from advanced fiction
this is the second draft of the second story i wrote this semester. any feedback would be appreciated. forgive the paragraph spacing.
Cleansed
He took a deep breath and plunged his face into the soft, tan mud. He let his head sink until he could feel it touch his hairline, then pulled away slowly. The mud made a thick sucking noise as he lifted, clumps fell from his skin with gentle thuds. With firm swipes, he cleared his eyes and mouth, flinging the excess towards a tree, where it hit with a satisfying pwap. He ran his gloppy fingers through his hair and laughed.
It was a warm summer evening. This was how Toby spent most of his evenings. This was the reason Toby bought a house farther away from the city than all his colleagues, with this excellent stretch of woodland behind it. Toby had bought that too, a whole four acres. It was so perfect, complete with a little bubbling stream if you walked in far enough, and trees with branches spaced just so to let the right amount of sunshine through. And of course, right next to the stream, plenty of slimy, luxuriant, coffee-colored mud. He threw himself backwards just to hear the squelch and looked up at the trees, mud oozing all around his limbs and soaking into his flannel shirt. It found its way past his cuffs and up the legs of his jeans. It slurped into his hair, making his head heavy. He flung out his arms and made a mud angel. Toby was completely coated. Studying his filthy, mudlogged limbs, Toby thought about what his mother would say if she saw him now.
He didn’t want to think about it. He’d taken great care to make sure she never saw him out there, completely dirty from top to bottom. He’d also chosen this house based on the distance from his mother. She didn’t like to drive, and the half-hour it took to get from her house to his was usually too much for her.
All the same, when Toby had finished playing in the mud for the day, he always made sure to carefully cover his hands and feet with plastic bags before entering his house, and always went straight for the bathtub. He always washed his clothes immediately afterwards, and except for using a mild detergent so that the pleasant, earthy smell remained in his flannel shirts and jeans, he never left a trace of mud in his house. He never knew if his mother would get it in her head to stop by. He didn’t want to deal with what she would say. Or do.
Sitting in his tub now, Toby pushed the thought of his mother from his mind and concentrated on shampooing his hair. He missed his last girlfriend, who took great pleasure in washing Toby’s hair after an evening in the mud. The girlfriend before that had actually gone out in the mud with him most evenings. Some people may find his mudplay odd, but Toby never bothered with those people. He liked the way his best friend Steven put it: “Hey, I like to hit a little white ball with a metal stick in my free time, you like to roll around in the mud. Who am I to judge?” Just last week Steven had been out there with him, discussing the merger of the company they worked for, as they chucked handfuls of cold, sticky mud at one another. Toby only made friends with the people who didn’t mind getting dirty every now and then. To be honest, it had been more of an attraction than a deterrent for a lot of people. “Throwing around mud, eh? I’m in!” Toby suspected that most people had mothers like his.
Well, perhaps not quite like his. Toby’s mother had a penchant for excellence. She aspired to be excellent cook, an excellent seamstress, and a excellent housekeeper. She wasn’t going to let a boisterous little boy ruin her perfect record of house cleanliness. So when she gave birth to young Toby, she took a deep breath, rolled up her sleeves and set about raising him to be as neat and tidy as her standards demanded. They were high standards. Toby was rushed to and from the car when it rained, wrapped head to toe in bright yellow raingear. Not a drop touched him. He was expressly forbidden to set foot in a sandbox, or to go down a slide to crash beautifully into the soft brown dirt below. He had been confined to the swings, the playground equipment with the least likelihood of soiling young Toby’s crisp clean shirts and muddying his rosy cheeks. He hadn’t even been allowed to go fishing with his father, for fishing included digging for worms. In the dirt. Not wanting to bother anyone, his father acquiesced and took Toby to movies instead.
There were many rules, but they weren’t earth-shattering. Toby even had friends who had overly-clean mothers. It was still easy enough to have a great time with blocks or toy cars or stuffed animals. He might have grown up fairly-well adjusted, had it not been for the one incident that made Toby adhere strictly to a life of walking around rain puddles and wiping his feet. It was twenty-seven years ago, when Toby was five years old.
