“Man,” Jack says as he picks up the phone. He does not want to face his parents, not yet. The school year has nearly three more weeks left in it. He figures he has at least that long to enjoy what was left of his life. His brother, Daniel, is a film major studying up in New York, actually passing his classes with honors and doing rather well. For a moment Jack is jealous, but then realizes that Danny probably works harder at it. The truth is, he is actually quite proud of him. “I’ll just call them,” Jack mutters as he picks up the phone and dials the number that he has purposely been avoiding for at least the past three months. “C’mon—pick up.”
No answer and no answering machine. Jack lets the phone ring for a few more cycles. Eventually the line goes silent.
“Don’t really want to go all the way out to Pine Hallow, Danny,” Jack says as he dials the number for Daniel’s cell. After a few rings, Jack hears a click, followed by a loud squeal, a sound just like feedback on a microphone.
Quickly hanging up, Jack tries his brother’s number again. This time it goes straight away to Daniel’s voice mail. “Hey, this is Daniel, I am either in class right now, or I am busy. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
“Yeah,” Jack speaks dejectedly, nervously running a hand through his hair. “It’s Jacky, got your message. I’ll be heading out after my afternoon class today; I should be there about seven or so. I guess I’ll give you a call and let you know that everything is good. Give me a call if you get this, otherwise I’ll call you later. Later, man.”
2
“Hey!” Emma happily announces as she sits beside Jack, sketchbook in hand and a smile upon her face. “You made it.”
“Yeah!” Jack replies as he smiles in return. Seeing Emma again is actually the highlight of this whole terrible day. In fact, since their short date, he has not missed a single art class.
“Where’s your stuff?” Emma whispers over from her seat, nudging him the arm with her elbow.
“Huh?” Jack replies, and then places a palm to his face. He has forgotten to bring any of his materials for class. Then again, he has no real purpose for being here other than seeing Emma. However, he figures that he should pretend to be an active participant, and keeps up the charade because he is too embarrassed to admit he is only here for her.
“Shit…,” Jack mutters as Emma turns away and covers a laugh with the backside of her hand. “I completely forgot. I got a call from my brother and he’s worried about my parents, so it’s been kind of a hectic day.”
“You okay?” Emma asks, sounding genuinely concerned.
“Yeah,” Jack replies with a confident nod. “Of course…”
“You want to leave, go outside and sit or something?” Emma continues, “Teacher’s not here yet.”
Jack is speechless; he has never really had a girl skip a class for him, or at least, leave right when class was about to begin. He takes this as a good sign, although perhaps it is a bit of a bad sign that one of his more rebellious habits might be rubbing off on her. “Sure,” he finally concludes, moral dilemma tossed aside for the promise of preferred company.
Slipping out the door, and feeling as though he is doing something wrong—exciting, but still somehow wrong—, Jack and Emma race down the hall, just like they are back in high school where the teachers actually care if you are at class or not. Laughing deeply, Emma leads the way through the doors as their world is filled with sunlight once more. No more cheap fluorescents or filtered air and the noises of busy students.
They walk hand-in-hand to the shade of a tall tree.
“So your parents…,” Emma asks, turning to Jack, “…what is going on with them then?”
“Well, I haven’t talked to them in a few months—I mean I haven’t been necessarily trying with me not doing as good as they would have liked in school,” Jack says, mentally suppressing the urge to slap himself for such an understatement regarding his school performance.
“Your brother is worried?” Emma asks.
“Yeah,” Jack replies, instinctively reaching into his pocket to retrieve his cell phone. He checks to see if he has missed any calls; he does not. “I mean, with me, it’s no big deal if I don’t hear from them. I was never close to my parents like Danny was.”
“Are you worried at all?” Emma asks, placing her hand over his.
