He hung limp, heavy in my arms, entirely covered in clay. No sign of clothes. I twisted out of my coat and threw it over him, tucking it quickly across his chest and over his body. I tried to hold the hat with one hand and use the other to wipe his face, but that only seemed to make things worse.
I hunkered over with his head against my waist and glanced under the hat, my wet face inches from his. Under the shadow of the hat, he seemed to have no face and no hair, just a muddy round head. I drew back, slung my hair out of my eyes, and tried to blink away the gray-white curtain of rain.
“Are you okay?” I yelled, my voice drowned by Hobo’s barks and the deafening rain. I tried to focus, squinting at the form slumped against me. The pelting rain exposed the lower half of his mud-caked head. I touched his jaw. His warm skin felt gritty, not the stubble of beard. His face cracked, and a small, lipless mouth opened. His chest expanded, a long, ragged breath. Then expanded again. He was breathing!
A strange sensation rose again from my belly to my chest. Hobo went silent. Under the white noise of rain pounding my head, I heard a tone like a large bell. It rushed up, sweet and soothing, through the bones of my chest. Rising and rising until it came out the top of me, clearing my head—through me or from me, I could not tell. Hobo leapt into the puddle, wagging his tail, licking at me and the man in the mud. The man’s hand flexed again. His arm jerked.
Suddenly, I felt the frigid water soaking my clothes. I had to get him inside. I grabbed him under the arms, dragged him out of the puddle to firmer ground. I could barely see for the blowing rain and my drenched hair, but he seemed caked with mud. Every inch of him covered. I tried hoisting him up, but we were too slippery. “Stay, Hobo, stay. I’ll be back.”
I ran inside to get the quilt I’d left warming at the stove. I grabbed the oiled tablecloth, too. Outside again, I struggled against the wind-driven downpour. Blinded by pounding gusts, I threw the quilt over him, then jerked the coat out from under it. I felt my way around him. Tucking the quilt under, I worked quickly down from his head to his feet. Then I spread the oilcloth over him. I shoved my arms into the coat and pressed the hat down onto my head.
Wrestling his bundled weight up into my arms, I managed to stand. Inside the quilt, he moved in small, spasmodic jerks, like someone doped or on the edge of sleep. Wind gusted at my back. Staggering, I once went down on my knees with him. His weight and size were at the edge of my strength. Hobo nudged me, whimpering inquisitively.
“It’ll be all right. You’ll be all right. I can get you there. It’s warm inside. You’ll be warm and dry soon,” I shouted. Easing him on the porch floor, I wrapped the quilt and tablecloth tighter around him, keeping him completely covered, and half-carried, half-dragged him across the porch into the kitchen. I shoved the chairs aside and pulled him up close to the warm stove.
The relative warmth and quiet of the house stunned me. My arms ached from carrying him. I peeled the oilcloth away. Mud streaked the sides of the wet quilt beneath, but it was surprisingly warm from his body heat. “Are you warm enough? Are you okay?” I asked softly near his covered head. He didn’t respond. I went for more quilts. I debated unwrapping him completely. But I was reluctant to expose him, even for a few seconds, to the cold bare floor. Instead, I left the wet quilt on him and pressed another quilt around him firmly for a moment to wick some moisture away, set it aside, and then swaddled him in a couple more dry quilts, head to toe like a mummy. He didn’t move as I tucked the quilts around him.
I knelt beside him, my hair and clothes dripping. In the dim kitchen light, I could barely discern the subtle rise and fall of his breathing. My teeth chattered. But I continued staring at the wad of blankets not knowing what to do next when I felt that sensation again. A strange, uncoiling calm hummed through me. This time I was sure I heard something below the drumming of the rain, a chime, sweet and soft, then it vanished. I wiped my chest, smearing more dirt on myself. I was freezing, suddenly aware of my heavy, drenched clothes.
“I’ll be back,” I said and grabbed the fresh clothes I’d left warming by the stove.
In the bedroom, I stripped and changed as quickly as my shaking hands would allow.
He lay still and bundled on the floor when I returned with the rest of the blankets and quilts. I took two warming bricks from the stove and folded them in flannel. After I eased a pillow under his head, I lined the bricks up at his feet, then wrapped myself in a blanket, lay down behind him, and pulled the remaining quilts over both of us. I had no idea how long he had been out in that cold storm; I needed to keep him warm. I shivered and pressed up close.
