Joyce's Green

Joyce’s Green

By midday the storm had hushed and fallen to a quiet drip, and the little noises were creeping out from their sad places. Always greenest after a storm, that’s what Joyce said. Green meant wet, and little noises. We’d eaten breakfast through thunder and now birdsong was nesting in the silence.

"Always greenest after a storm," Joyce said. "Hear the birds, Sam?"

"Yeah." Could hear them through the clefts in the walls and through the windows that bit when I touched them, the reds and blues and browns. Ain't no green birds, Joyce said. Not in the Washington forests nor in no other forest. Green was for the trees after the storm, and the yawning wet that hung over them. Henry was crying.

"You can't see 'em, though."

"N—n—no. Can I?"

"No, you can't, Sam, you idiot," Joyce said. "Course you can't. There's one right outside the window. I could touch it—" 

Touched the window and the wet was creeping through. Crept in cold vaporous breathing sighs that melted into green when they touched me, green and wet and foresty. Not birds. 

"Shut that goddamned rat up."

"Sh—shut up, Henry." Henry shut up, sniffed and was silent. Storms made Henry cry. Weak stupid critter, that's what Joyce said. But I never heard it because crying was a little noise and the little noises didn't come out until after when the wet unfolded out over the woods, outside the cabin. Henry was quiet now inside his box, made me feel sad. "Didn't al—didn't always cry, Joyce."

"I know, Sam. Damn it." Slamming noise and Henry whimpered once, didn't cry. "Gotta get a new one, now. Damn it."

"New—what?"

"A new shoe. This one's broke."

*

When we went out later Joyce helped me across the porch, even though he was barefoot. I had sandals on and down low there were flecks of cool where the wet touched me. Joyce told me to take little steps so I don't slip. Made it across and then we were stepping down into it, sinking; the wet was settling in a halo of droplets around my head.

"Gotta clear this moss," Joyce said. "Gotta clear it up, when it gets dry. Always grows right over where I bury ‘em. Gettin' long, ain't it?"

"W—wet."

"Damn right it's wet, after a storm like that. They call this a goddamned spring." Joyce was holding my hand and I could feel it tense against mine, rigid and dry and tense.

"Smells like spring," said tasting the humid springtime that lay condensed on my lower lip, the wet that hummed with life, birds ever-shifting between reds and blues. Wasn't a silence, but neither of us talked until we reached the lake. The wet was thicker there, and the moss.

"Lake—green?" I said to him.

"Water ain't green, Sam." Let go of my hand and I heard him in the water. Always in the water when we went to the lake, filling the jar. It was stroking the tips where my sandals anchored me to the sand.

"Then what?"

"Water ain't got no color." 

Joyce was distracted, was wading in the colorless sandy broth and it was touching him. Out ahead. Wanted to go to him, but the lake pulled me down when I tried to move and then I was inside it and the wet swallowed me.

Inside it, inside. Joyce pulled me up out of it.

"Damn it!"

It was cold, started to cry.

"Shut up!" Joyce had my hand and he was pulling me out of the wet, which was nipping me with cold lips like Henry used to nip me. "Shut your goddamned hole. Come on, it ain't that cold."

The lake dug into me. I stood and cried a different kind of wet, wanted Henry. "Cold."

"Shh. Let me finish filling this."

Joyce went in the lake again with the jar. I wandered down the shore for a while like trying to hear something, trying, but Joyce yelled to come back. I went back.

"Nothin' good ever comes of wandering, Sam. That’s the nest that way, where they all live. Don’t need you goin’ back there. Jar's full. Let's go."

"Joy—Joyce?"

"What?"

"What—in the jar?"

Quiet. I felt him pulling so we started walking back. Listened to the wet, our feet, his naked, dipping into it, the whispering tree-song. "Water from the lake."

"W—why?"

"'Cause I don't wanna use tapwater. Feels wrong. Damn, my feet are cold."

We made our way back to the cabin, didn't speak. The little sounds nestled in the wet were ebbing, which meant night, food. The wet had withdrawn from my skin and the air was drier now and cold, cold. Smelled like night.

"What col—color at—night?" asked Joyce as he clicked open the cabin. 

"I told you. Dark. Everything loses its color in the night."

Thought. "Like water."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Joyce said.

"Water—no color."

Joyce was silent, said let's get inside and we went inside now, in the stale air inside; behind, he locked the door. The cold was burning. Sensed the wet nestling into the house's skin from outside, sensed the air outside, the forest nested in its nighttime quilt. Joyce shut the door. "Jesus. Gotta make a fire." Heard his teeth. "Ain't you cold, Sam? Make a fire—"

The air was sand, too dry, too thirsty in here. Clothes soaked. I sat on the wood and I clutched myself and breathed into my arm. Joyce made trembling heat in the woodstove.

"Henry," I said.

