Chapter 8 - The Man of Wind and Moss

For the majority of the car ride, Marco was reminded of how annoying Keith could be.

“Don’t just take the promotion because it’s there,” Keith said. Doll was getting flustered. She had been explaining her role at The Leeland Insurance Brokerage, an entry-level spot that fell into her lap years ago and became her career path whether she wanted it or not. In college she studied art history. She had told her counselor that she wanted to be an art conservator and the counselor laughed in her face.

“Fuck Miss Grabinski,” Keith had said. That was the counselor. Even back when this incident happened and all but broke Doll, Keith was the first to decry the FSU faculty. When Doll took her role at Leeland, or The Lib as she called it, Keith decried that move too. “You should be pursuing what you want. End of discussion. Don’t you want to be happy?”

Doll was getting annoyed, and Marco noticed that she only resembled Pansy in her mouth. They pouted the same and had similar teeth, but where Pansy’s eyes were green and inviting, Doll’s were brown and accusatory, especially now peering over the shoulder of her seat as she angrily ate out of a bag of M&M’s.

Among other differences, Doll was more practical than Pansy. More levelheaded. Doll knew that wants and wishes were great, but they needed money and stability. The job at The Lib was a good one and, yeah sure, when she was in college she had big ideas of restoring long-revered paintings and traveling the world to great museums to be some culture’s last savior, but when push came to shove and Miss Grabinski guffawed in your face, the old hag, saggy flesh spilling out of her collared shirt, what else could you do but let the words trepan their way into your brain?

Pansy went with the flow. Pansy was the flow. She was impulsive. She was strong-willed and passionate, often asking forgiveness instead of permission. She would work late hours at a restaurant and swoop into class with crushed up Adderall in her Mexican Coke. She needed to be thrilling at all costs, the center of attention always. Doll was the opposite. Doll was patient and quiet and smart. Smarter than most of them there. Smarter than Pansy for sure. And that was the seed of most of their spats. There were nights when the two sisters came at each other with the ferocity of titans cast from Olympus. A slap goes to a hair pull goes to a grapple. Then the beer pong table collapses and the party’s over. Granted, those times were few and far between and were mostly left back in college when they, and everyone around them, were tanked on PBR and Guthrie’s fried chicken. Looking back with a closer lens, though, Pansy usually started it. And looking closer than that? Doll usually finished it.

“A promotion means more money,” Doll said slowly, stretching out the words so Keith could follow. “Which means more nice things and more traveling and more fun.”

“Providing insurance for rich assholes isn’t a life, it’s a jail sentence,” Keith said.

“And what are you doing that’s so profound?” she shot back. “Making videos for BuzzFeed? Sorry, to offend your creative sensibilities, Keith, but you’re hardly adding to the canon of Western art.”

Keith was about to speak, but Marco cut him off. “Yeah, how’s that TV show you were going to make anyway? I think I missed you at the Emmys this year.”

“Making a TV show is a lot harder than people think,” Keith said. “They just don’t pop out of nowhere. There’s a lot of branches you have to go through.”

“And what branch are you on?” Doll asked. “Just curious.”

Keith got upset. He crossed his arms. His big belly was tight against his T-shirt. He wore khaki jeans and his boots were off, piled behind the center console. “I’m just trying to be a supportive friend,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Well, I’m not feeling supported,” Doll said. “So, reassess your strategy.”

The thing about Keith, if you couldn’t surmise, is that he was critical about everything and had all the right advice but couldn’t function when the mirror showed him back. A real give-but-can’t-take. And while his advice was largely from a place of good intention—merely wanting to see Doll thrive—he was dumb to his own subtext. You should be doing this, started off good in theory, back in college when he would urge the group to major in whatever their heart desired: Communications? Creative Writing? Yo-yos?? Jesus Christ. But quickly it started to sound like I’m not impressed with your decisions. All of that was par for the course coming from a parental figure whose texts and phone calls you could duck and dodge, but it decidedly held less validity from the guy that opted for hard liquor at the brunch hang.

To Marco, Keith gave out spades of advice because 1) he wanted to look like he had it all figured out, a common situation, but also, more severely, 2) he wanted to be thanked if things worked out. Thank you, Keith, for getting me through all of this. Thank you, Keith, for that tip. Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you. Who needed to sell a screenplay when you had that in your inbox?

* * *

Later on, the six of them stopped and got lunch at a diner called Suzanna’s. Sasha pulled up alongside Dean’s pick-up. It was a 2017 Dodge Ram, and it was the same deep blue as toilet cleaner or, really, the cap of a Clearblue pregnancy test. When Marco climbed out of the car, he saw Pansy and Dean fighting. The four of them moved along and got a big table inside. Keith ordered a beer, Doll an iced tea, Sasha a Diet Coke, and Marco settled for coffee. He was going to be driving the last leg and wanted to be prepped. When the drinks arrived, Marco poured heaps of sugar and cream into his mug. He thought of the moka pot that Monchito brought home from his first PR trip. The house smelled amazing for that one morning and then Monchito stopped making it when their parents were around. Then he thought of ten cuidado. And then he nudged Sasha’s shoulder.

