When They Arrive

by Summer Hammond

The first moment they see her is a love story.

They streak together across the yard, beautiful balls of light, meteors who have found their center, where they must go.

Direct to her heart.

There is nowhere else.

The girl is mute, staring. Transfixed, terrified. She is eight-years-old.

They jump on her, and when she shrieks, they jump again. They knock her down with jumps. Cover her with jumps.

She throws her arm across her face and screams. Little maniacs! 

She is a rural Iowa girl, surrounded by farms and cattle and hogs and tractors and dump trucks. And she is scared of dogs.

The scar on her top lip, a tiny Frankenstein scar, a souvenir, from the time at a red dirt, dust blown gas station on a back road in Florida, when she thought she’d made friends with the owner’s dog. She recalls every detail of that dog. His fur, red as the dirt roads. His slim, wiry tail knocking against the ground, kicking up whirling clouds of dust. A we’re friends! tail wag, she had thought, caressing his head, his eyes full of shine. Then, in an instant, he jumped, bit her on the lip. Right on the lip! Trotted away, blithe as can be. Left the girl in the swirl of Florida dust, bawling. It wasn’t the physical, which was a blip, a sharp zipper of pain, then gone. It was the shock. He wasn’t her friend. Her own heart, and hopes, had deceived her.

Now, while the maniacs attack, and she cries out Help! Get Them Off Me! Tortured and desperate pleas, the neighbor girl, her playmate, Lauranne, stands above her, pointing and laughing. “Pray to your God!” she shouts. “Let’s see if He’s real!” Her laughter grows bigger. Her red hair glints in the sunlight like an approaching fire. She claps and whistles. “Scooter! Tex! C’mere, boys!”

The maniacs shoot to Lauranne and leap, straight up into her arms. “See?” Lauranne says, twirling with them. “They’re harmless, you nitwit!”

The girl raises up, shaking from the adrenaline rush, the effort to survive, and now also, shrinking, from the terrible heat of shame. “What are they?”

“Fancy dogs. Half Lhasa, half Shit-zu!”

“Shit-zu?”

Lauranne inhales, a big, dramatic suck of air. “You cussed! Now watch, your old Jerhover’s gonna ride down on a lightning bolt and zap you.” 

“Jehovah,” the girl corrects, under her breath. No matter how many times she tries to teach Lauranne how to pronounce God’s real name, the lesson never sticks. The girl is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it is her job on this earth to tell everyone The Truth.

Lauranne doesn’t want to hear The Truth.

Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas, and that’s all that matters to Lauranne.

After Christmas each year, Lauranne piles her gifts into her little red wagon and pulls it, a one woman parade, back and forth past the girl’s house, a smug march, her chin stuck in the air. “Trying to make you jealous,” the girl’s mother declares with a roll of the eyes, and a tsk. “If only she knew, the real gift is having the True God, Jehovah, as  friend.”

The little maniacs wriggle from Lauranne’s grasp, and arrow again, straight to the girl.

This time she surrenders. She gives herself to their frenzy, their dizzy joy, circling her in an endless spiral. 

And the girl, at their center, feels precious suddenly.

Like a present being wrapped.

***

Tex is the smaller of the pair. He wears a buzz cut and bravado with equal ease. 

Scooter is a sweet furry blur monster who wears small bouquets of thistles, seeds, and burs, and at his throat – an elegant, wispy white patch.

Little Maniacs.

The truth is, the girl loves them.

She loves them already.

This is bad because—they belong to Eva Otte.

The girl’s small town of McCausland, Iowa, population 300, is over eighty percent German, and about a hundred percent farmer. The Ottes are the royal farming family of the town, their two great silos like shining silver flowers blooming from the palatial spread of barns.

Karl Adolf Hinrich Otte, hailing from Brunsbüttel, Germany, sprawls vast upon his throne—a John Deere combine. His children, the prince and princesses, cover the town with their tracks—moped, dirt bike, ATC.

The girl and her family live on the lane, in a tiny community of mobile homes the Ottes think they own.

And the Ottes don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Karl Otte, Jr, shoots off firecrackers in their driveway, deposits stolen construction signs with flashing lights in their garden, spits loogies in the girl and her sister’s hair as they fetch the mail.

One night he tears up and down the lane on his dirt bike, revving the throttle and popping wheelies right outside their house, unleashing a stream of curse words, making them wake up.

