Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

“Very,” he said, and I thought a smile was about to emerge from his face now red with crying.

“You couldn’t make yourself a sandwich?”

His voice normalized again, he said, “I’ve been too afraid to even leave this room.” Dog tussle noises within the house made him blink and wince.

“The dogs?”

“Not just them.” He looked into the middle distance over my shoulder. “They know everything, feel all movement. They feel me and I feel them, no matter how far away, though it’s less and less the farther you go.”

“The farther you go from whom?”

“The kids I was born with.”

“ Born with?” Even Maggie perked an ear and tilted her head.

“Yes.” Wetness to it— yessss . My mind reeled.

“You mean you’ve been hiding around here since…?”

He shrugged.

“Jesus…”

The boy looked at the floor, rubbed his nose with his palm, then back at me. “That’s what one of the girls yelled when they grabbed her and dragged her out. ‘Oh, Jesus .’”

“Who dragged her?”

“The ones I came with.”

“You stayed behind?”

He nodded.

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“The dogs. What did they do?”

“They’re why the kids couldn’t stay.”

I turned and grabbed the Polaroid selfie of Chris and showed it to him. “And him?”

He took in the photo, glanced back at me.

“What happened to him?”

“Walked out the door. I didn’t follow.”

We walked into the kitchen. The kid moved slowly as if every step registered somewhere creating a beacon on which to be honed in. The dogs inside left, shouldering through the screen door. I grabbed the one package of bread that had been twisted airtight, waved away flies, pulled open drawers for a knife. “What’s your name?”

He sat down gingerly at the varnished knotty pine table in front of a large window looking out onto the pens. I pulled up the blinds quick and loud. He blinked and squinted. “Nate.”

The dogs sat out there looking at us. They sat out there in the rain and made not a sound, yet all their faces were directed at us and all their ears were perked.

“Hi, Nate.”

“Hi.” I was starving too, so I quickly made up PB&Js with the J I’d pulled out of the fridge just holding on to the last of its cold. I popped open a couple of warm sodas and set them before us. We took big bites and ate in famished quiet for a minute. Then I repeated, “Do you know what happened?”

His cheeks full, he looked up at me and shook his head and I believed him. His eyes fell upon the gun at my ribs as I leaned over to take a last bite, my shirt falling open a bit. His eyes remained there even as I continued.

“Do you miss your parents?” I buttoned my shirt one more up the chain.

He swallowed and nodded. “When I think of them, my head gets cloggy and it hurts.”

“Nate what?” I asked around smacks and strained gulps.

“Huhm?” Breadcrumbs on his face stood out in the shifting light. The rain plowed down now. Maggie sat patiently equidistant from us. Crust awaited. Nate tossed her one and she made it disappear in a snap. He smiled a mouth-full smile.

“What’s your last name?”

He stopped chewing, toggled his eyes upward to recall it. “Dyer,” he managed.

“Does it hurt even to remember that?”

“Sort of,” in muffled chewing.

“I know it hurts, but can you try to remember some things if I ask you?”

He swallowed. “I can try,” he said with a solemn look. He looked up from his crumbs and empty can. “Why do you need to know?”

“I’m lost. I need to find out what happened so I can go on. Figure out what to do next. But I need your help. You’re all I’ve got.”

He nodded and sat up straight, got a fixed look on his face and creased his forehead. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

Failing. This Nate was not processing levity.

“Okay,” I sighed deep and long, not sure I wanted to do this myself. “Do you remember the morning this all happened?”

He shook his head slowly with big innocent eyes.

I searched his face for duplicity, seeing nothing but the most scared and blameless waif’s face, skin still dewy from his tears.

“Before I say… do you have any sisters or brothers?”

“No.” He shook his head almost in shame.

“Okay, well, what happened is…”

He looked up at me, his face curious yet full of dread.

I told him.

He nodded like he knew, like I’d delivered a diagnosis confirming what in his heart he’d already known to be a lethal syndrome.

“How do you know for sure?” he asked in a cracked but normal kid’s voice. It sounded the most normal yet, now that he was upset.

“Because I’ve seen. And because the world is quiet.”

“Mommy and Daddy?”

I shook my head. “Nobody. Didn’t the teenagers here tell you?”

He shook his head. “I hid from them. A large group of us came here. But the dogs were… they left. They took one of them, a girl. I stayed behind. The other teenagers left soon after.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No. I saw one girl walk away down the road there. She held her throat and cried.”

Silence for a few moments. A spindle of drool fell from Maggie’s jowl, her eyes fixed on our food.

“We’ve tried with the radio, we’ve driven through the city, I drove out here from Austin and saw nothing, we’ve—”

His brave face crumbled, his eyes filled with tears which spilled over his lids and rolled down to his chin where the drops collected weight and gravity.

He burst out in a cry, a single loud one that echoed in the great room. I got upset too. I sniffled and swallowed it back, cleared my throat. I gave him a moment. His head hung and his emotion now so overwhelmed him that he went silent and he looked at me with his mouth open in that hideous pained way people do when their throats can’t even manage noise.

I don’t think he had understood until just that moment. It had taken my presence to draw it out. Whatever happened to him, all of them, that morning, I don’t believe allowed for understanding or pain or loss.

But here we were, these in-betweeners… falling through the fissure between the old and new world, feeling it all.

Nate sat in his chair and sobbed. Maggie waddled over, sensing the boy’s fear of her had slackened, and licked the hand he’d let fall to his side when he put his head down on the table. He let her. She wagged her tail. He turned his head to the side, laying his cheek on the table. Then he raised his licked hand and pet her head, and she let him.

One down , my head said.

Maybe I’m the warmth that breaks their ice. Maybe they all just need a good cry, to remember, to have a dog lick their hands again. The clarity of it struck me then. It made sense: they didn’t want to remember. It hurt too much. Their heads literally hurt. They didn’t want to remember and whenever we older ones were around, it made them hurt, made them start to remember. Mommies, Daddies. Home.

The pain was too much, and they fought against it not knowing why. Of course. This is why they stayed away and threw rocks. Pure reaction to stimulus.

My job, I thought then, was to let them feel their pain, to remember. So that then we can all come together and rebuild.

I float along now, and as if they agree with my thoughts, ratifying them, they sing to me, but not in words.

Maggie licking Nate’s hand was the first time I’d had any real hope since hearing those sounds the morning of.

My wonder grows more profound now as I get closer to the coast. I’ve plotted my course on a folded paper map I’ve sheathed in a Ziploc. This river, the flooded Colorado, has taken me through the south of Texas and now wants to deposit me at Matagorda Bay. It’s up ahead, maybe another day’s travel. I hope the travel remains smooth so I can keep telling you this story of my experiences during these first days. Once I get there, I’m not sure I’ll be doing any more talking because I think I’m going to be very busy. From what Nate told me, which I’m getting to, I know I will be.