DEATH OF A MAYFLY - Chapter 10

Click the above voiceover to hear this chapter read by Walter Rhein of I’d Rather Be Writing.

To a Wild Rose, Edward MacDowell, 1896. Two-four time, slow and soft, softer, nearly silent at the end. Written to be played with “simple tenderness,” I remembered, looking down at raw fingernails, scrubbed hard in the kitchen sink. Increase, still increase, loud, diminish. I’d never forgotten, perfect and slow for rocking him to sleep in his chair, wondering if he’d wake up this time. Then up, up the scale, higher and louder, faster but not fast. The bleeding stomach ulcers that woke him in a panic, choking on his own vomit, crawling and crying across the floor of the trailer. Hold, then rest.

I sat at the piano listening to him breathe behind me on the couch, shallow and weak from loss of blood. Even in his sleep he shook, and though I’d tried to cover him up, the stained blankets lay in a pile on the floor. The song had no repeat, but I kept on going end-to-end, staring straight ahead at the music that wasn’t there, memorizing all the little cracks in the varnish, like tiny eggshells across the back of the piano and fading where the light hit midday. Diminuendo to pianissimo, increase, diminish, ritard, the last chord barely audible as I paused.

Repeat.

I’d spent most of the morning on the porch soaking in the late-June sun and drinking cup after cup of coffee, watching the long line of food trucks make their way over the hill and down across the railroad tracks into town. I smelled Indian tacos and chicken frying in the park, canola oil carried on the wind that never stopped blowing across the coulees. It was the weekend of Summer Celebration, a three-day-long party of street dances, fried food, pie auctions, fun runs, and fishing derbies, capped off with the best fireworks show in Montana. We’d gone every year, though getting him out of the house and away from his routine had gotten harder and harder. But once upon a time I’d looked forward to it, watching the parade across from the Coast-to-Coast, the streets lined with nearly 20,000 visitors from all over the state.

Otis moaned in his sleep, choking quietly on his tongue. I propped a pillow behind his head. He felt like jelly, cold and clammy, and I couldn’t move him on my own anymore. But he stopped gagging and took a deep breath, blood still wet around the corners of his mouth.

I’d almost gone today, made the long walk into town all by myself to see the excitement. I could probably do it if I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Just hand them my money and eat a cherry-dip cone, dropping my feet in the river. Simple. But I was still covering up marks with my long sleeves. And powder covered the bruising, but not the scars. I looked at Otis, my easy excuse for staying home. With simple tenderness. I sat down at the piano and played one more time.

The ten years felt more like fifty, filled with a regular routine of drink and abuse that had stopped hurting long ago. Now I waited, allowed for it, scheduled around it, and dressed for the occasion. I picked clothes not for modesty anymore, but for peace of mind and protection—his, not mine. I wasn’t beautiful and didn’t try to be. Beneath a mop of graying hair I’d aged well beyond my years, and if I’d tried to fix myself up a little, the woman staring back at me would easily have been mistaken for my mother. Pain isn’t measured in years, not the linear kind anyway, and the lines around my eyes and the corners of my mouth painted a stark picture of how long it had really been. Of course all Mom’s lines were smile lines. I didn’t have any of those.

Mom.

How long had it been since she visited me, poured me a cup of tea and let me cry into her shoulder? She rocked me to sleep in those first few days, ignoring the bruising. She told me how to wash, to heal. She brushed my hair and helped me bind, drying up all the useless milk. But every time she did, the phone would ring, she’d smile, promise to come back, and go home to my father. Each visit grew shorter and shorter along with his patience for being ignored.

And then one afternoon she didn’t show. Then for a week, then two. I tried calling, though I knew she couldn’t answer the phone, but there was nothing. And then just a dial tone, the phone line cut. It wouldn’t be until almost spring when I read it in the paper:

“Local Preacher Squanders Funds, Leaves Parishioners High and Dry.”

