The Woolly Bear

(Fiction) Literary Speculative Fiction

Photo by Joye Ardyn Durham (edited)

And it came to this:
Wings fell in shards,
an avalanche of powder.

The soft white and iridescent blue
escaped the open window,
crumbling.

Over the wet hills,
decay drifted like tree pollen on the wind.
Scattered ash on droplets of dew.
Disintegrated.

Mae stuck her head out the window, into the humid morning air. The coastal fog blanketed the hilltops and hid the scattered stone houses there. Big Jim. Great Aunt Emma. Many of her close relatives lived nearby. And what would they say when she brought him around? She pulled her head back inside the window and looked over her shoulder at the Moth Man. His eyes closed, his perfect crooked nose. His wings draped over the bed.

Summer

A picnic. A party in the glen. Every sister, brother, aunt, uncle, and cousin awaited barbecue as Great Aunt Emma passed the time by subjecting her family to interrogation, as if she had the details of their lives pinned on corkboard inside her mind. She made unexpected and often incorrect connections, and as she spoke Mae could neither confirm nor deny Great Aunt Emma’s assertions regarding how she felt about her current occupation, the age of her body, and why she wasn’t more eager to hold Cousin Cynthia’s newborn baby.

“I don’t understand why you and Robbie don’t get back together.” Great Aunt Emma tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. “It’s not like you have a lot of options, Mae. Or a lot of time.”

Mae scratched under the lace on her dress at the scar Robbie had left on her wrist on his birthday last year.

Shattered porcelain.

“Robbie is an alcoholic.”

A scream and a flash.

“Don’t speak poorly of people, Mae.”

Blood on the tile.

“Especially when they aren’t present.”

Blood in the bath.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Mae, after a moment had passed. She spoke to fill the silence, for silence was the void opener. Silence could consume the whole party.

That night, in the quiet of her kitchen, Mae rifled through the drawers and located her scissors. She took off her party dress and stood in the incandescent light in nothing but her briefs as she cut the polyester and lace into ribbons, then threw it in the trash and topped it with watermelon rinds and scorched baked beans.

A light flickered on the hilltop in the distance, and she covered her breasts as she walked to the window and drew the blinds. The horizon, draped in coastal fog caught her eye and she peered through the exposed glass at the edge as she put her finger on the wood grain, the frame. Tree growth. Rings. Rugged outward stretching. A sound. Ringing. Not in her ear, but deep down. She spied the shadowed woodland past the soft, rolling hills. Something was over there. Something beyond.

Fall

Scattered leaves.
Persistent, relentless
Munching beneath
the opalesque sky

Warm dirt
the towering trees.
It had to be stopped,
or at least—

In the woods, not far from the scattered dwellings on the hilltop, Mae wandered by the creek. She would not admit to herself that she was looking for something. There was, after all, nothing to look for. Her physician had told her the ringing in her ears was tinnitus. As for the cause, Mae suspected it was likely from five regretful years of plausible deniability. Robbie hadn’t thrown a plate at her, for example, he had thrown it at the wall, and she just happened to get in the way. That’s why she had a scar on her wrist, and on her face: because she was stupid.

Only Roger believed her when she talked about Robbie, and she suspected he only believed her because he wanted to put his hand up her skirt in the storage room at the restaurant, which he did. Because he believed Mae wanted him to, which she did. “Why don’t you come over?” Mae asked him one day as they stocked glasses on the shelves at the bar.

“Robbie will kill me.”

“We’re not together anymore.”

“You’re off-limits last I heard.”

“He doesn’t own me.”

“Doesn’t mean he won’t kill me if he finds out, and he’s bound to find out. He’s our boss, Mae. This is a small town.”

“You’re a coward.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

And that’s how she knew he really did believe her. So, when she found the Woolly Bear, Roger was the first person she told.

“What the hell is that?” Roger’s face contorted in disgust as he tried to understand the faceless lump of fur, its tongue escaping its narrow mouth, licking.

