Arcadia by Lauren Groff Page A

under the blankets, against her warmth. When he is very still and breathes with her and drifts off to sleep in her wake, he sees pieces of her dreams: a gray street that Bit has never seen, a tree with coppery bark, a fountain under oaks draped in dusk, a huge black bird with its beak cracked to a red tongue. Deeper, and he is in the belly of a closet and something soft brushes his temple and voices are raised outside. There is a dinner table with many forks and spoons laid out in rows and a tiny silver bowl into which a white hand dabbles. There is a return to something private, slippery, that tips and spills. When he wakes, he is drenched with sweat but shivering.
    Midmorning is blindingly bright. His friends are rolling yarn balls from unwearable sweaters, and the Pink Piper smells like sweaty oatmeal. When Bit passes the Free Store with the Kid Herd, out for what Sweetie calls their Afternoon Constitutional, he sees Kaptain Amerika on the porch. The stars in the Trippie’s sarong flap in the wind. He beckons Bit close with a bony finger. Inside my ear a bed she laid. And there she slept. And all became her sleep, he murmurs with his sour breath. Rilke. My translation, of course, he says. Bit doesn’t understand. The Kid Herd has moved past the Store, and Bit runs to catch up and, safe again, looks back to see the old Trippie gazing at him. The Kaptain’s words tumble over one another in his head all afternoon, like a small room packed with toddlers.
    Jincy’s mother, Caroline, is gone. She has left her things and run away. And though Jincy weeps and her father, Wells, spits about abandonment and puts Caroline’s clothes in the Free Store, Bit knows what happened.
    This morning, when there was pewter frost on the grass, Bit came out for a pee and saw a huge white bird on the roof of Jincy’s bus, bright in the predawn. He saw it spread its wings and turn, once. It flapped. Then Jincy’s mother heaved herself up into the air and flew away.
    Jincy comes over to stay at Bit’s, to sleep in his sleeping bag with him, to squeeze him until she feels better. He goes limp and bears it.
    At night: Sweetness. Hey. Hey, sweet girl, wake up.
    Umph. What.
    I’m worried about you. Regina tells me you haven’t been going to the Bakery these past few days. Dorotka says you’re not going up to Arcadia House with the women in the afternoon.
    I’m just tired. You know how winter always gets me down.
    Yeah. Yeah. But this seems worse than usual. Are there days you’re not getting out of bed?
    Hannah says nothing.
    It’s just. I know with your dad and the other thing you’re pretty sad. But, I mean, I’m working my ass off. It’s already March and the plumbing still has another week and then we’ll start in on the rest, and we’re already behind, and in that last letter of Handy’s he was talking about cutting out Oregon so they all could get back here the week before we have to plow, and we can use all the Monkeypower we can get so that we’re all done before they get back.
    Nothing. Bit’s own heartbeat in his ears.
    Sweet girl? Don’t want to talk?
    Only the trees shaking outside.
    Okay. You take your time. Take a week or so, sleep it off. But I’d like you up and at ’em next week. Okay?
    His mother’s even breath.
    An emergency. The Showerhouse water heater is dead. Abe takes Bit with him. When they get down to the low hut by the Pond, there is no hot water left and the Thursday bathers look on, miserable, soap in their chilled hair.
    Abe must examine the hookups under the tank, and Titus and Hiero and Tarzan help move it. Someone gasps, someone screams: mounded under where it had stood, they find a coil, a ball of snakes, hibernating rattlers.
    Abe’s muscles are quick, and with the heavy heels of his boots, he smashes until blood splatters, a great deal of it, bits of snake everywhere. Bit wants to bend down and touch one of the rattles that sticks above the gore, delicate as a mushroom. But Abe picks him up