Wreck Center

Time is a strange fucking beast, Hank thought.

He pulled the heavy-duty padlock to untangle it from the chain, while juggling a cup of coffee in his other hand. The guard dogs, Axle and Bumper, jumped excitedly against the other side of the fence. He got the key into the lock but couldn’t turn it. Sighing, he put the coffee down on the hardened, tire-rutted dirt and tried to shield the cup from the soon-to-be pouncing dogs. This is when they usually knocked it over, ruining his morning. The three of them went through this dance every day; you’d think he would get a travel mug with a locking lid for Pete’s sake.

Hank felt strange this morning, like he sensed something was coming, but he didn’t know what. Maybe it was the inevitable thing we all wait for.

The lock popped and he swung the gate open, picked up the miraculously intact coffee cup, and, dogs at his heels, made his way to the old rusted trailer that was his office. He needed to feed the dogs and set up the lawn chairs before the boys arrived.

Inside the trailer it was like stepping back into 1976: cheap wood paneling on the walls, dirty yellow shag carpeting, a salvaged black-and-white TV with rabbit ears. He opened two cans of Alpo, plopped the dog food onto paper plates and brought them outside. With a hose he refilled the two-water bowls. The dogs tucked into their breakfast with full concentration.

He dragged five folded lawn chairs out from under the trailer and set them up facing the junkyard entrance. He settled into one and took the long-awaited sip of java. It was going to be a hot, sunny day; maybe he should set up the beach umbrella for shade. He checked his watch, then set his cup down and with a groan he stood and got the umbrella. He dragged over three tire rims and stacked them on top of each other, then jammed the umbrella point into the ground in the center of the rims. He settled back in the chair and took another sip of coffee, checked his watch again. Two minutes till they arrived. The dogs, already done with their Alpo, found a shady spot on the side of the trailer to rest.

After the death of his wife, Amelia, five years ago, Hank had a lot of hours on his hands to ruminate on time. Where the hell did it go and why so fast? How do you get it back? Does it really move faster every year? So far, he had reached no conclusions. Sometimes he felt like a time traveler, except, and unfortunately, he could only go forward—one day at a time. He had opened the Wreck Center junkyard soon after Amelia’s death to keep busy and get out of the empty house. Plus, it gave the old boys a place to hang out.

Bobby and Tall Tommy arrived first, as usual. Before they had even reached the entrance, Old Mickey and Renaldo appeared and caught up to them. Hank watched them approach four abreast, as if in slow motion. Jesus, it seemed like they were all just young men, out carousing and trying to meet girls.

They reached the chairs and plopped down with groans, Old Mickey taking his Yankees cap off and fanning himself. Mickey had been the first of them to go bald, before he was thirty, hence his nickname. He had seemed old to them, though they were all just a few months apart in age. They caught up to him eventually hair-wise, except for Renaldo who sported a full thatch of hair, the bastard. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was still almost all black. Only the laugh lines around his eyes betrayed his age.

Hank remembered they used to joke about whom would be the first to die, back when they were young and invincible and death was an abstract idea. They had all concluded it would be Tall Tommy, due to his penchant for driving fast. It was funny then; not so much now the closer they got to the actual finish line.

“Another hot one,” Tommy said, wiping his brow on his sleeve.

“It’s July,” Bobby said.

“Every day isn’t this hot in July.”

“But it shouldn’t be a surprise if it is.”

“I’m not surprised,” Tommy said, standing to adjust the angle of the beach umbrella. “Just sayin’.”

“Don’t forget guys, hot air rises,” Renaldo said. “Its hotter up where Tall Tommy resides.”

“I would laugh if I hadn’t heard that joke for the last sixty years.”

“Really tall people have fewer sweat glands,” Bobby stated. “They can’t cool their bodies like we can.”

“What about short people?” Renaldo asked.

“What about them?” Bobby said.

“Do they have more sweat glands?”

“Height has nothing to do with the number of sweat glands,” Hank said. “It’s all about the pores.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?” Tommy asked, furtively sniffing an armpit.

“The glands produce the sweat and it comes out of the pores,” Hank said, nodding his head for emphasis.

“Well, whatever, I’m still friggin’ hot,” Tommy said.

They’d been in this routine since they retired; well Hank wasn’t retired, he owned the Wreck Center now, but the work wasn’t too taxing. He often imagined that if they just sat here in these chairs without ever leaving, without going home to their lonely apartments, then the passage of time would somehow be suspended. They could just exist in this little bubble indefinitely, and the aging process would be arrested. Like an extra inning baseball game—off the clock, time paused until something finally gave and the clock restarted. But what were they sitting around waiting for? He didn’t like the answer.

Sometimes old memories came back in a flash, triggered by a smell or a song or nothing at all. They’d just show up and say hello, as clear as if it had just happened yesterday. He’d find himself vividly reliving a moment in time with old friends, relatives, co-workers, girlfriends. He’d wonder where the person was now and he’d not understand how that moment in time was gone, why he couldn’t go back for real. Everyone says life is short and when you really think about it, it is. Well, shit.

“What’s up your butt today, Hank?” Renaldo said. “You’ve barely said a word.”

“Just thinking.” What he was thinking was how they’d all ended up single again, one way or another. They were too old now to start chasing the ladies again. They were stuck with each other.

One of those vivid memories came to him now, the five of them piled into his first car—a 1960 Ford Falcon, blue with a white top—taking a drive out to Jones Beach in the summer of 1964. The year he was sure of because the Beatles had already invaded America and that’s all you heard on the radio. He wondered where that car was now. Lovingly restored, waiting in someone’s garage to be taken out for a Sunday drive? Or compacted into a cube, sitting in a junkyard like the Wreck Center?

If only he had that car again—if they had that car again—it would be like having a time machine. All of them back where it had begun. And, really, what has changed? A few more wrinkles, less hair, more pounds around the middle?

“I have to make some calls,” Hank said abruptly, standing, cutting off Renaldo’s story of the time he chauffeured for Frank Sinatra, which was in its eighty-third telling.

* * *

The next morning Hank set out the chairs as usual. The dogs were fed and resting. In his shirt pocket was $750 and a photo of his 1960 Falcon that he had dug out of an old box in his attic. He was both nervous and excited for the old boys to arrive. The calls he had made to other junkyards were successful; he had located what he was looking for. The surprise was due sometime this morning.

The old boys arrived and settled in. They were talking baseball when a flatbed tow truck pulled into the yard. The driver got out holding a clipboard. “Who’s Hank?”

Hank went over, scrawled his signature, and said, “Set it down over there, next to the trailer.”

Tall Tommy, Bobby, Mickey and Renaldo were standing now, making their way over to Hank.

Mickey said, “Is that what I think it is?”

They watched as the tow truck driver backed in and stopped, then lowered the bed. Soon the old car was settled next to the trailer. It was missing its hubcaps, the tires were bald and flat, what was left of the paint was faded and mismatched, having been replaced at some point with different quarter-panels or primed over and never repainted. The rear bumper was missing and the windshield had a crack running up the driver’s side. Hank went over, thanked the driver, and handed over the cash.

“What are you up to, Hank?” Tommy asked, as the tow truck pulled out of the junkyard.

 “This, my friends,” Hank said. “Is our time machine.”

“Our what now?” Bobby asked.

“This can’t be the same one,” Tommy said, shielding his eyes to peer inside.

“Can’t be,” Renaldo said. “Is it, Hank?”

“It’s the same one,” Hank said. “I tracked it down by the VIN number.” He opened the driver’s door and got in. He ran his hand over the dashboard and was immediately drawn back to when he had first started dating Amelia. They’d park at Glen Island and watch the sun set. He closed his eyes and could imagine she was sitting next to him now. As corny and clichéd as it sounded, he felt her absence in his heart, and believed people could actually die from a broken heart. Not that he would ever tell the guys this thought.

The others slowly circled the car, lost in their own memories. They had had a lot of adventures together, a lot of road trips, and all of them had borrowed the car at one time or another for a hot date.

