“You all right, son? You scared?”
Talk about the child being father to the man.
“Indeed I am, Farruh,” I said. And indeed I was.
Out in the moon-mad dark of this Enigmerica, I heard the cry of things I knew so well-and the call of things more obscure to me than to all others. My own unknown. So many “squeschuns,” as they say in Gullah.
The next day would bring more lightning… and thunder. The primordial answer to the lightning’s question-the original enigma that set the cyclone swirling. I lay down and closed my eyes, trying to master, for at least a few moments of illusory peace, the alien mechanics of this new sleep.
Rapture rolled over in her blanket. “De preechuh put on ’e shroud whin we beeried Boomer,” she said, sighing.
“It’s all right, Murruh,” I said. “It was just a dream.” The last time I would ever say those words.
Boomer.
Poor old Tip. You see the need to be ever mindful? To be mindful of the details? Sometimes it is wise to count the trees before they become a forest. Because if you see a tree clearly enough, others will see it, too. Stampedes start one hoof in the mind at a time. But learn to see the thunder… then you can call the lightning down.
Powerful though they were, they had taken the bait. As wasps are drawn to raw meat they had come, and would come closer still. That is the one true trick there will ever really be in time. Change the boundaries. Everything genuinely dangerous is afraid of itself, and so cannot resist a mirror.
Kris Saknussemm
KRIS SAKNUSSEMM is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Zanesville and Private Midnight, which became a bestseller in Europe, and a collection of short stories entitled Sinister Miniatures. His latest works, Reverend America and Eat Jellied Eels and Think Distant Thoughts will be appearing internationally in 2012. A book of his paintings called The Colors of Compulsion is being published in France and Denmark.
