Kingsfield Radio

You can’t sleep when you stay at your Mémère’s house. It could be that you’re sixteen and your body is not your own anymore, unfamiliar in its urges, wants, and rebellions. It could be the silence, how you can’t hear the lake sighing like you can at home. It could be the thought of Peg, who you want so desperately to see, and who you want so desperately to see you. It could be the radio you turned on for quiet company that pours out things you’ve never heard before. It could be that something turned one of Mémère’s chickens into a mess of blood and feathers.

She keeps looking to her chickens, getting up to peer out the window even though you can tell it isn’t easy for her to sit then stand then sit then stand again. The murdered hen’s viscera still stains the grass. You feel some shame that you didn’t see it, that you weren’t watching, making some use of your insomnia.

“It could’ve been a catamount,” you say, though it’s been over a hundred years since anyone in Vermont saw one alive. Unless Sydney really did see one like she said.

“Don’t be silly. A catamount wouldn’t have stopped at just one,” Mémère says. “We’re going to need to put up fences. I’ll call Peg.”

Your heart speeds up. The prospect of filling your lackadaisical summer day with a purpose is as invigorating as the thought of seeing Peg, the woman who works on the Ryleigh’s farm down the road a piece, and who sometimes helps Mémère out. Peg: always sleeveless in a cut-off t-shirt, her arms roped with muscles, and curly brown hair in a single long braid down her back. She is perpetually just a bit sunburned, but so are you, and in the shower, washing off the sleeplessness you imagine you could be like her, living confidently, a quiet unsung hero, helping your Mémère chop wood in the winter, washing her windows come spring. You imagine you could be useful, beautiful in a way people wouldn’t notice if you were just driving by, only if they got to know you. And you feel like you’ve gotten to know Peg pretty well in the summers since you were fourteen or so, when your study of her really blossomed. She listens to “that caterwauling” music your Mémère can’t stand, and only laughs at things once, a short and sharp “Ha!” and smiles most when she thinks no one is watching, when you’re hidden behind the glare of the bedroom window. She stretches her back whenever she’s done with something, as though now she can rest, yet she’s on to the next thing as soon as the first is finished.

Peg appears a couple hours later, and you ride shotgun to the hardware store in St. Pierre, Mémère in the back with her eyes closed against the motion sickness. Peg keeps the radio on. Mémère says nothing about it, and you admire Peg for the way she only listens to Mémère when she wants to, not because she has to. Mémère asks Peg, but she instructs you. And maybe this is because you’re related, but at sixteen it’s hard not to feel like your age is just a weapon forged against you. Not that you would do anything differently; you would do almost anything Mémère asked. That’s just it though, you want to be asked. You want to have the answer.

In front of a bail of chicken wire, Peg asks, “How high a fence are you thinking, Malva?”

Even though it’s not you she’s talking to, you say, “High enough to keep a catamount out.” And earn one of her single barking laughs.

“Tall as me,” Mémère says.

Peg nods, lifts a bail and considers a second. “You want to put some over top in case they get jumpy?”

“No need,” Mémère says. “I won’t block their sun.”

“Won’t see much sun inside some coyote’s belly,” Peg says, snorting. This floors you, the way Peg knows better and says so.

Mémère grumbles but agrees to the second bail of wire. Peg asks you to carry it while she picks out some two-by-fours, nails, and hinges for a door.

“It’s probably a fox,” Peg says. “I’ve seen them around the property line between Ryleigh’s and Lamond’s. Dad shot one last summer. Could lend you his .22 if you like.”

Mémère waves the suggestion away. Peg shrugs.

You spend the afternoon sweating and getting slowly sunburned, working side by side with Peg while Mémère supervises from the shade. The chickens are indifferent to your presence since you have no food for them. They don’t understand the fence inching closed around them. You hit your thumb with the hammer but say nothing, hoping Peg won’t notice your clumsiness. But by some sixth sense she knows and takes your hand in hers.

“It’s fine,” you say, though it feels like electricity is coursing through you.