“I found him. Beneath a toyon in the oak woodland.” Mae touched the sleek fur with her milkwhite hands. She brought the creature close to her body and placed it on her chest, its beating heart pulsing in tandem with her own. “I don’t know what he is.”

“What if it’s diseased?”

“He seems healthy to me.”

“Let me see him.”

Mae smoothed its silken fur, then curled her fingers underneath it’s body and held it out in front of her and the creature uncurled as she placed him in Roger’s outstretched arms. “Careful,” she said.

“It’s not natural for a wild animal to be so docile around people, Mae.” Roger held the Woolly Bear out in front of him as he inspected it. “Doesn’t even look like it should be in the daylight. I can’t tell if it’s a mole or what, but sick animals behave like this, not healthy ones. We should kill it so it doesn’t spread whatever it has around, and you should go to the clinic and make sure you haven’t caught anything from it.” Roger turned and headed toward the back door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get a shovel and put this thing out of its misery.”

“No, you won’t!” Mae shouted as she followed Roger and grabbed his shoulder.

“Let go!”

“What are you two doing in here?” The waitress, Chrystal, poked her head through the door. “What the hell is that?”

“Mae found a sick mole and I’m taking it outside to put it down.”

And when Chrystal’s eyes focused on the Woolly Bear, her jaw fell open, her eyebrows came together like two doors closing, and Mae’s shame sapped the blood from her limbs. In Chrystal’s eyes Mae saw the thing she had found: its ugliness. Chrystal dropped her tray and screamed. Roger startled and dropped the Woolly Bear. Mae chased after it, and Roger chased after Mae. It scooted across the tile floor of the kitchen, and Mae scooped it up in her arms as it squirmed.

“Get it out of here! Get it out!” Chrystal shouted.

Roger propped open the back door, then picked Mae up from behind. “You’ve got to let this thing go, Mae.”

“Kill it!” Chrystal cried.

But Mae wouldn’t let go, and as she ran through the back lot she tripped on a stone, and the Woolly Bear flew from her arms and into the grass, then wriggled under the barbed wire fence into the dense foliage of the neighboring field.

Winter

Each day Mae listened to her heartbeat, and against her own rhythm, out-of-phase, was the heart of the Woolly Bear. She looked for him: in the woods, near the restaurant, everywhere—

“Mae, are you even here?” Chrystal snapped her fingers.

“Sorry, I’m just thinking.”

“About that horrible thing?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

“I don’t want to come over anymore if that’s all you are going to talk about.”

“I just hope he’s okay. His heartbeat has been so quiet recently.”

“Are you aware of how insane you sound?”

“Yes, well—it is driving me crazy. Not being able to find him.” Mae looked out the window. Snow covered the ground. The distant beating had become a slow, indiscernible polyrhythm. Frozen silk wound tight around the crystalline quiescence.

“You need to go on a date. Or get a dog. Or go to therapy or something.”

“Are you jealous?” Mae blushed.

“Of what?” Chrystal laughed. “Being alone? Getting fired?”

Job applications on the kitchen table, quarters in rollers on the countertop, her purse inside-out on the floor; Mae cocooned herself in blankets as the heartbeat fell silent. No pulse. No ringing. No knock on the door.

Spring

Robbie came around in March, to “try again to make things right,” he said. “Aunt Emma told me you need a job real bad, Mae. Why don’t you come back to the restaurant and we’ll get you back on the payroll.”

“Why don’t you tell Emma to mind her own business,” Mae bit her lip as she spoke through the door. She latched the deadbolt, then went back to the mess of fabric she’d made on the floor, cut in ribbons. She texted Chrystal, and that evening they walked together to the reservoir at the edge of the oak woodland.

As a white swan severed rushes with its beak, the bush tits flitted. Ducks dipped their heads in snow melt. Mae’s ears began to ring. She laughed as she grabbed Chrystal’s hand and broke into a run. The blood flushed her cheeks, and as her heart pounded the ringing grew louder. They rounded a blind corner and Chrystal stopped running and screamed. There in the brush was a naked man with woolly wings.

Thanks for reading!

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