Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

He produces a glock just like Martin’s, the one I now have with me at all times, and puts it to his head and he fires and buckles to the ground. The lake water forced ashore by the wave comes up to his body and surrounds him once before receding, pulling a thin current of the man’s blood away.

It is then I find myself standing in the man’s yard. I turn to watch the wave seethe and hiss north.

I turn my head downriver and I feel profound doom and destiny.

There’s an echo within the river canyon. The frantic Spanish—now I understand it to be coming from Bass’s ham radio—has slowed to something the speaker wants me to understand. I shake my head, unable to. Then the voice says in heavily inflected English— they cannot do it alone. The voice lets me consider this. In my thoughts, I assent: I can help. No, they need more than that, señor.

That’s the chrysalis dream.

Now, Johnny stands over me and Kodie while we sleep. Dreaming? Unsure. Johnny says, “We do need you. I’m sorry I had to leave. You were learning to dream the dream of sleep and I couldn’t disturb that. Because you’ll need that, probably more than anything, the dream of sleep.” In his pause he became more himself, my little brother. His shoulders relaxed, his tone his again. “There’s no point in worrying, Kev. Okay? Trust me. No point. We’ll see each other soon.” And Johnny strikes that pose again, arms outstretched, palms up. His eyes and mouth become orbs of white light. My eye draws to his clenching right hand. He breaks from the pose, drops his arms, and immediately goes into a throwing motion, kicks out his leg and—

Shattering glass, together with whalescreams.

I see dawn and piles of stones on a beach.

I startled awake at that, soon tumbling in wet echoes.

I heard my name shouted. I heard pounding. I shook my skull side to side trying to rid it of the words, the screams, the dawn beach.

I sat up and there in my room I saw a head on a stick, the eyes Buddha-lidded, flies crawling and buzzing. I can’t make out the face it’s so covered. The buzzing pierces.

Truly awake, in my room. Kodie’s deep asleep. I get up slowly so as not to rouse her. I check to see if Johnny is in his room, what I’d do every morning, but it’s just Wayne on the wall doing his Christ pose in the gloom.

The world came back, the one I lived in now. It’s dawn. Spanish comes over the ham radio in the living room.

Ciudad de Mexico —

Eeef anyone ees dere, pleeese—

I made my way to the front of the house expecting to see Bass hunched over the ham. Light from the front door windows filled the hall.

A late bloomer’s voice: Hello, hello, estamos aquí, is anyone there? Weee are de Ciudad de Mexico—

I flick on the hall light switch. It does not come on. My footfalls quicken down the wooden floor of the short hall.

Los niños aquí, dios mio—

“Don’t.” Bass’s sonorous voice, aggrieved and wracked, from the front room before I even get there. “Don’t, Kevin.”

I step through the doorway. Before I turn to him, I see Mom’s car through the front door. It’s riddled with dings, the glass starred in constellations.

There’s a boy standing in the neighbor’s yard beyond the back of the car looking straight at me, still as a rabbit, a sentinel spy. His hair is blond. It moves in the breeze. He’s bigger, older, yet a boy.

Bass is naked. He holds the pistol. His face is red, his eyes are swollen from crying. He shivers blue-lipped, yet he’s starting to smile. His face forces this smile upon itself. A mucosal laugh barks from his throat when his eyes shift to look at me, then he says as if answering, “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.” He shakes his head each time he says this and each time the smile seems to spread.

“Bass,” I said. I didn’t move. “C’mon, man.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t, okay?” I stepped forward, my foot gingerly finding the floor as if it might contain a landmine.

“Don’t!” Bass shoved the barrel under his chin, gouging his skin. He breathed quickly, his nostrils flaring.

“Jesus Christ.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” But for my mouth, I didn’t dare move. He held the gun to his neck like he was his own hostage.

“The opposite.”

He shook his head, closed his eyes and gulped. The sheen of sweat of his neck shone in the light as he swallowed and spoke. He kept shaking his head in denial, sniffing, his lower lip quivering, the gun still very much there. “Close to sunup. I couldn’t sleep, I was listening to the ham and then…”

“I’m not moving, Bass. Okay? Just… put it down? Please.”

He lowered it from his throat, holding it flat and diagonal against his chest looking like a confederate soldier posing for a daguerreotype. He rocked back on his heels and leaned his shoulder blades against the wall.

“Why didn’t you come tell us?”

“I kept calling for you!”

I’d heard noises, but they were interpolated into my nightmare.

Two boys now, towheads, their twitching thatches of hair all that move. They stand under the magnolia tree with their arms to their sides. One wears a green long-sleeve T-shirt, the other a grey hoodie.

“Who’re the trick-or-treaters?”

Bass said, “Been there since right before… I… wasn’t feeling… well. They show up. When I picked up the gun, they just stood there.” He glanced at them and shivered. “I think they’re waiting for me now.”

Kodie stepped up behind me and coughed. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t,” said Bass. He stood erect again, gun wavering between us and him.

Kodie peered around me, saw Bass. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She seized my upper arm, her knuckles brushing my gun.

“No,” said Bass. “Definitely not.”

I asked, “Bass. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.”

“Are you… do you want to…?”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes. I want to.” He burst out a single wet cry.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Feels right. Feels… good .”

“Don’t,” I said.

“But it’s coming on slow. The need. I’m so afraid. I don’t really want to go, but—”

“We can help you,” Kodie said from behind me.

He shook his head violently. “No. You can’t. You should stay away. You should go away and just let me. Your being here makes it hurt more.”

Kodie teared up and sniffed.

“That doesn’t help,” Bass said. “If you don’t leave me alone… it seems so glorious. It’d be wrong to leave you here. To suffer in this… this cesspool of a world. It isn’t ours anymore. They’re just waiting us out.” He nodded to the front.

Kodie got up on her toes and looked over my shoulder out the door. “It’s just like what they did that morning at my house. Goddammit, can’t they just leave us alone? Or… do… something .”

“You could come with me.” He lowered the gun at us, then back to his chin. “Please stay away, Kevin. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, okay? I’m feeling very strange.”

“Bass? Now don’t get mad at me. I’m trying to help when I say this. Don’t shoot, okay?”

He shot me a basilisk glance, started to nod.

“What if I give you something to make you sleep? Knock you out? We could figure out what to do.”

“What could you do ? Fix me? When I wake up, I’ll be right back to feeling like this. Except you’ll probably have me secured and then I’ll just go crazy.”

“You’ll still be alive—”

“So? What’s so great about that? Look around, Kodie. This is a nightmare. We’re in hell. Why would I want to stay here? Why do you?” He pointed the gun at us again, his shoulders squared to us, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. The sweat on his skin had become a full-body slick. I wondered how long he had been standing there, there within eyeshot of the boys outside. In my peripheral vision, I saw the boys drop down, out of sight. Not turn and walk away. Drop down.