Flying Clean

Flying Clean Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The time of the harvest came- along with my eighteenth birthday- and I had hoped that the Desmonds' edginess would dissipate, but it turned out that it actually worsened. The days were the longest of my life and I had begun to cough again as I worked in air that was colder every day. As the temperatures dropped and the daylight shortened, my arthritis became a hell all its own. The joints in my knees and ankles blazed with pain and my hands and fingers were on fire through and through. I became certain that Harry had cracked my skull in two places that day in the forest; whenever the wind was particularly cold, I could feel a burning fracture crisscrossing my forehead- I felt as if I could trace the breaks exactly.

As I said, the temperament on the farm worsened as work increased, Dirk was on a rampage of punishments that had broken an arm of both Willy and Heather, had broken John's nose, and had collapsed Allen's eye socket in a nasty pocket of flesh that would never return to its original shape. I witnessed many of the attacks first-hand. I heard several more. There were some that occurred away from my presence that I could only speculate on. To make matters worse, Harry's bizarre lesson for me that day in the woods seemed a catalyst for his own violent behavior, as if he had decided that the secret had been poorly kept long enough. It was during the harvest that I first noticed his thumbs snapping his suspenders as an oncoming assault. When he saw or heard or thought something he didn't like, his big thumbs would dip under the tight suspenders, snick them against his strong chest muscles, then he would explode into action that always seemed to draw blood and bone-deep bruises the color of the night sky.

I had planned on waiting until the reap was finished, when I knew that Harry Desmond could pay me my wages, before taking my leave from the awful farm forever. I really hate to admit this, but if I've been honest so far, I might as well keep it up. I stayed through the winter, much to my chagrin, but I took my meals in the house less and less. The Desmond family did not take insult; in fact, many of them seemed relieved at my absence. Christmas came with a rapidity that was frightening and confrontational to my conscience, though there were no gifts and no merriment. Only a pig slaughtered by yours truly and cooked by Marjory. There had been an addition to the family several months previous; a baby boy name Simon who had suffocated in his sleep. Despite my opinion of the maleficent family, I don't suspect there was any plot behind it. These things just happen. Although I noted a very low amount of grief in the infant's death. I buried him beside the west wall of the house in an unmarked grave, Marjory said a brief, cold, and tearless prayer, and life went on as normal.

The winter was a miserable one in the hay loft. The barn was as old as Moses and drafty to an extreme and even the monumental addition of hay from the harvest did little to insulate my bed from the bitter winter nights. I never went in the Desmonds' house anymore and I was always cold and sickly. For a long while I feared frostbite would cripple me, but I was apparently strong enough to sustain the cold without incident. Because it was so hard to sleep at night, I became a regular insomniac and I passed my time the way that most insomniacs did: I took late-night walks beneath the dim moonlight, wrapping my blankets tightly around my shivering frame. I walked most often along the road to the Desmond farm, knowing that I would not be seen, but not particularly caring if I was. Some nights, though, I found myself standing just outside the windows to the house, mortified at some of the new horrors that I would see there. Although I have no wish whatsoever to describe some of these things, I feel that I must. I have come so far already. God, I am tired.

I don't think I need to tell you, but it was only a dozen times or so that I spied through the windows of the house at night. Each time I did, I felt dirty, voyeuristic. It was not my own deteriorating morality which stopped my late visits to the house, but rather the disgust at the things I saw. Things I desperately wish I could unsee.