By Aline Soules

This Story Was an Honorable Mention in Our Contest

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Jordy was talking nonstop.     

Pete saw his brother’s lips moving, but the words floated away. All his attention was on the four fingers sticking out of the ground, so small and rigid like a doll’s, only with dirt under the fingernails. He imagined digging down past the still-buried thumb and palm, along the arm to the head where he’d find the mouth that couldn’t say Mama because of the dirt filling the maw, lodged in the teeth, clogging the throat.

He ought to move, call someone. He followed the splayed fingers, the pinkie angled towards the barn, the ring finger to the silo, the middle finger to the sky, blue with heat haze on this sultry afternoon. 

Jordy was still jabbering when the police came, words that weren’t words as far as Pete could tell, sounds he didn’t understand, his brother’s face as glassy as his eyes.

Pete didn’t ask how the policemen knew to come. Later, he learned they were looking for a missing girl and had seen the two boys standing on the knoll the kids called the hill because everything around was flat. Pete told them how Jordy had seen the fingers first and had pointed to those stiff digits poking out of the ground. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay, son. We’re gonna take you both home now.”

~

Pete shared a room with Jordy, who was muttering in his sleep, babble, babble, babble, his body flopping back and forth in the bed, but Jordy didn’t wake. A mercy, as Pete’s eyes were wide open. He saw the fingers on the ceiling when he lay on his back, on the wall when he lay on his side, in his dream when his eyes finally closed and he slept. He woke in a sweat to hear snatches of conversation in the next room, Mam talking about a psychologist, Dad talking about expense and waste. 

The next day, Jordy prattled through breakfast, even after Dad said, “Shut up, Jordy, you’re driving me nuts.” He didn’t take out his belt, though.

After breakfast, Pete picked up his backpack, but Mam stopped him. “You’re not going to school today,” so Pete put it down. “You and Jordy are going to a new doc.”

Dad snorted. “They should go to school, but if they’re not going, they can sweep the barn ’til it’s time.”

Pete would rather have gone to school, but he didn’t argue. “C’mon, Jordy.” He grabbed Jordy’s hand and led him out of the house while Jordy gibbered on, his eyes still glazed.

~

The doc saw them one by one, Jordy first. Pete sat in the waiting room with the magazines— Parent Life, The Natural Parent, Parenting Times—and the TV tuned to HGTV where some guy was talking about fixing wainscotting in a dining room. Watching the TV, Pete couldn’t figure out why the guy was doing what he was doing. Easier to rip it out and install new. Stupid guy.

When it was his turn, Pete went in. It wasn’t like any doc’s room he’d seen before, more like a fancy lounge with chairs and a table and a couch. Sun was coming through the window and lighting up the fingers that had followed him. He could see where they pointed to the barn, the silo, and the sky. 

“Hi, Pete. How’re you doing?”

“Fine, thanks.” 

“That’s what we all say when someone asks how we are, but it doesn’t always mean we’re fine, does it?”

Pete didn’t answer.

“Can you tell me about yesterday?”

Pete told him about feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, going to school. He was in grade eight this year. After school, he came home and hoed the dirt in the vegetable patch.

“Tell me more about the dirt.”

“Dirt’s dirt. What’s there to tell?”

“But dirt holds more than vegetables, doesn’t it?”

Pete said nothing.

“You and Jordy went to play.”

“We climbed the hill.”

“Tell me what you found.”

Pete didn’t speak.

The doc kept on, question after question, until Pete couldn’t stand it. He wouldn’t be here if the doc didn’t know the answers. “Fingers. We see fingers.” 

“See?” The doc sat forward.

“Saw. Seesaw. Seesaw Marjory Daw.” 

Mam rocked Jordy when he was a baby and crooned that to him. 

“You said see.”

“Fuck.” Pete spat out the word and froze. If he’d said that at home, Dad would have belted him. But the doc didn’t even flinch. 

“You still see the fingers, don’t you?”

Pete’s body shook. He felt cold, so cold. He hugged himself and rocked back and forth in the chair, words bursting out, fingers, barn, silo, sky.

But not the index finger, how it was pointing at him.