Stoke the Embers

Her breath mixes with the fumes expelled by the exhaust pipe of the wrecked 4x4. Her figure is distorted by the cloud of haze as she leans against the trunk of a frozen birch. Though I can barely make out her shape, there will never be a time in our lives when I don’t see her. 

Never.

Shortly, both her breath and the vehicle’s exhaust will cease to exist. The former is preventable. Maybe. The latter is a foregone conclusion. The loss of either spells the severing of a vital lifeline.

There’s no point in seeking shelter within the cab of the old Ford. The still carcass, illuminated red by the taillights, shattered the windshield sufficiently enough to remove that option from what was never a paradox of choices to begin with. The nearest towns, if you can call them that, are six kilometers in either direction. Getting signal out here is about as hopeless as expecting rescue before the truckers pass this route about four hours from now. We are, for all intents and purposes, fucked. Chances are they find our bodies huddled together under snow tinted gray by a bleak morning sky. Our lips blue as the veins beneath the thin and milky skin of her sternum. The specter of the thought is blacker than the darkness threatening to engulf us once the vehicle’s battery runs out. 

“Come now, darling. I need you out of the elements as much as possible. Get in the backseat and wrap yourself in that blanket. I’ll be back in less than ten minutes,” I say.

“Where are you going? Lay with me. We have to bundle together. Share heat.” Her chattering teeth barely allow the words to escape. 

That won’t be enough. Without a fire we will die out here. As surely as the snow will keep coming down through morning. I tell her as much. She pleads. Asks to go with me. But I’ve got eighty pounds on her, and our respective conditions are beginning to make the difference apparent. She gets inside and pulls the blanket tight up to her chin. I try to kiss her forehead, but my lips can’t move so I hold my face against her head for an extra beat longer than normal. 

“We’re gonna be just fine. I’m getting the shit needed to start a fire. I’ll be back in no time. Promise.” I will. I’ll find dry wood. I have to. It’s cold enough that the snow will hold form without soaking the branches. I have a knife and flint on my keychain and there’s a shovel in the trunk. I’m no Soldier, not even a Boy Scout, and I’ve never built a fire without the help of a healthy dose of lighter fluid. The chances of us making it through the night, even with a blaze, are slim, but I’ll find a way. It’s not the first time the odds have been against us.

As I close the rear door and turn to head into the woods, I catch my reflection in the rear-view mirror. A thin streak of frozen blood, black in the waning light, stretches from the hairline above my right eye, skirts the bridge of my nose, and stains the tick tufts of my beard. Past the mirror I can make out almost nothing aside from the falling snow that seems to exist only within the beams of the vehicle’s headlights. For a second, I don’t move. Paralyzed as the memory, or rather the trauma from it, arrests my motor functions faster than the climate ever could. 

I’m in a dingy studio apartment. Beams of light invade the space through tattered curtains, illuminating the specks of dust suspended in the air. She’s standing in front me. Gesticulating with a fire that could solve all the problems of our current predicament.

“I can't fucking stand you.” The shrill voice can’t be coming from the woman I love, though the neighbors would confirm that it did. A porcelain bowl flies from her hand and slams into my forehead. My reflection in the mirror behind her shows a streak of blood running down my face. The physical pain is relatively mild.

“What is wrong with you?” The voice can’t be coming from the man she loves, though the neighbors would again make the same confirmation.

“I hate everything. I hate my friends, my life, you. There’s no point to anything. I just want to fucking die.” Her fire has been extinguished by a flood of tears that shatter me into more pieces than I can count. She sinks to her knees between two cracks of peeling wallpaper. Burying her face in her hands, her shoulders jerking as she is racked with sobs, she mutters, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

My feet are sinking into the linoleum floor at the same time my head threatens to separate at the shoulders and float into space. I don’t know what to do. Everything I’ve done in my life, every lesson I’ve learned, is useless at this most crucial junction. So I just move forward. The only thing that feels natural. I kneel in front of her. Wrap her tight in my arms. Try to keep us going like I’m trying right now, out in the cold. “It’s gonna be okay,” I whisper. “I love you I love you I love you.”

