Red Lightning: A Novel by Laura Pritchett

Author:Laura Pritchett [Pritchett, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Coming of Age, Urban, Crime
ISBN: 9781619026414
Google: -IySCAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2015-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

PART III

* * *

Fire

Chapter Ten

What would be the relief in redemption if it were a simple sorry, forgive me? Grace is not achieved so easily. Redemption is to purchase back something previously sold, the recovery of something pawned or mortgaged, the effort it takes to make things right. Bless me, self, for trying to reacquire some of what I sold somewhere along the line.

*

I wait for Slade’s whistle to strike my eardrums. I listen while I do Kay’s dishes, laundry, bring her tea, sweep the gray blooms. My ears ache with the seeking, with standing to attention, like an alert deer in a road, holding her position, large ears tipped, knowing there’s danger coming, exhausted by the stillness required to catch the very first moment of sound, the one that will tell her which way to go.

Enough time has now passed, hasn’t it? His realization I was gone, him finding the empty van in Alamosa, his figuring out where I’d be. Wouldn’t something guide him here? The fire in his loins? The fire in his heart? The fire in the mountains? But no: I had spoken my goodbyes. Told him we were over. That I was doing this last run and then was gone. This last kiss and then was gone. I had made my list of people to say goodbye to and in which order—Slade, Libby, Amber—and he was the first to get the news.

I listen but hear only Kay’s soft moans. She drifts in and out. Speaks and stares off into silence. Says a few words, kind and unkind. Directs me to do this, to do that. My feet pad across old carpeting, across linoleum, across wood floors, and I listen. I hear the wind, the flies buzzing, a siren far away on the highway. I hear the radio speaking of the fire, of the raging, uncontainable fire, the new lightning-started fires, how the people and animals of Colorado are fleeing down, away, trucks and trailers, helicopters and buses, Greyhound and schoolbus alike, donated, offered, given. Ranchers’ phone numbers spray-painted on horses and cattle, fences cut so those animals can make their way down, there no longer being time to round them up and haul them out. Everything, everyone, moving away from the crackling storming whooshing, from the choking air, from the bloom of red.

He’s not coming. You need to say your goodbyes. Hold yourself together. Don’t fragment. I say it again and again to myself as I watch my hands move in their chores, as I watch my feet cross the floors.

Kay and I watch one another, even when our eyes are not meeting. One full day with one another, which is not something I ever recall happening. She sees what she needs to see, perhaps: her daughter, too skinny and pale, able to move around a kitchen, able to sit and flip through a magazine, able to make light conversation. She does not ask about where I’ve been or where I’m going. She does not tell me where she’s been or where she’s going, in regard to her heart.

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