Alex Leigh Farber
The World Again
They found the bodies of the three girls on the shore below the cliffs. Far from here. Far from the woods. Far from the boy with the freshly cut hair.
He lay in his secret hiding place—a hole beneath a pine that had fallen in the last storm. His body fit perfectly there, cradled by wet earth and soft rot. The mud pressed against his clothes and skin, warm in places, cold in others. It was the only place in the world that felt safe.
He had never told anyone. How could he? Boys in the schoolyard didn’t talk about holes in the ground that made them feel whole. Even here, he could only stay a few moments before fear came—fear the earth might close over him, that no one would ever find him, that no one would even notice he was gone.
Every other Tuesday he went with his father to the barbershop across from the pharmacy. Men everywhere—fat men, bald men, men talking cars and real estate, the next war, the next pennant. The air thick with hair clippings and aftershave. On the waiting table: sports magazines and a single Playboy that no one ever touched, replaced silently each month with a new, staring girl. Secret holes and warm mud never entered the conversation.
Then, just when he thought he would never tell anyone, he met her.
The new girl at school. He would never remember her name, but he would always remember her long black hair and her small, birdlike bones. He saw her for the first time at recess, swinging on the jungle gym, surrounded by new friends as if she’d always belonged.
He stood by the back wall, where the boys played Suicide: a cracked tennis ball, a brick wall, the rule that if you were too slow, you got pegged in the head. He watched Bobby McKenzie cry as he prepared to “walk the wall,” and thought suddenly, without knowing why: she would fit perfectly in the hole with me.
When the game paused, he walked to the jungle gym.
“You wanna see something after school?”
She stared at him, then nodded.
“Meet me by the back exit,” he said and pointed toward Bobby bracing for impact.
After the bell, she came. Just like that. Book bag in hand, no tremor in her fingers. He felt strange—afraid, excited. He had no plan except to show her.
They walked apart but together into the woods, until the fallen pine appeared before them like a toppled king. He brushed away leaves and dirt to reveal the narrow mouth of his hole.
“How’d you find it?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Wanna get in?”
She hesitated only a heartbeat, then slid down feet first. Pantyhose, blouse, knees, hair—gone. Swallowed by earth.
“How is it?” he whispered from above.
Silence. Then her voice, small but strong: “Are you coming in too?”
His heart pounded. He wriggled down clumsily, dirt under his nails, the smell of rot and rain filling his nose. The only way to fit was to press against her. She didn’t move away.
“You’re shaking,” she said. Her arms went around his shoulders. “Don’t be scared. It’s quiet. It’s nice in here.”
And it was. Warmer than he remembered. The fear was gone. He felt her breath, her bones against his chest. She was giving him something he couldn’t name, something that would never come again.
They stayed like that until she whispered, “I have to pick up my sisters.”
He pulled her out, followed her home, waited by the fence for a wave from the window that never came. At dinner, his mother scolded him for the mud; his father scolded him again. Life went on.
Months later, after the thaw and the spring rains, he returned to the hole alone. He wanted to see if he could stay there as long as he had with her. He pressed his body into the mud, held his breath, waited for the old fear to rise. It didn’t.
Then the sirens came. Wailing, echoing through the valley road beyond the woods. He thought about climbing out, but didn’t.
It was warm in there. Dark in there. Safe.
All that noise, it was just the world again.
Alex Leigh Farber is a writer and teacher whose hybrid prose and lyric work appears in LIT Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Apocalypse Confidential, Apofenie, and Mediterranean Poetry. He is the author of the forthcoming collection Impermanent Graffiti.
Banner Art:
The Old Pine, Darien, Connecticut, John Frederick Kensett, 1872, The MET