I do the same thing again. I run straight into the wood line and head for a space deeper into the woods, where the canopies of the trees become intersect and provide more shelter against the falling snow. The thick powder forces me to lift my knees to my mid-drift just to move at a reasonable pace. I find a branch that is free of snowfall. It is low and thin enough to break with just my hands. I find another, and soon after that I have enough branches to fuel a fire large enough to keep us alive. If I can start it, that is. Birch is a quick burning wood, that much I know, so if I get it started I can keep coming into the woods to keep it going through the night. Plodding my way back toward the road, fast enough to return within my ten allotted minutes but not so fast to break a sweat, I make it back to the Ford with forty seconds to spare. The effort has me ruing the decision not to bring gloves along for our drive. I rub my hands to try to force blood back into them.

“How are you holding up in here?” I ask her. 

“Freezing my ass off, you?” She cracks a small smile. A good sign. “You were cutting it close you know.”

“I told you we’re gonna be alright. Just wait here a little longer. I found some wood, so I’ll be able to get this thing started pretty soon here,” I say, squeezing her hand before closing the rear door again.

We don’t have much time for chit-chat. The good spirits won’t last much longer. I can already feel my core temperature going down rapidly. Once it passes a certain point there will be no moving the limbs, let alone starting a fire with them.

I grab the shovel from the trunk and walk to a portion of the road’s shoulder where a snowdrift comes up to my chest. It takes ten minutes and the sweat does eventually come, but the snow is surprisingly giving here and I manage to dig out an alcove large enough for both of us and the fire. Returning to the car I see the battery has finally died, bringing the darkness to it’s final chapter. I open the front passenger door, and begin using my knife to cut into the cloth seat. I pull out what I hope should be enough cotton to use as kindling. I check to make sure she’s fine but tell her to stay in the car. This is my burden to bear. I want her to conserve her energy. I need her to make it through this, even if I don’t.

It is past noon on a Sunday morning. She has not left the bed and her unblinking eyes have not left the ceiling as she lays cocooned in the white sheets. The kitchenette where I fix some coffee is four steps from the foot of the bed, but I may as well be stuck on the ceiling above her, so heavy is the stare that I don’t need to be within its scope to feel the full weight of it.

“Are you hungry?” I ask. 

No response.

“We don’t have much here. I’ll have to step out to the store real quick but I can make whatever you like. Your parents were talking about a new place opening up on Monroe. Maybe we could meet them later. Your mom texted. Said she misses us,” I say.

The cup of coffee I place on her nightstand will stay as cold and untouched as my lips are now as she moves her head to avoid my kiss, whispering a nearly inaudible “thanks” as she does so. I say something about the speed with which I’ll return and spare a glance back before exiting the door. The woman laying there is nearly catatonic and likely feels little toward me. Any consolation of that fact is only possible through knowing that she feels little towards anything at the moment. I know her current condition does not define her. It is merely a storm to weather.

As the door closes behind me, I press my back against it, sliding towards the floor as months of repressed anxiety and exhaustion break open, wracking my body with wet sobs. I am a stumbling Atlas in this relationship, bearing the weight upon my shoulders as I attempt to carry us to brighter days. Atlas, the lucky bastard, was climbing a mountain with a summit at its end. I wander blindly through a forest, dragging us deeper into the maze rather than toward salvation above the cloud layer. It is easy to ignore the woeful look of the neighbor leaving his apartment across the hall. My entire world lies behind this door, which seems to be the only thing supporting me in this moment. The door, and an iron will to fulfill the promise I made to the sunny, ethereal soul behind it. 

“We will make it through anything.”

