Fiction by A.S. Gordon
She called me this morning because the planks have begun falling. There are red wasps nesting in the eaves. I can hear them buzz low in the wet air.
Dad brought me with him when you first began hauling the lumber out. You showed him where you aimed to build it. “Bad land,” he told you. You said there was no such thing. That to say so was an oxymoron. I stared eye level at the bull pressed into your belt buckle.
Within months the thing rose and shrunk, went up and came down again. You damned the lowland mud and the murky mirror the rain made it hold to the plans behind your eyes. The wind brought down the doorway I watched you spend an afternoon setting.
She leads me through the living room where the March breeze creeps through the window to rustle the plastic Christmas tree. Neither of you can take it down anymore. Her hands are like pincers. When I see you sitting out back her fingers bite my wrist. That it’d be best not to. That you’ve been having a rough morning.
You told me once that you weren’t woodworking if you didn’t walk out of the shop with a splinter when all was said and done. I wonder now if I could’ve taken yours and mine once, bit my lip and held out my palm to squirrel away a painless day for you.
I can see us again past the scarce wisps on your head, standing out against the whites and yellows on the honeysuckle vines. Before I knew what this state was called you told me they came from Japan. Years later I asked you about them again, some other soggy spring, after I’d read the species was invasive. You said that nothing belonged to anyone. It was here because something wanted it here, nothing more, and it would stay no longer than anyone wanted it to.
“Just like us,” you said. You were the commie Hoover saw in Guthrie.
She leads me around the side of the house, says there’ll be Kool-Aid for when I get hot. Even with the rainstorm I can’t believe it didn’t burn. I watched you carve nativity scene crosses inside the walls of that little shed, fashion violas and birdhouses and haggle with the summer sweatbees for your workbench. It’s all black as tar now. The lightning wanted it here no longer.
I turn again and there you are, sitting on the patio, rocking, rocking. You’ve muttered to me before that people come in the night. They track mud on the ceiling, they leave your truck door open. They cut your driver’s license in two. They know each twist of your safe, each disc in your spine, each dogeared page on your bookshelf. You find the crumbs they leave on your plate after she has filled your belly with pills. But now, here, you only raise your hand.
Where are you, man? Where have you gone to?
A.S. Gordon is an emerging writer from Murray, KY.
