The Fall of Man

This is a story I wrote nearly twenty years ago. The primary incident, setting, and circumstances related in the story are true, though the character of Abby is stitched together from a variety of cloths.  

    The boy woke. The cardinal was back today, perched on a branch of the pine which shadowed the house. The bird fluttered and pecked against the boy's windowpane, confronting its image. The boy lay in bed, eyes closed, listening. He knew the sound. He knew it would last about ten minutes before the sun shifted enough for the reflection to vanish. He never saw the cardinal during the rest of the day. Not by the creek behind the house where minnows flashed beneath the surface of the water, their silvery shapes silhouetted against the black shale. Not in the cherry tree, or pear trees, or apple trees, or any other tree in the orchard. The bird was only here, at his window, at the dawn of the day.

     The pecking stopped. The cardinal was gone. The boy smiled and opened his eyes. The early morning light seeped through the window, but his room was still cast in shades of grey. He looked at the outline of a picture frame hanging on the far wall. There was a watercolor horse hiding in that frame, a rusty orange horse that bound over a split-rail fence. It was there in that picture he had painted hanging on the far wall, flaming and golden and red and brilliant, wild and riderless. He could see the stallion's back and neck now, its outline just appearing as the sun slipped its tendrils through the glass.

     In the kitchen downstairs, the boy rummaged for breakfast, lifting an edge of a cake pan on the counter, sniffing at the remaining chocolate cake. Someone forgot to put the plastic wrap back over it. The boy cut a piece and put it in a bowl. He tapped it with a spoon. The cake was stale and the chocolate frosting was hard. He poured milk over it and sat at the table. He could hear the water filling the clothes washer down the hall. His mother was up early because she made coffee for his father before he left for work. His father was already gone, but the aroma of coffee lingered.

     The boy finished his breakfast. Abby wandered into the kitchen in her blue cotton pajamas, her bare feet dryly scuffing the linoleum like paper on cardboard. She rubbed her eyes and sat at the table.

     'Can you get me some cereal?'

     He reached for another bowl from the strainer. Abby did not move. He poured corn flakes and milk in the bowl and placed it in front of her. Abby lifted her head from the table and began eating. The boy watched her carefully. Her fine yellow hair was all cobweb and ashes, piled around her face like a protective mantle. She ate with her blue eyes shuttered and silent. He loved her more than anyone in the world. When she had first come to live with them, she wouldn't talk or play, she would only cry. For weeks, she never left her room. The boy had been afraid of her then. She was a ghost of a girl. He had lain in bed listening to her whimpers and tears and the clicking of her mysterious rosary beads long into the nights. If her parents had been so bad, he couldn't understand why she was filled with such sadness. After some months, her tears dried away and she ventured from her room. She attached herself to him and became his shadow-companion. She was a ghost still, elusive and silent, but the boy feared her no longer.

     'I have to feed the chickens,' the boy said. Abby stopped eating but did not open her eyes. She was still.

     'You can stay here and get dressed. I won't be long.' He shoved his chair back and went outside. Every morning he fed the chickens. Abby often followed him to the coop and watched. He wasn't sure why she came with him, but he enjoyed her presence. He wished yesterday she had chosen to stay behind. When they arrived at the coop, there was much commotion inside. They could hear squawks and cackles. Inside the dusty shed, the morning sun sliced brilliantly through long vertical slats of the planking. When their eyes adjusted to the alternating dimness, they found a half-dead hen. She was blood splattered and blind, her eyes pecked out by the fowls around her. Even as he and Abby stood there, the other hens clicked their hard beaks and plucked at the injured bird's neck and wings, stupidly acting on the instinct to purge their race of the sick and weak. Abby wept as the boy pushed the birds away and brought the hen out into the cool air of the valley. In that clear light, he could see the bird was too injured for survival. It was suffering. Oblivious to the sniffling girl behind him, he set the bird on the ground and lifted his boot. As he crushed the hen's skull, a shriek arose and he turned to see Abby, holding her sweater close to her frail body, drifting quickly over the scratch of dirt dividing the grass to the back of the house. The boy looked down at the collection of feathers at his feet and buried it behind the barn because no one ever went there.

     She should have come out today instead, the boy thought as he scattered cracked corn over the clucking flock. There was no cruelty today. They were just normal chickens doing normal chicken things.