Hank got out and said, “So, this is what I’m thinking…”

* * *

They set to work on the car, none of them experts, but figuring it out themselves nonetheless. They’d hire out the real experts for the tough parts, like the custom paint job and the reupholstering, replacing the windshield. Hank always kept the old photo in his pocket for reference and inspiration.

This was now their daily routine, meeting early at the Wreck Center and getting to work. If they needed a part, Hank got on the horn and found one from a fellow junker. Their goal was the have the car restored by Labor Day, when they’d take a trip out to Jones Beach like in the old days.

Renaldo said on the first day, “This baby is old and gray and rusty, just like us.”

“We haven’t aged any better,” Tall Tommy said, pausing from pulling the wheels off to stretch his aching back.

“I know we’re not firing on all our cylinders anymore.” Bobby said, and laughed until it turned into a smoker’s cough, even though he’d given up cigarettes years ago.

“Speak for yourself,” Mickey said.

“You only have four cylinders anyway,” Hank said.

“It’s not how many cylinders you have, but how you use them.” Mickey winked at Tommy, who rolled his eyes.

Hank stopped to drink some water. What’s the difference between 1964 and now? Same car, same bunch of guys. What’s changed? Some biological cellular reactions—or whatever the hell it is that causes aging. Hank remembered when he had hit his forties. This was when he realized he wasn't a kid anymore; he’d felt old. Hell, now he’d kill to be that age again. One day—he was sure of it—scientists would figure out how to reverse that cellular reaction and people would start getting younger. He sighed. Here he was thinking about time again. Time passes, people age, life is short—accept it. But he couldn’t.

“Let’s pull that rear quarter-panel,” he said. “I have a new one coming in today.”

* * *

A few days into the work, Hank had picked up a canopy carport at Walmart and assembled it around the Falcon to protect the car (and themselves) from the elements. The summer was racing fast toward Labor Day. Today was the day the car left the Wreck Center to get painted and have the seats redone. The car was running now, and Hank had registered it and gotten insurance. They were all sitting in the lawn chairs when Joe, the guy who ran the local body shop, drove the car out of the junkyard. The next time they’d see it, it’d look like new.

“Well, now what the hell are we gonna do?” asked Mickey.

“What did we do before the Falcon?” Tall Tommy said.

“This,” Renaldo said.

“Kinda dull, sitting here waiting for something to happen,” Bobby said.

“It was good enough before,” Renaldo said.

“Maybe we should work on another car,” Mickey suggested, searching the junkyard for another wreck.

Hank said, “I poured a lot of money into that car. Well’s dry.”

“So, I guess we wait,” Mickey said.

“Yup.”

“Maybe we should move the chairs to the carport,” Bobby suggested. “Get out of the sun.”

Everyone silently agreed and slowly dragged his chair to the mouth of the vacant carport. The dogs followed.

“Got a better view of the road from here,” Tommy said.

“Yup,” Hank said.

* * *

The Friday before Labor Day the old boys assembled in the carport. The Falcon was due to arrive. They remained standing, drinking their coffee. Axle and Bumper sensed the excitement in the air and ran around, looking eagerly at them as if they were at the park and expected a stick to be thrown. Joe had said he’d bring the car by before ten; he wanted to close up the shop by noon for the holiday weekend.

“It’s 10:05,” Tommy said, tapping his watch.

“He’s late,” Hank said.

At 10:08 the Falcon turned the corner and came into view, the re-chromed bumpers sparkling in the early morning sun. The white roof matched the thick stripes of the whitewall tires, and the metallic slate blue paint on the body shined magnificently. Hank gasped. It was as if it was suddenly 1964 again, and the boys were all at the starting lines of their lives instead of the final laps.

Joe got out of the car with a big smile and Hank found himself actually hugging the man.

“Joe, what can I say?” He pulled back. “This is… you’re an artist.”

The old boys were patting Joe on the back and inspecting the car. Joe shrugged, said, “I had a little help.”

Hank opened the door and leaned in. Everything looked like it had just rolled off the factory floor. The only concession to the modern era was the CD player Hank had installed, replacing the factory AM radio, which, good junker that he was, he stored in his trailer. “The interior is just like I remember it. Everything looks brand new,” he said.

“Well, it is!” Joe took one last look at the car. “This was fun to work on. Now who’s gonna give me a lift back to my shop?”

* * *

The boys piled into the Falcon at 6:30 a.m. on Labor Day morning, the trunk packed tight with a cooler, beach chairs, and an umbrella. Destination: Jones Beach, Long Island, New York. The five of them didn’t fit as well as Hank remembered them fitting all those years ago.

“Maybe the car got smaller,” he said.

Tommy, sucking in his gut, said, “No, we got wider.”

“Well, shit,” Bobby said.

The windows were down and once they got moving the cool morning air felt good. Hank merged onto the Hutchinson River Parkway headed south toward the Whitestone Bridge. If traffic cooperated, and it looked like it would, they’d be at the beach in forty-five minutes. There was no one else on the road, which made no sense since it was a holiday weekend.

Without any other cars for comparison, there wasn’t a yardstick to measure the Falcon against; cars were the best markers of eras. It gave Hank a sense of timelessness. He wondered if the others felt the same. It could have been any day, any year, any decade.

He pulled out a CD of The Beatles’ first album and slid it into the player. As Paul McCartney counted down “One, two, three, FOUR!” to the opening track “I Saw Her Standing There,” it was Beatlemania again. The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show, the Mets new home, Shea Stadium, had just opened, and The World’s Fair was happening in Flushing Meadows. The future was now.

Hank pressed the gas pedal a little harder. The air through the open windows kicked up a notch, bringing with it the smell of the salt water as they approached the bridge.

Another memory came to Hank now, of sneaking off with Amelia to go to the beach. It was early in the courtship, when they wanted to be alone and ditch out on their friends—and not feel a bit guilty about it. After getting the blanket and bags settled on the sand, Amelia had handed a bottle of suntan lotion to him and asked him to do her back. Those were the days when people wanted to attract as much sun as possible to their skin. She rolled over and he squirted some on her back and rubbed it in like it was a test, not wanting to miss a spot. It was the most intimate thing they had done yet. “Can you imagine if we hadn’t met?” she’d said. “But we did,” he’d said. It was a chance meeting, not through friends like most people. “Yeah, but do you think we would’ve met another time? I can’t believe that it wasn’t meant to be somehow.” He’d considered this. “Yes, I think we would’ve met some other time.” She smiled then; her eyes closed behind her sunglasses. She’d said, “I would’ve waited for you for as long as it took.”

The Falcon went through the toll and they were on the Whitestone Bridge. Hank punched the gas pedal and the car responded with a growl. He looked over the side of the bridge at the East River below and felt like he was flying. Every minute that passed brought them closer to their destination. There was still no one else on the road, and it felt eerie. Afraid to break the spell, no one spoke. They listened to The Beatles’ youthful enthusiasm, letting the music transport them back in time.

Old Mickey felt his scalp tingle. Tall Tommy’s stomach receded from his beltline as if in retreat. Renaldo’s laugh lines smoothed out and disappeared. Bobby breathed easily for the first time in years, his head hanging out the window like a happy dog.

Hank smiled, felt his heart expand, the emptiness he’d felt since Amelia’s passing slowly filling with warmth and hope. He knew with a certainty he had never felt about anything that she was out there, still waiting for him to find her.

~ ~ ~

Donald Capone’s novel, Just Follow Me, was published by Pen-L Publishing in 2014 (republished by the author in 2018). His short stories have appeared in the anthologies Sudden Flash Youth; The Westchester Review; and Short on Sugar, High On Honey: Micro Love Stories; as well as Weekly Reader’s READ magazine, Word Riot, River and South Review, and the Onyx Publications online journal and podcast. He can be found on Twitter @DonaldCapone

Français Aujourd’hui

“Why don’t you kids make yourself useful. Go inside and get some scissors. Cut that lawn over there. This place needs some sprucing up—”

There are two pairs of scissors, one sharp, one woefully dull, and though my sister Lily offers to make a go of it with the dull ones, I agree to give her the good ones if she stops crying.

Our father comments from the veranda.

