SOUTH OATS by Joshua Jones Lofflin

Before she divorced me, Layla ran the South Oats Sea Camp. Technically, I ran it with her though I only oversaw the ropes courses, checking the equipment for cracked helmets and fraying lines. The salt water did a number on them, was slowly eating away the entire camp, and we’d long since burned through Layla’s insurance payout. Soon, we’d have to let go of the college-kid counselors who always smelled of wet hemp and patchouli and unwashed hair. Layla said I coddled them. She accused me of ogling the one with a blue-green pixie cut and acned neck. You think she’s pretty because she wears those ripped short shorts, she said. You think she has a smackable ass.

That night, after she put her leg away, I tried to smack Layla’s ass. She only laughed at me, and I wasn’t even naked. Then she had me rub lotion on her stump, to moisturize the scars where the knee ended in a stapled flap of flesh. I made small motions with the flat of my palm until her jaw relaxed into a smile, and it was almost like before, back when South Oats was new, back when Layla let me touch the rest of her.

I traced the lines of her scars, their soft spidery ridges, and she sighed. When I ran my hands higher, she batted them away and called me pathetic.

*

Layla kept her prosthetic in a locked cedar chest at the end of the bed along with pitons, carabiners, a climbing harness she hadn’t used in years, old photo albums of our first summer of campers and how happy and fresh everyone looked then, and all of South Oats’ financial statements, now mostly bills or notices of lapsed payments. The leg lay nestled atop it all on a small bed of ropes. Sometimes I dreamed it escaped. Once, I dreamed it was choking me, had somehow grown a hand onto its plastic ankle, a hand with long fingers and neon-blue nails. Layla called the leg Marie, said I needed to stop staring at Marie so much. The counselor with the fluorescent hair was called Marie also. You want to fuck Marie, don’t you, Layla said. I wasn’t sure which one she meant.

*

Layla once caught me fondling Marie—the leg, that is. I’d snuck the key from her fanny pack and slotted it into the brass lock with hardly any click at all, but then her bedside light flicked on and she saw me holding it, my fingers running along the seam of its molded plastic. I tried to tell her I just wanted to check the financials, but she didn’t believe me. She finally rolled over and turned out her lamp leaving me still holding the leg. It gleamed in the moonlight and smelled of lavender lotion and soap. Marie the counselor’s legs were filthy and covered in dark, coarse hair—or maybe sand, it was hard to say. Everything at South Oats was coated in mud and sand. It’s on its last legs, Layla liked to say. She liked making leg jokes.

*

Marie the counselor worked the challenge course beneath the cliffs, clapping and cheering on awkward tweens as they struggled not to fall. Layla shouted at them to show some hustle, to show some teamwork, said she could do the course one-legged, and then she did, unstrapping her leg and passing it to Marie. She hopped onto the ropes without safety harness or helmet and worked her way upward until she was ten feet off the sand. Below, the kids tilted their heads back and watched her with the same dull hatred they channeled when they drew caricatures of her on the bathroom walls—a frizzy-haired, one-legged monster with angry, bloodshot eyes. (It was my job to scrub the walls clean, but I never had the heart to remove their artwork.) And they were hoping she’d fall—weren’t we all? —but of course she didn’t. Instead, she shimmied down the last rope and called Marie over and said, Strap it on for me, something she hadn’t said to me in years. Marie stared at Layla’s proffered stump, then snugged the leg onto the end of flesh. Her hands shook slightly, but Layla placed her own palm over Marie’s and smiled. Tighter, she said, Just like that.

*

On those overcast nights when the sea mists clung to the cliffs, and after I’d finish lotioning her stump, Layla would pull a stretch of climbing rope about my neck until I blacked out. Then I’d dream of Marie, of Marie wearing Marie. The leg would be furred in a light, mannish hair. I would stroke it, listen to Marie sigh, listen to the whisper of water outside our window, the singing of seals on the sand below. I’d float there, with Marie, with Marie wearing Marie and caressing my cheek, until Layla slapped me conscious, yelling at me that I was thinking of her again.

