Red Mittens

By David P. Ervin

The shutting car door sent a hollow echo through the woods. Grant and Julia’s shoes scraped and rustled the gravel as they walked across the lot to Westbrook Park’s information kiosk. The air was hot and close and still. Grant knew it would be a sweaty, uncomfortable hike. The dust from the drive lingered in a hazy yellow glare.
“You didn’t have to come. I know it’s not your favorite weather,” said Julia. She smiled at him, a grin that did not reach the top of her high cheekbones but squeezed her dark eyes together. “But I appreciate it.”
It was a smile Grant thought at times he did not deserve but one he tried to earn by doing thigs like going on a hike in the heat he hated so intensely, at the end of a long, hot day that seemed to pull his mind back to hard-edged malaise of Mesopotamia. It was a mood so oppressive that he did not want to be around himself and had never understood how she could want to be around him, either.
“Sure,” he said. He tried to match her smile as he stopped by the kiosk. “It’s Inner Loop trail or something that goes by the pond isn’t it?”
“I think so. It’s been a while,” she said. She steadied herself on the information stand’s post and pulled her foot to her lower back with ease, the years of teaching yoga marking her movements with grace. She switched legs. “It’s been a couple years. Before the wedding I think?”
“I think so. Let’s see,” said Grant. He traced his fingers along the plastic panel covering the map, fingers brushing over the carved proclamations of eternal love in the form of misshapen hearts and the jagged letters of initials and abbreviations. “We take this one over here a ways. Trailhead’s down the hill a bit,” he said, pointing to a short wooden sign off to their right.
Grant walked through a cloud of gnats and swatted at his face. The dusty weeds at the edge of the woods were littered with faded wax cups and dusty, broken bits of plastic. He resisted griping. She did not need to hear his loathing for litter, did not need to hear any negativity oozing from him beyond what already did by default. They moved into the dim woods and their steps thudded on the packed earth of the trail.
“It’s quiet,” said Julia.
“Mm hm,” said Grant. “That’s it.” He nodded toward to the right fork of path. An arrow on wooden signpost at the junction pointed the way. When they got closer Grant noticed a pair of tiny mittens draped over the sign.
“These things have been here forever,” he said. They had once been red but had faded to a dull pink. The fuzz of the yarn had worn off. They were flattened against the sign, stiff when Grant felt them.
“They’re so tiny. They must have been so hard to make,” said Julia. She touched them and smiled. “Some little human’s hands got cold.”
He heard the lilt and the softening of her voice she had when she spoke of tender things, like when she saw an elderly couple holding hands or a heard a kid’s squeal of delight at stomping through a puddle. She always sounded that way when she spoke of children. Kids. Grant tensed. Children, little humans, she called them. It was the perennial subject he tried to avoid even more than the summer heat, the thing he could not yet face again. For months he’d steered casual conversation away from which room of the house could be a nursery or which names sounded best with their last name.
Grant cleared his throat. “Ready?” he said. He chewed the inside of his mouth.
Julia turned to him. Her smile ebbed and she raised her brow. “Sure,” she said. “After you.”
Grant stared at her with a blank face.
“You’ll deal with the snakes, remember?”
“Oh. Right,” said Grant, remembering the long-running joke that the snakes and spider webs on a trail were all his. He gave her a half smile and stepped off.
“Just go slow. Your legs are a lot longer.”
“Uh huh.”
They hiked down the narrow trail. Grant stepped around the dried-up ruts from the mountain bikers, almost fossilized now from a month without rain. The bottoms of the old puddles they passed were cracked into small fragments with upturned edges. They wound down a switchback and then through a narrow section of trail along a dry creek-bed. The air was more stagnant and Grant felt the sweat trickling behind his knees and down his back. He stared ahead and trudged and stayed quiet save for the noise of the memory forefront in his mind.

“Morning. I brought you coffee,” she said. She sat on his side of the bed and placed a mug on the nightstand.
“Thanks,” said Grant, wiping his eyes and propping an elbow up and kneading the sleep from his squinting eyes. The summer morning was already bright.