It had been raining, because it always rains when something bad is going to happen. Toby’s father had called and said he was bringing home a surprise. Little Toby had run around the house all day, trying to speculate. Maybe it was a dog? He imagined burying his face in a dog’s warm fur. He bounced around the kitchen, barking. His mother put a quick stop to that, saying she wouldn’t tolerate a dog tracking dirt all over her house. A bird, then. It would sit on his finger and let him pet its back. Toby flung out his arms and tried to take off. A birdy would leave little poo drops all over the floor, explained his mother. No bird for Toby. At last, at last he heard his father pull into the driveway. Wild with anticipation, Toby flung open the door before his mother could catch him and dashed out to meet his father. Just before he reached him, Toby slipped on a wet patch of grass and went sliding across the entire lawn, collecting rainwater, grass stains, and globs and globs of mud along the way.
He was unhurt, and might have laughed if he’d had time to consider it. But his mother was upon him in seconds. Her mouth was open, and the most hideous sound Toby had ever heard was coming out of it. A high, shrill, quivering shriek careened from her lips and pounded Toby’s ears. He was terrified.
His horror escalated when his mother grabbed him up with one hand and swooped him into the backyard. She stripped him of his clothes and set the garden hose on him.
In retrospect, the backyard was fenced in and no one could see into it, but in Toby’s mind, every eye of every neighbor was fixed upon him and his muddy shame. The rain had been light and warm, but to Toby, each drop drilled into his skin. The hose had hardly any pressure at all, but it was like a fire hose turned on a riot to Toby. He never cried harder since. Sitting in the tub twenty-seven years later, remembering, he shuddered.
The surprise turned out to be a goldfish, swimming in a bag of clean, clear water. He wasn’t allowed to touch the fish, just watch it swim around and around, taking a constant bath. “The perfect pet,” said his mother. Neither the surprise nor the cautious pats on the head from his father was any consolation to Toby.
So Toby lived a squeaky-clean life with polished shoes and starched shirts until his freshman year at college. The afternoon had been warm and rainy, exactly the same weather as that fateful day with the hose. Eighteen-year-old Toby took note of this, and wrapped himself tighter in his raincoat and rushed across the quad, eager to get where it was safe and dry. The frat boys holding an impromptu football game had other ideas for this skinny, fastidious little mouse. The biggest one shouted Toby’s name and winged the filthy, slimy football at him.
Toby looked up just in time to see the gooey missile come hurtling through the misty air. His life flashed before his eyes. Toby at seven, using a nail brush on his toenails. Toby at ten, handwashing his sweaters. Toby at sixteen, applying spot cleaner to his socks. Toby just a month ago, disinfecting his suitcase before adding his carefully-folded slacks. In a matter of moments, the football hit Toby square in the chest, knocking him over into a gigantic mud puddle. The mud squished up the back of his shirt. It splashed up and coated his face. Mud in his shoes, between his toes, clinging to his hair in thick clumps, lodging itself in his collar. The warm rain fell down, mixing with the cold mud on his arms, as Toby clung to the football, his eyes screwed shut. He waited for the shriek.
Instead, laughter. Arms helping him up. Pats on the back. He opened his eyes to a circle of frat boys, all covered from head to toe in mud. They were almost indistinguishable from one another. Toby, soaked, looked just like them too. He’d only been covered in mud one other time in his life, and he’d gotten cleaned immediately. These people were scooping up handfuls of mud, throwing them at him and at each other, getting dirtier. And they were enjoying themselves. And they were asking him to join the football game. Toby never knew that mud could have such an effect. He shook his arm, and the mud flew off and hit a nearby tree. The sound was glorious. Pwap. Toby laughed. Toby laughed. He joined the game.
****
He was thirty-two again, and ran through the woods, nearly slipping with every step. He’d never come out here without changing his clothes before, and his oxfords just didn’t have the proper traction for running in the woods. He kept running anyway until he reached the stream. He threw himself backwards into the mud, landing with a loud splat.
He was ruining his suit, he knew. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be needing it anyway. His common sense told him that he’d need it for job interviews, and to wear to work if he did get hired again, but he threw a handful of mud on his face to drown out common sense. The very same merger that he and Steven had discussed a week ago, in this very same mud puddle, had happened. As a result, Toby and several others had been laid off. He scooped up a handful of mud in each hand and squeezed them together. Inevitably, some mud dripped out the bottom. He threw the handfuls at a tree, ignoring the pwap sound. There is no joy in Mudville.