Who was this strange man? How had he come to be buried on the edge of my field? What was wrong with him? With his face? I decided I should give him a few more minutes, to make sure he was warm. I should be as warm as possible, too, before starting down the hill to Mildred’s to call Momma and Daddy. They would know what to do. I’d have to go soon. The steady applause of rain continued on the metal roof. The expansion of his ribs as he breathed reminded me of sleeping with my sisters. I felt that odd hum in my chest again and, despite my plans to go for help, I fell asleep.
I
woke suddenly. We were still spooned up tight, my arm around him. We hadn’t slept very long. The stove still radiated heat. Early evening light shone through the windows. Rain pounded hard on the roof and windowpane, drowning the sound of the strange man’s breath, but I felt his chest rise under my arm.
Curious, I lifted a corner of the blanket from his face. He was grotesquely, vividly ugly. His skin was lumpy, rough whorls like burn scars. Worse than the woman in the photograph Frank had left. I’d never seen such jaundice, an unnatural dark yellow. Only his cheek and part of his nose were visible, a flat nose, small like a baby’s, with no bridge. How could I have missed that? The memory itself seemed dreamlike. I lay the blanket back across his scarred, bare shoulder and let it fall forward to cover the side of his face again.
I got up. Outside the dining room window, the sky was a solid iron-gray. I had no telephone and the road was out. There was no way to get this poor man to anyone who could help him. I didn’t want to leave him alone.
He must be a soldier, I realized, horribly disfigured from the war. But how had he stumbled naked onto my land and ended up nearly buried in the mud? What was wrong with him?
An unfamiliar scratching sound came from the porch, followed by a sharp bark. I opened the back door and Hobo darted in. He went immediately to the man on the floor, sniffing voraciously and wagging his tail. The barn cat followed, her fur as damp as Hobo’s. Rain blew in with them.
Farm dogs and cats are not let in the house; their jobs are outside. I’d occasionally tried to bring Hobo or the cat in just for the company and to have a pair of eyes to look at while I talked to myself. But Hobo, out of his usual territory, would be shy inside and usually stayed near the door. The cat, an opportunist, always curled up close to the stove or the pantry. Now both circled the man, sniffing him vigorously, and then lay down, Hobo at his feet and the cat near his chest.
I let them stay. The kitchen was more companionable with them there, the man somehow less exceptional. The rush of cold air that had surged in with them dissipated.
Rain drummed, shooting off the roof and hitting the ground in a solid sheet. Dusk fell, but no houses were lit down the hill. The electric poles were down. The only illumination was farther away, the faint light of the mill’s generator.
I knew I should check outside to make sure the drainage was still good beside the house. But first we needed food.
I lit a couple of lanterns, loaded the stove, and, stepping around the man, the cat, and the dog, I began to make some biscuits. While the biscuits baked, I went out to the front porch. Wind whipped the trees near the bank and slanted the rain nearly horizontal. But the runoff sluiced efficiently away from the house. A thin film of ice slicked the floorboards. Carefully, I hurried back inside, feeling oddly calm, aware of the man and how his position in relation to me changed as I moved through the house—behind me as I walked to the front door, ahead of me as I came back down the hall toward the warmth of the kitchen.
The man sighed as I took the biscuits out of the oven. A long, sweet-sounding sigh, but nothing else. He shifted inside the quilts and rolled onto his back. I was relieved to see that the blanket remained across his face.
He had to be hungry. I dragged the cat and the dog outside so I could feed the man in peace. Then I warmed some milk, and set it, the fresh biscuits, some jam, a thick slice of ham, and a bowl of canned peaches on a plate beside him and got down on the floor. I lifted the blanket away from his face again to see if he was awake.
It was hard to look at his face and hard to look away. The whorled scarring covered him—his scalp, temples, face, eyelids, and neck—as if his skin had recently been liquid, stirred by some cruel hand. His lips, though, were normal. Just thin. He had very small ears. All of his features were small and faint, his cheekbones wide, and his whole face flat the way some babies’ are. The way some Chinese and Japanese faces are. I had only seen black-and-white photographs, but the Japanese were called yellow. Were they really this strange a color? Was he a Japanese prisoner brought over after the bomb? I thought again of the woman in Frank’s photograph.
Then his odd, flat eyelids opened. His eyes were not brown, not Asian, but light, like my family’s. He was not an escaped Japanese prisoner. The pupils were strange, though—very large—and the line between them and the iris was vague, his gaze unfocused. Was he blind?
