River, Sing Out by James Wade

Author:James Wade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2021-04-29T19:51:39+00:00

At 4:00 a.m. the boy had estimated the man was deep into a drunken sleep. He’d been listening to the snoring for an hour. He came out from his room and passed by the sleeping man in the recliner.

The boy opened the cabinet under the microwave and scanned the meager selection within. There were six cans of Vienna sausages, a package of saltine crackers, two cans of refried beans, a four-pack of peach cups, and a bag of off-brand potato chips.

He looked over his shoulder at his father and then emptied the cabinet into his bag, all save the potato chips which he left not out of kindness, but because he feared the bag would make too much noise in transit. He also opened the refrigerator and took from it the jug of water and two cans of RC Cola.

With his backpack full, the jug in one hand and his flashlight in the other, the boy stood at the door of the trailer and tried to steady his breath. He watched his father sleeping, mouth open and body slunked down in the recliner as if he were some ballooned puppet whose air had been let out. The boy thought about what his father had told him and decided it was a lie. It had to be a lie.

He opened the door and eased himself down to the ground. He looked up at his father, then slowly brought the door to its frame. He readied himself, then gave the door a strong push so that it would shut completely, and as soon as it did the boy was off and running across the yard and down the trail. He ran without looking back until he reached the river where the bank trail intersected his own. He turned northwest and followed along the bank, the water sloshing in the jug and the beam from his flashlight erratic across ground and sky alike, jerking as he ran.

Miles later, the boy reached the ravine and shined his light down and tracked the creekbed up the ridge and across. He spotted the car as the last hour of darkness was waning and the pale light breaking beyond the trees.

To the east, the dawn was hard at work pushing a sanguine sky overtop the vestiges of the falling black, and when at last the glowing corona of the sun did emerge, it looked as if the earth were sacrificing its very heart to some ancient luminary. As if the sunrise was not but an extraction of the world’s soul, or the thing most liken to a soul, and it was being uprooted from the horizon and trawled through the great firmament what separates the waters below from the waters above.

The boy made the car and whispered the girl’s name and peered inside and his heart sank with her absence.

“Jonah,” she hissed from the underbrush.

“It’s me,” he replied.

She stood from her crouch and walked forward and he dropped the light and ran to meet her. They stood

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