The Seventh Mansion

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  For Danielle

  Is it true

  the earth is all there is, and the earth does not last?

  ………………………………………………………

  Living brings you to death, there is no other road.

  —GALWAY KINNELL, “Lastness”

  You are on the road or parts of you are on the road you are in two pieces. Blood into the ground, into the dirt, boot near your eyes, someone digging. White fur on meat beside you it is also in pieces soaking some of itself back up. Someone will eat that meat but not you, you are waiting for a different mouth, earth blacker beneath the spade, blacker and blacker the deeper down you go. You and your head. You are just a boy. They put the knife in your hand you would not touch the lamb. Not even to save yourself so the dirt goes right on top, shut your face. Blood left on the stones. On their boots. What a splash you made and now this, all of it on you, in you, covering you, the dirt, the smell of it, it will degrade you, shed the flesh from the bone, the eye from its socket, the heart from its nest of rib, packed hard, you didn’t make a sound. Not a single sound. Your life flying up against the sky. Oh, my God. And the legs of the lamb are dragged over you and the boots drag over you and the carts and the roads on top of this road many times over no one knows. You are here. A body losing its blood a head untethered a hand bound behind its back. A boy dragging his sword into the woods waiting to be saved trying to save himself

  Back to school. Glossy red brick, high ceilings. Fresh beige paint on the doors. Someone flicking a cigarette in Xie’s path as he comes up the steps, hood up. The cigarette hits his knee. Little spray of ash. Fucking psycho. He doesn’t look to see who said it. Picks up the butt, puts it in the trash. Locks his bike to the rack, the small of his back damp with sweat, too warm for the hoodie but he wears it anyway, every day, the same with his sneakers, no longer white at the toes, canvas showing holes at the sides. Too late to meet with FKK, the girls already in class so he checks his schedule, slides into the back of homeroom. Even the teacher’s eyes on him. Ratty pants and black hair and bright white patch on his bag that says Take Nothing, Leave Everything. Smell of linoleum, Lysol, chalk. Mountains beyond the windows. The teacher hands out some papers; he doesn’t look at them. Knee jumping beneath his desk. Shuffle to another class. Pants falling off hips. Didn’t you get enough to eat where you’re from. Something wet shoved down the back of his hoodie. Laughter. He goes to the bathroom, shakes raw hamburger from his clothes. Squiggles of meat on the floor. Tiny spot of blood. He scrubs himself with a damp paper towel, picks up the meat, folds it into the trash. Back in class, English, Mr. Matthews again. Xie opens his notebook. Last year he handed in an essay written in pencil: Meat is Murder. Matthews was furious. Why haven’t you formatted this per my directions? Long silence. Xie fingering the strap on his bag. Computers are toxic and they waste electricity. Was this acceptable at your school in California? No. Then why would you think it’s acceptable here? Xie didn’t answer. Well. No college anywhere is going to accept essays written in pencil. Handing the paper back. I’ll give you until tomorrow to turn it in according to the format specified in the syllabus. Next time it will be an automatic F. Xie got the F, then another, then another, until his father convinced the school to let Xie turn in handwritten homework, citing some doctor’s note from years before that said computer screens made Xie’s dyslexia worse. It didn’t matter. He cut as much class as he could get away with, reading in the bathroom, sleeping in the grass beneath the bleachers. Doing just enough work to keep from getting expelled but this is new, the cigarette butt, the meat; at worst last year he had been ignored, little cocoon of silence, fuck with no one and no one will fuck with you; but they all know, now, about the summer, about the farm, about Moore. He can still feel the hamburger on his skin, flesh against flesh; he shifts, folding his arm around his notebook, smudged skull beneath his thumb. Crown of leaves. Drop of water against the bone. At lunch he checks his bike: both tires slashed straight through to the rims. Wincing as he rubs his thumb over the torn rubber. Leni jogging up to him. Hey, we missed you this morning, where were you? Late, he says, and she sees the bike, flinches. Holy shit, she says, pink hair cut jagged to her chin, pale lips stretched across her slight overbite as she frowns, looking over his shoulder to see who’s watching. Nobody. Do you want to go to the principal? He waves his hand. Nah, it’s okay. They make their way to the parking lot. Jo already on the wall, hair shaved at the sides, plaid pants ripped at the thigh, sucking water from a Nalgene bottle as she checks her phone. Hey whores, she says. Leni hoists herself up on the wall, skinny ass next to Jo’s heavy one. Someone messed with Xie’s bike, Leni says. Jo grunts, unsurprised. I told you, you should’ve let me drive you. Xie shrugs, leaning against the wall. Eats trail mix from the pocket of his hoodie. They threw meat at me. Jo chokes out a laugh. They what? Hamburger, he says. Like, a pound of it. Raw. Faint unhappy smile. Disgusting motherfuckers, Jo mutters, shaking her head. A swig of water. Was it organic, at least? Leni elbows her. It’s not funny. Opening a pack of chips, frowning as she chews. I think we should tell someone. Jo snorts. Like anyone gives two shits about his bike. What are they going to do, call the police? We could, Leni insists. Jo rolls her eyes. Xie chews a handful of nuts. Wind blowing his hair into his face. Last year, on his first day, he’d stood in this same place, eating cold oatmeal from a thermos, when they’d walked up to him, Jo’s hand out: We’re FKK. They never explained the origin or meaning of that name; he thought it might be some dyslexic abbreviation of fuck. We saw you reading Frances Lappé, Leni had said. Are you vegan? He’d just nodded, speechless, as they took their places beside him, the same places they occupy now. The mountains gray beyond the lot. Jo rips a peanut butter sandwich into pieces. Gonna rain, she says, eye on the horizon. First fat drop plump on the hood of a white SUV. The bell rings. They slide off the wall. Tuck their trash in the bin. Xie goes up the steps. James Moore’s eyes on his back. Big banner on the brick: Welcome Back.

