Dreams of Arcadia by Brian Porter

Author:Brian Porter [Porter, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Legacy Book Press
Published: 2023-05-18T13:51:28+00:00

Fifteen

Autumn comes quietly in South Central Texas. After surviving the long brutal summer, trees are too weary for flashy displays of color. The leaves of post oaks and pecans turn various shades of brown before swirling away in the north wind, while live oaks flatly refuse to recognize such a season, discretely dropping their leaves when the new growth arrives in the spring. There are a few patches of color—the golden yellow of cedar elms and hackberries and the occasional brilliance of a sumac—but modesty is the general rule.

The post oak leaves were starting to change as Nate drove out to the farm on Sunday morning. He was on call that weekend and driving his work truck. As he crossed high above the jade waters of the Soledad and headed up the bluff road, his thoughts were on his father, and his mother, and Jerome, and Clarissa, and the whole damnable set of circumstances that had ripped the fabric of his family apart.

Every time he drove along the bluff, the magnitude of what happened there weighed on him, urging him to stop and look around. As he slowly made the sharp turns, he wondered which curve had been the site of the accident. What caused it? Where were they going that night? Were there any witnesses?

There was so much he didn’t know, yet he was afraid to dig too deeply.

The sky was partly cloudy with large patches of blue. October rains had diminished the drought and brought life back to the countryside. New grass had emerged, and stock tanks were almost full again.

Nate slowed as he approached Alois’s house. On a sudden whim, he pulled into the lane and stopped just beyond the cattle guard. The house was to his left, only partially visible, enveloped in the gloomy shade of tall pecans and cedar elms. He edged forward slowly, scanning the porch until the white screen door came into view.

The house was simple and unadorned, bare except for a few surviving patches of olive paint under the eaves. Hackberries stood very close, appearing to hold the structure up. Vines wrapped around the corner porch pillar and climbed onto the roof. The house looked less like a neglected man-made structure than a part of the land itself, sprouting from the soil like some wild thing.

Something about the place made him uneasy. He felt a yearning…so intense…so visceral as to be almost painful.

Disconcerted, he backed out of the lane and drove on, crossing the bridge and turning at Viola’s mailbox. The yaupons along her lane were thick with small crimson berries. Three deer darted in front of him, their white tails vanishing like ghosts into a dense growth of cedars.

Nate found Viola sitting on the front porch in her rocking chair, her eyes closed. A cat lay curled up in her lap, and she held a folded newspaper against her chest. The cat jumped down and disappeared under the house when Nate got out of the truck.

Viola’s eyes opened and flickered as they focused on him.

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