0 comments
Trum ran looking for Bewitta by the pile of rocks that had been their school. Sometimes when they were feeling quite lonely or sad they played school like when they were little and one pretended to be Ms. Kintz, the kindergarten teacher and the other pretended to be themselves or one of their friends that had died or one of the kids they didn’t like very much especially Stant. Trum really liked pretending to be Stant and would get everything wrong on purpose because he remembered that Stant had been smarter than him, faster and his mom had always said to him before her body had disintegrated right in front of his eyes, “You should try to be more like him. He really knows what he is doing. And his family has been going places for centuries. It’s time our family went somewhere so I’m depending on you. Now what is A+1?”
Trum didn’t know what happened to Stant or his family that went places. He had a younger sister at the time only about two years old with really pretty blond hair that was always put back in pigtails or braids and tied with pieces of fabric so she looked fancy, like a girl from long ago. But she probably went right up into the sky being so small on one of those first days when the bad winds came and tore everyone’s houses around and knocked them to pieces and had everyone out fighting each other over whose piece was whose the day after.
That was a special memory Trum liked to remember like a piece of sweet food and he let it sit in his head for a while. He saw his Dad, heavy and tall who could pick up him and his two brothers and younger sister and carry them at the same time like a superhero. His dad had no hair but he didn’t look old because of it like some of the even younger men who lost their hair so soon. He looked almost handsome except he had a very big nose with a long red scar on it. But he had every single one of his teeth just like Trum still did and he tapped them with his fingers counting, A, 1, 2, D, G, 5, H, 7, 9 and also Z. He saw his Dad standing in the field with his strong muscular arms, out in the crowds of people fighting, yelling loudly for them to stop and listen and when they didn’t, he picked up a pipe and hit Mr. Freezus on the back of his head as he was trying to take something away from a woman which made the crowds all stop at once and birds suddenly appear in the air like they were listening too, maybe the only birds left in the world and everyone looked up in the sky and then back at his dad as if he was even more important.
And his dad had said, “Take what you need and leave the rest. We need to work together or we are not long for this world.”
The black and purple birds above him made a crowing sound agreeing with him and the crowd wasn’t restless anymore and his mother, who always had her mouth pursed up as if it to say something angry or to tell you she was going to sleep, came over to his father and put her hand in his hand. It was the most in love he had ever seen in his parents and even though they had died with everyone else when the rains came that didn’t stop and made everyone cold with coughs and there was no way to make fires to warm anyone up because everything was wet and also had large black worms that stuck to your body and grew big with your blood until you fell down and didn’t get up.
Where was Bewitta? He couldn’t see her anywhere. It was very hot and he was thankful for the shade by some of the larger rock piles. He went to go and sit and think about how he was going to find food for the day when he saw something glittering out of the rock pile in front of him and he hadn’t seen anything besides, dark colors or rock colors in a very long time.
He walked over and bent down and couldn’t see anything but more rocks and dark shade when a small wind came and made something under one of the rocks move in the breeze a little. There was something there. He picked up a rock to find it. But he still couldn’t see what it was. He picked up a few more and then there was something he saw often, a skeleton. But this one still had some fabric on it, the clothes the person had been wearing. He carefully dug around it and gasped out loud when he picked up a small piece of fabric. It was once a large heavy coat and had been a beautiful dark red color that he could still see through the dust. He hadn’t seen anything with color in a long time besides Bewitta’s plain hazel eyes or the brown freckles she had. Bewitta loved to stare in his eyes. He had blue eyes which had been a rare thing and people always said people with blue eyes were going to become something special. And he guess he did because he lived while everyone else died.
Then he saw another glint by the skeleton and he picked it up. It was a ring. He had read about these things long ago but had never seen one. How did it get here? He thought for a while and then wondered if the body had been under the school even before it fell down and that was the only thing that made sense. It was a gold ring, simple and circular but it was like magic. He tried to put it on his fingers but it was way too big. Then he heard Bewitta singing and looked up to see as she came around the corner by the giant hole the police station had slipped into.
“Oh sunny day
Oh rainy
Oh never day
I’m here again”
Drum had no pockets so he put the ring back under the rocks and covered it with the fabric so he could find it later. He would have to find a place to keep it safe. He had already been thinking about asking Bewitta to marry him, but he didn’t know when the right age was.
He knew that he had been going to school when the world fell apart and that had been seven rains ago but there had been no snows anymore so he didn’t know how long that really was. But he knew he loved her, even if she was the only other person in the world he loved her.
He loved how she still made up songs and didn’t care if he laughed about them. He loved how she ate her food carefully like her mom was still there saying, use your bib. He loved how fast she could run when she had to even when she was really scared and as her heart went tat a tat a tat tat like it was trying to get out, she would still smile at him. He loved that she would let him hold her hand to fall asleep sometimes and let him pretend it was for her and not him.
