Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

My whistles came back to us from the walls of the valley louder than they left.

Roaring fire inside, small flames on the grill outside and I’m cooking eggs in an iron skillet. The sun plummets and it’s cold enough that I’m seeing my breath. Nate looks down at me from the tall rectangular window of his loft.

I feel him up there. Watching me. I pretend to focus on the skillet, but in my peripheral vision, I see his forehead and palms are pressed to the glass. His stillness is palpable.

He’d gone mute since we’d returned. His eyes had retrograded on me, looking like they did when I first met him in the office holding that Polaroid in my hand.

After a few minutes of me pretending to not know he’s up there staring down at me, the eggs I’ve stirred together popping into a scramble I’m sure will bring in the dogs (hoping to Christ it does), I attempt to nonchalantly look up over my shoulder and feign surprise to see him perched up there.

He’s staring, his oceanic eyes wide. I force a smile. Because it’s false, his face doesn’t change. His gaze bores through me. I wave my spatula at him. He blinks the sea-stare from his eyes and tepidly waves back.

Then he suddenly pushes off from the window.

“I’m ready to talk now.” I’d just looked back at my eggs and then Nate’s voice was right there. Standing in the garage doorway, he’d materialized so suddenly that I jumped and spun around brandishing the egg-dripping spatula as a weapon.

This should be funny. We should both break down laughing to release the tension.

I don’t like how he came down, so quiet and fast. As I recall this now, I think of him moving in a sickening new-world blur from his window and down the stairs.

I don’t like the look in his eyes or on his face either. While he doesn’t beam malevolence, I know within him a battle rages. The urges belonging to a scared kid of the old world named Nate versus implanted directives of the new.

“Talk about wh—?”

He cut me off. “When we first sat down the other day and you made me a peanut butter sandwich, you wanted me to tell you what I know.” I could swear I heard a smidgen of that flange in his voice.

“You don’t need to explain anything to me. I doubt there’s anything you can tell me that would be worth your pain.”

“But I want to.”

“Do you think it’s important?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it hard for you?”

He paused and said, “Yes.”

“Then I don’t need to hear it right now.”

“But—”

“I trust you, Nate.” Oh—how his face fell when I used that word trust . He lowered his eyes to the cement. I continued. “I think you’d have told me already if there was something I needed to know. I know you wouldn’t keep things from me that would hurt me.”

His pause before responding signaled calculation. His eyes drifted back to mine. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“We have tons of time. Okay?”

“Okay.” He slumped, plodded forward like any kid. “I thought you’d be mad at me.”

“No. We’re doing fine. One day at a time, all right?” I turned my back to him to evidence my trust.

It took a moment for him to speak. “I’ll go out in the morning to get the eggs this time, okay? I know how now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. The chickens like me. I want to.”

“I’d feel better about it if Maggie went with you though, you know?”

“No, it’s okay, really.”

“Swear?” I turned back to the grill. I had to turn around and ask again. “Swear?”

“Swear.”

It felt older brotherly. In his voice I could hear him wanting to please me. He wanted to do something on his own. He wanted to be an individual, and to stop being afraid. I thought it was a good idea. I’ll admit that gaining an extra half hour of sleep did appeal to me.

Though early evening, eager stars had winked into position. I spoke over my shoulder, “Eggs are nearly done. If you’ll go get some bread, I’ll toast it here and we can have breakfast for dinner.”

“Again?” he teased. Our thing.

“Again.”

Cue television laugh track.

I had incorporated their yipping and sniping into a dream before awaking, one of those dreams of a nebulous world at your periphery—blinded to it, you keep turning, your mind, your psyche, whatever you are, you’re spinning in a white void trying to connect.

The auditory connected because there was the yipping. A group of them, gathered outside. The feeling that they had returned woke me. Usually, I’d call up to Nate in his loft soon after I woke, but that morning I didn’t because I needed to know whether I had dreamed these noises or they had issued from the conscious world.

I sat and listened, moved my eyes back and forth in my sockets.

There—the yipping…

Sounding victorious and celebratory. There was also anxiety in it— wake up, come see .

I’d washed my clothes last night in the kitchen sink. They hung from a line of cooking twine I’d stretched across the front of the fireplace. As I slipped them on, dry and warm, the noises outside amplified.

The dogs had returned. I mumbled a missive out to the God that let this all happen, “Please let Maggie be among them.” I shrugged on my peacoat.

Beyond the ambit of the fire, I felt the morning cold before I reached the door. The storm door creaked. The dogs were gathered near the carport waiting to be fed. “Oh, so I guess you’re done carousing and you’re back to punch your meal ticket. What, hogs outrun you?”

Getting closer to them, I saw I was wrong. Each of their snouts, the fur on their chests, glistened red. A wave of revulsion moved through me. They froze as if gauging my reaction. I didn’t see Maggie. “I see you had yourselves a hunting lark after all.”

Their muzzles dribbled and dripped. Fresh kill. Standing among them now, they meandered all around me as if seeking praise, lifting their heads for my touch. Droplets of blood dotted my shoes. Some smeared on my hand-cleaned pants.

“ Ack! Back! Back you fiends,” I kidded. The dogs scattered a bit, giving me room with laughter in their eyes and grisly smiles on their faces. Each had a gout of blood on its snout like they’d dipped it up to their eyes in red oily paint. They seemed to revel in it. I’d not seen them so happy and satiated since coming here.

“I doubt you’re hungry. Huh, you killers? Yeah, you guys are killers,” I teased and reveled with them as I arranged their food pans, looking forward to reestablishing the routine again, that rhythm we needed after yesterday’s scare. The coppery tang sluicing from their mouths intensified as they dug into their food with abandon. “Guess I’m wrong. Famished. Famished from the glory of the hunt. You killers you.”

I turned around at movement I felt behind me. Up the path came Maggie in silhouette, the sky brassy with dawn breaking behind her through the crease in the valley. She sauntered toward me. I didn’t like her deliberation—she had the uneasy gait of a rabid, untrusting canine gone fey—but I ignored it, squatted down and opened my arms to her. “Mags! Where the hell’d you go? You went poof on me. Worried us.”

She didn’t come running. She came more into focus and I saw that her muzzle shone bloodslicked as the rest.

And something else. The shine on her muzzle. I looked back at the group of dogs eating. I walked over to them. Having breached the horizon, the sun poured light on the dogs. Now I saw how slick and splotched their muzzles were. Along with the blood, flecks of eggshell clung to their yolky smiles.

The chickens’ silence struck me as unusual for early morning. Dawn broke behind Maggie yet no rooster crowed.