A Strong and sudden Thaw by R.W. Day

Author:R.W. Day [Day, R.W.]
Language: nld
Format: epub
Tags: erotic MM, Romance MM
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

140 R. W. Day

where Almond had been, with the sheep huddled around him. He started to ask after Almond, but my face must have told the story, as he crumbled into noisy tears, then abruptly thrust something into my hands.

It was Almond’s book, and in the last of the light, I could see the dark stains of blood spattering the cover. I slipped it into my pocket; the weight of it sagged my jacket down, slapping against my leg as I rode back ahead of Jerzy and the sheep. And this time oblivion escaped me; each jarring blow of the book cried, ‘Almond,’ driving deeper and deeper into my chest till fi nally the tears came, and I clung to the horse like a child on his fi rst pony, wanting to go back and erase this day.

We buried my baby sister two days later on a day without sun. Th e whole town

turned out, from the mayor down to the claim farmers, none of whom had likely ever even heard the name Almond Anderson.

Th

e Digger had come up to the farm and measured her for her box, and the likes of that coffi

n hadn’t never been seen in Moline. Th

e boards was old, machine milled

hardwoods from Before, sanded smooth, stained dark with oil, and buff ed till they gleamed. Mam had wrapped Almond’s body in soft wool from our own sheep, woven into a worn white blanket that had comforted Almond in life, now cut into swaths and stitched together, swaddling her like the baby she was. Her head rested on a pillow Grandmam had fashioned, with clumsy stitches, as she could hardly see to wield the needle, but Almond was beyond caring and Grandmam, though she couldn’t make the trip down the mountain, had wanted a part in the burying.

Of all of us, only Mam was a regular churchgoer, and then only in summer, and Pa was positively hostile at times and had refused to let us be sprinkled, reasoning we could make the choice for our own selves when we was grown, but Pastor Daniels was willing to do the ceremony anyway. He at least had met Almond. Most of the people crowding into the school hadn’t never laid eyes on her, but they’d come to stare on her poor body like a freak in a Harvest Fair sideshow. I hated every one of them so fi erce that my face burned with it.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Pastor Daniels began. I didn’t pay heed to the words, just let the sound of them fall over me like snow, burying my feelings deep so that I might make it through this day without shaming myself before the town. I joined in at the psalm, knowing the words by heart from school recitations, and said

‘amen’ when I was supposed to, but it didn’t mean nothing to me. I didn’t care if the dead would rise incorruptible when the last trump sounded; my sister was dead and going into the ground right now.

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