by William Cryer



I n the deep predawn I wake to the groan of wind and the sound of Crepe Myrtle clawing at my window pane. I lie beneath a mound of cool linen and wait for my mind to piece itself together again, for memories to coalesce, but all I see is a whorl of capering silhouettes. Rising, I grope for the light switch. In the bathroom I'm still half-asleep, and the white ceramic curve of the toilet is a giant deviled egg without the devil. Have some yoke, I offer in slurred dream speech and drizzle, yellow and frothy. From the other end of the house I hear my mother stirring, beginning her daily ministrations in the kitchen. Prepare coffee, feed the dog, feed the cats, take out the trash. Neither of us drinks coffee and the cats have all disappeared, but she clings to her routine, like a sprinkler system that continues its diurnal chug long after its owners have fled their home, long after the home has begun to crumble and blow away upon an ancient and dying planet, which in turn persists its weary revolution around a black and shrunken sun.



Back in my bed the ceiling fan is a pin-wheel and I blow and blow, but can never send the blades spinning.

* * *



She moves silently through each room, sliding her hand over armoire and curtain, feeling for the past. But the house refuses to yield up its stores, so she retreats into the carport. There she is met with the dank smells of creosote and leafmold. Rusty pegs dot the far wall where assorted tools hang, collecting cobwebs and dust. Empty beer bottles remain undisturbed in a corner. She hesitates a moment, memories insinuating themselves, unbidden. She surveys the room once more—the tools, the beer bottles, the oily clutter–and the dismay on her face voices a sudden moment of clarity: that his entire existence was paraphrased in this one place. Finding no purchase in the carport, she steps out onto the broad front lawn. A soft breeze thrums the trees, carrying the faint laughter of a little boy. The sound floods her mind, sending her reeling into time. He appears on the wooden swing, like a diaphanous afterthought. The child is beautiful, like a fallen seraph, with eyes of ponderous sapphire. He looks at her with a numinous smile that pierces her heart. She sits down beside the apparition and places her hand in the empty space.



Later she kneels next to an oak tree, turning up soil in the flowerbed. The dog trots over and drops something at her feet. It is the fetid skull of a calf, exhumed from some neighboring field. She picks it up, gingerly holding it before her. For a long time she gazes at the bone. And by the flower bed under the oak tree her quiet sobs take form and mingle with the soft drone of cicadas.

* * *

Dusk spills over the firmament like entrails from a stomach. In the purple gloaming, familiar sounds bloom and unfold all around; low and resolute crepitations swell up. The warm summer wind diffuses the sour odor of Mustang vines. Behind the shed I hold the water hose over the peach tree saplings, and the sound is like the thudding of coins to the ground. In the distance I see her gliding past tree and shrub. She roams the fields, a silver negligee floating behind her, a shimmering gauzy film. She is a wraith, a specter haunted by specters. She does not know that it is her heart she is searching for. She does not know that long ago she anchored her heart to her other child, and that now her heart is anchored in a grave on a far hill where a grove of pine trees weaves an eternal nimbus of twilight.

* * *

At night I wake with spasms of fear that she is dying. She tosses in her bed, across the hallway, and I can hear the cry pivot in the dark.



Please. Oh please.



It's the sound of terror and momentarily I am seized with a paroxysm of dread. Mama, my hoarse shriek calls out to her as I fumble and flop around and around to free myself of sheets. Flailing in the dark, I stagger across to her room and throw open the door. But she does not see me; her mind clutches tenaciously to her dream, unrelenting, siphoning in pieces of reality and weaving them into her nightmare, fashioning sinister, frightful things. And I realize for the first time that our lives are ruled by shadow and suggestion and very little else. She chokes back a moan of terror and recoils deeper into her covers, and I know it's not me whom she sees but my father. And I can do nothing but squeeze the doorknob and try to hold back the oncoming tears.



Far away the dawn burgeons in roseate skeins.





© 2010 William Cryer. All rights reserved.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR





William Cryer was born and raised in Austin, Texas. In college he studied English literature and the Romance languages. Currently he is in his first year of graduate studies.