R. Boon
December 25, 2013/January 1, 2014
Intersections
This, late on the night
before winter solstice, a little snow on the ground, a few slick patches on the
country road, where snow had been packed down to ice. It was just at the edge of refreezing, and
the air was moist, thick. Patches of fog
gathered in the fields.
“Come
on, girl. Let’s go see if the creek has
a voice tonight,” Brad said to the old dog.
She snuffled at something in the ditch.
He rubbed his hands in his pockets and tried to be patient. He kicked at a mangled branch. Just two days before, the county had come
through again with their brush hog, destroyed all the grasses built up along
the road, snarled tree limbs without clean cuts, destroyed, destroyed. “The insane part, they think this is a public
service. Boone County Public Works, our
main cause of erosion.”
He
tossed the branch up over the fence line into his field. He imagined the hostile hum of the power
lines overhead. “And the electric
company. Put up lines over the biggest
trees, then blamed the trees and cut them down.
Now they come through every year and chop out the tops of anything left
underneath.” Lucy looked up and trotted
farther down the road. She tolerated his
rants and pitied how little he could smell or hear. Brad followed.
“Now they come spray something
to kill all the saplings right under the electric lines. Even when I refuse permission. As if that doesn’t bleed over into the field. More poison.”
Lucy stopped to crouch
down and piss. Brad stopped too, and
pissed in loops and lines across the road, trying to design impromptu
hieroglyphs. The road itself was made of
gummy oil put down and crushed rock pressed in. He imagined his piss dissolving the black road,
starting new potholes. “Fuck all of
them,” he said aloud. Lucy finished and
moved on downhill. The fog was thicker
over the creek.
“And this new
bridge. Seven months they closed the
road because two days a year, there would be a flood over the road. Seven months—that’s 210 days, more or less. At two days a year,” he paused to do the math—“that
means their solution equaled 105 years of the old problem.” Lucy looked over
the edge of the bridge, barked softly.
Brad remembered how old Starbuck, even blind, wouldn’t cross the new
bridge. “He’d go halfway and stop, and
pull back. I’d have to carry him over if
we were all going to walk up the far hill.”
He rubbed Lucy’s head.
“Look how they gouged
out the embankments. All these concrete
slabs they put in. And the big rocks
they hauled in from somewhere else.”
Lucy barked again, backed away from the edge. “Wrong thinking.” Brad stopped to listen. Some creek noise. The first running water since early spring,
when snow was melting. But the creek now
too wide. The old channel bulldozed
out. And not even enough water for
isolated pools. “What happened to all
the minnows? The crawdads? No frogs down there all summer. I never even see snakes anymore. Our
road intersects with their home, and they disappear.” Lucy backed off the bridge, whining. “I know, I know, it’s strange I talk to the
creek. And listen to it.
“Remember that flood 6
or 7 years ago? Water over the road, and
all of you knew enough to stay back. But
I wanted to try it. Must have been
fourteen foot over normal, enough to push it over the road. I waded out into the rush of water, felt a
log bump my leg. And a little farther
out, could feel the asphalt moving loose under my feet, as if the whole flood
was alive. Stupid, huh?”
He listened to the
water in the creek, heard a rustling, a breeze coming through the winter leaves
along the banks. The fog moved with the
breeze, a near-solid cloud. And
something—a deep ringing, like crystal, ethereal. A breath.
A heartbeat. “It’s like fog in a
movie,” he said, laughing, to Lucy, who had lurched back, growling. The breeze ended, and the fog climbed the
bridge. Part of the guard railing
sagged, crushed with enormous weight down to the concrete. The bridge itself cracked, trembled. The road all the way up the hill splintered
and shifted. The fog coiled around
him. “Hello? Hello?
What--?” He stared into the fog,
and huge red eyes opened and stared at him.
He fell backwards on his butt, and the creek’s voice took form. “Dragon,” Brad whispered, and smiled.
© 2014, Robert E. Boon