“You see them in the car?” he asked.

“Mhm,” was all she gave back. She turned over the menu and read it closely, really putting on a show. Again, Marco wanted to tell her his plan, but again, he held it back.

The doors jangled open, and Pansy came in red-eyed, and Doll and Sasha got the cue and went to the bathroom with her. Dean sat down across from Keith and Marco and looked stoic. He ordered a Heineken and a pastrami sandwich. When the server moved away, he watched her for a stretch before looking back at Keith and Marco.

“Let me show you this before the girls come back,” Dean said. He had come in with a Jansport backpack, and he pulled it up and handed it to Keith first. Keith looked at it nonplussed. “Open it up, doofus,” Dean said. Then Keith did and his eyes widened. He showed it to Marco and inside Marco saw a black revolver. His stomach dropped.

“What the fuck is that for?”

“We’re going into the woods, aren’t we?” Dean asked. “Don’t you want to feel a little safe?”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“I’ve been to a couple ranges,” Dean said. The server approached with the Heineken and Marco closed up the backpack. When she walked away Dean took a quick swig and grabbed the bag from Marco. “It’ll be fun to find a clearing and shoot at trees and stuff.”

“Yeah, and if anyone tries to Deliverance us, we can blow ’em to pieces,” Keith said.

“No way, man, I gotta hear you squeal.”

“Fuck you, you know I’m rape-shy.”

The two laughed loudly.

“I don’t know,” Marco said, breaking up the riff. “It makes me nervous.”

“Everything makes you nervous,” Dean said. “It’ll be fine.”

“Does Pansy know?”

“Of course she knows.”

“Is that what y’all were fighting about?”

Dean grew quiet. “We weren’t fighting,” he said. He took another pull from his beer and looked away. Then the girls came back from the bathroom and joined them. Pansy sat next to Dean, across from Marco, and Marco considered scribbling a quick diagram for Paula back in Brooklyn. He imagined himself drawing the gun on the table too, small little lines with a black Crayola. Paula was an artist. She’d appreciate the mise-en-scène.

* * *

Back in the car, back on the road, Marco was behind the wheel. Sasha moved to the passenger seat and Doll and Keith were behind them, on good terms again after Keith apologized during lunch. It was finally Sasha that brought up the topic that weighed on Marco’s mind, the one she had been avoiding a one-on-one about: “What the fuck are Dean and Pansy doing?”

“Dude, I don’t even want to get into it,” Doll said. She was her sister after all. She was probably bored stiff with this topic by now, but Sasha didn’t relent.

“Give me a little insight,” Sasha said. “As a treat.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked,” Keith said. “I say respectfully.”

“I don’t know, guys,” Doll said. She had turned sideways in the back seat, resting her feet on Keith’s lap. He was giving her a foot massage now as penance. “Pansy is Pansy.”

“Pansy is pregnant,” Marco corrected. He moved into the slow lane and tried to appreciate the scenery. They were about to break off I-87 and move onto a state road. The traffic was thinning out and overhead the sun was getting lost behind some clouds. The border of the roads fell away to American elms and black gum trees, vibrant and green. They were approaching the start of the Adirondacks. Huge mountains in the distance crumpled upward like piecrust. Just beyond that was nothing. You fell off. Sayonara.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, guys,” Doll said. “She wants to keep the baby. She wants to start something with Dean. And I guess he wants the same. And, anyway, aren’t we supposed to support what women do with their babies? Abortion or not?”

“Whoa, now,” Sasha started. “Don’t question my stance on the choice. I invented the choice. But Pansy? And Dean? Raising a kid?”

“Not even,” Marco said. He was getting keyed up. He looked at Sasha who gave him an emphatic head nod. Her gossip side had come back, God bless her. “Pansy and her parents are raising it, and Dean is essentially skipping town.”

“He’s not skipping town,” Doll said. “Think of it as him getting a job.”

“Good point,” Keith said. “And with how psycho he can be, he’ll probably get promoted on day one.”

“Look, I’m not saying it’s the smartest move there is,” Doll went on, “but it’s not so uncommon. Military guys do this all the time. They get a wife. Knock ’em up. And they ship off.”

“Then they come back in their fatigues and surprise the kid at school.”

“Exactly,” Doll laughed.

“Well, what do your parents think?” Sasha asked. She had turned 180 degrees in the passenger seat. “Are they amped to have a grandkid?”

“It’s a mixed bag,” Doll said.

“Mixed Bag,” Sasha repeated. “That could be a good title for an essay.”

“Yeah,” Marco teased, “real human condition stuff right there.” Sasha ruffled his hair. He forgot how often she touched him. A pat on the shoulder. A squeeze on the leg. In college she’d jump on his back and have him carry her.

“It is a mixed bag,” Doll implored. “My dad doesn’t like Dean.”

“Shocker,” Marco said.

“But they’re both thrilled she’s coming back home,” she said. “They’ve kind of divided us up in a way. I’m the one that goes out and gets a real job and makes real money, hence The Lib. And they think Pansy should stay in Florida and have a family and a kid. Otherwise, they think Pansy will be a party girl her whole life, doing coke at lunch, and like use dirty needles or something.”