His house! His beautiful house with its perfect four acres of muddy, muddy woodland. He could never afford it now. He rolled to his side, curling to the fetal position. The mud slid gently, fitting the shape of his body. It was getting into his ear, but he didn’t lift his head.
He ran through a list of his friends. Steven had a baby on the way. Gil was newly-married. Toby had only been on two dates in the past few months, which was not enough to move in with a woman.
But there was one woman he could turn to. Toby buried his face in the muck, trying not to think about it.
****
Toby’s mother was an excellent woman. She had excellent patience. So when her son told her that he might have to live with her for a few months, she just cleaned out his old room and started doing double groceries.
She made him wipe his feet when he came in, despite the fact that he was carrying an enormous box and needed to set it down quickly. Once he got his boxes into the house, Toby looked out the window to the backyard. There was no wooded area, just a fenced-in section of lawn. Coiled near the back door was the garden hose. Toby moved away from the window.
He’d noted a park just a few blocks away from the house, with a dusty baseball diamond that looked like it got watery after rainfalls, but he knew he’d never be able to sneak past his mother’s watchful eyes. Besides, the bathroom was on the second floor. Even with the most diligent of plastic-bag wrappings, he’d never make it up the stairs without getting mud somewhere.
Sitting neatly on his old bureau was a bottle of disinfectant. He opened it and started cleaning out his drawers.
****
He took a deep breath and plunged his face into the clear, clean basin of water. He let his head sink until he could feel it touch his hairline, then pulled away quickly. The water made a light plinking noise as he lifted, droplets fell from his skin with tiny splashes. With careful swipes, he cleared his eyes and mouth, toweling the excess off the sink, where it hit with telltale water trails. He ran his immaculate fingers through his hair and sighed.
****
Toby’s mother wasn’t used to having someone in her house, not since Toby’s father had died nearly eight years past. She couldn’t stop being surprised when he found the soap dispenser on the opposite side of the sink that she’d left it, or the milk cap not screwed on all the way. She found evidence of water droplets on the sink. She wanted to say something to him, but he seemed stressed, looking for a job and having to move. She kept quiet. To keep things in order, she started cleaning every other day rather than the twice-a-week she’d gotten used to.
****
Toby came home from his daily job search to find his flannel shirts and jeans freshly washed and smelling like a synthesized mountain stream. He stared at them, folded neatly on his bed, all in a row like little denim and flannel gravestones.
He found his mother laundering the curtains. “Did you wash my clothes?” he demanded.
“Only the things that smelled like dirt. You really should use a stronger detergent, honey.” She smiled at Toby. He didn’t know what expression to have on his face, and ended up with half his lip twisted up and squinting his eyes. “It’s all better now, Toby. And I decided to wash the curtains while I was at it! I haven’t washed them in forever. I guess it’s just something about having you back in the house that made me up and do it.”
Toby thought of all the things he could say, about how he was in this thirties and could do his own laundry, how his mother had no business touching his things, how pointless it was to wash clothes that hadn’t been worn in weeks simply because of a slight dirtlike odor. But he was tired, and he had no other place to go except his room. He went there and stared at the ceiling, not touching anything.
****
He stood near the edge of the park, drawing circles in the mud with the tip of his shoe. The rest of him stayed hovering above the dirt, not getting a speck of it on his suit, which his mother just had cleaned, or his socks, which his mother just laundered. He only allowed the tip of his oxford to sink, to get covered completely in glop, to burrow underneath and be surrounded by rich black mud.
The mud here was different than the mud in his woods. His old mud had more clay in it and was a light tan that bounced the sunlight off and stayed a cool, refreshing temperature. This mud was darker, grainier, with more soil. Toby couldn’t help himself; he bent down and felt it. It was warmer than his streamside puddle, and wetter. The handful dripped down between his fingers. Splat, splat, splat onto the ground. A bit splashed up and landed on his pant leg. He brushed it off with his clean hand.
In the middle of the park, a group of boys, perhaps fourteen years old, were playing a game of tackle football. With each hit, they would go soaring through the air, landing in the dirt, sending arcs of mud all over the field. Toby actually started towards them, then remembered that his shoes would not keep him from slipping, and his suit needed to stay clean. He remembered his mother mopping the floors as he left this morning, silently stopping to pick up a tiny leaf that had come off Toby’s shoe. She hadn’t said anything then, but he was certain she’d say something if he tracked in an entire footprint.