Apparently he’d left town, taking Mom and any record that they’d ever existed with them. No one ever mentioned them again, at least not to me. They just disappeared. Mom didn’t write, didn’t visit, didn’t send any kind of word that she was okay and where.

Just before dusk I shook Otis awake, wrapping him in a blanket and helping him out to the truck. I parked along the waterfront near the bridge just as the bats came out, flitting along the shoreline and diving sideways as kids chased them, swatting at them with their hats and glow-sticks. They changed direction so quickly, left and right, shooting straight up in the air and disappearing into the dark. I found an empty spot to watch the show and walked Otis slowly down the trail, maneuvering around the cottonwood roots that forced their way down to the water. Above us the air was filled with mayflies, hovering in great clouds underneath the street lights. I knew why the bats had com—the hatch had perfectly aligned with the best and biggest day of the Celebration.

I used to think they were magic, millions of little flies appearing out of nowhere and mixing with the cotton, swirling and catching the wind like a beautiful summer snowstorm. I cupped them in my hands, watching them flutter around, so fragile, and knowing they’d never fly away. Then I’d roll their cool grub-like bodies between my fingers, squeezing out their guts.

But the very best part was watching them die. Because mayflies don’t disappear one at a time into the grass like mosquitoes and moths. They fall from the sky all at once, collecting in the gutters, on windshields, and drifting into the river in massive white quivering islands. They writhe and twist between your toes, smacking at the pavement in great pulsing piles. You can walk to one end of town and the ground is alive with them. But turn around and everything is quiet, still. Nothing moves, and everything waits for just a moment. And then with a rush the birds begin to feast, and the fish, the bats, and the snakes, binging on these little flies that live and die for just one day.

Mom loved them, too. It’s time for the mayfly snow, she’d write, and we’d sit on the porch scooping up handfuls of them and throwing “snowballs” at each other. I looked forward to the death of the mayflies every summer, some of my happiest memories in the years when Otis was at his worst. I waited for them—my little friends, my morbid fascination—eager to watch them die.

Just after dusk a hush came over the crowd as the first fireworks ignited off the bridge. Balls and spirals of every color shot up and over the river, high into the sky, skidding across the surface of the water, dipping and diving as the crowd oohed and aahed. We gasped and applauded at the mortars, swans, jellyfish, and strobes, saving the best and most magnificent for last: the Waterfall. White sparks lit the entire span of the bridge for nearly a minute, pouring into the water and lighting up the river, as thunderous applause echoed down the riverbank all the way to the levee and up to the Grand Union, people cheering and whistling from their windows in the old hotel. And then it was over, chairs folded, sleeping children strapped to their car seats, as the first few raindrops fell in a perfectly-timed summer thunderstorm.

Since losing the baby and Mom my faculties had begun to slip. I still masterfully played the part of the steadfast wife, not hard to do next to a husband who could barely stand most days, drinking his breakfast and forgetting to go to work. He was heavy, balding, red in the face, and so reminiscent of my father that I wondered if I’d become my mother. Even when the dishes were done, dinner put away, and the house so clean it squeaked, I lay in bed unable to sleep. Otis took a pill at bedtime, so it wasn’t his snoring or choking that kept me awake. But I thought she was in the bathroom, running the water and splashing in the tub. I could hear her little footsteps running back and forth on the ceiling, climbing out of her bed and playing in the rafters.

Sometimes she sounded happy up there, giggling, speaking a nonsensical language that reminded me of my mother. But then she’d cry, begging someone to come get her out of the salt. Her tiny fists banged against the lid of the locked trunk, rocking back and forth against the ceiling, shrieking, louder and louder.

And every time I woke unable to breathe, soaking the sheets in sweat and urine. Next to me Otis slept soundly, unaware of yet another night of hallucinations, nightmares, whatever you want to call them, as I changed the bedding underneath him.

