by Kabeera McCorkle 

They told you that your assignment was to find evidence. This was the sum of your instruction. Having little to no experience in the realm of ‘evidence,’ you went in search of an answer. In a wooded park at the corner of town you collected: eight branches of about a meter’s length. When they ask what the eight branches are for ­ because they will ask ­ you know exactly what you will tell them. You will say, “Branches are from trees. This is the evidence of the part to the whole. The branch is proof of the tree.” You are hoping that this demonstration will suffice. But you have heard their denials before. You’ve felt their reprimands in the form of four sharp marks to your wrist. Minor cuts, really, but they sting. 

And so you enlist others. It’s a bright June day when you open the recruitment center and hang the sign on the front door that says: ‘Bureau of Evidence. Workers Wanted.’ On Day 1, nobody comes and so you take it upon yourself to gather the olive oil and the water. You pour them into a plastic cup and recite the words, so that you will not forget, “The oil and the water are for distance. This is to show the point of separation. Look how they sit, one on top of the other and each stays to his side and neither journeys an iota into the other’s dominion.” 

On Day 2, a small child shows up. “How much?” he asks. You don’t have a lot to spare, but you strike a deal, agreeing to pay four whole dollars for every admissible assemblage of evidence. The child brings you: all kinds of insect wings. Those of Monarch butterflies and small grasshoppers and the thin, membranous wings of bees. 

“What on earth?” you exclaim. 

But then he tells you, “Without the wings they cannot fly.” 

You ask him to go on. 

“Wings are for flying. This is to show that wings are for flying. See how they cannot leave the ground?” And then he pulls from his other pocket a few mangled bug bodies, one of them oozing a brown secretion. “Watch,” he says. “None of them will fly.” 

“Yes,” you say, nodding. “It might do. They might like it.” 

And so you embark on a cooperative business, you and this merry bug-assassin. On Day 3 you each return to the office with arms full. “”You first,” he says. And so you lay the specimens out on the table: an old toothbrush, a pair of dentures that you plucked from a dumpster, a retainer. The boy picks up the toothbrush and then reaches for the retainer. 

“Not that!” you warn. “It’s dirty. These are contaminated things.” 

“Rubbish,” he says. “What’s so good about them anyhow?” 

You can tell he thinks he’s got something better. “Wait,” you say. “Just listen to this.” And then you make your case, gesturing to each item as you explain it, with pride, as if each were your child. “This is the toothbrush. The toothbrush is supposed to clean the teeth. And this, the retainer. The retainer is supposed to retain them, to hold them in position. And here we have the dentures, which arrive when the teeth go. The dentures are proof that everything goes, even that which was supposed to be retained.” 

“Slippy…” says the boy. He’s made up the word. He tells you it lies somewhere between ‘sneaky’ and ‘slip’ in the wide spectrum of the English language. It’s not that you mind his new word. But it’s the way he defends it, as if it were a toothbrush or a pair of insect wings. 

“And now my turn,” he says, and lifts a knapsack onto the table. In it are: three swollen, pulsing chickens without their heads. Their feet find the surface of the table and they clamber out, running from side to side, spurting blood everywhere. 

“Good God!” you shout and leap from the table. 

“It’s all right,” he tells you. “They won’t bite. Their teeth are gone,” he says in an even, logical manner. And then he tells you that they stay alive after their heads have been removed. “And their hearts go on beating. Look how long! They’re almost finished now.” 

“How do you know that?” you ask. As far as you can tell, they are still beating strong. 

“The first one I took kept beating for about two or three minutes. So these are almost done.” And as if on cue, one of the chickens slows and stops. It lies motionless in a puddle on the table. “I had to run back here with these three so that you could see them before they died.” The other two chickens do die then, flopping on top of each other at the edge of the table. 

You take a long, hard look at the boy. Did you underestimate him? Would they disapprove? They wouldn’t condone carnage for no reason. “Is there a reason?” you ask. “What are they for?” 

“These,” says the boy slowly, “are to show that the soul is in the heart, not in the brain. Look how the heart went on beating long after I left the brains in the chicken coop,” he says, and his eyes mist over with tears. “It’s the answer to everything,” he tells you. 

And so you take him on as a permanent partner. The two of you hoard all kinds of objects in that office on the first floor, lining your work up next to the wall and stacking it across the table. By Day 12 the room is nearly full of animal parts and branches and bits of toy dolls. On Day 13 a woman mistakes your office for the bakery and stumbles in to buy a loaf of walnut bread. 

“Oh!” she says aghast, startled. You and the boy look up from the table, where you are cataloging a pile of rabbit ears. “I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I thought ­ I thought this was the bakery.” 

“No,” you tell her, in a soft, but authoritative tone. “This is the Bureau of Evidence.” 

“Oh, I am sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know.” 

“Don’t be afraid,” says the boy. “Would you like to have a look around?” You both motion to the left wall, where the collection begins. You’re certain she’s going to turn and make for the bakery, but then she pauses and points. 

“Is that ­ are those umbrellas?” she asks. 

“Yes,” you say, moving towards her. You are proud that she has selected one of your findings over those of the boy. “You see, they’re all broken.” She lays a hand on a gray umbrella near where the wiring sticks out past the rim. “They’ve all been damaged in one way or another. This one doesn’t pop out anymore. That one’s got a huge tear in it. And these, all of these have one or two or even three lazy rods.” 