The football hit a boy whose attention had wandered for a moment, square in the chest. Caught off-guard, he tumbled backwards into the mud. His comrades laughed with him, helping him up, tossing handfuls of mud at one another.
At that moment, a plastic grocery bag bumbled by on the wind. Without really noticing what he was doing, Toby caught it, scooped up a large handful of mud, dumped it into the bag, and slipped it into his pocket.
His mother wasn’t home when he arrived. He wiped his feet and wandered into the living room. The room had just been dusted. He started to sit on the sofa when he noticed that it was sporting a plastic cover. That hadn’t been there yesterday. He sat on it gingerly. It squeaked in protest. He stood up again.
The room smelled of false lemons and counterfeit pine. All the scents of the great outdoors, without the outdoors. Toby thought about real pine trees and lemon trees, their roots plunging deep into the nourishing soil, spreading and growing. There had been a pine tree in the front yard of Toby’s former house. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what it smelled like. All he could smell was the sharp, tangy odor of his mother’s dusting spray. It bumped up roughly against his nose. Toby reached into his pocket and found the bag of mud. He just wanted to offset the synthesized smells with the smell of earth. That was all. That was all.
He could have stopped himself, but he didn’t. He lifted the corner of the rug and smeared a glob of mud on the underside.
The next day, he smeared a little on the backs of the picture frames on the wall.
The day after that, he placed a dollop on the underside of the easy chair.
The following day, he filled the pockets of her winter coat.
The day after that one, he put a clump behind the refrigerator.
****
Toby never pushed in his chair when he left the table. His mother started pushing in the chairs every time she walked by them. Toby never used a coaster. His mother started wiping down the counters three times a day to prevent rings. Toby left specks of toothpaste in the sink. His mother started scouring the bathroom after his every use.
When she wasn’t looking, Toby pressed his muddy thumbs against the bottoms of all her dolls’ shoes.
****
He didn’t know what it was about that day. Maybe it was the new Spring Garden scented carpet shampoo his mother just started using. Perhaps the fact that he’d awoken to find her polishing the doorknob to his room, as though his fingerprints would grow legs and crawl into the walls and multiply. Or it could have simply been that he’d been living there for exactly six weeks, and it had gotten to be too much.
Whatever it was, Toby found himself diving headfirst into the muddy puddles that had formed all over the park due to the light, warm rain that was falling. He marinated in mud. It clung to his clothes and skin, as though embracing him in happiness. He tossed handfuls of it into the air and let it fall back down all over him. He rolled in it and felt it cover his body, sticking to him wherever it touched. He stuck his hair in it just to make his head heavier. He took off his shoes just to watch it squirt up between his toes. He threw it at trees just to hear the sound. Pwap.
Dripping, oozing, glopping, he returned to his mother’s house. He turned the glittering doorknob and crossed the threshold. He took each step with particular heaviness, to make the mud come off his feet and leave dark soil footprints across the Spring-Garden-scented carpet.
He stood before his mother, who had dropped the rag she’d been using to wipe up the circles that had appeared on the cabinet shelves due to Toby putting away dishes when they were still wet. She stared at her son, clumps of soggy brown dirt falling liberally from his elbows to her floor. She opened her mouth. Toby waited for the shriek.
“Get out.” It was nearly a whisper.
“What’s that?” Toby asked. He leaned forward. Mud slid from the top of his head and landed splashily at his mother’s feet.
“Get out.” It was just as quiet as the last one. Toby said nothing. He reached out and touched his finger to her nose. It left a tiny brown circle.
Almost instantly, she whirled around and disappeared through the back door. In exactly two seconds, she reappeared, brandishing the garden hose. Water gushed out of it, and she turned it on Toby. He yelped and ran for it, but his mother chased him through the house. He left footprints everywhere he went, but she sprayed those away, too. She sprayed beneath the rug, behind the picture frames, under the easy chair, in her coat pockets, behind the refrigerator, and her dolls’ shoes. She sprayed the furniture until it sagged and dripped. She sprayed chairs until they fell over. She sprayed dressers until their drawers filled with water. The carpet grew dark with water. The pictures fell off the walls, which were covered in rivulets. She sprayed the ceiling, so water fell down onto them wherever they ran. She sprayed Toby until the mud ran off in little rivers. She sprayed and sprayed until not a speck of dirt was left.
thanks for reading!