He was going to find a good place for this ring and then in two more rains, he would ask her to marry him and be his life. Maybe one day they would even leave the buildings they lived in, go walk past the big hill where they sometimes still heard noises and see what was there. Maybe one day when they were old enough to know their A,1, 2s by heart, they could have their own kids and he could show his son that he was big and strong with a funny nose as he carried them around making them feel safe even if things were really scary and there were no more birds.
“Trum, where are you?” Bewitta yelled out.
“Over here”, he yelled back smiling. Today was a very good day. Maybe they would even find enough food to fill their bellies so they didn’t sound like they were yelling at them like little children. Today was the day he knew how he was going to get married.
Bewitta got closer and looked surprised. She asked, “What’s going on? Why are you so happy?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just feeling like today is going to be a good day and that we will find a lot of food to fill us up. I’m about to go look but first, let’s look into each other’s eyes for a while. I want to look at colors.”
Bewitta replied, “Ok, sure.” And then sat down smiling to stare in his plain brown eyes saying, “I really wish you could see in yours and not in mine for at least a little while.”
Trum said expectantly, “Tell me what the blue looks looks like again Bewitta, tell me what you see.”
Sometimes Trum felt jealous when they did this because he wanted her eyes to be blue also. He wanted to look into eyes that looked like the sky used to look before the clouds came and never went away, that looked like pools of water. That was his favorite one, when she said they looked like pools of water. It reminded him of his Grandma Jack who told him she had run in a large body of water as a child and made sandcastles, that her footprints had left a path behind her. He thought she was just making it up and being a “senile old woman” like his mother would call her and then spit on the ground, having to get a towel to clean it up if she was inside which made no sense to him even at three or four, why not just swear like his father did and not get her spit on the clean dishes or the kitchen floor? But his mother was pure mystery to him. She still held a place in his mind sometimes yelling so loudly his heart skipped a beat or he froze in space.
His father, who had whacked the kids plenty, never came up from the depths screaming. If he arrived, it was leading with that long nose and a hearty laugh that would make Trum smile. Trum wondered if everyone else, the people that died, everyone—if they had ever had people who popped up suddenly, causing them to catch their breath or filling them with warmth and yearning like when he thought of his youngest sister, a triangle cut out and sent flying into the winds and above the clouds. And perhaps because she had been so small up and up past the clouds to where it was dark speckled with tiny lights, some brighter than others, some that could lead your way if you knew the science of it. He wondered if she was up there now, maybe even sitting on the Moon or the Sun, pleading with them to go back home and be with her family.
Did the Moon talk in our language? Did the Sun have feelings, especially about all of a sudden having a little girl sitting on it. One that would be asking for Moo-Moos and Crackles, one that wanted someone to hold her hand when she fell asleep, one that cried when she was the only one in a room all alone and one that made your heart go bigger every second you were with her. She used to crawl into his lap and play with his clumped hair, taking soot from the floor and drawing lines on his arm between the moles. One time when he was holding her and trying to clean up dishes at the same time, she had made a long line and then suddenly shouted out—“YOU GOIN’ TA DA OUTA SPACES!”
He remembered trying not to drop the dishes he was carrying and how much he had laughed, having her repeat it to his brothers Dwin and Bus who all laughed so hard that she began to cry, thinking people were making fun of her. Being young can be so very hard.
Then they had all played with soot for a while, drawing on each other’s arms and backs. His dad had been in the other room whispering to a neighbor. When he whispered it meant he was probably talking about the government or the mayor. The mayor, who would pick someone once a year to get shot with an illness they had kept up in a drawer, sealed up they said for safety, in case someone ever attacked and they needed to use it.
We aren’t safe, his father had whispered with people like that in charge. I only heard him say that once because speech wasn’t open back then. There were crows that listened and reported back. Little bugs on the ground that went from house to house to see who was speaking bad about the mayor or the government.
But there was no more mayor or government, no more birds or neighbors. There was just him and Bewitta, a girl he had barely known before everyone died and who was going to wear that ring he found today and become the mother of his children. He looked at her, her face dirty with soot and her hair a black clump, wearing the same dress she wore everyday with tears and holes in it. She had a scar on her knees from falling a few weeks ago and was sitting right in front of him, with a look of expectation, like she knew something was about to happen.
He said, “Tell me a story Bewitta. Before I go look for food, tell me a new story.”
And Bewitta began a story that turned into a beautiful song, a song that held high above all the rocks and all the holes and all the nothing that was there, a song that made Trum believe that someday life would change and a song that made him get up everyday. A song that told him that he loved and was loved and a song for everyone that was missed. A song for brown eyes and a song for blue eyes and a song simply made just for loving, their hands in one another’s making a fallen world become not fallen but theirs and rising, rising more and more each day.
You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.
0 comments