VELA AND THE SUNSET

The pen is making me do this.

Get it out. It’s okay. There was a time before this pen wrote the things I tried not to see, in this place with no difference between dreams and the moment. I have learned how cold the wind can be when you can’t sleep and walk alone for hours. I have learned fire burns when you bring it to close to your face and try to lick it.

Why must these lessons be wrought from blood? How much more can you love when you know it is only love that will tear you all out from the insides? Even in dreams there is still no relief from nightmares. Not even a dull narcotic can steal it. There are shadows you cannot outrun, no matter how fast you hide in the corridors-passages of the mind.

The pen is starting a fight with me. Each dab of ink leaves an angry trail. I am only but forced to follow. Tell me then pen. Make me your slave.

I remember the farm I grew up on. It looked like the land went on forever. I sat there, mulling on the wood porch, picking at the slivers of wood, looking off into the horizon, wondering, what was out there — past the sunset.

I wanted to run and run, run out the sounds of my Father yelling after me in the afternoon light:

“Vela, Vela,” he screamed from the house. I knew I was far when his voice was drowned out by the whispering of the corn. I wanted to run as far as his voice would carry, far from any voice for that matter — so no one could yell for me again.

The sun was setting, big and yellow, where the sky met the soil. I wanted that world, past the sun, but it never came to me, no matter what I wished. The sunset would give me nothing.

All I hear is this pen again. The dull scratches against the hard white paper, the ink weaving trails into some kind of subconscious wilderness. I never wanted to be found but the ink always leaves trails. Well, trail on sick pen. I’ll follow you again.

My Mother’s funeral was on a Tuesday. I didn’t want to go up to the casket. I sat in the back. They all came, all the hicks, smelling of fertilizer and dirt. They all were there, sitting in dungerees, hulking with a mediocre sadness for a woman they only claimed to know. The whole place smelled of candles and paint and these people. Blooms of huge bouquets were all over the room and everyone was in black.

I remember thinking: ‘why would anyone bring flowers into a place like this?’ Such brilliant life to be put around death. No amount of flowers was going to bring her back.

I remember Dad telling me that Mom was on a long trip. But if she had gone, why was that thing lying there instead? I really didn’t even know what the that was, this husk mannequin. I couldn’t look. I came into the room and saw her nose pop out from the coffin bed over the red oak, fell to the ground, and cried.

That’s not my Mother there. That is an imposter. Her head was bloated, her cheeks red in an unusual way, like a badly stuffed doll. Her plastic fingers laced together on her chest. There was a strange smell in the room, like burnt toys.

Everyone was crying. The women kept putting their faces into their little armpits. Dad was there beside me. I looked up at him and his face was hard. I felt that heavy hand on my shoulder. He kept it there and I wanted to break from it but my feet wouldn’t work. I just kept staring at his knuckles and the little slits in the big fingers. He had rough hands, like sandpapered old wood.

He kept that hand on me as people started to go, one by one, over to the coffin. I started to shake. My belly went first. My knees next.

I looked up at Daddy and his cheeks quivered, folding in on themselves. I put my hand on his.

“No, Daddy, don’t cry.”

Then my Uncle came over and put his arm around my Father’s neck. My Father looked at him slow and they stared in a way I never seen two people look at each other. His hand broke from my shoulder to clasp his brother.

“James,” my Uncle said, “James. I’m so sorry. Please, what can I do?”

My Father shivered in my Uncle’s arms, and just shook his head. I wanted to take them both and hug them in my arms so they both wouldn’t have to look like this.

So they could be strong.

The whimpers rumbled around the room. I wanted to put my arms around the whole room and muffle the sound of everyone’s tears. Many faces were watching me as I snuck to the back of the room. I went to the bunches of flowers. I put my hand on the soft flesh of the petals and cupped them. I looked back.

Someone was kneeling on that little pulpit beside the coffin. They were talking to her. I didn’t want to see that. Why are you talking to nothing? That’s not her. She’s gone away!

I didn’t even know I was I crushing the bulbs.

“Don’t pull on them,” a raspy voice said behind me.

I look over. An old man stared at me. Everything was old about him. Old clothes. Old bones. The skin on his face barely hung on. He had yellow ragged teeth hanging out of his head. His eyes, below the wisp of little strings of white hair, were beautiful.

