Lexi
The man came over the hill in the afternoon. Vaulted over the gate. Came over the hill and into the yard. Black clouds stacked in the west. The sky held its breath. Breathed out. The wind whipped over the hill sweeping dust and sand off the dry ground. Rain pocked the ground. The sand and dirt turned into fish scales and then into a brown wash.
Because metaphors are one-way tickets. From here.
Lightning jagged the sky. The yard smelled like salt. Like a first world. If I closed my eyes I could believe it. The man came over the hill and up the driveway. Kicking wet sand and dust.
These things are hard to get a grip on.
But I know this much. Nothing on this island stops for rain.
The man wore blue suit pants and a blue jacket. A white handkerchief poked from his pocket. A cotton-white star. He’d polished his black shoes fine and hard. A beautiful man. I could see that much even through the waves of rain and the tar smoke and the spattering sand and dust.
Cristofer bounced on his trampoline in the side yard. Bounced and grunted. Skinny golden-haired angel. Bouncing. Reaching into the sky. All day long. Skipping meals. Rain or wind or sun. Mom painted in her studio shed. Walter washed tar off his hands and arms in the kitchen. As if. Tilson fixed the chicken fence. He’d fixed it a thousand times if one. Lane Charles stood at the side of his cane field. He knew better than to step across the property line. Walter had said he’d shoot him. He sometimes stepped across the line anyway.
I sat on the front porch. Reading ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ out of the Bible that I’d cut the middle out of. So I could stick in a paperback book. Because that’s what I did when Walter hid my dad’s books in the attic and said, Thou shalt not. And Mom rolled her eyes but let Walter have his way. As if. But I could cut the middle out of a Bible. And I could climb a ladder to the attic and find Walter’s hidey-hole.
I read ‘Tell-Tale’ from Great American Stories. And I stroked my leg under my dress. Higher and higher. Circling higher. Because there was happiness between the rainclouds and the sun and who deserved it if I didn’t?
My orgasm and a man coming over the hill. The most exciting events of the day. Of any day. Around here.
So much was unclear until he came. We’d been ghosts. Ghosts in a fog in the night though it was a July afternoon. I know that much. Until the rain came the sun had shined so hot it could burn a hole in a bleached sheet if you left it out too long to dry. It had been a day to run off to the pine woods and sit in the shade. Or to find a porch swing and read a book. A place to escape the stinging hot July and the weed-and-holly smell and the tar smoke and the biting yellow flies.
The man in the blue suit came over the hill. He raised his face to the rain as if he was looking for directions. But if the rain was guiding him it was a cruel rain telling him to walk to our house. He was fine-looking though I couldn’t see his eyes. And eyes as they say are the windows.
I took my hand out of my dress. Picked up the Bible. Walter gave it to me because I’d tired him with begging begging begging for my dad’s books. Pastels of a shepherd and lambs. Jesus and Mary. The burning bush. Jacob wrestling. It had a red binding and a strap with a heart-shaped lock that held the cover closed even if you chucked it at a wall. Which I’d tried. I kept the key on a leather string around my neck.
I opened the cover and breathed the old-yellow-paper smell of Great American Edgar Allan. Closed it and locked the strap. Look at me. I was a girl on a front-porch swing with a Bible on her lap. Church mouse.
The man came to the porch. When he smiled each white tooth was a star in the sky. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the rain from his forehead. He said, ‘Is this where Kay Jakobson lives?’
I gave him my best smile also. It was small change. ‘My mom,’ I said. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘An admirer,’ he said.
‘She’s old for you,’ I said. ‘And married. And self-obsessed and not a very nice person.’
‘I saw her paintings,’ he said.
‘You’re not the first.’
‘In Atlanta,’ he said.
‘And you came all the way down here to meet her?’
‘I want to buy one,’ he said. ‘If she’ll work that way.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I said. ‘How did you get into the yard?’
He said, ‘I climbed over the gate.’
‘Bad idea to climb over a gate,’ I said.
‘I tried to call,’ he said.
‘No you didn’t. I would’ve answered.’
‘I tried—’
‘You’re a liar.’ I said it nicely.
He smiled those teeth at me. ‘I would have called if I’d known you would answer,’ he said.
‘I’m here all the time,’ I said.