His Papa Used to Dance

His papa’s pyre burned for thirty days and nights. The whole town had come out to watch at first. Even the witch from down past the old oak tree. They always came, for the Burnings. Or the lightings, more like. He wasn’t sure if it was out of curiosity or respect or just ‘cause a body going up in smoke was more interesting than decade-old replays of The Price is Right. They never stayed too much longer past the first lit match; as soon as the tinder started to smoke and the initial sparks drifted towards the sky, they were gone, drifting themselves back to their own homes. The Watching was for the firstborn and the firstborn only. The townspeople knew that, patting the boy’s head as they walked by, whispering words of solace as empty as his papa’s dead body. We’re so sorry, they’d say, without any sorriness in their words, or, You’ll be okay, just give it time, as if time meant anything to a boy who’s papa had just died. Some avoided him entirely, skirting around the edges of the gathering and slinking back into their own trailers. Those that were here were here for the ceremony, and then they’d be gone, too.

    The boy — Samuel to his ma, Sammy to Papa —  stood next to his ma, a woman like a radio tower, tall and hard and full of angles, her hair a fiery red. He was half as tall and twice as wide as his her; he took after his papa that way. The boy spit, then scuffed the ground. He hoped he didn’t take after Papa like this, too. His papa used to dance, and now look at him: just dead weight on a bundle of sticks.

    The town preacher stepped out of the circle and stood next to the boy and his ma. With his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he read a verse from his holy book about smoke and wickedness and burning away to nothingness. He beckoned to the boy and his ma, and they stepped forward towards the pyre. His ma peeled back the shroud that was covering the body. Underneath the cloth was Papa, but it wasn’t his papa. The skin was white and papery and slightly blue and purple like a faded bruise. The boy bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. He waited for his ma to start the ritual. She stepped close to the pyre, her stomach pressed against the sticks, and bit her thumb with a precise snip. After letting the blood well up and spread across the pad of her thumb, then smeared it across the body’s lips. She stepped back, leaving room for the boy to step in. He bit his thumb, too, eyes stinging at the pain, then pressed his thumb gently to both of the body’s eyelids until the skin was covered in red. The body was cold, and the boy shivered.

    They stepped back as one and the preacher stepped forward. He lit the stack of wood and said nothing, just stared as the flames quickly wormed their way up the dry bundle and onto the shrouded body. He tucked his book under his arm, then turned around and walked away. The preacher didn’t even glance at the boy and his mother. Most of the town did the same, stopping and staring then leaving as they came. The Frog was the last to leave the trailer park. She stopped in front of the boy and his mom; the mother turned and walked back to their trailer with a grunt like cracking wood. The boy looked the witch over: she wasn’t much taller than him, with dark skin and dark hair and eyes that were friendly, but a deep, dark red, swirling in colors and shades like a deep pool. It’d been a long time since he’d last seen her. She pressed a small bottle firmly into the boy’s hand, then folded his fingers over it. The glass was cold in a way that it shouldn’t be, as if the witch had taken it out of a freezer instead of just her pocket. He opened his fingers slightly to look at it. It was filled with a thick red liquid that danced in the light of the meteoric fire. She grabbed him by the chin, tilting his head up and forcing him to look in her eyes.

    “It’s your choice,” she said.

    “My choice? For what?”

    “To use it. To ignore me. To become like your mother back there and the rest of this town and curse me under your breath. Your choice.”

    “I…” His voice trailed off.

    “There will be consequences. And every gift comes with a price. I know you know that. But there will be consequences no matter what choice you make, so,” she said, her red eyes sparkling, “make the right one.” She stood up as if to leave.

    “How do I use it?” the boy said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice, his hand holding out the vial. “And I can’t pay for it. I don’t get an allowance anymore.”

    The witch turned her back on him, gathering up her skirts. “It will only work under the light of a full moon. When the moon is in the sky and the Burning is complete, give it to your father. Not an hour more, do you hear me? But only if you’re sure.” She turned her head, looking back at him over her shoulder, a red eye glinting in the waning light. “And if you do use it, I’ll come back for my payment. You’ll have the means by then. Goodbye, Samuel.” She walked away before he had a chance to respond.

    The day suddenly felt colder. He moved towards the fire as if to warm his hands and then stopped, realizing what he was doing.

