Ocotillo

by Abbie Donoghue, Winner of the Editors’ Award in Prose

Blythe ducked out of the chapel-in-progress, turning to the neighbor’s rusting fence. Her trowel clattered down into the bucket of plaster, momentarily creating a welcomed layer of sound between her and the cacophony of clucks. The dry grass and phalange-like ocotillo branches rose higher than the source of the chaos. By the time she hoisted her upper body over the fence, the desperate avian cries had dissipated. A hen had wedged herself between the rusted fence and the coup, surrounded by feathers. Her head was now spotty with bald patches. Two roosters darted at each other on the other side of the dusty yard under a warped set of swings. Blythe knew what had occurred, knew it was what simply what chickens did, but was still horrified whenever the neighbors left the roosters to roam in their hen house.

She hopped back down to her side with a crunch of spiny goat-heads underfoot. When she first arrived in Duncan, she was disinterested in the dusty ground. She liked that it was dead, the simplicity of it, but that was the extent of her admiration. Every step was a crunch, a scrape, a skid. For a while she missed the spongey earth underfoot of the Pacific Northwest. She was nostalgic for the slips, slides, squishes with every step but it had been four years since she left Portland. Now she reveled in the dormant, brown foliage. Back in the chapel she held a porcelain crucifix up to the wall, contemplated placing it in a row with several others, or solitary on the opposite wall. The placement of the solitary crucifix would only further confuse. That was what she was going for. She went with solitary on the opposite wall and began mounting, blending the crucifix into the walls that grew higher with each methodical hour that she spent working.

These hours were not quite work and not quite art. At least she didn’t consider it her art anymore. She thought of her chapel project as more of a record of material culture for beings of the future. Blythe was certain that someone would someday dig her chapel out of the dust and try to make sense of the things humans worshiped, loved, cared about. Humans were bound to destroy themselves, but she was determined to leave a striking record. She had traveled throughout the Southwest, collecting old antiques and knick-knacks, crosses, plastic Buddhas, clay pots. Blythe was energized by things, perpetually in awe of stuff. Amazed at what people weren’t looking at. They were fixed on the reflective sheen of a cell phone and didn’t notice that she had taken ownership of every thing, everywhere she went. It was all hers, the material world. The crap, the jewels, the books, even the crunchy ground and the dull hills in the distance. Stuff was a portal into a world where she was almost always utterly alone. She decided to build from it a massive temple dedicated to just that. Stuff.

Two years ago, she had amassed a pile as large as an industrial dumpster and finally began building. Each day she would haul out a Rubbermaid bin of material from her adjacent studio in the yard and begin breaking, shaping, creating patterns and mosaics in the walls as she built them. This day was no different. She had spent all morning before the clucking interruption arranging a recent haul of catholic relics but with guests arriving later, she wiped her hands on her pants, leaving grey streaks of plaster and headed across the yard to the hotel.

An easy loan, a cheap, dilapidated property, and an urge to recreate the 1920’s boomtown grandeur lured Blythe to Duncan, Arizona. The crafted oak molding, dark patterned wallpaper, and tiled floors that had fallen into disrepair had been revived little by little over the past two years. As she wound her way up the staircase, each step gave way slightly as old steps do. She frowned as she entered the bedroom. Dust had settled on the quilt since she had changed the sheets. It had been two weeks since the last set of guests. To visit Duncan, you had to be intentional about it, and not many people were. Word was spreading, however, about the hotel, and about her. The previous guest had been a writer from Phoenix who decided to take a detour on her way back from Marfa. She had written a piece on the hotel, chronicling the original southwestern art covering the walls, the peculiar inn-keeper on the run from tragedy, and her chapel. She grazed over the details of the accident, focusing instead on the gang of outdoor cats that roamed through the yard and the goat, Pepper, that had eaten her entire copy of Anna Karenina. The writer emailed a link of the story to Blythe, who noticed an obvious correlation between the published date and her overflowing voicemail box. Blythe worried about the influx of guests, that her time in the chapel would be usurped each week by cooking, cleaning, laundry. She also worried about the type of guest waiting in her voicemail box. Normally, they were far removed from the life she used to lead as a working artist in Portland. Since opening the Inn, she never had a guest who had a remote notion of who she was or why she had moved to this town of two intersections, three stop signs, and a population of 142, depending on the season. The cool desert nights, the muted sliver of civilization that was Duncan, the open spaces—Blythe savored it.

