In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

  Delaney comes to fetch me for lunch and again for dinner. We walk, holding hands, to the dining hall.

  “This isn’t gonna help the perception that we’re married,” I say, holding our joined hands up.

  “Nope,” Delaney says.

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t give much of a shit,” I say. “Never did.”

  Delaney giggles. “Same.”

  But it seems that the buzz isn’t about Delaney’s and my maybe being married anymore. At both lunch and dinner, a few people I’ve never met before come up to shake my hand and high-five me. Middleford is a small world, and word travels fast.

  At one point during dinner, Alex and Delaney get up to drop off their trays, leaving Vi and me sitting together alone.

  “I knew it,” Vi says with a sly grin, and we both know what she’s referring to.

  “You were right. I didn’t even know it at the time.”

  “It was very obvious. Women know these things.”

  “Looks like.”

  “I could also see how she felt about you. I’m happy for you two.”

  “Thanks, Vi.”

  “Delaney’s a lucky girl.”

  I smile and blush. I don’t know how to respond, but it’s okay, because before I have to, someone else comes up to give me a high five.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, I meet with Dr. Archampong. The school’s lawyer is there, as are detectives from the New Canaan Police Department. They take my statement as part of a criminal investigation into Tripp’s actions.

  We wrap up, and I’m about to leave for poetry class when Dr. Archampong says, “Mr. Pruitt, there is one more thing. Your housing situation. You have two options. First, you may finish out the year with your room to yourself. We ordinarily encourage sharing of rooms, to teach students compromise and conflict resolution and to forge lifelong friendships. But you have certainly earned the right to a solo room.”

  That sounds pretty great. “What’s the other option?”

  “One of your fellow students, who currently resides in a single room, has come forward and asked to be placed as your roommate if you so choose. I believe you know him. Alex Pak. An exceptional young man, from what I gather.”

  An ecstatic bloom spreads through me. “Yeah, I know Alex. He is pretty exceptional. Let’s go with that.”

  Poetry class has been going for about fifteen minutes when I slip in as quietly as I can. I’m already self-conscious enough, with my two wine-purple raccoon eyes.

  Dr. Adkins reads a stanza from a poem, her back to the door. She stops to look behind her. When she sees it’s me, she puts the book down, stands, turns to face me, and begins applauding. Everyone in the class rises to join her.

  I blush and look at the ground. I want to say something snappy, like You should see the other guy, but I’m afraid if I try to talk I’ll lose my shit. I smile awkwardly, wave, and take my seat. But the class remains on their feet and clapping.

  As the applause finally subsides, I venture one sentence: “Man, I should be late more often.” Everyone laughs.

  * * *

  Dr. Adkins waits to talk to me until everyone’s gone.

  “How’s the head?” she asks.

  “Still pretty sore. You should see the other guy.”

  “You’ve been saving that one.”

  “Yep.”

  We both smile.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she says.

  “I just did the right thing.”

  “This world needs more men who do the right thing.”

  “Speaking of doing what I’m supposed to, I even managed to finish the assignment.” I hand her the poem I spent Sunday writing and revising.

  “You were totally off the hook. I thought I made that clear.”

  “It’s okay. It felt…necessary. You’ll see why when you read it.” I start to walk out.

  “Cash?” she calls after me.

  I turn.

  “Being a poet takes bravery. Yes, the courage to bleed on a page. But also to bleed for the world we write poetry about. You have it and I’ve always seen it.”

  Weight

  I have this dream.

  I’m trying to push open

  a door closed

  by the weight

  of my mama’s body.

  Some dreams are fiction

  but not this one.

  When I was young,

  my mama took

  too much of what she used

  to numb herself

  and died in our single-wide’s bathroom

  with a television

  playing sitcom reruns as her last sunset.

  Why is feeling so terrifying

  that we try to stop it?

  Feeling is a thing that’s ours only,

  a thing we don’t borrow.

  In my dream, I yearn

  for something to lift

  that weight from the door,

  To make it as incorporeal

  as smoke or light,

  so I’m not pushing against the gravity

  of my own blood.

  In its last hour, the body I left

  became the body that would

  no longer let me in.

  After crew practice, Alex and I are exhausted, but we move his things up to my room. Neither of us cares to wait.

  We study side by side that night. Sometimes one of us will break the silence with a quip or an observation. Alex ribs me about getting together with Delaney. I tease him about his agonizing over an ambiguous text from Alara.

  It reminds me of sitting on the porch with Papaw, or videochatting with him. It’s not the same. But it’s conversation and comfortable silence with someone I love.

  As it comes time for lights-out, Alex kneels on his bed to begin his private benedictions.

  Before he starts, I say, “Hey, man. Real quick.”

  He looks over.

  “Thanks for praying for me. I think it helped.”

  “Look. They have National Geographic. You love National Geographic. You used to read it all the time at our old school,” I say, pointing at the waiting room table.

  “Too nervous,” Delaney says, bouncing her leg. “Don’t feel like reading.”