“But this is Pansy we’re talking about,” Sasha said again. “Who’s to say she won’t be doing that as a mother?”

“I guess we’re gonna find out,” Doll said.

Dean’s truck overtook them, and Marco saw through their back window. More hand gestures. Maybe singing aloud. Maybe fighting again. Sasha turned back around and sat in her seat. She looked at Marco and mouthed the word crazy. Marco nodded and mouthed the word back. He kept his eyes on the road, but he could still feel Sasha looking at him, only he was looking up ahead at Dean’s truck and at Pansy’s profile and behind him Keith tickled Doll’s foot, and she yelped and pulled back and all of it was starting to feel like a parade.

* * *

An hour or so later they were at the final stretch, and Dean had fallen behind to let Marco lead the way. In the passenger seat, Sasha kept a printed map on her lap, cross-referenced it with the GPS, and supplemented it with handwritten notes from Paula. Fastidious was the word.

The road ahead narrowed and on either side of them, the dark woods closed in. Cast in a deep hue, a little after golden hour, the trees faded from orange to purple. Tangled wildflowers crept from the incline of the woods and reached for the asphalt. The sun found its place behind the mountains they were approaching. The ridges off in the distance glowed like a live wire, a spinal cord of electricity, brilliant in the growing dusk.

“Are you still thinking about grad school?” Marco asked. In the past, Sasha had mentioned pursuing an MFA and leaning into her creative writing. While grad school certainly wasn’t for him, it seemed realistic for someone like Sasha. It made sense for her to go, even if she doubted it.

“I haven’t decided,” she said. She was small in the passenger seat, her knees pulled up. She was leaning against the door and looking at Marco dead-on. Behind her, through the windows, trees whipped by in a blur. “I’ve been doing research and there are tons of other options to further your education.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Seminars. Lectures. Online specialty courses. Hey, do you remember when we took that folklore class back in Tallahassee?”

Marco tried to remember. He had graduated at twenty-­one, a baby really, and he had been so absent during most of it, mentally and literally, that it barely made an impression. He recalled the small and heavily air-conditioned rooms that comprised the English department. He remembered sitting behind a kid who drank liters of Faygo. He could vaguely remember the face of his professor. Where had all those memories gone? Why was there a fog? Lord knew that in the storage unit of his brain, he was hardly adding anything precious. He was just letting things go. The thought was a bummer. “Yeah. I think so. Paul Bunyan and stuff. What about it?”

“I liked that course a lot. I still think about some of the stories we read.”

Her voice trailed off. Marco looked over at her. She was picking at her fingernails, lost in thought. The road had grown darker than he realized, and he toggled the headlights. A dull orange illuminated the cracked state road flying beneath them, disappearing in the rear where Dean’s truck ate it in seconds.

“I feel like you’ve always been into that stuff,” Marco said.

“It’s just interesting. All these cultures have, like, some spooky excuse for why their lives go wrong. Legends of things in the woods. Pixies and stuff. Nothing is an accident. You didn’t pray correctly, you drank from the wrong part of the river, you walked past a mushroom on a rainy afternoon. Something silly. It’s been in my head a lot. When kids go missing it’s because of fairies. In the mines there are Tommy Knockers. Maybe it gives comfort to when people are hearing things and spooking themselves out.”

The car was getting tighter. Doll and Keith were asleep in the back. The glow of the dashboard gave off a sickly green.

“Do you remember the one I wanted to present on?”

“Not really. What was it called?”

“The Man of Wind and Moss.”

“Remind me how it goes.”

“‘The Man of Wind and Moss has come, he comes when you are lost-a-come, he’s here to protect, he’s here to direct, and tally up the cost to come.’”

He vaguely remembered. It tickled his head like an actor he couldn’t place. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he couldn’t tell what reaction she was hoping for.

“It’s Norse,” she continued.

“Sure.”

“It’s been in my head a lot.”

Marco waited for her to say more. To explain the poem or maybe diffuse the sudden tension it brought. But she didn’t.

“You’re not going to do anything weird this trip, are you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How much further do we have?” she asked.

“About an hour.”

“Okay, I’m going to say my piece and then sleep the rest of the way, and we won’t discuss it again.”

“Here we go.”

“Nobody wants you to make it awkward.”

“Is that your piece?”

“Yes, I’m done.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing.”

“Sasha.”

“One more thing—I care about you a lot and in a lot of different ways. Okay, goodnight.”

“Sasha, what does that even mean?”

“Goodnight, I’m napping, goodnight,” she said with her eyes closed.

“Sasha,” Marco said again. He reached over and grabbed her leg, but she pretended like she was sleeping. “You’re ridiculous.”

He turned his eyes back to the road. In the rearview mirror Dean’s headlights followed. He checked the GPS and settled in for the final stretch. His mind worked through images of fairies and goblins and the Man of Wind and Moss. What must he look like? He thought of Black Arms. Long black arms. Bright yellow eyes. His father whispering to-the-night-to-come.