They Think in Circles

by B.C. Brock

They used to tell us that time don’t move right in Carroway Holler. Said it folds in on itself if you stay too long. That you’ll hear voices that ain’t yours whispering from the creekbed—and they’ll stay in your head forever. Even when the bed runs dry. 

The house across the way—where I was born—sweated through the walls and forgot what time it was. Grandmother Miriam still sits there in that house. Still in the rocking chair she died in. No one dares move Grandma Mari. Mama said if you touch those bones, she’ll ask you the Question. And don’t nobody wanna know the Question. 

I came back for Daddy’s funeral, though no one could tell me when he actually died. All they found were his godforsaken boots—mud caked in spirals all over. They said the smell of rust and rotting books came from the cracked door of his shack. 

Sheriff Taylor—the one who talks and drinks more than he prays—stood on the stoop that day just staring at the scene. Cigarette hanging on, burnt down so far it near kissed his lip. He knew the Question. Told the deputy with him, “Ain’t nothing in them woods worth fooling with like they do.” His eyes were childlike: wide and knowing. “That ain’t none of God’s business what goes on out there.” He glanced through the cracked door, and just as quick turned his eyes away. Nothing worth looking at in there neither. 

That night, I heard it. The low humming. The sound of a drum now and again. It called me to Daddy’s shack. Came from the floorboards. It wasn’t normal—weren’t rats or pipes. No rhythm. The only thing that grabbed me about the sound was the feeling it remembered me. 

I followed it—‘cause how could you not? I followed it out of his shack, past the shed he built from tin scraps and pallet wood. Before I knew it, I was at the holler. The trees still grew in unnatural patterns, with colors under the bark that didn’t make sense unless you stared too long. In spirals the branches reached down for ya. They didn’t grow up. They grew down. Like they wanted to pull something out the dirt. They were thirsty. Hungry. For what was supposed to stay buried. 

I did it then. I saw the thing that wasn’t meant to be seen. It didn’t look at me, but I knew it knew me—and I knew I knew it. It knew the shape of my regrets and the color of my failures. It felt the weight of all the names that knew my poor past. The language it spoke bent my thoughts and made every one turn back to it, no matter what it was. My thoughts turned to wet straw, and my brain to clay. I knew it wasn’t speaking. It was reminding. 

It reminded me that before people lived in the valley, and before men lived at all, words were nothing. It reminded me words were a joke we leaned on. It reminded what happens when our words—my words—run out. I ran straight back. 

The house wasn’t there. Then again, maybe it was. Maybe it was there but just in a way I couldn’t reach. The only thing where the house was s’posed to be were his boots and her rocking chair. Empty. I sat there, knees bent to my chest. I listened to the trees. 

They think in circles.