Orphaned
Page 3
She pulls Breath closer to her.
He settles into her grasp,
trying again for her nipple
but not finding milk.
Birds fly from the suffering mountain,
sharp flares of black against heavy banks of gray.
White flashes from the tips of wings.
Maybe those two magpies are in there.
As she watches them pass,
Snub’s eye spots a patch of wild celery,
smashed in the tumult,
fragrant stalks splaying in every direction.
Soon her belly is full.
A pond where once was none,
water a brown so deep
it is nearly the black of rot.
The tips of drowned ferns sway
on the water’s ashy surface.
Sooty cormorants fidget,
spreading their wings and strutting,
yellow throat pouches trembling
as they balk at strange water.
Buffalo mill at the far edge,
lowing and sipping,
the water’s surface darkening
the sweeping curve of their horns.
They are focused on the jungle
where there is a sound of
yip.
It sets Snub’s hairs standing.
A hot wind whips down the slope,
wakes the flesh on Snub’s cheeks,
tingles her hands and chest.
She faces away from it,
curving her body over Breath’s.
On the spot of ground between her big toes, she sees
a young tendril of vine wither and curl into itself
as heat from the mountain
makes Snub’s heart surge.
Without another thought
she is racing down the slope
toward the dark pond,
away from the red.
Making sure Breath is secure on her back,
Snub stands up on two legs and beats her chest,
hitting the spot where her heart is already
pounding.
Pap pap
Pap pap
like Silverback would do.
He is not here, and some gorilla
must always be Silverback.
The mountain rumbles and sends
wind,
fast and searing,
crisping and dry.
Snub runs from it,
fear making her shambling and fitful.
She falls more than she races.
Breath whimpers his panic.
The hot wind turns trees limp
and then, sizzling, bends them.
Even though she is facing away,
the pain closes Snub’s eyes.
Her heart knows this hot wind
is like a buffalo chasing her down,
horns lowered.
The angrier its snorts are,
the more she must not look back.
Looking back is to slow,
and to slow is to die.
The gray sky
starts falling to the ground,
rolling misty boulders
in all directions,
fast and sure.
The ash keeps easy pace with her,
and then it is beyond her,
clogging Snub’s vision
with its sooty gray.
Snub vaults bodies without knowing what animal has fallen,
only that the fallen creature is warm and maybe even still alive
but has succumbed to the water or the tumbling or the ash.
She will not let the same thing happen to her or Breath.
A smell both sweet and revolting
distracts Snub enough that a palm bush
emerges unexpectedly from the swirling gray
and smashes her.
Breath squeals in fear.
When Snub gets up
she sees that the hairs
along her arm
are smoking.
It is her own body
causing the burning smell.
A forest antelope plunges
down the mountainside,
fleeing the red.
When it strikes a tendril of fire,
it does not drown.
It does not struggle to get back onto the land.
One delicate hoof hits the red flow,
then the animal is a blaze of yellow flame,
flaring and disappearing.
It has not become dead.
It has become gone.
Snub hides in the pond water,
billowing ash raining thickly,
turning Breath the color of pith.
The shore of the pond,
once only a few lengths away,
has vanished.
Sounds are all that
tell her of others,
lowing buffalo,
yipping dogs,
shrieking parakeets,
barking baboons.
She edges Breath away from the worst of the noise,
creatures slithering against her waist and legs.
The tail of a buffalo emerges in front of her, and
the beast kicks out and startles away,
barely missing Snub.
She has been on two feet for too long—
her hips ache.
She moves Breath so he is riding on her shoulders.
He wraps his hands around her forehead,
little finger drifting into her view.
Insect carcasses strew the ashy pond.
They, too, steam as they float,
clumping around bobbing logs.
Some of the insects are still alive.
Snub ignores them even as she feels them
thrash in the hair on her cheeks
and over her brows.
Breath catches a stick bug in his hand,
brings it to his mouth.
Snub can see flailing insect legs,
until she hears a crunching sound
and the legs go still.
Snub wades blind,
eyes scrunched closed,
until she hears heavy breathing.
She’s staring into the eyes of a hippopotamus.
The bulging and blundering animal,
so puffed and ungainly on land,
is a gorilla-killer in the water,
more dangerous than any crocodile.
But this animal has flared wide nostrils
at the end of its bulbous head,
snorting into the water hard enough
to send up sprays of muck.
Its soft brown irises are framed in white
as it stares at the suffering mountain.
The hippopotamus is terrified.
They stare at one another,
Snub and Breath and hippopotamus,
undone by their changed world.
The beast surges away.
The dome of ash tightens and darkens.
Even the fastest creature could not outrun it.
wragh.
Snub cries to the hot sky.
She can’t hear any answer.
If her family is nearby,
they are not telling her.
She can breathe only shallowly.
Anything deeper and the heat gashes,
pulling her into a fit of coughing.
She whimpers, hoping Mother
or Brother or Wrinkled or Teased
or Silverback
will hear her distress and come.
But if they are here,
she cannot see them.
All she can do
is wait
and hope
her family will appear with the dawn.
This night brings more to see instead of less.
Other hues appear behind the ash.
The sky is rimmed red in one direction,
a gurgling growth of angry color,
like a pustule.
The suffering mountain
that used to be home
is now so far away.
It brings a warped, tense feeling,
the opposite of
hoo.
Carefully holding a sleeping Breath,
Snub eases herself deeper into the slackening water,
now the same dark as the clogged sky,
though lapped in moonlight.
Husky breathing stills her.
She almost grunts,
but stops herself.
It is not a gorilla that she’s heard.
Rain comes.