In the girl’s house, the explosives start tingling.

The girl’s mother is a living, breathing stick of dynamite.

This is true all the time. Ignited by dirty looks and attitude, too many tears, too much complaint, unmade beds, a dish in the sink, a weird smile, one eyelash flutter, a sudden muscle twitch in the wrong place—and loud noises.

The girl’s mother rants—the girl’s sister retreats—the girl’s father rapidly dials. “Hello, I have a noise complaint.”

The sheriff shows up, gives the prince a cuff on the wrist and a wink.

The next day, His Highness, Karl Otte, Sr., drives his tractor down their lane, dismounts, decked out in sovereign attire, bib overalls, duck boots, and his John Deere ball cap, a dirty crown stuck atop his platinum hair.

From the bathroom, the girl hears him shouting. The girl stands on tip toe, parts the curtains. The girl’s mother sits in her garden, surrounded by her violets and sweet-faced pansies—and the ring of rocks she has collected from the places they go camping. Some are heart shaped, many of them pyrite from the upper Mississippi River valley—in the sun, those rocks throw off a wicked glitter.

Karl Otte curses, one thick finger jabbing in her mother’s face.

The girl isn’t scared for her mother.

His Highness doesn’t know.

With each poke of his sausage finger, how dangerously close.

The girl’s mother, the sweet, petite, Jehovah’s Witness lady, the neighborhood looker with her stylish fringe of blonde hair—is loaded with a rage that could explode the whole place, King Otte’s beloved silos blowing into fragments, smithereens sailing silver, smashing into the sky like shrapnel, his John Deere cap, shreds floating down to feather, ribbon ragged fields. 

The girl watches her mother’s hand creep and creep, toward a heart-shaped rock.

Later, the girl’s mother tells her, “The only thing that stopped me, was the thought of you girls, watching your mother get carted off to jail.”

Each day, the girl learns fresh.

The adults are terrifying.

They control all the big machines—cars, combines—and all the big choices—where to live and what to believe. But they are nuts. Collapse, catastrophe, destruction. Their fingers hover, a threat, right above the nuclear button of their own psyches.

They’ll take everyone with them.

***

Eva Otte lives in a trailer on top of the hill with a sweeping view of the Otte dynasty, the farmhouse, barns, pastures, crops and cattle. She has a job in town and each morning she roars off in her pea green Thunderbird, bobbing over potholes, down the lane, vanishing in gravel dust.

Little Maniacs.

Eva’s dogs are left to run, make madness all over the neighborhood, in the way of the Otte clan.

Lauranne informs the girl. “Eva bought them from a breeder.” They are riding bikes after a rain shower, side by side, wheels crunching pebbles and dirt, spitting flecks of mud onto their shins and knees. “She paid big bucks for them. She’s bored of them now, I guess.” 

Those two.

They come back to the girl, again and again. Without her even asking. They traipse with her up and down the lane. Prowl with her through the rippling, leafy shadows of cornfields. Nap with her in the coolness of the tree fort, their small bodies pressed to hers, breathing with her, one on either side. 

The girl’s sister laughs. “Those dogs are your twins! You have the same color hair.”

She’s right, they do. Hair, the color of a dirty penny.

When her mother catches her, brushing them, the girl gasps, scrambles to hide the comb.

Too late.

The girl’s mother stands over her, hands on hips. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Her lips grow thin, an ominous line, a warning.

Then—she sees the girl is scared.

Sometimes, she wants to scare the girl. Charges at her, nostrils flared, hands balled into fists. Other times, like now, she sees the girl is afraid, and softens, steps back. Says, “These dogs aren’t your dogs and I don’t want to see you get attached. You know why, don’t you?” Tremble of her lower lip.

The girl knows what’s coming next.

Peppy.

The girl’s mother was raised by an abusive drunk and a mother that kept taking him back—took the punches for the gifts that came later. I’m sorry in the shape of a diamond necklace and once, a new convertible. The girl’s mother wore bruises like jewelry the nuns at the Catholic school pretended not to see. The other kids called her trash. No one had ever chosen her.

Peppy.

