We have no admissions desk, and no curators, but our collection is vast and eclectic.

The north wing borders the Kyner Playfield, and features an ever-growing collection of sporting goods. Soccer balls of all colors and patterns, from black-and-white to bright yellow, are suspended in the shelves of our vines. The sun has cracked most of their skins, and the seasons have relieved them of their pressure. Visitors are cautioned to watch their step, as the floor of the north wing is scattered with chipped golfballs and rain-swollen baseballs, split and spilling their strings.

We have two bicycles, one of which hangs from the ceiling of the north wing. It is a modern ten-speed, previously owned by Levi Orenstein and donated to us by Brayden Collins. Mr. Collins was our most generous benefactor of the last year, having donated the Orenstein bicycle, six baseball gloves, two basketballs, three schoolbags, five lunchboxes, one rented clarinet, and the headless body of a possum.

He recently departed to attend a military academy upstate. We thank him for his contributions.

The southeast wing features several exhibits dedicated to the science of time. This is where our second bicycle can be found, chained to a sapling by one Marcie Pittsmouth in 1975, and which now rests six feet off the ground, embedded in the trunk of that same tree. When it rains, visitors are invited to admire the drool of rust that issues from the tree’s lips of wrinkled bark.

The Green Tangle Museum is also excited to announce that approximately three years from now, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Marcie Pittsmouth’s contribution, the bicycle’s front fork bolt will have completely rusted through, and the wheel will fall to the ground. We warn visitors that the timing of this event cannot be precisely predicted, and as such it will not be advertised.

While they wait, attendees may choose to explore the museum’s Dome, so-dubbed at its inauguration in 1988 by Crossbridge High School students Paul Ashby, Lindsay Milligan, and Roger Zarn, whose initials are inscribed in a commemorative tree in the Dome’s west wall. Use of the fire pit is open to all museum guests. But we caution visitors to wear closed toe shoes, and ask them not to disturb the Dome’s immersive diorama of drug paraphernalia and contraceptive materials.

The prize specimen of the Green Tangle Museum is not yet accessible to the public: the body of forty-four-year-old Herbert Selnick, offered to our archives in 1953 by an anonymous donor. The specimen’s exposure to the elements was mitigated by an archival covering of vines, and volunteer fauna served to remove the most perishable matter.

The “Selnick Skeleton” exhibit will treat visitors to a veritable time capsule, from the specimen’s intact ochre suit of polyester gabardine, to its red-and-white nubuck Oxford shoes. Ephemera enthusiasts will appreciate the still-legible dry cleaning ticket in the back pant pocket, as well as the matchbook from the long-defunct Cassman’s Deli in the jacket pocket. Amateur and experienced forensic analysts alike will marvel at the “kerf marks” carefully revealed by our preservation team, made in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar vertebrae with a Schrade Walden Muskrat 2 model folding knife.

The knife itself can be seen in the collection of the Silty Delta Museum, located six miles south, beneath the Route 80 overpass.

We encourage everyone to visit the Green Tangle, Silty Delta, or any of our sister museums worldwide—in forests, near freeways, behind buildings, under porches, or inside your very own home.

We welcome you and your donations any day, at any hour, year-round.

Jessica sees a few people crying. Under the rain rattling on the roof, she can hear even more. Life-jacketed and lined up on a plastic bench in a bright orange capsule with a hundred other tourists. Couples, families.

A four-year-old boy next to her keeps asking between sobs, “Mommy, why are we in the little boat?”

His mom has her sweaty face against the foam shoulder of her life jacket, and her breath heaves. They were all given seasickness pills when they boarded, but hers isn’t working. “It’s just a little longer, honey. Just sit—” she swallows, “sit tight, okay?”

Jessica sees the “big boat” out the rain-streaked window, many-storied and lit like a skyscraper, its nose sinking into the dark water as if ashamed.

*

Jessica bowed her head at dinner and chewed carefully.

She’d been liberal with the adhesive, because that night she planned to order the steak—her first in two months. She pinned her hair back and made up the scar on her cheek as best she could.

