Boondocks

Chapter 49: Moment

FERN

Little moments built me. Cultivated me like rain drops on soil or sun rays on leaves. Every lesson, every skill, every tool. Every hunting trip, hike, or day on the farm. Every conversation.

Little moments snowballed when lives rolled downhill. I stood in the midst of my biggest moment, and I'd never been calmer. More focused. More ready. Because I knew what to do.

As the masses dwindled, and the shadows fled, and the fire died, and Tex's voice echoed a failure not yet cemented, I slid my last arrow from the quiver. "Daddy," I said as I handed it to him, then ripped a strip from my t-shirt.

Tex was bloody and blackened with soot from head to toe. A jolt of awareness lit my skin the minute his attention found me. He didn't run forward, or shout, or light a cigar. He slackened, then straightened, and a hundred conversations echoed in the space between us. He'd gone. He'd left me. But he could sense it. That this was what was meant to happen. This was why I'd found him in the woods all those moments ago. This was why I'd had to wander. This was why I'd suffered. This was why I'd followed.

Daddy didn't need to ask to know what I wanted him to do. They'd seen Tex set the bags, trail the powder, get shot and push onward anyway. We'd all watched the prisoner ruin the work he'd done. We'd been standing there like spectators at a ball game, quietly rooting Tex on, praying our team would win. Daddy wrapped the cloth around the arrowhead.

"I need your rum," I said to Sergio. My voice was odd, not different or strained, but too steady. Too assured. As if I'd already been here before. I'd already lived this moment. In a way, I supposed I had. On that day. The day people had sprinted for freedom and never made it. The day my family had fallen. The day I'd become alone and broken and lost.

Snowflakes mingled with the ash, gently swaying to the Earth, signaling an end to the fall. A new season, and a chance to do things different. Sergio poured the rum, saturating the cloth. Then he lit it, and the flames danced in front of me, warmth in the cold, painting pictures of days long gone but not forgotten. Mama knitting by the fire. Mama hanging ornaments on a tree. Mama tending the garden. The way the beetle had crawled across her hair as she lay there, bleeding out in her blue cotton dress. The woman and her daughter, who'd just wanted to be clean. Julia, working her fingers to the bone to fill bellies, dead and cradled by the fruits of her labor. And all the other people who'd gone: in the cities, by the sea. In small towns and in slums. Across oceans. So many. Too many.

They stood with me. They surrounded me. Ghosts that'd always been there. Their hands were on my shoulders, my back. They supported my elbows and steadied my hands. They whispered their stories and begged for endings. For purpose. For reason.

The packs were far and hard to see, but I'd never had better aim. I took a slow breath, filling my lungs, the air like angry hornets with stingers extended. It didn't throw me. Nothing could have thrown me. I was the shot, and the shot was me, and it was the most natural thing left in the world.

"Nice and easy," Daddy's voice echoed. Not a dream. Not a memory. Not a wishful thought.

My breath released with the bowstring, and a world that had been so hectic and horrific, slowed, quieted. I heard my breath, soft, steady. I watched the arrow zip across the space, carried by every moment from the beginning of time to this one.

The boom destroyed the calm, and I was yanked back to reality by Sergio's grip on my jacket. He all but dragged me as we sprinted between the buildings, back through the hole where we'd entered, across the darkness, and toward a dead city. A chorus of screams rang up as crowds frantically tumbled down the hill. They were way ahead of us. We were too far behind. Two more explosions rumbled the air. The world narrowed. Black sky. My boots pounding against the ground. Alarms going off in the distance. Men's shouts.