“To the left, Lily. No, not my left—yours—”

And individual blades of grass draw comment from his intermittent tours of inspection.

“Clip them all to the same height, Eliza. Your sections are uneven.”

These I return to and summarily snip. All I have to do is think of my mother, and nothing living escapes deliverance from these scissors.

We are vacationing in the South of France. The sun-drenched villa perches on cliffs overlooking the sea. There are pear orchards. That is where I hid last night to see it happening, the strange arithmetic of marriage—the subtraction—how, by candlelight, with graceful dancing limbs, dusky murmurings ending in a slap, four became three. I alone saw this; my sister slept. Now that slap is everywhere. It inhabits the flesh of the growing pears. If we stay here for long enough, we’ll be eating it.

* * *

We woke up this morning to find our father on the veranda. His face was sallow; his fat body slumped.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.

I stepped in front of my sister to soften the slap that survived the night to end up here.

“Your Grandmother’s sick. Your mother’s gone back to the States.”

“When will she be back?” Lily asked.

My father peered vaguely in the direction of the orchard. “I don’t know. We’ve got this place now. We’ll have to make the best of it.”

I stared stonily at the veranda’s columns.  Dry paint was peeling from them. My own eyes felt just as dry. I kicked at the marble stoop until my toes stung.

“What will we do without Mommy?” Lily sniffled. A few tears leaked from her eyes.

He stared down at us. That was when he ordered us inside to get the scissors.

Now we crouch and snip. The sun beats down on our backs.

* * *

At twelve-thirty, when the sun is at its hottest, he retires to the shady verandah out back. Hunkered in the grass, Lily and I wait. It’s so quiet we can hear his footsteps trudging across the villa’s marble floors, a door swinging on its hinges, and then the creaks and groans of the hammock announcing its burden. A moment later come the snores: thick and regular.

We lie down side by side in the narrow swath it has taken us hours to cut. It’s a green grave from which I squint up at the sun through the branches of a pear tree at the edge of the orchard. The heat settles on top of us, as if the sun has gotten snarled in the branches and can’t go down.

I say, “She’s not visiting Grandma, you know. She’s leaving Daddy. She may have someone else.”

Lily props up on an elbow.

“You think Mommy’s a bigatist?”

Under that French sun the whole world seems a dry dazzling white. Even the young pears loading up the branches look bleached and artificial.

“Bigamist. But do you even know what that word means?”

“Maybe we’re not really his?”

I turn to her.

“We’re his. If anyone’s the bigamist, it’s him. Probably that’s why Mommy left.” I wave a fly out of my face. “She probably isn’t our real mother anyway.”

Lily looks shocked. “Don’t say that! Of course she is.”

“I bet the strain of it got too much.”

She sits up. “What strain?”

“The strain of raising us, someone else’s kids, naturally. Besides, we’re not easy, you know… Well, you’re never any trouble…”

She takes my hand, looks me in the eye.

“Elzie James, are you telling me the truth?”

“Of course,” I say, shaking her off. “What, are you calling me a liar?”

A moment passes. Lily takes the measure of me.

“Well, if Mommy isn’t our real mother, then who is? It isn’t Alexandra, is it?” she asks with dread of the housekeeper. “But she doesn’t even like him.”

“Dummy, who says you have to like someone to marry them?”

We creep away to spy on that housekeeper through the kitchen window. I can feel Lily examining Alexandra with new eyes. A sharp-featured older woman, she holds knitting on equally sharp-looking needles and looks like someone to steer clear of. Suddenly our father appears in the kitchen doorway. We crouch lower. Alexandra mumbles a swift “bonjour,” to which he replies, “What the heck’s so good about it?”

He walks toward the fridge.

“Ah, Monsieur James,” she chides, “s’il vous plait—on peut manger dans une heure...”

“That may be,” our father says. “But on ne mange pas real food.”

From outside, we see his big hand on the unopened package of hamburger meat. Cutting it open, he sinks his knife into the red and white worms of meat and spreads it raw on to an oval slice of Jewish rye, bringing it to his mouth before the spreading is even complete. Four, maybe five slices before trudging off to his chamber to collapse on the bed. We peep in. There he lies in his underwear, snoring, a great spill of a birthmark half exposed on his gut: a deep, strawberry- red anchor.

* * *

I begin to believe my own lie that our mother isn’t ours. It explains how easily I can act like my father.

Now, crouched at the villa’s kitchen window, “Here are the scissors,” I say to Lily. “Get going.”

She looks at me without surprise, with that expression of inevitability and premature forgiveness which only makes me more contrary.

* * *

There is a whistle. I’ve heard it before, but only in France does it seem to be summoning me too. I follow the lazy purr of a saxophone floating from an old radio and it leads me to a clearing in the orchard. My father lights candles. The flames brighten the whites of their eyes. Scuffing the dust, they dance. Their bodies cradle each other. My mother’s head is on his shoulder. I hide behind a tree. Their words float, stirring the air, the leaves. My ears are hungry for such murmurings.

“The agent wasn’t kidding,” my father says. “This place is a palace. And for four blissful weeks, it’s ours. What do you think, Rosie? Will it suit?”

“What are we going to do here for four weeks?” she says, lifting her head. Her lips are a bright balloon-red.

“Do? There’s plenty to do,” he says. “And there’s stuff nearby. Monte Carlo isn’t far.”

She turns toward him. “As if coming here wasn’t enough of a gamble…”

“You were gambling that in five, ten years he’d still be around to worship you.”

My mother has a parasol beauty that looks particularly good under the French sky. She prepared for this trip, bought a little string bikini. There’s a sheer cover-up too through which the bikini will show. They are as proud of her body as they are of my rare sorties into school work.

Her remoteness holds a kind of majesty. Even from a distance, the weight of it bears down on me.

“You’re happy now,” my father says.

I wonder what’s paler, her face or the moths.

“How much did you spend on this place?” she asks. “Will you win it back?”

“I did you, didn’t I?”

“The children will be happy here,” she says duskily.

A clumsy moth bumps her face, lost perhaps on its way to the flame. She brushes it gently along.

“Wipe that stuff off your lips. Kiss me.”

I blush at the thought that they won’t be able to help themselves, they’ll get swept up in some icky passion. But the kiss, when it comes, is scarcely a graze, light enough to allay my fear that he’d end up with her mark on him.

* * *

My father unravels as surely as the mysterious garment Alexandra undoes each night, to begin anew the next morning with the same kinked yarn. Tonight I’m wakened from a fitful dream. I leave Lily sleeping and walk toward the strange sounds which I deduce must be my father weeping. They aren’t loud sounds, but they’re deep and penetrating, and they travel the long hallways and twisting corridors with determined desolation. I descend to the kitchen, open the ice box, and snag the last slice of Jalousie. I put it on a tray with a tall glass of Cassis and follow the doleful sounds out on to the veranda. Handing it to my father, I wrap my arms around his belly. In this moment I forget what he might have said before she slapped him. He has to hold the tray out to avoid my burrowing head.

* * *

In its sprawling opulence, the villa mocks our shrinking numbers. The textured magnificence of the furnishings contrasts with the monotony of the motherless, wifeless lives we now live.

Our father mopes over his French cuisine at his solitary station, the verandah. Lily and I eat at the banquet table in the dining room, an immense slab of mahogany so polished that, looking into it, it’s as if we’re feeding our reflections. We’re waited on by a handsome boy, Philippe Pierre, whose father, we guess, must be a mortician. Philippe wears a black jacket we’re sure serves a gruesome double duty. When he draws close to me with the silver service of petit pois or fillets de rouget aux herbettes, a pungent smell wafts up from the outstretched sleeve. This morning he whispers, “You are preety,” which causes my cheeks to flame and Alexandra to look up over the rims of her specs.

* * *

We have our choice of a dozen different bedrooms. The windows in these are all sealed shut, screened by stiff savagely pleated draperies. No breeze blows through. You can’t hear the sea. Everything is dark and shut up; the silence is deep and aspidistral. Phantoms lurk beneath this crust of neglect. My mother’s, however, is nowhere amongst them.

