Free Cold Quiet Country by Clayton Lindemuth Page A

people. I want to know.”
    The bell rang.
    “The first was my grandfather. I was in bed. I saw his face, and heard music that sounded like dozens of singing bullfrogs. Grandfather looked past me like he saw the Devil. And I didn’t do anything—”
    “It was a dream?”
    “No. I was awake. Wide awake.”
    “That’s all?”
    “The next morning my mother said he’d died overnight.”
    “You saw his face and heard music, and then he died.” Liz pulled away. “You fucking lied.”
    “No! Listen. The next was my grandmother. It was the same thing; I was in bed and…and I was upset, a little, and I saw her.”
    “Why were you upset?”
    “I can’t talk about it. It’s too complicated to say, here. It’s…”
    “Worse than this?” Liz cupped her shoulders and her breasts, still exposed on their cabbage leaves, swelled.
    “Depends,” Gwen said, “on who the father is.”
    “What?”
    “I’ve got to go to the nurse. Stay here and I’ll be right back.”
    Liz frowned, tilted her head.
    Gwen unlocked the stall door and slipped through, quickly scanned the restroom, and rushed to Mrs. Reynolds, the school nurse.
    Nurse Reynolds stood eight feet tall, was blade-of-grass slender, and wore her gray hair in a bun. Her face was all smile and spectacles, and from Gwen’s posture, she immediately diagnosed the problem. She mouthed, “Pad?” and Gwen nodded.
    As Reynolds turned, Gwen said, “Two, please.”
    Reynolds stopped.
    “Another girl…”
    In a moment Nurse Reynolds returned with a pair of maxi pads in a discretely flamboyant pink plastic bag. “Do you have more at home?”
    “I’m fine. I just forgot. Thank you.”
    Moments later Gwen stood in the restroom. “Liz?”
    The toilet flushed and after a second the stall door opened and Liz stood there, arms crossed at her bosom. Gwen slipped into the stall with her, gave her a pad, and opened the other. Liz applied each inside her bra, and threw the cabbage leaves to the floor behind the toilet. Liz buttoned her blouse. “I can’t go to class like this.”
    “I’ll go back and get our stuff. It’s seventh period. We’ll walk home.”
    Again Gwen set out. Fitzsimons had left the classroom door ajar. She looked inside and saw someone had secured her and Liz’s purses and books by the window. She would have to walk in front of the study hall students. Juniors.
    Gwen opened the door. Fitzsimons stood and hurried to her. “Is everything good with Liz? And you? What was the matter?”
    “It was a…it was—”
    “A
female
matter?”
    Gwen nodded. She peered closer at Fitzsimons, a man with, what? An English name? He looked like a Russian Ichabod Crane. His hair was jet black and always needed cut, and his features were blunt like God had cut them out of granite and quit before rounding the angles. His chin was covered in a beard like Lenin wore, and if any man would be sensitive to a brooding gray girl with a communist father…
    “Would you allow me to get our things?” Gwen said. “She’s not well and I’m staying with her.”
    “Right over here.”
    He crossed the room and the juniors snickered. Gwen stood at the corner.
    Fitzsimons returned with both purses and an armload of books.
    “Thank you.”
    She threw both purse straps over her shoulder and filled her arms with texts and notebooks. She noted the concern in Fitzsimons’s eyes as she backed away and fleetingly questioned whether his sweat would smell as disgusting as her father’s. She looked at his hands, his clean fingernails, and spun the other direction not knowing if she would vomit or begin sobbing. She scampered down the hall, her soles barely rising from the linoleum. She ducked into the restroom yet again.
    A pair of seniors huddled in the corner. Smoke curled from their cigarettes and a cloud lingered at the ceiling.
    With Liz behind her, Gwen held the older girls’ eyes. The blonde shifted sideways. “You ever get burned?” the blonde said, and dragged from her