    “Don’t you be talking to her,” the boy’s ma called from their trailer. “She’s a witch. Witches ain’t nothing but bad luck. We don’t need no more bad luck in this family.” She crossed herself and laid a broom across the doorway just in case, and the boy sat down and waited to watch his papa burn to smoke and drift up into the sky.

——————

    His ma and pa had been happy, once. Over-the-top happy, like the sickly sweet TV films that Ma liked, as if just being with each other and with him was enough to forget the drafty trailer house and the near-empty fridge and the stack of letters by the sink that were covered in bold, red-lettered stamps. The radio was always on, a big 1960 Crosley tombstone that let out just as much static as music. The boy liked to sit down in front of it and stare at the wood lattice and glass, the clock staring back at him with its knobs and dial. He would never touch it, though; Ma would work and work until she had gotten the dial in just the right place, spinning it back and forth and back again, and he didn’t want to mess it up. His Ma and Papa would dance in the background, his Ma laughing and his Papa smiling, proud that he’d gotten her to laugh.

    Ma would get moods sometimes, though. The boy thought of them like the storms that would come in the spring, expected but unexpected and fierce in a way that only Nature could be. She’d curl up inside of herself as if hiding from something, stuffing her hair under a hat and retreating under a blanket. When Papa was there it wasn’t so bad. He knew just what to do, flicking on the radio, picking her up off of the couch where she’d laid for hours, and swaying her back and forth in his arms in a ridiculous dance. And if that didn’t work, he’d press his nose into her cheek and nuzzle her like an excited dog, refusing to stop until she swatted him away with laughter. The boy knew that his Ma wasn’t alright, could see in her eyes a distance and gloss that frightened him. But at least Papa could make it a little better.

    Sometimes Papa wouldn’t be there, though. He’d be working late or gone for the weekend on a business trip or down at the local Kinko’s with his friends, and the boy and his ma would be home alone. The boy was never sure what to do. He couldn’t pick her up, he didn’t know how to dance, and he was far too old for dog kisses. So he’d sit down in front of the radio and switch it on, looking at the dial and refusing to look at his mother behind him, her prone figure curled up on the couch. She didn’t talk to him when she got like this, would only stare past him and through him as if he wasn’t even there. Occasionally she’d look up at him, the storm inside of her giving respite for a brief moment, and she’d grab his hand.

    “Could you turn it up, Sammy?” she would say. “I like this song.”

    So Samuel would go back and turn up the radio, knowing that the storm would always come back.

    —————

    The fire raged and his papa’s flesh bubbled, as if there were hundreds of little cartoon mice trying to escape from underneath the rug of his skin. Fat pooled up and dripped down the burning branches in thick rivulets. He knew, somewhere deep inside, that he shouldn’t be watching this, but it was his job to keep the fire going, and no one had told him not to look. No one had told him much of anything, really, except to keep the fire lit until the next full moon. Everyone knew to give every body a full Burning. He’d heard about Fat Johnny. That alone was enough to keep him attentive, make sure that the fire never did anything but roar. Fat Johnny’s firstborn had let the fire die, only a week or so into the Burning. He’d fallen asleep or gotten drunk and passed out or been magicked into a stupor by the witch (the story changed every time it was told), and the fire had gone out. Fat Johnny had come back, half-flesh half-bone, and killed his son. His wife and little daughter, too. He’d ransacked half the town before the witch had finally gotten him under control. The boy knew it wasn’t just a story — his pa had been there, seen it all, and told him the story time and time again.

    So he looked at the pyre, and watched, and tried to ignore his stinging eyes and running nose from his papa’s smoke. He’d need to get more wood soon. From inside the trailer came the distinct click of the old radio being turned on. He hadn’t heard that since his father had gotten sick. It felt wrong to hear it now. But he was lonely and enjoyed the company of Diana Ross as he watched his papa’s body glow and crumble and climb towards the sky.

——————

    Papa got sick. It was a subtle thing that crept up on him, and the boy didn’t notice until he was already far gone. His eyes had sunken in and loose skin hung from cheeks that had become bony and sharp. He’d stopped working near the end of it. It was hard for him to get around, so he’d taken over the couch. When Ma got bad now she’d curl up on the La-Z-Boy. With one on the couch and the other on the recliner, the boy felt like the living room had gone from a storm to a hurricane.