“Do you really think Mommy’s never coming back?” Lily whimpers from inside cool mimosa sheets. “Then why aren’t you sad? Who’s going to take care of us?”

It’s nine o’clock, the light is declining. The balcony doors pried open, the wild sea is just a blur over the treetops.

“I am sad,” I say touchily, batting the festoon that loops between the four posters of our bed. “I’ll have to take care of you. I’m older. You don’t know the ropes.”

“What about Daddy?”

The deep sigh that escapes me stirs some extravagant feathers sprouting from a vase.

“He’s a gambler. He doesn’t know what to do with kids.”

Lily huddles closer.

“Mommy’s probably out interviewing orphanages,” I say authoritatively.

“Orphanages?”

“Yeah. She’ll pick the best one and then she’ll give us up. Officially. The most we can hope for is that we won’t be split up… I wouldn’t want to be. I like you, kiddo.”

I plant a small kiss on her forehead.

“I like you too, Elzie. A lot. But you lie.”

“Do not—”

“Yes, you do. All the time. I never know whether to believe you.”

* * *

Every day, driven by a bungling desire to please my father, I wield my blades. I excel at grooming the lawn. Yet day by day his interest in the childish diversion wanes. I begin to feel guilty for appropriating what was originally his, begin to make blunders and glaring omissions with the scissors I think will revive him. But these do nothing to allay the dismal moods that chase him back to the verandah, where he broods in a rocking chair. I hear the rails right now grinding into the marble floor.

Days stretch to weeks. The pears grow. We hear nothing from our mother. Every day I run down the driveway to check the mailbox for a letter. I never wonder what she’d write to me, only what I’d say to her if she did. Our father never wavers in his story about our sick grandmother and I never let on that I know it’s a lie. As time wears on, my yarns become more fantastical. Our mother was a travel agent before she got married. Maybe she bought herself a one-way ticket somewhere. Or maybe she really does have a lover, he already has kids, and they don’t want more. Feeling more French by the day, I seem to lie even better in this new language.

* * *

We’re walking, my father and I, through the pears. It’s so hot that even the orchard flies are resting their wings in the leaves.

My father says, “I know you were there. I’m sorry you had to see us like that.”

It’s not that I can’t bear him broaching the subject. What I won’t be able to bear is how different I know his version will be from mine. My mother’s body is a perfume we both still smell. Yet what lingers now that she is gone is not her, only something taken from her.

I know he’s lonely, he needs to talk. It would be so easy. All I’d have to do is ask and he’d spill, like dice at the gaming table.

* * *

The very next day, he surprises us by saying, “Come on. Let’s get out of this place.”

He takes us into town, where flippers and wet suits, inner tubes and rafts fill the windows and stoops of shops. Mopeds fart along the cobbled streets and the boys riding them whistle and caterwaul at me. We eat ice cream cones as we walk barefoot along the beach. I’ve almost forgotten that there’s a world beyond the villa and orchard.

Some boats are shackled together on the sand and our father suggests we rent one—a pedalo. Hopping aboard, we squeal when, beneath his weight, the boat dips so steeply it nearly takes on water. We stare at the wolds of flab that hang over his belt.

He tells funny stories. For a time we drift.

He says, “This hasn’t been much of a holiday for you girls, has it?”

“That’s OK,” I reply. I feel airy. With its scattering of sun diamonds, the sea is an artificial swimming pool blue. But there’s life beneath, beautiful fish, the occasional eel swimming past.

* * *

After the boat ride, we walk home along cliffs. Our father is quiet. I know something’s coming.

“Listen kiddos, I thought I might get away for a while. Go to Monty and play the tables for a couple of days.”

“Is that where Mommy is?” Lily asks.

“No. No… I’ve spoken to Alexandra. She’ll take good care of you.”

I grumble, “But we don’t like Alexandra.”

“What’s playing the tables?” Lily asks.

“Everybody knows that,” I say. “It’s when you go in rich and come out poor.”

I peer over the cliffs and down at the ocean where the waves are whipping up. His news should have come as a surprise, but seems now as inevitable as the incoming tide we’ve narrowly missed.

Later that night, he sees us to bed.

“Don’t be sad, girls. We had fun today. We’ll do it again some time…”

“Tomorrow?” Lily begs.

He switches out the light.

Tomorrow comes. But our father doesn’t. He goes to Monty.

* * *

The housekeeper forbids us to wander beyond the orchard to the cliffs overlooking the sea. She makes sure we come in at a decent hour, oversees meals, and insists on strict bedtimes. Her idea of a holiday seems a kind of French boot camp, for which I resent her colossally.

Most mornings find us back at the lawn, which, throughout the weeks, has taken on a poodle-like appearance. But the lawn is our sustenance, and we begin to work more slowly now, as if on rations, for fear it will run out. We begin to take long breaks, during which we lie face down in the grass. We try working a few limericks, but these usually start badly:

She kneels on her knees and cuts the lawn to a crew

She does not mean to cut that praying mantis in two…

* * *

Later I sit beside the tape recorder my mother has left behind, her Français Aujourd’hui tape still inside. Back home she played it over and over, repeating the strange syllables, the phrases and idioms of a language as manageable by her as a mouthful of marbles. I hear her voice close to me: Je suis heureuse… Nous avons dansé jusqu'à minuit…

* * *

In the clearing, their dulcet murmurings become an angry hiss. Everyone knows men have vices, so what?

She’s wearing her bright pink mini dress. Gay, saucy, it sheathes her body, showing the best, hiding the rest. I’m the one who asked her to put it on. I dress her for this night. Tonight her usually quiet lips pulse in the candlelight. I’ve heard them argue before, yet never seen it. I wonder if they always do it with red lipstick. My mother wants something from him, that’s why the red. It’s a signal, like the whistle that drew us here. I feel wicked watching them. Maybe I don’t deserve to hear what he whispers. Her lips part in a smile. He’s whispering, she’s smiling, and then she slaps him. Quick as lightning, he catches her arm, in his clutch the slapping hand raised high, like a prize fighter’s.

* * *

It’s early morning, the fifth or sixth since my father left. I’m down at the foot of the driveway feeling around in the empty mailbox when Philippe Pierre appears, just arriving to help with breakfast. The sun’s already blazing. I wear shorts, but he’s dressed in a black suit. Compared to his, my skin is still pale.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” he says in a voice of the silkiest velvet. “Come walk with me.”

Together, we walk up the sandy driveway.

He’s early that day. We stand in the shade of a pear tree.

“Tu aime France?” Philippe asks.

“Oui. But I miss ma mere.”

I wonder why I’m telling him this—a boy I scarcely know when I can’t even admit it to my own sister.

“Ta mere? Where is she?” His forehead wrinkles in concern.

“I don’t know. She just left.”

Philippe pulls aside the flexible branches of a nearby bush to reveal a scrubby path.

“Viens. I show you something.”

We wind through the pears down a steep slope, emerging at a secluded rocky inlet by the sea. When we sit down, Philippe lights two cigarettes and hands one to me. I inhale, cough, then content myself with watching the ash grow. He smokes his like a pro.

“Alors, I must go. I will be late.”

He bows. We shake hands with awkward formality.

* * *

The ringing phone penetrates the villa. I pounce on it.

“Mother?”

Someone breathes there. I can smell her perfume.

“Afraid not, Bunny. Just your old Dad…”

Silence. My heart sinks.

“Alexandra taking good care of you?”

“Uh-huh…”

Lily comes in, stands beside me to share the receiver.

“Are you coming home soon, Daddy?” she asks.

“Yeah, pretty soon, Duck.”

Ear to ear, we wait on the sticky silence.

“Well, I’ll be in touch soon.”

Later that afternoon, sneaking into the wine cellar and lifting a bottle and a corkscrew, we sneak away without Alexandra noticing. We wander into the orchard. I jigger open the bottle, a Chateau Lafitte 1947, and we down it like fruit juice. The wine goes straight to our legs. Unsteadily we make our way through the trees.

We arrive at the cliffs, a sheer wall of jutty molars overlooking the beach. I prance from rock to rock, feeling as sure-footed as a goat.

