The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

Author:Christopher Scotton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Family Life, Fiction / Coming Of Age
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

It was the smell that brought everything back. It didn’t reach me until they had left the cave and Buzzy and I climbed from the crag hole. The smell of burning hair, acrid and sickly sweet, hung in the air on an inversion of smothered memories.

As I stood and considered the fire, the true and absolute horror of that day came streaming back in a single razor-wire vision. I knew that if I closed my eyes, the sequence of it, like the film loop of a bad dream, would start again.

Buzzy added more wood and we laid out our sleeping bags again. I was dark and silent and brought my knees to my chest, continued to stare into the flames.

“You know, you ain’t tole the cave nuthin,” he whispered. “You should do that now, fore we forget.”

“I don’t want to tell the cave anything. I don’t even want to sleep here tonight. That smell is gonna make me puke.”

“We can go sleep up the tree house then.”

“I’d rather just go home. I don’t want to be a wimp, but I really think I’m going to puke.”

“But you seen what happens when you don’t tell. Just tell a little an we’ll go.”

I shifted on my sleeping bag and gathered up the rememberings. I had kept the truth hidden for so long that the lies were rooted in me like weeds. “My brother wasn’t hit by a car like I told you,” I said.

“My momma said she heard that,” he admitted and looked down into his hands. “Why ain’t you tole the truth?” The fire popped and issued an arching cinder that landed near my foot. It glowed for a moment, then went dark.

“Because the truth is what’s making my mom crazy. I guess my dad thinks if we all lie long enough, the lie will eventually become the truth.”

“You don’t gotta tell if you don’t want to. Let’s jus forget the Tellin Cave an go home.”

But the memory had already shifted forward, and there was no possible way of sending it back. Like water overtopping a dam, it had to alight somewhere. I shook the ghosts out of my head and began.

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