“Let’s take a break,” she says, and the two of you sit in the shade with Mémère. Peg reaches into her own glass of lemonade and takes out an ice cube for your purpling thumb. You’re embarrassed but secretly overjoyed at the attention Peg is paying you. When construction resumes, you work twice as hard and twice as careful, and feel Peg watching out the corner of her eye. You’re proud of the fence when it’s finished, and high five Peg, a gesture she finds worthy of another singular laugh. Mémère beams at both of you, says, “My girls.”

You laugh too when you realize she means her hens, curious and pecking at the wire.

“Antonia, go wash up for supper,” Mémère says. “Peg would you like to stay and eat? I’m cooking chicken.”

“You and your thief got the same tastes, huh?” Peg says.

“Maybe you were sleepwalking, Mémère,” you say. “And it was you the whole time.” Again, Peg laughs, and again Mémère tells you to go wash up.

At the dinner table you drop into your seat and there’s a crack. One of the chair legs snaps beneath your weight, and you pitch forward, jam your palms on the table’s edge. Twist your ankle just a twinge. You hover over the chair for a second, awkwardly sidle into the next one, your whole body an apology. Mémère assures you that it’s an old thing not worth much at all. Its time had come. But you’re so ashamed you lose your appetite and can barely eat. You have to sit across from Peg, conscious of every single sound you’re making.

*

That night insomnia is your only companion, so you watch the henhouse from your bedroom window, leaving the radio on. You found the channel by chance, twisting the AM dial, looking for anything that wasn’t The Smashing Pumpkins or Guns n’ Roses, the volume low so Mémère wouldn’t come crashing into your room and say, “Antonia! Cut that caterwauling out.” The show only lasts from midnight to two in the morning, though some nights he starts a minute or two late, and you think maybe your insomnia imagined his voice, then he emerges from the static silence.

“This is Kingsfield Radio,” he says. “And these are the names of the dead.”

He recites names you don’t know, careful and slow, a pause between each, so it feels like a funeral march. You try to find a pattern in the number of names he reads each night, but there’s no consistency, sometimes it goes on for a hundred, sometimes you lose count, sometimes only a handful. He always ends the litany with this, “And thousands of Vietnamese people whose names we’ll never know. God rest their souls.” It’s because of this incantation you understand he’s reading from a list of Americans killed in action during the Vietnam War.

You listen because it only ended twenty-one years ago, and they certainly don’t teach you anything about it in high school, and though your dad served then he doesn’t talk about it. All you know is he didn’t want to go, and he would’ve moved back to Canada where they couldn’t get him, but he stayed because he loved your mother.

After the names of the dead, the man on the radio plays old records: Hendrix, the Stones, and Fleetwood Mac. In between songs he sometimes speaks his mind. Names places you’ve only seen in newspapers, Sarajevo, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It’s rambling, and you feel like you walked into a room where the adults were talking long before you got there and would keep talking long after you left, but they hadn’t noticed you yet, so they kept going without filtering. It makes you feel like an adult, to know things about death.

“The longer you listen the more echoes you hear,” he says. “Every war starts sounding the same. We want and we want, so we take and we take. Yes, it’s different this time. The names, the places, maybe even the masked motivations. I’m not saying history repeats, but sometimes the record skips.”

You relish these rants because they feel like something your dad might say, maybe to your mother when they’re alone in the car together. You’re sad when the show ends and fades back into empty airwaves. You’ve still got the whole night alone. Nothing comes to investigate the fence or spook the hens. It’s like you built a barrier just for show.

You think about Peg in the dark, feel a heat you’ve only felt before around Sydney. But you two don’t really talk anymore since she quit the softball team, though that wasn’t really the reason.

You were sitting side by side in the twilight, and you could smell each other’s sweat. She leaned over, kissed you, and an icicle slipped down your spine. You were afraid you tasted like unbrushed teeth. Sometimes, when you concentrate, you bite your lip, and that’s what she tasted like. Yes, you’d been expecting it, craving it even, but once you had it you rejected it, rejected her, got up and walked out because you needed to be alone. Now you were alone. You got what you wanted, and you couldn’t get it back.

Both of you kept secrets it seemed, and the silence made you realize how little you shared. You’d lived with Sydney’s silence so long it felt like a scab. Peg’s silence was an invitation, a challenge, to see if maybe you were worthy of her words.

