Keep off the grass

by a stump

It was late August, and the Village of Edam was preparing for their annual Labor Day festivities, such as they were. A village of six hundred souls nestled between farm fields and tracts of forest a mere hour’s drive from the nearest city has a peculiar draw. It is foreign enough to the city dwellers to feel quaint and desirable for a day trip, but quirky enough that those same cookie cutter humans are permanently banned from moving into the community. That community, which seems as American as apple pie and as small town as Mayberry, revolves around such a close-knit group of oddly intertwined individuals that the insertion of just one non-native is enough to set the town ablaze with gossip and ill-will towards that alien sojourner.

One such alien sojourner was to be foisted upon this community, whether they liked it or not, and the welcome committee for this special visitor included three boys who were unaware that this summer was about to end as quickly as it had begun, but not with the fanfare and frivolity of the Labor Day parade or fireworks. Indeed, the concussion wave was not to come from gunpowder packed in a cardboard tube, but from the depths of their souls as they ventured out on this particularly hot August morning.

All the villagers knew that Labor Day—the last tryst with the warm embrace of summer—would produce the third wave of tourist oddities that had begun on Memorial Day and risen to fever pitch on July 4th. Those urbanite pilgrims would mill about on the handful of paved streets in Edam, bringing with them strange clothing, smells, accoutrements, technology, styles, and cold, hard cash. During those three “American Holidays,” the drug store would make more money selling candy, soda pop, and ice cream than all the prescription medications that six months of Edamite patients’

illnesses could prescribe. But Ralph, Mike, and Emerson weren’t interested in penny candy or other treats today. They were called by some greater force—nature, God, boyhood—to ride as fast as they could and cover as much ground as they could. It was time for liftoff from this sleepy town, and the countdown clock had already begun.

The village boys were forbidden from riding their bikes in the town square as temporary “KEEP OFF THE GRASS” signs were hammered into every verdant, lush lawn and grassy causeway connecting their usual pathways to adventure. While the temptation was great to simply ignore the signs and follow the familiar, well-worn bikeways through town, leaving massive skid marks, tracks, and unreplaced divots, the threat of punishment was greater. Instead, it was as though the boys were funneled through the town by some spectral force that drove them from what they knew and into the vastness of the void of blind adventure.

So, in pursuit of the ultimate adventure during the final week of glorious, burning summer, Mike, Ralph, and Emerson raced through known, but less familiar terrain. They edged along through their known territory, riding deeper and deeper into the known but untested boundaries of town. Mike and Ralph were like tour de France finalists compared to Emerson, whose girth kept him from speeding along with the other boys. He followed at a distance, and when the pack leaders jumped across gullies and culverts along the road, Emerson was content to slosh down one side, hoping that the momentum of descent would be enough to propel him up the other side with a minimal pedal effort.

The boys sped down the two lane leading out of the village and toward the vast metropolis that everyone knew was waiting a mere 50 miles behind the tree line—waiting to hungrily devour any defector from that tiny village. Some had attempted to escape the city, but its claws would stretch through acres of hardwood timber, scraping across farmers’ fields, and dance along the tops of rock boundary walls that meant something to the ancient families of the hinterland, but were totally disregarded by the spirit of animosity that comes from a sprawling urban center. Some villagers had left Edam and never returned. Sure, they would write occasionally, call family on birthdays, show up every other Thanksgiving or Christmas, but they could never go back to the queer pedantry that comes from living a simple life and knowing every neighbor and most residents of your town. They disappeared, ghoulishly, into the vastness of urban conformity.

Mike, Ralph, and Emerson had been indoctrinated in this way of thinking—that the village was safe and the city was dangerous—by their parents, grandparents, neighbors, and teachers. Perhaps it was the thrill of just traveling the road that led to such mortal peril, or perhaps it was the motivation of boredom on a hot summer day, but they traveled that road. Of course, they had traveled that road before on their way to doctor’s appointments with parents, special annual shopping trips, and the like.

But this time was different. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, that road called to them, and their bikes didn’t just roll—they danced down the molten pavement. They zigged and zagged. They floated, then pedaled, enjoying the breeze that came from the speed of those metal and rubber steeds. As the boys raced toward the first crossroad that formed the border of the village limits, they realized that this was the farthest that they had ever ridden before. Though unspoken, it was understood by all three that they planned on pushing past the invisible barrier of this crossroad that had previously restrained them to their tiny sphere of existence. Every destination and even the thrill of no destination was calling to them as they sped in line, Mike first, Ralph coming up close behind, and Emerson trailing at some distance, each rider hurtling away from the village as fast as their bikes could travel across the sizzling asphalt.