"I'll get 'im out for you. Goddamned fire doesn't wanna start, anyway." Joyce got Henry out and put him in my lap, matted hair and smelling, then was making metal sounds in the woodstove again. Henry was gray, flecked with white like he sometimes got. There was pain on my finger but Henry was soft, wriggling then lying still between my fingers like he was caught in a net, tail coiled. I held him to my lips and murmured to him, held him to my ears and heard him murmur back, held him to my chest and felt his warm twitching body against my heart, pounding small like the residue of a morning rainfall. 

The cabin was heating up, and the heat on Henry's fur was heating up until he squirmed away and Joyce had to put him away. Inside his box, Henry cried like there was a storm coming.

Later there was food. 

Joyce helped me eat dinner, lifted the tastes into my mouth and helped me chew and I swallowed them. Joyce fed Henry. After, he sat across from me and I could feel him looking.

"Just got a letter from your aunt, Sam," he told. "Says she wants me to take you back to the city, back to Seattle. You got folks up there that miss you."

"Tired," I said. Joyce coughed, didn't listen.

"This ain't the first time I got a letter, from your aunt or some other relation. First time I really looked at it, though. Or thought on it." Laughed, spat. "Don't worry, I ain't takin' you back. I thought on it. In this strange way, Sam, I could never let you go. You're what's keepin' me sane up here."

Pause.

"'Sides, you lived here your whole damn life. You ain't cut out for city life."

"Tired," I said.

"I hear you. Come on." Joyce went around the table and helped me stand up. Touched my hand and heard him inhale. "Why the hell is there blood on your fingers?"

"Hen—Henry n—nipped again."

Joyce didn't say anything. He wrapped my finger, got me in my night shirt, and laid me down on my mat. I slept.

*

In the stale clutch of night I heard the crying. Clear and quiet and tremulous and it threaded through the sleeping silence, sharp enough to pull me awake. It was an alone sound.

Henry. I pulled up and felt to the kitchen, stumbling. It was gone. No box. Crying, crying. Shirtless and barefoot I fumbled open the unlocked door and followed it into the cold, the trees where it hung gossamer and quivering. Left Joyce. Henry. Henry. I drifted trancelike through the night, hands and knees and crawling, inexorable. Felt the forest's parched fingers carving my skin, my chest, tearing into my pants, but not the pain. All I knew was Henry's crying.

Closer and closer and louder.

Joyce told me once that sometimes at night a bright came out, wandered over the trees and made color where all color had disappeared. The moon, he said. Soundless, scentless, earthless.  Sometimes it was there to make color and some nights it was gone, when the bright ran out, out like wet. 

No moon tonight. Not for me. Down low the soil was clinging wet to my fingers and my knees, and further the soil turned to sand, and further the sand turned to water that was cool and stagnant. Was close. I followed the crying along the shore until it was close close closer—up a hill that crumbled, worming up until it was in my ears high pitched and irregular and dipping in and out of the soundscape—a hole in a softened tree, leaking out. 

One quivering little noise, leaking out. 

It wasn’t. Not one. I reached in and the crying erupted in a wave that enveloped me; gravity waned and dissolved and I was crumbling down with the hill and then I was in the lake, trapped beneath its skin. Henrys rained from the sky. Their crying blurred and drifted downward.

There was a voice, distant, calling, calling.

*

“Joyce?” I said.

“Tired,” he said. He helped me sit at the table, then heard him making morning tastes. The wet had breathed itself into a mist through the night and the air tasted warm and wet and like morning.

“H—Henry.”

“Henry is—yeah. Yeah, I’ll get ‘im. How’s your finger?”

I showed him it. He felt with his fingers. They were wet, smelled like lake, like mud and lake and like Henry. He went and got Henry. I held him.

“D—doesn’t—smell like Henry.”

“Gave ‘im a bath. In that jar, gave ‘im a bath.”

“Softer.”

“That’s what happens. Let me go finish makin’ breakfast.” He was quiet then spoke again, remembering: “Fixed up those shoes, by the way.”

I held Henry, oscillating, feathery. Didn’t smell like Henry, but I could get used to it. In the kitchen there were sounds. “Storm comin’,” Joyce said. “Clouds comin’ in. It ain’t spring yet, that’s for sure.” Voice sounded troubled, like it was something else. I heard the wet, outside, the wet that sang grim in the limbs and leaves. The morning birds were trickling back to their holes. 

“Where do the birds go?” I said. 

“I can’t just let ‘em go,” Joyce said. The kitchen sounds stopped, and he fell into a delicate cry. “I can’t do that. Look what happened last time. Damn it, I got to.”

I stumbled to the table with Henry in my hand and sat myself down, wondering about birds and why the trees were so sad, always so sad here. Outside, the first howls of the storm ruptured in the gray, and the wet became pounding, frigid, pounding. 

Henry didn’t cry.

I sat through the storm, gripping him, listening to the rain against the cabin roof and to the steady sobs from the kitchen. Always greenest after a storm. If I got lucky, maybe Joyce would take me out after breakfast, venture out into the wet and the little noises that dripped from the trees and listen to the meandering wind. Out into the fresh day. Maybe he could show me his green.