Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

He gave me a curt nod.

“I talked to him before, doesn’t sound good. Sarah said he sounds pretty bad. He was a little loopy.”

“How loopy?” He was wrapping the cord around the vacuum neck.

“He said my mom was there.”

“Where? There?”

My phone rang. “Dad?”

He sounded far away: “Why is my phone ringing so much?” Almost like he was on speakerphone and actually walking away from the phone while we talked. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“I wanted to see how you’re doing. I told you before I’d call.”

“When?”

“Before. This morning.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was yelling now.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, you’re alive.”

“Yes! I’m alive! Are you satisfied? I’m going to bed.”

“It’s like two o’clock. That’s like four o’clock your time.”

“I’m tired.” He hung up.

I looked at Amad, shrugged my shoulder.

I went back in the storeroom, and I wanted a cigarette because now I was feeling anxious and I’d forgotten to smoke one outside. Plus there was no smoking in the storeroom, one of Amad’s many rules. I’d smoke later on with another cup of coffee, but a hot cup of coffee. Planning cigarettes was almost always as pleasurable as smoking them. I’d never given real thought to who was taking care of my father at home since Mom died. Who was cooking? Was the man having hot meals? Then again, a burrito could be just as good cold. I organized and moved things. I swept. I picked up broken glass from things that fell from the top shelves and broke around me while I was cleaning up — we’d been on to something, after all, with those yellow lines — and before you know it Amad was standing in the doorway eating an apple, and saying “You’re hired.”

“I’m being serious,” he said. “This inspires me. So clean!” He ran his finger along a shelf, held it up to the light, and even from where I was standing I could see the filthy smudge.

“Getting there,” I said.

“Yes. And I’m going home now.” He put out his hand. I shook it, exaggeratedly, like, You got a deal there, mister. I wiped what smudge came with it on my jeans.

“You close shop?” he asked me.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll close shop,” I said, feeling very proud.

He waved as he walked away, and closed the door behind him.

I walked home along the water, and had my cigarette with a hot black coffee I got at the corner gas station. The smoke climbed up, the color of the moon’s silver swirls. Obviously I had to go see Dad. As soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow? Or was that too soon? But if I went tomorrow, it meant no dinner with Sarah … Which was an easy decision, yes, but also it felt important. I needed to recognize it. And then I looked out at the dark water and could’ve sworn I saw someone coming out of the ocean. A shadow of someone, probably just had a night swim, but then he bled away in the night.

I blinked my eyes, shook my head.

Dad was getting old, and I knew what comes next, what always comes next, and I wondered why I was smoking so much when I hardly liked the taste anymore. Plus dinner probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. She and I were dead, long dead, and shamefully, forgive me, but a dying and not-quite-dead-yet part of me also used to sometimes stand by that water and watch the sun drop below the waterline at sunset, and I’d wish the great reddening ball would quash out, get doused, fall purple and cooling toward the bottom of the ocean. Take us all down with it. I put out my cigarette in the sand. I was getting morbid, and maudlin, and decided that what I really needed was to just get laid.

There was so much sand, and the ocean was rolling in and rolling out, and the waves were playing and toppling like animals wrestling. Water roiling and boiling in the dark. And then it happened again. I saw someone coming from the water. But this time it was two men, looking like two black liquid things walking from the water, except they stayed where they were, and were sort of suspended. One of the drilling rigs miles away on the water let out a booming signal, and it spooked me, so I took off running; then I stopped. I turned back and there they were, natural as night, two figures forming there in front of me. They were made of the water, and the dark light, and the night air. Just as fast, they disappeared. They rose up again from underwater, and then bled away in the darkness. It was all a trick of the light, or the no-light. I was tired, and I was seeing things, a grown man running from ghosts on a cool and lovely summer evening by the water. Things would be better in the morning.

The long PINNNGGG of a doorbell rudely pealed through the fog in my brain. My face all pressed up against the armrest of the couch, Dad’s knees slowly went by. At some point in the night I’d apparently wrapped myself in the sheet. Cats were resting on my back. The doorbell pinged again. I wanted a tremendous orange juice. Voices in the front hall, feet shuffling, and then blurry sounds coming from the kitchen …

“Have a good day, Mr. Laudermilk.”

Dad shouted: “It’s a good morning, Junior, so let’s take advantage!” The front door closed. “I made us some coffee!”

My face was mashed against the armrest and it felt just right until the part of my brain in charge of such things suddenly woke. The whole face hurt, pressure on every pore and wrinkle. I turned over, cats darting from the sofa. I stretched with a loud groan, causing an animal chain reaction where, beside the table, two fat cats, one first, then another, bowed up like stuffed feline stoles, stretching their spines. They yawned and fell back asleep.

I pulled aside the draping a bit, squinting at the outside day, and watched a deliveryman drop two garbage bags on the curb before hopping into a brown double-parked truck. Still in the head-melt of sleep, I saw an empty wine bottle on the table, a shallow bowl littered with cigarette stubs, and my phone, open, dead. The thought of smoking made me nauseated. I walked toward the kitchen and became aware, and weirdly okay with the fact, that I, too, was now walking barefoot, instinctively avoiding the cat turds and everything else. Dad was framed by a beige window shade behind him. He was wearing his loincloth and a white T-shirt. A large box lay on the table.

I pointed to the window shade. “Why not let some day in here?”

“Days are finished, Junior.”

He was drinking coffee from an oversized mug emblazoned with a screaming image of Max Headroom. He sipped, Max all glaring teeth and white plastic shades. I had to look away.

He said, “I love a cup of coffee in the morning. One cup.”

“Who was your visitor?”

“Delivery.”

A haze and muffle between my ears.

“You found the wine.” He pointed to yet another empty bottle on the counter.

“Jesus. Sorry.”

“No, it’s good. I’m glad.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m fine. What?” I was a palm-sized man climbing my own insides like a cave.

“What I say?”

“I thought you said something,” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “And I gotta say I’m glad you’re not feeling so hot.”

Another Max Headroom mug sat beside the coffeemaker. It was already filled with coffee. “That’s a terrible thing to say.” I picked it up. My right palm was pulsing; I switched hands and took a sip.

“Means you’re no professional, which makes me glad. Never was either, myself. You hungry?”

“There is no food in this house.”

“Bread and butter, Junior. Food of the gods.” He looked toward the counter where the bread, the butter semiwrapped in waxy paper, and a knife lay. A pallid still life.