“Elzie, come back, you’re too close—”

But good lord, what else are cliffs for? I’m not afraid of falling off, but if I did, I know I’d fly.

* * *

The next evening I go out alone. I sidle along the edge of the orchard, kicking up dust that blows back into my face in the hot breeze. Night gathers first here, not as something lost from the sky, but as though it were exhaled by the root-gnarled earth. It’s not well-behaved, workaday and predictable as it is back home. While it pools and swirls around the trunks of the trees, daylight clings to the path and I can pick out the rubber half-moons of my sneakers.

I sit down against a trunk on the small bed of pebbles at its feet. I begin chucking them, aiming them low to avoid hitting the ripening pears. You can tell when you hit a tree by the tiny dull thud. It feels good, like hitting a person.

“Merde!” comes a voice.

“Qui est la?” I say.

There are footsteps and then the voice comes again.

“Mademoiselle Eliza?”

“That you, Philippe? I’m over here.”

Night thickens around me. I can feel Philippe now feeling for where I am, touching my face, my shoulder, my arm, as he lowers himself down beside me.

“Alors,” he says, sighing. “A beautiful evening, n’est-ce pas?”

I feel happy to be here with him. He understands things. Lily is still a baby.

He lights a cigarette. The breeze blows the smoke my way. Laughing, I blow it back in his face.

He laughs too and, stubbing out his cigarette, puts a hand on my bare leg, just above the knee. For a moment I’m too surprised to do anything, even wriggle away.

“Tu est jolie,” he says. A hand grasps each of my thighs.

“Philippe,” I quake. “What are you doing? I thought you were my friend.”

“Je suis,” he purrs.

“Get off me. I have a disease. It’s catching—”

He laughs again, this time sordidly, and says “Mmmm,” as he buries his face in my neck and then kisses me, open-mouthed.

“Philippe, I’m too young. You need an older girl—”

Frantically, I wipe the red lipstick from my mouth.

“Non—toi… You sexy leetel girl.”

“I don’t want to. Please stop—”

But his hands keep coming.

“Couche-toi ici,” he says, patting the ground.

“Non, let me go—”

He throws himself on top of me. I sock him. Laughing, he yanks my skirt up, gropes around. When his zipper gets stuck, I give him a shove and run as fast as I can.

Minutes later, I’m breathless at my father’s chair. Kneeling, I lay my head on the seat. I try to cry. I think about how much he might be losing at the gaming tables at this very moment.

* * *

Breaking free of my father’s grip, my mother skims right by my hiding place, not seeing me at first. Then she doubles back to stand in front of me. Her hand is under my chin. She coaxes my face up, my face which can’t help but obey. My eyes come last—reluctantly—to hers. I know she is seeing something obstinate, pitiable. As her hand must have moments before, so her eyes burn now. In those eyes I hitch a ride to somewhere I don’t understand. She kisses me French style, on both cheeks, something she’s never done before. Her double kiss pins on me a sordid badge.

* * *

Sitting on the toilet, I examine the situation between my legs. Have the curling hairs multiplied, thickened their ranks since last night in the orchard? I fetch the scissors, the sharp ones. They still have a few blades of grass on them. Then I call Lily in.

“What are we doing in here?”

I lower my shorts.

“Elzie—” she cries, averting her eyes.

There might only be seventeen months between us, but between the legs, Lily is still a child.

In readiness, I raise one foot to the side of the tub.

“What do you want me to do?” she beseeches. Her frightened eyes widen.

I make a few ominous scissor snips to the air.

“But Elzie, I don’t think you’re supposed to—”

“You can get rid of them, see?” Grabbing a cluster of hair, I slash through it.

“Elzie, don’t do that—you’ll bleed—”

“Not if you do it.” I hand Lily the scissors.

She plants her feet. “I’ll tell,” she declares.

“Oh yeah? Who?”

Her brown eyes begin to swim. She puts the scissors down.

“OK, Lily,” I say. “I’ll tell you something, but you have to keep a secret. Last night, I almost did it.”

“Did what?”

“You know. It. With Philippe Pierre. He tried to force me, but I wouldn’t let him.”

Lily looks skeptical.

I pick up the scissors and slap them into my palm. “I solemnly swear on Mother’s life I’m telling the truth.”

“I’m sorry, Elzie, I don’t believe you.”

* * *

“Alexandra,” I say to the housekeeper, seeking her out in the kitchen, “what would you do if something bad happened to us? Like, what if I got sick or fell off a cliff? What if I cut myself with the scissors?”

Her knitting needles stop clicking.

“Viens ici,” she says, and I do. I stand before her. “You are hurt?” she asks.

I burrow into the folds of the housekeeper’s dress.

“Ai, faites attention!” the voice barks, whether because the stitches are slipping off her needles or the needles poking into her, I don’t know.

I want to cry, but push away. “You’re not my mother—you’re not anybody’s mother or else you’d knit a hat or a scarf—”

Yelling at Alexandra feels good. So does Alexandra’s flat bony bosom, when she reaches out and pulls me close.

* * *

The next day is cool and drizzly. A delicious smell of baking lures me back into the kitchen.

“I will knit you a blanket,” Alexandra says to me. “When you go back to England, you will be warm.”

For a few minutes I don’t say anything. Then, “Your English,” I say, “is so much better than I thought.”

“Only when necessaire…”

“Is it necessary now?”

Alexandra stops knitting long enough to pat my head. Her hand is hard. 

For a while we sit together, not talking. The needles click. A damp breeze blows in through the kitchen window. Out on the wet flagstones, Lily skips rope.

“You’re nice,” I say. “Why do you pretend you’re not?”

“Maybe for the same reason you do. It is easier.”

“And why do you pretend your English is bad?”

“People say things when they think you do not understand.”

Satisfied with her answer, I nod.

“They do that with kids, too.”

My eyes light on the ancient telephone mounted to the wall. I say to Alexandra, “Has my mother called?”

The housekeeper presses her lips together.

“Only your father.”

“What did he say?”

“He ask how you are.”

I put my elbows on the table.

“What did you tell him?”

“I say, ‘Elles souffrent.’” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

Alexandra puts down her knitting.

“It means we have a pear tart to eat.” Donning oven gloves, she takes the steaming hot dish from the oven. “Alors. Come help me lay the table.” She adds with a knowing look, “Philippe Pierre is no longer with us.”

* * *

Our father comes back as he left, without fanfare, appearing a week later. There are presents. He hands Lily a rosy-cheeked doll dressed in traditional French peasant costume. Entranced, she fiddles with its frilly bonnet and apron.

“And this is for you,” he says to me, “my big girl who held down the fort… Close your eyes.”

I feel something tickly brushing my lids.

“There. Now go and look at yourself.”

The painted eyes of a young woman gaze back at me. But it’s the girl who runs out into the orchard and stomps on the fallen pears.

“I want that damn doll!”

Suddenly my father’s hands are around my wrists.

“Hey, hey,” he says. “Calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I want to—”

“Look, I know you’re upset—” Letting go of my wrists, he turns and offers me his arm. “It’s OK to be angry. Go on. Hit me. As hard as you can.”

He doesn’t know what he’s asking of me. Doesn’t know how hard I could slug him. So hard he’d stagger back and fall over!

“You can’t hurt a fat man,” he says. “That’s why he’s fat. Go on. Hit me.”

My fists go slack. My hand opens. The slap is in it—living, burning.

I run away from him, through the orchard via the clearing, all the way to the other side. By the time I reach the cliffs overlooking the sea, I’m calmer. Last time I was here I was juiced. Now, sober as a judge, I lie down on my tummy and let my arms hang limply over the edge. I run my fingers through the scrubby tussocks of grass eking out their sparse livings in cracks on the cliff face, only a little nostalgic now for the old impulse to clasp and snip. I’m glad to be alone. I’d be embarrassed for anyone to see me now, pressing my cheek to the earth, looking sideways at the world beneath. It’s better not knowing where my mother is. It’s better that she went than placing odds on a gamble she can never win. Or perhaps this moment is her gamble paying off. I used to be small enough to fit between her hand and his cheek. But now other things have taken my place: the occasional unhitching of a bikini top, the outpouring of breasts on to sand. Young girls unfrocking beneath umbrellas, wriggling out of shifts. The sounds they make drift up to me: a throaty laugh, the groan of pleasure from the corner of a woman’s mouth. The squinch of a wine bottle being uncorked, like the sound of a thrown kiss.

