Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Red Seeds
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
I was nine, and my parents were watching a special news bulletin on TV late in the afternoon on a grindingly hot summer day. The aliens, who’d been just floating in the sky for more than eight months, ignoring every attempt to contact them and unhurt by any weapon we tried, had finally acted. They had dropped little red seeds from the sky that landed and ripped terrible gashes in the earth, hundreds of meters deep, razing houses and slashing roads and cutting rivers. They’d already done it in dozens of places: South Africa, Pakistan, Norway, Canada, Bolivia, France, Russia, New Zealand.
Out on the street, very faintly, I heard the rambling tinkle of the ice cream truck. I begged with my parents, waited the excruciating time it took for Dad to get his wallet, snatched the two quarters, ran, had to be called back to say “Thank you,” ran again, and caught up with the ice cream truck just at the end of the street, where Walter Biscayne was receiving not one, but two drumstick cones.
I remember it vividly. The sky was a scorched blue. The heat over the new-paved street wavered, as if we were all knee-deep in water. An oak tree three houses away was yellowing even though it was late July: probably it had some kind of blight or something. A housefly was sitting on Walter Biscayne’s shoulder, but he didn’t even notice.
Walter collected his cones. I ran to the window.
“Ice cream sandwich, please,” I said.
“Sorry, we’re out,” said the ice cream guy. And then I heard the blast, a torrential ripping noise. It knocked me into the truck and blew the little truck right over on its side. A horrible cracking sound came up from the ground. My forehead was bleeding. When the noise went away, I sat up and looked around me.
The ground had been torn open in a deep, gaping rent as long as half a dozen ocean liners end to end. Dust rained down from the sky. Four houses on our street were completely gone, obliterated. The only thing left of my house–or my parents–was a broken piece of the slide from the back yard. The crack stopped just short of Walter’s house.
So yes, despite everything they’ve done for us since, despite the fact that they never erased New York or crushed the Eiffel Tower, I still think the aliens need to be exterminated.
Is that enough to get me into your goddamned little resistance, or do I need to get some scalps first?
Overlea Marsh
Monday, July 19th, 2010
We’re a big family, notoriously hard to fright, unless you count Uncle Jack; the rest of us got our horses walloped over fences when we were young enough to learn— no fear, or don’t show it. My cousin Gilly’s shaping up to be like Uncle Jack. The aunts talk about what’s to be done about her.
Therefore when my horse cast a shoe coming up on Overlea Marsh I didn’t fret too much. Everyone warns about the marsh— “not after sunset,” & etc. I found the shoe settling in a pool off the track, pulled it out in the reddening light, and decided against going after the missing nails.
“We’ll have to walk it, Conqueror,” I told him, and he had the grace to look ashamed. We crossed the first bridge, by Cold Water.
“Who passes there?” asked a voice like water weed.
I stopped dead.
“John Overlea,” I said, addressing the empty dusk.
It said nothing more; yet I found myself kneeling in the middle of the bridge, weeping with loneliness. My whole family despised me, though they’d never said a word. Overleas don’t. They thought I was worse than a hundred Uncle Jacks.
“That was quick,” said the voice by my ear. “I thought to have to try you at all three bridges. Mind the lesson here. If you do, nothing more will fright you tonight.”
I stood up, startled. The loneliness had gone, my aunts and cousins and all didn’t despise me in the least.
I walked on leading Conqueror, thinking; the voice kept its promise.
When I got home, I walked round the porch to where Uncle Jack always sits, alone with his pipe on the far side. I sat down beside him.
“Young John,” he nodded.
“Uncle Jack,” I answered, “You suffer a great deal from us.”
He smiled, looking out over the north field towards the marsh.
“Yes,” he said. “Someone’s got to carry the fears awhile, if nobody else shares the burden. Makes you strong, I admit, though you hate it.”
He turned to me.
“Something happen in the marsh?”
“Yes,” I blinked.
“Ah,” he said, smiling out over the field again.
“I’ll share the burden,” I offered suddenly, because nobody ought to bear what I’d felt on the bridge, even if sometimes they must.
He patted my arm.
“Some’s you can, and some’s you can’t. Thank you.”