Hannah Pass
When we come for the long-haired man, he is sharpening his knife. He sits on a rock and pulls the blade up against its side. It is an impressive amount of energy, the blade becoming more malevolent at each spark.
Behind the long-haired man sits his home built with leaves and fallen branches. Like an eagle's nest, but thoughtful and roofed. My colleagues and I form a half-moon around him and stand with our clipboards. There is, what I believe to be, a shirt hung at the entrance, and inside, a mirror lodged into a birch.
"Hello," the long-hair man says, and we are shocked at his English. Articulate and well-meaning, we write. Alert,but poorly styled. Already we have collected his boot from the woods. Leathery and tufted with fur. A Sharpied-on swoosh. "Is this yours?" Bert says, and holds the boot up by its tongue. Bert the Chief of Staff. Bert, the new diabetic by six days.
The long-haired man snorts and walks toward the boot. He sniffs, and steps back astonished. We wait for an answer, but instead he spits into a Folgers can atop some dirt, and the tink echoes throughout the trees, the powerlines. Suddenly then, I'm aware of the ants near my feet, the clover, the clouds overhead. In the woods, things are pure and ever-changing.
"Is this your boot?" Bert asks again, and louder. "Is this your cookbook? Is this your knit hat? Is this your meat?" Each of us holds up an item. "You are all over Marathon County," another colleague says.
It is true, these items are all over Marathon County. Last week, outside the courthouse our mayor discovered a fake Renoir stained by dirty, plump fingerprints. Yesterday, I found a record lodged into my rhododendrons. Cher. I took it inside and played the sweet melodies while my daughter Lily and I put away her blocks. We stacked one cube after another, as the songs crackled, before her nanny came in to take her to school. Every day, we put the blocks away. It's our ritual, I'm teaching her well.
The long-haired man grunts and heads for his house. He sticks his knife into a squirrel, dead on the grass. There is no other explanation for the disorder except for the long-haired man. He is the only man without a clipboard. He is the only man without an email. He is the only one unlike us.
He has hair all over his body, his cheeks, his neck, the knuckles on his hands, bulbous and knotted. His shoulders, big-boned and sturdy. His feet, the size of watermelons. Occasionally in the night we hear his cries echoing from the mountain. It is then, I'll get up and tuck Lily in extra tight, so she is extra safe, extra worry-free. We don't know what the long-haired man wants. We don't know what he needs.
"You need to clean up your act," Bert calls to him.
"You're loud and unruly," another colleague says.
I agree, but it's not that simple. We are used to rigidity, everything accounted for and in its place.
"Let's smoke him out," Neil says. Neil, the Policy Advisor, the connoisseur of sour beer. He holds up a matchbox and grins at the petite case, the fancy gold lettering.
But Bert disagrees. We cannot smoke him out. It's dry season. Endangered beaver not so far away. Not to mention, it is his home.
I pat Bert on the back for remembering our regulations. We have forty-two, which I've stored in my inbox. The forty-second being, No Breaks After Noon or Before Holidays. Presently, it is 11:41.
But still, The long-haired man is rude and dismissive, Bert writes. And big.
I pull out my own clipboard. Yet, oddly handsome, I add, and bold. I don't show the men my writings. In fact, I fold the pages back and tuck the clipboard away into my pack. My memory is good enough. It holds so much! For example, the day I became a mother, the day I became a divorcee; it was something the County had to get used to.
Then Neil, out of impatience, empties all of his matches from a plastic bag onto the forest floor, like toys out from a toy chest. There are so many of them, collected over the years. Matches from Hawaii, from Caesar's Palace, from Denny's, from a Hilton in Rome, from a 7-Eleven on Stark. They keep spilling, out and out and out from a contained space, where they should.
"There," Neil says, and dusts off his palms.
I fear now I need to talk to the long-haired man. I tell Neil, "No. Let's come back tomorrow, when the air has settled." And Bert agrees. Air settling is good. He's doesn't like confrontation. Plus, the long-haired man has shown his teeth and they are sharp, along with the knife.
The next morning, I wake to a parachute in my rhododendrons. It is large and cascades onto my lawn, over my fence, around the fire hydrant and into the street. Something about the parachute fills me up with warmth, how the nylon rustles, how it collects crab apples in its red and blue stripes. I take Lily outside and she patters on top of the parachute, then laughs and rolls across the entire thing. It is quite the sight. It is rare and wonderful seeing her this happy.
Then, a ding in my inbox. Mail. Bert calls an emergency meeting.
It is over the parachute, the email says. Have you seen? Atrocious.