It had been ten years of hell—choking, punching, raping, screaming, humiliating, and taking, the least of which, maybe, should have been the loss of a baby. But I’d have gladly suffered ten times worse from him to spend a day with her. Instead, I’d taken a job at the Press, proofreading articles with the editor five nights a week to make up for Otis’ lack of motivation. Not only was he a no-show most days at the railroad, he spent nearly every afternoon down at the VFW, Daddy’s old seat still warm, gambling with the local sharecroppers and a handful of church leaders that hadn’t left town in the wake of the scandal. We hadn’t a penny to our name, using credit cards for food and rent, but everything we did have and then some he gambled away in a list of debts that we’d never be able to repay.

And so I went to work, ignoring the calls from collections, and coming home to him standing out back over a burn pile of bills, drinking straight from the bottle. The more letters, the more he drank, the harder he hit, and the more he needed from me at night. Then he passed out, and I lay awake, listening to her laugh and cry, banging on the little bed of salt.

But amidst the trauma and deterioration of my mental state, something else broke through and I heard my mother’s mythical voice: Don’t wait for a better day that may not come. Write it all down. Write like no one will read it. It was something I’d avoided because of shame, hurt, and ultimately her abandonment of me without ever telling me why. I’d written nothing in ten years except to note the birth and death of my daughter. And despite the old quip, I really didn’t have anyone to leave my writing. And I’d certainly never go back and read it myself.

But for whatever reason I began to write again, finding it therapeutic and falling back into my old teenage footsteps. The freehand expression was still there; the story wasn’t. I didn’t have a path or a purpose, just wrote the words that came to me one at a time. First pain and anger. I told Otis everything I’d ever wanted to, fought back, hit him harder than he’d hit me. All on paper. And then like breathing, the rage disappeared and the words fell into a cadence of storytelling, reliving, retelling, and creating for the very first time. And I began to split in half and see my life as two worlds: what I wanted, and what I didn’t.

The non-fiction was easy. No, not easy. Literal. I talked about my day, my life, the scars, his habits, the names he called me. I described smells and feelings, the irritating little scratches he gave me, building up to beating me unconscious. I detailed the misshapen parts of my body and why, not genetics anymore. Some were scars, some bones that hadn’t healed. There were places my hair hadn’t grown back, and the gray had come early for a reason. I talked about death and what I wanted and when, how easy it would be to just walk away from this life. I wasn’t depressed; I needed to be free.

But then I began writing a new story, fun and easy, beautiful. This, too, was filled with smells and sensations, a world that was anything I wanted. And like music, it took me away to another time and place. The odor of petrichor in the dark. A wordless voice that laughed more than it spoke. Something I remembered, I thought, but from where?

And back and forth I wrote, anger, sadness, elation, the two worlds both mine, splitting me down the middle and letting me decide which way to go. When darkness was too dark to see, her cries to loud, I could step into the orange glow of a streetlight on a warm summer night, the mayflies fluttering down around me. Freedom.

February 9

I am the only one here, but it’s as if the streets were just filled with people. I can still smell cotton candy and fry oil on the wind. Every sound is magnified. Even the bugs are loud, and the fish in the river. The stoplight makes a clicking sound at the end of town; I never knew. When it’s quiet like this, I think I love it here. When it’s filled with people, and noise, and opinions, I know I can never leave. But something feels safer being on this side of the railroad tracks and walking alone at night. I can see the highway and know I’m free.

It took us a while to get out of town, stopping at every corner to wait for the crowds of people to cross the street in the dark as police officers directed traffic in the rain, pouring now. I flipped on the wipers, squinting through the windshield and trying to follow the dim street lights as I made my way slowly up Main Street past the pool and out toward the railroad tracks. Otis had already fallen asleep, snoring softly into his chest, and I turned on the radio to avoid the silence. We didn’t get many stations down here, but a couple would come through when the signal was clear, and if I could get the dial just right I might find something. But even static was better than listening to my own thoughts.