~ ~ ~

Julie Esther Fisher’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, William and Mary Review, Other Voices, etc. Her short story won Sunspot Lit’s 2022 Rigel Award. Her finalist entry to their 2022 Summer Short Story Prize is forthcoming in Bridge Eight. One of her stories, adapted from a chapter in her debut novel, was selected as a finalist in Boulevard's Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers. Another piece was selected as a finalist in Arts and Letters Unclassifiables Contest. An American expat who grew up in London, she now lives, and passionately gardens, on several hundred acres of wild conserved land in Massachusetts.

Last Light of Day

Simon was late and I waited on the sidewalk. It was the Fourth of July, and sun glared off the bridge cables, and I could already hear what he would say when he rolled up, like don’t give me that look man you know how my dad is man it’s always something with that guy. Scooters flew and dogs yapped and I leaned against the wrought iron park fence, scanning the crowd, wondering to myself why he could never be on time, even for his own thing. From across the street, the condo towers cast long shadows back into the razor wire and bakeries, the brownstones and delis. Idle couples held hands in the harbor breeze and building shade. Sunglass mothers pushed gear-laden strollers under the sweetgum boughs and linden boughs and maple, birch, and pin oak boughs, and I kicked an asphalt pebble into the gutter. A barge horn bellowed and I cussed under my breath. We had to get going while the sun was still high––if he didn’t come soon, we wouldn’t make it.

Ray made some concessions for the holiday, but even on the Fourth, Simon had a curfew. He and I would walk over to the 69th Street Pier to watch the fireworks over Staten Island and Bayonne, with strict instructions that he leave before the finale and head straight home. Every year he complained, and every year Ray held the line, like don’t give me that side-eye kid and don’t act like being out that late isn’t already a privilege kid. Simon fumed about it, but I never blamed Ray for the caution. Nights were one thing; the Fourth was another. After the last rocket burst and the last echo rippled out over the harbor and died, the spectators went home and the whole neighborhood fell under a different species of darkness, eerie and misshapen, a radical flickering darkness of hollow pops and whirling sirens. Drunken revelers swarmed onto the sidewalks. Car alarms chattered and glass broke. Contraband bottle rockets whined and howled and thundered through the dark streets. Ray was right to be nervous; anything could happen under such strange cover, and it seemed like most things did. No matter Simon’s objections, the curfew was there for a reason. It wasn’t going anywhere.

So we would make our way over in the heat of the afternoon, buy snacks at the bodega on 71st and Shore, and stand back from the crowd, down the promenade from the pier, where there was space to lean over the railing and smell the water. The stars would come out slowly. Circling moths would block out the streetlamps, and we would talk and eat chips or mini-muffins while we waited. At full dark, the show would start. Rocket after rocket would thunder out over the harbor and smoke would gather around the rocks and bridge piles in a thick haze. After about twenty minutes, everything would fall suddenly quiet and that was when we’d turn to leave, in the lull before the big ending. The streets were pretty empty then, and we’d take our sweet time, drag every second we could from the walk back. We were usually somewhere between Colonial and Ridge when the show resumed, haltingly at first. In the long second between each flash and the percussive thud in its wake, we’d study our own faces in the shop windows––or I would, at least. Surrounded by all that black glass, we looked small––but older too; the whole world over our shoulders, flashing bright and dying away; eerily illuminated, then gone again. And as we made our way across the neighborhood, the finale would build to a climax and the flashes would come faster and faster, until the whole street was lit red-white, and we couldn’t hear a thing over the roar. We’d stop walking at Ovington and Fifth, just as the last volley flared across the sky––bump knuckles, just as the bricks and window panes ceased their rattling. He’d go his way; I’d go mine.

But we had other plans that year.

I checked the time. A car stereo boom-throbbed around the corner, and I shook my head. Still no Simon.

* * *

Ray spent most of that morning perched in the open window, one foot propped on the sill, the other dangling free over the dormant radiator, pencil tucked behind his ear and a cigarette pinched between his fingers. Big Sir dozed in the La-Z-Boy with a knitted afghan over his knees, and a glass of orange juice on the table by his pills.

Simon was being Simon, stomping around the kitchen and slamming cabinets, picking a fight over little more than a few extra minutes, like we’ll leave as soon as they’re done Ray it’s not even that much longer Ray what difference does it make. He’d been at it for a while, and it was wearing a little thin. I rolled my eyes––discretely, I thought, but Big Sir saw. I glanced over and he had one eye open, trained on me. A smile spread over his face and he held my gaze a second or two, then closed his eyes again. Ray took a long drag and leaned half his body out over the fire escape. He blew smoke across the quiet street, and hollered back through the window, like don’t call me Ray kid and you’ll come home just like every year kid and I mean straight home not a minute later. Simon heaved a big sigh and opened his mouth to say something else, but I elbowed him in the ribs. He couldn’t afford trouble; we had plans later, and a little time was better than none at all.

Ray leaned back out the window. He took another pull and exhaled and a hot breeze blew the smoke back inside. Big Sir jolted awake again and coughed. He glared and shook his head and pressed a rag to his crooked waxy nose, like Jesus Ray I don’t need that shit in my life right now. Ray grimaced and hastily ground his cigarette dead on the sill. Oh shit Sir I didn’t mean, and he reached out to pat Big Sir’s bony shoulder, like sorry about that Sir I didn’t even realize. Big Sir waved him away and clenched his fist around the rag and settled back into his chair. Ray watched the old man’s eyes flutter and close again, then looked up at me, and why don’t you go ahead and take off Ben the kid will come meet you when he’s all finished in the kitchen. Simon muttered something to himself, shuffled over to the sink, and turned on the tap. I watched him for a second, then thanked Ray and waved goodbye on my way out the door. Big Sir opened one eye and waved back.

* * *

Simon shouted from down the block and I jumped. He stood perched on the fire hydrant outside the bodega on the corner, head-and-shoulders above the baggyshirt teenagers filtering in and out with their Funyuns and Mountain Dew. I waved him over. Simon frowned, tapped his wrist impatiently, and shouted over the traffic sounds for me to hurry up. My backpack was pretty much empty, and I flung it over one shoulder and dashed across the street in the middle of the block. An old Civic slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn and half the neighborhood turned to stare, but I was already on the sidewalk.

“’Bout time man.” Simon hopped down from the hydrant and adjusted his own backpack. “Late as shit.”

“What?” I stared, out of breath. “I was right down there the whole time. You’re the one––”

“Come on, Ben.” He shook his head. “I have to be home in three hours. That’s it. Three hours, there and back.”

“Alright fine.” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say. I guess this is your thing anyway.”

He scowled. Even just a year ago, he would’ve said something like it’s easier for you man your dad isn’t waiting around the apartment to chew your ass out when you roll up thirty seconds after curfew man I’ll trade you any damn day of the week. But he didn’t talk like that any more. For one thing, he knew me well enough by then to know it wasn’t all that funny. For another, I would’ve called bullshit. I’d spent a lot of time around Ray, and he was a teddy bear––intense, sure, but not like Simon used to make him sound. He left for work before Alvin unshuttered the newsstand by the 77th Street R-train, and wrote at the desk in the living room until Big Sir had snored through at least two hours of News One; but he also packed Simon’s lunch when he was done for the night, and left little rhyming notes at the bottom of the brown bag. He hung pages of the Times on the fridge with multi-colored magnets so he didn’t have to stop reading just to slice the onions, but he also folded Big Sir’s glasses and tucked the musty afghan around the old man’s bony elbows when he dozed off. He’d bend over his tape recorder and legal pad, lose himself in headphones and furious scribbling, and we could shout profanities from the kitchen or throw a couch pillow at his back without breaking his focus, even a little bit. But he’d also say stuff like come on Ben you can call me Ray Ben you know Mr Gutierrez is my dad’s name, then laugh when Big Sir glared at me and pointed a bony finger at my chest and shook his head, like you’ll call me Sir until I’m too old to kick your ass for getting it wrong.