You wonder if Peg listens to Kingsfield Radio too, if maybe she’s awake right now, thinking about what a good job you two did putting up that fence.

*

Days at Mémère’s without Peg are spent with embroidery hoops and baking sheets. In the early afternoons Mémère takes a nap and you go for a run, or climb around the forest out back, dip your toes in the Old Mill River, which is always too cold and too shallow to swim. Kingsfield is as small and quiet as your hometown half an hour northwest, and you’re more than content to laze your days away here.

A couple times you play catch with some of the other teenagers down the road. There’s pretty Michelle, who outpitched you when your high-school softball teams faced off last fall, and who you hate just a little bit, though she’s nice about it. Then the Dubois boy, Ira, who Mémère says will be a real heartbreaker someday but you just don’t see it.

You return from the river to find Peg in the backyard, trying to nail and glue the broken chair together, and you consider retreating to the woods again, because you can’t bear the shame. But Mémère spots you first and calls out your name. You slink over, and Mémère says,

“You know what, Peg, could you just take that thing to the dump? I’m tired of looking at it.” She gives you a little smile and you understand this is a mercy. This way you won’t have to look at it either. “Antonia, go with Peg, will you?”

And like that Mémère sends your shame to the trash heap too. How much you love her, you’re not sure she’ll ever quite know.

And what to say to Peg, unsupervised in her car? Nothing. She plays the radio and you don’t want to interrupt. And you think it’s silly the way you’re silly about her. She’s a grown woman and you’re still a child, and you know there is nothing you can do to change that. You can’t grow up any faster.

The radio sings a song you recognize from your insomniac nights. Peg moves her lips along to the words, but you can’t hear her over the clanging guitar, the howling refrain. The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter.” You sweat, trying to think of a way to show Peg you know this song too. Did she hear it in the dark like you? You nod your head, mouth the lyrics, tap a finger on your thigh.

When the song ends, Peg speaks, and you lean closer.

“You ever hear the story behind that one?” she asks. You shake your head. “The woman singing, Merry Clayton is her name, like Merry Christmas. Though they spell it wrong on the liner notes. They call her up late at night to come into the studio and sing her part. Wake up a pregnant woman in the middle of the night just to sing a song. Well she sings it. Really sings it. Few days later she loses her baby. They say she put too much into her singing. Strained herself. Course they blame her for doing her best.”

You don’t know what to say, so all that comes out is, “Wow.”

“Terrible thing,” she says.

You agree, ask her where she heard the story from.

“Kingsfield Radio,” she says. You’re glad you’re not driving, because you might’ve sent the car right off the road.

“The one that only plays late at night?” you ask, thrumming with excitement. She’s been listening this whole time.

“That’s right,” she replies. “Helps me fall asleep.”

“Me too,” you say, though that isn’t quite true.

At the town dump you offload the broken chair, and a couple bags of Mémère’s trash. You hurry so you can be back in the car alone with Peg. But she knows the two men manning the drop off station and they chat for a minute. You can hardly contain yourself. All that silly obsession you swore off in Mémère’s driveway comes hurtling back, because it was never even close to gone. You wonder if Peg counts the names of the dead, if she listens to remember what must’ve happened when she was too young to recall any details.

She gets back in the driver’s seat and you ask her if she knows the man on the radio.

“Dana Dubois,” she says. “He’s a friend of my dad’s.”

“Did he fight in Vietnam?”

“My dad got drafted, yeah.”

It’s too good, you think, this shared life experience you two have.

“Does your dad talk about it?” you ask.

“What? Dana?”

“No. Being drafted.”

“Oh, no,” she says. “All I know is what I hear from Dana. Not that I really want to know too much, I think. Some people keep their pain to themselves and that’s their business.”

But you want to know it all. The secrets silence hides only eat you up inside. Pain kept in is like poison, you think. You can’t just let it settle in your blood because it will kill you. That’s why you and Sydney don’t talk anymore, and you realize Peg would never tell you something better kept secret, because she probably thinks she’s protecting you. Isn’t that what adults always want to do?

