Silence on Cold River by Casey Dunn

Author:Casey Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

MICHAEL Chapter 41 | October 2004 | Tarson, Georgia

I’M DEAD.

I sit back in my chair at the library and reread the archived article about my suicide in Cold River. I stare at the photograph they used, one of those school pictures with the blue backgrounds that makes it look like you’re underwater or in the sky. Either way, it’s a touch morbid.

I was small for my age, undernourished and constantly in motion. In this picture, my younger self is drowning in fabric. Once my clothes were too small, I had only my father’s to wear. There was no in-between, save the random jacket or pair of shoes some woman from the church would drop off when the weather turned each year. I was covered in acne and ghostly pale. My hair was lighter then, too, mousy brown, stringy and long, and constantly covering my face. I remember the photographer coming around the camera to tuck the curtains of it behind my ears when I refused to do it myself. I’d shaken my head just before the picture, and greasy clumps of hair had framed my cheeks like prison bars.

The school never did ask when I planned to reenroll, and the women from the church, who once brought over fresh-baked casseroles and pies every Sunday and Wednesday for years after my father’s funeral, shifted to dropping off nonperishables once a month following the verdict. The bags were more like donations to a food pantry, and I remember wondering what ate at them so much that they were bound and determined to keep us just enough alive.

My father’s death.

My mother’s sight.

Me.

Maybe Mother was right. They saw the bruises and burns on my limbs. They watched my pants become too loose and too short, the fronts cut out of my shoes to keep from rubbing sores on the tops of my toes. They explained away the time Ms. Nichols caught me with her cat tucked inside my jacket in the dead heat of summer, limp and foaming red spittle. This town had taken enough from me and my mother, they’d decided, so they would not take my future, too.

All this time, Ama thought she’d won, when really she was never going to lose.

A card catalog slams shut, and my mind returns to the library, my eyes to my reflection on my computer screen, my face parallel to the image of my teenage self. Even side by side, I wouldn’t consider these two faces one in the same. Similar… a relative familiarity, maybe. But in coming home, I have been born anew. I will have to claw out from neither Mother’s shadow nor her thumb. I am not of her any longer. I am born of Lady Fate, and she has named me Jonathon Walks.

I leave the library and drive to my old street. My childhood home comes into view, a brick corner peeking out from behind a magnolia tree. The squat house seems even smaller now, quieter. The windows are dark, but I

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