Cleansed
He took a deep breath and plunged his face into the soft, tan mud. He let his head sink until he could feel it touch his hairline, then pulled away slowly. The mud made a thick sucking noise as he lifted, clumps fell from his skin with gentle thuds. With firm swipes, he cleared his eyes and mouth, flinging the excess towards a tree, where it hit with a satisfying pwap. He ran his gloppy fingers through his hair and laughed.
It was a warm summer evening. This was how Toby spent most of his evenings. This was the reason Toby bought a house farther away from the city than all his colleagues, with this excellent stretch of woodland behind it. Toby had bought that too, a whole four acres. It was so perfect, complete with a little bubbling stream if you walked in far enough, and trees with branches spaced just so to let the right amount of sunshine through. And of course, right next to the stream, plenty of slimy, luxuriant, coffee-colored mud. He threw himself backwards just to hear the squelch and looked up at the trees, mud oozing all around his limbs and soaking into his flannel shirt. It found its way past his cuffs and up the legs of his jeans. It slurped into his hair, making his head heavy. He flung out his arms and made a mud angel. Toby was completely coated. Studying his filthy, mudlogged limbs, Toby thought about what his mother would say if she saw him now.
He didn’t want to think about it. He’d taken great care to make sure she never saw him out there, completely dirty from top to bottom. He’d also chosen this house based on the distance from his mother. She didn’t like to drive, and the half-hour it took to get from her house to his was usually too much for her.
All the same, when Toby had finished playing in the mud for the day, he always made sure to carefully cover his hands and feet with plastic bags before entering his house, and always went straight for the bathtub. He always washed his clothes immediately afterwards, and except for using a mild detergent so that the pleasant, earthy smell remained in his flannel shirts and jeans, he never left a trace of mud in his house. He never knew if his mother would get it in her head to stop by. He didn’t want to deal with what she would say. Or do.
Sitting in his tub now, Toby pushed the thought of his mother from his mind and concentrated on shampooing his hair. He missed his last girlfriend, who took great pleasure in washing Toby’s hair after an evening in the mud. The girlfriend before that had actually gone out in the mud with him most evenings. Some people may find his mudplay odd, but Toby never bothered with those people. He liked the way his best friend Steven put it: “Hey, I like to hit a little white ball with a metal stick in my free time, you like to roll around in the mud. Who am I to judge?” Just last week Steven had been out there with him, discussing the merger of the company they worked for, as they chucked handfuls of cold, sticky mud at one another. Toby only made friends with the people who didn’t mind getting dirty every now and then. To be honest, it had been more of an attraction than a deterrent for a lot of people. “Throwing around mud, eh? I’m in!” Toby suspected that most people had mothers like his.
Well, perhaps not quite like his. Toby’s mother had a penchant for excellence. She aspired to be excellent cook, an excellent seamstress, and a excellent housekeeper. She wasn’t going to let a boisterous little boy ruin her perfect record of house cleanliness. So when she gave birth to young Toby, she took a deep breath, rolled up her sleeves and set about raising him to be as neat and tidy as her standards demanded. They were high standards. Toby was rushed to and from the car when it rained, wrapped head to toe in bright yellow raingear. Not a drop touched him. He was expressly forbidden to set foot in a sandbox, or to go down a slide to crash beautifully into the soft brown dirt below. He had been confined to the swings, the playground equipment with the least likelihood of soiling young Toby’s crisp clean shirts and muddying his rosy cheeks. He hadn’t even been allowed to go fishing with his father, for fishing included digging for worms. In the dirt. Not wanting to bother anyone, his father acquiesced and took Toby to movies instead.
There were many rules, but they weren’t earth-shattering. Toby even had friends who had overly-clean mothers. It was still easy enough to have a great time with blocks or toy cars or stuffed animals. He might have grown up fairly-well adjusted, had it not been for the one incident that made Toby adhere strictly to a life of walking around rain puddles and wiping his feet. It was twenty-seven years ago, when Toby was five years old.
