Wildflowers—Steve Nutt

When the police come round, askin, they looks me up sideways. Two men, barely out of kidskin. Says have you seen the boys an girls out by the humps? Goin out there night-time? I says I hear em, tells em that old oak and the lanky birches got no beef with children, keeps an eye out for them even. With their root talk ‘n spores. Wherever them kids has gone, they gone safe.

 

There is rules, see? Most people know that cats can’t abide no cucumbers. Common sense, that. But did you know the war between house spider an the house? That shale brick an clay, walling you all in, some two hundred years. The house spider scarries the floors, claims skirting board an plaster is his, all of em barriers between the hearth an home, the web, an that old enemy. Meanwhiles there’s that dancin cellar spider, in the damp corners an underneath toilets, in that space behind doors what don’t close no more. He works for shale rock since before it was ever dug out the ground. Old Papa Shale and daddy-long-legs, his turncoat murderer.

 

We ain’t all got that mother’s knowledge now. Got pissed up and away, first in churches and then kicked out for kings and teachers and outshon by radio crackle and screens. But cause I know little muckers has brains tuned in to gooseweed and woodlices, cause I know you put a baby boy out under the moon in summer to quiet your chickens happy, I know what’s all goin on with them teenages up in town. They’s a price, see?

 

Don’t tell no police mans any prize junk like that. Take you straight in for questions. Them don’t know what to ask mind. Seems I got to do the detecting for em. Not been generations for anyone to come askin no one like me for that. They spews a buncha discombobuled stories. I gotta jigsaw it into some sense. Everythins just family, see? That’s what they all lost. Ain’t much between a man an a tree.

 

So them kids. Up and gone scarce. First lot wandered off out on the footie field. Caught a scent, started singin an ran. Other one gone right that night. His folks is so sunk in drink, they don’t even know till evening—day after. Then a whole class of em, teacher says. Took em out potting for frogspawn. Trips on a gangly root, near stoves his head in. Come to an they gone. Course I gotta ask who these kids is. Did they granddaddies work underground? When they ma’s have em? Spring kids is special. Police mans don’t tell me nothing. Say they askin the questions. I tell em they ain’t askin shit.

 

Way I sees it is, you got kids what's been left to root like maybugs. And they does it over more than one kid lifetime. Gestating. These lot sends their kids away when they gets a certain size already. But they gets all odd when they leave by their selves? Police mans don’t like that one bit. Look at me like I ate a kitten or shot a dog.

 

They stops askin. Sends blokes in white shrouds and baggy shoe hats over to my shack. Spends two days scratching at the dirt like a dog nesting till they dig up Ma an Pa. Cellar spiders all wiggling and laughing it up. Got lots of questions now. Ain’t no records see. We never scrawled nothin down, never asked permission to die or where to do it. I lose my rag. Tell em if there’s any kids buried up on the humps it's you lot what did it. All of you. You palmed up all the coals out into money-hands in cities I ain’t never seen. Then up in some tower, some suit man says that’s enough of that. Now what they got? Soot all grubbied up their nice sandy walls. Little town all wet an dead for twenty years. Only natural them teens look at all that and want to get into the flowers and weeds. Drink and get all feral and jump in and out of fire. Fuck out in the wet leaves an on rotted mattresses. What else they got?

 

There is rules I say an they chain me up and lock me away. Never find no kids mind. Only gots me on Ma an Pa. Little man they send to talk at me sez it’s a mans-slaughter! Calls it criminal neglect. Says that ain’t no natural age for no parents to die. Like any of these folks knows about natural. Should I ‘a let Ma an Pa grow all crooked and dee-crept and send em away to die in piss smellin beds? Eatin baby food with all them others what’s lived past their sell byes?

 

Never find no kids. They stick bombs under the humps, tryna shake out a last bit of scratch from down in the earth. And summink leakes out of Papa shale. Gets all in the pipes an the reservoirs. I first clocks it poking a little stalky bud out of my cold silver piss-pot. All them house spiders sees the wall writing and legs it fast. Scramble to get out of town. No one notices but me. A Little budding head, growing out the shitwater in my cage, curlin up an waitin for spring.

 

So them kids they come back, right? They swims in an out of cups of tea an shower heads. Gets in yer blood an you blooms up like a field of wildflowers. An I say its like them church stories innit? Eatin the body of your kids, so you live eternal.

 

An some policed man, he comes in and wants to ask me things. And he’s all rough wood and barky, bits crumbling off him like dead skin. I say we all just family now and I can’t stop laughin. I’m half-mad for thirst, so everythins a ball. And he gets angry an tries to grab at me, but he creaks an his knuckles pop and crack, his feet break out in roots. All the daddy-long-legs under my bed is jiggling on they webs an tittering like schoolgirls.

 

When the police man comes out in little white flowers I pluck em an knot em in my hair. I tear my sheets into dresses an dance around him like a Maypole.

 

 

Steve Nutt is a writer, researcher, and musician who lives in the sticks, outside Bristol in the UK. He shares a house with three dogs and two and a half cats. He’s previously had work published in The Airgonaut and Fleas on the Dog, and spends most of his time writing copy to keep himself from going back into academia.