The rains come in the afternoon when the clouds clot like blood, flowing against one another, thunderheads swelling over the town in the heart of the forest. Men, jockeyed by adrenaline, yank out barrels to collect what is coming, cover sharp corners with blankets, drag mattresses over rocks and jagged edges and concrete. A shudder passes through their rugged bodies, a frenzied burst of voltage; they are used to the droughts, twelve months stretching, a muscle before it snaps, but they are slick with sweat today, running tongues over flaky lips. Always watching the sky, pacing in front of trucks or porches or front doors, places into which they can duck.
The wind cools and downdrafts prickle and jumbled roots of lightning flash, and the men tap their arms where they do not wear watches and nod at one another and say, right on time, glomming over the flare in their bellies, the deep seat of worry pulsing all day, pretending they were never afraid the previous year would be the last.
It begins.
Feet, hands, torsos, hips fall from the sky, striking roofs and grass and pavement, sickly splats all around. The calves on the legs that rain down are shapely, curved like lakeshores, the skin stone-smooth, weathered without the look of weathering. The arms are thin, toned without strength, wrists spidered with pastel veins, the chests naked like everything else, breasts sagging, flopping as they tumble. The air is thick with womanflesh, curling against the sky in punctuation shapes, smothering the ground.
The heads fall last. The men act quickly, before the parts rot, burst with fluids. The men inspect the faces for bruising, for fat or bloodied lips, for black eyes and cuts and broken noses. They handle each piece with care, brush away dust and pine needles. Jigsaw limbs together, hook joints into sockets, pop necks onto spines. Everything fits perfectly.
Any subpar bits—cloudy eyes, bellies that jiggle, thick and squatty necks—are snow plowed into bins, transported as soon as possible to the pits in the dense, hushed woods, trees so close their branches interlock like arms.
Eyes open as the heads are placed, a delicate but hurried motion. The men grow warm when they look upon their creations, burning at how their first action is always to smile, a moon rising. This is the part they crave, the spark of pride: the women look at them like gods, like giving life is possible for no one else.
The women are perfection for two full days, days of bliss for the men, days of uncontained desires. They’re sure it must be bliss for their handiwork too because they’re always smiling, the edges of their mouths fluttering up, even when they stare at the ceiling past sweaty shoulders; it puts the men in mind of birds, always lifting higher.
The men know they only have to command it and the women will stay in bed all day, soundless as walls waiting for an echo, except when they moan in exactly the right way when gripped, when thrusted, when bent like furniture. The men cannot stop touching those faces, stroking cheeks pooled with just the right level of pink, imprinting their calloused fingers in the tender skin under the eyes, fawn-wide and soft, bruise-grey or bluebird-toned or the hue of leaves fresh from rain, eyes normal women never had, not ever, empty of rage or fear or sadness; they cannot get enough of those bodies, pliable, ripe fruit full, primed for taking. Sometimes when the men are exploring the vast lands of their creations, the contours of a memory will impose over the crooks of panting, the slapping of skin: there were real women once, maybe the men even loved them, but they cannot remember the sound of a woman’s voice or the words she said. The thought lasts a mere second, the same length as a whiff of perfume.
But after forty-eight hours, each second a spur, a tooth of want sinking in, the women begin to decline. They stare at the sun without shielding their eyes, words bubbling and spilling from the cauldrons of their lips, nonsense about please and shelter and no, no, no.
The men lock them inside when this happens, trap them in bedrooms with benign classical music playing, plenty of strings, because songs by old female singers agitate the women. The women claw at the walls—soft, as though they are not sure why, cats swimming in slow motion.
The next few days, the bodies disintegrate, the details of their forms decaying, fingernails peeling off in rounded, hardened strips, hair falling out strand by strand, still lustrous on the floor or spoking between their fingers. Their skin wrinkles, greys and flakes around the edges, their flesh drips downward like Spanish moss.
Finally, they stoop. A flash of annoyance strikes the men: the women walk so slowly you’d think they’d been here for centuries upon exhausting centuries, that they’d seen everything the world had to offer and were tired of it all. They curl into corners, folding their bodies into the gloom, looming an ashen hand to block the light.
When this happens, it’s time.
It’s evening before the men set off for the pits; they used the snowplow and trucks one year but no man wants a repeat of the gore, all those parts stuck in machinery, dribbling out among the trees, all those bobbing limbs. It isn’t so bad, the carrying, although they shuffle their burdens often, switch from shoulder to shoulder. Sometimes they whistle if the loads are too tired to fight or are already lifeless—there’s something in the pitch that causes the living to grit their teeth, snapping them in half, scattering the well-worn trail with ivory specks. Sometimes the ones awake enough will babble, plotting maps of random sounds and guttural growls and this is why the men wear earplugs.
They march through the trees, directing one another to avoid a hole, a root, a cricked and spindling branch. Sometimes a man stumbles and they gather to help him up, reset his cargo in his arms.
But one woman always survives until the end, garbles and reaches for the boughs around her, scrabbles for her man’s throat or kicks him, slow as a nightmare.
The men pause at the edge of the pit, listen to her wisping grunts, softer each time.
In this moment, the dying woman stares into her man’s eyes. For a shredded second he fears she has spied something in him, a narrow cracked weakness that sets a thrumming rage boiling, and he should not have looked at her, the others always say not to, and they’re grinning at him now, shaking their heads at one another, snickering, but those luminous pebbles bewitched him, dark green, the color of life, and his lip snarls upward as he tightens his grip, squeezes and squeezes the soft molding flesh of the struggling creature in his arms, its motions smaller and slower and rounded off now, lacking the violence of hope.
For a moment, the world is peaceful beyond small sighs tapering off. The wind shushes through the trees. Birds rustle in the brush.
The men toss their baggage. They are shocked, every year, by how lifelike the objects become in motion, tumbling down the steep dugout sides, how like animals running away.
The carcasses come to rest at the bottom. The men stand in silence, squint, watch for movement. When there is none, they hike back to town, clapping one another’s shoulders, their work boots squeaking.
A year passes. The men toil, dream of bodies falling from the sky, wake electric and stiff. They keep the barrels in sheds, protected by tarps. In the winter they remark at how much easier the snow is to handle with the plows, to clear away than other things. Streaks of deep scarlet transfer from the blades to the blank plow hills by the roads and the mens’ eyes peel over the sight as though registering a tire mark on asphalt.
They do not return to the pits. The bodies decompose, they assume.
Sometimes they swap stories of the women they’ve made over the years; the stories grow longer, more involved, more desperate and pounding as the days go on, as the snow melts and the air primes and they feel it swelling, the static in their bodies, pressing, pressing, pressing for somewhere to go.
The day it happens, the men pull out the barrels, the mattresses, the sheets, all of them whistling. They test bedroom locks, drum their fingers against the wood. They look at their beds and shiver, throbbing all through their bones.
That afternoon, the sky darkens. Thunderheads coagulate.
Right on time, the men say, rubbing their hands. Reading their future in the clouds. Waiting, slack-bodied, for the rain.