It had been raining, because it always rains when something bad is going to happen. Toby’s father had called and said he was bringing home a surprise. Little Toby had run around the house all day, trying to speculate. Maybe it was a dog? He imagined burying his face in a dog’s warm fur. He bounced around the kitchen, barking. His mother put a quick stop to that, saying she wouldn’t tolerate a dog tracking dirt all over her house. A bird, then. It would sit on his finger and let him pet its back. Toby flung out his arms and tried to take off. A birdy would leave little poo drops all over the floor, explained his mother. No bird for Toby. At last, at last he heard his father pull into the driveway. Wild with anticipation, Toby flung open the door before his mother could catch him and dashed out to meet his father. Just before he reached him, Toby slipped on a wet patch of grass and went sliding across the entire lawn, collecting rainwater, grass stains, and globs and globs of mud along the way.
He was unhurt, and might have laughed if he’d had time to consider it. But his mother was upon him in seconds. Her mouth was open, and the most hideous sound Toby had ever heard was coming out of it. A high, shrill, quivering shriek careened from her lips and pounded Toby’s ears. He was terrified.
His horror escalated when his mother grabbed him up with one hand and swooped him into the backyard. She stripped him of his clothes and set the garden hose on him.
In retrospect, the backyard was fenced in and no one could see into it, but in Toby’s mind, every eye of every neighbor was fixed upon him and his muddy shame. The rain had been light and warm, but to Toby, each drop drilled into his skin. The hose had hardly any pressure at all, but it was like a fire hose turned on a riot to Toby. He never cried harder since. Sitting in the tub twenty-seven years later, remembering, he shuddered.
The surprise turned out to be a goldfish, swimming in a bag of clean, clear water. He wasn’t allowed to touch the fish, just watch it swim around and around, taking a constant bath. “The perfect pet,” said his mother. Neither the surprise nor the cautious pats on the head from his father was any consolation to Toby.
So Toby lived a squeaky-clean life with polished shoes and starched shirts until his freshman year at college. The afternoon had been warm and rainy, exactly the same weather as that fateful day with the hose. Eighteen-year-old Toby took note of this, and wrapped himself tighter in his raincoat and rushed across the quad, eager to get where it was safe and dry. The frat boys holding an impromptu football game had other ideas for this skinny, fastidious little mouse. The biggest one shouted Toby’s name and winged the filthy, slimy football at him.
Toby looked up just in time to see the gooey missile come hurtling through the misty air. His life flashed before his eyes. Toby at seven, using a nail brush on his toenails. Toby at ten, handwashing his sweaters. Toby at sixteen, applying spot cleaner to his socks. Toby just a month ago, disinfecting his suitcase before adding his carefully-folded slacks. In a matter of moments, the football hit Toby square in the chest, knocking him over into a gigantic mud puddle. The mud squished up the back of his shirt. It splashed up and coated his face. Mud in his shoes, between his toes, clinging to his hair in thick clumps, lodging itself in his collar. The warm rain fell down, mixing with the cold mud on his arms, as Toby clung to the football, his eyes screwed shut. He waited for the shriek.
Instead, laughter. Arms helping him up. Pats on the back. He opened his eyes to a circle of frat boys, all covered from head to toe in mud. They were almost indistinguishable from one another. Toby, soaked, looked just like them too. He’d only been covered in mud one other time in his life, and he’d gotten cleaned immediately. These people were scooping up handfuls of mud, throwing them at him and at each other, getting dirtier. And they were enjoying themselves. And they were asking him to join the football game. Toby never knew that mud could have such an effect. He shook his arm, and the mud flew off and hit a nearby tree. The sound was glorious. Pwap. Toby laughed. Toby laughed. He joined the game.
****
He was thirty-two again, and ran through the woods, nearly slipping with every step. He’d never come out here without changing his clothes before, and his oxfords just didn’t have the proper traction for running in the woods. He kept running anyway until he reached the stream. He threw himself backwards into the mud, landing with a loud splat.
He was ruining his suit, he knew. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be needing it anyway. His common sense told him that he’d need it for job interviews, and to wear to work if he did get hired again, but he threw a handful of mud on his face to drown out common sense. The very same merger that he and Steven had discussed a week ago, in this very same mud puddle, had happened. As a result, Toby and several others had been laid off. He scooped up a handful of mud in each hand and squeezed them together. Inevitably, some mud dripped out the bottom. He threw the handfuls at a tree, ignoring the pwap sound. There is no joy in Mudville.
His house! His beautiful house with its perfect four acres of muddy, muddy woodland. He could never afford it now. He rolled to his side, curling to the fetal position. The mud slid gently, fitting the shape of his body. It was getting into his ear, but he didn’t lift his head.
