Here in the afterglow

Chapter 1

Here In The Afterglow

November 8th, 1977

Against the soft light of first dawn, Post Falls is a simple mirage of shadow, the power lines and softwood silhouetted.

Louis breathes out long and slow as he unchains his bike from the fence, peering up and down the street.

It's just hit six o'clock.

He swings his leg over and balances the tips of his beat-up sneakers on the rough pavement, placing his radio and his apple into the basket on the front of his rusty bike. After a moment of painful tuning, Bob Dylan crows out at him gently, a little crackly. When he kicks off, he spares another glance up the street.

A streetlamp flickers against the beginnings of the mauve sky, the quaint little buildings row by row, cream and baby blue. The spokes on his bike click as he rides. In the silence of early daybreak, Louis can hear the roar of the dam in the distance.

Slowly, the little houses fall away into the main strip. The glowing signs are all flicked off, and only the streetlamps offer any radiance. They're weak, now, as the sun claws its way up the sky. Outside the dirty newsstand, Mr. Lucas has again fallen asleep in his warped camp chair. Someone has had the decency to spread his newspaper over his body in the cold. Louis rides past silently as the old man snores.

He tucks his nose into his mom's sweater as he lets himself drift down the hill towards the bridge, cold wind whipping around his ears.

The tiny boats bump against their morings, and birds glide atop of the crystal water, leaving the first ripples of the day with the tips of their webbed feet. Louis cycles alongside them, then loses sight of their flapping wings as they soar up, up, up and float into the trees.

The Spokane is a deep, deep blue, and Louis rides across the bridge into the thick pines with his eyes half closed, surrounded by the river and the haze of the morning. It's the first clear day they've had in weeks, not a cloud in sight, but the air is crisp and floats up off the glass-like water with teeth.

When he's safely in the cover of the trees, pedalling along the road, Bob Dylan fades away to a Santana song that he doesn't recognize, something off of Moonflower. Liam would know, maybe.

Without fault Louis pedals straight into the thin trail he's made for himself in the trees, lifting up a little in his seat as he moves up the incline. The pines tickle his arms as he pushes up the hill, the trees slowly falling away and becoming sparse, giving way to the tall grass. When it starts to get jammed into his spokes Louis dismounts and pushes his bike the rest of the way. The grass brushes tenderly against his clothed legs, swaying and swishing gently with the morning breeze. It smells like earth and ice, something inherently warm but a little cold all at once.

When he reaches the old fence, Louis holds his apple and his radio carefully in his hands. He slinks through the tangled and broken barbed wire, twisting his back awkwardly so he doesn't get the sweater caught on it and pull at the yarn. Once he's managed to squeeze through, he trots up to the highest point, where one lone pine shoots up into the sky like an arrow. It's lost most of its foliage, and pine needles litter the ground at its base.

Louis slides down against the trunk slowly. Before him, Post Falls stretches out endlessly, peaks of roofs and powerlines crisscrossing. The hills that surround the little town curve around it, and directly in front of him, meet together in a gradual, steep line, revealing a convex dip of sky, purple on the horizon.

Fiddling with the antenna, Louis positions the radio in front of him, turning it this way and that to try and pick up the perfect signal. After a little maneuvering and a few frustrated pats, it crackles to life again, deep voices pressing through.