Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

Author:Tochi Onyebuchi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Jonathan had a wool blanket draped over a coat draped over his shoulders as he sat on the front porch of his yet-unfinished home. The new freezer deep in the bowels of the house had brought with it a new serenity, what one of the other settlers called an insh’allah attitude, something she’d learned traveling somewhere in Mesopotamia. A sort of “it’ll get done when it gets done” mindset. A leaving-behind of control, so that everything that happened was its own miracle. Even the mug of hot chocolate in his gloved fingers.

David hadn’t said what time he’d be arriving at, as neither of them could guess at the time difference between New Haven and the Colonies. As soon as news came that David’s paperwork had gone through and the next wave of arrivals was scheduled to fly out, Jonathan had insisted on being at the shuttle station to meet David, and when David had rebuffed him, Jonathan had insisted on meeting him at the Fairfield Station. But David had said no to that as well, perhaps understanding without even having to be told that Jonathan was in the process of assimilating this new mindset into his thinking. Learning that he didn’t need to be the dictator of all things. How had David changed in the meantime?

He arrested that line of inquiry before it could spiral into paranoia and instead schooled himself into being present for this quiet, for the sound of winter around him and the feel of it in the seat of his torn jeans. For the moonlit clouds and the lights winking out in window after window on his street, some of them staying on for Jonathan to wonder at what sort of life was lived in those rooms. When David finally came, Jonathan would begin introducing him to their neighbors and showing him the stable, closed for the season, where kids rode horses.

A truck rounded a corner and emerged from the darkness, sounding of Eamonn. But when it pulled up in front of Jonathan’s house, Aurora was at the wheel. “Look who I found,” she crowed, just as the passenger’s side door swung open then shut and David revealed himself, standing still in the street, gilded by the truck’s headlamps.

For five of the longest seconds of Jonathan’s life, they held each other’s gaze, not knowing where to begin but wanting to tell it all and wanting, at the same time, to hold some of it back, to tell it in its own time. How much life have you lived without me?

“Come to the bonfire!” Aurora hollered. Her fox had migrated to her lap, its tail feather-dusting her face.

Jonathan stood, too suddenly, and hot chocolate splashed onto his gloves and his blanket fell off his shoulders. He heard chuckling behind him as he turned around and was secretly grateful he could give David this to laugh at. “One second, I…”

“No, come on! They’re already getting started. David said he’s already down. Bring whatever it is you’re drinking!” Her

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