finally rotted, so it looked like we needed a different miracle. Perhaps the lord would provide.

As Mama watched us gather the fish she thought it was just another mess she would have to clean. She thought us brothers were there to throw fish slops all over the house. Then Brother told her he had figured it out. The heavy fish, us boys heavy inside her, father’s leg heavy as a pumpkin. We had it all wrong before, Brother said, but now it made sense. When the lord wants something to move he makes it soft, like the air. When he wants it to stay put and not get swept away by the Holy Spirit he makes it heavy, like a fish.

Brother fisted the fish guts into his hand. He told Mama to open her mouth. Mama said no and Brother said yes.

Mama spit up the first slops with a yelp. She said it wasn’t enough to make her heavy and Brother said God would be the judge of that. Brother had me hold her mouth open while he pressed fish inside her.

Good, Mama, Brother said. Good. We’ll get through this together. Hold her hand, Brother.

After a while I asked if we were done.

No, Brother said. I think she’s got other holes. He said it in a whisper.

Other holes?

We’ll have to fill them too, Brother said.

We kept pressing fish inside her. It was almost morning. I asked if she was heavy yet.

Shut up, Brother, he said.

When our hands were sore from stuffing, Brother reached for the pocket watch. Mama was trembling now, like a mackinaw out of water. I held her hand. Her skin was slick like fish scales. I wanted the Holy Spirit to carry me far away from this place. But I had to see.

Don’t worry, Mama, Brother said, winding up that old pocket watch. He steadied his hand where she opened at the thighs.

It’s nothing, Mama, Brother said. Just another miracle.