But even cut into small pieces and squished between her molars for a long time, steak was too tough. She was grateful that Chelsea and Trevor—those were their names?—probably didn’t notice her difficulty chewing while they described their cruise around Australia the year before.

Chelsea is pregnant and shouldn’t have ordered the swordfish, but Jessica didn’t say anything.

She felt her front-left teeth start to move. Too much adhesive. Her lip tightened against them. “Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding. She held up a finger and tried to say, “Excuse me,” but the teeth popped out and flipped between her lips, the metal support clicked against her real teeth.

Trevor said, “Oh. Sure,” and looked at his food.

“Oh,” as in, he hadn’t expected a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a denture. “Oh,” as in, now he better understood the scar showing through her makeup.

In her cabin Jessica spat the denture into her hand. Her left incisor stood alone at the front of her mouth, the one they could save. Her molars huddled in the back.

She ran warm water and scrubbed away the adhesive, then added more from the tube in her purse and pushed the denture back in. The false teeth settled around her incisor like strangers at the dinner table.

She decided to order room service instead—mashed potatoes and gravy.

*

Trevor is in the back corner of the lifeboat holding up his phone and frowning. Chelsea’s head rests on his shoulder. She and Jessica meet eyes. Chelsea looks away and puts a hand on her belly. Jessica has to make herself look away.

A crew member screeches open the hatch and fires a flare into the rain. The black water out the window lights pink-orange.

The boy asks, urgent, “Mommy, why is there fire?”

Others snap alert and look out the window.

“Honey, that’s not—” She covers her mouth. Her fingers graze Jessica’s life jacket. “I’m sorry,” she says, “could you wa—” she swallows, “watch him while…”

Jessica wants to say no, but the mom is already standing and shuffling between everyone’s knees toward the open porthole.

The boy screams for her and gets up.

Jessica holds his arm. “Stay here.”

*

Ryan said looking at her reminded him of what happened.

He should have been the one to drive, but he had a drink after dinner. The other car shouldn’t have swerved.

In the hospital, she felt his tears on her cheeks. She felt his lips push hers into the new emptiness behind them.

When he pulled away he didn’t look at her. It felt like he never looked at her again.

The last thing she said was, “Please stay.”

Her sister got her the cruise, for a “fresh start.” She shouldn’t have gone.

But she did. To get away from everyone’s sad smiles and overlong hugs. The house, empty of Ryan’s things. The closed room with the crib and playpen still folded in their boxes.

*

“Your mommy’s feeling sick. She’ll be back.”

His face is wet and red. “Why is mommy sick?”

She wants to say it’s because his mom is weak. “Because we’re in a boat, and there’s a storm.”

“Why?”

She waits for an answer to come. “Sometimes bad things happen.”

Ryan had jumped ship, and their son had drowned in her waters.

She feels the boy’s stare on her cheek. “What’s that?” He points.

She touches the scar. “I got hurt.” Now it’s her turn to cry. Her lips tighten, and she feels the denture loosen. In the midnight rush to get to the lifeboats she’d been hasty with the adhesive.

“How?”

“I was—” Her teeth slip, click against the others. She puts a hand on her mouth.

“What’s that?” His eyes are patient, fixed on her mouth. His little barrel chest rises and falls under his life jacket.

She sucks at her teeth, pushes the metal ridge with her tongue until they settle back into place. Then she smiles. “My teeth,” she says carefully.

“Can I see?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a crew member says from his windowed perch, “the coast guard is on their way. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Cheers and applause.

But the boy’s eyes haven’t left Jessica’s tight lips.

She hesitates. Then she parts her teeth and pops the denture loose, holds it for him to see. Four resin teeth in two humps of pink resin gum. Metal wire spans the gap between them and curls at either end to hold them among her real teeth.

His eyes get bigger. This is when he screams, her face forever burned in his mind as the toothless witch in the lifeboat.

Instead, his little finger rises to his mouth and pulls his lip down. He grimaces. His pink tongue squishes through the gap where he’s missing his middle-left incisor.