“It’s not my thing, man,” Simon answered, jabbing his pointer finger into my shoulder. “It’s our thing. Our thing.”

“Right. Yeah.” I rubbed my shoulder. A rusty fence hemmed in the leaning trees, and pollen floated off the boughs in urine-colored clouds. I stifled a sneeze. “Well, I guess it’s actually Big Sir’s thing, now that I say it. I mean, if you think about it, it’s really kind of Big Sir’s thing.”

“Yeah, man.” Simon grinned and nodded. “That’s more like it.” The foot traffic had thinned and he picked up a pebble and threw it down the shade-dappled sidewalk. It clanged off a stop sign. “Yeah, man.” He nodded again, solemnly this time––straight-faced. “It’s Big Sir’s thing.”

We started walking.

* * *

We’d been school-and-neighborhood friends for years, but the first time Simon invited me to the apartment was a week after Big Sir moved in. After that, I went over almost every day. We’d unsling our backpacks by the shoe rack, and Big Sir would bellow something about not letting the door slam, or about bringing him some orange juice from the fridge. We’d unpack our homework and he’d leave the glass full and sweating on the end table and rest his elbow on the sill; mock the pierced and tattooed vegans leaving the gourmet grocery five floors below; drift away as the evening sun dripped off the laundromat and Starbucks like lava. I’d sink into the couch while Simon ransacked the kitchen for snacks and bragged on the old man, like Big Sir used to be one of those Union Square hustlers man like one of those dudes who plays chess for money on the plaza, or Big Sir used to hitchhike on Fort Hamilton Parkway just to see he how far he could get before dark. Big Sir would play along if he was lucid, wink and say king me Ben and laugh when I looked confused, or stare me straight in the eye and say you should give it a go Ben it’s a pretty decent way to kill a boring day Ben you should try it.

One afternoon in March, while Simon was microwaving popcorn, Big Sir sneezed so violently he knocked his juice off the end table. Simon whipped around to see what happened and I jumped up from the couch. The juice had only been about a third full. I sidestepped the puddle, picked up the glass, and handed it back. When Big Sir leaned forward to take it, a fart issued from under his blanket––an airy odorless squeak, like the hinges on an old door. Simon and I both lost it and Big Sir just sat there smiling, glass-in-hand, while we laughed ourselves to tears. When we’d finally pulled it together, I went over to the kitchen and Simon handed me a roll of paper towels for the orange juice like Jesus fucking Christ Sir today is not your day. Big Sir set the glass back on the table and thanked me for my help, then arched his eyebrow at Simon and said watch your language kid and you know good and well every day is my day.

* * *

“It’s the other side of the highway, right?”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “Other side of the overpass. Forty-second I think.”

“You think?”

But he wasn’t paying attention. A feeble string of yellow embers cut the purple sky and fizzled over the hoops and chainlink fence and a dry pop clapped the rooftops––bootleg prelude to the real thing. A baby squealed at the sound, and three older girls in scissortorn denim turned and gazed up at the tired, sparkshot twilight. We slowed a beat to watch the shimmer fill their eyes, but dream on man dream on, and it was only for a second. Outside the dusty brick lowrises and rundown brownstones, old folks played gin and drank Irish whiskey from blue plastic cups. Chickens hung trussed and burned in windows with peeling letters advertising American Chinese and Halal dim sum. Trash and pavement-water bled into the sweet tang of lemon garlic and spun lamb, and we dodged a borough cab and crossed the street.

* * *

Every night, when Ray got home from work, he’d lean against the wall with a spatula in his hand, a grease-stained Atlantic on the counter, and raw chicken sizzling in the pan on the stovetop, shaking his head while Big Sir threw up his arms in the brassy sunset and said things like I ever tell you about the time I ate seven hotdogs and rode the Cyclone?

Big Sir loved holding court like that. He only turned on the TV for the evening news and he never drew the curtains. He’d recline by the open window with the afghan over his knees and we’d fill Simon’s binder with baseball cards or scribble away at the math homework or devour our bodega candy while Ray was busy cooking. On warm nights, we would sit out on the fire escape, listening to the street sounds and crackling grease, talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and Big Sir would cut in sometimes, telling stories through the open window about how when I was your age I told your great-grandpa I’d named a pigeon after him and he said how do you even know which one is which and I said of course I know which one is which and he said that’s not an answer and I said can you really not tell the difference and he shook his head and said Jesus kid you’ll never get out of this city and I said what makes you think I want to. Simon always laughed at that one, but I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be funny.

Other times, we would set up a board game on the throw by the chair and I’d roll the dice for Big Sir. The game inevitably descended into a chaotic tangle of wild stories, wheezy laughing, neighborhood mythology, and accusations of cheating; Simon staring up like you have to write this shit down Big Sir I bet you a million bucks people would read it. Big Sir would laugh and say something along the lines of well I did once when I was your dad’s age but it came out all long and convoluted so I figured I’d just read it back and mark out all the crap that didn’t seem important any more and I sat there for ten days and ten nights without food or sleep marking and marking until all I had left was a raggedy beard and a howling stomach and a thousand pages with all the words scratched out. When Ray heard that, he dropped the spatula on the floor and cracked up. He laughed until he coughed, laughed until he lost his breath entirely, laughed until well after the tears dried and the chicken started smoking on the burner and the rest of the room was quiet.

* * *

“This the one?” I stopped in front of the walk. A plane traced a line across the sky and a single star peeked through the sunset’s blue extremity. Cars roared across the highway overpass and I eyeballed the shambling brick facade; flags and towels hung from open windows; AC units dripped frigid water onto the peeling sills. Leaves littered the stoop and a broken bottle glittered on the bottom step. The buzzers to the left of the door were framed in dented steel, with tenants’ names scribbled in ballpoint pen on a torn index card next to the buttons. On the alley side, next to a weather-beaten dumpster, a fire-escape zigzagged up to the rooftop. “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Simon snapped. “This is the one.” He ground a stray piece of glass under his heel and glanced over his shoulder. Trees lined the darkening sidewalk and trashcans were still on the curb from the day before. Down the block, the street disappeared under the elevated highway. The neighborhood––so far from the crowded pier––was quieter than I’d expected. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Hold up.” He darted into the alley, but I didn’t move. The fire escape’s steps were crooked and the whole structure leaned away from the building at the middle; paint fell off in big flakes and rust chewed up the metal underneath. “Hold up,” I said again, scrambling to think of some way to make him see the fragility of the whole apparatus. “Wait a second. Don’t you see the way it––wait a second. Maybe we should––”

But he chose not to hear.

“Come on!” he hissed from the alley. He gripped the dumpster’s heavy plastic lid and swung himself up. From on top, he grasped the rickety access ladder and started climbing. “Or don’t. But I’m going either way.”

* * *

Technically Ray gave Big Sir his room, but most nights Big Sir fell asleep in his chair and Ray slept in his own bed. One night, I woke up on the floor with a Silverado commercial tossing flickery blue onto the dark parquet by my pillow. Simon slept on the couch. I rolled over and saw Big Sir’s chair was empty. The afghan lay in a heap on the floor and orange light fell in from the hall in a long, dim stripe. The toilet flushed and Simon started awake.

By the time Big Sir’s paper-frail silhouette appeared over the threshold, Simon was sitting cross-legged on the couch, rubbing the yawn from his eyes. You okay Big Sir? The old man gripped his aluminum walker and stepped into the column of orange light; glasses askew and silver hair mussed, shoulders shaking with the effort. He looked down at his fat, purple knuckles, the popped veins, the brittle fingers gripping the handlebars––shook his head, and said I’m fine kid don’t worry kid you know all this shit’s just temporary. Simon started to stand but Big Sir waved him off, so he just dropped back onto the couch and watched the old man’s grueling progress, confusion on his face, like what do you mean Big Sir like you’re moving back already or the walker or what? Big Sir lowered himself gingerly into the chair and winced and the television lit his face like flame under a burner. I handed him the afghan and he thanked me and glanced up at Simon, eyes dancing in the weird glow. Simon stared back and Big Sir blinked, then settled back into his chair and muttered something like sure kid you got it kid the walker.