A five-minute drive out of town and she could find herself completely alone. It was routine for her go for a ride, eyes set on the horizon. She drove out until the lights of her hotel were faintly glowing. She screamed until her voice became brittle and useless. She chucked glass bottles down to smack the asphalt of the two-lane highway and shatter. She loved that she could lose it, that she had the space to go crazy outside of a stranger’s gaze and beyond their earshot. But what she loved about Duncan most of all was her anonymity. She reveled in the realization that her reputation did not proceed her upon an uneasy handshake. Nothing was personal. The retirees in Cruise America campers or dusty families returning from camping in the Gila Box propped Blythe up as a mysterious Innkeeper, solitary in the desert. Assuming their imaginations were more entertaining than whatever story she would deliver, most of the time, they never asked. However, an arty magazine centerfold piece, categorizing her hotel as a “nostalgic gateway to a new American West” would not attract the distant guests she enjoyed. Nevertheless, she had filled her books for the month. She needed the cash.

Blythe changed the sheets, beat a cloud of dust out of the quilt on the balcony and then began to cook dinner. She knew the couple staying the weekend would be driving from at least 100 miles in some direction and would be worn out from staring at the monochromatic landscape for hours. She could control one of those variables. Blythe grabbed the stewpot suspended above the stove and began to chop and toss in the various limp, rogue vegetables that were scattered in the fridge.

By the time the guests arrived, they were greeted with the smell of stew that had wound its way through every room, hung above the oak bookshelves, clung to the parlor room furniture. It was clear to Blythe that they had read the magazine article. She had a vision of what the readership looked like and they radically fulfilled it. Jane, the first woman, wore a black monosuit with minimalist, geometric jewelry. Nix was also in all black apart from a topaz bolo tie tight around her collar.

“Oh my god,” Jane said, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. “Whatever that is, I cannot wait to eat it.”

“Jane,” she added, eyes still closed, jutting her hand in Blythe’s direction.

“Blythe. Welcome to the Sampson Hotel.” She ushered them in and they shuffled towards the lectern where she handed them keys and a handwritten set of guidelines. It was an ever-growing list of rules and information. Where to get extra towels, not to feed the animals, keep paper away from the goat, et cetera. She rambled off the rules. After so many guests her mouth just moved on its own and her mind could wander. Her feet stepped and hands gestured through the small hotel, pointing out the bathroom, the long, cluttered kitchen, the upstairs bedrooms, and, finally, the yard. The guests looked out, eyes wide, at the chapel, the rusted teardrop trailer that now served as a small library, the cat castle she had built from the old kitchen cabinets, everything now shrouded in the pale pink haze of dusk.

Blythe led them back towards the dining room for dinner. She ladled the thick dark soup into their bowls and sat down at the head of the table. She sliced bread, her hands still spotted with plaster. The conversation meandered through the usual topics. Jane and Nix were creative types from Tempe on a self-declared sabbatical. They had been jumping around the Southwest for a month now, and while looking for their next destination, stumbled upon the hotel article. Then the conversation turned to Blythe. She could feel the questions coming— why she moved to Duncan, did she feel alone, did she planned to return to the city with armloads of inspired canvases in tow. Her solitary, decluttered life couldn’t be forever.

“My friend from Portland has heard of you. Apparently, you are some kind of a big deal,” Jane said, reaching across the table for an- other piece of bread. Blythe was surprised by Jane’s immediate comfort at the table with her host, as if they shared an instant kinship by way of a hearty stew. Jane began explaining her plans for a more permanent artistic isolation and chattered on about her hopes for escaping the urban art scene of Tempe. Blythe’s mind began to wander. What would Jane and Nix converse about later, curled up after dinner in the dark? She could picture them debriefing on their hostess in hushed voices.

“So, what kicked you out? How did you wind up all the way out here?” Jane said with a laugh, but her curiosity was palpable. Blythe started clearing the table, shuffling plates and spoons and napkins into a pile on her forearm as she began to explain.

“Nothing really. Portland was fine… I just wanted to be alone.” Blythe paused, furrowing her brow, choosing her words. She studied their faces. How much did they know? What did Jane’s friend in Portland say? Did they come to see the Chapel and have a laugh at Pepper nibbling their notebooks or were their motivations elsewhere?

“Away, I guess, is the better word.” She explained her current project, the chapel, emphasizing the process, deemphasizing the connection to her art career. Both women had heads cocked to one side, nodding in time to a specific rhythm that indicated their idea of what Blythe would say had already taken hold before she said anything. If only Blythe could access it. If only she could peel back the skin, open the skulls and peer into what they knew.