He ran through a list of his friends. Steven had a baby on the way. Gil was newly-married. Toby had only been on two dates in the past few months, which was not enough to move in with a woman.
But there was one woman he could turn to. Toby buried his face in the muck, trying not to think about it.
****
Toby’s mother was an excellent woman. She had excellent patience. So when her son told her that he might have to live with her for a few months, she just cleaned out his old room and started doing double groceries.
She made him wipe his feet when he came in, despite the fact that he was carrying an enormous box and needed to set it down quickly. Once he got his boxes into the house, Toby looked out the window to the backyard. There was no wooded area, just a fenced-in section of lawn. Coiled near the back door was the garden hose. Toby moved away from the window.
He’d noted a park just a few blocks away from the house, with a dusty baseball diamond that looked like it got watery after rainfalls, but he knew he’d never be able to sneak past his mother’s watchful eyes. Besides, the bathroom was on the second floor. Even with the most diligent of plastic-bag wrappings, he’d never make it up the stairs without getting mud somewhere.
Sitting neatly on his old bureau was a bottle of disinfectant. He opened it and started cleaning out his drawers.
****
He took a deep breath and plunged his face into the clear, clean basin of water. He let his head sink until he could feel it touch his hairline, then pulled away quickly. The water made a light plinking noise as he lifted, droplets fell from his skin with tiny splashes. With careful swipes, he cleared his eyes and mouth, toweling the excess off the sink, where it hit with telltale water trails. He ran his immaculate fingers through his hair and sighed.
****
Toby’s mother wasn’t used to having someone in her house, not since Toby’s father had died nearly eight years past. She couldn’t stop being surprised when he found the soap dispenser on the opposite side of the sink that she’d left it, or the milk cap not screwed on all the way. She found evidence of water droplets on the sink. She wanted to say something to him, but he seemed stressed, looking for a job and having to move. She kept quiet. To keep things in order, she started cleaning every other day rather than the twice-a-week she’d gotten used to.
****
Toby came home from his daily job search to find his flannel shirts and jeans freshly washed and smelling like a synthesized mountain stream. He stared at them, folded neatly on his bed, all in a row like little denim and flannel gravestones.
He found his mother laundering the curtains. “Did you wash my clothes?” he demanded.
“Only the things that smelled like dirt. You really should use a stronger detergent, honey.” She smiled at Toby. He didn’t know what expression to have on his face, and ended up with half his lip twisted up and squinting his eyes. “It’s all better now, Toby. And I decided to wash the curtains while I was at it! I haven’t washed them in forever. I guess it’s just something about having you back in the house that made me up and do it.”
Toby thought of all the things he could say, about how he was in this thirties and could do his own laundry, how his mother had no business touching his things, how pointless it was to wash clothes that hadn’t been worn in weeks simply because of a slight dirtlike odor. But he was tired, and he had no other place to go except his room. He went there and stared at the ceiling, not touching anything.
****
He stood near the edge of the park, drawing circles in the mud with the tip of his shoe. The rest of him stayed hovering above the dirt, not getting a speck of it on his suit, which his mother just had cleaned, or his socks, which his mother just laundered. He only allowed the tip of his oxford to sink, to get covered completely in glop, to burrow underneath and be surrounded by rich black mud.
The mud here was different than the mud in his woods. His old mud had more clay in it and was a light tan that bounced the sunlight off and stayed a cool, refreshing temperature. This mud was darker, grainier, with more soil. Toby couldn’t help himself; he bent down and felt it. It was warmer than his streamside puddle, and wetter. The handful dripped down between his fingers. Splat, splat, splat onto the ground. A bit splashed up and landed on his pant leg. He brushed it off with his clean hand.
In the middle of the park, a group of boys, perhaps fourteen years old, were playing a game of tackle football. With each hit, they would go soaring through the air, landing in the dirt, sending arcs of mud all over the field. Toby actually started towards them, then remembered that his shoes would not keep him from slipping, and his suit needed to stay clean. He remembered his mother mopping the floors as he left this morning, silently stopping to pick up a tiny leaf that had come off Toby’s shoe. She hadn’t said anything then, but he was certain she’d say something if he tracked in an entire footprint.