     He walked back to the house. Abby was gone. His mother was kneeling on the floor in the living room with an overturned mason jar and a mass of pennies and nickels before her. The brown copper disks clanked together dully as her fingers separated them into piles and fumbled to open and stuff the dry penny rolls. She hummed softly as she worked, and the boy recognized the tune but could not place it. She wore her dark hair pulled back tightly to her head and secured with a rubberband. When she saw the boy, she pushed half the pile of coins toward him, and he began to count.

     'Feed the chickens this morning?'

     'Yes.' The boy lost count of the pennies he was shifting. His mother returned to her humming and the boy tried to remember what song it was.

     'Did Abby go with you?'

     'No.' His mother finished another roll and stopped humming. For a minute the only sounds were the pennies touching one another momentarily as they were swept over the carpet.

     'Make sure she goes with you tomorrow.'

     He nodded and looked out the window. A breeze animated the corners of the sheets hanging on the line out over the creek where they danced and quivered like spirits standing at the throne of Judgment. He thought he saw a flash of red dash through the air.

     Abby walked into the room and stood uncertainly at the side of the couch. The boy's mother glanced with approval at the girl's sneakers.

     'Going to get some fresh air today, Abby?'

     Abby nodded, blinking slowly.

     The boy stood and handed his penny rolls to his mother. 'Can we go in the creek?'

     'Maybe later this afternoon, but not now. It's too cold.' She dropped the penny rolls in a canvas bag. 'Why don't you play in the woods this morning? You might see a lady's slipper, and I know the jack-in-the-pulpit are up.'

     The boy and Abby went outside. They walked across the narrow wooden bridge which spanned the steep banks of the creek. The sheets drying on the line were at eye-level and waved fanatically at the two mortals. The sun had climbed high enough to glimmer like a temptress on the water, and the boy could almost feel the languid cool stream as the reflections danced over his face and blinded his eyes. The afternoon seemed so far away. His ghostly companion breathed softly at his elbow, and the trance was interrupted.

     There was a special place halfway up the hill in the woods immediately beyond the creek, a moss-carpeted dell with a long-fallen log at one end, hemmed around by young pines and thick bunches of fern. The boy proceeded to climb the slope to this place, grasping the trunks and branches of trees to assist his ascent. Away from the constant burble of the creek, he took great care to help Abby follow the route he had chosen. The fresh odor of new leaves mingled with the sharp, thin scent of new blossoms and new life was vibrant in the air of the woods. The dark trunks vaulted upward into the green canopy, broken by irregular windows in the ceiling where the blue sky beyond shone passively. The boy and the girl reached the pines that marked the exterior boundary of their destination. They pushed through the long wispy needles and stood side by side on the soft pungent moss, their eyes adjusting to the diffused green light trapped like fog in the little valley. They rested on the fallen log.

     The boy looked at the girl. Her wide blue eyes indicated her interest in the secret place he had shared. Everything about the mossy dale pointed to rest, to recovery from long illness, to rebirth and creation. A quiet breeze rustled through the leaves and fern fronds, caressing the boy's ears and fingering the girl's soft blonde hair. Abby smiled and the boy was glad she was with him.

     'Are we the first to be here?' Her voice was filled with wonder and awe, and the boy hesitated before telling her he had been there many times before, but always by himself. Then she seemed to blossom like the lacy white flowers around the log, and she rushed over the moss like a butterfly newly released from its cocoon. The boy watched her movements, then got to his feet and followed. His ghost was wearing new raiment, unfamiliar and pleasing, and he tripped about the lawn behind her. Around the perimeter they ran twice, slapping the pine branches, relishing the pricks they received as the only evidence which tied this mystical Eden to the realities of the world around them. The boy heard Abby laugh for the first time since she had been with his family.

     Exhausted by the splendor of their flight, they alighted once again upon the log, leaning against one another, chests heaving, eyes fluttering. Abby looked behind their perch and pointed. Shaded beneath an outstretched branch of elm, wild strawberries hugged the ground. The berries were tart and unripe, reminding the children time had passed and they were hungry.

     They glanced around the sanctuary, committing it to memory, and crept back through the fir trees, clambering tree to tree down the slope toward the house. The boy's mother met them on the porch with a plate of sandwiches and two glasses of water.

     'Have a good time in the woods?'

