The Late Rebellion by Mark Powell

Author:Mark Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

She wasn’t at home, his ma.

Hadn’t Richard known this? He had, he supposed. Yet somehow he had left the game with his pennant and his drink and his Germantown hoodie, got in Tom’s pickup, and wound up here. Was this another of Jack’s tricks? He couldn’t be sure. Standing in the dark living room, the house silent and settling, he couldn’t quite be sure of anything. He was on his way to see his ma. Of that he was certain. Yet she was where? She was in the ICU at Germantown Memorial, of course. Which was where Richard had intended to go. Yet some homing instinct had taken over. Some inborn impulse, the kind of thing that pulls migrating birds from one continent to another and then back again.

He walked through the darkened house, feeling his feet sink into the pile of the carpet.

Were the Feds watching the house? They couldn’t be because why would they? He felt the papers against his chest, his father’s photograph hidden within them. He kept one hand there, pressing, securing. Where are you, Ma? Not here. But also here, he thought, still here, and for the second time that day he started down the basement steps.

This time he didn’t bother with the lights.

At the turn in the stairs he put his hands out for balance and when he brought them back to his chest, his feet now planted solidly on the cold concrete, he no longer felt the papers or the photograph. He no longer felt them because all at once, he was home from the Citadel, dressed in his parade whites with the starched collar and blue shoulder boards, a golden SC pinned to his throat, home and walking through the dim labyrinth of boxes stacked throughout the basement, calling, Ma? Where are you, Ma?

And Ma not answering; Ma answering, Go and find your brother. Your brother’s down there somewhere, Richard. They have him. Find him, Richard. Please. Your father’s away at the war where it’s snowing and they’re dying but your brother, he’s alive, he’s there. You have to find him, darling!

And Richard answering that he could do that.

He could find his brother.

Just as soon as he got up.

Because Richard was—he realized—down on the carpet in front of the fire, Benjamin Harden’s fire up in Cary, North Carolina, plowing a furrow through the shag with his metal Farmall. It was 1956, maybe 1957, which meant Teddy wasn’t even born yet. So how could he be dead? Which meant time had failed, time had turned back on itself, just as Richard had always suspected it might. And in its turning the past had swerved. The tractor had swerved, it must have. The great cleats of the back right tire must have shifted to miss the cavity of his chest, the teeth of the hay rake must have failed to claw his ear and nose and catch in the soft give of his lip, his face torn to the same pink you found inside a dog’s ear.

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