Maybe it was the sensual song that the city sang, or just a desire to pursue the unknown vastness of that curiously straight two lane road, but Mike didn’t see the turtle in the road until it was too late. As he looked down, it appeared that the shelled little land mine was directly under his tire! It was too late to brake, but he did so, anyway, and his soft rubber soles jammed into the jagged, metal teeth of the pedals. His rear tire locked, starting to skid, but no sooner did the “shiddiddiddi” of the skid begin, than Mike jammed hard right on the handle bars. The front wheel turned a sharp ninety degrees, which resulted in a drastic and awkward wobble away from the reptile in the road and a lifting of the rear wheel, stopping the skid, but upending the jockey from his saddle and throwing him headlong through the air, in a graceful, aerial arc that propelled him, head first, into the deep drainage ditch that ran the length of that country road.

For the faintest moment in time, Mike experienced the freedom of weightlessness that was ended far too abruptly when he crashed into the rip rap lining that ditch. As his brief flight clattered to a stop in the bottom of the ditch, every part of him was immediately assaulted with pain—every part except his head, which would suffer the ill effects of a serious concussion for months into the fall, winter, and ensuing spring. But for now, Mike lay, curled into a fetus, holding himself with fingers, hands, and arms that were scuffed and bleeding, packed with raw nerves now exposed and screaming at his numb brain.

Ralph, being almost right behind Mike, was the first to approach. His bike skidded to a stop and he thoughtlessly tossed it down onto the scorched pavement, neglecting the kickstand and then jumping the full depth of the ditch, landing beside his best friend.

“Mike! Mike! Are you OK?"

“Uhn…" moaned Mike in non-response.

“Mike!"

Mike rolled to his side, and then onto his back as his chest seared in pain. As if his body were set to autopilot, he opened and shut each of his eyes, analyzing their functioning. As he squeezed his right eye shut, his head throbbed and thumped with a depth he had never felt before. His left eye opened, he saw things in a blur; double, then single vision with everything slowly coming into focus. He squeezed his left eye shut and opened his right. He could see out of it, but everything was bathed in a crimson film. The sun beamed into the eye like some primordial torch set in the cave of human antiquity. As he lay there, not able to hear anything but the thumping in his head, he thought that the whole vision reminded him of some 1970’s B horror movie that he saw on channel 3 at midnight, after his parents had told him to go to bed.

Through the sheer scarlet silk, he could see his friend, Ralph, mouthing wordlessly to him, and he could see over the rim of the ditch Emerson, slowing his bike to a stop by dragging his canvas sneakers along the hot pavement. He watched, with stupefied wonder, as Emerson fumbled his thick calf over the rear wheel of his bike, in an attempt to quickly dismount. If Ralph was an athlete, jumping the full depth of the four foot ditch and landing like a spider next to Mike, Emerson was some sort of rodeo clown, sent for comic relief, stumbling and falling to the bottom of the ditch, skinning his own knees on the cumbersome descent.

As Mike contemplated this scene, his hearing returned, as if coming out of a tunnel, increasing in volume, crashing through his head like clanging gongs of cacophony. Through the scourge of sound, Mike could discern the voice of Ralph, repeatedly inquiring if he was ok, and the familiar sound of Emerson muttering, “Oh gosh! Oh gosh! Oh gosh!” in a way that only a church mouse could produce, coming as close to swearing as the choir boy felt he could without incurring the wrath of the vengeful God he believed was always watching.

“Shut up!" Mike grumbled while clutching his ears, his own voice causing pain in his head. As the voices returned, the shrill ringing began. It was as high pitched as the TV sign off test signal and just as painful. Squeezing his eyes shut against the noise cleared the blood from his eyes as hot tears streamed down his cheeks. The burning made him blink, and as he did, he tried to focus on the objects around him, as if that would somehow clear his muffled mind. Scanning the length of the ditch, something caught his eye. It wasn’t a flash of movement as much as it was a small jumble, or cloud, in his peripheral vision. He glanced in the direction of the crossroads and saw a large storm drain. This crossroads, which provided the only paved entrance to the village of Edam, was important, so all water had to be diverted, requiring the ditch that Mike found himself in and the two foot wide pipe that he could not now pry his eyes from.