Standing up, I wipe the snot and tears from my face with the sleeve of my jacket. My steps echo on the stairs as I descend, carrying the boulder between my shoulders into another day.    

I gather the birch branches and the cotton and head back to the alcove. The walls of the snowdrift block the worst of the wind. That’s good. I take some of the smaller branches and break them into pieces to use as a base. I shred the cotton and place it between the pieces, then stack the larger branches in the shape of a tepee over the base. My fingers can barely form a grip as I stack the last branch, praying that the structure forms the requisite shape needed to spark the blaze. 

Holding the knife in my right hand, the flint in my left, my fingers resist the brain’s message to curl. I try to move the knife across the flint and miss it completely, the sharp edge slicing a deep gash across my palm. Blood pours from the wound and steams as it fills the grooves between the skin. Shaking, knees pressed into the snow and gravel underneath my weight, I let go a pathetic, undulating groan that would be more akin to the whimper of an unsettled child than a man’s desperate growl. Allowing a disgraceful moment of self-pity, I stare forward in bewilderment, the last bits of moisture freezing dry in my mouth as it hangs agape.

I accept that I am dying. There is no pain coming from the wound. The unmoving limbs hanging stiff at my sides may as well belong to the wolves, useless as my previous effort to accomplish the task at hand. It will be painless, I tell myself. She is probably already driftly off to sleep in the backseat, blissfully ignorant to my incompetence. But that is a lie. There is regret. There is fury. Years, laughter, children, dreams, love. A miraculous rebirth, stolen. Cut short by the cruel, unfeeling hand of fate. No, not fate. Just the terrible convergence of indecent coincidences. 

Everything is all right. The ground against my head is quite warm now. It feels good to lie down. Mother nature is a fine death to succumb to. It’s quiet and natural as old age. 

Our apartment is clean today. I do not remember cleaning it. The onslaught of this morning’s tears has prevented me from doing much of anything, really. I lie on my side, the warmth of the bed my only sanctuary after the robbery of my laughter, future children, dreams, and love not by coincidence but by my own incompetence. My inability to see the signs, to put the right pieces in place, and to put what pieces that have been broken back together. 

A soft pressure pushes against my back. Delicate hands come over my shoulder and place themselves on top of my own, radiating heat and strength. 

“Shh,” She whispers. 

“I’m trying. I’m really fucking trying,” I say, my voice quavering.

“I know, I know. Me too,” she says. Her touch is euphoria. An angelic resolve in her voice. She holds me there, and in this moment, if only this moment, I feel my strength returning.

A delicate hand comes over my shoulder. Two fingers press against the side of my neck. Snow crunches under boots as a figure appears and crouches in front of my narrowing vision. 

“Shit, shit, shit.” Dirty words from a celestial voice.

We are watching a movie. The day was long, but not so long as they have been. I did not face it alone. She shifts her weight so that her shoulder nestles into my armpit. I stretch my arm over her shoulder and her head comes to rest on my chest. Hair tickles my chin but I do not move it. In the space of three seconds the trials of today disappear and the tribulations of tomorrow become indiscernible in the distance.

The failing of the body has unleashed a clarity of thought and consciousness impossible to grasp without being this close to the end. I never carried our relationship. She was there just as much as much as I was for her, just as she is here for me now. How foolish I am. By taking on all the responsibility here in the cold, I almost doomed us to death. Of course she would know to share the burden. She always did. It has been both of us, all along, fighting for something greater than our individual selves. She led me through the dark patches when I was weak and I returned the favor when called upon. This life we have now, full of hope, congeniality, and a future was built in equal parts by the both of us. 

She is in front of the sticks and the branches now, knife and flint in her hand. I hear metal grating against stone. Sparks, glorious little bits of light, leap forward like a thousand fire flies bursting into the night. There’s a faint crackling, an aroma of smoke, and finally the divine sight of flames beginning to lick the base of the branches.

“Shh,” she whispers. “It’s going to be alright. We will make it through anything.”