May 9, 2012

• They’d banish us

  The mystical flutterings of the leaves silenced every other noise, left the forest and found the open air like birds who thought there might be better places in the world.  Inside the forest you couldn’t tell from the tangled branches where one tree stopped and the next one started. 

  Flynn huffed and puffed like he did when he was forced to run in gym but this time it was Tilda and her ‘Come on!’ but it was all the same to him.  Her sneakers were red but his were black and bright green.

  “I don’t know why we have to run,” he said when he got there.  But Tilda didn’t hear him and she took slow steps as she looked around.  Sunlight made her feel like her face was swimming as she walked through it but Flynn just felt sticky.

  “I wonder what kind of trees these are.”
  
  “I don’t know,” Flynn said.

  “Well, duh. How would anyone know?”

  They walked to the big rock that they usually went to with the other kids to tell ghost stories when their parents thought they were in the basement sleeping and most everyone ended up crying, even the boys who said they weren’t afraid. 

  Flynn climbed the rock very fast like there was a glowing prize at the top, but Tilda was very slow because she was afraid at small rocks just as much as the mountains.  When they got to the top they sat next to each other and the leaves didn’t rustle, but birds called each other in the distance but they didn’t hear that because it was all too much.

  Tilda put her hands to her eyes and began sobbing and her tears wetted the ends of her fingers.  Flynn looked over and was as frightened as Tilda was when she thought about the mountains.

  “I miss Tandy so much.”
  
  “Who is Tandy?”
  
  “It was our dog.  He died.”

  Flynn didn’t know what to say so he put his arm around her and she cried and cried.  In the years to come he would learn to try to talk to the crying person because he didn’t know that it’s only the arm that ever does any good. 

  But arms don’t do any good either because arms are not a dog.

  “Today my mom was talking on the phone.”  Tilda’s face was still shiny but she was only sniffling as her thoughts slowed down.  “She was mad.  They are going to add some pews to the back of the church.  She was talking to Susan’s mom about it.”

  “Why don’t they want to add more pews?”

  “I don’t know.” 

  Tilda was pulling on her fingers and feeling her joints.  Flynn looked down at her hands but her red sneakers and doughy fingers and yellow dress were blurry and he asked,

  “Do you want to be anybody?”

  “What do you mean?”  Her eyebrows tightened.  She liked talking to Flynn.

  “Well, I heard Ruthie say she wants to be a nurse.  Some others were talking about it.  They all had ideas.  And it’s true, I guess,” Flynn added from deep within his thoughts. “We’re not anybody.  Not yet.”

  Tilda’s thoughts wandered to movies and other kids’ parents in their kitchens and her teachers and fire engines rushing down the street and she looked over at Flynn and he was tapping his feet as they dangled off the rock. 

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What?”
  
  “I don’t think I want to be anybody.”

  Flynn was a year younger than Tilda and was not supposed to be hanging out with her because if her friends knew about it then she would have to choose.  He didn’t think she would pick him, but he was happy it hadn’t happened yet.

  “Well you kind of have to.”
  
  “No. Let’s just stay here.”
  
  “On this rock?”
  
  “We’ll just stay here and not be anybody.”

  Flynn thought about this for awhile and no one said anything and everything settled into a listless memory gone by high school. 

  “Promise you’ll stay here with me.”
  
  Flynn looked at her freckles and the gaps between her blond tendrils and the woods surrounding them to a point, the point of ignorance of the trees and pews and dead dogs but a knowledge that they were there together.

  “Ok. I promise.”

  The evening grew cool and the sky turned blue-grey and Tilda shivered as the stars poked their heads out from their covers. Flynn looked up at them and remembered his room where he usually looked at the stars through his window and he smiled because he liked this better and this is where he would be looking at them forever. 

  A few blocks away the concrete porches scraped with the ankles of hustling parents leaving their doorsteps and hurrying out into the night.

  • 3:54 am
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