Jessica’s eyes blur. A drop crawls down her cheek. She asks, “Did it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

He hopes she won’t go in the back yard, because he doesn’t want her to find out that way. Slipped and fell on a garden fork stirring compost in the rain. He feels like a dumb old man.

He was scared until now, but now she’s back from her trip, and he’s calm. He can’t see her yet, because he’s still hidden away, waiting to burst out.

It’s dark where he is.

He has trouble remembering.

There’s still some of him out back, staring up at the dim gray cords of falling rain, which push more of him into darkness with each slapping drop.

Over the last few days, most of him filtered down through layers of grass roots, muddy topsoil, clay, sand. Ants drank drops of him. Worms used him to remoisten themselves. The marbling veins of mold absorbed what they needed as he sank through them.

He finally met a hard surface, then found pores to push into and passed through it almost like a ghost, regathered himself and slid into a large, dripping chamber.

There were others with him, so many others. Parts of others. Sent bobbing and spinning by more falling drops. Drifting. Some muttered clipped phrases in other languages, some in ancient tongues, some roared or growled, or they chittered, squawked, or grunted. But most were silent. He passed them, passed through some, felt their anger or sadness or confusion, felt some of it come with him, felt himself shrink a little.

The others frightened him, so he used the pulse of drips in the chamber to move along the walls, and found a way out. A long black tunnel full of others sitting, muttering, idle. It was harder to push through them, and they pulled more from him as he went.

The tunnel shrank and split.

He thought to split himself with it, to see where both paths led, but stretching apart made him feel weak, blurry at the edges.

So he chose only one and followed it.

Now he waits at the mouth of the tunnel, seeing light for the first time in days, staring down at the kitchen sink drain.

He hears her take the kettle from the stove, smells her vanilla hand cream—and he rushes forth into the kettle. He’s dizzy, blurred with others and bubbles in a new dark place. Loud metallic whooshing rises in pitch as it fills.

This churning is almost too much, but the rhythmic click of the stove lighting reminds him of who and where he is, and that he may see her.

Others relax into the heat and stretch themselves into division. Their mutterings go monosyllabic, then silent.

He focuses himself.

The water bucks and roars. Fragments of others split further, expand, and blow out the spout in a scream.

The kettle lifts and he feels the water calm.

Porcelain tinkles, and he’s poured into a mug where he mingles with sweet, pungent chamomile leaves.

She looks distracted—he’s almost forgotten why—and she disappears.

The stairs creak. Thumps above as she walks down the hall and says his name again. Then again.

Stairs creak, and she reappears, curls her hands around him, a single concerned eye visible past the lip of the mug.

She has her phone. He recognizes his own voice quiet and tinny. Then she speaks, but from all of it, he only understands the sound of his own name.

She puts the phone down and still looks concerned.

Everything shifts as the mug rises and tips, her face grows in the sky like a planet, the water lifts to touch her lip, air gusts from her nose above him, stirring the steam, and he relaxes and splits, and half of him disappears into her mouth.

That part sees more darkness. Another descent. He feels warm and thick, and the walls are soft and more porous than the chamber in the yard. He pushes through membrane and pulls in all directions, divides, and blurs to nothing.

The rest of him sloshes and drifts and watches from the mug. He has trouble staying together, is too relaxed now, and divides, and divides again, and expands and rises from the surface to float before her face, her eyes staring through him, before he forgets himself and joins the air completely.

The vineyards stretched healthy green stripes across the faces of the hills, but among them was a scab where the grapes had shriveled on their bunches like little lungs squeezed shut.

From atop a hill, the boy stared down at the blighted vines. His father would be unable to contribute to the royal wine barrels, and the vineyard would be razed.

Crows circled and dove at a shape that walked the withered rows. From afar, the boy heard it speak: “The vines can live again.”

“The grapes are to be offered at the harvest fair tomorrow,” said the boy. “My father is ruined.”

The shape stepped from the rows—a scarecrow in clothes fatigued by years of wind, rain, sun, and snow. Under the rippled hat brim its eyes shone like polished garnets.

