Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde Epilogue

Epilogue

At twilight Merle held the warm boy in his lap on the swing until the child could contain himself no longer and threw himself off the porch and into the yard to chase fireflies. Earlier the sky had been a clear one all day, but now he could feel a thunderstorm coming back off the horizon. He had moved away once, long ago, and the heat lightning blowing across the western prairie into the heart of the Little Dixie was what he had missed most.

He had hoped Troy would do better for himself just as his old man had expected of him. Troy and the girl were talked about down at the cafe and in the bars. It was almost like they were celebrities, but Merle hung his head down as he leaned over to stomp out a butt under his boot as he switched of the keening sound of the evening news on the radio. The doctor had already told him he had to give up smoking and drinking. Smoking was something he could afford to do only on occasion now.

The breeze kicked up appreciably as he looked for the boy heading toward the barn to find one of the wild cats he was always chattering about. Lightning struck miles away and there was a reverberation that seemed to absorb all other sound. He wanted to call the boy back, but he didn’t trust his smoke-scarred voice. Alisha came out onto the porch untying the apron from around her slim waist. She put a hand up as if to call Ray back to the house. Birds called fatuously under the gathering current of the approaching rainstorm.

He stretched up to hold himself against the trellis and watched the cloudbanks on the horizon like heavenly hosts and rolling ponies in the sky. He reflected on the times he too had wanted to leave this place, but now the farmstead called to him from its roots. He could see his daddy waving from the back porch. His grandmother making sauerkraut in deep cauldrons in the backyard. His bare feet when he was eleven years old squishy in the red clay near the creek. Now, he felt superstitious about leaving as if he might die if he ever left again. Nothing could be worse than dying alone, away from down-home people. Somewhere along the line he had doomed himself to the land where he was born and fated his son to die in a far away place.

The phone rang. Merle and Alisha exchanged a glance. Oh Dad, she said. They wondered if it was him on the other line. Neither of them moved to answer it. It stopped ringing after the fourth time. The storm passed over. The darkness subsided just as the sun set low on the evening horizon.

The end.

May 12, 2010