***

Blythe woke in a sheen of sweat. She was still wrapped in a down comforter from the middle of the night freeze. Unsticking herself, she walked to the window looking down on the yard. Jane and Nix were already outside at the rod iron table, holding mugs, cats weaving in and out of their legs. Dog-eared books were scattered on the table. Sleep had not taken away Blythe’s unease from the prior evening, and, looking down, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Jane and Nix were getting uncomfortably close to backing her into a corner. She thought back to the magazine. The ambiguous description of the accident that begged for an explanation. It was only a matter of time before they asked. Blythe turned from the window, coming to the conclusion that the only way they wouldn’t be able to do so was with food in their mouths.

Pancake batter softly sizzled on the griddle. She watched the bubbles gently rise and fall. After the satisfying first flips revealing golden brown undersides, the primal clucking, the sounds of a hen in peril cut through the quiet again. Jane ran in from the yard.

“Blythe!” She shouted, distraught. “The neighbor’s hen. We need you.” Blythe followed Jane back outside to the same corner of the yard where her feet crunched the day before. The roosters had once again pinned the hen down. One held her neck with his beak while the other walked on her back, mating. The hen clucked and screeched. Jane and Nix were huddled together, eyes wide, mouths covered with tense hands, frozen in place. Blythe grabbed a rake and jabbed it at the roosters over the fence. It snagged them up and off of the hen. They dodged the rake and continued to bob and weave in attempts to get back to the hen. She hid behind the rake, burrowing into the corner. Blythe turned and surveyed the yard for a makeshift shelter. She grabbed a wire cage and lowered it onto the hen. The bird was trapped, but away from the roosters. Blythe wiped her hands on her thighs, and, remembering breakfast, jogged back towards the hotel.

The pancakes were smoking and blackened on one side. Blythe scraped the black off the griddle and started a new batch. Jane and Nix were just starting to move from the fence. Slowly, they made their way back to the kitchen.

“Blythe. We just watched an act of rape. I really don’t think we can be here anymore.” Jane’s face had not yet relaxed. Blythe flipped the pancakes, trying to summon something comforting.

“Troubling. Uh—Pancakes?” Blythe held a plate out towards her. Jane looked back at Nix, her eyes searching for reinforcement. Nix stood back, leaned on the counter, and sighed. She shook her head. Jane took the plate and allowed Blythe to pile a stack of pancakes on it. They all moved slowly to the table with their pancakes

“It’s just… that was traumatizing. That poor hen, I mean—” “Jane, we can’t anthropomorphize. Is sexual assault a thing with chickens? I really don’t know.”

Nix shrugged, hands flinging out with a forkful of pancakes. Blythe kept her eyes on her plate. Jane expected her to soothe them. She knew Jane thought this was the raw, rural standard and she was an interpreter. But how to respond to barbaric chicken mating had not permeated her instincts during her years in Duncan. She cleared the table, put the syrup back in the fridge, and went to change into work clothes. Jane and Nix wandered back outside to the table, fresh coffee mugs steaming.

Blythe thought about the hen, still hovering beneath the cage as she placed and leveled a ceramic disciple on the wall. One of the cats wandered into the chapel, its tail twitching back and forth. The cat hissed and darted away as she knelt to pet its long coat. Blythe won- dered if she should take it personally.

The morning blurred into a lazy afternoon, the couple still at the table. Nix was underlining something in On Photography and Jane rifled through Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera, reaffirming their southwest road trip as a feminist one. Jane began sketching ocotillo plants in the margins. She tried again every few pages.

Jane set down the book and walked across the yard to the chapel.

Blythe was smoothing the edges that secured the disciple to the wall. After months of daily work, she had become desensitized to the intricate beauty that had begun to take shape. Jane, however, was not. She stepped slowly into the sanctuary, scanning the walls, eyes feasting on the colors, textures, chaos. Small pieces of statues, goblets, and sym- bols of all sorts formed patterns flowing and spiraling energetically towards where Blythe stood at the back.

“Blythe,” she said. “This is something else. It’s unreal.” She dragged her fingertips along the textured wall, still examining the small fragments in awe.

“Thanks, it’s a process.” Blythe said, not turning away from the wall.

“Have you shared this with anyone back home?” Blythe’s fingers pushed harder into the crease between the wall and the disciple. She imagined Jane under the quilts she had carefully folded, face illumi- nated by a google search of ‘Blythe Werner.’ As it stood, any mention of her art had fallen to the second page of results. Jane would have scrolled, lingered in the stream of local news outlets detailing the police report, the media statements, the digestible story arc of Blythe fleeing town at the height of the chaos.