  “Dr. Hannan’s a therapist. Her job is literally to help you be less anxious,” I say.

  “I’m worried about what she’s gonna find in my head.”

  “What, like going fishing and you pull up an old boot?”

  “Exactly that.”

  “I don’t think that’s how therapists work.”

  “It’s not. I studied up. Still. Aren’t you nervous?”

  “I’m mainly worried she won’t find anything at all in my head.”

  “Valid fear.”

  “Well, come on. Don’t agree with me.”

  Delaney sighs. “I guess we’re both people who get help when we need it. It’s how we met.” She starts to put her thumb to her mouth.

  I catch her hand and lower it back to her thigh. “And I have an idea for how you should start when it’s your turn with the therapist.”

  She sits on her hand. “One of the girls I used to work with texted me and said the Phantom Shitter struck the DQ again today.”

  “That’s…amazing?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what it is. It’s something.”

  “It’s weirdly comforting to know that the world continues on in your absence.” I reach over and pluck an eyelash from Delaney’s cheek.

  “Guess who I talked to the other day.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Goins.”

  I shake my head. “Dr. Goins…as in the lady-who-you-insulted-repeatedly-and-so-she-kicked-you-out-of-the-hospital Dr. Goins?”


  “Wasn’t her. Deputy Dogshit did it on his own. He got fired, by the way. She complained to management about how he treated me.”

  “How—”

  “I called to apologize. I kept feeling bad for how I treated her.”

  “And?”

  “It was cool. We had a nice conversation.” She starts fiddling with the ends of her hair, tufting them against her thumb. “You know there used to be parrots in East Tennessee?” she asks, staring off.

  “Like in dinosaur times?”

  “No. In like the 1800s. The Carolina parakeet. Last seen in the wild in 1910. The final one in captivity died in 1918. It was declared extinct in 1939.” She pulls up an Audubon drawing of a green parrot with a yellow neck and red head on her phone.

  “Seriously?” I murmur in awe. “You used to be able to look out your window in Sawyer, Tennessee, and see parrots?”

  “Yep,” Delaney says. “Aren’t they pretty? Weren’t they, I mean.”

  “Yeah. They were.”

  We’re quiet for a long time.

  “I’d love if they were still around,” I say after a while. I think about how much I wish the trajectory of the world was toward flowering instead of ruin.

  But then, as Delaney starts to raise her thumb to her mouth again, I catch her hand, and this time I clutch it tight, interweaving my fingers with hers.

  I guess sometimes the world moves from desolation toward blossom after all.

  There are still many long and loss-haunted days. Times I feel like giving up. Moments when grief strikes suddenly, like a rattlesnake hidden in tall grass.

  I see his face every day. His absence is so tangible it has its own body.

  But the world is filled with new green, and it reminds me that there are beautiful things that continue on.

  Delaney and I keep our back-to-back appointments visiting Dr. Hannan. Delaney’s thumbs start to heal, and so do I.

  I keep writing through the tempests of pain. That helps a lot too.

  And another thing that helps: being on the water. Right now, though, I’m not doing much processing.

  My pulse throbs where my spine meets my skull.

  My heart verges on exploding.

  I can’t get enough air.

  Every meter is in the red, every Klaxon sounding.

  Catch drive release recover catch drive release recover catch drive release recover. The swish of water. The buoys marking the lanes rushing by. The synchronized clatter of the oarlocks as we feather our oars, eight blades slicing through the air as one. My hands strong on the oar. Catch. Drive. Recover. Catch. Drive.

  From what seems like a great distance, the coxswain shouts, “Nice and controlled, very nice. There we go, there we go! Drive! Push! Push! Keep it tight! Port side, high finish! High finish! Starboard side, gimme a little more. We’re walking up on La Salle. We’ve been chasing them all season. Looking good, boys! We got it! We got it!”

  I hear Alex, directly behind me, huffing like a train engine.

  “Pull! Pull! Keep them off us! Keep them off us! I need a power ten in two. One! Two! Hit the gas! Go! Whoo yeah! Whoo yeah! That’s it, gentlemen, nice! Straight ahead, all together. Two boats off our bow, this is it! We’re walking on stroke! Seven! Six! Do this shit, Middleford! Keep driving! Home stretch!”

  My lungs are searing, my muscles ardent and shrieking. But I don’t slow. I’m ready to die for this. For my heart to pump my steaming blood right through my pores. For my team. I won’t let them down.

  We smash through the finish line and we glide to a stop, collapsing, too tired to even hold water. Our coxswain tells us we got first place. We’re going to Philadelphia. We’re going to the Stotesbury Cup.

  Delaney and Vi are waiting for Alex and me. My whole body quivers; I held nothing in reserve.

  Delaney sprints toward me.

  “I’m sweaty,” I warn her. She jumps on me, undeterred, hugging me with her legs wrapped around my waist like a koala. She’s tiny but I still can’t support both our weights for how exhausted I am, and we collapse to the ground, laughing.