“Eh,” Jack mutters, contorting his mouth into a thoughtfully confused look. “I suppose, I mean. My dad, he’s an author, he writes these children’s stories. You know the kind: they have nice little lessons and such. My mom is something of an internet entrepreneur: she sells these specially-made art pieces for people whose pets have died. So they’re always busy—I mean, even as a kid it would not be cause for panic if we hadn’t spoken to each other properly for a few days, and this was still while we all lived in the same house.”
“I can relate to that. It was just me and my mom growing up most of the time,” Emma adds, “Before she got her job at Terring we were doing pretty badly for a while, and my mom was working like three different jobs throughout the week. Looking back, though, I had a lot of time to work on my art and I think that I would be worse off without that time alone. Strange that, during the time, I was always like, ‘I wish mom were around more,’ you know? Like, I can even remember being angry at her sometimes for always being gone.”
“I guess I was lucky, though; I mean, I always had Danny around. He’s only about 2 years older than I am. So, you know we got along pretty well,” Jack replies with a nod.
“So where are you going?” Emma asks, cocking her head to the side and resting her chin upon the back of her hand. “Is it far?”
“Yeah,” Jack replies, shaking his head at the thought of being stuck in the car for the next six to seven hours or so. “It’s about a seven-hour drive from here. Tiny place called Pine Hallow over in Missouri. You know Springfield, right?”
“Yeah,” Emma replies, nodding with her head against her hand. “I got an aunt that lives in Mt. Vernon, about half an hour west, but I’ve never heard of Pine Hallow.”
“It is about an hour… north, I’d say,” Jack continues, pausing to get his bearings. “Not much there though to be honest: mostly just woods, a few houses and a lake. My parents, they actually bought a house in a field of about four acres of land that used to be a farm of some sort or another. They don’t farm it; they just like being secluded. They just let the wild animals have their run of the land, I suppose, which gives my father inspiration for his work.”
“That sounds nice, actually,” Emma says, getting up to her feet and dusting the dirt from her jeans. “Sounds like a lot of places I used to go camping at when I was a kid. You know, I don’t really have any plans for this weekend, and if it will make the drive easier for you…”
“You’d come along?” Jack interrupts, trying to hide a shock look that threatened to wash over his face.
“Yeah, of course,” Emma replies, smiling.
The Hawk and the Rabbit
The clouds overhead are sailing in the blue sky; the sun is out. A rabbit creeps through a clover patch. Tiny white butterflies scatter playfully about.
Wide-eyed and cautious, the rabbit sniffs the air, its tiny nose wiggling about and its ears erect. Content that there is nothing to fear, the rabbit begins to eat a patch of flowered clover.
Above, a hawk circles the rabbit, its wings spread wide and riding the wind in a glide. Its claws outstretched, in one swift motion the hawk swoops down and yanks the rabbit from the ground, taking to the sky once more.
Its heart beating fiercely, and its eyes clenched tightly in a mix of terror and pain, the rabbit begins to shake uncontrollably, knowing that the end of its life is tragically near.
The hawk loosens its grip, slightly. “Open your eyes, little rabbit. This is not a moment for you to be so fearful.”
“But…,” the rabbit trembles, “…you are going to kill me. You are going to eat me.”
“Yes, that is the truth,” the hawk replies sole
mnly. “Yet, till we arrive at my nest, we are one with the sky. Though I will take your life, I can only give you this one small gift in return. Look at the world from this height not in fear, but in awe, for very few who live will ever see it.”
The rabbit looks down to the ground below at the tops of lush green trees, a tiny creek shimmering in the sunlight, rolling hills of windswept grass; for a moment there was no pain, no fear, and the world was a beautiful place.
3
The sunset paints the sky a brilliant red as Jack and Emma draw closer to Springfield, Missouri. The trees emerge in mass numbers, covering both sides of the night road like tall shadowy onlookers, their thin branches swaying softly in the wind and dressed in their spring leaves as they blur past. The scenery has slowly changed from the flatlands and cornfields of Illinois to the large rolling hills of the Ozarks. Hills that appear as dark, tree-covered backs of great sleeping beasts, their towering growths reflecting the last rays of light in deep blues and purples.