“It really was an accident” Blythe said. “Wait, what?“

“I know you read the magazine and probably looked me up. Just…for the record. It was an accident.” Blythe stayed frozen facing the wall, weight leaning into the statue, waiting for a response. Neither broke the silence.

Blythe crouched down to the bucket and tried to appear focused, head bowed down intently. Her hair draped over her face to hide her gaze. Through the strands she could see Jane’s out of focus figure re- treating to the patio table. Jane sat down, shook her head, and flipped open her book. Blythe watched as she scribbled something in the margins of her book and slid it over to Nix. Nix shook her head. It must have been a question. Blythe let out her breathe but pulled it back in sharply as Nix grabbed the book and pen from Jane’s hands. She scribbled something back. Jane read it and returned a confused glance until her eyebrow arched and chin dropped slowly into a nod. She sipped her coffee slowly, still nodding.

Blythe remained frozen on her knees beside the bucket, her fingers now covered in dried plaster. She tried to reason that Nix and Jane were just guests, that they knew just as much as anyone who was not there in the gallery on that day. What was different? A wave of heat swept through her. It settled in her cheeks, her chest, the tightness oozing down to collect in her forearms. In the chapel, Jane had touched the walls, leaving her fingerprints and miniscule scraps of skin on the sharp edges of the mosaic. Blythe was now aware of her presence, her inquisition, her judgement permeating and rotting throughout the sacred structure. The way she had returned to the table, furiously scribbling a new piece of gossip. Blythe walked away from the wall and knelt down. She mixed the hardening plaster, unsure if or when she would need it again.

The hen cried out again, shattering the hot, stiff worry that had settled over Blythe in the Chapel. The roosters had thrust the cage off of the hen and were on her again. Blythe dropped the trowel back in the bucket, the motion now familiar as she again ducked out of the chapel. She grabbed her gardening gloves sitting in the dirt and put them on. The fence was easier to jump than she expected. The first rooster was surprised by Blythe’s grip and tried to wiggle free. She held its body between her legs, one hand on its skull and one on its neck. She twisted her hands and with a crack, it stopped. The next rooster ran across the yard but Blythe was able to corner it and grab its body. Again, she twisted its neck with one motion until she heard a crack. Easier than she expected. She carried them back to the hotel by their legs, a bouquet of feathers dragging in the dirt. She took out her knife, slashed their throats and let the blood drip into the bucket of plaster. It was thin in comparison and splattered up onto the white sides of the bucket, then pooled into the troughs of the plaster.

She walked to the kitchen and swung the chickens onto the metal counter. She studied their limp, mutilated bodies. Blood was beginning to coagulate. She picked one up, fingers pressing around its neck again. She could feel the bones, so close beneath the thin sheen of skin and feathers. It had been so easy. Why had it all been so easy? She snapped its neck again, creating another break. She chuckled. She thought about how it took less effort to break that neck than crack a pair of take-out chopsticks into two. She was unsure of what to do with them now. She had never butchered a chicken. She vaguely re- membered a photo from a tattered cookbook she had flipped through in an antique store. Following her instinct, she put the chickens in a pot, filled the pot with water, and set it to boil. Perhaps they would eat them, and later than that, she could use the bones in the chapel walls. Blythe let out a deep breath, trying to calm down. She threw her gardening gloves in the trash and ran her wrists under the cold faucet. She had guests and was certain they knew who she was and wanted to know more. She walked back outside. Jane was staring at her book and pretending to read, hands trembling and pages quivering. Nix raised her coffee cup in Blythe’s direction. “Can I get a refill?” she asked.

Blythe returned with the steaming cup and paused before handing it back.

“I know you read about it. I just want to explain myself.” Jane and Nix exchanged a look that Blythe interpreted as recognition. They were ready to hear the full story.

“One of my assistants, Beth, she was using the wrong paint on the top border of the mosaic.” Blythe said.

“I was yelling but she had headphones in so I went up the ladder to get her attention.” Blythe had been angry. She had been so angry. Not at Beth, but she remembered that hot rage building and burning and she couldn’t help herself. Beth’s arm was so close; it felt so natural to reach. Blythe had grabbed it, mushing the flesh around the bone and pulling it towards her in attempts to make Beth under- stand, but more so to release the hot, itchy anger that was crawling over her skin.

“The installation was so behind and I was so frustrated I just snapped.” Blythe’s hand clenched, knuckles white around Nix’s mug. She closed her eyes.