“You may have the wealth of a hundred harvests,” it said.

Hope fluttered in the boy’s chest.

“But something must be given before something is received.”

“Anything,” said the boy.

The scarecrow took hold of the boy’s head, and with a small sickle carved a line around his crown, lifted the lid and scooped his brain and his eyes. His vision went black. Cool air blew into the cavity and whistled through his ears.

The scarecrow removed its hat and lifted a fat bunch of red grapes from its cranium, its eyes emptied of their garnets. The sockets were paneless windows, into which nestled the boy’s blue eyes as they lowered with his brain into their new container.

In turn, the boy’s head received the grapes; two bulbous members of the bunch filled his sockets and shone with dark juice in the yellow evening light.

“Touch every leaf,” said the scarecrow.

The boy set to work, blindly anointing each leaf with a sweet tear from his new eyes.

In the morning the father awoke to a field of luxuriant vines, but still not a single grape hung from them. He found his cart was missing. To save his son the shame of arriving cart-less and empty-handed, he walked to the fair alone.

When he arrived, he found his cart and his son surrounded by mountains of luscious grapes that reached even above the colored flags strung across the beams of the stalls. The boy sat among the piles, staring into the distance and wearing on his face the only smile in sight.

Villagers glowered from nearby stalls of gourds, fresh bread, corn of all colors, woven baskets and furniture, handcrafted tools, jars of jam and honey, and barrels of dried beans and herbs. Children approached to marvel at the grapes, but their parents quickly snatched them away as if from piles of moldering corpses.

“My boy,” said the father, stepping over grape-full crates near bursting on the ground. “It is a miracle.”

“Miracle, my eye!” said the butcher, tossing aside the bunches of grapes tumbling onto his table of salted meats. “The child is touched by the devil!”

The woodcarver worried over a toy horse stained with juice from grapes fallen into his chests. He spat into a kerchief and wiped the figurine. “Indeed, from what sulfur-smelling hole have you dug this ‘miracle’?”

The father put a hand upon his son’s shoulder and said quietly, “My son, what terrible magic was summoned for this?”

The boy smiled up at the father and a drop of juice ran down his cheek.

The father trembled. “I have gained prosperity, and lost my son!”

Fanfare chopped his voice away, and a mass of members of the court came down the alley. The King himself stepped to the front. All bowed, including the father and still-grinning son.

The King eyed them suspiciously. Even the jewels in his crown paled next to the light and color of the grapes. “Only yesterday your farm was a spot of blight,” said he. “Now you must answer for this… diabolical reversal of fortune.”

“Your Highness,” said the boy, “before you declare us heretics, please taste of our grapes.”

The King paused. Then he snapped his fingers. A set of bells jingled through the members of the court until a jester emerged.

The King pointed. “Jester, taste a grape.”

The jester approached with caution. He plucked a grape, examined it at length, put it into his mouth, and slowly bit down. “Sire…” He chewed. “My mind can invent neither quip nor jape, so awestruck am I by this delectable grape!”

The King hesitated, then chose and ate a grape. Misgiving melted from his face. He demanded that all of the court’s wine barrels be filled with only the juice of those grapes.

Having won the King’s favor, the father and son spent the fair selling their surplus to the decreasingly suspicious villagers. The boy stared at nothing and felt his way among the bunches, packing more crates while his father counted coins with quivering hands.

When the day dimmed, the last of the customers approached—a man in weather-worn clothes, with a strange old face but familiar blue eyes.

At the sight of those eyes, the father fell to his knees.

The man said, “Your son made a great sacrifice for this fortune.”

“Please, replace his sacrifice with my own,” said the father. “He must not suffer my failings.”

“Very well.” The man removed his hat.

In the following years, the vineyard flourished under the boy’s care. He often stopped atop the hill to admire the healthy green stripes stretched across the land. His blue eyes drank with sadness the plentiful view that his father could no longer see.

The father kept watch among the vines below, night and day, through all weather. Crows gathered like never before, but they left the vines untouched, favoring the juicier grapes of the father’s eyes.