I'm never going to finish this but I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE
Sometimes his mother carried him with her on long late-night walks across their farm, moving away from her insomnia, and his nightmares. His brother might have been a big rawboned eight year old and stubbornly fond of his bed, but he was still small enough to fit under the front porch’s sagging steps: his preferred method of escaping the baby sitter was hiding with his back up against the house’s foundations. Besides, her job at the mechanic’s shop had hardened her arms: she could lift him one-handed, tuck him between the crook of her elbow and the sweep of her ribs like a folded jacket.
Usually she wrapped him up in a shawl first, of course; with his head in the fuzzy depths, his breathing would come short and warm, forced back into his open mouth by soft fabric before he’d finished exhaling. It had an open kind of weave that caught the shadows and muted them, working unremarkable gloom into the wool. But she forgot, now and again, more frequently as he grew older, and those were good nights. Without the shawl to insulate him he could swallow cold and expand around the aching chill like a pufferfish until she shifted and settled him lower, near her hip, where he felt less like a prop, more like a real burden.
Those were the best nights, although it meant she would turn around much earlier, muttering words that sounded to his uncomprehending ears like an alien language constructed for sharper teeth than hers-- hard, undeniable, pushing out in blunt fingers of sound from under her tongue. Those were the nights that left him with a crick in his neck and starlight trapped in his sticky eyelashes. Winona a solid presence at his back and side while he stretched up small hands, coveting the crown of distant suns that pinned up what thicker darkness rose off the ground after even their sun’s deepest, reddest echoes had died their deaths.
It went on for -- months? A year? He doesn’t know.
More accurately: it went on until one of her coworkers, Frank, came over to keep an eye on him instead of the usual lazy-eyed teenagers, and paid attention-- too much attention, sad, thoughtful attention stinging like salt on Jim’s often scraped knees-- and stayed for dinner.
Afternoons, hiding from the prospect of eating around the table like a normal family, Jim wrote Frank, my dear, I don’t give a damn over and over in the dirt behind the porch steps; his shoulder blades flush against the rotting wood underside of the porch. Directly above, Frank stood on the lip of the steps and bellowed “Jim, come out or I swear to god I’ll -- god damn it, Jim, Ji-im” pulling his name long like low light does a shadow. His voice penetrated the boards but slowly, after a slight delay, dripping in softened onto the bare indifferent back of Jim’s bowed neck. Eventually his mother hauled him out, once she was sure Frank had gone inside in disgust; the deal was she could make him do things he didn’t want to do but she couldn’t betray his secrets.
Frank had long hands and a rough voice and he strangled her habit of reheated pizza at midnight with grave, worried looks and Italian cooking; gentled her by degrees until she could pass for ordinary in a poor light. He asked, because he was too intelligent to insist, that walks that kept her little boy up to the small hours of the morning stop. He saw to it that Jim was in bed by seven, falling asleep uncertainly while the few faint stars were still low in the sky, outshone by planets. They crouched near the horizon in what temporary skeletons his mind could force on them, reluctant as lizards faced with snow.
He saved Jim from god knows how many afflictions: the common cold, and failing grades, and the untranslatable sight of constellations at their zenith.
Usually she wrapped him up in a shawl first, of course; with his head in the fuzzy depths, his breathing would come short and warm, forced back into his open mouth by soft fabric before he’d finished exhaling. It had an open kind of weave that caught the shadows and muted them, working unremarkable gloom into the wool. But she forgot, now and again, more frequently as he grew older, and those were good nights. Without the shawl to insulate him he could swallow cold and expand around the aching chill like a pufferfish until she shifted and settled him lower, near her hip, where he felt less like a prop, more like a real burden.
Those were the best nights, although it meant she would turn around much earlier, muttering words that sounded to his uncomprehending ears like an alien language constructed for sharper teeth than hers-- hard, undeniable, pushing out in blunt fingers of sound from under her tongue. Those were the nights that left him with a crick in his neck and starlight trapped in his sticky eyelashes. Winona a solid presence at his back and side while he stretched up small hands, coveting the crown of distant suns that pinned up what thicker darkness rose off the ground after even their sun’s deepest, reddest echoes had died their deaths.
It went on for -- months? A year? He doesn’t know.
More accurately: it went on until one of her coworkers, Frank, came over to keep an eye on him instead of the usual lazy-eyed teenagers, and paid attention-- too much attention, sad, thoughtful attention stinging like salt on Jim’s often scraped knees-- and stayed for dinner.
Afternoons, hiding from the prospect of eating around the table like a normal family, Jim wrote Frank, my dear, I don’t give a damn over and over in the dirt behind the porch steps; his shoulder blades flush against the rotting wood underside of the porch. Directly above, Frank stood on the lip of the steps and bellowed “Jim, come out or I swear to god I’ll -- god damn it, Jim, Ji-im” pulling his name long like low light does a shadow. His voice penetrated the boards but slowly, after a slight delay, dripping in softened onto the bare indifferent back of Jim’s bowed neck. Eventually his mother hauled him out, once she was sure Frank had gone inside in disgust; the deal was she could make him do things he didn’t want to do but she couldn’t betray his secrets.
Frank had long hands and a rough voice and he strangled her habit of reheated pizza at midnight with grave, worried looks and Italian cooking; gentled her by degrees until she could pass for ordinary in a poor light. He asked, because he was too intelligent to insist, that walks that kept her little boy up to the small hours of the morning stop. He saw to it that Jim was in bed by seven, falling asleep uncertainly while the few faint stars were still low in the sky, outshone by planets. They crouched near the horizon in what temporary skeletons his mind could force on them, reluctant as lizards faced with snow.
He saved Jim from god knows how many afflictions: the common cold, and failing grades, and the untranslatable sight of constellations at their zenith.