“You pull on them too hard.” He gestured to the floor. I looked down and saw the violet petals gathered by my feet.

There really was no color in the room like that man’s eyes. Black, grey, the red oak of the coffin, the violet of the petals, sure, but the blue from this smiling skeletons face was the bluest thing I had ever seen since.

“You don’t want them to all fall off, do you?”

“No.”

“They fall all off, and then you have no more flowers.”

I nodded. He smiled again.

“What’s your name?”

I shook my head.

“No name?”

I shook my head. He smiled. “That’s okay.”

I looked back at the coffin. The old man nudged me.

“Why don’t you say goodbye?”

I shook my head, staring at the coffin.

“I don’t know who that is,” I said.

“Yes, you do.”

Some women started crying. I looked back at the nose. I didn’t want it to happen. I moved past the old man and went straight to the coffin. I felt all the eyes all over me. A hush or two sounded. I breathed in and took a step towards her. The crowd parted for me.

“That’s her daughter,” I heard some woman say.

I didn’t like that thing in front of me. It didn’t look like her at all. I mean, the expression. I never saw that expression before. Not when she was alive.

I went over to the body and put my hand on her arm. It felt like plaster. Lifeless. I felt something shoot up my arm, like pins and needles. I tore my hand away and left the room.

Outside, the sky was bright blue and the grass was very green. After a little while, people trailed out of the funeral home. I looked around, hoping to find the old man, but he was gone.

Soon after that, everybody got back into the cars to go home. I rode and sat in the front seat next to Dad in his truck. He kept looking over at me, but I kept staring out the window. The cornfields flew past in long streaks of brown and yellow.

We got back to the house. I kept rubbing my arms but those pins and needles wouldn’t stop. I swung open the truck door and ran out into the field. I wanted to leave and go to the place I could never get to — to where the ground met the sky. I heard my Father yelling my name but I ran faster than the voice. I kept going. I felt so much building up in my body I thought I could fly. I kept going, further out than I had ever been before, moving in the cornfield. Then I fell to the dirt. The watery mud soaked through my dress as I knelt in the muck.

My heart was pounding so hard. I could barely breathe.

I felt tears starting to well up my eyes. I pounded on the ground.

I started to laugh, looking at my reflection in the puddles in the dirt I made, trying to rub the tears out of my eyes. My tears fell into the little puddles, rippling my reflection.

I heard a scream. It sounded inhuman, like a great roar of some ancient beast. I pulled myself off of the ground, brushed my dress off, hearing some other kind of cackling, and ran toward it.

I heard boys yelling as I got closer. I peeked through the stalks.

A dead cow laid on its side in the center of a clearing, big and beaten, on the muddy ground. Three young boys were jumping around it, open-mouthed and screaming, cheering around the body of the cow. One of the boys stopped, raised a 2 x 4 high above his head, and smashed it down on the cow’s head with a meaty thud. The other boys howled. Another poked at its bloated stomach with wooden end of a rusted rake. They each took turns beating the cow. It did not move, wetting the dirt with its blood.

I felt rage grow like never before. I grabbed a long piece of wood by the clearing and jumped out, screaming, from the stalks of corn.

The boys turned scared over to me and took off running, while the leader stood there, by the cow’s head, 2 x 4 in his hand. I ran toward him. He did not move.

I jumped on him, swinging the piece of wood. It felt it hit his face. He yelled out and fell on the ground, crying. I jumped on top of him and slapped his face over and over again. He tried calling for help.

I let him up.

“Go home!” I screamed at him. “Get out of here.”

He saw the fire in my eyes.

He threw his piece of plywood down to the ground and ran off. I liked how scared he looked.

Good, I thought. Run, damn you, and don’t ever touch another thing in this world like that again. I fell down on my knees and laid my head down next to the cattle’s head, staring into her black ruby eyes. I saw my reflection in them. I saw my little head lying on the dirt, the stalks behind me, and the bright blue sky above, just as the sun was leaving the sky.

“I’m here, girl, don’t you worry. It’s okay. It’s okay. They’re gone.” I felt better.

I couldn’t hear anything. I just heard the buzz in the soil, me staring into her eyes, both of us lost in each other’s reflections in the sunset.