  * * *

  They had parked Jo’s car in the lot of an abandoned Waffle House and walked on foot, 1:00 a.m., to the Moore farm. Head to toe in black. Heavy gloves. Knit masks tight and hot on their heads. At the base of the mountains hardly any houses. No light on at the Moores’; easy to slip to the back, skinning beneath the windows. Do they have guns? Leni whispered. Of course they have guns, Jo scoffed, they all have fucking guns. Leni rolling in her lips, half a step back. Looking over her shoulder. Jo stopped at the gate, bolt cutters poised. Look, do you want to do this or what? It was Leni who’d sat in class with James Moore while his uncle gave a presentation about genetics and mink farming, highlighting their own fur production at a facility only fifteen miles from the school; Leni who’d cried while describing the picture of Ryan Moore and his nephew beside a pile of fresh silver pelts; Leni who said they should do something about it. But it was Jo who had thought of this—no petitions, no letters, no protest. Direct action. Do you? Jo asked again. No, I do, Leni said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. I’m fine. Sorry. Jo glancing at Xie; he looked back, adjusting his gloves, pure acid in his gut. They cut through the chain. Slither of metal against metal. Behind the gate a huge concrete lot covered in straw and shit. God, Leni breathed. Whisper of fur in the dark. Slow steps closer. The mink curled in me
sh-wire cells no more than ten inches wide, stacked on row after row of wooden platforms stretching a hundred feet or more to the back of the farm. They’d seen the aerial maps, had known what to expect, but it stopped them anyway, for a moment, to see in the flesh just how many animals there were. Jo put her hand against the front of a cage; the mink shifted inside, hissing. Smooth shine of eyes. Hi, babies, Jo whispered. We’re not here to hurt you. Slow hard press against the metal clips at the top of the box and the door sprang open, nearly hitting her chin. Come on, she said, reaching for the mink, go! The mink hurtled up the arm of her glove before leaping to the ground, scattering straw, claws against concrete. Xie and Leni running, each to the head of a row, snapping back the clips. Even through the gloves you could feel how soft those bodies were. Silver ghosts swarming beneath the gate. Xie’s hands so fast on the clips, trying to balance speed against silence. Sneakers slipping on straw, on shit, breath wet in the mask. He couldn’t see the girls but he heard them, felt them, moving in the same rhythm, the three of them a single machine. In the last row a mother and her babies, five or six, teeth bared; they would not leave their cage and Xie shook it, hard, trying to rattle them free, stifling a shout as one leapt at his face, the cage rocked free of its stand. He fumbled to right it but it fell, too loud. Fuck. Jo pointing to her watch, eight minutes up, Leni already sprinting to the road and Jo following but at the gate Xie stopped, turning to make sure they’d emptied every row, flashlight jumping in the dark. Faint scent of fur and the most. Beautiful sight. Pockets of night in the open mouths of the cages. The barn a black shadow against the mountains. Breeze stirring the straw. The almost alien sensation of joy: We did it. And then he was down, cheek straight to the concrete, Moore’s hard breath in his ear. Don’t move, motherfucker. Spit of blood catching in the black hairs of Xie’s mask, rattle of air and groan. Pain somewhere in the distance, waiting for him to feel it, but he felt nothing. Run, he thought, closing his eyes. Run. Run.