A black and white spotted dog that arrived, wagging his wiry tail at her as she walked to school. He followed her there, his scruffy little head bobbing with preternatural good cheer. She had to leave him outside. She gave him a parting kiss on the head. Never thought she’d see him again. He didn’t leave. He sat his raggedy butt down and waited for her. When had anyone ever waited for her? Never. Yet when she pushed through the school doors at the end of the day, there he was. He rose up, spotting her through the stream of other kids, that wiry little tail going bezerk, that ridiculous, cheerful bobbing head. He followed her home.

Peppy. 

Her mother’s friend. Her one and only. Enduring, alongside her, the sad chaos of her home. With him, she never had to feel ashamed.

Until.

That word. The sharp, squealing turn from joy to anguish.

The girl winces, steels herself.

Until the day he was hit by a car on the highway behind our house. Somebody wasn’t watching. Somebody let him out.

Each time, the girl watches her mother’s eyes, like time travelers, going back. Her eyes change. Who let him out? Why weren’t you watching? 

No one cared. No one cared about her, or her little dog.

Anger, anger, anger.

Soft, fragile pain turned to boiling lava, hardened now, into dynamite. Pain that turns solid is dangerous, sparking, a dark threat to everyone, all the time.

Peppy, her mother says. Peppy! The cry of a ghost girl, turning circles, stuck in time, no one to hear or see.

Except the girl does. She hears. She sees. But she can’t go back, can’t save Peppy.

The girl’s mother turns her eyes to her daughter, blinks, returning now. “Don’t you see? You’ve got to protect yourself.”

***

The girl’s mother makes her take them back, hands her a bag of bones, the kind with marrow inside, crack for dogs, they can’t resist.

The girl leads them back to Eva Otte’s trailer on the hill. She is a desolate Pied Piper, head hanging, hating her mission. What does it mean to protect yourself? Where can you get a heart shield, if your heart isn’t hard enough? What if you don’t want one? What if you don’t want to live protected. The girl kicks at gravel and shining dust surrounds them, a magical cloud of smoke, the little maniacs, jumping and leaping for those bones.

She leaves them behind at Eva’s house, chewing and gnawing, and the girl fades away, forgotten in their feast.

That night, the girl swings on her swing alone, dirty bare feet pointed to the cornfields that dance, that leaf-whisper to the stars, and she feels deep into the lacework of her bones what it means to be lonely.

Jehovah God should be your best friend. But when the girl prays, and pictures Him, she sees a businessman with a big moustache sitting in a suit behind a desk. Barking orders. Giving commands. Firing people when they break the rules. 

Lonely.

Lonely is a hollow in the gut, after you have known small bodies, traveling with, breathing, sleeping alongside yours.

Lonely is cornfields that stretch to the end of the world, with no clear path.

It is swinging to the stars, and a rope, always a rope, pulling you back.

***

Tex is the daredevil, risktaker, reckless little stunt man.

He chases dirt bikes, dump trucks, and combine harvesters.

He lunges, gets as close as he can, hugs those tires.

What can the girl do?

They are not her dogs.

A lie she abides by.

Until.

It is a chill morning, drizzly. The girl and Lauranne huddle together at the end of the lane, under Lauranne’s umbrella, waiting for the school bus. Mist writhes and coils around the Otte’s royal silos. The bus will pierce like a bright bead of yellow light through the gloom, but not yet, it is not the bus coming.

The milk truck roars, tears the fog to pieces, glossy silver mammoth, going way too fast.

Thundering down the gravel lane, the two little girls stumbling away.

Tex. 

Sprinting past, he zooms after that metallic beast like it’s a little rabbit he’s bound to catch, bring back.

His little legs wheel, a cartoon blur.

“Tex! Tex!” The girl’s own voice, a shriek, a plea.

It’s so fast. The girl has never seen time, move like that.

Tex, caught, spun, dropped by that wheel.

The milk truck roars on, never looking back.

***

The thing about the girl’s mother – sometimes she’s strong enough.

The girl didn’t get on the school bus. The girl is a puddle, on the floor, sobbing the pieces of her heart, deep into the fur of the one little maniac that’s left.

Scooter.

The mother could spit. Her hands, clenched into fists, she just wants to spit. Didn’t I tell you? (Peppy) Didn’t I? This is what happens, you dumb girl, when you let yourself get attached! (Peppy!) 

But sometimes, she can do it. Drill down, through the rage, into that warm, liquid core, where love lives. The girl’s mother gazes at her daughter, clutching Scooter’s fur

And softly she says

“Looks like you’ve got a dog.”