“I’ve always enjoyed the feeling this area gives me,” Emma reflectively whispers as she stares out window, fixated on the passing evening scenery.
“It’s empty,” Jack says as he glances over to the view from her side. “Desolate, that’s the word. Desolate….”
“I like it,” she says, sounding distant. “It reminds me of all the lonely feelings you have in early winter, where your heart feels somehow empty but not entirely in a bad way. It’s just like how it feels good to listen to a sad song.”
“Spoken just like an artist,” he adds with a laugh.
She lets out a short, quirky little laugh as she shakes her head. “You don’t feel that way?”
“No, no…,” he answers as he changes his voice to a more serious tone, “I get it. I mean, I really get it. Honestly, I am just not used to talking about things like that. Not that I mind at all, of course; It’s actually refreshing. Deep things and such—this all sounds really retarded doesn’t it…”
She replies with a deep laugh, which she attempts to cover with both of her hands to muffle the intensity of her fit. “It is fine! You don’t sound ‘retarded’ at all. So what would a normal conversation for you be at this moment?”
“Christ,” Jack mutters as he thinks hard on the subject. Usually he would be making this trip alone, with his brother being so far away at school and all. “If it were me and my brother, we’d probably still be complaining about our parents at this point of the trip. Actually, it would have intensified the closer we got, so at this point it would have been all about them, the past and such. If it were anyone else, it’d be just talking about how crap life can be, and getting drunk and television shows. You know, things that seem important, but really… just aren’t.”
“Is it a hard life, being the son of an author?” Emma asks, resting her chin against the backs of her hands as she slouches forward in the seat and looks to Jack.
“Well,” he quietly answers, as though unsure. “It has had its good and bad times, just as I would imagine most people’s lives do. I mean people get this idea in their head that since my father had some degree of success that my childhood was all golden plates and diamond dinner forks and shit.”
Emma lets out another short burst of laughter. “Right. I mean, even I thought—foolishly, of course—that things would somehow be better with that. So it was just the silver plates, and cubic zirconium dinner forks.”
Jack shakes his head as a short-lived frown crosses his face, and a laugh swiftly follows. “Well, we had our share of hard times too. There was a time when we were doing poor financially, and my father was always trying his best, of course. Sometimes he would get so upset that the world could not accept him as a serious author. That was his main dream. He somehow got, I suppose, typecast into this character that could only be a children’s author in life and nothing more. I guess there was some amount of frustration that made him bitter and withdrawn at times.”
“I am sorry,” Emma whispers, not expecting such a depressingly honest reply. “The world can do that to you though, I’ve seen it myself. My mother went from someone so carefree—I’ve seen pictures and such from when she was younger. She used to want to be a photographer, still takes a few pictures in her spare time, yet somehow she ended up going to work every day at a factory. I guess after a while it got to a point that she became all right with it.”
“It seems like there is a point that people just accept who they are, or who they’ve become.” He adds, “I always thought that people could just change spontaneously, but I guess it’s something that happens over a long time, like the way that rubber on a tire wears thin until it one day blows.”
She lets out a short laugh once more, turning away and looking into the darkness past her window.
“What?” he asks, looking confused.
“You’re just opening up a lot more—more than before, that is. It is good to see you be honest and comfortable and everything around me. It makes me happy that you aren’t so… I guess, nervous,” she says as she nods with a smile, the right side of her cheek showing a small dimple.
“Actually, I’m just amazed that you care about these kinds of things,” he answers honestly. “I suppose I come off as really nervous because I’m not used to it.”
“Maybe you’ve just been hanging out with the wrong kind of people?” she says as she places her hand to Jack’s shoulder.
“Is that why you came with me?” he asks, turning for a moment to face Emma, and then quickly turning his attention back to the road, trying hard to keep from being distracted. However, the way her face looks in the last light of day keeps his attention like it is the last beautiful thing a dying man might see before the inevitable darkness. “Was it to save me from the wrong kind of people?”