    Papa would sleep a lot, but Ma never did. She’d just stay balled up on the leather chair, staring at the radio as if it were something more interesting than wood and glass. The boy did what he could, but that wasn’t much. Ma wouldn’t eat the bologna from the fridge or the canned soup from the cupboard, and the boy hadn’t been able to find anything else in the house. She’d stopped talking entirely, now, when she was in one of her moods, only the occasional blink letting the boy know that she was still alive. Between the blanket and her Mood Hat (that’s what the boy had started calling it, a black knit cap that his ma would stuff her hair into during times like these), all he could see was a strip of flesh and her eyes, peeking out from between the fabrics.

    He’d considered trying to find a doctor, or even the witch if he had to, but he had no money, and he couldn’t leave Ma and Papa by themselves when they were like this. So he’d sit on the ground between the couch and the chair, Papa asleep and Ma somewhere in-between and listen to the radio, trying to pretend, at least for the length of a song, that things were right and normal. 

——————

    The boy sat on the steps of their trailer, watching the red light of the distant radio tower pulse gently along with the dying fire. There was nothing left of it now but a few sticks and ashes. Bone too, somewhere in there, maybe so hot that they glowed red like that radio tower light. But still the boy piled sticks onto the pile, sometimes throwing a cup of gasoline on with them just to watch the burst of light and feel the heat on his face. The sun didn’t give much heat these days. He was supposed to watch and make sure that none of the bones were stolen by witches or raccoons (his ma spoke about both of them the same, just one got a broom across the doorway and another got one across the back).

    He’d just gotten back from another wood trip. He had to go every day, sometimes two or three times. The area around the trailer park was bare, nothing but stumps for at least an acre. He could’ve gone farther, cut down a tree in the woods, but he didn’t want to leave sight of the crumbling pyre. Instead he just gathered sticks and twigs and any loose scraps that he could find. He was going to run out soon. He was thinking about maybe tearing down siding off of the house, or cutting down the nearby telephone pole.

    It had been eighteen days since his Papa had died. It had been eighteen days since his ma had talked about it. He felt all too much like the little bottle clutched in his hand: a fragile glass vessel filled with blood. And cold. He felt so cold. He threw a stick on the fire.

——————

    The boy remembered the first time he’d met the witch. It was his last birthday. He’d turned nine and figured that he was old enough for Papa to teach him how to dance. To the little boy, it seemed that’s all Papa really did: work and dance. He’d come home from cleaning the school smelling like soap and lemon and teenage body spray and turn on the radio and pull Ma into whatever dance he felt matched the song that was on. It made Ma happy, and he figured if he learned how to dance, he could help make Ma happy, too. So Papa turned on the radio and told him words like foxtrot and waltz and quick quick slow, quick quick slow. He tried to follow his papa’s steps, but his feet were quicker than his mind and so he stumbled across the floor of the living room like a rabid raccoon. His papa laughed, a big thing full of belly and vigor, and pulled the boy up, putting his son’s feet on top of his own. Together they danced across the room, and the boy suddenly understood what about Neil Diamond and Arthur Conley and quick quick slow helped the storm inside Ma calm down.

    The boy decided to try on his own, and — without warning Papa — stepped off of his papa’s feet. In a split second their legs got tangled and his papa tripped, throwing his arm out to steady himself. His arm hit the ground before his body and, with a sickening pop, his elbow bent the opposite direction it should have. His father swore, a harsh and grating sound that the boy hadn’t heard before. The boy apologized over and over again, his sobbing making the words hard to distinguish. His papa crawled over to him, his left arm bent in an angle like a twisted puppet, and awkwardly cradled the boy in his uninjured arm.

    “It’s okay, bud. It was an accident.” His papa wiped tears from the boy’s eyes. “I’ll be just fine, I promise.”

    “The doctor’ll be able to fix that, right?”

    “The doctor and I don’t get along,” Papa said, but the boy knew that his papa got along with everyone. “I know someone else just as good, though. You’ll see.”

    His father put him in his rusty pickup, and together they drove down the main road, past the lake, over the bridge, and all the way across town until they had gone past the old oak tree. They turned down a rutted dirt road, his father grimacing as the truck bounced up and fell back down. The road ended at a small shack, well-taken care of but sparse.