  * * *

  Jo drives him home. Xie carries the bike to the garage, past his father unloading tools from his truck. Hey, Erik says. What happened? Nothing, Xie replies, leaning the bike against the back wall of the garage. Erik looking at Jo. She shrugs. It was James, had to be. Leni scrubbing at the gravel with the toe of her boot. They threw stuff at him, too, she says, eyes wide. Erik dropping a wrench into a box, loud clatter of metal on metal. Wiping his hands on his jeans. You tell anyone? Xie’s jaw tight. Squatting on the step to stitch the long gash in the sidewall of the tire with a piece of dental floss. Finger slipping on the needle. He shakes his head, once. Goddamn it, Erik mutters. He goes inside. Jo and Leni exchange a glance. You want to come over later? Jo asks. Not tonight, Xie says. Okay, well, call us, she says, turning to take Leni’s arm as they walk back to the Jetta. Slow roll from the driveway. Inside the house his father’s voice rises, falls. Xie drops the needle, makes a knot in the floss. Erik comes back out, hand against the screen behind Xie. They’re giving you two options. You can transfer to another school in the district, or you can take a tutor for the semester until things settle down. I have to talk to the principal in the morning and let him know what you decide. Xie scrubs his palms against his thighs. Okay. Silence. Erik scratching the back of his skull. You want me to take a look at it? Jutting his chin toward the bike. No, it’s fine. A pause. You know I have to call your mother. Yep, Xie says. I don’t have a choice. I said okay, Xie replies, sharp. His father slams the screen. Xie on the step, arms around his knees. Rain pouring off the door of the garage. Water splashing the drive. Xie, his father calls. He drags himself inside. Takes the phone, pressing it against the cheek that Moore had smashed against the concrete; it doesn’t hurt anymore but he remembers how much it did, hairline fracture and a bruise that distorted half his face for weeks. Now they’re kicking you out of school? his mother is saying. Because of that stunt you pulled this summer? Xie quiet. Wrapping the phone cord around his wrist. Wrap. Unwrap. They’re not kicking me out, he says. Oh, okay, well, if your father didn’t think it was necessary to ask them to give you special treatment all the time that’s exactly what they would do. You can’t just keep running away from the consequences of your actions, Xie. I wasn’t trying to, he says. They don’t want me there, I don’t want to be there, why should I go? Because it’s good for you! she yelps. Not everything is about what you want. Think of all the money we’re spending, your father isn’t exactly wealthy, and we’ve worked very hard for what we have, very hard, Jerry is very supportive but he just doesn’t understand what’s going on with you and frankly neither do I. You don’t have to send anything, Xie says. Of course we do, what are you saying, how else do you expect to pay them back for all the damage you did? He hears the chatter of pills on the other end of the line, the sound of his mother arranging her nightly cornucopia of vitamins on a plate. They didn’t even live, she says. They all got shot or trapped or run over. I mean you didn’t really think any of it through, did you. Xie peels the cuticle away from his thumb. Do you need to talk to Dad again? No, she says, suddenly composed, satisfied with this proof of disaster, a disaster she’d predicted ever since he was young, predictions his father ignored. I love you, she says. But I need you to be good. Can you be good? Yes, Xie says. She hangs up.