The cloud of motion that had initially caught his attention was a large swarm of iridescent flies, shimmering green and blue with vacuous faceted eyes and hungry mouths, darting here and there, flying into and out of that storm drain with limitless intensity, busily at work doing what such flies do: eating. Beyond the cloud of carrion flies and just inside the yawning maw of the storm drain, something was staring back at the boys, with equally vacuous, cataract eyes. She lay there, her ghostly orbs framed with the parchment colored canvas of her cold face—a face wreathed in the humming, buzzing carcass eating creatures, which every few moments slowly walked across those horrible, sightless eyes, always searching, always eating. Following the ghastly lines of her gaunt cheeks and slender nose downward, there was a dirty piece of cloth wrapped tightly around her mouth to forever stifle the screams that just days ago filled her mouth. Her lips, beginning to shrivel, revealed her ivory teeth, which clenched the cloth as if letting go of it would plummet her into the abyss of that storm drain, whose bottom could only be fathomed in terms of eternity. Oddly, next to her head lay her bare feet, brown with dried blood as though they had been dragged through that same gravel that filled the knees of the boys just beyond her. Further into the claustrophobic darkness of that iron tunnel lay her legs, draped in the remains of a red, white, and blue dress that was a gruesome parody of the same festal patriotic banners spread across porches and windows and bandstands just a mile further up the road.

The three boys stared at the corpse before them, eyes transfixed by her foggy, unfocused eyes. The inhabitants of the ditch were locked in a horrible staring contest that one side couldn’t win and the other couldn’t lose. Still, the stalemate continued for what seemed like days, nothing moving except the unceasing cloud of flies that tore through the air, darting to and fro.

“Oh…. Gosh…" quivered Emerson, cradling his queasy stomach with his soft hands. “What is it?"

“It’s a body, you idiot!" sneered Mike.

“No, it’s a woman…" breathed Ralph.

As if sensing that there was new flesh in the ditch, the cloud of flies sent forward observers to search the boys out. Though only a small portion of the cloud moved from the corpse, still hundreds of flies began buzzing and ricocheting into the new inhabitants, with their hungry mouths like little trumpets sucking life, rather than blowing melodies. They landed on the boys, tousled their hair, and crawled across their faces. The thought of these carrion-crawlers dancing on the woman’s dead flesh and then touching his own quivering lips shot through Emerson like a ray of heat from the very heart of the sun. Coursing through his stomach and churning his breakfast, he felt as though his belly was full of those same swarming eaters of the dead. His jowls began pouring saliva into his mouth, and he felt his tongue quivering and his throat opening, and began to gag. A single cough erupted from his mouth, followed by the contents of his stomach, causing that bitter, bile burning through throat, tongue, and sinuses.

“It’s a woman…" whispered Ralph again, with a perceptibly audible sense of wonder in his voice.

“…a woman." Ralph would be forever changed by this realization that the thing that lay before them was not a cold, lifeless stone, but this object had just recently been a living, breathing human—a woman—that was like other women he knew. As he stared at her sallow features, he could see life and beauty in her newly-dead features. The harder he stared at the blank canvas of forehead, he could almost see where blue veins had coursed blood back to a heart that used to beat like his. Her auburn hair, crusted with blood and dirt, and undulating with maggots, used to undulate in the breeze like a sea of oats awaiting the harvesting of a loving hand. Her mouth, forced open by the gag used to open on its own to accept the kiss of another mouth. Her feet and legs, now with ripped cotton dress loosely covering them, used to lie between cotton sheets and would feel the cool of the night air and tiny gooseflesh would come upon them without warning.

With each revelation of her humanity and previous, glorious beauty, Ralph edged closer to her. He was drawn to her. As though she were calling to him with those eyes and that mouth. As though she were waiting to embrace someone for the last time. Was it a morbid sense of curiosity, or a pubescent desire to be close to a woman who would allow him to explore and investigate without question or comment? Ralph didn’t know, but something pulled him closer and closer to this gothic beauty queen who was both macabre and burlesque at the same time, beckoning him, whatever her reason, to come.