“So,” she said. Her dark eyes were wide open, face upturned in a half-smile. She wove and unwove her fingers and fidgeted.
He grunted as he sipped the coffee. She always made it better than he did.
“I’m late,” she said, that buoyant lilt in her voice.
“Late for what?”
“Late, like, I’m late. My period’s late.”
“Oh. Shit. Wow,” said Grant. His throat tightened. His mind raced through all the possibilities of how it could be. It wasn’t even something they’d considered, a kid, not until after the wedding in a few months, if at all, a thing put off into that far off place in the future, “one day,” that might as well not exist. He thought they’d been careful. But maybe not. God, and here it was.
“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t taken a test or anything, but it’s been a couple days. It’s usually like clockwork,” she said. She bit her nail and then put her hands on her thighs and looked at him. “I usually don’t mess up the pill, but it’s been hectic with the wedding coming up and all.”
“No, no. It’s okay. It’s okay,” said Grant. He pushed himself to sit beside her. His heart thumped and he took a shaky breath, struggling against the heaviness in his chest. “It’s okay.”
“Let’s just get a test,” said Julia with a slow nod. There was a brightness to her face he had not seen before and a soft lilt to her voice. She touched his leg. “It really is okay. Right? A little human...”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll run out to Rite Aid and get a test.”
“I’ll get it. That waiting game would kill me,” he said with a nervous laugh. He swung his legs around her and planted his feet on the floor. “Whew.”
He slipped into his jeans and wondered whether to hug her, whether to laugh or panic or cry. And he felt a need to do all those things at once. He cinched his belt. Julia had stood and put her hands at his elbows.
“Take a deep breath. The breath always comes first,” she said, looking into his eyes and smiling. “We’ll be okay.”
“Yeah.”
“We really will.”
“Yeah. I’ll be right back. Love you,” he said, and he pecked her cheek.
By the time she told him she loved him, too, he was putting on his shoes by the door. Wallet, keys, phone. Deep breath.
The dew was heavy and the water slid down the window when he opened the car door. The sun gave the mist a bright yellow glow and the cicadas and crickets had started as if the day would be hot. The chipper Saturday morning shows on NPR piped in when he started the car.
The drive to the drugstore seemed long. It meandered through sections of town where he had to drive slowly and his mind leaped and bounced and pinged things he’d only ever thought of vaguely, if at all. Thinking of the logistics was not surprising – with her yoga studio and his teaching history at the community college plus the VA they would get by, and her parents could help with watching a child. Thinking that Julia would be a good mother was not shocking, either. If anyone could be a good mother it was her. But his hollow gut, the heaviness bearing down on his chest, that was fear. Its magnitude was surprising but its source was clear.
He could not do it. Fatherhood. The world was so bleak. He had seen it. It wasn’t fair to bring a life into that mess. He had seen the callousness that made it so. He’d even been the source of it once. It was all he talked about in his infrequent sessions with Dr. Campbell at the VA. It wasn’t the fear of being killed that still hurt ten years later, it was the hardness he’d seen in himself, either when he’d killed or had felt nothing when others did. Or the kids he walked by on patrol. Or that one kid. The seven-fingered boy.
They passed him every day for months in that village of squat buildings and tangled powerlines and date palms. The kid’s house was just another doorway in the stucco, opened to the packed dirt and rivulets of sewage in the alley. He squatted in that doorway and watched them every time, never with the other kids who darted around their formation begging for soccer balls or money or candy, shouting “Mista mista,” kidding with them. Grant did not know how old he was, maybe ten. The soccer jersey dwarfed his tiny shoulders. And his hands rested on his bony knees as he looked up with is gaunt face and wide eyes, half-open mouth revealing buck teeth. And each of his hands had seven digits. That poor kid.
In the early weeks of the deployment Grant always stuffed a cargo pocket with candy for him. Here was a child who did not know enough of kindness to even ask for candy or soccer balls or money, so the Jolly Ranchers and Blow Pops always went to him. Even though the kid never smiled and never seemed to know what to do with the candy he was always there the next day.