  You pass through enough defeat, it feels like you’ll never taste victory’s sweetness. But then somehow you do, and for at least that moment, you can’t even remember a time when it wasn’t on your lips.

  My phone buzzes. I check it. “Hoooooly shit, Delaney,” I murmur.

  Alex doesn’t look up from his physics textbook. “What?”

  “She got a perfect score on the SAT.”

  Alex sets his book down on his pillow to mark his place. “Bro, get out.” He comes over and I show him Delaney’s text. “Is she joking?”

  “She wouldn’t joke about this.” I jump up and put on my shoes. “Come on.” I run out of our room, with Alex at my heels. We don’t stop running until we reach Delaney’s door. I pound on it.

  Vi answers, her hair in a messy bun, wearing pajama pants and a tank top. She smiles widely when she sees me and Alex. She steps aside. “Delaney?”

  Delaney reclines on her bed in the shorts and tank top she sleeps in. She looks up from her phone and our eyes meet. She looks happy, as well she should.

  “Come here,” I say.

  “I’m busy,” she says with a sly grin.

  “You know why we’re here.”

  “You gonna embarrass me?”

  “Bet your ass.”

  She sighs theatrically, gets up, and walks to the door. Alex and I kneel, and she obligingly stands between us. We’d all heard about this Middleford tradition.

  “Count of three,” I say to Alex. “One, two, three.”

  We hoist Delaney on our shoulders. She squeals, giggles, and teeters.

  Alex steadies her. “We won’t let you fall.” He pats her thigh. “Can’t have that genius brain splattering on the ground.”

  I look to Alex. “Ready?”

  “Let’s do this, bro.”

  We run together up the hall, whooping and hollering, with Delaney held aloft on our shoulders, screaming and laughing. Vi runs behind us, clapping and whistling. Girls open their doors to gawk, and they applaud and high-five Delaney. We get to the end of the hall and run back. Then we repeat. Until the proctors make us stop.

  When we drop off Delaney at her door, her cheeks are rosy with laughter.

  “I love you,” I whisper in her ear. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Bro, cut.”

  “What?”

  “I screwed up.”

  “Dude, you were doing great. We’ll never finish if you keep cutting.”

  “Once more.”

  “Think of the Midnite Matinee ladies. They’re on TV every week, and they’re fine with screwing up.”

  “We’re aiming higher than Midnite Matinee quality here. Where’s your Laundry Boy honor?”

  “Laundry Boy honor? That’s a thing now?”

  “Absolutely. Let’s go. In five, four, three, two, one…Hey, everyone, welcome to Blaundry Boys. Okay, cut.”

  “Dude.”

  “I said Blaundry Boys. We at least have to get the name right.”

  “Gotta get the shitty name right.”

  “Why would you say that? The name is good, man. It’s good. Rolling in five, four, three, two, one…Hey, everyone, and welcome to Laundry Boys. My name’s Alex, and this is…”

  “Cash.”

  “And we’re here to give you some tips…”

  “And tricks…”

  “To up your laundry game.”

  “The first thing you need to know about doing laundry is—”

  “Uh, bro.”

  “What? That was our best take yet.”

  “Yeah, so I accidentally didn’t hit the record button.”

  Laundry Boys

  You helped me believe

 
that there is no such thing

  as a permanent stain;

  No such thing

  as a wrinkle

  that cannot be made smooth;

  Nothing that cannot be made

  new again.

  On the second-to-last Saturday before school lets out, Vi and I go to the beach. Alex and Delaney are busy with other stuff.

  Vi wants to keep her promise to show me the ocean for the first time. The one she made the night we met. As the van nears, she blindfolds me with one of her scarves.

  “No looking,” she says.

  I feel the van stop.

  “Have fun,” Chris says from the driver’s seat. “I’ll be back at five to pick up.”

  I hear everyone getting out excitedly, their animated voices fading.

  “Careful,” Vi says, holding my elbow and assisting me out.

  “You’re in for a treat, Paul Bunyan,” Chris says. “The ocean is something you gotta see before you die.”

  Vi leads me a short ways and we stop. She says, “Listen.”

  In the faint distance, I hear the motion of the water.

  My heartbeat quickens. We walk a bit farther.

  I feel the hard pavement turn to soft sand. I take off my flip-flops and carry them in my free hand. “Can I look?”

  “Not yet,” Vi says. “Soon.”

  I tread unsteadily through the sand. The sound of waves breaking on the beach grows louder. I smell salt, seaweed, and churning water.

  “Okay…now,” Vi says, and takes off my blindfold.

  I’m looking at the ocean, for the first time. It sprawls in an infinite expanse before us, gray green at the horizon. Dazzling sunlight dapples the surface of the waves as they slowly roll in, one by one, like breaths of an immense sleeping creature.

  “Wow,” I murmur, enraptured. “Wow.”

  Vi beams. “You like?”