    “This is where the witch lives,” the boy said. Ma called her the Devil’s Bitch, but he wasn’t allowed to say that.

    “Yes, and don’t call her that.” He turned and smiled at the boy. “Even if she is one, we can still be polite.”

    “Then what should I call her?”

    “Well, her name would be a good start,” Papa said. “Kulimara. She told me once that it meant ‘Daughter of Leeches.’ Ain’t that neat?”

    “Oh,” the boy said back.

    They went inside; Kulimara seemed to know Papa. She wore a dress that seemed patched together from hundreds of other dresses, colors flowing and stopping in a patternless pattern. They talked for a while about payment — she said that everything had a price, but just laughed when Papa pulled out his wallet, as if it was a joke between the two of them. She waved it off, then rummaged through a drawer, pulling out a small glass vial filled with a dark liquid. She poured it over his Papa’s forearm. The liquid seemed to soak in instead of dripping off. Will this fix it? Papa asked. Of course, she replied. In a sense.

    A week later, Papa’s forearm shriveled up like a raisin, the flesh black and hard as rock. It fell off, and from seemingly out of nowhere the witch showed up. She picked it up from the ground, dusting it off with her hand and clutching it tight to her chest as if it was a prized pet.

    “I see it worked,” she said to Papa. “Always does.”

    “In a sense, I suppose,” he replied.

    She smiled, then wrapped the arm up in white linen and walked away from the house, down the path to the old oak tree.

——————

    On the thirtieth day after his Papa had died, the fire was nothing more than misplaced sparks and lukewarm coals. The boy had tended to it every morning, cupping his hands around the lifeless embers and blowing on them till they flashed like the sun. Every night he sat around the smoldering branches while the flickering light made shadowy creatures dance across his skin. Tonight, though, he’d let the fire die. Above him the moon hung heavy and full, its light coating everything around the boy with stark shadows. The porcelain-white hardness of bone peaked through the uneven piles of ash of the pyre; they didn’t glow red, but were instead smothered in spidery, soot-filled cracks. His ma had started singing along to the radio again. Tonight it was Marvin Gaye. She was off key.

    The little boy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the bottle, clenching it tight in his fist. The glass was ice, even after having spent so long pressed up against his body. He held his hand over the coals, his fingernails digging into the soft flesh of his palm. He was scared to do it, scared to find out what might happen, but the boy couldn’t dance, and Ma needed to dance. She was getting worse. Only if you’re sure, Kulimara had said — he wasn’t sure, but he also wasn’t not sure, so he unclenched his fist. The bottle fell, glinting red and orange and a black darker than the night sky above. It hit bone with a solid thud, and all went silent. Overhead, a night hawk cried, and the boy wanted to cry out with it.

    Crack.

    The bottle didn’t break so much as it fractured, fissured. The syrupy blood seeped out of the cracks in the glass and into the cracks in the bones. The bones glowed red and then sparked into dimness. There was a pause, not of nothingness, but of everything rushing together. With a blinding flash, the dead fire exploded outwards. Sparks and ash twisted in the air, circling in the sky and blocking out the stars. The boy thought he saw vague shapes, inky crows and reaching tentacles and bony hands reaching for nothing and everything. The black cloud looked at him with no eyes, then flung itself downward, burrowing deep into the split bones. It was over. Silence pressed down on the trailer park with a choking heaviness. The bones looked different now, almost as if he see into and through them. He glanced around, making sure no one had seen; there was nothing but spindly trees and a flash of rustling fabric, garish and disparate.

    Inside the trailer, the radio had moved on to David Bowie, and his ma followed suit. Her off-key singing didn’t sound too bad with him.

