During-The-Event by Roger Wall

Author:Roger Wall [Wall, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781602233836
Google: 4ICSDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07NJ59L7B
Goodreads: 42171884
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Published: 2019-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Above the door handle was a square metal lever. I pressed this, and, with a slight push, the door opened. Cool damp air and the musty odor of mold filled my nose. A window almost as tall as the ceiling lined the far side of the room and provided the only light to navigate through the brown-and-green-streaked walls of the short entry corridor.

The floor was stone, and a carpet of muted roses, their blossoms full with red, orange, and yellow petals, covered much of it. A metal-framed bench with brown cushions lined one edge of the rug, which squished as I stepped on a corner. Above, on the ceiling, a brown stain showed where the roof had leaked—like in the back of the cave where water seeped through soil and rock, darkening the cottonwood timbers. At one end of the room was the kitchen. A vine-covered window above the sink barely admitted light. On the other end of the room was a wall of bookshelves with a desk and monitor built into them.

Behind the house was an expanse of sand, dotted with neat piles of rocks and the blackened remains of burned trees. Over this landscape arched a lattice structure as tall as the house and constructed of six-sided interlocking windows. A patch of green, moss or grass—I couldn’t tell—grew in the shade of an elm tree that had fallen and punched a hole through the structure. Something had happened here, a fire, it looked like.

I raised a latch on the tall, wide window and slid it open. It was a door, after all. The decayed wooden planking of the deck squeaked under my weight. The emptiness reminded me of my town. The warm, moldy air under the false sky of the lattice of windows made me cough, and I went back into the house.

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, I noticed four wooden masks in a row on a wall. They seemed to meet my stare and scowl. They had been carved with a knife, with most of the cuts in the wood not having been smoothed but left irregular and jagged. The open mouths were decorated with shells and feathers and pieces of metal and leather. White had been painted around the eyes. Only the cheeks and brows had been polished, and these caught the faint light coming through the door. I looked out again at the barren land, trying to see it as these wooden faces might. They seemed to be angry about what had happened.

I decided not to sleep in the house for fear of disturbing the masks. Instead, under the lattice of windows next to a charred stump, I made a fire with the rotting deck planks. Smoke settled around me, and the smell of it and the burning wood reminded me of the cave. I collected water to boil—I had no tea to add to it—from a downspout and chewed the remainder of my sunflower seeds into a warm mash. I wanted to lie down, get out of my wet clothes, and sleep.

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