Page 4 of Bent Heavens

“How come you … like this so much?”

There, she said it. To his back, yes, but still. Doug’s gait didn’t change.

“Like? I like kung fu movies and porn. This is just something we gotta do, Liv.”

“But … you know. It’s a project. You like projects.”

“Tell that to my Ds and Fs.”

“But, like, the corn mazes.”

Doug laughed once, bitterly.

“That was a long, long, long time ago.”

It didn’t seem that long ago to Liv. It was no coincidence that it’d been Lee who’d taken Liv and Doug, both ten years old, to Lomax County, where an industrious farmer had carved into his corn a thirty-acre maze in the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Liv thought there had been something sinister about the endless corners, intersections, and roundabouts, all while corn leaves shivered as if the stalks were snickering at her. As the sun began to set, only her dad’s held hand prevented Liv from sprinting a straight line through the corn until she came out somewhere, anywhere.

Doug, though, had fallen in love. His father supplemented trucking and fireworks income by renting out fifteen acres of family-owned land on the other side of town, which he called the Monk Block. Most of it was being farmed for corn and, to Doug, that was proof enough of destiny. Maybe his wouldn’t be the world’s biggest corn maze, but who cared about biggest? The Monk Block Corn Maze would be the best.

On paper as small as napkins and as big as the backs of posters, Doug sketched hundreds of mazes. Early designs came in obvious shapes: skull and crossbones, a snake, the X-Men logo. Year by year, they evolved and refined. Doug became a connoisseur of confusion. Never much of a reader before, he checked out library books about patterns that challenged human perception.

Go slowly, Liv told herself. Build up to it. She raised her voice. “There was some pattern you used? To confuse people?”

“The Ebbinghaus illusion,” Doug said instantly. “Tricks the mind into confusing relative size.” He chuckled. “And then I blended it with the Ponzo illusion and the Hermann grid. Man, I would have had people lost for days.”

He sounded too gleeful about this, but Liv couldn’t blame him. People were shitty to Doug—folks who bought fireworks, kids at school, staff at stores who just didn’t like the look of him. Of course he imagined them all trapped inside some brilliant labyrinth of his own design.

“What did you call it? All the patterns together? The Prank?”

“The Trick.” He sounded irritated that she’d forgotten, even though, seconds ago, he’d been the one to claim that he’d all but forgotten it. “That’s the thing about most mazes. They were such massive suck-ups. ‘Oh, here’s a big Abe Lincoln head.’ ‘Here’s a salute to our stupid military.’ Mazes are ancient. There’s mazes carved on prehistoric bones. You gotta respect that. I used ancient runes and mathematic fractals in mine. That stuff is pure.”

“I remember one of yours shaped like a spider. Real pure, Doug.”

“It was! Humans are hardwired to fear things with long legs. I read that.”

The conversation was as difficult as Liv had feared. She knew Hangman’s Noose was just around the bend, yet wondered if she’d gotten that wrong, for it felt like the trap had slipped behind her and dropped its noose around her throat, slowly stealing her air as she walked.

“I’m just saying,” Liv said, “that you left all that behind. Maybe, you know, maybe now’s the time…”

“I didn’t leave it behind. No one was with me on it. You certainly never liked it.”

Now he was mad. It could happen that quick with Doug, and though she knew she had to stay firm, she heard herself backpedaling.

“That’s not true. I thought it was really—”

“It is true, Liv. I tried to come up with ways for you to be involved.”

This was bullshit, but just what Liv needed. Irritability fired from her brain, and she could almost see it, a cigarette lighter spark.

“Yeah, you told me I could sell tickets to the haunted house off the side. Sell cider and corndogs at the snack bar. Perfect for the little woman. Gee, thanks.”

He stopped with an underbrush crunch and looked back at her. As quick as Doug could be to anger, he was even quicker to be hurt. His startled, wet-eyed look of betrayal made Liv feel awful, all at once, because what she’d said was unfair. Back when he’d made that offer, it’d been because Liv, scared of corn mazes, had been nervous about Doug’s enthusiasm.

And what had happened after that? Doug’s cardboard tubes of mazes had disappeared, and it had been her fault. Maybe if she’d supported him more, he’d still be working on those harmless plans instead of having shifted his energy to the absurdity of maintaining Lee Fleming’s traps.

“That’s not true,” Doug said softly. “And you know it.”

His eyes swept downward, rather pitifully, and he continued on, his bare knees not lifting quite so high now, the bag of poop on his belt not flopping so vigorously.