I am all by myself / The trees are not trees / The birds are not birds / And I am not me / But something that has been walking for a very long time.
YELLOWJACKETS. Lottie Matthews
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
2019.
There's a bird chirping, loud and annoying. It's pestering him. Standing at the cement door, for the first time in his life, Travis Martinez doesn't know what to do with his hands.
His right arm is holding luggage, so it's busy. There's usually a wall to punch. A beer to guzzle. A white line to snort. Natalie to hold close or kiss. All of his vices are gone. He feels naked, too exposed to noise. Farm life is fine. It's safe, in the way that a grave is safe. Does he knock? Pick at dead cuticles? Trudging through pig sludge and duck feathers, Travis moves as if dragging centuries behind him. Slop splashes in dull notes of gray and green—sounds that scratch up his calves in pinpricks.
No civilization or dead brothers, he's satisfied. Not happy, though. Manageable. He finds himself thanking God for life more often now, though he has no faith. Travis has an inevitable disdain towards Him.
He's thought about life. Making a family. Marriage. He's not getting any younger, and that's what men do, right? What's more satisfying than unionizing in the arches of God's image? Travis never had been able to decipher happy from satisfying. His marriage with Natalie would be watery. Tearful in the best sense. She understands him. Loves him in all of the messy things. Isn't that what they say? In sickness and in health? So, he bought a ring with Sade's help. It was small, but Natalie wasn't exactly rich herself.
He's learned that God is kinder to others who have working hands. People who claw into the dirt, aren't afraid to get a little ugly. Like Sade. That's why he wrote to her. He had a dream about her. All dimples and dark-freckled, smelling like spicy herbs. Baby Javi was crying, a starving cry. He wanted Mom, so naturally, Sade came. The crying stopped. The end of it. It was a nice dream, but not real. They didn't know each other when Javi was born, when things were nice, but she held him like she birthed him.
Life has devoured him, it doesn't hold him. He carries too many souls to save. Too many unhappy questions. The ring is a shiny token, yes, but the Stag is still left with his useless hands. Empty.
Physiologically, Sade and Javi and Travis are the same: long, bruised lashes; sad lungs like caved-in wings, gasping against the cold. Both are animals (dead stag, nervous bird, even deader hare), slick-boned and trembling. Except, Sade's features are half-masked by soot and darkness, giving nothing away—except maybe the fact that she's stopped waiting to be saved. She became the monstrous thing they used to pray to. Death. Easily dissected by the scalpel of Charlotte Matthews, who stood at her lover's side, proudly.
Whatever Sade found in those woods didn't let go of her. It took root like a cavity. And she, quietly, let It take her. It accepted her. She protected them with It. Travis misses his brother and best friend. Catastrophically so. He'll take the knife over the memory any day.