She nods, and tries to shove the protruding metal piece back into the fabric of the gray umbrella. 

“It won’t work,” you tell her. “I’ve tried them all and none of them can be fixed. I’ve made sure.” 

She turns around to face you. She’s prettier than you first thought. You can feel the boy’s eyes on her as well. It’s the first time a woman has entered the room. “Why do you have them?” she asks. 

And now is your chance to tell her. Now is your chance to steal her, to win her once and for all from the boy. He can’t be more than eleven or twelve now, but he’ll grow. He’ll sneak up on you one day, a full-blown man. “These are to show that when a member of a group cracks, the whole is useless. See how the rain would slant down on you if you tried to use it? These umbrellas are to illustrate the importance of self-reliance. Never depend on any part outside of yourself.” 

“I see,” she says and closes her hand around the handle of the gray umbrella. “May I have one?” 

And that is when you start sleeping with her. You wait until the boy leaves, of course. He leaves every day at nightfall and comes back the next morning, arms full of fur and bone and blood. In the dark, the office seems grim and sinister. You clear the items from the table and stack them up at the front door. 

“And so now we’re barricaded in?” she asks, teasing. 

“Guess so,” you say and pull her onto the table. Underneath her ordinary white blouse is a magenta bra, laced. You kiss the nape of her neck. You run your hand over her breast and take her bra. As you dangle it in the air you tell her, “This is to show that what is on top is not necessarily what is underneath. There is another layer beneath the surface.” She allows you then, to unzip the side of her skirt and to pull from her a pair of pantyhose, and then, a pair of panties. They are magenta, like the bra. 

“Ah,” you say. “Consistency.” You place the magenta panties on top of the magenta bra at the corner of the table. “These are to show that housewives are as mindful of their undergarments as they are of their crockery.” 

In the morning, the boy is angry. “You’re late,” he tells you. “I’ve already gathered the whiskers of fourteen squirrels.” He lays these on the table and looks at the space where your evidence should be. You have been delinquent. You have been collecting: a thousand different scents and tastes instead of the usual assortment of odd objects. Daylight finds you without the woman and without any proof of philosophical truths, be they of sex, women or dilapidated houses. 

“They’re going to be furious,” says the boy. 

“What do you know about furious!” you retort, with more force than you intended. 

The boy stands there, upright, his posture as stiff as a telephone pole. He’s turned into quite a self-righteous bastard, hasn’t he. He thinks he can boss you around, does he. “You don’t know a thing about them,” you say. “They did not say when they would return. So how could they possibly be furious since they are not here? And if there’s anything they would be furious about, it would be your persistent animal abuse!” you shout. 

He does not speak or move for a moment and then he turns and picks up the squirrel whiskers. He holds them up in the air, in one fist, his anger mounting, building. He has within him: the fury of every religious fanatic you’ve ever met. Evidence has become a religion to him, as sanctified as God. “These,” he says, shaking, holding the whiskers. “These,” he says again. “You call these abuse? You think I caused the squirrels pain? What is the ravaging of a woman if not abuse? Hmmm? What is that if not abuse?” 

How dare he. How dare he. “What do you know of women? Tell me one thing you know about women!” you demand. For once, you have the upper hand. Here is an empire he has never touched. 

But then you see the corner of his mouth twitch and you know. You know. He doesn’t have to say it. 

He doesn’t have to explain about the magenta underwear or the magenta bra or about the scent of Jasmine, the taste of honey. You know. How odd the acts of your life are, how odd the staging, the entrances, the exits, the way the characters move. Shuffle in, shuffle out. How they spread your idiocy out before you like a red carpet, daring you to walk into it, daring you to walk. How many days was the boy back in the office before you? Or away longer than you? Where was it, you want to know. Where did it take place? In some animal-ridden wood? Or. On the table. He doesn’t say anything for a moment. He doesn’t have to. He’s holding the squirrel whiskers in one hand and with the other he’s grasping the corner of the table. And then he says, “Tell me what you know of women.” He says, “Tell me.” 

You try to locate the images. You try to recollect the ideas, the point. “There was magenta and white,” you say. “What is on top is not ­ what is ­ there is.” You stop and begin again. “These things were there,” you say. “A white blouse and ­ there were ­ there was.” 

Silence. 

The boy lets the pause linger for a while and then he says, with purpose, as if he’s rehearsed every word, “The act of sex is for forgetting. This is to prove that what was there then is not here now. What was intimate and acutely present during the act is estranged and vacant after the act.” He takes a step closer to you. He is barely past puberty. “The reason you cannot recall the essence is because the essence is gone afterwards. There is no proof,” he says. “There is no evidence. Nothing lingers. Nothing remains. What was beautiful becomes sorrowful in absentia. This,” he says with great gravity, “ is the worst form of abuse.” 

He’s looking at you with those moral eyes of his, holding the squirrel whiskers at his hip. “Nothing remains of your chickens,” you say cautiously. You are making this up as you go. “They are in a landfill by now. And the woman ­ though she’s gone ­ and the act is fleeting ­ I did not hurt her,” you insist. “I didn’t.” 

“No,” he agrees, tilting his head in contemplation. “But you passed through her and left no mark. I have marked the chickens and the grasshoppers and the rabbits,” he says. “You could say that I’m responsible.”

Kabeera McCorkle lives in Philadelphia, PA.