Blythe remembered Beth’s wide eyes, surprised by her grasp. Blythe had let go of her arm after a moment. In hindsight, Blythe realized that she had been on the edge of a line. Everything could have been fine. She would have returned to hectic preparation for the exhibit as if nothing had occurred. She had grabbed her assistant’s arm in a compromised moment, but would later apologize. There had been a small chance that everything would change. That her tight grip would mean something more. Beth had nodded, agreed to fix her work. Blythe was down off the ladder when Beth started descending for the right color. Halfway down, her foot slipped slightly on the paint spattered step and she swayed, trying to balance. Blythe watched as her left foot swung in the air, sweeping up as if it alone could stop her upper body as it fell towards the ground. Blythe had never given much thought to the sound that a skull would make upon smacking a concrete floor. Weeks after the accident, she dropped a plant in a ceramic pot and was startled. It had made the same sound. The weight, cracking and spreading dully across the ground.

“I wasn’t even on the ladder, I didn’t push her but, I just—” Her hand flew up and landed with a dull slap on her thigh.

“It was my fault, I shouldn’t have—” Blythe looked at Jane and Nix who were nodding, brows furrowed in front of her. They were listening this time.

“But was it?” She asked them, voice cracking.

“Was it my fault?” She wanted them to answer the question, keep nodding, cry for her, tell her that they believed her. It was then that Blythe heard a distant sizzle. It had to be the water, boiling up over the edges of the pot, collecting at the burner. The bodies of her neighbors’ chickens, which she had killed with her own hands were on the stove. She was standing in the yard, seeking absolution of guilt from two strangers from Tempe who had come to relax, perhaps see her art collection, sit in the yard and do exactly what they were doing before interrupted. Drink coffee, read, and draw what she now, standing in front of the table, could see were skeletal fingers. Jane’s page was covered in bones reaching across towards the spine. Had they even read the article? Blythe thought for the first time.

She pointed to the house and jogged towards the birds. In the kitchen, bloody bubbles of water, fat, and feathers were gliding up and out of the pot. She drained it in the sink, the basin quickly coated in a layer of pink feathers. She started picking at the birds through the rising steam, her fingertips singeing on the hot flesh. The feathers fell out of the loosened pores without a fight.

Her knife slid easily down the thin skin of their underbellies to remove the giblets. As she cut out the intestines, she thought about Jane and Nix and how they were just like the old couples in RV’s passing through. They did not care more or less about her than the dusty families. She thought about the limp necks under her palms. How good it felt to break them. Squeeze her fists, flip her wrists, and feel the thumping pulse of their struggle subside. She tossed the cleaned birds back into the pot and gathered ingredients for soup. Later, as Blythe stirred the pot, her mind replaying the day’s events, wondering if and where she, herself, had lost it, Nix stepped into the kitchen. She leaned against the doorway.

“So…I think we are going to hit the road.” Nix said, looking down. “We’ve got to get back to Tempe but in all honesty, this just got out of hand.”

Blythe walked around the counter and wiped her hands. They were stained a dark pink from handling the blood. She nodded and offered to carry down their bags.

“No—no need to check us out. I already grabbed my card up front. I think it’s pretty clear but just in case—we aren’t paying for any of this.”

Blythe heard an engine starting somewhere out front.

“That’s my cue,” Nix said, turning to walk towards the door. “Take care,” Blythe called after her, unsure of how else to address their swift departure, or make up for her violent outburst, her monologue about Beth, her obvious desperation.

By evening, fat had floated to the top of the soup and begun to foam. The drained feathers had dried to the bottom of the sink. Blythe collected them in a grocery bag and brought them out to the patio along with a bowl of soup. She took a few sips, then set it down to turn towards the entryway of the chapel.

She began with broad strokes, using a thick brush to establish each carpal to metacarpal to phalange. Bone by bone she slashed until two hands towered on either side of where the door would be. The plaster from the afternoon had toughened by then, the blood separated and caked at the top of the bucket. She mixed a new batch and grabbed the bag of feathers. After hours working under a spotlight, the grey morning light began to soak through the clouds. Blythe stood back. Two blue skeletal hands with fingers poised to choke around the doorway were illuminated. Knuckles of layered feathers protruded out of the wall. The fingers reached high, and curved slightly towards the door, as if their strength would swoop down at any moment. The feather knuckles rustled slightly in the breeze. Blythe looked down at her hands, now thick with plaster and small tufts of pink. She walked back inside the hotel and climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. She be- gan pulling at the sheets to change for a new pair of guests arriving the next day. Her books were full and she needed the cash.