——————

    The boy woke to scratching outside the trailer. At first he thought it was the usual raccoons, but it was different, wrong somehow. When the raccoons clawed their way up the trailer’s siding it was a harsh sound, claw fighting metal and the metal screeching back. This was more of a hollow sound, like tree branches tapping against the roof in a breeze. He snuck out the bedroom window backwards, being careful not to wake his ma on the couch. Outside, his father’s skeleton greeted him, bone against bone whispering like lake wind. The bones were glass now, flecked with crimson drops of blood. The cracks of ash were still there, marbling the figure. The skull opened its mouth and white noise spilled out. It reminded the boy of the sounds his ma’s radio made when the tower went down, or the clouds of flies that came when the lake got swampy. The skeleton pointed a bony finger towards the trailer, then opened its jaw again, cocking his head expectantly at the boy. Figuring he knew what his papa wanted, he went inside and grabbed the old radio, bringing it back outside and setting it on the ground. He turned it on, turning the knob only slightly, quiet enough to not wake his ma but loud enough to drown out the flies. Stevie Wonder crooned from the box; Stevie was his pa’s favorite. The boy waited expectantly, watching. The skeleton twitched and convulsed and knocked around, the bones clacking into each other like a tuneless wind chime. Quick quick slow. The boy sat and watched. Maybe Papa shouldn’t dance anymore, the boy thought. The skeleton continued to jerk and shudder while Stevie sang about how overjoyed he was.

——————

    The boy knew he needed to tell his ma, but a part of him — a large part, a part full of broomsticks and glass skeletons and Fat Johnnies — didn’t want to. She’d moved on, in her own way. She was even sleeping in her own bed again. But the boy knew he couldn’t hide his papa forever, or even for a day, for that matter, so he brought the skeleton into the house and went to his ma’s bedroom door. He knocked once, quietly, and then again, louder.

    “Ma? Can you come out here?” He swallowed. “I need you to come out here.”

    A heartbeat later she opened the door, stepping out. She was still half-asleep, hair a bird’s nest, eyelids heavy. She opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong, then stopped. Her eyes were locked on Papa.  Light was pouring in through the trailer’s windows and the skeleton was dancing, the sun breaking through the glass bones and scattering the living room with a kaleidoscope of colors. She shoved the boy behind her, protecting him with her body. She didn’t scream like the boy had expected, but instead had become steely and hard.

    “Go in my room and lock the door. Climb out the window and go get the witch.”

    “But Ma-”

    “Go!” She pushed him away from her and towards her room, then stepped into the living room. The skeleton still danced, the room filled with the sound of static and clanging bones. A short lamp sat on a nearby table, sturdy and squat, and she grabbed it, hefting its weight in her hands. The skeleton made a move towards her and she charged, her mouth open in a battlecry, the lamp lifted above her head like a bladed weapon. She swung the lamp downwards and the skeleton raised an arm upwards and the two collided with the sound of a clanging bell.

    Glass shattered, minuscule shards raining down like snow onto the living room carpet. The skeleton had gone still and his ma had gone silent and the little boy stood in the doorway, screaming. His papa’s right arm and hand was gone, radius and ulna and phalanges scattered across the room, spots of blood dotting the carpet. The pieces shivered and quaked as if still trying to dance. The skeleton had become a statue, unnaturally quiet and unmoving. Papa had already lost his left arm, and with the right arm gone, too, the skeleton seemed unsure of what to do. It turned its head slowly towards Ma and the boy, and his ma raised the lamp again.

    “No!” the boy yelled, rushing to his ma’s side. “It’s Papa. I brought Papa back, Ma.”

    “You…what?” Her voice was shaky.

    “I brought him back. After the Burning, though, so he won’t hurt us.”

    “How the —” Her voice cut off mid-sentence. “It was the witch, wasn’t it? You talked to her? You actually listened to her?”

    The skeleton interrupted them, its jaw unhinging and filling the living room with a steady, low static. The boy stepped forward, ducking underneath his ma’s cautionary grasp, and stood next to his papa.

    “It’s okay, Ma. I promise.”

    His ma stepped forward, slowly, each step a conscious decision. She reached out, fingertips lightly touching the glass skull. The static changed instantly, fragments of words and music intermixed with the white noise. She pulled back as if the slick surface of bone had burned her, then reached out tentatively again. This time she rested her hand on the side of the skull, the way she used to cradle Papa’s face. As if she had become his personal antenna, words and music joined the static coming out of his skull. It was garbled and hard to understand, but it was music. If the boy remembered right, it was one of his ma’s favorite songs. His ma smiled, and it was a genuine smile, the kind of smile that the boy hadn’t seen since his papa had died.