At home I laid out Otis’ pajamas while he poured himself a drink and took his pills. He climbed into bed next to me just as I’d opened my book, lighting a cigarette and smiling at me over the top of his glasses. In the last few months he’d softened a bit, started going to church again and mixing orange juice with the liquor. It had become a pattern once every year or two, a quick time for rebirth, a reboot, a small break in the abuse to regroup as a little “family” over verses, and hymns, and reminiscing about the good old days. He’d put his arm around me and I tried not to flinch, programmed in my reactions. He cooed slimily and smiled in a sort of drippy, nostalgic way, asking to sit with me at the piano or help me in the kitchen. It gave me the willies and mentally stopped me from writing, a period I hated so much I almost preferred the abuse. At least it was consistent and “normal.”

“Some storm,” he said, resting his hand on my arm, and I knew he wanted to talk. I didn’t want to talk. I closed my book.

“Yes.”

“How many years has it been now, going to watch the fireworks?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound as exasperated as I felt. “Maybe eight or nine. Have we gone every year?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. Nine years.” He whistled. “Good years. The Celebration hasn’t changed much.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. They were not good years, awful, brutal in fact. I still had scars from those years.

“Remember the street dances? God, I loved to dance. Oh, and the apples, the caramel apples they used to sell behind the bandstand.” He shut his eyes, laying back on his pillow. “I could eat those all day if I still had my teeth.” I couldn’t help smiling—he did look really strange without his dentures in. “And remember the Boy Scout barbecue, grilling up burgers for the whole town? Do they still do that?”

“Mm-hm, I think so.” I opened my book again.

“Oh, that’s good then.” He sounded far away, thinking of all the “good times” we’d had together. He squeezed my hand, rubbing my knuckles with his thumb. “Yeah, that was really something. We’ve had a pretty damn good life, you and I.” I stared at my book, silent. I could see him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, waiting for me to respond in kind. He was wrong on every level imaginable, but I still felt guilty for being so cynical. Maybe his memory was going. Maybe he couldn’t remember how cruel he’d been and loved me on the only level he had left.

I looked at him, his swollen, unshaved jowls sagging over the collar of his plaid pajamas. Purple blood vessels lined his cheeks like a roadmap, his watery eyes looking drippier than usual, and I wondered if he might be about to cry. He cried more in these moments of renewal, sharing his feelings and always finding pertinent verses to weep over and talk to death next to me in the bed. I’d learned to stuff my feelings a long time ago, uncomfortable with the whole display but acquiescing nonetheless. Still, I didn’t want to deal with this tonight.

He reached up, awkwardly trying to slip an arm behind my neck, then thinking better of it and rubbing my hand again.

“Our baby,” he said, so quietly I wasn’t sure what I’d heard. He smiled wistfully, a tear rolling down his stupid cheek. “I miss our baby.” And he gave my stomach a weird little pat, sticking out his bottom lip like a child.

“What?” I sat up, leaning away from him. What the hell did he say? But he didn’t seem to notice, clasping his hands together and bowing like he was about to pray.

“Our sweet baby, poor thing. I’m sad we never got to meet him.” With one last dreamy glance he snuggled down into his pillow, rolled over, and turned off the light.

I sat completely still, now so far over I had one foot on the floor. Searing heat flowed into my cheeks and the back of my neck started to sweat. What the fuck did you just say? I wanted to scream, shaking his disgusting body awake and forcing him to look at me.

I hate you. I HATE you.

I hated him more in this moment than all the times he’d slammed me into floors, and the walls, and the doors. I hated him more than I had through swollen eyes and broken wrists. What had he said? “Our baby?” The baby he’d raped into me when I was still only a child? The baby he’d beaten and raped out of me, leaving us both to die alone while he went on a bender for three days?

Otis snored softly into his pillow, his immense back rising up and down and already sweating through his clothes. My hands shook, clutching at the front of my pajamas as I tried to breathe. I knew it was just a panic attack but I could feel his hands on my neck again, squeezing the life out of me. I had to do something. I needed him to hurt like he’d hurt us. I needed him to suffer the bruising, the scars, the broken bones and weeks lost from head trauma and blood loss. I slid my legs over the side of the bed.