  * * *

  He unwraps the cord from his wrist. His father’s hand at his back. I’ll make dinner in a minute, Xie says. Just going to take a walk. It’s raining, Erik says. I know. Slips out the back door. Trips over the back step. Curses. Hood up against the rain but he is soaked in a second. He walks into the backyard. The remains of summer’s strawberry and zucchini plants sunk in mud, surrounded by weeds, a mess. He unlatches the gate, slips down the narrow bank to the stream, which has swelled almost as high as the log that crosses it. He jogs over the log, careful of the moss, to the fence, higher than his head. NO TRESPASSING. He rolls back a flap of chain-link, his sleeve catching on the steel. He faces the trees. Breathes. The woods are a mile deep, two miles long, bound by the highway at the east, a local road at the west, the house at the south. To the north, in the clearing that used to be full of ash and oak, there is a field of wild grass. It’s not dark enough to see the light yet but it’s there. He doesn’t know where it comes from, some building in the clearing; he has never gone near it. He walks, arm out to touch the trunks as he passes. The wood is pure birch, Betula pendula, not native to the state, considered invasive in some places, crowding out slower-growing, longer-living species: trespassers, like him, creating a screen between Xie and the town, between Xie and everything else. A mile from any neighbor, twice that to the tiny downtown with its strip malls and craft shops and bars. He spent every day of his first summer here. Learned the names of the ferns, the flowers, the birds. Nuthatch. Barn swallow. Goldfinch. He had found his nest; he had wanted to disappear. Stupid. To think you could. He pauses at a trunk split in half by the last storm, its branches grazing the soil. The crown is still connected to the trunk by an arch of bark chalk-white on one side, bright yellow on the other, the sapwood and heartwood jaggedly exposed at the top of the break. He tugs a strip of bark from the wound and puts it in his mouth, chews. Finger deep in the cracked body of the tree, which is still alive, pumping the last of its sugars through the wood. A fox slides through the fallen crown, twitching the leaves aside. Weird nighttime eyes, rain combing its pelt close to its skinny haunches. Xie waits, bark bitter in his mouth, as the fox darts back into the brush. In its wake he sees something white in the juncture of two broken ferns; tiny bones, gently curved, with knobs like fists at either end: femurs. Picked clean. He puts them in the pocket of his hoodie. Walks home.

  * * *

  After dinner his father pulls a pack of cards from the sideboard Xie loves, teak with a satin finish that still shines. All their furniture is like this, simple, Danish, true vintage, inherited from Erik’s parents. His father shuffles, hands fast on the cards; he had paid for his wife’s engagement ring with the winnings from a single evening of poker. His mother used
to say the ring would be his someday. An entire circle of diamonds. For the girl he was supposed to marry. He scoops up the dealt cards. More diamonds. His father frowning as he fans his hand. Shit, he murmurs. They won’t talk about the phone call, about school. Snap of plastic against the table. His thumb bleeding from where he pulled flesh away with the cuticle. Sucks it. Let him win. Pretend like you didn’t.

  * * *

  Up in the attic before bed. Putting the bones into the brass dish along with the others, six or seven dozen: femurs, vertebrae, ribs, some brown and brittle, others, like tonight’s, fresh, a pure dry white. He puts the dish at the head of the mattress, pulls the curtain over the window. The room turns to velvet. Softest black. For a while there isn’t anything in his head. The sound of the creek, the occasional cry of a whip-poor-will, a nightingale. Xie turns on his side. Puts his fingers in the dish. Imagine. A single white curve. The horizon of a skull against the velvet. How smooth it would be, if you put your mouth against it, drew your lips to the crest of the brow, tongued the deep sockets, inhaled the scent of the wafer-thin walls of the nasal cavity, more delicately, numerously chambered than a beating heart. Kissed each loose tooth. Licked the entire length of the jaw, slowly bit the arch of the cheek. You imagine everything, as the void peels away from the body bone by bone: skull, spine, clavicle, ribs, hips, thighs, knees, shins, feet, you go as slow as you can. Hands against every hollow, every curve. How quiet it would be. How quiet it is. Alone with it. You turn your mouth into the pillow. Lift your knee against the sheet. Your hips against its hips. Your mouth against its mouth. Whatever movement might be possible, without hurting it, you’d learn, you’d know, it would tell you, show you. How it fucks you. How you fuck it. Making sense of your own flesh. You spread your arm across the mattress but there is no body to embrace. There never will be. And you fall straight through the ceiling into sleep on this thought and even the velvet does not catch you, you just fall and fall.