     'Mmhmm,' the boy nodded, his mouth full. Abby smiled.

     'See anything special?'

     'Not really. No lady's slipper anyway.' A few minutes of silence hugged them. The boy finished eating and drank some water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, 'Can we go down and catch some minnows?'

     His mother shook her head and swallowed her mouthful. 'It's supposed to rain this afternoon and I need you to burn the trash before it does.'

     'You said this morning we could,' the boy protested in a high pitched voice. The creek's gurgling song bathed the porch in its music. The cold water already numbed his bare feet in his mind.

     'Now I'm saying no. It's supposed to rain. I'm sorry, but the trash needs to be burned.' Her gaze fell upon the sheets clinging to the line. 'I only hope the laundry dries before then so I can gather it in.'

     The boy didn't care about the laundry or the trash; his heart was set on the pleasure of wading in the creek, of slowing the flashing forms in a glass jar, of overturning submerged rocks in search of frogs. He wanted to throw his rider and kick the fence down and run flaming and brilliant.

     Abby and the boy's mother went inside. The boy fumed a few minutes before he taking to his feet. The garbage awaited. The boy scowled and lowered the container off the porch and rolled it across the yard to the rusted, wire mesh circle where the trash was to be burned. He threw the loose papers in first, piling the full bags on top of them. A breeze wandered through the yard, scuffling the boy's hair. The blue sky was disintegrating before a vast, incontestable greyness. The boy muttered and pushed the empty container back to the porch, reaching above his head to feel around a bucket of half-used paint for the mason jar containing matches. He retrieved the matches and left the jar on the floor. As he advanced toward the trash barrel, he noticed a large daddy-longleg spider ascending the chalky white wall of the house, its small brown body the knot at the center of its eight thread-like legs. The creature edged its way along the wall, stopping to inspect its route each time it came to a seam in the panels or a nail in the studs. An unpleasant idea came to the boy's mind. He dismissed it immediately, touched with shame, but it had taken root already, and, a few seconds later, he was returning to the porch. He grasped the mason jar and spilled its contents onto the floor. He walked back along the wall of the house and located the daddy-long-leg spider. Without hesitation, he swept the spider into the jar and screwed the cap into place. He held the jar up and examined the spider closely. It roamed frantically around the interior glass, dismayed at the closed quarters but pleased to be safe from the impending rain which its senses foretold.

     The boy carried the jar to the garbage pile and placed it atop a cardboard box filled with junk mail. He knelt and removed a cardboard match from its book and struck it. It flared and went out almost immediately in the light breeze which still drifted over the hill through the valley. He lit another but it too went out. Three more he lit before one finally lingered long enough for him to start the corner of a grocery bag on fire. The flame spread quickly in the quickening breeze, and the boy stepped back to watch the destruction. Smoke billowed around the cardboard box and masonry jar as the flames licked the bags beneath them. The flames climbed higher, now touching the box, now finding the envelopes and crumpled sweepstakes entries, now tapping the glass of the jar. The boy watched. The spider charged back and forth inside the glass cage, desperately fleeing the unexpected drop of sun where drops of rain were foreseen. The flames surrounded the jar, excreting carbon smears on its surface. The flames danced and the spider danced with them, without hope and or rhythm. The wind picked up abruptly and the fire roared. A brilliant stallion galloped through the trees, stopping only to kick out its forelegs and dash its rider to the ground. Its tail flashed like fire and hoofs struck the ground with thunder. Its mane snapped out and grew and stretched across the trees, wrapping around the boy's feet and stinging his face.

     The fire hissed and popped as droplets of rain skittered through the atmosphere. The boy pushed away the branch which had slapped his face, and, remembering, looked for the mason jar. It was black and cracked and entirely surrounded by flames in the center of the fire. Thunder spilled over the hill and filled the valley with ominous echoes. The rain increased, and the boy looked around to find Abby watching him. Her eyes reflected the dying flames and the wind tossed branches and a red cardinal and a blackened mason jar. The boy stared at her and his heart fell. Her morning smile was far away. She turned from him and ran over the bridge into the woods. The sky opened wide and released a downpour of tears. Through the deafening roar, the boy could hear the shouts of his mother from the porch, 'Save the sheets! Save the sheets!' The boy did not move. He just stood and watched the fire drown.