    Something changed in his ma, as if she was willing to throw away disbelief and sadness and just live in the moment. She grabbed the skeleton, awkwardly clutching the stubs of his arms, and they began to dance. The sounds of static and Barry Manilow and her laughter echoed inside the tiny trailer. She seemed happy, really happy, and the boy was happy, too. After a minute of watching and drinking it in, he sat down in front of the radio, tracing the grains of wood with his finger while his papa and Ma danced in the background behind him.

    “It’s your Papa!” his Ma said from behind him. “You brought back Papa!”

——————

    Life was normal after that in a way the was decidedly not normal. His ma and Papa would dance all day long, and the bone static became like a ringing in the boy’s ears, there but unnoticed. Occasionally they’d stop, when his ma got too tired. The glass skeleton never got tired, only danced. His ma would sit on the couch and the boy would sit on the carpet and the skeleton would keep dancing. If the light caught his papa in the right way he’d become a living disco ball, like the one the preacher had in the basement of the church, and sunlight would sparkle and glint off everything in the room. It was beautiful and hard to look at at the same time.

    Sometimes Ma would give the boy the look she used to, back when Papa was healthy and they were happy. It was the look that meant her and Papa wanted some alone time, and so the boy would leave the trailer and sit on the steps outside. He was happy, not so much because he was happy but because his ma was happy. She was eating again and even though she still sometimes slept on the couch, she only did so so that she could fall asleep watching Papa dance. That was all the boy needed to be happy, really.

    On some days, as he sat on the steps and let Ma and Papa have some alone time, he would look across the trailer park and see a flash of multi-colored fabric, a glint of red. He would shiver, whether it was cold or not.

——————

    The witch showed up a month after his papa had come back. She’d knocked on the door and stepped in without waiting for anyone to answer it. The boy and his papa turned to look at her, and she stared back. Ma was asleep on the couch and Papa was still dancing, but slowly, as if he was trying carefully to not wake up Ma. The witch smiled, looking the skeleton up and down as if she was sizing up a good horse or a sturdy piece of furniture. She gestured to the boy and stepped outside. He followed, closing the door behind him.

    “So, Samuel, I see you made the right choice. I had my doubts,” she said, thumbing her nose, “but I’m glad you proved me wrong.”

    “Thank you,” the boy replied, not sure what else to say.

    “I’m here to collect, Samuel.”

    The boy swallowed. “I still don’t have any money.”

    “Ah, like I said, you have the means. No money needed.” She made a meaningful glance towards the trailer.

    “What do you want? You can take anything you need, I promise. Ma’s got some jewelry from my grandma that I’m sure is worth something and — ”

    “No,” the witch said, cutting him off. “I’ve give you time, more than I wanted to, but time nonetheless. I want your father.”

    The boy froze, glancing at the witch, then at the trailer, then back at the witch.

    “No.”

    “Boy, we made a deal, and deal’s mean something. Your father will go to good use, I assure you.”

    The boy had begun to cry, hot tears burning his cheeks in the cold outside air. His ma was finally happy, and he wasn’t going to let anything — or anyone — change that, even a witch. He grabbed a handful of the witch’s robe in either hand and hung on her.

    “Please, please don’t take him!”

    “Boy, let go. A deal is a deal.”

    “Take me instead!”

    The witch stopped and became unnaturally still.

    “What?”

    “Take me instead. My ma’s happy and I don’t wanna change that. I’m sure I could be just as useful as my Papa.”

    The witch paused, looking the boy deep in the eyes.

    “Are you sure, Samuel? I need you to understand what you’re saying.”

    “I’m sure.” He paused, looking back again the trailer. The sound of static was quiet, but could still be heard, leaking out from under the door. He steeled himself, set his jaw, and turned back to the witch. “I’m sure.”

    “Very well, then. You for him? Sounds like a good deal to me.” She extended her hand and the boy shook it. The witch smiled, an unnatural thing with too much teeth. “Let’s get going, then.” She turned and began walking away.

    The boy took one more look at the trailer, thought of his ma sleeping on the couch, his papa dancing lightly on the carpet, then turned and followed the witch.

——————

    The boy would watch from the trees, sometimes, trying to catch a glimpse of his ma or papa. He never managed to see them, though: the windows were always shuttered, the door always closed. The area around the house was always drenched in a constant stream of static. He never managed to hear music, whether from the radio or his papa.

    He hoped his ma was happy.