But eventually Grant stopped bringing the Jolly Ranchers and Blow Pops. Eventually he only brought extra ammunition and tourniquets and extra worry about what firefight was around the corner in the alley or whether they’d get hit on the road when they mounted up and left the village. And eventually he hated the kid for his silence, because the kid had to know what was around the corner or up the road. And he hated the kid’s parents and the godawful heat and sun and the whole fucking place and he didn’t care what happened to any of it. That still hurt.
When he returned home and saw Julia’s lit-up face and heard the sweet, excited lilt in her voice as she took the test into the bathroom he hated himself for having the nerve to marry her knowing he could not do the thing she was so excited about.
Julia stepped out of the bathroom after a few minutes.
“False alarm. Says it’s negative,” she said. She still smiled but not with her eyes. She stepped heavily into the living room where Grant had been pacing and slumped on to the couch. They looked on in silence for a moment and Grant did not know what to say. In that moment he hated the relief he felt but it was relief all the same.

“Hey,” said Julia. “You okay?”
“Hm,” said Grant, looking over his shoulder. Julia’s face and shoulders glistened with sweat and her thick, dark hair had gone frizzy.
“You just seem quiet.”
“I’m okay. Just taking it in,” he said. He flashed her an affected smile to dilute the low-rent poison he felt himself being. He turned around again and stared at his feet as they picked over the roots.
“Okay. I really do appreciate you coming,” she said.
“It’s no big deal. Glad to come.”
The trail flattened and the woods opened up and brightened as they approached the clearing by the pond. They passed a swath of tired, dingy green undergrowth and the path meandered through patchy grass down to the pond.
The pond was the size of a football field, ringed by a gravel pathway cut along its bank and the dam. The path merged with a paved road atop a high embankment on the far side. The pond’s still surface reflected the dull yellow and white glare of the sky.
They stopped by the pond and Grant squatted by the bank, peering into water at the submerged weeds. His knees crackled when he rose.
“It’s nice down here. It’s not bad for Westbrook,” said Julia. She stood by the edge of the water with her hands on her hips. She watched a couple walking along the top of the embankment opposite them, their two small children circling about them in a fast orbit. “Crazy they’re the only other ones we’ve seen.”
“Yeah,” said Grant. He picked his way along the bank, following the trail and staring into the water. A shout from one of the children carried across the water. He kept walking and Julia followed.
The trail led up one end of the embankment and steepened. The water in their bottles sloshed as their arms swung and Grant’s breathing quickened. He felt his heartbeat when they reached the top of the rise and hit the pavement, glad for the reprieve of the flat road before the second half of the trail. The family had disappeared into the woods ahead of them and he wondered if they would catch up to them as he walked along.
A few yards down the embankment to their left a bird screeched and chirped and flapped around a hemlock tree, flying madly in tight circles that bumped it against the trunk.
“What the hell’s it doing,” said Julia.
Grant stopped. He stared down at the scraggly, squawking creature making its panicked circuit. He looked the tree up and down and then he saw it, a tangled ball of fishing line wrapped around the hemlock’s lowest branches.
“Jeez,” he said, pointing. “It’s stuck on fishing line. Look, you can barely see it.”
“Oh my god. That poor thing,” said Julia. She stepped towards the tree. She looked back at Grant and her face was scrunched, pained.
There was a pang in his stomach and he did not answer for a moment.
The bird would flap against the tree and struggle and tangle the fishing line further. It would eventually exhaust itself. It would die. Perhaps it would starve or maybe the exhaustion alone would kill it, but it would die slowly and awfully either way. He had to end its misery. If he could hit it hard enough with something it would kill it quickly. He scanned around for a stick and was relieved to find nothing suitable. He could not kill the thing any more than he could walk away from it. He looked at Julia.
“Maybe we can reach it to get it free. Somehow,” she said. Her eyes were soft despite the pained expression, and it deepened the pang in his gut.
“I don’t know. I might be tall enough. I’ll try.” He set his water bottle down and sidestepped and slid down the slope. Bits of dry clay and pebbles tumbled down the embankment into the brush thirty feet below.
“Be careful,” said Julia.
