The Red Boy & How I Went to Sleep

I used to make a living out of being a good listener. Then, two years ago I lost a child; we agreed it was my fault, Avery and I, and though we never filed for divorce, I haven’t spoken to her in just as long. Tiny Thaya, when she went, was like a collapsed star, tearing a hole into the fabric of who we’d been. We spun apart quickly after and got tossed into new worlds, me in Onyx, her who-knows-where.

God used to live deep in this forest, they told me early on. She was the very first tree to reach up out of the silt and when she found the sky, she whispered through her roots and told all the other trees where to look. Whether we were jealous or thirsty for fire, who knows, but we cut her down, strapped her to the bed of a fifth wheel and brought her here to this very mill to be processed. “Why else you think your house groans at night?” said the saw man who’d trained me, edges of a bitter smile disappearing under the red foliage of his beard.

I didn’t believe him but I found myself, each night, lingering on the edge of a sleep into which I would not fall, listening for her.

I took a walk today during my lunch break to make a call, the one that would mend things between Avery and I. Such a call deserved the perfect place. I pictured a clearing with grand light and the kind of air that made breathing easy. I gripped the phone in my pocket. What was it I’d wanted to say? I couldn’t remember. Something to stitch warmth over an absence. I thought and thought and so kept looking and looking.

It must have been a while later when I found myself on a road arched by trees so thick that the sound of my boots crunching in the chipped stone echoed. The sun came down in spires and speckled the ground and caught shape in the tufts of dust I kicked up as I walked. That road seemed to stretch on and on, seemed longer and straighter than any road had a right to be, but then again maybe roads liked to run free in these parts. It felt good to float. Maybe it was better to call her later in the day, anyway.

I came to a crossing and found it was marked by a dilapidated house, huddling back from the road in the shadows. It had once been white but was now faded and cracked as if the vines that grew up its sides were trying to pull it into the ground. The air surrounding the place was so thick that I slowed. As my eyes adjusted, I took in the crooked mouth of a garage. Rusted tin signs hung on the walls inside and caught a yellow marrow lamplight. A man the color of grease and tree moss was bent over the engine block of a banged up blue two-door. I heard faintly the sound of metal ratchet and smokers lung.

“You been walkin’ a while?” came a voice from the porch as a shape I thought part of the home slid a shotgun off his lap, unfolded and stood.

—

Read the rest at https://hoxiegorgereview.com/the-red-boy-how-i-went-to-sleep/

(Originally published in Hoxie Gorge Review, Issue I: Fall 2019)