You’re sad, but need to fill the air. The man’s name rings a bell and you ask, “Dana Dubois. Has he got kids?”

“Nope.”

“Related to Ira Dubois?”

“Yeah, that’s his nephew.” Small towns are like this, you know. Maybe you’ll ask Ira about his uncle next time you play catch.

You say, “I like the music he plays.”

She says she does too, and that’s all before you’re back at Mémère’s. You get out of the car and Peg waves, like she’s dropping you off at school, and you feel so small. She heads to the farm, leaving you to feel the bruise’s heat on your thumb, and wish for a glass of ice, just to soak it. You bake brownies with Mémère, and even the oven and the summer swelters can’t match the fire you endure at the thought of the woman who will forever look at you and just see a little girl.

*

You lie in bed with the window open and the fan on because you’re still burning, even after the sun is down and you’ve slicked aloe over your reddest patches of skin. The names of the dead come marching in at midnight, and you consider turning the radio off, even if Peg is out there listening along. What a way to air your pain, you think, to put it out into the world when you’re sure everyone else is asleep. There’s a chance someone will hear it and think you’re crazy, and there’s a chance they’ll pity you, and there’s a chance they’ll think thank god they’re not alone. It feels like you’ve been waiting all this time, for the radio, for Peg, to say a name you recognize: your own.

When you look out the window the moon’s eyelid is open almost all the way. The hen pen shines silver. The chickens are clucking, and you think they should be asleep too, but maybe no one in this town can. Then there is a gargled squawk, and something copper emerges from the shadow of the henhouse, dragging a hen by the neck. Your breath catches and you think for a moment maybe it really is a catamount. It’s a fox, and you have no clue how it got in, until it backs under the fence, where it dug a hole while you were lying awake listening to the radio. It slips through, but the fence snags on the chicken, and you see the bird kick because it’s not yet dead. The fox pulls and pulls, and the fence rakes the hen, and you think it’s going to be stuck there, headless and bloody in the morning for Mémère to find. The fox tugs once more, and the fence lets go. The killer melts into the dark.

Dana Dubois recited countless names while you watched and did nothing. You could’ve screamed, run outside with a broom, and scared the fox off yourself. You could’ve woken Mémère who does have Pépère’s old shotgun somewhere in the house. You could’ve built the fence better, but you didn’t think of it, because you thought Peg knew best.

Dana finishes his list for the night. You turn the radio off before the music plays, and, exhausted by your own silence, fall asleep in an instant.

*

In the morning Mémère doesn’t make eggs, only toast. Her sadness is like a cold, and you shiver, and sneeze at the dew on the windows. Acting surprised is hard when she tells you about the fence, the hole, the blood, but she isn’t watching you very close.

You say how sorry you are, but Mémère coos. “It’s not your fault, Antonia, dear.” She strokes your hair like you’re still a kid. Like you really are blameless.

You know you will never tell her the truth. That you didn’t mind, in the moment, to see Peg proven wrong. That watching felt a little like revenge. That you dreamt of Peg. Instead you say, “We should’ve dug the fence in deeper.”

It’s almost time for your Dad to pick you up and drive you back to Branburgh, your summer at Mémère’s coming to a close. You think maybe you won’t see Peg before you go, but she drops by just to check on the fence. Mémère hasn’t filled in the hole, hasn’t cleaned up the blood.

Peg must know something is wrong when Mémère meets her out front, where she’s let the hens roam, and says, “Count them.”

Peg counts, twice to make sure, says “shit” when she comes up short.

“If you want one, take your pick,” Mémère says. “You can pull up the fence too. I’m not keeping what I can’t keep safe.”

You think Mémère will make you tear up the henhouse too, but she insists you stay in and help her bake a pie. You feel sick, because you know Peg is in pain, and you didn’t realize she would have to clean up your shared mistakes. You pour her a glass of lemonade, plunk three ice cubes inside. Through the kitchen window you watch her work alone, getting redder and redder with the sun and the shame.

Author’s Biography

Carl Lavigne is from Georgia, Vermont. Their work appears in Black Warrior Review, Hunger Mountain, and other venues.