He inched his way down and steadied himself on the tree trunk. The bird flapped and fluttered just above him now. Its screeches rang in his ears. He reached for the branch but was two feet short of being able to grasp it. The knot of fishing line was several feet further out along the branch, anyway, and the bird was too fast to catch.
He stood there for a long moment listening to the fluttering and crying. He glanced down the embankment and his head swam with vertigo.
“I think I’m going to have to climb out there and cut it loose,” he said. “Only thing I can think of.”
“I can spot you,” said Julia.
Grant shook his head. “I don’t think there’s room. God, I haven’t climbed a tree in years.”
Grant fought back a slight tremble and weakness in his knees. He hugged the tree then wrapped his legs round it and pushed and pulled himself up. The sharp edges of the bark scraped his chest through is t-shirt and grated his bare legs. When he could reach the branch he grabbed it with one shaky hand and then the other, releasing his legs. He flinched when the bird fluttered in front of his face.
Arms already tiring, he had to be fast. He let go with his left hand and opened the knife, then swung his arm to catch the line with his blade. The line wrapped around his wrist and he fought to untangle it. The bird shrieked and flapped around.
“Fuck!” he said, his hand weakening. Julia yelped something but he did not hear it. He grabbed the branch with his left hand and the knife clattered down the embankment. He took a sharp breath and yanked the fishing line until it snapped and the bird zipped away. Then he shimmied along the branch until he could wrap his legs around the trunk.
He was breathless by the time he clambered back up the slope, and he wiped his trembling hands on his shorts, leaving sweaty, brown streaks.
Julia patted the heel of her hand in an imitation of a clap. “Take a bow, sir,” she said. She nodded at his legs. “You okay?”
“Damn,” he said, examining the insides of his arms. They were striped with red scrapes and flecked with pinpoints of blood. He brushed the debris from them and from his legs, which looked the same. “I’ll survive I think.”
“You saved it,” said Julia. The familiar lilt was there.
He met her eyes and saw their softness, the upturned corners of her thin lips. Grant still trembled, mouth dry, and he slurped some water.
“I can’t believe those people just walked past it like nothing,” said Julia, canting her head up the trail.
“I can. Some people just don’t care. About anything,” he said.
“Well, we’re not those people. You’re not that person.”
“No?” he said.
“No,” said Julia. She shook her head, still smiling. “You’re one of the good ones.”
He opened his mouth to disagree but stopped himself. He gazed at the ground and thought to apologize for the prickliness of the day, the miasma he brought with him to the park.
When he looked up Julia still had her smile and she cocked her head at him, eyes narrowed. “What?” she said.
“I try very hard to be.”
She nodded slowly. “I know you do. You do pretty good at it,” she said. She pointed at his legs. The blood had expanded into blots. “We better get home and get you cleaned up.”
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.”
They walked up the road and back into the woods. The sweat stung his cuts and scrapes. The September dusk had dimmed the woods further. They had lost time with the bird but Grant was mindful to keep his stride shortened for Julia.
He listened as she broke into a giggle behind him at times, remarking on his Tarzan skills or teasing him that it wouldn’t have been has hard if he’d only come to her yoga classes more often. He laughed and did not think of the burning of the raw skin as much.
They neared the parking lot, could see the open space and the white of the limestone gravel peaking through the shadowed woods. The trail merged onto the path to the lot and widened enough for them to walk beside one another.
Julia stopped by the trailhead sign and felt the red mittens.
“They’re so adorable,” she said quietly. Grant stared at her in the growing dark. She rubbed the mittens between her thumb and forefinger and her face was softened but there was something in place of the lilt in her voice when she said, “I’d totally make these for a little human.”
It was something sad but hopeful, a thing he had not heard before. He wondered if he had just not heard it through the noise of his own mind when she spoke of small humans. Something warm rose in his chest.
“One day,” he said. He swallowed hard. “One day soon you can.”

****

David P. Ervin is an infantry veteran of the Iraq War who went on to obtain a BA in history from West Virginia University. He wrote and published a memoir of his time in war as well as numerous short pieces of nonfiction and fiction. His work can be found in The Line Literary Review, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Wilderness House Literary Review, among other publications.