Snub normally hates getting wet
but is glad for the rain now,
for the familiar patter of droplets hitting water,
for the rivulets running down her forehead
that smell like ash but leave her clean.
Somehow, time passes during this watchful night.
The sun can only glimmer
behind the clouds of ash.
But with its rise she can hear sounds of gorillas,
gorillas that may be her family.
When will full daylight come?
Logs
sticks
leaves
insects
white bellies of fish
white bellies of lizards
white bellies of mice
rats
birds
monkeys
dead and alive,
all glint in thick ash sludge.
This dark pond is the reason Snub is still alive,
but the dark pond is full of death.
She must cross it to bring Breath
to the sound of Mother.
This little body
in her aching arms
is the courage she needs.
Snub rubs the top of Breath’s head until he is awake.
He is dazed and groggy, but his eyes are open.
Breath spooks at the dark, filthy water.
He is angry, pinching and biting her.
Snub moves him up to her shoulders.
He goes mute.
Breath’s small fingers grip tight.
He shivers as his back hits a raft of dead birds.
Snub moves toward the sound of
hoo.
Snub passes a crocodile
and a troop of long-toothed baboons.
Snakes plane through the water,
slithering as easily through pond as land,
triangle heads leaving
delicate wakes
through ash sludge.
A seething mass of red ants.
They’ve made their own raft,
those on the bottom struggling
to get to the surface,
those on the surface
sending the bottom to drown.
Fire ants can swarm and kill.
But none of these animals attack one another.
The mountain’s suffering has remade the world.
She is almost there.
As she nears the gorillas, Snub’s heart lifts,
but to keep her and Breath safe
she fights not to make
any sounds of
acha.
There is Silverback!
A patch of his hair has burned away,
but he is whole.
There is Teased!
She looks exhausted, older than ever,
head drooping while she hunkers down.
Other gorillas are on the far side of Silverback,
but Snub cannot tell which ones.
Snub has made a sound of
acha!
before she knows it.
Birds and insects go quiet.
Snub looks back at the crocodile
and sees only the flash of its tail as it dives.
Maybe it is coursing right toward her.
Snub grips Breath tight,
picks up speed,
racing through wet clutter.
Silverback is up on all fours,
pacing back and forth,
his eyes never leaving Snub and Breath
as he punches the earth,
saying Come sooner.
As she slips and staggers forward,
Snub imagines the crocodile’s jaws
locking on her leg,
she and Breath dragged under.
Silverback’s strong arms pull Breath from her,
then return to drag Snub along a sodden trunk,
slide her over mossy wood,
and finally bring her to rest
on a broad, flat stone.
Hands are on Snub,
snagging in her clodded hair.
There is a lot of grooming to do.
Brother pulls half a crushed earthworm from between Snub’s toes.
Teased sniffs globs of mud before rubbing them into the grass,
then flicks sodden weeds from Snub’s back.
It is Silverback who grooms Snub’s face,
smoothing out her wet hair,
his thumbs heavy as slumber against her forehead.
Snub closes her eyes and faces the ash-dimmed sun.
hoo!
Waking, the sun hot and bright.
Where is Breath?
Where is Mother?
Snub sits up, eyes open wide.
Brother is startled.
He jerks and rolls,
nearly pitching into the dark pond
before he catches himself and rights to all fours.
He glares at Snub.
Broken nettles are under Snub’s back.
Someone made her a nest and placed her in it.
There is Mother!
She faces away from Snub, hunched and rocking.
The triangles of her shoulder blades jut,
her hair is even thinner than before.
Where is Breath?
Snub circles to see what is in Mother’s arms.
Breath is there.
Dirty, but whole.
Latched to Mother,
filling himself.
Snub sits beside Mother and Breath,
feels the warmth of their bodies,
listens
to the slurping sound of alive.
A feeling of missing.
That is when Snub realizes it:
Wrinkled is gone.
Maybe Wrinkled will be back home,
whenever they finally get there.
Maybe Wrinkled will
be waiting for them
when they all arrive.
The flood took the family a long way.
The mountain that used to hold
the soft forest of home
is at the horizon,
no longer red but still spewing its clouds of dark gray.
At the far side of it
is a small arc of sky.
Blue!
Some of the sky is not gray.
Silverback’s eyes cast toward home,
but his body faces the other way.
Snub knows that he means
to bring them into unknown places
instead of back toward the mountain.
But Snub wants to go home.
They must choose.
They cannot stay at the edge of this pond,
full of milling predators.
Snub has always been content to watch Silverback decide.
She has never tried to convince Silverback
of anything.
She moves so she’s directly in front of Mother,
exaggerating each movement
so Mother can’t help but notice her.
Mother’s bones creak as
she follows Snub,
joining her in heading toward the fallen mountain,
toward home.
Brother follows Mother.
Teased follows Brother.
Silverback follows Teased.
That’s how it happens.
Snub is leading them.
Snub!
The silverback who led the family
before Silverback
began to leave blood in his nests,
slowed down until one day
he headed into a forested canyon
and never returned.
The baby who would have been Brother
was still and blue beneath black.
A young female tumbled from a tree
on a warm, boring, sunny morning.
The family panicked at bone shards
poking through bloody flesh.
The female dragged herself away,
baring her teeth at any who tried to follow.
They died alone.
The family did not witness it.
Gorillas Snub has known have died,
but she has never seen one die.
Snub traces a narrow gully of exposed earth
away from the pond,
her family a line behind her,
placing their feet where hers have gone,
like ants do.
Black water runs
through the gully like a vein.
Ashy birds dot its surface,
acting less like birds and more like beetles,
too wet to fly and too nervous
to accept being stuck on the ground.
They hop in circles,
they hold their wings out to dry,
startling as the gorillas pass,