“Well, we had that one date, remember?” she says, looking away as though she is embarrassed by the way that Jack was looking at her.
“Yeah.”
“After that we fell into being friends, somehow; we didn’t go on anymore dates,” she continues as she slides her hand down Jack’s arm, taking his hand into hers. “I didn’t want to come to a point where I had to accept that things would just stay like that.”
Jack keeps his eyes on Emma, who is still turned away from him. His foot eases off of the gas pedal and the car slowly comes to a stop. He lets go of her hand, reaching over to her shoulder. She turns toward him, her gentle, smiling blue eyes lit in the darkness, a beautiful cold blue illuminated in the reflection of the headlights. He lets his hand linger next to her cheek, his eyes taking in the features of her fair face and filling him with quiet intimidation, and he feels like the first man to walk on the moon, taking that first step out into the unknown. An uncontrollable force, much like gravity, brings their faces together as their lips meet for the second time. For Jack, an eternity passes, an eternity of soft moments, like memories of summer winds on cool nights against his bare feet, or the promise of excitement like any given Christmas morning from his childhood. Their first kiss was now nothing more than a short memory in his life, remarkable in its significance but ultimately not as intimate as the second, and he begins to genuinely fear that a third kiss would kill him. Luckily, it does not.
He begins to feel silly for feeling so vulnerable. So childish and idiotic—if he were with anyone else he would be made fun of for his sudden lack of manliness and unemotional coolness. Still, he does not care, not right now. These things just aren’t important anymore.
Two Wolves
Two white wolves stalk in the night, their evening breaths curling up in white puffs that glimmered faintly in the dim light of the half-moon. Noses close to the ground, they follow a set of fresh tracks in the dirt. The field shimmers spectacularly as it dances in the moonlight. In the distance, one of the wolves makes out a form running into a bramble of dead branches.
The sight of their quarry hastens their resolve as the wolves begin to quicken their pace. Their footfalls mute in the soft earth, they are upon their prey in
mere moments and so far remain undetected.
“What is it?” the first wolf asks, looking upon the form that has been taking little notice of them as it continues on its almost random path, its back to the pair.
“It is of man,” the second wolf replies with a growl.
Wearing a small jacket with a puffy brown hood and blue pajama pants, the child turns at the sound of the growling wolf. The little boy looks to the pair of creatures and smiles as though the sight of the white wolves were almost comforting and familiar to him.
“This is our land to hunt,” the first wolf says, baring her large teeth.
The child takes a step back, frightened by the display, falling down clumsily to his rear against the hard ground.
“Do not waste your words; it cannot understand them,” the male wolf says as he too, bares his teeth to the boy.
The child sits silently, staring nervously and unmoving in an act of obedience. The wolves inch ever closer, till their curling breaths fleetingly warm the boy’s bare cheeks. He sits like a cold stone beneath the early summer moon, struggling only slightly as the male’s teeth are upon him. There are small screams, not unlike the animals that the pair usually tear into. The hunger for flesh is briefly satiated as the blood stains the ground, covering the new spring flowers in brilliant red.
4
Sometimes the fickleness of emotion guides the way in life. For Jack, the night that was supposed to lead him to his parent’s home leads him, instead, back to way that they had come about half an hour prior. Just outside of the city of Springfield he stands at the front desk of the Red Rose Motel, a cheap and rundown place that seems as though its glory days have long passed. A sick, excited sense of nervousness in the pit of his stomach has caused him to sloppily fill out the registration paperwork for the check-in. Rushing through small conversation with the old lady with curly white hair, who is more interested in the television than Jack, she finally hands him the keys to the room. Small and silver, the keys feel cold against his sweaty hand. He walks out slowly, trying not to appear to be in a rush—however, he feels like running. At this point he feels like he could fucking fly.
Window in the Earth Trilogy Page 28