“Hello,” I said, keeping my eyes on his so I would not have to see his skin.
He blinked slowly. His eyes focused, the pupil coming into definition, and he opened his mouth. “ ’Ello” came out. An old, heavy door opening, a cat being choked.
“You hungry?” I held up the plate.
“Hungry,” he stated, his voice a little less rough. He took a quick breath, opening his mouth slightly, the way a tomcat does when it’s getting a scent.
I shifted him up, putting my leg under his shoulders to prop him up and support his back. I offered him a slice of peach. He did not take his eyes off mine, nor did he open his mouth any wider.
“They’re good. I canned them myself.” I popped the peach into my mouth, then forked another slice and offered it to him. He stared at it and slowly opened his mouth. His teeth were small and round, like a child’s baby teeth. Chewing slowly, he locked his eyes on mine and swallowed. A sigh of pure joy came out of him and he shuddered. I heard and felt that sweet chime I’d heard outside, felt it in my belly and chest and head, nearer now, softer than before. It came from the man!
Resistance, a snake of fear convulsed along my spine, then lay still and vanished under his gaze. Looking into those eyes, which were now a pure, lucid blue, I saw no harm or malice. Only strange, expansive otherness. Sitting on the floor, cradling his head in the bend of my knee as his odd voice hummed through me, I fell not so much in love but into fascination, into a deep and tender accord.
I smiled and he smiled back, his face creasing, his damaged skin surprisingly supple. I fed him a few more bites. Then his hand emerged from the blankets—the same horrible skin as on his face. His hand swerved twice before he took the biscuit I held. He brought it slowly to his mouth. The scarring covered his palms and fingertips, too. Miraculously, he seemed to be in no pain.
With every bite, he beamed. I’d never seen anyone take such unabashed pleasure in simple food, at least not an adult. He almost swooned.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He stopped chewing and swallowed.
I pointed at myself. “I am Evelyn, Evelyn Roe. What’s your name?”
The smile left his face. He stared expectantly as if he had asked the questions.
“Where are your clothes?”
Nothing, no reply. Just his open face, waiting.
I stammered on, “Why were you in the dirt like that? You could have drowned in that puddle.”
Still, just that steady, bright gaze.
I could not tell if he understood what I was saying, but he listened very closely, reluctantly taking his attention from the food each time I spoke. The way he watched me reminded me of the deaf girl who lived down in the mill-village. She had the same intense way of taking everything in through her eyes, drinking in the world. But when I laughed at his ecstatic expression after he took his first bite of the blackberry jam, he stopped his chewing to watch me and listen. He was not deaf.
Maybe he had amnesia. Maybe if I told him about my family and where I came from, he would be reminded of who he was. So I talked, telling him my name and where we were and everything we were eating, as though he were from another country.
We ate and ate. Three plates of food and two glasses of milk, him watching me each time I got up to get more.
When he finally seemed to be full, he sighed deeply. The room went oddly quiet and still.
I laid my hand on my chest and opened my mouth to ask about that sound, but he stopped me with that gaze. Then he placed his hand carefully over mine. The roughness of his palm against the back of my hand was both pleasant and repulsive. Slowly, his eyes closed, but his hand did not move from mine. After a long, quiet while, I laid his hand down, gently lowered his head from my leg to the pillow, and covered him again.
I thought I should offer him a bath and some clothes, but when I finished cleaning our supper dishes, he still slept, breathing deeply.
As I slipped into Lester’s coat, I wondered about the stranger’s people. Were they somewhere, not far from us, slipping into dank coats and going out into the same rain? Sick with worry about him? He did not look at me like any of the local boys, but something was familiar about him. I was certain he was a good man. His people would be searching for him.
When I stepped off the porch, the rain on my hat overwhelmed every other sound. I stopped in the middle of the barnyard and surveyed the horizon. Where could he have come from so naked and scarred? I went to the place where I had found him. The depression in the soil still held his general shape, but it was already beginning to vanish, its sides collapsing. I put my hands into the cold, opaque water and felt the round spot where his head had been, the deeper indentation his shoulder had made, then down toward his hips. Just clay slick and grit. Not a clue, not a hint of clothes or identity. There had to be something. I pushed my coat sleeves up higher and dug into the harder clay below. Nothing. I remembered that strange sound surging through me when I found him, and I stopped digging. Whoever he might be, he was a naked, hungry man out in the cold. A close flash of lightning followed by an instant boulder of thunder sent me scurrying for the barn.