The Apparent Junction of Earth and Sky

The Apparent Junction of Earth and Sky, Part V

He slept on the beach and this is what he dreamed about:

He saw the bars of his crib, slanted slightly as he tried to roll over onto his side. There was a tree just outside the window, each green leaf spread out like a webbed hand. They waved at him in the subtle stirrings of the wind. The honey-colored sunlight was the only thing illuminating the room. It turned the walls gray. The door opened. He turned to look. Something black floated across his vision, a spot that swam like a microbe in the liquid of his eyeball.

He ran across the cracked sidewalk alongside the Fourth of July parade,careful to avoid the miniature flags that lined the street. He imagined that if he tripped and fell onto one, it would impale him and he would bleed and no one would stop to watch because they were too enthralled with the veterans who marched mere feet away. And he did catch one of the cracks with the toe of his small, Velcro-latched shoe. And he did fall. And the candy he collected so far scattered from his hands and his knee scraped across the rough cement and there was a feeling like burning. He could feel the pebbles and flakes of dirt dig into his skin and he knew that he would cry even though the bigger kids would see him.

And then he was sitting next to Brendan watching a movie, a computer animated film with pastel balloons and dogs flying airplanes. They wore special glasses and it felt like you could reach out and gather the balloons up in your arms. He was old enough to know that he would be foolish to try it. But there was a fire burning in him to do it anyway.

Brendan let him sit on his lap on the way home and steer. They laughed a lot but his heart was racing and for the only time he felt the freedom of driving and the roll of the road under the tires and the rumble of the engine.

And then there was something bad. That night after they got home. His mom asked if they were listening to the radio in the car but they weren't. They made Ciaran go to bed early and so he listened from his dark room to their conversation. He was in the same room where he once slept in the crib. The same tree was outside still, but its moving shape in the dark turned its waving into fanatic flailing and frightened him, so he kept his back turned. A slash of light crossed his face as he pulled the thin, pale pink sheet up to his chin. The people on TV sounded very serious. His mom began to cry. A great ruckus started in the kitchen. Brendan was mumbling, asking her what he should take and what he should leave.

He didn't fall asleep until he was in the back seat of the loaded car.The hum of the road lulled his eyes. He tried to fight them, to keep them open, but there was nothing except that hum and the colored lights of the dash. And his mom was close, only a few feet away. So he slept.

There was fire outside the window sometime in the night.

A hand slapped against the outside of the car and dragged across his half-sleeping vision.

Brendan and his mom argued about fueling up the car. Brendan said there was nowhere safe to go.

He dreamed about their first nights in the woods. Before it all happened, he thought that one tree outside his window was spooky. Now he was surrounded by them. The light from the fire made faces on their bark, mouths that constantly chewed and eyes that rolled back and forth. When they got far enough into the trees, he could hear them moaning and cracking and each time it gave his heart a start.

Then he saw his mom from his view on the ground as she was dragged away,her hands reaching for him and clawing the brown leaves on the ground, her hair in tangles around her wet eyes.

On the beach, Ciaran groaned and rolled onto his back. His brain corrected itself and brought him happy memories. The things he talked about now with Brendan. The things that didn't bother him so much.

Seeing the ocean for the first time and wondering at its impossible endlessness.

Brendan crying on the boardwalk because the sun was setting and they were finally safe and they could finally forget everything that haunted them.

The first night he stumbled into the festival, drunk and grinning.

The first night he stayed with a girl, his stomach pressed against her back as they stood on the beach and looked out at the night sky, the smell of her hair dancing with the ocean breeze. Kissing her. A dazed walk back to the house and waking up next to her.

Brendan asking cautiously if it happened.Him smiling a red-faced, crooked smile and saying no, it didn't, not this time.

Drinks on the beach and not knowing if it was Monday or Wednesday or Saturday but listening to Brendan talk about a time when he had to know those things. When clocks were tools, not decorations. Sipping on rum and imagining how bland it must have been to grow up that way.

And hating Brendan for bringing it up in the first place.

The cry of a gull woke him. It was fall or maybe winter now; the mornings were cold. He sat up and pulled his legs close to his chest, lifted the hood on his sweatshirt. Reached blindly for the pack of smokes that he collapsed onto the night before. Finding that there was only one and lighting it. The beach was empty. Everyone else was inside.He knew most of them by name now.

He couldn't stay long. Brendan was lax but not lazy, he would start to look for him soon. He didn't make it home but instead passed out about a mile down the beach on his way.

His heart stood still. Before him, a long gray hulk lifted above the water and slid across its surface. There was a crass burst of air and a fine spray of water before the glistening skin disappeared again.

"Save the whales," Brendan would always say in these moments, laughing a little while he did. "I guess we did, huh?"

Ciaran hated this, too. He didn't understand the joke and found its repetition grating.

Ciaran respected the beast, though, and he watched it with bated breath as it swam in a large circle for a few minutes before diving into the water again. He considered jumping into the water and seeing how close he could get. They weren't aggressive, after all. But the whales weren't the only things making a comeback now that civilization was fading. There were a lot of scary things in the ocean.

Even from the beach, he hated to see the whale leave him. It was a quiet moment, and while there were lots of those now, it was also a moment he had to himself. That was becoming more rare now that Brendan was latching onto him as his only means of purpose.

He thought these things as he took the final drag of his cigarette, tossing the butt into the sand and covering it with his bare foot.With a grunt, he got to his feet, dusted the sand off his bare calves, and began the trek home.