Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

We never told Mom anything about what happened that day — the tubes tied together, the bridge, the man, the knife, the snake — and now that she’s gone it bothers me. I’m not sure why we never told her that story. I guess we thought — the way kids always do — we’d be in trouble.

IT’S ONLY NINE O’CLOCK, but the trailer is already stifled with morning heat. I pull back the little curtain to Carin’s bedroom, where she’s sleeping with her mouth hanging open, a small puddle of drool on her pillow. Sometime during the night she kicked off all her covers in what looks to me like a violent rejection, her arms still a frozen flail above her head and her legs stalled mid-kick. I pull the curtain shut quietly and walk back outside.

The car is sweltering and I roll down all the windows while I load my bag into the trunk. As I pull out of the trailer park, I catch sight of Carin in the rearview mirror, stumbling from the trailer in her pajamas, her hair a rat’s nest on top of her head. I pause for a moment and then reverse, putting the car in park and leaving the engine running. Carin leans into the window. “Here.” She reveals two sweaty aspirin from the clutch of her palm. “Thought you might need these.”

“Thanks.”

“You were a mess last night.” Carin grins at me. “It was hilarious.”

“I’m sure it was very funny for you.” Sitting, looking up at Carin, it’s the first time I feel like the younger sister.

“Get home safe.” Carin is still chuckling as I start to drive away. “Mexico,” she yells, as I roll through the trailer park.

I stick my head out the car window. “I’ll think about it.”

Carin follows the car to the edge of the road and as I drive away, she hops across the hot concrete in her bare feet, waving at me in her goofy way. I reach my arm out the window and wave back before pulling out onto the highway and following the snaking road through the arid hills and up into the green mountains. The air turns cool on my skin, sending a shiver of goose bumps up my arms.

Deep into the mountains everything thins: the trees, the air, the clouds. I’m not sure if this mountain highway is actually the highest I’ve been above sea level, but it feels that way. Every time I drive it, I feel like I can see great distances. The forest stretches and spills off the sides of the Earth. I reach the highway’s crest and then I’m descending again. Everything from here on is closer to the coast. It’s here, at this height, that it hits me: a pang of missing that catches like a stone in the softness of my throat and settles somewhere in my stomach. I finally miss her at the right time. She is my childhood. She’s the part of me that has passed and I miss her.

AFTER COLLECTING THE BEER bottles from the bunkhouses at the sawmill, the brothers headed into the forest behind their house to eat wild blackberries until their bellies were rotten with them and their fingertips were stained purple.

“Lookit.” Ben crouched on one knee, shaped his hand into a gun and took aim at a sparrow perched on a branch. “Bam!” The bird took flight through the trees. When the boys were in the forest, Ben spent a lot of time talking about BB guns.

“Don’t scare them,” Henry said. Their Mama kept three birdcages in the kitchen — one with finches, one with budgies and one with an African Grey — and Henry liked to stick a finger through the cages to rub their bellies or feel the curt jabs from their beaks. Every morning, it seemed to Henry, they tried to escape. At first light, he could hear them flapping around, screeching and knocking against the metal cages. By lunch they quieted, and by evening they slept. There was always a racket in the kitchen in the morning with the birds and the coffee machine and the brothers.

“It’s not real,” Ben said. He stood right in front of Henry and aimed his weapon at Henry’s black eye. “Bang!”

Henry flinched then looked away.

“Pantywaist,” Ben said. It was what their father called men he didn’t respect. Whenever Henry heard the word he thought of their mother’s underwear, the caramel-coloured ones that reached up past the belly button. Ben picked up two sticks and twirled them between his fingers like nunchucks, spinning his legs around with circular kicks. He pointed a stick at Henry’s swollen eye. “Does it still hurt?” It was the first time Ben said anything about it.

“No,” Henry lied. The area around the eye was a deep shade of purple, and this morning when Henry looked in the mirror and pried open the lid, there was a bloody spiderweb across his cornea. That day Ben had stood on the other side of the school’s chain-link fence, watching as the boys yelled faggot and chased Henry across the field toward the trees. Henry thought there would be lots of places to hide in the forest. Part of him had believed that once he hit the treeline, he would disappear or swoop high up into the branches of the evergreens like a winged creature.

“It’s this way,” Ben said when they reached a fork in the path. They were looking for a cave they found yesterday, past the clearing and past the creek. Henry wasn’t allowed to cross the water because he wasn’t a strong swimmer, but Ben had a way of making him do things, like sticking six peanuts up his nose. Henry had snorted most of them out, but he had to go to the emergency clinic for the last two.

This time they had matches with them, pilfered from the glove compartment of their mother’s car. The cave had been pitch black and Henry had ripped his favorite T-shirt scrambling from it after Ben let out a scream that made his eardrums go fuzzy. Ben was only teasing him, but in the total darkness of the cave Henry had imagined a bear’s coarse fur brushing against his cheek.

The creek came into view now, twisting through trees dripping with moss, and Ben ran ahead, wading through the water and coming out the other side soaking wet. He took off his shirt, wringing it out before putting it back on, smoothing the wrinkled cotton over his chest. “We need a torch,” he shouted across the water, picking up bits of dried grass and twigs from the ground. Henry scanned the length of the creek, trying to find a safe place to cross. The water was deep in parts, swirling gently where the rocks created whirlpools. Henry crossed along a line of large boulders, taking his steps carefully on the slimy green rocks. He tried not to think about being swept into the water and dragged all the way to the ocean. Every summer on their first day at the lake, their father would check his wristwatch and time Ben as he swam the length of the shore. He’d compare the result to last year’s time and then enter the numbers in a small booklet that fit in his shirt pocket. Henry would stand on the shore and watch, leaning against their father’s leg and letting his body go limp, his limbs hanging as though he were sick or very tired. When Ben came to shore, their father would pull out a stub of pencil for recording and give him claps on the back as Henry shrugged off the water drops that fell on him.

By the time Henry reached the entrance to the cave, Ben was on his hands and knees, already half inside, the unlit torch under one arm. Henry rushed to follow behind him, accidently bumping into his behind. “Give me some room, would ya?” Ben said, kicking at him. One of his kicks got Henry on the nose, making him sneeze and sending a spasm of pain through his eye.

The tunnel leading into the cave was narrow and as they crawled through, their bodies sealed off any light from outside.

“What about bears?” Henry said, feeling phantom bristles along his skin.

“The hole’s too small, dummy.” Ben’s voice was muffled.

The damp rock hugged the brothers as they squeezed blindly through the passageway, and then all of a sudden the cold walls were gone. The air became verdant, cool and wide. Henry reached out into the dark space and felt nothing. They sat silently in the void for a minute, close together, their knees touching. Henry tried to quiet his breathing so it sounded normal — the cave exaggerated every small noise. Ben lit a match, the delicate glow flickering, barely lighting the small circle between them. He held the match to the torch and the flame stirred before fizzling out. He lit a second match and the torch ignited, flaring brightly and filling the space with a smoke that smelled of burning hay.