The Late Bloomer by Mark Falkin

Author:Mark Falkin [Falkin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2018-08-13T07:00:00+00:00

Maggie growls. Nate’s talking. My eyes fly open. Nate is sitting up, staring ahead unblinking, mumbling in his sleep. He doesn’t react to the flashlight when I point it at his face, but his pupils contract to pinpricks and his speech clears. “You have to go, Kevin…you can only go one way.…you already know. You must go alone.” Then in a faraway disembodied flange voice he says, “It’s only me, brother. No other.”

Those six words are said in Johnny’s voice.

I detect that he’s conflicted. He’s breathing hard.

“Nate, wake up.” Barely awake myself, I find it hard to separate Nate’s words from Johnny’s, the dream world from this one. They overlap and I am unsure. “Please, Nate, wake up and talk to me for real.”

This kid sitting up and staring past the flashlight glare speaking in monotone had my pulse going, the reality of now thrumming through me.

I yelled at him. “Nate! Wake up!”

I beat on his legs with my open palm. He blinked, turned his face toward me. Growling from Maggie. Maggie leaning into me, ready to pounce.

Nate’s face gathered up into a fearful shudder. He recoiled and pulled his legs away from me. “Oh, no! It’s you!” His eyes grew wide and he shook his head with petulance like the child he was. “No. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to what, Nate? C’mon, it’s me. Kevin. You’re okay. You’re safe here.”

“No, I’m not safe. Never safe.” The voice wavered between old and new.

“That’s not true. Don’t you remember? We’ve been together all day today. I’ve told you all about me.” I reached out to touch his shoulder. He jumped back onto his heels on the couch, his knees at his chin. Maggie startled but I made sure she stayed put with my other arm.

“Why did you come here?” he asked in a whisper.

“I told you.”

“They’ll find me!”

“Nate—”

“And I don’t want to go back to them and I don’t want to be with you because you make my head hurt. I just want to be left alone.”

“Nate—”

His eyes shot back and forth and his breathing shallowed in rapid hitches. He huffed his breath and whimpered in abject pain, overwhelmed.

My presence confuses things for him.

“When they find me, they’re going to…”

“What?” But I already knew. I flashed onto Simon’s freckled face, fish-belly white, peering through the curtain of green.

“Because I’m not…I’m not…complete.”

He looked up at me and his eyes implored that I believe him. I took the flashlight beam off his face, no longer interrogating him. “And they’ll just kill you for it.” I remember saying this without derision. I said it quietly, stating fact.

Though he did not respond, his face was grim.

The night’s black didn’t allow me to see that puddles in the gravel quivered with droplets until I waved my beam out across the drive. Lifting the light up, I saw the dogs’ eyes spark yellow. They sat still, watching, ears perked to our conversation. I lit new candles on the bar. Sleeping no longer occurred to us.

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