* * *

The sun was an orange haze at the bottom of a purpling sky and we could see all the way to the elevated D-train and the twinkling neon of Chinatown. I leaned against the bricks and sighed out over the wide expanse of yellow trees and sooty rooftops. Out beyond the overpass, a schoolyard playground flexed against the chain-link fence separating it from the food carts and sidewalk bustle. Shouts and hot smoke toppled out into the tumbledown neighborhood and water towers threw shadows over the brownstones and warehouses. The skyline glittered to the north, and darkness rolled west from the ocean, over the island and the grave-choked wasteland of Queens, and it’s quite a sight kid no lie kid you should really see it.

“Ben.” Simon’s voice was all but lost in the city’s dull rumble. “Ben. Over there.”

I crossed the lumpy roof to where Simon leaned against the low parapet, and it might not sound like much kid but have I ever lead you wrong, and we gazed out over the steeples and hoops and razor wire, toward where half the neighborhood crowded around the distant pier, waiting patiently for someone somewhere to light a fuse. Simon nudged me with his elbow and pointed down the block. I turned and we both stared silently at the warehouse on the corner, and this neighborhood is different kid back in the day we didn’t have all this shit to keep us busy, and I couldn’t quite tell what was going on, but I could see the sprawling rooftop was alive, squirming and shifting and twitching and fluttering under the drawn-out shadows. Simon’s eyes were wide and a smile spread across his face; the summer air was beginning to cool and I squinted into the smoldering finality of day. Packed like a slaughterhouse and churning churning churning above the garbage bags and storm drains and parked cars, and we used to walk to this building up by the park and there was a warehouse down the block where they used to flock when they’d finished up with whatever it was they did during the day and we would drink anything we managed to steal from our parents and wait for the sun to set, and a dingy avian reek filled my lungs, and I realized suddenly what I was seeing. There, on the warehouse rooftop, were pigeons by the thousand: legions of pigeons, hordes of pigeons, white and gray and blue and green pigeons, ruffled and sleek and fat and scrawny pigeons, a great cooing oilslick that covered every single inch.

Without taking his eyes off the birds, Simon dropped the backpack from his shoulder and produced two Cokes. He handed one to me. “You bring it?”

“Yeah.” I nodded and unzipped the front pocket of my bag and removed a heavy, gray stone we’d found under the bridge the day before. “Here you go.”

“You mind if…”

I shook my head, and your great uncle would bring a rock or a scrap of wood or something and I’d throw it as far as I could, and Simon set his Coke on the edge and cocked his arm and cast the stone high into the air. It drew a long arc against the twilight and the scattered stars and the overworked streetlamps and we held our breath and watched, and I know it doesn’t sound like much but you should really see it kid. The stone hovered for a time at the pinnacle and I could almost see it turn––revolving slowly, at a slight angle, drawing the city sounds toward it until there was nothing left in the neighborhood but quiet. After a moment, it began to fall.

The whole thing must’ve happened in two or three breaths, but it felt durationless. We watched as the rock whistled toward the pigeons, faster and faster, hurtling through the darkening twilight until it landed dead center of the rooftop. For a long empty second, nothing happened. The trains stalled in their tracks and the fuses stopped burning and the water flashed like black glass. For a long empty second, the blood stilled in our veins and the throbbing heart of Brooklyn ceased its work and the gull-shadows froze over the cruise ships moored in the distance. But the stillness reached its limit, and a dull clap buzzed the waiting city’s anxious rivets, and we exhaled.

All at once, as a river jumps a dam, thousands upon thousands of birds, more birds than I’d ever seen or would ever see again, birds for all time and a thousand to grow on, countless flapping wings and everything living leaving the city, and the white and black and blue and green pigeons, the ruffled and sleek and fat and scrawny pigeons, all lifted off and smothered the last traces of the sinking sun. We stared out as the storm of flapping wings chopped the steel and brick and glass horizon into numberless gyrating fragments, and I think the building’s still there kid. Simon lifted his Coke and took a sip, and I did too. The birds surged up and over us and I couldn’t see the faces of the people on the street, but I knew they weren’t looking. I knew their minds were elsewhere, the way sometimes everything goes dark and the rushing swallows up all the other sounds and nobody else notices. I can’t explain how I knew it, but we were the only ones watching, the only ones who saw the million clawed feet, the million spread wings, the million beating hearts thrumming up over the neighborhood, blacking out the day’s last light.

We sipped our Cokes as birds flooded the sky, and I don’t know Big Sir it sounds like kind of a waste, and the city was gone and the sun gone and the stars gone, and they kept coming and coming until finally the warehouse roof lay bare and the whole neighborhood lay dark under a single, shifting shadow. I sighed and Simon crushed his can in his fist and dropped it into his open backpack, and what is it you’re scared of wasting kid, and the stars winked again behind the violent fluttering, and what is it you’re so scared of wasting. The shadow swirled and bent and the light flicked and blinked through the rushing of wings, and no offense Sir I don’t mean to be rude or whatever Sir it just seems like kind of a waste of time I guess, and little by little, the sky cleared until we could see through into the almost-night, into the scattered stars and the white ripples of cloud and the thin crescent moon. We stood there a long while, and give me a break kid what the hell do you know about time kid, and the fluttering thinned and thinned until the birds were gone altogether, and what the hell do you know about time.

I crushed my can too and handed it to Simon. A half-dozen pigeons took off from a stoplight up the avenue and I lost them against the dark sky. A few seconds later, they circled back and landed on an antenna at the far end of the warehouse. A white line shot up from across the harbor, and I really don’t mean to be rude Sir but all the way out there and all the way up to the roof just to watch a bunch of pigeons fly away and then what? Sparks showered down onto the water and, a moment later, the bricks shook and the pigeons scattered, and then nothing kid is that not good enough for you, and the echoes washed back out in great concentric circles, and they just fly away and then nothing kid. That’s it.

“Alright.” Simon swept up his backpack and threw it over his shoulder. “We should get back.”

“Already?” I was surprised, but another trail of sparks cut the sky and pulled my attention from his face. The sparks scattered silently and I winced ahead of the deafening clap to come. Simon glanced my way, and I shouted to him over the noise. “You don’t want to watch the show? Not even the beginning?”

“Nah man, you know I can’t be late. Ray’s probably waiting already.”

“Ray.”

“Dad, whatever.”

“Just saying.”

“Anyway.” He shrugged. “We should probably get going.”

“You sure?” Curfew was curfew, but Simon had never cared before, and we were already there. “Just fifteen minutes?”

“I don’t think so.” Simon shook his head and took one last look at the warehouse, the harbor, the dark twinkling neighborhood. “Besides,” he said, “if we hurry up, we might catch Big Sir before he’s out for the night.”

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “Good call.”

Another trail of sparks drew a broad, lazy curve over the dark harbor. The world hushed and the sparks faded and the horizon lit up a full second before the boom. Another and another and another cut the night, and Simon stared up into the strange, fluid light. His eyes gave back that eerie brilliance, and for a second it looked like he knew, like all the darkness had been chased out of the corners, like he’d finally matched the fire with its sound. He shielded his eyes with his hand and turned away and it was gone. I grabbed my backpack and started after, and we crossed to the fire escape and shivered under the falling stars and climbed down in the dark, and the metal rattled under our hands, and we walked all the way back to Big Sir with the sky loud and the sky wild and the sky black but also flickering, and that’s just how it was, and you know all this shit’s just temporary kid.

~ ~ ~

Peter Amos is a writer and musician from rural Virginia. He studied jazz and classical guitar in college before moving to New York City, where he wrote and performed for nine years. He lives now in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia with his wife and two-year-old son. His writing can be found in Eclectica, Cleaver Magazine, Brevity, and elsewhere.