With one shaking hand I pulled open the little drawer in my bedside table, reaching in and feeling around in the dark for what I knew was there. My fingers scraped the old Bible, dusty but crisp and untouched, a prop. I pushed it aside, pushed aside the little leather journal, and slid my hand to the back of the drawer. There it was. I reached in and pulled out the knife, the one missing from the kitchen for nearly ten years that he’d never noticed, and ran my finger along the blade. Still sharp even now, quietly hiding in my drawer in case he ever tried to kill me again. He hadn’t, at least not enough to scare me. Maybe he didn’t hit me as hard, or maybe I’d just learned how to block it out. Either way, I’d never pulled the knife. I looked at Otis and climbed back into the bed, wondering what I’d do.

Before I could think, she began pounding on the attic door, fighting the lock and banging at the hinges, and I heard the all-too-familiar scraping sounds on the ceiling that started like mice, then growing, throbbing as she rocked her little trunk back and forth trying to get out. She wailed pitifully, crying from somewhere deep in her soul, begging for someone, anyone, to come get her. Sweat soaked through my pajamas and down my stomach, dripping into the sheets. I’d done this so many times; I couldn’t help her.

“You’re not real,” I whispered. “You’re not real. Go away, this isn’t real. Stop it! Stop!” I cupped my hands over my ears and fell back onto the pillows, staring at the ceiling as it began to move and spin around the little door. Something was seeping through the cracks and dripping onto the bed, onto my legs, onto my feet, sticky and hot. I pulled the lamp chain to see the blood everywhere, her blood, pouring faster from the little door and down the sides of the bed, foaming and swirling at my feet.

I heard myself scream but Otis didn’t move, lying there like a dead man, his pale, fat body barely breathing underneath the pools of blood.

“This is your fault!” I yelled, and reaching for the knife I sunk it into his thick back as the layers melted away like butter. Again and again I shoved the knife deep into his skin, and muscles, even his spine, surprised at how easily it dug into his weight. Blood seeped through his pajamas and soaked the sheets, but he still didn’t move. I stabbed him again and again, rolling him over onto his back and slicing his stomach, his arms, his groin. I saved his neck for last, cutting him slowly from ear to ear to ensure he would never, ever think about our baby again. I held the knife in my fist, watching his blood drip down the steel blade and out every hole and wound in his massive body. And with one last thrust into his Adam’s apple I dropped the knife onto the bed and sat back against the headboard, hugging my knees. There were my feelings; I’d found them now.

I cried, and then I threw up for a long time, choking when I had nothing left in me but bile. Then I cried more, gripping at my stomach and feeling the labor pains all over again. They clawed and tore at me, reminding me that I should have died. I couldn’t breathe and gasped for air, staring up at the little attic door, quiet now. The rattling had stopped, the blood disappeared.

I sat up in bed. The clock on the nightstand blinked 2:23. From the kitchen I heard the radio blaring. Otis snored peacefully in the bed, not dead, and I wondered at what point I’d fallen asleep. I reached over, sliding open the drawer. Inside lay the Bible, the journal, and the knife, untouched. Was I actually disappointed? Otis gagged in his sleep and I shoved him, closing the drawer.

“A flood warning has been issued to all Cascade and Chouteau County residents, especially those along the Missouri River and/or low-lying areas. Expect severe flooding over the next twelve hours. Do not attempt to cross waterways or drive through standing water on the highway and residential roads. Please stay in your homes until this weather system has passed and officials can assess the situation.”

I turned off the radio and poured myself a glass of milk. Otis’ keys hung on a hook by the door and I could smell his boots under the table. I could smell stale whiskey in the sink and cigarette butts in the ashtray next to his chair. He’d left the TV on with the volume down, and somewhere on the wall a clock ticked away the seconds in two-four time.

Tick, tick, tick, tick. Increase. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Diminish.

Setting the empty glass in the sink I grabbed his keys and closed the door behind me for the last time.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

Copyright© 2025 Eleanor Leonard All Rights Reserved

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.