In Just the Right Light by William R. Soldan

Author:William R. Soldan [Soldan, William R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Published: 2019-03-12T06:00:00+00:00

Portraits of the Dead and Dying

Dwight had just torn open the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d stolen from Mort’s Little Shopper when we saw the plane going down. We were in the patch of woods behind St. John’s, where we liked to horse around on those long summer afternoons when our mothers were working, and our fathers were laid off and either slouched in front of the TV or down at Miller’s Tap tying one on.

“Holy Shit!” Dwight said. “You see that?”

The plane was one of those Cessna puddle jumper deals, looked like the piece-together toys they had over at the discount drugstore where my mom bought her make-up and my old man’s stomach medicine. It came arcing across the sky in a spiraling nosedive. Dwight jammed the pack of smokes into the pocket of his Rustlers and shouted, “Come on!”

Our bikes were lying in the grass behind the church pavilion, and as we started down the hill toward the road, the plane disappeared behind a barn at the old Anders dairy farm just outside of town. A moment after it dropped out of sight, we heard the crash, such a faint sound, you probably wouldn’t hear it at all if you didn’t know it was coming.

Pedaling out Main Street, to where it was no longer Main but a two-lane highway leading into Pennsylvania, I did my best to keep up with Dwight. He was more excited than I’d ever seen him. We were twelve and thirteen years old, Dwight being the older of us, and the most excitement we knew besides setting fire to anthills, pissing from the turnpike overpass onto passing cars, and smoking behind the church came from the small wall of VHS tapes at the corner store.

“Maybe it’s bank robbers,” Dwight said, out of breath.

“Really?”

“Or maybe it’s the Russians.”

“You really think so?”

The previous weekend, Dwight and I had watched this movie where Communists invaded a small town out west somewhere, and though I knew it wasn’t real, I was nervous as we skidded to a stop at the crest of the rutted dirt road, stirring up dust.

“Could be,” he said.

We were on the far edge of the old farm, which I’d overheard my old man say had gone under, something to do with the bank coming in and making everybody leave. The land had been empty for a couple years, and now the fields were overgrown with nettle and choked with briar. We sat there on our bikes, looking down into a grassy hollow. Just us for at least two miles in any direction. Nothing else around but rolling, scrubby fields and sun-parched dirt.

Before I knew it, Dwight was at the bottom of the hollow, off his bike and running toward the downed plane. Close up, it reminded me even more of a broken toy, maybe thrown to the ground by God Himself. Seeing it made me feel small, and as I coasted down to join him, and the land rose around me, I swore the earth was about to swallow me whole.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.