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hearyourselfintheworld · 2 years

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Dairy

It was late spring, just before that summer. “Your taking so fucking long.” Her arms folded just below the crease of her towel, looking at him like there was some point to be proven. A sort of swooshing sound came from the swim trunks appearing under his jeans, hanging on for dear life. Standing like a magnet was buried in the center of his chest and his head, metal. His shoulders seemed weird and off-putting, but from a side profile he could pass as “slim”.

“Hold up.” Forced out of a heavy chest he had on.

A group of water arranged on his back left calf. He was confused and scared like a dog is. She called in the pool, pushing her hair from her face; “You gotta just jump in, get it over with.”

He half bent over to not fully expose the shape of his torso and placed the Levis on the rock, putting his boots on top to keep them in place. He crossed his arms and stood at the foot of the water.

“We should just hang out on the rocks. It's starting to get cold and the pebbles underneath hurt my soles.”

He heard water settling back onto the surface from her body and she repeated the same ‘pushing-hair-from-face” motion. “C’monnnn Henry, it's fun and it's summer now and we have to do all the stuff we said we would.” Swimming at night in the middle of April didn’t seem like an activity Henry had on his bucket list but he didn't have many friends. She actually saw him and wanted him around still so he took that to heart. He made up his mind pretty quick he was getting in. He felt the earth take him down and lift him again inside a fluid bubble. He pushed down in an attempt to submerge his whole body in the river, then feeling the cold wind immediately as he came up from the water. Denise swam to him, head just above the water, then rising up to meet on the giant rock he was standing on underneath. “See, wasn’t so bad?” she said with a long awaited smile. He was lost for a moment in her but quick to be unsure of what to do with his hands so he jumped back in, and she followed.

In the sound of impact Henry opened his eyes and realized he had fallen asleep, his shoes still on and his long johns exposed under his jeans. He heard his mother calling out to him about the cat being inside again, so he just yelled back in a similar tone. Then back to silence.

He got up from his bed and grabbed his science notebook, tore out a page and began writing with -the under the bed pencil- he discovered on his way.

Denise,

It’s January now. Austin and I were together pretty much all of winter break. Still had my daily rounds at the dairy but I seemed to get a lot done in that time I had around it. It’s so fucking cold in the winter. I swear it’s like I forget what it feels like every time, and everything seems like it takes so long. I was behind the well pond Tuesday with Austin and I couldn’t remember where we left the last of the jack we had from Saturday. We had just finished fixing the heat lamp in the chicken coop so we just went straight there from the hill. Right in front of the sprinkler pile there’s these lilac bushes. They were frozen over so I decided to put it in-between the two. I knew it was on the right side so Austin reached to grab the bottle, he picked up this branch that guarded our Jack Daniels and underneath it was 4 newly born kits. I honestly didn't know what to do, so I asked Austin. I saw his right hand holding the bucket with the old lamp, with his face showing no genuine reaction. I kinda put two and two together. Before he could say anything he dropped the 5 gallon bucket to the ground where they were laying. They weren’t moving when he lifted it. No breaths. No form to it really either. Just blood. Everywhere.

Austin pretty much kills anything not human, actually he asked granny if he could ring the next hens neck she needs for soup.

I never question that side of him. I always didn’t want to know or was just afraid he would take it the wrong way. And hell I’ve shot some birds too, so am I any better than him? This time was different so I asked. He said it's because they have no mom. You know, coyotes and all that stuff. How would they even eat? I wiped the blood from the bottle and pulled the rest. As we headed back to the house the v shaped birds drew over the top of our heads like a blimp. We lit our smokes as the shadow felt like there was a point to be proven. Anyways, yeah, it's been getting pretty cold here. I think it was 13 degrees yesterday. My mom is still sick but she was talking about a garden for next spring so I’m feeling optimistic. Just wanted to talk or write down what I can’t really say here. I miss you.

Love , Henry

He brushed over the paper with the bottom side of his palm, ridding it of any pencil dust or eraser debris. It wasn’t usual to have this feeling for Henry. At the dairy there were two types of moments, one alone and one alone but around people. Right now he doesn't even feel alone. What's more alone than being alone? He was empty. He saw a big white room, with strong white overhead lighting, grow apart from his location in the center. Before he knew it he couldn’t see any definition. Just white space, endlessly growing, further and further away. He woke from a thud at the back door; Henry knew it was the back because it wouldn’t close easily unless slammed. He heard the drunken cadence of his father rambling at someone or something in a way which seemed a bit too giddy for him to be up to anything good. Henry hadn’t really seen a lot of feelings come from his father besides ‘tired’ or what he liked to call It, ‘work washed”. His cat's ears stood up and eyes wide at the sound of the big burly man rummaging in the house. She hated Henry's Father, for some reason, but he always felt bad for him for that reason. His aunt would say animals can just tell something about a person. He could tell by the footsteps , or lack of them, that he had sat down at his chair in the living room. It was greenish brown and rough like an old blanket, with smells like sawdust and sweat and cigarettes and machine oil. Henry could sense it without even being in the room. He knew, 18 years around it and your olfactory senses start doing their own magic.

“Henry c’mere” he belted to his son, down the hall second door to the left. Henry felt a sense of dread in his legs as he looked down at them. Suddenly he wanted to be back in that big white room. The big glowing ceilings with endless space and pure white walls. He looked at the clock and it read 6:13, the storm was starting so he knew he was about to have to deal with something. “Gotta fill the wood box” his father said as he pointed at the box. The box for wood. That was empty. “ Check on your mother when you're done, bet she needs something” he said overtly staring at the television. Which Henry was always fine with, he hated making eye contact with his father. Seemed like each time there was someone in there begging to be let free. There were times when feeling empathy for him was hard to deal with. But maybe, he saw the white room too?

“You get kindling too?” said in an unnecessarily southern way.

‘Damnit’ Henry thought in his head as he was taking off his coat, it had the chair smell too. The worst part of starting the fire was having to chop the logs into these small thin pieces which Henry's Father called ‘Kindling’. The tricky part was not missing, most of the time his dad would do it but since winter break started he told him he seemed to be ‘getting lazy’. Henry didn’t have the best Hand-eye coordination. He was about 6’ 3’, all limbs and didn’t realize it or didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t help that he was turning into a drunk himself. He remembered the time he went swimming in the river with Denise and she was so impatient and made him feel weak in a vulnerable sort of way. He muttered to himself, clogging down the steps in his boots and fixed his stride. He rounded the shed towards the flat and set his eyes on his victim.

the wood pile.

He imagined he was standing in the white room cutting the wood. The echo off the walls was alive and came back harder than it left. There was warm water coming out of his shoulder moving to the back of his neck. He watched the process unfold from his labor. Log. Place. Ax. Swing. Break. Stack. Again. He was in the room again and the glow felt warm. Something had left him he hadn’t lived without for some time. His eyes were locked on the task before him and he felt no need to stop. After about a half hour the storm was getting pretty bad so he needed to get the wood inside before it was too wet to burn. Henry put the ax back in the shed and looked down the hill at a small black figure. He saw a skunk, her head following her feet in a sort of synchronized rhythm. “Hell you doing out there?'' He heard his fathers voice leaning from the screen door. “Skunk.” He yelled back. Henry heard the screen door close through the blanket of snow falling between them. He noticed the skunk's pace getting slower and less anticipated. She took a few more attempts and stopped, laying in the field just below the hill, flat on her stomach as the snow began to layer like a new coat of fur. They watched for a moment, then remembering what the hell he was doing out there, Henry and his father made his way back inside with the kindling, looking for the white room.

Written by Michael Daniel

#short stories #writing #stories #literature

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