We've seen it, we say. It is loud and unruly.
We are now on the mountain again, before the long-haired man's home. Neil lights a match and throws it into the Folgers can. He lights a second and then a third and plops them, tink tink, into the tin like rain. But oddly enough, the long-haired man is nowhere to be seen. He lives minimally. Aside from the can and the mirror and his shirt, he has a stump and that's about it.
"Where is he?" Neil says.
"Maybe he's in the woods," I say.
"Maybe he's in his home," Bert says.
"Let's smoke him out," Neil says again.
Bert disagrees. We cannot smoke him out. We have regulations. In fact, we just added a forty-third, which states, No Blue and Red Fabric Aside from One's Clothing. Our phone inboxes ding and we read.
Bert looks at the clouds. But then again, he says, "Perhaps we have no other choice."
"Let's come back tomorrow," I say. "When the air has settled."
Neil agrees. Air settling is good. It's too windy. The gusts will blow out the flames.
That night, alone, I drive up to the long-haired man. I bring a flashlight and the parachute, which I've folded down to a square. It takes twenty minutes to putter up the mountain and park at the logging road that leads to his home. I hear a cry from the woods and it is louder than ever. Eeeeyeowwwwww! it goes. I open the door and get out. The trees smell fresh. Mosquitoes nip the face. Eeeeyeowwwwww! The sound stirs my insides and I shiver. I open the parachute, shake it out and tie it cape-like around my neck. Now I am warm and recognizable, but within regulations.
I find the long-haired man in his home. He's standing in the doorway, where I see his reflection in the mirror.
"Hello?" I say, before I peek in.
"Go away," the long-haired man says, and grips his knife. But to my surprise, the long-haired man's hair now isn't so long. Piles of hair lay on the dirt. A tendril drapes from a branch. I pick up a lock and it feels like a doll, floppy in my hands.
"You've cut it," I say.
The long-haired man growls and looks at me through the mirror. I store his face in my good memory, where my imagination itches to play. But his reflection is not the only one I see. Inside his home, at every angle, are more mirrors propped into the branches. It is like a giant chandelier that has splintered and cracked. I step inside and look around, at all of my infinities. There are so many of me extending into the trees. It seems that no matter where I look I see a person who sees a person who sees a person who is able to truly see me.
"It's beautiful," I say.
The long-haired man stops his trimming. He appears delighted by this. Beauty. Right here in his home. He then wipes his knife on his shirt and holds it out, then out some more, away from his hair as he should. "Gift," he says, and blinks. Suddenly then, I see the pride in his face, of the work he's done—his home, his hair, his giving—but the more I look, I see he's just a man who appears to be very, very sad.
"Thank you," I say. I take the knife and drop it in my pack. I have the urge to tell him about Bert, about Neil. But before I can muster it, a yowl consumes him. He throws a pine cone, and then his shirt. Eeeeyeowwwwww. The pitch unlike anything I've heard.
"I have to go," I say, and I pinch the parachute, tight at my chest.
The long-haired man looks off into a mirror.
I drive home down the mountain. The street lights, dim. The county, quiet. I set my pack atop my television.
Then Lily comes into my room, climbs under the covers. I spread the parachute across my bed. It is a place for her and me and no other people. Only the fresh-pine scent from the rustling nylon.
But Lily finds it silly, a parachute on the bed. Why haven't we thought of it before? We toss it in the air and then hide underneath. We do this again and again and again.
Then a ding in my inbox. Mail. Bert calls an emergency meeting.
It is over the mirrors, the email says. Have you seen? Atrocious. It is also over the mountain and the trees and our children, among other things.
I close my inbox. I don't go to the meeting, I don't move from the bed. Instead, Lily and I sleep this way, beneath wonder, beneath this gift from the long-haired man. We sleep this way beneath red and blue.
The next morning, Lily wakes me. A funny smell, she says, and smoke. She takes my hand and leads me to the window.
Outside, on our doorstep, a fire rages from a can. The fire catches the rhododendrons, sending them up into a blaze. Pink flowers curl and fall. Leaves turn brown and shriveled. I pick up Lily and put on my pack. "Wait," she says, and grabs Cher.
We go out the backdoor. The nanny, too. I phone for help but no answer. I call again and a machine picks up. We're out, it says and beeps. Meanwhile, the roof catches fire and also the siding, sending flames into the sky.
I think of the long-haired man, now long-gone. I imagine this as the only outcome I know. Then with the knife in my pack and a spark in my heart, we wait steadily. Steadily, for the trucks. I hold Lily close and sing her sweet melodies, so she is extra safe. Extra worry-free.