In horror, Emerson beheld his friend slowly approaching this apparition like a boy approaches a snake in the wild, with eagerness and wonder at the mysterious curiosity before him. He shouted out to the entranced boy, “Oh, gosh, Ralphy! Don’t touch her! Come back!” Ralph only vaguely registered that someone was talking, as though Emerson were hidden deep within a tunnel of his own. Almost subconsciously, he tilted his head ever so slightly, still watching his lady, but acknowledging that he was not alone and that his actions needed some form of justification.

“Guys, I can see her. I can see all of her," he spoke distantly, second-hand.

Emerson thought that he meant that he could see what lay beyond the face and the feet. Images of entrails spilling into the storm drain came to mind and his mouth began salivating again, and he thought he would vomit again. Mike, with vivid pictures in his mind of magazines that he found in his dad’s boxes in the basement, thought that he meant that he could see the woman’s sex, a thought which now called to himself for curious exploration.

What neither of the other two could possibly imagine was that their friend, who had been a boy riding a bike with them just a short time ago was in the complicated process of becoming a man, capable of seeing the whole creature before him—a woman who had lived and who had life left within her. He saw a glorious Eve, who had been a dancer, propelled by the orchestra of life to twirl and pirouette, adding grace and beauty to this hot and torrid world. He saw the beauty of a life cut short and longed to touch that beauty, but there was an invisible barrier that would never allow him to gaze into her world with the physical touch of his hands. He was constrained to touch her only with his mind, and wonder at the beauty that beckoned him in one moment and walled him out the next. He stood, frozen, unsure of what to do next.

As if to explain the tension between the two of them, a large, oily creature emerged from the blackness of that strange portal to the underworld. It was a creature with red eyes, vicious incisors, and hands like human hands, clutching the woman’s hair and ear with its talon-like claws. It made Ralph stop dead in his tracks, and drew the boys’ attention away from the woman before them. Its jaws were gnawing on an unseen morsel while its whiskers contained fragments of some organ: a piece of liver, perhaps, or a kidney. Horrible reminders that what lay before them was a pretzel pile of human parts that at one time had been a connected whole and now lay pulled apart for someone else to put back together, or for the animals to rend further asunder.

As if to seal the horror in their minds forever, the rat plummeted from the storm drain, scrambling onto the rip rap and tearing its way through the few weeds that clutched tightly to a muddy patch under the mouth of the drain. It flew through the canyon-like crags that were like mountains to the crazed rodent who sprinted straight toward its stunned audience, scattering bits of viscera here and there that it had been clinging to with its man-like hands. As the creature ran towards the boys, it released a scream that was more a howl than a squeak. The boys returned in shrill kind, much less like men and more like infants searching desperately for a mother that they cannot see and believe is a million miles away.

Despite their scuffs and scrapes, hurtled either by the power of fear or the numbness of shock, they flew out of the ditch faster than they thought possible. The errant rat served as an emancipator for the three captives who fled the stiff, rigor mortise grip of the woman. The spell was broken! Forgetting their bicycles, the boys ran and ran, fueled by adrenaline and fear. They ran until the ditch and the drain seemed more like a fever dream than reality. They ran until they saw the lush green town square, ribboned in patriotic regalia, and they collapsed on that verdant bed next to the

KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs, with their chests heaving and their sullied clothes washed in the cleansing gush of salty sweat fleeing their dust-filled pores. As they lay on the lawn with the burning rays of the sun softened by the green chlorophyll filter of the live oak trees, a small crowd of townies encircled the boys, gazing at these wild-eyed youth covered in dirt and blood and sputum.

For the village of Edam, Labor Day would come and go as it previously had. However, the thrill and joy of the festivities was trumped by the discovery of the body in a storm drain. It would never be confirmed who the woman in the pipe was, but rumors would abound, ranging from an unknown hitchhiker who took the wrong ride this one time; to a city hooker, murdered by her John, or maybe her pimp. Others would imagine that she was trying to escape the city, but her husband caught up with her at the border of the village—maybe they had previously come here for a holiday celebration. Some would even claim that they had seen her before, but couldn’t place just where. Whatever her story, it didn’t matter, because soon the winter snow would come, and then the spring melt, which would force torrents of runoff straight through the pipe that led to the ditch, erasing her from the townsfolk memory; washing away even the microscopic remains of this woman who had briefly touched this small community with her dead, cracking fingers. However, to three boys, she would forever be remembered as the woman who held their hands as they journeyed through the end of that summer.