Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

It was a quiet evening, and the kerosene smell seemed less everywhere now, and there were lights in the neighboring windows. In a back window of the house behind ours, a family was sitting around a table, and the father, or I assume it was the father, was talking lively with his hands. The backyard was smaller than I remembered. All overgrown with weeds and littered with beer cans and bottles, probably from neighborhood kids. Three bald rubber tires were stacked beside a pile of paint cans, and a twisted bike knotted like a ribbon sat on top of a red metal car hood. The Ford Country Squire! — No. And just as fast, I remembered that poor thing had been repossessed, not so long after Dad brought it home. Because the world in fact kept turning, and it turned out we couldn’t afford the payments. At the back fence, like a V jutting from the ground, were the same two maples.

The evening breeze was slight. The leaves up top were flitting. I sat on the back porch steps.

The wine was cold and not bad at all and I watched evening come down behind the houses. The pearlike shadows of the Sikh temple domes darkened against the sky. I’m here, I’m right here, I thought to myself. And Dad’s here, too, right there inside and asleep. He’s alive. But the man should be in a bed. Were there beds anymore? Upstairs? I hadn’t even been upstairs yet. More wine. Too many years had sloughed off this place, like paint peeling from a surface, all of it and everywhere else, the backyard and metal fence, the rusting wrought-iron porch railing, the blue mailboxes on the street corners, and the ice cream trucks, takeout delivery guys on bikes, and the next-door neighbors asleep in their beds or watching the nightly news in easy chairs, from all of this and everything, the years were sloughing off too fast. What happens next? We’d hug in the bright morning, avoiding all mirrors, and cheer flat beer until he finally gave up and died, “went home.” I opened my phone and the digital green display lit up. I looked at the numbers.

I decided I would march through the house first thing in the morning, and tear every drape and shade from the windows, open every window wide. I wanted to light every bulb and start sweeping. I would wake the man up with a busy morning commotion, fresh coffee brewing in the kitchen. He’d come shouting from the bathroom, blocking the sunlight from his eyes, and see me in the hallway working a broom. The front door open, trash bags piled on the porch. And then he’d say, Thank you, Junior, thank you. He’d say, This is just what I needed, good light in here! Just can’t get enough light! Then we’d go for a walk in the sun, me holding his hand, a giant hand, and my father a giant beside me. I drank. But part of me, I have to say, was also jealous of the man, of how he looked at the thing, unflinching. And yet a small part of me also disliked him for being so goddamn gullible about it all. Life is here. Now. God doesn’t need your company. Leave Heaven be. I would save him after all.

I went back to the kitchen and foraged for more wine. I opened the refrigerator, dumbly, knowing there was no more left. I went through the cabinets, mostly empty; some were filled. One was lovingly stacked with newspapers, and another with pens and pencils bound by rubber bands. Another was stacked with empty wine bottles. One fell, I caught it in my hands, and this gave me hope.

The pantry.

It was a deep closet pantry with louvered doors. I’d hidden inside as a kid when my mother did the dishes, and also when she searched the rooms with a belt in her hands, anxious to give me a strapping for any disobedience. I don’t like to remember this side of her. Plus that sort of thing only happened occasionally, and when I was very young. I saw a worn-down broom leaned against shelves stacked with dusty canned goods, and a stack of cardboard boxes. One had been opened, flaps nicely folded. Inside it, I saw two lamps messily wrapped in bubble packing, the same lamp I’d seen in both the dining room and the living room. Behind, there was a box with four bottles of red wine, screw-topped.

I chose a tall glass from the sink and rinsed it, dried it clean on my shirt.

Back outside, shouting came from a dimly lit basement window next door. Maybe Korean. The night sky in Queens had no stars, and the moon was somewhere up there dozing. It was a nonstop sky of dark blue and nothing. I thought, My mother is here, she’s right here, and also she’s not here at all. She’s out there and nothing at all. And all of her was here when she was still here, even the yelling for my father, saying there’s a spider in the bathroom, and the prayers before meals with a supplicant’s napkin on her head whenever Dad was out of town, even the vein in her neck like the string on her red balloon face when she got angry. I let that memory go when it came. All of her was here when she was here, and nowhere else. I never thought of her name anymore. My father’s name is Gill. I wanted to say his name out loud.

“Gill Laudermilk.”

My glass raised, I said it louder. And I had a terrible feeling that there was more dead space between sons and fathers than all of the night air around me. Which version of Dad did I love? I loved mostly an invention, the best version of him I could think of.

“I am Gill Laudermilk’s son!”

The moon peeked over the roofs, and I was tired. The lightning bugs were blinking, and I thought of the brief electric marks they make when getting snuffed.

I carefully closed the back door and took the wine bottle into the living room. And like rats after hours in a restaurant, the cats came out from the corners. They rubbed against my legs, flirting and following me with caution. I shook the sheet on the couch clean, shut off the lamp, and leaned back easy on the couch. Where was my bag? I pulled the phone from my pocket and tried to relax. The room was dark, very dark, and I set the phone green-lit and open on the table. I smelled the garbage in the hallway, but it was fainter. I was getting used to it. I deeply inhaled, filled my senses like I would in a Christmas kitchen. I drank in the stink and everything was going to be fine. The phone shined weakly and the numbers read “9:21.” Things would be better tomorrow.

The white cat rubbed at my ankles.

I patted my lap: Come up here. Stroked her back. I wanted to ask her about the bathroom, what it looked like inside the red-lit room, and how it felt to be such a good kitty, to be trusted to see what was going on inside there, to be such a perfect fucking kitty. I stood up and, picking her up with both hands, I let her hang. Dangling there from my grip, the softly hissed. I let go one hand and lifted her higher, stretching my arm as far is it could go. She scratched at my forearms with her back feet. Was this the same vicious thing that had scratched my arm before? An itchy red line puffed up on my wrist. I took a gulp from my glass as the cat fought back. I squeezed my hand slightly, and actually moved the cat’s ribs. I felt the shape of her rib cage, her interior, her tiny pink heart shaking there and sweating the closing rib walls between my fingers. The cage was closing in my grip. I put down my glass.

I pressed my fingers against one of the pink pads of her right front paw, and a single claw came curling like a sharp thin pinky finger. I kept pressure on the pad, keeping the claw extended, and I pressed a thumb against the claw. It poked against my skin and broke the skin of my finger but I pushed back more against the claw, bending it backward. She cried out, fighting my grip. I was afraid my father might hear. I squeezed hard on her ribs and reminded her that I actually had two hands. I pushed back on her claw and she cried and she fought.

She whimpered.

She stopped fighting, and let herself hang. I thought of wishbones, totally ashamed. I sat and placed the cat in my lap. She didn’t run. She hopped off and just walked away, but not without stopping at the doorway and giving me a look of absolute disgust before leaving the room. The phone light had gone out. I closed the phone, opened it again, and left it there on the table, green-lit and glowing. I poured another glass and drank it down fast. It had been such a long first day. What would I find in the light of morning? I closed my eyes and the cats were slowly climbing up the couch, up my legs. They came out like shadows and covered me. I closed my eyes and prayed again. Again! I asked if I could please dream of Sarah, and I lay there for what seemed like only seconds before I fell into a deep heavy sleep, before falling into a long and semilucid dream.