The Blue Hour by Laura Pritchett

Author:Laura Pritchett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2016-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

She went to the ceremony, held a week after his death, and wrote it in the snow outside the grange with an ungloved finger before she walked in. YOU WIN. The others on the mountain had spent the week digging themselves out and various cars and trucks were pulling into the parking lot of an old brick building, or over at the parking area for the post office nearby, and people were trudging through the snow, and so in one small sense, the universe had not won, here was evidence of the fight against it. In the larger sense it had, and always would, and worst of all, was indifferent to its success.

Flannery stood, gazing at her writing in the snow as people started to filter by. A few stopped to say hello or ask if she wanted to join them inside, but she said she’d come in a moment. She waited until they’d all gone inside. Hard new flakes settled over her letters and she decided she’d move off the mountain in the spring. Moving was not the solution to everything, perhaps nothing, but as she saw how fast her marks would be impermanent, she was clear that she had to do something tangible. Her move here hadn’t changed anything, after all, hadn’t led her closer to family or community or love, and so she’d simply move on, to keep from doing what Sy had just done. She couldn’t be rid of this virus. She couldn’t make someone love her. She couldn’t make the universe cause her path to careen into someone else’s.

What could she do? The roar of defeat was so great that she couldn’t move for a long time. An idea came to her, then. An idea that even made her smile. She glanced at the grange. No one could see her out here; she was facing a bricked wall; the windows and door were on the other side. So she pulled down her tights, held up her black skirt, squatted, and peed. She melted the letters herself before the universe had its chance to cover them up. She smiled the whole time that the urine hissed, and then she stood up and pulled up her tights and smoothed her skirt and looked down at the melting letters. “You win, but fuck you,” she said. Then she went inside, to be among others and to grieve it all. Come spring, she’d pack her bags, load up her car, and drive off the mountain. Perhaps she’d get a Ducati. Although, no, she didn’t want a motorcycle herself. Just something similar, something so sturdy that she could lean toward a danger and be held.

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