The football hit a boy whose attention had wandered for a moment, square in the chest. Caught off-guard, he tumbled backwards into the mud. His comrades laughed with him, helping him up, tossing handfuls of mud at one another.
At that moment, a plastic grocery bag bumbled by on the wind. Without really noticing what he was doing, Toby caught it, scooped up a large handful of mud, dumped it into the bag, and slipped it into his pocket.
His mother wasn’t home when he arrived. He wiped his feet and wandered into the living room. The room had just been dusted. He started to sit on the sofa when he noticed that it was sporting a plastic cover. That hadn’t been there yesterday. He sat on it gingerly. It squeaked in protest. He stood up again.
The room smelled of false lemons and counterfeit pine. All the scents of the great outdoors, without the outdoors. Toby thought about real pine trees and lemon trees, their roots plunging deep into the nourishing soil, spreading and growing. There had been a pine tree in the front yard of Toby’s former house. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what it smelled like. All he could smell was the sharp, tangy odor of his mother’s dusting spray. It bumped up roughly against his nose. Toby reached into his pocket and found the bag of mud. He just wanted to offset the synthesized smells with the smell of earth. That was all. That was all.
He could have stopped himself, but he didn’t. He lifted the corner of the rug and smeared a glob of mud on the underside.
The next day, he smeared a little on the backs of the picture frames on the wall.
The day after that, he placed a dollop on the underside of the easy chair.
The following day, he filled the pockets of her winter coat.
The day after that one, he put a clump behind the refrigerator.
****
Toby never pushed in his chair when he left the table. His mother started pushing in the chairs every time she walked by them. Toby never used a coaster. His mother started wiping down the counters three times a day to prevent rings. Toby left specks of toothpaste in the sink. His mother started scouring the bathroom after his every use.
When she wasn’t looking, Toby pressed his muddy thumbs against the bottoms of all her dolls’ shoes.
****
He didn’t know what it was about that day. Maybe it was the new Spring Garden scented carpet shampoo his mother just started using. Perhaps the fact that he’d awoken to find her polishing the doorknob to his room, as though his fingerprints would grow legs and crawl into the walls and multiply. Or it could have simply been that he’d been living there for exactly six weeks, and it had gotten to be too much.
Whatever it was, Toby found himself diving headfirst into the muddy puddles that had formed all over the park due to the light, warm rain that was falling. He marinated in mud. It clung to his clothes and skin, as though embracing him in happiness. He tossed handfuls of it into the air and let it fall back down all over him. He rolled in it and felt it cover his body, sticking to him wherever it touched. He stuck his hair in it just to make his head heavier. He took off his shoes just to watch it squirt up between his toes. He threw it at trees just to hear the sound. Pwap.
Dripping, oozing, glopping, he returned to his mother’s house. He turned the glittering doorknob and crossed the threshold. He took each step with particular heaviness, to make the mud come off his feet and leave dark soil footprints across the Spring-Garden-scented carpet.
He stood before his mother, who had dropped the rag she’d been using to wipe up the circles that had appeared on the cabinet shelves due to Toby putting away dishes when they were still wet. She stared at her son, clumps of soggy brown dirt falling liberally from his elbows to her floor. She opened her mouth. Toby waited for the shriek.
“Get out.” It was nearly a whisper.
“What’s that?” Toby asked. He leaned forward. Mud slid from the top of his head and landed splashily at his mother’s feet.
“Get out.” It was just as quiet as the last one. Toby said nothing. He reached out and touched his finger to her nose. It left a tiny brown circle.
Almost instantly, she whirled around and disappeared through the back door. In exactly two seconds, she reappeared, brandishing the garden hose. Water gushed out of it, and she turned it on Toby. He yelped and ran for it, but his mother chased him through the house. He left footprints everywhere he went, but she sprayed those away, too. She sprayed beneath the rug, behind the picture frames, under the easy chair, in her coat pockets, behind the refrigerator, and her dolls’ shoes. She sprayed the furniture until it sagged and dripped. She sprayed chairs until they fell over. She sprayed dressers until their drawers filled with water. The carpet grew dark with water. The pictures fell off the walls, which were covered in rivulets. She sprayed the ceiling, so water fell down onto them wherever they ran. She sprayed Toby until the mud ran off in little rivers. She sprayed and sprayed until not a speck of dirt was left.
thanks for reading!