Butter Nights; Shooting Stars

The Village Dommitzsche

Summer of 1885

*

—Quit your fretting.

—Papa . . .

—You know he’s late he’s always god damn late . . .

—Papa . . .

—Don't speak like that and this goes cold we’ll have to, I'll have to make him something else we can’t hardly heat it again.

—Think the most of mine's gone bad . . .

—Papa . . .

—What, Gertrude?

—Can I, please papa, say hello Schatzi?

One question and his whole form had seemed to change. He dropped his fork and stared ahead. Julie and Gertrude said nothing, then looked at each other. Oskar reached for a cup, the last bit of milk, and drank it.

—Yersee, I . . . been with her all day, so no.

—But . . .

—She, you stay away from her.

—Is it the baby papa!

—Calf, Trudy, babies called a calf.

—It ain't the baby and I’ll tell you when it is.

—Calf papa!

—Trudy . . .

—Gertrude no I said no listen to me you stay away from her, god-da . . .

—Oskar.

The room was still.

—Yes papa. Sorry, papa.

Oskar left the room.

The black had swarmed behind his eyes patterned like a cloud of bugs, he could see nothing, he left the kitchen, the house. His meandering glance caught at first the grass, wood, some presence of the sun, then his nose took in and had denied the smell of death, interwoven, in a place like this, with the stench of shit, a stench which long now had been lost to him. From ahead he heard the soft moan, pained and outward and intense, abound in qualities of unknowing and delirium, primal or transcendened. In approach he could do nothing, and, in knowing that fact, was standing with his hands on his hips in the doorway of the barn, the sweet, large, black- and white-blotched Schatzi, her head against the wall, and legs collapsed, limping not even slightly into life.

—I know, I know it does.

Her head turned to him in a slight twist, then, failing, landed on the floor. The barn was filled with flies, bigger than blueberries, which buzzed upward and below, stinging with their sounds the ears, and pincers to the skin: their small feet bringing the noises of a whirlwind to a crawl, and they did crawl, across Oskar's arms and neck, atop Schatzi entirely, across the eyeballs, face, and chest. Only the tail persevered in swatting them away. It’s like they knew of death, he thought, reaped in day what others saw only in the night.

Schatzi gave a small scream. It almost sounded human. Oskar in his present state became a blur, he was looking backwards, towards his memories, behind him, and something glanced he simply couldn’t catch.

—He still isn’t . . .

—Damn it, Julie you half scared me out my skin.

—Sorry. Is she alright?

—I don’t know.

—Is it . . .

—I don’t know damn it.

She approached:

—Oh my.

—What is it?

—Her, face, what has happened to . . .

—I mean what is it you want, I’m trying . . .

—He still isn’t back.

—Well go get him if it concerns you that much.

—Trudy got the post, also, one letter, I didn’t get the chance to tell you that, also . . .

—That don’t matter.

—Alright. Well. I’m going to find Anton.

—Alright.

—So if you need me . . .

—I won't.

She was gone. Without his watching she fluttered away and again he was alone with her.

Many hours later, when the hot air had shifted with the declining sun and the starless blues had faded into slumber, still in the short-roofed barn with the whining, dying cow, Oskar was thinking and thinking, feeling no concern for the unreturned Anton, nor, as it were, Julie, who too had yet to reappear; and, near-forgetting his own daughter, and thinking only of a different calf and a different dying mother, he had, in glancing to a rifle leaning barrel-side-up in a corner of the barn, felt the taste of metal in his crooked, chattering teeth, and cringed.

He walked to the doorway, and with both hands on its frame he called to the house.

—Juuulie.

He released, and with a stumbling step went along the grass.

—Julie? Julie?

—Papa?

—Where’s your mother.

—Did she go for Anton?

—She isn’t back?

—I haven’t seen her I don't think she is.

—Go to your room, I . . .

—But papa I . . .

—Stop following me, go, go.

And he was hot with sweat all sweltering like the cool night didn’t care didn’t think to warn him otherwise, and stepping into the night neatly shifted into sunlessness all reminded him to remember of his father; so he went to the clearing and the massive stump of a former tree, surrounded by many smaller shards of tree which weren't yet small enough, and he leveraged the axe that was wedged in the stump and took up one of the shards placed it down and raised the axe above his head.

He swung.

He swung and swung.

His cutting of the woodblocks became a metronome.

Without his knowing Gertrude had been sneaking from the house. She came from the back to a small porch under moonlit night. She wondered where her mother and her uncle were.

She could hear two things, possibly four: the drone of bugs a murmur in the sky and the harsh and intermittent bashful chopping of her father’s giant axe upon a giant tree, which was intermixed at odd and unpredicted intervals into a well-timed harmony, with the chopper's strained and angered grunts.

She stepped into the barn in which Schatzi slept, dying.

—Schatzi . . . ?

And in a Mithraic scene the weeping cow and the thousand flies and the cursed array of other wicked beasts froze upon their standing, and etched in time as into stone they stood. Again Gertrude had seen that her mind was working but her body couldn't function. Like the wind knocked right out of you kicks you off your chest like wow. The darling Schatzi smelled something and a bit of life came into her, and with her half raised head and wet, tearful, gruesome eyes, she looked towards the girl, and smiled.

—Schatzi . . .

A brutal silhouette coalesced; she had not noticed the stopping of the chopping.

—Gertrude! You’ve just gone and done it.

—Auh . . .

—You, stupid, selfish . . .

—aeh pap . . . !

—You’re gonna get it.

—I didn’t . . .

—Did you touch her you bitch?

—Herr I didn’t go near her.

—You . . . oh god . . .

—You’re hurting . . .

—damn god damn . . . you wanna make a mess of me? you want to go behind my back think me a fool you, you you . . .

—Papa you’re hurting my shoulder my shoulder hurts.

—This is my house!

—Please.

—Go!

—Wha . . .

—Go to your god damned room sit on your bed close your eyes and open your ears.

—Papa, what?

—I said go . . . oh, make a . . . go behind my back will you and . . . god what if she . . . she better not, not’ve . . . maybe she will need one . . . maybe Jules . . . yes, hallo, yes, hi old girl . . . it’s me . . .

The cow raised its head.

Oskar took the rifle in his hands. He did not know if Gertrude had seen it in the corner of the barn (she had) but he very much didn’t care because he took the rifle to his shoulder aimed it straight tucked tight right into the armpit and ironsights dead towards the girl aiming over her eyeball he sighed and spoke without his breath, —God, damned . . . then held and pulled the trigger.

He exhaled with the kick of the sound which bounced around the barn and which thrashed the poppers of his ears. There was a screech he didn’t hear, and a cow which died. He found that the smell of gunpowder had hit him all at once, filled the air in an instant, and immediately consumed, immensely charmed and nauseated all at once, it caused the barn to spin around him, or him to spin around it.

He descended elsewhere, a maelstrom of his own torments, he grasped the phantom of a history.

—Damn fine shot, oh! P J. Damn fine.

This story was submitted to Vocal's (SFS1) Challenge: Old Barn.

Thank you for reading. If it was worth your time, tips of any size contribute to my living, and are greatly appreciated.

If you enjoyed this story but do not wish to tip, sharing it also makes a difference, and pressing the heart hits the algorithm.

with love

- T VV