A Hot Sonoma Porchfront
The gaunt man sneered from beneath the brim of his low hat. Tonight would be cold, he knew, but the heat of the afternoon made the night seem far off, and his mind was yet on other things. When he closed his eyes, he could hear the sound of water, the surf, and he could see only the crashing of the waves as they fell against the wooden hull of a ship. Not the delicate sound of the ambient insectile static or the far-off scratch of his intermittent TV. A crow landed in his yard, and out of habit the man reached for his gun, but he did not draw down upon it. The bird made for an inky blot upon the otherwise tinder brown landscape, and the man fell deeply entranced. As he watched the bird, so the bird appeared to stop its cawing and its pecking and its jostling, and to watch the man as well.
CAW. CAW. CAW. Only after some long moments did the crow caw loudly, and it felt to the man as if the bird were daring him to pick up the gun which he felt so plainly in the palm of his right hand. CAW. CAW. CAW. The bird’s head snapped to, keeping one sharp black eye upon him. CAW. CAW. CAW, squawking out these last three notes into the dull air before taking flight.
And now all that was left was the hot wind, which drug itself reluctantly across this dry field as it were some sort of somber refugee, and the man, who sat silent and as if awaiting something.
To him it was a hole, this aching, black and interminable thing; and before he could fill it, or heal it, or excavate it, the man had sold himself on the idea that it was smoking which he missed, and not his old life. It wasn’t the taste, or the smell, but rather just the simple act: of inhalation and exhalation, and the force of thought that this bellows gave his brain.
The man grew aware that his infant son had appeared upon the house’s doorway behind him. This made him stiffen, and he remarked this reflex to himself, for its hidden intent. The man felt how the boy had stopped upon the berm between the house and the deck, and he could feel the weight of his tiny son’s fear compounded by the sense of the boy’s inquisitive eyes upon him. What is it, boy? the man asked. The child was too young to reply. Neither outside, nor in, it stood a few moments before turning around and going back inside the house, leaving the man to return his eyes to the straight ribbon of empty driveway that bore on ahead. This single, straight, and miserable line. Every day the man prayed for it to bring him change as some in history have prayed for rain; for someone new, someone interesting to pass that interminable expanse of gravel.
The man turned, and eyed the doorway where his son had been. He felt low, no better way to describe it, low because he did not love the boy as he knew he should. It was possible that these things would change over time; this he told himself. This was the lie he allowed himself to tell and at the same time not believe; because the man knew what accepting the truth really meant. He wanted desperately to love the boy. He had to love the boy. He couldn’t imagine raising a child to whom he felt no connection, even though that was exactly what he was now doing.
The man got up and he took the gun inside with him. He stood on the doorsill a long time. It was dark inside the kitchen, his wife was at the stove, her hips swaying to a song from earlier in the year about a schoolboy who fell in love with his teacher but couldn’t get it up when the time came to deliver. The man put the gun in the darkest corner of the room and he approached his wife from behind while she stirred the pot of cabbage and dumplings.
He put his hands around her waist and felt the soft curve of her belly, the sharp lines of her hips. You’re going to get food all over you, she told him, Or you’re going to burn your hands. The man sniffed her neck in response. Her skin smelled good, of berries and linen. How did she keep herself clean like this? I smell terrible, the man grumbled, his face pressed against her cheek. I think it’s sexy, she smiled, her hand reaching up to cast itself across stubble on his cheek; and, for a moment, his whole world was the length and breadth of that: her palms upon his skin while the radio in the corner of the other room turned out some slow jazz instrumental. I just want to hold you here and dance with you forever, the man said. Mmmmm. His arm was around her waist, her hand upon his forearm; and so they swayed, and they did not hear it when the little boy came back into the kitchen.
The boy, dragging his favorite blanket, had come to stand with his thumb in his mouth and his other hand down his diaper. He stared up at them, the only two people that he could say with any real sense of the word that he could relate to at this point in his tiny life. These two souls, co-mingling into one.
It was not the boy’s first conscious thought, but it was his first conscious memory; the thing he would come back to, time and again, in the fog of drink, or the razor sharp clarity of sobriety, upon the quest for memory and meaning; this vision of his two parents dancing to the subtle plucking of a jazz bass and ivory keys; while above their heads the kitchen fan was turning slowly in the settling dusk; and far away, over two ridges, there comes the long, low sound of the evening freight train as it enters RidgePort tunnel.
Baby, said the woman; and it was here that she came to him, eyes shimmering, to make it alright, and the monsters go away.
Mama, said the boy; and it was here that she broke from him, leaving him cold, and on his way to the icebox to get another can of beer.