*

The counselors’ bunkhouse sat at the top of the far cliffs. Layla and I had our cabin at the southernmost promontory, on the very edge. (Years later, long after our divorce and bankruptcies, the sea would claim the salt-stained structure, would rise up and grab it from the eroded cliffside. You can see a video of it online still, and when I’m feeling depressed, I watch it over and over, sometimes play it at quarter-speed so I can catch sight of all we left behind, the tiny forgotten artifacts, as they tumble into the frothing waves.) A small ravine separated our cabin from the bunkhouse, but we’d strung a sturdy rope bridge across it. Layla could cross it in seconds, one-legged if she had to, and soon Marie the counselor could also. I’d be down on the beach below sorting through the safety harnesses and could make out Marie’s small form shimmying back and forth on another errand of Layla’s—she never said what exactly. In the evenings, I’d smell a lingering scent of sweat and patchouli throughout the cabin, and Layla would complain loudly about her, how worthless she was, how it’s staff like her that make South Oats lose money hand over fist. They’re takers, she’d say. That’s all they do: take, take, take.

Some nights she’d send me into town for more Madeira and yell at me to send Marie over so they could work out camp assignments some more. I’d cross the bridge by feel in the almost-dark and knock on the bunkhouse’s screen door. Layla wants you, I’d say, and Marie would roll her eyes and the other counselors would snicker. By the time I’d return, the bunkhouse would be silent and too dark to see through the screen door, to see where Marie the counselor bunked, unless the moon was low in the sky, and then I might see her legs kicked out from beneath the scratchy camp blankets we gave them, each leg luminous in that silvered light and not dirty at all. Across the ravine, our cabin would be dark also and Layla asleep atop the coverlet, her breathing slow, steady. Her stump would glisten palely and taste of lavender and salt.

*

It was near the end of the season when the accident happened. One moment, Marie the counselor was cheering a wobbling kid along the final stretch of her challenge course, a taut strand of rope only five feet above the beach—hardly high enough to worry about a fall—but then the kid was in the sand, rolling and wailing, her arm twisted beneath her. Layla limp-ran across the beach, screaming at Marie to get the kid up, but Marie only stood above the flailing body, her hands pressed against her cheeks.

Ger her up, get her up! Layla shouted, and then she was standing above the child whose cries had devolved into a series of blubbery, choking sounds like the seals that sometimes lolled on our beach.

We need an ambulance, I said.

Get her up! She’s not hurt! Layla kept saying.

Marie bent and swayed, saying nothing; she just pressed her palms further into her cheeks, sandwiching her lips together until they puffed out like one of those kissing fish.

I’m calling an ambulance, I said, already running up the beach. Over my shoulder, I saw Layla slap Marie hard across the face, knocking her to her knees, and the child quit her crying.

*

It was almost dark by the time the ambulance pulled away. Already we were getting calls and cancellations from angry parents. Layla sat rubbing Marie the leg in the dark of our bedroom. When I offered to help her remove it, she told me to get out, to go into town for more wine, or something harder, anything. Go! she shouted, and I went. On my way, I stopped by the bunkhouse and told Marie that Layla needed her. She’d changed into a scoop-necked tank top and no bra. She had small, dark nipples. Her face was no longer strawberried from Layla’s slap, but across her throat was a thin red welt. My own rope burns had mostly faded. She saw my eyes staring and gave me a disgusted look. She’s right, you are a perv, she said and pushed past me.

I didn’t get back until late. I might’ve been a little drunk. I stood outside the bunkhouse listening to the churn of waves below and watching the moon set into the ocean. It was a late summer moon, fat and sallow. Its light streamed across Marie’s empty bunk.

The next morning, Layla slapped me awake shouting that Marie was missing, for me to find her, and it took me a moment to realize she meant her leg and not the counselor, though the counselor was gone too, disappeared sometime during the night. That slut! She stole my leg! she screamed, hopping across the bedroom unsteadily, pointing to the empty chest, the key left in the lock. Call the cops, she growled, but the police were already calling us, speaking words like child endangerment and numerous complaints. And Layla crying, really turning on the waterworks, I’m the victim here! and pointing to her naked stump.

*

It was months before the leg turned up, the camp shuttered by then, and Layla far inland and not returning my calls. I found it on the beach, near the torn and graffitied South Oats sign, half-buried in the sand, its plastic toes eaten away by the grinding surf. I picked it up, brushed it clean, felt for the seam along the now pitted calf. It was rougher than I remembered, and heavier. I hurled it back into the waves as far as I could throw. This time, it didn’t float, but sank almost immediately, as if it had never been here at all.